The Tale of Timber Town

The three answered affirmatively, and Sweet William said, “Don’t never any of you chaps come near my shanty. This meetin’ stands adjourned sine die.”

“If there’s a notice in the newspaper of gold arriving, that means we meet here at once,” said Dolphin, “otherwise we meet this day fortnight. Is that clear?”

“Yes, that’s clear,” said Garstang.

“Certainly,” said Carnac, “perfectly clear.”

“An’, please, when you go,” said Sweet William, “don’t raise the whole neighbourhood, but make a git one by one, and disperse promiscuous, as if you’d never met in your beautiful lives.”

The four men were now standing round the table.

“Good night all,” said Dolphin, and he went out quietly by the front door.

“Remember what the boss says about the wine,” remarked William, when the leader of the gang had gone. “No boozing and giving the show away. You’re to be strictly sober for a fortnight, Garstang. And, Carny, if that girl at The Lucky Digger tries to pump you as to what your lay is, tell ’er you’ve come to buy a little property and settle down. She’ll think you mean marrying.”

Carnac smiled. “You might be my grandfather, William,” he said.

“Personally, I’m a shearer that’s havin’ a very mild sort of spree and knockin’ down his cheque most careful. You’ve bin aboard a ship, ain’t you, Garstang?”

“D’you suppose I swam out to this blanky country?” said the crooked-featured gentleman.

“Then you’re a sailor that’s bin paid off and taken your discharge.”

Carnac had his hand on the latch of the door through which Dolphin had disappeared.

“No, no; you go out the back way,” said William, who conducted the man in the velvet coat into the back yard, and turned him into a paddock full of cabbages, whence he might find his way as best he could to the roadway.

When the youthful William returned, Garstang was smoking; his elbows on the table, and his ugly head resting in his hands.

“You seem bloomin’ comfortable, Garstang.”

“I’d be a darn sight more comfortabler for a drop of grog, William.”

William took a bottle from beneath his bed.

“Just eleven o’clock,” said the younger man, looking at his watch. “This house closes punctual. You shall have one nip, mister, and then I chuck you out.”

He poured the contents of the bottle into the solitary mug, and added water from a jug with a broken lip. Then the two rogues drank alternately.

“What do you intend to do when you’ve made your pile, Garstang?”

“Me? I’m goin’ back to London and set up in a nice little public, missis, barmaid, and boots, complete, and live a quiet, virtuous life. That’s me. I should prefer somewheres down Woolwich way – I’m very fond of the military.”

“I’m goin’ to travel,” said William. “I’m anxious for to see things and improve me mind. First, I’ll go to America – I’m awful soft on the Yanks, and can’t help thinkin’ that ’Frisco’s the place for a chap with talent. Then I’ll work East and see New York, and by-and-by I’ll go over to Europe an’ call on the principal Crown Heads – not the little ’uns, you understand, like Portugal and Belgium, or fry of that sort: they ain’t no class – an’ then I’ll marry a real fine girl, a reg’lar top-notcher with whips of dollars, an’ go and live at Monte Carlo. How’s that for a programme, eh?”

“Nice and complete. But I rayther expect the Crown ’Eads’d be one too many for you. The Czar o’ Rooshia, f’r instance, I fancy he’d exile you to Siberia.”

“But that’d be agin international law an’ all rule an’ precedent – I’d tell ’im I was a British subject born in Australia, and wrap a Union Jack around me stummick, an’ dare ’im to come on. How’d that be for high?”

“You’d be ’igh enough. You’d be ’anded over to th’ British authorities – they’d see you went ’igh enough. The experience of men of our perfession is, lie very low, live very quiet, don’t attract no attention whatever – when you’ve succeeded in makin’ your pile. That’s why I say a public: you’ve a few select pals, the best of liquor, and just as much excitement as a ordinary man needs. I say that, upon retirement, for men of our perfession a public’s the thing.”

“How’d a theayter do?”

“Too noisy an’ unrestful, William. An’ then think of all the wimmen – they’d bother a man silly.”

“What d’you say to a song and dance ’all?”

“’Tain’t so bad. But them places, William, I’ve always noticed, has a tendency to grow immoral. Now, a elderly gent, who’s on the down-grade and ’as ’ad ’is experiences, don’t exactly want that. No, I’m dead set on a public. I think that fills the bill completely.”

