III
Lying under the coolebah at midday, after they had been burrowing from the shaft for about a week, and Michael was talking of clearing mullock from the drives, Potch said:
“I’m going to sink another hole, Michael—higher up.”
Michael glanced at him. It was unusual for Potch to put a thing in that way, without a by-your-leave, or feeler for advice, or permission; but he was not disturbed by his doing so.
“Right,” he said; “you sink another hole, Potch. I’ll stick to this one for a bit.”
Potch began to break earth again next morning. He chose his site carefully, to the right of the one he had been working on, and all the morning he swung his heavy pick and shovelled earth from the shaft he was making. He worked slowly, doggedly. When he came on sandstone he had been three weeks on the job.
“Ought to be near bottoming, Potch,” Roy remarked one day towards the end of the three weeks.
“Be there today,” Potch said.
Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, unable to suppress his impatience, and calling down the shaft now and then.
Potch believed so in this claim of his that his belief had raised a certain amount of expectation. His report, too, was going to make considerable difference to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well: they had cut out a pocket worth £400 as a result of their sinking, and it remained to be seen what Potch’s new hole would bring. A good prospect would make the new field, it was reckoned.
Potch’s prospect was disappointing, however, and of no sensational value when he did bottom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of promising colours, and Michael left the first shaft they had sunk on the coolebah to work with Potch in the new mine.
They had been on the new claim, with nothing to show for their pains, for nearly two months, the afternoon Potch, who had been shifting opal dirt of a dark strain below the steel band on the south side of the mine, uttered a low cry.
“Michael,” he called.
Michael, gouging in a drive a few yards away, knew the meaning of that joyous vibration in a man’s voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went to Potch.
Potch was holding his spider off from a surface of opal his pick had clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leaping, dancing, and quivering together in the red earth of the mine. Michael swore reverently when he saw it. Potch moved his candle before the chipped corner of the stones which he had worked round sufficiently to show that a knobby of some size was embedded in the wall of the mine.
“Looks a beaut, doesn’t she, Michael?” he gasped.
Michael breathed hard.
“By God—” he murmured.
Paul, hearing the murmur of their voices, joined them.
He screamed when he saw the stone.
“I knew!” he yelled. “I knew we’d strike it here.”
“Well, stand back while I get her out,” Potch cried.
Michael trembled as Potch fitted his spider and began to break the earth about the opal, working slowly, cautiously, and rubbing the earth away with his hands. Michael watched him apprehensively, exclaiming with wonder and admiration as the size of the stone was revealed.
When Potch had worked it out of its socket, the knobby was found to be even bigger than they had thought at first. The stroke which located it had chipped one side so that its quality was laid bare, and the chipped surface had the blaze and starry splendour of the finest black opal. Michael and Potch examined the stone, turned it over and over, tremulous and awed by its size and magnificence. Paul was delirious with excitement.
He was first above ground, and broke the news of Potch’s find to the men who were knocking off for the day on other claims. When Michael and Potch came up, nearly a dozen men were collected about the dump. They gazed at the stone with oaths and exclamations of amazement and admiration.
“You’ve struck it this time, Potch!” Roy O’Mara said.
Potch flushed, rubbed the stone on his trousers, licked the chipped surface, and held it to the sun again.
“It’s the biggest knobby—ever I see,” Archie Cross said.
“Same here,” Bill Grant muttered.
“Wants polishin’ up a bit,” Michael said, “and then she’ll show better.”
As soon as he got home, Potch went into Paul’s hut and faced the stone on Sophie’s wheel. Paul and Michael hung over him as he worked; and when he had cleaned it up and put it on the rouge buffer, they were satisfied that it fulfilled the promise of its chipped side. Nearly as big as a hen’s egg, clean, hard opal of prismatic fires in sparkling jet, they agreed that it as the biggest and finest knobby either of them had ever seen.
Potch took his luck quietly, although there were repressed emotion and excitement in his voice as he talked.
Michael marvelled at the way he went about doing his ordinary little odd jobs of the evening, when they returned to their own hut. Potch brought in and milked the goats, set out the pannikins and damper, and made tea.
When Michael and Potch had finished their meal and put away their plates, food, and pannikins, Michael picked up the stone from the shelf where Potch had put it, wrapped in the soft rag of an oatmeal bag. He threw himself on the sofa under the window and held the opal to the light, turning it and watching the stars spawn in its firmament of crystal ebony. Potch pulled a book from his pocket and sprawled across the table to read.
Michael regarded him wonderingly. Had the boy no imagination? Did the magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael’s eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby ever taken out of the fields.
Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered book.
As he gazed at the big opal, a vision of Paul’s opals flashed before him. The consternation and dismay that had made him scarcely conscious of what he was doing the night Potch found him with them, and Maud Johnson had come for Potch to go to see her sick goat, overwhelmed him again. He had not yet given the opals to Paul, he remembered, or explained to Potch and the rest of the men how he came to have them.
Any other mate than Potch would have resented his holding opals like that and saying nothing of them. But there was no resentment in Potch’s bearing to him, Michael had convinced himself. Yet Potch must know about the stones; he must have seen them. Michael could find no reason for his silence and the unaltered serenity of the affection in his eyes, except that Potch had that absolute belief in him which rejects any suggestion of unworthiness in the object of its belief.
