CHAPTER III
Not for several years had Mar made mention of the far northern experience which, beside laming him for life, had as yet but one visible effect upon his circumstances—that of ruining his credit as a man of judgment among those nearest to him.
People had recognized Nathaniel Mar as one marked out for misfortune, when, upon his father’s death, he had been obliged to give up his theological studies, and come back from college, to take the first thing that offered him a little ready money for the assistance of his mother. His modest salary as surveyor’s clerk was presently augmented, in recognition of his good draftsmanship and his surprisingly quick mastery of the new field. But it was not till the work he did the following year, over in the Rock Hill district, brought him the friendship of the prosperous young mine owner Galbraith, that Mar found an opportunity of following the more scientific side of his new profession. It was Galbraith who got him the post on the Coast Survey, that led to Mar’s joining the Russian-American Expedition.
After his return the handsome schoolmistress, who had reluctantly said “no” to the penniless surveyor, consented to look with favor upon the Discoverer of Gold in the new territory of Alaska.
But she warmly opposed Mar’s design of going to Rock Hill to share the great secret with his friend Galbraith. No, indeed! The Rock Hill mining magnate was in small need of “tips.” It was clearly Mar’s duty to give the men of Miss Trennor’s family the first chance of joining in this glorious scheme that was to enrich them all.
When Harriet Trennor called the Trennor brothers “the men of her family,” she made the most of what was a second cousinship. It was even the case that she was not on very good terms with those go-ahead young gentlemen; for the Trennors, in spite of their prosperity, had never, as she expressed it, “done anything” for her. It had been for the sake of her old father that they had bestirred themselves sufficiently to recommend Harriet for the post of assistant superintendent of the Girls’ College of Valdivia. But after providing her with an opportunity to leave their common birthplace in St. Joseph, Missouri, the Trennors and their respective wives had, in point of fact, neglected Miss Harriet to such a degree, that there would be a certain magnificence in her heaping coals of fire on their heads. She, the poor relation, whom they had so little regarded, would put it in the way of men merely well-off to become millionaires. They would learn her worth at last!
Yes, yes, Nathaniel must keep the great secret close, till the Trennors (who were in New York on their yearly business trip) should have returned. But the affairs of the brothers took them to Mexico, and their home coming was further delayed.
While they tarried acute pneumonia appeared upon the Rock Hill scene, and carried off John Galbraith. Little part in Mar’s grief at the loss of his best-loved friend was played by the thought that now he could not count upon his “backing.” Galbraith took with him out of the world something that to a man of Mar’s temperament meant more. And at that time he looked upon himself as possessor of a secret that any capitalist in the country would hold himself lucky to share. It was not till the return of his wife’s cousins that he found there could be exceptions to this foregone conclusion.