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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 a preliminary flourish; Mrs. Newton threw a bunch of chords after him, and they cantered into a waltz time the Ridge loved. Roy O’Mara, M.C. for the occasion, shouted jubilantly: “Take y’r partners for a waltz!” Couples edged out from the wall, and in a moment were swirling and whirling up and down on the bared space of the hall. There were squeals and little screams as feet slipped and skidded on the polished floor; but people soon found their dancing feet, got under way of the music, and swung to its rhythms with more ease, security, and pleasure. Sophie watched the dance for a while. She saw Martha dancing with Michael. Every year at the Ridge ball Michael danced the first dance with Martha. And Martha, dancing with Michael—no one on the Ridge was happier, though they moved so solemnly, turning round and round with neat little steps, as if they were pledged to turn in the space of a threepenny piece!
Sophie smiled at Martha’s happy seriousness. Arthur Henty was dancing with his wife. Sophie had not seen him so clearly since her return to the Ridge. When she had passed him in the township, or at Newton’s, he had been riding, and she had scarcely seen his face for the beard which had overgrown it and the shadow his hat cast. She studied him with unmoved curiosity. His beard had been clipped close, and she recognised the moulding of his head, the slope of his shoulders, a peculiar loose litheness in his gait. Her eyes followed him as he danced with his wife. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Henty were waltzing in the perfunctory, mechanical fashion of people thoroughly bored with each other.
Then Sophie swung with Potch into the eddying current of the dancers. Potch danced in as steady and methodical a fashion as he did everything. The music did not get him; at least, Sophie could not believe it did.
His eyes were deep and shining as though it were a great and holy ceremony he were engaged in, but there was no melting to the delight of rhythmic movement in his sober gyrations. Sophie felt him a clog on the flow of her own action as he steered and steadily directed her through the crowd.
“For goodness’ sake, Potch, dance as if you meant it,” she said.
“But I do mean it, Sophie,” he said.
As he looked down at her, his flushed, happy face assured her that he did mean dancing, but he meant it as he meant everything—with a dead earnestness.
After that dance all her old friends among men of the Ridge came round Sophie to ask her to dance with them. Bully and Roy sparred for dances as they did in the old days, and Michael and George and Watty threatened to knock their heads together and throw them out of the room if they didn’t get out of the way and give some other chaps a chance to dance with Sophie. Between the dances, Sophie went over to talk to Maggie Grant, Mrs. Watty, Mrs. George Woods, and Martha. She had time to tell Martha how nice her dress and the pink stockings looked, and how the opals in her bracelet flashed as she was dancing.
“You can see them from one end of the hall to the other,” Sophie whispered.
“And you, lovey,” Martha said. “It’s just lovely, the dress. You should have seen how they stared at you when you came in. … And Potch looking so nice, too. He wouldn’t call the King his uncle tonight, Sophie!”
Sophie laughed happily as she went off to dance with Bully, who was claiming her for a polka mazurka.
The evening was half through when John Armitage appeared in the doorway. Sophie had just come from dancing the quadrilles with Potch when she saw Armitage standing in the doorway with Peter Newton. Potch saw him as Sophie did; their eyes met. Michael came towards them.
“Mr. Armitage did come, I see,” Sophie said quietly, as Potch and Michael were looking towards the door. “I had a letter from him a few weeks ago saying he thought he would be here for the ball,” she added.
“Why has he come?” Michael asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “To see me, I suppose … and to find out whether the men will do business with him again.”
Michael’s gesture implied it was useless to talk of that.
Sophie continued: “But you know what I said, Michael. I can’t be happy until it has been arranged. I owe it to him to put things right with the men here. … You must do that for me, Michael. They know I’m going to marry Potch … and if they see there’s no ill feeling between John Armitage and me, they’ll believe I was more to blame than he was—if it’s a question of blame. … I want you and Potch to stand by me in this, Michael.”
Potch’s eyes turned to her. She read their assurance, deep, still, and sure. But Michael showed no relenting.
Armitage left his place by the door and came towards them. All eyes in the room were on him. A whisper of surprise and something like fear had circled. He was as aware of it, and of the situation his coming had created, as anyone in the hall; but he appeared unconscious and indifferent, and as if there were no particular significance to attach to his being at the ball and crossing to speak to Sophie.
