"I know you chaps--I know how you feel about things; and quite right, too! A man that'd go back on a mate like that--why, he's not fit to wipe your boots on. He ain't fit to be called a man; he ain't fit to be let run with the rest."
He continued impressively; "I didn't know no more about that business than any man-jack of you--no more did Mrs. Jun.... Bygones is bygones--that's my motto. But I tell you--and that's the strength of it--I didn't know no more about those stones of Rummy's than any man here. D'y' believe me?"
It was said in good earnest enough, even Watty and George had to admit.
It was either the best bit of bluff they had ever listened to, or else Jun, for once in a way, was enjoying the luxury of telling the truth.
"We're all good triers here, Jun," George said, "but we're not as green as we're painted."
Jun regarded his beer meditatively; then he said:
"Look here, you chaps, suppose I put it to you straight: I ain't always been what you might call the clean potato ... but I ain't always been married, either. Well, I'm married now--married to the best little girl ever I struck...."
The idea of Jun taking married life seriously amused two or three of the men. Smiles began to go round, and broadened as he talked. That they did not please Jun was evident.
"Well, seein' I've taken on family responsibilities," he went on--"Was you smiling, Watty?"
"Me? Oh, no, Jun," the offender replied, meekly; "it was only the stummick-ache took me. It does that way sometimes. You mightn't think so, but I always look as if I was smilin' when I've got the stummick-ache."
George Woods, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and some of the others laughed, taking Watty's explanation for what it was worth. But Jun continued solemnly, playing the reformed blackguard to his own satisfaction.
"Seein' I've taken on family responsibilities, I want to run straight. I don't want my kids to think there was anything crook about their dad."
If he moved no one else, he contrived to feel deeply moved himself at the prospect of how his unborn children were going to regard him. The men who had always more or less believed in him managed to convince themselves that Jun meant what he said. George and Watty realised he had put up a good case, that he was getting at them in the only way possible.
Michael moved out of the crowd round the door towards the bar. Peter Newton put his daily ration of beer on the bar.
"'Lo, Michael," Jun said.
"'Lo, Jun," Michael said.
"Well," Jun concluded, tossing off his beer; "that's the way it is, boys. Believe me if y'r like, and if y'r don't like--lump it.
"But there's one thing more I've got to tell you," he added; "and if you find what I've been saying hard to believe, you'll find this harder: I don't believe Charley got those stones of Rummy's."
"What?"
The query was like the crack of a whip-lash. There was a restive, restless movement among the men.
"I don't believe Charley got those stones either," Jun declared. "'Got,'
I said, not 'took.' All I know is, he was like a sick fish when he reached Sydney ... and sold all the opal he had with him. He was lively enough when we started out. I give you that. Maybe he took Rum-Enough's stones all right; but somebody put it over on him. I thought it might be Emmy--that yeller-haired tart, you remember, went down with us. She was a tart, and no mistake. My little girl, now--she was never ... like that! But Maud says she doesn't think so, because Emmy turned Charley out neck and crop when she found he'd got no cash. He got mighty little for the bit of stone he had with him ... I'll take my oath. He came round to borrow from me a day or two after we arrived. And he was ragin'
mad about something.... If he shook the stones off Rum-Enough, it's my belief somebody shook them off of him, either in the train or here--or off of Rummy before he got them...."
Several of the men muttered and grunted their protest. But Jun held to his point, and the talk became more general. Jun asked for news of the fields: what had been done, and who was getting the stuff. Somebody said John Armitage had been up and had bought a few nice stones from the Crosses, Pony-Fence, and Bully Bryant.
"Armitage?" Jun said. "He's always a good man--gives a fair price. He bought my stones, that last lot ... gave me a hundred pounds for the big knobby. But it fair took my breath away to hear young Sophie Rouminof had gone off with him."
Michael was standing beside him before the words were well out of his mouth.
"What did you say?" he demanded.
"I'm sorry, Michael," Jun replied, after a quick, scared glance at the faces of the men about him. "But I took it for granted you all knew, of course. We saw them a good bit together down in Sydney, Maud and me, and she said she saw Sophie on the _Zealanida_ the day the boat sailed. Maud was down seeing a friend off, and she saw Sophie and Mr. Armitage on board. She said--"
Michael turned heavily, and swung out of the bar.
