Arthur Henty preferred being out on the plains with them rather than in at the home station, the men said. He looked happier when he was with them; he whistled to them as they lay yarning round the camp-fire before turning in. They had never heard anything like his whistling. He seemed to be playing some small, fine, invisible flute as he gave them old-fashioned airs, ragtime tunes, songs from the comic operas, and miscellaneous melodies he had heard his sisters singing. No one had heard him whistling like that at the station. Out on the plains, or in the bar at Newton's, he was a different man. Once or twice when he had been drinking, and a glass or two of beer or whisky had got to his head, he had shown more the spirit that it was thought he possessed--as if, when the conscious will was relaxed, a submerged self had leapt forth.
Men who had known him a long time wondered whether time would not strengthen the fibres of that submerged self; but they had seen Arthur Henty lose the elastic, hopeful outlook of youth, and sink gradually into the place assigned him by his father, at first dutifully, then with an indifference which slowly became apathy.
Mrs. Henty and the girls exclaimed with dismay and disgust when they returned to the station after two years in town, and saw how rough and unkempt-looking Arthur had become. They insisted on his having his hair and beard cut at once, and that he should manicure his finger-nails.
After he had dressed for dinner and was clipped and shaved, they said he looked more as if he belonged to them; but he was a shy, awkward boor, and they did not know what to make of him. In his mother's hands, Arthur was still a child, though, and she brought him back to the fold of the family, drew his resistance--an odd, sullen resentment he had acquired for the niceties of what she called "civilised society"--and made him amenable to its discipline.
Elizabeth was twice the man her brother was, James Henty was fond of declaring. She had all the vigour and dash he would have liked his son to possess. "My daughter Elizabeth," he said as frequently as possible, and was always talking of her feats with horses, and the clear-headed and clever way she went about doing things, and getting her own way on all and every occasion.
When the men rounded buck-jumpers into the yards on a Sunday morning, Elizabeth would ride any Chris Este, the head stockman, let her near; but Arthur never attempted to ride any of the warrigals. He steered clear of horse-breaking and rough horses whenever he could, although he broke and handled his own horses. In a curious way he shared a secret feeling of his mother's for horses. She had never been able to overcome an indefinable apprehension of the raw, half-broken horses of the back-country, although her nerve had carried her through years of acquaintance with them, innumerable accidents and misadventures, and hundreds of miles of journeys at their mercy; and Arthur, although he had lived and worked among horses as long as he could remember, had not been able to lose something of the same feeling. His sister, suspecting it, was frankly contemptuous; so was his father. It was the reason of Henty's low estimate of his son's character generally. And the rumour that Arthur Henty was shy of tough propositions in horses--"afraid of horses"--had a good deal to do with the never more than luke-warm respect men of the station and countryside had for him.
CHAPTER XIII
Sophie often met Arthur Henty on the road just out of the town. Usually it was going to or coming from the tank paddock, or in the paddock, on Friday afternoons, when he had been into Budda for the sales or to truck sheep or cattle. They did not arrange to meet, but Sophie expected to see Arthur when she went to the tank paddock, and she knew he expected to find her there. She did not know why she liked being with Arthur Henty so much, or why they were such golden occasions when she met him.
They did not talk much when they were together. Their eyes met; they knew each other through their eyes--a something remote from themselves was always working through their eyes. It drew them together.
When she was with Arthur Henty, Sophie knew she was filled with an ineffable gaiety, a thing so delicate and ethereal that as she sang she seemed to be filling the air with it. And Henty looked at her sometimes as if he had discovered a new, strange, and beautiful creature, a butterfly, or gnat, with gauzy, resplendent wings, whose beauty he was bewildered and overcome by. The last time they had been together he had longed to draw her to him and kiss her so that the virgin innocence would leave her eyes; but fear or some conscientious scruple had restrained him. He had been reluctant to awaken her, to change the quality of her feeling towards him. He had let her go with a lingering handclasp. In all their tender intimacy there had been no more of the love-making of the flesh than the subtle interweavings of instincts and fibres which this handclasp gave. Ridge folk had seen them walking together. They had seen that subtle inclination of Sophie's and Arthur's figures towards each other as they walked--the magnetic, gentle, irresistible swaying towards each other--and the gossips began to whisper and nod smilingly when they came across Arthur and Sophie on the road. Sophie at first went her way unconscious of the whispers and smiles. Then words were dropped slyly--people teased her about Arthur.
