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CHAPTER FIVE
IN THIS way only was the power of the local authorities
vindicated amongst the great body of strong-limbed foreigners who
dug the earth, blasted the rocks, drove the engines for the
"progressive and patriotic undertaking." In these very words
eighteen months before the Excellentissimo Senor don Vincente
Ribiera, the Dictator of Costaguana, had described the National
Central Railway in his great speech at the turning of the first
sod.
He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a one-o'clock
dinner-party, a convite offered by the O.S.N. Company on board
the Juno after the function on shore. Captain Mitchell had
himself steered the cargo lighter, all draped with flags, which,
in tow of the Juno's steam launch, took the Excellentissimo from
the jetty to the ship. Everybody of note in Sulaco had been
invited--the one or two foreign merchants, all the
representatives of the old Spanish families then in town, the
great owners of estates on the plain, grave, courteous, simple
men, caballeros of pure descent, with small hands and feet,
conservative, hospitable, and kind. The Occidental Province was
their stronghold; their Blanco party had triumphed now; it was
their President-Dictator, a Blanco of the Blancos, who sat
smiling urbanely between the representatives of two friendly
foreign powers. They had come with him from Sta. Marta to
countenance by their presence the enterprise in which the capital
of their countries was engaged. The only lady of that company
was Mrs. Gould, the wife of Don Carlos, the administrator of the
San Tome silver mine. The ladies of Sulaco were not advanced
enough to take part in the public life to that extent. They had
come out strongly at the great ball at the Intendencia the
evening before, but Mrs. Gould alone had appeared, a bright spot
in the group of black coats behind the President-Dictator, on the
crimson cloth-covered stage erected under a shady tree on the
shore of the harbour, where the ceremony of turning the first sod
had taken place. She had come off in the cargo lighter, full of
notabilities, sitting under the flutter of gay flags, in the
place of honour by the side of Captain Mitchell, who steered, and
her clear dress gave the only truly festive note to the sombre
gathering in the long, gorgeous saloon of the Juno.
The head of the chairman of the railway board (from London),
handsome and pale in a silvery mist of white hair and clipped
beard, hovered near her shoulder attentive, smiling, and
fatigued. The journey from London to Sta. Marta in mail boats and
the special carriages of the Sta. Marta coast-line (the only
railway so far) had been tolerable--even pleasant--quite
tolerable. But the trip over the mountains to Sulaco was another
sort of experience, in an old diligencia over impassable roads
skirting awful precipices.
"We have been upset twice in one day on the brink of very deep
ravines," he was telling Mrs. Gould in an undertone. "And when we
arrived here at last I don't know what we should have done
without your hospitality. What an out-of-the-way place Sulaco
is!--and for a harbour, too! Astonishing!"
"Ah, but we are very proud of it. It used to be historically
important. The highest ecclesiastical court for two
viceroyalties, sat here in the olden time," she instructed him
with animation.
"I am impressed. I didn't mean to be disparaging. You seem very
patriotic."
"The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Perhaps you
don't know what an old resident I am."
"How old, I wonder," he murmured, looking at her with a slight
smile. Mrs. Gould's appearance was made youthful by the mobile
intelligence of her face. "We can't give you your ecclesiastical
court back again; but you shall have more steamers, a railway, a
telegraph-cable--a future in the great world which is worth
infinitely more than any amount of ecclesiastical past. You
shall be brought in touch with something greater than two
viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a place on a sea-coast
could remain so isolated from the world. If it had been a
thousand miles inland now--most remarkable! Has anything ever
happened here for a hundred years before to-day?"
While he talked in a slow, humorous tone, she kept her little
smile. Agreeing ironically, she assured him that certainly
not--nothing ever happened in Sulaco. Even the revolutions, of
which there had been two in her time, had respected the repose of
the place. Their course ran in the more populous southern parts
of the Republic, and the great valley of Sta. Marta, which was
like one great battlefield of the parties, with the possession of
the capital for a prize and an outlet to another ocean. They were
more advanced over there. Here in Sulaco they heard only the
echoes of these great questions, and, of course, their official
world changed each time, coming to them over their rampart of
mountains which he himself had traversed in an old diligencia,
with such a risk to life and limb.
The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her hospitality for
several days, and he was really grateful for it. It was only
since he had left Sta. Marta that he had utterly lost touch with
the feeling of European life on the background of his exotic
surroundings. In the capital he had been the guest of the
Legation, and had been kept busy negotiating with the members of
Don Vincente's Government--cultured men, men to whom the
conditions of civilized business were not unknown.
What concerned him most at the time was the acquisition of land
for the railway. In the Sta. Marta Valley, where there was
already one line in existence, the people were tractable, and it
was only a matter of price. A commission had been nominated to
fix the values, and the difficulty resolved itself into the
judicious influencing of the Commissioners. But in Sulaco--the
Occidental Province for whose very development the railway was
intended--there had been trouble. It had been lying for ages
ensconced behind its natural barriers, repelling modern
enterprise by the precipices of its mountain range, by its
shallow harbour opening into the everlasting calms of a gulf full
of clouds, by the benighted state of mind of the owners of its
fertile territory--all these aristocratic old Spanish families,
all those Don Ambrosios this and Don Fernandos that, who seemed
actually to dislike and distrust the coming of the railway over
their lands. It had happened that some of the surveying parties
scattered all over the province had been warned off with threats
of violence. In other cases outrageous pretensions as to price
had been raised. But the man of railways prided himself on being
equal to every emergency. Since he was met by the inimical
sentiment of blind conservatism in Sulaco he would meet it by
sentiment, too, before taking his stand on his right alone. The
Government was bound to carry out its part of the contract with
the board of the new railway company, even if it had to use force
for the purpose. But he desired nothing less than an armed
disturbance in the smooth working of his plans. They were much
too vast and far-reaching, and too promising to leave a stone
unturned; and so he imagined to get the President-Dictator over
there on a tour of ceremonies and speeches, culminating in a
great function at the turning of the first sod by the harbour
shore. After all he was their own creature--that Don Vincente.
He was the embodied triumph of the best elements in the State.
These were facts, and, unless facts meant nothing, Sir John
argued to himself, such a man's influence must be real, and his
personal action would produce the conciliatory effect he
required. He had succeeded in arranging the trip with the help of
a very clever advocate, who was known in Sta. Marta as the agent
of the Gould silver mine, the biggest thing in Sulaco, and even
in the whole Republic. It was indeed a fabulously rich mine. Its
so-called agent, evidently a man of culture and ability, seemed,
without official position, to possess an extraordinary influence
in the highest Government spheres. He was able to assure Sir John
that the President-Dictator would make the journey. He regretted,
however, in the course of the same conversation, that General
Montero insisted upon going, too.
General Montero, whom the beginning of the struggle had found an
obscure army captain employed on the wild eastern frontier of the
State, had thrown in his lot with the Ribiera party at a moment
when special circumstances had given that small adhesion a
fortuitous importance. The fortunes of war served him
marvellously, and the victory of Rio Seco (after a day of
desperate fighting) put a seal to his success. At the end he
emerged General, Minister of War, and the military head of the
Blanco party, although there was nothing aristocratic in his
descent. Indeed, it was said that he and his brother, orphans,
had been brought up by the munificence of a famous European
traveller, in whose service their father had lost his life.
Another story was that their father had been nothing but a
charcoal burner in the woods, and their mother a baptised Indian
woman from the far interior.
However that might be, the Costaguana Press was in the habit of
styling Montero's forest march from his commandancia to join the
Blanco forces at the beginning of the troubles, the "most heroic
military exploit of modern times." About the same time, too, his
brother had turned up from Europe, where he had gone apparently
as secretary to a consul. Having, however, collected a small band
of outlaws, he showed some talent as guerilla chief and had been
rewarded at the pacification by the post of Military Commandant
of the capital.
The Minister of War, then, accompanied the Dictator. The board
of the O.S.N. Company, working hand-in-hand with the railway
people for the good of the Republic, had on this important
occasion instructed Captain Mitchell to put the mail-boat Juno at
the disposal of the distinguished party. Don Vincente, journeying
south from Sta. Marta, had embarked at Cayta, the principal port
of Costaguana, and came to Sulaco by sea. But the chairman of the
railway company had courageously crossed the mountains in a
ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meeting his
engineer-in-chief engaged in the final survey of the road.
For all the indifference of a man of affairs to nature, whose
hostility can always be overcome by the resources of finance, he
could not help being impressed by his surroundings during his
halt at the surveying camp established at the highest point his
railway was to reach. He spent the night there, arriving just too
late to see the last dying glow of sunlight upon the snowy flank
of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black basalt framed like an open
portal a portion of the white field lying aslant against the
west. In the transparent air of the high altitudes everything
seemed very near, steeped in a clear stillness as in an
imponderable liquid; and with his ear ready to catch the first
sound of the expected diligencia the engineer-in-chief, at the
door of a hut of rough stones, had contemplated the changing hues
on the enormous side of the mountain, thinking that in this
sight, as in a piece of inspired music, there could be found
together the utmost delicacy of shaded expression and a
stupendous magnificence of effect.
Sir John arrived too late to hear the magnificent and inaudible
strain sung by the sunset amongst the high peaks of the Sierra.
