The Boss of Taroomba

"And a very good top-score, too, Harry. I'd rather spend three months over the shearing than have sheep cut about and wool left on. What was that number I asked you to keep in mind, Mr. Engelhardt?"

"Nineteen, Miss Pryse."

"Ah, yes! Who's number nineteen, Harry?"

Harry grinned.

"They call him the ringer of the shed, miss."

"Oh, indeed. That means the fastest shearer, Mr. Engelhardt – the man who runs rings round the rest, eh, Harry? What's his top-score, do you suppose?"

"Something over two hundred."

"I thought as much. And his name?"

"Simons, miss."

"Point him out, Harry."

"Why, there he is; that big chap now helping himself to a woolly."

They turned and saw a huge fellow drag out an unshorn sheep by the leg, and fling it against his moleskins with a clearly unnecessary violence and cruelty.

"Come on, Mr. Engelhardt," said Naomi, in her driest tones; "I have a word to say to the ringer of the shed. I rather think he won't ring much longer."

They walked on and watched the long man at his work. It was the work of a ruffian. The shearer next him had started on a new sheep simultaneously, and was on farther than the brisket when the ringer had reached the buttocks. On the brisket of the ringer's sheep a slit of livid blue had already filled with blood, and blood started from other places as he went slashing on. He was either too intent or too insolent to take the least heed of the lady and the young man watching him. The young man's heart was going like a clock in the night, and he was sufficiently ashamed of it. As for Naomi, she was visibly boiling over, but she held her tongue until the sheep rose bleeding from its fleece. Then, as the man was about to let the poor thing go, she darted between it and the hole.

"Tar here on the brisket!" she called down the board.

A boy came at a run and dabbed the wounds.

"Why didn't you call him yourself?" she then asked sternly of the man, still detaining his sheep.

"What business is that of yours?" he returned, impudently.

"That you will see presently. How many sheep did you shear yesterday?"

"Two hundred and two."

"And the day before?"

"Two hundred and five."

"That will do. It's too much, my man, you can't do it properly. I've had a look at your sheep, and I mean to run your pen. What's more, if you don't intend to go slower and do better, you may throw down your shears this minute!"

The man had slowly lifted himself to something like his full height, which was enormous. So were his rounded shoulders and his long hairy arms and hands. So was his face, with its huge hook-nose and its mouthful of yellow teeth. These were showing in an insolent yet savage grin, when a good thing happened at a very good time.

A bell sounded, and someone sang out, "Smoke-oh!"

Instantly many pairs of shears were dropped; in the ensuing two minutes the rest followed, as each man finished the sheep he was engaged on when the bell rang. Thus the swish and tinkle of the shears changed swiftly to a hum of conversation mingled with deep-drawn sighs. And this stopped suddenly, miraculously, as the shed opened its eyes and ears to the scene going forward between its notorious ringer and Naomi Pryse, the owner of the run.

In another moment men with pipes in their hands and sweat on their brows were edging toward the pair from right and left.

"Your name, I think, is Simons?" Naomi was saying, coolly, but so that all who had a mind might hear her. "I have no more to say to you, Simons, except that you will shear properly or go where they like their sheep to have lumps of flesh taken out and lumps of wool left on."

"Since when have you been over the board, miss?" asked Simons, a little more civilly under the eyes of his mates.

"I am not over the board," said Naomi, hotly, "but I am over the man who is."

She received instant cause to regret this speech.

"We wish you was!" cried two or three. "You wouldn't make a blooming mull of things, you wouldn't!"

"I'll take my orders from Mr. Gilroy, and from nobody else," said Simons, defiantly.

"Well, you may take fair warning from me."

"That's as I like."

"It's as I like," said Naomi. "And look here, I won't waste more words upon you and I won't stand your impertinence. Better throw down your shears now – for I've done with you – before I call upon your mates to take them from you."

"We don't need calling, miss, not we!"

Half a dozen fine fellows had stepped forward, with Harry at their head, and the affair was over. Simons had flung his shears on the floor with a clatter and a curse, and was striding out of the shed amid the hisses and imprecations of his comrades.

Naomi would have got away, too, for she had had more than enough of the whole business, but this was not so easy. Someone raised three cheers for her. They were given with a roar that shook the iron roof like thunder. And to cap all this a gray old shearer planted himself in her path.

