 | CHAPTER FIVE Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad |  |
5. CHAPTER FIVE
THE Gould carriage was the first to return from the
harbour to the empty town. On the ancient pavement,
laid out in patterns, sunk into ruts and holes, the portly
Ignacio, mindful of the springs of the Parisian-built
landau, had pulled up to a walk, and Decoud in his
corner contemplated moodily the inner aspect of the
gate. The squat turreted sides held up between them
a mass of masonry with bunches of grass growing at the
top, and a grey, heavily scrolled, armorial shield of stone
above the apex of the arch with the arms of Spain nearly
smoothed out as if in readiness for some new device
typical of the impending progress.
The explosive noise of the railway trucks seemed to
augment Decoud's irritation. He muttered something
to himself, then began to talk aloud in curt, angry
phrases thrown at the silence of the two women. They
did not look at him at all; while Don José, with his semi-
translucent, waxy complexion, overshadowed by the
soft grey hat, swayed a little to the jolts of the carriage
by the side of Mrs. Gould.
"This sound puts a new edge on a very old
truth."
Decoud spoke in French, perhaps because of Ignacio
on the box above him; the old coachman, with his broad
back filling a short, silver-braided jacket, had a big
pair of ears, whose thick rims stood well away from his
cropped head.
"Yes, the noise outside the city wall is new, but the
principle is old."
He ruminated his discontent for a while, then began
afresh with a sidelong glance at Antonia —
"No, but just imagine our forefathers in morions and
corselets drawn up outside this gate, and a band of
adventurers just landed from their ships in the harbour
there. Thieves, of course. Speculators, too. Their
expeditions, each one, were the speculations of grave
and reverend persons in England. That is history, as
that absurd sailor Mitchell is always saying."
"Mitchell's arrangements for the embarkation of the
troops were excellent!" exclaimed Don José.
"That! — that! oh, that's really the work of that
Genoese seaman! But to return to my noises; there
used to be in the old days the sound of trumpets outside
that gate. War trumpets! I'm sure they were trumpets.
I have read somewhere that Drake, who was
the greatest of these men, used to dine alone in his
cabin on board ship to the sound of trumpets. In
those days this town was full of wealth. Those men
came to take it. Now the whole land is like a treasure-
house, and all these people are breaking into it, whilst
we are cutting each other's throats. The only thing
that keeps them out is mutual jealousy. But they'll
come to an agreement some day — and by the time we've
settled our quarrels and become decent and honourable,
there'll be nothing left for us. It has always been the
same. We are a wonderful people, but it has always
been our fate to be" — he did not say "robbed," but
added, after a pause — "exploited!"
Mrs. Gould said, "Oh, this is unjust!" And Antonia
interjected, "Don't answer him, Emilia. He is attacking
me."
"You surely do not think I was attacking Don Carlos!"
Decoud answered.
And then the carriage stopped before the door of the
ladies. They went in first together; Don José walked
by the side of Decoud, and the gouty old porter tottered
after them with some light wraps on his arm.
Don José slipped his hand under the arm of the
journalist of Sulaco.
"The Porvenir must have a long and confident article
upon Barrios and the irresistibleness of his army of
Cayta! The moral effect should be kept up in the
country. We must cable encouraging extracts to
Europe and the United States to maintain a favourable
impression abroad."
Decoud muttered, "Oh, yes, we must comfort our
friends, the speculators."
The long open gallery was in shadow, with its screen
of plants in vases along the balustrade, holding out
motionless blossoms, and all the glass doors of the
reception-rooms thrown open. A jingle of spurs died
out at the further end.
Basilio, standing aside against the wall, said in a soft
tone to the passing ladies, "The Señor Administrador is
just back from the mountain."
In the great sala, with its groups of ancient Spanish
and modern European furniture making as if different
centres under the high white spread of the ceiling, the
silver and porcelain of the tea-service gleamed among
a cluster of dwarf chairs, like a bit of a lady's
boudoir, putting in a note of feminine and intimate
delicacy.
Don José in his rocking-chair placed his hat on his
lap, and Decoud walked up and down the whole length
of the room, passing between tables loaded with knickknacks
and almost disappearing behind the high backs
of leathern sofas. He was thinking of the angry face of
Antonia; he was confident that he would make his
with Antonia.
Martin Decoud was angry with himself. All he saw
and heard going on around him exasperated the preconceived
views of his European civilization. To
contemplate revolutions from the distance of the
Parisian Boulevards was quite another matter. Here
on the spot it was not possible to dismiss their tragic
comedy with the expression, "Quelle farce!"
The reality of the political action, such as it was,
seemed closer, and acquired poignancy by Antonia's
belief in the cause. Its crudeness hurt his feelings. He
was surprised at his own sensitiveness.
"I suppose I am more of a Costaguanero than I would
have believed possible," he thought to himself.
His disdain grew like a reaction of his scepticism
against the action into which he was forced by his
infatuation for Antonia. He soothed himself by saying
he was not a patriot, but a lover.
The ladies came in bareheaded, and Mrs. Gould sank
low before the little tea-table. Antonia took up her
usual place at the reception hour — the corner of a
leathern couch, with a rigid grace in her pose and a fan
in her hand. Decoud, swerving from the straight line of
his march, came to lean over the high back of her seat.
For a long time he talked into her ear from behind,
softly, with a half smile and an air of apologetic familiarity.
Her fan lay half grasped on her knees. She
never looked at him. His rapid utterance grew more
and more insistent and caressing. At last he ventured
a slight laugh.
"No, really. You must forgive me. One must be
serious sometimes." He paused. She turned her
head a little; her blue eyes glided slowly towards him,
slightly upwards, mollified and questioning.
"You can't think I am serious when I call Montero a
gran' bestia every second day in the Porvenir? That
is not a serious occupation. No occupation is serious,
not even when a bullet through the heart is the penalty
of failure!"
Her hand closed firmly on her fan.
"Some reason, you understand, I mean some sense,
may creep into thinking; some glimpse of truth. I
mean some effective truth, for which there is no room
in politics or journalism. I happen to have said what
I thought. And you are angry! If you do me the
kindness to think a little you will see that I spoke like a
patriot."
