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

merit it. Michael could never be less than Michael to her⁠—the soul of honour, the knight without fear, against whom no reproach could be levelled.

Armitage spoke again.

“You see,” he said, “you could still have all those things you spoke of, under my scheme⁠—the long, quiet days; life that is broad and simple; the hearth; home, children⁠—all that sort of thing⁠ ⁠… and even time for any of the little social reform schemes you fancied.⁠ ⁠…”

Sophie found herself confronted with the fundamental difference of their outlook again. He talked as if the ideas which meant so much to her and to people of the Ridge were the notions of headstrong children⁠—whimsical and interesting notions, perhaps, but mistaken, of course. He was inclined to make every allowance for them.

“The only little social reform I’d have any time for,” she murmured, “would be the overthrowing of your scheme for ownership of the mines.”

John Armitage was frankly surprised to find that she held so firmly to the core of the Ridge idea, and amused by the uncompromising hostility of her attitude. Sophie herself had not thought she was so attached to the Ridge life and its purposes, until there was this suggestion of destroying them.

“Then”⁠—he stood up suddenly⁠—“whether I succeed or whether I don’t⁠—whether the scheme goes my way or not⁠—won’t make any difference to you⁠—to us.”

“It will make this difference,” Sophie said. “I’m heart and soul in the life here, I’ve told you. And if you do as you say you’re going to⁠ ⁠… instead of thinking of you in the old, good, friendly way, I’ll have to think of you as the enemy of all that is of most value to me.”

“You mean,” John Armitage cried, his voice broken by the anger and chagrin which rushed over him, “you mean you’re going to take on Henty⁠—that’s what’s at the back of all this.”

“I mean,” Sophie said steadily, her eyes clear green and cool in his, “that I’m going to marry Potch, and if Michael and all the rest of the men of the Ridge go over to you and your scheme, we’ll fight it.”

XII

“Are you there, Potch?” Sophie stood in the doorway of Michael’s hut, a wavering shadow against the moonlight behind her.

Michael looked up. He was lying on the sofa under the window, a book in his hands.

“He’s not here,” he said.

His voice was as distant as though he were talking to a stranger. He had been trying to read, but his mind refused to concern itself with anything except the night before, and the consequences of it. His eyes had followed a trail of words; but he had been unable to take any meaning from them. Sophie! His mind hung aghast at the exclamation of her. She was the storm-centre. His thoughts moved in a whirlwind about her. He did not understand how she could have worn that dress showing her shoulders and so much of her bared breast. It had surprised, confused, and alarmed him to see Sophie looking as she did in that photograph Dawe Armitage had brought to the Ridge. The innocence and sheer joyousness of her laughter had reassured him, but, as the evening wore on, she seemed to become intoxicated with her own gaiety.

Michael had watched her dancing with vague disquiet. To him, dancing was rather a matter of concern to keep step and to avoid knocking against anyone⁠—a serious business. He did not get any particular pleasure out of it; and Sophie’s delight in rhythmic movement and giving of her whole being to a waltz, amazed him. When Armitage came, her manner had changed. It had lost some of its abstract joyousness. It was as if she were playing up to him.⁠ ⁠… She had been much more of his world than of the world of the Ridge; had displayed a thousand little airs and superficial graces, all the gay, light manner of that other world. When she was dancing with Arthur Henty, Michael had seen the sudden drooping and overcasting of her gaiety. He thought she was tired, and that Potch should take her home. The old gossip about Arthur Henty had faded from his memory; not the faintest recollection of it occurred to him as he had seen Sophie and Arthur Henty dancing together.

Then Sophie’s cry, eerie and shrill in the night air, had reached him. He had seen Potch and Arthur Henty at grips. He had not imagined that such fury could exist in Potch. Other men had come. They dragged Potch away from Henty.⁠ ⁠… Henty had fallen.⁠ ⁠… Potch would have killed him if they had not dragged him away.⁠ ⁠… Henty was carried in an unconscious condition to Newton’s. Armitage had taken Sophie home. Michael went with Potch.

Michael did not know exactly what had occurred. He could only imagine.⁠ ⁠… Sophie had been behaving in that gay, light manner of the other world: he had seen her at it all the evening. Potch had not understood, he believed; it had goaded him to a state of mind in which he was not responsible for what he did.

Sophie was conscious of Michael’s aloofness from her as she stood in the doorway; it wavered as his eyes held and communed with hers. The night before he had not been able to realise that the girl in the black dress, which had seemed to him almost indecent, was Sophie. He kept seeing her in her everyday white cotton frock⁠—as she sat at work at her cutting-wheel, or went about the hut⁠—and now that she stood before him in white again, he could scarcely believe that the black dress and happenings of the ball were not an hallucination. But there was a prayer in her eyes which came of the night before. She would not have looked at him so if there had been no night before; her lips would not have quivered in that way, as if she were sorry and would like to explain, but could not.

Potch had staggered home beside Michael, swaying