"It's just this way, miss," said he. "We liked Simons little enough, but, begging your pardon, we like Mr. Gilroy less. He doesn't know how to treat us at all. He has no idea of bossing a shed like this. And mark my words, miss, unless you remove that man, and give us some smarter gentleman like, say, young Mr. Chester – "

"Ay, Chester'll do!"

"He knows his business!"

"He's a man, he is – "

"And the man for us!"

"Unless you give us someone more to our fancy, like young Mr. Chester," concluded the old man, doing his best to pacify his mates with look and gesture, "there'll be further trouble. This is only the beginning. There'll be trouble, and maybe worse, until you make a change."

Naomi felt inexpressibly uncomfortable.

"Mr. Gilroy is the manager of this station," said she, for once with a slight tremor in her voice. "Any difference that you have with him, you must fight it out between you. I am quite sure that he means to be just. I, at any rate, must interfere no more. I am sorry I interfered at all."

So they let her go at last, the piano-tuner following close upon her heels. He had stuck to her all the time with shut mouth and twitching fingers, ready for anything, as he was ready still. And the first person these two encountered in the open air was Gilroy himself, with so white a face and such busy lips that they hardly required him to tell them he had heard all.

"I am very sorry, Monty," said the girl, in a distressed tone which highly surprised her companion; "but I simply couldn't help it. You can't stand by and see a sheep cut to pieces without opening your mouth. Yet I know I was at fault."

"It's not much good knowing it now," returned Gilroy, ungraciously, as he rolled along at her side; "you should have thought of that first. As it is, you've given me away to the shed, and made a tough job twice as tough as it was before."

"I really am very sorry, Monty. I know I oughtn't to have interfered at all. At the same time, the man deserved sending away, and I am sure you would have been the first to send him had you seen what I saw. I know I should have waited and spoken to you; but I shall keep away from the shed in future."

"That won't undo this morning's mischief. I heard what the brutes said to you!"

"Then you must have heard what I said to them. Don't try to make me out worse than I am, Monty."

She laid her hand upon his arm, and Engelhardt, to his horror, saw tears on her lashes. Gilroy, however, would not look at her. Instead, he hailed the store-keeper, who had passed them on his way to the huts.

"Make out Simons's account, Sandy," he shouted at the top of his voice, "and give him his check. Miss Pryse has thought fit to sack him over my head!"

Instantly her penitence froze to scorn.

"That was unnecessary," she said, in the same quiet tone she had employed toward the shearer, but dropping her arm and halting dead as she spoke. "If this is the way you treat the men, no wonder you can't manage them. Come, Mr. Engelhardt!"

And with this they turned their back on the manager, but not on the shed; that was not Naomi's way at all. She was pre-eminently one to be led, not driven, and she remained upon the scene, showing Engelhardt everything, and explaining the minutest details for his benefit, much longer than she would have dreamt of staying in the ordinary course of affairs. This involved luncheon in the manager's hut, at which meal Naomi appeared in the highest spirits, cracking jokes with Sanderson, chaffing the boy in spectacles, and clinking pannikins with everyone but the manager himself. The latter left early, after steadily sulking behind his plate, with his beard in his waistcoat and his yellow head presented like a bull's. Tom Chester was not there at all. Engelhardt was sorry, though the others treated him well enough to-day – Sanderson even cutting up his meat for him. It was three o'clock before Naomi and he started homeward in the old Shanghai.

With the wool-shed left a mile behind, they overtook a huge horseman leading a spare horse.

"That's our friend Simons," said Naomi. "I wonder what sort of a greeting he'll give me. None at all, I should imagine."

She was wrong. The shearer reined up on one side of the track, and gave her a low bow, wide-awake in hand, and with it a kind of a glaring grin that made his teeth stand out like brass-headed nails in the afternoon sunshine. Naomi laughed as they drove on.

"Pretty, wasn't it? That man loves me to distraction, I should say. On the whole we may claim to have had a rather lively day. First came that young lady on the near side, who's behaving herself so angelically now; and then the swingle-tree, which they've fixed up well enough to see us through this afternoon at any rate. Next there was our friend Simons; and after him, poor dear Monty Gilroy – who had cause to complain, mind you, Mr. Engelhardt. We mustn't forget that I had no sort of right to interfere. And now, unless I'm very much mistaken, we're on the point of meeting two more of our particular friends."

