XVI
The men stood in groups outside the hall, smoking and yarning together before going into it, on the night John Armitage was to put his proposition for reorganisation of the mines before them. Each group formed itself of men whose minds were inclined in the same direction. M’Ginnis was the centre of the crowd from the Punti rush who were prepared to accept Armitage’s scheme. The Crosses, while they would not go over to the M’Ginnis faction, had a following—and the group about them was by far the largest—which was asserting an open mind until it heard what Armitage had to say. Archie and Ted Cross and the men with them, however, were suspected of a prejudice rather in favour of, than against, Armitage’s outline of the new order of things for the Ridge since its main features and conditions were known. Men who were prepared at all costs to stand by the principle which had held the gougers of Fallen Star Ridge, together for so long, and whose loyalty to the old spirit of independence was immutable, gathered round George Woods and Watty Frost.
“Thing that’s surprised me,” Pony-Fence Inglewood murmured, “is the numbers of men there is who wants to hear what Armitage has got to say. I wouldn’t ’ve thought there’d be so many.”
“I don’t like it meself, Pony,” George admitted. “That’s why we’re here. Want to know the strength of them—and him.”
“That’s right,” Watty muttered.
“Crosses, for instance,” Pony-Fence continued. “You wouldn’t ’ve thought Archie and Ted’d ’ve even listened to guff about profit-sharin’—all that. … But they’ve swallowed it—swallowed it all down. They say—”
George nodded gloomily. “This blasted talkin’ about Michael’s done more harm than anything.”
“That’s right,” Pony-Fence said. “What’s the strength of it, George?”
“Damned if I know!”
“Where’s Michael tonight?”
Their eyes wandered over the scattered groups of the miners. Michael was not among them.
“Is he coming?” Pony-Fence asked.
George shrugged his shoulders; the wrinkles of his forehead lifted, expressing his ignorance and the doubt which had come into his thinking of Michael.
“Does he know what’s being said?” Pony-Fence asked.
“He knows all right. I told Potch, and asked him to let Michael know about it.”
“What did he say?”
“Tell you the truth, Pony-Fence, I don’t understand Michael over this business,” George said. “He’s been right off his nest the last week or two. It might have got him down what’s being said—he might be so sore about anybody thinkin’ that of him, or that it’s just too mean and paltry to take any notice of. … But I’d rather he’d said something. … It’s played Armitage’s game all right, the yarn that’s been goin’ round, about Michael’s not being the man we think he is. And the worst of it is, you don’t know exactly where it came from. Charley, of course—but it was here before him. … He’s just stoked the gossip a bit. But it’s done the Ridge more harm than a dozen Armitages could ’ve—”
“Tonight’ll bring things to a head,” Watty interrupted, as though they had talked the thing over and he knew exactly what George was going to say next. “I reck’n we’ll see better how we stand—what’s the game—and the men who are going to stand by us. … Michael’s with us, I’ll swear; and if we’ve got to put up a fight … we’ll have it out with him about those yarns. … And it’ll be hell for any man who drops a word of them afterwards.”
When they went into the hall George and Watty marched to the front form and seated themselves there. Bully Bryant and Pony-Fence remained somewhere about the middle of the hall, as men from every rush on the fields filed into the seats and the hall filled. Potch came in and sat near Bully and Pony-Fence. As Newton, Armitage, and the American engineer crossed the platform, Michael took a seat towards the front, a little behind George and Watty. George stood up and hailed him, but Michael shook his head, indicating that he would stay where he was.
Peter Newton, after a good deal of embarrassment, had consented to be chairman of the meeting. But he looked desperately uncomfortable when he took his place behind a small table and an array of glasses and a water bottle, with John Armitage on one side of him and Mr. Andrew M’Intosh, the American engineer, on the other.
His introductory remarks were as brief as he could make them, and chiefly pointed out that being chairman of the meeting was not to be regarded as an endorsement of Mr. Armitage’s plan.
John Armitage had never looked keener, more immaculate, and more of another world than he did when he stood up and faced the men that night. Most of them were smoking, and soon after the meeting began the hall was filled with a thin, bluish haze. It veiled the crowd below him, blurred the shapes and outlines of the men sitting close together along the benches, most of them wearing their working clothes, faded blueys, or worn moleskins, with handkerchiefs red or white round their throats. Their faces swam before John Armitage as on a dark sea. All the weather-beaten, sun-red, gaunt, or full, fat, daubs of faces, pallid through the smoke, turned towards him with a curious, strained, and intent expression of waiting to hear what he had to say.
