CHAPTER XTHE QUICKENING CURRENT
The last quarter of 1873 was for California and Nevada a period of steadily augmenting excitement. The rumor of new strikes in the California and Con. Virginia grew with each week, seizing upon the minds of men, shaking them from the lethargy of their disbelief, arresting them in the plodding ways of work by the temptation of riches, in vast quantities, easily made, open to the hands of all who dared.
Reports from Virginia by wire, by letter, by word of mouth poured into San Francisco. The news that a southeast drift had run into a rich ore-body in the California and Con. Virginia was two weeks later supplemented by a rumor that a chamber had been cut in the ledge, the ore-surface assaying from ninety-three to six hundred and thirty-two dollars per ton.
The male population of the city surged back and forth across the mountains, seized with the fever for gold. The wild days of mining speculation were not yet fully inaugurated, but with the increasing discoveries shares in all the properties near the new bonanzas began to rise, and the world once more began to buy. From across the mountains truth and rumor flowed in ever-accelerating waves to SanFrancisco, and stocks began to leap as they had done in the Crown Point and Belcher days.
In the middle of this outer ring of excitement the little group of the Colonel and his friends was shaken by tumults of its own creating. The great wheel outside spun round with fury while the little wheel inside flew with an equal speed. It seemed as if the fever of life around them was communicating itself to them, making their blood flow quicker, their pulses throb harder, lifting them up to planes where the air was charged with dynamic forces, and electric vibrations hummed along the serene currents of life.
Both Allen and the Colonel were smitten by temptation. Like a man suddenly arrested in happy, undisturbed wayfaring by some irresistible call to sin, the Colonel stood irresolute, fighting with his desire once more to “try his luck.” His resources had grown smaller again within the last year, and he found it meant financiering to keep up the donations for “Carter’s girl” and “G. T.’s widow.” Early in the year he had sold one of the South Park houses, almost the only good piece of property he still retained, paid his assessments for the new pumps they were putting up in the mine in Shasta and placed “Joe’s boy” in business. “Carter’s girl” would not be a care much longer. She was eighteen and engaged to be married. “G. T.’s widow” was the only pensioner that would remain on his hands till either he or she was called to a final account. The Colonel felt that he must live up to her ideal of him, which was that he was as good financially as the Bank of England.
Allen had not a thought to give to such matters as individual pecuniary obligations. He was continually at his mine or in Virginia, returning for brief visits at odd times, when he talked thickly and volubly of the wonderful developments of the Nevada camp. He was deteriorating rapidly. He drank now in the daytime. There were stories going about that ore in the Barranca was very low grade, the ore-body narrowing. In October the Colonel met a mining man from the locality who said it was common talk at Foleys that the Barranca was “pinching out.” Whether it was or not Allen was known to be investing in “wildcat” in Virginia. He went about with his pockets full of maps which he was perpetually unrolling and pointing out this or that undeveloped claim which would some day yield a new bonanza and was now a prospect hole in the sage brush.
The engagement of Rosamund filled him with delight. He was a man whose affection was largely founded on pride, and it satisfied him that one of his girls should “capture,” as he expressed it, a fiancé so eminently eligible. He made much of Rosamund, of whom he had never before been as fond as he was of June, and treated Harrower with a familiar jocoseness under which that reserved young man winced and was restive.
“He thinks I’m rich,” Allen had said one evening to the Colonel as they sat alone over their cigars. “He thinks he’s going to get a fortune with Rosamund.”
“What put that into your head?” the Colonel hadasked in sudden annoyance. “The boy loves her as he ought to. He’s a man, that fellow. He’s not after money.”
“Maybe that’s your opinion,” the other had returned, “but I happen to have a different one. He takes me for a millionaire mining man and thinks Rosamund’s going to get her slice of the millions for a dowry. He’s going to get left, but that’s not my concern or yours. Rosamund’ll have as good a trousseau as any girl, but when you come to dowry—!”
He broke off, laughing. The Colonel found it difficult to respond without a show of temper.
“You’re all off,” he answered dryly. “When his grandfather dies—and the old fellow’s over eighty now—he’ll have one of the finest estates in the part of England where he’s located. What’s he want with your money? Why, he could buy up and put in his pocket a whole bunch of plungers like you, with your wildcat shares. Can’t you believe that the boy’s honestly in love with a girl like Rosamund?”
“Oh, Jim, you’re an old maid!” the other returned with his irritating, lazy laughter. “He’s in love with Rosamund all right, but he’s also in love with the money he thinks he’s going to get with her. But don’t you fret. It’ll be all right. He’s a decent enough fellow, but it’s a good thing for us he’s not got more sense.”
Thus the older men had their anxieties, as the young people had theirs. And all this agglomeration of divers emotions and interests concentrated, even as the pressure in the city without, the yearsweeping toward its close with ever-increasing momentum, like a river rushing toward the sea.
October was a month of movement, pressure and stir. While San Francisco waited expectant for its first cleansing rains, Harrower left for England, to return in the spring and claim his bride. In the long gray afternoons June sat much at home, brooding over the sitting-room fire, waiting for a visitor who never came. Mercedes moved up from Tres Pinos and took possession of the city house her father had rented for her. She was blooming and gay after her summer in the country. Her heart was swelled with triumph, for she knew the game was won, and, caught in the eddies of the whirling current, she too was swept forward toward a future that was full of tantalizing secrets.