"Good business!" she cried at sight of him. "I know how you are from Mr. Chester. Just hold these things while I take both hands to this key; it always is so stiff."
The things in question, which she reached out to him with her left hand, consisted of a box of plate-powder, a piece of chamois leather, a tooth-brush, and a small bottle of methylated spirits; the lot lying huddled together in a saucer.
"That does it," continued Naomi as the lock shot back with a bang and the door flew open. "Now come on in. You can lend me your only hand. I never thought of that."
Engelhardt followed her into the store.Inside it was one big room, filled with a good but subdued light (for as yet the sun was beating upon the hinder slope of corrugated iron), and with those motley necessaries of station life which are to be seen in every station store. Sides of bacon, empty ration-bags, horse-collars and hames, bridles and reins, hung promiscuously from the beams. Australian saddles kept their balance on stout pegs jutting out from the walls. The latter were barely lined with shelves, like book-cases, but laden with tinned provisions of every possible description, sauces and patent medicines in bottles, whiskey and ink in stone jars, cases of tea, tobacco, raisins, and figs. Engelhardt noticed a great green safe, with a couple of shot-guns and a repeating-rifle in a rack beside it, and two or three pairs of rusty hand-cuffs on a nail hard by. The floor was fairly open, but for a few sacks of flour in a far corner. It was cut up, however, by a raised desk with a high office-stool to it, and by the permanent, solid-looking counter which faced the door. A pair of scales, of considerable size and capacity, was the one encumbrance on the counter. Naomi at once proceeded to remove it, first tossing the weights onto the flour bags, one after the other, and thenlifting down the scales before Engelhardt had time to help her. Thereafter she slapped the counter with her flat hand, and stood looking quizzically at her guest.
"You don't know what's under this counter," she said at last, announcing an obvious fact with extraordinary unction.
"I don't, indeed," said the piano-tuner, shaking his head.
"Nor does your friend Mr. Sanderson, though he's the store-keeper. He's out at the shed during shearing-time, branding bales and seeing to the loading of the drays. But all the rest of the year he keeps the books at that desk or serves out rations across this counter; and yet he little dreams what's underneath it."
"You interest me immensely, Miss Pryse."
"I wonder if I dare interest you any more?"
"You had better not trust me with a secret."
"Why not? Do you mean that you couldn't keep one?"
"I don't say that; but I have no right——"
"Right be bothered," cried Naomi, crisply; "there's no question of right."
Engelhardt colored up.
"I was only going to say that I had no right to get in your way and perhaps make you feel it was better to tell me things than to turn me out," he explained, humbly. "I shall turn myself out, since you are too kind to do it for me. I meant in any case to take a walk in the pines."
"Did I invite you to come in here, or did I not?" inquired Miss Pryse.
"Well, only to carry these things. Here they are."
He held them out to her, but she refused to look at them.
"When I tell you I don't want you, then it will be time for you to go," she said. "Since you don't live here, there's not the least reason why you shouldn't know what no man on the place knows, except Mr. Gilroy. Besides, you can really help me. So now will you be good?"
"I'll try," said Engelhardt, catching her smile.
"Then I forgive everything. Now listen to me. My dear father was the best and kindest man in all the world; but he had his fair share of eccentricity. I have mine, too; and you most certainly have yours; but that's neither here nor there. My fathercame of a pretty good old Welsh family. In case you think I'm swaggering about it, let me tell you I'd like to take that family and drop the whole crew in the well outside—yes, and heat up the water to boil 'em before they'd time to drown! I owe them nothing nice, don't you believe it. They treated my father shamefully; but he was the eldest son, and when the old savage,hisfather, had the good taste to die, mine went home and collared his dues. He didn't get much beyond the family plate; but sure enough he came back with that. And didn't the family sit up, that's all! However, his eccentricity came in then. He must needs bring that plate up here. It's here still. I'm sitting on it now!"
Indeed, she had perched herself on the counter while speaking; and now, spinning round where she sat, she was down on the other side and fumbling at a padlock before her companion could open his mouth.
"Isn't it very dangerous?" he said at length, as Naomi stood up and set the padlock on the desk.
"Hardly that. Mr. Gilroy is absolutely the only person who knows that it is here. Still, the bank would be best, of course, and I mean to have it all taken there one ofthese days. Meanwhile, I clean my silver whenever I come up here. It's a splendid opportunity when my young men are all out at the shed. I did a lot last week, and I expect to finish off this morning."
As she spoke the top of the counter answered to the effort of her two strong arms, and came up with a jerk. She raised it until it caught, when Engelhardt could just get his chin over the rim, and see a huge, heavily clamped plate-chest lying like a kernel in its shell. There were more locks to undo. Then the baize-lined lid of the chest was raised in its turn. And in a very few minutes the Taroomba store presented a scene which it would have been more than difficult to match throughout the length and breadth of the Australian bush.