Before making any statement himself, Mr. Armitage said he would ask Mr. Andrew M’Intosh, who had come with him from America some time ago to report on the field, and who was one of the ablest engineers in the United States of America, to tell what he thought of the natural resources of the Ridge, and the possibilities of making an up-to-date, flourishing town of Fallen Star under conditions proposed by the Armitage Syndicate.
Andrew M’Intosh, a meagrely-fleshed man, with squarish face, blunt features, and hair in a brush from a broad, wrinkled forehead, stood up in response to Mr. Armitage’s invitation. He was a man of deeds, not words, he declared, and would leave Mr. Armitage to give them the substance of his report. His knees jerked nervously and his face and hands twitched all the time he was speaking. He had an air of protesting against what he was doing and of having been dragged into this business, although he was more or less interested in it. He confessed that he had not investigated the resources of Fallen Star Ridge as completely as he would have wished, but he had done so sufficiently to enable him to assure the people of Fallen Star that if they accepted the proposition Mr. Armitage was to lay before them, the country would back them. He himself, he said, would have confidence enough in it to throw in his lot with them, should they accept Mr. Armitage’s proposition; and he gave them his word that if they did so, and he were invited to take charge of the reorganisation of the mines, he would work wholeheartedly for the success of the undertaking he and the miners of Fallen Star Ridge might mutually engage in. He talked at some length of the need for a great deal of preliminary prospecting in order to locate the best sites for mines, of the necessity for plant to use in construction works, and of the possibility of a better water supply for the township, and the advantages that would entail.
The men were impressed by the matter-of-factness of the engineer’s manner and his review of technical and geological aspects of the situation, although he gave very little information they had not already possessed. When he sat down, Armitage pushed back his chair and confronted the men again.
He made his position clear from the outset. It was a straightforward business proposition he was putting before men of the Ridge, he said; but one the success of which would depend on their cooperation. As their agent of exchange with the world at large, he described the disastrous consequences the slump of the last year or so had had for both Armitage and Son and for Fallen Star, and how the system he proposed, by opening up a wider area for mining and by investigating the resources of the old mines more thoroughly under the direction of an expert mining engineer, would result in increased production and prosperity for the people of the Ridge and Fallen Star township. He saw possibilities of making a thriving township of Fallen Star, and he promised men of the Ridge that if they accepted the scheme he had outlined for them, the Armitage Syndicate would make a prosperous township of Fallen Star. In no time people: would be having electricity in their homes, water laid on, rose gardens, cabbage patches, and all manner of comforts and conveniences as a result of the improved means of communication with Budda and Sydney, which population and increased production would ensure.
In a nutshell Armitage’s scheme amounted to an offer to buy up the mines for £30,000 and put the men on a wage, allowing every man a percentage of 20 percent profit on all stones over a certain standard and size. The men would be asked to elect their own manager, who would be expected to see that engineering and development designs were carried out, but otherwise the normal routine of work in the mines would be observed. Mr. Armitage explained that he hoped to occupy the position of general manager in the company himself, and engaged it to observe the union rates of hours and wages as they were accepted by miners and mining companies throughout the country.
When he had finished speaking there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that John Lincoln Armitage had made a very pleasant picture of what life on the Ridge might be if success attended the scheme of the Armitage Syndicate, as John Armitage seemed to believe it would. Men who had been driven to consider Armitage’s offer from their first hearing of it, because of the lean years the Ridge was passing through, were almost persuaded by his final exposition.
George Woods stood up.
George’s strength was in his equable temper, in his downright honesty and sincerity, and in the steady common-sense with which he reviewed situations and men.
He realised the impression Armitage’s statement of his scheme, and its bearing on the life of the Ridge, had made. It did not affect his own position, but he feared its influence on men who had been wavering between prospects of the old and of the new order of things for Fallen Star. In their hands, he could see now, the fate of all that Fallen Star had stood for so long, would lie.
