 the manifestation
of a pious and humble spirit. But in his own circles of the financial world the
taking up of such a thing as the San Tomé mine was regarded with respect,
indeed, but rather as a subject for discreet jocularity. It was a great man's
caprice. In the great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and
blocks of stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by the radiation
of telegraph wires) the heads of principal departments exchanged humorous
glances, which meant that they were not let into the secrets of the San Tomé
business. The Costaguana mail (it was never large - one fairly heavy envelope)
was taken unopened straight into the great man's room, and no instructions
dealing with it had ever been issued thence. The office whispered that he
answered personally - and not by dictation either, but actually writing in his
own hand, with pen and ink, and, it was to be supposed, taking a copy in his own
private press copy-book, inaccessible to profane eyes. Some scornful young men,
insignificant pieces of minor machinery in that eleven-storey-high workshop of
great affairs, expressed frankly their private opinion that the great chief had
done at last something silly, and was ashamed of his folly; others, elderly and
insignificant, but full of romantic reverence for the business 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
Tomé 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 trumpeted
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,