She opened her red lips for the first time, not unkindly.
"Yes, but you never see the aim. Men must be used
as they are. I suppose nobody is really disinterested,
unless, perhaps, you, Don Martin."
"God forbid! It's the last thing I should like you to
believe of me." He spoke lightly, and paused.
She began to fan herself with a slow movement without
raising her hand. After a time he whispered passionately
—
"Antonia!"
She smiled, and extended her hand after the English
manner towards Charles Gould, who was bowing before
her; while Decoud, with his elbows spread on the back
of the sofa, dropped his eyes and murmured, "Bonjour."
The Señor Administrador of the San Tomé mine bent
over his wife for a moment. They exchanged a few
words, of which only the phrase, "The greatest enthusiasm,"
pronounced by Mrs. Gould, could be heard.
"Yes," Decoud began in a murmur. "Even he!"
"This is sheer calumny," said Antonia, not very
severely.
"You just ask him to throw his mine into the melting-
pot for the great cause," Decoud whispered.
Don José had raised his voice. He rubbed his hands
cheerily. The excellent aspect of the troops and the
great quantity of new deadly rifles on the shoulders of
those brave men seemed to fill him with an ecstatic
confidence.
Charles Gould, very tall and thin before his chair,
listened, but nothing could be discovered in his face
except a kind and deferential attention.
Meantime, Antonia had risen, and, crossing the
room, stood looking out of one of the three long windows
giving on the street. Decoud followed her. The
window was thrown open, and he leaned against the
thickness of the wall. The long folds of the damask
curtain, falling straight from the broad brass cornice,
hid him partly from the room. He folded his arms on
his breast, and looked steadily at Antonia's profile.
The people returning from the harbour filled the
pavements; the shuffle of sandals and a low murmur of
voices ascended to the window. Now and then a coach
rolled slowly along the disjointed roadway of the Calle
de la Constitucion. There were not many private
carriages in Sulaco; at the most crowded hour on the
Alameda they could be counted with one glance of the
eye. The great family arks swayed on high leathern
springs, full of pretty powdered faces in which the eyes
looked intensely alive and black. And first Don Juste
Lopez, the President of the Provincial Assembly,
passed with his three lovely daughters, solemn in a
black frock-coat and stiff white tie, as when directing a
debate from a high tribune. Though they all raised
their eyes, Antonia did not make the usual greeting
gesture of a fluttered hand, and they affected not to see
the two young people, Costaguaneros with European
barred windows of the first families in Sulaco. And
then the widowed Señora Gavilaso de Valdes rolled by,
handsome and dignified, in a great machine in which
she used to travel to and from her country house, surrounded
by an armed retinue in leather suits and big
sombreros, with carbines at the bows of their saddles.
She was a woman of most distinguished family, proud,
rich, and kind-hearted. Her second son, Jaime, had
just gone off on the Staff of Barrios. The eldest, a
worthless fellow of a moody disposition, filled Sulaco
with the noise of his dissipations, and gambled heavily
at the club. The two youngest boys, with yellow Ribierist
cockades in their caps, sat on the front seat.
She, too, affected not to see the Señor Decoud talking
publicly with Antonia in defiance of every convention.
And he not even her novio as far as the world knew!
Though, even in that case, it would have been scandal
enough. But the dignified old lady, respected and
admired by the first families, would have been still
more shocked if she could have heard the words they
were exchanging.
"Did you say I lost sight of the aim? I have only
one aim in the world."
She made an almost imperceptible negative movement
of her head, still staring across the street at the
Avellanos's house, grey, marked with decay, and with
iron bars like a prison.
"And it would be so easy of attainment," he continued,
"this aim which, whether knowingly or not, I
have always had in my heart — ever since the day when
you snubbed me so horribly once in Paris, you remember."
A slight smile seemed to move the corner of the lip
that was on his side.
"You know you were a very terrible person, a sort of
Charlotte Corday in a schoolgirl's dress; a ferocious
patriot. I suppose you would have stuck a knife into
Guzman Bento?"
She interrupted him. "You do me too much
honour."
"At any rate," he said, changing suddenly to a tone of
bitter levity, "you would have sent me to stab him
without compunction."
"Ah, par exemple!" she murmured in a shocked tone.
"Well," he argued, mockingly, "you do keep me here
writing deadly nonsense. Deadly to me! It has already
killed my self-respect. And you may imagine,"
he continued, his tone passing into light banter, "that
Montero, should he be successful, would get even with
me in the only way such a brute can get even with a
man of intelligence who condescends to call him a gran'
bestia three times a week. It's a sort of intellectual
death; but there is the other one in the background for
a journalist of my ability."
"If he is successful!" said Antonia, thoughtfully.
"You seem satisfied to see my life hang on a thread,"
Decoud replied, with a broad smile. "And the other
Montero, the 'my trusted brother' of the proclamations,
the guerrillero — haven't I written that he was taking
the guests' overcoats and changing plates in Paris at
our Legation in the intervals of spying on our refugees
there, in the time of Rojas? He will wash out that
sacred truth in blood. In my blood! Why do you
look annoyed? This is simply a bit of the biography of
one of our great men. What do you think he will do to
me? There is a certain convent wall round the corner
of the Plaza, opposite the door of the Bull Ring. You
know? Opposite the door with the inscription, Intrada
de la Sombra.' Appropriate, perhaps! That's where
soul. And, note, he might have run away. A man
who has fought with weapons may run away. You
might have let me go with Barrios if you had cared for
me. I would have carried one of those rifles, in which
Don José believes, with the greatest satisfaction, in the
ranks of poor peons and Indios, that know nothing
either of reason or politics. The most forlorn hope in
the most forlorn army on earth would have been safer
than that for which you made me stay here. When you
make war you may retreat, but not when you spend
your time in inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to
die."
His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his
presence she stood motionless, her hands clasped
lightly, the fan hanging down from her interlaced
fingers. He waited for a while, and then —
"I shall go to the wall," he said, with a sort of jocular
desperation.
Even that declaration did not make her look at him.
Her head remained still, her eyes fixed upon the house
of the Avellanos, whose chipped pilasters, broken
cornices, the whole degradation of dignity was hidden
now by the gathering dusk of the street. In her whole
figure her lips alone moved, forming the words —
"Martin, you will make me cry."
