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.
That morning even, before he had gone off to work, she had taken his
face in her hands. He had seen tenderness and an infinite gentleness in
her eyes.
"Dear Potch," she had said, and kissed him.
She had withdrawn from him before the faint chill which her words and
the light pressure of her lips diffused, had left him. And now he was
wandering over the plains looking for her, calling her.... He had done
so before.... Sophie liked to wander off like this by herself. Sometimes
he had found her in a place where they often sat together; sometimes she
had been in the hut before him; sometimes she had come in a long time
after him, wearily, a strange, remote expression on her face, as if long
gazing at the stars or into the darkness which overhung the plains had
deprived her of some earthliness.
He did not know how long he walked over the plains and along the Ridge,
looking for her, his soul in that cry:
"Sophie! Sophie!"
He wandered for hours before he went back to the hut, and saw Michael
coming out to meet him.
"She knows, Potch," Michael said.
Potch waited for him to continue.
"Says nobody told her.... She heard the shot ... and knew," Michael
said.
Potch exclaimed brokenly. He asked how Sophie was. Michael said she had
come in and had lain down on the sofa as though she were very tired. She
had been lying there ever since, so still that Michael was alarmed. He
had called Paul and sent him to find Martha. Sophie had not cried at
all, Michael said.
She was lying on the sofa under the window, her hair thrown back from
her face when Potch went into the hut. He closed his eyes against the
sight of her face; he could not see Sophie in the grip of such pain. He
knelt beside her.
"Sophie! Sophie!" he murmured, the inarticulate prayer of his love and
anguish in those words.