 | Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad |  |
3. PART THIRD
THE LIGHTHOUSE
1. CHAPTER ONE
DIRECTLY the cargo boat had slipped away from the
wharf and got lost in the darkness of the harbour the
Europeans of Sulaco separated, to prepare for the coming
of the Monterist régime, which was approaching
Sulaco from the mountains, as well as from the sea.
This bit of manual work in loading the silver was
their last concerted action. It ended the three days of
danger, during which, according to the newspaper press
of Europe, their energy had preserved the town from the
calamities of popular disorder. At the shore end of the
jetty, Captain Mitchell said good-night and turned
back. His intention was to walk the planks of the
wharf till the steamer from Esmeralda turned up. The
engineers of the railway staff, collecting their Basque
and Italian workmen, marched them away to the rail-
way yards, leaving the Custom House, so well defended
on the first day of the riot, standing open to the four
winds of heaven. Their men had conducted themselves
bravely and faithfully during the famous "three days"
of Sulaco. In a great part this faithfulness and that
courage had been exercised in self-defence rather than
in the cause of those material interests to which Charles
Gould had pinned his faith. Amongst the cries of the
mob not the least loud had been the cry of death to
foreigners. It was, indeed, a lucky circumstance for
Sulaco that the relations of those imported workmen
with the people of the country had been uniformly bad
from the first.
Doctor Monygham, going to the door of Viola's
foreign interference, this withdrawal of the army of
material progress from the field of Costaguana revolutions.
Algarrobe torches carried on the outskirts of the
moving body sent their penetrating aroma into his
nostrils. Their light, sweeping along the front of the
house, made the letters of the inscription, "Albergo
d'ltalia Una," leap out black from end to end of the
long wall. His eyes blinked in the clear blaze. Several
young men, mostly fair and tall, shepherding this mob
of dark bronzed heads, surmounted by the glint of
slanting rifle barrels, nodded to him familiarly as they
went by. The doctor was a well-known character.
Some of them wondered what he was doing there.
Then, on the flank of their workmen they tramped on,
following the line of rails.
"Withdrawing your people from the harbour?"
said the doctor, addressing himself to the chief engineer
of the railway, who had accompanied Charles Gould so
far on his way to the town, walking by the side of the
horse, with his hand on the saddle-bow. They had
stopped just outside the open door to let the workmen
cross the road.
"As quick as I can. We are not a political faction,"
answered the engineer, meaningly. "And we are not
going to give our new rulers a handle against the rail-
way. You approve me, Gould?"
"Absolutely," said Charles Gould's impassive voice,
high up and outside the dim parallelogram of light falling
on the road through the open door.
With Sotillo expected from one side, and Pedro
Montero from the other, the engineer-in-chief's only
anxiety now was to avoid a collision with either. Sulaco,
for him, was a railway station, a terminus, workshops,
the railway defended its property, but politically the
railway was neutral. He was a brave man; and in that
spirit of neutrality he had carried proposals of truce to
the self-appointed chiefs of the popular party, the
deputies Fuentes and Gamacho. Bullets were still
flying about when he had crossed the Plaza on that
mission, waving above his head a white napkin belonging
to the table linen of the Amarilla Club.
He was rather proud of this exploit; and reflecting
that the doctor, busy all day with the wounded in the
patio of the Casa Gould, had not had time to hear the
news, he began a succinct narrative. He had communicated
to them the intelligence from the Construction
Camp as to Pedro Montero. The brother of the victorious
general, he had assured them, could be expected
at Sulaco at any time now. This news (as he anticipated),
when shouted out of the window by Señor
Gamacho, induced a rush of the mob along the Campo
Road towards Rincon. The two deputies also, after
shaking hands with him effusively, mounted and
galloped off to meet the great man. "I have misled
them a little as to the time," the chief engineer confessed.
"However hard he rides, he can scarcely get
here before the morning. But my object is attained.
I've secured several hours' peace for the losing party.
But I did not tell them anything about Sotillo, for fear
they would take it into their heads to try to get hold
of the harbour again, either to oppose him or welcome
him — there's no saying which. There was Gould's
silver, on which rests the remnant of our hopes. Decoud's
retreat had to be thought of, too. I think the
railway has done pretty well by its friends without compromising
itself hopelessly. Now the parties must be
left to themselves."
"Costaguana for the Costaguaneros," interjected the
doctor, sardonically. "It is a fine country, and they
have raised a fine crop of hates, vengeance, murder,
and rapine — those sons of the country."
"Well, I am one of them," Charles Gould's voice
sounded, calmly, "and I must be going on to see to my
own crop of trouble. My wife has driven straight on,
doctor?"
"Yes. All was quiet on this side. Mrs. Gould has
taken the two girls with her."
Charles Gould rode on, and the engineer-in-chief
followed the doctor indoors.
"That man is calmness personified," he said, appreciatively,
dropping on a bench, and stretching his well-
shaped legs in cycling stockings nearly across the doorway.
"He must be extremely sure of himself."
"If that's all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing,"
said the doctor. He had perched himself again on the
end of the table. He nursed his cheek in the palm of
one hand, while the other sustained the elbow. "It is
the last thing a man ought to be sure of." The candle,
half-consumed and burning dimly with a long wick,
lighted up from below his inclined face, whose expression
affected by the drawn-in cicatrices in the cheeks, had
something vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated remorseful
bitterness. As he sat there he had the air of meditating
upon sinister things. The engineer-in-chief
gazed at him for a time before he protested.
"I really don't see that. For me there seems to be
nothing else. However —"
He was a wise man, but he could not quite conceal
his contempt for that sort of paradox; in fact. Dr.
Monygham was not liked by the Europeans of Sulaco.
His outward aspect of an outcast, which he preserved
even in Mrs. Gould's drawing-room, provoked unfavourable
intelligence; and as he had lived for over twenty years
in the country, the pessimism of his outlook could not be
altogether ignored. But instinctively, in self-defence
of their activities and hopes, his hearers put it to the
account of some hidden imperfection in the man's
character. It was known that many years before,
when quite young, he had been made by Guzman Bento
chief medical officer of the army. Not one of the
Europeans then in the service of Costaguana had been
so much liked and trusted by the fierce old Dictator.
Afterwards his story was not so clear. It lost itself
amongst the innumerable tales of conspiracies and
plots against the tyrant as a stream is lost in an arid
belt of sandy country before it emerges, diminished and
troubled, perhaps, on the other side. The doctor made
no secret of it that he had lived for years in the wildest
parts of the Republic, wandering with almost unknown
Indian tribes in the great forests of the far interior where
the great rivers have their sources. But it was mere
aimless wandering; he had written nothing, collected
nothing, brought nothing for science out of the twilight
of the forests, which seemed to cling to his battered
personality limping about Sulaco, where it had drifted in
casually, only to get stranded on the shores of the sea.
It was also known that he had lived in a state of
destitution till the arrival of the Goulds from Europe.
Don Carlos and Doña Emilia had taken up the mad
English doctor, when it became apparent that for all
his savage independence he could be tamed by kindness.
Perhaps it was only hunger that had tamed him. In
years gone by he had certainly been acquainted with
Charles Gould's father in Sta. Marta; and now, no
matter what were the dark passages of his history, as the
medical officer of the San Tomé mine he became a recognized
accepted. So much defiant eccentricity and
such an outspoken scorn for mankind seemed to point to
mere recklessness of judgment, the bravado of guilt.
Besides, since he had become again of some account,
vague whispers had been heard that years ago, when
fallen into disgrace and thrown into prison by Guzman
Bento at the time of the so-called Great Conspiracy, he
had betrayed some of his best friends amongst the
conspirators. Nobody pretended to believe that whisper;
the whole story of the Great Conspiracy was
hopelessly involved and obscure; it is admitted in Costaguana
that there never had been a conspiracy except in
the diseased imagination of the Tyrant; and, therefore,
nothing and no one to betray; though the most distinguished
Costaguaneros had been imprisoned and
executed upon that accusation. The procedure had
dragged on for years, decimating the better class like
a pestilence. The mere expression of sorrow for the
fate of executed kinsmen had been punished with death.
Don José Avellanos was perhaps the only one living who
knew the whole story of those unspeakable cruelties.
He had suffered from them himself, and he, with a
shrug of the shoulders and a nervous, jerky gesture of
the arm, was wont to put away from him, as it were,
every allusion to it. But whatever the reason, Dr.
Monygham, a personage in the administration of the
Gould Concession, treated with reverent awe by the
miners, and indulged in his peculiarities by Mrs.
Gould, remained somehow outside the pale.
It was not from any liking for the doctor that the
engineer-in-chief had lingered in the inn upon the plain.
He liked old Viola much better. He had come to look
upon the Albergo d'ltalia Una as a dependence of the
railway. Many of his subordinates had their quarters
upon it a sort of distinction. The engineer-in-chief,
with an army of workers under his orders, appreciated
the moral influence of the old Garibaldino upon his
countrymen. His austere, old-world Republicanism
had a severe, soldier-like standard of faithfulness and
duty, as if the world were a battlefield where men had
to fight for the sake of universal love and brotherhood,
instead of a more or less large share of booty.
"Poor old chap!" he said, after he had heard the
doctor's account of Teresa. "He'll never be able to
keep the place going by himself. I shall be sorry."
"He's quite alone up there," grunted Doctor Monygham,
with a toss of his heavy head towards the narrow
staircase. "Every living soul has cleared out, and Mrs.
Gould took the girls away just now. It might not be
over-safe for them out here before very long. Of
course, as a doctor I can do nothing more here; but she
has asked me to stay with old Viola, and as I have no
horse to get back to the mine, where I ought to be, I
made no difficulty to stay. They can do without me in
the town."
"I have a good mind to remain with you, doctor, till
we see whether anything happens to-night at the
harbour," declared the engineer-in-chief. "He must
not be molested by Sotillo's soldiery, who may push on
as far as this at once. Sotillo used to be very cordial
to me at the Goulds' and at the club. How that man'll
ever dare to look any of his friends here in the face I
can't imagine."
"He'll no doubt begin by shooting some of them to
get over the first awkwardness," said the doctor.
"Nothing in this country serves better your military
man who has changed sides than a few summary
executions." He spoke with a gloomy positiveness
did not attempt any. He simply nodded several
times regretfully, then said —
"I think we shall be able to mount you in the morning,
doctor. Our peons have recovered some of our
stampeded horses. By riding hard and taking a wide
circuit by Los Hatos and along the edge of the forest,
clear of Rincon altogether, you may hope to reach the
San Tomé bridge without being interfered with. The
mine is just now, to my mind, the safest place for anybody
at all compromised. I only wish the railway was
as difficult to touch."
"Am I compromised?" Doctor Monygham brought
out slowly after a short silence.
"The whole Gould Concession is compromised. It
could not have remained for ever outside the political
life of the country — if those convulsions may be called
life. The thing is — can it be touched? The moment
was bound to come when neutrality would become impossible,
and Charles Gould understood this well. I
believe he is prepared for every extremity. A man of
his sort has never contemplated remaining indefinitely
at the mercy of ignorance and corruption. It was like
being a prisoner in a cavern of banditti with the price of
your ransom in your pocket, and buying your life from
day to day. Your mere safety, not your liberty, mind,
doctor. I know what I am talking about. The image
at which you shrug your shoulders is perfectly correct,
especially if you conceive such a prisoner endowed with
the power of replenishing his pocket by means as remote
from the faculties of his captors as if they were magic.
You must have understood that as well as I do, doctor.
He was in the position of the goose with the golden
eggs. I broached this matter to him as far back as Sir
John's visit here. The prisoner of stupid and greedy
ruffian, who may blow out his brains in a fit of temper or
for some prospect of an immediate big haul. The tale of
killing the goose with the golden eggs has not been
evolved for nothing out of the wisdom of mankind. It
is a story that will never grow old. That is why
Charles Gould in his deep, dumb way has countenanced
the Ribierist Mandate, the first public act that promised
him safety on other than venal grounds. Ribierism has
failed, as everything merely rational fails in this
country. But Gould remains logical in wishing to save
this big lot of silver. Decoud's plan of a counter-
revolution may be practicable or not, it may have a
chance, or it may not have a chance. With all my
experience of this revolutionary continent, I can hardly
yet look at their methods seriously. Decoud has been
reading to us his draft of a proclamation, and talking
very well for two hours about his plan of action. He
had arguments which should have appeared solid
enough if we, members of old, stable political and
national organizations, were not startled by the mere
idea of a new State evolved like this out of the head of a
scoffing young man fleeing for his life, with a proclamation
in his pocket, to a rough, jeering, half-bred swashbuckler,
who in this part of the world is called a general.
It sounds like a comic fairy tale — and behold, it may
come off; because it is true to the very spirit of the
country."
"Is the silver gone off, then?" asked the doctor,
moodily.
The chief engineer pulled out his watch. "By
Captain Mitchell's reckoning — and he ought to know —
it has been gone long enough now to be some three or
four miles outside the harbour; and, as Mitchell says,
Nostromo is the sort of seaman to make the best of his
the other changed his tone.
"You have a poor opinion of that move, doctor? But
why? Charles Gould has got to play his game out,
though he is not the man to formulate his conduct even
to himself, perhaps, let alone to others. It may be that
the game has been partly suggested to him by Holroyd;
but it accords with his character, too; and that is why it
has been so successful. Haven't they come to calling
him 'El Rey de Sulaco' in Sta. Marta? A nickname
may be the best record of a success. That's what I call
putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth. My
dear sir, when I first arrived in Sta. Marta I was struck
by the way all those journalists, demagogues, members
of Congress, and all those generals and judges cringed
before a sleepy-eyed advocate without practice simply
because he was the plenipotentiary of the Gould Concession.
Sir John when he came out was impressed, too."
"A new State, with that plump dandy, Decoud, for
the first President," mused Dr. Monygham, nursing his
cheek and swinging his legs all the time.
"Upon my word, and why not?" the chief engineer
retorted in an unexpectedly earnest and confidential
voice. It was as if something subtle in the air of
Costaguana had inoculated him with the local faith in
"pronunciamientos." All at once he began to talk, like
an expert revolutionist, of the instrument ready to hand
in the intact army at Cayta, which could be brought
back in a few days to Sulaco if only Decoud managed to
make his way at once down the coast. For the military
chief there was Barrios, who had nothing but a bullet to
expect from Montero, his former professional rival and
bitter enemy. Barrios's concurrence was assured. As
to his army, it had nothing to expect from Montero
either; not even a month's pay. From that point of
importance. The mere knowledge that it had been
saved from the Monterists would be a strong inducement
for the Cayta troops to embrace the cause of the
new State.
The doctor turned round and contemplated his companion
for some time.
"This Decoud, I see, is a persuasive young beggar,"
he remarked at last. "And pray is it for this, then,
that Charles Gould has let the whole lot of ingots go
out to sea in charge of that Nostromo?"
"Charles Gould," said the engineer-in-chief, "has
said no more about his motive than usual. You know,
he doesn't talk. But we all here know his motive, and
he has only one — the safety of the San Tomé mine with
the preservation of the Gould Concession in the spirit
of his compact with Holroyd. Holroyd is another uncommon
man. They understand each other's imaginative
side. One is thirty, the other nearly sixty, and
they have been made for each other. To be a millionaire,
and such a millionaire as Holroyd, is like being
eternally young. The audacity of youth reckons upon
what it fancies an unlimited time at its disposal; but a
millionaire has unlimited means in his hand — which is
better. One's time on earth is an uncertain quantity,
but about the long reach of millions there is no doubt.
The introduction of a pure form of Christianity into this
continent is a dream for a youthful enthusiast, and I
have been trying to explain to you why Holroyd at
fifty-eight is like a man on the threshold of life, and
better, too. He's not a missionary, but the San Tomé
mine holds just that for him. I assure you, in sober
truth, that he could not manage to keep this out of a
strictly business conference upon the finances of Costaguana
he had with Sir John a couple of years ago.
wrote to me here, from San Francisco, when on his way
home. Upon my word, doctor, things seem to be worth
nothing by what they are in themselves. I begin to
believe that the only solid thing about them is the
spiritual value which everyone discovers in his own
form of activity —"
"Bah!" interrupted the doctor, without stopping for
an instant the idle swinging movement of his legs.
"Self-flattery. Food for that vanity which makes the
world go round. Meantime, what do you think is
going to happen to the treasure floating about the gulf
with the great Capataz and the great politician?"
"Why are you uneasy about it, doctor?"
"I uneasy! And what the devil is it to me? I put
no spiritual value into my desires, or my opinions, or my
actions. They have not enough vastness to give me
room for self-flattery. Look, for instance, I should certainly
have liked to ease the last moments of that poor
woman. And I can't. It's impossible. Have you met
the impossible face to face — or have you, the Napoleon
of railways, no such word in your dictionary?"
"Is she bound to have a very bad time of it?" asked
the chief engineer, with humane concern.
Slow, heavy footsteps moved across the planks above
the heavy hard wood beams of the kitchen. Then
down the narrow opening of the staircase made in the
thickness of the wall, and narrow enough to be defended
by one man against twenty enemies, came the murmur
of two voices, one faint and broken, the other deep and
gentle answering it, and in its graver tone covering the
weaker sound.
The two men remained still and silent till the murmurs
ceased, then the doctor shrugged his shoulders and
muttered —
"Yes, she's bound to. And I could do nothing if I
went up now."
A long period of silence above and below ensued.
"I fancy," began the engineer, in a subdued voice,
"that you mistrust Captain Mitchell's Capataz."
"Mistrust him!" muttered the doctor through his
teeth. "I believe him capable of anything — even of
the most absurd fidelity. I am the last person he spoke
to before he left the wharf, you know. The poor
woman up there wanted to see him, and I let him go up
to her. The dying must not be contradicted, you
know. She seemed then fairly calm and resigned, but
the scoundrel in those ten minutes or so has done or
said something which seems to have driven her into
despair. You know," went on the doctor, hesitatingly,
"women are so very unaccountable in every position,
and at all times of life, that I thought sometimes she
was in a way, don't you see? in love with him — the
Capataz. The rascal has his own charm indubitably,
or he would not have made the conquest of all the
populace of the town. No, no, I am not absurd. I
may have given a wrong name to some strong sentiment
for him on her part, to an unreasonable and
simple attitude a woman is apt to take up emotionally
towards a man. She used to abuse him to me frequently,
which, of course, is not inconsistent with my
idea. Not at all. It looked to me as if she were always
thinking of him. He was something important
in her life. You know, I have seen a lot of those people.
Whenever I came down from the mine Mrs. Gould used
to ask me to keep my eye on them. She likes Italians;
she has lived a long time in Italy, I believe, and she took
a special fancy to that old Garibaldino. A remarkable
chap enough. A rugged and dreamy character, living
in the republicanism of his young days as if in a cloud.
nonsense — the high-strung, exalted old beggar!"
"What sort of nonsense?" wondered the chief engineer.
"I found the Capataz always a very shrewd
and sensible fellow, absolutely fearless, and remarkably
useful. A perfect handy man. Sir John was greatly
impressed by his resourcefulness and attention when he
made that overland journey from Sta. Marta. Later
on, as you might have heard, he rendered us a service
by disclosing to the then chief of police the presence in
the town of some professional thieves, who came from a
distance to wreck and rob our monthly pay train. He
has certainly organized the lighterage service of the
harbour for the O.S.N. Company with great ability.
He knows how to make himself obeyed, foreigner though
he is. It is true that the Cargadores are strangers here,
too, for the most part — immigrants, Isleños."
"His prestige is his fortune," muttered the doctor,
sourly.
"The man has proved his trustworthiness up to the
hilt on innumerable occasions and in all sorts of ways,"
argued the engineer. "When this question of the silver
arose, Captain Mitchell naturally was very warmly of
the opinion that his Capataz was the only man fit for
the trust. As a sailor, of course, I suppose so. But as
a man, don't you know, Gould, Decoud, and myself
judged that it didn't matter in the least who went.
Any boatman would have done just as well. Pray,
what could a thief do with such a lot of ingots? If he
ran off with them he would have in the end to land somewhere,
and how could he conceal his cargo from the
knowledge of the people ashore? We dismissed that
consideration from our minds. Moreover, Decoud was
going. There have been occasions when the Capataz
has been more implicitly trusted."
"He took a slightly different view," the doctor said.
"I heard him declare in this very room that it would be
the most desperate affair of his life. He made a sort of
verbal will here in my hearing, appointing old Viola his
executor; and, by Jove! do you know, he — he's not
grown rich by his fidelity to you good people of the rail-
way and the harbour. I suppose he obtains some —
how do you say that? — some spiritual value for his
labours, or else I don't know why the devil he should
be faithful to you, Gould, Mitchell, or anybody else.
He knows this country well. He knows, for instance,
that Gamacho, the Deputy from Javira, has been nothing
else but a 'tramposo' of the commonest sort, a petty
pedlar of the Campo, till he managed to get enough
goods on credit from Anzani to open a little store in the
wilds, and got himself elected by the drunken mozos
that hang about the Estancias and the poorest sort of
rancheros who were in his debt. And Gamacho, who
to-morrow will be probably one of our high officials, is a
stranger, too — an Isleño. He might have been a
Cargador on the O. S. N. wharf had he not (the posadero
of Rincon is ready to swear it) murdered a pedlar in the
woods and stolen his pack to begin life on. And do you
think that Gamacho, then, would have ever become a
hero with the democracy of this place, like our Capataz?
Of course not. He isn't half the man. No; decidedly,
I think that Nostromo is a fool."
The doctor's talk was distasteful to the builder of
railways. "It is impossible to argue that point," he said,
philosophically. "Each man has his gifts. You should
have heard Gamacho haranguing his friends in the street.
He has a howling voice, and he shouted like mad, lifting
his clenched fist right above his head, and throwing his
body half out of the window. At every pause the
rabble below yelled, 'Down with the Oligarchs! Viva
You know, he is the brother of Jorge Fuentes,
who has been Minister of the Interior for six months or
so, some few years back. Of course, he has no conscience;
but he is a man of birth and education — at one
time the director of the Customs of Cayta. That
idiot-brute Gamacho fastened himself upon him with
his following of the lowest rabble. His sickly fear of
that ruffian was the most rejoicing sight imaginable."
He got up and went to the door to look out towards
the harbour. "All quiet," he said; "I wonder if Sotillo
really means to turn up here?"
2. CHAPTER TWO
CAPTAIN MITCHELL, pacing the wharf, was asking
himself the same question. There was always the doubt
whether the warning of the Esmeralda telegraphist —
a fragmentary and interrupted message — had been
properly understood. However, the good man had
made up his mind not to go to bed till daylight, if even
then. He imagined himself to have rendered an enormous
service to Charles Gould. When he thought of
the saved silver he rubbed his hands together with
satisfaction. In his simple way he was proud at being
a party to this extremely clever expedient. It was he
who had given it a practical shape by suggesting the
possibility of intercepting at sea the north-bound
steamer. And it was advantageous to his Company,
too, which would have lost a valuable freight if the
treasure had been left ashore to be confiscated. The
pleasure of disappointing the Monterists was also very
great. Authoritative by temperament and the long
habit of command, Captain Mitchell was no democrat.
He even went so far as to profess a contempt for
parliamentarism itself. "His Excellency Don Vincente
Ribiera," he used to say, "whom I and that fellow of
mine, Nostromo, had the honour, sir, and the pleasure
of saving from a cruel death, deferred too much to his
Congress. It was a mistake — a distinct mistake, sir."
The guileless old seaman superintending the O.S.N.
service imagined that the last three days had exhausted
every startling surprise the political life of Costaguana
could offer. He used to confess afterwards that the
begin with, Sulaco (because of the seizure of the cables
and the disorganization of the steam service) remained
for a whole fortnight cut off from the rest of the world
like a besieged city.
"One would not have believed it possible; but so it
was, sir. A full fortnight."
The account of the extraordinary things that happened
during that time, and the powerful emotions he
experienced, acquired a comic impressiveness from the
pompous manner of his personal narrative. He opened
it always by assuring his hearer that he was "in the
thick of things from first to last." Then he would begin
by describing the getting away of the silver, and his
natural anxiety lest "his fellow" in charge of the lighter
should make some mistake. Apart from the loss of
so much precious metal, the life of Señor Martin Decoud,
an agreeable, wealthy, and well-informed young
gentleman, would have been jeopardized through his
falling into the hands of his political enemies. Captain
Mitchell also admitted that in his solitary vigil on
the wharf he had felt a certain measure of concern for
the future of the whole country.
"A feeling, sir," he explained, "perfectly comprehensible
in a man properly grateful for the many
kindnesses received from the best families of merchants
and other native gentlemen of independent means, who,
barely saved by us from the excesses of the mob, seemed,
to my mind's eye, destined to become the prey in person
and fortune of the native soldiery, which, as is well
known, behave with regrettable barbarity to the inhabitants
during their civil commotions. And then,
sir, there were the Goulds, for both of whom, man and
wife, I could not but entertain the warmest feelings
deserved by their hospitality and kindness. I felt, too,
had made me honorary member, and had treated me
with uniform regard and civility, both in my capacity
of Consular Agent and as Superintendent of an important
Steam Service. Miss Antonia Avellanos,
the most beautiful and accomplished young lady whom
it had ever been my privilege to speak to, was not a
little in my mind, I confess. How the interests of my
Company would be affected by the impending change
of officials claimed a large share of my attention, too.
In short, sir, I was extremely anxious and very tired, as
you may suppose, by the exciting and memorable events
in which I had taken my little part. The Company's
building containing my residence was within five
minutes' walk, with the attraction of some supper and of
my hammock (I always take my nightly rest in a hammock,
as the most suitable to the climate); but somehow,
sir, though evidently I could do nothing for any
one by remaining about, I could not tear myself away
from that wharf, where the fatigue made me stumble
painfully at times. The night was excessively dark —
the darkest I remember in my life; so that I began to
think that the arrival of the transport from Esmeralda
could not possibly take place before daylight, owing
to the difficulty of navigating the gulf. The mosquitoes
bit like fury. We have been infested here with mosquitoes
before the late improvements; a peculiar harbour
brand, sir, renowned for its ferocity. They were
like a cloud about my head, and I shouldn't wonder
that but for their attacks I would have dozed off as I
walked up and down, and got a heavy fall. I kept on
smoking cigar after cigar, more to protect myself from
being eaten up alive than from any real relish for the
weed. Then, sir, when perhaps for the twentieth time
I was approaching my watch to the lighted end in order
wanted yet ten minutes to midnight, I heard the splash
of a ship's propeller — an unmistakable sound to a
sailor's ear on such a calm night. It was faint indeed,
because they were advancing with precaution and dead
slow, both on account of the darkness and from their
desire of not revealing too soon their presence: a very
unnecessary care, because, I verily believe, in all the
enormous extent of this harbour I was the only living
soul about. Even the usual staff of watchmen and
others had been absent from their posts for several
nights owing to the disturbances. I stood stock still,
after dropping and stamping out my cigar — a circumstance
highly agreeable, I should think, to the mosquitoes,
if I may judge from the state of my face next morning.
But that was a trifling inconvenience in comparison
with the brutal proceedings I became victim of
on the part of Sotillo. Something utterly inconceivable,
sir; more like the proceedings of a maniac than the
action of a sane man, however lost to all sense of honour
and decency. But Sotillo was furious at the failure of
his thievish scheme."
In this Captain Mitchell was right. Sotillo was indeed
infuriated. Captain Mitchell, however, had not
been arrested at once; a vivid curiosity induced him to
remain on the wharf (which is nearly four hundred feet
long) to see, or rather hear, the whole process of disembarkation.
Concealed by the railway truck used
for the silver, which had been run back afterwards to
the shore end of the jetty, Captain Mitchell saw the
small detachment thrown forward, pass by, taking
different directions upon the plain. Meantime, the
troops were being landed and formed into a column,
whose head crept up gradually so close to him that he
made it out, barring nearly the whole width of the
shuffling, murmuring, clinking sounds ceased, and the
whole mass remained for about an hour motionless and
silent, awaiting the return of the scouts. On land
nothing was to be heard except the deep baying of the
mastiffs at the railway yards, answered by the faint
barking of the curs infesting the outer limits of the
town. A detached knot of dark shapes stood in front of
the head of the column.
Presently the picket at the end of the wharf began to
challenge in undertones single figures approaching from
the plain. Those messengers sent back from the scouting
parties flung to their comrades brief sentences and
passed on rapidly, becoming lost in the great motionless
mass, to make their report to the Staff. It occurred to
Captain Mitchell that his position could become disagreeable
and perhaps dangerous, when suddenly, at
the head of the jetty, there was a shout of command, a
bugle call, followed by a stir and a rattling of arms, and a
murmuring noise that ran right up the column. Near
by a loud voice directed hurriedly, "Push that railway
car out of the way!" At the rush of bare feet to execute
the order Captain Mitchell skipped back a pace or
two; the car, suddenly impelled by many hands, flew
away from him along the rails, and before he knew what
had happened he found himself surrounded and seized
by his arms and the collar of his coat.
"We have caught a man hiding here, mi teniente!"
cried one of his captors.
"Hold him on one side till the rearguard comes
along," answered the voice. The whole column
streamed past Captain Mitchell at a run, the thundering
noise of their feet dying away suddenly on the shore.
His captors held him tightly, disregarding his declaration
that he was an Englishman and his loud demands to
Finally he lapsed into dignified silence. With a hollow
rumble of wheels on the planks a couple of field guns,
dragged by hand, rolled by. Then, after a small body
of men had marched past escorting four or five figures
which walked in advance, with a jingle of steel scabbards,
he felt a tug at his arms, and was ordered to come
along. During the passage from the wharf to the
Custom House it is to be feared that Captain Mitchell
was subjected to certain indignities at the hands of the
soldiers — such as jerks, thumps on the neck, forcible
application of the butt of a rifle to the small of his back.
Their ideas of speed were not in accord with his notion
of his dignity. He became flustered, flushed, and helpless.
It was as if the world were coming to an end.
The long building was surrounded by troops, which
were already piling arms by companies and preparing
to pass the night lying on the ground in their ponchos
with their sacks under their heads. Corporals moved
with swinging lanterns posting sentries all round the
walls wherever there was a door or an opening. Sotillo
was taking his measures to protect his conquest as if
it had indeed contained the treasure. His desire to
make his fortune at one audacious stroke of genius had
overmastered his reasoning faculties. He would not
believe in the possibility of failure; the mere hint of
such a thing made his brain reel with rage. Every
circumstance pointing to it appeared incredible. The
statement of Hirsch, which was so absolutely fatal to his
hopes, could by no means be admitted. It is true, too,
that Hirsch's story had been told so incoherently, with
such excessive signs of distraction, that it really looked
improbable. It was extremely difficult, as the saying
is, to make head or tail of it. On the bridge of the
steamer, directly after his rescue, Sotillo and his officers,
the wretched man time to collect such few wits as remained
to him. He ought to have been quieted,
soothed, and reassured, whereas he had been roughly
handled, cuffed, shaken, and addressed in menacing
tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to get
down on his knees, followed by the most violent efforts
to break away, as if he meant incontinently to jump
overboard, his shrieks and shrinkings and cowering
wild glances had filled them first with amazement, then
with a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to suspect
the sincerity of every great passion. His Spanish,
too, became so mixed up with German that the better
half of his statements remained incomprehensible. He
tried to propitiate them by calling them hochwohlgeboren
herren, which in itself sounded suspicious. When
admonished sternly not to trifle he repeated his entreaties
and protestations of loyalty and innocence again
in German, obstinately, because he was not aware in
what language he was speaking. His identity, of
course, was perfectly known as an inhabitant of Esmeralda,
but this made the matter no clearer. As he
kept on forgetting Decoud's name, mixing him up with
several other people he had seen in the Casa Gould, it
looked as if they all had been in the lighter together;
and for a moment Sotillo thought that he had drowned
every prominent Ribierist of Sulaco. The improbability
of such a thing threw a doubt upon the whole
statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing a part —
pretending fear and distraction on the spur of the moment
to cover the truth. Sotillo's rapacity, excited to
the highest pitch by the prospect of an immense booty,
could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew might have
been very much frightened by the accident, but he
knew where the silver was concealed, and had invented
off the track as to what had been done.
Sotillo had taken up his quarters on the upper floor
in a vast apartment with heavy black beams. But
there was no ceiling, and the eye lost itself in the darkness
under the high pitch of the roof. The thick shutters
stood open. On a long table could be seen a large
inkstand, some stumpy, inky quill pens, and two
square wooden boxes, each holding half a hundred-
weight of sand. Sheets of grey coarse official paper
bestrewed the floor. It must have been a room occupied
by some higher official of the Customs, because
a large leathern armchair stood behind the table,
with other high-backed chairs scattered about. A net
hammock was swung under one of the beams — for the
official's afternoon siesta, no doubt. A couple of
candles stuck into tall iron candlesticks gave a dim
reddish light. The colonel's hat, sword, and revolver
lay between them, and a couple of his more trusty
officers lounged gloomily against the table. The
colonel threw himself into the armchair, and a big
negro with a sergeant's stripes on his ragged sleeve,
kneeling down, pulled off his boots. Sotillo's ebony
moustache contrasted violently with the livid colouring
of his cheeks. His eyes were sombre and as if sunk very
far into his head. He seemed exhausted by his perplexities,
languid with disappointment; but when the
sentry on the landing thrust his head in to announce the
arrival of a prisoner, he revived at once.
"Let him be brought in," he shouted, fiercely.
The door flew open, and Captain Mitchell, bare-
headed, his waistcoat open, the bow of his tie under his
ear, was hustled into the room.
Sotillo recognized him at once. He could not have
hoped for a more precious capture; here was a man who
know — and directly the problem of how best to make
him talk to the point presented itself to his mind. The
resentment of a foreign nation had no terrors for Sotillo.
