The sky was like a great shallow basin turned over the plains. No tree
or rising ground broke the perfect circle of its fall over the earth;
only in the distance, on the edge of the bowl, a fringe of trees drew a
blurred line between earth and sky.
Potch and Sophie lay out on the plains, on their backs in the dried
herbage, watching the sunset--the play of light on the wide sweep of the
sky--silently, as if they were listening to great music.
They had been married some days before in Budda township, and were
living in Potch's hut.
Sophie and Potch had often wandered over the plains in the evening and
watched the sunset; but never before had they come to the sense of
understanding and completeness they attained this evening. The days had
been long and peaceful since they were living together, an anodyne to
Sophie, soothing all the restless turmoil of her soul and body. She had
ceased to desire happiness; she was grateful for this lull of all her
powers of sense and thought, and eager to love and to serve Potch as he
did her. She believed her life had found its haven; that if she kept in
tune with the fundamentals of love and service, she could maintain a
consciousness of peace and rightness with the world which would make
living something more than a weary longing for death.
All the days were holy days to Potch since Sophie and he had been
married. He looked at her as if she were Undine making toast and tea,
cooking, washing dishes, or sweeping and tidying up his hut. He followed
her every movement with a worshipful, reverent gaze.
Soon after Sophie's return, Potch had gone to live in the hut which he
and his father had occupied in the old days. He had put a veranda of
boughs to the front of it, and had washed the roof and walls with
carbide to lessen the heat in summer. He had turned out the rooms and
put up shelves, trying to furnish the place a little for Sophie; but she
had not wanted it altered at all. She had cleared the cupboard, put
clean paper on the shelves, and had arranged Potch's books on them
herself.
Sophie loved the austerity of her home when she went to live in it--its
earthen floor, bare walls, unvarnished furniture, the couch under the
window, the curtains of unbleached linen she had hemstitched herself,
the row of shining syrup-tins in which she kept tea, sugar, and coffee
on shelves near the fireplace, the big earthenware jar for flowers, and
a couple of jugs which Snow-Shoes had made for her and baked in an oven
of his own contrivance. She had a quiet satisfaction in doing all the
cleaning up and tidying to keep her house in the order she liked, so
that her eyes could rest on any part of it and take pleasure from the
sense of beauty in ordinary and commonplace things.
But the hut was small and its arrangements so simple that an hour or two
after Potch had gone to the mines Sophie went to the shed into which he
had moved her cutting-wheel, and busied herself facing and polishing the
stones which some of the men brought her as usual. She knew her work
pleased them. She was as skilful at showing a stone to all its advantage
as any cutter on the Ridge, and nothing delighted her more than when
Watty or George or one of the Crosses exclaimed with satisfaction at a
piece of work she had done.
In the afternoon sometimes she went down to the New Town to talk with
Maggie Grant, Mrs. Woods, or Martha. She was understudying Martha, too,
when anyone was sick in the town, and needed nursing or a helping hand.
Martha had her hands full when Mrs. Ted Cross's fourth baby was born.
There were five babies in the township at the time, and Sophie went to
Crosses' every morning to fix up the house and look after the children
and Mrs. Ted before Martha arrived. When Martha found the Crosses'
washing gaily flapping on the line one morning towards midday, she
protested in her own vigorous fashion.
"I ain't going to have you blackleggin' on me, Mrs. Heathfield," she
said. "And what's more, if I find you doin' it again, I'll tell Potch.
It's all right for me to be goin' round doing other people's odd jobs;
but I don't hold with you doin' 'em--so there! If folks wants babies,
well, it's their look-out--and mine. But I don't see what you've got to
do with it, coming round makin' your hands look anyhow."
"You just sit down, and I'll make you a cup of tea, Mother M'Cready,"
Sophie said by way of reply, and gently pushed Martha into the most
comfortable chair in the room. "You look done up ... and you're going on
to see Ella and Mrs. Inglewood, I suppose."
Martha nodded. She watched Sophie with troubled, loving eyes. She was
really very tired, and glad to be able to sit and rest for a moment. It
gave her a welling tenderness and gratitude to have Sophie concerned for
her tiredness, and fuss about her like this. Martha was so accustomed to
caring for everybody on the Ridge, and she was so strong, good-natured,
and vigorous, very few people thought of her ever being weary or
dispirited. But as she bustled into the kitchen, blocking out the light,
Sophie saw that Martha's fat, jolly face under the shadow of her
sun-hat, was not as happy-looking as usual. Sophie guessed the weariness
which had overtaken her, and that she was "poorly" or "out-of-sorts," as
Martha would have said herself, if she could have been made to admit
such a thing.
"It's all very well to give folks a helping hand," Martha continued,
"but I'm not going to have you doin' their washin' while I'm about."
Sophie put a cup of tea and slice of bread and syrup down beside her.
"There! You drink that cup of tea, and tell me what you think of it,"
she said.
"But, Sophie," Martha protested. "It's stone silly for you to be doing
things like Cross's washing. You're not strong enough, and I won't have
it."
"Won't you?"
Sophie put her arms around Martha's neck from behind her chair. She
pressed her face against the creases of Martha's sunburnt neck and
kissed it.
Martha gurgled happily under the pressure of Sophie's young arms, the
childish impulse of that hugging. She turned her face back and kissed
Sophie.
"Oh, my lamb! My dearie lamb!" she murmured.
She recognised Sophie's need for common and kindly service to the people
of the Ridge. She knew what that service had meant to her at one time,
and was willing to let Sophie share her ministry so long as her health
was equal to it.