“Well,” he said, “we’ve got to thank you for puttin’ the thing to us as clear and as square as you have, Mr. Armitage. It gives every man here a chance to see just what you’re drivin’ at. But I might say here and now … I’ve got no time for it … neither me nor my mates. … It’ll save time and finish the business of this meeting if there’s no beatin’ about the bush and we understand each other right away. It sounds all right—your scheme—nice and easy. Looks as if there was more for us to get out of it than to lose by it. … I don’t say it wouldn’t mean easier times … more money … all that sort of thing. We haven’t had the easiest of times here sometimes, and this scheme of yours comes … just when we’re in the worst that’s ever knocked us. But speakin’ for myself, and”—his glance round the hall was an appeal to that principle the Ridge stood for—“the most of my mates, we’d rather have the hard times and be our own masters. That’s what we’ve always said on the Ridge. … Your scheme ’d be all right if we didn’t feel like that; I suppose. But we do … and as far as I’m concerned, we won’t touch it. It’s no go.
“We’re obliged to you for putting the thing to us. We recognise you could have gone another way about getting control here. You may—buy up a few of the mines perhaps, and try to squeeze the rest of us out. Not that I think the boys’d stand for the experiment.”
“They wouldn’t,” Bill Grant called.
“I’m glad to hear that,” George said. He tried to point out that if Fallen Star miners accepted Armitage’s offer they would be shouldering conditions which would take from their work the freedom and interest that had made their life in common what it had been on the Ridge. He asked whether a weekly wage to tide them over years of misfortune would compensate for loss of the sense of being free men; he wanted to know how they’d feel if they won a nest of knobbies worth £400 or £500 and got no more out of them than the weekly wage. The percentage on big stones was only a bluff to encourage men to hand over big stones, George said. And that, beyond the word being used pretty frequently in Mr. Armitage’s argument and documents, was all the profit-sharing he could see in Mr. Armitage’s scheme. He reminded the men, too, that under their own system, in a day they could make a fortune. And all there was for them under Mr. Armitage’s system was three or four pounds a week—and not a bit of potch, nor a penny in the quart pot for their old age.
“We own these mines. Every man here owns his mine,” George said; “that’s worth more to us just now than engineers and prospecting parties. … Well have them on our own account directly, when the luck turns and there’s money about again. … For the present we’ll hang on to what we’ve got, thank you, Mr. Armitage.”
He sat down, and a guffaw of laughter rolled over his last words.
“Anybody else got anything to say?” Peter Newton inquired.
M’Ginnis stood up.
He had heard a good deal of talk about men of the Ridge being free, he said, but all it amounted to was their being free to starve, as far as he could see. He didn’t see that the men’s ownership of the mines meant much more than that—the freedom to starve. It was all very well for them to swank round about being masters of their own mines; any fool could be master of a rubbish heap if he was keen enough on the rubbish heap. But as far as he was concerned, M’Ginnis declared, he didn’t see the point. What they wanted was capital, and Mr. Armitage had volunteered it on what were more than ordinarily generous terms. …
It was all very well for a few shell-backs who, because they had been on the place in the early days, thought they had some royal prerogative to it, to cut up rusty when their ideas were challenged. But their ideas had been given a chance; and how had they worked out? It was all very well to say that if a man was master of his own mine he stood a chance of being a millionaire at a minute’s notice; but how many of them were millionaires? As a matter of fact, not a man on the Ridge had a penny to bless himself with at that moment, and it was sheer madness to turn down this offer of Mr. Armitage’s. For his part he was for it, and, what was more, there was a big body of the men in the hall for it.
“If it’s put to the vote whether people want to take on or turn down Mr. Armitage’s scheme, we’ll soon see which way the cat’s jumping,” M’Ginnis said. “People’d have the nause to see which side their bread’s buttered on—not be led by the nose by a few fools and dreamers. For my part, I don’t see why—”
“You’re not paid to,” a voice called from the back of the hall.
“I don’t see why,” M’Ginnis repeated stolidly, ignoring the interruption, “the ideas of three or four men should be allowed to rule the roost. What’s wanted on the Ridge is a little more horse sense—”
Impatient and derisive exclamations were hurled at him; men sitting near M’Ginnis shouted back at the interrupters. It looked as if the meeting were going to break up in uproar, confusion, and fighting all round. Peter Newton knocked on the table and shouted himself hoarse trying to restore order. The voices of George, Watty, and Pony-Fence Inglewood were heard howling over the din:
“Let him alone.”