The might of the whole armed Europe would not have
protected Captain Mitchell from insults and ill-usage, so
well as the quick reflection of Sotillo that this was an
Englishman who would most likely turn obstinate under
bad treatment, and become quite unmanageable. At
all events, the colonel smoothed the scowl on his brow.
"What! The excellent Señor Mitchell!" he cried,
in affected dismay. The pretended anger of his swift
advance and of his shout, "Release the caballero at
once," was so effective that the astounded soldiers
positively sprang away from their prisoner. Thus
suddenly deprived of forcible support, Captain Mitchell
reeled as though about to fall. Sotillo took him
familiarly under the arm, led him to a chair, waved his
hand at the room. "Go out, all of you," he commanded.
When they had been left alone he stood looking down,
irresolute and silent, watching till Captain Mitchell
had recovered his power of speech.
Here in his very grasp was one of the men concerned
in the removal of the silver. Sotillo's temperament was
of that sort that he experienced an ardent desire to beat
him; just as formerly when negotiating with difficulty
a loan from the cautious Anzani, his fingers always
itched to take the shopkeeper by the throat. As to
Captain Mitchell, the suddenness, unexpectedness, and
general inconceivableness of this experience had confused
his thoughts. Moreover, he was physically out
of breath.
"I've been knocked down three times between this
and the wharf," he gasped out at last. "Somebody
stumbled more than once, and had been dragged along
for some distance before he could regain his stride.
With his recovered breath his indignation seemed to
madden him. He jumped up, crimson, all his white
hair bristling, his eyes glaring vengefully, and shook
violently the flaps of his ruined waistcoat before the
disconcerted Sotillo. "Look! Those uniformed thieves
of yours downstairs have robbed me of my watch."
The old sailor's aspect was very threatening. Sotillo
saw himself cut off from the table on which his sabre and
revolver were lying.
"I demand restitution and apologies," Mitchell
thundered at him, quite beside himself. "From you!
Yes, from you!"
For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with
a perfectly stony expression of face; then, as Captain
Mitchell flung out an arm towards the table as if to
snatch up the revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of alarm,
bounded to the door and was gone in a flash, slamming
it after him. Surprise calmed Captain Mitchell's fury.
Behind the closed door Sotillo shouted on the landing,
and there was a great tumult of feet on the wooden
staircase.
"Disarm him! Bind him!" the colonel could be
heard vociferating.
Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once
at the windows, with three perpendicular bars of iron
each and some twenty feet from the ground, as he well
knew, before the door flew open and the rush upon him
took place. In an incredibly short time he found himself
bound with many turns of a hide rope to a high-
backed chair, so that his head alone remained free. Not
till then did Sotillo, who had been leaning in the doorway
trembling visibly, venture again within. The
dropped to grapple with the prisoner, filed out of the
room. The officers remained leaning on their swords
and looking on.
"The watch! the watch!" raved the colonel, pacing
to and fro like a tiger in a cage. "Give me that man's
watch."
It was true, that when searched for arms in the hall
downstairs, before being taken into Sotillo's presence,
Captain Mitchell had been relieved of his watch and
chain; but at the colonel's clamour it was produced
quickly enough, a corporal bringing it up, carried carefully
in the palms of his joined hands. Sotillo snatched
it, and pushed the clenched fist from which it dangled
close to Captain Mitchell's face.
"Now then! You arrogant Englishman! You dare
to call the soldiers of the army thieves! Behold your
watch."
He flourished his fist as if aiming blows at the prisoner's
nose. Captain Mitchell, helpless as a swathed
infant, looked anxiously at the sixty-guinea gold half-
chronometer, presented to him years ago by a Committee
of Underwriters for saving a ship from total loss
by fire. Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable
appearance. He became silent suddenly, stepped aside
to the table, and began a careful examination in the
light of the candles. He had never seen anything so
fine. His officers closed in and craned their necks behind
his back.
He became so interested that for an instant he forgot
his precious prisoner. There is always something
childish in the rapacity of the passionate, clear-minded,
Southern races, wanting in the misty idealism of the
Northerners, who at the smallest encouragement dream
of nothing less than the conquest of the earth. Sotillo
After a moment he turned about, and with a commanding
gesture made all his officers fall back. He laid
down the watch on the table, then, negligently, pushed
his hat over it.
"Ha!" he began, going up very close to the chair.
"You dare call my valiant soldiers of the Esmeralda
regiment, thieves. You dare! What impudence! You
foreigners come here to rob our country of its wealth.
You never have enough! Your audacity knows no
bounds."
He looked towards the officers, amongst whom there
was an approving murmur. The older major was
moved to declare —
"Si, mi colonel. They are all traitors."
"I shall say nothing," continued Sotillo, fixing the
motionless and powerless Mitchell with an angry but
uneasy stare. "I shall say nothing of your treacherous
attempt to get possession of my revolver to shoot
me while I was trying to treat you with consideration
you did not deserve. You have forfeited your
life. Your only hope is in my clemency."
He watched for the effect of his words, but there was
no obvious sign of fear on Captain Mitchell's face. His
white hair was full of dust, which covered also the rest
of his helpless person. As if he had heard nothing, he
twitched an eyebrow to get rid of a bit of straw which
hung amongst the hairs.
Sotillo advanced one leg and put his arms akimbo.
"It is you, Mitchell," he said, emphatically, "who are
the thief, not my soldiers!" He pointed at his prisoner
a forefinger with a long, almond-shaped nail. "Where
is the silver of the San Tomé mine? I ask you, Mitchell,
where is the silver that was deposited in this Custom
House? Answer me that! You stole it. You were a
Aha! you think I do not know what I say; but I am up
to your foreign tricks. It is gone, the silver! No?
Gone in one of your lanchas, you miserable man! How
dared you?"
This time he produced his effect. "How on earth
could Sotillo know that?" thought Mitchell. His head,
the only part of his body that could move, betrayed his
surprise by a sudden jerk.
"Ha! you tremble," Sotillo shouted, suddenly. "It
is a conspiracy. It is a crime against the State. Did
you not know that the silver belongs to the Republic till
the Government claims are satisfied? Where is it?
Where have you hidden it, you miserable thief?"
At this question Captain Mitchell's sinking spirits revived.
In whatever incomprehensible manner Sotillo
had already got his information about the lighter, he had
not captured it. That was clear. In his outraged
heart, Captain Mitchell had resolved that nothing
would induce him to say a word while he remained so
disgracefully bound, but his desire to help the escape of
the silver made him depart from this resolution. His
wits were very much at work. He detected in Sotillo a
certain air of doubt, of irresolution.
"That man," he said to himself, "is not certain of
what he advances." For all his pomposity in social
intercourse, Captain Mitchell could meet the realities of
life in a resolute and ready spirit. Now he had got over
the first shock of the abominable treatment he was cool
and collected enough. The immense contempt he felt
for Sotillo steadied him, and he said oracularly, "No
doubt it is well concealed by this time."
Sotillo, too, had time to cool down. "Muy bien,
Mitchell," he said in a cold and threatening manner.
"But can you produce the Government receipt for the
hey? Can you? No. Then the silver has been removed
illegally, and the guilty shall be made to suffer,
unless it is produced within five days from this." He
gave orders for the prisoner to be unbound and locked
up in one of the smaller rooms downstairs. He walked
about the room, moody and silent, till Captain Mitchell,
with each of his arms held by a couple of men, stood up,
shook himself, and stamped his feet.
"How did you like to be tied up, Mitchell?" he asked,
derisively.
"It is the most incredible, abominable use of power!"
Captain Mitchell declared in a loud voice. "And
whatever your purpose, you shall gain nothing from it,
I can promise you."
The tall colonel, livid, with his coal-black ringlets and
moustache, crouched, as it were, to look into the eyes of
the short, thick-set, red-faced prisoner with rumpled
white hair.
"That we shall see. You shall know my power a
little better when I tie you up to a potalon outside in the
sun for a whole day." He drew himself up haughtily,
and made a sign for Captain Mitchell to be led away.
"What about my watch?" cried Captain Mitchell,
hanging back from the efforts of the men pulling him
towards the door.
Sotillo turned to his officers. "No! But only listen
to this picaro, caballeros," he pronounced with affected
scorn, and was answered by a chorus of derisive laughter.
"He demands his watch!" . . . He ran up
again to Captain Mitchell, for the desire to relieve his
feelings by inflicting blows and pain upon this Englishman
was very strong within him. "Your watch! You
are a prisoner in war time, Mitchell! In war time!
You have no rights and no property! Caramba! The
that."
"Bosh!" said Captain Mitchell, concealing a disagreeable
impression.
Down below, in a great hall, with the earthen floor
and with a tall mound thrown up by white ants in a
corner, the soldiers had kindled a small fire with broken
chairs and tables near the arched gateway, through
which the faint murmur of the harbour waters on the
beach could be heard. While Captain Mitchell was
being led down the staircase, an officer passed him,
running up to report to Sotillo the capture of more
prisoners. A lot of smoke hung about in the vast
gloomy place, the fire crackled, and, as if through a
haze, Captain Mitchell made out, surrounded by short
soldiers with fixed bayonets, the heads of three tall
prisoners — the doctor, the engineer-in-chief, and the
white leonine mane of old Viola, who stood half-turned
away from the others with his chin on his breast and his
arms crossed. Mitchell's astonishment knew no
bounds. He cried out; the other two exclaimed also.
But he hurried on, diagonally, across the big cavern-
like hall. Lots of thoughts, surmises, hints of caution,
and so on, crowded his head to distraction.
"Is he actually keeping you?" shouted the chief
engineer, whose single eyeglass glittered in the firelight.
An officer from the top of the stairs was shouting
urgently, "Bring them all up — all three."
In the clamour of voices and the rattle of arms, Captain
Mitchell made himself heard imperfectly: "By
heavens! the fellow has stolen my watch."
The engineer-in-chief on the staircase resisted the
pressure long enough to shout, "What? What did you
say?"
"My chronometer!" Captain Mitchell yelled violently
through a small door into a sort of cell, perfectly
black, and so narrow that he fetched up against the
opposite wall. The door had been instantly slammed.
He knew where they had put him. This was the strong
room of the Custom House, whence the silver had been
removed only a few hours earlier. It was almost as
narrow as a corridor, with a small square aperture,
barred by a heavy grating, at the distant end. Captain
Mitchell staggered for a few steps, then sat down on the
earthen floor with his back to the wall. Nothing, not
even a gleam of light from anywhere, interfered with
Captain Mitchell's meditation. He did some hard
but not very extensive thinking. It was not of a
gloomy cast. The old sailor, with all his small weaknesses
and absurdities, was constitutionally incapable
of entertaining for any length of time a fear of his personal
safety. It was not so much firmness of soul as the
lack of a certain kind of imagination — the kind whose
undue development caused intense suffering to Señor
Hirsch; that sort of imagination which adds the blind
terror of bodily suffering and of death, envisaged as an
accident to the body alone, strictly — to all the other
apprehensions on which the sense of one's existence is
based. Unfortunately, Captain Mitchell had not much
penetration of any kind; characteristic, illuminating
trifles of expression, action, or movement, escaped him
completely. He was too pompously and innocently
aware of his own existence to observe that of others.
For instance, he could not believe that Sotillo had been
really afraid of him, and this simply because it would
never have entered into his head to shoot any one
except in the most pressing case of self-defence. Anybody
could see he was not a murdering kind of man, he
reflected quite gravely. Then why this preposterous
thoughts mainly clung around the astounding and unanswerable
question: How the devil the fellow got to
know that the silver had gone off in the lighter? It was
obvious that he had not captured it. And, obviously,
he could not have captured it! In this last conclusion
Captain Mitchell was misled by the assumption drawn
from his observation of the weather during his long
vigil on the wharf. He thought that there had been
much more wind than usual that night in the gulf;
whereas, as a matter of fact, the reverse was the case.
"How in the name of all that's marvellous did that
confounded fellow get wind of the affair?" was the first
question he asked directly after the bang, clatter, and
flash of the open door (which was closed again almost
before he could lift his dropped head) informed him that
he had a companion of captivity. Dr. Monygham's
voice stopped muttering curses in English and Spanish.
"Is that you, Mitchell?" he made answer, surlily. "I
struck my forehead against this confounded wall with
enough force to fell an ox. Where are you?"
Captain Mitchell, accustomed to the darkness, could
make out the doctor stretching out his hands blindly.
"I am sitting here on the floor. Don't fall over my
legs," Captain Mitchell's voice announced with great
dignity of tone. The doctor, entreated not to walk
about in the dark, sank down to the ground, too. The
two prisoners of Sotillo, with their heads nearly touching,
began to exchange confidences.
"Yes," the doctor related in a low tone to Captain
Mitchell's vehement curiosity, "we have been nabbed
in old Viola's place. It seems that one of their pickets,
commanded by an officer, pushed as far as the town
gate. They had orders not to enter, but to bring along
every soul they could find on the plain. We had been
saw the glimmer of our light. They must have been
making their approaches for some time. The engineer
laid himself on a bench in a recess by the fire-place, and
I went upstairs to have a look. I hadn't heard any
sound from there for a long time. Old Viola, as soon as
he saw me come up, lifted his arm for silence. I stole in
on tiptoe. By Jove, his wife was lying down and had
gone to sleep. The woman had actually dropped off to
sleep! 'Señor Doctor,' Viola whispers to me, 'it looks
as if her oppression was going to get better.' 'Yes,' I
said, very much surprised; 'your wife is a wonderful
woman, Giorgio.' Just then a shot was fired in the
kitchen, which made us jump and cower as if at a thunder-clap.
It seems that the party of soldiers had
stolen quite close up, and one of them had crept up to
the door. He looked in, thought there was no one there,
and, holding his rifle ready, entered quietly. The chief
told me that he had just closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, he saw the man already in the
middle of the room peering into the dark corners. The
chief was so startled that, without thinking, he made
one leap from the recess right out in front of the fireplace.
The soldier, no less startled, up with his rifle
and pulls the trigger, deafening and singeing the engineer,
but in his flurry missing him completely. But,
look what happens! At the noise of the report the
sleeping woman sat up, as if moved by a spring, with a
shriek, 'The children, Gian' Battista! Save the children!'
I have it in my ears now. It was the truest cry
of distress I ever heard. I stood as if paralyzed, but
the old husband ran across to the bedside, stretching out
his hands. She clung to them! I could see her eyes
go glazed; the old fellow lowered her down on the pillows
and then looked round at me. She was dead!
to see what was the matter. It was no use thinking of
any resistance. Nothing we two could say availed with
the officer, so I volunteered to go up with a couple of
soldiers and fetch down old Viola. He was sitting at
the foot of the bed, looking at his wife's face, and did not
seem to hear what I said; but after I had pulled the
sheet over her head, he got up and followed us downstairs
quietly, in a sort of thoughtful way. They
marched us off along the road, leaving the door open
and the candle burning. The chief engineer strode on
without a word, but I looked back once or twice at the
feeble gleam. After we had gone some considerable
distance, the Garibaldino, who was walking by my side,
suddenly said, 'I have buried many men on battlefields
on this continent. The priests talk of consecrated
ground! Bah! All the earth made by God is holy;
but the sea, which knows nothing of kings and priests
and tyrants, is the holiest of all. Doctor! I should like
to bury her in the sea. No mummeries, candles, incense,
no holy water mumbled over by priests. The
spirit of liberty is upon the waters.' . . . Amazing
old man. He was saying all this in an undertone
as if talking to himself."
"Yes, yes," interrupted Captain Mitchell, impatiently.
"Poor old chap! But have you any idea how
that ruffian Sotillo obtained his information? He did not
get hold of any of our Cargadores who helped with the
truck, did he? But no, it is impossible! These were
picked men we've had in our boats for these five years,
and I paid them myself specially for the job, with instructions
to keep out of the way for twenty-four hours at
least. I saw them with my own eyes march on with the
Italians to the railway yards. The chief promised to give
them rations as long as they wanted to remain there."
"Well," said the doctor, slowly, "I can tell you that
you may say good-bye for ever to your best lighter, and
to the Capataz of Cargadores."
At this, Captain Mitchell scrambled up to his feet in
the excess of his excitement. The doctor, without giving
him time to exclaim, stated briefly the part played
by Hirsch during the night.
Captain Mitchell was overcome. "Drowned!" he
muttered, in a bewildered and appalled whisper.
"Drowned!" Afterwards he kept still, apparently
listening, but too absorbed in the news of the catastrophe
to follow the doctor's narrative with attention.
The doctor had taken up an attitude of perfect
ignorance, till at last Sotillo was induced to have
Hirsch brought in to repeat the whole story, which was
got out of him again with the greatest difficulty, because
every moment he would break out into lamentations.
At last, Hirsch was led away, looking more dead
than alive, and shut up in one of the upstairs rooms to
be close at hand. Then the doctor, keeping up his
character of a man not admitted to the inner councils of
the San Tomé Administration, remarked that the story
sounded incredible. Of course, he said, he couldn't
tell what had been the action of the Europeans, as he
had been exclusively occupied with his own work in
looking after the wounded, and also in attending Don
José Avellanos. He had succeeded in assuming so well
a tone of impartial indifference, that Sotillo seemed
to be completely deceived. Till then a show of regular
inquiry had been kept up; one of the officers sitting at
the table wrote down the questions and the answers, the
others, lounging about the room, listened attentively,
puffing at their long cigars and keeping their eyes on the
doctor. But at that point Sotillo ordered everybody
out.
3. CHAPTER THREE
DIRECTLY they were alone, the colonel's severe official
manner changed. He rose and approached the doctor.
His eyes shone with rapacity and hope; he became confidential.
"The silver might have been indeed put on
board the lighter, but it was not conceivable that it
should have been taken out to sea." The doctor,
watching every word, nodded slightly, smoking with
apparent relish the cigar which Sotillo had offered him
as a sign of his friendly intentions. The doctor's
manner of cold detachment from the rest of the Europeans
led Sotillo on, till, from conjecture to conjecture,
he arrived at hinting that in his opinion this was a put-
up job on the part of Charles Gould, in order to get hold
of that immense treasure all to himself. The doctor,
observant and self-possessed, muttered, "He is very
capable of that."
Here Captain Mitchell exclaimed with amazement,
amusement, and indignation, "You said that of Charles
Gould!" Disgust, and even some suspicion, crept into
his tone, for to him, too, as to other Europeans, there appeared
to be something dubious about the doctor's
personality.
"What on earth made you say that to this watch-
stealing scoundrel?" he asked. "What's the object of
an infernal lie of that sort? That confounded pick-
pocket was quite capable of believing you."
He snorted. For a time the doctor remained silent
in the dark.
"Yes, that is exactly what I did say," he uttered at
to a third party that the pause was not of a reluctant but
of a reflective character. Captain Mitchell thought
that he had never heard anything so brazenly impudent
in his life.
"Well, well!" he muttered to himself, but he had not
the heart to voice his thoughts. They were swept
away by others full of astonishment and regret. A
heavy sense of discomfiture crushed him: the loss of the
silver, the death of Nostromo, which was really quite a
blow to his sensibilities, because he had become attached
to his Capataz as people get attached to their inferiors
from love of ease and almost unconscious gratitude.
And when he thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his
sensibility was almost overcome by this miserable end.
What a heavy blow for that poor young woman! Captain
Mitchell did not belong to the species of crabbed
old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young
men paying attentions to young women. It seemed to
him a natural and proper thing. Proper especially.
As to sailors, it was different; it was not their place to
marry, he maintained, but it was on moral grounds as a
matter of self-denial, for, he explained, life on board
ship is not fit for a woman even at best, and if you leave
her on shore, first of all it is not fair, and next she either
suffers from it or doesn't care a bit, which, in both cases,
is bad. He couldn't have told what upset him most —
Charles Gould's immense material loss, the death of
Nostromo, which was a heavy loss to himself, or the
idea of that beautiful and accomplished young woman
being plunged into mourning.
"Yes," the doctor, who had been apparently reflecting,
began again, "he believed me right enough.
I thought he would have hugged me. 'Si, si,' he
said, 'he will write to that partner of his, the rich
not? There is enough to share with many people.'"
"But this is perfectly imbecile!" cried Captain
Mitchell.
The doctor remarked that Sotillo was imbecile, and
that his imbecility was ingenious enough to lead him completely
astray. He had helped him only but a little way.
"I mentioned," the doctor said, "in a sort of casual
way, that treasure is generally buried in the earth
rather than set afloat upon the sea. At this my Sotillo
slapped his forehead. 'Por Dios, yes,' he said;
'they must have buried it on the shores of this harbour
somewhere before they sailed out.'"
"Heavens and earth!" muttered Captain Mitchell,
"I should not have believed that anybody could be ass
enough —" He paused, then went on mournfully:
"But what's the good of all this? It would have been
a clever enough lie if the lighter had been still afloat. It
would have kept that inconceivable idiot perhaps from
sending out the steamer to cruise in the gulf. That was
the danger that worried me no end." Captain Mitchell
sighed profoundly.
"I had an object," the doctor pronounced, slowly.
"Had you?" muttered Captain Mitchell. "Well,
that's lucky, or else I would have thought that you
went on fooling him for the fun of the thing. And perhaps
that was your object. Well, I must say I personally
wouldn't condescend to that sort of thing. It is
not to my taste. No, no. Blackening a friend's
character is not my idea of fun, if it were to fool the
greatest blackguard on earth."
Had it not been for Captain Mitchell's depression,
caused by the fatal news, his disgust of Dr. Monygham
would have taken a more outspoken shape; but he
thought to himself that now it really did not matter
and do.
"I wonder," he grumbled, "why they have shut us
up together, or why Sotillo should have shut you up at
all, since it seems to me you have been fairly chummy up
there?"
"Yes, I wonder," said the doctor grimly.
Captain Mitchell's heart was so heavy that he would
have preferred for the time being a complete solitude to
the best of company. But any company would have
been preferable to the doctor's, at whom he had always
looked askance as a sort of beachcomber of superior
intelligence partly reclaimed from his abased state.
That feeling led him to ask —
"What has that ruffian done with the other two?"
"The chief engineer he would have let go in any case,"
said the doctor. "He wouldn't like to have a quarrel
with the railway upon his hands. Not just yet, at any
rate. I don't think, Captain Mitchell, that you understand
exactly what Sotillo's position is —"
"I don't see why I should bother my head about it,"
snarled Captain Mitchell.
"No," assented the doctor, with the same grim composure.
"I don't see why you should. It wouldn't
help a single human being in the world if you thought
ever so hard upon any subject whatever."
"No," said Captain Mitchell, simply, and with
evident depression. "A man locked up in a confounded
dark hole is not much use to anybody."
"As to old Viola," the doctor continued, as though
he had not heard, "Sotillo released him for the same
reason he is presently going to release you."
"Eh? What?" exclaimed Captain Mitchell, staring
like an owl in the darkness. "What is there in common
between me and old Viola? More likely because the
steal. And I tell you what, Dr. Monygham," he went
on with rising choler, "he will find it more difficult than
he thinks to get rid of me. He will burn his fingers over
that job yet, I can tell you. To begin with, I won't go
without my watch, and as to the rest — we shall see. I
dare say it is no great matter for you to be locked up.
But Joe Mitchell is a different kind of man, sir. I
don't mean to submit tamely to insult and robbery. I
am a public character, sir."
And then Captain Mitchell became aware that the
bars of the opening had become visible, a black grating
upon a square of grey. The coming of the day silenced
Captain Mitchell as if by the reflection that now in all
the future days he would be deprived of the invaluable
services of his Capataz. He leaned against the wall
with his arms folded on his breast, and the doctor
walked up and down the whole length of the place
with his peculiar hobbling gait, as if slinking about on
damaged feet. At the end furthest from the grating he
would be lost altogether in the darkness. Only the
slight limping shuffle could be heard. There was an air
of moody detachment in that painful prowl kept up
without a pause. When the door of the prison was
suddenly flung open and his name shouted out he
showed no surprise. He swerved sharply in his walk,
and passed out at once, as though much depended upon
his speed; but Captain Mitchell remained for some
time with his shoulders against the wall, quite undecided
in the bitterness of his spirit whether it wouldn't be
better to refuse to stir a limb in the way of protest. He
had half a mind to get himself carried out, but after the
officer at the door had shouted three or four times in
tones of remonstrance and surprise he condescended to
walk out.
Sotillo's manner had changed. The colonel's offhand
civility was slightly irresolute, as though he were in
doubt if civility were the proper course in this case. He
observed Captain Mitchell attentively before he spoke
from the big armchair behind the table in a condescending
voice —
"I have concluded not to detain you, Señor Mitchell.
I am of a forgiving disposition. I make allowances.
Let this be a lesson to you, however."
The peculiar dawn of Sulaco, which seems to break
far away to the westward and creep back into the shade
of the mountains, mingled with the reddish light of the
candles. Captain Mitchell, in sign of contempt and
indifference, let his eyes roam all over the room, and he
gave a hard stare to the doctor, perched already on the
casement of one of the windows, with his eyelids
lowered, careless and thoughtful — or perhaps ashamed.
Sotillo, ensconced in the vast armchair, remarked, "I
should have thought that the feelings of a caballero
would have dictated to you an appropriate reply."
He waited for it, but Captain Mitchell remaining
mute, more from extreme resentment than from
reasoned intention, Sotillo hesitated, glanced towards
the doctor, who looked up and nodded, then went on
with a slight effort —
"Here, Señor Mitchell, is your watch. Learn how
hasty and unjust has been your judgment of my
patriotic soldiers."
Lying back in his seat, he extended his arm over the
table and pushed the watch away slightly. Captain
Mitchell walked up with undisguised eagerness, put it
to his ear, then slipped it into his pocket coolly.
Sotillo seemed to overcome an immense reluctance.
Again he looked aside at the doctor, who stared at him
unwinkingly.
But as Captain Mitchell was turning away, without
as much as a nod or a glance, he hastened to
say —
"You may go and wait downstairs for the señor doctor,
whom I am going to liberate, too. You foreigners
are insignificant, to my mind."
He forced a slight, discordant laugh out of himself,
while Captain Mitchell, for the first time, looked at him
with some interest.
"The law shall take note later on of your transgressions,"
Sotillo hurried on. "But as for me, you can
live free, unguarded, unobserved. Do you hear, Señor
Mitchell? You may depart to your affairs. You are
beneath my notice. My attention is claimed by matters
of the very highest importance."
Captain Mitchell was very nearly provoked to an
answer. It displeased him to be liberated insultingly;
but want of sleep, prolonged anxieties, a profound
disappointment with the fatal ending of the silver-
saving business weighed upon his spirits. It was as
much as he could do to conceal his uneasiness, not
about himself perhaps, but about things in general.
It occurred to him distinctly that something underhand
was going on. As he went out he ignored the
doctor pointedly.
"A brute!" said Sotillo, as the door shut.
Dr. Monygham slipped off the window-sill, and,
thrusting his hands into the pockets of the long, grey
dust coat he was wearing, made a few steps into the
room.
Sotillo got up, too, and, putting himself in the way,
examined him from head to foot.
"So your countrymen do not confide in you very
much, señor doctor. They do not love you, eh? Why
is that, I wonder?"
The doctor, lifting his head, answered by a long, lifeless
stare and the words, "Perhaps because I have lived
too long in Costaguana."
Sotillo had a gleam of white teeth under the black
moustache.
"Aha! But you love yourself," he said, encouragingly.
"If you leave them alone," the doctor said, looking
with the same lifeless stare at Sotillo's handsome face,
"they will betray themselves very soon. Meantime, I
may try to make Don Carlos speak?"
"Ah! señor doctor," said Sotillo, wagging his head,
"you are a man of quick intelligence. We were made
to understand each other." He turned away. He
could bear no longer that expressionless and motionless
stare, which seemed to have a sort of impenetrable
emptiness like the black depth of an abyss.
Even in a man utterly devoid of moral sense there
remains an appreciation of rascality which, being conventional,
is perfectly clear. Sotillo thought that Dr.
Monygham, so different from all Europeans, was ready
to sell his countrymen and Charles Gould, his employer,
for some share of the San Tomé silver. Sotillo did not
despise him for that. The colonel's want of moral
sense was of a profound and innocent character. It
bordered upon stupidity, moral stupidity. Nothing
that served his ends could appear to him really reprehensible.
Nevertheless, he despised Dr. Monygham.
He had for him an immense and satisfactory contempt.
He despised him with all his heart because he did not
mean to let the doctor have any reward at all. He
despised him, not as a man without faith and honour,
but as a fool. Dr. Monygham's insight into his
character had deceived Sotillo completely. Therefore
he thought the doctor a fool.
Since his arrival in Sulaco the colonel's ideas had
undergone some modification.
He no longer wished for a political career in Montero's
administration. He had always doubted the safety of
that course. Since he had learned from the chief
engineer that at daylight most likely he would be confronted
by Pedro Montero his misgivings on that point
had considerably increased. The guerrillero brother of
the general — the Pedrito of popular speech — had a
reputation of his own. He wasn't safe to deal with.
Sotillo had vaguely planned seizing not only the treasure
but the town itself, and then negotiating at leisure.
But in the face of facts learned from the chief engineer
(who had frankly disclosed to him the whole situation)
his audacity, never of a very dashing kind, had been
replaced by a most cautious hesitation.
"An army — an army crossed the mountains under
Pedrito already," he had repeated, unable to hide his
consternation. "If it had not been that I am given the
news by a man of your position I would never have
believed it. Astonishing!"
"An armed force," corrected the engineer, suavely.
His aim was attained. It was to keep Sulaco clear of
any armed occupation for a few hours longer, to let
those whom fear impelled leave the town. In the
general dismay there were families hopeful enough to
fly upon the road towards Los Hatos, which was left open
by the withdrawal of the armed rabble under Señores
Fuentes and Gamacho, to Rincon, with their enthusiastic
welcome for Pedro Montero. It was a hasty and
risky exodus, and it was said that Hernandez, occupying
with his band the woods about Los Hatos, was receiving
the fugitives. That a good many people he
knew were contemplating such a flight had been well
known to the chief engineer.
Father Corbelàn's efforts in the cause of that most
pious robber had not been altogether fruitless. The
political chief of Sulaco had yielded at the last moment
to the urgent entreaties of the priest, had signed a
provisional nomination appointing Hernandez a general,
and calling upon him officially in this new capacity to
preserve order in the town. The fact is that the
political chief, seeing the situation desperate, did not
care what he signed. It was the last official document
he signed before he left the palace of the Intendencia
for the refuge of the O.S.N. Company's office. But
even had he meant his act to be effective it was already
too late. The riot which he feared and expected broke
out in less than an hour after Father Corbelàn had left
him. Indeed, Father Corbelàn, who had appointed a
meeting with Nostromo in the Dominican Convent,
where he had his residence in one of the cells, never
managed to reach the place. From the Intendencia he
had gone straight on to the Avellanos's house to tell
his brother-in-law, and though he stayed there no
more than half an hour he had found himself cut off
from his ascetic abode. Nostromo, after waiting there
for some time, watching uneasily the increasing uproar
in the street, had made his way to the offices of the
Porvenir, and stayed there till daylight, as Decoud had
mentioned in the letter to his sister. Thus the Capataz,
instead of riding towards the Los Hatos woods as
bearer of Hernandez's nomination, had remained in
town to save the life of the President Dictator, to assist
in repressing the outbreak of the mob, and at last to sail
out with the silver of the mine.
But Father Corbelàn, escaping to Hernandez, had the
document in his pocket, a piece of official writing turning
a bandit into a general in a memorable last official
act of the Ribierist party, whose watchwords were
priest nor the bandit saw the irony of it. Father
Corbelàn must have found messengers to send into the
town, for early on the second day of the disturbances
there were rumours of Hernandez being on the road to
Los Hatos ready to receive those who would put themselves
under his protection. A strange-looking horseman,
elderly and audacious, had appeared in the town, riding
slowly while his eyes examined the fronts of the houses,
as though he had never seen such high buildings before.
Before the cathedral he had dismounted, and, kneeling
in the middle of the Plaza, his bridle over his arm and
his hat lying in front of him on the ground, had bowed
his head, crossing himself and beating his breast for
some little time. Remounting his horse, with a fearless
but not unfriendly look round the little gathering
formed about his public devotions, he had asked for the
Casa Avellanos. A score of hands were extended in
answer, with fingers pointing up the Calle de la Constitucion.
The horseman had gone on with only a glance of
casual curiosity upwards to the windows of the Amarilla
Club at the corner. His stentorian voice shouted
periodically in the empty street, "Which is the Casa
Avellanos?" till an answer came from the scared porter,
and he disappeared under the gate. The letter he was
bringing, written by Father Corbelàn with a pencil by
the camp-fire of Hernandez, was addressed to Don José,
of whose critical state the priest was not aware. Antonia
read it, and, after consulting Charles Gould, sent
it on for the information of the gentlemen garrisoning
the Amarilla Club. For herself, her mind was made
up; she would rejoin her uncle; she would entrust the
last day — the last hours perhaps — of her father's life
to the keeping of the bandit, whose existence was a
alike, against the moral darkness of the land. The
gloom of Los Hatos woods was preferable; a life of hardships
in the train of a robber band less debasing. Antonia
embraced with all her soul her uncle's obstinate
defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief
in the man whom she loved.
In his message the Vicar-General answered upon his
head for Hernandez's fidelity. As to his power, he
pointed out that he had remained unsubdued for so
many years. In that letter Decoud's idea of the new
Occidental State (whose flourishing and stable condition
is a matter of common knowledge now) was for
the first time made public and used as an argument.
Hernandez, ex-bandit and the last general of Ribierist
creation, was confident of being able to hold the tract of
country between the woods of Los Hatos and the coast
range till that devoted patriot, Don Martin Decoud,
could bring General Barrios back to Sulaco for the re-
conquest of the town.
