Perched in lofty isolation now, they architecturally dominate the meaner huts below. Vulgar monuments of a social upheaval which beggars the old stories of fairy changelings, of Sancho Panza, of "Barney the Baron," or "Monte Cristo."
In the days of '60, Philip Hardin is too busy with plot and scheme, with daily plunging, and dreaming over the fate of Lagunitas, to notice the social elevation of the more aspiring male and female adventurers. The rising tide of wealth grows. Judicious use of early gained riches, trips to Europe, furtive lessons, the necessities of the changed station, and an unlimited cheek and astounding adaptability change the lucky men and women whom fortune's dower has ennobled. They are all now "howling swells."
Some never reach as high as the "Monarchs of Mount Davidson," who were pretty high up at the start, nearly a mile and a half. In many cases, King Midas's Court shows very fairly scattered promotions.
Society's shoddy geometry gives a short-cut for "my lady's maid" to become "my lady." She surely knows "how to dress." The lady who entertains well, in some cases does so with long experience as a successful professional cook.
Some who dropped into California with another woman's husband, forget, while rolling in their carriages, that they ever had one of their own. Children with no legal parents have not learned the meaning of "filius nullius." From the bejewelled mass of vigorous, keen upstarts, now enriched by stocks, the hardy children of the great bonanzas, rises the chorus, "Let the past rest. We have passed the gates of Gold."
To the "newer nobility of California," is given local golden patents. They cover modest paternal names and many shady personal antecedents.
In a land without a past, the suddenly enriched speculators reign in mart and parlor. They rule society and the Exchange. In a great many cases, a judicious rearrangement of marriage proves that the new-made millionnaires value their recently acquired "old wines" and "ancient pictures," more than their aging wives. They bring much warmth of social color into the local breezy atmosphere of this animated Western picture, these new arrangements of Hymen.
Hardin, plunging into the general madness of stock speculation, destined to reign for twenty years, keeps his own counsel. He sneers not at the households queened over by the "Doubtful Loveliness" of the "Rearranged Aristocracy of the Pacific." He has certain twinges when he hears the laughing girl child at play in the bowers of his park. While the ex-queen of the El Dorado, now a marvel of womanly beauty, gazes on that dancing child, she cannot yet see, among the many flashing gems loading her hands, the plain circlet of a wedding ring.
No deeper consecration than the red blood of the murdered gambler ever sealed the lawless union of the "Chief of the Golden Circle" with the peerless "Empress of Rouge et Noir."
Her facile moods, restrained passions, blind devotion, and self-acquired charms of education, keep Philip Hardin strangely faithful to a dark bond.