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

her through the doorway into the moonlight with the other couples. They walked to the garden where, the orange trees were in blossom.

“Oh!” Sophie breathed, her arm still on his, and a little giddy.

The earth was steeped in purest radiance; the orange blossoms swam like stars on the dark bushes; their fragrance filled the air.

Sophie held up her face as if to drink. “Isn’t it lovely?” she murmured.

A black butterfly with white etchings on his wings hovered over an orange bush they were standing near, as if bewildered by the moonlight and mistaking it for the light of a strange day.

Armitage spread his handkerchief on a wooden seat.

“I thought you’d like it,” he said. “Let’s sit here⁠—I’ve put down my handkerchief because there’s a dew, although the air seems so dry.”

When the music began again Sophie got up.

“Don’t let us go in yet,” he begged.

“But⁠—” she demurred.

“We’ll stay here for this, and have the next dance,” Armitage said.

Sophie hesitated. She wondered why Mr. Armitage was being so nice to her, understanding a little. She smiled into his eyes, dallying with the temptation. John Armitage had seen women’s eyes like that before; then fall to the appeal of his own. But in Sophie’s eyes he found something he had not seen very often⁠—a will-o’the-wisp of infinite wispishness which incited him to pursue and to insist, while it eluded and flew from him.

When she danced with John Armitage again, Sophie looked up, laughed, and played her eyes and smiles for him as she had seen Phyllis Chelmsford do for Arthur. At first, shyly, she had exerted herself to please him, and Armitage had responded to her tentative efforts; but presently she found herself enjoying the game. And Armitage was so surprised at the charm she revealed as she exerted herself to please him, that he responded with an enthusiasm he had not contemplated. But their mutual success at this oldest diversion in the world, while it surprised and delighted them, did not delight their hosts. Mr. and Mrs. Henty were surprised; then frankly scandalised. Several young men asked Sophie to dance with them after she had danced with John Armitage. She thanked them, but refused, saying she did not wish to dance very much. She sat in her chair by the piano except when she was dancing with Mr. Armitage, or was in the garden with him.

XVI

“See Ed means to do you well with a six-horse team this evening, Mr. Armitage,” Peter Newton said, while Armitage was having his early meal before starting on his all-night drive into Budda.

Newton remembered afterwards that John Armitage did not seem as interested and jolly as usual. Ordinarily he was interested in everything, and cordial with everybody; but this evening he was quiet and preoccupied.

“Hardly had a word to say for himself,” Peter Newton said.

Armitage had watched Ed bring the old bone-shaking shandrydan he called a coach up to the hotel, and put a couple of young horses into it. He had a colt on the wheel he was breaking-in, and a sturdy old dark bay beside him, a pair of fine rusty bays ahead of them, and a sorrel, and chestnut youngster in the lead. He had got old Olsen and two men on the hotel veranda to help him harness-up, and it took them all their time to get the leaders into the traces. Bags had to be thrown over the heads of the young horses before anything could be done with them, and it took three men to hold on to the team until Ed Ventry got into his seat and gathered up the reins. Armitage put his valise on the coach and shook hands all round. He got into his seat beside Ed and wrapped a tarpaulin lined with possum skin over his knees.

“Let her go, Olly,” Ed yelled.

The men threw off the bags they had been holding over the horses’ heads. The leaders sprang out and swayed; the coach rocked to the shock; the steady old wheeler leapt forward. The colt under the whip, trying to throw himself down on the trace, leapt and kicked, but the leaders dashed forward; the coach lurched and was carried along with a rattle and clash of gear, Ed Ventry, the reins wrapped round his hands, pulling on them, and yelling:

“I’ll warm yer.⁠ ⁠… Yer lazy, wobblin’ old adders⁠—yer! I’ll warm yer.⁠ ⁠… Yer wobble like a crosscut saw.⁠ ⁠… Kim ovah! Kim ovah, there! I’ll get alongside of yer! Kim ovah!”

Swaying and rocking like a ship in a stormy sea, the coach turned out of the town. Armitage thought its timbers would be strewn along the road at any moment; but the young horses, under Mr. Ventry’s masterly grip, soon took the steady pace of the old roadsters; their freshness wore off, and they were going at a smart, even pace by the time the Three Mile was reached.

“Seemed to have something on his mind,” Ed Ventry said afterwards. “Ordinarily, he’s keen to hear all the yarns you can tell him, but that day he was dead quiet.”

“ ‘Not much doin’ on the Ridge just now, Mr. Armitage,’ I says.

“ ‘No, Ed,’ he says.

“ ‘Hardly worth y’r while comin’ all the way from America to get all you got this trip?’

“ ‘No,’ he says. But, by God⁠—if I’d known what he got⁠—”

It was an all-night trip. Ed and Mr. Armitage had left the Ridge at six o’clock and arrived in Budda township about an hour before the morning train left for Sydney. There was just time for Armitage to breakfast at the hotel before he went off in the hotel drag to the station. The train left at half-past six. But Ed Ventry had taken off his hat and scratched his grizzled thatch when he saw a young, baldy-faced gelding in the paddock with the other coach horses that evening.

“Could’ve swore I left Baldy at the Ridge,” he said to the boy who looked after the stables at the Budda end of his journey.

“Thought he was there meself,” the lad replied, imitating Ed’s perplexed