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?”