The Wedge of Gold Part 8

The day wore heavily away. It was almost dark when a carriage stopped at the hotel and the cards of Archibald Hamlin and Percival Jenvie were brought in. Browning received them, and glancing at them handed them to Sedgwick, whispering, "They are the old duffers, Jim," caught up his hat, said to the servant, "Show me the gentlemen," and followed him out of the room.

He was absent a full half-hour. When he returned the two old men accompanied him and were presented to Jack. They were very gracious, invited Sedgwick to come with his son and make his son's home his home while in London.

Sedgwick was shy when there were ladies present, but men did not disconcert him.

He thanked Mr. Hamlin for his kind invitation, but begged to be excused, adding, "I am but a miner, not yet a month from underground. I have lived a miner's life for years. You do not understand, but that is not a good school in which to prepare a student for polite society."

"Tut, tut," said the old gentleman, with English heartiness. "We have a big, rambling old house. You can have your quarters there. When you become bored you can retreat to them. You shall have a key and go and come when you please. We should all be hurt were not Jack's friend made welcome under our roof so long as he pleased to remain in London."

"Well, let me think it over to-night. If I can gather the courage, maybe I will accept to-morrow," said Sedgwick.

Then Jenvie interposed, saying, "Mr. Sedgwick, let us make a compromise.

My house is but a step from Hamlin's; make it your home half the time.

Really it should be. In England friends only stop at hotels when traveling."

"Come, Jim," said Jack; "you see it must be, and that is the right thing.

Ours are old-fashioned people, just up from Devonshire. What would you have thought had I insisted upon stopping at that hotel at the station near your father's house?"

Sedgwick yielded at last. Their trunks were packed in a few minutes, the bill settled, and they drove away.

Reaching the Hamlin home they were shown at once to their apartments, and were informed that so soon as they were ready dinner would be served.

They were not long in dressing, and together they descended to the parlor. Besides the family, the Jenvie family were also present. Grace met them at the door, shook hands with Sedgwick, and welcomed him with a word and a smile which set all his pulses bounding, and, taking his arm, presented him to the strangers; then shouted gaily: "Follow us! dinner is waiting."

Sedgwick was given the seat at the right of his host; Grace took the seat at his right, with Jack and Rose opposite.

The ladies were radiant in evening costume, and Sedgwick with a mighty effort threw off the depression which had burdened the day and appeared at his very best.

Mrs. Hamlin, judging shrewdly that perhaps it would relieve the stranger from embarra.s.sment to engage him in conversation, with beautiful tact brought him to tell the company of his own country, remarking that "We insular people have but a vague idea at best of America."

With a smile, Sedgwick replied: "I do not know very much myself of my native country, for since I left school (here he glanced at Jack and his eyes twinkled) I merely wandered slowly through the southwestern States, almost to the Gulf in Texas, then bending north and west again, continued until I reached the eastern slope of the Sierras, and then made a dive underground and remained there until Jack determined to go home, and I came along to take care of him."

Here Miss Jenvie interposed and said: "What was the most precious thing you ever found in the mines, Mr. Sedgwick?"

"Considering who asked the question, it would be cruel not to tell you it was Jack," he replied.

All laughed, and Miss Jenvie said: "Is it true, did you and Jack first meet underground?"

"Indeed we did," said Sedgwick, "and we were neither of us handsomely attired. I thought he was a gnome; he thought me a Chinese dragon."

Then Miss Grace interposed; "Mr. Sedgwick," said she, "is not Texas a land where there are a great many cattle?"

"Millions of them," was the reply.

"And is not that the region where the cowboy is also found?" she continued.

"There are a few there, surely," said Sedgwick, and looking across the table he saw a smile on Jack's face.

"They are good riders and good shots, are they not?" Grace asked.

"Some of them ride well, and nearly all of them shoot well," said Sedgwick.

"I would like to go there," said Grace, impetuously; "it must be a jolly life." Then looking at her mother, she laughed gaily and said: "If ever one of those cowboys, with broad hat and jingling spurs, comes this way, you had better lock the doors, mamma, if you want to keep me."

Sedgwick kept a steady face, but his heart was throbbing so that he feared the company would hear it.

Then Jenvie asked Sedgwick if mining in Nevada was not mostly carried on by rough and rude men.

Sedgwick's face became grave in a moment, as he said: "We must judge men by the motives behind their lives, if we would get at what they really are. There are married men and single men at work in the mines. The married men have wives and little children to support. They wish to have their dear ones fed and clothed as well as other generous people feed and clothe their families. They want their children educated. They have, moreover, all around them examples of rich men who a year or five years previous were as humble and poor as they now are. The young men have hopes quite as sweet, purposes quite as high. This one is to build up a little fortune for some one he loves; this one has a home in his mind's eye which he means to purchase; this one has relatives whom he dreams of making happy, while others have visions of honors and fame, so soon as something which is in their thoughts shall materialize.