He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if overwhelmed
by a sort of awed happiness, with the lines of
the mocking smile still stiffened about his mouth, and
incredulous surprise in his eyes. The value of a sentence
is in the personality which utters it, for nothing
new can be said by man or woman; and those were the
last words, it seemed to him, that could ever have been
spoken by Antonia. He had never made it up with
her so completely in all their intercourse of small encounters;
him, which she did slowly with a rigid grace, he had
begun to plead —
"My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My
father is transported with joy. I won't say anything
of my mother! Our mothers were like sisters. There
is the mail-boat for the south next week — let us go.
That Moraga is a fool! A man like Montero is
bribed. It's the practice of the country. It's tradition
— it's politics. Read 'Fifty Years of Misrule.'"
"Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He believes
—"
"I have the greatest tenderness for your father,"
he began, hurriedly. "But I love you, Antonia! And
Moraga has miserably mismanaged this business. Perhaps
your father did, too; I don't know. Montero was
bribeable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his share of
this famous loan for national development. Why
didn't the stupid Sta. Marta people give him a mission
to Europe, or something? He would have taken five
years' salary in advance, and gone on loafing in Paris,
this stupid, ferocious Indio!"
"The man," she said, thoughtfully, and very calm
before this outburst, "was intoxicated with vanity.
We had all the information, not from Moraga only;
from others, too. There was his brother intriguing,
too."
"Oh, yes!" he said. "Of course you know. You
know everything. You read all the correspondence,
you write all the papers — all those State papers
that are inspired here, in this room, in blind deference
to a theory of political purity. Hadn't you Charles
Gould before your eyes? Rey de Sulaco! He and
his mine are the practical demonstration of what
could have been done. Do you think he succeeded
railway people, with their honest work! Of course,
their work is honest! But what if you cannot work
honestly till the thieves are satisfied? Could he not,
a gentleman, have told this Sir John what's-his-name
that Montero had to be bought off — he and all his
Negro Liberals hanging on to his gold-laced sleeve?
He ought to have been bought off with his own stupid
weight of gold — his weight of gold, I tell you, boots,
sabre, spurs, cocked hat, and all."
She shook her head slightly. "It was impossible,"
she murmured.
"He wanted the whole lot? What?"
She was facing him now in the deep recess of the
window, very close and motionless. Her lips moved
rapidly. Decoud, leaning his back against the wall,
listened with crossed arms and lowered eyelids. He
drank the tones of her even voice, and watched the
agitated life of her throat, as if waves of emotion had
run from her heart to pass out into the air in her
reasonable words. He also had his aspirations, he
aspired to carry her away out of these deadly futilities
of pronunciamientos and reforms. All this was wrong
— utterly wrong; but she fascinated him, and sometimes
the sheer sagacity of a phrase would break the
charm, replace the fascination by a sudden unwilling
thrill of interest. Some women hovered, as it were, on
the threshold of genius, he reflected. They did not
want to know, or think, or understand. Passion stood
for all that, and he was ready to believe that some startlingly
profound remark, some appreciation of character,
or a judgment upon an event, bordered on the miraculous.
In the mature Antonia he could see with an
extraordinary vividness the austere schoolgirl of the
earlier days. She seduced his attention; sometimes he
advanced an objection quite seriously. Gradually they
began to argue; the curtain half hid them from the
people in the sala.
Outside it had grown dark. From the deep trench of
shadow between the houses, lit up vaguely by the
glimmer of street lamps, ascended the evening silence
of Sulaco; the silence of a town with few carriages, of
unshod horses, and a softly sandalled population. The
windows of the Casa Gould flung their shining parallelograms
upon the house of the Avellanos. Now and then
a shuffle of feet passed below with the pulsating red
glow of a cigarette at the foot of the walls; and the
night air, as if cooled by the snows of Higuerota, refreshed
their faces.
"We Occidentals," said Martin Decoud, using the
usual term the provincials of Sulaco applied to themselves,
"have been always distinct and separated. As
long as we hold Cayta nothing can reach us. In all our
troubles no army has marched over those mountains.
A revolution in the central provinces isolates us at once.
Look how complete it is now! The news of Barrios'
movement will be cabled to the United States, and only
in that way will it reach Sta. Marta by the cable from
the other seaboard. We have the greatest riches, the
greatest fertility, the purest blood in our great families,
the most laborious population. The Occidental
Province should stand alone. The early Federalism
was not bad for us. Then came this union which
Don Henrique Gould resisted. It opened the road to
tyranny; and, ever since, the rest of Costaguana hangs
like a millstone round our necks. The Occidental
territory is large enough to make any man's country.
Look at the mountains! Nature itself seems to cry
to us, 'Separate!'"
She made an energetic gesture of negation. A
silence fell.
"Oh, yes, I know it's contrary to the doctrine laid
down in the 'History of Fifty Years' Misrule.' I am
only trying to be sensible. But my sense seems always
to give you cause for offence. Have I startled you very
much with this perfectly reasonable aspiration?"
She shook her head. No, she was not startled, but
the idea shocked her early convictions. Her patriotism
was larger. She had never considered that possibility.
"It may yet be the means of saving some of your convictions,"
he said, prophetically.
She did not answer. She seemed tired. They
leaned side by side on the rail of the little balcony, very
friendly, having exhausted politics, giving themselves
up to the silent feeling of their nearness, in one of those
profound pauses that fall upon the rhythm of passion.
Towards the plaza end of the street the glowing coals
in the brazeros of the market women cooking their
evening meal gleamed red along the edge of the pavement.
A man appeared without a sound in the light
of a street lamp, showing the coloured inverted triangle
of his bordered poncho, square on his shoulders, hanging
to a point below his knees. From the harbour end
of the Calle a horseman walked his soft-stepping mount,
gleaming silver-grey abreast each lamp under the dark
shape of the rider.
"Behold the illustrious Capataz de Cargadores,"
said Decoud, gently, "coming in all his splendour after
his work is done. The next great man of Sulaco after
Don Carlos Gould. But he is good-natured, and let
me make friends with him."
