The Black Opal by Katharine Susannah Prichard (english novels to improve english TXT) 📕

of understanding. If she had been near enough to talk to, he knew he could have explained that the girl was right: neither of them had any right to interfere with the course of her life. She had to go her own way; to learn joy and sorrow for herself.

Too late Michael realised that he had done all the harm in the world by seeking to make Sophie go his own and her mother’s way. He had opposed the tide of her youth and enthusiasm, instead of sympathising with it; and by so doing he had made it possible for someone else to sympathise and help her to go her own way. Opposition had forced her life into channels which he was afraid would heap sorrows upon her, whereas identification with her feeling and aspirations might have saved her the hurt and turmoil he had sought to save her.

Thought of what he had done to prevent Paul taking Sophie away haunted Michael. But, after all, he assured himself, he had not stolen from Paul. Charley had stolen from Paul, and he, Michael, was only holding Paul’s opals until he could give them to Paul when his having them would not do Sophie any harm.⁠ ⁠… His having them now could not injure Sophie.⁠ ⁠… Michael decided to give Paul the opals and explain how he came to have them, when the shock of what Jun had said left him. He tried not to think of that, although a consciousness of it was always with him.⁠ ⁠… But Paul was delirious with sunstroke, he remembered; it would be foolish to give him the stones just then.⁠ ⁠… As soon as that touch of the sun had passed, Michael reflected, he would give Paul the opals and explain how he came to have them.⁠ ⁠…

Part II I

The summer Sophie left the Ridge was a long and dry one. Cool changes blew over, but no rain fell. The still, hot days and dust-storms continued until March.

Through the heat came the baaing of sheep on the plains, moving in great flocks, weary and thirsty; the blaring of cattle; the harsh crying of crows following the flocks and waiting to tear the dead flesh from the bones of spent and drought-stricken beasts. The stock routes were marked by the bleached bones of cattle and sheep which had fallen by the road, and the stench of rotting flesh blew with the hot winds and dust from the plains.

It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather. Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before the heat of the day began.

In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump, handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone, shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air. But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay, moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the busy underground world of the mines.

As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium of sunstroke, and Paul’s hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it. Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning; he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie’s room open sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once, in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti⁠—the yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat’s-milk butter or cheese for the two huts.

People at first were surprised at Potch’s care of Paul; then they regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of. And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so. He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself did.

A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought much of him. “Potch,” they would say, as his father used to, “a little bit of potch!” Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley Heathfield’s son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house, thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut.

“He’s the only mate worth