She realised they thought he was her sweetheart. Was he? She began to wonder and think about it. He must be; she came to the conclusion happily. Only sweethearts went for walks together as she and Arthur did.
"My mother says," Mirry Flail remarked one day, "she wouldn't be a bit surprised to see you marrying Arthur Henty, Sophie, and going over to live at Warria."
"Goodness!" Sophie exclaimed, surprised and delighted that anybody should think such a thing.
"Marry Arthur Henty and go over and live at Warria." Her mind, like a delighted little beaver, began to build on the idea. It did not alter her bearing with Arthur. She was less shy and thoughtful with him, perhaps; but he did not notice it, and she was carelessly and childishly content to have found the meaning of why she and Arthur liked meeting and talking together. People only felt as she and Arthur felt about each other if they were going to marry and live "happy ever after," she supposed.
When Michael was aware of what was being said, and of the foundation there was for gossip, he was considerably disturbed. He went to talk to Maggie Grant about it. She, he thought, would know more of what was in the wind than he did, and be better able to gauge what the consequences were likely to be to Sophie.
"I've been bothered about it myself, Michael," she said. "But neither you nor me can live Sophie's life for her.... I don't see we can do anything. His crowd'll do all the interfering, if I know anything about them."
"I suppose so," Michael agreed.
"And, as far as I can see, it won't do any good our butting in," Mrs.
Grant continued. "You know Sophie's got a will of her own ... and she's always had a good deal her own way. I've talked round the thing to her ... and I think she understands."
"You've always been real good to her, Maggie," Michael said gratefully.
"As to that"--the lines of Maggie Grant's broad, plain face rucked to the strength of her feeling--"I've done what I could. But then, I'm fond of her--fond of her as you are, Michael. That's saying a lot. And you know what I thought of her mother. But it's no use us thinking we can buy Sophie's experience for her. She's got to live ... and she's got to suffer."
Busy with her opal-cutting, and happy with her thoughts, Sophie had no idea of the misgiving Michael and Maggie Grant had on her account, or that anyone was disturbed and unhappy because of her happiness. She sang as she worked. The whirr of her wheel, the chirr of sandstone and potch as they sheared away, made a small, busy noise, like the drone of an insect, in her house all day; and every day some of the men brought her stones to face and fix up. She had acquired such a reputation for making the most of stones committed to her care that men came from the Three Mile and from the Punti with opals for her to rough-out and polish.
Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara were often at Rouminof's in the evening, and they heard about it when they looked in at Newton's later on, now and then.
"You must be striking it pretty good down at the Punti, Bull," Watty Frost ventured genially one night. "See you takin' stones for Sophie to fix up pretty near every evenin'."
"There's some as sees too much," Bully remarked significantly.
"What you say, you say y'rself, Bull." Watty pulled thoughtfully on his pipe, but his little blue eyes squinted over his fat, red-grained cheeks, not in the least abashed.
"I do," Bull affirmed. "And them as sees too much ... won't see much ...
when I'm through with 'em."
"Mmm," Watty brooded. "That's a good thing to know, isn't it?"
He and the rest of the men continued to "sling off," as they said, at Bully and Roy O'Mara as they saw fit, nevertheless.
The summer had been a mild one; it passed almost without a ripple of excitement. There were several hot days, but cool changes blew over, and the rains came before people had given up dreading the heat. Several new prospects had been made, and there were expectations that holes sunk on claims to the north of the Punti Rush would mean the opening up of a new field.
Michael and Potch worked on in their old claim with very little to show for their pains. Paul had slackened and lost interest as soon as the fitful gleams of opal they were on had cut out. Michael was not the man to manage Rummy, the men said.
