第9章

``How dare you talk of resigning? I'll pack the whole lot of you back to New York on the first steamer, if I want to, and I'll give you such characters that you'll be glad to get a job carrying a transit.You're in no position to talk of resigning yet--not one of you.Yes,'' he added, interrupting himself, ``one of you is MacWilliams, the man who had charge of the railroad.It's no fault of his that the road's not working.Iunderstand that he couldn't get the right of way from the people who owned the land, but I have seen what he has done, and his plans, and I apologize to him--to MacWilliams.As for the rest of you, I'll give you a month's trial.It will be a month before the next steamer could get here anyway, and I'll give you that long to redeem yourselves.At the end of that time we will have another talk, but you are here now only on your good behavior and on my sufferance.Good-morning.''

As Clay had boasted, he was not the man to throw up his position because he found the part he had to play was not that of leading man, but rather one of general utility, and although it had been several years since it had been part of his duties to oversee the setting up of machinery, and the policing of a mining camp, he threw himself as earnestly into the work before him as though to show his subordinates that it did not matter who did the work, so long as it was done.The men at first were sulky, resentful, and suspicious, but they could not long resist the fact that Clay was doing the work of five men and five different kinds of work, not only without grumbling, but apparently with the keenest pleasure.

He conciliated the rich coffee planters who owned the land which he wanted for the freight road by calls of the most formal state and dinners of much less formality, for he saw that the iron mine had its social as well as its political side.And with this fact in mind, he opened the railroad with great ceremony, and much music and feasting, and the first piece of ore taken out of the mine was presented to the wife of the Minister of the Interior in a cluster of diamonds, which made the wives of the other members of the Cabinet regret that their husbands had not chosen that portfolio.Six months followed of hard, unremitting work, during which time the great pier grew out into the bay from MacWilliams' railroad, and the face of the first mountain was scarred and torn of its green, and left in mangled nakedness, while the ringing of hammers and picks, and the racking blasts of dynamite, and the warning whistles of the dummy-engines drove away the accumulated silence of centuries.

It had been a long uphill fight, and Clay had enjoyed it mightily.Two unexpected events had contributed to help it.One was the arrival in Valencia of young Teddy Langham, who came ostensibly to learn the profession of which Clay was so conspicuous an example, and in reality to watch over his father's interests.He was put at Clay's elbow, and Clay made him learn in spite of himself, for he ruled him and MacWilliams of both of whom he was very fond, as though, so they complained, they were the laziest and the most rebellious members of his entire staff.The second event of importance was the announcement made one day by young Langham that his father's physician had ordered rest in a mild climate, and that he and his daughters were coming in a month to spend the winter in Valencia, and to see how the son and heir had developed as a man of business.

The idea of Mr.Langham's coming to visit Olancho to inspect his new possessions was not a surprise to Clay.It had occurred to him as possible before, especially after the son had come to join them there.The place was interesting and beautiful enough in itself to justify a visit, and it was only a ten days' voyage from New York.But he had never considered the chance of Miss Langham's coming, and when that was now not only possible but a certainty, he dreamed of little else.He lived as earnestly and toiled as indefatigably as before, but the place was utterly transformed for him.He saw it now as she would see it when she came, even while at the same time his own eyes retained their point of view.It was as though he had lengthened the focus of a glass, and looked beyond at what was beautiful and picturesque, instead of what was near at hand and practicable.He found himself smiling with anticipation of her pleasure in the orchids hanging from the dead trees, high above the opening of the mine, and in the parrots hurling themselves like gayly colored missiles among the vines; and he considered the harbor at night with its colored lamps floating on the black water as a scene set for her eyes.He planned the dinners that he would give in her honor on the balcony of the great restaurant in the Plaza on those nights when the band played, and the senoritas circled in long lines between admiring rows of officers and caballeros.And he imagined how, when the ore-boats had been filled and his work had slackened, he would be free to ride with her along the rough mountain roads, between magnificent pillars of royal palms, or to venture forth in excursions down the bay, to explore the caves and to lunch on board the rolling paddle-wheel steamer, which he would have re painted and gilded for her coming.He pictured himself acting as her guide over the great mines, answering her simple questions about the strange machinery, and the crew of workmen, and the local government by which he ruled two thousand men.It was not on account of any personal pride in the mines that he wanted her to see them, it was not because he had discovered and planned and opened them that he wished to show them to her, but as a curious spectacle that he hoped would give her a moment's interest.

But his keenest pleasure was when young Langham suggested that they should build a house for his people on the edge of the hill that jutted out over the harbor and the great ore pier.If this were done, Langham urged, it would be possible for him to see much more of his family than he would be able to do were they installed in the city, five miles away.