That summer she was a good deal saddened by the news from Russia. In the broad valley of the Volga, already ravaged by the passions of armies, no spring showers had coaxed the wheat out of its matrix, and Samarans might soon be driven to devour their own children. She could not fully sense the image and horror of what was coming, but it was all a warning against marriage.
Yet Russia was rich in natural resources, and especially rich in platinum, which it had been using as coins. She had never seen platinum, and had no hope of seeing it, but she knew how precious it is in a laboratory. She knew also that because it is worth five times as much as gold, much of it hangs on the necks of rich women, who are utterly unaware of the sin they are committing. The whole earth produces less than ten tons a year, and every ounce of it is needed for crucibles or wire or apparatus, but the density of platinum is nothing to the density of human minds.
One thing about platinum interested and puzzled her. When finely divided it hastens the union of hydrogen and oxygen without losing any of its mass. It produces explosions without itself exploding. It struck her that this was a good deal like the rich women who owned it, but that it was also like electricity. She had a horror of explosions, but she had a growing interest in electricity. If George Gillies could find her some zinc and copper, she might be able to make herself a battery.
Chapter 79. Gold
A year had passed, and still no word from Marvin. Evidently he had not yet gone back to the wonderful Gratia with the hair like spun gold and the eyes like gentians by the river’s edge. But he had two more years in which to reclaim Gratia or find somebody else.
How like a dream were now that visit to the East, and the meeting with her mother’s old friend, and the confession to Kate Coggeshall in the gloaming, and that gift of paper which might have been sold for a hundred thousand dollars! She, Jean Winifred Rich, had actually refused a hundred thousand golden dollars, flattering herself that it was because she had not earned it. How slenderly she had known herself! The real reason was that she could not accept money from the father of the man she loved!
Now all the gold remaining to her was the unspent double-eagle given her by Susan Endicott Hogg. No—there was the other tiny mass of it. Up on the hill lay a ring on a dear and crumbling hand.
During the magical autumn days of 1920 she was but little in her laboratory and oftener sitting by the grave beneath the pines. It was covered now by the scarlet berries of mitchella, on which the sunlight rested warm. And beside it Jean lingered as if clinging to the one thing intelligible in a chaotic world. Her mother’s love seemed about the only fact that she could understand.
Certainly she could not understand gold. It was a lovely substance, looking as if all the fires of a star had been compacted in one lump, and it had always been dear to poets. It was so beautiful that she would fain have given the Red Leaf a mixing bowl of the purest gold to mix her corn bread in. That of course was impossible, because there are so few grains of it on earth. To make up one-tenth of one percent of the rocks it takes all the gold and all of sixty-three other elements.
But this stuff so dear to the poets had also been cursed by every great writer from Isaiah down. It was saint-seducing gold. It was the cause of theft and murder and war. It meant misers and misery. She felt dimly that Horatio had been sacrificed to somebody’s love of gold, but she could not prove it. All that she could do to help the world was to bring no more Horatios into it.