"Heaven itself wills it. Providence is on our side,"
wrote Father Corbelàn; there was no time to reflect upon
or to controvert his statement; and if the discussion
started upon the reading of that letter in the Amarilla
Club was violent, it was also shortlived. In the
general bewilderment of the collapse some jumped at
the idea with joyful astonishment as upon the amazing
discovery of a new hope. Others became fascinated by
the prospect of immediate personal safety for their
women and children. The majority caught at it as a
drowning man catches at a straw. Father Corbelàn
was unexpectedly offering them a refuge from Pedrito
Montero with his llaneros allied to Señores Fuentes and
Gamacho with their armed rabble.
All the latter part of the afternoon an animated
Club. Even those members posted at the windows
with rifles and carbines to guard the end of the street
in case of an offensive return of the populace shouted
their opinions and arguments over their shoulders. As
dusk fell Don Juste Lopez, inviting those caballeros who
were of his way of thinking to follow him, withdrew
into the corredor, where at a little table in the light of
two candles he busied himself in composing an address,
or rather a solemn declaration to be presented to Pedrito
Montero by a deputation of such members of
Assembly as had elected to remain in town. His idea
was to propitiate him in order to save the form at least
of parliamentary institutions. Seated before a blank
sheet of paper, a goose-quill pen in his hand and surged
upon from all sides, he turned to the right and to the
left, repeating with solemn insistence —
"Caballeros, a moment of silence! A moment of
silence! We ought to make it clear that we bow in all
good faith to the accomplished facts."
The utterance of that phrase seemed to give him a
melancholy satisfaction. The hubbub of voices round
him was growing strained and hoarse. In the sudden
pauses the excited grimacing of the faces would sink all
at once into the stillness of profound dejection.
Meantime, the exodus had begun. Carretas full of
ladies and children rolled swaying across the Plaza, with
men walking or riding by their side; mounted parties
followed on mules and horses; the poorest were setting
out on foot, men and women carrying bundles, clasping
babies in their arms, leading old people, dragging along
the bigger children. When Charles Gould, after leaving
the doctor and the engineer at the Casa Viola, entered
the town by the harbour gate, all those that had meant
to go were gone, and the others had barricaded themselves
was only one spot of flickering lights and moving figures,
where the Señor Administrador recognized his wife's
carriage waiting at the door of the Avellanos's house.
He rode up, almost unnoticed, and looked on without a
word while some of his own servants came out of the
gate carrying Don José Avellanos, who, with closed eyes
and motionless features, appeared perfectly lifeless.
His wife and Antonia walked on each side of the improvised
stretcher, which was put at once into the
carriage. The two women embraced; while from the
other side of the landau Father Corbelàn's emissary,
with his ragged beard all streaked with grey, and high,
bronzed cheek-bones, stared, sitting upright in the
saddle. Then Antonia, dry-eyed, got in by the side of
the stretcher, and, after making the sign of the cross
rapidly, lowered a thick veil upon her face. The
servants and the three or four neighbours who had come
to assist, stood back, uncovering their heads. On the
box, Ignacio, resigned now to driving all night (and to
having perhaps his throat cut before daylight) looked
back surlily over his shoulder.
"Drive carefully," cried Mrs. Gould in a tremulous
voice.
"Si, carefully; si niña," he mumbled, chewing his
lips, his round leathery cheeks quivering. And the
landau rolled slowly out of the light.
"I will see them as far as the ford," said Charles
Gould to his wife. She stood on the edge of the sidewalk
with her hands clasped lightly, and nodded to him
as he followed after the carriage. And now the windows
of the Amarilla Club were dark. The last spark
of resistance had died out. Turning his head at the
corner, Charles Gould saw his wife crossing over to their
own gate in the lighted patch of the street. One of their
the province, followed at her elbow, talking with great
gestures. As she passed in all the lights went out in the
street, which remained dark and empty from end to end.
The houses of the vast Plaza were lost in the night.
High up, like a star, there was a small gleam in one of
the towers of the cathedral; and the equestrian statue
gleamed pale against the black trees of the Alameda,
like a ghost of royalty haunting the scenes of revolution.
The rare prowlers they met ranged themselves against
the wall. Beyond the last houses the carriage rolled
noiselessly on the soft cushion of dust, and with a
greater obscurity a feeling of freshness seemed to fall
from the foliage of the trees bordering the country road.
The emissary from Hernandez's camp pushed his horse
close to Charles Gould.
"Caballero," he said in an interested voice, "you are
he whom they call the King of Sulaco, the master of the
mine? Is it not so?"
"Yes, I am the master of the mine," answered
Charles Gould.
The man cantered for a time in silence, then said, "I
have a brother, a sereño in your service in the San
Tomé valley. You have proved yourself a just man.
There has been no wrong done to any one since you
called upon the people to work in the mountains. My
brother says that no official of the Government, no
oppressor of the Campo, has been seen on your side of
the stream. Your own officials do not oppress the
people in the gorge. Doubtless they are afraid of your
severity. You are a just man and a powerful one," he
added.
He spoke in an abrupt, independent tone, but evidently
he was communicative with a purpose. He told
Charles Gould that he had been a ranchero in one of the
the old days, and godfather to his eldest boy; one of
those who joined him in his resistance to the recruiting
raid which was the beginning of all their misfortunes.
It was he that, when his compadre had been carried off,
had buried his wife and children, murdered by the
soldiers.
"Si, señor," he muttered, hoarsely, "I and two or three
others, the lucky ones left at liberty, buried them all in
one grave near the ashes of their ranch, under the tree
that had shaded its roof."
It was to him, too, that Hernandez came after he had
deserted, three years afterwards. He had still his
uniform on with the sergeant's stripes on the sleeve, and
the blood of his colonel upon his hands and breast.
Three troopers followed him, of those who had started
in pursuit but had ridden on for liberty. And he told
Charles Gould how he and a few friends, seeing those
soldiers, lay in ambush behind some rocks ready to pull
the trigger on them, when he recognized his compadre
and jumped up from cover, shouting his name, because
he knew that Hernandez could not have been coming
back on an errand of injustice and oppression. Those
three soldiers, together with the party who lay behind
the rocks, had formed the nucleus of the famous band,
and he, the narrator, had been the favourite lieutenant
of Hernandez for many, many years. He mentioned
proudly that the officials had put a price upon his head,
too; but it did not prevent it getting sprinkled with grey
upon his shoulders. And now he had lived long enough
to see his compadre made a general.
He had a burst of muffled laughter. "And now from
robbers we have become soldiers. But look, Caballero,
at those who made us soldiers and him a general! Look
at these people!"
Ignacio shouted. The light of the carriage lamps,
running along the nopal hedges that crowned the bank
on each side, flashed upon the scared faces of people
standing aside in the road, sunk deep, like an English
country lane, into the soft soil of the Campo. They
cowered; their eyes glistened very big for a second; and
then the light, running on, fell upon the half-denuded
roots of a big tree, on another stretch of nopal hedge,
caught up another bunch of faces glaring back apprehensively.
Three women — of whom one was carrying a
child — and a couple of men in civilian dress — one armed
with a sabre and another with a gun — were grouped
about a donkey carrying two bundles tied up in blankets.
Further on Ignacio shouted again to pass a
carreta, a long wooden box on two high wheels, with the
door at the back swinging open. Some ladies in it
must have recognized the white mules, because they
screamed out, "Is it you, Doña Emilia?"
At the turn of the road the glare of a big fire filled the
short stretch vaulted over by the branches meeting overhead.
Near the ford of a shallow stream a roadside
rancho of woven rushes and a roof of grass had been set
on fire by accident, and the flames, roaring viciously, lit
up an open space blocked with horses, mules, and a
distracted, shouting crowd of people. When Ignacio
pulled up, several ladies on foot assailed the carriage,
begging Antonia for a seat. To their clamour she
answered by pointing silently to her father.
"I must leave you here," said Charles Gould, in the
uproar. The flames leaped up sky-high, and in the recoil
from the scorching heat across the road the stream
of fugitives pressed against the carriage. A middle-
aged lady dressed in black silk, but with a coarse manta
over her head and a rough branch for a stick in her hand,
staggered against the front wheel. Two young girls,
Gould knew her very well.
"Misericordia! We are getting terribly bruised in
this crowd!" she exclaimed, smiling up courageously to
him. "We have started on foot. All our servants ran
away yesterday to join the democrats. We are going
to put ourselves under the protection of Father Corbelàn,
of your sainted uncle, Antonia. He has wrought a
miracle in the heart of a most merciless robber. A
miracle!"
She raised her voice gradually up to a scream as she
was borne along by the pressure of people getting out of
the way of some carts coming up out of the ford at a
gallop, with loud yells and cracking of whips. Great
masses of sparks mingled with black smoke flew over the
road; the bamboos of the walls detonated in the fire with
the sound of an irregular fusillade. And then the
bright blaze sank suddenly, leaving only a red dusk
crowded with aimless dark shadows drifting in contrary
directions; the noise of voices seemed to die away
with the flame; and the tumult of heads, arms, quarrelling,
and imprecations passed on fleeing into the darkness.
"I must leave you now," repeated Charles Gould to
Antonia. She turned her head slowly and uncovered
her face. The emissary and compadre of Hernandez
spurred his horse close up.
"Has not the master of the mine any message to send
to Hernandez, the master of the Campo?"
The truth of the comparison struck Charles Gould
heavily. In his determined purpose he held the mine,
and the indomitable bandit held the Campo by the
same precarious tenure. They were equals before the
lawlessness of the land. It was impossible to disentangle
one's activity from its debasing contacts. A
whole country. An immense and weary discouragement
sealed his lips for a time.
"You are a just man," urged the emissary of Hernandez.
"Look at those people who made my compadre
a general and have turned us all into soldiers.
Look at those oligarchs fleeing for life, with only the
clothes on their backs. My compadre does not think
of that, but our followers may be wondering greatly, and
I would speak for them to you. Listen, señor! For
many months now the Campo has been our own. We
need ask no man for anything; but soldiers must have
their pay to live honestly when the wars are over. It
is believed that your soul is so just that a prayer from
you would cure the sickness of every beast, like the
orison of the upright judge. Let me have some words
from your lips that would act like a charm upon the
doubts of our partida, where all are men."
"Do you hear what he says?" Charles Gould said in
English to Antonia.
"Forgive us our misery!" she exclaimed, hurriedly.
"It is your character that is the inexhaustible treasure
which may save us all yet; your character, Carlos, not
your wealth. I entreat you to give this man your word
that you will accept any arrangement my uncle may
make with their chief. One word. He will want no
more."
On the site of the roadside hut there remained nothing
but an enormous heap of embers, throwing afar a
darkening red glow, in which Antonia's face appeared
deeply flushed with excitement. Charles Gould, with
only a short hesitation, pronounced the required pledge.
He was like a man who had ventured on a precipitous
path with no room to turn, where the only chance of
safety is to press forward. At that moment he understood
stretched out, hardly breathing, by the side of the erect
Antonia, vanquished in a lifelong struggle with the
powers of moral darkness, whose stagnant depths breed
monstrous crimes and monstrous illusions. In a few
words the emissary from Hernandez expressed his complete
satisfaction. Stoically Antonia lowered her veil,
resisting the longing to inquire about Decoud's escape.
But Ignacio leered morosely over his shoulder.
"Take a good look at the mules, mi amo," he grumbled.
"You shall never see them again!"
4. CHAPTER FOUR
CHARLES GOULD turned towards the town. Before
him the jagged peaks of the Sierra came out all black in
the clear dawn. Here and there a muffled lepero
whisked round the corner of a grass-grown street before
the ringing hoofs of his horse. Dogs barked behind the
walls of the gardens; and with the colourless light
the chill of the snows seemed to fall from the mountains
upon the disjointed pavements and the shuttered houses
with broken cornices and the plaster peeling in patches
between the flat pilasters of the fronts. The daybreak
struggled with the gloom under the arcades on the Plaza,
with no signs of country people disposing their goods
for the day's market, piles of fruit, bundles of vegetables
ornamented with flowers, on low benches under enormous
mat umbrellas; with no cheery early morning
bustle of villagers, women, children, and loaded donkeys.
Only a few scattered knots of revolutionists
stood in the vast space, all looking one way from under
their slouched hats for some sign of news from Rincon.
The largest of those groups turned about like one man
as Charles Gould passed, and shouted, "Viva la libertad!"
after him in a menacing tone.
Charles Gould rode on, and turned into the archway
of his house. In the patio littered with straw, a practicante,
one of Dr. Monygham's native assistants, sat on
the ground with his back against the rim of the fountain,
fingering a guitar discreetly, while two girls of the lower
class, standing up before him, shuffled their feet a little
and waved their arms, humming a popular dance tune.
been taken away already by their friends and relations,
but several figures could be seen sitting up balancing
their bandaged heads in time to the music. Charles
Gould dismounted. A sleepy mozo coming out of the
bakery door took hold of the horse's bridle; the practicante
endeavoured to conceal his guitar hastily; the
girls, unabashed, stepped back smiling; and Charles
Gould, on his way to the staircase, glanced into a dark
corner of the patio at another group, a mortally
wounded Cargador with a woman kneeling by his side;
she mumbled prayers rapidly, trying at the same time
to force a piece of orange between the stiffening lips
of the dying man.
The cruel futility of things stood unveiled in the levity
and sufferings of that incorrigible people; the cruel
futility of lives and of deaths thrown away in the vain
endeavour to attain an enduring solution of the problem.
Unlike Decoud, Charles Gould could not play
lightly a part in a tragic farce. It was tragic enough for
him in all conscience, but he could see no farcical element.
He suffered too much under a conviction of
irremediable folly. He was too severely practical and
too idealistic to look upon its terrible humours with
amusement, as Martin Decoud, the imaginative materialist,
was able to do in the dry light of his scepticism.
To him, as to all of us, the compromises with his conscience
appeared uglier than ever in the light of failure.
His taciturnity, assumed with a purpose, had prevented
him from tampering openly with his thoughts; but the
Gould Concession had insidiously corrupted his judgment.
He might have known, he said to himself, leaning
over the balustrade of the corredor, that Ribierism
could never come to anything. The mine had corrupted
his judgment by making him sick of bribing and
to day. Like his father, he did not like to be robbed.
It exasperated him. He had persuaded himself that,
apart from higher considerations, the backing up of Don
José's hopes of reform was good business. He had gone
forth into the senseless fray as his poor uncle, whose
sword hung on the wall of his study, had gone forth — in
the defence of the commonest decencies of organized
society. Only his weapon was the wealth of the mine,
more far-reaching and subtle than an honest blade of
steel fitted into a simple brass guard.
More dangerous to the wielder, too, this weapon of
wealth, double-edged with the cupidity and misery of
mankind, steeped in all the vices of self-indulgence as
in a concoction of poisonous roots, tainting the very
cause for which it is drawn, always ready to turn awkwardly
in the hand. There was nothing for it now but
to go on using it. But he promised himself to see it
shattered into small bits before he let it be wrenched
from his grasp.
After all, with his English parentage and English
upbringing, he perceived that he was an adventurer in
Costaguana, the descendant of adventurers enlisted in a
foreign legion, of men who had sought fortune in a
revolutionary war, who had planned revolutions, who
had believed in revolutions. For all the uprightness of
his character, he had something of an adventurer's easy
morality which takes count of personal risk in the
ethical appraising of his action. He was prepared, if
need be, to blow up the whole San Tomé mountain sky
high out of the territory of the Republic. This resolution
expressed the tenacity of his character, the remorse
of that subtle conjugal infidelity through which
his wife was no longer the sole mistress of his thoughts,
something of his father's imaginative weakness, and
lighted match into the magazine rather than surrender
his ship.
Down below in the patio the wounded Cargador had
breathed his last. The woman cried out once, and her
cry, unexpected and shrill, made all the wounded sit
up. The practicante scrambled to his feet, and, guitar
in hand, gazed steadily in her direction with elevated
eyebrows. The two girls — sitting now one on
each side of their wounded relative, with their knees
drawn up and long cigars between their lips — nodded
at each other significantly.
Charles Gould, looking down over the balustrade, saw
three men dressed ceremoniously in black frock-coats
with white shirts, and wearing European round hats,
enter the patio from the street. One of them, head and
shoulders taller than the two others, advanced with
marked gravity, leading the way. This was Don Juste
Lopez, accompanied by two of his friends, members of
Assembly, coming to call upon the Administrador of the
San Tomé mine at this early hour. They saw him, too,
waved their hands to him urgently, walking up the
stairs as if in procession.
Don Juste, astonishingly changed by having shaved
off altogether his damaged beard, had lost with it nine-
tenths of his outward dignity. Even at that time of
serious pre-occupation Charles Gould could not help
noting the revealed ineptitude in the aspect of the man.
His companions looked crestfallen and sleepy. One
kept on passing the tip of his tongue over his parched
lips; the other's eyes strayed dully over the tiled floor of
the corredor, while Don Juste, standing a little in advance,
harangued the Señor Administrador of the San
Tomé mine. It was his firm opinion that forms had to
be observed. A new governor is always visited by
Council, from the Consulado, the commercial Board,
and it was proper that the Provincial Assembly should
send a deputation, too, if only to assert the existence
of parliamentary institutions. Don Juste proposed that
Don Carlos Gould, as the most prominent citizen of the
province, should join the Assembly's deputation. His
position was exceptional, his personality known through
the length and breadth of the whole Republic. Official
courtesies must not be neglected, if they are gone through
with a bleeding heart. The acceptance of accomplished
facts may save yet the precious vestiges of parliamentary
institutions. Don Juste's eyes glowed dully; he believed
in parliamentary institutions — and the convinced drone
of his voice lost itself in the stillness of the house like the
deep buzzing of some ponderous insect.
Charles Gould had turned round to listen patiently,
leaning his elbow on the balustrade. He shook his
head a little, refusing, almost touched by the anxious
gaze of the President of the Provincial Assembly. It
was not Charles Gould's policy to make the San Tomé
mine a party to any formal proceedings.
"My advice, señores, is that you should wait for your
fate in your houses. There is no necessity for you to
give yourselves up formally into Montero's hands.
Submission to the inevitable, as Don Juste calls it, is all
very well, but when the inevitable is called Pedrito
Montero there is no need to exhibit pointedly the whole
extent of your surrender. The fault of this country is
the want of measure in political life. Flat acquiescence
in illegality, followed by sanguinary reaction — that,
señores, is not the way to a stable and prosperous future."
Charles Gould stopped before the sad bewilderment
of the faces, the wondering, anxious glances of the eyes.
The feeling of pity for those men, putting all their trust
stalked over the land, had betrayed him into what
seemed empty loquacity. Don Juste murmured —
"You are abandoning us, Don Carlos. . . . And
yet, parliamentary institutions —"
He could not finish from grief. For a moment he put
his hand over his eyes. Charles Gould, in his fear of
empty loquacity, made no answer to the charge. He
returned in silence their ceremonious bows. His
taciturnity was his refuge. He understood that what
they sought was to get the influence of the San Tomé
mine on their side. They wanted to go on a conciliating
errand to the victor under the wing of the Gould Concession.
Other public bodies — the Cabildo, the Consulado
— would be coming, too, presently, seeking the
support of the most stable, the most effective force
they had ever known to exist in their province.
The doctor, arriving with his sharp, jerky walk, found
that the master had retired into his own room with.
orders not to be disturbed on any account. But Dr.
Monygham was not anxious to see Charles Gould at
once. He spent some time in a rapid examination of
his wounded. He gazed down upon each in turn,
rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger; his
steady stare met without expression their silently inquisitive
look. All these cases were doing well; but
when he came to the dead Cargador he stopped a little
longer, surveying not the man who had ceased to suffer,
but the woman kneeling in silent contemplation of the
rigid face, with its pinched nostrils and a white gleam in
the imperfectly closed eyes. She lifted her head slowly,
and said in a dull voice —
"It is not long since he had become a Cargador — only
a few weeks. His worship the Capataz had accepted
him after many entreaties."
"I am not responsible for the great Capataz," muttered
the doctor, moving off.
Directing his course upstairs towards the door of
Charles Gould's room, the doctor at the last moment
hesitated; then, turning away from the handle with a
shrug of his uneven shoulders, slunk off hastily along the
corredor in search of Mrs. Gould's camerista.
Leonardo told him that the señora had not risen yet.
The señora had given into her charge the girls belonging
to that Italian posadero. She, Leonarda, had put them
to bed in her own room. The fair girl had cried herself
to sleep, but the dark one — the bigger — had not closed
her eyes yet. She sat up in bed clutching the sheets
right up under her chin and staring before her like a
little witch. Leonarda did not approve of the Viola
children being admitted to the house. She made this
feeling clear by the indifferent tone in which she inquired
whether their mother was dead yet. As to the
señora, she must be asleep. Ever since she had gone
into her room after seeing the departure of Doña
Antonia with her dying father, there had been no sound
behind her door.
The doctor, rousing himself out of profound reflection,
told her abruptly to call her mistress at once. He
hobbled off to wait for Mrs. Gould in the sala. He was
very tired, but too excited to sit down. In this great
drawing-room, now empty, in which his withered soul
had been refreshed after many arid years and his outcast
spirit had accepted silently the toleration of many
side-glances, he wandered haphazard amongst the
chairs and tables till Mrs. Gould, enveloped in a
morning wrapper, came in rapidly.
"You know that I never approved of the silver being
sent away," the doctor began at once, as a preliminary
to the narrative of his night's adventures in association
Viola, at Sotillo's headquarters. To the doctor, with
his special conception of this political crisis, the removal
of the silver had seemed an irrational and ill-omened
measure. It was as if a general were sending the best
part of his troops away on the eve of battle upon some
recondite pretext. The whole lot of ingots might have
been concealed somewhere where they could have been
got at for the purpose of staving off the dangers which
were menacing the security of the Gould Concession.
The Administrador had acted as if the immense and
powerful prosperity of the mine had been founded on
methods of probity, on the sense of usefulness. And it
was nothing of the kind. The method followed had
been the only one possible. The Gould Concession had
ransomed its way through all those years. It was a
nauseous process. He quite understood that Charles
Gould had got sick of it and had left the old path to
back up that hopeless attempt at reform. The doctor
did not believe in the reform of Costaguana. And now
the mine was back again in its old path, with the disadvantage
that henceforth it had to deal not only with
the greed provoked by its wealth, but with the resentment
awakened by the attempt to free itself from its
bondage to moral corruption. That was the penalty of
failure. What made him uneasy was that Charles
Gould seemed to him to have weakened at the decisive
moment when a frank return to the old methods was the
only chance. Listening to Decoud's wild scheme had
been a weakness.
The doctor flung up his arms, exclaiming, "Decoud!
Decoud!" He hobbled about the room with slight,
angry laughs. Many years ago both his ankles had
been seriously damaged in the course of a certain
investigation conducted in the castle of Sta. Marta by a
had been signified to them unexpectedly at the dead
of night, with scowling brow, flashing eyes, and in a
tempestuous voice, by Guzman Bento. The old tyrant,
maddened by one of his sudden accesses of suspicion,
mingled spluttering appeals to their fidelity with
imprecations and horrible menaces. The cells and
casements of the castle on the hill had been already
filled with prisoners. The commission was charged
now with the task of discovering the iniquitous conspiracy
against the Citizen-Saviour of his country.
Their dread of the raving tyrant translated itself into
a hasty ferocity of procedure. The Citizen-Saviour was
not accustomed to wait. A conspiracy had to be discovered.
The courtyards of the castle resounded with
the clanking of leg-irons, sounds of blows, yells of pain;
and the commission of high officers laboured feverishly,
concealing their distress and apprehensions from each
other, and especially from their secretary, Father Beron,
an army chaplain, at that time very much in the confidence
of the Citizen-Saviour. That priest was a big
round-shouldered man, with an unclean-looking, overgrown
tonsure on the top of his flat head, of a dingy,
yellow complexion, softly fat, with greasy stains all
down the front of his lieutenant's uniform, and a small
cross embroidered in white cotton on his left breast. He
had a heavy nose and a pendant lip. Dr. Monygham
remembered him still. He remembered him against all
the force of his will striving its utmost to forget. Father
Beron had been adjoined to the commission by Guzman
Bento expressly for the purpose that his enlightened zeal
should assist them in their labours. Dr. Monygham could
by no manner of means forget the zeal of Father Beron,
or his face, or the pitiless, monotonous voice in which
he pronounced the words, "Will you confess now?"
This memory did not make him shudder, but it had
made of him what he was in the eyes of respectable
people, a man careless of common decencies, something
between a clever vagabond and a disreputable doctor.
But not all respectable people would have had the
necessary delicacy of sentiment to understand with
what trouble of mind and accuracy of vision Dr. Monygham,
medical officer of the San Tomé mine, remembered
Father Beron, army chaplain, and once a secretary of
a military commission. After all these years Dr.
Monygham, in his rooms at the end of the hospital
building in the San Tomé gorge, remembered Father
Beron as distinctly as ever. He remembered that priest
at night, sometimes, in his sleep. On such nights the
doctor waited for daylight with a candle lighted, and
walking the whole length of his rooms to and fro,
staring down at his bare feet, his arms hugging his
sides tightly. He would dream of Father Beron
sitting at the end of a long black table, behind which,
in a row, appeared the heads, shoulders, and epaulettes
of the military members, nibbling the feather of a quill
pen, and listening with weary and impatient scorn to
the protestations of some prisoner calling heaven to
witness of his innocence, till he burst out, "What's the
use of wasting time over that miserable nonsense! Let
me take him outside for a while." And Father Beron
would go outside after the clanking prisoner, led away
between two soldiers. Such interludes happened on
many days, many times, with many prisoners. When
the prisoner returned he was ready to make a full confession,
Father Beron would declare, leaning forward
with that dull, surfeited look which can be seen in the
eyes of gluttonous persons after a heavy meal.
The priest's inquisitorial instincts suffered but little
from the want of classical apparatus of the Inquisition
loss how to inflict mental and bodily anguish upon
their fellow-creatures. This aptitude came to them in
the growing complexity of their passions and the early
refinement of their ingenuity. But it may safely be said
that primeval man did not go to the trouble of inventing
tortures. He was indolent and pure of heart. He
brained his neighbour ferociously with a stone axe from
necessity and without malice. The stupidest mind
may invent a rankling phrase or brand the innocent with
a cruel aspersion. A piece of string and a ramrod; a
few muskets in combination with a length of hide rope;
or even a simple mallet of heavy, hard wood applied
with a swing to human fingers or to the joints of a
human body is enough for the infliction of the most
exquisite torture. The doctor had been a very stubborn
prisoner, and, as a natural consequence of that "bad
disposition" (so Father Beron called it), his subjugation
had been very crushing and very complete. That is
why the limp in his walk, the twist of his shoulders, the
scars on his cheeks were so pronounced. His confessions,
when they came at last, were very complete,
too. Sometimes on the nights when he walked the
floor, he wondered, grinding his teeth with shame and
rage, at the fertility of his imagination when stimulated
by a sort of pain which makes truth, honour, self-
respect, and life itself matters of little moment.
And he could not forget Father Beron with his monotonous
phrase, "Will you confess now?" reaching him
in an awful iteration and lucidity of meaning through the
delirious incoherence of unbearable pain. He could
not forget. But that was not the worst. Had he met
Father Beron in the street after all these years Dr.
Monygham was sure he would have quailed before him.
This contingency was not to be feared now. Father
Dr. Monygham from looking anybody in the face.
Dr. Monygham. had become, in a manner, the slave of
a ghost. It was obviously impossible to take his knowledge
of Father Beron home to Europe. When making
his extorted confessions to the Military Board, Dr.
Monygham was not seeking to avoid death. He longed
for it. Sitting half-naked for hours on the wet earth
of his prison, and so motionless that the spiders, his
companions, attached their webs to his matted hair, he
consoled the misery of his soul with acute reasonings
that he had confessed to crimes enough for a sentence of
death — that they had gone too far with him to let him
live to tell the tale.
But, as if by a refinement of cruelty, Dr. Monygham
was left for months to decay slowly in the darkness of his
grave-like prison. It was no doubt hoped that it would
finish him off without the trouble of an execution; but
Dr. Monygham had an iron constitution. It was
Guzman Bento who died, not by the knife thrust of a
conspirator, but from a stroke of apoplexy, and Dr.
Monygham was liberated hastily. His fetters were
struck off by the light of a candle, which, after months of
gloom, hurt his eyes so much that he had to cover his
face with his hands. He was raised up. His heart was
beating violently with the fear of this liberty. When
he tried to walk the extraordinary lightness of his feet
made him giddy, and he fell down. Two sticks were
thrust into his hands, and he was pushed out of the
passage. It was dusk; candles glimmered already in
the windows of the officers' quarters round the courtyard;
but the twilight sky dazed him by its enormous
and overwhelming brilliance. A thin poncho hung over
his naked, bony shoulders; the rags of his trousers came
down no lower than his knees; an eighteen months'
sharp cheek-bones. As he dragged himself past the
guard-room door, one of the soldiers, lolling outside,
moved by some obscure impulse, leaped forward with a
strange laugh and rammed a broken old straw hat on
his head. And Dr. Monygham, after having tottered,
continued on his way. He advanced one stick, then
one maimed foot, then the other stick; the other foot
followed only a very short distance along the ground,
toilfully, as though it were almost too heavy to be
moved at all; and yet his legs under the hanging angles
of the poncho appeared no thicker than the two sticks in
his hands. A ceaseless trembling agitated his bent
body, all his wasted limbs, his bony head, the conical,
ragged crown of the sombrero, whose ample flat rim
rested on his shoulders.
In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr.
Monygham go forth to take possession of his liberty.
And these conditions seemed to bind him indissolubly
to the land of Costaguana like an awful procedure of
naturalization, involving him deep in the national life,
far deeper than any amount of success and honour could
have done. They did away with his Europeanism; for
Dr. Monygham had made himself an ideal conception of
his disgrace. It was a conception eminently fit and
proper for an officer and a gentleman. Dr. Monygham,
before he went out to Costaguana, had been surgeon in
one of Her Majesty's regiments of foot. It was a conception
which took no account of physiological facts or
reasonable arguments; but it was not stupid for all that.
It was simple. A rule of conduct resting mainly on
severe rejections is necessarily simple. Dr. Monygham's
view of what it behoved him to do was severe; it
was an ideal view, in so much that it was the imaginative
exaggeration of a correct feeling. It was also, in its
loyal nature.
There was a great fund of loyalty in Dr. Monygham's
nature. He had settled it all on Mrs. Gould's head. He
believed her worthy of every devotion. At the bottom
of his heart he felt an angry uneasiness before the prosperity
of the San Tomé mine, because its growth was
robbing her of all peace of mind. Costaguana was no
place for a woman of that kind. What could Charles
Gould have been thinking of when he brought her out
there! It was outrageous! And the doctor had
watched the course of events with a grim and distant
reserve which, he imagined, his lamentable history imposed
upon him.
Loyalty to Mrs. Gould could not, however, leave out
of account the safety of her husband. The doctor had
contrived to be in town at the critical time because he
mistrusted Charles Gould. He considered him hopelessly
infected with the madness of revolutions. That
is why he hobbled in distress in the drawing-room of the
Casa Gould on that morning, exclaiming, "Decoud,
Decoud!" in a tone of mournful irritation.
Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glistening
eyes, looked straight before her at the sudden
enormity of that disaster. The finger-tips on one hand
rested lightly on a low little table by her side, and the
arm trembled right up to the shoulder. The sun,
which looks late upon Sulaco, issuing in all the fulness of
its power high up on the sky from behind the dazzling
snow-edge of Higuerota, had precipitated the delicate,
smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which the town lies
steeped during the early hours, into sharp-cut masses of
black shade and spaces of hot, blinding glare. Three
long rectangles of sunshine fell through the windows of
the sala; while just across the street the front of the
shadow seen through the flood of light.
A voice said at the door, "What of Decoud?"
It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him
coming along the corredor. His glance just glided over
his wife and struck full at the doctor.
"You have brought some news, doctor?"
Dr. Monygham blurted it all out at once, in the rough.
For some time after he had done, the Administrador of
the San Tomé mine remained looking at him without a
word. Mrs. Gould sank into a low chair with her hands
lying on her lap. A silence reigned between those three
motionless persons. Then Charles Gould spoke —
"You must want some breakfast."
He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught
up her husband's hand and pressed it as she went out,
raising her handkerchief to her eyes. The sight of her
husband had brought Antonia's position to her mind,
and she could not contain her tears at the thought of the
poor girl. When she rejoined the two men in the dining-
room after having bathed her face, Charles Gould was
saying to the doctor across the table —
"No, there does not seem any room for doubt."
And the doctor assented.
"No, I don't see myself how we could question that
wretched Hirsch's tale. It's only too true, I fear."
She sat down desolately at the head of the table and
looked from one to the other. The two men, without
absolutely turning their heads away, tried to avoid her
glance. The doctor even made a show of being hungry;
he seized his knife and fork, and began to eat with
emphasis, as if on the stage. Charles Gould made no
pretence of the sort; with his elbows raised squarely, he
twisted both ends of his flaming moustaches — they were
so long that his hands were quite away from his face.
"I am not surprised," he muttered, abandoning
his moustaches and throwing one arm over the back
of his chair. His face was calm with that immobility
of expression which betrays the intensity of a mental
struggle. He felt that this accident had brought to a
point all the consequences involved in his line of conduct,
with its conscious and subconscious intentions.
There must be an end now of this silent reserve, of that
air of impenetrability behind which he had been safe-
guarding his dignity. It was the least ignoble form of
dissembling forced upon him by that parody of civilized
institutions which offended his intelligence, his uprightness,
and his sense of right. He was like his father.
He had no ironic eye. He was not amused at the
absurdities that prevail in this world. They hurt him
in his innate gravity. He felt that the miserable death of
that poor Decoud took from him his inaccessible position
of a force in the background. It committed him openly
unless he wished to throw up the game — and that was
impossible. The material interests required from him
the sacrifice of his aloofness — perhaps his own safety
too. And he reflected that Decoud's separationist
plan had not gone to the bottom with the lost silver.
