It was still light; the sky, faintly green, a tinge as of stale blood
along the horizon, as Sophie and Potch walked down the road to the hall.
At a little distance the big building showed dark and ungainly against
the sky. Its double doors were open, and a wash of dull, golden light
came out from it into the twilight, with the noise of people laughing
and talking.
"It's like old times, isn't it, Potch"--Sophie's fingers closed over
Potch's arm--"to be going to a Ridge dance?"
There was a faint, sweet stirring which the wind makes in the trees
within her, Sophie realised. It was strange and delightful to feel alive
again, and alive with the first freshness, innocence, and vague
happiness of a girl.
Potch looked down on her, smiling. He was filled with pride to have her
beside him like this, to think they would go into the hall together, and
that people would say to each other when they saw them: "There's Sophie
and Potch!"
That using of their names side by side was a source of infinite content
to Potch. He loved people to say: "When are you and Sophie coming over
to see us, Potch?" or, "Would you mind telling Sophie, Potch?" and give
him a message for Sophie. And this would be the first time they had
appeared at an assembly of Ridge folk together.
He walked with his head held straight and high, and his eyes shone when
he went down the hall with Sophie. What did it matter if they called him
Potch, the Ridge folk, "a little bit of potch," he thought, Sophie was
going to be Mrs. Heathfield.
"Here's Sophie and Potch," he heard people say, as he had thought they
would, and his heart welled with happiness and pride.
Nearly everybody had arrived when they went into the hall; the first
dance was just beginning. Branches of budda, fleeced with creamy and
lavender blossom, had been stuck through the supports of the hall. Flags
and pennants of all the colours in the rainbow, strung on a line
together, were stretched at the end of the platform. On the platform
Mrs. Newton was sitting at the piano. Paul had his music-stand near her,
and behind him an old man from the Three Mile was nervously fingering
and blowing on a black and silver-mounted flute. Women and girls and a
few of the older men were seated on forms against the walls. Several
young mothers had babies in their arms, and children of all ages were
standing about, or sitting beside their parents. By common consent,
Ridge folk had taken one side of the hall, and station folk the upper
end of the other side.
Sophie's first glance found Martha, her white dress stiff and
immaculate, her face with its plump, rosy cheeks turned towards her, her
eyes smiling and expectant. Martha beamed at her; Sophie smiled back,
and, her glance travelling on, found Maggie and Bill Grant, Mrs. George
Woods and two of her little girls; Mrs. Watty, in a black dress, its
high neck fastened by a brooch, with three opals in, Watty had given
her; and Watty, genial and chirrupy as usual, but afraid to appear as if
he were promising himself too much of a good time.
Warria, Langi-Eumina, and Darrawingee folk had foregathered; the girls
and men laughed and chattered in little groups; the older people talked,
sitting against the wall or leaning towards each other. Mrs. Henty
looked much as she had done five years before; James Henty not a day
older; but Mrs. Tom Henderson, who had been Elizabeth Henty, had
developed a sedate and matronly appearance. Polly was not as plump and
jolly as she had been--a little puzzled and apprehensive expression
flitted through her clear brown eyes, and there were lines of
discouragement about her mouth. Sophie recognised Mrs. Arthur Henty in a
slight, well-dressed woman, whose thin, unwrinkled features wore an
expression of more or less matter-of-fact discontent.
The floor was shining under the light of the one big hanging lamp. Paul
scraped his violin with a preliminary flourish; Mrs. Newton threw a
bunch of chords after him, and they cantered into a waltz time the Ridge
loved. Roy O'Mara, M.C. for the occasion, shouted jubilantly: "Take y'r
partners for a waltz!" Couples edged out from the wall, and in a moment
were swirling and whirling up and down on the bared space of the hall.
There were squeals and little screams as feet slipped and skidded on the
polished floor; but people soon found their dancing feet, got under way
of the music, and swung to its rhythms with more ease, security, and
pleasure. Sophie watched the dance for a while. She saw Martha dancing
with Michael. Every year at the Ridge ball Michael danced the first
dance with Martha. And Martha, dancing with Michael--no one on the Ridge
was happier, though they moved so solemnly, turning round and round with
neat little steps, as if they were pledged to turn in the space of a
threepenny piece!
