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

that both Michael’s and Potch’s demeanours were too calm for them to have heard what he had, as if savouring the effect of his news, he added:

“But perhaps we won’t have many more chances-seein’ Rummy’ll be going to America before long, perhaps⁠—”

Michael, looking at Roy through his tobacco smoke, realised that he knew about Sophie’s having come home. His glance travelled to Potch, who was slogging at the cement stone again.

“Saw old Ventry on me way down to the mine,” Roy said, “and he said he’d a passenger on the coach last night.⁠ ⁠… Who do you think it was?”

Michael dared not look at Potch.

“He said,” Roy murmured slowly, “it was Sophie.”

They knew that Potch’s pick had stopped. Michael had seen a tremor traverse the length of his bared back; but Potch did not turn. He stood with his face away from them, immobile. His body dripped with sweat and seemed to be oiled by the garish light of the candle which outlined his head, gilded his splendid arms and torso against the red earth of the mine, and threw long shadows into the darkness, shrouding the workings behind him. Then his pick smashed into the cement stone with a force which sent sharp, white chips flying in every direction.

When Roy crawled away through the tunnel to his own quarters, Potch swung round from the face he was working on, his eyes blazing.

“Is it true?” he gasped.

“Yes,” Michael said.

After a moment he added: “I found her in the hut this morning just before I came away. I been tryin’ all these blasted hours to tell you, Potch⁠ ⁠… but every time I tried, it got me by the neck, and I had to wait until I found me voice.”

VI

The sunset was fading, a persimmon glow failing from behind the trees, its light merging with the blue of the sky, creating the faint, luminous green which holds the first stars with such brilliance, when Sophie went out of the hut to meet Potch.

The smell of sandalwood burning on the fireplace in the kitchen she had just left, was in the air. Such soothing its fragrance had for her! And on the shingly soil, between the old dumps cast up a little distance from the huts, in every direction, the paper daisies were lying, white as driven snow in the wan light. Sophie went to the goat-pen, strung round with a light, crooked fence, a few yards from the back of the house.

As she leaned against the fence she could hear the tinkling of a goat-bell in the distance. The fragrances, the twilight, and the quiet were balm to her bruised senses. The note of a bell sounded nearer. Potch was bringing the goats in.

Sophie went to the shed and stood near it, so that she might see him before he saw her. A kid in the shed bleated as the note of the bell became harsher and nearer. Sophie heard the answering cry of the nanny among the three or four goats coming down to the yard along a narrow track from a fringe of trees beyond the dumps. Then she saw Potch’s figure emerge from the trees.

He drove the goats into the yard where two sticks of the fence were down, put up the rails, and went to the shed for a milking bucket. He came back into the yard, pulled a little tan-and-white nanny beside a low box on which he sat to milk, and the squirt and song of milk in the pail began. Sophie wondered what Potch was thinking of as he sat there milking. She remembered the night⁠—Potch had been sitting just like that⁠—when she told him her mother was dead. As she remembered, she saw again every flicker and gesture of his, the play of light on his broad, heavy face and head, with its shock of fairish hair; how his face had puckered up and looked ugly and childish as he began to cry; how, after a while, he had wiped his eyes and nose on his shirtsleeve, and gone on with the milking again, crying and sniffling in a subdued way.

There was a deep note of loving them in his voice, rough and burred though it was, as Potch spoke to the goats. Two of them came when he called.

When he had nearly finished milking, Sophie moved away from the screen of the shed. She went along to the fence and stood where he could see her when he looked up.

The light had faded, and stars were glimmering in the luminous green of the sky when Potch, as he released the last goat, pushed back the box he had been sitting on, got up, took his bucket by the handle, and, looking towards the fence, saw Sophie standing there. At first he seemed to think she was a figure of his imagination, he stood so still gazing at her. He had often thought of her, leaning against the rails there, smiling at him like that. Then he remembered Sophie had come home; that it was really Sophie herself by the fence as he had dreamed of seeing her. But her face was wan and ethereal in the half-light; it floated before him as if it were a drowned face in the still, thin air.

“She’s very like my old white nanny, Potch,” Sophie said, her eyes glancing from Potch to the goat he had just let go and which had followed him across the yard.

“Yes,” Potch said.

“She might almost be Annie Laurie’s daughter,” Sophie said.

“She’s her granddaughter,” Potch replied.

He put the bucket down at the rails and stooped to get through them. Before he took up the bucket again he stood looking at her as though to assure himself that it was really Sophie in the flesh who was waiting for him by the fence. Then he took up the bucket, and they walked across to Michael’s hut together.

Potch dared scarcely glance at her when he realised that Sophie was really