The only thing that was not changed was his position
towards Mr. Holroyd. The head of silver and steel
interests had entered into Costaguana affairs with a sort
of passion. Costaguana had become necessary to his
existence; in the San Tomé mine he had found the
imaginative satisfaction which other minds would get
from drama, from art, or from a risky and fascinating
sport. It was a special form of the great man's extravagance,
sanctioned by a moral intention, big
enough to flatter his vanity. Even in this aberration of
his genius he served the progress of the world. Charles
Gould felt sure of being understood with precision and
Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man.
And Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to
San Francisco in some such words: ". . . . The
men at the head of the movement are dead or have
fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end
for the present; the Blanco party in Sulaco has collapsed
inexcusably, but in the characteristic manner of
this country. But Barrios, untouched in Cayta,
remains still available. I am forced to take up openly
the plan of a provincial revolution as the only way of
placing the enormous material interests involved in the
prosperity and peace of Sulaco in a position of permanent
safety. . . ." That was clear. He saw these
words as if written in letters of fire upon the wall at
which he was gazing abstractedly.
Mrs Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It
was a domestic and frightful phenomenon that darkened
and chilled the house for her like a thunder-
cloud passing over the sun. Charles Gould's fits of
abstraction depicted the energetic concentration of a
will haunted by a fixed idea. A man haunted by a
fixed idea is insane. He is dangerous even if that
idea is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the
heaven down pitilessly upon a loved head? The eyes
of Mrs. Gould, watching her husband's profile, filled
with tears again. And again she seemed to see the
despair of the unfortunate Antonia.
"What would I have done if Charley had been
drowned while we were engaged?" she exclaimed, mentally,
with horror. Her heart turned to ice, while
her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of a
funeral pyre consuming all her earthly affections. The
tears burst out of her eyes.
"Antonia will kill herself!" she cried out.
This cry fell into the silence of the room with
strangely little effect. Only the doctor, crumbling
up a piece of bread, with his head inclined on one side,
raised his face, and the few long hairs sticking out of
his shaggy eyebrows stirred in a slight frown. Dr.
Monygham thought quite sincerely that Decoud was a
singularly unworthy object for any woman's affection.
Then he lowered his head again, with a curl of his lip,
and his heart full of tender admiration for Mrs. Gould.
"She thinks of that girl," he said to himself; "she
thinks of the Viola children; she thinks of me; of the
wounded; of the miners; she always thinks of everybody
who is poor and miserable! But what will she do if
Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal scrimmage
those confounded Avellanos have drawn him into? No
one seems to be thinking of her."
Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his reflections
subtly.
"I shall write to Holroyd that the San Tomé mine is
big enough to take in hand the making of a new State.
It'll please him. It'll reconcile him to the risk."
But was Barrios really available? Perhaps. But he
was inaccessible. To send off a boat to Cayta was no
longer possible, since Sotillo was master of the harbour,
and had a steamer at his disposal. And now, with all
the democrats in the province up, and every Campo
township in a state of disturbance, where could he find
a man who would make his way successfully overland to
Cayta with a message, a ten days' ride at least; a man
of courage and resolution, who would avoid arrest or
murder, and if arrested would faithfully eat the paper?
The Capataz de Cargadores would have been just such
a man. But the Capataz of the Cargadores was no
more.
And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the
thing! Saved himself by clinging to the anchor,
did he? I had no idea that he was still in Sulaco.
I thought he had gone back overland to Esmeralda
more than a week ago. He came here once to talk
to me about his hide business and some other things.
I made it clear to him that nothing could be done."
"He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez
being about," remarked the doctor.
"And but for him we might not have known anything
of what has happened," marvelled Charles Gould.
Mrs. Gould cried out —
"Antonia must not know! She must not be told.
Not now."
"Nobody's likely to carry the news," remarked the
doctor. "It's no one's interest. Moreover, the people
here are afraid of Hernandez as if he were the devil."
He turned to Charles Gould. "It's even awkward,
because if you wanted to communicate with the refugees
you could find no messenger. When Hernandez
was ranging hundreds of miles away from here the
Sulaco populace used to shudder at the tales of him
roasting his prisoners alive."
"Yes," murmured Charles Gould; "Captain Mitchell's
Capataz was the only man in the town who had
seen Hernandez eye to eye. Father Corbelàn employed
him. He opened the communications first. It
is a pity that —"
His voice was covered by the booming of the great
bell of the cathedral. Three single strokes, one after
another, burst out explosively, dying away in deep and
mellow vibrations. And then all the bells in the tower
of every church, convent, or chapel in town, even those
that had remained shut up for years, pealed out together
with a crash. In this furious flood of metallic
and violence which blanched Mrs. Gould's cheek.
Basilio, who had been waiting at table, shrinking within
himself, clung to the sideboard with chattering teeth.
It was impossible to hear yourself speak.
"Shut these windows!" Charles Gould yelled at him,
angrily. All the other servants, terrified at what they
took for the signal of a general massacre, had rushed upstairs,
tumbling over each other, men and women, the
obscure and generally invisible population of the ground
floor on the four sides of the patio. The women, screaming
"Misericordia!" ran right into the room, and, falling
on their knees against the walls, began to cross themselves
convulsively. The staring heads of men blocked
the doorway in an instant — mozos from the stable,
gardeners, nondescript helpers living on the crumbs of
the munificent house — and Charles Gould beheld all
the extent of his domestic establishment, even to the
gatekeeper. This was a half-paralyzed old man, whose
long white locks fell down to his shoulders: an heirloom
taken up by Charles Gould's familial piety. He could
remember Henry Gould, an Englishman and a Costaguanero
of the second generation, chief of the Sulaco
province; he had been his personal mozo years and
years ago in peace and war; had been allowed to attend
his master in prison; had, on the fatal morning, followed
the firing squad; and, peeping from behind one
of the cypresses growing along the wall of the Franciscan
Convent, had seen, with his eyes starting out of his
head, Don Enrique throw up his hands and fall with
his face in the dust. Charles Gould noted particularly
the big patriarchal head of that witness in the rear of the
other servants. But he was surprised to see a shrivelled
old hag or two, of whose existence within the walls of his
house he had not been aware. They must have been the
There were a few children, too, more or less naked, crying
and clinging to the legs of their elders. He had never
before noticed any sign of a child in his patio. Even
Leonarda, the camerista, came in a fright, pushing
through, with her spoiled, pouting face of a favourite
maid, leading the Viola girls by the hand. The crockery
rattled on table and sideboard, and the whole house
seemed to sway in the deafening wave of sound.
5. CHAPTER FIVE
DURING the night the expectant populace had taken
possession of all the belfries in the town in order to welcome
Pedrito Montero, who was making his entry after
having slept the night in Rincon. And first came straggling
in through the land gate the armed mob of all
colours, complexions, types, and states of raggedness,
calling themselves the Sulaco National Guard, and
commanded by Señor Gamacho. Through the middle
of the street streamed, like a torrent of rubbish, a mass
of straw hats, ponchos, gun-barrels, with an enormous
green and yellow flag flapping in their midst, in a
cloud of dust, to the furious beating of drums. The
spectators recoiled against the walls of the houses
shouting their Vivas! Behind the rabble could be seen
the lances of the cavalry, the "army" of Pedro Montero.
He advanced between Señores Fuentes and Gamacho
at the head of his llaneros, who had accomplished the
feat of crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota in a
snow-storm. They rode four abreast, mounted on
confiscated Campo horses, clad in the heterogeneous
stock of roadside stores they had looted hurriedly in
their rapid ride through the northern part of the province;
for Pedro Montero had been in a great hurry
to occupy Sulaco. The handkerchiefs knotted loosely
around their bare throats were glaringly new, and all
the right sleeves of their cotton shirts had been cut
off close to the shoulder for greater freedom in throwing
the lazo. Emaciated greybeards rode by the side of
lean dark youths, marked by all the hardships of campaigning,
crowns of their hats, and huge iron spurs fastened to
their naked heels. Those that in the passes of the
mountain had lost their lances had provided themselves
with the goads used by the Campo cattlemen: slender
shafts of palm fully ten feet long, with a lot of loose rings
jingling under the ironshod point. They were armed
with knives and revolvers. A haggard fearlessness characterized
the expression of all these sun-blacked countenances;
they glared down haughtily with their
scorched eyes at the crowd, or, blinking upwards insolently,
pointed out to each other some particular
head amongst the women at the windows. When they
had ridden into the Plaza and caught sight of the equestrian
statue of the King dazzlingly white in the sunshine,
towering enormous and motionless above the
surges of the crowd, with its eternal gesture of saluting,
a murmur of surprise ran through their ranks. "What
is that saint in the big hat?" they asked each other.
They were a good sample of the cavalry of the plains
with which Pedro Montero had helped so much the victorious
career of his brother the general. The influence
which that man, brought up in coast towns, acquired in
a short time over the plainsmen of the Republic can be
ascribed only to a genius for treachery of so effective
a kind that it must have appeared to those violent men
but little removed from a state of utter savagery, as the
perfection of sagacity and virtue. The popular lore
of all nations testifies that duplicity and cunning, together
with bodily strength, were looked upon, even
more than courage, as heroic virtues by primitive mankind.
To overcome your adversary was the great
affair of life. Courage was taken for granted. But
the use of intelligence awakened wonder and respect.
Stratagems, providing they did not fail, were honourable;
no feelings but those of gladness, pride, and admiration.
Not perhaps that primitive men were more faithless
than their descendants of to-day, but that they went
straighter to their aim, and were more artless in their
recognition of success as the only standard of morality.
We have changed since. The use of intelligence
awakens little wonder and less respect. But the ignorant
and barbarous plainsmen engaging in civil strife followed
willingly a leader who often managed to deliver their
enemies bound, as it were, into their hands. Pedro Montero
had a talent for lulling his adversaries into a sense
of security. And as men learn wisdom with extreme
slowness, and are always ready to believe promises that
flatter their secret hopes, Pedro Montero was successful
time after time. Whether only a servant or some inferior
official in the Costaguana Legation in Paris, he had
rushed back to his country directly he heard that his
brother had emerged from the obscurity of his frontier
commandancia. He had managed to deceive by his
gift of plausibility the chiefs of the Ribierist movement
in the capital, and even the acute agent of the San
Tomé mine had failed to understand him thoroughly.
At once he had obtained an enormous influence over
his brother. They were very much alike in appearance,
both bald, with bunches of crisp hair above their ears,
arguing the presence of some negro blood. Only Pedro
was smaller than the general, more delicate altogether,
with an ape-like faculty for imitating all the outward
signs of refinement and distinction, and with a parrot-
like talent for languages. Both brothers had received
some elementary instruction by the munificence of a
great European traveller, to whom their father had been
a body-servant during his journeys in the interior of
the country. In General Montero's case it enabled
lazy and slovenly, had drifted aimlessly from
one coast town to another, hanging about counting-
houses, attaching himself to strangers as a sort of valet-
de-place, picking up an easy and disreputable living.
His ability to read did nothing for him but fill his head
with absurd visions. His actions were usually determined
by motives so improbable in themselves as to
escape the penetration of a rational person.
Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession
in Sta. Marta had credited him with the possession of
sane views, and even with a restraining power over the
general's everlastingly discontented vanity. It could
never have entered his head that Pedrito Montero,
lackey or inferior scribe, lodged in the garrets of the
various Parisian hotels where the Costaguana Legation
used to shelter its diplomatic dignity, had been devouring
the lighter sort of historical works in the French
language, such, for instance as the books of Imbert
de Saint Amand upon the Second Empire. But Pedrito
had been struck by the splendour of a brilliant court,
and had conceived the idea of an existence for himself
where, like the Duc de Morny, he would associate the
command of every pleasure with the conduct of political
affairs and enjoy power supremely in every way. Nobody
could have guessed that. And yet this was one
of the immediate causes of the Monterist Revolution.
This will appear less incredible by the reflection that
the fundamental causes were the same as ever, rooted
in the political immaturity of the people, in the indolence
of the upper classes and the mental darkness of
the lower.
Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother
the road wide open to his wildest imaginings. This was
what made the Monterist pronunciamiento so unpreventable.
bought off, pacified with flatteries, despatched on a
diplomatic mission to Europe. It was his brother who
had egged him on from first to last. He wanted to become
the most brilliant statesman of South America.
He did not desire supreme power. He would have been
afraid of its labour and risk, in fact. Before all, Pedrito
Montero, taught by his European experience, meant
to acquire a serious fortune for himself. With this
object in view he obtained from his brother, on the
very morrow of the successful battle, the permission
to push on over the mountains and take possession
of Sulaco. Sulaco was the land of future prosperity,
the chosen land of material progress, the only province
in the Republic of interest to European capitalists.
Pedrito Montero, following the example of the Duc de
Morny, meant to have his share of this prosperity.
This is what he meant literally. Now his brother was
master of the country, whether as President, Dictator,
or even as Emperor — why not as an Emperor? — he
meant to demand a share in every enterprise — in railways,
in mines, in sugar estates, in cotton mills, in land
companies, in each and every undertaking — as the price
of his protection. The desire to be on the spot early
was the real cause of the celebrated ride over the mountains
with some two hundred llaneros, an enterprise of
which the dangers had not appeared at first clearly to
his impatience. Coming from a series of victories, it
seemed to him that a Montero had only to appear
to be master of the situation. This illusion had betrayed
him into a rashness of which he was becoming
aware. As he rode at the head of his llaneros he regretted
that there were so few of them. The enthusiasm
of the populace reassured him. They yelled "Viva
Montero! Viva Pedrito!" In order to make them still
in dissembling, he dropped the reins on his horse's neck,
and with a tremendous effect of familiarity and confidence
slipped his hands under the arms of Señores
Fuentes and Gamacho. In that posture, with a ragged
town mozo holding his horse by the bridle, he rode
triumphantly across the Plaza to the door of the Intendencia.
Its old gloomy walls seemed to shake in
the acclamations that rent the air and covered the
crashing peals of the cathedral bells.
Pedro Montero, the brother of the general, dismounted
into a shouting and perspiring throng of enthusiasts
whom the ragged Nationals were pushing
back fiercely. Ascending a few steps he surveyed the
large crowd gaping at him. and the bullet-speckled
walls of the houses opposite lightly veiled by a sunny
haze of dust. The word "PORVENIR" in immense
black capitals, alternating with broken windows, stared
at him across the vast space; and he thought with delight
of the hour of vengeance, because he was very sure
of laying his hands upon Decoud. On his left hand,
Gamacho, big and hot, wiping his hairy wet face,
uncovered a set of yellow fangs in a grin of stupid hilarity.
On his right, Señor Fuentes, small and lean,
looked on with compressed lips. The crowd stared
literally open-mouthed, lost in eager stillness, as
though they had expected the great guerrillero, the
famous Pedrito, to begin scattering at once some sort
of visible largesse. What he began was a speech. He
began it with the shouted word "Citizens!" which
reached even those in the middle of the Plaza. Afterwards
the greater part of the citizens remained fascinated
by the orator's action alone, his tip-toeing, the
arms flung above his head with the fists clenched, a
hand laid flat upon the heart, the silver gleam of rolling
hand laid familiarly on Gamacho's shoulder; a hand
waved formally towards the little black-coated person
of Señor Fuentes, advocate and politician and a true
friend of the people. The vivas of those nearest to the
orator bursting out suddenly propagated themselves irregularly
to the confines of the crowd, like flames running
over dry grass, and expired in the opening of the
streets. In the intervals, over the swarming Plaza
brooded a heavy silence, in which the mouth of the
orator went on opening and shutting, and detached
phrases — "The happiness of the people," "Sons of
the country," "The entire world, el mundo entiero" —
reached even the packed steps of the cathedral with
a feeble clear ring, thin as the buzzing of a mosquito.
But the orator struck his breast; he seemed to prance
between his two supporters. It was the supreme effort
of his peroration. Then the two smaller figures disappeared
from the public gaze and the enormous Gamacho,
left alone, advanced, raising his hat high above
his head. Then he covered himself proudly and yelled
out, "Ciudadanos!" A dull roar greeted Señor Gamacho,
ex-pedlar of the Campo, Commandante of the
National Guards.
Upstairs Pedrito Montero walked about rapidly from
one wrecked room of the Intendencia to another, snarling
incessantly —
"What stupidity! What destruction!"
Señor Fuentes, following, would relax his taciturn
disposition to murmur —
"It is all the work of Gamacho and his Nationals;"
and then, inclining his head on his left shoulder,
would press together his lips so firmly that a little
hollow would appear at each corner. He had his
nomination for Political Chief of the town in his
functions.
In the long audience room, with its tall mirrors all
starred by stones, the hangings torn down and the
canopy over the platform at the upper end pulled to
pieces, the vast, deep muttering of the crowd and the
howling voice of Gamacho speaking just below reached
them through the shutters as they stood idly in dimness
and desolation.
"The brute!" observed his Excellency Don Pedro
Montero through clenched teeth. "We must contrive
as quickly as possible to send him and his Nationals out
there to fight Hernandez."
The new Géfé Político only jerked his head sideways,
and took a puff at his cigarette in sign of his agreement
with this method for ridding the town of Gamacho and
his inconvenient rabble.
Pedrito Montero looked with disgust at the absolutely
bare floor, and at the belt of heavy gilt picture-frames
running round the room, out of which the remnants of
torn and slashed canvases fluttered like dingy rags.
"We are not barbarians," he said.
This was what said his Excellency, the popular
Pedrito, the guerrillero skilled in the art of laying ambushes,
charged by his brother at his own demand
with the organization of Sulaco on democratic principles.
The night before, during the consultation
with his partisans, who had come out to meet him in
Rincon, he had opened his intentions to Señor Fuentes —
"We shall organize a popular vote, by yes or no, confiding
the destinies of our beloved country to the wisdom
and valiance of my heroic brother, the invincible general.
A plebiscite. Do you understand?"
And Señor Fuentes, puffing out his leathery cheeks,
had inclined his head slightly to the left, letting a thin,
had understood.
His Excellency was exasperated at the devastation.
Not a single chair, table, sofa, étagère or console had
been left in the state rooms of the Intendencia. His
Excellency, though twitching all over with rage, was
restrained from bursting into violence by a sense of his
remoteness and isolation. His heroic brother was very
far away. Meantime, how was he going to take his
siesta? He had expected to find comfort and luxury
in the Intendencia after a year of hard camp life, ending
with the hardships and privations of the daring dash
upon Sulaco — upon the province which was worth
more in wealth and influence than all the rest of the
Republic's territory. He would get even with Gamacho
by-and-by. And Señor Gamacho's oration, delectable
to popular ears, went on in the heat and glare
of the Plaza like the uncouth howlings of an inferior
sort of devil cast into a white-hot furnace. Every
moment he had to wipe his streaming face with his bare
fore-arm; he had flung off his coat, and had turned up
the sleeves of his shirt high above the elbows; but he
kept on his head the large cocked hat with white plumes.
His ingenuousness cherished this sign of his rank as
Commandante of the National Guards. Approving and
grave murmurs greeted his periods. His opinion was
that war should be declared at once against France,
England, Germany, and the United States, who, by
introducing railways, mining enterprises, colonization,
and under such other shallow pretences, aimed at robbing
poor people of their lands, and with the help of
these Goths and paralytics, the aristocrats would convert
them into toiling and miserable slaves. And
the leperos, flinging about the corners of their dirty
white mantas, yelled their approbation. General
only man equal to the patriotic task. They assented
to that, too.
The morning was wearing on; there were already signs
of disruption, currents and eddies in the crowd. Some
were seeking the shade of the walls and under the trees
of the Alameda. Horsemen spurred through, shouting;
groups of sombreros set level on heads against the vertical
sun were drifting away into the streets, where the
open doors of pulperias revealed an enticing gloom resounding
with the gentle tinkling of guitars. The National
Guards were thinking of siesta, and the eloquence
of Gamacho, their chief, was exhausted. Later on,
when, in the cooler hours of the afternoon, they tried
to assemble again for further consideration of public
affairs, detachments of Montero's cavalry camped on
the Alameda charged them without parley, at speed,
with long lances levelled at their flying backs as far as
the ends of the streets. The National Guards of
Sulaco were surprised by this proceeding. But they
were not indignant. No Costaguanero had ever
learned to question the eccentricities of a military force.
They were part of the natural order of things. This must
be, they concluded, some kind of administrative measure,
no doubt. But the motive of it escaped their
unaided intelligence, and their chief and orator, Gamacho,
Commandante of the National Guard, was lying
drunk and asleep in the bosom of his family. His bare
feet were upturned in the shadows repulsively, in the
manner of a corpse. His eloquent mouth had dropped
open. His youngest daughter, scratching her head with
one hand, with the other waved a green bough over his
scorched and peeling face.
6. CHAPTER SIX
THE declining sun had shifted the shadows from west
to east amongst the houses of the town. It had shifted
them upon the whole extent of the immense Campo,
with the white walls of its haciendas on the knolls
dominating the green distances; with its grass-thatched
ranches crouching in the folds of ground by the banks
of streams; with the dark islands of clustered trees on a
clear sea of grass, and the precipitous range of the
Cordillera, immense and motionless, emerging from the
billows of the lower forests like the barren coast of a
land of giants. The sunset rays striking the snow-slope
of Higuerota from afar gave it an air of rosy youth,
while the serrated mass of distant peaks remained black,
as if calcined in the fiery radiance. The undulating
surface of the forests seemed powdered with pale gold
dust; and away there, beyond Rincon, hidden from
the town by two wooded spurs, the rocks of the San
Tomé gorge, with the flat wall of the mountain itself
crowned by gigantic ferns, took on warm tones of brown
and yellow, with red rusty streaks, and the dark green
clumps of bushes rooted in crevices. From the plain
the stamp sheds and the houses of the mine appeared
dark and small, high up, like the nests of birds clustered
on the ledges of a cliff. The zigzag paths resembled
faint tracings scratched on the wall of a cyclopean
blockhouse. To the two sereños of the mine on
patrol duty, strolling, carbine in hand, and watchful
eyes, in the shade of the trees lining the stream near
the bridge, Don Pépé, descending the path from
beetle.
With his air of aimless, insect-like going to and fro
upon the face of the rock, Don Pépé's figure kept on
descending steadily, and, when near the bottom, sank
at last behind the roofs of store-houses, forges, and
workshops. For a time the pair of sereños strolled
back and forth before the bridge, on which they had
stopped a horseman holding a large white envelope in
his hand. Then Don Pépé, emerging in the village
street from amongst the houses, not a stone's throw from
the frontier bridge, approached, striding in wide dark
trousers tucked into boots, a white linen jacket, sabre
at his side, and revolver at his belt. In this disturbed
time nothing could find the Señor Gobernador with
his boots off, as the saying is.
At a slight nod from one of the sereños, the man, a
messenger from the town, dismounted, and crossed the
bridge, leading his horse by the bridle.
Don Pépé received the letter from his other hand,
slapped his left side and his hips in succession, feeling
for his spectacle case. After settling the heavy silver-
mounted affair astride his nose, and adjusting it carefully
behind his ears, he opened the envelope, holding
it up at about a foot in front of his eyes. The paper he
pulled out contained some three lines of writing. He
looked at them for a long time. His grey moustache
moved slightly up and down, and the wrinkles, radiating
at the corners of his eyes, ran together. He nodded
serenely. "Bueno," he said. "There is no answer."
Then, in his quiet, kindly way, he engaged in a cautious
conversation with the man, who was willing to talk
cheerily, as if something lucky had happened to him
recently. He had seen from a distance Sotillo's infantry
camped along the shore of the harbour on each
to the buildings. The foreigners of the railway remained
shut up within the yards. They were no longer
anxious to shoot poor people. He cursed the foreigners;
then he reported Montero's entry and the rumours of
the town. The poor were going to be made rich now.
That was very good. More he did not know, and,
breaking into propitiatory smiles, he intimated that he
was hungry and thirsty. The old major directed him to
go to the alcalde of the first village. The man rode off,
and Don Pépé, striding slowly in the direction of a little
wooden belfry, looked over a hedge into a little garden,
and saw Father Romàn sitting in a white hammock slung
between two orange trees in front of the presbytery.
An enormous tamarind shaded with its dark foliage
the whole white framehouse. A young Indian girl with
long hair, big eyes, and small hands and feet, carried out
a wooden chair, while a thin old woman, crabbed and
vigilant, watched her all the time from the verandah.
Don Pépé sat down in the chair and lighted a cigar;
the priest drew in an immense quantity of snuff out
of the hollow of his palm. On his reddish-brown
face, worn, hollowed as if crumbled, the eyes, fresh
and candid, sparkled like two black diamonds.
Don Pépé, in a mild and humorous voice, informed
Father Romàn that Pedrito Montero, by the hand of
Señor Fuentes, had asked him on what terms he would
surrender the mine in proper working order to a legally
constituted commission of patriotic citizens, escorted
by a small military force. The priest cast his eyes up
to heaven. However, Don Pépé continued, the mozo
who brought the letter said that Don Carlos Gould
was alive, and so far unmolested.
Father Romàn expressed in a few words his thankfulness
at hearing of the Señor Administrador's safety.
The hour of oration had gone by in the silvery ringing
of a bell in the little belfry. The belt of forest
closing the entrance of the valley stood like a screen
between the low sun and the street of the village. At
the other end of the rocky gorge, between the walls of
basalt and granite, a forest-clad mountain, hiding all
the range from the San Tomé dwellers, rose steeply,
lighted up and leafy to the very top. Three small rosy
clouds hung motionless overhead in the great depth
of blue. Knots of people sat in the street between the
wattled huts. Before the casa of the alcalde, the foremen
of the night-shift, already assembled to lead their
men, squatted on the ground in a circle of leather skull-
caps, and, bowing their bronze backs, were passing
round the gourd of maté. The mozo from the town,
having fastened his horse to a wooden post before
the door, was telling them the news of Sulaco as the
blackened gourd of the decoction passed from hand to
hand. The grave alcalde himself, in a white waistcloth
and a flowered chintz gown with sleeves, open wide upon
his naked stout person with an effect of a gaudy bathing
robe, stood by, wearing a rough beaver hat at the back
of his head, and grasping a tall staff with a silver knob
in his hand. These insignia of his dignity had been
conferred upon him by the Administration of the mine,
the fountain of honour, of prosperity, and peace. He
had been one of the first immigrants into this valley;
his sons and sons-in-law worked within the mountain
which seemed with its treasures to pour down the
thundering ore shoots of the upper mesa, the gifts of
well-being, security, and justice upon the toilers. He
listened to the news from the town with curiosity
and indifference, as if concerning another world than
his own. And it was true that they appeared to
him so. In a very few years the sense of belonging
in these harassed, half-wild Indians. They were proud
of, and attached to, the mine. It had secured their
confidence and belief. They invested it with a protecting
and invincible virtue as though it were a fetish
made by their own hands, for they were ignorant, and
in other respects did not differ appreciably from the
rest of mankind which puts infinite trust in its own
creations. It never entered the alcalde's head that
the mine could fail in its protection and force. Politics
were good enough for the people of the town and the
Campo. His yellow, round face, with wide nostrils,
and motionless in expression, resembled a fierce full
moon. He listened to the excited vapourings of the
mozo without misgivings, without surprise, without
any active sentiment whatever.
Padre Romàn sat dejectedly balancing himself, his
feet just touching the ground, his hands gripping the
edge of the hammock. With less confidence, but as
ignorant as his flock, he asked the major what did he
think was going to happen now.
Don Pépé, bolt upright in the chair, folded his hands
peacefully on the hilt of his sword, standing perpendicular
between his thighs, and answered that he did not
know. The mine could be defended against any force
likely to be sent to take possession. On the other hand,
from the arid character of the valley, when the regular
supplies from the Campo had been cut off, the population
of the three villages could be starved into submission.
Don Pépé exposed these contingencies with
serenity to Father Romàn, who, as an old campaigner,
was able to understand the reasoning of a military man.
They talked with simplicity and directness. Father
Romàn was saddened at the idea of his flock being
scattered or else enslaved. He had no illusions as to
of political atrocities, which seemed to him
fatal and unavoidable in the life of a State. The working
of the usual public institutions presented itself to
him most distinctly as a series of calamities overtaking
private individuals and flowing logically from each other
through hate, revenge, folly, and rapacity, as though
they had been part of a divine dispensation. Father
Romàn's clear-sightedness was served by an uninformed
intelligence; but his heart, preserving its tenderness
amongst scenes of carnage, spoliation, and violence,
abhorred these calamities the more as his association
with the victims was closer. He entertained towards
the Indians of the valley feelings of paternal scorn.
He had been marrying, baptizing, confessing, absolving,
and burying the workers of the San Tomé mine with
dignity and unction for five years or more; and he believed
in the sacredness of these ministrations, which
made them his own in a spiritual sense. They were
dear to his sacerdotal supremacy. Mrs. Gould's earnest
interest in the concerns of these people enhanced
their importance in the priest's eyes, because it really
augmented his own. When talking over with her the
innumerable Marias and Brigidas of the villages, he felt
his own humanity expand. Padre Romàn was incapable
of fanaticism to an almost reprehensible degree.
The English señora was evidently a heretic; but at the
same time she seemed to him wonderful and angelic.
Whenever that confused state of his feelings occurred
to him, while strolling, for instance, his breviary under
his arm, in the wide shade of the tamarind, he would
stop short to inhale with a strong snuffling noise a large
quantity of snuff, and shake his head profoundly. At
the thought of what might befall the illustrious señora
presently, he became gradually overcome with dismay.
lost his serenity for a moment. He leaned forward
stiffly.
"Listen, Padre. The very fact that those thieving
macaques in Sulaco are trying to find out the price of my
honour proves that Señor Don Carlos and all in the Casa
Gould are safe. As to my honour, that also is safe, as
every man, woman, and child knows. But the negro
Liberals who have snatched the town by surprise do not
know that. Bueno. Let them sit and wait. While
they wait they can do no harm."
And he regained his composure. He regained it
easily, because whatever happened his honour of an old
officer of Paez was safe. He had promised Charles
Gould that at the approach of an armed force he would
defend the gorge just long enough to give himself time
to destroy scientifically the whole plant, buildings, and
workshops of the mine with heavy charges of dynamite;
block with ruins the main tunnel, break down the pathways,
blow up the dam of the water-power, shatter
the famous Gould Concession into fragments, flying
sky high out of a horrified world. The mine had got
hold of Charles Gould with a grip as deadly as ever
it had laid upon his father. But this extreme resolution
had seemed to Don Pépé the most natural thing in the
world. His measures had been taken with judgment.
Everything was prepared with a careful completeness.
And Don Pépé folded his hands pacifically on his
sword hilt, and nodded at the priest. In his excitement,
Father Romàn had flung snuff in handfuls at his
face, and, all besmeared with tobacco, round-eyed, and
beside himself, had got out of the hammock to walk
about, uttering exclamations.
Don Pépé stroked his grey and pendant moustache,
whose fine ends hung far below the clean-cut line
reputation.
"So, Padre, I don't know what will happen. But I
know that as long as I am here Don Carlos can speak to
that macaque, Pedrito Montero, and threaten the destruction
of the mine with perfect assurance that he will
be taken seriously. For people know me."
He began to turn the cigar in his lips a little nervously,
and went on —
"But that is talk — good for the politicos. I am a
military man. I do not know what may happen. But
I know what ought to be done — the mine should march
upon the town with guns, axes, knives tied up to sticks
— por Dios. That is what should be done. Only —"
His folded hands twitched on the hilt. The cigar
turned faster in the corner of his lips.
"And who should lead but I? Unfortunately — observe
— I have given my word of honour to Don Carlos
not to let the mine fall into the hands of these thieves.
In war — you know this, Padre — the fate of battles is
uncertain, and whom could I leave here to act for me
in case of defeat? The explosives are ready. But it
would require a man of high honour, of intelligence, of
judgment, of courage, to carry out the prepared destruction.
Somebody I can trust with my honour as I
can trust myself. Another old officer of Paez, for instance.
Or — or — perhaps one of Paez's old chaplains
would do."
He got up, long, lank, upright, hard, with his martial
moustache and the bony structure of his face, from which
the glance of the sunken eyes seemed to transfix the
priest, who stood still, an empty wooden snuff-box held
upside down in his hand, and glared back, speechless,
at the governor of the mine.
7. CHAPTER SEVEN
AT ABOUT that time, in the Intendencia of Sulaco,
Charles Gould was assuring Pedrito Montero, who had
sent a request for his presence there, that he would never
let the mine pass out of his hands for the profit of a
Government who had robbed him of it. The Gould
Concession could not be resumed. His father had not
desired it. The son would never surrender it. He
would never surrender it alive. And once dead, where
was the power capable of resuscitating such an enterprise
in all its vigour and wealth out of the ashes and
ruin of destruction? There was no such power in the
country. And where was the skill and capital abroad
that would condescend to touch such an ill-omened
corpse? Charles Gould talked in the impassive tone
which had for many years served to conceal his anger
and contempt. He suffered. He was disgusted with
what he had to say. It was too much like heroics. In
him the strictly practical instinct was in profound discord
with the almost mystic view he took of his right.
The Gould Concession was symbolic of abstract justice.
Let the heavens fall. But since the San Tomé mine
had developed into world-wide fame his threat had
enough force and effectiveness to reach the rudimentary
intelligence of Pedro Montero, wrapped up as it was
in the futilities of historical anecdotes. The Gould
Concession was a serious asset in the country's finance,
and, what was more, in the private budgets of many
officials as well. It was traditional. It was known.
It was said. It was credible. Every Minister of
was natural. And Pedrito intended to be Minister
of the Interior and President of the Council in his
brother's Government. The Duc de Morny had occupied
those high posts during the Second French
Empire with conspicuous advantage to himself.
A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured
for His Excellency, who, after a short siesta, rendered
absolutely necessary by the labours and the pomps of his
entry into Sulaco, had been getting hold of the administrative
machine by making appointments, giving orders,
and signing proclamations. Alone with Charles Gould
in the audience room, His Excellency managed with his
well-known skill to conceal his annoyance and consternation.