Sophie smiled at Martha's happy seriousness. Arthur Henty was dancing
with his wife. Sophie had not seen him so clearly since her return to
the Ridge. When she had passed him in the township, or at Newton's, he
had been riding, and she had scarcely seen his face for the beard which
had overgrown it and the shadow his hat cast. She studied him with
unmoved curiosity. His beard had been clipped close, and she recognised
the moulding of his head, the slope of his shoulders, a peculiar loose
litheness in his gait. Her eyes followed him as he danced with his wife.
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Henty were waltzing in the perfunctory, mechanical
fashion of people thoroughly bored with each other.
Then Sophie swung with Potch into the eddying current of the dancers.
Potch danced in as steady and methodical a fashion as he did everything.
The music did not get him; at least, Sophie could not believe it did.
His eyes were deep and shining as though it were a great and holy
ceremony he were engaged in, but there was no melting to the delight of
rhythmic movement in his sober gyrations. Sophie felt him a clog on the
flow of her own action as he steered and steadily directed her through
the crowd.
"For goodness' sake, Potch, dance as if you meant it," she said.
"But I do mean it, Sophie," he said.
As he looked down at her, his flushed, happy face assured her that he
did mean dancing, but he meant it as he meant everything--with a dead
earnestness.
After that dance all her old friends among men of the Ridge came round
Sophie to ask her to dance with them. Bully and Roy sparred for dances
as they did in the old days, and Michael and George and Watty threatened
to knock their heads together and throw them out of the room if they
didn't get out of the way and give some other chaps a chance to dance
with Sophie. Between the dances, Sophie went over to talk to Maggie
Grant, Mrs. Watty, Mrs. George Woods, and Martha. She had time to tell
Martha how nice her dress and the pink stockings looked, and how the
opals in her bracelet flashed as she was dancing.
"You can see them from one end of the hall to the other," Sophie
whispered.
"And you, lovey," Martha said. "It's just lovely, the dress. You should
have seen how they stared at you when you came in.... And Potch looking
so nice, too. He wouldn't call the King his uncle to-night, Sophie!"
Sophie laughed happily as she went off to dance with Bully, who was
claiming her for a polka mazurka.
The evening was half through when John Armitage appeared in the doorway.
Sophie had just come from dancing the quadrilles with Potch when she saw
Armitage standing in the doorway with Peter Newton. Potch saw him as
Sophie did; their eyes met. Michael came towards them.
"Mr. Armitage did come, I see," Sophie said quietly, as Potch and
Michael were looking towards the door. "I had a letter from him a few
weeks ago saying he thought he would be here for the ball," she added.
"Why has he come?" Michael asked.
"I don't know," she said. "To see me, I suppose ... and to find out
whether the men will do business with him again."
Michael's gesture implied it was useless to talk of that.
Sophie continued: "But you know what I said, Michael. I can't be happy
until it has been arranged. I owe it to him to put things right with the
men here.... You must do that for me, Michael. They know I'm going to
marry Potch ... and if they see there's no ill feeling between John
Armitage and me, they'll believe I was more to blame than he was--if
it's a question of blame.... I want you and Potch to stand by me in
this, Michael."
Potch's eyes turned to her. She read their assurance, deep, still, and
sure. But Michael showed no relenting.
Armitage left his place by the door and came towards them. All eyes in
the room were on him. A whisper of surprise and something like fear had
circled. He was as aware of it, and of the situation his coming had
created, as anyone in the hall; but he appeared unconscious and
indifferent, and as if there were no particular significance to attach
to his being at the ball and crossing to speak to Sophie.
She met him with the same indifference and smiling detachment. They had
met so often before people like this, that it was not much more for them
than playing a game they had learned to play rather well.
Sophie said: "It is you really?"
He took the hand she held to him. "But you knew I was coming? You had my
letter?"
"Of course ... but----"
"And my word is my bond."
The cynical, whimsical inflection of John Armitage's voice, and the
perfectly easy and friendly terms Sophie and he were on, surprised
people who were near them.
Michael was incensed by it; but Potch, standing beside Sophie, regarded
Armitage with grave, quiet eyes.
