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

sales were the envy of pastoralists on both sides of the Queensland border. Phyllis’s inheritance and the knowledge that the interests of Warria were allied to those of Andrew Chelmsford of Yuina, would ensure a new lease of hope and opportunity for Warria.⁠ ⁠… Whereas it would be worse than awful if Arthur contemplated anything like marriage with this girl from the Ridge.

Mrs. Henty’s conscience was uneasy all the same. When the dance was ended, she called Arthur to her.

“For goodness’ sake, dear, ask that child to dance with you,” she said when he came to her. “She’s been sitting here all the evening by herself.”

“I was just going to,” Sophie heard Arthur say.

He came towards her.

“Will you have the next dance with me, Sophie?” he asked.

She did not look at him.

“No,” she said.

“Oh, I say⁠—” He sat down beside her. “I’ve had to dance with these people who are staying with us,” he added awkwardly.

Her eyes turned to him, all the stormy fires of opal running in them.

“You don’t have to dance with me,” she said.

He got up and stood indecisively a moment.

“Of course not,” he said, “but I want to.”

“I don’t want to dance with you,” Sophie said.

He turned away from her, went down the ballroom, and out through the doorway in the hessian wall. Everyone had gone to supper. Mrs. Henty had left the piano. Paul himself had gone to have some refreshment which was being served in the dining-room across the courtyard. From the square, washed with the silver radiance of moonlight which she could see through the open space in the hessian, came a tinkle of glasses and spoons, fragments of talking and laughter. Sophie heard a clear, girlish voice cry: “Oh, Arthur!”

She clenched her hands; she thought that she was going to cry; but stiffening against the inclination, she sat fighting down the pain which was gripping her, and longed for the time to come when she could go home and be out in the dark, alone.

John Armitage entered the ballroom as if looking for someone. Glancing in the direction of the piano, he saw Sophie.

“There you are, Sophie!” he exclaimed heartily. “And, would you believe it, I’ve only just discovered you were here.”

He sat down beside her, and talked lightly, kindly, for a moment. But Sophie was in no mood for talking. John Armitage had guessed something of her crisis when he came into the room and found her sitting by herself. He had seen the affair at Newton’s, and knew enough of Fallen Star gossip to understand how Sophie would resent Arthur Henty’s treatment of her. He could see she was a sorely hurt little creature, holding herself together, but throbbing with pain and anger. She could not talk; she could only think of Arthur Henty, whose voice they heard occasionally out of doors. He was more than jolly after supper. Armitage had seen him swallow nearly a glassful of raw whisky. His face had gone a ghastly white after it. Rouminof had been drinking too. He came into the room unsteadily when Mrs. Henty took her seat at the piano again; but he played better.

Armitage’s eyes went to her necklace.

“What lovely stones, Sophie!” he said.

Sophie looked up. “Yes, aren’t they? The men gave them to me⁠—there’s a stone for everyone. This is Michael’s!”⁠—she touched each stone as she named it⁠—“Potch gave me that, and Bully Bryant that.”

Her eyes caught Armitage’s with a little smile.

“It’s easy to see where good stones go on the Ridge,” he said. “And here am I⁠—come hundreds of miles⁠ ⁠… can’t get anything like that piece of stuff in your brooch.”

“That’s Mrs. Grant’s,” Sophie confessed.

“And your earrings, Sophie!” Armitage said. “ ‘Clare to goodness,’ as my old nurse used to say, I didn’t think you could look such a witch. But I always have said black opal earrings would make a witch of a New England spinster.”

Sophie laughed. It was impossible not to respond to Mr. Armitage when he looked and smiled like that. His manner was so friendly and appreciative, Sophie was thawed and insensibly exhilarated by it.

Armitage sat talking to her. Sophie had always interested him. There was an unusual quality about her; it was like the odour some flowers have, of indescribable attraction for certain insects, to him. And it was so extraordinary, to find anyone singing arias from old-fashioned operas in this out-of-the-way part of the world.

John Lincoln Armitage had a man of the world’s contempt for churlish treatment of a woman, and he was indignant that the Hentys should have permitted a girl to be so humiliated in their house. He had been paying Nina Henty some mild attention during the evening, but Sophie in distress enlisted the instinct of that famous ancestor of his in her defence. He determined to make amends as far as possible for her disappointment of the earlier part of the evening.

“May I have the next dance, Sophie?” he inquired.

Sophie glanced up at him.

“I’m not dancing,” she said.

Her averted face, the quiver of her lips, confirmed him in his resolution. He took in her dress, the black opals in her earrings swinging against her black hair and white neck. She had never looked more attractive, he thought, than in this unlovely dress and with the opals in her ears. The music was beginning for another dance. Across the room Henty was hovering with a bevy of girls.

“Why aren’t you dancing, Sophie?” John Armitage asked.

His quiet, friendly tone brought the glitter of tears to her eyes.

“No one asked me to, until the dance before supper⁠—then I didn’t want to,” she said.

The dance was already in motion.

“You’ll have this one with me, won’t you?”

John Armitage put the question as if he were asking a favour. “Please!” he insisted.

Putting her arm on his, Armitage led Sophie among the dancers. He held her so gently and firmly that she felt as if she were dancing by a will not her own. She and he glided and flew together; they did not talk, and when the music stopped, Mr. Armitage took