Naomi had seated herself on the tall stool at the bookkeeper's desk, on which she had placed in array the silver that was still unclean. This included a fine old epergne, of quaint design and exceedingly solid proportions; a pair of candlesticks, in thefamiliar form of the Corinthian column—more modern, but equally handsome in their way; a silver coffee-pot with an ivory handle; and a number of ancient skewers. She tackled the candlesticks first. They were less tarnished than might have been expected, and in Naomi's energetic hands they soon regained their pristine purity and lustre. As she worked she talked freely of her father, and his family in Wales, to Engelhardt, for whose benefit she had unpacked many of the things which she had already cleaned, and set them out upon the counter after shutting it down as before. He, too, was seated, on the counter's farther edge, with his back half-turned to the door. And the revelation of so much treasure in that wild place made him more and more uneasy.
"I should have thought you'd be frightened to have this sort of thing on the premises," he could not help saying.
"Frightened of what?"
"Well—bushrangers."
"They don't exist. They're as extinct as the dodo. But that reminds me!"
She broke off abruptly, and sat staring thoughtfully at the door, which was standing ajar. She even gave the steps of herCorinthian column a rest from tooth-brush and plate-powder.
"That reminds you?"
"Yes—of bushrangers. We once had some here, before they became extinct."
"Since you've had the plate?"
"Yes; it was the plate they were after. How they got wind of it no one ever knew."
"Is it many years ago?"
"Well, I was quite a little girl at the time. But I never shall forget it! I woke in the night, hearing shots, and I ran into the veranda in my night-dress. There was my father behind one of the veranda posts, with a revolver in each hand, roaring and laughing as though it were the greatest joke in the world; and there were two men in the store veranda, just outside this door. They were shooting at father, all they knew, but they couldn't hit him, though they hit the post nearly every time. I'll show you the marks when we go over to lunch. My father kept laughing and shooting at them the whole time. It was just the sort of game he liked. But at last one of the men fell in a heap outside the door, and then the other bolted for his horse. He got away, too; but he left something behind him thathe'll never replace in this world or the next."
"What was that?" asked Engelhardt with a long breath.
"His little finger. My father amputated it with one of his shots. It was picked up between this and the place where he mounted his horse. Father got him on the wing!" said Naomi, proudly.
"Was he caught?"
"No, he was never heard of again."
"And the man who was shot?"
"He was as dead as sardines. And who do you suppose he turned out to be?"
Engelhardt shook his head.
"Tigerskin the bushranger! No less! It was a dirty burgling business for a decent bushranger to lose his life in, now wasn't it? For they never stuck up the station, mind you; they were caught trying to burst into the store. Luckily, they didn't succeed. The best of it was that at the inquest, and all that, it never came out what it was they really wanted in our store. Soon afterward my father had the windows blocked up and the whole place cemented over, as you see it now."
Naomi was done. Back went the tooth-brush to work on the Corinthian column,and Engelhardt saw more of the pretty hair, but less of the sweet face, as she bent to her task with redoubled vigor. Sweet she most certainly was in his sight, and yet she could sit there, and tell him of blood spilt and life lost before her own soft eyes, as calmly as though such sights were a natural part of a young girl's education. For a space he so marvelled at her that there was room in his soul for no other sensation. Then the towering sun struck down through the skylight, setting light to the silver, and brushing the girl's hair as she leant forward, so that it shone like spun copper. From that moment the piano-tuner could only and slavishly admire; but he was not allowed much time for this slightly perilous recreation. Abruptly, impulsively, as she did most things, Naomi raised her face and gave him a nod.
"Now, Mr. Engelhardt, it's your turn to talk. I've done my share. Who are you, where do you come from, and what's your ambition in life? It really is time I knew something more about you."
The poor fellow was so taken aback, and showed it so plainly, that Naomi simplified her question without loss of time.
"It doesn't matter who you are, since you're a very nice young man—which is themain thing. And I know that you hail from old England, which is all I have any business to know. But come! you must have some ambitions. I like all young men to have their ambitions. I distrust them when they have none. So what's yours? Out with it quick!"
She discerned delight behind his blushes.
"Come on, I can't wait! What is it?"
"I suppose it's music."
"I knew it. Oh, but that's such a splendid ambition!"
"Do you really think so?"
"It's grand! But what do you aspire to do? Mephistopheles or Faust in the opera? Or sentimental songs in your dress-suit, with a tea-rose in your button-hole and a signet-ring plain as a pike-staff to the back row? Somehow or other I don't think you're sleek enough for a tenor or coarse enough for a bass. Certainly I know nothing at all about it."
"Oh, Miss Pryse, I can't sing a bit!"
"My dear young man, I've heard you."
