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CHAPTER XVII

When Michael got back to his hut he found Martha there.

"Oh, Michael," she said, "a dreadful thing has happened."

Michael stared at her, unable to understand what she said. It seemed to him all the terrible things that could happen had happened that evening.

"While you were away Arthur Henty came here to see Sophie," Martha said.

"She hasn't been feeling well ... and I came up to have a look at her.

She's been doing too much lately. Things haven't been too right between her and Potch, either, and that's her way of taking it out of herself.

Arthur was here when I got here, Michael, and--you never heard anything like the way he went on...."

Michael had fallen wearily into his chair while she was talking.

Martha continued, knowing that the sooner she got rid of her story the better it would be for both of them.

"It's an old story, of course, this about Arthur Henty and Sophie....

When he was ill after the ball he talked a good bit about her.... He always has ... to me. I was with his mother when he was born ... and he's always called me Mother M'Cready like the rest of you. He told me long ago he'd always been fond of Sophie.... He didn't know at first, he said. He was a fool; he didn't like being teased about her.... Then she went away.... He doesn't seem to know why he got married except that his people wanted him to.

"After the ball he'd made up his mind they were going away together, Sophie and he. But while he was ill ... before he was able to get around again, Sophie married Potch. Then he went mad, stark, starin' mad, and started drinking. He's been drinking hard ever since.... And to-night when he came, he just went over to Sophie.... She was lying on the couch under the window, Michael.... He said, I've got a horse for you outside.

Sophie didn't seem to realise what he meant at first. Then she did. I don't know how he guessed she wouldn't go ... but the next minute he was on his knees beside her ... and you never heard anything like it, Michael--the way he went on, sobbing and crying out--I never want to hear anything like it again.... I couldn't 've stood it meself.... I'd 've done anything in the world if a man'd gone on to me like that. And Sophie ... she put her arms round him, and mothered him like.... Then she began to cry too.... And there they were, both crying and sayin' how much they loved each other ... how much they'd always loved each other....

"It fair broke me up, Michael.... I didn't know what to do. They didn't seem to notice me.... Then he said again they'd go away together, and begin life all over again. Sophie tried to tell him it was too late to think of that.... They both had responsibilities they'd ought to stand by.... Hers was the Ridge and the Ridge life, she said.... He didn't understand.... He only understood he wanted her to go away with him, and she wouldn't go...."

Michael was so spent in body and mind that what Martha was saying did not at first make any impression on his mind. She seemed to be telling him a long and dolorous tale of something which had happened a long time ago, to people he had once known. In a waking nightmare, realisation that it was Sophie she was talking of dawned on him.

"He tried to make her," Martha was saying when he began to listen intently. "He said he'd been weak and a fool all his days. But he wasn't any more. He was strong now. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to have it.... Sophie was his, he said. Nothing in the world would ever make her anything but his. She knew it, and he knew it.... And Sophie hid her face in her hands. He took her hands away from her face and dragged her to her feet. He asked her if he was her mate.

"She said 'Yes.'

"'Then you've got to come with me,' he said.

"But she wouldn't go, Michael. She tried to explain it was the Ridge--what the Ridge stood for--she must stay to work for. She'd sworn to, she said. He cursed the Ridge and all of us, Michael. He said that he wouldn't let her go on living with Potch--be his wife. That he'd kill her, and himself, and Potch, rather than let her.... I never heard a man go on like he did, Michael. I never want to again. Half the time he was raging mad, then crying like a child. But in the end he said, quite quietly:

"'Will you come with me, Sophie?'

"And she said, quiet like that, too, 'No.'

"He went out of the hut.... I heard him ride away. Sophie cried after him. She put out her arms ... but she couldn't speak. And if you had seen her face, Michael----She just stood there against the wall, listening to the hoof-beats.... When we couldn't hear them any more, she stood there listening just the same. I went to her and tried to--to waken her--she seemed to have gone off into a sort of trance, Michael.... After a while she did wake; but she looked at me as if she didn't know me. She walked about for a bit, she walked round the table, and then she went out as though she were goin' for a walk. I told her not to go far ... not to be long ... but I don't think she heard me....

I watched her walking out towards the old rush.... And she isn't back yet...."

"It's too much," Michael muttered.

He sat with his head buried in his hands.

"What's to be done about it?" he asked at last.

Martha shook her head.

"I don't know. Sophie'll go through with her part, I suppose ... as her mother did."

Michael's face quivered.

"He's such an outsider," he groaned. "Sophie'd never give up the things we stand for here, now she understands them."

"That's just it," Martha said. "She doesn't want to--but there's something stronger than herself draggin' at her ... it's something that's been in all the women she's come of--the feeling a woman's got for the man who's her mate. Sophie married Potch, it's my belief, to get away from this man. She wanted to chain herself to us and her life here.

She wants to stay with us.... She was kept up at first by ideas of duty and sacrifice, and serving something more than her own happiness. But love's like murder, Michael--it must out, and it's a good thing it must...."

"And what about Potch?" Michael asked.

"Potch?" Martha smiled. "The dear lad ... he'll stand up to things.

There are people like that--and there're people like Arthur Henty who can't stand up to things. It's not their fault they're made that way ...

and they go under when they have too much to bear."

"Curse him," Michael groaned. "I wish he'd kept out of our lives."

"So do I," Martha said; "but he hasn't."

Potch came in. He looked from Martha to Michael.

"Where's Sophie?" he asked.

"She ... went out for a walk, a while ago," Martha said.

At first Martha believed Potch knew what had happened. In his eyes there was an awe and horror which communicated itself to Martha and Michael, and held them dumb.

"Henty has shot himself down in the tank paddock," he said at length.

Martha uttered a low wail. Michael looked at Potch, waiting to hear further.

"Some of the boys going home to the Three Mile heard the shot, and went over," Potch said. "I wanted to tell Sophie myself.... They were looking for you in the town, Martha."

"Oh!" Martha got up and went to the door.

"He's at Newton's," Potch said. "Which way did Sophie go?"

"She went towards the Old Town, Potch," Martha said.

The chestnut Arthur Henty had brought for Sophie, still standing with reins over a post of the goat-pen, whinnied when he saw them at the door of the hut. Potch looked at him as if he were wondering why the horse was there--a vague perplexity defined itself through the troubled abstraction of his gaze. His eyes went to Martha as if asking her how the horse came to be there; but she did not offer any explanation. She went off down the track to Newton's, and he struck out towards the Old Town.

Potch wandered over the plains looking for Sophie. She was not in any of her usual haunts. He wandered, looking for her, calling her, wondering what this news would mean to her. Vaguely, instinctively he knew. Prom the time of their marriage nothing had been said between them of Arthur Henty.

"Sophie! Sophie!" he called.

The stars were swarming points of silver fire in the blue-black sky. He wandered, calling still. Desolation overwhelmed him because he could not find Sophie; because she was in none of the places they had spent so much time in together. It was significant that she should not be in any of them, he felt. He could not bear to think she was eluding him, and yet that was what she had done all her life. She had been with him, smiling, elfish and tender one moment, and gone the next. She had always been elusive. For a long time a presentiment of desolation and disaster had overshadowed him. Again and again he had been able to draw breath of relief and assure himself that the indefinable dread which was always with him was a chimera of his too absorbing, too anxious love. But the fear, instinctive, prophetic, begotten by consciousness of the slight grasp he had of her, had remained.

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