"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.
Her eyes widened. Her thought would not utter itself, but Michael knew
it. Potch leaving the Ridge! The Ridge without Potch! It was impossible.
Their minds would not accept the idea.
Sophie turned away from the door. Her white dress fluttered in the
moonlight. Michael could see it moving across the bare, shingly ground
at the back of the hut. He thought that Sophie was going to look for
Potch. He had not told her the direction in which Potch had gone. He
wondered whether she would find him. She might know where to look for
him. Michael wondered whether Potch haunted particular places as he
himself did, when his soul was out of its depths in misery.
Instinctively Sophie went to the old playground she and Potch had made
on the slope of the Ridge behind the Old Town.
She found him lying there, stretched across the shingly earth. He lay so
still that she thought he might be asleep. Then she went to him and
knelt beside him.
"Potch!" she said.
He moved as if to escape her touch. The desolation of spirit which had
brought him to the earth like that overwhelmed Sophie. She crouched
beside him.
"Potch," she cried. "Potch!"
Potch did not move or reply.
"I can't live ... if you won't forgive me, Potch," Sophie said.
He stirred. "Don't talk like that," he muttered.
After a little time he sat up and turned his face to her. The dim light
of-the young moon showed it swollen and discoloured, a hideous and comic
mask of the tragedy which consumed him.
"That's the sort of man I am," Potch said, his voice harsh and unsteady.
"I didn't know ... I didn't know I was like that. It came over me all of
a sudden, when I saw you and--him. I didn't know any more until Michael
was talking to me. I wouldn't've done it if I'd known, Sophie.... But I
didn't know.... I just saw him--and you, and I had to put out the sight
of it ... I had to get it out of my eyes... what I saw.... That's all I
know. Michael says I didn't kill him ... but I meant to ... that's what
I started to do."
Sophie's face withered under her distress.
"Don't say that, Potch," she begged.
"But I do," he said. "I must.... I can't make out ... how it was ... I
felt like that. I thought I'd see things like you saw them always, stand
by you. Now I don't know.... I'm not to be trusted----"
"I'd trust you always, and in anything, Potch," Sophie said.
"You can't say that--now."
"It's now ... I want to say it more than ever," she continued. "I can't
explain ... what I did ... any more than you can what you did, Potch.
But I'm to blame for what you did ... and yet ... I can't see that I'm
altogether to blame. I didn't want what happened--to happen ... any more
than you."
She wanted to explain to Potch--to herself also. But she could not see
clearly, or understand how the threads of her intentions and deeds had
become so crossed and tangled. It was not easy to explain.
"You remember that ball at Warria I went to with father," she said at
last. "I thought a lot of Arthur Henty then.... I thought I was in love
with him. People teased me about him. They thought he was in love with
me, too.... And then over there at the ball something happened that
changed everything. I thought he was ashamed of me ... he didn't ask me
to dance with him like he did at the Ridge balls.... He danced with
other girls ... and nobody asked me to dance except Mr. Armitage, I
wanted to go away from the Ridge and learn to look like those girls
Arthur had danced with ... so that he would not be ashamed of me....
Afterwards I thought I'd forgotten and didn't care for him any more....
Last night he was not ashamed of me.... It was funny. I felt that the
Warria people were envying me last night, and I had envied them at the
other ball.... I didn't want to dance with Arthur ... but I did ... and,
somehow, then--it was as if we had gone back to the time before the ball
at Warria...."
A heavy, brooding silence hung between them. Sophie broke it.
"Michael says you're going away?"
"Yes," Potch replied.
Sophie shifted the pebbles on the earth about her abstractedly.
"Don't leave me, Potch," she cried, scattering the pebbles suddenly. "I
don't know what will become of me if you go away.... I wanted us to get
married and settle down."
Potch turned to her.
"You don't mean that?"
"I do," Sophie said, all her strength of will and spirit in the words.
"I'm afraid of myself, Potch ... afraid of drifting."
Potch's arms went round her. "Sophie!" he sobbed. But even as he held
her he was conscious of something in her which did not fuse with him.
"But you love him!" he said.
Sophie's eyes did not fail from his.
"I do," she said, "but I don't want to. I wish I didn't."
His hands fell from her. "Why," he asked, "why do you say you'll marry
me, if you ... if----"
Despair and desperation were in the restive movement of Sophie's hands.
"I'm afraid of him," she said, "of the power of my love for him ... and
there's no future that way. With you there is a future. I can work with
you and Michael for the Ridge.... You know I do care for you too, Potch
dear, and I want to have the sort of life that keeps a woman faithful
... to mend your clothes, cook your meals, and----"
Potch quivered to the suggestions she had evoked. He saw Sophie in a
thousand tender associations--their home, the quiet course their lives
might have together. He loved her enough for both, he told himself.
His conscience was not clear that he should take this happiness the gods
offered him, even for the moment. And yet--he could not turn from it.
Sophie had said she needed him; she wanted the home they would have
together; all that their life in common would mean. And by and by--he
stirred to the afterthought of her "and"--she wanted the children who
might come to them.... Potch knew what Sophie meant when she said that
she cared for him. Whatever else happened he knew he had her tenderest
affection. She kissed him familiarly and with tenderness. It was not as
Maud had kissed him, with passion, a soul-dying yearning. He drove the
thought off. Maud was Maud, and Sophie Sophie; Maud's most passionate
kisses had never distilled the magic for him that the slightest brush of
Sophie's dress or fingers had.
Sophie took his hand.
"Potch," she said, "if you love me--if you want me to marry you, let us
settle the thing this way.... I want to marry you.... I want to be your
loving and faithful wife.... I'll try to be.... I don't want to think of
anyone but you.... You may make me forget--if we are married, and get on
well together. I hope you will----"
Potch took her into his arms, an inarticulate murmur breaking his
voice.