He had begun at first to talk loftily of confiscation,
but the want of all proper feeling and mobility in the
Señor Administrador's features ended by affecting
adversely his power of masterful expression. Charles
Gould had repeated: "The Government can certainly
bring about the destruction of the San Tomé mine if it
likes; but without me it can do nothing else." It was
an alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to
hurt the sensibilities of a politician whose mind is bent
upon the spoils of victory. And Charles Gould said
also that the destruction of the San Tomé mine would
cause the ruin of other undertakings, the withdrawal
of European capital, the withholding, most probably,
of the last instalment of the foreign loan. That stony
fiend of a man said all these things (which were accessible
to His Excellency's intelligence) in a cold-
blooded manner which made one shudder.
A long course of reading historical works, light and
gossipy in tone, carried out in garrets of Parisian hotels,
sprawling on an untidy bed, to the neglect of his duties,
menial or otherwise, had affected the manners of Pedro
the old Intendencia, the magnificent hangings, the gilt
furniture ranged along the walls; had he stood upon a
daïs on a noble square of red carpet, he would have probably
been very dangerous from a sense of success and
elevation. But in this sacked and devastated residence,
with the three pieces of common furniture huddled up
in the middle of the vast apartment, Pedrito's imagination
was subdued by a feeling of insecurity and
impermanence. That feeling and the firm attitude
of Charles Gould who had not once, so far, pronounced
the word "Excellency," diminished him in his own eyes.
He assumed the tone of an enlightened man of the world,
and begged Charles Gould to dismiss from his mind
every cause for alarm. He was now conversing, he
reminded him, with the brother of the master of the
country, charged with a reorganizing mission. The
trusted brother of the master of the country, he repeated.
Nothing was further from the thoughts of
that wise and patriotic hero than ideas of destruction.
"I entreat you, Don Carlos, not to give way to your
anti-democratic prejudices," he cried, in a burst of
condescending effusion.
Pedrito Montero surprised one at first sight by the
vast development of his bald forehead, a shiny yellow
expanse between the crinkly coal-black tufts of hair
without any lustre, the engaging form of his mouth,
and an unexpectedly cultivated voice. But his eyes,
very glistening as if freshly painted on each side of his
hooked nose, had a round, hopeless, birdlike stare when
opened fully. Now, however, he narrowed them agreeably,
throwing his square chin up and speaking with
closed teeth slightly through the nose, with what he
imagined to be the manner of a grand seigneur.
In that attitude, he declared suddenly that the highest
rule based upon the direct popular vote. Cæsarism
was conservative. It was strong. It recognized the
legitimate needs of democracy which requires orders,
titles, and distinctions. They would be showered
upon deserving men. Cæsarism was peace. It was
progressive. It secured the prosperity of a country.
Pedrito Montero was carried away. Look at what the
Second Empire had done for France. It was a régime
which delighted to honour men of Don Carlos's stamp.
The Second Empire fell, but that was because its chief
was devoid of that military genius which had raised
General Montero to the pinnacle of fame and glory.
Pedrito elevated his hand jerkily to help the idea of
pinnacle, of fame. "We shall have many talks yet.
We shall understand each other thoroughly, Don
Carlos!" he cried in a tone of fellowship. Republicanism
had done its work. Imperial democracy was the
power of the future. Pedrito, the guerrillero, showing
his hand, lowered his voice forcibly. A man singled
out by his fellow-citizens for the honourable nickname
of El Rey de Sulaco could not but receive a full recognition
from an imperial democracy as a great captain
of industry and a person of weighty counsel, whose
popular designation would be soon replaced by a more
solid title. "Eh, Don Carlos? No! What do you
say? Conde de Sulaco — Eh? — or marquis . . ."
He ceased. The air was cool on the Plaza, where a patrol
of cavalry rode round and round without penetrating
into the streets, which resounded with shouts and
the strumming of guitars issuing from the open doors
of pulperias. The orders were not to interfere with the
enjoyments of the people. And above the roofs, next
to the perpendicular lines of the cathedral towers the
snowy curve of Higuerota blocked a large space of
After a time Pedrito Montero, thrusting his
hand in the bosom of his coat, bowed his head with
slow dignity. The audience was over.
Charles Gould on going out passed his hand over his
forehead as if to disperse the mists of an oppressive
dream, whose grotesque extravagance leaves behind a
subtle sense of bodily danger and intellectual decay.
In the passages and on the staircases of the old palace
Montero's troopers lounged about insolently, smoking
and making way for no one; the clanking of sabres
and spurs resounded all over the building. Three silent
groups of civilians in severe black waited in the main
gallery, formal and helpless, a little huddled up, each
keeping apart from the others, as if in the exercise of a
public duty they had been overcome by a desire to shun
the notice of every eye. These were the deputations
waiting for their audience. The one from the Provincial
Assembly, more restless and uneasy in its corporate
expression, was overtopped by the big face of Don Juste
Lopez, soft and white, with prominent eyelids and
wreathed in impenetrable solemnity as if in a dense
cloud. The President of the Provincial Assembly,
coming bravely to save the last shred of parliamentary
institutions (on the English model), averted his eyes
from the Administrador of the San Tomé mine as a
dignified rebuke of his little faith in that only saving
principle.
The mournful severity of that reproof did not affect
Charles Gould, but he was sensible to the glances of the
others directed upon him without reproach, as if only to
read their own fate upon his face. All of them had
talked, shouted, and declaimed in the great sala of the
Casa Gould. The feeling of compassion for those men,
struck with a strange impotence in the toils of moral
suffered from his fellowship in evil with them too much.
He crossed the Plaza unmolested. The Amarilla Club
was full of festive ragamuffins. Their frowsy heads
protruded from every window, and from within came
drunken shouts, the thumping of feet, and the twanging
of harps. Broken bottles strewed the pavement below.
Charles Gould found the doctor still in his house.
Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the
shutter through which he had been watching the street.
"Ah! You are back at last!" he said in a tone of
relief. "I have been telling Mrs. Gould that you were
perfectly safe, but I was not by any means certain that
the fellow would have let you go."
"Neither was I," confessed Charles Gould, laying his
hat on the table.
"You will have to take action."
The silence of Charles Gould seemed to admit that
this was the only course. This was as far as Charles
Gould was accustomed to go towards expressing his
intentions.
"I hope you did not warn Montero of what you mean
to do," the doctor said, anxiously.
"I tried to make him see that the existence of the
mine was bound up with my personal safety," continued
Charles Gould, looking away from the doctor, and fixing
his eyes upon the water-colour sketch upon the wall.
"He believed you?" the doctor asked, eagerly.
"God knows!" said Charles Gould. "I owed it to
my wife to say that much. He is well enough informed.
He knows that I have Don Pépé there. Fuentes must
have told him. They know that the old major is perfectly
capable of blowing up the San Tomé mine without
hesitation or compunction. Had it not been for
that I don't think I'd have left the Intendencia a free
and from hate — from hate of these Liberals, as they
call themselves. Liberals! The words one knows so
well have a nightmarish meaning in this country.
Liberty, democracy, patriotism, government — all of
them have a flavour of folly and murder. Haven't
they, doctor? . . . I alone can restrain Don Pépé.
If they were to — to do away with me, nothing could
prevent him."
"They will try to tamper with him," the doctor
suggested, thoughtfully.
"It is very possible," Charles Gould said very low,
as if speaking to himself, and still gazing at the sketch
of the San Tomé gorge upon the wall. "Yes, I expect
they will try that." Charles Gould looked for the first
time at the doctor. "It would give me time," he added.
"Exactly," said Dr. Monygham, suppressing his excitement.
"Especially if Don Pépé behaves diplomatically.
Why shouldn't he give them some hope of success?
Eh? Otherwise you wouldn't gain so much time.
Couldn't he be instructed to —"
Charles Gould, looking at the doctor steadily, shook
his head, but the doctor continued with a certain
amount of fire —
"Yes, to enter into negotiations for the surrender of
the mine. It is a good notion. You would mature
your plan. Of course, I don't ask what it is. I don't
want to know. I would refuse to listen to you if you
tried to tell me. I am not fit for confidences."
"What nonsense!" muttered Charles Gould, with
displeasure.
He disapproved of the doctor's sensitiveness about
that far-off episode of his life. So much memory
shocked Charles Gould. It was like morbidness. And
again he shook his head. He refused to tamper with
taste and from policy. Instructions would have to be
either verbal or in writing. In either case they ran the
risk of being intercepted. It was by no means certain
that a messenger could reach the mine; and, besides,
there was no one to send. It was on the tip of Charles's
tongue to say that only the late Capataz de Cargadores
could have been employed with some chance of success
and the certitude of discretion. But he did not say
that. He pointed out to the doctor that it would have
been bad policy. Directly Don Pépé let it be supposed
that he could be bought over, the Administrador's
personal safety and the safety of his friends would become
endangered. For there would be then no reason
for moderation. The incorruptibility of Don Pépé
was the essential and restraining fact. The doctor hung
his head and admitted that in a way it was so.
He couldn't deny to himself that the reasoning was
sound enough. Don Pépé's usefulness consisted in his
unstained character. As to his own usefulness, he
reflected bitterly it was also his own character. He
declared to Charles Gould that he had the means of
keeping Sotillo from joining his forces with Montero,
at least for the present.
"If you had had all this silver here," the doctor said,
"or even if it had been known to be at the mine, you
could have bribed Sotillo to throw off his recent Monterism.
You could have induced him either to go away
in his steamer or even to join you."
"Certainly not that last," Charles Gould declared,
firmly. "What could one do with a man like that,
afterwards — tell me, doctor? The silver is gone, and
I am glad of it. It would have been an immediate
and strong temptation. The scramble for that visible
plunder would have precipitated a disastrous ending.
removed it — even if it is lost. It would have been a
danger and a curse."
"Perhaps he is right," the doctor, an hour later, said
hurriedly to Mrs. Gould, whom he met in the corridor.
"The thing is done, and the shadow of the treasure may
do just as well as the substance. Let me try to serve you
to the whole extent of my evil reputation. I am off now
to play my game of betrayal with Sotillo, and keep him
off the town."
She put out both her hands impulsively. "Dr. Monygham,
you are running a terrible risk," she whispered,
averting from his face her eyes, full of tears, for a short
glance at the door of her husband's room. She pressed
both his hands, and the doctor stood as if rooted to the
spot, looking down at her, and trying to twist his lips
into a smile.
"Oh, I know you will defend my memory," he uttered
at last, and ran tottering down the stairs across the
patio, and out of the house. In the street he kept up.
a great pace with his smart hobbling walk, a case of instruments
under his arm. He was known for being loco.
Nobody interfered with him. From under the seaward
gate, across the dusty, arid plain, interspersed with low
bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the ugly enormity
of the Custom House, and the two or three other
buildings which at that time constituted the seaport
of Sulaco. Far away to the south groves of palm trees
edged the curve of the harbour shore. The distant
peaks of the Cordillera had lost their identity of clear-
cut shapes in the steadily deepening blue of the eastern
sky. The doctor walked briskly. A darkling shadow
seemed to fall upon him from the zenith. The sun
had set. For a time the snows of Higuerota continued
to glow with the reflected glory of the west. The
appeared lonely, hopping amongst the dark bushes like
a tall bird with a broken wing.
Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in
the clear water of the harbour. A long tongue of land,
straight as a wall, with the grass-grown ruins of the
fort making a sort of rounded green mound, plainly
visible from the inner shore, closed its circuit; while
beyond the Placid Gulf repeated those splendours of
colouring on a greater scale and with a more sombre
magnificence. The great mass of cloud filling the head
of the gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted
folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantle stained
with blood. The three Isabels, overshadowed and
clear cut in a great smoothness confounding the sea
and sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in the air.
The little wavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red sparks
upon the sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water
along the horizon gave out a fiery red glow, as if fire
and water had been mingled together in the vast bed
of the ocean.
At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embraced
and still in a flaming contact upon the edge of
the world, went out. The red sparks in the water
vanished together with the stains of blood in the black
mantle draping the sombre head of the Placid Gulf; a
sudden breeze sprang up and died out after rustling
heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined earthwork
of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours'
sleep, and arose full length from his lair in the long grass.
He stood knee deep amongst the whispering undulations
of the green blades with the lost air of a man just born
into the world. Handsome, robust, and supple, he
threw back his head, flung his arms open, and stretched
himself with a slow twist of the waist and a leisurely
evil in the moment of waking as a magnificent and
unconscious wild beast. Then, in the suddenly steadied
glance fixed upon nothing from under a thoughtful
frown, appeared the man.
8. CHAPTER EIGHT
AFTER landing from his swim Nostromo had scrambled
up, all dripping, into the main quadrangle of the
old fort; and there, amongst ruined bits of walls and
rotting remnants of roofs and sheds, he had slept
the day through. He had slept in the shadow of the
mountains, in the white blaze of noon, in the stillness
and solitude of that overgrown piece of land between
the oval of the harbour and the spacious semi-circle
of the gulf. He lay as if dead. A rey-zamuro, appearing
like a tiny black speck in the blue, stooped, circling
prudently with a stealthiness of flight startling in a bird
of that great size. The shadow of his pearly-white
body, of his black-tipped wings, fell on the grass no
more silently than he alighted himself on a hillock of
rubbish within three yards of that man, lying as still
as a corpse. The bird stretched his bare neck, craned
his bald head, loathsome in the brilliance of varied
colouring, with an air of voracious anxiety towards the
promising stillness of that prostrate body. Then,
sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he settled
himself to wait. The first thing upon which Nostromo's
eyes fell on waking was this patient watcher for
the signs of death and corruption. When the man got
up the vulture hopped away in great, side-long, fluttering
jumps. He lingered for a while, morose and reluctant,
before he rose, circling noiselessly with a sinister
droop of beak and claws.
Long after he had vanished, Nostromo, lifting his
eyes up to the sky, muttered, "I am not dead yet."
The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores had lived in
splendour and publicity up to the very moment, as it
were, when he took charge of the lighter containing the
treasure of silver ingots.
The last act he had performed in Sulaco was in complete
harmony with his vanity, and as such perfectly
genuine. He had given his last dollar to an old woman
moaning with the grief and fatigue of a dismal search
under the arch of the ancient gate. Performed in
obscurity and without witnesses, it had still the characteristics
of splendour and publicity, and was in strict
keeping with his reputation. But this awakening in
solitude, except for the watchful vulture, amongst
the ruins of the fort, had no such characteristics. His
first confused feeling was exactly this — that it was not
in keeping. It was more like the end of things. The
necessity of living concealed somehow, for God knows
how long, which assailed him on his return to consciousness,
made everything that had gone before for years
appear vain and foolish, like a flattering dream come
suddenly to an end.
He climbed the crumbling slope of the rampart, and,
putting aside the bushes, looked upon the harbour. He
saw a couple of ships at anchor upon the sheet of water
reflecting the last gleams of light, and Sotillo's steamer
moored to the jetty. And behind the pale long front of
the Custom House, there appeared the extent of the
town like a grove of thick timber on the plain with a
gateway in front, and the cupolas, towers, and miradors
rising above the trees, all dark, as if surrendered already
to the night. The thought that it was no longer open
to him to ride through the streets, recognized by everyone,
great and little, as he used to do every evening
on his way to play monte in the posada of the Mexican
Domingo; or to sit in the place of honour, listening to
a town that had no existence.
For a long time he gazed on, then let the parted
bushes spring back, and, crossing over to the other side
of the fort, surveyed the vaster emptiness of the great
gulf. The Isabels stood out heavily upon the narrowing
long band of red in the west, which gleamed low between
their black shapes, and the Capataz thought of Decoud
alone there with the treasure. That man was the only
one who cared whether he fell into the hands of the
Monterists or not, the Capataz reflected bitterly. And
that merely would be an anxiety for his own sake. As
to the rest, they neither knew nor cared. What he
had heard Giorgio Viola say once was very true.
Kings, ministers, aristocrats, the rich in general, kept
the people in poverty and subjection; they kept them
as they kept dogs, to fight and hunt for their service.
The darkness of the sky had descended to the line of
the horizon, enveloping the whole gulf, the islets, and
the lover of Antonia alone with the treasure on the
Great Isabel. The Capataz, turning his back on these
things invisible and existing, sat down and took his
face between his fists. He felt the pinch of poverty
for the first time in his life. To find himself without
money after a run of bad luck at monte in the low,
smoky room of Domingo's posada, where the fraternity
of Cargadores gambled, sang, and danced of an evening;
to remain with empty pockets after a burst of public
generosity to some peyne d'oro girl or other (for whom
he did not care), had none of the humiliation of destitution.
He remained rich in glory and reputation. But
since it was no longer possible for him to parade the
streets of the town, and be hailed with respect in the
usual haunts of his leisure, this sailor felt himself destitute
indeed.
His mouth was dry. It was dry with heavy sleep and
extremely anxious thinking, as it had never been dry
before. It may be said that Nostromo tasted the dust
and ashes of the fruit of life into which he had bitten
deeply in his hunger for praise. Without removing
his head from between his fists, he tried to spit before
him — "Tfui" — and muttered a curse upon the selfishness
of all the rich people.
Since everything seemed lost in Sulaco (and that was
the feeling of his waking), the idea of leaving the country
altogether had presented itself to Nostromo. At
that thought he had seen, like the beginning of another
dream, a vision of steep and tideless shores, with dark
pines on the heights and white houses low down near
a very blue sea. He saw the quays of a big port,
where the coasting feluccas, with their lateen sails
outspread like motionless wings, enter gliding silently
between the end of long moles of squared blocks that
project angularly towards each other, hugging a cluster
of shipping to the superb bosom of a hill covered with
palaces. He remembered these sights not without
some filial emotion, though he had been habitually and
severely beaten as a boy on one of these feluccas by a
short-necked, shaven Genoese, with a deliberate and
distrustful manner, who (he firmly believed) had cheated
him out of his orphan's inheritance. But it is mercifully
decreed that the evils of the past should appear
but faintly in retrospect. Under the sense of loneliness,
abandonment, and failure, the idea of return to these
things appeared tolerable. But, what? Return? With
bare feet and head, with one check shirt and a pair of
cotton calzoneros for all worldly possessions?
The renowned Capataz, his elbows on his knees and a
fist dug into each cheek, laughed with self-derision, as
he had spat with disgust, straight out before him into
universal dissolution which beset a subjective nature at
any strong check to its ruling passion had a bitterness
approaching that of death itself. He was simple. He
was as ready to become the prey of any belief, superstition,
or desire as a child.
The facts of his situation he could appreciate like a
man with a distinct experience of the country. He saw
them clearly. He was as if sobered after a long bout
of intoxication. His fidelity had been taken advantage
of. He had persuaded the body of Cargadores to side
with the Blancos against the rest of the people; he had
had interviews with Don José; he had been made use
of by Father Corbelàn for negotiating with Hernandez;
it was known that Don Martin Decoud had admitted
him to a sort of intimacy, so that he had been
free of the offices of the Porvenir. All these things had
flattered him in the usual way. What did he care about
their politics? Nothing at all. And at the end of it all
— Nostromo here and Nostromo there — where is Nostromo?
Nostromo can do this and that — work all day
and ride all night — behold! he found himself a marked
Ribierist for any sort of vengeance Gamacho, for instance,
would choose to take, now the Montero party,
had, after all, mastered the town. The Europeans
had given up; the Caballeros had given up. Don
Martin had indeed explained it was only temporary —
that he was going to bring Barrios to the rescue. Where
was that now — with Don Martin (whose ironic manner
of talk had always made the Capataz feel vaguely uneasy)
stranded on the Great Isabel? Everybody had
given up. Even Don Carlos had given up. The
hurried removal of the treasure out to sea meant nothing
else than that. The Capataz de Cargadores, on a revulsion
of subjectiveness, exasperated almost to insanity,
been betrayed!
With the boundless shadows of the sea behind him,
out of his silence and immobility, facing the lofty shapes
of the lower peaks crowded around the white, misty
sheen of Higuerota, Nostromo laughed aloud again,
sprang abruptly to his feet, and stood still. He must
go. But where?
"There is no mistake. They keep us and encourage
us as if we were dogs born to fight and hunt for them.
The vecchio is right," he said, slowly and scathingly.
He remembered old Giorgio taking his pipe out of his
mouth to throw these words over his shoulder at the
café, full of engine-drivers and fitters from the railway
workshops. This image fixed his wavering purpose.
He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God
knows what might have happened to him! He made
a few steps, then stopped again and shook his head.
To the left and right, in front and behind him, the
scrubby bush rustled mysteriously in the darkness.
"Teresa was right, too," he added in a low tone
touched with awe. He wondered whether she was
dead in her anger with him or still alive. As if in answer
to this thought, half of remorse and half of hope, with a
soft flutter and oblique flight, a big owl, whose appalling
cry: "Ya-acabo! Ya-acabo! — it is finished; it is finished"
— announces calamity and death in the popular
belief, drifted vaguely like a large dark ball across his
path. In the downfall of all the realities that made his
force, he was affected by the superstition, and shuddered
slightly. Signora Teresa must have died, then. It
could mean nothing else. The cry of the ill-omened
bird, the first sound he was to hear on his return, was a
fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality. The
unseen powers which he had offended by refusing
their voice against him. She was dead. With admirable
and human consistency he referred everything to
himself. She had been a woman of good counsel always.
And the bereaved old Giorgio remained stunned
by his loss just as he was likely to require the advice
of his sagacity. The blow would render the dreamy
old man quite stupid for a time.
As to Captain Mitchell, Nostromo, after the manner
of trusted subordinates, considered him as a person
fitted by education perhaps to sign papers in an office
and to give orders, but otherwise of no use whatever,
and something of a fool. The necessity of winding
round his little finger, almost daily, the pompous and
testy self-importance of the old seaman had grown
irksome with use to Nostromo. At first it had given
him an inward satisfaction. But the necessity of
overcoming small obstacles becomes wearisome to a
self-confident personality as much by the certitude
of success as by the monotony of effort. He mistrusted
his superior's proneness to fussy action. That old
Englishman had no judgment, he said to himself. It
was useless to suppose that, acquainted with the true
state of the case, he would keep it to himself. He
would talk of doing impracticable things. Nostromo
feared him as one would fear saddling one's self
with some persistent worry. He had no discretion.
He would betray the treasure. And Nostromo had
made up his mind that the treasure should not be
betrayed.
The word had fixed itself tenaciously in his intelligence.
His imagination had seized upon the clear and
simple notion of betrayal to account for the dazed feeling
of enlightenment as to being done for, of having
inadvertently gone out of his existence on an issue in
A man betrayed is a man destroyed. Signora Teresa
(may God have her soul!) had been right. He had
never been taken into account. Destroyed! Her
white form sitting up bowed in bed, the falling black
hair, the wide-browed suffering face raised to him, the
anger of her denunciations appeared to him now majestic
with the awfulness of inspiration and of death.
For it was not for nothing that the evil bird had uttered
its lamentable shriek over his head. She was dead —
may God have her soul!
Sharing in the anti-priestly freethought of the masses,
his mind used the pious formula from the superficial
force of habit, but with a deep-seated sincerity. The
popular mind is incapable of scepticism; and that incapacity
delivers their helpless strength to the wiles of
swindlers and to the pitiless enthusiasms of leaders
inspired by visions of a high destiny. She was dead.
But would God consent to receive her soul? She had
died without confession or absolution, because he had
not been willing to spare her another moment of his
time. His scorn of priests as priests remained; but
after all, it was impossible to know whether what they
affirmed was not true. Power, punishment, pardon,
are simple and credible notions. The magnificent
Capataz de Cargadores, deprived of certain simple
realities, such as the admiration of women, the adulation
of men, the admired publicity of his life, was ready
to feel the burden of sacrilegious guilt descend upon his
shoulders.
Bareheaded, in a thin shirt and drawers, he felt the
lingering warmth of the fine sand under the soles of his
feet. The narrow strand gleamed far ahead in a long
curve, defining the outline of this wild side of the
harbour. He flitted along the shore like a pursued
of water lying as still as death on his right hand. He
strode with headlong haste in the silence and solitude
as though he had forgotten all prudence and caution.
But he knew that on this side of the water he ran no
risk of discovery. The only inhabitant was a lonely,
silent, apathetic Indian in charge of the palmarias,
who brought sometimes a load of cocoanuts to the town
for sale. He lived without a woman in an open shed,
with a perpetual fire of dry sticks smouldering near
an old canoe lying bottom up on the beach. He could
be easily avoided.
The barking of the dogs about that man's ranche was
the first thing that checked his speed. He had forgotten
the dogs. He swerved sharply, and plunged into the
palm-grove, as into a wilderness of columns in an immense
hall, whose dense obscurity seemed to whisper
and rustle faintly high above his head. He traversed
it, entered a ravine, and climbed to the top of a steep
ridge free of trees and bushes.
From there, open and vague in the starlight, he saw
the plain between the town and the harbour. In the
woods above some night-bird made a strange drumming
noise. Below beyond the palmaria on the beach, the
Indian's dogs continued to bark uproariously. He
wondered what had upset them so much, and, peering
down from his elevation, was surprised to detect unaccountable
movements of the ground below, as if
several oblong pieces of the plain had been in motion.
Those dark, shifting patches, alternately catching and
eluding the eye, altered their place always away from
the harbour, with a suggestion of consecutive order
and purpose. A light dawned upon him. It was a
column of infantry on a night march towards the higher
broken country at the foot of the hills. But he was
and speculation.
The plain had resumed its shadowy immobility.
He descended the ridge and found himself in the open
solitude, between the harbour and the town. Its spaciousness,
extended indefinitely by an effect of obscurity,
rendered more sensible his profound isolation.
His pace became slower. No one waited for him; no
one thought of him; no one expected or wished his return.
"Betrayed! Betrayed!" he muttered to himself.
No one cared. He might have been drowned
by this time. No one would have cared — unless, perhaps,
the children, he thought to himself. But they
were with the English signora, and not thinking of him
at all.
He wavered in his purpose of making straight for the
Casa Viola. To what end? What could he expect
there? His life seemed to fail him in all its details, even
to the scornful reproaches of Teresa. He was aware
painfully of his reluctance. Was it that remorse which
she had prophesied with, what he saw now, was her
last breath?
Meantime, he had deviated from the straight course,
inclining by a sort of instinct to the right, towards the
jetty and the harbour, the scene of his daily labours.
The great length of the Custom House loomed up all at
once like the wall of a factory. Not a soul challenged
his approach, and his curiosity became excited as he
passed cautiously towards the front by the unexpected
sight of two lighted windows.
They had the fascination of a lonely vigil kept by
some mysterious watcher up there, those two windows
shining dimly upon the harbour in the whole vast extent
of the abandoned building. The solitude could almost
be felt. A strong smell of wood smoke hung about in
eyes against the glitter of the stars. As he advanced
in the profound silence, the shrilling of innumerable
cicalas in the dry grass seemed positively deafening to
his strained ears. Slowly, step by step, he found himself
in the great hall, sombre and full of acrid smoke.
A fire built against the staircase had burnt down
impotently to a low heap of embers. The hard wood
had failed to catch; only a few steps at the bottom
smouldered, with a creeping glow of sparks defining
their charred edges. At the top he saw a streak of
light from an open door. It fell upon the vast landing,
all foggy with a slow drift of smoke. That was the
room. He climbed the stairs, then checked himself,
because he had seen within the shadow of a man cast
upon one of the walls. It was a shapeless, high-
shouldered shadow of somebody standing still, with
lowered head, out of his line of sight. The Capataz, remembering
that he was totally unarmed, stepped aside,
and, effacing himself upright in a dark corner, waited
with his eyes fixed on the door.
The whole enormous ruined barrack of a place, unfinished,
without ceilings under its lofty roof, was pervaded
by the smoke swaying to and fro in the faint cross
draughts playing in the obscurity of many lofty rooms
and barnlike passages. Once one of the swinging
shutters came against the wall with a single sharp crack,
as if pushed by an impatient hand. A piece of paper
scurried out from somewhere, rustling along the landing.
The man, whoever he was, did not darken the
lighted doorway. Twice the Capataz, advancing a
couple of steps out of his corner, craned his neck in
the hope of catching sight of what he could be at, so
quietly, in there. But every time he saw only the distorted
shadow of broad shoulders and bowed head.
from the spot, as though he were meditating — or, perhaps,
reading a paper. And not a sound issued from
the room.
Once more the Capataz stepped back. He wondered
who it was — some Monterist? But he dreaded to show
himself. To discover his presence on shore, unless
after many days, would, he believed, endanger the
treasure. With his own knowledge possessing his whole
soul, it seemed impossible that anybody in Sulaco
should fail to jump at the right surmise. After a
couple of weeks or so it would be different. Who
could tell he had not returned overland from some
port beyond the limits of the Republic? The existence
of the treasure confused his thoughts with a peculiar
sort of anxiety, as though his life had become bound
up with it. It rendered him timorous for a moment
before that enigmatic, lighted door. Devil take the
fellow! He did not want to see him. There would be
nothing to learn from his face, known or unknown.
He was a fool to waste his time there in waiting.
Less than five minutes after entering the place the
Capataz began his retreat. He got away down the
stairs with perfect success, gave one upward look over
his shoulder at the light on the landing, and ran stealthily
across the hall. But at the very moment he was turning
out of the great door, with his mind fixed upon escaping
the notice of the man upstairs, somebody he had
not heard coming briskly along the front ran full into
him. Both muttered a stifled exclamation of surprise,
and leaped back and stood still, each indistinct to the
other. Nostromo was silent. The other man spoke
first, in an amazed and deadened tone.
"Who are you?"
Already Nostromo had seemed to recognize Dr.
the space of a second. The idea of bolting without a
word presented itself to his mind. No use! An inexplicable
repugnance to pronounce the name by which
he was known kept him silent a little longer. At last
he said in a low voice —
"A Cargador."
He walked up to the other. Dr. Monygham had
received a shock. He flung his arms up and cried out
his wonder aloud, forgetting himself before the marvel
of this meeting. Nostromo angrily warned him to moderate
his voice. The Custom House was not so deserted
as it looked. There was somebody in the lighted room
above.
There is no more evanescent quality in an accomplished
fact than its wonderfulness. Solicited incessantly
by the considerations affecting its fears and
desires, the human mind turns naturally away from the
marvellous side of events. And it was in the most
natural way possible that the doctor asked this man
whom only two minutes before he believed to have
been drowned in the gulf —
"You have seen somebody up there? Have you?"
"No, I have not seen him."
"Then how do you know?"
"I was running away from his shadow when we
met."
"His shadow?"
"Yes. His shadow in the lighted room," said Nostromo,
in a contemptuous tone. Leaning back with
folded arms at the foot of the immense building, he
dropped his head, biting his lips slightly, and not looking
at the doctor. "Now," he thought to himself, "he
will begin asking me about the treasure."
But the doctor's thoughts were concerned with an
but in itself much less clear. Why had Sotillo taken
himself off with his whole command with this suddenness
and secrecy? What did this move portend?
However, it dawned upon the doctor that the man
upstairs was one of the officers left behind by the disappointed
colonel to communicate with him.
"I believe he is waiting for me," he said.
"It is possible."
"I must see. Do not go away yet, Capataz."
"Go away where?" muttered Nostromo.
Already the doctor had left him. He remained
leaning against the wall, staring at the dark water of
the harbour; the shrilling of cicalas filled his ears. An
invincible vagueness coming over his thoughts took
from them all power to determine his will.
"Capataz! Capataz!" the doctor's voice called
urgently from above.
The sense of betrayal and ruin floated upon his sombre
indifference as upon a sluggish sea of pitch. But he
stepped out from under the wall, and, looking up, saw
Dr. Monygham leaning out of a lighted window.
"Come up and see what Sotillo has done. You need
not fear the man up here."
He answered by a slight, bitter laugh. Fear a man!
The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores fear a man!
It angered him that anybody should suggest such a
thing. It angered him to be disarmed and skulking
and in danger because of the accursed treasure, which
was of so little account to the people who had tied it
round his neck. He could not shake off the worry of
it. To Nostromo the doctor represented all these
people. . . . And he had never even asked after
it. Not a word of inquiry about the most desperate
undertaking of his life.
Thinking these thoughts, Nostromo passed again
through the cavernous hall, where the smoke was considerably
thinned, and went up the stairs, not so warm
to his feet now, towards the streak of light at the top.
The doctor appeared in it for a moment, agitated and
impatient.
"Come up! Come up!"
At the moment of crossing the doorway the Capataz
experienced a shock of surprise. The man had not
moved. He saw his shadow in the same place. He
started, then stepped in with a feeling of being about to
solve a mystery.
It was very simple. For an infinitesimal fraction of
a second, against the light of two flaring and guttering
candles, through a blue, pungent, thin haze which made
his eyes smart, he saw the man standing, as he had
imagined him, with his back to the door, casting an
enormous and distorted shadow upon the wall. Swifter
than a flash of lightning followed the impression of his
constrained, toppling attitude — the shoulders projecting
forward, the head sunk low upon the breast. Then
he distinguished the arms behind his back, and wrenched
so terribly that the two clenched fists, lashed together,
had been forced up higher than the shoulder-blades.
From there his eyes traced in one instantaneous glance
the hide rope going upwards from the tied wrists over
a heavy beam and down to a staple in the wall. He
did not want to look at the rigid legs, at the feet hanging
down nervelessly, with their bare toes some six inches
above the floor, to know that the man had been given
the estrapade till he had swooned. His first impulse
was to dash forward and sever the rope at one blow.
He felt for his knife. He had no knife — not even a
knife. He stood quivering, and the doctor, perched
on the edge of the table, facing thoughtfully the cruel
without stirring —
"Tortured — and shot dead through the breast —
getting cold."
This information calmed the Capataz. One of the
candles flickering in the socket went out. "Who did
this?" he asked.
"Sotillo, I tell you. Who else? Tortured — of course.
But why shot?" The doctor looked fixedly at Nostromo,
who shrugged his shoulders slightly. "And
mark, shot suddenly, on impulse. It is evident. I
wish I had his secret."