She met him with the same indifference and smiling detachment. They had met so often before people like this, that it was not much more for them than playing a game they had learned to play rather well.
Sophie said: “It is you really?”
He took the hand she held to him. “But you knew I was coming? You had my letter?”
“Of course … but—”
“And my word is my bond.”
The cynical, whimsical inflection of John Armitage’s voice, and the perfectly easy and friendly terms Sophie and he were on, surprised people who were near them.
Michael was incensed by it; but Potch, standing beside Sophie, regarded Armitage with grave, quiet eyes.
“Good evening, Michael! Evening, Potch!” Armitage said.
Michael did not reply; but Potch said:
“Evening, Mr. Armitage!” And Sophie covered the trail of his words, and Michael’s silence, with questions as to the sort of journey Armitage had made; a flying commentary on the ball, the races, and the weather. Michael moved away as the next dance was beginning.
“Is this my dance, Sophie?” Armitage inquired.
Sophie shook her head, smiling.
“No,” she said.
“Which is my dance?” The challenge had yielded to a note of appeal.
Sophie met that appeal with a smile, baffling, but of kindly understanding.
“The next one.”
She danced with Potch, appreciating his quiet strength, the reserve force she felt in him, the sense that this man was hers to lean on, hold to, or move as she wished.
“It’s awfully good to have you, Potch,” she murmured, glancing up at him.
“Sophie!”
His declarations were always just that murmuring of her name with a love and gratitude beyond words.
While she was dancing with Potch, Sophie saw Armitage go to the Hentys; he stood talking with them, and then danced the last bars of the waltz with Polly Henty.
When she was dancing with Armitage, Sophie discovered Arthur Henty leaning against the wall near the door, looking over the dancers with an odd, glowering expression. He had been drinking heavily of late, she had heard. Sophie wondered whether he was watching her, and whether he was connecting this night with that night at Warria, which had brought about all there had been between herself and John Armitage—even this dancing with him at a Ridge ball, after they had been lovers, and were no longer anything but very good friends. She knew people were following her dancing with John Armitage with interest. Some of them were scandalised that he should have come to the Ridge, and that they should be meeting on such friendly terms. She could see the Warria party watching her dancing with John Armitage, Mrs. Arthur Henty looking like a pastel drawing against the wall, and Polly, her pleasant face and plump figure blurred against the grey background of the corrugated iron wall.
Armitage talked, amiably, easily, about nothing in particular, as they danced. Sophie enjoyed the harmonious rhythm and languor of their movement together. The black, misty folds of her gown drifted out and about them. It was delightful to be drifting idly to music like this with John, all their old differences, disagreements, and lovemaking forgotten, or leaving just a delicate aroma of subtle and intimate sympathy. The old admiration and affection were in John Armitage’s eyes. It was like playing in the sunshine after a long winter, to be laughing and dancing under them again. And those stiff, disapproving faces by the wall spurred Sophie to further laughter—a reckless gaiety.
“You look like a butterfly just out of its chrysalis, and … trying its wings in the sun, Sophie,” Armitage said.
“I feel … just like that,” Sophie said.
After that Armitage had eyes for no one but her. He danced with two or three other people. Sophie saw him steering Martha through a set of quadrilles; but he hovered about her between the dances. She danced with George Woods and Watty, with the Moffats of Langi-Eumina, and some of the men from Darrawingee. Men of the station families were rather in awe of, and had a good deal of curiosity about this Fallen Star girl who had “gone the pace,” in their vernacular, and of whose career in the gay world on the other side of the earth they had heard spicy gossip. Sophie guessed that had something to do with their fluttering about her. But she had learned to play inconsequently with the admiration of young men like these; she did so without thinking about it. Once or twice she caught Potch’s gaze, perplexed and inquiring, fixed on her. She smiled to reassure him; but, unconsciously, she had drawn an eddy of the younger men in the room about her, and when she was not dancing she was talking with them, laughingly, fielding their crude witticisms, and enjoying the game as much as she had ever done.
As she was coming from a dance with Roy O’Mara she passed Arthur Henty where he stood by the door. The reek of whisky about him assailed Sophie as she passed. She glanced up at him. His eyes were on her. He swung over to her where she had gone to sit beside Martha M’Cready.