“Let’s hear what he’s got to say.”
Then M’Ginnis continued his description of the advantages to be gained by the acceptance of Mr. Armitage’s offer.
“And,” he wound up, “there’s the women and children to think of.” At the back of the hall somebody laughed. “Laugh if you like”—M’Ginnis worked himself into a passion of virtuous indignation—“but I don’t see there’s anything to laugh at when I say remember what those things are goin’ to mean to the women and children of this town—what a few of the advantages of civilisation—”
“Disadvantages!” the same voice called.
“—Comforts and conveniences of civilisation are goin’ to mean to the women and children of this Godforsaken hole,” M’Ginnis cried furiously. “If I had a wife and kids, d’ye think I’d have any time for this highfalutin’ flap-doodle of yours about bread and fat? Not much. The best in the country wouldn’t be too good for them—and it’s not good enough for the women and children of Fallen Star. That’s what I’ve got to say—and that’s what any decent man would say if he could see straight. I’m an ordinary, plain, practical man myself … and I ask you chaps who’ve been lettin’ your legs be pulled pretty freely—and starvin’ to be masters of your own dumps—to look at this business like ordinary, plain, practical men, who’ve got their heads screwed on the right way, and not throw away the chance of a lifetime to make Fallen Star the sort of township it ought to be. If there’s some men here want to starve to be masters of their own dumps, let ’em, I say: it’s a free country. But there’s no need for the rest of us to starve with ’em.”
He sat down, and again it seemed that the pendulum had swung in favour of Armitage and his scheme.
“What’s Michael got to say about it?” a man from the Three Mile asked. And several voices called: “Yes; what’s Michael got to say?”
For a moment there was silence—a silence of apprehension. George Woods and the men who knew, or had been disturbed by the stories they had heard of a secret treaty between Michael and John Armitage, recognised in that moment the power of Michael’s influence; that what Michael was going to say would sway the men of the Ridge as it had always done, either for or against the standing order of life on the Ridge on which they had staked so much. His mates could not doubt Michael, and yet there was fear in the waiting silence.
Those who had heard Michael was not the man they thought he was, waited anxiously for his movement, the sound of his voice. Charley Heathfield waited, crouched in a corner near the platform, where everyone could see him, Rouminof beside him. They were standing there together as if there was not room for them in the body of the hall, and their eyes were fixed on the place where Michael sat—Charley’s eager and cruel as a cat’s on its victim, Rouminof’s alight with the fires of his consuming excitement.
Then Michael got up from his seat, took off his hat; and his glance, those deep-set eyes of his, travelled the hall, skimming the heads and faces of the men in it, with their faint, whimsical smile.
“All I’ve got to say,” he said, “George Woods has said. There’s nothing in Mr. Armitage’s scheme for Fallen Star. … It looks all right, but it isn’t; it’s all wrong. The thing this place has stood for is ownership of the mines by the men who work them. Mr. Armitage’ll give us anything but that—he offers us every inducement but that … and you know how the thing worked out on the Cliffs. If the mines are worth so much to him, they’re worth as much, or more, to us.
“Boiled down, all the scheme amounts to is an offer to buy up the mines—at a ‘fair valuation’—put us on wages and an eight-hour day. All the rest, about making a flourishing and, up-to-date town of Fallen Star, might or mightn’t come true. P’raps it would. I can’t say. All I say is, it’s being used to gild the pill we’re asked to swallow—buyin’ up of the mines. There’s nothing sure about all this talk of electricity and water laid on; it’s just gilding. And supposing the new conditions did put more money about—did bring the comforts and conveniences of civilisation to Fallen Star—like M’Ginnis says—what good would they be to the people, women and children, too, if the men sold themselves like a team of bullocks to work the mines? It wouldn’t matter to them any more whether they brought up knobbies or mullock; they’d have their wages—like bullocks have their hay. It’s because our work’s had interest; it’s because we’ve been our own bosses, life’s been as good as it has on Fallen Star all these years. If a man hasn’t got interest in his work he’s got to get it somewhere. How did we get it on the Cliffs when the mines were bought up? Drinking and gambling … and how did that work out for the women and children? But it was stone silly of M’Ginnis to talk of women and children here. We know that old hitting-below-the-belt gag of sweating employers too well to be taken in by it. By and by, if you took on the Armitage scheme, and there was a strike in the mines, he’d be saying that to you: ‘Remember the women and children.’ ”
Colour flamed in Michael’s face, and he continued with more heat than there had yet been in his voice.
