CHAPTER II.
“The light that shone when hope was born.”
In the early dawn of an August day in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-two, David Morning stepped through the French window of his bedroom out upon the broad and sheltered piazza of the railroad station hotel at Tucson, Arizona.
A mass of straight brown hair crowned rather than shaded a broad, high brow, over the surface of which thought and time had indented a few lines which gave strength and meaning to the face. Eyes of sea gray hue, as candid and as translucent as the deeps which they resembled, were divided by a nose somewhat too thick at the base for perfect features but running to an aquiline point, with the thin and flexible nostrils of the racer. A short upper lip was covered with a luxuriant chestnut brown mustache, shading a chin which, though long and resolute and firmly upheld against the upper lip, was yet divided by a deep dimple which quivered with sensitiveness. A thick-set but graceful and erect figure, clothed in a suit of dark blue flannel, completed the tout ensemble of the subject of our sketch, who, with thirty-two years of human experience behind him, had stepped five hours before from the West-bound Pullman sleeper.
David Morning—the only child of a Connecticut father and a Knickerbocker mother—was born and passed the days of his boyhood in the city of New York, where he was a pupil of the public schools, and where he was making preparation for entering upon a course at Yale, when, at sixteen years of age, the sudden death of his father, followed within a fortnight by that of his mother, compelled him to surrender his studies and seek a means of livelihood.
A distant relative offered him a place as clerk in a general merchandise store in Southern Colorado, whither the lad journeyed. For two years he faithfully served his employer. Always of an exploring and adventurous disposition, he had, while “geologizing”—as he called it—in the neighboring hills, in company with a prospector who had taken a fancy to “the kid,” discovered a quartz lode, which his companion located on joint account, David being under age. This location was soon afterwards sold to an Eastern company for the sum of $20,000, of which the lad received one-half. Declining several friendly offers to invest the money in promising mines, he wisely determined to return East and resume the studies which had been interrupted by the death of his parents; but, guided by his Colorado experience, and having a strong inclination for the vocation of a mining engineer, he determined to study in special lines which were outside of the usual collegiate course. He had not deemed it necessary to leave his own country to obtain the necessary instruction, and, four years later, he found himself with $5,000 left of his capital, with no knowledge of the Greek alphabet and but small acquaintance with Latin, yet able to speak and write fluently French, Spanish, and German, and possessed of a good knowledge of geology, metallurgy, chemistry, and both civil and mechanical engineering, and with a cultivated as well as a natural taste for politico-economic science.
At twenty-two years of age, having completed his studies, David Morning located in Denver, adopted the profession of a civil and mining engineer, and promptly proceeded to fall in love with the only daughter of Professor John Thornton, the principal of the Denver public schools.
Ellen Thornton at seventeen gave abundant promise of the splendid womanhood that was to follow. Above the middle height, slender in form, and graceful in carriage, with a broad, low brow crowned with silky, lustrous, dark hair, and eyes of chestnut brown, that, in moments of inspiration, grew radiant as stars, she captivated the young engineer and was readily captivated by him in turn. An engagement of marriage followed, to be fulfilled as soon as the clientage of Morning should be sufficient to warrant the union.
But business comes slowly to young men of two and twenty, and Ellen’s mother grew impatient of the fetters which she deemed kept her charming daughter from more advantageous arrangements. Ellen was proud-spirited and ambitious, and, although she was earnest and conscientious, she was not so stable of purpose as to be unaffected by the arguments and appeals of her mother. At times she was sure that she loved David Morning, and at other times she was not so sure that her love was of that enduring and devoted character which a wife should feel for her husband. Her reading had created in her mind a conception of an ideal passion which she could not feel had as yet come into her life. She believed that her affianced had undeveloped powers that would some day bring him fame and fortune, and again she was not so sure that he possessed the tact and persistence to utilize his powers to the best advantage. This doubt would not have deterred her from fulfilling her engagement of marriage if she had been entirely certain of her love for him. But she was divided by doubts as to whether the affection she felt was really the ideal and exalted passion of her dreams, or only a strong desire for a companionship which she found to be exceedingly pleasant.
She was not quite certain in all things of her affianced, not quite certain of herself, not quite certain of anything, and one day, yielding to an irresistible impulse of doubt and hesitancy, she asked to be released from her engagement.
Morning was amazed, indignant, and almost heartbroken at her request. Had he been of riper age and experience he would have known how to allow for the doubts and self-questionings of a young girl in her first love affair, but he was as unsophisticated as she, and more secure in his own possession of himself. Frank and proud, he took her at the word, which she regretted almost as soon as it was uttered. He neither sued nor remonstrated, but with only a “God bless you” and a “good-by,” and without even a request for a parting kiss, which, if given, might have opened the way to a better understanding, he hurriedly left the house.
The next day he was on his way to Leadville, in fulfillment of a professional engagement, and when he returned two weeks later he found that his former affianced had accompanied her parents to Boston, where Professor Thornton had been suddenly called by the death of a relative, to whose large fortune he succeeded.
Our hero did not despair, and, having no natural inclination for dissipation, did not make his rejection an excuse and an opportunity for self-indulgence. He was of an intense and earnest nature, and he was really in love with the girl who had discarded him, but life was not dead of duty or achievement to him because of her loss, which he looked upon as final, for her newly-acquired position as a wealthy heiress made it impossible to his self-respect to seek a reconciliation. He applied himself with assiduity and industry to his profession, and soon became an exceedingly skillful and reliable mining expert.
