The Tale of Timber Town

He turned abruptly to Scarlett.

“There’s something I have to say to you, young feller. My gal, here, came to me, the night before last – when some one we know of was in a very queer street – she came to me, all of a shake, all of a tremble, unable to sleep; she came to me in the middle of the night – a thing she’d never done since she was six years old – an’ at first I thought it was the hysterics, an’ then I thought it was fever. But she spoke plain enough, an’ her touch was cool enough. An’ then she began to tell me” —

“Really, father,” Rose exclaimed, her cheeks colouring like a peony, “do stop, or you’ll drive me from the room.”

“Right, my dear: I say no more. But I ask you, sir,” he continued, turning to Scarlett. “I ask you how you diagnose a case like that. What treatment do you prescribe? What doctor’s stuff do you give?” There was a smile on the old man’s face, and his eyes sparkled with merriment. “I put it to you as a friend, I put it to you as a man who knows a quantity o’ gals. What’s the matter with my dar’ter Rose?”

For a moment, Jack looked disconcerted, but almost instantly a smile overspread his face.

“I expect it arose from a sudden outburst of affection for her father,” he said.

But here Sartoris spoilt the effect by laughing. “I suspect the trouble rose from a disturbed condition of the heart,” said he, “a complaint not infrequent in females.”

“An’ what, Cap’n, would you suggest as a cure?” asked the Pilot; his eyes twinkling, and his suppressed merriment working in him like the subterranean rumbling of an earthquake.

“Cast off the tow-rope, drop the pilot, and let her own skipper shape her course” – this was the advice that Sartoris gave – “to my mind you’ve been a-towin’ of her too long.”

“But she’s got no skipper,” said Summerhayes, “an’, dear, dear, she’s a craft with a deal too much top-hamper an’ not near enough free-board to please me, an’ her freight’s valued at over fifty thousand. Where’s the man, Sartoris, you’d guarantee would take her safely into port?”

The two old sailors were now bubbling with laughter, and there were frequent pauses between their words, that their mirth might not explode.

“There was a time,” said Sartoris, “there was a time when I’d ha’ bin game to take on the job meself.”

“What!” exclaimed Rose. “You? Why, you’re old and shaky and decrepit.”

“Yes, I don’t deny it – I’m a bit of a hulk, my dear,” but Sartoris laughed as he spoke. “I may have to pass in my cheques, any day. That’s why I stand aside; but I’ll find you the man to take my place. Here ’e is!” The grizzled old sailor seized Scarlett by the arm, and pushed him towards the girl. “This is him. He’s got his master’s ticket all right; an’ though he’s never had command of a ship, he’s anxious to try his hand. Pilot, my advice is, let ’im have her.”

“Thank ’e, Cap’n.” Here the Pilot’s laughter, too long suppressed, burst forth with a terrific roar, in which Sartoris joined. “I mark what you say, Cap’n. I take your advice.” His words again halted to make way for his Titanic laughter. “I believe it’s about the best thing I can do.” He had now caught hold of Scarlett’s hand. “Come here, my gal.” Taking hold of Rose’s hand also, he said, “My dear, I built you – an’ I pride myself your lines are beautiful, though I’ve never told you so till now – I launched you in life, an’ now I put you in charge of the best skipper I can lay hands on. Always answer your helm quick, take care you don’t fall away to lee-ward in making your course, an’ I’ll go bail he’ll treat you fair an’ safely carry you into port.”

He put his daughter’s hand into Jack’s.

“There,” he said. “A long voyage an’ a happy one. May you weather every storm.” And, walking to the window, the Pilot made pretence of looking out on the roses in the garden, in order to hide the moisture which clouded his eyes.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Tresco Makes the Ring

The goldsmith sat at his bench; his spectacles on his nose, his apron round the place where his waist should have been, and in his hands the implements of his craft. Nobody had told him, he had hardly told himself, that it was for the last time that he was sitting within the four boarded walls where he had spent so many hours during the last four years, at the bench which bore on every square inch of its surface the marks of his labour. But Tresco knew, as did also Jake Ruggles and the Prospector who watched him, that the end of his labours had come.

The goldsmith’s thoughts were in keeping with his work: he was about to make a wedding-ring, and his speech was of Love.

First, he took a little ingot of pure gold, and, laying it on the smooth surface of what looked like an upturned, handleless flat-iron, he wrought upon the precious, yellow metal with a hammer, till it was shaped like a badly-made rod.

This he handed over to Jake, who put it on the wire “devil” and strove with blow-pipe and flame to bring it to a red heat.

“Woman,” said Benjamin, “Woman is like a beautiful scene, or the perfume of a delicate rose – every man loves her, be he prince or pauper, priest or murderer. To labour for Woman is the sweetest work of Man – that’s why a goldsmith is in love with his craft. Think of all the pretty creatures I have made happy with my taste and skill. While there are women there must be goldsmiths, Jake!”