"Ah, indeed!" said Antonia. "How did you make
friends?"
"A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular
A journalist ought to know remarkable men — and this
man is remarkable in his way."
"Ah, yes!" said Antonia, thoughtfully. "It is
known that this Italian has a great influence."
The horseman had passed below them, with a gleam
of dim light on the shining broad quarters of the grey
mare, on a bright heavy stirrup, on a long silver spur;
but the short flick of yellowish flame in the dusk was
powerless against the muffled-up mysteriousness of the
dark figure with an invisible face concealed by a great
sombrero.
Decoud and Antonia remained leaning over the
balcony, side by side, touching elbows, with their heads
overhanging the darkness of the street, and the brilliantly
lighted sala at their backs. This was a tête-à-tête
of extreme impropriety; something of which in the
whole extent of the Republic only the extraordinary
Antonia could be capable — the poor, motherless girl,
never accompanied, with a careless father, who had
thought only of making her learned. Even Decoud
himself seemed to feel that this was as much as he could
expect of having her to himself till — till the revolution
was over and he could carry her off to Europe, away
from the endlessness of civil strife, whose folly seemed
even harder to bear than its ignominy. After one
Montero there would be another, the lawlessness of a
populace of all colours and races, barbarism, irremediable
tyranny. As the great Liberator Bolivar had
said in the bitterness of his spirit, "America is ungovernable.
Those who worked for her independence
have ploughed the sea." He did not care, he declared
boldly; he seized every opportunity to tell her that
though she had managed to make a Blanco journalist
of him, he was no patriot. First of all, the word had
every belief is odious; and secondly, in connection with
the everlasting troubles of this unhappy country it was
hopelessly besmirched; it had been the cry of dark
barbarism, the cloak of lawlessness, of crimes, of rapacity,
of simple thieving.
He was surprised at the warmth of his own utterance.
He had no need to drop his voice; it had been low all
the time, a mere murmur in the silence of dark houses
with their shutters closed early against the night air,
as is the custom of Sulaco. Only the sala of the Casa
Gould flung out defiantly the blaze of its four windows,
the bright appeal of light in the whole dumb obscurity
of the street. And the murmur on the little balcony
went on after a short pause.
"But we are labouring to change all that," Antonia
protested. "It is exactly what we desire. It is our
object. It is the great cause. And the word you
despise has stood also for sacrifice, for courage, for
constancy, for suffering. Papa, who —"
"Ploughing the sea," interrupted Decoud, looking
down.
There was below the sound of hasty and ponderous
footsteps.
"Your uncle, the grand-vicar of the cathedral, has
just turned under the gate," observed Decoud. "He
said Mass for the troops in the Plaza this morning.
They had built for him an altar of drums, you know.
And they brought outside all the painted blocks to take
the air. All the wooden saints stood militarily in a row
at the top of the great flight of steps. They looked
like a gorgeous escort attending the Vicar-General. I
saw the great function from the windows of the Porvenir.
He is amazing, your uncle, the last of the
Corbelàns. He glittered exceedingly in his vestments
all the time our saviour Barrios sat in the Amarilla
Club drinking punch at an open window. Esprit fort —
our Barrios. I expected every moment your uncle to
launch an excommunication there and then at the black
eye-patch in the window across the Plaza. But not
at all. Ultimately the troops marched off. Later
Barrios came down with some of the officers, and stood
with his uniform all unbuttoned, discoursing at the
edge of the pavement. Suddenly your uncle appeared,
no longer glittering, but all black, at the cathedral door
with that threatening aspect he has — you know, like a
sort of avenging spirit. He gives one look, strides over
straight at the group of uniforms, and leads away the
general by the elbow. He walked him for a quarter of
an hour in the shade of a wall. Never let go his elbow
for a moment, talking all the time with exaltation, and
gesticulating with a long black arm. It was a curious
scene. The officers seemed struck with astonishment.
Remarkable man, your missionary uncle. He hates an
infidel much less than a heretic, and prefers a heathen
many times to an infidel. He condescends graciously
to call me a heathen, sometimes, you know."
Antonia listened with her hands over the balustrade,
opening and shutting the fan gently; and Decoud talked
a little nervously, as if afraid that she would leave him
at the first pause. Their comparative isolation, the
precious sense of intimacy, the slight contact of their
arms, affected him softly; for now and then a tender
inflection crept into the flow of his ironic murmurs.
"Any slight sign of favour from a relative of yours is
welcome, Antonia. And perhaps he understands me,
after all! But I know him, too, our Padre Corbelàn.
The idea of political honour, justice, and honesty for
him consists in the restitution of the confiscated Church
converter of savage Indians out of the wilds to work for
the Ribierist cause! Nothing else but that wild hope!
He would make a pronunciamiento himself for such an
object against any Government if he could only get
followers! What does Don Carlos Gould think of
that? But, of course, with his English impenetrability,
nobody can tell what he thinks. Probably he thinks of
nothing apart from his mine; of his 'Imperium in
Imperio.' As to Mrs. Gould, she thinks of her schools, of
her hospitals, of the mothers with the young babies, of
every sick old man in the three villages. If you were to
turn your head now you would see her extracting a report
from that sinister doctor in a check shirt — what's
his name? Monygham — or else catechising Don Pépé
or perhaps listening to Padre Romàn. They are all
down here to-day — all her ministers of state. Well,
she is a sensible woman, and perhaps Don Carlos is a
sensible man. It's a part of solid English sense not to
think too much; to see only what may be of practical
use at the moment. These people are not like ourselves.
We have no political reason; we have political passions
— sometimes. What is a conviction? A particular view
of our personal advantage either practical or emotional.
No one is a patriot for nothing. The word serves us
well. But I am clear-sighted, and I shall not use that
word to you, Antonia! I have no patriotic illusions. I
have only the supreme illusion of a lover."
He paused, then muttered almost inaudibly, "That
can lead one very far, though."
