The men turned to the door, judging from Mr. Armitage's tone that what he had to say was for Michael alone.
"I'll just have a look if that bally mare of mine's all right, Mr.
Armitage," Peter Newton said.
He went to the door, and the rest of the men followed him.
"Well, Michael," Dawe Armitage said when the men had gone out, "I guess you know what it is I want to talk to you about."
Michael jerked his head slightly by way of acknowledgment.
"That little girl of yours."
Michael smiled. It always pleased and amused him to hear people talk as if he and not Paul were Sophie's father.
"She"--old Armitage leaned back on the sofa, and a shade of perplexity crossed his face--"I've seen a good deal of her, Michael, and I've tried to keep an eye on her--but I don't mind admitting to you that a man needs as many eyes as a centipede has legs to know what's coming to him where Sophie's concerned. But first of all ... she's well ... and happy--at least, she appears to be; and she's a great little lady."
He brooded a moment, and Michael smoked, watching his face as though it were a page he were trying to read.
"You know, she's singing at one of the theatres in New York, and they say she's doing well. She's sought after--made much of. She's got little old Manhattan at her feet, as they say.... I don't want to gloss over anything that son of mine may have done--but to put it in a nutshell, Michael, he's in love with her. He's really in love with her--wants to marry her, but Sophie won't have him."
Michael did not speak, and he continued:
"And there's this to be said for him. She says it. He isn't quite so much to blame as we first thought. Seems he'd been making love to her...
and did a break before.... He didn't mean to be a blackguard, y' see.
You know what I'm driving at, Michael. He loved the girl and went--She says when she knew he had gone away, she went after him. Then--well, you know, Michael ... you've been young ... you've been in love. And in Sydney ... summer-time ... with the harbour there at your feet....
"They were happy enough when they came to America. How they escaped the emigration authorities, I don't know. They make enough fuss about an old fogey like me, as if I had a harem up me sleeve. But still, when I found her they were still happy, and she was having dancing lessons, had made up her mind to go on the stage, and wouldn't hear of getting married.
Seemed to think it was a kind of barbarous business, gettin' married.
Said her mother had been married--and look what it had brought her to.
"She's fond of John, too," the old man continued. "But, at present, New York's a side-show, and she's enjoying it like a child on a holiday from the country. I've got her living with an old maid cousin of mine....
Sophie says by and by perhaps she'll marry John, but not yet--not now--she's having too good a time. She's got all the money she wants ...
all the gaiety and admiration. It's not the sort of life I like for a woman myself ... but I've done my best, Michael."
There was something pathetic about the quiver which took the old face before him. Michael responded to it gratefully.
"You have that, I believe, Mr. Armitage," he said, "and I'm grateful to you.".
"Tell you the truth, Michael," he said, "I'm fond of her. I feel about her as if she were a piece of live opal--the best bit that fool of a son of mine ever brought from the Ridge...."
His face writhed as he got up from the sofa.
"But I must be going, Michael. Rouminof had a touch of the sun a while ago, they tell me. Never been quite himself since. Bad business that.
Better go and have a look at him. Yes? Thanks, Michael; thanks. It's a God-damned business growing old, Michael. Never knew I had so many bones in me body."
Leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled to the door. Michael gave him his arm, and they went to Rouminof's hut.
Potch had told Paul of Dawe P. Armitage's arrival; that he had come to the Ridge to see the big opal, and was in Michael's hut. Paul had gone to bed, but was all eagerness to get up and go to see Mr. Armitage. He was sitting on his bed, weak and dishevelled-looking, shirt and trousers on, while Potch was hunting for his boots, when Michael and Mr. Armitage came into the room.
After he had asked Paul how he was, and had gossiped with him awhile, Mr. Armitage produced an illustrated magazine from one of the outer pockets of his overcoat.
"Thought you'd like to see these pictures of Sophie, Rouminof," he said.
"She's well, and doing well. The magazine will tell you about that. And I brought along this." He held out a photograph. "She wouldn't give me a photograph for you, Michael--said you'd never know her--so I prigged this from her sitting-room last time I was there."
