"I'll warm yer.... Yer lazy, wobblin' old adders--yer! I'll warm yer....
Yer wobble like a cross-cut saw.... Kim ovah! Kim ovah, there! I'll get alongside of yer! Kim ovah!"
Swaying and rocking like a ship in a stormy sea, the coach turned out of the town. Armitage thought its timbers would be strewn along the road at any moment; but the young horses, under Mr. Ventry's masterly grip, soon took the steady pace of the old roadsters; their freshness wore off, and they were going at a smart, even pace by the time the Three Mile was reached.
"Seemed to have something on his mind," Ed. Ventry said afterwards.
"Ordinarily, he's keen to hear all the yarns you can tell him, but that day he was dead quiet."
"'Not much doin' on the Ridge just now, Mr. Armitage,' I says.
"'No, Ed,' he says.
"'Hardly worth y'r while comin' all the way from America to get all you got this trip?'
"'No,' he says. But, by God--if I'd known what he got----"
It was an all-night trip. Ed. and Mr. Armitage had left the Ridge at six o'clock and arrived in Budda township about an hour before the morning train left for Sydney. There was just time for Armitage to breakfast at the hotel before he went off in the hotel drag to the station. The train left at half-past six. But Ed. Ventry had taken off his hat and scratched his grizzled thatch when he saw a young, baldy-faced gelding in the paddock with the other coach horses that evening.
"Could've swore I left Baldy at the Ridge," he said to the boy who looked after the stables at the Budda end of his journey.
"Thought he was there meself," the lad replied, imitating Ed.'s perplexed head-scratching.
At the Ridge, when he made his next trip, they were able to tell Mr.
Ventry how the baldy-face happened to be at Budda when Ed. thought he was at Fallen Star, although Ed. heard some of the explanation from Potch and Michael a day or two later. Sophie had ridden the baldy-face into Budda the night he drove Mr. Armitage to catch the train for Sydney. No one discovered she had gone until the end of next day. Then Potch went to Michael.
"Michael," he said; "she's gone."
During the evening Paul had been heard calling Sophie. He asked Potch whether he had seen her. Potch said he had not. But it was nothing unusual for Sophie to wander off for a day on an excursion with Ella or Mirry Flail, so neither he nor Michael thought much of not having seen her all day, until Paul remarked querulously to Potch that he did not know where Sophie was. Looking into her room Potch saw her bed had not been slept in, although the room was disordered. He went up to the town, to Mrs. Newton and to the Flails', to ask whether they had seen anything of Sophie. Mirry Flail said she had seen her on one of the coach-stable horses, riding out towards the Three Mile the evening before. Potch knew instinctively that Sophie had gone away from the moment Paul had spoken to him. She had lived away from him during the last few months; but watching her with always anxious, devout eyes, he had known more of her than anyone else.
Lying full stretch on his sofa, Michael was reading when Potch came into the hut. His stricken face communicated the seriousness of his news.
Michael had no reason to ask who the "she" Potch spoke of was: there was only one woman for whom Potch would look like that. But Michael's mind was paralysed by the shock of the thing Potch had said. He could neither stir nor speak.
"I'm riding into Budda, to find out if she went down by the train,"
Potch said. "I think she did, Michael. She's been talking about going to Sydney ... a good deal lately.... She was asking me about it--day before yesterday ... but I never thought--I never thought she wanted to go so soon ... and that she'd go like this. But I think she has gone.... And she was afraid to tell us--to let you know.... She said you'd made up your mind you didn't want her to go ... she'd heard her mother tell you not to let her go, and if ever she was going she wouldn't tell you...."
Potch's explanation, broken and incoherent as it was, gave Michael's thought and feeling time to reassert themselves.
He said: "See if Chassy can lend me his pony, and I'll come with you, Potch."
They rode into Budda that night, and inquiry from the station-master gave them the information they sought. A girl in a black frock had taken a second-class ticket for Sydney. He did not notice very much what she was like. She had come to the window by herself; she had no luggage; he had seen her later sitting in a corner of a second-class compartment by herself. The boy, a stranger to the district, who had clipped her ticket, said she was crying when he asked for her ticket. He had asked why she was crying. She had said she was going away, and she did not like going away from the back-country. She was going away--to study singing, she said, but would be coming back some day.
Michael determined to go to Sydney by the morning train to try to find Sophie. He went to Ed. Ventry and borrowed five pounds from him.
"That explains how the baldy-face got here," Ed. said.
Michael nodded. He could not talk about Sophie. Potch explained why they wanted the money as well as he could.
"It's no good trying to bring her back if she doesn't want to come, Michael," Potch had said before Michael left for Sydney.