Jun looked after him. In the faces of the men he read what a bomb his news had been among them.
"I wouldn't have said that for a lot," he said, "if I'd 've thought Michael didn't know. But, Lord, I thought he knew ... I thought you all knew."
In the days which followed, as he wandered over the plains in the late afternoon and evening, Michael tried to come to some understanding with himself of what had happened. At first he had been too overcast by the sense of loss to realise more than that Sophie had gone away. But now, beyond her going, he could see the failure of his own effort to control circumstances. He had failed; Sophie had gone; she had left the Ridge.
"God," he groaned; "with the best intentions in the world, what an awful mess we make of things!"
Michael wondered whether it would have been worse for Sophie if she had gone away with Paul when her mother died. At least, Sophie was older now and better able to take care of herself.
He blamed himself because she had gone away as she had, all the same; the failure of the Ridge to hold her as well as his own failure beat him to the earth. He had hoped Sophie would care for the things her mother had cared for. He had tried to explain them to her. But Sophie, he thought now, had more the restless temperament of her father. He had not understood her young spirit, its craving for music, laughter, admiration, and the life that could give them to her. He had thought the Ridge would be enough for her, as it had been for her mother.
Michael never thought of Mrs. Rouminof as dead. He thought of her as though she were living some distance from him, that was all. In the evening he looked up at the stars, and there was one in which she seemed to be. Always he felt as if she were looking at him when its mild radiance fell over him. And now he looked to that star as if trying to explain and beg forgiveness.
His heart was sore because Sophie had left him without a word of affection or any explanation. His fear and anxiety for her gave him no peace. He sweated in agony with them for a long time, crying to her mother, praying her to believe he had not failed in his trust through lack of desire to serve her, but through a fault of understanding. If she had been near enough to talk to, he knew he could have explained that the girl was right: neither of them had any right to interfere with the course of her life. She had to go her own way; to learn joy and sorrow for herself.
Too late Michael realised that he had done all the harm in the world by seeking to make Sophie go his own and her mother's way. He had opposed the tide of her youth and enthusiasm, instead of sympathising with it; and by so doing he had made it possible for someone else to sympathise and help her to go her own way. Opposition had forced her life into channels which he was afraid would heap sorrows upon her, whereas identification with her feeling and aspirations might have saved her the hurt and turmoil he had sought to save her.
Thought of what he had done to prevent Paul taking Sophie away haunted Michael. But, after all, he assured himself, he had not stolen from Paul. Charley had stolen from Paul, and he, Michael, was only holding Paul's opals until he could give them to Paul when his having them would not do Sophie any harm.... His having them now could not injure Sophie.... Michael decided to give Paul the opals and explain how he came to have them, when the shock of what Jun had said left him. He tried not to think of that, although a consciousness of it was always with him.... But Paul was delirious with sun-stroke, he remembered; it would be foolish to give him the stones just then.... As soon as that touch of the sun had passed, Michael reflected, he would give Paul the opals and explain how he came to have them....
_PART II_
CHAPTER I
The summer Sophie left the Ridge was a long and dry one. Cool changes blew over, but no rain fell. The still, hot days and dust-storms continued until March.
Through the heat came the baa-ing of sheep on the plains, moving in great flocks, weary and thirsty; the blaring of cattle; the harsh crying of crows following the flocks and waiting to tear the dead flesh from the bones of spent and drought-stricken beasts. The stock routes were marked by the bleached bones of cattle and sheep which had fallen by the road, and the stench of rotting flesh blew with the hot winds and dust from the plains.
It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather.
Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before the heat of the day began.
In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump, handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone, shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air.
But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay, moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the busy underground world of the mines.
As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium of sun-stroke, and Paul's hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it.
Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning; he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie's room open sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once, in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti--the yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat's-milk butter or cheese for the two huts.
People at first were surprised at Potch's care of Paul; then they regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch Was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of.