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

until Potch, by throwing crumbs and whistling encouragingly and in imitation of their own calls, had induced a little crested pigeon, or whitetail, to come quite close to him. The confidence Potch won from the birds was a reproach to him. But in a few days now, Michael told himself, he would be giving Paul his opals. Then Potch would know what perhaps he ought to have known already. Potch was his mate, Michael reminded himself, and entitled to know what his partner was doing with opal which was not their common property.

When Sophie was at home, Michael had taken Potch more or less for granted. He had not wished to care for, or believe in, Potch, as he had his father, fearing a second shock of disillusionment. The compassion which was instinctive had impelled him to offer the boy his goodwill and assistance; but a remote distrust and contempt of Charley in his son had at first tinged his feeling for Potch. Slowly and surely Potch had lived down that distrust and contempt. Dogged and unassuming, he asked nothing for himself but the opportunity to serve those he loved, and Michael had found in their work, in their daily association, in the homage and deep, mute love Potch gave him, something like balm to the hurts he had taken from other loves.

Michael had loved greatly and generously, and had little energy to give to lesser affections, but he was grateful to Potch for caring for him. He was drawn to Potch by the knowledge of his devotion. He longed to tell him about the opals; how he had come to have them, and why he was holding them; but always there had been an undertow of resistance tugging at the idea, reluctance to break the seals on the subject in his mind. Some day he would have to break them, he told himself.

Paul’s illness had made it seem advisable to put off explanation about the opals for a while. Paul was still weak from the fever following his touch of the sun, and his brain hazy. As soon as he had his normal wits again, Michael promised himself he would take the opals to Paul and let him know how he came to have them.

All the afternoon, as he worked, Michael was plagued by thought of the opals. He had no peace with himself for accepting Potch’s belief in him, and for not telling Potch how Paul’s opals came into his possession.

In the evening as he lay on the sofa under the window, reading, the troubled thinking of his midday reverie became tangled with the printed words of the page before him. Michael had a flashing vision of the stones as Paul had held them to the light in Newton’s bar. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had not seen the stones, or looked at the package the opals were in, since he had thrown them into the box of books in his room, the night he had taken them from Charley.

He got up from the sofa and crossed to his bedroom to see whether Paul’s cigarette tin, wrapped in its old newspaper, was still lying among his books. He plunged is hand among them, and turned his books over until he found the tin. It looked much as it had the night he threw it into the box⁠—only the wrappings of newspaper were loose.

Michael wondered whether all the opals were in the box. He hoped none had fallen out, or got chipped or cracked as a result of his rough handling. He untied the string round the tin in order to tie it again more securely. It might be just as well to see whether the stones were all right while he was about it, he thought.

He went back to the sitting-room and drew his chair up to the table. Slowly, abstractedly, he rolled the newspaper wrappings from the tin; and the stones rattled together in their bed of wadding as he lifted them to the table. He picked up one and held it off from the candlelight. It was the stone Paul had had such pride in⁠—a piece of opal with a glitter of flaked gold and red fire smouldering through its black potch like embers of a burning tree through the dark of a starless night.

One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle, letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in the stones⁠—blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red⁠—melted, sprayed, and scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires.

“God! it’s good stuff!” he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and emotion.

With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars.

Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly.

Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay, instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at, tumbled out from the others and lay under the candlelight, winking and flashing.

But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering