IV
Michael and Potch were finishing their tea when Watty burst in on them. His colour was up, his small, blue eyes winking and flashing over his fat, pink cheeks.
“Who d’y’ think’s come be motor today, Michael?” he gasped.
Michael’s movement and the shade of apprehension which crossed his face were a question.
“Old man Armitage!” Watty said. “And he’s come all the way from New York to see the big opal, he says.”
There was a rumble of cart wheels, an exclamation and the reverberation of a broad, slow voice out-of-doors. Watty looked through Michael’s window.
“Here he is, Michael,” he said. “George and Peter are helping him out of Newton’s dogcart. And Archie Cross and Bill Grant are coming along the road a bit behind.”
Michael pushed back his seat and pulled the fastenings from his front door. The front door was more of a decoration and matter of form in the face of the hut than intended to serve any useful purpose, and the fastening had never been moved before.
Potch cleared away the litter of the meal while Michael went out to meet the old man. He was walking with the help of a stick, his heavy, colourless face screwed with pain.
“Grr-rr!” he grunted. “What a fool I was to come to this Goddamn place of yours, George! What? No fool like an old one? Don’t know so much about that. … What else was I to do? Brrr! Oh, there you are, Michael! Came to see you. Came right away because, from what the boys tell me, you weren’t likely to slip down and call on me.”
“I’d ’ve come all right if I’d known you wanted to see me, Mr. Armitage,” Michael said.
The old man went into the hut and, creaking and groaning as though all his springs needed oiling, seated himself on the sofa, whipped out a silk handkerchief and wiped his face and head with it.
“Oh, well,” he said, “here I am at last—and mighty glad to get here. The journey from New York City, where I reside, to this spot on the globe, don’t get any nearer as I grow older. No, sir! Who’s that young man?”
Mr. Armitage had fixed his eyes on Potch from the moment he came into the hut. Potch stood to his gaze.
“That’s Potch,” Michael said.
“Potch?”
The small, round eyes, brown with black rims and centres, beginning to dull with age, winked over Potch, and in that moment Dawe Armitage was trying to discover what his chances of getting possession of the stone he had come to see, were with the man who had found it.
“Con—gratulate you, young man,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ve come, Lord knows how many miles, to have a look at that stone of yours.”
Potch shook hands with him.
“They tell me it’s the finest piece of opal ever come out of Ridge earth,” the old man continued. “Well, I couldn’t rest out there at home without havin’ a look at it. To think there was an opal like that about, and I couldn’t get me fingers on it! And when I thought how it was I’d never even see it, perhaps, I danged ’em to Hades—doctors, family and all—took me passage out here. Ran away! That’s what I did.” He chuckled with reminiscent glee. “And here I am.”
“Cleared out, did y’, Mr. Armitage?” Watty asked.
“That’s it, Watty,” old Armitage answered, still chuckling. “Cleared out. … Family’ll be scarrifyin’ the States for me. Sent ’em a cable when I got here to say I’d arrived.”
Michael and George laughed with Watty, and the old man looked as pleased with himself as a schoolboy who has brought off some soul-satisfying piece of mischief.
“Tell you, boys,” he said, “I felt I couldn’t die easy knowing there was a stone like that about and I’d never clap eyes on it. … Know you chaps’d pretty well turned me down—me and mine—and I wouldn’t get more than a squint at the stone for my pains. You’re such damned independent beggars! Eh, Michael? That’s the old argument, isn’t it? How did y’ like those papers I sent you—and that book … by the foreign devil—what’s his name? Clever, but mad. Y’r all mad, you socialists, syndicalists, or whatever y’r call y’rselves nowadays. … But, for God’s sake, let me have a look at the stone now, there’s a good fellow.”
Michael looked at Potch.
“You get her, Potch,” he said.
Potch put his hand to the top of the shelf where, in an old tin, the great opal lay wrapped in wadding, with a few soft cloths about it. He put the tin on the table. Michael pushed the table toward the sofa on which Mr. Armitage was sitting. The old man leaned forward, his lips twitching, his eyes watering with eagerness. Potch’s clumsy fingers fumbled with the wrappings; he spread the wadding on the table. The opal flashed black and shining between the rags and wadding as Potch put it on the table. Michael had lighted a candle and brought it alongside.
Dawe Armitage gaped at the stone with wide, dazed eyes.
“My!” he breathed; and again: “My!” Then: “She was worth it, Michael,” fell from him in an awed exclamation.
He looked up, and the men saw tears of reverence and emotion in his eyes. He brushed them away and put out his hand to take the stone. He lifted the stone, gently and lovingly, as if it were alive and might be afraid at the approach of his wrinkled old hand. But it was not afraid, Potch’s opal; it fluttered with delight in the hand of this old man, who was a devout lover, and rayed itself like a bird of paradise. Even to the men who had seen the stone before, it had a new and uncanny brilliance. It seemed to coquet with Dawe Armitage; to pour out its infinitesimal stars—red, blue, green, gold, and amethyst—blazing, splintering, and coruscating to dazzle and bewilder him.
The men exclaimed as Mr. Armitage moved the opal. Then he put the stone down and mopped his forehead.
“Well,” he said, “I reckon she’s the Goddamnedest piece of opal I’ve ever seen.”
“She is that,” Watty declared.
“What have you got on her, Michael?” Dawe Armitage queried.
A faint smile touched Michael’s mouth.
“I’m only asking,” Armitage remarked apologetically. “I can tell you, boys, it’s a pretty bitter thing for me to be out of the running for a stone like this. I ain’t even bidding, you see—just inquiring, that’s all.”
Michael looked at Potch.
“Well,” he said, “it’s Potch’s first bit of luck, and I reck’n he’s got the say about it.”
The old man looked at Potch. He was a good judge of character. His chance of getting the stone from Michael was remote; from Potch—a steady, flat look in the eyes, a stolidity and inflexibility about the young man, did not give Dawe Armitage much hope where he was concerned either.
“They tell me,” Mr. Armitage said, the twinkling of a smile in his eyes as he realised the metal of his adversary—“they tell me,” he repeated, “you’ve refused three hundred pounds for her?”
“That’s right,” Potch said.
“How much do you reck’n she’s worth?”
“I don’t know.”
“How much have you got on her?”
Potch looked at Michael.
“We haven’t fixed any price,” he said.
“Four hundred pounds?” Armitage asked.
Potch’s grey eyes lay on his for the fraction of a second.
“You haven’t got money enough to buy that stone, Mr. Armitage,” he said, quietly.
The old man was crestfallen. Although he pretended that he had no hope of buying the opal, everybody knew that, hoping against hope, he had not altogether despaired of being able to prevail against the Ridge resolution not to sell to Armitage and Son, in this instance. Potch remarked vaguely that he had to see Paul, and went out of the hut.
“Oh, well,” Dawe Armitage said, “I suppose that settles the matter. Daresay I was a durned old fool to try the boy—but there you are. Well, since I can’t have her, Michael, see nobody else gets her for less than my bid.”
The men were sorry for the old man. What Potch had said was rather like striking a man when he was down, they thought; and they were not too pleased about it.
“Potch doesn’t seem to fancy sellin’ at all for a bit,” Michael said.
“What!” Armitage exclaimed. “He’s not a miser—at his age?”
“It’s not that,” Michael replied.
“Oh, well”—the old man’s gesture disposed of the matter. He gazed at the stone entranced again. “But she’s the koh-i-noor of opals, sure enough. But tell me”—he sat back on the sofa for a yarn—“what’s the news of the field? Who’s been getting the stuff?”
The gossip of Jun and the ratting was still the latest news of the Ridge; but Mr. Armitage appeared to know as much of that as anybody. Ed Ventry’s boy, who had motored him over from Budda, had told him about it, he said. He had no opinion of Jun.
“A bad egg,” he said, and began to talk about bygone days on the Ridge. There was nothing in the world he liked better than smoking and yarning with men of the Ridge about black opal.
He was fond of telling his family and their friends, who were too nice and precise in their manners for his taste, and who thought him a boor and mad on the subject of black opal, that the happiest times of his life had been spent on Fallen Star Ridge, “swappin’ lies with the gougers”; yarning with them about the wonderful stuff they had got, and other chaps had got, or looking over some of the opal he had bought, or was going to buy from them.
“Oh, well,” Mr. Armitage said after they had been talking for a long time, “it’s great sitting here yarning with you chaps. Never thought … I’d be sitting here like this again. …”
“It’s fine to have a yarn with you, Mr. Armitage,” Michael said.
“Thank you, Michael,” the old man replied. “But I suppose I must be putting my old bones to bed. … There’s something else I want to talk to you about though, Michael.”
The men turned to the door, judging from Mr. Armitage’s tone that what he had to say was for Michael alone.
