The men stood in groups outside the hall, smoking and yarning together
before going into it, on the night John Armitage was to put his
proposition for reorganisation of the mines before them. Each group
formed itself of men whose minds were inclined in the same direction.
M'Ginnis was the centre of the crowd from the Punti rush who were
prepared to accept Armitage's scheme. The Crosses, while they would not
go over to the M'Ginnis faction, had a following--and the group about
them was by far the largest--which was asserting an open mind until it
heard what Armitage had to say. Archie and Ted Cross and the men with
them, however, were suspected of a prejudice rather in favour of, than
against, Armitage's outline of the new order of things for the Ridge
since its main features and conditions were known. Men who were prepared
at all costs to stand by the principle which had held the gougers of
Fallen Star Ridge, together for so long, and whose loyalty to the old
spirit of independence was immutable, gathered round George Woods and
Watty Frost.
"Thing that's surprised me," Pony-Fence Inglewood murmured, "is the
numbers of men there is who wants to hear what Armitage has got to say.
I wouldn't 've thought there'd be so many."
"I don't like it meself, Pony," George admitted. "That's why we're here.
Want to know the strength of them--and him."
"That's right," Watty muttered.
"Crosses, for instance," Pony-Fence continued. "You wouldn't 've thought
Archie and Ted'd 've even listened to guff about profit-sharin'--all
that.... But they've swallowed it--swallowed it all down. They say----"
George nodded gloomily. "This blasted talkin' about Michael's done more
harm than anything."
"That's right," Pony-Fence said. "What's the strength of it, George?"
"Damned if I know!"
"Where's Michael to-night?"
Their eyes wandered over the scattered groups of the miners. Michael was
not among them.
"Is he coming?" Pony-Fence asked.
George shrugged his shoulders; the wrinkles of his forehead lifted,
expressing his ignorance and the doubt which had come into his thinking
of Michael.
"Does he know what's being said?" Pony-Fence asked.
"He knows all right. I told Potch, and asked him to let Michael know
about it."
"What did he say?"
"Tell you the truth, Pony-Fence, I don't understand Michael over this
business," George said. "He's been right off his nest the last week or
two. It might have got him down what's being said--he might be so sore
about anybody thinkin' that of him, or that it's just too mean and
paltry to take any notice of.... But I'd rather he'd said something....
It's played Armitage's game all right, the yarn that's been goin' round,
about Michael's not being the man we think he is. And the worst of it
is, you don't know exactly where it came from. Charley, of course--but
it was here before him.... He's just stoked the gossip a bit. But it's
done the Ridge more harm than a dozen Armitages could 've----"
"To-night'll bring things to a head," Watty interrupted, as though they
had talked the thing over and he knew exactly what George was going to
say next. "I reck'n we'll see better how we stand--what's the game--and
the men who are going to stand by us.... Michael's with us, I'll swear;
and if we've got to put up a fight ... we'll have it out with him about
those yarns.... And it'll be hell for any man who drops a word of them
afterwards."
When they went into the hall George and Watty marched to the front form
and seated themselves there. Bully Bryant and Pony-Fence remained
somewhere about the middle of the hall, as men from every rush on the
fields filed into the seats and the hall filled. Potch came in and sat
near Bully and Pony-Fence. As Newton, Armitage, and the American
engineer crossed the platform, Michael took a seat towards the front, a
little behind George and Watty. George stood up and hailed him, but
Michael shook his head, indicating that he would stay where he was.
Peter Newton, after a good deal of embarrassment, had consented to be
chairman of the meeting. But he looked desperately uncomfortable when he
took his place behind a small table and an array of glasses and a water
bottle, with John Armitage on one side of him and Mr. Andrew M'Intosh,
the American engineer, on the other.
His introductory remarks were as brief as he could make them, and
chiefly pointed out that being chairman of the meeting was not to be
regarded as an endorsement of Mr. Armitage's plan.
John Armitage had never looked keener, more immaculate, and more of
another world than he did when he stood up and faced the men that night.