Nostromo had advanced, and stooped slightly to
look. "I seem to have seen that face somewhere," he
muttered. "Who is he?"
The doctor turned his eyes upon him again. "I
may yet come to envying his fate. What do you
think of that, Capataz, eh?"
But Nostromo did not even hear these words. Seizing
the remaining light, he thrust it under the drooping
head. The doctor sat oblivious, with a lost gaze.
Then the heavy iron candlestick, as if struck out of
Nostromo's hand, clattered on the floor.
"Hullo!" exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a
start. He could hear the Capataz stagger against
the table and gasp. In the sudden extinction of the
light within, the dead blackness sealing the window-
frames became alive with stars to his sight.
"Of course, of course," the doctor muttered to himself
in English. "Enough to make him jump out of his skin."
Nostromo's heart seemed to force itself into his throat.
His head swam. Hirsch! The man was Hirsch!
He held on tight to the edge of the table.
"But he was hiding in the lighter," he almost shouted
His voice fell. "In the lighter, and — and —"
"And Sotillo brought him in," said the doctor. "He
is no more startling to you than you were to me. What
I want to know is how he induced some compassionate
soul to shoot him."
"So Sotillo knows —" began Nostromo, in a more
equable voice.
"Everything!" interrupted the doctor.
The Capataz was heard striking the table with his
fist. "Everything? What are you saying, there?
Everything? Know everything? It is impossible!
Everything?"
"Of course. What do you mean by impossible? I
tell you I have heard this Hirsch questioned last night,
here, in this very room. He knew your name, Decoud's
name, and all about the loading of the silver. . . .
The lighter was cut in two. He was grovelling in abject
terror before Sotillo, but he remembered that much.
What do you want more? He knew least about himself.
They found him clinging to their anchor. He
must have caught at it just as the lighter went to the
bottom."
"Went to the bottom?" repeated Nostromo, slowly.
"Sotillo believes that? Bueno!"
The doctor, a little impatiently, was unable to
imagine what else could anybody believe. Yes, Sotillo
believed that the lighter was sunk, and the Capataz
de Cargadores, together with Martin Decoud and perhaps
one or two other political fugitives, had been
drowned.
"I told you well, señor doctor," remarked Nostromo
at that point, "that Sotillo did not know everything."
"Eh? What do you mean?"
"He did not know I was not dead."
"Neither did we."
"And you did not care — none of you caballeros on
like yourselves on a fool's business that could not end
well."
"You forget, Capataz, I was not on the wharf. And I
did not think well of the business. So you need not
taunt me. I tell you what, man, we had but little leisure
to think of the dead. Death stands near behind
us all. You were gone."
"I went, indeed!" broke in Nostromo. "And for the
sake of what — tell me?"
"Ah! that is your own affair," the doctor said, roughly.
"Do not ask me."
Their flowing murmurs paused in the dark. Perched
on the edge of the table with slightly averted faces,
they felt their shoulders touch, and their eyes remained
directed towards an upright shape nearly lost in the
obscurity of the inner part of the room, that with projecting
head and shoulders, in ghastly immobility,
seemed intent on catching every word.
"Muy bien!" Nostromo muttered at last. "So be it.
Teresa was right. It is my own affair."
"Teresa is dead," remarked the doctor, absently,
while his mind followed a new line of thought suggested
by what might have been called Nostromo's return to
life. "She died, the poor woman."
"Without a priest?" the Capataz asked, anxiously.
"What a question! Who could have got a priest for
her last night?"
"May God keep her soul!" ejaculated Nostromo,
with a gloomy and hopeless fervour which had no time
to surprise Dr. Monygham, before, reverting to their
previous conversation, he continued in a sinister tone,
"Si, señor doctor. As you were saying, it is my own
affair. A very desperate affair."
"There are no two men in this part of the world that
done," the doctor said, admiringly.
And again there was silence between those two men.
They were both reflecting, and the diversity of their
natures made their thoughts born from their meeting
swing afar from each other. The doctor, impelled to
risky action by his loyalty to the Goulds, wondered
with thankfulness at the chain of accident which had
brought that man back where he would be of the greatest
use in the work of saving the San Tomé mine. The
doctor was loyal to the mine. It presented itself to
his fifty-years' old eyes in the shape of a little woman in a
soft dress with a long train, with a head attractively
overweighted by a great mass of fair hair and the delicate
preciousness of her inner worth, partaking of a
gem and a flower, revealed in every attitude of her
person. As the dangers thickened round the San Tomé
mine this illusion acquired force, permanency, and
authority. It claimed him at last! This claim, exalted
by a spiritual detachment from the usual sanctions
of hope and reward, made Dr. Monygham's thinking,
acting, individuality extremely dangerous to himself
and to others, all his scruples vanishing in the proud
feeling that his devotion was the only thing that stood
between an admirable woman and a frightful disaster.
It was a sort of intoxication which made him utterly
indifferent to Decoud's fate, but left his wits perfectly
clear for the appreciation of Decoud's political idea.
It was a good idea — and Barrios was the only instrument
of its realization. The doctor's soul, withered and
shrunk by the shame of a moral disgrace, became implacable
in the expansion of its tenderness. Nostromo's
return was providential. He did not think of him
humanely, as of a fellow-creature just escaped from the
jaws of death. The Capataz for him was the only
doctor's misanthropic mistrust of mankind (the bitterer
because based on personal failure) did not lift him
sufficiently above common weaknesses. He was under
the spell of an established reputation. Trumpeted
by Captain Mitchell, grown in repetition, and fixed
in general assent, Nostromo's faithfulness had never
been questioned by Dr. Monygham as a fact. It was
not likely to be questioned now he stood in desperate
need of it himself. Dr. Monygham was human; he
accepted the popular conception of the Capataz's
incorruptibility simply because no word or fact had
ever contradicted a mere affirmation. It seemed to be
a part of the man, like his whiskers or his teeth. It
was impossible to conceive him otherwise. The question
was whether he would consent to go on such a
dangerous and desperate errand. The doctor was observant
enough to have become aware from the first
of something peculiar in the man's temper. He was
no doubt sore about the loss of the silver.
"It will be necessary to take him into my fullest confidence,"
he said to himself, with a certain acuteness of
insight into the nature he had to deal with.
On Nostromo's side the silence had been full of black
irresolution, anger, and mistrust. He was the first to
break it, however.
"The swimming was no great matter," he said. "It
is what went before — and what comes after that —"
He did not quite finish what he meant to say, breaking
off short, as though his thought had butted against
a solid obstacle. The doctor's mind pursued its own
schemes with Machiavellian subtlety. He said as
sympathetically as he was able —
"It is unfortunate, Capataz. But no one would
think of blaming you. Very unfortunate. To begin
But it was Decoud who — however, he is dead. There
is no need to talk of him."
"No," assented Nostromo, as the doctor paused,
"there is no need to talk of dead men. But I am not
dead yet."
"You are all right. Only a man of your intrepidity
could have saved himself."
In this Dr. Monygham was sincere. He esteemed
highly the intrepidity of that man, whom he valued
but little, being disillusioned as to mankind in general,
because of the particular instance in which his own manhood
had failed. Having had to encounter single-
handed during his period of eclipse many physical
dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous
element common to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing
sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats
a man struggling with natural forces, alone, far from
the eyes of his fellows. He was eminently fit to appreciate
the mental image he made for himself of the
Capataz, after hours of tension and anxiety, precipitated
suddenly into an abyss of waters and darkness,
without earth or sky, and confronting it not only with
an undismayed mind, but with sensible success. Of
course, the man was an incomparable swimmer, that
was known, but the doctor judged that this instance
testified to a still greater intrepidity of spirit. It was
pleasing to him; he augured well from it for the success
of the arduous mission with which he meant to entrust
the Capataz so marvellously restored to usefulness.
And in a tone vaguely gratified, he observed —
"It must have been terribly dark!"
"It was the worst darkness of the Golfo," the Capataz
assented, briefly. He was mollified by what seemed a
sign of some faint interest in such things as had befallen
affected and curt nonchalance. At that moment he
felt communicative. He expected the continuance
of that interest which, whether accepted or rejected,
would have restored to him his personality — the only
thing lost in that desperate affair. But the doctor,
engrossed by a desperate adventure of his own, was
terrible in the pursuit of his idea. He let an exclamation
of regret escape him.
"I could almost wish you had shouted and shown a
light."
This unexpected utterance astounded the Capataz
by its character of cold-blooded atrocity. It was as
much as to say, "I wish you had shown yourself a
coward; I wish you had had your throat cut for your
pains." Naturally he referred it to himself, whereas it
related only to the silver, being uttered simply and with
many mental reservations. Surprise and rage rendered
him speechless, and the doctor pursued, practically
unheard by Nostromo, whose stirred blood was beating
violently in his ears.
"For I am convinced Sotillo in possession of the
silver would have turned short round and made for some
small port abroad. Economically it would have been
wasteful, but still less wasteful than having it sunk.
It was the next best thing to having it at hand in some
safe place, and using part of it to buy up Sotillo. But
I doubt whether Don Carlos would have ever made up
his mind to it. He is not fit for Costaguana, and that
is a fact, Capataz."
The Capataz had mastered the fury that was like a
tempest in his ears in time to hear the name of Don
Carlos. He seemed to have come out of it a changed
man — a man who spoke thoughtfully in a soft and even
voice.
"And would Don Carlos have been content if I had
surrendered this treasure?"
"I should not wonder if they were all of that way of
thinking now," the doctor said, grimly. "I was never
consulted. Decoud had it his own way. Their eyes
are opened by this time, I should think. I for one
know that if that silver turned up this moment miraculously
ashore I would give it to Sotillo. And, as things
stand, I would be approved."
"Turned up miraculously," repeated the Capataz
very low; then raised his voice. "That, señor, would
be a greater miracle than any saint could perform."
"I believe you, Capataz," said the doctor, drily.
He went on to develop his view of Sotillo's dangerous
influence upon the situation. And the Capataz, listening
as if in a dream, felt himself of as little account as
the indistinct, motionless shape of the dead man whom
he saw upright under the beam, with his air of listening
also, disregarded, forgotten, like a terrible example of
neglect.
"Was it for an unconsidered and foolish whim that
they came to me, then?" he interrupted suddenly.
"Had I not done enough for them to be of some account,
por Dios? Is it that the hombres finos — the gentlemen
— need not think as long as there is a man of the people
ready to risk his body and soul? Or, perhaps, we have
no souls — like dogs?"
"There was Decoud, too, with his plan," the doctor
reminded him again.
"Si! And the rich man in San Francisco who had
something to do with that treasure, too — what do I
know? No! I have heard too many things. It seems
to me that everything is permitted to the rich."
"I understand, Capataz," the doctor began.
"What Capataz?" broke in Nostromo, in a forcible
There is no Capataz. Oh, no! You will find the Capataz
no more."
"Come, this is childish!" remonstrated the doctor;
and the other calmed down suddenly.
"I have been indeed like a little child," he muttered.
And as his eyes met again the shape of the murdered
man suspended in his awful immobility, which seemed
the uncomplaining immobility of attention, he asked,
wondering gently —
"Why did Sotillo give the estrapade to this pitiful
wretch? Do you know? No torture could have been
worse than his fear. Killing I can understand. His
anguish was intolerable to behold. But why should he
torment him like this? He could tell no more."
"No; he could tell nothing more. Any sane man
would have seen that. He had told him everything.
But I tell you what it is, Capataz. Sotillo would not
believe what he was told. Not everything."
"What is it he would not believe? I cannot understand."
"I can, because I have seen the man. He refuses to
believe that the treasure is lost."
"What?" the Capataz cried out in a discomposed
tone.
"That startles you — eh?"
"Am I to understand, señor," Nostromo went on in a
deliberate and, as it were, watchful tone, "that Sotillo
thinks the treasure has been saved by some means?"
"No! no! That would be impossible," said the
doctor, with conviction; and Nostromo emitted a grunt
in the dark. "That would be impossible. He thinks
that the silver was no longer in the lighter when she was
sunk. He has convinced himself that the whole show
of getting it away to sea is a mere sham got up to deceive
Fuentes, our new Géfé Político, and himself, too. Only,
he says, he is no such fool."
"But he is devoid of sense. He is the greatest imbecile
that ever called himself a colonel in this country
of evil," growled Nostromo.
"He is no more unreasonable than many sensible
men," said the doctor. "He has convinced himself
that the treasure can be found because he desires passionately
to possess himself of it. And he is also afraid
of his officers turning upon him and going over to
Pedrito, whom he has not the courage either to fight
or trust. Do you see that, Capataz? He need fear no
desertion as long as some hope remains of that enormous
plunder turning up. I have made it my business to
keep this very hope up."
"You have?" the Capataz de Cargadores repeated
cautiously. "Well, that is wonderful. And how long
do you think you are going to keep it up?"
"As long as I can."
"What does that mean?"
"I can tell you exactly. As long as I live," the doctor
retorted in a stubborn voice. Then, in a few words,
he described the story of his arrest and the circumstances
of his release. "I was going back to that silly scoundrel
when we met," he concluded.
Nostromo had listened with profound attention.
"You have made up your mind, then, to a speedy
death," he muttered through his clenched teeth.
"Perhaps, my illustrious Capataz," the doctor said,
testily. "You are not the only one here who can look an
ugly death in the face."
"No doubt," mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be
overheard. "There may be even more than two fools
in this place. Who knows?"
"And that is my affair," said the doctor, curtly.
"As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my
affair," retorted Nostromo. "I see. Bueno! Each
of us has his reasons. But you were the last man I
conversed with before I started, and you talked to me
as if I were a fool."
Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor's
sardonic treatment of his great reputation. Decoud's
faintly ironic recognition used to make him uneasy;
but the familiarity of a man like Don Martin was
flattering, whereas the doctor was a nobody. He
could remember him a penniless outcast, slinking about
the streets of Sulaco, without a single friend or acquaintance,
till Don Carlos Gould took him into the service
of the mine.
"You may be very wise," he went on, thoughtfully,
staring into the obscurity of the room, pervaded by the
gruesome enigma of the tortured and murdered Hirsch.
"But I am not such a fool as when I started. I have
learned one thing since, and that is that you are a
dangerous man."
Dr. Monygham was too startled to do more than
exclaim —
"What is it you say?"
"If he could speak he would say the same thing,"
pursued Nostromo, with a nod of his shadowy head silhouetted
against the starlit window.
"I do not understand you," said Dr. Monygham,
faintly.
"No? Perhaps, if you had not confirmed Sotillo in
his madness, he would have been in no haste to give the
estrapade to that miserable Hirsch."
The doctor started at the suggestion. But his devotion,
absorbing all his sensibilities, had left his heart
steeled against remorse and pity. Still, for complete
contemptuously.
"Bah! You dare to tell me that, with a man like
Sotillo. I confess I did not give a thought to Hirsch.
If I had it would have been useless. Anybody can see
that the luckless wretch was doomed from the moment
he caught hold of the anchor. He was doomed, I tell
you! Just as I myself am doomed — most probably."
This is what Dr. Monygham said in answer to Nostromo's
remark, which was plausible enough to prick
his conscience. He was not a callous man. But the
necessity, the magnitude, the importance of the task
he had taken upon himself dwarfed all merely humane
considerations. He had undertaken it in a fanatical
spirit. He did not like it. To lie, to deceive, to circumvent
even the basest of mankind was odious to him.
It was odious to him by training, instinct, and tradition.
To do these things in the character of a traitor was abhorrent
to his nature and terrible to his feelings. He
had made that sacrifice in a spirit of abasement. He
had said to himself bitterly, "I am the only one fit for
that dirty work." And he believed this. He was not
subtle. His simplicity was such that, though he had
no sort of heroic idea of seeking death, the risk, deadly
enough, to which he exposed himself, had a sustaining
and comforting effect. To that spiritual state the
fate of Hirsch presented itself as part of the general
atrocity of things. He considered that episode practically.
What did it mean? Was it a sign of some dangerous
change in Sotillo's delusion? That the man
should have been killed like this was what the doctor
could not understand.
"Yes. But why shot?" he murmured to himself.
Nostromo kept very still.
9. CHAPTER NINE
DISTRACTED between doubts and hopes, dismayed by
the sound of bells pealing out the arrival of Pedrito
Montero, Sotillo had spent the morning in battling
with his thoughts; a contest to which he was unequal,
from the vacuity of his mind and the violence of his
passions. Disappointment, greed, anger, and fear
made a tumult, in the colonel's breast louder than the
din of bells in the town. Nothing he had planned had
come to pass. Neither Sulaco nor the silver of the
mine had fallen into his hands. He had performed
no military exploit to secure his position, and had obtained
no enormous booty to make off with. Pedrito
Montero, either as friend or foe, filled him with dread.
The sound of bells maddened him.
Imagining at first that he might be attacked at once,
he had made his battalion stand to arms on the shore.
He walked to and fro all the length of the room, stopping
sometimes to gnaw the finger-tips of his right hand
with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with
a sullen, repelling glance all round, he would resume
his tramping in savage aloofness. His hat, horsewhip,
sword, and revolver were lying on the table. His
officers, crowding the window giving the view of the
town gate, disputed amongst themselves the use of his
field-glass bought last year on long credit from Anzani.
It passed from hand to hand, and the possessor for the
time being was besieged by anxious inquiries.
"There is nothing; there is nothing to see!" he would
repeat impatiently.
There was nothing. And when the picket in the
bushes near the Casa Viola had been ordered to fall
back upon the main body, no stir of life appeared on the
stretch of dusty and arid land between the town and
the waters of the port. But late in the afternoon a
horseman issuing from the gate was made out riding up
fearlessly. It was an emissary from Señor Fuentes.
Being all alone he was allowed to come on. Dismounting
at the great door he greeted the silent bystanders
with cheery impudence, and begged to be taken up at
once to the "muy valliente" colonel.
Señor Fuentes, on entering upon his functions of Géfé
Político, had turned his diplomatic abilities to getting
hold of the harbour as well as of the mine. The man
he pitched upon to negotiate with Sotillo was a Notary
Public, whom the revolution had found languishing in
the common jail on a charge of forging documents.
Liberated by the mob along with the other "victims
of Blanco tyranny," he had hastened to offer his services
to the new Government.
He set out determined to display much zeal and
eloquence in trying to induce Sotillo to come into town
alone for a conference with Pedrito Montero. Nothing
was further from the colonel's intentions. The mere
fleeting idea of trusting himself into the famous Pedrito's
hands had made him feel unwell several times.
It was out of the question — it was madness. And to
put himself in open hostility was madness, too. It
would render impossible a systematic search for that
treasure, for that wealth of silver which he seemed
to feel somewhere about, to scent somewhere near.
But where? Where? Heavens! Where? Oh! why had
he allowed that doctor to go! Imbecile that he was.
But no! It was the only right course, he reflected distractedly,
while the messenger waited downstairs chatting
doctor's true interest to return with positive information.
But what if anything stopped him? A general prohibition
to leave the town, for instance! There would
be patrols!
The colonel, seizing his head in his hands, turned in
his tracks as if struck with vertigo. A flash of craven
inspiration suggested to him an expedient not unknown
to European statesmen when they wish to delay a difficult
negotiation. Booted and spurred, he scrambled
into the hammock with undignified haste. His handsome
face had turned yellow with the strain of weighty
cares. The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp;
the audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched.
The velvety, caressing glance of his fine eyes seemed
dead, and even decomposed; for these almond-shaped,
languishing orbs had become inappropriately bloodshot
with much sinister sleeplessness. He addressed the
surprised envoy of Señor Fuentes in a deadened, exhausted
voice. It came pathetically feeble from under
a pile of ponchos, which buried his elegant person right
up to the black moustaches, uncurled, pendant, in sign
of bodily prostration and mental incapacity. Fever,
fever — a heavy fever had overtaken the "muy valliente"
colonel. A wavering wildness of expression, caused by
the passing spasms of a slight colic which had declared
itself suddenly, and the rattling teeth of repressed panic,
had a genuineness which impressed the envoy. It was a
cold fit. The colonel explained that he was unable
to think, to listen, to speak. With an appearance of
superhuman effort the colonel gasped out that he was
not in a state to return a suitable reply or to execute
any of his Excellency's orders. But to-morrow!
To-morrow! Ah! to-morrow! Let his Excellency Don
Pedro be without uneasiness. The brave Esmeralda
eyes, he rolled his aching head like a half-delirious
invalid under the inquisitive stare of the envoy, who
was obliged to bend down over the hammock in order
to catch the painful and broken accents. Meantime,
Colonel Sotillo trusted that his Excellency's humanity
would permit the doctor, the English doctor, to come
out of town with his case of foreign remedies to attend
upon him. He begged anxiously his worship the
caballero now present for the grace of looking in as he
passed the Casa Gould, and informing the English
doctor, who was probably there, that his services were
immediately required by Colonel Sotillo, lying ill of
fever in the Custom House. Immediately. Most
urgently required. Awaited with extreme impatience.
A thousand thanks. He closed his eyes wearily and
would not open them again, lying perfectly still, deaf,
dumb, insensible, overcome, vanquished, crushed, annihilated
by the fell disease.
But as soon as the other had shut after him the door of
the landing, the colonel leaped out with a fling of both
feet in an avalanche of woollen coverings. His spurs
having become entangled in a perfect welter of ponchos
he nearly pitched on his head, and did not recover his
balance till the middle of the room. Concealed behind
the half-closed jalousies he listened to what went on
below.
The envoy had already mounted, and turning to the
morose officers occupying the great doorway, took off
his hat formally.
"Caballeros," he said, in a very loud tone, "allow me
to recommend you to take great care of your colonel. It
has done me much honour and gratification to have seen
you all, a fine body of men exercising the soldierly virtue
of patience in this exposed situation, where there is
of wine and feminine charms is ready to embrace you
for the brave men you are. Caballeros, I have the
honour to salute you. There will be much dancing
to-night in Sulaco. Good-bye!"
But he reined in his horse and inclined his head sideways
on seeing the old major step out, very tall and
meagre, in a straight narrow coat coming down to his
ankles as it were the casing of the regimental colours
rolled round their staff.
The intelligent old warrior, after enunciating in a
dogmatic tone the general proposition that the "world
was full of traitors," went on pronouncing deliberately a
panegyric upon Sotillo. He ascribed to him with leisurely
emphasis every virtue under heaven, summing
it all up in an absurd colloquialism current amongst
the lower class of Occidentals (especially about Esmeralda).
"And," he concluded, with a sudden rise in the
voice, "a man of many teeth — 'hombre de muchos
dientes.' Si, señor. As to us," he pursued, portentous
and impressive, "your worship is beholding the finest
body of officers in the Republic, men unequalled for
valour and sagacity, 'y hombres de muchos dientes.'"
"What? All of them?" inquired the disreputable
envoy of Señor Fuentes, with a faint, derisive smile.
"Todos. Si, señor," the major affirmed, gravely,
with conviction. "Men of many teeth."
The other wheeled his horse to face the portal resembling
the high gate of a dismal barn. He raised
himself in his stirrups, extended one arm. He was a
facetious scoundrel, entertaining for these stupid
Occidentals a feeling of great scorn natural in a native
from the central provinces. The folly of Esmeraldians
especially aroused his amused contempt. He
began an oration upon Pedro Montero, keeping a solemn
him to their notice. And when he saw every face set,
all the eyes fixed upon his lips, he began to shout a sort
of catalogue of perfections: "Generous, valorous,
affable, profound" — (he snatched off his hat enthusiastically)
— "a statesman, an invincible chief of partisans
—" He dropped his voice startlingly to a deep,
hollow note — "and a dentist."
He was off instantly at a smart walk; the rigid straddle
of his legs, the turned-out feet, the stiff back, the
rakish slant of the sombrero above the square, motionless
set of the shoulders expressing an infinite, awe-
inspiring impudence.
Upstairs, behind the jalousies, Sotillo did not move
for a long time. The audacity of the fellow appalled
him. What were his officers saying below? They were
saying nothing. Complete silence. He quaked. It was
not thus that he had imagined himself at that stage
of the expedition. He had seen himself triumphant,
appeased, the idol of the soldiers, weighing
in secret complacency the agreeable alternatives
of power and wealth open to his choice. Alas! How
different! Distracted, restless, supine, burning with
fury, or frozen with terror, he felt a dread as fathomless
as the sea creep upon him from every side. That rogue
of a doctor had to come out with his information.
That was clear. It would be of no use to him — alone.
He could do nothing with it. Malediction! The doctor
would never come out. He was probably under
arrest already, shut up together with Don Carlos. He
laughed aloud insanely. Ha! ha! ha! ha! It was
Pedrito Montero who would get the information. Ha!
ha! ha! ha! — and the silver. Ha!
All at once, in the midst of the laugh, he became
motionless and silent as if turned into stone. He too,
real truth. He would have to be made to speak. And
Sotillo, who all that time had not quite forgotten Hirsch,
felt an inexplicable reluctance at the notion of proceeding
to extremities.
He felt a reluctance — part of that unfathomable
dread that crept on all sides upon him. He remembered
reluctantly, too, the dilated eyes of the hide merchant,
his contortions, his loud sobs and protestations. It
was not compassion or even mere nervous sensibility.
The fact was that though Sotillo did never for a moment
believe his story — he could not believe it; nobody
could believe such nonsense — yet those accents of despairing
truth impressed him disagreeably. They made
him feel sick. And he suspected also that the man might
have gone mad with fear. A lunatic is a hopeless subject.
Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a pretence.
He would know how to deal with that.
He was working himself up to the right pitch of
ferocity. His fine eyes squinted slightly; he clapped
his hands; a bare-footed orderly appeared noiselessly,
a corporal, with his bayonet hanging on his thigh and a
stick in his hand.
The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable
Hirsch, pushed in by several soldiers, found him
frowning awfully in a broad armchair, hat on head,
knees wide apart, arms akimbo, masterful, imposing,
irresistible, haughty, sublime, terrible.
Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been
bundled violently into one of the smaller rooms. For
many hours he remained apparently forgotten, stretched
lifelessly on the floor. From that solitude, full of despair
and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and
blows, passive, sunk in hebetude. He listened to threats
and admonitions, and afterwards made his usual answers
his hands tied behind his back, swaying a little in front
of Sotillo, and never looking up. When he was forced
to hold up his head, by means of a bayonet-point prodding
him under the chin, his eyes had a vacant, trance-
like stare, and drops of perspiration as big as peas were
seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches of
his white face. Then they stopped suddenly.
Sotillo looked at him in silence. "Will you depart
from your obstinacy, you rogue?" he asked. Already
a rope, whose one end was fastened to Señor Hirsch's
wrists, had been thrown over a beam, and three soldiers
held the other end, waiting. He made no answer.
His heavy lower lip hung stupidly. Sotillo made a
sign. Hirsch was jerked up off his feet, and a yell of
despair and agony burst out in the room, filled the passage
of the great buildings, rent the air outside, caused
every soldier of the camp along the shore to look up
at the windows, started some of the officers in the hall
babbling excitedly, with shining eyes; others, setting
their lips, looked gloomily at the floor.
Sotillo, followed by the soldiers, had left the room.
The sentry on the landing presented arms. Hirsch went
on screaming all alone behind the half-closed jalousies
while the sunshine, reflected from the water of the harbour,
made an ever-running ripple of light high up on
the wall. He screamed with uplifted eyebrows and a
wide-open mouth — incredibly wide, black, enormous,
full of teeth — comical.
In the still burning air of the windless afternoon he
made the waves of his agony travel as far as the O. S. N.
Company's offices. Captain Mitchell on the balcony,
trying to make out what went on generally, had heard
him faintly but distinctly, and the feeble and appalling
sound lingered in his ears after he had retreated indoors
balcony several times during that afternoon.
Sotillo, irritable, moody, walked restlessly about, held
consultations with his officers, gave contradictory orders
in this shrill clamour pervading the whole empty edifice.
Sometimes there would be long and awful silences.
Several times he had entered the torture-chamber
where his sword, horsewhip, revolver, and field-glass
were lying on the table, to ask with forced calmness,
"Will you speak the truth now? No? I can wait."
But he could not afford to wait much longer. That
was just it. Every time he went in and came out with
a slam of the door, the sentry on the landing presented
arms, and got in return a black, venomous, unsteady
glance, which, in reality, saw nothing at all, being
merely the reflection of the soul within — a soul of
gloomy hatred, irresolution, avarice, and fury.
The sun had set when he went in once more. A
soldier carried in two lighted candles and slunk out,
shutting the door without noise.
"Speak, thou Jewish child of the devil! The silver!
The silver, I say! Where is it? Where have you
foreign rogues hidden it? Confess or —"
A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the
racked limbs, but the body of Señor Hirsch, enterprising
business man from Esmeralda, hung under the heavy
beam perpendicular and silent, facing the colonel
awfully. The inflow of the night air, cooled by the
snows of the Sierra, spread gradually a delicious freshness
through the close heat of the room.
"Speak — thief — scoundrel — picaro — or —"
Sotillo had seized the riding-whip, and stood with his
arm lifted up. For a word, for one little word, he felt
he would have knelt, cringed, grovelled on the floor
before the drowsy, conscious stare of those fixed eye-
drooped very still with its mouth closed askew. The
colonel ground his teeth with rage and struck. The
rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the long string
of a pendulum starting from a rest. But no swinging
motion was imparted to the body of Señor Hirsch,
the well-known hide merchant on the coast. With
a convulsive effort of the twisted arms it leaped up a few
inches, curling upon itself like a fish on the end of a line.
Señor Hirsch's head was flung back on his straining
throat; his chin trembled. For a moment the rattle
of his chattering teeth pervaded the vast, shadowy
room, where the candles made a patch of light round
the two flames burning side by side. And as Sotillo,
staying his raised hand, waited for him to speak, with
the sudden flash of a grin and a straining forward of the
wrenched shoulders, he spat violently into his face.
The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back
with a low cry of dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of
deadly venom. Quick as thought he snatched up his
revolver, and fired twice. The report and the concussion
of the shots seemed to throw him at once from
ungovernable rage into idiotic stupor. He stood with
drooping jaw and stony eyes. What had he done,
Sangre de Dios! What had he done? He was basely
appalled at his impulsive act, sealing for ever these lips
from which so much was to be extorted. What could
he say? How could he explain? Ideas of headlong
flight somewhere, anywhere, passed through his mind;
even the craven and absurd notion of hiding under
the table occurred to his cowardice. It was too late;
his officers had rushed in tumultuously, in a great clatter
of scabbards, clamouring, with astonishment and
wonder. But since they did not immediately proceed
to plunge their swords into his breast, the brazen side
of his uniform over his face he pulled himself together,
His truculent glance turned slowly here and there,
checked the noise where it fell; and the stiff body of the
late Señor Hirsch, merchant, after swaying imperceptibly,
made a half turn, and came to a rest in the midst
of awed murmurs and uneasy shuffling.
A voice remarked loudly, "Behold a man who will
never speak again." And another, from the back
row of faces, timid and pressing, cried out —
"Why did you kill him, mi colonel?"
"Because he has confessed everything," answered
Sotillo, with the hardihood of desperation. He felt
himself cornered. He brazened it out on the strength
of his reputation with very fair success. His hearers
thought him very capable of such an act. They were
disposed to believe his flattering tale. There is no
credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness,
which, in its universal extent, measures the
moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.
Ah! he had confessed everything, this fractious
Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he was no longer
wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the
senior captain — a big-headed man, with little round
eyes and monstrously fat cheeks which never moved.
The old major, tall and fantastically ragged like a scarecrow,
walked round the body of the late Señor Hirsch,
muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that
like this there was no need to guard against any future
treacheries of that scoundrel. The others stared, shifting
from foot to foot, and whispering short remarks
to each other.
Sotillo buckled on his sword and gave curt, peremptory
orders to hasten the retirement decided upon in the
afternoon. Sinister, impressive, his sombrero pulled
the door in such disorder of mind that he forgot utterly
to provide for Dr. Monygham's possible return. As
the officers trooped out after him, one or two looked
back hastily at the late Señor Hirsch, merchant from
Esmeralda, left swinging rigidly at rest, alone with the
two burning candles. In the emptiness of the room
the burly shadow of head and shoulders on the wall had
an air of life.
Below, the troops fell in silently and moved off by
companies without drum or trumpet. The old scarecrow
major commanded the rearguard; but the party
he left behind with orders to fire the Custom House
(and "burn the carcass of the treacherous Jew where it
hung") failed somehow in their haste to set the staircase
properly alight. The body of the late Señor Hirsch
dwelt alone for a time in the dismal solitude of the unfinished
building, resounding weirdly with sudden
slams and clicks of doors and latches, with rustling
scurries of torn papers, and the tremulous sighs that
at each gust of wind passed under the high roof. The
light of the two candles burning before the perpendicular
and breathless immobility of the late Señor Hirsch
threw a gleam afar over land and water, like a signal
in the night. He remained to startle Nostromo by his
presence, and to puzzle Dr. Monygham by the mystery
of his atrocious end.
"But why shot?" the doctor again asked himself,
audibly. This time he was answered by a dry laugh
from Nostromo.
"You seem much concerned at a very natural thing,
señor doctor. I wonder why? It is very likely that before
long we shall all get shot one after another, if not
by Sotillo, then by Pedrito, or Fuentes, or Gamacho.
And we may even get the estrapade, too, or worse — quien
Sotillo's head."
"It was in his head already," the doctor protested.
"I only —"
"Yes. And you only nailed it there so that the devil
himself —"
"That is precisely what I meant to do," caught up
the doctor.
"That is what you meant to do. Bueno. It is as I
say. You are a dangerous man."
Their voices, which without rising had been growing
quarrelsome, ceased suddenly. The late Señor Hirsch,
erect and shadowy against the stars, seemed to be waiting
attentive, in impartial silence.
But Dr. Monygham had no mind to quarrel with Nostromo.