But since—since he had made up his mind to give the opals to Paul—since Sophie had gone, and there was no chance of their doing her any harm; since that night Potch and Maud had seen him, why had he not given them to Paul? Why had he not told Potch how the opals Potch had seen him with had come into his possession? Michael put the questions to himself, hardly daring, and yet knowing, he must search for the answer in the mysterious no-man’s land of his subconsciousness.
Paul’s slow recovery from sunstroke was a reason for deferring explanation about the stones and for not giving them back to him, in the first instance. After Potch and Maud had seen him with the opals, Michael had intended to go at once to George and Watty and tell them his story. But the more he had thought of what he had to do, the more difficult it seemed. He had found himself shrinking from fulfilment of his intention. Interest in the new claim and the excitement of bottoming on opal had for a time almost obliterated memory of Paul’s opals.
But he had only put off telling Potch, Michael assured himself; he had only put off giving the stones back to Paul. There was no motive in this putting off. It was mental indolence, procrastination, reluctance to face a difficult and delicate situation: that was all. Having the opals had worried him to death. It had preyed on his mind so that he was ready to imagine himself capable of any folly or crime in connection with them. … He mocked his fears of himself.
Michael went over all he had done, all that had happened in connection with the opals, seeking out motives, endeavouring to fathom his own consciousness and to be honest with himself.
As if answering an evocation, the opals passed before him in a vision. He followed their sprayed fires reverently. Then, as if one starry ray had shed illumination in its passing, a daze of horror and amazement seized him. He had taken his own rectitude so for granted that he could not believe he might be guilty of what the light had shown lurking in a dark corner of his mind.
Had Paul’s stones done that to him? Michael asked himself. Had their witch fires eaten into his brain? He had heard it said men who were misers, who hoarded opal, were mesmerised by the lights and colour of the stuff; they did not want to part with it. Was that what Paul’s stones had done to him? Had they mesmerised him, so that he did not want to part with them? Michael was aghast at the idea. He could not believe he had become so besotted in his admiration of black opal that he was ready to steal—steal from a mate. The opal had never been found, he assured himself, which could put a spell over his brain to make him do that. And yet, he realised, the stones themselves had had something to do with his reluctance to talk of them to Potch, and with the deferring of his resolution to give them to Paul and let the men know what he had done. Whenever he had attempted to bring his resolution to talk of them to the striking-point, he remembered, the opals had swarmed before his dreaming eyes; his will had weakened as he gazed on them, and he had put off going to Paul and to Watty and George.
Stung to action by realisation of what he had been on the brink of, Michael went to the box of books in his room. He determined to take the packet of opals to Paul immediately, and go on to tell George and Watty its history. As he plunged an arm down among the books for the cigarette tin the opals were packed in, he made up his mind not to look at them for fear some reason or excuse might hinder the carrying out of his project. His fingers groped eagerly for the package; he threw out a few books.
He had put the tin in a corner of the box, under an old Statesman’s yearbook and a couple of paper-covered novels. But it was not there; it must have slipped, or he had piled books over it, at some time or another, he thought. He threw out all the books in the box and raked them over—but he could not find the tin with Paul’s opals in.
He sat back on his haunches, his face lean and ghastly by the candle-fight.
“They’re gone,” he told himself.
He wondered whether he could have imagined replacing the package in the box—if there was anywhere else he could have put it, absentmindedly; but his eyes returned to the box. He knew he had put the opals there.
Who could have found them? Potch? His mind turned from the idea.
Nobody had known of them. Nobody knew just where to put a hand on them—not even Potch. Who else could have come into the hut, or suspected the opals were in that box. Paul? He would not have been able to contain his joy if he had come into possession of any opal worth speaking of. Who else might suspect him of hoarding opal of any value. His mind hovered indecisively. Maud?
Michael remembered the night she had come for Potch and had seen that gold-and-red-fired stone on the table. His imagination attached itself to the idea. The more he thought of it, the surer he felt that Maud had come for the stone she had offered to buy from him. There was nothing to prevent her walking into the hut and looking for it, any time during the day when he and Potch were away at the mine. And if she would rat, Michael thought she would not object to taking stones from a man’s hut either. Of course, it might not be Maud; but he could think of no one else who knew he had any stone worth having.
If Maud had taken the stones, Jun would recognise them, Michael knew. By and by the story would get round, Jun would see to that. And when Jun told where those opals of Paul’s had been found, as he would some day—Michael could not contemplate the prospect.
He might tell men of the Ridge his story now and forestall Jun; but it would sound thin without the opals to verify it, and the opportunity to restore them to Paul. Michael thought he had sufficient weight with men of the Ridge to impress them with the truth of what he said; but knowledge of a subtle undermining of his character, for which possession of the opals was responsible, gave him such a consciousness of guilt that he could not face the men without being able to give Paul the stones and prove he was not as guilty as he felt.
Overwhelmed and unable to throw off a sense of shame and defeat, Michael sat on the floor of his room, books thrown out of the box all round him. He could not understand even now how those stones of Paul’s had worked him to the state of mind they had. He did not even know they had brought him to the state of mind he imagined they had, or whether his fear of that state of mind had precipitated it. He realised the effect of the loss more than the thing itself, as he crouched beside the empty book-box, foreseeing the consequences to his work and to the Ridge, of the story Jun would tell—that he, Michael Brady, who had held such high faiths, and whose allegiance to them had been taken as a matter of course, was going to be known as a filcher of other men’s stones, and that he who had formulated and inspired the Ridge doctrine was going to be judged by it.