Most of them were smoking, and soon after the meeting began the hall was
filled with a thin, bluish haze. It veiled the crowd below him, blurred
the shapes and outlines of the men sitting close together along the
benches, most of them wearing their working clothes, faded blueys, or
worn moleskins, with handkerchiefs red or white round their throats.
Their faces swam before John Armitage as on a dark sea. All the
weather-beaten, sun-red, gaunt, or full, fat, daubs of faces, pallid
through the smoke, turned towards him with a curious, strained, and
intent expression of waiting to hear what he had to say.
Before making any statement himself, Mr. Armitage said he would ask Mr.
Andrew M'Intosh, who had come with him from America some time ago to
report on the field, and who was one of the ablest engineers in the
United States of America, to tell what he thought of the natural
resources of the Ridge, and the possibilities of making an up-to-date,
flourishing town of Fallen Star under conditions proposed by the
Armitage Syndicate.
Andrew M'Intosh, a meagrely-fleshed man, with squarish face, blunt
features, and hair in a brush from a broad, wrinkled forehead, stood up
in response to Mr. Armitage's invitation. He was a man of deeds, not
words, he declared, and would leave Mr. Armitage to give them the
substance of his report. His knees jerked nervously and his face and
hands twitched all the time he was speaking. He had an air of protesting
against what he was doing and of having been dragged into this business,
although he was more or less interested in it. He confessed that he had
not investigated the resources of Fallen Star Ridge as completely as he
would have wished, but he had done so sufficiently to enable him to
assure the people of Fallen Star that if they accepted the proposition
Mr. Armitage was to lay before them, the country would back them. He
himself, he said, would have confidence enough in it to throw in his lot
with them, should they accept Mr. Armitage's proposition; and he gave
them his word that if they did so, and he were invited to take charge of
the reorganisation of the mines, he would work whole-heartedly for the
success of the undertaking he and the miners of Fallen Star Ridge might
mutually engage in. He talked at some length of the need for a great
deal of preliminary prospecting in order to locate the best sites for
mines, of the necessity for plant to use in construction works, and of
the possibility of a better water supply for the township, and the
advantages that would entail.
The men were impressed by the matter-of-factness of the engineer's
manner and his review of technical and geological aspects of the
situation, although he gave very little information they had not already
possessed. When he sat down, Armitage pushed back his chair and
confronted the men again.
He made his position clear from the outset. It was a straightforward
business proposition he was putting before men of the Ridge, he said;
but one the success of which would depend on their co-operation. As
their agent of exchange with the world at large, he described the
disastrous consequences the slump of the last year or so had had for
both Armitage and Son and for Fallen Star, and how the system he
proposed, by opening up a wider area for mining and by investigating the
resources of the old mines more thoroughly under the direction of an
expert mining engineer, would result in increased production and
prosperity for the people of the Ridge and Fallen Star township. He saw
possibilities of making a thriving township of Fallen Star, and he
promised men of the Ridge that if they accepted the scheme he had
outlined for them, the Armitage Syndicate would make a prosperous
township of Fallen Star. In no time people: would be having electricity
in their homes, water laid on, rose gardens, cabbage patches, and all
manner of comforts and conveniences as a result of the improved means of
communication with Budda and Sydney, which population and increased
production would ensure.
In a nutshell Armitage's scheme amounted to an offer to buy up the mines
for L30,000 and put the men on a wage, allowing every man a percentage
of 20 per cent. profit on all stones over a certain standard and size.
The men would be asked to elect their own manager, who would be expected
to see that engineering and development designs were carried out, but
otherwise the normal routine of work in the mines would be observed. Mr.
Armitage explained that he hoped to occupy the position of general
manager in the company himself, and engaged it to observe the union
rates of hours and wages as they were accepted by miners and mining
companies throughout the country.
