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

to help her to get fixed up. Everybody’ll be so busy over at Warria⁠—and we thought she mightn’t be able to get anybody to do up her dress for her.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Watty said.

There was a rattle of wheels on the rough shingle near the hut.

“Here’s your father, Sophie,” Martha called.

“And Michael and Potch are in the kitchen wanting to have a look at you before you go, Sophie,” Maggie Grant said.

“Oh!” Sophie took the coat Mrs. Woods was lending her, and went out to the kitchen with it on her arm.

Michael and Potch were there. They stared at her. But her radiant face, the shining eyes, and the little smile which hovered on her mouth, held their gaze more than the new white dress standing out in slight, stiff folds all round her. The vision of her⁠—incomparable youth and loveliness she was to Michael⁠—gripped him so that a moisture of love and reverence dimmed his eyes.⁠ ⁠… And Potch just stared and stared at her.

Paul was bawling from the buggy outside:

“Are you ready, Sophie? Sophie, are you ready?”

Mrs. Woods held the dust-coat. Very carefully Sophie edged herself into it, and wrapped its nondescript buff-coloured folds over her dress. Then she put the pink woollen scarf Martha had brought over her head, and went out to the buggy. Her father was sitting aloft on the front seat, driving Sam Nancarrow’s old roan mare, and looking spruce and well turned out in a new baggy suit which Michael had arranged for him to get in order to look more of a credit to Sophie at the ball.

“See you take good care of her, Paul,” Mrs. Grant called after him as they drove off.

XV

The drive across the plains seemed interminable to Sophie.

Paul hummed and talked of the music he was going to play as they went along. He called to Sam Nancarrow’s old nag, quite pleased to be having a horse to drive as though it belonged to him, and gossiped genially about this and other balls he had been to.

Sophie kept remembering what Mrs. Grant and Mrs. George Woods had said, and how she had looked in those glimpses of herself in the mirror. “I do look nice! I do look nice!” she assured herself.

It was wonderful to be going to a ball at Warria. She had never thought she could look as she did in this new frock, with her necklace, and Mrs. Woods’ earrings, and that old sash of her mother’s. She was a little anxious, but very happy and excited.

She remembered how Arthur had looked at her when she met him on the road or in the paddock sometimes, She only had on her old black dress then. He must like her in this new dress, she thought. Her mind had a subtle recoil from the too great joy of thinking how much more he must like her in this pretty, new, white frock; she sat in a delicious trance of happiness. Her father hummed and gossiped. All the stars came out. The sky was a wonderful blue where it met the horizon, and darkened to indigo as it climbed to the zenith.

When they drove from the shadow of the coolebahs which formed an avenue from the gate of the home paddock to the veranda of the homestead, Ted Burton, the station bookkeeper, a porky, good-natured little man, with light, twinkling eyes, whose face looked as if it had been sandpapered, came out to meet them.

“There you are, Rouminof!” he said. “Glad to see you. We were beginning to be afraid you weren’t coming!”

Sophie got down from the buggy, and her father drove off to the stables. Passing the veranda steps with Mr. Burton, she glanced up. Several men were on the steps. Her eyes went instinctively to Arthur Henty, who was standing at the foot of them, a yellow puppy fawning at his feet. He did not look up as Sophie passed, pretending to be occupied with the pup. But in that fleeting glance her brain had photographed the bruise on his forehead where it had caught a veranda post when Bully Bryant, having regained his feet, hit out blindly.

Potch had told Sophie what happened⁠—she had made him find out in order to tell her. Arthur and Bully had wanted to fight, but after the first exchange of blows the men had held them back. Bully was mad drunk, they said, and would have hammered Henty to pulp. And the next evening Bully came to Sophie, heavy with shame, and ready to cry for what he had done.

“If anybody’d ’ve told me I’d treat you like that, Sophie, I’d ’ve killed him,” he said. “I’d ’ve killed him.⁠ ⁠… You know how I feel about you⁠—you know how we all feel about you⁠—and for me to have served you like that⁠—me that’d do anything in the world for you.⁠ ⁠… But it’s no good trying to say any more. It’s no good tryin’ to explain. It’s got me down.⁠ ⁠…”

He sat with his head in his hands for a while, so ashamed and miserable, that Sophie could not retain her wrath and resentment against him. It was like having a brother in trouble and doing nothing to help him, to see Bully like this.

“It’s all right, Bully,” she said. “I know⁠ ⁠… you weren’t yourself⁠ ⁠… and you didn’t mean it.”

He started to his feet and came to stand beside her. Sophie put her hand in his; he gripped it hard, unable to say anything. Then, when he could control his voice, he said:

“I went over to see Mr. Henty this morning⁠ ⁠… and told him if anybody else ’d done what I did, I’d ’ve done what he did.”

Potch had said the men expected Bully would want to fight the thing out when he was sober, and it was a big thing for him to have done what he had. The punishing power of Bully’s fists was well known, and he had taken this way of punishing himself. Sophie understood that, She was grateful and reconciled to