第8章 CHAPTER II(1)

When the news of the discovery of gold in Mulrady shaft was finally made public,it created an excitement hitherto unknown in the history of the country.Half of Red Dog and all Rough-and-Ready were emptied upon the yellow hills surrounding Mulrady's,until their circling camp fires looked like a besieging army that had invested his peaceful pastoral home,preparatory to carrying it by assault.Unfortunately for them,they found the various points of vantage already garrisoned with notices of "preemption"for mining purposes in the name of the various members of the Alvarado family.

This stroke of business was due to Mrs.Mulrady,as a means of mollifying the conscientious scruples of her husband and of placating the Alvarados,in view of some remote contingency.It is but fair to say that this degradation of his father's Castilian principles was opposed by Don Caesar."You needn't work them yourself,but sell out to them that will;it's the only way to keep the prospectors from taking it without paying for it at all,"argued Mrs.Mulrady.Don Caesar finally assented;perhaps less to the business arguments of Mulrady's wife than to the simple suggestion of Mamie's mother.Enough that he realized a sum in money for a few acres that exceeded the last ten years'income of Don Ramon's seven leagues.

Equally unprecedented and extravagant was the realization of the discovery in Mulrady's shaft.It was alleged 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 obstinacy,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 tenacity,to part with it to outside speculators on even the most extravagant offers.In vain Mrs.Mulrady protested;in vain she pointed out to him that the retention of the evidence of his former humble occupation was a green blot upon their social escutcheon.

"If you will keep the land,build on it,and root up the garden."But Mulrady was adamant.

"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 ornament and luxury obliterate its vulgar part.Less successful,however,was that energetic woman in another effort to mitigate the austerities of their earlier state.

It occurred to her to utilize the softer accents of Don Caesar in the pronunciation of their family name,and privately 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 corrupted,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 Nemesis of an un-Spanish,American provincial speech avenged the orthographical outrage 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 promptly refused the original vowel.

But she fondly clung to the Spanish courtesy which transformed her husband's baptismal name,and usually spoke of him--in his absence--as "Don Alvino."But in the presence of his short,square figure,his orange tawny hair,his twinkling gray eyes,and retrousse nose,even that dominant woman withheld his title.It was currently reported at Red Dog that a distinguished foreigner had one day approached Mulrady with the formula,"I believe I have the honor of addressing Don Alvino Mulrady?""You kin 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 spotted 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 foresight that the touched and gratified parent kissed her,and assented.The result was gratifying beyond her expectation.In that few weeks'sojourn 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 pliancy and taste.

Equal to all emergencies of style and material,she seemed to supply,from some hitherto unknown quality she possessed,the grace and manner peculiar to each.Untrammeled by tradition,education,or precedent,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 mingled sentiments of pride and awe.