When he had finished speaking there was no doubt in anyone's mind that
John Lincoln Armitage had made a very pleasant picture of what life on
the Ridge might be if success attended the scheme of the Armitage
Syndicate, as John Armitage seemed to believe it would. Men who had been
driven to consider Armitage's offer from their first hearing of it,
because of the lean years the Ridge was passing through, were almost
persuaded by his final exposition.
George Woods stood up.
George's strength was in his equable temper, in his downright honesty
and sincerity, and in the steady common-sense with which he reviewed
situations and men.
He realised the impression Armitage's statement of his scheme, and its
bearing on the life of the Ridge, had made. It did not affect his own
position, but he feared its influence on men who had been wavering
between prospects of the old and of the new order of things for Fallen
Star. In their hands, he could see now, the fate of all that Fallen Star
had stood for so long, would lie.
"Well," he said, "we've got to thank you for puttin' the thing to us as
clear and as square as you have, Mr. Armitage. It gives every man here a
chance to see just what you're drivin' at. But I might say here and now
... I've got no time for it ... neither me nor my mates.... It'll save
time and finish the business of this meeting if there's no beatin' about
the bush and we understand each other right away. It sounds all
right--your scheme--nice and easy. Looks as if there was more for us to
get out of it than to lose by it.... I don't say it wouldn't mean easier
times ... more money ... all that sort of thing. We haven't had the
easiest of times here sometimes, and this scheme of yours comes ... just
when we're in the worst that's ever knocked us. But speakin' for myself,
and"--his glance round the hall was an appeal to that principle the
Ridge stood for-"the most of my mates, we'd rather have the hard times
and be our own masters. That's what we've always said on the Ridge....
Your scheme 'd be all right if we didn't feel like that; I suppose. But
we do ... and as far as I'm concerned, we won't touch it. It's no go.
"We're obliged to you for putting the thing to us. We recognise you
could have gone another way about getting control here. You may---buy up
a few of the mines perhaps, and try to squeeze the rest of us out. Not
that I think the boys'd stand for the experiment."
"They wouldn't," Bill Grant called.
"I'm glad to hear that," George said. He tried to point out that if
Fallen Star miners accepted Armitage's offer they would be shouldering
conditions which would take from their work the freedom and interest
that had made their life in common what it had been on the Ridge. He
asked whether a weekly Wage to tide them over years of misfortune would
compensate for loss of the sense of being free men; he wanted to know
how they'd feel if they won a nest of knobbies worth L400 or L500 and
got no more out of them than the weekly wage. The percentage on big
stones was only a bluff to encourage men to hand over big stones, George
said. And that, beyond the word being used pretty frequently in Mr.
Armitage's argument and documents, was all the profit-sharing he could
see in Mr. Armitage's scheme. He reminded the men, too, that under their
own system, in a day they could make a fortune. And all there was for
them under Mr. Armitage's system was three or four pounds a week--and
not a bit of potch, nor a penny in the quart pot for their old age.
"We own these mines. Every man here owns his mine," George said; "that's
worth more to us just now than engineers and prospecting parties....
Well have them on our own account directly, when the luck turns and
there's money about again.... For the present we'll hang on to what
we've got, thank you, Mr. Armitage."
He sat down, and a guffaw of laughter rolled over his last words.
"Anybody else got anything to say?" Peter Newton inquired.
M'Ginnis stood up.
He had heard a good deal of talk about men of the Ridge being free, he
said, but all it amounted to was their being free to starve, as far as
he could see. He didn't see that the men's ownership of the mines meant
much more than that--the freedom to starve. It was all very well for
them to swank round about being masters of their own mines; any fool
could be master of a rubbish heap if he was keen enough on the rubbish
heap. But as far as he was concerned, M'Ginnis declared, he didn't see
the point. What they wanted was capital, and Mr. Armitage had
volunteered it on what were more than ordinarily generous terms....