"Then the occupation itself and the results have a tendency, I think, to exalt men. To begin with, the work is a steady struggle against nature's tremendous forces. The rock has to be blasted, the waters controlled, the consuming heat tempered, the swelling clay confined, and to do this men have to employ great agents. A silver mine generally has Desolation placed as a watch above it. To work it everything has to be carried to it. The forest away off on some mountain side has to be felled and hauled to the spot. For many months the great Bonanza has received within it monthly 3,000,000 feet of timbers, machinery equal to that in the holds of mighty steamships has to be set in place and motion; drills are kept at work 2,000 feet underground, from power supplied on the surface; hundreds of men have to be daily hoisted from and lowered into the depths; there has to be a precision and continuity that never fail, and the men who plan and carry on that work emerge from it after a few years stronger, brighter, clearer-brained and braver men than they ever would have been except for that discipline.

"Then what they produce is something which makes the labor of every other man more profitable, for it is something which is the measure of values, something which all races of men recognize at once, something indestructible and peculiarly precious, which can be drawn into a thread-like silk, or hammered into a leaf so thin that a breath will carry it away; it is the very spirit of the rock, the part that is imperishable. Moreover, it is labor made immortal, for, tried by fire, it grows bright and loses no grain of its weight. Could we find a piece of the beaten gold that overlaid the temple of Israel's greatest king, it would, to-day, represent the labor of one of those miners that toiled in Ophir and fell back to dust thirty generations before the Christ was born.

"Moreover, it is and has been from the first one of the measures of the civilization of nations. Where gold and silver are in general circulation among the people they are always prosperous, their children are always educated, and the advance is so marked that it can be measured by decades of years. A nation's decay or enlightenment can be traced by the decreasing or increasing volume of gold and silver in circulation.

"Miners thus engrossed, producing such a substance, and carrying such hopes and aspirations in their souls, as a rule, grow stronger, more manly and more true.

"I do not say that there are not many rough characters among them. I do not say that when the influence of true women is in great part withdrawn from any cla.s.s of men, they do not more and more gravitate toward savagery, for they but follow a natural law; but the tenderest, truest, bravest, best, most generous and most just men I have ever known have been miners in the far West of the United States."

While talking, Sedgwick had seemed to forget where he was, but as he ceased he glanced across the table and noticed a look of full appreciation on Rose's face, and smiling, he added: "I was talking for Jack's sake, Miss Rose."

It was a pleasant dinner, and a pleasant evening followed. There was a running fire of conversation, broken only when the young ladies sang or played. When Sedgwick first heard Grace sing, he sat, as he said afterward, "in mortal terror lest wings should spread out from her white shoulders and she should disappear through the ceiling."

In point of fact, she sang well, but she was not nearly ethereal enough to want to give up the substantial earth to take to the ether.

But amid all the contending emotions, Sedgwick kept a furtive watch upon the two old men. They were exceedingly gracious, but they gave Sedgwick the impression that they were striving too hard to be agreeable.

Jack was in the seventh heaven. He tried to conceal his joy, but every moment he would glance at Rose Jenvie with a look in his eyes which was enough to show any miner where his bonanza was. Sedgwick was wildly smitten, himself, but he kept his wits about him enough to watch and try to fathom what in the bearing of the old men for some inexplainable reason disturbed him.

When the company separated and sought their respective apartments, Jack went to his own room, threw off his coat, put on slippers and lighted a cigar, crossed the hall, first tapped upon the door of Sedgwick's room, then pushed it open, walked in, closed the door, and then burst out with "Jim, is she not a glory of the earth?"

"I think she is, indeed," was the reply. Sedgwick was thinking of Grace.

"Is there another such girl in all the world, Jim?" said Jack.

"I don't believe there is, old boy; not another one," said Sedgwick.

"What a queenly head she has! What a throat of snow! What an infinite grace! 'Whether she sits or stands or walks or whatever thing she does,'

she is divine," said Jack.

"She impressed me just that way," said Sedgwick.

"Not too short, not too tall, with just enough flesh and blood to keep one in mind that while she is divine, she is still a woman," said Jack.

"Only base metal enough to hold the precious metal in place," said Sedgwick.

So Jack rattled on in the very ecstasy of his love, and so Sedgwick, quite as deeply involved, replied; the one talking of Rose, the other of Grace.