Behind their backs the political tide that once in
every twenty-four hours set with a strong flood through
the Gould drawing-room could be heard, rising higher
in a hum of voices. Men had been dropping in singly,
or in twos and threes: the higher officials of the province,
the frosted head of their chief smiling with slow, humorous
indulgence amongst the young eager faces. Scarfe,
the lover of fandangos, had already slipped out in search
of some dance, no matter where, on the outskirts of the
town. Don Juste Lopez, after taking his daughters
home, had entered solemnly, in a black creased coat
buttoned up under his spreading brown beard. The
few members of the Provincial Assembly present
clustered at once around their President to discuss the
news of the war and the last proclamation of the rebel
Montero, the miserable Montero, calling in the name of
"a justly incensed democracy" upon all the Provincial
Assemblies of the Republic to suspend their sittings till
his sword had made peace and the will of the people
could be consulted. It was practically an invitation to
dissolve: an unheard-of audacity of that evil madman.
The indignation ran high in the knot of deputies behind
José Avellanos. Don José, lifting up his voice,
cried out to them over the high back of his chair,
"Sulaco has answered by sending to-day an army upon
his flank. If all the other provinces show only half as
much patriotism as we Occidentals —"
A great outburst of acclamations covered the vibrating
treble of the life and soul of the party. Yes! Yes!
This was true! A great truth! Sulaco was in the forefront,
as ever! It was a boastful tumult, the hopefulness
inspired by the event of the day breaking out
amongst those caballeros of the Campo thinking of their
herds, of their lands, of the safety of their families.
Everything was at stake. . . . No! It was impossible
that Montero should succeed! This criminal,
this shameless Indio! The clamour continued for some
time, everybody else in the room looking towards the
group where Don Juste had put on his air of impartial
Assembly. Decoud had turned round at the noise,
and, leaning his back on the balustrade, shouted into
the room with all the strength of his lungs, "Gran'
bestia!"
This unexpected cry had the effect of stilling the
noise. All the eyes were directed to the window with
an approving expectation; but Decoud had already
turned his back upon the room, and was again leaning
out over the quiet street.
"This is the quintessence of my journalism; that is
the supreme argument," he said to Antonia. "I have
invented this definition, this last word on a great
question. But I am no patriot. I am no more of a
patriot than the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores, this
Genoese who has done such great things for this harbour
— this active usher-in of the material implements for our
progress. You have heard Captain Mitchell confess
over and over again that till he got this man he could
never tell how long it would take to unload a ship.
That is bad for progress. You have seen him pass by
after his labours on his famous horse to dazzle the girls
in some ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a
fortunate fellow! His work is an exercise of personal
powers; his leisure is spent in receiving the marks of
extraordinary adulation. And he likes it, too. Can
anybody be more fortunate? To be feared and admired
is —"
"And are these your highest aspirations, Don
Martin?" interrupted Antonia.
"I was speaking of a man of that sort," said Decoud,
curtly. "The heroes of the world have been feared and
admired. What more could he want?"
Decoud had often felt his familiar habit of ironic
thought fall shattered against Antonia's gravity. She
feminine obtuseness which stands so often
between a man and a woman of the more ordinary sort.
But he overcame his vexation at once. He was very
far from thinking Antonia ordinary, whatever verdict
his scepticism might have pronounced upon himself.
With a touch of penetrating tenderness in his voice he
assured her that his only aspiration was to a felicity so
high that it seemed almost unrealizable on this earth.
She coloured invisibly, with a warmth against which
the breeze from the sierra seemed to have lost its cooling
power in the sudden melting of the snows. His whisper
could not have carried so far, though there was enough
ardour in his tone to melt a heart of ice. Antonia
turned away abruptly, as if to carry his whispered
assurance into the room behind, full of light, noisy with
voices.
The tide of political speculation was beating high
within the four walls of the great sala, as if driven
beyond the marks by a great gust of hope. Don Juste's
fan-shaped beard was still the centre of loud and
animated discussions. There was a self-confident ring
in all the voices. Even the few Europeans around
Charles Gould — a Dane, a couple of Frenchmen, a discreet
fat German, smiling, with down-cast eyes, the
representatives of those material interests that had got
a footing in Sulaco under the protecting might of the
San Tomé mine — had infused a lot of good humour into
their deference. Charles Gould, to whom they were
paying their court, was the visible sign of the stability
that could be achieved on the shifting ground of revolutions.
They felt hopeful about their various undertakings.
One of the two Frenchmen, small, black, with
glittering eyes lost in an immense growth of bushy
beard, waved his tiny brown hands and delicate wrists.
for a syndicate of European capitalists. His forcible
"Monsieur l' Administrateur" returning every minute
shrilled above the steady hum of conversations. He
was relating his discoveries. He was ecstatic. Charles
Gould glanced down at him courteously.
At a given moment of these necessary receptions it
was Mrs. Gould's habit to withdraw quietly into a
little drawing-room, especially her own, next to the
great sala. She had risen, and, waiting for Antonia,
listened with a slightly worried graciousness to the
engineer-in-chief of the railway, who stooped over her,
relating slowly, without the slightest gesture, something
apparently amusing, for his eyes had a humorous
twinkle. Antonia, before she advanced into the room
to join Mrs. Gould, turned her head over her shoulder
towards Decoud, only for a moment.
"Why should any one of us think his aspirations
unrealizable?" she said, rapidly.
"I am going to cling to mine to the end, Antonia,"
he answered, through clenched teeth, then bowed very
low, a little distantly.
The engineer-in-chief had not finished telling his
amusing story. The humours of railway building in
South America appealed to his keen appreciation of the
absurd, and he told his instances of ignorant prejudice
and as ignorant cunning very well. Now, Mrs. Gould
gave him all her attention as he walked by her side
escorting the ladies out of the room. Finally all three
passed unnoticed through the glass doors in the gallery.
Only a tall priest stalking silently in the noise of the sala
checked himself to look after them. Father Corbelàn,
whom Decoud had seen from the balcony turning into
the gateway of the Casa Gould, had addressed no one
since coming in. The long, skimpy soutane accentuated
torso thrown forward; and the straight, black bar of
his joined eyebrows, the pugnacious outline of the bony
face, the white spot of a scar on the bluish shaven
cheeks (a testimonial to his apostolic zeal from a party
of unconverted Indians), suggested something unlawful
behind his priesthood, the idea of a chaplain of bandits.
