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

that Michael Brady had anything to do with the business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney⁠ ⁠… and also that Michael had possession of Rouminof’s opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she saw Rouminof’s stones on the table of Michael Brady’s hut one evening nearly two years ago.

“I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael Brady of having stolen Rouminof’s opals. If he has anything to say, now is the time to say it.”

What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody spoke nobody moved. Michael’s friends sat with hunched shoulders, not looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement, the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.

“For God’s sake speak, Michael,” he said. Michael did not move.

Then from the back of the hall marched Snowshoes. Tall and stately, he strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear what he would say to it. When Snowshoes reached the top of the hall he turned and faced the men he held up a narrow package wrapped in newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still hovering near the edge of the platform.

“Your stones,” he said. “I took them.” And in the same stately, measured fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.

Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but his joy in fingering his lost gems.

When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause, Armitage spoke.

“I’ve got to apologise to you, Michael,” he said. “I do most contritely.⁠ ⁠… I don’t yet understand⁠—but the facts are, the opals are here, and Mr. Riley has said⁠—”

Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as if only a great effort of will drove it from him.

“I want to say,” he said, “I did take those stones⁠ ⁠… not from Paul⁠ ⁠… but from Charley.”

His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of opals from Rouminof’s pocket and put them in his own.

“I didn’t want the stones,” Michael cried, “I didn’t ever want them for myself.⁠ ⁠… It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn’t want him to have them just then.⁠ ⁠…”

Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he had made to Sophie’s mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare himself.

Paul had had sunstroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the thing to himself even.⁠ ⁠… He had not looked at the opals except once again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was drifting⁠—how the stones were getting hold of him⁠—and in a panic, knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone.

Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but now it was clear. Probably Snowshoes had known all the time he had the stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It was just that slight sound Snowshoes’ moccasins made on the shingle. Exclamations and odd queries Snowshoes had launched from time to time came