"No," Michael agreed.
"If you could get her fixed up with somebody to stay with," Potch suggested; "and see she was all right for money ... it might be the best thing to do. I've got a bit of dough put by, Michael.... I'll send that down to you and go over to one of the stations for a while to keep us goin'--if we want more."
Michael assented.
"You might try round and see if you could find Mr. Armitage," Potch said, just before the train went. "He might have seen something of her."
"Yes," Michael replied, drearily.
Potch waited until the train left, and started back to Fallen Star in the evening.
A week later a letter came for Michael. It was in Sophie's handwriting.
Potch was beside himself with anxiety and excitement. He wrote to Michael, care of an opal-buyer they were on good terms with and who might know where Michael was staying. In the bewilderment of his going, Potch had not thought to ask Michael where he would live, or where a letter would find him.
Michael came back to Fallen Star when he received the letter. He had not seen Sophie. No one he knew or had spoken to had seen anything of her after she left the train. Michael handed the letter to Potch as soon as he got back into the hut.
Sophie wrote that she had gone away because she wanted to learn to be a singer, and that she would be on her way to America when they received it. She explained that she had made up her mind to go quite suddenly, and she had not wanted Michael to know because she remembered his promise to her mother. She knew he would not let her go away from the Ridge if he could help it. She had sold her necklace, she said, and had got 100 for it, so had plenty of money. Potch and Michael were not to worry about her. She would be all right, and when she had made a name for herself as a singer, she would come home to the Ridge to see them.
"Don't be angry, Michael dear," the letter ended, "with your lovingest Sophie."
Potch looked at Michael; he wondered whether the thought in his own mind had reached Michael's. But
Michael was too dazed and overwhelmed to think at all.
"There's one thing, Potch," he said; "if she's gone to America, we could write to Mr. Armitage and ask him to keep an eye on her. And," he added, "if she's gone to America ... it's just likely she may be on the same boat as Mr. Armitage, and he'd look after her."
Potch watched his face. The thought in his mind had not occurred to Michael, then, he surmised.
"He'd see she came to no harm."
"Yes," Potch said.
But he had seen John Armitage talking to Sophie on the Ridge over near Snow-Shoes' hut the afternoon after the dance at Warria. He knew Mr.
Armitage had driven Sophie home after the dance, too. Paul had been too drunk to stand, much less drive. Potch had knocked off early in the mine to go across to the Three Mile that afternoon. Then it had surprised Potch to see Sophie sitting and talking to Mr. Armitage as though they were very good friends; but, beyond a vague, jealous alarm, he had not attached any importance to it until he knew Sophie had gone down to Sydney by the same train as Mr. Armitage. She had said she was going to America, too, and he was going there. Potch had lived all his days on the Ridge; he knew nothing of the world outside, and its ways, except what he had learnt from books. But an instinct where Sophie was concerned had warned him of a link between her going away and John Armitage. That meeting of theirs came to have an extraordinary significance in his mind. He had thought out the chances of Sophie's having gone with Mr. Armitage as far as he could. But Michael had not associated her going with him, it was clear. It had never occurred to him that Mr. Armitage could have anything to do with Sophie's going away. It had not occurred to the rest of the Ridge folk either.
Paul was distracted. He made as great an outcry about Sophie's going as he had about losing his stones. No one had thought he was as fond of her as he appeared to be. He wept and wailed continuously about her having gone away and left him. He went about begging for money in order to be able to go to America after Sophie; but no one would lend to him.
"You wait till Sophie's made a name for herself, Paul," everybody said, "then she'll send for you."
"Yes," he assented eagerly. "But I don't want to spend all that time here on the Ridge: I want to see something of life and the world again."
Paul got a touch of the sun during the ferment of those weeks, and then, for two or three days, Michael and Potch had their work cut out nursing him through the delirium of sun-stroke.
A week or so later the coach brought unexpected passengers--Jun Johnson and the bright-eyed girl who had gone down on the coach with him--and Jun introduced her to the boys at Newton's as his bride. He had been down in Sydney on his honeymoon, he said, that was all.
When Michael went into the bar at Newton's the same evening, he found Jun there, explaining as much to the boys.
"I know what you chaps think," he was saying when Michael entered. "You think I put up the checkmate on old Rum-Enough, Charley played. Well, you're wrong. I didn't know no more about it than you did; and the proof is--here I am. If I'd 'a' done it, d'y'r think I'd have come back? If I'd had any share in the business, d'y'r think I'd be showin' me face round here for a bit? Not much...."
Silence hung between him and the men. Jun talked through it, warming to his task with the eloquence of virtue, liking his audience and the stage he had got all to himself, as an outraged and righteously indignant man.