"I only tried because they made me—and to sell my wretched songs."
"Then is it to be solos on the piano?"
"I'm not good enough to earn my rations at that."
"The organ—and a monkey? Burnt cork and the bones?"
"Oh, Miss Pryse!"
"Well, then, what?"
"How can I say it? I should like, above everything else—if only I ever could!—to write music—to compose." He said it shyly enough, with downcast eyes, and more of his blushes.
"And why not?"
"Well, I don't know why not—one of these days."
His tone had changed. He had tossed up his head erect. She had not laughed at him after all!
"I should say that you would compose very well indeed," remarked Naomi, naïvely.
"I don't know that; but some day or other I mean to try."
"Then why waste your time tuning pianos?"
"To keep myself alive meanwhile. I don't say that I shall ever do any good as a composer. Only that's what you'd call my ambition. In any case, I don't know enough to try yet, except to amuse myself when I'm alone. I have no technique. I know only the rudiments of harmony. I do get ideas;but they're no use to me. I haven't enough knowledge—of treatment—of composition—to turn them to any account. But I shall have some day! Miss Pryse, do you know why I'm out here? To make enough money to go back again and study—and learn my trade—with plenty of time and pains—which all trades require and demand. I mean all artistic trades. And I'm not doing so very badly, seeing I've only been out three years. I really am beginning to make a little. It was my mother's idea, my coming out at all. I wasn't twenty-three at the time. It was a splendid idea, like everything she does or says or thinks! How I wish you knew my mother! She is the best and cleverest woman in all the world, though she is so poor, and has lived in a cottage all her life. My father was a German. He was clever, too, but he wasn't practical. So he never succeeded. But my mother is everything! One day I shall go back to her with my little pile. Then we shall go abroad together—perhaps to Milan—and I shall study hard-all, and we'll soon find out whether there's anything in me or not. If there isn't, back I come to the colonies to tune pianos and sell music; but my mother shall come with me next time."
"You will find that there is something in you," said Naomi. "I can see it."
Indeed, it was not unreasonable to suppose that there was something behind that broad, high forehead and those enthusiastic and yet intelligent eyes. The mouth, too, was the delicate, mobile mouth of the born artist; the nostrils were as sensitive as those of a thoroughbred racehorse; and as he spoke the young man's face went white-hot with sheer enthusiasm. Clearly there was reason in what Naomi thought and said, though she knew little about music and cared less. He beamed at her without answering, and she spoke again.
"Certainly you have ambition," she said; "and honestly, there's nothing I admire so much in a young man. Please understand that I for one am with you heart and soul in all you undertake or attempt. I feel quite sure that I shall live to see you famous. Oh, isn't it splendid to be a man and aim so high?"
"It is," he answered, simply, out of the frankness of his heart.
"Even if you never succeed, it is fine to try!"
"Thank Heaven for that. Even if you never succeed!"
"But you are going to——"
"Or going to know the reason why!"
To a sympathetic young woman who believes in him, and thus stimulates his belief in himself; who is ready with a nod and a smile when his mind outstrips his tongue; who understands his incoherences, and is with him in his wildest nights; to such a listener the ordinary young man with enthusiasm can talk by the hour together, and does. Naomi was one such; she was eminently understanding. Engelhardt had enthusiasm. He had more than it is good for a man to carry about in his own breast. And there is no doubt that he would have spent the entire morning in putting his burden, bit by bit, upon Naomi as she sat and worked and listened, had no interruption occurred. As it was, however, she interrupted him herself, and that in the middle of a fresh tirade, by suddenly holding up her finger and sharply enjoining silence.
"Don't you hear voices?" she said.
He listened.
"Yes, I do."
"Do you mind seeing who it is?"
He went to the door. "There are two men hanging about the station veranda," he said. "Stay! Now they have seen me, and are coming this way."
Naomi said not one word, but she managed to fetch over the office-stool in the haste with which she sprang to the ground. At a run she rounded the counter, and reached the door just as the men came up. She pushed Engelhardt out first, and then followed him herself, locking the door and putting the key in her pocket before turning to the men. Last of all, but in her most amiable manner, she asked them what they wanted.
"Travellers' rations," said one.
"Especially meat," added the other.
"Very good," said Naomi, "go to the kitchen and get the meat first. Mr. Engelhardt, you may not know the station custom of giving rations to travellers. We don't give meat here as a rule; so will you take these men over to the kitchen, and tell Mrs. Potter I wish them each to have a good helping of cold mutton? Then bring them back to the store."
"We don't seek no favors," growled the man who had spoken first.
"No?" said Naomi, with a charming smile. "But I'm sure you need some meat. What's more, I mean you to have some!"
"Suppose we take the tea and flour first, now we are at the store!"