In fact, a couple of tramps were approaching, swag on back, with the slow swinging stride of their kind. Engelhardt colored hotly as he recognized the ruffians of the day before. They were walking on opposite sides of the track, and as the buggy cut between them the fat man unpocketed one hand and saluted them as they passed.

"Not got a larger size yet?" he shouted out. "Why, that ain't a man at all!"

The poor piano-tuner felt red to his toes, and held his tongue with exceeding difficulty. But, as usual, Naomi and her laugh came to his rescue.

"How polite our friends are, to be sure! A bow here and a salute there! Birds of a feather, too, if ever I saw any; you might look round, Mr. Engelhardt, and see if they're flocking together."

"They are," said he, next minute.

Then Naomi looked for herself. They were descending a slight incline, and, sure enough, on top of the ridge stood the two tramps and the mounted shearer. Stamped clean against the sky, it looked much as though horses and men had been carved out of a single slab of ebony.

CHAPTER VIII

"THREE SHADOWS"

That night the piano-tuner came out in quite a new character, and with immediate success. He began repeating poetry in the moonlit veranda, and Naomi let him go on for an hour and a half; indeed, she made him; for she was in secret tribulation over one or two things that had happened during the day, and only too thankful, therefore, to be taken out of herself and made to think on other matters. Engelhardt did all this for her, and in so doing furthered his own advantage, too, almost as much as his own pleasure. At all events, Naomi took to her room a livelier interest in the piano-tuner than she had felt hitherto, while her own troubles were left, with her boots, outside the door.

It was true she had been interested in him from the beginning. He had so very soon revealed to her what she had never come in contact with before – a highly sensitized specimen of the artistic temperament. She did not know it by this name, or by any name at all; but she was not the less alive to his little group of interesting peculiarities, because of her inability to label the lot with one phrase. They interested her the more for that very reason; just as her instinct as to the possibilities that were in him was all the stronger for her incapacity to reason out her conviction in a satisfactory manner. Her intellectual experience was limited to a degree; but she had seen success in his face; and she now heard it in his voice when he quoted verses to her, so beautifully that she was delighted to listen whether she followed him or not. Her faith in him was sweetly unreasonable, but it was immensely strong. She was ready and even eager to back him heavily; and there are those who would rather have one brave girl do that on instinct, than win the votes of a hundred clear heads, basing their support upon a logical calculation.

For reasons of her own, however, Naomi decided overnight to take her visitor a little less seriously to his face. She had been too confidential with him concerning station affairs past and present; that she must drop, and at the same time discourage him from opening his heart to her, as he was beginning to do, on the slightest provocation. These resolutions would impose a taboo on nearly all the subjects they had found in common. She quite saw that, and she thought it just as well. Too much sympathy with this young man might be bad for him. Naomi realized this somewhat suddenly in the night, and it kept her awake rather longer than she liked. But she rose next morning fully resolved to eschew conversation of too sympathetic a character, and to encourage her young friend in quotations from the poets instead. Obviously this was quite as great a pleasure to him, while it was a much safer one – or so Naomi thought in her innocence. But then it was a very genuine pleasure to her, too, because the poetry was entirely new to her, and her many-sided young man knew so much and repeated it so charmingly.

It was incredible, indeed, what a number of the poets of all ages he had at his finger-ends, and how justly he rendered their choicest numbers. Their very names were mostly new to Naomi. There was consequently an aboriginal barbarity about many of her comments and criticisms, and more than once the piano-tuner found it impossible to sit still and hear her out. This was notably the case at their second poetical séance, when Naomi had got over her private depression on the one hand, and was full of her new intentions toward the piano-tuner on the other. He would jump out of his chair, and fume up and down the veranda, running his five available fingers through his hair until the black shock stood on end. It was at these moments that Naomi liked him best.

