I do not yet fully understand—perhaps it was the mere delight in power, in the exercise of his dazzling faculties; or perhaps it was that he had leisure, that his mind was not yet engrossed in the game on which he staked so much.
I have said that his life had been cast in many curious places. Martinique was only the last of these, the most recent, and I gathered that the business which brought him to New York was the forming of a syndicate to build a railroad through the island. Through is the right word, for it was evident that, owing to the island’s peculiar formation, there would have to be much tunnelling. But he waved all such practical difficulties aside and discoursed of the great future before such a road with an enthusiasm that was absolutely convincing.
I remember one evening he got fairly started upon this hobby of his and talked uninterruptedly for at least an hour—facts, details, descriptions at his finger-ends. Cecily, chin in hands, listened intent to every word, and I, with the remembrance of that evening still fresh upon me, can understand how he won the ear of even Wall Street’s suspicious denizens. And, indeed, it was a wonderful prospectus which he painted—broad sugar plantations with no market, the whole traffic of the island carried upon the heads of women; the great sand-heaps of the east coast ninety per cent. pure steel, waiting only for development, but worthless now because no ship can approach them—and I know not what beside, but all of which, I have no doubt, was substantially true.
Perhaps I am lingering unduly over this portrait
