And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so.
He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself did.
A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought much of him. "Potch," they would say, as his father used to, "a little bit of potch!" Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley Heathfield's son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house, thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut.
"He's the only mate worth a straw Michael's had since God knows when, 't anyrate," Watty said, after Potch had been working with Paul and Michael for some time. George and Cash agreed with him.
George and Watty and Cash had "no time," as they said themselves, for Rouminof; and Potch as a rule stayed in the shelter with Paul when Michael went over to talk with George and Watty. He was never prouder than when Michael asked him to go over to George and Watty's shelter.
At first Potch would sit on the edge of the shelter, leaning against the brushwood, the sun on his shoulder, as if unworthy to take advantage of the shelter's shade, further. For a long time he listened, saying nothing; not listening very intently, apparently, and feeding the birds with crumbs from his lunch. But Michael saw his eyes light when there was any misstatement of fact on a subject he had been reading about or knew something of.
Soon after Sophie had gone, Michael wrote to Dawe Armitage. He and the old man had always been on good terms, and Michael had a feeling of real friendliness for him. But the secret of the sympathy between them was that they were lovers of the same thing. For both, black opal had a subtle, inexplicable fascination.
As briefly as he knew how, Michael told Dawe Armitage how Sophie had left Fallen Star, and what he had heard. "It's up to you to see no harm comes to that girl," he wrote. "If it does, you can take my word for it, there's no man on this field will sell to Armitages."
Michael knew Mr. Armitage would take his word for it. He knew Dawe Armitage would realise better than Michael could tell him, that it would be useless for John Armitage to visit the field the following year.
George Woods had informed Michael that, by common consent, men of the Ridge had decided not to sell to Armitage for a time; and, in order to prevent an agent thwarting their purpose, to deal only with known and rival buyers of the Armitages. Dawe Armitage, Michael guessed, would be driven to the extremity of promising almost anything to make up for what his son had done, and to overcome the differences between Armitage and Son and men of the Ridge.
When the reply came, Michael showed it to Watty and George.
"DEAR BRADY," it said, "I need hardly say your letter was a great shock to me. At first, when I taxed my son with the matter you write of, he denied all knowledge or responsibility for the young lady. I have since found she is here in New York, and have seen her. I offered to take her passage and provide for her to return to the Ridge; but she refuses to leave this city, and, I believe, is to appear in a musical comedy production at an early date. Believe me overcome by the misfortune of this episode, and only anxious to make any reparation in my power.
Knowing the men of the Ridge as I do, I can understand their resentment of my son's behaviour, and that for a time, at least, business relations between this house and them cannot be on the old friendly footing. I need hardly tell you how distressing this state of affairs is to me personally, and how disastrous the cutting off of supplies is to my business interests. I can only ask that, as I will, on my part, to the best of my ability, safeguard the young, lady--whom I will regard as under my charge--you will, in recognition of our old friendship, perhaps point out to men of the Ridge that as it is not part of their justice to visit sins of the fathers upon the children, so I hope it may not be to visit sins of the children upon the fathers.
"Yours very truly,
"DAWE P. ARMITAGE."
"The old man seems fair broken up," Watty remarked.
"Depends on how Sophie gets on whether we have anything to do with Armitage and Son--again," George replied. "If she's all right ... well ... perhaps it'll be all right for them, with us. If she doesn't get on all right ... they won't neither."
"That's right," Watty muttered.
The summer months passed slowly. The country was like a desert for hundreds of miles about the Ridge in every direction. The herbage had crumbled into dust; ironstone and quartz pebbles on the long, low slopes of the Ridge glistened almost black in the light; and out on the plains, and on the roads where the pebbles were brushed aside, the dust rose in tawny and reddish clouds when a breath of wind, or the movement of man and beast stirred it. The trees, too, were almost black in the light; the sky, dim, and smoking with heat.
Paul had not done any work in the mine since he had been laid up with sun-stroke. When he was able to be about again he went to the shelter to eat his lunch with Michael and Potch. He was extraordinarily weak for some time, and a haze the sun-stroke had left hovered over his mind.
Usually, to stem the tide of his incessant questions and gossiping, Potch gave him some scraps of sun-flash, and colour and potch to noodle, and he sat and snipped them contentedly while Potch and Michael read or dozed the hot, still, midday hours away.
When he had eaten his lunch, Potch tossed his crumbs to the birds which came about the shelter. He whistled to them for a while and tried to make friends with them. As often as not Michael sat, legs stretched put before him, smoking and brooding, as he gazed over the plains; but one day he found himself in the ruck of troubled thoughts as he watched Potch with the birds.
Michael had often watched Potch making friends with the birds, as he lay on his side dozing or dreaming. He had sat quite still many a day, until Potch, by throwing crumbs and whistling encouragingly and in imitation of their own calls, had induced a little crested pigeon, or white-tail, to come quite close to him. The confidence Potch won from the birds was a reproach to him. But in a few days now, Michael told himself, he would be giving Paul his opals. Then Potch would know what perhaps he ought to have known already. Potch was his mate, Michael reminded himself, and entitled to know what his partner was doing with opal which was not their common property.