He had been giving her "Tears, idle tears" (because she had "heard of Tennyson," she said) on the Wednesday morning in the veranda facing the station-yard. He had recited the great verses with a force and feeling all his own. Over one of them in particular his voice had quivered with emotion. It was the dear emotion of an æsthetic soul touched to the quick by the sheer beauty of the idea and its words. And Naomi said:

"That's jolly; but you don't call it poetry, do you?"

His eyes dried in an instant. Then they opened as wide as they would go. He was speechless.

"It doesn't rhyme, you know," Naomi explained, cheerfully.

"No," said Engelhardt, gazing at her severely. "It isn't meant to; it's blank verse."

"It's blank bad verse, if you ask me," said Naomi Pryse, with a nod that was meant to finish him; but it only lifted him out of his chair.

"Well, upon my word," said the piano-tuner, striding noisily up and down, as Naomi laughed. "Upon my word!"

"Please make me understand," pleaded the girl, with a humility that meant mischief, if he had only been listening; but he was still wrestling with his exasperation. "I can't help being ignorant, you know," she added, as though hurt.

"You can help it – that's just it!" he answered, bitterly. "I've been telling you one of the most beautiful things that Tennyson himself ever wrote, and you say it isn't verse. Verse, forsooth! It's poetry – it's gorgeous poetry!"

"It may be gorgeous, but I don't call it poetry unless it rhymes," said Naomi, stoutly. "Gordon always does."

Gordon, the Australian poet, she was forever throwing at his head, as the equal of any of his English bards. They had already had a heated argument about Gordon. Therefore Engelhardt said merely:

"You're joking, of course?"

"I am doing nothing of the sort."

"Then pray what do you call Shakespeare" – pausing in front of her with his hand in his pocket – "poetry or prose?"

"Prose, of course."

"Because it doesn't rhyme?"

"Exactly."

"And why do you suppose it's chopped up into lines?"

"Oh, I don't know – to moisten it perhaps."

"I beg your pardon?"

"To make it less dry."

"Ah! Then it doesn't occur to you that there might be some law which decreed the end of a line after a certain number of beats, or notes – exactly like the end of a bar of music, in fact?"

"Certainly not," said Naomi. There was a touch of indignation in this denial. He shrugged his shoulders and then turned them upon the girl, and stood glowering out upon the yard. Behind his back Naomi went into fits of silent laughter, which luckily she had overcome before he wheeled round suddenly with a face full of eager determination. His heart now appeared set upon convincing her that verse might be blank. And for half an hour he stood beating his left hand in the air, and declaiming, in feet, certain orations of Hamlet, until Mrs. Potter, the cook-laundress, came out of the kitchen to protect her young mistress if necessary. It was not necessary. The broken-armed gentleman was standing over her, shaking his fist and talking at the top of his voice; but Miss Pryse was all smiles and apparent contentment; and, indeed, she behaved much better for awhile, and did her best to understand. But presently she began to complain of the "quotations" (for he was operating on the famous soliloquy), and to profane the whole subject. And the question of blank verse was discussed between them no more.

She could be so good, too, when she liked, so appreciative, so sympathetic, so understanding. But she never liked very long. He had a tendency to run to love-poems, and after listening to five or six with every sign of approval and delight, Naomi would suddenly become flippant at the sixth or seventh. On one occasion, when she had turned him on by her own act aforethought, and been given a taste of several past-masters of the lyric, from Waller to Locker, and including a poem of Browning's which she allowed herself to be made to understand, she inquired of Engelhardt whether he had ever read anything by "a man called Swinton."

"Swinburne," suggested Engelhardt.

"Are you sure?" said Naomi, jealously. "I believe it's Swinton. I'm prepared to bet you that it is!"

"Where have you come across his name?" the piano-tuner said, smiling as he shook his head.

"In the preface to Gordon's poems."

Engelhardt groaned.

"It mentions Swinton – what are you laughing at? All right! I'll get the book and settle it!"

She came back laughing herself.

"Well?" said Engelhardt.

"You know too much! Not that I should accept anything that preface says as conclusive. It has the cheek to say that Gordon was under his influence. You give me something of his, and we'll soon see."

"Something of Swinburne's?"

"Oh, you needn't put on side because you happen to be right according to a preface. I'll write and ask The Australasian! Yes, of course I mean something of his."

Engelhardt reflected. "There's a poem called 'A Leave-taking,'" said he, tentatively, at length.