Potch and Michael, however, seemed satisfied enough to regard Paul more or less as a sleeping partner; to do the work of the mine and share with him for keeping out of the way.
"Shouldn't wonder if they wouldn't rather have his room than his company," Watty ventured, "and they just go shares with him so as things'll be all right for Sophie."
"That's right!" Pony-Fence agreed.
The year had made a great difference to Potch. Doing man's work, going about on equal terms with the men, the change of status from being a youth at anybody's beck and call to doing work which entitled him to the taken-for-granted dignity of being an independent individual, had made a man of him. His frame had thickened and hardened. He looked years older than he was really, and took being Michael's mate very seriously.
Michael had put up a shelter for himself and his mates, thinking that Potch and Paul might not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter; but George and Watty were loth to lose Michael's word from their councils.
They called him over nearly every day, on one pretext or another.
Sometimes his mates followed Michael. But Rouminof soon wearied of a discussion on anything except opal, and wandered off to the other shelters to discover whether anybody had struck anything good that morning. Potch threw himself on the ground beside Michael when Michael had invited him to go across to George and Watty's shelter with him, and after a while the men did not notice him there any more than Michael's shadow. He lay beside Michael, quite still, throwing crumbs to the birds which came round the shelter, and did not seem to be listening to what was said. But always when a man was heatedly and with some difficulty trying to disentangle his mind on a subject of argument, he found Potch's eyes on him, steady and absorbing, and knew from their intent expression that Potch was following all he had to say with quick, grave interest.
Some people were staying at Warria during the winter, and when there was going to be a dance at the station Mrs. Henty wrote to ask Rouminof to play for it. She could manage the piano music, she said, and if he would tune his violin for the occasion, they would have a splendid band for the young people. And, her letter had continued: "We should be so pleased if your daughter would come with you."
Sophie was wildly excited at the invitation. She had been to Ridge race balls for the last two or three years, but she had never even seen Warria. Her father had played at a Warria ball once, years before, when she was little; but she and her mother had not gone with him to the station. She remembered quite well when he came home, how he had told them of all the wonderful things there had been to eat at the ball--stuffed chickens and crystallised fruit, iced cakes, and all manner of sweets.
Sophie had heard of the Warria homestead since she was a child, of its orange garden and great, cool rooms. It had loomed like the enchanted castle of a legend through all her youthful imaginings. And now, as she remembered what Mirry Flail had said, she was filled with delight and excitement at the thought of seeing it.
She wondered whether Arthur had asked his mother to invite her to the dance. She thought he must have; and with nave conceit imagined happily that Arthur's mother must want to know her because she knew that Arthur liked her. And Arthur's sisters--it would be nice to know them and to talk to them. She went over and over in her mind the talks she would have with Polly and Nina, and perhaps Elizabeth Henty, some day.
A few weeks before the ball she had seen Arthur riding through the township with his sisters and a girl who was staying at Warria. He had not seen her, and Sophie was glad, because suddenly she had felt shy and confused at the thought of talking to him before a lot of people.
Besides, they all looked so jolly, and were having such a good time, that she would not have known what to say to Arthur, or to his sisters, just then.
When she told Mrs. Woods and Martha M'Cready about the invitation, they smiled and teased her.
"Oh, that tells a tale!" they said.
Sophie laughed. She felt silly, and she was blushing, they said. But she was very happy at having been asked to the ball. For weeks before she found herself singing "Caro Nome" as she sat at work, went about the house, or with Potch after the goats in the late afternoon.
Arthur liked that song better than any other, and its melody had become mingled and interwoven with all her thoughts of him.
The twilight was deepening, on the evening a few days before the dance, when Bully Bryant and Roy O'Mara came up to Rouminof's hut, calling Sophie. She was washing milk tins and tea dishes, and went to the door singing to herself, a candle throwing a fluttering light before her.
"Your father sent us along for you, Sophie," Bully explained. "There's a bit of a celebration on at Newton's to-night, and the boys want you to sing for them."
Sophie turned from them, going into the house to put down her candle.