Ability to comprehend the story written upon the rocks cannot always be gained by study or experience. At last it is a “faculty,” rather than the result of reading or training. Fire and flood, oxygen and electricity, the tempests of the air and the volcanic throbbings of the earth, have been busy for ages with the quartz lode, and have left their marks upon it. It is possible sometimes to decipher these hieroglyphics so as to answer with a degree of accuracy the ever-recurring question, “Will it pay to work?” Yet such possibility cannot be reduced to a science. Professors of geology and metallurgy are often wrong in their conclusions, and even old prospectors are frequently at fault.
Go across a piece of marsh land on a spring morning accompanied by a bull-dog and a Gordon setter. The former will flush no snipe save those he may fairly run over as he trots along. But the fine nose of the dog with the silky auburn coat will catch the scent of the wary bird, and follow it here and there around tufts of marsh grass and across strips of meadow, until the sagacious canine shall be seen outlined against earth and sky. It is difficult to be certain of anything in this world of human deceptions, but one may be absolutely sure under such circumstances that the dog will not lie, and that he cannot be mistaken. There is a snipe within a few yards of that dog in the direction in which his nose is pointed. If the sportsman fails to secure the bird, the fault will be with his aim or his fowling-piece—the dog has done his part.
Some men—even among experienced miners—have the bull-dog’s obtuseness, and some have an eye for quartz equal to the nose of a pointer for snipe. David Morning was of this latter class, and to the thorough training which he had received during his four years’ studies he speedily added that practical knowledge of the rocks which, guided by natural aptitudes and intuitions, will enable the wooer of the hills to gain their golden favors. His honesty, good judgment, and fidelity caused his services to be eagerly sought by the mining companies, which—after the Leadville discoveries—abounded in Colorado, and at the date at which our narrative opens he had acquired a fortune of about $300,000, which was invested mainly in mortgages upon business property in Denver. But he made no attempt at further attendance on Cupid’s court, and, indeed, gave but little attention to society.
Yet, while the physical Ellen Thornton thus passed out of the young man’s life, there came into his soul instead an ideal, whose influence was ever an inspiration to higher thinking, purer life, gentler judgments, and loftier deeds. Well has the poet said, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” No man can be possessed by love for a good woman without being thereby moved upward on all the lines of existence. Damps cannot dim the diamond; its facets and angles of fire will never permit the fog to abide with them. From the hour that his heart is touched with the electric passion, the lover is in harmony with all delights.
The waters tinkle and the lark sings for him with sweeter notes, while the sunlight is more radiant, and the hills are robed with a softer purple. The woman who has evoked the one passion of a man’s life may become as dead to him as the occupant of an Etruscan tomb, but the love itself will abide with him to enrich his life, and journey with him into the other country.
David Morning found in books the most pleasant and absorbing companionship, and those who gained admittance to his library were surprised to learn that there was a dreamy, speculative, poetical side to the busy, practical mining engineer. All the great authors on mental, moral, and political economy were well-thumbed comrades, and the covers of the leading English and German poets and essayists were free from dust. Especially was he a close and interested student of social science, and he had his theories concerning changes of various natures in society and governments which might ameliorate the condition and elevate the lives and purposes of mankind.
In religion Morning was neither an accepter nor an agnostic. His reading taught him that all religions inculcate the righteousness of truth, honesty, and unselfishness, and that any form of faith in the hereafter is better for the world than no faith at all. The Persian who bowed devoutly to the highest material sign of Deity, the sun, was thereby filled with a spirit which made him readier to relieve the misery of his brother. The Egyptian who brought tribute to the priests of Isis and Osiris, was the better for his self-denial. The Greek who believed in Minerva was a closer student. Odin’s followers scorned a lie. Confucius taught love of home and kindred. Mahomet prescribed temperance, and the pure and gentle faith of Buddha in its benefactions to the human race has been exceeded only by the benign power of the religion of Jesus.
Skeptics strengthen their scoffings by recounting the wars and cruelties—in bygone centuries—of zealots insane with fervor. But these are only spots upon the sun. The rusty thumbscrews of the Inquisition, and the ashes of the fires amid which Servetus perished—fires unkindled and dead for three hundred years—may be forgotten when one considers the hospitals, and schools, and houses of shelter which now link their shadows across continents.
A few days before, while attending the locomotive races in Chicago, Morning had met an old mining friend, at whose earnest insistence he had been induced to visit and examine, with a view of purchasing, a large and promising ledge of copper in the Santa Catalina Mountains. It was the pursuit of this purpose that had brought him to Tucson.
From his seat on the hotel piazza David Morning gazed into the little triangular garden beneath, with its splashing fountain guarded by fragrant honey locust trees, its close-knit, dark green lawn of Australian grass, and its collection of weird and ugly cacti, transplanted from their native sand for the edification of passing tourists.
Then, raising his eyes, he beheld the ancient adobe pueblo, with a few belated saloon lights blinking through the murk, which was now slowly changing into ashen dawn. In the east a pencil line of light was beginning to glow, and to the northward the blackish purple of the Santa Catalina Range upreared itself against the night sky.
In yonder mountains, as tenantless, as forbidding, as inaccessible, and almost as unexplored as when they were first upheaved from the tortured breast of chaos, there reposed the golden power which, in the hands of David Morning, was to change the economic and social relations of mankind, and, possibly, the governments, the boundaries, and the history of nations.
Nothing of these ripening purposes of Omniscience were then revealed to the soul of our hero; none of them even rested in his dreams. Yet the nations, weary of centuries of error, centuries of wrong, centuries of toil and tears and martyrdom, were waiting, even as he was waiting before commencing his work, for the light which every moment grew brighter in its scarlet beauty against the eastern horizon—the light which was to guide humanity to its destiny of better days.