"Good evening, Michael! Evening, Potch!" Armitage said.
Michael did not reply; but Potch said:
"Evening, Mr. Armitage!" And Sophie covered the trail of his words, and
Michael's silence, with questions as to the sort of journey Armitage had
made; a flying commentary on the ball, the races, and the weather.
Michael moved away as the next dance was beginning.
"Is this my dance, Sophie?" Armitage inquired.
Sophie shook her head, smiling.
"No," she said.
"Which is my dance?" The challenge had yielded to a note of appeal.
Sophie met that appeal with a smile, baffling, but of kindly
understanding.
"The next one."
She danced with Potch, appreciating his quiet strength, the reserve
force she felt in him, the sense that this man was hers to lean on, hold
to, or move as she wished.
"It's awfully good to have you, Potch," she murmured, glancing up at
him.
"Sophie!"
His declarations were always just that murmuring of her name with a love
and gratitude beyond words.
While she was dancing with Potch, Sophie saw Armitage go to the Hentys;
he stood talking with them, and then danced the last bars of the waltz
with Polly Henty.
When she was dancing with Armitage, Sophie discovered Arthur Henty
leaning against the wall near the door, looking over the dancers with an
odd, glowering expression. He had been drinking heavily of late, she had
heard. Sophie wondered whether he was watching her, and whether he was
connecting this night with that night at Warria, which had brought about
all there had been between herself and John Armitage--even this dancing
with him at a Ridge ball, after they had been lovers, and were no longer
anything but very good friends. She knew people were following her
dancing with John Armitage with interest. Some of them were scandalised
that he should have come to the Ridge, and that they should be meeting
on such friendly terms. She could see the Warria party watching her
dancing with John Armitage, Mrs. Arthur Henty looking like a pastel
drawing against the wall, and Polly, her pleasant face and plump figure
blurred against the grey background of the corrugated iron wall.
Armitage talked, amiably, easily, about nothing in particular, as they
danced. Sophie enjoyed the harmonious rhythm and languor of their
movement together. The black, misty folds of her gown drifted out and
about them. It was delightful to be drifting idly to music like this
with John, all their old differences, disagreements, and love-making
forgotten, or leaving just a delicate aroma of subtle and intimate
sympathy. The old admiration and affection were in John Armitage's eyes.
It was like playing in the sunshine after a long winter, to be laughing
and dancing under them again. And those stiff, disapproving faces by the
wall spurred Sophie to further laughter--a reckless gaiety.
"You look like a butterfly just out of its chrysalis, and ... trying its
wings in the sun, Sophie," Armitage said.
"I feel ... just like that," Sophie said.
After that Armitage had eyes for no one but her. He danced with two or
three other people. Sophie saw him steering Martha through a set of
quadrilles; but he hovered about her between the dances. She danced with
George Woods and Watty, with the Moffats of Langi-Eumina, and some of
the men from Darrawingee. Men of the station families were rather in awe
of, and had a good deal of curiosity about this Fallen Star girl who had
"gone the pace," in their vernacular, and of whose career in the gay
world on the other side of the earth they had heard spicy gossip. Sophie
guessed that had something to do with their fluttering about her. But
she had learned to play inconsequently with the admiration of young men
like these; she did so without thinking about it. Once or twice she
caught Potch's gaze, perplexed and inquiring, fixed on her. She smiled
to reassure him; but, unconsciously, she had drawn an eddy of the
younger men in the room about her, and when she was not dancing she was
talking with them, laughingly, fielding their crude witticisms, and
enjoying the game as much as she had ever done.
As she was coming from a dance with Roy O'Mara she passed Arthur Henty
where he stood by the door. The reek of whisky about him assailed Sophie
as she passed. She glanced up at him. His eyes were on her. He swung
over to her where she had gone to sit beside Martha M'Cready.
"You're going to dance with me?" he asked, a husky uncertainty in his
voice.
"No," Sophie said, looking away from him.
"Yes."
The low growl, savage and insistent, brought her eyes to his. Dark and
sunbright, they were, but with pain and hunger in their depths. The
unspoken truth between them, the truth which their wills had thwarted,
spoke through their eyes. It would not be denied.