Michael glanced at the photographer's card of heavy grey paper, which Mr. Armitage was holding. He would know Sophie, anyhow and anywhere, he thought; but he agreed that she was right when, the card in his hands, he gazed at the elegant, bizarre-looking girl in the photograph. She was so unlike the Sophie he had known that he closed his eyes on the picture, pain, and again a dogging sense of failure and defeat filtering through all his consciousness.
CHAPTER V
Potch had gone to the mine on the morning when Michael went into Paul's hut, intending to rouse him out and make him go down to the claim and start work again. It was nearly five years since he had got the sun-stroke which had given him an excuse for loafing, and Michael and Potch had come to the conclusion that even if it were only to keep him out of mischief, Paul had to be put to work again.
Since old Armitage's visit he had been restless and dissatisfied. He was getting old, and had less energy, even by fits and starts, than he used to have, they realised, but otherwise he was much the same as he had been before Sophie went away. For months after Armitage's visit he spent the greater part of his time on the form in the shade of Newton's veranda, or in the bar, smoking and yarning to anybody who would yarn with him about Sophie. His imagination gilded and wove freakish fancies over what Mr. Armitage had said of her, while he wailed about Sophie's neglect of him--how she had gone away and left him, her old father, to do the best he could for himself. His reproaches led him to rambling reminiscences of his life before he came to the Ridge, and of Sophie's mother. He brought out his violin, tuned it, and practised Sometimes, talking of how he would play for Sophie in New York.
He was rarely sober, and Michael and Potch were afraid of the effect of so much drinking on his never very steady brain.
For months they had been trying to induce him to go down to the claim and start work again; but Paul would not.
"What's the good," he had said, "Sophie'll be sending for me soon, and I'll be going to live with her in New York, and she won't want people to be saying her father is an old miner."
Michael had too deep a sense of what he owed to Paul to allow him ever to want. He had provided for him ever since Sophie had left the Ridge; he was satisfied to go on providing for him; but he was anxious to steer Paul back to more or less regular ways of living.
This morning Michael had made up his mind to tempt him to begin work again by telling him of a splash of colour Potch had come on in the mine the day before. Michael did not think Paul could resist the lure of that news.
Potch had brought Paul home from Newton's the night before, Michael knew; but Paul was not in the kitchen or in his own room when Michael went into the hut.
As he was going out he noticed that the curtain of bagging over the door of the room which had been Sophie's was thrown back. Michael went towards it.
"Paul!" he called.
No answer coming, he went into the room. Its long quiet and tranquillity had been disturbed. Michael had not seen the curtain over the doorway thrown back in that way since Sophie had gone. The room had always been like a grave in the house with that piece of bagging across it; but there was none of the musty, dusty, grave-like smell of an empty room about it when Michael crossed the threshold. The window was open; the frail odour of a living presence in the air. On the box cupboard by the window a few stalks of punti, withered and dry, stood in a tin. Michael remembered having seen them there when they were fresh, a year ago.
He was realising Potch had put them there, and wondering why he had left the dead stalks in the tin until they were as dry as brown paper, when his eyes fell on a hat with a long veil, and a dark cloak on the bed. He gazed at them, his brain shocked into momentary stillness by the suggestion they conveyed.
Sophie exclaimed behind him.
When he turned, Michael saw her standing in the doorway, leaning against one side of it. Her face was very pale and tired-looking; her eyes gazed into his, dark and strange. He thought she had been ill.
"I've come home, Michael," she said.
Michael could not speak. He stood staring at her. The dumb pain in her eyes inundated him, as though he were a sensitive medium for the realisation of pain. It surged through him, mingling with the flood of his own rejoicing, gratitude, and relief that Sophie had come back to the Ridge again.
They stood looking at each other, their eyes telling in that moment what words could not. Then Michael spoke, sensing her need of some commonplace, homely sentiment and expression of affection.
"It's a sight for sore eyes--the sight of you, Sophie," he said.