He separated his bony, knotted hands clasped behind
his back, to shake his finger at Martin.
Decoud had stepped into the room after Antonia.
But he did not go far. He had remained just within,
against the curtain, with an expression of not quite
genuine gravity, like a grown-up person taking part in a
game of children. He gazed quietly at the threatening
finger.
"I have watched your reverence converting General
Barrios by a special sermon on the Plaza," he said, without
making the slightest movement.
"What miserable nonsense!" Father Corbelàn's
deep voice resounded all over the room, making all the
heads turn on the shoulders. "The man is a drunkard.
Señores, the God of your General is a bottle!"
His contemptuous, arbitrary voice caused an uneasy
suspension of every sound, as if the self-confidence of
the gathering had been staggered by a blow. But
nobody took up Father Corbelàn's declaration.
It was known that Father Corbelàn had come out of
the wilds to advocate the sacred rights of the Church
with the same fanatical fearlessness with which he had
gone preaching to bloodthirsty savages, devoid of human
compassion or worship of any kind. Rumours of
legendary proportions told of his successes as a missionary
beyond the eye of Christian men. He had baptized
whole nations of Indians, living with them like a savage
himself. It was related that the padre used to ride with
shield, and, no doubt, a long lance, too — who knows?
That he had wandered clothed in skins, seeking for
proselytes somewhere near the snow line of the Cordillera.
Of these exploits Padre Corbelàn himself was
never known to talk. But he made no secret of his
opinion that the politicians of Sta. Marta had harder
hearts and more corrupt minds than the heathen to
whom he had carried the word of God. His injudicious
zeal for the temporal welfare of the Church was damaging
the Ribierist cause. It was common knowledge
that he had refused to be made titular bishop of the
Occidental diocese till justice was done to a despoiled
Church. The political Géfé of Sulaco (the same
dignitary whom Captain Mitchell saved from the
mob afterwards) hinted with naíve cynicism that
doubtless their Excellencies the Ministers sent the padre
over the mountains to Sulaco in the worst season of the
year in the hope that he would be frozen to death by
the icy blasts of the high paramos. Every year a few
hardy muleteers — men inured to exposure — were known
to perish in that way. But what would you have?
Their Excellencies possibly had not realized what a
tough priest he was. Meantime, the ignorant were
beginning to murmur that the Ribierist reforms meant
simply the taking away of the land from the people.
Some of it was to be given to foreigners who made the
railway; the greater part was to go to the padres.
These were the results of the Grand Vicar's zeal.
Even from the short allocution to the troops on the
Plaza (which only the first ranks could have heard) he
had not been able to keep out his fixed idea of an
outraged Church waiting for reparation from a penitent
country. The political Géfé had been exasperated.
But he could not very well throw the brother-in-law
magistrate, an easy-going and popular official, visited
the Casa Gould, walking over after sunset from the
Intendencia, unattended, acknowledging with dignified
courtesy the salutations of high and low alike. That
evening he had walked up straight to Charles Gould
and had hissed out to him that he would have liked to
deport the Grand Vicar out of Sulaco, anywhere, to
some desert island, to the Isabels, for instance. "The
one without water preferably — eh, Don Carlos?" he had
added in a tone between jest and earnest. This uncontrollable
priest, who had rejected his offer of the
episcopal palace for a residence and preferred to hang
his shabby hammock amongst the rubble and spiders
of the sequestrated Dominican Convent, had taken into
his head to advocate an unconditional pardon for Hernandez
the Robber! And this was not enough; he
seemed to have entered into communication with the
most audacious criminal the country had known for
years. The Sulaco police knew, of course, what was
going on. Padre Corbelàn had got hold of that reckless
Italian, the Capataz de Cargadores, the only man fit
for such an errand, and had sent a message through him.
Father Corbelàn had studied in Rome, and could
speak Italian. The Capataz was known to visit the
old Dominican Convent at night. An old woman who
served the Grand Vicar had heard the name of Hernandez
pronounced; and only last Saturday afternoon
the Capataz had been observed galloping out of town.
He did not return for two days. The police would have
laid the Italian by the heels if it had not been for fear of
the Cargadores, a turbulent body of men, quite apt to
raise a tumult. Nowadays it was not so easy to govern
Sulaco. Bad characters flocked into it, attracted by the
money in the pockets of the railway workmen. The
And the first magistrate explained to Charles
Gould that now the province was stripped of troops any
outbreak of lawlessness would find the authorities with
their boots off, as it were.
Then he went away moodily to sit in an armchair,
smoking a long, thin cigar, not very far from Don
José, with whom, bending over sideways, he exchanged
a few words from time to time. He ignored the entrance
of the priest, and whenever Father Corbelàn's
voice was raised behind him, he shrugged his shoulders
impatiently.
Father Corbelàn had remained quite motionless for a
time with that something vengeful in his immobility
which seemed to characterize all his attitudes. A lurid
glow of strong convictions gave its peculiar aspect to the
black figure. But its fierceness became softened as the
padre, fixing his eyes upon Decoud, raised his long,
black arm slowly, impressively —
"And you — you are a perfect heathen," he said, in a
subdued, deep voice.
He made a step nearer, pointing a forefinger at the
young man's breast. Decoud, very calm, felt the wall
behind the curtain with the back of his head. Then,
with his chin tilted well up, he smiled.
"Very well," he agreed with the slightly weary nonchalance
of a man well used to these passages. "But
is it perhaps that you have not discovered yet what is
the God of my worship? It was an easier task with our
Barrios."
The priest suppressed a gesture of discouragement.
"You believe neither in stick nor stone," he said.
"Nor bottle," added Decoud without stirring.
"Neither does the other of your reverence's confidants.
I mean the Capataz of the Cargadores. He does not
your perspicacity. But why call me a heathen?"
"True," retorted the priest. "You are ten times
worse. A miracle could not convert you."
"I certainly do not believe in miracles," said Decoud,
quietly. Father Corbelàn shrugged his high, broad
shoulders doubtfully.
"A sort of Frenchman — godless — a materialist,"
he pronounced slowly, as if weighing the terms of a
careful analysis. "Neither the son of his own country
nor of any other," he continued, thoughtfully.