At this supremely critical point of Sulaco's
fortunes it was borne upon him at last that this man
was really indispensable, more indispensable than ever
the infatuation of Captain Mitchell, his proud discoverer,
could conceive; far beyond what Decoud's
best dry raillery about "my illustrious friend, the unique
Capataz de Cargadores," had ever intended. The
fellow was unique. He was not "one in a thousand."
He was absolutely the only one. The doctor surrendered.
There was something in the genius of that
Genoese seaman which dominated the destinies of great
enterprises and of many people, the fortunes of Charles
Gould, the fate of an admirable woman. At this last
thought the doctor had to clear his throat before he
could speak.
In a completely changed tone he pointed out to the
Capataz that, to begin with, he personally ran no great
risk. As far as everybody knew he was dead. It was
an enormous advantage. He had only to keep out
of sight in the Casa Viola, where the old Garibaldino
servants had all run away. No one would think of
searching for him there, or anywhere else on earth,
for that matter.
"That would be very true," Nostromo spoke up,
bitterly, "if I had not met you."
For a time the doctor kept silent. "Do you mean to
say that you think I may give you away?" he asked in
an unsteady voice. "Why? Why should I do that?"
"What do I know? Why not? To gain a day perhaps.
It would take Sotillo a day to give me the estrapade,
and try some other things perhaps, before he puts
a bullet through my heart — as he did to that poor
wretch here. Why not?"
The doctor swallowed with difficulty. His throat
had gone dry in a moment. It was not from indignation.
The doctor, pathetically enough, believed that
he had forfeited the right to be indignant with any one —
for anything. It was simple dread. Had the fellow
heard his story by some chance? If so, there was an
end of his usefulness in that direction. The indispensable
man escaped his influence, because of that indelible
blot which made him fit for dirty work. A feeling
as of sickness came upon the doctor. He would have
given anything to know, but he dared not clear up the
point. The fanaticism of his devotion, fed on the sense
of his abasement, hardened his heart in sadness and
scorn.
"Why not, indeed?" he reëchoed, sardonically.
"Then the safe thing for you is to kill me on the spot.
I would defend myself. But you may just as well know
I am going about unarmed."
"Por Dios!" said the Capataz, passionately. "You
fine people are all alike. All dangerous. All betrayers
of the poor who are your dogs."
"You do not understand," began the doctor, slowly.
"I understand you all!" cried the other with a violent
movement, as shadowy to the doctor's eyes as the persistent
immobility of the late Señor Hirsch. "A poor
man amongst you has got to look after himself. I say
that you do not care for those that serve you. Look
at me! After all these years, suddenly, here I find
myself like one of these curs that bark outside the walls
— without a kennel or a dry bone for my teeth. (Caramba!"
But he relented with a contemptuous fairness.
"Of course," he went on, quietly, "I do not suppose
that you would hasten to give me up to Sotillo,
for example. It is not that. It is that I am nothing!
Suddenly —" He swung his arm downwards. "Nothing
to any one," he repeated.
The doctor breathed freely. "Listen, Capataz,"
he said, stretching out his arm almost affectionately
towards Nostromo's shoulder. "I am going to tell
you a very simple thing. You are safe because you
are needed. I would not give you away for any conceivable
reason, because I want you."
In the dark Nostromo bit his lip. He had heard
enough of that. He knew what that meant. No more
of that for him. But he had to look after himself now,
he thought. And he thought, too, that it would not
be prudent to part in anger from his companion. The
doctor, admitted to be a great healer, had, amongst
the populace of Sulaco, the reputation of being an evil
sort of man. It was based solidly on his personal appearance,
which was strange, and on his rough ironic
manner — proofs visible, sensible, and incontrovertible
of the doctor's malevolent disposition. And Nostromo
was of the people. So he only grunted incredulously.
"You, to speak plainly, are the only man," the doctor
pursued. "It is in your power to save this town and
men who —"
"No, señor," said Nostromo, sullenly. "It is not
in my power to get the treasure back for you to give
up to Sotillo, or Pedrito, or Gamacho. What do I
know?"
"Nobody expects the impossible," was the answer.
"You have said it yourself — nobody," muttered
Nostromo, in a gloomy, threatening tone.
But Dr. Monygham, full of hope, disregarded the
enigmatic words and the threatening tone. To their
eyes, accustomed to obscurity, the late Señor Hirsch,
growing more distinct, seemed to have come nearer.
And the doctor lowered his voice in exposing his scheme
as though afraid of being overheard.
He was taking the indispensable man into his fullest
confidence. Its implied flattery and suggestion of great
risks came with a familiar sound to the Capataz. His
mind, floating in irresolution and discontent, recognized
it with bitterness. He understood well that the doctor
was anxious to save the San Tomé mine from annihilation.
He would be nothing without it. It was his
interest. Just as it had been the interest of Señor
Decoud, of the Blancos, and of the Europeans to get
his Cargadores on their side. His thought became
arrested upon Decoud. What would happen to him?
Nostromo's prolonged silence made the doctor uneasy.
He pointed out, quite unnecessarily, that though
for the present he was safe, he could not live concealed
for ever. The choice was between accepting the mission
to Barrios, with all its dangers and difficulties, and leaving
Sulaco by stealth, ingloriously, in poverty.
"None of your friends could reward you and protect
you just now, Capataz. Not even Don Carlos himself."
"I would have none of your protection and none of
and your sense. When I return in triumph, as you
say, with Barrios, I may find you all destroyed. You
have the knife at your throat now."
It was the doctor's turn to remain silent in the contemplation
of horrible contingencies.
"Well, we would trust your courage and your sense.
And you, too, have a knife at your throat."
"Ah! And whom am I to thank for that? What
are your politics and your mines to me — your silver and
your constitutions — your Don Carlos this, and Don
José that —"
"I don't know," burst out the exasperated doctor.
"There are innocent people in danger whose little
finger is worth more than you or I and all the Ribierists
together. I don't know. You should have asked
yourself before you allowed Decoud to lead you into
all this. It was your place to think like a man; but
if you did not think then, try to act like a man now.
Did you imagine Decoud cared very much for what
would happen to you?"
"No more than you care for what will happen to me,"
muttered the other.
"No; I care for what will happen to you as little as I
care for what will happen to myself."
"And all this because you are such a devoted Ribierist?"
Nostromo said in an incredulous tone.
"All this because I am such a devoted Ribierist,"
repeated Dr. Monygham, grimly.
Again Nostromo, gazing abstractedly at the body of
the late Señor Hirsch, remained silent, thinking that the
doctor was a dangerous person in more than one sense.
It was impossible to trust him.
"Do you speak in the name of Don Carlos?" he asked
at last.
"Yes. I do," the doctor said, loudly, without hesitation.
"He must come forward now. He must," he
added in a mutter, which Nostromo did not catch.
"What did you say, señor?"
The doctor started. "I say that you must be true to
yourself, Capataz. It would be worse than folly to fail
now."
"True to myself," repeated Nostromo. "How do
you know that I would not be true to myself if I told
you to go to the devil with your propositions?"
"I do not know. Maybe you would," the doctor
said, with a roughness of tone intended to hide the
sinking of his heart and the faltering of his voice. "All
I know is, that you had better get away from here.
Some of Sotillo's men may turn up here looking for
me."
He slipped off the table, listening intently. The
Capataz, too, stood up.
"Suppose I went to Cayta, what would you do meantime?"
he asked.
"I would go to Sotillo directly you had left — in the
way I am thinking of."
"A very good way — if only that engineer-in-chief
consents. Remind him, señor, that I looked after the
old rich Englishman who pays for the railway, and that
I saved the lives of some of his people that time when a
gang of thieves came from the south to wreck one of his
pay-trains. It was I who discovered it all at the risk
of my life, by pretending to enter into their plans. Just
as you are doing with Sotillo."
"Yes. Yes, of course. But I can offer him better
arguments," the doctor said, hastily. " Leave it to me."
"Ah, yes! True. I am nothing."
"Not at all. You are everything."
They moved a few paces towards the door. Behind
of a disregarded man.
"That will be all right. I know what to say to the
engineer," pursued the doctor, in a low tone. "My
difficulty will be with Sotillo."
And Dr. Monygham stopped short in the doorway as
if intimidated by the difficulty. He had made the sacrifice
of his life. He considered this a fitting opportunity.
But he did not want to throw his life away too soon.
In his quality of betrayer of Don Carlos' confidence,
he would have ultimately to indicate the hiding-place
of the treasure. That would be the end of his deception,
and the end of himself as well, at the hands of the infuriated
colonel. He wanted to delay him to the very last
moment; and he had been racking his brains to invent
some place of concealment at once plausible and difficult
of access.
He imparted his trouble to Nostromo, and concluded
—
"Do you know what, Capataz? I think that when
the time comes and some information must be given,
I shall indicate the Great Isabel. That is the best
place I can think of. What is the matter?"
A low exclamation had escaped Nostromo. The
doctor waited, surprised, and after a moment of profound
silence, heard a thick voice stammer out, "Utter
folly," and stop with a gasp.
"Why folly?"
"Ah! You do not see it," began Nostromo, scathingly,
gathering scorn as he went on. "Three men in
half an hour would see that no ground had been disturbed
anywhere on that island. Do you think that
such a treasure can be buried without leaving traces
of the work — eh! señor doctor? Why! you would not
gain half a day more before having your throat cut by
invention! Ah! you are all alike, you fine men
of intelligence. All you are fit for is to betray men of
the people into undertaking deadly risks for objects
that you are not even sure about. If it comes off you
get the benefit. If not, then it does not matter. He
is only a dog. Ah! Madre de Dios, I would —"
He shook his fists above his head.
The doctor was overwhelmed at first by this fierce,
hissing vehemence.
"Well! It seems to me on your own showing that the
men of the people are no mean fools, too," he said, sullenly.
"No, but come. You are so clever. Have you
a better place?"
Nostromo had calmed down as quickly as he had
flared up.
"I am clever enough for that," he said, quietly, almost
with indifference. "You want to tell him of a
hiding-place big enough to take days in ransacking — a
place where a treasure of silver ingots can be buried
without leaving a sign on the surface."
"And close at hand," the doctor put in.
"Just so, señor. Tell him it is sunk."
"This has the merit of being the truth," the doctor
said, contemptuously. "He will not believe it."
"You tell him that it is sunk where he may hope to
lay his hands on it, and he will believe you quick enough.
Tell him it has been sunk in the harbour in order to be
recovered afterwards by divers. Tell him you found out
that I had orders from Don Carlos Gould to lower the
cases quietly overboard somewhere in a line between
the end of the jetty and the entrance. The depth is
not too great there. He has no divers, but he has a ship,
boats, ropes, chains, sailors — of a sort. Let him fish
for the silver. Let him set his fools to drag backwards
till his eyes drop out of his head."
"Really, this is an admirable idea," muttered the
doctor.
"Si. You tell him that, and see whether he will not
believe you! He will spend days in rage and torment —
and still he will believe. He will have no thought for
anything else. He will not give up till he is driven off —
why, he may even forget to kill you. He will neither
eat nor sleep. He —"
"The very thing! The very thing!" the doctor
repeated in an excited whisper. "Capataz, I begin
to believe that you are a great genius in your
way."
Nostromo had paused; then began again in a changed
tone, sombre, speaking to himself as though he had
forgotten the doctor's existence.
"There is something in a treasure that fastens upon a
man's mind. He will pray and blaspheme and still
persevere, and will curse the day he ever heard of it,
and will let his last hour come upon him unawares, still
believing that he missed it only by a foot. He will see
it every time he closes his eyes. He will never forget
it till he is dead — and even then — Doctor, did you
ever hear of the miserable gringos on Azuera, that cannot
die? Ha! ha! Sailors like myself. There is no
getting away from a treasure that once fastens upon
your mind."
"You are a devil of a man, Capataz. It is the most
plausible thing."
Nostromo pressed his arm.
"It will be worse for him than thirst at sea or hunger
in a town full of people. Do you know what that is?
He shall suffer greater torments than he inflicted upon
that terrified wretch who had no invention. None!
tale for very little pain."
He laughed wildly and turned in the doorway towards
the body of the late Señor Hirsch, an opaque long blotch
in the semi-transparent obscurity of the room between
the two tall parallelograms of the windows full of stars.
"You man of fear!" he cried. "You shall be avenged
by me — Nostromo. Out of my way, doctor! Stand
aside — or, by the suffering soul of a woman dead without
confession, I will strangle you with my two hands."
He bounded downwards into the black, smoky hall.
With a grunt of astonishment, Dr. Monygham threw
himself recklessly into the pursuit. At the bottom of
the charred stairs he had a fall, pitching forward on his
face with a force that would have stunned a spirit less
intent upon a task of love and devotion. He was up
in a moment, jarred, shaken, with a queer impression
of the terrestrial globe having been flung at his head in
the dark. But it wanted more than that to stop Dr.
Monygham's body, possessed by the exaltation of self-
sacrifice; a reasonable exaltation, determined not to lose
whatever advantage chance put into its way. He ran
with headlong, tottering swiftness, his arms going like a
windmill in his effort to keep his balance on his crippled
feet. He lost his hat; the tails of his open gaberdine
flew behind him. He had no mind to lose sight of the
indispensable man. But it was a long time, and a long
way from the Custom House, before he managed to
seize his arm from behind, roughly, out of breath.
"Stop! Are you mad?"
Already Nostromo was walking slowly, his head
dropping, as if checked in his pace by the weariness
of irresolution.
"What is that to you? Ah! I forgot you want me
for something. Always. Siempre Nostromo."
"What do you mean by talking of strangling me?"
panted the doctor.
"What do I mean? I mean that the king of the
devils himself has sent you out of this town of cowards
and talkers to meet me to-night of all the nights of my
life."
Under the starry sky the Albergo d'ltalia Una
emerged, black and low, breaking the dark level of the
plain. Nostromo stopped altogether.
"The priests say he is a tempter, do they not?" he
added, through his clenched teeth.
"My good man, you drivel. The devil has nothing
to do with this. Neither has the town, which you may
call by what name you please. But Don Carlos Gould
is neither a coward nor an empty talker. You will
admit that?" He waited. "Well?"
"Could I see Don Carlos?"
"Great heavens! No! Why? What for?" exclaimed
the doctor in agitation. "I tell you it is madness. I
will not let you go into the town for anything."
"I must."
"You must not!" hissed the doctor, fiercely, almost
beside himself with the fear of the man doing away with
his usefulness for an imbecile whim of some sort. "I
tell you you shall not. I would rather —"
He stopped at loss for words, feeling fagged out,
powerless, holding on to Nostromo's sleeve, absolutely
for support after his run.
"I am betrayed!" muttered the Capataz to himself;
and the doctor, who overheard the last word, made an
effort to speak calmly.
"That is exactly what would happen to you. You
would be betrayed."
He thought with a sickening dread that the man was
so well known that he could not escape recognition.
spies, no doubt. And even the very servants of the
casa were not to be trusted. "Reflect, Capataz," he
said, impressively. . . . "What are you laughing at?"
"I am laughing to think that if somebody that did not
approve of my presence in town, for instance — you
understand, señor doctor — if somebody were to give
me up to Pedrito, it would not be beyond my power to
make friends even with him. It is true. What do you
think of that?"
"You are a man of infinite resource, Capataz," said
Dr. Monygham, dismally. "I recognize that. But
the town is full of talk about you; and those few Cargadores
that are not in hiding with the railway people
have been shouting 'Viva Montero' on the Plaza all
day."
"My poor Cargadores!" muttered Nostromo. "Betrayed!
Betrayed!"
"I understand that on the wharf you were pretty free
in laying about you with a stick amongst your poor
Cargadores," the doctor said in a grim tone, which
showed that he was recovering from his exertions.
"Make no mistake. Pedrito is furious at Señor
Ribiera's rescue, and at having lost the pleasure of
shooting Decoud. Already there are rumours in the
town of the treasure having been spirited away. To
have missed that does not please Pedrito either; but
let me tell you that if you had all that silver in your
hand for ransom it would not save you."
Turning swiftly, and catching the doctor by the shoulders,
Nostromo thrust his face close to his.
"Maladetta! You follow me speaking of the treasure.
You have sworn my ruin. You were the last man who
looked upon me before I went out with it. And Sidoni
the engine-driver says you have an evil eye."
"He ought to know. I saved his broken leg for him
last year," the doctor said, stoically. He felt on his
shoulders the weight of these hands famed amongst the
populace for snapping thick ropes and bending horse-
shoes. "And to you I offer the best means of saving
yourself — let me go — and of retrieving your great reputation.
You boasted of making the Capataz de Cargadores
famous from one end of America to the other
about this wretched silver. But I bring you a better
opportunity — let me go, hombre!"
Nostromo released him abruptly, and the doctor
feared that the indispensable man would run off again.
But he did not. He walked on slowly. The doctor
hobbled by his side till, within a stone's throw from the
Casa Viola, Nostromo stopped again.
Silent in inhospitable darkness, the Casa Viola seemed
to have changed its nature; his home appeared to repel
him with an air of hopeless and inimical mystery. The
doctor said —
"You will be safe there. Go in, Capataz."
"How can I go in?" Nostromo seemed to ask himself
in a low, inward tone. "She cannot unsay what she
said, and I cannot undo what I have done."
"I tell you it is all right. Viola is all alone in there.
I looked in as I came out of the town. You will be
perfectly safe in that house till you leave it to make your
name famous on the Campo. I am going now to arrange
for your departure with the engineer-in-chief,
and I shall bring you news here long before daybreak."
Dr. Monygham, disregarding, or perhaps fearing to
penetrate the meaning of Nostromo's silence, clapped him
lightly on the shoulder, and starting off with his smart,
lame walk, vanished utterly at the third or fourth hop
in the direction of the railway track. Arrested between
the two wooden posts for people to fasten their horses to,
solidly in the ground. At the end of half an hour he
lifted his head to the deep baying of the dogs at the railway
yards, which had burst out suddenly, tumultuous
and deadened as if coming from under the plain. That
lame doctor with the evil eye had got there pretty fast.
Step by step Nostromo approached the Albergo
d'Italia Una, which he had never known so lightless, so
silent, before. The door, all black in the pale wall,
stood open as he had left it twenty-four hours before,
when he had nothing to hide from the world. He remained
before it, irresolute, like a fugitive, like a man
betrayed. Poverty, misery, starvation! Where had
he heard these words? The anger of a dying woman
had prophesied that fate for his folly. It looked as if
it would come true very quickly. And the leperos
would laugh — she had said. Yes, they would laugh
if they knew that the Capataz de Cargadores was at
the mercy of the mad doctor whom they could remember,
only a few years ago, buying cooked food from a
stall on the Plaza for a copper coin — like one of themselves.
At that moment the notion of seeking Captain Mitchell
passed through his mind. He glanced in the direction
of the jetty and saw a small gleam of light in the
O.S.N. Company's building. The thought of lighted
windows was not attractive. Two lighted windows
had decoyed him into the empty Custom House, only
to fall into the clutches of that doctor. No! He would
not go near lighted windows again on that night.
Captain Mitchell was there. And what could he be
told? That doctor would worm it all out of him as if
he were a child.
On the threshold he called out "Giorgio!" in an
undertone. Nobody answered. He stepped in. "Olà!
darkness his head swam with the illusion that the obscurity
of the kitchen was as vast as the Placid Gulf,
and that the floor dipped forward like a sinking lighter.
"Olà! viejo!" he repeated, falteringly, swaying where he
stood. His hand, extended to steady himself, fell
upon the table. Moving a step forward, he shifted
it, and felt a box of matches under his fingers. He
fancied he had heard a quiet sigh. He listened for a
moment, holding his breath; then, with trembling hands,
tried to strike a light.
The tiny piece of wood flamed up quite blindingly
at the end of his fingers, raised above his blinking eyes.
A concentrated glare fell upon the leonine white head
of old Giorgio against the black fire-place — showed him
leaning forward in a chair in staring immobility, surrounded,
overhung, by great masses of shadow, his
legs crossed, his cheek in his hand, an empty pipe in
the corner of his mouth. It seemed hours before he attempted
to turn his face; at the very moment the match
went out, and he disappeared, overwhelmed by the
shadows, as if the walls and roof of the desolate house
had collapsed upon his white head in ghostly silence.
Nostromo heard him stir and utter dispassionately
the words —
"It may have been a vision."
"No," he said, softly. "It is no vision, old man."
A strong chest voice asked in the dark —
"Is that you I hear, Giovann' Battista?"
"Si, viejo. Steady. Not so loud."
After his release by Sotillo, Giorgio Viola, attended to
the very door by the good-natured engineer-in-chief,
had reëntered his house, which he had been made to
leave almost at the very moment of his wife's death.
All was still. The lamp above was burning. He nearly
from him would ever again evoke the answer of her
voice, made him drop heavily into the chair with a
loud groan, wrung out by the pain as of a keen blade
piercing his breast.
The rest of the night he made no sound. The darkness
turned to grey, and on the colourless, clear, glassy
dawn the jagged sierra stood out flat and opaque, as if
cut out of paper.
The enthusiastic and severe soul of Giorgio Viola,
sailor, champion of oppressed humanity, enemy of kings,
and, by the grace of Mrs. Gould, hotel-keeper of the
Sulaco harbour, had descended into the open abyss of
desolation amongst the shattered vestiges of his past.
He remembered his wooing between two campaigns,
a single short week in the season of gathering olives.
Nothing approached the grave passion of that time but
the deep, passionate sense of his bereavement. He discovered
all the extent of his dependence upon the silenced
voice of that woman. It was her voice that he
missed. Abstracted, busy, lost in inward contemplation,
he seldom looked at his wife in those later years.
The thought of his girls was a matter of concern, not
of consolation. It was her voice that he would miss.
And he remembered the other child — the little boy who
died at sea. Ah! a man would have been something to
lean upon. And, alas! even Gian' Battista — he of whom,
and of Linda, his wife had spoken to him so anxiously
before she dropped off into her last sleep on earth, he on
whom she had called aloud to save the children, just
before she died — even he was dead!
And the old man, bent forward, his head in his hand,
sat through the day in immobility and solitude. He
never heard the brazen roar of the bells in town. When
it ceased the earthenware filter in the corner of the
great porous jar below.
Towards sunset he got up, and with slow movements
disappeared up the narrow staircase. His bulk filled it;
and the rubbing of his shoulders made a small noise as of
a mouse running behind the plaster of a wall. While
he remained up there the house was as dumb as a grave.
Then, with the same faint rubbing noise, he descended.
He had to catch at the chairs and tables to regain his
seat. He seized his pipe off the high mantel of the
fire-place — but made no attempt to reach the tobacco —
thrust it empty into the corner of his mouth, and sat
down again in the same staring pose. The sun of Pedrito's
entry into Sulaco, the last sun of Señor Hirsch's
life, the first of Decoud's solitude on the Great Isabel,
passed over the Albergo d'ltalia Una on its way to the
west. The tinkling drip, drip of the filter had ceased,
the lamp upstairs had burnt itself out, and the night
beset Giorgio Viola and his dead wife with its obscurity
and silence that seemed invincible till the
Capataz de Cargadores, returning from the dead, put
them to flight with the splutter and flare of a match.
"Si, viejo. It is me. Wait."
Nostromo, after barricading the door and closing the
shutters carefully, groped upon a shelf for a candle, and
lit it.
Old Viola had risen. He followed with his eyes in the
dark the sounds made by Nostromo. The light disclosed
him standing without support, as if the mere
presence of that man who was loyal, brave, incorruptible,
who was all his son would have been, were enough
for the support of his decaying strength.
He extended his hand grasping the briar-wood pipe,
whose bowl was charred on the edge, and knitted his
bushy eyebrows heavily at the light.
"You have returned," he said, with shaky dignity.
"Ah! Very well! I —"
He broke off. Nostromo, leaning back against the
table, his arms folded on his breast, nodded at him
slightly.
"You thought I was drowned! No! The best dog
of the rich, of the aristocrats, of these fine men who
can only talk and betray the people, is not dead yet."
The Garibaldino, motionless, seemed to drink in the
sound of the well-known voice. His head moved
slightly once as if in sign of approval; but Nostromo saw
clearly that the old man understood nothing of the
words. There was no one to understand; no one he
could take into the confidence of Decoud's fate, of his
own, into the secret of the silver. That doctor was an
enemy of the people — a tempter. . . .
Old Giorgio's heavy frame shook from head to foot
with the effort to overcome his emotion at the sight of
that man, who had shared the intimacies of his domestic
life as though he had been a grown-up son.
"She believed yon would return," he said, solemnly.
Nostromo raised his head.
"She was a wise woman. How could I fail to come
back —?"
He finished the thought mentally: "Since she has
prophesied for me an end of poverty, misery, and starvation."
These words of Teresa's anger, from the circumstances
in which they had been uttered, like the
cry of a soul prevented from making its peace with
God, stirred the obscure superstition of personal
fortune from which even the greatest genius amongst
men of adventure and action is seldom free. They
reigned over Nostromo's mind with the force of a potent
malediction. And what a curse it was that which her
words had laid upon him! He had been orphaned so
he called mother. Henceforth there would be no enterprise
in which he would not fail. The spell was working
already. Death itself would elude him now. . . .
He said violently —
"Come, viejo! Get me something to eat. I am
hungry! Sangre de Dios! The emptiness of my belly
makes me lightheaded."
With his chin dropped again upon his bare breast
above his folded arms, barefooted, watching from under
a gloomy brow the movements of old Viola foraging
amongst the cupboards, he seemed as if indeed fallen
under a curse — a ruined and sinister Capataz.
Old Viola walked out of a dark corner, and, without a
word, emptied upon the table out of his hollowed palms
a few dry crusts of bread and half a raw onion.
While the Capataz began to devour this beggar's
fare, taking up with stony-eyed voracity piece after
piece lying by his side, the Garibaldino went off, and
squatting down in another corner filled an earthenware
mug with red wine out of a wicker-covered demijohn.
With a familiar gesture, as when serving customers in
the café, he had thrust his pipe between his teeth to
have his hands free.
The Capataz drank greedily. A slight flush deepened
the bronze of his cheek. Before him, Viola, with a
turn of his white and massive head towards the staircase,
took his empty pipe out of his mouth, and pronounced
slowly —
"After the shot was fired down here, which killed her
as surely as if the bullet had struck her oppressed heart,
she called upon you to save the children. Upon you,
Gian' Battista."
The Capataz looked up.
"Did she do that, Padrone? To save the children!
Hey! old man of the people. Thy benefactress.
. . ."
"I am old," muttered Giorgio Viola. "An English-
woman was allowed to give a bed to Garibaldi lying
wounded in prison. The greatest man that ever lived.
A man of the people, too — a sailor. I may let another
keep a roof over my head. Si . . . I am old. I
may let her. Life lasts too long sometimes."
"And she herself may not have a roof over her head
before many days are out, unless I . . . What do
you say? Am I to keep a roof over her head? Am I
to try — and save all the Blancos together with her?"
"You shall do it," said old Viola in a strong voice.
"You shall do it as my son would have. . . ."
"Thy son, viejo! .. .. There never has been a
man like thy son. Ha, I must try. . . . But what
if it were only a part of the curse to lure me on? . . .
And so she called upon me to save — and then —?"
"She spoke no more." The heroic follower of Gari-@@@
baldi, at the thought of the eternal stillness and silence
fallen upon the shrouded form stretched out on the bed
upstairs, averted his face and raised his hand to his
furrowed brow. "She was dead before I could seize
her hands," he stammered out, pitifully.
Before the wide eyes of the Capataz, staring at the
doorway of the dark staircase, floated the shape of the
Great Isabel, like a strange ship in distress, freighted
with enormous wealth and the solitary life of a man.
It was impossible for him to do anything. He could
only hold his tongue, since there was no one to trust.
The treasure would be lost, probably — unless Decoud.
. . . And his thought came abruptly to an end.
He perceived that he could not imagine in the least
what Decoud was likely to do.
Old Viola had not stirred. And the motionless Capataz
dropped his long, soft eyelashes, which gave to the
upper part of his fierce, black-whiskered face a touch of
feminine ingenuousness. The silence had lasted for a
long time.
"God rest her soul!" he murmured, gloomily.
10. CHAPTER TEN
THE next day was quiet in the morning, except for the
faint sound of firing to the northward, in the direction of
Los Hatos. Captain Mitchell had listened to it from
his balcony anxiously. The phrase, "In my delicate
position as the only consular agent then in the port,
everything, sir, everything was a just cause for anxiety,"
had its place in the more or less stereotyped relation of
the "historical events" which for the next few years was
at the service of distinguished strangers visiting Sulaco.
The mention of the dignity and neutrality of the flag,
so difficult to preserve in his position, "right in the thick
of these events between the lawlessness of that piratical
villain Sotillo and the more regularly established
but scarcely less atrocious tyranny of his Excellency
Don Pedro Montero," came next in order. Captain
Mitchell was not the man to enlarge upon mere dangers
much. But he insisted that it was a memorable day.
On that day, towards dusk, he had seen "that poor
fellow of mine — Nostromo. The sailor whom I discovered,
and, I may say, made, sir. The man of the famous
ride to Cayta, sir. An historical event, sir!"
Regarded by the O. S. N. Company as an old and
faithful servant, Captain Mitchell was allowed to attain
the term of his usefulness in ease and dignity at the head
of the enormously extended service. The augmentation
of the establishment, with its crowds of clerks, an
office in town, the old office in the harbour, the division
into departments — passenger, cargo, lighterage, and
so on — secured a greater leisure for his last years in the
Liked by the natives for his good nature and
the formality of his manner, self-important and simple,
known for years as a "friend of our country," he felt
himself a personality of mark in the town. Getting
up early for a turn in the market-place while the gigantic
shadow of Higuerota was still lying upon the fruit
and flower stalls piled up with masses of gorgeous colouring,
attending easily to current affairs, welcomed in
houses, greeted by ladies on the Alameda, with his
entry into all the clubs and a footing in the Casa Gould,
he led his privileged old bachelor, man-about-town
existence with great comfort and solemnity. But on
mail-boat days he was down at the Harbour Office at
an early hour, with his own gig, manned by a smart
crew in white and blue, ready to dash off and board
the ship directly she showed her bows between the
harbour heads.
It would be into the Harbour Office that he would
lead some privileged passenger he had brought off in his
own boat, and invite him to take a seat for a moment
while he signed a few papers. And Captain Mitchell,
seating himself at his desk, would keep on talking hospitably
—
"There isn't much time if you are to see everything
in a day. We shall be off in a moment. We'll have
lunch at the Amarilla Club — though I belong also to
the Anglo-American — mining engineers and business
men, don't you know — and to the Mirliflores as well,
a new club — English, French, Italians, all sorts — lively
young fellows mostly, who wanted to pay a compliment
to an old resident, sir. But we'll lunch at the Amarilla.
Interest you, I fancy. Real thing of the country. Men
of the first families. The President of the Occidental
Republic himself belongs to it, sir. Fine old bishop
of statuary, I believe. Cavaliere Parrochetti — you
know Parrochetti, the famous Italian sculptor — was
working here for two years — thought very highly of
our old bishop. . . . There! I am very much at
your service now."
Proud of his experience, penetrated by the sense of
historical importance of men, events, and buildings, he
talked pompously in jerky periods, with slight sweeps
of his short, thick arm, letting nothing "escape the
attention" of his privileged captive.
"Lot of building going on, as you observe. Before
the Separation it was a plain of burnt grass smothered
in clouds of dust, with an ox-cart track to our Jetty.
Nothing more. This is the Harbour Gate. Picturesque,
is it not? Formerly the town stopped short there.
We enter now the Calle de la Constitucion. Observe
the old Spanish houses. Great dignity. Eh? I suppose
it's just as it was in the time of the Viceroys, except
for the pavement. Wood blocks now. Sulaco
National Bank there, with the sentry boxes each side
of the gate. Casa Avellanos this side, with all the
ground-floor windows shuttered. A wonderful woman
lives there — Miss Avellanos — the beautiful Antonia.
A character, sir! A historical woman! Opposite
— Casa Gould. Noble gateway. Yes, the Goulds
of the original Gould Concession, that all the world
knows of now. I hold seventeen of the thousand-dollar
shares in the Consolidated San Tomé mines. All the
poor savings of my lifetime, sir, and it will be enough
to keep me in comfort to the end of my days at home
when I retire. I got in on the ground-floor, you see.
Don Carlos, great friend of mine. Seventeen shares —
quite a little fortune to leave behind one, too. I have
a niece — married a parson — most worthy man, incumbent
was never married myself. A sailor should exercise
self-denial. Standing under that very gateway, sir,
with some young engineer-fellows, ready to defend
that house where we had received so much kindness
and hospitality, I saw the first and last charge of
Pedrito's horsemen upon Barrios's troops, who had just
taken the Harbour Gate. They could not stand the
new rifles brought out by that poor Decoud. It was a
murderous fire. In a moment the street became
blocked with a mass of dead men and horses. They
never came on again."
And all day Captain Mitchell would talk like this
to his more or less willing victim —
"The Plaza. I call it magnificent. Twice the area
of Trafalgar Square."
From the very centre, in the blazing sunshine, he
pointed out the buildings —
"The Intendencia, now President's Palace — Cabildo,
where the Lower Chamber of Parliament sits. You
notice the new houses on that side of the Plaza? Compañia
Anzani, a great general store, like those coöperative
things at home. Old Anzani was murdered by the
National Guards in front of his safe. It was even for
that specific crime that the deputy Gamacho, commanding
the Nationals, a bloodthirsty and savage
brute, was executed publicly by garrotte upon the sentence
of a court-martial ordered by Barrios. Anzani's
nephews converted the business into a company.