“The time’s coming when the man who talks ‘women and children’ to defeat their own interests will be treated like the skunk—the low-down, thieving swine he is. Do we say anything’s too good for our women and children? Not much. But we want to give them real things—the real things of life and happiness—not only flashy clothes and fixings. If we give our women and children the mines as we’ve held them, and the record of a clean fight for them, we’ll be giving them something very much bigger than anything Mr. Armitage can offer us in exchange for them. The things we’ve stood for are better than anything he’s got to offer. We’ve got here what they’re fighting for all over the world … it’s bigger than ourselves.
“M’Ginnis says he’s heard a lot of ‘the freedom to starve on the Ridge’—it’s more than I have, it’s a sure thing if he wants to starve, nobody’d stop him. …”
A wave of laughter passed over the hall.
“But most of us here haven’t any fancy for starving, and what’s more, nobody has ever starved on the Ridge. I don’t say that we haven’t had hard times, that we haven’t gone on short commons—we have; but we haven’t starved, and we’re not going to. …
“This talk of buying up the mines comes at the only time it would have been listened to in the last half-dozen years. It hits us when we’re down, in a way; but the slump’ll pass. There’ve been slumps before, and they’ve passed. … Mr. Armitage thinks so, or he wouldn’t be so keen on getting hold of the mines.
“And as to production of stone and development of the mines, it seems to me we can do more ourselves than any Proprietary Company, Ltd., or syndicate ever made could. Didn’t old Mr. Armitage, himself, say once that he didn’t know a better conducted or more industrious mining community than this one. ‘Why d’y’ think that is?’ I asked him. He said he didn’t know. I said, ‘You don’t think the way the men feel about their work’s got anything to do with it?’ ‘Damn it, Michael,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to think so.’
“And I happen to know”—Michael smiled slightly towards John Armitage, who was gazing at him with tense features and hands tightly folded and crossed under his chin—“that the old man is opposed even now to this scheme because he thinks he won’t get as much black opal out of us as he does under our own way of doing things. He remembers the Cliffs, and what taking over of the mines did for opal—and the men—there. This scheme is Mr. John Armitage’s idea. …
“He’s put it to you. You’ve heard what it is. All I’ve got to say now is, don’t touch it. Don’t have anything to do with it. … It’ll break us … the spirit of the men here … and it’ll break what we’ve been working on all these years. If it means throwing that up, don’t let us see which side our bread’s buttered on, as Mr. M’Ginnis says. Let us say like we always have—like we’ve been proud to say: ‘We’ll eat bread and fat, but we’ll be our own masters!’ ”
“We’ll eat bread and fat, but we’ll be our own masters!” the men who were with Michael roared.
He sat down amid cheers. George and Watty turned in their seats to beam at him, filled with rejoicing.
Armitage rose from his chair and shifted his papers as though he had not quite decided what he intended to say.
“I’m not going to ask this meeting for a decision,” he began.
“You can have it!” Bully Bryant yelled.
“There’s a bit of a rush at Blue Pigeon Creek, and I’m going on up there,” John Armitage continued. “I’m due in Sydney at the end of the month—that is, a month from this date—and I’ll run up then for your answer to the proposition which has been laid before you. I have said all there is to say about it, except that, notwithstanding anything which may have been asserted to the contrary, I hope you will give your gravest consideration to an enterprise, I am convinced, would be in the best interests of this town and of the people of Fallen Star Ridge. I think, however, you ought to know—”
“That Michael Brady’s a liar and a thief!” Charley cried, springing from his corner as if loosed from some invisible leash. “If you believe him, you’re believing a liar and a thief. Mr. Armitage knows … I know … and Paul knows—”
“Throw him out.”
“He’s mad!”
The cries rose in a tumult of angry voices. When they were at their height M’Ginnis was seen on his feet and waving his arms.
