In Virginia men fought against the forces of nature. They matched their strength with the elements of the primeval world. Water and fire were their enemies. Their task was the tearing out from the rock-ribbed flanks of the mountains the treasure that nature had buried with jealous care. They performed prodigies of energy, conquered the unconquerable, rose to the height of their mighty antagonist, giant against giant.
In San Francisco men fought with one another. The treasure once in their hands, the battle lost its dignity and became the ignominious scramble of the swindler and the swindled. The gold and silver—thrown among the crowd—ran this way and that, like spilled quicksilver. Most of it ran the way its manipulators directed, into pockets that were already full, carrying with it the accumulation of gold from other pockets less full, whose owners were less cunning.
Through the winter Crown Point and Belcher—the neighboring mine into which the ore-body extended—continued to rise. Confidence had been restored; everybody was investing. Clerks and servant girls drew their savings out of banks and stocking feet and bought shares. In April the stock had reached its highest point, seven hundred and twenty-five dollars. In May, one month later, it dropped to one hundred and seventy-five. It was the greatest and most rapid decline the San Francisco stock market had ever known.
The city was for the moment stunned by it. The confidence in Virginia—for three years regarded as “petered”—had returned in full force. The sudden drop knocked the breath from the lungs of those who had been vociferating the recrudescence of the Comstock. A quantity of fortunes, great and small, were swept away in the collapse. The brokers’ cries for “mud” drew the last nickels from the clerks and the servant girls, the last dollars from their employers. When the wave receded the shore was strewn with wrecks. For the second time this wave had slowly risen to level-brimming flood, broken, swept back and left such a drift of human wreckage.
Throughout the city there was wailing. Nearly everybody had suffered. The last remnant of the fortune left to Jerry Barclay by his father was gone. His mother too had lost, fortunately not heavily. But she bemoaned her few thousands with as much zeal as her cook did the five hundred, which constituted the savings of years.
Among the heaviest losers was Beauregard Allen. Had not the Barranca been behind him he would have been a ruined man. As it was, the second fortune he saw himself possessed of was swept away in a few disastrous days. The Barranca, while its yield had not of late been so large or so rich as during its first year, still gave him what he once would have considered a princely income. But he lived up to and beyond it. His expenditures during the last year had been exceedingly heavy. He had private extravagances of his own, besides the lavish manner of living in which he encouraged his daughters. He had leased the De Soto house for three years at a fancy rent. The Colonel’s mortgage on the Folsom Street house would mature in another year. The interest which fell due in January he had neglected to pay. He had had the money and then a jeweler had threatened to bring suit for an unpaid-for diamond bracelet, and the money had gone there, quickly, to keep the jeweler quiet.
Three years ago at Foleys had any one told him that he would own a mine like the Barranca and enjoy an income from it such as still was his, he would have wondered how he could best expend such wealth. Since then the beggar on horseback had ridden fast and far. Now, in morose absorption, he reviewed his expenses and his debts. His petty vanity forbade him to economize in his manner of living. He had raised his head before men and he would not lower it again. Some financiering would be necessary to pay up his brokers, maintain the two fine establishments in which his daughters ruled, and have the necessary cash for the diamond bracelets and suppers after the theater that absorbed so many uncounted hundreds. There was solace in the thought that Parrish held the mortgage on the Folsom Street house. However restive other creditors might grow Parrish could be managed.
The Colonel in these troublous days was also glumly studying his accounts. Crown Point, which was to repair the recent decline in certain of his investments, had swept away in its fall a portion of that comfortable fortune in which its owner had felt so secure. He had had several losses of late. From the day of his relinquishment of the Parrish Tract bad luck seemed to follow him. Owing to an uncontrollable influx of water the mine in Shasta had been shut down indefinitely. The South Park houses were declining in value, the city was growing out toward the property he had sold on upper Market Street, which a year ago had been a bare stretch of sand. The Colonel looked grave as he bent over his books; his riches were something more than a matter of mere personal comfort and convenience.
On a blank sheet of paper he jotted down what his income would be after all these loppings off. Then over against the last line of figures jotted down a second line of his expenditures. For some time he pondered frowningly over these two columns. They presented a disconcerting problem.
For the past six or seven years he had spent some five thousand per annum on himself, the rest on certain charities and what he lumped together under the convenient head of “Sundries.” It was a word which covered among other things numerous presents and treats for June and Rosamund. “Sundries” had consumed a great deal of ready money, nearly as much as Allen’s diamond bracelets and theater suppers, and the Colonel sighed as he realized they must suffer curtailment. The private charities were represented by a few written words with an affixed line of figures: “Carter’s girl at Convent;” “Joe’s boy,” “G. T.’s widow.” When the figures were added up they made a formidable sum.