The Tale of Timber Town. Grace Alfred Augustus
hat.
“You’re in an awful hurry. Where bound, Rachel?”
“If your old Dad told you to go and buy a gold watch and chain, you’d be in a hurry, lest he might change his mind.”
“My soul hankers after something dearer than watches and chains. If your Dad would give me leave, I’d annex his most precious jewel before he could say, ‘Knife!’ He’d never get a chance to change his mind. But he always says, ‘My boy, you wait till you’re a manager, and can give me a big overdraft.’ At that rate we shall have to wait till Doomsday.”
“The watch is at Tresco’s. Come along: help me turn the shop upside down to find the dandiest.”
“How d’you manage to get round the Governor, Rachel? I’d like to know the dodge.”
“He wouldn’t mind if you fell off a stack of bales and broke your neck. He’d say, ‘Thank God! that solves that liddle difficulty.’”
“Wool bales? Has wool gone up? I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t, stupid. If you were on the top of a pile of swaying bales, old Podge would say, ‘Packett, take away the ladder: that nice young man must stay there. It’s better for him to die than marry Rachel – she’d drive him mad with bills in a month.’”
“Oh, that wouldn’t trouble me – I’d draw on him.”
“Oh, would you?” Rachel laughed sceptically. “You don’t know the Gov. if you think that. You couldn’t bluff him into paying a shilling. But I manage him all right. I can get what I want, from a trip to Sydney to a gold watch, dear boy.”
“Then why don’t you squeeze a honeymoon out of him? – that would be something new, Rachel.”
She actually paused in her haste.
“Wouldn’t it be splendid!” she exclaimed, putting her parasol well back behind her head, so that the glow of its crimson silk formed a telling background to her face. “Wouldn’t it be gorgeous? But as soon as I’m married he will say, ‘No, Rachel, my dear child, your poor old father is supplanted – your husband now has the sole privilege of satisfying your expensive tastes. Depend on him for everything you want.’ What a magnificent time I should have on your twelve notes a month!”
The spruce bank-clerk was subdued in a moment, in the twinkling of one of Rachel’s beautiful black eyes – his matrimonial intentions had been rudely reduced to a basis of pounds, shillings and pence.
But just at this embarrassing point of the conversation they turned into Tresco’s doorway, and confronted the rubicund goldsmith, whose beaming smile seemed to fill the whole shop.
“I saw an awf’ly jolly watch in your window,” said Rachel.
“Probably. Nothing more likely, Miss Varnhagen,” replied Benjamin. “Gold or silver?”
“Gold, of course! Let me see what you’ve got.”
“Why, certainly.” Tresco took gold watches from the window, from the glass case on the counter, from the glass cupboard that stood against the wall, from the depths of the great iron safe, from everywhere, and placed them in front of the pretty Jewess. Then he glanced with self-approval at the bank-clerk, and said: “I guarantee them to keep perfect time. And, after all, there’s nothing like a good watch – a young lady cannot keep her appointments, or a young man be on time, without a watch. Most important: no one should be without it.”
Rachel was examining the chronometers, one by one; opening and shutting their cases, examining their dials, peering into their mysterious works. She had taken off her gloves, and her pretty hands, ornamented with dainty rings, were displayed in all their shapeliness and delicacy.
“What’s the price?” she asked.
“Prices to suit all buyers,” said Tresco. “They go from ten pounds upwards. This is the one I recommend – it carries a guarantee for five years – jewelled throughout, in good, strong case – duplex escapement – compensation balance. Price £25.” He held up a gold chronometer in a case which was flat and square, with rounded corners, and engraved elaborately – a watch which would catch the eye and induce comment.
The jeweller had gauged the taste of his fair customer.
“Oh! the duck.”
“The identical article, the ideal lady’s watch,” said Tresco, unctuously.
“And now the chain,” said Rachel.
Benjamin took a dozen lady’s watch-guards from a blue velvet pad, and handed them to the girl.
The gold clerk of the Kangaroo Bank stood by, and watched, as Rachel held the dainty chains, one by one, across her bust.
“Quite right, sir, quite right,” remarked the goldsmith. “When a gentleman makes a present to a lady, let him do the thing handsome. Them’s my sentiments.”
The girl looked at Tresco, and laughed.
“This is to be booked to my father,” she said. “There, that’s the one I like best.” She held out an elaborate chain, with a round bauble hanging from it. “If you had to depend on Mr. Zahn, here, you’d have to wait till the cows came home.”
Benjamin was wrapping up the watch in a quantity of tissue paper.
“No, no. I’ll wear it,” exclaimed Rachel. One dainty hand stretched forward and took the watch, while the other held the chain. “There,” she said, as she handed the precious purchase to her sweetheart, “fix it on.”
She threw her head back, laid her hand lightly on the young man’s arm, and allowed him to tuck the watch into her bodice and fasten the chain around her neck.
He lingered long over the process.
“Yes, I would,” said the voice from behind the counter. “I most certainly should give her one on the cheek, as a reward. Don’t mind me; I’ve done it myself when I was young, before I lost my looks.”
The young man stepped back, and Rachel, after the manner of a pouter pigeon, nestled her chin on her breast, in her endeavour to see how the watch looked in wearing. Then she tapped the floor with the toe of her shoe indignantly, and said, looking straight at the goldsmith: “You lost your looks? What a find they must have been for the man who picked them up. If I were you, I’d advertise for them, and offer a handsome a reward – they must be valuable.”
“Most certainly, they were,” replied Benjamin, his smile spreading across his broad countenance, “they were the talk of all my lady friends and the envy of my rivals.”
“I expect it was the rivals that spoilt them. But don’t cry over spilt milk, old gentleman.”
“Certainly not, most decidedly not – there are compensations. The price of the watch and chain is £33.”
“Never mind the price. I don’t want to know the price – that’ll interest my Dad. Send the account to him, and make yourself happy.”
And, touching her sweetheart’s arm as a signal for departure, the dazzling vision of muslins and ribbons vanished from the shop.
CHAPTER V
He came down the street like a dog that has strayed into church during sermon-time; a masterless man without a domicile. He was unkempt and travel-stained; his moleskin trousers, held up by a strap buckled round his waist, were trodden down at the heels; under the hem of his coat, a thing of rents and patches, protruded the brass end of a knife-sheath. His back was bent under the weight of his neat, compact swag, which contained his six-by-eight tent and the blankets and gear necessary to a bushman. He helped his weary steps with a long manuka stick, to which still clung the rough red bark, and looking neither to left nor right, he steadfastly trudged along the middle of the road. What with his ragged black beard which grew almost to his eyes, and the brim of his slouch hat, which had once been black, but was now green with age and weather, only the point of his rather characterless