Mrs. Watty, and the women who took their views from her, thought that
Sophie was giving herself a great deal of unnecessary and laborious work
as a sort of penance. They had withdrawn all countenance from her after
the disaster of the ball, although they regarded her marriage to Potch
as an endeavour to reinstate herself in their good graces. Mrs. Watty
had been scandalised by the dress she had worn at the ball, by the way
she had danced, and her behaviour generally. But Sophie was quite
unconcerned as to what Mrs. Watty and her friends thought: she did not
go out of her way either to avoid or placate them.
When she went to the Crosses' to take charge of the children and look
after the house while Mrs. Cross was ill, the gossips had exclaimed
together. And when it was known that Sophie had taken on herself odds
and ends of sewing for other women of the township who had large
families and rather more to do than they knew how to get through, they
declared that they did not know what to make of it, or of Sophie and her
moods and misdemeanours.
Potch heard of what Sophie was doing from the people she helped. When he
came home in the evening she was nearly always in the kitchen getting
tea for him; but if she was not, she came in soon after he got home, and
he knew that one of these little tasks she had undertaken for people in
the town had kept her longer than she expected. Usually he hung in the
doorway, waiting for her to come and meet him, to hold up her face to be
kissed, eyes sweet with affection and the tender familiarity of their
association. Those offered kisses of hers were the treasure of these
dream-like days to Potch.
He had always loved Sophie. He had thought that his love had reached the
limit of loving a long time before, but since they had been married and
were living, day after day, together, he had become no more than a
loving of her. He went about his work as usual, performed all the other
functions of his life mechanically, scrupulously, but it was always with
a subconscious knowledge of Sophie and of their life together.
"You're tired," he said one night when Sophie lifted her face to his,
his eyes strained on her with infinite concern.
"Dear Potch," she said; and she had put back the hair from his forehead
with a gesture tender and pitiful.
Her glance and gesture were always tender and pitiful. Potch realised
it. He knew that he worshipped and she accepted his worship. He was
content--not quite content, perhaps--but he assured himself it was
enough for him that it should be so.
He had never taken Sophie in his arms without an overwhelming sense of
reverence and worship. There was no passionate need, no spontaneity, no
leaping flame in the caresses she had given him, in that kiss of the
evening, and the slight, girlish gestures of affection and tenderness
she gave as she passed him at meals, or when they were reading or
walking together.
As they lay on the plains this evening they had been thinking of their
life together. They had talked of it in low, brooding murmurs. The
immensity of the silence soaked into them. They had taken into
themselves the faint, musky fragrance of the withered herbage and the
paper daisies. They had gazed among the stars for hours. When it was
time to go home, Sophie sat up.
"I love to lie against the earth like this," she said.
"We seem to get back to the beginning of things. You and I are no more
than specks of dust on the plains ... under the skies, Potch ... and yet
the whole world is within us...."
"Yes," Potch said, and the silence streamed between them again.
"I'll never forget," Sophie continued dreamily, "hearing a negro talk
once about what they call 'the negro problem' in America. He was an
ordinary thick-set, curly-haired, coarse-featured negro to look
at--Booker Washington--but he talked some of the clearest, straightest
stuff I've ever heard.
"One thing he said has always stayed in my mind: 'Keep close to the
earth.' It was not good, he said, to walk on asphalted paths too
long.... He was describing what Western civilisation had done for the
negroes--a primitive people.... Anyone could see how they had
degenerated under it. And it's always seemed to me that what was true
for the negroes ... is true for us, too.... It's good to keep close to
the earth."
"Keep close to the earth?" Potch mused.
"In tune with the fundamentals, all the great things of loving and
working--our eyes on the stars."
"The stars?"
"The objects of our faith and service."
They were silent again for a while. Then Sophie said:
"You ..." she hesitated, remembering what she had told John
Armitage--"you and I would fight for the Ridge principle, even if all
the others accepted Mr. Armitage's offer, wouldn't we, Potch?"
"Of course," Potch said.
"And Michael?"
"Michael?" His eyes questioned her in the dim light because of the
hesitation in her question. "Why do you say that? Michael would be the
last man on earth to have anything to do with Armitage's scheme."
"He comes back to put the proposition to the men definitely in a few
days, doesn't he?" Sophie asked.
"Yes," Potch said.
"Have you talked to Michael about it?"
"To tell you the truth, Sophie," Potch replied slowly,
conscience-stricken that he had given the subject so little
consideration, "I took it for granted there could only be one answer to
the whole thing.... I haven't thought of it. I've only thought of you
the last week or so. I haven't talked to Michael; I haven't even heard
what the men were saying at midday.... But, of course, there's only one
answer."
"I've tried to talk to Michael, but he won't discuss it with me," Sophie
said.
Potch stared at her.
"You don't mean," he said--"you can't think--"
"Oh," she cried, with a gesture of desperation, "I know John Armitage is
holding something over Michael ... and if it's true what he says, it'll
break Michael, and it'll go very badly against the Ridge."
"You can't tell me what it is?"
Sophie shook her head.
Potch got up; his face settled into grave and fighting lines. Sophie,
too, rose from the ground. They went towards the track where the three
huts stood facing the scattered dumps of the old Flash-in-the-Pan rush.
"I want to see Michael," Potch said, when they approached the huts.
"I'll be in, in a couple of minutes."
Sophie went on to their own home, and Potch, swerving from her, walked
across to the back door of Michael's hut.