"There's going to be an extra after supper," he said.
"Very well."
What happened then was remote from her. Sophie did not remember what she
had said or done, until she was dancing with Arthur Henty.
How long was it since that night at Warria? Was she waiting for him as
she had waited then? But there were all those long years between.
Memories brilliant and tempestuous flickered before her. Then she was
dancing with Arthur.
He had come to her quite ordinarily; they had walked down the room a few
paces; then he had taken her hand in his, and they had swung out among
the dancers. He did not seem drunk now. Sophie wondered at his steadier
poise as she moved away with him. The butterfly joy of fluttering in
sunshine was leaving her, she knew, as she went with him. She made an
effort to recapture it. Looking up at him, she tried to talk lightly,
indifferently, and to laugh, but it was no good. Arthur did not bother
to reply to anything she said; he rested his eyes in hers, possessing
himself of her behind her gaze. Sophie's laughter failed. The
inalienable, unalterable attraction of each to the other which they had
read long before in each other's eyes was still there, after all the
years and the dark and troubled times they had been through.
Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had
walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was
remembering little things he had said ... she had said ... the afternoon
he had recited:
"I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild."
Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not
danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not
laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and
wanted to cry.... She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like
dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing
on a grave.
Henty's grip tightened. Sophie's face had become childish and pitiful,
working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers
comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other,
every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests
of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other.
Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when
they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie
wondered. The noises of the ball-room broke in on her wondering--voices,
shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy
exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them....
Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared
not look up. Arthur's will, working against hers, demanded the
surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated
itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again.
As they danced, Arthur seemed to be taking her into deep water. She was
afraid of getting out of her depth ... but he held her carefully. His
grasp, was strong and his eyes hungry. Sophie could not escape that
hungry look of his eyes. She told herself that she would not look up;
she would not see it. They moved unsteadily; his breath, hot and
smelling of whisky, fanned her. She sickened under it, loathing the
smell of whisky and the rank tobacco he had been smoking. His grasp
tightened. She was afraid of him--afraid of all the long, old dreams he
might revive. Her step faltered, his arm trembled against her. And those
hungry, hungry eyes.... She could not see them; she would not.
A clamour of tiny voices rose within her and dinned in her ears. She
could hear the clamour of tiny voices going on in Henty, too; his voices
were drowning her voices. She looked up to him begging him to silence
them ... begging, but unable to beg, terrified and quailing to the
implacable in him--the stark passion and tragedy which were in his face.
She was helpless before them.
Arthur had given her his arm before the open door; they had moved a
little distance from the door. Darkness was about them. There was no
hesitancy, no moment of consideration. As two waves meeting in mid-ocean
fall to each other, they met, and were lost in the oblivion of a close
embrace. The first violence of their movement, failing, brought
consciousness of time and place. They were standing in the slight shadow
of some trees just beyond the light of the hall. A purring of music came
to them in far-away murmurs, and strange, distant ejaculations, and
laughter.
Sophie tried to withdraw from the arms which held her.
"No, no," she breathed; but Henty drew her to him again.
He murmured into her hair, and then from her lips again took a full
draught of her being, lingeringly, as though he would drain its last
essence.
A shadow loomed heavy and shapeless over them. It fell on them. Sophie
was thrown back. Dazed, and as if she were falling through space, for a
moment she did not realise what had happened. Then, there in the dark,
she knew men were grappling silently. The intensity of the struggle
paralysed her; she could see nothing but heavy, rolling shapes; hear
nothing but stertorous breathing and the snorting grunts as of enraged
animals. A cry, as if someone were hurt, broke the fear which had
stupefied her.
She called Michael.
Two or three men came running from the hall. The struggling figures were
on their feet again; they swung from the shadow. Sophie had an instant's
vision of a hideous, distorted face she scarcely recognised as Potch's
... she saw Henty on the ground and Potch crouched over him. Then the
surrounding darkness swallowed her. She knew she was dragged away from
where she had been standing; she seemed to have been dragged through
darkness for hours. When she wakened she could see only those heavy,
quiet figures, struggling and grappling through the darkness.