Michael was so spent in body and mind that what Martha was saying did not at first make any impression on his mind. She seemed to be telling him a long and dolorous tale of something which had happened a long time ago, to people he had once known. In a waking nightmare, realisation that it was Sophie she was talking of dawned on him.
“He tried to make her,” Martha was saying when he began to listen intently. “He said he’d been weak and a fool all his days. But he wasn’t any more. He was strong now. He knew what he wanted, and he meant to have it. … Sophie was his, he said. Nothing in the world would ever make her anything but his. She knew it, and he knew it. … And Sophie hid her face in her hands. He took her hands away from her face and dragged her to her feet. He asked her if he was her mate.
“She said ‘Yes.’
“ ‘Then you’ve got to come with me,’ he said.
“But she wouldn’t go, Michael. She tried to explain it was the Ridge—what the Ridge stood for—she must stay to work for. She’d sworn to, she said. He cursed the Ridge and all of us, Michael. He said that he wouldn’t let her go on living with Potch—be his wife. That he’d kill her, and himself, and Potch, rather than let her. … I never heard a man go on like he did, Michael. I never want to again. Half the time he was raging mad, then crying like a child. But in the end he said, quite quietly:
“ ‘Will you come with me, Sophie?’
“And she said, quiet like that, too, ‘No.’
“He went out of the hut. … I heard him ride away. Sophie cried after him. She put out her arms … but she couldn’t speak. And if you had seen her face, Michael—She just stood there against the wall, listening to the hoof-beats. … When we couldn’t hear them any more, she stood there listening just the same. I went to her and tried to—to waken her—she seemed to have gone off into a sort of trance, Michael. … After a while she did wake; but she looked at me as if she didn’t know me. She walked about for a bit, she walked round the table, and then she went out as though she were goin’ for a walk. I told her not to go far … not to be long … but I don’t think she heard me. … I watched her walking out towards the old rush. … And she isn’t back yet. …”
“It’s too much,” Michael muttered.
He sat with his head buried in his hands.
“What’s to be done about it?” he asked at last.
Martha shook her head.
“I don’t know. Sophie’ll go through with her part, I suppose … as her mother did.”
Michael’s face quivered.
“He’s such an outsider,” he groaned. “Sophie’d never give up the things we stand for here, now she understands them.”
“That’s just it,” Martha said. “She doesn’t want to—but there’s something stronger than herself draggin’ at her … it’s something that’s been in all the women she’s come of—the feeling a woman’s got for the man who’s her mate. Sophie married Potch, it’s my belief, to get away from this man. She wanted to chain herself to us and her life here. She wants to stay with us. … She was kept up at first by ideas of duty and sacrifice, and serving something more than her own happiness. But love’s like murder, Michael—it must out, and it’s a good thing it must. …”
“And what about Potch?” Michael asked.
“Potch?” Martha smiled. “The dear lad … he’ll stand up to things. There are people like that—and there’re people like Arthur Henty who can’t stand up to things. It’s not their fault they’re made that way … and they go under when they have too much to bear.”
“Curse him,” Michael groaned. “I wish he’d kept out of our lives.”
“So do I,” Martha said; “but he hasn’t.”
Potch came in. He looked from Martha to Michael.
“Where’s Sophie?” he asked.
“She … went out for a walk, a while ago,” Martha said.
At first Martha believed Potch knew what had happened. In his eyes there was an awe and horror which communicated itself to Martha and Michael, and held them dumb.
“Henty has shot himself down in the tank paddock,” he said at length.
Martha uttered a low wail. Michael looked at Potch, waiting to hear further.
“Some of the boys going home to the Three Mile heard the shot, and went over,” Potch said. “I wanted to tell Sophie myself. … They were looking for you in the town, Martha.”
“Oh!” Martha got up and went to the door.
“He’s at Newton’s,” Potch said. “Which way did Sophie go?”
“She went towards the Old Town, Potch,” Martha said.
The chestnut Arthur Henty had brought for Sophie, still standing with reins over a post of the goat-pen, whinnied when he saw them at the door of the hut. Potch looked at him as if he were wondering why the horse was there—a vague perplexity defined itself through the troubled abstraction of his gaze. His eyes went to Martha as if asking her how the horse came to be there; but she did not offer any explanation. She went off down the track to Newton’s, and he struck out towards the Old Town.
Potch wandered over the plains looking for Sophie. She was not in any of her usual haunts. He wandered, looking for her, calling her, wondering what this news would mean to her. Vaguely, instinctively he knew. Prom the time of their marriage nothing had been said between them of Arthur Henty.
“Sophie! Sophie!” he called.
The stars were swarming points of silver fire in the blue-black sky. He wandered, calling still.
