It was one of those clear days of late spring, the sky exquisitely blue,
the cuckoos calling, the paper daisies in blossom, their fragrance in
the air; they lay across the plains, through the herbage, white to the
dim, circling horizon.
Horses and vehicles were tied up outside the grey palings of the
cemetery on the Warria road. All the horses and shabby, or new and
brightly-painted carts, sulkies, and buggies of Fallen Star and the
Three Mile were there; and buggies from Warria, Langi-Eumina, and the
river stations as well. Saddle horses, ranged along one side of the
fence, reins over the stakes, whinnied and snapped at each other.
The crowd of people standing in the tall grass and herbage on the other
side of the fence was just breaking up when Sophie and Potch appeared,
coming over the plains from the direction of the tank paddock, Sophie
riding the chestnut Arthur Henty had left behind her house, and Potch
walking beside the horse's head. Sophie had been gathering Darling pea,
and had a great sheaf in one hand. Potch was carrying some, too: he had
picked up the flowers Sophie let fall, and had a little bunch of them.
She was riding astride and gazing before her, her eyes wide with a
vision beyond the distant horizon. The wind, a light breeze breathing
now and then, blew her hair out in wisps from her bare head.
All the men of Warria were in the sombre crowd in the cemetery. Old
Henty, red-eyed and broken by the end of his only son, whom he found he
had cared for now that he was dead; the stockmen, boundary-riders,
servants, fencers, shearers from Darrawingee sheds who, a few weeks
before had been on the Warria board, and men from other stations near
enough to have heard of Arthur Henty's death. None of the Henty women
were there; but women of the Ridge, who were accustomed to pay last
respects as their menfolk did, were with their husbands as usual. They
would have thought it unnatural and unkind not to follow Arthur Henty to
his resting-place; not to go as friends would to say good-bye to a
friend who is making a long journey. And there was more than the
ordinary reason for being present at Arthur Henty's funeral. He was
leaving them under a cloud, circumstances which might be interpreted
unkindly, and it was necessary to be present to express sympathy with
him and sorrow at his going. That was the way they regarded it.
Martha had driven with Sam Nancarrow, as she always did to functions of
the sort. No one remembered having seen Martha take a thing so to heart
as she did Arthur Henty's death. She was utterly shaken by it, and could
not restrain her tears. They coursed down her cheeks all the time she
was in that quiet place on the plains; her great, motherly bosom rose
and fell with the tide of her grief. She tried to subdue it, but every
now and then the sound of her crying could be heard, and in the end Sam
took her, sobbing uncontrollably, back to his buggy.
People knew she had seen further into the cause of Arthur Henty's death
than they had, and they understood that was why she Was so upset.
Besides, Martha had always confessed to a soft corner for Arthur Henty:
she had been with his mother when he was born, had nursed him during a
hot summer and through several slight illnesses since then. And Arthur
had been fond of her too. He had always called her Mother M'Cready as
the Ridge folk did. Old Mr. Henty had driven over to see Martha the
night before, to hear all she knew of what had happened, and Ridge folk
had gathered something of the story from her broken exclamations and the
reproaches with which she covered herself.
She cried out over and over again that she could not have believed
Arthur would shoot himself--that he was the sort of man to do such a
thing--and blamed herself for not having foreseen what had occurred. She
had never seen him like he was that night--so strong, so much a man, so
full of life and love for Sophie. He had begged Sophie to go with him as
though his life depended on it--and it had.
If she had been a woman, and Sophie, and had loved him, Martha said, she
would have had to go with him. She could never have withstood his
pleading.... But Sophie had been good to him; she had been gentle--only
she wouldn't go. Neither Sophie nor she believed, of course, he would do
as he said--but he had.
Martha could not forgive herself that she had done nothing to soothe or
pacify Arthur; that she had said nothing, given him neither kindly word
nor gesture. But she had been so upset, so carried away. She had not
known what to do or say. She abused and blackguarded herself; but she
had sensed enough of the utter loneliness and darkness of Henty's mind
to realise that most likely she could have done nothing against it. He
would have brushed her aside had she attempted to influence him; he
would not have heard what, she said. She would have been as helpless as
any other human consideration against the blinding, irresistibly
engulfing forces of despair which had impelled him to put himself out of
pain as he had put many a suffering animal. It was an act of
self-defence, as Mother M'Cready saw it, Arthur Henty's end, and that
was all there was to it.
As Sophie and Potch approached the cemetery, people exclaimed together
in wonderment, awe--almost fear.
James Henty, when he saw them, turned away from the men he was talking
to and walked to his buggy; Tom Henderson, his son-in-law, followed him.
Although he would have been the last to forgive Sophie if she had done
as Arthur wished, even to save his life, old Henty had to have a
whipping-post, and he eased his own sense of responsibility for what had
blighted his son's life, by blaming Sophie for it. He assured himself,
his family and friends, that she, and she alone, was responsible for
Arthur's death. She had played with Arthur; she had always played with
him, old Henty said. She had driven him to distraction with her
wiles--and this was the end of it all.
Sophie rode into the cemetery: she rode to where the broken earth was;
but she did not dismount. The horse came to a standstill beside it, and
she sat on him, her eyes closed. Potch stood bare-headed and bowed
beside her. He put the flowers he had picked up as Sophie let them fall,
on the grave. Sophie thrust the long, purple trails she was carrying
into the saddle-bag where Arthur had put the flowers she gave him that
first day their eyes met and drank the love potion of each others'
being.
People were already on the road, horses and buggies, dark, ant-like
trains on the flowering plains, moving slowly in the direction of Warria
and of Fallen Star, when Sophie and Potch turned away from the cemetery.
