The Black Opal. Katharine Susannah Prichard
could not bring themselves to admit there was any danger to the sacred principle of Ridge life, that a mate stands by a mate, in letting Rouminof wander home by himself. He might be in danger if there were rats about; they would admit that. But rats, the men who sneaked into other men's mines when they were on good stuff, and took out their opal during the night, were never Ridge men. They were new-comers, outsiders, strangers on the rushes, who had not learnt or assimilated Ridge ideas.
After a few minutes George turned away. "Well, good-night, Archie," he said.
Watty moved after him.
"'Night!" Archie replied.
George and Watty went along the road together, and Archie walked off in the direction Michael had taken.
But Michael had not gone home. When the trees screened him from sight, he had struck out across the Ridge, then, turning back on his tracks behind the town, had made towards the Warria road. He walked, thinking hard, without noticing where he was going, his mind full of Paul, of Sophie, and of his promise.
Now that Paul had his opal, it was clear he would be able to do as he wished—leave the Ridge and take Sophie with him. For the time being at least he was out of Jun Johnson's hands—but Michael was sure he would not stay out of them if he went to Sydney. How to prevent his going—how, rather, to prevent Sophie going with him—-that was Michael's problem. He did not know what he was going to do.
He had asked Sophie not to go with her father. He had told her what her mother had said, and tried to explain to her why her mother had not wanted her to go away from the Ridge, or to become a public singer. But Sophie was as excited about her future as her father was. It was natural she should be, Michael assured himself. She was young, and had heard wonderful stories of Sydney and the world beyond the Ridge. Sydney was like the town in a fairy tale to her.
It was not to be expected, Michael confessed to himself, that Sophie would choose to stay on Fallen Star Ridge. If she could only be prevailed upon to put off her departure until she was older and better able to take care of herself, he would be satisfied. If the worst came to the worst, and she went to Sydney with her father soon, Michael had decided to go with them. Peter Newton would give him a couple of pounds for his books, he believed, and he would find something to do down in Sydney. His roots were in the Ridge. Michael did not know how he was going to live away from the mines; but anything seemed better than that Sophie should be committed to what her mother had called "the treacherous whirlpool" of life in a great city, with no one but her father to look after her.
And her mother had said:
"Don't let him take her away, Michael."
Michael believed that Marya Rouminof intended Sophie to choose for herself whether she would stay on the Ridge or not, when she was old enough. But now she was little more than a child, sixteen, nearly seventeen, young for her years in some ways and old in others. Michael knew her mother had wanted Sophie to grow up on the Ridge and to realise that all the potentialities of real and deep happiness were there.
"They say there's got to be a scapegoat in every family, Michael," she had said once. "Someone has to pay for the happiness of the others. If all that led to my coming here will mean happiness for Sophie, it will not have been in vain."
"That's where you're wrong," Michael had told her.
"Looking for justice—poetic justice, isn't it, they call it?—in the working out of things. There isn't any of this poetic justice except by accident. The natural laws just go rolling on—laying us out under them. All we can do is set our lives as far as possible in accordance with them and stand by the consequences as well as we know how."
"Of course, you're right," she had sighed, "but——"
It was for that "but" Michael was fighting now. He knew what lay beyond it—a yearning for her child to fare a little better in the battle of life than she had. Striding almost unconsciously over the loose, shingly ground, Michael was not aware what direction his steps were taking until he saw glimmering white shapes above the grass and herbage of the plains, and realised that he had walked to the gates of the cemetery.
With an uncomfortable sense of broken faith, he turned away from the gate, unable to go in and sit under the tree there, to smoke and think, as he sometimes did. He had used every argument with Paul to prevent his taking Sophie away, he knew; but for the first time since Michael and he had been acquainted with each other, Paul had shown a steady will. He made up his mind he was "going to shake the dust of the Ridge off his feet," he said. And that was the end of it. Michael almost wished the men had let Jun clear out with his stones. That would have settled the business. But, his instinct of an opal-miner asserting itself, he was unable to wish Paul the loss of his luck, and Jun what he would have to be to deprive Paul of it. He walked on chewing the cud of bitter and troubled reflections.
"Don't let him take her away!" a voice seemed to cry suddenly after him.
Michael stopped; he snatched the hat from his head.
"No!" he said, "he shan't take her away!"
Startled by the sound of his own voice, the intensity of thinking which had wrung it from him, dazed by the sudden strength of resolution which had come over him, he stood, his face turned to the sky. The stars rained their soft light over him. As he looked up to them, his soul went from him by force of will. How long he stood like that, he did not know; but when his eyes found the earth again he looked about him wonderingly. After a little while he put on his hat and turned away. All the pain and trouble were taken from his thinking; he was strangely soothed and comforted. He went back along the road to the town, and, skirting the trees and the houses on the far side, came again to the track below Newton's.
Lights were still shining in the hotel although it was well after midnight. Michael could hear voices in the clear air. A man was singing one of Jun's choruses as he went down the road towards the Punti Rush. Michael kept on his way. He was still wondering what he could do to prevent Paul taking Sophie away; but he was no longer worried about it—his brain was calm and clear; his step lighter than it had been for a long time.
He heard the voices laughing and calling to each other as he walked on.
"Old Ted!" he commented to himself, recognising Ted Cross's voice. "He's blithered!"
When he came to a fork in the tracks where one went off in the direction of his, Charley's, and Rouminof's huts, and the other towards the Crosses', Michael saw Ted Cross lumbering along in the direction of his own hut.
"Must 've been saying good-night to Charley and Paul," he thought. A little farther along the path he saw Charley and Paul, unsteady shadows ahead of him in the moonlight, and Charley had his arm under Paul's, helping him home.
"Good old Charley!" Michael thought, quickly appreciative of the man he loved.
He could hear them talking, Rouminof's voice thick and expostulatory, Charley's even and clear.
"Charley's all right. He's not showin', anyhow," Michael told himself. He wondered at that. Charley was not often more sober than his company, and he had been drinking a good deal, earlier in the evening.
Michael was a few yards behind them and was just going to quicken his steps and hail Charley, when he saw the flash of white in Charley's hand—something small, rather longer than square, a cigarette box wrapped in newspaper, it might have been—and Michael saw Charley drop it into the pocket of his coat.
Paul wandered on, talking stupidly, drowsily. He wanted to go to sleep there on the roadside; but Charley led him on.
"You'll be better at home and in bed," he said. "You're nearly there now."
Instinctively, with that flash of white, Michael had drawn into the shadow of the trees which fringed the track. Charley, glancing back along it, had not seen him. Several moments passed before Michael moved. He knew what had happened, but the revelation was such a shock that his brain would not react to it. Charley, his mate, Charley Heathfield had stolen Paul's opals. The thing no man on the Ridge had attempted, notwithstanding its easiness, Charley had done. Although