It was all very well for a few shell-backs who, because they had been on
the place in the early days, thought they had some royal prerogative to
it, to cut up rusty when their ideas were challenged. But their ideas
had been given a chance; and how had they worked out? It was all very
well to say that if a man was master of his own mine he stood a chance
of being a millionaire at a minute's notice; but how many of them were
millionaires? As a matter of fact, not a man on the Ridge had a penny to
bless himself with at that moment, and it was sheer madness to turn down
this offer of Mr. Armitage's. For his part he was for it, and, what was
more, there was a big body of the men in the hall for it.
"If it's put to the vote whether people want to take on or turn down Mr.
Armitage's scheme, we'll soon see which way the cat's jumping," M'Ginnis
said. "People'd have the nause to see which side their bread's buttered
on--not be led by the nose by a few fools and dreamers. For my part, I
don't see why----"
"You're not paid to," a voice called from the back of the hall.
"I don't see why," M'Ginnis repeated stolidly, ignoring the
interruption, "the ideas of three or four men should be allowed to rule
the roost. What's wanted on the Ridge is a little more horse sense----"
Impatient and derisive exclamations were hurled at him; men sitting near
M'Ginnis shouted back at the interrupters. It looked as if the meeting
were going to break up in uproar, confusion, and fighting all round.
Peter Newton knocked on the table and shouted himself hoarse trying to
restore order. The voices of George, Watty, and Pony-Fence Inglewood
were heard howling over the din:
"Let him alone."
"Let's hear what he's got to say."
Then M'Ginnis continued his description of the advantages to be gained
by the acceptance of Mr. Armitage's offer.
"And," he wound up, "there's the women and children to think of." At the
back of the hall somebody laughed. "Laugh if you like"--M'Ginnis worked
himself into a passion of virtuous indignation--"but I don't see there's
anything to laugh at when I say remember what those things are goin' to
mean to the women and children of this town--what a few of the
advantages of civilisation----"
"Disadvantages!" the same voice called.
"--Comforts and conveniences of civilisation are goin' to mean to the
women and children of this God-forsaken hole," M'Ginnis cried furiously.
"If I had a wife and kids, d'ye think I'd have any time for this
high-falutin' flap-doodle of yours about bread and fat? Not much. The
best in the country wouldn't be too good for them--and it's not good
enough for the women and children of Fallen Star. That's what I've got
to say--and that's what any decent man would say if he could see
straight. I'm an ordinary, plain, practical man myself ... and I ask you
chaps who've been lettin' your legs be pulled pretty freely---and
starvin' to be masters of your own dumps--to look at this business like
ordinary, plain, practical men, who've got their heads screwed on the
right way, and not throw away the chance of a lifetime to make Fallen
Star the sort of township it ought to be. If there's some men here want
to starve to be masters of their own dumps, let 'em, I say: it's a free
country. But there's no need for the rest of us to starve with 'em."
He sat down, and again it seemed that the pendulum had swung in favour
of Armitage and his Scheme.
"What's Michael got to say about it?" a man from the Three Mile asked.
And several voices called: "Yes; what's Michael got to say?"
For a moment there was silence--a silence of apprehension. George Woods
and the men who knew, or had been disturbed by the stories they had
heard of a secret treaty between Michael and John Armitage, recognised
in that moment the power of Michael's influence; that what Michael was
going to say would sway the men of the Ridge as it had always done,
either for or against the standing order of life on the Ridge on which
they had staked so much. His mates could not doubt Michael, and yet
there was fear in the waiting silence.
Those who had heard Michael was not the man they thought he was, waited
anxiously for his movement, the sound of his voice. Charley Heathfield
waited, crouched in a corner near the platform, where everyone could see
him, Rouminof beside him. They were standing there together as if there
was not room for them in the body of the hall, and their eyes were fixed
on the place where Michael sat--Charley's eager and cruel as a cat's on
its victim, Rouminof's alight with the fires of his consuming
excitement.
Then Michael got up from his seat, took off his hat; and his glance,
those deep-set eyes of his, travelled the hall, skimming the heads and
faces of the men in it, with their faint, whimsical smile.
