Equally unprecedented13 and extravagant15 was the realization16 of the discovery in Mulrady's shaft. It was alleged17 that a company, hastily formed in Sacramento, paid him a million of dollars down, leaving him still a controlling two-thirds interest in the mine. With an obstinacy18, however, that amounted almost to a moral conviction, he refused to include the house and potato-patch in the property. When the company had yielded the point, he declined, with equal tenacity19, to part with it to outside speculators on even the most extravagant offers. In vain Mrs. Mulrady protested; in vain she pointed20 out to him that the retention21 of the evidence of his former humble22 occupation was a green blot23 upon their social escutcheon.
"If you will keep the land, build on it, and root up the garden." But Mulrady was adamant24.
"It's the only thing I ever made myself, and got out of the soil with my own hands; it's the beginning of my fortune, and it may be the end of it. Mebbee I'll be glad enough to have it to come back to some day, and be thankful for the square meal I can dig out of it."
By repeated pressure, however, Mulrady yielded the compromise that a portion of it should be made into a vineyard and flower-garden, and by a suitable coloring of ornament25 and luxury obliterate26 its vulgar part. Less successful, however, was that energetic woman in another effort to mitigate27 the austerities of their earlier state. It occurred to her to utilize28 the softer accents of Don Caesar in the pronunciation of their family name, and privately29 had "Mulrade" take the place of Mulrady on her visiting card. "It might be Spanish," she argued with her husband. "Lawyer Cole says most American names are corrupted30, and how do you know that yours ain't?" Mulrady, who would not swear that his ancestors came from Ireland to the Carolinas in '98, was helpless to refute the assertion. But the terrible Nemesis31 of an un-Spanish, American provincial32 speech avenged33 the orthographical34 outrage35 at once. When Mrs. Mulrady began to be addressed orally, as well as by letter, as "Mrs. Mulraid," and when simple amatory effusions to her daughter rhymed with "lovely maid," she promptly36 refused the original vowel37. But she fondly clung to the Spanish courtesy which transformed her husband's baptismal name, and usually spoke38 of him—in his absence—as "Don Alvino." But in the presence of his short, square figure, his orange tawny39 hair, his twinkling gray eyes, and retrousse nose, even that dominant40 woman withheld41 his title. It was currently reported at Red Dog that a distinguished42 foreigner had one day approached Mulrady with the formula, "I believe I have the honor of addressing Don Alvino Mulrady?" "You kin11 bet your boots, stranger, that's me," had returned that simple hidalgo.
Although Mrs. Mulrady would have preferred that Mamie should remain at Sacramento until she could join her, preparatory to a trip to "the States" and Europe, she yielded to her daughter's desire to astonish Rough-and-Ready, before she left, with her new wardrobe, and unfold in the parent nest the delicate and painted wings with which she was to fly from them forever. "I don't want them to remember me afterwards in those spotted43 prints, ma, and like as not say I never had a decent frock until I went away." There was something so like the daughter of her mother in this delicate foresight44 that the touched and gratified parent kissed her, and assented. The result was gratifying beyond her expectation. In that few weeks' sojourn45 at Sacramento, the young girl seemed to have adapted and assimilated herself to the latest modes of fashion with even more than the usual American girl's pliancy46 and taste. Equal to all emergencies of style and material, she seemed to supply, from some hitherto unknown quality she possessed47, the grace and manner peculiar48 to each. Untrammeled by tradition, education, or precedent14, she had the Western girl's confidence in all things being possible, which made them so often probable. Mr. Mulrady looked at his daughter with mingled49 sentiments of pride and awe50. Was it possible that this delicate creature, so superior to him that he seemed like a degenerate51 scion52 of her remoter race, was his own flesh and blood? Was she the daughter of her mother, who even in her remembered youth was never equipped like this? If the thought brought no pleasure to his simple, loving nature, it at least spared him the pain of what might have seemed ingratitude53 in one more akin10 to himself. "The fact is, we ain't quite up to her style," was his explanation and apology. A vague belief that in another and a better world than this he might approximate and understand this perfection somewhat soothed54 and sustained him.
It was quite consistent, therefore, that the embroidered55 cambric dress which Mamie Mulrady wore one summer afternoon on the hillside at Los Gatos, while to the critical feminine eye at once artistic56 and expensive, should not seem incongruous to her surroundings or to herself in the eyes of a general audience. It certainly did not seem so to one pair of frank, humorous ones that glanced at her from time to time, as their owner, a young fellow of five-and-twenty, walked at her side. He was the new editor of the "Rough-and-Ready Record," and, having been her fellow-passenger from Sacramento, had already once or twice availed himself of her father's invitation to call upon them. Mrs. Mulrady had not discouraged this mild flirtation57. Whether she wished to disconcert Don Caesar for some occult purpose, or whether, like the rest of her sex, she had an overweening confidence in the unheroic, unseductive, and purely58 platonic59 character of masculine humor, did not appear.
