The Black Opal, Katharine Susannah Prichard [i have read the book a hundred times txt] 📗

he had heard his sisters singing. No one had heard him whistling like that at the station. Out on the plains, or in the bar at Newton’s, he was a different man. Once or twice when he had been drinking, and a glass or two of beer or whisky had got to his head, he had shown more the spirit that it was thought he possessed⁠—as if, when the conscious will was relaxed, a submerged self had leapt forth.

Men who had known him a long time wondered whether time would not strengthen the fibres of that submerged self; but they had seen Arthur Henty lose the elastic, hopeful outlook of youth, and sink gradually into the place assigned him by his father, at first dutifully, then with an indifference which slowly became apathy.

Mrs. Henty and the girls exclaimed with dismay and disgust when they returned to the station after two years in town, and saw how rough and unkempt-looking Arthur had become. They insisted on his having his hair and beard cut at once, and that he should manicure his fingernails. After he had dressed for dinner and was clipped and shaved, they said he looked more as if he belonged to them; but he was a shy, awkward boor, and they did not know what to make of him. In his mother’s hands, Arthur was still a child, though, and she brought him back to the fold of the family, drew his resistance⁠—an odd, sullen resentment he had acquired for the niceties of what she called “civilised society”⁠—and made him amenable to its discipline.

Elizabeth was twice the man her brother was, James Henty was fond of declaring. She had all the vigour and dash he would have liked his son to possess. “My daughter Elizabeth,” he said as frequently as possible, and was always talking of her feats with horses, and the clearheaded and clever way she went about doing things, and getting her own way on all and every occasion.

When the men rounded buck-jumpers into the yards on a Sunday morning, Elizabeth would ride any Chris Este, the head stockman, let her near; but Arthur never attempted to ride any of the warrigals. He steered clear of horse-breaking and rough horses whenever he could, although he broke and handled his own horses. In a curious way he shared a secret feeling of his mother’s for horses. She had never been able to overcome an indefinable apprehension of the raw, half-broken horses of the back-country, although her nerve had carried her through years of acquaintance with them, innumerable accidents and misadventures, and hundreds of miles of journeys at their mercy; and Arthur, although he had lived and worked among horses as long as he could remember, had not been able to lose something of the same feeling. His sister, suspecting it, was frankly contemptuous; so was his father. It was the reason of Henty’s low estimate of his son’s character generally. And the rumour that Arthur Henty was shy of tough propositions in horses⁠—“afraid of horses”⁠—had a good deal to do with the never more than lukewarm respect men of the station and countryside had for him.

XIII

Sophie often met Arthur Henty on the road just out of the town. Usually it was going to or coming from the tank paddock, or in the paddock, on Friday afternoons, when he had been into Budda for the sales or to truck sheep or cattle. They did not arrange to meet, but Sophie expected to see Arthur when she went to the tank paddock, and she knew he expected to find her there. She did not know why she liked being with Arthur Henty so much, or why they were such golden occasions when she met him. They did not talk much when they were together. Their eyes met; they knew each other through their eyes⁠—a something remote from themselves was always working through their eyes. It drew them together.

When she was with Arthur Henty, Sophie knew she was filled with an ineffable gaiety, a thing so delicate and ethereal that as she sang she seemed to be filling the air with it. And Henty looked at her sometimes as if he had discovered a new, strange, and beautiful creature, a butterfly, or gnat, with gauzy, resplendent wings, whose beauty he was bewildered and overcome by. The last time they had been together he had longed to draw her to him and kiss her so that the virgin innocence would leave her eyes; but fear or some conscientious scruple had restrained him. He had been reluctant to awaken her, to change the quality of her feeling towards him. He had let her go with a lingering handclasp. In all their tender intimacy there had been no more of the lovemaking of the flesh than the subtle interweavings of instincts and fibres which this handclasp gave. Ridge folk had seen them walking together. They had seen that subtle inclination of Sophie’s and Arthur’s figures towards each other as they walked⁠—the magnetic, gentle, irresistible swaying towards each other⁠—and the gossips began to whisper and nod smilingly when they came across Arthur and Sophie on the road. Sophie at first went her way unconscious of the whispers and smiles. Then words were dropped slyly⁠—people teased her about Arthur. She realised they thought he was her sweetheart. Was he? She began to wonder and think about it. He must be; she came to the conclusion happily. Only sweethearts went for walks together as she and Arthur did.

“My mother says,” Mirry Flail remarked one day, “she wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see you marrying Arthur Henty, Sophie, and going over to live at Warria.”

“Goodness!” Sophie exclaimed, surprised and delighted that anybody should think such a thing.

“Marry Arthur Henty and go over and live at Warria.” Her mind, like a delighted little beaver, began to build on the idea. It did not alter her bearing with Arthur. She was less shy and thoughtful