“What?” asked the apprentice, taking his lips from the stem of the blow-pipe, and looking at his master.

“You’re sure this is the correct size?” Tresco held an old-fashioned ring between his forefinger and thumb, and tested with the point of a burnisher the setting of the rubies in it.

“Yes,” replied the shock-headed youth. “I seen her take it orf her finger, when the toff bought her engagement-ring. I was ‘all there,’ don’t you make no mistake. ‘Leave this,’ I said, looking at the rubies; ‘the settin’ is a bit shaky,’ I says. ‘Allow me to fix it,’ I says. An’ there you are with a pattern. Savee?”

Benjamin laughed.

“Mind you make it real good,” said the Prospector, who stood, watching the operation. “Person’lly, I’d say put a good big diamond in the centre.”

“’Twouldn’t do,” replied the goldsmith. “Unfortunately, Custom says wedding-rings must be plain, so plain it must be.”

“Then let it be pure,” said the Prospector. “Anyway it’ll bring good luck.”

He had divided his lucky nugget, the same that he had refused to sell when he made the goldsmith’s acquaintance and sold the first gold from Bush Robin Creek, and while he had retained one half of this talisman, out of the other half Tresco was fashioning a wedding-ring for Scarlett.

The red-hot piece of gold had been cooled suddenly by being cast into the “pickle,” and was now subjected to another severe hammering, after which it was drawn, by means of a gigantic pair of tongs fixed to the windlass of a bench by a long leather strap through graduated holes in a strong steel plate. Next, it was branded, by means of certain steel punches, with the goldsmith’s private marks, and afterwards it was bent with pliers into a circle, and its clear-cut ends were soldered together under the blow-pipe.

Benjamin peered over the tops of his glasses at the Prospector. “I owe you luck, fortune, and freedom,” he said, “and yet, Bill, your power to create happiness is distinctly limited.”

“I dessay,” replied the Prospector. “But what’d you have me do? Would you ask me to make you into a gold-plated angel with a pair o’ patent wings, twelve foot in the spread? It’d save me a deal o’ trouble if you could fly away from the police an’ Timber Town.”

“I wasn’t thinking of the police. I was thinking of adorable, elusive Woman. I ought to be making my own wedding-ring: instead of that I must roll my bluey and be footing it over the mountains before to-morrow morning. I’m turned into a perfect Wandering Jew.”

“You should be darn glad I give you the opportunity.”

“I leave behind the loveliest fallen angel you ever set eyes on.”

“You’ll find plenty more o’ that sort where you’re goin’.”

“Perhaps: but not one of ’em the prospective Mrs. T. Ah, well, all through life my hopes of domestic bliss have invariably been blighted; but the golden key of wealth will unlock the hardest woman’s heart. When I have leisure and freedom from worry, I’ll see what can be done. In the meanwhile, Jake, go and fetch some beer.” He took a shilling from his pocket, and gave it to the apprentice. “Make tracks,” he said, “or my sorrow will have fled before I’ve had time to drown it.”

Jake disappeared, as if shot from a cannon, and his master placed the roughly-formed ring on a steel mandril.

“But this,” said the goldsmith, tapping the ring skilfully with a diminutive hammer, “this is for the finger of an angel. Just think, Bill, what it would be to be spliced to a creature so good that it’d be like being chained to a scripture saint for the rest of your life.”

“I guess I’d be on the wallaby in a fortnight,” said the Prospector. “Personally, I prefer a flesh-and-blood angel, with a touch of the devil in her. But at best marriage is on’y a lottery. A wife’s like a claim – she may prove rich, or she may turn out to be a duffer.”

The goldsmith was now working upon the ring with a file. Next, he rubbed it with emery paper, and finished it with a burnisher.

“Yes,” said he, as he filled his pipe, and lighted it at the pilot-flame of the gas-jet which stretched its long, movable arm over the bench, “men, like flies, are of two kinds – those that fall into the soup, an’ those that don’t. I have borne a charmed life: you have fallen into the tureen. Here comes the beer!”

There was a scuffling on the side-path, and Jake’s voice was heard in shrill altercation. Up to that point, Benjamin’s body-guard had attended rigidly to its self-imposed duty, but now, following close on the heels of the apprentice, its members burst into the workshop.

Shaking with laughter, Tresco addressed the thirsty influx.

“I’m sorry, mates,” he said, “but I can’t see my way to make that quart of beer into two gallons. But I give largess to my vassals – that, I believe, is real, toff, Court dialect. Drink this.”

He took a crumpled one-pound bank-note from his pocket, and handed it to the self-appointed captain of his guard, who immediately withdrew his fire-eaters, and the goldsmith was left to complete his work in peace.

“Here’s health to the bride that’s to wear it,” said Benjamin, as he raised his glass to his thirsty lips.