"When I say I'm sorry you are going to leave us, Miss Mulrady," said the young fellow, lightly, "you will comprehend my unselfishness, since I frankly60 admit your departure would be a positive relief to me as an editor and a man. The pressure in the Poet's Corner of the 'Record' since it was mistakingly discovered that a person of your name might be induced to seek the 'glade61' and 'shade' without being 'afraid,' 'dismayed,' or 'betrayed,' has been something enormous, and, unfortunately, I am debarred from rejecting anything, on the just ground that I am myself an interested admirer."
"It's dreadful to be placarded around the country by one's own full name, isn't it?" said Mamie, without, however, expressing much horror in her face.
"They think it much more respectful than to call you 'Mamie,'" he responded, lightly; "and many of your admirers are middle-aged62 men, with a mediaeval style of compliment. I've discovered that amatory versifying wasn't entirely63 a youthful passion. Colonel Cash is about as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and scatters64 as terribly. Judge Butts65 and Dr. Wilson have both discerned the resemblance of your gifts to those of Venus, and their own to Apollo. But don't undervalue those tributes, Miss Mulrady," he added, more seriously. "You'll have thousands of admirers where you are going; but you'll be willing to admit in the end, I think, that none were more honest and respectful than your subjects at Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog." He stopped, and added in a graver tone, "Does Don Caesar write poetry?"
"He has something better to do," said the young lady, pertly.
"I can easily imagine that," he returned, mischievously67; "it must be a pallid68 substitute for other opportunities."
"What did you come here for?" she asked, suddenly.
"To see you."
"Nonsense! You know what I mean. Why did you ever leave Sacramento to come here? I should think it would suit you so much better than this place."
"I suppose I was fired by your father's example, and wished to find a gold mine."
"Men like you never do," she said, simply.
"Is that a compliment, Miss Mulrady?"
"I don't know. But I think that you think that it is."
He gave her the pleased look of one who had unexpectedly found a sympathetic intelligence. "Do I? This is interesting. Let's sit down." In their desultory69 rambling70 they had reached, quite unconsciously, the large boulder71 at the roadside. Mamie hesitated a moment, looked up and down the road, and then, with an already opulent indifference72 to the damaging of her spotless skirt, sat herself upon it, with her furled parasol held by her two little hands thrown over her half-drawn-up knee. The young editor, half sitting, half leaning, against the stone, began to draw figures in the sand with his cane73.
"On the contrary, Miss Mulrady, I hope to make some money here. You are leaving Rough-and-Ready because you are rich. We are coming to it because we are poor."
"We?" echoed Mamie, lazily, looking up the road.
"Yes. My father and two sisters."
"I am sorry. I might have known them if I hadn't been going away." At the same moment, it flashed across her mind that, if they were like the man before her, they might prove disagreeably independent and critical. "Is your father in business?" she asked.
He shook his head. After a pause, he said, punctuating75 his sentences with the point of his stick in the soft dust, "He is paralyzed, and out of his mind, Miss Mulrady. I came to California to seek him, as all news of him ceased three years since; and I found him only two weeks ago, alone, friendless—an unrecognized pauper76 in the county hospital."
"Two weeks ago? That was when I went to Sacramento."
"Very probably."
"It must have been very shocking to you?"
"It was."
"I should think you'd feel real bad?"
"I do, at times." He smiled, and laid his stick on the stone. "You now see, Miss Mulrady, how necessary to me is this good fortune that you don't think me worthy77 of. Meantime I must try to make a home for them at Rough-and-Ready."
Miss Mulrady put down her knee and her parasol. "We mustn't stay here much longer, you know."
"Why?"
"Why, the stage-coach comes by at about this time."
"And you think the passengers will observe us sitting here?"
"Of course they will."
"Miss Mulrady, I implore78 you to stay."
He was leaning over her with such apparent earnestness of voice and gesture that the color came into her cheek. For a moment she scarcely dared to lift her conscious eyes to his. When she did so, she suddenly glanced her own aside with a flash of anger. He was laughing.
"If you have any pity for me, do not leave me now," he repeated. "Stay a moment longer, and my fortune is made. The passengers will report us all over Red Dog as engaged. I shall be supposed to be in your father's secrets, and shall be sought after as a director of all the new companies. The 'Record' will double its circulation; poetry will drop out of its columns, advertising
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