When Sophie was at home, Michael had taken Potch more or less for granted. He had not wished to care for, or believe in, Potch, as he had his father, fearing a second shock of disillusionment. The compassion which was instinctive had impelled him to offer the boy his goodwill and assistance; but a remote distrust and contempt of Charley in his son had at first tinged his feeling for Potch. Slowly and surely Potch had lived down that distrust and contempt. Dogged and unassuming, he asked nothing for himself but the opportunity to serve those he loved, and Michael had found in their work, in their daily association, in the homage and deep, mute love Potch gave him, something like balm to the hurts he had taken from other loves.
Michael had loved greatly and generously, and had little energy to give to lesser affections, but he was grateful to Potch for caring for him.
He was drawn to Potch by the knowledge of his devotion. He longed to tell him about the opals; how he had come to have them, and why he was holding them; but always there had been an undertow of resistance tugging at the idea, reluctance to break the seals on the subject in his mind. Some day he would have to break them, he told himself.
Paul's illness had made it seem advisable to put off explanation about the opals for a while. Paul was still weak from the fever following his touch of the sun, and his brain hazy. As soon as he had his normal wits again, Michael promised himself he would take the opals to Paul and let him know how he came to have them.
All the afternoon, as he worked, Michael was plagued by thought of the opals. He had no peace with himself for accepting Potch's belief in him, and for not telling Potch how Paul's opals came into his possession.
In the evening as he lay on the sofa under the window, reading, the troubled thinking of his midday reverie became tangled with the printed words of the page before him. Michael had a flashing vision of the stones as Paul had held them to the light in Newton's bar. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had not seen the stones, or looked at the package the opals were in, since he had thrown them into the box of books in his room, the night he had taken them from Charley.
He got up from the sofa and crossed to his bedroom to see whether Paul's cigarette tin, wrapped in its old newspaper, was still lying among his books. He plunged is hand among them, and turned his books over until he found the tin. It looked much as it had the night he threw it into the box--only the wrappings of newspaper were loose.
Michael wondered whether all the opals were in the box. He hoped none had fallen out, or got chipped or cracked as a result of his rough handling. He untied the string round the tin in order to tie it again more securely. It might be just as well to see whether the stones were all right while he was about it, he thought.
He went back to the sitting-room and drew his chair up to the table.
Slowly, abstractedly, he rolled the newspaper wrappings from the tin; and the stones rattled together in their bed of wadding as he lifted them to the table. He picked up one and held it off from the candle-light. It was the stone Paul had had such pride in--a piece of opal with a glitter of flaked gold and red fire smouldering through its black potch like embers of a burning tree through the dark of a starless night.
One by one he lifted the stones and moved them before the candle, letting its yellow ray loose their internal splendour. The colours in the stones--blue, green, gold, amethyst, and red--melted, sprayed, and scintillated before him. His blood warmed to their fires.
"God! it's good stuff!" he breathed, his eyes dark with reverence and emotion.
With the tranced interest of a child, he sat there watching the play of colours in the stones. Opal always exerted this fascination for him. Not only its beauty, but the mystery of its beauty enthralled him. He had a sense of dimly grasping great secrets as be gazed into its shining depths, trying to follow the flow and scintillation of its myriad stars.
Potch came into the hut, brushing against the doorway. He swung unsteadily, as though he had been running or walking quickly.
Michael started from the rapt contemplation he had fallen into; he stood up. His consciousness swaying earthwards again, he was horrified that Potch should find him with the opals like this before he had explained how he came to have them. Confounded with shame and dismay, instinctively he brushed the stones together and, almost without knowing what he did, threw the wrappings over them. He felt as if he were really guilty of the thing Potch might suspect him guilty of: either of being a miser and hoarding opal from his mate, or of having come by the stones as he had come by them. One opal, the stone he had first looked at, tumbled out from the others and lay under the candle-light, winking and flashing.
But Potch was disturbed himself; he was breathing heavily; his usually sombre, quiet face was flushed and quivering with restrained excitement.
He was too preoccupied to notice Michael's movement, or what he was doing.
"Snow-Shoes been here?" he asked, breathlessly.
"No," Michael said. "Why?"
He stretched out his hand to take the opal which lay winking in the light and put it among the others. Potch's excitement died out.
"Oh, nothing," he said, lamely. "I only thought I saw him making this way."
The sound of a woman laughing outside the hut broke the silence between them. Michael lifted his head to listen.
"Who's that?" he asked;
Potch did not reply. The blue dark of the night sky, bright with stars, was blank in the doorway.
"May I come in?" a woman's voice called. Her figure wavered in the doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson's wife. She stood there on the threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair wind-blown, her eyes, laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away.
"My old nanny's awful bad, Potch," she said. "They say there's no one on the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see what you can do for her?"
Potch was silent. Michael had never known him take a request for help so ungraciously. His face was sullen and resentful as his eyes went to Maud.
"All right," he said.
He moved to go out with her. Maud moved too. Then she caught sight-of the piece of opal lying out from the other stones on the table.
"My," she cried eagerly, "that's a pretty stone, Michael!" She turned it back against the light, so that the opal threw out its splintered sparks of red and gold.
"Just been noodlin' over some old scraps ... and came across it,"