Page 6 of Gold and Good Sense

“I knew it,” said Collin. There was no anger or frustration in his voice, just a tinge of sadness.

“If you knew it, why did you force yourself to travel all this way?” asked Thomas.

“Well, as I mentioned earlier, I did not even know anything was truly wrong until I was on the ship. Even before then, however, it would have been just as difficult to turn around. There are currently no ships sailing between America and England, so I had to travel all the way to Canada to even have a chance of getting home to England. Besides, I had no home to return to in North Carolina, since I had already sold my land.”

“Well, you should have just stayed in London until you had recuperated a bit,” said Thomas.

“I couldn’t do that, either. The air there was much harder to breathe. Perhaps I should have left London earlier, but that is the only thing I could have changed, and in the end I do not think it would have made any difference,” said Collin.

Thomas could not speak. His fists were clenched in his lap in his frustration that he had finally reunited with his brother, but he could do nothing for him.

“Please, Thomas, do not spend your life regretting the past,” said Collin. “Nothing can be done to change it, and wishing it were different will only make you unhappy. Your future and that of your children is secure now. Please look forward and enjoy it for my sake.”

Thomas tried to do as his brother advised. For the first time in his life, he forced himself to listen to the advice of his younger brother. It was good advice, sound and practical, just as all Collin’s advice had turned out to be.

Collin said, “I would love to hear more about my nieces, the ones who will inherit my good fortune.”

“I will tell you about them, but then you must tell me how you acquired such a fortune in the first place,” said Thomas.

Collin smiled and agreed.

Thomas went on to describe his five daughters. Jane, the eldest at age twenty-one, looked the most like her mother, but her personality was more similar to her grandmother’s, mild-mannered and kind. Elizabeth was nearly twenty. She had the darker hair that came from the Bennet side of the family, and her personality matched it. She had a keen intellect and a sharp wit that everyone said mimicked her father’s.

The next daughter was Mary. She would be turning eighteen in another month. She was studious and quiet, though she perhaps liked to show off a bit too much. Kitty and Lydia were the youngest, both rather willful and wild, though Lydia took after her mother’s personality the most.

“So, you have five daughters to split my fortune amongst,” said Collin. “That is quite a generous dowry for them, do you not agree, Brother?” he asked with a mischievous grin.

“I don’t wish to look a gift horse in the mouth,” said Thomas, “but it is quite the conundrum you have given me. Where will I find men who are worthy of my daughters once they become so obscenely wealthy?”

Collin chuckled, though it quickly turned into a coughing fit. When it had ceased, Collin said, “I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you. I have no connections here anymore, not that I ever had many. Those who once knew me are all in this neighborhood. You are not without a modicum of intelligence, however. I’m certain you shall come to some conclusion how it should be done.”

“Well, while I am pondering on that subject, perhaps you will now tell me how you became so wealthy,” said Bennet.

It took a while for Collin to tell the complete tale. Between his coughing fits and his need to simply rest occasionally, it took more than a day before Thomas’ curiosity was completely satisfied.

Collin had started out with a small farm in Noth Carolina. Over the first five years there, he took every opportunity to purchase the surrounding farms, usually offering somewhat more than the land was worth to enable the sale. His goal was to build up a stable income and inheritance for any future children he might have. By 1793, he had accumulated a vast swath of land.

It was run by hired laborers. He was never comfortable with the idea of owning slaves, so he refused to do so even though it was, at times, difficult to find enough labor to truly take advantage of all of his land.

It all changed in 1795 when he was walking through his fields one day and stumbled upon a large and unusually heavy rock which had been moved to the side of the planting area. A couple other rocks were nearby, having similarly been moved out of the way.

A suspicion of the possible nature of these rocks prompted a trip to Raleigh, the nearest city of any size. There, he had the rock appraised, and it was discovered to be gold. It was a large rock, about 10 pounds. That one rock was worth nearly three hundred English pounds.

Collin endeavored to keep it secret, and he managed to do so for five years. All the while, he personally walked through his fields after they had been plowed each year and collected the gold rocks. He spent the winters travelling from town to town, selling them wherever he could find a buyer. He did not wish to try selling them all at once. For one thing, no one would have enough money to buy it all. For another, it would be impossible to keep it secret if he did.

Secrecy was paramount to keep his laborers from simply walking away with the gold on his land and also to keep his family safe. The amount of money he was accumulating was starting to become concerning.

In the end, it couldn’t be kept quiet forever. In 1800, the secret was leaked, and all the surrounding farmers began searching their own fields for such rocks. Additionally, they all began searching the stream beds as well, and there they found far more than they could find on the land.

By the time Collin’s wife and son died, the easy-to-find gold was running thin, and there was talk among the locals of hiring a proper mining team to see if they could find where the gold had come from so they could dig it out of the earth, but no one knew enough to be able to figure out how to go about it.

When Collin decided to sell out and head back to England, there was no shortage of offers for his land. Even though he made it clear that he believed he had found as much gold as possible there, the offers were enormous.

So, he sold it to the highest bidder. Then he hired a team of servants to accompany him to Canada, both to help with the journey and for personal protection, since he would be taking his entire fortune with him.

It was a harrowing journey, and there were a couple of attacks along the way, since he couldn’t keep his departure completely quiet. Once they were north of Philadelphia, however, the rumors of who he was seemed to have stopped, and there were no more attacks.

By the time Collin reached Canada, the cough which he thought was a holdover from his own bout with influenza had grown worse, but there was no helping it. He had no choice but to press on.