Timber Alpha

The Master-Goldsmith.

Jake Ruggles leant over the goldsmith's bench, put the end of his blow-pipe into the gas-flame, and impinged a little oxygenized jet upon the silver buckle he was soldering. He was a thin, undersized, rabbit-faced youth, whose head was thatched with a shock of coarse black hair. He possessed a pair of spreading black eyebrows upon a forehead which was white when well washed, for Nature had done honestly by the top of his head, but had realised, when his chin was reached, the fatuity of spending more time upon the moulding and adornment of the person of Jake Ruggles.

The master-goldsmith was a rubicund man, with a face which Jake, in a rage, had once described as that of "a pig with the measles." But this was, without doubt, a gross perversion of the truth. Benjamin Tresco's countenance was as benign as that of Bacchus, and as open as the day. Its chief peculiarity was that the brow and lashes of one eye were white, while piebald patches adorned his otherwise red head.

In his own eyes, the most important person in Timber Town was Benjamin Tresco. But it was natural for him to think so, for he was the only man of his trade in a town of six thousand people. He was a portly person who took a broad view of life, and it was his habit to remark, when folk commented on his rotundity, "I am big. I don't deny it. But I can't help myself-God A'mighty made me big, big in body, big in brain, big in appetite, big in desire to break every established law and accepted custom; but I am prevented from giving rein to my impulses by the expansiveness of my soul. That I developed myself. I could go up the street and rob the Kangaroo Bank; I could go to Mr. Crewe, the millionaire, and compel him at the pistol's mouth to transfer me the hoards of his life-time; I could get blazing drunk three nights a week; I could kidnap Varnhagen's pretty daughter, and carry her off to the mountains; but my soul prevents me-I am the battle-ground of contending passions. One half of me says, 'Benjamin, do these things'; the other half says, 'Tresco, abstain. Be magnanimous: spare them!' My appetites-and they are enormous-say, 'Benjamin Tresco, have a real good time while you can; sail in, an' catch a-holt of pleasure with both hands.' But my better part says, 'Take your pleasure in mutual enjoyments, Benjamin; fix your mind on book-learning and the elevating Arts of peace.' I am a bone of contention between Virtue and License, an' the Devil only knows which will get me in the end."

But at the time of introduction he was quietly engraving a little plate of gold, which was destined to adorn the watch-chain of the Mayor, who, after Mr. Crewe, was Timber Town's most opulent citizen.

When the craftsman engraves, he fastens his plate of gold to the end of a piece of wood, long enough to be held conveniently in the hand, and as thick as the width of the precious metal. This he holds in his left hand, and in his right the graver with which he nicks out little pieces of gold according to design, which pieces fall into the apron of the bench-and, behold! he is engraving. The work needs contemplation, concentration, and attention; for every good goldsmith carries the details of the design in his head. But, that morning, there seemed to be none of these qualities in Benjamin Tresco. He dropped his work with a suddenness that endangered its fastenings of pitch, rapped the bench with the round butt of his graver, and glared ferociously at Jake Ruggles.

"What ha' you got there?" he asked fiercely of his apprentice, who sat with him at the bench and was now working industriously with a blow-pipe upon the hoop of a gold ring. "Who told you to stop soldering the buckles?"

Jake turned his head sideways and looked at his master, like a ferret examining an angry terrier; alert, deliberate, and full of resource.

"It's a bit of a ring I was give to mend," he replied, "up at The Lucky Digger."

Tresco stretched out a long arm, and took the gem. Then he drew a deep breath.

"You've begun early, young man," he exclaimed. "Would you poach on my preserves? The young lady whose finger that ring adorns I am wont to regard as my especial property, an' a half-fledged young pukeko, like you, presumes to cut me out! You mend that lady's trinkets? You lean over a bar, an' court beauty adorned in the latest fashion? You make love to my 'piece' by fixing up her jewels? Young man, you've begun too early. Now, look-a-here, I shall do this job myself-for love-I shall deliver this ring with my own hand." Tresco chuckled softly, and Jake laughed out loud.

The scene had been a piece of play-acting. The apprentice, who knew his master's weakness for the pretty bar-maid at The Lucky Digger was, as he expressed himself, "taking a rise out of the boss," and Tresco's simulated wrath was the crisis for which he had schemed. Between the two there existed a queer comradeship, which had been growing for more than two years, so that the bald, rotund, red-faced goldsmith had come to regard the shock-headed, rat-faced apprentice more as a son than as an assistant; whilst Jake would say to the youth of his "push," "Huh! none o' yer bashin' an' knockin' about fer me-the boss an' me's chums. Huh! you should be in my boots-we have our pint between us reg'lar at eleven, just like pals."

Picking up the ring with a pair of tweezers, the master-jeweller first examined its stone-a diamond-through a powerful lens. Next, with a small feather he took up some little bits of chopped gold from where they lay mixed with borax and water upon a piece of slate; these he placed deftly where the gold hoop was weak; over the top of them he laid a delicate slip of gold, and bound the whole together with wire as thin as thread. This done, he put the jewel upon a piece of charred wood, thrust the end of his blow-pipe into the flame of the gas-burner, which he pulled towards him, and with three or four gentle puffs through the pipe the mend was made. The goldsmith threw the ring in the "pickle," a green, deadly-looking chemical in an earthenware pot upon the floor.

Tresco was what the doctors call "a man of full habit." He ate largely, drank deeply, slept heavily, but, alas! he was a bachelor. There was no comfortable woman in the room at the back of his workshop to call in sweet falsetto, "Benjamin, come to dinner! Come at once: the steak's getting cold!" As he used to say, "This my domicile lacks the female touch-there's too much tobacco-ashes an' cobwebs about it: the women seem kind o' scared to come near, as if I might turn out to be a dog that bites."

The ring being pickled, Benjamin fished it out of the green liquid and washed it in a bowl of clean water. A little filing and scraping, a little rubbing with emery-paper, and the goldsmith burnished the yellow circlet till it shone bright and new.

"Who knows?" he exclaimed, holding up the glistening gem, "who knows but it is the ring of the future Mrs. T.? Lord love her, I have forty-eight pairs of socks full of holes, all washed and put away, waiting for her to darn. Think of the domestic comfort of nearly fifty pairs of newly-darned socks; with her sitting, stitching, on one side of the fire, and saying, 'Benjamin, these ready-made socks are no good: I must knit them for you in future,' and me, on the other side, smiling like a Cheshire cat with pure delight, and saying: 'Annie, my dear, you're an angel compacted of comfort and kindness: my love, would you pass me a paper-light, if you please?' But in the meantime the bird must be caught. I go to catch it."

He slipped his dirty apron over his head, put on his coat and weather-beaten hat of strange outlandish shape, placed the ring in a dainty, silk-lined case, and sallied forth into the street.

Timber Town burst on his benignant gaze. Over against him stood a great wooden shop, painted brilliant blue; along the street was another, of bright red; but most of the buildings were a sober stone-colour or some shade of modest grey or brown. One side of the street was verandah'd along its whole length, and the walks on either side of the macadamised road were asphalted. Benjamin, wearing the air of Bacchus courting the morning, walked a hundred yards or so, till he came to the centre of the town, where four streets met. At one corner stood the Kangaroo Bank; at another a big clothing-shop; at the two others Timber Town's rival hostelries-The Bushman's Tavern and The Lucky Digger. The Bank and hotels, conspicuous amid the other buildings, had no verandahs in front of them, but each was freshly painted; the Bushman's Tavern a slate-blue, The Lucky Digger a duck-egg green.