"Ah, I can't attend to you for a few minutes," said the girl, casually. As she spoke she turned and left them, and Engelhardt gathered her unconcern from the snatch of a song as she entered the main building. The men accompanied him to the kitchen in a moody silence. As for himself, he already felt an extraordinary aversion for them both.
And indeed their looks were against them. The one who had spoken offensively about the meat was a stout, thick-set, middle-aged man, who gave an impression of considerable activity in spite of his great girth. Half his face was covered with short gray bristles, like steel spikes. Though his hands were never out of his pockets, he carried his head like a man of character; but the full force of a bold, insolent, vindictive expression was split and spoilt by the most villanous of squints. Nevertheless the force was there. It was not so conspicuous in his companion, who was, however, almost equally untoward-looking in his own way. He was of the medium size, all bone and gristle like a hawk, and with no sign upon his skin of a drop of red blood underneath. The hands were brown and furry as an ape's, with the nails all crooked and broken byhard work. The face was as brown, and very weather-beaten, with a pair of small black eyes twinkling out of the ruts and puckers like pools in the sun upon a muddy road. This one rolled as he walked, and wore brass rings in his ears; and Engelhardt, who had come out from England in a sailing ship, saw in a moment that he was as salt as junk all through. Decidedly he was the best of the two, though his eyes were never still, nor the hang of his head free and honest. And on the whole the piano-tuner was thankful when his share of the trouble with these men was at an end, and they all came back to the store.
Rather to his surprise, Naomi was there before them, and busy weighing out the traveller's quantum of sugar, tea, and flour, for each man. What was really amazing, however, was the apparent miracle that had put every trace of the silver out of sight.
"No work for us on the station?" said the stout man, before they finally sheered off, and in a tone far from civil, to Engelhardt's thinking.
"None, I'm afraid," said Naomi, again with a smile.
"Nor yet at the shed?" inquired the other, civilly enough.
"Nor yet at the shed, I am sorry to say."
"So long, then," said the fat man, in his impudent manner. "Mayhap we shall be coming to see you again, miss, one o' these fine days or nights. My dear, you look out for us! You keep your spare-room in readiness! A feather-bed for me——"
"Stow it, mate," said the other tramp, as he hitched his swag across his shoulders. "Can't you hump your bluey and come away decent?"
"If you don't," cried Engelhardt, putting in his little word in a gigantic voice, "it will be the worse for you!"
The big fellow laughed and swore.
"Will it, my little man?" said he. "Areyougoing to make it the worse? I've a blessed good mind to take and crumple you up for manure, I have. And a blessed bad barrerful you'd make! See here, my son, I reckon you've got one broke bone about you already; mind out that I don't leave a few pals to keep it company. A bit more of your cheek, and I'll make you so as your own sweetheart—a fine girl she is, as ought to be above the likes of you; but I suppose you're better than nothing—I tell you I'll make you so as your sweetheart——"
It was the man's own mate who put a stop to this.
"Can't you shut it and come on?" he cried, with a kind of half-amused anger. "Wot good is this going to do either me or you, or any blessed body else?"
"It'll do somebody some harm," returned the other, "if he opens his mouth again. Yes, I'll clear out before I smash 'im! Good-by, my dear, and a bigger size to you in sweethearts. So long, little man. You may thank your broke arm that your 'ead's not broke as well!"
They were gone at last. Naomi and Engelhardt watched them out of sight from the veranda, the latter heaving with rage and indignation. He was not one to forget this degradation in a hurry. Naomi, on the other hand, who had more to complain of, being a woman, was in her usual spirits in five minutes. She took him by the arm, and told him to cheer up. He made bitter answer that he could never forgive himself for having stood by and heard her spoken to as she had been spoken to that morning. She pointed to his useless arm, and laughed heartily.
"As long as they didn't see the silver," said she, "I care very little what they said."
"But I care!"
"Then you are not to. Do you think they saw the silver?"
"No; I'm pretty sure they didn't. How quickly you must have bundled it in again!"
"There was occasion for quickness. We must put it to rights after lunch. Meanwhile come along and look here."
She had led the way along the veranda, and now stood fingering one of the whitewashed posts. It was pocked about the middle with ancient bullet-marks.
"This was the post my father stood behind. Not much of a shelter, was it?"
Engelhardt seemed interested and yet distrait. He made no answer.
"Why don't you speak?" cried Naomi. "What has struck you?"
"Nothing much," he replied. "Only when you heard the voices, and I went to the door, the big brute was showing the little brute this very veranda-post!"
Naomi considered.
"There's not much in that," she said at last. "It's the custom for travellers to waitabout a veranda; and what more natural than their spotting these holes and having a look at them? As long as they didn't spot my silver! Do you know why I came over to the house before putting it away?"
"No."