“I’ll just have a look if that bally mare of mine’s all right, Mr. Armitage,” Peter Newton said.
He went to the door, and the rest of the men followed him.
“Well, Michael,” Dawe Armitage said when the men had gone out, “I guess you know what it is I want to talk to you about.”
Michael jerked his head slightly by way of acknowledgment.
“That little girl of yours.”
Michael smiled. It always pleased and amused him to hear people talk as if he and not Paul were Sophie’s father.
“She”—old Armitage leaned back on the sofa, and a shade of perplexity crossed his face—“I’ve seen a good deal of her, Michael, and I’ve tried to keep an eye on her—but I don’t mind admitting to you that a man needs as many eyes as a centipede has legs to know what’s coming to him where Sophie’s concerned. But first of all … she’s well … and happy—at least, she appears to be; and she’s a great little lady.”
He brooded a moment, and Michael smoked, watching his face as though it were a page he were trying to read.
“You know, she’s singing at one of the theatres in New York, and they say she’s doing well. She’s sought after—made much of. She’s got little old Manhattan at her feet, as they say. … I don’t want to gloss over anything that son of mine may have done—but to put it in a nutshell, Michael, he’s in love with her. He’s really in love with her—wants to marry her, but Sophie won’t have him.”
Michael did not speak, and he continued:
“And there’s this to be said for him. She says it. He isn’t quite so much to blame as we first thought. Seems he’d been making love to her … and did a break before. … He didn’t mean to be a blackguard, y’ see. You know what I’m driving at, Michael. He loved the girl and went—She says when she knew he had gone away, she went after him. Then—well, you know, Michael … you’ve been young … you’ve been in love. And in Sydney … summertime … with the harbour there at your feet. …
“They were happy enough when they came to America. How they escaped the emigration authorities, I don’t know. They make enough fuss about an old fogey like me, as if I had a harem up me sleeve. But still, when I found her they were still happy, and she was having dancing lessons, had made up her mind to go on the stage, and wouldn’t hear of getting married. Seemed to think it was a kind of barbarous business, gettin’ married. Said her mother had been married—and look what it had brought her to.
“She’s fond of John, too,” the old man continued. “But, at present, New York’s a sideshow, and she’s enjoying it like a child on a holiday from the country. I’ve got her living with an old maid cousin of mine. … Sophie says by and by perhaps she’ll marry John, but not yet—not now—she’s having too good a time. She’s got all the money she wants … all the gaiety and admiration. It’s not the sort of life I like for a woman myself … but I’ve done my best, Michael.”
There was something pathetic about the quiver which took the old face before him. Michael responded to it gratefully.
“You have that, I believe, Mr. Armitage,” he said, “and I’m grateful to you.”
“Tell you the truth, Michael,” he said, “I’m fond of her. I feel about her as if she were a piece of live opal—the best bit that fool of a son of mine ever brought from the Ridge. …”
His face writhed as he got up from the sofa.
“But I must be going, Michael. Rouminof had a touch of the sun a while ago, they tell me. Never been quite himself since. Bad business that. Better go and have a look at him. Yes? Thanks, Michael; thanks. It’s a Goddamned business growing old, Michael. Never knew I had so many bones in me body.”
Leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled to the door. Michael gave him his arm, and they went to Rouminof’s hut.
Potch had told Paul of Dawe P. Armitage’s arrival; that he had come to the Ridge to see the big opal, and was in Michael’s hut. Paul had gone to bed, but was all eagerness to get up and go to see Mr. Armitage. He was sitting on his bed, weak and dishevelled-looking, shirt and trousers on, while Potch was hunting for his boots, when Michael and Mr. Armitage came into the room.
After he had asked Paul how he was, and had gossiped with him awhile, Mr. Armitage produced an illustrated magazine from one of the outer pockets of his overcoat.
“Thought you’d like to see these pictures of Sophie, Rouminof,” he said. “She’s well, and doing well. The magazine will tell you about that. And I brought along this.” He held out a photograph. “She wouldn’t give me a photograph for you, Michael—said you’d never know her—so I prigged this from her sitting-room last time I was there.”
Michael glanced at the photographer’s card of heavy grey paper, which Mr. Armitage was holding. He would know Sophie, anyhow and anywhere, he thought; but he agreed that she was right when, the card in his hands, he gazed at the elegant, bizarre-looking girl in the photograph. She was so unlike the Sophie he had known that he closed his eyes on the picture, pain, and again a dogging sense of failure and defeat filtering through all his consciousness.