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

fragments of laughter and calling. Excitement about the ball was in the air.

Sophie remembered how happy and excited she used to be about the Ridge balls. She thought of it all vaguely at first, that lost girlish joy of hers, the free, careless gaiety which had swept her along as she danced. She remembered her father’s fiddling, Mrs. Newton’s playing; how the music had had a magic in it which set everybody’s feet flying and the boys singing to tunes they knew. The men polished the floor so that you could scarcely walk on it. One year they had spent hours working it up so that you slipped along like greased lightning as you danced.

Sophie smiled at her reminiscences. The high tones of a man’s voice, eager and exultant, shouting to someone across the twilight; the twitter of a girl’s laughter⁠—they were all in the air now as they had been then. Her listlessness stirred; everybody was preparing for the ball, and getting ready to go to it. Excitement and eager looking forward to a good time were in the air. They were infectious. Sophie trembled to them⁠—they tempted her. Could she go to the ball, like everybody else? Could she drift again in the stream of easy and genial intercourse with all these people of the Ridge whom she loved and who loved her?

Martha came to the door. Her eyes strained on the brooding young face, trying to read from the changing expressions which flitted across it what Sophie was thinking.

“You’re coming, aren’t you, dearie?” she begged.

Sophie’s eyes surprised the old woman, the brilliance of tears and light in them, their childish playing of hope beyond hope and fear, amazed her.

“Do you think I could, Martha?” she cried. “Do you think I could?”

“ ’Course you could, darling,” Martha said.

Sophie’s arms went round her in an instant’s quick pressure; then she stood off from her.

“Won’t it be lovely,” she cried, “to dance and sing⁠—and to be young again, Martha?”

X

It was still light; the sky, faintly green, a tinge as of stale blood along the horizon, as Sophie and Potch walked down the road to the hall. At a little distance the big building showed dark and ungainly against the sky. Its double doors were open, and a wash of dull, golden light came out from it into the twilight, with the noise of people laughing and talking.

“It’s like old times, isn’t it, Potch”⁠—Sophie’s fingers closed over Potch’s arm⁠—“to be going to a Ridge dance?”

There was a faint, sweet stirring which the wind makes in the trees within her, Sophie realised. It was strange and delightful to feel alive again, and alive with the first freshness, innocence, and vague happiness of a girl.

Potch looked down on her, smiling. He was filled with pride to have her beside him like this, to think they would go into the hall together, and that people would say to each other when they saw them: “There’s Sophie and Potch!”

That using of their names side by side was a source of infinite content to Potch. He loved people to say: “When are you and Sophie coming over to see us, Potch?” or, “Would you mind telling Sophie, Potch?” and give him a message for Sophie. And this would be the first time they had appeared at an assembly of Ridge folk together.

He walked with his head held straight and high, and his eyes shone when he went down the hall with Sophie. What did it matter if they called him Potch, the Ridge folk, “a little bit of potch,” he thought, Sophie was going to be Mrs. Heathfield.

“Here’s Sophie and Potch,” he heard people say, as he had thought they would, and his heart welled with happiness and pride.

Nearly everybody had arrived when they went into the hall; the first dance was just beginning. Branches of budda, fleeced with creamy and lavender blossom, had been stuck through the supports of the hall. Flags and pennants of all the colours in the rainbow, strung on a line together, were stretched at the end of the platform. On the platform Mrs. Newton was sitting at the piano. Paul had his music-stand near her, and behind him an old man from the Three Mile was nervously fingering and blowing on a black and silver-mounted flute. Women and girls and a few of the older men were seated on forms against the walls. Several young mothers had babies in their arms, and children of all ages were standing about, or sitting beside their parents. By common consent, Ridge folk had taken one side of the hall, and station folk the upper end of the other side.

Sophie’s first glance found Martha, her white dress stiff and immaculate, her face with its plump, rosy cheeks turned towards her, her eyes smiling and expectant. Martha beamed at her; Sophie smiled back, and, her glance travelling on, found Maggie and Bill Grant, Mrs. George Woods and two of her little girls; Mrs. Watty, in a black dress, its high neck fastened by a brooch, with three opals in, Watty had given her; and Watty, genial and chirrupy as usual, but afraid to appear as if he were promising himself too much of a good time.

Warria, Langi-Eumina, and Darrawingee folk had foregathered; the girls and men laughed and chattered in little groups; the older people talked, sitting against the wall or leaning towards each other. Mrs. Henty looked much as she had done five years before; James Henty not a day older; but Mrs. Tom Henderson, who had been Elizabeth Henty, had developed a sedate and matronly appearance. Polly was not as plump and jolly as she had been⁠—a little puzzled and apprehensive expression flitted through her clear brown eyes, and there were lines of discouragement about her mouth. Sophie recognised Mrs. Arthur Henty in a slight, well-dressed woman, whose thin, unwrinkled features wore an expression of more or less matter-of-fact discontent.

The floor was shining under the light of the one big hanging lamp. Paul scraped his violin with