"To get this," said Naomi, pulling something from her pocket. She was laughing rather shyly. It was a small revolver.
"And what is your other name, Mr. Engelhardt?"
"Hermann."
"Hermann Engelhardt! That's a lovely name. How well it will look in the newspapers!"
The piano-tuner shook his head.
"It will never get into them now," said he, sadly.
"What nonsense!" exclaimed the girl. "When you have told me of all the big things you dream of doing one day! You'll do them every one when you go home to England again; I'll put my bottom dollar on you."
"Ah, but the point is whether I shall ever go back at all."
"Of course you will."
"I have a presentiment that I never shall."
"Since when?" inquired Naomi, with a kindly sarcasm.
"Oh, I always have it, more or less."
"You had it very much less this morning, when you were telling me how you'd go home and study at Milan and I don't know where-all, once you'd made the money."
"But I don't suppose I ever shall make it."
"Bless the man!" cried Naomi, giving him up, for the moment in despair. She continued to gaze at him, however, as he leant back in his wicker chair, with hopeless dark eyes fixed absently upon the distant clumps of pale green trees that came between glaring plain and cloudless sky. They were sitting on the veranda which did not face the station-yard, because it was the shady one in the afternoon. The silver had all been properly put away, and locked up as carefully as before. As for the morning's visitors, Naomi was herself disposed to think no more of them or their impudence; it is therefore sad to relate that her present companion would allow her to forget neither.With him the incident rankled characteristically; it had left him solely occupied by an extravagantly poor opinion of himself. For the time being, this discolored his entire existence and prospects, draining his self-confidence to the last drop. Accordingly, he harped upon the late annoyance, and his own inglorious share in it, to an extent which in another would have tried Naomi very sorely indeed; but in him she rather liked it. She had a book in her lap, but it did not interest her nearly so much as the human volume in the wicker chair at her side. She was exceedingly frank about the matter.
"You're the most interesting man I ever met in my life," was her very next remark.
"I can't think that!"
He had hauled in his eyes some miles to see whether she meant it.
"Nevertheless, it's the case. Do you know why you're so interesting?"
"No, that I don't!"
"Because you're never the same for two seconds together."
His face fell.
"Among other reasons," added Naomi, nodding kindly.
But Engelhardt had promptly put himself upon the spit. He was always doing this.
"Yes, I know I'm a terribly up-and-down kind of chap," said he, miserably; "there's no happy medium aboutme."
"When you are good you are very good indeed, and when you are bad you are horrid! That's just what I like. I can't stand your always-the-same people. They bore me beyond words; they drill me through and through! Still, you were very good indeed this morning, you know. It is too absurd of you to give a second thought to a couple of tramps and their insolence!"
"I can't help it. I'm built that way. To think that I should have stood still to hear you insulted like that!"
"But you didn't stand still."
"Oh, yes, I did."
"Well, I wish you wouldn't bother about it. I wish you wouldn't bother about yourself."
"When I am bad I am horrid," he said, with a wry smile, "and that's now."
"No, I tell you I like it. I never know where I've got you. That's one reason why you're so interesting."
His face glowed, and he clasped her with his glance.
"How kind you are!" he said, softly. "How you make the best of one, even atone's worst! But oh, how bitterly you make me wish that I were different!"
"I'm very glad that you're not," said Naomi; "everybody else is different."
"But I would give my head to be like everybody else—to be hail-fellow with those men out at the shed, for instance.Theywouldn't have stood still this morning."
"Wouldn't you as soon be hail-fellow with me?" asked the girl, ignoring his last sentence.
"A million times sooner, of course! But surely you understand?"
"I think I do."
"I know you do; you understand everything. I never knew anyone like you, never!"
"Then we're quits," said Naomi, as though the game were over. And she closed her eyes. But it was she who began it again; it always was.
"You have one great fault," she said, maternally.
"I have a thousand and one."
"There you are. You think too much about them. You take too much notice of yourself; that's your great fault."
"Yet I didn't think I was conceited."
"Not half enough. That's just it. Yet youareegotistical."
He looked terribly crestfallen. "I suppose I am," he said, dolefully. "In fact, I am."
"Then you're not, so there!"
"Which do you mean?"
"I only said it to tease you. Do you suppose I'd have said such a thing if I'd really thought it?"
"I shouldn't mind what you said. If you really do think me egotistical, pray say so frankly."
"Of course I don't think anything of the kind!"
"Is that the truth?"
"The real truth."
(It was not.)
"If it's egotistical to think absolutely nothing of yourself," continued Naomi, "and to blame yourself and not other people for every little thing that goes wrong, then I should call you a twenty-two-carat egotist. But even then your aims and ambitions would be rather lofty for the billet."
"They never seemed so to me," he whispered, "until you sympathized with them."
