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

enough when they came to America. How they escaped the emigration authorities, I don’t know. They make enough fuss about an old fogey like me, as if I had a harem up me sleeve. But still, when I found her they were still happy, and she was having dancing lessons, had made up her mind to go on the stage, and wouldn’t hear of getting married. Seemed to think it was a kind of barbarous business, gettin’ married. Said her mother had been married⁠—and look what it had brought her to.

“She’s fond of John, too,” the old man continued. “But, at present, New York’s a sideshow, and she’s enjoying it like a child on a holiday from the country. I’ve got her living with an old maid cousin of mine.⁠ ⁠… Sophie says by and by perhaps she’ll marry John, but not yet⁠—not now⁠—she’s having too good a time. She’s got all the money she wants⁠ ⁠… all the gaiety and admiration. It’s not the sort of life I like for a woman myself⁠ ⁠… but I’ve done my best, Michael.”

There was something pathetic about the quiver which took the old face before him. Michael responded to it gratefully.

“You have that, I believe, Mr. Armitage,” he said, “and I’m grateful to you.”.

“Tell you the truth, Michael,” he said, “I’m fond of her. I feel about her as if she were a piece of live opal⁠—the best bit that fool of a son of mine ever brought from the Ridge.⁠ ⁠…”

His face writhed as he got up from the sofa.

“But I must be going, Michael. Rouminof had a touch of the sun a while ago, they tell me. Never been quite himself since. Bad business that. Better go and have a look at him. Yes? Thanks, Michael; thanks. It’s a Goddamned business growing old, Michael. Never knew I had so many bones in me body.”

Leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled to the door. Michael gave him his arm, and they went to Rouminof’s hut.

Potch had told Paul of Dawe P. Armitage’s arrival; that he had come to the Ridge to see the big opal, and was in Michael’s hut. Paul had gone to bed, but was all eagerness to get up and go to see Mr. Armitage. He was sitting on his bed, weak and dishevelled-looking, shirt and trousers on, while Potch was hunting for his boots, when Michael and Mr. Armitage came into the room.

After he had asked Paul how he was, and had gossiped with him awhile, Mr. Armitage produced an illustrated magazine from one of the outer pockets of his overcoat.

“Thought you’d like to see these pictures of Sophie, Rouminof,” he said. “She’s well, and doing well. The magazine will tell you about that. And I brought along this.” He held out a photograph. “She wouldn’t give me a photograph for you, Michael⁠—said you’d never know her⁠—so I prigged this from her sitting-room last time I was there.”

Michael glanced at the photographer’s card of heavy grey paper, which Mr. Armitage was holding. He would know Sophie, anyhow and anywhere, he thought; but he agreed that she was right when, the card in his hands, he gazed at the elegant, bizarre-looking girl in the photograph. She was so unlike the Sophie he had known that he closed his eyes on the picture, pain, and again a dogging sense of failure and defeat filtering through all his consciousness.

V

Potch had gone to the mine on the morning when Michael went into Paul’s hut, intending to rouse him out and make him go down to the claim and start work again. It was nearly five years since he had got the sunstroke which had given him an excuse for loafing, and Michael and Potch had come to the conclusion that even if it were only to keep him out of mischief, Paul had to be put to work again.

Since old Armitage’s visit he had been restless and dissatisfied. He was getting old, and had less energy, even by fits and starts, than he used to have, they realised, but otherwise he was much the same as he had been before Sophie went away. For months after Armitage’s visit he spent the greater part of his time on the form in the shade of Newton’s veranda, or in the bar, smoking and yarning to anybody who would yarn with him about Sophie. His imagination gilded and wove freakish fancies over what Mr. Armitage had said of her, while he wailed about Sophie’s neglect of him⁠—how she had gone away and left him, her old father, to do the best he could for himself. His reproaches led him to rambling reminiscences of his life before he came to the Ridge, and of Sophie’s mother. He brought out his violin, tuned it, and practised sometimes, talking of how he would play for Sophie in New York.

He was rarely sober, and Michael and Potch were afraid of the effect of so much drinking on his never very steady brain.

For months they had been trying to induce him to go down to the claim and start work again; but Paul would not.

“What’s the good,” he had said, “Sophie’ll be sending for me soon, and I’ll be going to live with her in New York, and she won’t want people to be saying her father is an old miner.”

Michael had too deep a sense of what he owed to Paul to allow him ever to want. He had provided for him ever since Sophie had left the Ridge; he was satisfied to go on providing for him; but he was anxious to steer Paul back to more or less regular ways of living.

This morning Michael had made up his mind to tempt him to begin work again by telling him of a splash of colour Potch had come on in the mine the day before. Michael did not think Paul could resist the lure of that news.

Potch had brought Paul home from Newton’s the night before, Michael knew; but Paul was