The shadow of what had happened was heavy over everybody as they drove
home. Arthur Henty had been well enough liked, and he had had much more
to do with Fallen Star than most of the station people. He had gone
about so much with his men they had almost ceased to think of him as not
one of themselves. He was less the "Boss" than any man in the
back-country. They recognised that, and yet he was the "Boss." He had
lived like a half-caste, drifting between two races and belonging to
neither. The people he had been born among cold-shouldered him because
he had acquired the manners and habits of thought of men he lived and
worked with; the men he had lived and worked with distrusted and
disliked in him just those tag-ends of refinement, and odd graces which
belonged to the crowd he had come to them from.
The station hands, his work-mates--if he had any--had had a slightly
contemptuous feeling for him. They liked him--they were always saying
they liked him--but it was clear they never had any great opinion of
him. As a boy, when he began to work with them, to cover his shyness and
nervousness, he had been silent and boorish; and he had never had the
courage of his opinions--courage for anything, it was suspected. It had
always been hinted that he shirked any jobs where danger was to be
expected.
The stockmen told each other they would miss him, all the same. They
would miss that wonderful whistling of his from the camp fires; and they
were appalled at what he had done to himself. "The last man," Charley
Este said, "the last man you'd ever 've thought would 've come to that!"
Most of them believed they had misjudged Arthur Henty--that, after, all,
he had had courage of a sort. A man must have courage to blow out his
light, they said. And they were sorry. Every man in the crowd was heavy
with sorrow.
Ridge people gossiped pitifully, sentimentally, to each other as they
drove home. Most of the women believed in the strength and fidelity of
the old love between Sophie and Arthur Henty. But straight-dealing and
honest themselves, they had no conception of the tricks complex
personalities play each other; they did not understand how two people
who had really cared for each other could have gone so astray from the
natural impulse of their lives.
They recalled the dance at Warria, and how they had teased Sophie when
they thought she was going to marry Arthur Henty, and how happy and
pleased she had looked about it. How different both their lives would
have been if Sophie and Arthur had been true to that instinct of the
mate for the mate, they reflected; and sighed at the futility of the
thought. They realised in Arthur Henty's drinking and rough ways of
late, all his unhappiness. They imagined that they knew why he had
become the uncouth-looking man he had. They remembered him a slight, shy
youth, with sun-bright, freckled eyes; then a man, lithe, graceful, and
good to look at, with his face a clear, fine bronze, his hair taking a
glint of copper in the sun. When he danced with them at the Ridge balls,
that occasionally flashing, delightful way of his had made them realise
why Sophie was in love with him. They remembered how he had looked at
Sophie; how his eyes had followed her. They had heard of the Warria
dance, and knew Arthur Henty had not behaved well to Sophie at it. They
had been angry at the time. Then Sophie had gone away ... and a little
later he had married.
His marriage had not been a success. Mrs. Arthur Henty had spent most of
her time in Sydney; she was rarely seen on the Ridge now. So women of
the Ridge, who had known Arthur Henty, went over all they knew of him
until that night at the race ball when he and Sophie had met again. And
then his end in the tank paddock brought them back to exclamations of
dismay and grief at the mystery of it all.
As she left the cemetery, Sophie began to sing, listlessly, dreamily at
first. No one had heard her sing since her return to the Ridge. But her
voice flew out over the plains, through the wide, clear air now, with
the pure melody it had when she was a girl:
"Caro nome che il mio cor festi primo palpitar,
Le delizie dell' amor mi dei sempre rammentar!
Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volera,
E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sara!"
Ella Bryant, driving home beside Bully, knew Sophie was singing as she
had sung to Arthur Henty years before, when they were coming home from
the tank paddock together. She wondered why Sophie was riding the horse
Arthur had brought for her; why she had ridden him to the funeral; and
why she was singing that song.
Sophie sang on:
"Col pensier il mio desir a te sempre volera,
E fin l'ultimo sospir, caro nome, tuo sara!"
Looking back, people saw Potch walking beside her as Joseph walked
beside Mary when they went down to Nazareth.
"It's hard on Potch," somebody said.
"Yes," it was agreed; "it's hard on Potch."
The buggies, carts, sulkies, and horsemen moving in opposite directions
on the long, curving road over the plains grew dim in the distance.
The notes of Sophie's singing, with its undying tenderness triumphing
over life and death, flowed fainter and fainter.
When she and Potch came to the town again, the light was fading. Through
the green, limpid veil of the sky, stars were glittering; huts of the
township were darkening under the gathering shadow of night. A breath of
sandal-wood burning on kitchen hearths came to Sophie and Potch like a
greeting. The notes of a goat-bell clanking dully sounded from beyond
the dumps. There were lights in a few of the huts; a warm, friendly
murmur of voices went up from them. For weeks troubled and disturbed
thinking, arguments, and conflicting ideas, had created a depressed and
unrestful atmosphere in every home in Fallen Star. But to-night it was
different. The temptations, allurements and debris of Armitage's scheme
had been swept from the minds--even of those who had been ready to
accept it. Hope and pride in the purpose of the Ridge had been restored
by Michael's vindication and by reaffirmation of the principle he and
all staunch men of the Ridge stood for as the mainstay of their life in
common. Thought of Arthur Henty's death, which had oppressed people
during the day, seemed to have been put aside now that they had seen him
laid to rest, and had returned to their homes again.
Voices were heard exclaiming with the light cadence and rhythm of joy.
The crisis which had come near to shattering the Ridge scheme of things,
and all that it stood for, had ended by drawing dissenting factions of
the community into closer sympathy and more intimate relationship. In
everybody's mind were the hope and enthusiasm of a new endeavour. As
they went through the town again, neither Sophie nor Potch were
conscious of them for the sorrow which had soaked into their lives. But
these things were in the air they breathed, and sooner or later would
claim them from all personal suffering; faith and loving service fill
all their future--the long twilight of their days.