"Of course I sympathize," said Naomi, laughing at him. It was necessary to laughat him now and then. It kept him on his feet; this time it led him from the abstract to the concrete.
"If only I could make enough money to go home and study, to study even in London for one year," murmured Engelhardt, as his eyes drifted out across the plains. "Then I should know whether my dreams ever were worth dreaming. But I have taken root out here, I am beginning to do well, better than ever I could have hoped. At our village in the old country I was glad enough to play the organ in church for twelve pounds a year. Down in Victoria they gave me fifty without a murmur, and I made a little more out of teaching. Oh! didn't I tell you I started life out here as an organist? That's how it was I was able to buy this business, and I am doing very well indeed. Two pounds for tuning a piano! They wouldn't credit it in the old country."
"The man before you used to charge three. A piano-tuner in the bush is an immensely welcome visitor, mind. I don't think I should have lowered my terms at all, especially when you have no intention of doing this sort of thing all your days."
"Ah, well, I shall never dare to throw it up."
"Never's not a word I like to hear you use, Mr. Engelhardt. Remember that you've only been out here three years, and that you are not yet twenty-six. You told me so yourself this morning."
"It's perfectly true," said Engelhardt. "But there's one's mother to consider. I told you about her. I am beginning to send her so much money now. It would be frightful to give that up, just because there are tunes in my head now and then, and I can't put them together in proper harmony."
"I should say that your mother would rather have you than your money, Mr. Engelhardt."
"Perhaps so, but not if I were on her hands composing things that nobody would publish."
"That couldn't be. You would succeed. Something tells me that you would. I see it in your face; I did this morning. I know nothing about music, yet I feel so certain about you. The very fact that you should have these ambitions when you are beginning to do well out here, that in itself is enough for me."
He shook his head, without turning it to thank her by so much as a look. The girl was glad of that. Though he had so littleconfidence in himself, she knew that the dreams of which he had spoken more freely and more hopefully in the morning were thick upon him then, as he sat in the wicker chair and looked out over the plains, with parted lips and such wistful eyes that Naomi's mind went to work at the promptings of the heart in her which he touched. It was a nimble, practical mind, and the warm heart beneath it was the home of noble impulses, which broke forth continually in kind words and generous acts. Naomi wore that heart upon her sweet frank face, it shone with a clear light out of the fearless eyes that were fixed now so long and so steadily upon the piano-tuner's eager profile. She watched him while the shadow of the building grew broader and broader under his eyes, until all at once it lost its edges, and there were no more sunlit patches on the plain. Still he neither moved nor looked at her. At last she touched him on the arm. She was sitting on his right, and she laid her fingers lightly upon the splints and bandages which were her own handiwork.
"Well, Mr. Engelhardt?"
He started round, and she was smiling at him in the gloaming, with her sweet warm face closer to his than it had ever been before.
"I have been very rude," he stammered.
"I am going to be much ruder."
"Now you are laughing at me."
"No, I am not. I was never farther from laughing in my life, for I fear that I shall offend you, though I do hope not."
He saw that something was upon her mind.
"You couldn't do it if you tried," he said, simply.
"Then I want to know how much money you think you ought to have to go home to England with a clear conscience, and to give yourself heart and soul to music for a year certain? Iamso inquisitive about it all."
She was employing, indeed, and successfully, a tone of pure and indefensible curiosity. He thought for some moments before answering. Then he said, quite innocently:
"Five hundred pounds. That would leave me enough to come back and start all over again out here if I failed. I wouldn't tackle it on less."
"But you wouldn't fail. I know nothing about it, but I have my instincts, and I see success in your face. I see it there! And I want to bet on you. I have more money than is good for any girl, and I want to back you for five hundred pounds."
"It is very kind of you," he said, "but you would lose your money." He did not see her meaning. The southern night had set in all at once; he could not even see her strenuous eyes.
"How dense you are," she said, softly, and with a little nervous laugh. "Can't you see that I want tolendyou the money?"
"To lend it to me!"
"Why not?"
"Five hundred pounds!"
"My dear young man, I'm ashamed to say that I should never feel it. It's a sporting offer merely. Of course I'd charge interest—you'd dedicate all your nice songs to me. Why don't you answer? I don't like to see you in the bush, it isn't at all the place for you; and I do want to send you home to your mother. You might let me, for her sake. Have you lost your tongue?"
Her hand had remained upon the splints and bandages; indeed, she had forgotten that there was a living arm inside them, but now something trivial occurred that made her withdraw it, and also get up from her chair.
"Are you on, or are you not?"
"Oh, how can I thank you? What can I say?"
"Yes or no," replied Naomi, promptly.
"No, then. I can't—I can't——"
"Then don't. Now not another word! No, there's no offence on either side, unless it's I that have offended you. It was great cheek of me, after all. Yes, it was! Well, then, if it wasn't, will you have the goodness to lend me your ears on an entirely different matter?"
