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

She was a little afraid. But she knew she had always pleased Ridge folk when she sang to them, so she put back her head and sang a song of youth and youthful happiness she had sung on the veranda at Newton’s before. It did not matter that the words were in Italian, which nobody understood. The dancing joyousness and laughing music of her notes carried the men with them. The applause was noisy and enthusiastic. Sophie laughed, delighted, yet almost afraid of her success.

Big and broad-shouldered, Bully Bryant stood at a little distance from her, in front of everybody. Arthur Henty, leaning against the wall near the door of the bar, smiled softly, foolishly, when she glanced at him. He had been drinking, too, and was watching, and listening to her, with the same look in his eyes as Bully.

Sophie caught the excitement about her. An exhilaration of pleasure thrilled her. It was crude wine which went to her head, this admiration and applause of strangers and of the men she had known since she was a child. There was a wonderful elation in having them beg her to sing. They looked actually hungry to hear her. She found Arthur Henty’s eyes resting on her with the expression she knew in them. An imp of recklessness entered her. Her father beat the air as if he were leading an orchestra, and she threw herself into the Shadow Song, singing with an abandonment that carried her beyond consciousness of her surroundings.

She sang again and again, and always in response to an eager tumult of cheers, thudding of feet, joggling of glasses, chorus of broken cries: “Encore, encore, Sophie!” An instinct of mischief and coquetry urging, she glanced sometimes at Arthur, sometimes at Bully. Then with a glance at Arthur, and for a last number, she began “Caro Nome,” and gave to her singing all the glamour and tenderness, the wild sweetness, the aria had come to have for her, because she had sung it so often to Arthur when they met and were walking along the road together. She was so carried away by her singing, she did not realise what had happened until afterwards.

She only knew that suddenly, roughly, she was grasped and lifted. She saw Bully’s face flaming before her own, gazed with terror and horror into his eyes. His face was thrown against hers⁠—and obliterated.

“Are you all right?” someone asked after a moment.

Awaking from the daze and bewilderment, Sophie looked up.

John Armitage was standing beside her; Potch nearby. They were on the outskirts of the crowd on the veranda.

“Yes,” she said.

The men on the veranda had broken into two parties; one was surging towards the bar door, the other moving off down the road out of the town. Michael came towards her.

“Thank you, Mr. Armitage,” he said.

“Oh, Potch looked after her. I couldn’t get near,” John Armitage said.

An extraordinary quiet took possession of Sophie. When she was going down the road with Potch and Michael, she said:

“Did Bully kiss me, Michael?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“I don’t know what happened then?”

“Arthur Henty knocked him down,” Michael said.

She looked at him with scared eyes.

“They want to fight it out⁠ ⁠… but they’re both drunk. The boys are trying to stop it.”

“Oh, Michael!” Sophie cried on a little gasping breath; and looking into her eyes he read her contrition, asking forgiveness, understanding all that he had not been able to explain to her. She did not say, “I’ll never sing there, like that, any more.” Her feeling was too deep for words; but Michael knew she never would.

“It’s what I wore, meself, white muslin, when I went to me first ball,” Mrs. George Woods said, standing off to admire the frock of white muslin Sophie had on, and which she had just fastened up for her.

Sophie was admiring her reflection in Mrs. Woods’ mirror, a square of glass which gave no more than her head and shoulders in brilliant sketchy outlines. She moved, trying to see more of herself and the new dress. Maggie Grant, who had helped with the making of the dress, was also gazing at her and at it admiringly.

When it was a question of Sophie having a dress for the ball at Warria, Mrs. Grant had spoken to Michael about it.

“Sophie’s got to have a decent dress to go to the station, Michael,” she said. “I’m not going to have people over there laughing at her, and she’s had nothing but her mother’s old dresses, cut down⁠—for goodness knows how long.”

“Will you get it?” Michael inquired anxiously.

Mrs. Grant nodded.

“Bessie Woods and I were thinking it might be pinspot muslin, with a bit of lace on it,” she said. “We could get the stuff at Chassy Robb’s and make it up between us.”

“Right!” Michael replied, looking immensely relieved to have the difficulty disposed of. “Tell Chassy to put it on my book.”

So the pinspot muslin and some cheap creamy lace had been bought. Mrs. Woods and Sophie settled on a style they found illustrating an advertisement in a newspaper and which resembled a dress one of the Henty girls had worn at the race ball the year before. Maggie Grant had done all the plain sewing and Mrs. Woods the fixing and finishing touches. They had consulted over and over again about sleeves and the length of the skirt. The frock had been fitted at least a dozen times. They had wondered where they would put the lace as a bit of trimming, and had decided for frills at the elbows and a tucker in the V-shaped neck of the blouse. They marvelled at their audacity, but felt sure they had done the right thing when they cut the neck rather lower than they would have for a dress to be worn in the daytime.

Martha M’Cready, insisting on having a finger in the pie, had pressed the dress when it was finished, and she had washed and ironed Mrs. George Woods’ best embroidered petticoat for