The pioneer

by Geraldine Bonner

Mercedes would not, probably, have been the object of such interest had not the fortunes of her father and uncle been for the past three years steadily ascending. The Gracey boys had of late risen from the position of a pair of well-known and capable mining men to that of two of the most prominent figures in the state. Their means were reported large. They had been among the few who had got out of the Crown Point excitement at the right moment, selling their stock at the top price. They were now developing their Cresta Plata property. Should this pan out as they expected there was no knowing where the Gracey boys’ successes would end. Mercedes was the only woman relative they possessed. It was no wonder that she was regarded with an almost reverential interest, and her return evoked as much curiosity as though it were that of an errant princess.

Black Dan, who had gone to New York to meet her, brought her back in triumph. His idolatrous love had known no abatement in the two years’ separation. To have her finally restored to him, in an even completer state of perfection, was a bewildering happiness to him. His primitive nature strove to show its gratitude and tenderness in extravagant ways. He showered presents on her, ordered the finest suite in the newly-completed Lick House to be prepared for her, offered to rent any country place she might choose. That she should accompany him to the rough life of Virginia, where he spent most of his time, he never expected. It would be enough for him to see her on his frequent visits to the coast.

The other notable visitor who arrived in the city almost simultaneously was a young Englishman, Lionel Harrower. He, too, took up his residence in the Lick House, and it was but natural that some of the interest evoked by the appearance of Black Dan’s daughter should be deflected toward him.

Young Harrower was a nephew of that Englishman who fifteen years before had married Mrs. Newbury’s sister, Carmen Romero. He was finishing his education by a trip around the world, and had decided to make a stop of some length in California, then a terra incognita to the traveling Briton. From his Spanish-Californian aunt he had brought letters to the Newburys, Mrs. Davenport, and other prominent San Franciscans.

The Englishman of Harrower’s class was at that time a rarity in the far West. Bonanza heiresses had not yet arisen to be the bait for well-born foreigners of all nations. California, outside its own borders, still enjoyed its original reputation as a land of picturesque gold-diggers and romantic gamblers, and the wandering noble of Anglo-Saxon or Gallic extraction avoided it as an unsafe place, where men were still free with the revolver and the bowie knife.

Harrower was an even more engrossing object of local curiosity than Mercedes. He was a good-looking young man of five and twenty, quiet in manner, non-committal and brief of speech, deeply interested in all he saw, and very shy. He was the heir to a baronetcy and fine country place in Warwickshire. His grandfather, the present baronet, was in his eighty-first year, and, though a hale old man, could not be expected to live much longer. When he died Lionel Harrower would inherit the title and lands, thereby coming into possession of one of the oldest and most beautiful estates in the county. The young man neither looked nor hinted any of these matters. But they were all carefully set down in the letters that Carmen Romero wrote to her sister and her friends, and they passed from mouth to mouth, accumulating material as they progressed. San Francisco had not had enough experience in the visiting patrician to be familiar with all the delicate gradations of rank, and Harrower was regarded as of hardly less distinction than a reigning Grand Duke.

With the appearance of these two interesting strangers the city emerged from its apathy of depression. A desire to impress the new-comers hospitably took possession of it. Both Mercedes and Harrower were caught in the whirl of a round of entertainments, during which they constantly encountered each other. Thrown thus together their acquaintance rapidly grew. Harrower had not been a month in San Francisco when the little world about him was speculating on his interest in the daughter of Black Dan Gracey.

Mercedes was now nearly nineteen years of age. With her Spanish blood to round and ripen her, that corresponded to the Anglo-Saxon woman’s twenty-five. For all her American birth and education she was at heart a Latin, subtile, complex, and revengeful. There was little of her father in her. She had none of his simple largeness of temperament, but was made up of feline intricacies of caprice, vanity, and passion. At the present stage in her life her strongest instinct was love of admiration. She had early comprehended the power of her beauty, and to exercise this power was to her a delight which never lost its zest. To throw a spell over men was the thing Mercedes loved best to do, and could do with remarkable proficiency, considering her years and inexperience.

So far she had had few opportunities. Mrs. Campbell, the chaperone to whom her father had intrusted her, was a capable New England woman who had early recognized the responsibilities of her position. Mercedes, rich and beautiful, was a prize for which princes might have sued. But Mrs. Campbell had received instructions from Black Dan that he did not want his daughter taken from him by marriage with a foreigner, and Mercedes, during her year in Europe, was guarded like a princess traveling incognito. When she returned to San Francisco she had never yet received an offer of marriage, and even her admirers had been restricted in number and kept sternly at bay.

To Mercedes, Lionel Harrower represented all that was most choice in position and rank. Through her travels she knew more of the class he stood for than the admiring San Franciscans, and it was a class in which she ardently desired to install herself. She questioned the young man of his country and his people, prevailed upon him to show her a photograph of the stately Elizabethan manor house which was his home, and to talk to her of the life he led upon his ancestral acres. It was like an English novel, and Mercedes saw herself moving through it, lovely, proud and desired, as its conquering heroine.