"Very well; with all my heart; yet if only I could ever thank you——"
"If only you would be quiet and listen to me! How are the bruises behaving? That's all I want to hear now."
"The bruises? Oh, they're all right; I'd quite forgotten I had any."
"You can lean back without hurting?"
"Rather! If I put my weight on the left side it doesn't hurt a bit."
"Think you could stand seven miles in a buggy to-morrow morning?"
"Couldn't I!"
"Then I thought of driving over to the shed in the morning; and you shall come with me if you're good."
For an instant he looked radiant. Then his face clouded over as he thought again of her goodness and his own ingratitude.
"Miss Pryse," he began—and stuck—but his tone spoke volumes of remorse and self-abasement.
Evidently she was getting to know that tone, for she caught him up with a look of distinct displeasure.
"Only if you're good, mind!" she told him, sharply. "Not on any account unless!"
And Engelhardt said no more.
A sweet breeze and a flawless sky rendered it an exquisite morning when Naomi and her piano-tuner took their seats behind the kind of pair which the girl loved best to handle. They were youngsters both, the one a filly as fresh as paint, the other a chestnut colt, better broken, perhaps, but sufficiently ready to be led astray. The very start was lively. Engelhardt found himself holding on with his only hand as if his life depended on it, instead of on the firm gloved fingers and the taut white-sleeved arm at his side. He looked from the pair of young ones to that arm and those fingers, and back again at the pair. Theywere pulling alarmingly, especially the filly. Engelhardt took an anxious look at the driver's face. He was prepared to find it resolute but pale. He found it transfigured with the purest exultation. After all, this was the daughter of the man who had returned the bushranger's fire with laughter as loud as his shots; she was her father's child; and from this moment onward the piano-tuner felt it a new honor to be sitting at her side.
"How do you like it?" she found time to ask him when the worst seemed over.
"First-rate," he replied.
"Not in a funk?"
"Not with you."
"That's a blessing. The filly needs watching—little demon! But she sha'n't smash your other arm for you, Mr. Engelhardt, if I can prevent it. No screws loose, Sam, I hope?"
"Not if I knows it, miss!"
Sam Rowntree had jumped on behind to come as far as the first gate, to open it. Already they were there, and as Sam ran in front of the impatient pair the filly shied violently at a blue silk fly-veil which fluttered from his wide-awake.
"That nice youth is the dandy of themen's hut," explained Naomi, as they tore through the gates, leaving Sam and his fly-veil astern in a twinkling. "I daren't say much to him, because he's the only man the hut contains just at present. The rest spend most nights out at the shed, so I should be pretty badly off if I offended Sam. I wasn't too pleased with the state of the buggy, as a matter of fact. It's the old Shanghai my father used to fancy, and somehow it's fallen on idle days; but it runs lighter than anything else we've got, and it's sweetly swung. That's why I chose it for this little trip of ours. You'll find it like a feather-bed for your bruises and bones and things—if only Sam Rowntree used his screw-hammer properly. Feeling happy so far?"
Engelhardt declared that he had never been happier in his life. There was more truth in the assertion than Naomi suspected. She also was happy, but in a different way. A tight rein, an aching arm, a clear course across a five-mile paddock, and her beloved Riverina breeze between her teeth, would have made her happy at any time and in any circumstances. The piano-tuner's company added no sensible zest to a performance which she thoroughly enjoyed for its own sake; but with him the exact opposite wasthe case. She was not thinking of him. He was thinking only of her. She had her young bloods to watch. His eyes spent half their time upon her grand strong hand and arm. Suddenly these gave a tug and a jerk, both together. But he was in too deep a dream either to see what was wrong or to understand his companion's exclamation.
"He didn't!" she had cried.
"Didn't what?" said Engelhardt. "And who, Miss Pryse?"
"Sam Rowntree didn't use his screw-hammer properly. Wretch! The near swingle-tree's down and trailing."
It took Engelhardt some moments to grasp exactly what she meant. Then he saw. The near swingle-tree was bumping along the ground at the filly's heels, dragged by the traces. Already the filly had shown herself the one to shy as well as to pull, and it now appeared highly probable that she would give a further exhibition of her powers by kicking the Shanghai to matchwood. Luckily, the present pace was too fast for that. The filly had set the pace herself. The filly was keeping it up. As for the chestnut, it was contentedly playing second fiddle with traces drooping like festoons. Thus the buggy was practically being drawn by a single reinwith the filly's mouth at one end of it and Naomi's hand at the other.
"Once let the bar tickle her hoofs, and she'll hack us to smithereens," said the latter, cheerfully. "We'll euchre her yet by keeping this up!" And she took her whip and flogged the chestnut.