"All I've got to say," he said, "George Woods has said. There's nothing
in Mr. Armitage's scheme for Fallen Star.... It looks all right, but it
isn't; it's all wrong. The thing this place has stood for is ownership
of the mines by the men who work them. Mr. Armitage 'll give us anything
but that--he offers us every inducement but that ... and you know how
the thing worked out on the Cliffs. If the mines are worth so much to
him, they're worth as much, or more, to us.
"Boiled down, all the scheme amounts to is an offer to buy up the
mines--at a 'fair valuation'--put us on wages and an eight-hour day. All
the rest, about making a flourishing and, up-to-date town of Fallen
Star, might or mightn't come true. P'raps it would. I can't say. All I
say is, it's being used to gild the pill we're asked to swallow--buyin'
up of the mines. There's nothing sure about all this talk of electricity
and water laid on; it's just gilding. And supposing the new conditions
did put more money about--did bring the comforts and conveniences of
civilisation to Fallen Star--like M'Ginnis says--what good would they be
to the people, women and children, too, if the men sold themselves like
a team of bullocks to work the mines? It wouldn't matter to them any
more whether they brought up knobbies or mullock; they'd have their
wages--like bullocks have their hay. It's because our work's had
interest; it's because we've been our own bosses, life's been as good as
it has on Fallen Star all these years. If a man hasn't got interest in
his work he's got to get it somewhere. How did we get it on the Cliffs
when the mines were bought up? Drinking and gambling ... and how did
that work out for the women and children? But it was stone silly of
M'Ginnis to talk of women and children here. We know that old
hitting-below-the-belt gag of sweating employers too well to be taken in
by it. By and by, if you took on the Armitage scheme, and there was a
strike in the mines, he'd be saying that to you: 'Remember the women and
children.'"
Colour flamed in Michael's face, and he continued with more heat than
there had yet been in his voice.
"The time's coming when the man who talks 'women and children' to defeat
their own interests will be treated like the skunk--the low-down,
thieving swine he is. Do we say anything's too good for our women and
children? Not much. But we want to give them real things--the real
things of life and happiness--not only flashy clothes and fixings. If we
give our women and children the mines as we've held them, and the record
of a clean fight for them, we'll be giving them something very much
bigger than anything Mr. Armitage can offer us in exchange for them. The
things we've stood for are better than anything he's got to offer. We've
got here what they're fighting for all over the world ... it's bigger
than ourselves.
"M'Ginnis says he's heard a lot of 'the freedom to starve on the
Ridge'--it's more than I have, it's a sure thing if he wants to starve,
nobody'd stop him...."
A wave of laughter passed over the hall.
"But most of us here haven't any fancy for starving, and what's more,
nobody has ever starved on the Ridge. I don't say that we haven't had
hard times, that we haven't gone on short commons--we have; but we
haven't starved, and we're not going to....
"This talk of buying up the mines comes at the only time it would have
been listened to in the last half-dozen years. It hits us when we're
down, in a way; but the slump'll pass. There've been slumps before, and
they've passed.... Mr. Armitage thinks so, or he wouldn't be so keen on
getting hold of the mines.
"And as to production of stone and development of the mines, it seems to
me we can do more ourselves than any Proprietary Company, Ltd., or
syndicate ever made could. Didn't old Mr. Armitage, himself, say once
that he didn't know a better conducted or more industrious mining
community than this one. 'Why d'y' think that is?' I asked him. He said
he didn't know. I said, 'You don't think the way the men feel about
their work's got anything to do with it?' 'Damn it, Michael,' he said,
'I don't want to think so.'
"And I happen to know"--Michael smiled slightly towards John Armitage,
who was gazing at him with tense features and hands tightly folded and
crossed under his chin--"that the old man is opposed even now to this
scheme because he thinks he won't get as much black opal out of us as he
does under our own way of doing things. He remembers the Cliffs, and
what taking over of the mines did for opal--and the men--there. This
scheme is Mr. John Armitage's idea....
