The Black Opal - Katharine Susannah Prichard (open ebook .TXT) 📗

and when there was going to be a dance at the station Mrs. Henty wrote to ask Rouminof to play for it. She could manage the piano music, she said, and if he would tune his violin for the occasion, they would have a splendid band for the young people. And, her letter had continued: “We should be so pleased if your daughter would come with you.”

Sophie was wildly excited at the invitation. She had been to Ridge race balls for the last two or three years, but she had never even seen Warria. Her father had played at a Warria ball once, years before, when she was little; but she and her mother had not gone with him to the station. She remembered quite well when he came home, how he had told them of all the wonderful things there had been to eat at the ball⁠—stuffed chickens and crystallised fruit, iced cakes, and all manner of sweets.

Sophie had heard of the Warria homestead since she was a child, of its orange garden and great, cool rooms. It had loomed like the enchanted castle of a legend through all her youthful imaginings. And now, as she remembered what Mirry Flail had said, she was filled with delight and excitement at the thought of seeing it.

She wondered whether Arthur had asked his mother to invite her to the dance. She thought he must have; and with naive conceit imagined happily that Arthur’s mother must want to know her because she knew that Arthur liked her. And Arthur’s sisters⁠—it would be nice to know them and to talk to them. She went over and over in her mind the talks she would have with Polly and Nina, and perhaps Elizabeth Henty, some day.

A few weeks before the ball she had seen Arthur riding through the township with his sisters and a girl who was staying at Warria. He had not seen her, and Sophie was glad, because suddenly she had felt shy and confused at the thought of talking to him before a lot of people. Besides, they all looked so jolly, and were having such a good time, that she would not have known what to say to Arthur, or to his sisters, just then.

When she told Mrs. Woods and Martha M’Cready about the invitation, they smiled and teased her.

“Oh, that tells a tale!” they said.

Sophie laughed. She felt silly, and she was blushing, they said. But she was very happy at having been asked to the ball. For weeks before she found herself singing “Caro Nome” as she sat at work, went about the house, or with Potch after the goats in the late afternoon.

Arthur liked that song better than any other, and its melody had become mingled and interwoven with all her thoughts of him.

The twilight was deepening, on the evening a few days before the dance, when Bully Bryant and Roy O’Mara came up to Rouminof’s hut, calling Sophie. She was washing milk tins and tea dishes, and went to the door singing to herself, a candle throwing a fluttering light before her.

“Your father sent us along for you, Sophie,” Bully explained. “There’s a bit of a celebration on at Newton’s tonight, and the boys want you to sing for them.”

Sophie turned from them, going into the house to put down her candle.

“All right,” she said, pleased at the idea.

Michael came into the hut through, the back door. From his own room he had heard Bully calling and then explaining why he and Roy O’Mara were there.

“Don’t go, Sophie,” Michael said.

“But why, Michael?” Disappointment clouded Sophie’s first bright pleasure that the men had sent for her to sing to them, and her eagerness to do as they asked.

“It’s not right⁠ ⁠… not good for you to sing down there when the boys ’ve been drinking,” Michael said, unable to express clearly his opposition to her singing at Newton’s.

“Don’t be a spoilsport, Michael,” the boys at the door called when they saw he was trying to dissuade Sophie.

“Come along, Sophie,” Roy called.

She looked from Bully and Roy to Michael, hesitating. Theirs was the call of youth to youth, of youth to gaiety and adventure. She turned away from Michael.

“I’m going, Michael,” she said quickly, and swung to the door. Michael heard her laughing as she went off along the track with Bully and Roy.

“Did you know Mr. Armitage is up?” Roy stopped to call back.

“No,” Michael said.

“Came up by the coach this evening,” Roy said, and ran after Bully and Sophie.

It was a rowdy night at Newton’s. Shearing was just over at Warria sheds, and men with cheques to burn were crowding the bar and passages. Sophie was hailed with cheers as she neared the veranda. Her father staggered out towards her, waving his arms crazily. Sophie was surprised when she found the crowd waiting for her. There were so many strangers in it⁠—rough men with heavy, inflamed faces⁠—hardly one she knew among them. A murmur and boisterous clamour of voices came from the bar. The men on the veranda made way for her.

Her heart quailed when she looked into the big earthen-floored bar, and saw its crowd of rough-haired, sun-red men, still wearing the clothes they had been working in, grey flannel shirts and dungarees, blood-splashed, grimy, and greasy with the “yolk” of fleeces they had been handling. The smell of sheep and the sweat of long days of shearing and struggling with restless beasts were in the air, with fumes of rank tobacco and the flat, stale smell of beer. The hanging lamp over the bar threw only a dim light through the fog of smoke the men had put up, and which from the doorway completely obscured Peter Newton where he stood behind the bar.

Sophie hung back.

“I’m not going in there,” she said.

“Did you know Mr. Armitage was up?” Roy asked.

“No,” she said.

He explained how Mr. Armitage had come unexpectedly by the coach that evening. Sophie saw him among the men on the veranda.

“I’ll sing here,” she told Bully