THE TALE OF TIMBER TOWN.
CHAPTER I.
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.