It had sung itself out into the breathless pause of deep dusk
before, climbing down the fore wheel of the diligencia with stiff
limbs, he shook hands with the engineer.
They gave him his dinner in a stone hut like a cubical boulder,
with no door or windows in its two openings; a bright fire of
sticks (brought on muleback from the first valley below) burning
outside, sent in a wavering glare; and two candles in tin
candlesticks--lighted, it was explained to him, in his
honour--stood on a sort of rough camp table, at which he sat on
the right hand of the chief. He knew how to be amiable; and the
young men of the engineering staff, for whom the surveying of the
railway track had the glamour of the first steps on the path of
life, sat there, too, listening modestly, with their smooth faces
tanned by the weather, and very pleased to witness so much
affability in so great a man.
Afterwards, late at night, pacing to and fro outside, he had a
long talk with his chief engineer. He knew him well of old. This
was not the first undertaking in which their gifts, as
elementally different as fire and water, had worked in
conjunction. From the contact of these two personalities, who had
not the same vision of the world, there was generated a power for
the world's service--a subtle force that could set in motion
mighty machines, men's muscles, and awaken also in human breasts
an unbounded devotion to the task. Of the young fellows at the
table, to whom the survey of the track was like the tracing of
the path of life, more than one would be called to meet death
before the work was done. But the work would be done: the force
would be almost as strong as a faith. Not quite, however. In the
silence of the sleeping camp upon the moonlit plateau forming the
top of the pass like the floor of a vast arena surrounded by the
basalt walls of precipices, two strolling figures in thick
ulsters stood still, and the voice of the engineer pronounced
distinctly the words--
"We can't move mountains!"
Sir John, raising his head to follow the pointing gesture, felt
the full force of the words. The white Higuerota soared out of
the shadows of rock and earth like a frozen bubble under the
moon. All was still, till near by, behind the wall of a corral
for the camp animals, built roughly of loose stones in the form
of a circle, a pack mule stamped his forefoot and blew heavily
twice.
The engineer-in-chief had used the phrase in answer to the
chairman's tentative suggestion that the tracing of the line
could, perhaps, be altered in deference to the prejudices of the
Sulaco landowners. The chief engineer believed that the obstinacy
of men was the lesser obstacle. Moreover, to combat that they had
the great influence of Charles Gould, whereas tunnelling under
Higuerota would have been a colossal undertaking.
"Ah, yes! Gould. What sort of a man is he?"
Sir John had heard much of Charles Gould in Sta. Marta, and
wanted to know more. The engineer-in-chief assured him that the
administrator of the San Tome silver mine had an immense
influence over all these Spanish Dons. He had also one of the
best houses in Sulaco, and the Gould hospitality was beyond all
praise.
"They received me as if they had known me for years," he said.
"The little lady is kindness personified. I stayed with them for
a month. He helped me to organize the surveying parties. His
practical ownership of the San Tome silver mine gives him a
special position. He seems to have the ear of every provincial
authority apparently, and, as I said, he can wind all the
hidalgos of the province round his little finger. If you follow
his advice the difficulties will fall away, because he wants the
railway. Of course, you must be careful in what you say. He's
English, and besides he must be immensely wealthy. The Holroyd
house is in with him in that mine, so you may imagine--"
He interrupted himself as, from before one of the little fires
burning outside the low wall of the corral, arose the figure of a
man wrapped in a poncho up to the neck. The saddle which he had
been using for a pillow made a dark patch on the ground against
the red glow of embers.
"I shall see Holroyd himself on my way back through the States,"
said Sir John. "I've ascertained that he, too, wants the
railway."
The man who, perhaps disturbed by the proximity of the voices,
had arisen from the ground, struck a match to light a cigarette.
The flame showed a bronzed, black-whiskered face, a pair of eyes
gazing straight; then, rearranging his wrappings, he sank full
length and laid his head again on the saddle.
"That's our camp-master, whom I must send back to Sulaco now we
are going to carry our survey into the Sta. Marta Valley," said
the engineer. "A most useful fellow, lent me by Captain Mitchell
of the O.S.N. Company. It was very good of Mitchell. Charles
Gould told me I couldn't do better than take advantage of the
offer. He seems to know how to rule all these muleteers and
peons. We had not the slightest trouble with our people. He shall
escort your diligencia right into Sulaco with some of our railway
peons. The road is bad. To have him at hand may save you an upset
or two. He promised me to take care of your person all the way
down as if you were his father."
This camp-master was the Italian sailor whom all the Europeans in
Sulaco, following Captain Mitchell's mispronunciation, were in
the habit of calling Nostromo. And indeed, taciturn and ready,
he did take excellent care of his charge at the bad parts of the
road, as Sir John himself acknowledged to Mrs. Gould afterwards.
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