Page 100 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

inaccessible to profane eyes. Some scornful young men,
insignificant pieces of minor machinery in that eleven-sto-
rey-high workshop of great affairs, expressed frankly their
private opinion that the great chief had done at last some-
thing silly, and was ashamed of his folly; others, elderly and
insignificant, but full of romantic reverence for the busi-
ness that had devoured their best years, used to mutter
darkly and knowingly that this was a portentous sign; that
the Holroyd connection meant by-and-by to get hold of the
whole Republic of Costaguana, lock, stock, and barrel. But,
in fact, the hobby theory was the right one. It interested the
great man to attend personally to the San Tome mine; it
interested him so much that he allowed this hobby to give
a direction to the first complete holiday he had taken for
quite a startling number of years. He was not running a
great enterprise there; no mere railway board or industrial
corporation. He was running a man! A success would have
pleased him very much on refreshingly novel grounds; but,
on the other side of the same feeling, it was incumbent upon
him to cast it off utterly at the first sign of failure. A man
may be thrown off. The papers had unfortunately trumpet-
ed all over the land his journey to Costaguana. If he was
pleased at the way Charles Gould was going on, he infused
an added grimness into his assurances of support. Even at
the very last interview, half an hour or so before he rolled
out of the patio, hat in hand, behind Mrs. Gould’s white
mules, he had said in Charles’s room—
‘You go ahead in your own way, and I shall know how to
help you as long as you hold your own. But you may rest as-