"Scarcely human, in fact," Decoud commented under
his breath, his head at rest against the wall, his eyes
gazing up at the ceiling.
"The victim of this faithless age," Father Corbelàn
resumed in a deep but subdued voice.
"But of some use as a journalist." Decoud changed
his pose and spoke in a more animated tone. "Has
your worship neglected to read the last number of the
Porvenir? I assure you it is just like the others. On
the general policy it continues to call Montero a gran'
bestia, and stigmatize his brother, the guerrillero, for a
combination of lackey and spy. What could be more
effective? In local affairs it urges the Provincial
Government to enlist bodily into the national army the
band of Hernandez the Robber — who is apparently
the protégé of the Church — or at least of the Grand
Vicar. Nothing could be more sound."
The priest nodded and turned on the heels of his
square-toed shoes with big steel buckles. Again, with
his hands clasped behind his back, he paced to and fro,
planting his feet firmly. When he swung about, the
skirt of his soutane was inflated slightly by the brusqueness
of his movements.
The great sala had been emptying itself slowly.
remaining stood up suddenly in sign of respect, and Don
José Avellanos stopped the rocking of his chair. But
the good-natured First Official made a deprecatory gesture,
waved his hand to Charles Gould, and went out
discreetly.
In the comparative peace of the room the screaming
"Monsieur l'Administrateur" of the frail, hairy Frenchman
seemed to acquire a preternatural shrillness. The
explorer of the Capitalist syndicate was still enthusiastic.
"Ten million dollars' worth of copper practically in
sight, Monsieur l'Administrateur. Ten millions in sight!
And a railway coming — a railway! They will never
believe my report. C'est trop beau." He fell a prey to
a screaming ecstasy, in the midst of sagely nodding
heads, before Charles Gould's imperturbable calm.
And only the priest continued his pacing, flinging
round the skirt of his soutane at each end of his beat.
Decoud murmured to him ironically: "Those gentlemen
talk about their gods."
Father Corbelàn stopped short, looked at the journalist
of Sulaco fixedly for a moment, shrugged his
shoulders slightly, and resumed his plodding walk of an
obstinate traveller.
And now the Europeans were dropping off from the
group around Charles Gould till the Administrador of
the Great Silver Mine could be seen in his whole lank
length, from head to foot, left stranded by the ebbing
tide of his guests on the great square of carpet, as it
were a multi-coloured shoal of flowers and arabesques
under his brown boots. Father Corbelàn approached
the rocking-chair of Don José Avellanos.
"Come, brother," he said, with kindly brusqueness
and a touch of relieved impatience a man may feel at the
end of a perfectly useless ceremony. "A la Casa! A
think and pray for guidance from Heaven."
He rolled his black eyes upwards. By the side of the
frail diplomatist — the life and soul of the party — he
seemed gigantic, with a gleam of fanaticism in the
glance. But the voice of the party, or, rather, its
mouthpiece, the "son Decoud" from Paris, turned
journalist for the sake of Antonia's eyes, knew very well
that it was not so, that he was only a strenuous priest
with one idea, feared by the women and execrated by
the men of the people. Martin Decoud, the dilettante
in life, imagined himself to derive an artistic pleasure
from watching the picturesque extreme of wrong-
headedness into which an honest, almost sacred, conviction
may drive a man. "It is like madness. It
must be — because it's self-destructive," Decoud had
said to himself often. It seemed to him that every
conviction, as soon as it became effective, turned into
that form of dementia the gods send upon those they
wish to destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of
that example with the zest of a connoisseur in the art
of his choice. Those two men got on well together, as
if each had felt respectively that a masterful conviction,
as well as utter scepticism, may lead a man
very far on the by-paths of political action.
Don José obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand.
Decoud followed out the brothers-in-law. And there
remained only one visitor in the vast empty sala,
bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a heavy-eyed, round-
cheeked man, with a drooping moustache, a hide merchant
from Esmeralda, who had come overland to
Sulaco, riding with a few peons across the coast range.
He was very full of his journey, undertaken mostly for
the purpose of seeing the Senor Administrador of San
Tomé in relation to some assistance he required in his
now that the country was going to be settled. It was
going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrading
by a strange, anxious whine the sonority of the
Spanish language, which he pattered rapidly, like some
sort of cringing jargon. A plain man could carry on his
little business now in the country, and even think of
enlarging it — with safety. Was it not so? He seemed
to beg Charles Gould for a confirmatory word, a grunt
of assent, a simple nod even.
He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in
the pauses he would dart his eyes here and there; then,
loth to give up, he would branch off into feeling allusion
to the dangers of his journey. The audacious Hernandez,
leaving his usual haunts, had crossed the
Campo of Sulaco, and was known to be lurking in the
ravines of the coast range. Yesterday, when distant
only a few hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant and his
servants had seen three men on the road arrested suspiciously,
with their horses' heads together. Two of
these rode off at once and disappeared in a shallow
quebrada to the left. "We stopped," continued the
man from Esmeralda, "and I tried to hide behind a
small bush. But none of my mozos would go forward
to find out what it meant, and the third horseman
seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was no use.
We had been seen. So we rode slowly on, trembling.
He let us pass — a man on a grey horse with his hat down
on his eyes — without a word of greeting; but by-and-by
we heard him galloping after us. We faced about, but
that did not seem to intimidate him. He rode up at
speed, and touching my foot with the toe of his boot,
asked me for a cigar, with a blood-curdling laugh. He
did not seem armed, but when he put his hand back to
reach for the matches I saw an enormous revolver
fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and as he did not offer to go
on we dared not move. At last, blowing the smoke
of my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said,
'Señor, it would be perhaps better for you if I rode behind
your party. You are not very far from Sulaco
now. Go you with God.' What would you? We
went on. There was no resisting him. He might have
been Hernandez himself; though my servant, who has
been many times to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he
had recognized him very well for the Capataz of the
Steamship Company's Cargadores. Later, that same
evening, I saw that very man at the corner of the Plaza
talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the stirrup
with her hand on the grey horse's mane."
"I assure you, Señor Hirsch," murmured Charles
Gould, "that you ran no risk on this occasion."