But this did not ease the strain on her left hand and arm, for the chestnut's pace was nothing to the filly's, so that even with the will he had not the power to tighten his traces and perform his part. Engelhardt saw the veins swelling in the section of wrist between the white sleeve and the dogskin glove. He reached across and tried to help her with his left hand; but she bade him sit quiet, or he would certainly tumble out and be run over; and with her command she sent a roar of laughter into his ear, though the veins were swelling on her forehead, too. Truly she was a chip of the old block, and the grain was as good as ever.
It came to an end at last.
"Hurray!" said Naomi. "I see the fence."
Engelhardt saw it soon after, and in another minute the horses stood smoking, and the buggy panting on its delicate springs,before a six-bar gate which even the filly was disinclined to tackle just then.
"Do you think you can drive through with your one hand, and hold them tight on t'other side?" said Naomi. "Clap your foot on the break and try."
He nodded and managed creditably; but before opening the gate Naomi made a temporary fixture of the swingle-tree by means of a strap; and this proved the last of their troubles. The shed was now plainly in sight, with its long regular roof, and at one end three huts parallel with it and with each other. To the left of the shed, as they drove up, Naomi pointed out the drafting yards. A dense yellow cloud overhung them like a lump of London fog.
"They're drafting now," said Naomi. "I expect Mr. Gilroy is drafting himself. If so, let's hope he's too busy to see us. It would be a pity, you know, to take him away from his work," she added next instant; but Engelhardt was not deceived.
They drove down the length of the shed, which had small pens attached on either side, with a kind of port-hole opening into each. Out of these port-holes there kept issuing shorn sheep, which ran down little sloping boards, and thus filled the pens. Atone of the latter Naomi pulled up. It contained twice as many sheep as any other pen, and a good half of them were cut and bleeding. The pens were all numbered, and this one was number nineteen.
"Bear that in mind," said Naomi. "Nineteen!"
Engelhardt looked at her. Her face was flushed and her voice unusually quiet and hard. But she drove on without another word, save of general explanation.
"Each man has his pen," she said, "and shears his sheep just inside those holes. Then the boss of the shed comes round with his note-book, counts out the pens, and enters the number of sheep to the number of each pen. If a shearer cuts his sheep about much, or leaves a lot of wool on, he just runs that man's pen—doesn't count 'em at all. At least, he ought to. It seems he doesn't always do it."
Again her tone was a singular mixture of hard and soft.
"Mr. Gilroy is over the shed, isn't he?" said Engelhardt, a little injudiciously.
"He is," returned Naomi, and that was all.
They alighted from the buggy at the farther end of the shed, where huge doors stoodopen, showing a confused stack of wool-bales within, and Sanderson, the store-keeper, engaged in branding them with stencil and tar-brush. He took off his wide-awake to Naomi, and winked at the piano-tuner. The near-sighted youth was also there, and he came out to take charge of the pair, while Engelhardt entered the shed at Naomi's skirts.
Beyond the bales was the machine which turned them out. Here the two wool-pressers were hard at work and streaming with perspiration. Naomi paused to see a bale pressed down and sewn up. Then she led her companion on to where the wool-pickers were busy at side tables, and the wool-sorter at another table which stood across the shed in a commanding position, with a long line of shearers at work to right and left, and an equally long pen full of unshorn sheep between them. The wool-sorter's seemed the softest job in the shed. Boys brought him fleeces—perhaps a dozen a minute—flung them out upon the table, and rolled them up again into neat bundles swiftly tied with string. These bundles the wool-sorter merely tossed over his shoulder into one or other of the five or six bins at his back.
"He gets a pound a thousand fleeces," Naomi whispered, "and we shear something over eighty thousand sheep. He will take away a check of eighty odd pounds for his six weeks' work."
"And what about the shearers?"
"A pound a hundred. Some of them will go away with forty or fifty pounds."
"It beats piano-tuning," said Engelhardt, with a laugh. They crossed an open space, mounted a few steps, and began threading their way down the left-hand aisle, between the shearers and the pen from which they had to help themselves to woolly sheep. The air was heavy with the smell of fleeces, and not unmusical with the constant swish and chink of forty pairs of shears.
"Well, Harry?" said Naomi, to the second man they came to. "Harry is an old friend of mine, Mr. Engelhardt—he was here in the old days. Mr. Engelhardt is a new friend, Harry, but a very good one, for all that. How are you getting on? What's your top-score?"
"Ninety-one, miss—I shore ninety-one yesterday."
"And a very good top-score, too, Harry. I'd rather spend three months over the shearing than have sheep cut about and wool lefton. 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'shistop-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 ona 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. "Youwouldn'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 asIlike," said Naomi. "And look here, I won't waste more words uponyou 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 sheepcut 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 otherstreated 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 muchmistaken, 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.