"He's put it to you. You've heard what it is. All I've got to say now
is, don't touch it. Don't have anything to do with it.... It'll break us
... the spirit of the men here ... and it'll break what we've been
working on all these years. If it means throwing that up, don't let us
see which side our bread's buttered on, as Mr. M'Ginnis says. Let us say
like we always have--like we've been proud to say: 'We'll eat bread and
fat, but we'll be our own masters!'"
"We'll eat bread and fat, but we'll be our own masters!" the men who
were with Michael roared.
He sat down amid cheers. George and Watty turned in their seats to beam
at him, filled with rejoicing.
Armitage rose from his chair and shifted his papers as though he had not
quite decided what he intended to say.
"I'm not going to ask this meeting for a decision," he began.
"You can have it!" Bully Bryant yelled.
"There's a bit of a rush at Blue Pigeon Creek, and I'm going on up
there," John Armitage continued. "I'm due in Sydney at the end of the
month--that is, a month from this date--and I'll run up then for your
answer to the proposition which has been laid before you. I have said
all there is to say about it, except that, notwithstanding anything
which may have been asserted to the contrary, I hope you will give your
gravest consideration to an enterprise, I am convinced, would be in the
best interests of this town and of the people of Fallen Star Ridge. I
think, however, you ought to know----"
"That Michael Brady's a liar and a thief!" Charley cried, springing from
his corner as if loosed from some invisible leash. "If you believe him,
you're believing a liar and a thief. Mr. Armitage knows ... I know ...
and Paul knows----"
"Throw him out."
"He's mad!"
The cries rose in a tumult of angry voices. When they were at their
height M'Ginnis was seen on his feet and waving his arms.
"Let him say what he's got to!" he shouted. "You chaps know as well as I
do what's been going the rounds, and we might as well have it out now.
If it's not true, Michael'd rather have the strength of it, and give you
his answer ... and if there is anything in it, we've got a right to
know."
"That's right!" some of the men near him chorused.
Newton looked towards George, and George towards Michael.
"Might as well have it," Michael said.
Charley, who had been hustled against the wall by Potch and Bully
Bryant, was loosed. He moved a few steps forward so that everyone could
see him, and breathlessly, shivering, in a frenzy of triumphant malice,
told his story. Rouminof, carried away by excitement, edged alongside
him, chiming into what he was saying with exclamations and chippings of
corroboration.
When Charley had finished talking and had fallen back exhausted,
Armitage left his chair as if to continue what he had been going to say
when Charley took the floor. Instead, he hesitated, and, feeling his way
through the silence of consternation and dismay which had stricken
everybody, said uncertainly:
"Much as I regret having to do so, I consider it my duty to state that
Charley Heathfield's story, as far as I know it, is substantially
correct. Some time ago I was sold a stone in New York. As soon as he saw
it, my father said, 'Why, that's Michael's mascot.' I asked him if he
were sure, and he declared that he could not be mistaken about the
stone....
"I told him the story I had got with it. Charley has already told you.
That stone came from a parcel Charley supposed contained Rouminof's
opals--the one Paul got when Jun Johnson and he had a run of luck
together. The parcel did not contain Rouminof's opals, and had been
exchanged for the parcel which did, either while Rouminof and Charley
were going home together or after he had taken them from Rouminof. My
father refused to believe that Michael Brady had anything to do with the
business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man
who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the
altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that
stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney ... and also that
Michael had possession of Rouminof's opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she
saw Rouminof's stones on the table of Michael Brady's hut one evening
nearly two years ago.
"I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He
denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it
seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account
of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael
Brady of having stolen Rouminof's opals. If he has anything to say, now
is the time to say it."
What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was
heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody
spoke nobody moved. Michael's friends sat with hunched shoulders, not
looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place
where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first
sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when
Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes
on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance
swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and
humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement,
the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still
Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.
"For God's sake speak, Michael," he said. Michael did not move.