“But we can’t all go into the grog business.”

“I don’t see why. ’Tain’t as if we was a regiment of soldiers. There’s but four of us.”

“Oh, well, the liquor’s finished. You can make a git, Garstang. But, if you ask me what I’ll do with this pile as soon as it’s made, I say I still have a hankerin’ after the Crown Heads. They must be most interestin’ blokes to talk to: you see, they’ve had such experience. I’m dead nuts on Crown Heads.”

“And they’re dead nuts on the ’eads of the likes of you, William. Good-night.”

“So-long, Garstang. Keep good.”

And with those words terminated the gathering of the four greatest rogues who ever were in Timber Town.

CHAPTER XX

Gold and Roses

The Pilot’s daughter was walking in her garden.

The clematis which shaded the verandah was a rich mass of purple flowers, where bees sucked their store of honey; the rose bushes, in the glory of their second blooming, scented the air, while about their roots grew masses of mignonette.

Along the winding paths the girl walked; a pair of garden scissors in one hand and a basket in the other. She passed under a latticed arch over which climbed a luxuriant Cloth of Gold, heavy with innumerable flowers. Standing on tip-toe, with her arms above her head, she cut half-a-dozen yellow buds, which she placed in the basket. Passing on, she came to the pink glory of the garden, Maria Pare, a mass of brown shoots and clusters of opening buds whose colour surpassed in delicacy the softest tint of the pink sea-shell. Here she culled barely a dozen roses where she might have gathered thirty. “Yellow and pink,” she mused. “Now for something bright.” She walked along the path till she came to M’sieu Cordier, brilliant with the reddest of blooms. She stole but six of the best, and laid them in the basket. “We want more scent,” she said. There was La France growing close beside; its great petals, pearly white on the inside and rich cerise without, smelling deliciously. She robbed the bush of only its most perfect flowers, for though there were many buds but few were developed.

Next, she came to the type of her own innocence, The Maiden Blush, whose half-opened buds are the perfect emblem of maidenhood, but whose full-blown flowers are, to put it bluntly, symbolical of her who, in middle life, has developed extravagantly. But here again was no perfume. The mistress passed on to the queen of the garden, La Rosiere, fragrant beyond all other roses, its reflexed, claret-coloured petals soft and velvety, its leaves – when did a rose’s greenery fail to be its perfect complement? – tinged underneath with a faint blush of its own deep colour.

She looked at the yellow, red, and pink flowers in her basket, and said, “There’s no white.” Now white roses are often papery, but there was at least one in the garden worthy of being grouped with the beauties in the basket. It was The Bride, typical, in its snowy chastity and by reason of a pale green tint at the base of its petals, of that purity and innocence which are the bride’s best dowry.

Rose cut a dozen long-stemmed flowers from this lovely bush, and then – whether it was because of the sentiment conveyed by the blooms she had gathered, or the effect of the landscape, is a mystery unsolved – her eyes wandered from the garden to the far-off hills. With the richly-laden basket on her arm, she gazed at the blue haze which hung over mountain and forest. Regardless of her pleasant occupation, forgetful that the fragrant flowers in the basket would wither in the glaring sun, she stood, looking sadly at the landscape, as though in a dream.

What were her thoughts? Perhaps of the glorious work of the Master-Builder; perhaps of the tints and shades where the blue of the forest, the brown of the fern-clad foot-hills, the buff of the sun-dried grass, mottled the panorama which lay spread before her. But if so, why did she sigh? Does the contour of a hill suffuse the eye? Not a hundred-thousand hills could in themselves cause a sob, not even the gentle sob which amounted to no more than a painful little catch in Rose’s creamy throat.

She was standing on the top of the bank, which was surmounted by a white fence; her knee resting on the garden-seat upon which she had placed her basket, whilst in reverie her spirit was carried beyond the blue mountains. But there appeared behind her the bulky form of her father, who walked in carpet slippers upon the gravel of the path.

“Rosebud, my gal.” The stentorian tones of the old sailor’s voice woke her suddenly from her day-dream. “There’s a party in the parlour waitin’ the pleasure of your company, a party mighty anxious for to converse with a clean white woman by way of a change.”

The girl quickly took up her flowers.

“Who can it possibly be, father?”

“Come and see, my gal; come and see.”