“You’re going to dance with me?” he asked, a husky uncertainty in his voice.
“No,” Sophie said, looking away from him.
“Yes.”
The low growl, savage and insistent, brought her eyes to his. Dark and sunbright, they were, but with pain and hunger in their depths. The unspoken truth between them, the truth which their wills had thwarted, spoke through their eyes. It would not be denied.
“There’s going to be an extra after supper,” he said.
“Very well.”
What happened then was remote from her. Sophie did not remember what she had said or done, until she was dancing with Arthur Henty.
How long was it since that night at Warria? Was she waiting for him as she had waited then? But there were all those long years between. Memories brilliant and tempestuous flickered before her. Then she was dancing with Arthur.
He had come to her quite ordinarily; they had walked down the room a few paces; then he had taken her hand in his, and they had swung out among the dancers. He did not seem drunk now. Sophie wondered at his steadier poise as she moved away with him. The butterfly joy of fluttering in sunshine was leaving her, she knew, as she went with him. She made an effort to recapture it. Looking up at him, she tried to talk lightly, indifferently, and to laugh, but it was no good. Arthur did not bother to reply to anything she said; he rested his eyes in hers, possessing himself of her behind her gaze. Sophie’s laughter failed. The inalienable, unalterable attraction of each to the other which they had read long before in each other’s eyes was still there, after all the years and the dark and troubled times they had been through.
Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was remembering little things he had said … she had said … the afternoon he had recited:
“I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a fairy’s child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.”
Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and wanted to cry. … She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing on a grave.
Henty’s grip tightened. Sophie’s face had become childish and pitiful, working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other, every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other.
Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie wondered. The noises of the ballroom broke in on her wondering—voices, shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them. …
Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared not look up. Arthur’s will, working against hers, demanded the surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again.
As they danced, Arthur seemed to be taking her into deep water. She was afraid of getting out of her depth … but he held her carefully. His grasp, was strong and his eyes hungry. Sophie could not escape that hungry look of his eyes. She told herself that she would not look up; she would not see it. They moved unsteadily; his breath, hot and smelling of whisky, fanned her. She sickened under it, loathing the smell of whisky and the rank tobacco he had been smoking. His grasp tightened. She was afraid of him—afraid of all the long, old dreams he might revive. Her step faltered, his arm trembled against her. And those hungry, hungry eyes. … She could not see them; she would not.
A clamour of tiny voices rose within her and dinned in her ears. She could hear the clamour of tiny voices going on in Henty, too; his voices were drowning her voices. She looked up to him begging him to silence them … begging, but unable to beg, terrified and quailing to the implacable in him—the stark passion and tragedy which were in his face. She was helpless before them.
Arthur had given her his arm before the open door; they had moved a little distance from the door. Darkness was about them. There was no hesitancy, no moment of consideration. As two waves meeting in mid-ocean fall to each other, they met, and were lost in the oblivion of a close embrace. The first violence of their movement, failing, brought consciousness of time and place. They were standing in the slight shadow of some trees just beyond the light of the hall. A purring of music came to them in faraway murmurs, and strange, distant ejaculations, and laughter.
Sophie tried to withdraw from the arms which held her.
“No, no,” she breathed; but Henty drew her to him again.
He murmured into her hair, and then from her lips again took a full draught of her being, lingeringly, as though he would drain its last essence.
A shadow loomed heavy and shapeless over them. It fell on them. Sophie was thrown back. Dazed, and as if she were falling through space, for a moment she did not realise what had happened. Then, there in the dark, she knew men were grappling silently. The intensity of the struggle paralysed her; she could see nothing but heavy, rolling shapes; hear nothing but stertorous breathing and the snorting grunts as of enraged animals. A cry, as if someone were hurt, broke the fear which had stupefied her.
She called Michael.
Two or three men came running from the hall. The struggling figures were on their feet again; they swung from the shadow. Sophie had an instant’s vision of a hideous, distorted face she scarcely recognised as Potch’s … she saw Henty on the ground and Potch crouched over him. Then the surrounding darkness swallowed her. She knew she was dragged away from where she had been standing; she seemed to have been dragged through darkness for hours. When she wakened she could see only those heavy, quiet figures, struggling and grappling through the darkness.