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

not in the kitchen or in his own room when Michael went into the hut.

As he was going out he noticed that the curtain of bagging over the door of the room which had been Sophie’s was thrown back. Michael went towards it.

“Paul!” he called.

No answer coming, he went into the room. Its long quiet and tranquillity had been disturbed. Michael had not seen the curtain over the doorway thrown back in that way since Sophie had gone. The room had always been like a grave in the house with that piece of bagging across it; but there was none of the musty, dusty, grave-like smell of an empty room about it when Michael crossed the threshold. The window was open; the frail odour of a living presence in the air. On the box cupboard by the window a few stalks of punti, withered and dry, stood in a tin. Michael remembered having seen them there when they were fresh, a year ago.

He was realising Potch had put them there, and wondering why he had left the dead stalks in the tin until they were as dry as brown paper, when his eyes fell on a hat with a long veil, and a dark cloak on the bed. He gazed at them, his brain shocked into momentary stillness by the suggestion they conveyed.

Sophie exclaimed behind him.

When he turned, Michael saw her standing in the doorway, leaning against one side of it. Her face was very pale and tired-looking; her eyes gazed into his, dark and strange. He thought she had been ill.

“I’ve come home, Michael,” she said.

Michael could not speak. He stood staring at her. The dumb pain in her eyes inundated him, as though he were a sensitive medium for the realisation of pain. It surged through him, mingling with the flood of his own rejoicing, gratitude, and relief that Sophie had come back to the Ridge again.

They stood looking at each other, their eyes telling in that moment what words could not. Then Michael spoke, sensing her need of some commonplace, homely sentiment and expression of affection.

“It’s a sight for sore eyes⁠—the sight of you, Sophie,” he said.

“Michael!”

Her arms went out to him with the quick gesture he knew. Michael moved to her and caught her in his arms. No moment in all his life had been like this when he held Sophie in his arms as though she were his own child. His whole being swayed to her in an infinite compassion and tenderness. She lay against him, her body quivering. Then she cried, brokenly, with spent passion, almost without strength to cry at all.

“There, there!” Michael muttered. “There, there!”

He held her, patting and trying to comfort and soothe her, muttering tenderly, and with difficulty because of his trouble for her. The tears she had seen in his eyes when he said she was a sight for sore eyes came from him and fell on her. His hand went over her hair, clumsily, reverently.

“There, there!” he muttered again and again.

Weak with exhaustion, when her crying was over, Sophie moved away from him. She pushed back the hair which had fallen over her forehead; her eyes had a faint smile as she looked at him.

“I am a silly, aren’t I, Michael?” she said.

Michael’s mouth took its wry twist.

“Are you, Sophie?” he said. “Well⁠ ⁠… I don’t think there’s anyone else on the Ridge’d dare say so.”

“I’ve dreamt of that smile of yours, Michael,” Sophie said. She swayed a little as she looked at him; her eyes closed.

Michael put his arm round her and led her to the bed. He made her lie down and drew the coverlet over her.

“You lay down while I make you a cup of tea, Sophie,” he said.

Sophie was lying so still, her face was so quiet and drained of colour when he returned with tea in a pannikin and a piece of thick bread and butter on the only china plate in the hut, that Michael thought she had fainted. But the lashes swept up, and her eyes smiled into his grave, anxious face as he gazed at her.

“I’m all right, Michael,” she said, “only a bit crocky and dead tired.” She sat up, and Michael sat on the bed beside her while she drank the tea and ate the bread and butter.

“Tea in a pannikin is much nicer than any other tea in the world,” Sophie said. “Don’t you think so, Michael? I’ve often wondered whether it’s the tea, or the taste of the tin pannikin, or the people who have tea in pannikins, that makes it so nice.”

After a while she said:

“I came up on the coach this morning⁠ ⁠… didn’t get in till about half-past six.⁠ ⁠… And I came straight up from Sydney the day before. That’s all night on the train⁠ ⁠… and I didn’t get a sleeper. Just sat and stared out of the window at the country. Oh! I can’t tell you how badly I’ve wanted to come home, Michael. In the end I felt I’d die if I didn’t come⁠—so I came.”

Then she asked about Potch and her father.

Michael told her about the ratting, and how Paul had had sunstroke, but that he was all right again now; and how Potch and he were thinking of putting him on to work again. Then he said that he must get along down to the claims, as Potch would be wondering what had become of him; and Paul might be down there, having heard of the colours they had got the night before.

“I’ll send him up to you, if he’s there,” Michael said. “But you’d better just lie still now, and try to get a little of the shuteye you’ve been missing these last two or three days.”

“Months, Michael,” Sophie said, that dark, strange look coming into her eyes again.

They did not speak for a moment. Then she lay back on the bed.

“But I’ll sleep all right here,” she said. “I feel as if I’d sleep for years and years.⁠ ⁠… It’s