“Let him say what he’s got to!” he shouted. “You chaps know as well as I do what’s been going the rounds, and we might as well have it out now. If it’s not true, Michael’d rather have the strength of it, and give you his answer … and if there is anything in it, we’ve got a right to know.”
“That’s right!” some of the men near him chorused.
Newton looked towards George, and George towards Michael.
“Might as well have it,” Michael said.
Charley, who had been hustled against the wall by Potch and Bully Bryant, was loosed. He moved a few steps forward so that everyone could see him, and breathlessly, shivering, in a frenzy of triumphant malice, told his story. Rouminof, carried away by excitement, edged alongside him, chiming into what he was saying with exclamations and chippings of corroboration.
When Charley had finished talking and had fallen back exhausted, Armitage left his chair as if to continue what he had been going to say when Charley took the floor. Instead, he hesitated, and, feeling his way through the silence of consternation and dismay which had stricken everybody, said uncertainly:
“Much as I regret having to do so, I consider it my duty to state that Charley Heathfield’s story, as far as I know it, is substantially correct. Some time ago I was sold a stone in New York. As soon as he saw it, my father said, ‘Why, that’s Michael’s mascot.’ I asked him if he were sure, and he declared that he could not be mistaken about the stone. …
“I told him the story I had got with it. Charley has already told you. That stone came from a parcel Charley supposed contained Rouminof’s opals—the one Paul got when Jun Johnson and he had a run of luck together. The parcel did not contain Rouminof’s opals, and had been exchanged for the parcel which did, either while Rouminof and Charley were going home together or after he had taken them from Rouminof. My father refused to believe that Michael Brady had anything to do with the business. I made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that the man who had always seemed to me the soul of honour and a pattern of the altruistic virtues, I must confess, was responsible for placing that stone in the parcel Charley took down to Sydney … and also that Michael had possession of Rouminof’s opals. Mrs. Johnson will swear she saw Rouminof’s stones on the table of Michael Brady’s hut one evening nearly two years ago.
“I approached Michael myself to try to discover more of the stones. He denied all knowledge of them. But now, before you all, and because it seems to me an outrageous thing for people to ruin themselves on account of their belief in a man who is utterly unworthy of it, I accuse Michael Brady of having stolen Rouminof’s opals. If he has anything to say, now is the time to say it.”
What Armitage said seemed to have paralysed everybody. The silence was heavier, more dismayed than it had been a few minutes before. Nobody spoke nobody moved. Michael’s friends sat with hunched shoulders, not looking at each other, their gaze fixed ahead of them, or on the place where Michael was sitting, waiting to see his face and to hear the first sound of his voice. Potch, who had gone to hold his father back when Charley had made his attack on Michael, stood against the wall, his eyes on Michael, his face illumined by the fire of his faith. His glance swept the crowd as if he would consign it to perdition for its doubt and humiliation of Michael. The silence was invaded by a stir of movement, the shuffle of feet. People began to mutter and whisper together. Still Michael did not move. George Woods turned round to him.
“For God’s sake speak, Michael,” he said. Michael did not move.
Then from the back of the hall marched Snowshoes. Tall and stately, he strode up the narrow passage between the rows of seats wedged close together. People watched him with an abstract curiosity, their minds under the shadow of the accusation against Michael, waiting only to hear what he would say to it. When Snowshoes reached the top of the hall he turned and faced the men he held up a narrow package wrapped in newspaper and before them all handed it to Rouminof, who was still hovering near the edge of the platform.
“Your stones,” he said. “I took them.” And in the same stately, measured fashion he had entered, he walked out of the hall again.
Cheers resounded, cheers on cheers, until the roof rang. There was no hearing anything beyond cheers and cries for Michael. People crushed round him shaking his hand, clinging to him, tears in their eyes. When order was achieved again, it was found that Paul was on the platform going over the stones with Armitage, Newton looking on. Paul was laughing and crying; he had forgotten Charley, forgotten everything but his joy in fingering his lost gems.
When there was a lull in the tempest of excitement and applause, Armitage spoke.
“I’ve got to apologise to you, Michael,” he said. “I do most contritely. … I don’t yet understand—but the facts are, the opals are here, and Mr. Riley has said—”
Michael stood up. His mouth moved and twisted as though he were going to speak before his voice was heard. When it was, it sounded harsh and as if only a great effort of will drove it from him.