"That may be, señor, though I tremble yet. A most
fierce man — to look at. And what does it mean? A
person employed by the Steamship Company talking
with salteadores — no less, señor; the other horsemen
were salteadores — in a lonely place, and behaving like
a robber himself! A cigar is nothing, but what was
there to prevent him asking me for my purse?"
"No, no, Señor Hirsch," Charles Gould murmured,
letting his glance stray away a little vacantly from the
round face, with its hooked beak upturned towards him
in an almost childlike appeal. "If it was the Capataz
de Cargadores you met — and there is no doubt, is there?
— you were perfectly safe."
"Thank you. You are very good. A very fierce-
looking man, Don Carlos. He asked me for a cigar in a
most familiar manner. What would have happened if
I had not had a cigar? I shudder yet. What business
had he to be talking with robbers in a lonely place?"
But Charles Gould, openly preoccupied now, gave
not a sign, made no sound. The impenetrability of the
embodied Gould Concession had its surface shades. To
be dumb is merely a fatal affliction; but the King of
Sulaco had words enough to give him all the mysterious
weight of a taciturn force. His silences, backed by
the power of speech, had as many shades of significance
as uttered words in the way of assent, of doubt, of
negation — even of simple comment. Some seemed to
say plainly, "Think it over"; others meant clearly,
"Go ahead"; a simple, low "I see," with an affirmative
nod, at the end of a patient listening half-hour was the
equivalent of a verbal contract, which men had learned
to trust implicitly, since behind it all there was the
great San Tomé mine, the head and front of the material
interests, so strong that it depended on no man's goodwill
in the whole length and breadth of the Occidental
Province — that is, on no goodwill which it could not buy
ten times over. But to the little hook-nosed man from
Esmeralda, anxious about the export of hides, the
silence of Charles Gould portended a failure. Evidently
this was no time for extending a modest man's
business. He enveloped in a swift mental malediction
the whole country, with all its inhabitants, partisans of
Ribiera and Montero alike; and there were incipient
tears in his mute anger at the thought of the innumerable
ox-hides going to waste upon the dreamy
expanse of the Campo, with its single palms rising like
ships at sea within the perfect circle of the horizon, its
clumps of heavy timber motionless like solid islands of
leaves above the running waves of grass. There were
hides there, rotting, with no profit to anybody — rotting
where they had been dropped by men called away to
attend the urgent necessities of political revolutions.
The practical, mercantile soul of Señor Hirsch rebelled
respectful but disconcerted leave of the might and
majesty of the San Tomé mine in the person of Charles
Gould. He could not restrain a heart-broken murmur,
wrung out of his very aching heart, as it were.
"It is a great, great foolishness, Don Carlos, all this.
The price of hides in Hamburg is gone up — up. Of
course the Ribierist Government will do away with all
that — when it gets established firmly. Meantime —"
He sighed.
"Yes, meantime," repeated Charles Gould, inscrutably.
The other shrugged his shoulders. But he was not
ready to go yet. There was a little matter he would like
to mention very much if permitted. It appeared he had
some good friends in Hamburg (he murmured the name
of the firm) who were very anxious to do business, in
dynamite, he explained. A contract for dynamite with
the San Tomé mine, and then, perhaps, later on, other
mines, which were sure to — The little man from
Esmeralda was ready to enlarge, but Charles interrupted
him. It seemed as though the patience of the
Senor Administrador was giving way at last.
"Señor Hirsch," he said, "I have enough dynamite
stored up at the mountain to send it down crashing into
the valley" — his voice rose a little — "to send half
Sulaco into the air if I liked."
Charles Gould smiled at the round, startled eyes of
the dealer in hides, who was murmuring hastily, "Just
so. Just so." And now he was going. It was impossible
to do business in explosives with an Administrador
so well provided and so discouraging. He had
suffered agonies in the saddle and had exposed himself
to the atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for nothing
at all. Neither hides nor dynamite — and the very
At the door he bowed low to the engineer-in-
chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio he
stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an
attitude of meditative astonishment.
"What does he want to keep so much dynamite for?"
he muttered. "And why does he talk like this to me?"
The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the
empty sala, whence the political tide had ebbed out to
the last insignificant drop, nodded familiarly to the
master of the house, standing motionless like a tall
beacon amongst the deserted shoals of furniture.
"Good-night, I am going. Got my bike downstairs.
The railway will know where to go for dynamite should
we get short at any time. We have done cutting and
chopping for a while now. We shall begin soon to blast
our way through."
"Don't come to me," said Charles Gould, with perfect
serenity. "I shan't have an ounce to spare for
anybody. Not an ounce. Not for my own brother, if
I had a brother, and he were the engineer-in-chief of
the most promising railway in the world."
"What's that?" asked the engineer-in-chief, with
equanimity. "Unkindness?"
"No," said Charles Gould, stolidly. "Policy."
"Radical, I should think," the engineer-in-chief observed
from the doorway.
"Is that the right name?" Charles Gould said, from
the middle of the room.
"I mean, going to the roots, you know," the engineer
explained, with an air of enjoyment.
"Why, yes," Charles pronounced, slowly. "The
Gould Concession has struck such deep roots in this
country, in this province, in that gorge of the mountains,
that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to
card to play."
The engineer-in-chief whistled low. "A pretty
game," he said, with a shade of discretion. "And have
you told Holroyd of that extraordinary trump card you
hold in your hand?"
"Card only when it's played; when it falls at the end
of the game. Till then you may call it a — a —"
"Weapon," suggested the railway man.
"No. You may call it rather an argument," corrected
Charles Gould, gently. "And that's how I've
presented it to Mr. Holroyd."
"And what did he say to it?" asked the engineer, with
undisguised interest.
"He" — Charles Gould spoke after a slight pause —
"he said something about holding on like grim death
and putting our trust in God. I should imagine he
must have been rather startled. But then" — pursued
the Administrador of the San Tomé mine — "but then,
he is very far away, you know, and, as they say in this
country, God is very high above."
The engineer's appreciative laugh died away down
the stairs, where the Madonna with the Child on her
arm seemed to look after his shaking broad back from
her shallow niche.
| CHAPTER FIVE Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad | |