"As a matter of fact"--John Armitage returned Sophie's gaze tranquilly--"I know something about Michael--some information came into my hands recently, although I've always vaguely suspected it--which will make his consent much more likely than you would have imagined.... If it does not, giving the information I hold to men of the Ridge will so destroy their faith and confidence in Michael that what he may say or do will not matter."
Sophie's bewilderment and dismay constrained him. Then he continued:
"You see, quite apart from you, my dear, it has always been a sort of dream of mine--ambition, if you like--to make a going concern of this place--to do for Fallen Star what other men I know have done for no-count, out-of-the-way towns and countries where natural resources or possibilities of investment warranted it.... I've talked the thing over with the old man, and with Andy M'Intosh, an old friend of mine, who is one of the ablest engineers in the States.... He's willing to throw in his lot with me.... Roughly, we've drawn up plans for conservation of flood waters and winter rains, which will alter the whole character of this country.... The old man at first was opposed--said the miners would never stand it; but since we've been out with the Ridge men, he's changed his mind rather. I mean, that when he knew some of the men would be willing to stand by us--and I have means of knowing they would--he was ready to agree. And when I told him Michael might be reckoned a traitor to his own creed----"
"It's not true," Sophie cried, her faith afire. "It couldn't be! ... If everybody in the world told me, I wouldn't believe it!"
Armitage took a cigarette-case from his vest pocket, opened it, and selected a cigarette.
"I'm not asking you to believe me," he said. "I'm only explaining the position to you because you're concerned in it. And for God's sake don't let us be melodramatic about it, Sophie. I'm not a villain. I don't feel in the least like one. This is entirely a business affair.... I see my way to a profitable investment--incidentally fulfilment of a scheme I've been working out for a good many years.
"Michael would oppose the syndicate for all he's worth if it weren't for this trump card of mine," Armitage went on. "He's got a Utopian dream about the place.... I see it as an up-to-date mining town, with all the advantages which science and money can bring to the development of its resources. His dream against mine--that's what it amounts to.... Well, it's a fair thing, isn't it, if I know that Michael is false to the things he says he stands for--and he stands in the way of my scheme--to let the men know he's false? ... They will fall away from the ideas he stands for as they will from Michael; two or three may take the ideas sans Michael ... but they will be in the minority.... The way will be clear for reorganisation then."
Not for an instant did Sophie believe that Michael had been a traitor to his own creed--false to the things he stood for, as John Armitage said,--although she thought he may have done something to give Armitage reason for thinking so.
"I'll see Michael to-morrow, and have it out with him," John Armitage said. "I shall tell him what I know ... and also my plans. If he will work with me----"
Sophie looked up, her smile glimmering.
"If he will work with me," Armitage repeated, knowing she realised all that would mean in the way of surrender for Michael, "nothing need be said which will undermine Michael's influence with men of the Ridge. I know he can make things a great deal easier by using his influence with them--by bending their thoughts in the direction of my proposition, suggesting that, after all, they have given their system a trial and it has not worked out as satisfactorily as might have been expected....
I'll make all the concessions possible, you may be sure--give it a profit-sharing basis even, so that the transaction won't look like the thing they are prejudiced against. But if Michael refuses...."
"He will...."
"I am going to ask the men to meet me in the hall, at the end of the month, to lay before them a proposition for the more effective working of the mines. I shall put my proposition before them, and if Michael refuses to work with me, I shall be forced to give them proofs of his unworthiness of their respect...."
"They won't believe you."
"There will be the proofs, and Michael will not--he cannot--deny them."
"You'll tell him what you are going to do?"
"Certainly."
Sophie realised how far Armitage was from understanding the religious intensity and simplicity with which Ridge folk worked for the way of life they believed to be the right one, and what the break-up of that belief would mean to those who had served it in the unpretentious, unprotesting fashion of honest, downright people. To him the Ridge stood for messy sentimentalism, Utopian idealism. And there was money in the place: there was money to be made by putting money into it--by working the mines and prospecting the country as the men without capital could not.
John Armitage was ready to admit--Sophie had heard him admitting in controversy--that the Fallen Star mines which the miners themselves controlled were as well worked and as well managed within their means as any he had ever come across; that the miners themselves were a sober and industrious crowd. What capital could do for them and for the Fallen Star community by way of increasing its output and furthering its activities was what he saw. And the only security he could have for putting his capital into working the mines was ownership of them.
Ownership would give him the right to organise the workers, and to claim interest for his investment from their toil, or the product of their toil.
The Ridge declaration of independence had made it clear that people of Fallen Star did not want increased output, the comforts and conveniences which capital could give them, unless they were provided from the common fund of the community. Ultimately, it was hoped the common fund would provide them, but until it did Ridge men had announced their willingness to do without improvements for the sake of being masters of their own mines. If it was a question of barter, they were for the pride and dignity of being free men and doing without the comforts and conveniences of modern life. Sophie felt sure Armitage underestimated the feeling of the majority of men of the Ridge toward the Ridge idea, and that most of them would stand by it, even if for some mysterious reason Michael lost status with them. But she was dismayed at the test the strength of that feeling was to be put to, and at the mysterious shame which threatened Michael. She could not believe Michael had ever done anything to merit it. Michael could never be less than Michael to her--the soul of honour, the knight without fear, against whom no reproach could be levelled.
Armitage spoke again.
"You see," he said, "you could still have all those things you spoke of, under my scheme--the long, quiet days; life that is broad and simple; the hearth; home, children--all that sort of thing ... and even time for any of the little social reform schemes you fancied...."
Sophie found herself confronted with the fundamental difference of their outlook again. He talked as if the ideas which meant so much to her and to people of the Ridge were the notions of headstrong children--whimsical and interesting notions, perhaps, but mistaken, of course. He was inclined to make every allowance for them.
"The only little social reform I'd have any time for," she murmured, "would be the overthrowing of your scheme for ownership of the mines."
John Armitage was frankly surprised to find that she held so firmly to the core of the Ridge idea, and amused by the uncompromising hostility of her attitude. Sophie herself had not thought she was so attached to the Ridge life and its purposes, until there was this suggestion of destroying them.
"Then"--he stood up suddenly--"whether I succeed or whether I don't--whether the scheme goes my way or not--won't make any difference to you--to us."
"It will make this difference," Sophie said. "I'm heart and soul in the life here, I've told you. And if you do as you say you're going to ...
instead of thinking of you in the old, good, friendly way, I'll have to think of you as the enemy of all that is of most value to me."
"You mean," John Armitage cried, his voice broken by the anger and chagrin which rushed over him, "you mean you're going to take on Henty--that's what's at the back of all this."
"I mean," Sophie said steadily, her eyes clear green and cool in his, "that I'm going to marry Potch, and if Michael and all the rest of the men of the Ridge go over to you and your scheme, we'll fight it."
CHAPTER XII
"Are you there, Potch?" Sophie stood in the doorway of Michael's hut, a wavering shadow against the moonlight behind her.
Michael looked up. He was lying on the sofa under the window, a book in his hands.
"He's not here," he said.
His voice was as distant as though he were talking to a stranger. He had been trying to read, but his mind refused to concern itself with anything except the night before, and the consequences of it. His eyes had followed a trail of words; but he had been unable to take any meaning from them. Sophie! His mind hung aghast at the exclamation of her. She was the storm-centre. His thoughts moved in a whirlwind about her. He did not understand how she could have worn that dress showing her shoulders and so much of her bared breast. It had surprised, confused, and alarmed him to see Sophie looking as she did in that photograph Dawe Armitage had brought to the Ridge. The innocence and sheer joyousness of her laughter had reassured him, but, as the evening wore on, she seemed to become intoxicated with her own gaiety.
Michael had watched her dancing with vague disquiet. To him, dancing was rather a matter of concern to keep step and to avoid knocking against anyone--a serious business. He did not get any particular pleasure out of it; and Sophie's delight in rhythmic movement and giving of her whole being to a waltz, amazed him. When Armitage came, her manner had changed. It had lost some of its abstract joyousness. It was as if she were playing up to him.... She had been much more of his world than of the world of the Ridge; had displayed a thousand little airs and superficial graces, all the gay, light manner of that other world. When she was dancing with Arthur Henty, Michael had seen the sudden drooping and overcasting of her gaiety. He thought she was tired, and that Potch should take her home. The old gossip about Arthur Henty had faded from his memory; not the faintest recollection of it occurred to him as he had seen Sophie and Arthur Henty dancing together.
Then Sophie's cry, eerie and shrill in the night air, had reached him.
He had seen Potch and Arthur Henty at grips. He had not imagined that such fury could exist in Potch. Other men had come. They dragged Potch away from Henty.... Henty had fallen.... Potch would have killed him if they had not dragged him away.... Henty was carried in an unconscious condition to Newton's. Armitage had taken Sophie home. Michael went with Potch.
Michael did not know exactly what had occurred. He could only imagine.... Sophie had been behaving in that gay, light manner of the other world: he had seen her at it all the evening. Potch had not understood, he believed; it had goaded him to a state of mind in which he was not responsible for what he did.
Sophie was conscious of Michael's aloofness from her as she stood in the doorway; it wavered as his eyes held and communed with hers. The night before he had not been able to realise that the girl in the black dress, which had seemed to him almost indecent, was Sophie. He kept seeing her in her everyday white cotton frock--as she sat at work at her cutting-wheel, or went about the hut--and now that she stood before him in white again, he could scarcely believe that the black dress and happenings of the ball were not an hallucination. But there was a prayer in her eyes which came of the night before. She would not have looked at him so if there had been no night before; her lips would not have quivered in that way, as if she were sorry and would like to explain, but could not.
Potch had staggered home beside Michael, swaying and muttering as though he were drunk. But he was not drunk, except with rage and grief, Michael knew. He had lain on his bunk like a log all night, muttering and groaning. Michael had sat in a chair in the next room, trying to understand the madness which had overwhelmed Potch.
In the morning, he realised that work and the normal order of their working days were the only things to restore Potch's mental balance. He roused him earlier than usual.
"We'd better get down and clear out some of the mullock," he said. "The gouges are fair choked up. There'll be no doing anything if we don't get a move on with it."
Potch had stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he got up, changed his clothes, and they had gone down to the mine together. His face was swollen and discoloured, his lip broken, one eye almost hidden beneath a purple and blue swelling which had risen on the upper part of his left cheek. He had dragged his hat over his face, and walked with his head down; they had not spoken all the morning. Potch had swung his pick stolidly. All day his eyes had not met Michael's as they usually did, in that glance of love and comradeship which united them whenever their eyes met.
In the afternoon, when they stopped work and went to the top of the mine, Potch had said:
"Think I'll clear out--go away somewhere for awhile, Michael."
From his attitude, averted head and drooping shoulders, Michael got the unendurable agony of his mind, his pain and shame. He did not reply, and Potch had walked away from him striking out in a south-easterly direction across the Ridge. Michael had not seen him since then. And now it was early evening, the moon up and silvering the plains with the light of her young crescent.
"He says--Potch says ... he's going away," Michael said to Sophie.