"All right," she said, pleased at the idea.
Michael came into the hut through, the back door. From his own room he had heard Bully calling and then explaining why he and Roy O'Mara were there.
"Don't go, Sophie," Michael said.
"But why, Michael?" Disappointment clouded Sophie's first bright pleasure that the men had sent for her to sing to them, and her eagerness to do as they asked.
"It's not right ... not good for you to sing down there when the boys 've been drinking," Michael said, unable to express clearly his opposition to her singing at Newton's.
"Don't be a spoil-sport, Michael," the boys at the door called when they saw he was trying to dissuade Sophie.
"Come along, Sophie," Roy called.
She looked from Bully and Roy to Michael, hesitating. Theirs was the call of youth to youth, of youth to gaiety and adventure. She turned away from Michael.
"I'm going, Michael," she said quickly, and swung to the door. Michael heard her laughing as she went off along the track with Bully and Roy.
"Did you know Mr. Armitage is up?" Roy stopped to call back.
"No," Michael said.
"Came up by the coach this evening," Roy said, and ran after Bully and Sophie.
It was a rowdy night at Newton's. Shearing was just over at Warria sheds, and men with cheques to burn were crowding the bar and passages.
Sophie was hailed with cheers as she neared the veranda. Her father staggered out towards her, waving his arms crazily. Sophie was surprised when she found the crowd waiting for her. There were so many strangers in it--rough men with heavy, inflamed faces--hardly one she knew among them. A murmur and boisterous clamour of voices came from the bar. The men on the veranda made way for her.
Her heart quailed when she looked into the big earthen-floored bar, and saw its crowd of rough-haired, sun-red men, still wearing the clothes they had been working in, grey flannel shirts and dungarees, blood-splashed, grimy, and greasy with the "yolk" of fleeces they had been handling. The smell of sheep and the sweat of long days of shearing and struggling with restless beasts were in the air, with fumes of rank tobacco and the flat, stale smell of beer. The hanging lamp over the bar threw only a dim light through the fog of smoke the men had put up, and which from the doorway completely obscured Peter Newton where he stood behind the bar.
Sophie hung back.
"I'm not going in there," she said.
"Did you know Mr. Armitage was up?" Roy asked.
"No," she said.
He explained how Mr. Armitage had come unexpectedly by the coach that evening. Sophie saw him among the men on the veranda.
"I'll sing here," she told Bully and Roy, leaning against a veranda post.
She was a little afraid. But she knew she had always pleased Ridge folk when she sang to them, so she put back her head and sang a song of youth and youthful happiness she had sung on the veranda at Newton's before.
It did not matter that the words were in Italian, which nobody understood. The dancing joyousness and laughing music of her notes carried the men with them. The applause was noisy and enthusiastic.
Sophie laughed, delighted, yet almost afraid of her success.
Big and broad-shouldered, Bully Bryant stood at a little distance from her, in front of everybody. Arthur Henty, leaning against the wall near the door of the bar, smiled softly, foolishly, when she glanced at him.
He had been drinking, too, and was watching, and listening to her, with the same look in his eyes as Bully.
Sophie caught the excitement about her. An exhilaration of pleasure thrilled her. It was crude wine which went to her head, this admiration and applause of strangers and of the men she had known since she was a child. There was a wonderful elation in having them beg her to sing.
They looked actually hungry to hear her. She found Arthur Henty's eyes resting on her with the expression she knew in them. An imp of recklessness entered her. Her father beat the air as if he were leading an orchestra, and she threw herself into the Shadow Song, singing with an abandonment that carried her beyond consciousness of her surroundings.
She sang again and again, and always in response to an eager tumult of cheers, thudding of feet, joggling of glasses, chorus of broken cries: "En-core, encore, Sophie!" An instinct of mischief and coquetry urging, she glanced sometimes at Arthur, sometimes at Bully. Then with a glance at Arthur, and for a last number, she began "Caro Nome," and gave to her singing all the glamour and tenderness, the wild sweetness, the aria had come to have for her, because she had sung it so often to Arthur when they met and were walking along the road together. She was so carried away by her singing, she did not realise what had happened until afterwards.
She only knew that suddenly, roughly, she was grasped and lifted. She saw Bully's face flaming before her own, gazed with terror and horror into his eyes. His face was thrown against hers--and obliterated.
"Are you all right?" someone asked after a moment.
Awaking from the daze and bewilderment, Sophie looked up.
John Armitage was standing beside her; Potch nearby. They were on the outskirts of the crowd on the veranda.
"Yes," she said.
The men on the veranda had broken into two parties; one was surging towards the bar door, the other moving off down the road out of the town. Michael came towards her.
"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," he said.
"Oh, Potch looked after her. I couldn't get near," John Armitage said.
An extraordinary quiet took possession of Sophie. When she was going down the road with Potch and Michael, she said:
"Did Bully kiss me, Michael?"
"Yes," he replied.
"I don't know what happened then?"
"Arthur Henty knocked him down," Michael said.
She looked at him with scared eyes.
"They want to fight it out ... but they're both drunk. The boys are trying to stop it."
"Oh, Michael!" Sophie cried on a little gasping breath; and looking into her eyes he read her contrition, asking forgiveness, understanding all that he had not been able to explain to her. She did not say, "I'll never sing there, like that, any more." Her feeling was too deep for words; but Michael knew she never would.
CHAPTER XIV
"It's what I wore, meself, white muslin, when I went to me first ball,"
Mrs. George Woods said, standing off to admire the frock of white muslin Sophie had on, and which she had just fastened up for her.
Sophie was admiring her reflection in Mrs. Woods' mirror, a square of glass which gave no more than her head and shoulders in brilliant sketchy outlines. She moved, trying to see more of herself and the new dress. Maggie Grant, who had helped with the making of the dress, was also gazing at her and at it admiringly.
When it was a question of Sophie having a dress for the ball at Warria, Mrs. Grant had spoken to Michael about it.
"Sophie's got to have a decent dress to go to the station, Michael," she said. "I'm not going to have people over there laughing at her, and she's had nothing but her mother's old dresses, cut down--for goodness knows how long."