"Then trot it out," said Naomi; and she set herself to listen with so unsympathetic an expression on her pretty face, that he was obliged to look the other way before he could begin. The contrary was usually the case. However, he managed to get under way:

"Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.Let us go hence together without fear;Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,And over all old things and all things dear.She loves not you nor me as all we love her.Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,She would not hear."Let us rise up and part; she will not know.Let us go seaward as the great winds go,Full of blown sand and foam; what help is there?There is no help, for all these things are so,And all the world is bitter as a tear.And how these things are, though ye strove to showShe would not know."Let us go home and hence; she will not weep – "

"Stop a moment," said Naomi, "I'm in a difficulty. I can't go on listening until I know something."

"Until you know what?" said Engelhardt, who did not like being interrupted.

"Who it's all about – who she is!" cried Naomi, inquisitively.

"Who – she – is," repeated the piano-tuner, talking aloud to himself.

"Yes, exactly; who is she?"

"As if it mattered!" Engelhardt went on in the same aside. "However, who do you say she is?"

"I? She may be his grandmother for all I know. I'm asking you."

"I know you are. I was prepared for you to ask me anything else."

"Were you? Then why is she such an obstinate old party, anyway? She won't hear and she won't know. What will she do? Now it seems that you can't even make her cry! 'She will not weep' was where you'd got to. As you seem unable to answer my questions, you'd better go on till she does."

"I'm so likely to go on," said Engelhardt, getting up.

Naomi relented a little.

"Forgive me, Mr. Engelhardt; I've been behaving horribly. I'm sorry I spoke at all, only I did so want to know who she was."

"I don't know myself."

"I was sure you didn't!"

"What's more, I don't care. What has it got to do with the merits of the poem?"

"I won't presume to say. I only know that it makes all the difference to my interest in the poem."

"But why?"

"Because I want to know what she was like."

"But surely to goodness," cried Engelhardt, "you can imagine her, can't you? You're meant to fill her in to your own fancy. You pays your money and you takes your choice."

"I get precious little for my money," remarked Naomi, pertinently, "if I have to do the filling in for myself!"

Engelhardt had been striding to and fro. Now he stopped pityingly in front of the chair in which this sweet Philistine was sitting unashamed.

"Do you mean to say that you like to have every little thing told you in black and white?"

"Of course I do. The more the better."

"And absolutely nothing left to your own imagination?"

"Certainly not. The idea!"

He turned away from her with a shrug of his shoulders, and quickened his stride up and down the veranda. He was visibly annoyed. She watched him with eyes full of glee.

"I do love to make you lose your wool!" she informed him in a minute or two, with a sudden attack of candor. "I like you best when you give me up and wash your hands of me!"

This cleared his brow instantaneously, and brought him back to her chair with a smile.

"Why so, Miss Pryse?"

"Must I tell you?"

"Please."

"Then it's because you forget yourself, and me, too, when I rile you; and you're delightful whenever you do that, Mr. Engelhardt."

Naomi regretted her words next moment; but it was too late to unsay them. He went on smiling, it is true, but his smile was no longer naïve and unconsidered; no more were his recitations during the next few hours. His audience did her worst to provoke him out of himself, but she could not manage it. Then she tried the other extreme, and became more enthusiastic than himself over this and that, but he would not be with her; he had retired into the lair of his own self-consciousness, and there was no tempting him out any more. When he did come out of himself, it was neither by his own will nor her management, and the moment was a startling one for them both.

It was late in the afternoon of that same Wednesday. They were sitting, as usual, in the veranda which overlooked not the station-yard but the boundless plains, and they were sitting in silence and wide apart. They had not quarrelled; but Engelhardt had made up his mind to decamp. He had reasoned the whole thing out in a spirit of mere common-sense; yet he was reasoning with himself still, as he sat in the quiet veranda; he thought it probable that he should go on with his reasoning – with the same piece of reasoning – until his dying hour. He looked worried. He was certainly worrying Naomi, and annoying her considerably. She had given up trying to take him out of himself, but she knew that he liked to hear himself saying poetry, and she felt perfectly ready to listen if it would do him any good. Of course she was not herself anxious to hear him. It was entirely for his sake that she put down the book she was reading, and broached the subject at last.