Then from the back of the hall marched Snow-Shoes. Tall and stately, he
strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close
together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds
under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear
what he would say to it. When Snow-Shoes reached the top of the hall he
turned and faced the men He held up a narrow package wrapped in
newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still
hovering near the edge of the platform.
"Your stones," he said. "I took them." And in the same stately, measured
fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.
Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no
hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed
round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When
order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform
going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was
laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but
his joy in fingering his lost gems.
When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause,
Armitage spoke.
"I've got to apologise to you, Michael," he said. "I do most
contritely.... I don't yet understand--but the facts are, the opals are
here, and Mr. Riley has said--"
Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to
speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as
if only a great effort of will drove it from him.
"I want to say," he said, "I did take those stones ... not from Paul ...
but from Charley."
His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his
suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul
going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of
opals from Rouminof's pocket and put them in his own.
"I didn't want the stones," Michael cried, "I didn't ever want them for
myself.... It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn't want him to
have them just then...."
Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he
had made to Sophie's mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the
stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had
gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained
why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare
himself.
Paul had had sun-stroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night
he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been
reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning
them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the
thing to himself even.... He had not looked at the opals except once
again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly
the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then
Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was
drifting--how the stones were getting hold of him--and in a panic,
knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it
to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to
do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone.
Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but
now it was clear. Probably Snow-Shoes had known all the time he had the
stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must
have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he
came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It
was just that slight sound Snow-Shoes' moccasins made on the shingle.
Exclamations and odd queries Snow-Shoes had launched from time to time
came back to Michael. He had no doubt, he said, that Mr. Riley had taken
the stones to do just what he had done--and because he feared the
influence possession of them was having on him, Michael, since they
should have been returned to Paul long ago.
"That's the truth, as far as I know it," Michael said. "There's been
attempts made to injure ... the Ridge, our way of doing things here,
because of me, and because of those stones.... What happened to me
doesn't matter. What happens to the Ridge and the mines does matter. I
done wrong. I know I done wrong holding those stones. I'd give anything
now if I--if I'd given them to Paul when Sophie went away. But I didn't
... and I'll stand by anything the men who've been my mates care to say
or do about that. Only don't let the Ridge, and our way of doing things
here, get hurt through me. That's bigger--it means more than any man.
Don't let it! ... I'd ask George to call a meeting, and get the boys to
say what they think about all this--and where I stand."
Michael put on his hat, dragged it down over his eyes, and walked out of
the hall.
When the slow fall of his footsteps no longer sounded on the wooden
floor, George Woods rose from his place on the front bench. He turned
and faced the men. The smoke from their smouldering pipes had created
such a fog that he could see only the bulk of those on the near rows of
forms. With the exception of M'Ginnis and half a dozen Punti men who had
the far end of one of the front seats, the mass of men in the hall, who
a few moments before had been cheering for Michael, were as inert as
blown balloons. Depression was in every line of their heavy, squatted
shapes and unlighted countenances.
"Well," George said, "it's been a bit of a shock what we've just heard.
It wasn't easy what Michael's just done ... and Snow-Shoes, if he'd
wanted it, had provided the get-out. But Michael he wouldn't have it....
At whatever cost to himself, he wanted you to have the truth and to
stand by the Ridge ... he'd stand by it at any cost.... If there's a
doubt in anyone's mind as to what he is, what he's just done proves
Michael. I don't say, as he says himself, that it wouldn't have been
better if he had handed the stones over to Paul when Sophie went away
... but after all, what does that amount to as far as Michael's
concerned? We've got his record, every one of us, his life here. Does
anybody know a mean or selfish thing he's ever done, Michael?"
No one spoke, and George went on:
"Michael's asked for trial by his mates--and we've got to give it to
him, if it's only to clear up the whole of this business and be done
with it.... I move we meet here to-morrow night to settle the thing."
There was a rumbling murmur, and staccato exclamations of assent. Men in
back seats moved to the door; others surged after them. Armitage and his
proposals were forgotten.