“I want to say,” he said, “I did take those stones … not from Paul … but from Charley.”
His words went through the heavy quiet slowly, a vibration of his suffering on every one of them. He told how he had seen Charley and Paul going home together, and how he had seen Charley take the package of opals from Rouminof’s pocket and put them in his own.
“I didn’t want the stones,” Michael cried, “I didn’t ever want them for myself. … It was for Paul I took them back, but I didn’t want him to have them just then. …”
Haltingly, with the same deadly earnestness, he went over the promise he had made to Sophie’s mother, and why he did not want Paul to have the stones and to use them to take Sophie away from the Ridge. But she had gone soon after, and what he had done was of no use. When he explained why he had not then, at once, returned the opals he did not spare himself.
Paul had had sunstroke; but Michael confessed that from the first night he had opened the parcel and had gone over the stones, he had been reluctant to part with them; he had found himself deferring returning them to Paul, making excuses for not doing so. He could not explain the thing to himself even. … He had not looked at the opals except once again, and then it was to see whether, in putting them away hurriedly the first time, any had tumbled out of the tin among his books. Then Potch and Maud had seen him. Afterwards he realised where he was drifting—how the stones were getting hold of him—and in a panic, knowing what that meant, he had gone for the parcel intending to take it to Paul at once and tell him how he, Michael, came to have anything to do with his opals, just as he was telling them. But the parcel was gone.
Michael said he could not think who had found it and taken it away; but now it was clear. Probably Snowshoes had known all the time he had the stones. The more he thought of it, the more Michael believed it must have been so. He remembered the slight stir on the shingly soil as he came from the hut on the night he had taken the opals from Charley. It was just that slight sound Snowshoes’ moccasins made on the shingle. Exclamations and odd queries Snowshoes had launched from time to time came back to Michael. He had no doubt, he said, that Mr. Riley had taken the stones to do just what he had done—and because he feared the influence possession of them was having on him, Michael, since they should have been returned to Paul long ago.
“That’s the truth, as far as I know it,” Michael said. “There’s been attempts made to injure … the Ridge, our way of doing things here, because of me, and because of those stones. … What happened to me doesn’t matter. What happens to the Ridge and the mines does matter. I done wrong. I know I done wrong holding those stones. I’d give anything now if I—if I’d given them to Paul when Sophie went away. But I didn’t … and I’ll stand by anything the men who’ve been my mates care to say or do about that. Only don’t let the Ridge, and our way of doing things here, get hurt through me. That’s bigger—it means more than any man. Don’t let it! … I’d ask George to call a meeting, and get the boys to say what they think about all this—and where I stand.”
Michael put on his hat, dragged it down over his eyes, and walked out of the hall.
When the slow fall of his footsteps no longer sounded on the wooden floor, George Woods rose from his place on the front bench. He turned and faced the men. The smoke from their smouldering pipes had created such a fog that he could see only the bulk of those on the near rows of forms. With the exception of M’Ginnis and half a dozen Punti men who had the far end of one of the front seats, the mass of men in the hall, who a few moments before had been cheering for Michael, were as inert as blown balloons. Depression was in every line of their heavy, squatted shapes and unlighted countenances.
“Well,” George said, “it’s been a bit of a shock what we’ve just heard. It wasn’t easy what Michael’s just done … and Snowshoes, if he’d wanted it, had provided the get-out. But Michael he wouldn’t have it. … At whatever cost to himself, he wanted you to have the truth and to stand by the Ridge … he’d stand by it at any cost. … If there’s a doubt in anyone’s mind as to what he is, what he’s just done proves Michael. I don’t say, as he says himself, that it wouldn’t have been better if he had handed the stones over to Paul when Sophie went away … but after all, what does that amount to as far as Michael’s concerned? We’ve got his record, every one of us, his life here. Does anybody know a mean or selfish thing he’s ever done, Michael?”
No one spoke, and George went on:
“Michael’s asked for trial by his mates—and we’ve got to give it to him, if it’s only to clear up the whole of this business and be done with it. … I move we meet here tomorrow night to settle the thing.”
There was a rumbling murmur, and staccato exclamations of assent. Men in back seats moved to the door; others surged after them. Armitage and his proposals were forgotten.