From the beginning he took the Klondike seriously. Not long before everybody was doing the same. Instead of quickly exhausting itself the excitement grew. Had diamonds been discovered in Dakota, the matter would have been a nine days’ wonder, and then died as the easily accessible fields were reached and appropriated. Paradox as it might appear, it was owing to the forbidding circumstances under which those pioneers of ’97 found their treasure, that made the appeal “Klondike” so irresistible to the marvel-loving fancy of the world. The papers overflowed with accounts of the awful hardship and the huge reward—combination irresistible since history began. And if any Missourian said “show me!” he was shown. The actual nuggets and the veritable dust, displayed in a bank window, made would-be miners of men as they passed, or as they meant to pass and stood riveted, staring, seeing there a type of what they might attain unto, if only they had much courage and a little money for an outfit. Who lacked the first? Who could not, for so alluring a purpose, collect the second?
The trains to the ports of San Francisco, Seattle, Victoria, were crammed; the north-bound ships overflowed. Unenterprising, indeed, any store on the Pacific coast that did not advertise some essential to a Klondike outfit. People talked with as much earnestness of the science of life under arctic conditions as they before had discussed Spanish misrule in the South. Even for the vast majority who had no hope of being able to join the rush, the great problem of transportation and the value of evaporated food stuffs, obscured many an issue nearer home.
The one man that he was on fairly intimate terms with, yet to whom Mar had not mentioned the new craze, was Cheviot. It was the kind of thing he would be certain to scoff at. People at the San Joaquin had noticed that scoffing at the Klondike annoyed Mr. Mar, and they wondered a little. Mar had quite made up his mind not to give Cheviot’s skepticism a chance for expression. If you were unwary you might easily think, “So sympathetic and understanding a young man can’t help taking fire over this burning question.” And then Cheviot would show you how easily he could help it. Watch him playing with his little nephews and nieces and you’d say, “So kind to children, he will be kind to the childishness in me.” And behold he wasn’t. He was an “awfully good fellow,” but he expected a man to be grown up—and few are.
Mar’s anticipation of what would be Cheviot’s views about the new craze were very much Hildegarde’s own. Her astonishment was therefore well-nigh speechless, when, on the occasion of his next visit, after ten minutes’ general conversation in the garden, Cheviot said, “By the way, Hildegarde, I’ve come to tell you I’m going to the Klondike.”
“You!” and she stared at him in silence till she could reassure herself by saying, “Nonsense!”
“It may be nonsense, but I’m going.”
“You can’t be in earnest!”
“Quite.”
She stood, watering-pot in hand, her big eyes wider than ever he had seen them, and a look on her face certainly disturbed, even annoyed.
It wasn’t very nice, this feeling as if the bottom were dropping out of existence. He had no right to make her feel like that.