All that side of the Plaza had been burnt; used to be
colonnaded before. A terrible fire, by the light of which
I saw the last of the fighting, the llaneros flying, the
Nationals throwing their arms down, and the miners of
San Tomé, all Indians from the Sierra, rolling by like a
torrent to the sound of pipes and cymbals, green flags
hats, on foot, on mules, on donkeys. Such a sight, sir,
will never be seen again. The miners, sir, had marched
upon the town, Don Pépé leading on his black horse,
and their very wives in the rear on burros, screaming
encouragement, sir, and beating tambourines. I remember
one of these women had a green parrot seated
on her shoulder, as calm as a bird of stone. They had
just saved their Señor Administrador; for Barrios,
though he ordered the assault at once, at night, too,
would have been too late. Pedrito Montero had Don
Carlos led out to be shot — like his uncle many years ago
— and then, as Barrios said afterwards, 'Sulaco would
not have been worth fighting for.' Sulaco without the
Concession was nothing; and there were tons and tons
of dynamite distributed all over the mountain with
detonators arranged, and an old priest, Father Romàn,
standing by to annihilate the San Tomé mine at the
first news of failure. Don Carlos had made up his
mind not to leave it behind, and he had the right
men to see to it, too."
Thus Captain Mitchell would talk in the middle of
the Plaza, holding over his head a white umbrella with a
green lining; but inside the cathedral, in the dim light,
with a faint scent of incense floating in the cool atmosphere,
and here and there a kneeling female figure,
black or all white, with a veiled head, his lowered voice
became solemn and impressive.
"Here," he would say, pointing to a niche in the wall
of the dusky aisle, "you see the bust of Don José Avellanos,
'Patriot and Statesman,' as the inscription says,
'Minister to Courts of England and Spain, etc., etc.,
died in the woods of Los Hatos worn out with his life-
long struggle for Right and Justice at the dawn of the
New Era.' A fair likeness. Parrochetti's work from
Gould. I was well acquainted with that distinguished
Spanish-American of the old school, a true Hidalgo,
beloved by everybody who knew him. The marble
medallion in the wall, in the antique style, representing
a veiled woman seated with her hands clasped loosely
over her knees, commemorates that unfortunate young
gentleman who sailed out with Nostromo on that fatal
night, sir. See, 'To the memory of Martin Decoud,
his betrothed Antonia Avellanos.' Frank, simple,
noble. There you have that lady, sir, as she is. An
exceptional woman. Those who thought she would
give way to despair were mistaken, sir. She has been
blamed in many quarters for not having taken the veil.
It was expected of her. But Doña Antonia is not the
stuff they make nuns of. Bishop Corbelàn, her uncle,
lives with her in the Corbelàn town house. He is a
fierce sort of priest, everlastingly worrying the Government
about the old Church lands and convents. I believe
they think a lot of him in Rome. Now let us go
to the Amarilla Club, just across the Plaza, to get some
lunch."
Directly outside the cathedral on the very top of the
noble flight of steps, his voice rose pompously, his arm
found again its sweeping gesture.
"Porvenir, over there on that first floor, above those
French plate-glass shop-fronts; our biggest daily. Conservative,
or, rather, I should say, Parliamentary. We
have the Parliamentary party here of which the actual
Chief of the State, Don Juste Lopez, is the head; a very
sagacious man, I think. A first-rate intellect, sir. The
Democratic party in opposition rests mostly, I am sorry
to say, on these socialistic Italians, sir, with their secret
societies, camorras, and such-like. There are lots of
Italians settled here on the railway lands, dismissed
There are whole villages of Italians on the Campo.
And the natives, too, are being drawn into these ways
. . . American bar? Yes. And over there you can
see another. New Yorkers mostly frequent that
one — Here we are at the Amarilla. Observe the
bishop at the foot of the stairs to the right as we go in."
And the lunch would begin and terminate its lavish
and leisurely course at a little table in the gallery, Captain
Mitchell nodding, bowing, getting up to speak for a
moment to different officials in black clothes, merchants
in jackets, officers in uniform, middle-aged caballeros
from the Campo — sallow, little, nervous men, and fat,
placid, swarthy men, and Europeans or North Americans
of superior standing, whose faces looked very white
amongst the majority of dark complexions and black,
glistening eyes.
Captain Mitchell would lie back in the chair, casting
around looks of satisfaction, and tender over the table a
case full of thick cigars.
"Try a weed with your coffee. Local tobacco. The
black coffee you get at the Amarilla, sir, you don't meet
anywhere in the world. We get the bean from a famous
cafeteria in the foot-hills, whose owner sends three sacks
every year as a present to his fellow members in remembrance
of the fight against Gamacho's Nationals, carried
on from these very windows by the caballeros. He was
in town at the time, and took part, sir, to the bitter end.
It arrives on three mules — not in the common way, by
rail; no fear! — right into the patio, escorted by mounted
peons, in charge of the Mayoral of his estate, who walks
upstairs, booted and spurred, and delivers it to our
committee formally with the words, 'For the sake of
those fallen on the third of May.' We call it Tres de
Mayo coffee. Taste it."
Captain Mitchell, with an expression as though making
ready to hear a sermon in a church, would lift the
tiny cup to his lips. And the nectar would be sipped
to the bottom during a restful silence in a cloud of cigar
smoke.
"Look at this man in black just going out," he would
begin, leaning forward hastily. "This is the famous
Hernandez, Minister of War. The Times' special
correspondent, who wrote that striking series of letters
calling the Occidental Republic the 'Treasure House of
the World,' gave a whole article to him and the force
he has organized — the renowned Carabineers of the
Campo."
Captain Mitchell's guest, staring curiously, would see
a figure in a long-tailed black coat walking gravely,
with downcast eyelids in a long, composed face, a
brow furrowed horizontally, a pointed head, whose
grey hair, thin at the top, combed down carefully on
all sides and rolled at the ends, fell low on the neck
and shoulders. This, then, was the famous bandit of
whom Europe had heard with interest. He put on a
high-crowned sombrero with a wide flat brim; a rosary
of wooden beads was twisted about his right wrist.
And Captain Mitchell would proceed —
"The protector of the Sulaco refugees from the rage of
Pedrito. As general of cavalry with Barrios he distinguished
himself at the storming of Tonoro, where Señor
Fuentes was killed with the last remnant of the Monterists.
He is the friend and humble servant of Bishop
Corbelàn. Hears three Masses every day. I bet
you he will step into the cathedral to say a prayer or two
on his way home to his siesta."
He took several puffs at his cigar in silence; then, in
his most important manner, pronounced:
"The Spanish race, sir, is prolific of remarkable characters
now into the billiard-room, which is cool, for a quiet
chat. There's never anybody there till after five. I
could tell you episodes of the Separationist revolution
that would astonish you. When the great heat's over,
we'll take a turn on the Alameda."
The programme went on relentless, like a law of
Nature. The turn on the Alameda was taken with
slow steps and stately remarks.
"All the great world of Sulaco here, sir." Captain
Mitchell bowed right and left with no end of formality;
then with animation, "Doña Emilia, Mrs. Gould's
carriage. Look. Always white mules. The kindest,
most gracious woman the sun ever shone upon. A
great position, sir. A great position. First lady in
Sulaco — far before the President's wife. And worthy
of it." He took off his hat; then, with a studied
change of tone, added, negligently, that the man in
black by her side, with a high white collar and a scarred,
snarly face, was Dr. Monygham, Inspector of State
Hospitals, chief medical officer of the Consolidated San
Tomé mines. "A familiar of the house. Everlastingly
there. No wonder. The Goulds made him.
Very clever man and all that, but I never liked him.
Nobody does. I can recollect him limping about the
streets in a check shirt and native sandals with a water-
melon under his arm — all he would get to eat for the
day. A big-wig now, sir, and as nasty as ever. However
. . . There's no doubt he played his part
fairly well at the time. He saved us all from the deadly
incubus of Sotillo, where a more particular man might
have failed —"
His arm went up.
"The equestrian statue that used to stand on the
pedestal over there has been removed. It was an
"There is some talk of replacing it by a marble shaft
commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at
the four corners, and bronze Justice holding an even
balance, all gilt, on the top. Cavaliere Parrochetti
was asked to make a design, which you can see framed
under glass in the Municipal Sala. Names are to be
engraved all round the base. Well! They could do
no better than begin with the name of Nostromo. He
has done for Separation as much as anybody else, and,"
added Captain Mitchell, "has got less than many others
by it — when it comes to that." He dropped on to a
stone seat under a tree, and tapped invitingly at the
place by his side. "He carried to Barrios the letters
from Sulaco which decided the General to abandon
Cayta for a time, and come back to our help here by sea.
The transports were still in harbour fortunately. Sir,
I did not even know that my Capataz de Cargadores
was alive. I had no idea. It was Dr. Monygham
who came upon him, by chance, in the Custom House,
evacuated an hour or two before by the wretched Sotillo.
I was never told; never given a hint, nothing — as if
I were unworthy of confidence. Monygham arranged
it all. He went to the railway yards, and got admission
to the engineer-in-chief, who, for the sake of the Goulds
as much as for anything else, consented to let an engine
make a dash down the line, one hundred and eighty
miles, with Nostromo aboard. It was the only way to
get him off. In the Construction Camp at the railhead,
he obtained a horse, arms, some clothing, and
started alone on that marvellous ride — four hundred
miles in six days, through a disturbed country, ending
by the feat of passing through the Monterist lines outside
Cayta. The history of that ride, sir, would make a
most exciting book. He carried all our lives in his
not enough. Of course, he was perfectly fearless and
incorruptible. But a man was wanted that would
know how to succeed. He was that man, sir. On the
fifth of May, being practically a prisoner in the Harbour
Office of my Company, I suddenly heard the whistle
of an engine in the railway yards, a quarter of a
mile away. I could not believe my ears. I made one
jump on to the balcony, and beheld a locomotive under
a great head of steam run out of the yard gates, screeching
like mad, enveloped in a white cloud, and then, just
abreast of old Viola's inn, check almost to a standstill.
I made out, sir, a man — I couldn't tell who — dash out
of the Albergo d'ltalia Una, climb into the cab, and
then, sir, that engine seemed positively to leap clear of
the house, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye.
As you blow a candle out, sir! There was a first-rate
driver on the foot-plate, sir, I can tell you. They were
fired heavily upon by the National Guards in Rincon
and one other place. Fortunately the line had not
been torn up. In four hours they reached the Construction
Camp. Nostromo had his start. . . . The
rest you know. You've got only to look round you.
There are people on this Alameda that ride in their
carriages, or even are alive at all to-day, because years
ago I engaged a runaway Italian sailor for a foreman of
our wharf simply on the strength of his looks. And
that's a fact. You can't get over it, sir. On the seventeenth
of May, just twelve days after I saw the man
from the Casa Viola get on the engine, and wondered
what it meant, Barrios's transports were entering this
harbour, and the 'Treasure House of the World,' as
The Times man calls Sulaco in his book, was saved intact
for civilization — for a great future, sir. Pedrito,
with Hernandez on the west, and the San Tomé miners
landing. He had been sending messages to Sotillo
for a week to join him. Had Sotillo done so there
would have been massacres and proscription that would
have left no man or woman of position alive. But
that's where Dr. Monygham comes in. Sotillo, blind
and deaf to everything, stuck on board his steamer
watching the dragging for silver, which he believed to
be sunk at the bottom of the harbour. They say that
for the last three days he was out of his mind raving
and foaming with disappointment at getting nothing,
flying about the deck, and yelling curses at the boats
with the drags, ordering them in, and then suddenly
stamping his foot and crying out, 'And yet it is there!
I see it! I feel it!'
"He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he
had on board) at the end of the after-derrick, when the
first of Barrios's transports, one of our own ships at
that, steamed right in, and ranging close alongside
opened a small-arm fire without as much preliminaries
as a hail. It was the completest surprise in the world,
sir. They were too astounded at first to bolt below.
Men were falling right and left like ninepins. It's a
miracle that Monygham, standing on the after-hatch
with the rope already round his neck, escaped being
riddled through and through like a sieve. He told me
since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept on
yelling with all the strength of his lungs: 'Hoist a white
flag! Hoist a white flag!' Suddenly an old major
of the Esmeralda regiment, standing by, unsheathed
his sword with a shriek: 'Die, perjured traitor!' and ran
Sotillo clean through the body, just before he fell himself
shot through the head."
Captain Mitchell stopped for a while.
"Begad, sir! I could spin you a yarn for hours.
for you to pass through Sulaco and not see the lights of
the San Tomé mine, a whole mountain ablaze like a
lighted palace above the dark Campo. It's a fashionable
drive. . . . But let me tell you one little
anecdote, sir; just to show you. A fortnight or more
later, when Barrios, declared Generalissimo, was gone
in pursuit of Pedrito away south, when the Provisional
Junta, with Don Juste Lopez at its head, had promulgated
the new Constitution, and our Don Carlos
Gould was packing up his trunks bound on a mission to
San Francisco and Washington (the United States, sir,
were the first great power to recognize the Occidental
Republic) — a fortnight later, I say, when we were
beginning to feel that our heads were safe on our
shoulders, if I may express myself so, a prominent man,
a large shipper by our line, came to see me on business,
and, says he, the first thing: 'I say, Captain Mitchell,
is that fellow' (meaning Nostromo) 'still the Capataz of
your Cargadores or not?' 'What's the matter?' says I.
'Because, if he is, then I don't mind; I send and receive
a good lot of cargo by your ships; but I have observed
him several days loafing about the wharf, and just now
he stopped me as cool as you please, with a request for
a cigar. Now, you know, my cigars are rather special,
and I can't get them so easily as all that.' 'I hope
you stretched a point,' I said, very gently. 'Why, yes.
But it's a confounded nuisance. The fellow's everlastingly
cadging for smokes.' Sir, I turned my eyes
away, and then asked, 'Weren't you one of the prisoners
in the Cabildo?' 'You know very well I was, and in
chains, too,' says he. 'And under a fine of fifteen
thousand dollars?' He coloured, sir, because it got
about that he fainted from fright when they came to
arrest him, and then behaved before Fuentes in a manner
there by the hair of his head, smile at his cringing.
'Yes,' he says, in a sort of shy way. 'Why?' 'Oh,
nothing. You stood to lose a tidy bit,' says I, 'even
if you saved your life. . . . But what can I do
for you?' He never even saw the point. Not he.
And that's how the world wags, sir."
He rose a little stiffly, and the drive to Rincon would
be taken with only one philosophical remark, uttered
by the merciless cicerone, with his eyes fixed upon the
lights of San Tomé, that seemed suspended in the dark
night between earth and heaven.
"A great power, this, for good and evil, sir. A great
power."
And the dinner of the Mirliflores would be eaten,
excellent as to cooking, and leaving upon the traveller's
mind an impression that there were in Sulaco many
pleasant, able young men with salaries apparently
too large for their discretion, and amongst them a few,
mostly Anglo-Saxon, skilled in the art of, as the saying
is, "taking a rise" out of his kind host.
With a rapid, jingling drive to the harbour in a two-
wheeled machine (which Captain Mitchell called a curricle)
behind a fleet and scraggy mule beaten all the
time by an obviously Neapolitan driver, the cycle
would be nearly closed before the lighted-up offices of
the O. S. N. Company, remaining open so late because
of the steamer. Nearly — but not quite.
"Ten o'clock. Your ship won't be ready to leave till
half-past twelve, if by then. Come in for a brandy-
and-soda and one more cigar."
And in the superintendent's private room the privileged
passenger by the Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned
and as it were annihilated mentally by a sudden surfeit
of sights, sounds, names, facts, and complicated information
tired child to a fairy tale; would hear a voice, familiar
and surprising in its pompousness, tell him, as if from
another world, how there was "in this very harbour"
an international naval demonstration, which put an
end to the Costaguana-Sulaco War. How the United
States cruiser, Powhattan, was the first to salute the
Occidental flag — white, with a wreath of green laurel
in the middle encircling a yellow amarilla flower. Would
hear how General Montero, in less than a month after
proclaiming himself Emperor of Costaguana, was shot
dead (during a solemn and public distribution of orders
and crosses) by a young artillery officer, the brother of
his then mistress.
"The abominable Pedrito, sir, fled the country," the
voice would say. And it would continue: "A captain
of one of our ships told me lately that he recognized
Pedrito the Guerrillero, arrayed in purple slippers and a
velvet smoking-cap with a gold tassel, keeping a disorderly
house in one of the southern ports."
"Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?"
would wonder the distinguished bird of passage
hovering on the confines of waking and sleep with resolutely
open eyes and a faint but amiable curl upon his
lips, from between which stuck out the eighteenth or
twentieth cigar of that memorable day.
"He appeared to me in this very room like a haunting
ghost, sir" — Captain Mitchell was talking of his Nostromo
with true warmth of feeling and a touch of wistful
pride. "You may imagine, sir, what an effect it
produced on me. He had come round by sea with
Barrios, of course. And the first thing he told me after
I became fit to hear him was that he had picked up
the lighter's boat floating in the gulf! He seemed quite
overcome by the circumstance. And a remarkable
it was then sixteen days since the sinking of the silver.
At once I could see he was another man. He stared
at the wall, sir, as if there had been a spider or something
running about there. The loss of the silver
preyed on his mind. The first thing he asked me about
was whether Doña Antonia had heard yet of Decoud's
death. His voice trembled. I had to tell him that
Doña Antonia, as a matter of fact, was not back
in town yet. Poor girl! And just as I was making
ready to ask him a thousand questions, with a sudden,
'Pardon me, señor,' he cleared out of the office altogether.
I did not see him again for three days. I was
terribly busy, you know. It seems that he wandered
about in and out of the town, and on two nights turned
up to sleep in the baracoons of the railway people.
He seemed absolutely indifferent to what went on. I
asked him on the wharf, 'When are you going to take
hold again, Nostromo? There will be plenty of work
for the Cargadores presently.'
"'Señor,' says he, looking at me in a slow, inquisitive
manner, 'would it surprise you to hear that I am too
tired to work just yet? And what work could I do now?
How can I look my Cargadores in the face after losing a
lighter?'
"I begged him not to think any more about the silver,
and he smiled. A smile that went to my heart, sir. 'It
was no mistake,' I told him. 'It was a fatality. A
thing that could not be helped.' 'Si, si!" he said, and
turned away. I thought it best to leave him alone for a
bit to get over it. Sir, it took him years really, to get
over it. I was present at his interview with Don Carlos.
I must say that Gould is rather a cold man. He
had to keep a tight hand on his feelings, dealing with
thieves and rascals, in constant danger of ruin for himself
second nature. They looked at each other for a long
time. Don Carlos asked what he could do for him, in
his quiet, reserved way.
"'My name is known from one end of Sulaco to the
other,' he said, as quiet as the other. 'What more can
you do for me?' That was all that passed on that occasion.
Later, however, there was a very fine coasting
schooner for sale, and Mrs. Gould and I put our heads
together to get her bought and presented to him.
It was done, but he paid all the price back within the
next three years. Business was booming all along this
seaboard, sir. Moreover, that man always succeeded
in everything except in saving the silver. Poor Doña
Antonia, fresh from her terrible experiences in the
woods of Los Hatos, had an interview with him, too.
Wanted to hear about Decoud: what they said, what
they did, what they thought up to the last on that fatal
night. Mrs. Gould told me his manner was perfect
for quietness and sympathy. Miss Avellanos burst
into tears only when he told her how Decoud had happened
to say that his plan would be a glorious success.
. . . And there's no doubt, sir, that it is. It is a
success."
The cycle was about to close at last. And while
the privileged passenger, shivering with the pleasant
anticipations of his berth, forgot to ask himself,
"What on earth Decoud's plan could be?" Captain
Mitchell was saying, "Sorry we must part so soon.
Your intelligent interest made this a pleasant day to
me. I shall see you now on board. You had a
glimpse of the 'Treasure House of the World.' A
very good name that." And the coxswain's voice at
the door, announcing that the gig was ready, closed the
cycle.
Nostromo had, indeed, found the lighter's boat,
which he had left on the Great Isabel with Decoud,
floating empty far out in the gulf. He was then on
the bridge of the first of Barrios's transports, and within
an hour's steaming from Sulaco. Barrios, always delighted
with a feat of daring and a good judge of courage,
had taken a great liking to the Capataz. During
the passage round the coast the General kept Nostromo
near his person, addressing him frequently in that
abrupt and boisterous manner which was the sign of his
high favour.
Nostromo's eyes were the first to catch, broad on the
bow, the tiny, elusive dark speck, which, alone with the
forms of the Three Isabels right ahead, appeared on
the flat, shimmering emptiness of the gulf. There are
times when no fact should be neglected as insignificant;
a small boat so far from the land might have had some
meaning worth finding out. At a nod of consent from
Barrios the transport swept out of her course, passing
near enough to ascertain that no one manned the little
cockle-shell. It was merely a common small boat gone
adrift with her oars in her. But Nostromo, to whose
mind Decoud had been insistently present for days, had
long before recognized with excitement the dinghy of
the lighter.
There could be no question of stopping to pick up that
thing. Every minute of time was momentous with the
lives and futures of a whole town. The head of the leading
ship, with the General on board, fell off to her
course. Behind her, the fleet of transports, scattered
haphazard over a mile or so in the offing, like the finish
of an ocean race, pressed on, all black and smoking on
the western sky.
"Mi General," Nostromo's voice rang out loud, but
quiet, from behind a group of officers, "I should like to
belongs to my Company."
"And, por Dios," guffawed Barrios, in a noisy, good-
humoured voice, "you belong to me. I am going to
make you a captain of cavalry directly we get within
sight of a horse again."
"I can swim far better than I can ride, mi General,"
cried Nostromo, pushing through to the rail with a set
stare in his eyes. "Let me —"
"Let you? What a conceited fellow that is," bantered
the General, jovially, without even looking at him.
"Let him go! Ha! ha! ha! He wants me to admit
that we cannot take Sulaco without him! Ha! ha!
ha! Would you like to swim off to her, my son?"
A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the
other stopped his guffaw. Nostromo had leaped overboard;
and his black head bobbed up far away already
from the ship. The General muttered an appalled
"Cielo! Sinner that I am!" in a thunderstruck tone.
One anxious glance was enough to show him that Nostromo
was swimming with perfect ease; and then he
thundered terribly, "No! no! We shall not stop to
pick up this impertinent fellow. Let him drown —
that mad Capataz."
Nothing short of main force would have kept Nostromo
from leaping overboard. That empty boat,
coming out to meet him mysteriously, as if rowed by
an invisible spectre, exercised the fascination of some
sign, of some warning, seemed to answer in a startling
and enigmatic way the persistent thought of a treasure
and of a man's fate. He would have leaped if there
had been death in that half-mile of water. It was as
smooth as a pond, and for some reason sharks are unknown
in the Placid Gulf, though on the other side of
the Punta Mala the coastline swarms with them.
The Capataz seized hold of the stern and blew with
force. A queer, faint feeling had come over him while
he swam. He had got rid of his boots and coat in the
water. He hung on for a time, regaining his breath. In
the distance the transports, more in a bunch now, held
on straight for Sulaco, with their air of friendly contest,
of nautical sport, of a regatta; and the united smoke of
their funnels drove like a thin, sulphurous fogbank
right over his head. It was his daring, his courage, his
act that had set these ships in motion upon the sea,
hurrying on to save the lives and fortunes of the Blancos,
the taskmasters of the people; to save the San
Tomé mine; to save the children.
With a vigorous and skilful effort he clambered over
the stern. The very boat! No doubt of it; no doubt
whatever. It was the dinghy of the lighter No. 3 —
the dinghy left with Martin Decoud on the Great Isabel
so that he should have some means to help himself if
nothing could be done for him from the shore. And
here she had come out to meet him empty and inexplicable.
What had become of Decoud? The Capataz
made a minute examination. He looked for some
scratch, for some mark, for some sign. All he discovered
was a brown stain on the gunwale abreast of the
thwart. He bent his face over it and rubbed hard
with his finger. Then he sat down in the stern sheets,
passive, with his knees close together and legs aslant.
Streaming from head to foot, with his hair and whiskers
hanging lank and dripping and a lustreless stare
fixed upon the bottom boards, the Capataz of the Sulaco
Cargadores resembled a drowned corpse come up
from the bottom to idle away the sunset hour in a small
boat. The excitement of his adventurous ride, the
excitement of the return in time, of achievement, of
success, all this excitement centred round the associated
man who knew of its existence, had departed from him.
To the very last moment he had been cudgelling his
brains as to how he could manage to visit the Great
Isabel without loss of time and undetected. For the
idea of secrecy had come to be connected with the
treasure so closely that even to Barrios himself he had
refrained from mentioning the existence of Decoud
and of the silver on the island. The letters he carried
to the General, however, made brief mention of the
loss of the lighter, as having its bearing upon the situation
in Sulaco. In the circumstances, the one-
eyed tiger-slayer, scenting battle from afar, had not
wasted his time in making inquiries from the messenger.
In fact, Barrios, talking with Nostromo, assumed that
both Don Martin Decoud and the ingots of San Tomé
were lost together, and Nostromo, not questioned directly,
had kept silent, under the influence of some indefinable
form of resentment and distrust. Let Don
Martin speak of everything with his own lips — was
what he told himself mentally.
And now, with the means of gaining the Great Isabel
thrown thus in his way at the earliest possible moment,
his excitement had departed, as when the soul takes
flight leaving the body inert upon an earth it knows no
more. Nostromo did not seem to know the gulf.
For a long time even his eyelids did not flutter once
upon the glazed emptiness of his stare. Then slowly,
without a limb having stirred, without a twitch of
muscle or quiver of an eyelash, an expression, a living
expression came upon the still features, deep thought
crept into the empty stare — as if an outcast soul, a
quiet, brooding soul, finding that untenanted body in
its way, had come in stealthily to take possession.
The Capataz frowned: and in the immense stillness
trails of light upon the water, the knitting of that brow
had the emphasis of a powerful gesture. Nothing
else budged for a long time; then the Capataz shook
his head and again surrendered himself to the universal
repose of all visible things. Suddenly he seized the
oars, and with one movement made the dinghy spin
round, head-on to the Great Isabel. But before he
began to pull he bent once more over the brown stain
on the gunwale.
"I know that thing," he muttered to himself, with a
sagacious jerk of the head. "That's blood."
His stroke was long, vigorous, and steady. Now and
then he looked over his shoulder at the Great Isabel,
presenting its low cliff to his anxious gaze like an impenetrable
face. At last the stem touched the strand.
He flung rather than dragged the boat up the little
beach. At once, turning his back upon the sunset, he
plunged with long strides into the ravine, making the
water of the stream spurt and fly upwards at every
step, as if spurning its shallow, clear, murmuring spirit
with his feet. He wanted to save every moment of daylight.
A mass of earth, grass, and smashed bushes had fallen
down very naturally from above upon the cavity under
the leaning tree. Decoud had attended to the concealment
of the silver as instructed, using the spade with
some intelligence. But Nostromo's half-smile of approval
changed into a scornful curl of the lip by the
sight of the spade itself flung there in full view, as if in
utter carelessness or sudden panic, giving away the
whole thing. Ah! They were all alike in their folly,
these hombres finos that invented laws and governments
and barren tasks for the people.
The Capataz picked up the spade, and with the feel of
horse-hide boxes of treasure came upon him suddenly.
In a very few strokes he uncovered the edges and corners
of several; then, clearing away more earth, became
aware that one of them had been slashed with a knife.
He exclaimed at that discovery in a stifled voice, and
dropped on his knees with a look of irrational apprehension
over one shoulder, then over the other. The
stiff hide had closed, and he hesitated before he pushed
his hand through the long slit and felt the ingots inside.
There they were. One, two, three. Yes, four gone.
Taken away. Four ingots. But who? Decoud? Nobody
else. And why? For what purpose? For what
cursed fancy? Let him explain. Four ingots carried
off in a boat, and — blood!
In the face of the open gulf, the sun, clear, unclouded,
unaltered, plunged into the waters in a grave and untroubled
mystery of self-immolation consummated far
from all mortal eyes, with an infinite majesty of silence
and peace. Four ingots short! — and blood!
The Capataz got up slowly.
"He might simply have cut his hand," he muttered.
"But, then —"
He sat down on the soft earth, unresisting, as if he
had been chained to the treasure, his drawn-up legs
clasped in his hands with an air of hopeless submission,
like a slave set on guard. Once only he lifted his head
smartly: the rattle of hot musketry fire had reached his
ears, like pouring from on high a stream of dry peas
upon a drum. After listening for a while, he said,
half aloud —
"He will never come back to explain."
And he lowered his head again.
"Impossible!" he muttered, gloomily.
The sounds of firing died out. The loom of a great
played on the clouds at the head of the gulf, seemed to
touch with a ruddy and sinister reflection the forms of
the Three Isabels. He never saw it, though he raised
his head.
"But, then, I cannot know," he pronounced, distinctly,
and remained silent and staring for hours.
He could not know. Nobody was to know. As
might have been supposed, the end of Don Martin
Decoud never became a subject of speculation for any
one except Nostromo. Had the truth of the facts
been known, there would always have remained the
question. Why? Whereas the version of his death
at the sinking of the lighter had no uncertainty of
motive. The young apostle of Separation had died
striving for his idea by an ever-lamented accident.
But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy
known but to few on this earth, and whom only the
simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanero
of the boulevards had died from solitude and
want of faith in himself and others.
For some good and valid reasons beyond mere human
comprehension, the sea-birds of the gulf shun the Isabels.
The rocky head of Azuera is their haunt, whose
stony levels and chasms resound with their wild and
tumultuous clamour as if they were for ever quarrelling
over the legendary treasure.
At the end of his first day on the Great Isabel,
Decoud, turning in his lair of coarse grass, under the
shade of a tree, said to himself —
"I have not seen as much as one single bird all day."
And he had not heard a sound, either, all day but that
one now of his own muttering voice. It had been a
day of absolute silence — the first he had known in his
life. And he had not slept a wink. Not for all these
not for all that last night of danger and hard physical
toil upon the gulf, had he been able to close his eyes
for a moment. And yet from sunrise to sunset he had
been lying prone on the ground, either on his back or on
his face.
He stretched himself, and with slow steps descended
into the gully to spend the night by the side of the silver.
If Nostromo returned — as he might have done at
any moment — it was there that he would look first;
and night would, of course, be the proper time for an attempt
to communicate. He remembered with profound
indifference that he had not eaten anything yet since
he had been left alone on the island.
He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day
broke he ate something with the same indifference.
The brilliant "Son Decoud," the spoiled darling of the
family, the lover of Antonia and journalist of Sulaco,
was not fit to grapple with himself single-handed.
Solitude from mere outward condition of existence becomes
very swiftly a state of soul in which the affectations
of irony and scepticism have no place. It takes
possession of the mind, and drives forth the thought
into the exile of utter unbelief. After three days of
waiting for the sight of some human face, Decoud
caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own individuality.
It had merged into the world of cloud
and water, of natural forces and forms of nature. In
our activity alone do we find the sustaining illusion
of an independent existence as against the whole
scheme of things of which we form a helpless part.
Decoud lost all belief in the reality of his action past
and to come. On the fifth day an immense melancholy
descended upon him palpably. He resolved
not to give himself up to these people in Sulaco, who
obscene spectres. He saw himself struggling feebly in
their midst, and Antonia, gigantic and lovely like an
allegorical statue, looking on with scornful eyes at his
weakness.
Not a living being, not a speck of distant sail, appeared
within the range of his vision; and, as if to escape
from this solitude, he absorbed himself in his
melancholy. The vague consciousness of a misdirected
life given up to impulses whose memory left a bitter
taste in his mouth was the first moral sentiment of his
manhood. But at the same time he felt no remorse.
What should he regret? He had recognized no other
virtue than intelligence, and had erected passions into
duties. Both his intelligence and his passion were
swallowed up easily in this great unbroken solitude of
waiting without faith. Sleeplessness had robbed his
will of all energy, for he had not slept seven hours in
the seven days. His sadness was the sadness of a sceptical
mind. He beheld the universe as a succession of
incomprehensible images. Nostromo was dead. Everything
had failed ignominiously. He no longer dared to
think of Antonia. She had not survived. But if she
survived he could not face her. And all exertion
seemed senseless.
On the tenth day, after a night spent without even
dozing off once (it had occurred to him that Antonia
could not possibly have ever loved a being so impalpable
as himself), the solitude appeared like a great
void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord
to which he hung suspended by both hands, without
fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion
whatever. Only towards the evening, in the comparative
relief of coolness, he began to wish that this cord
would snap. He imagined it snapping with a report as
the end of him. He contemplated that eventuality
with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleepless nights
in which the silence, remaining unbroken in the
shape of a cord to which he hung with both hands,
vibrated with senseless phrases, always the same but
utterly incomprehensible, about Nostromo, Antonia,
Barrios, and proclamations mingled into an ironical
and senseless buzzing. In the daytime he could look
at the silence like a still cord stretched to breaking-
point, with his life, his vain life, suspended to it like a
weight.
"I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I
fell," he asked himself.
The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got
up, gaunt, dirty, white-faced, and looked at it with his
red-rimmed eyes. His limbs obeyed him slowly, as if
full of lead, yet without tremor; and the effect of that
physical condition gave to his movements an unhesitating,
deliberate dignity. He acted as if accomplishing
some sort of rite. He descended into the gully;
for the fascination of all that silver, with its potential
power, survived alone outside of himself. He picked
up the belt with the revolver, that was lying there, and
buckled it round his waist. The cord of silence could
never snap on the island. It must let him fall and
sink into the sea, he thought. And sink! He was looking
at the loose earth covering the treasure. In the sea!
His aspect was that of a somnambulist. He lowered
himself down on his knees slowly and went on grubbing
with his fingers with industrious patience till he uncovered
one of the boxes. Without a pause, as if doing
some work done many times before, he slit it open and
took four ingots, which he put in his pockets. He
covered up the exposed box again and step by step
with a swish.
It was on the third day of his solitude that he had
dragged the dinghy near the water with an idea of rowing
away somewhere, but had desisted partly at the
whisper of lingering hope that Nostromo would return,
partly from conviction of utter uselessness of all effort.
Now she wanted only a slight shove to be set afloat.
He had eaten a little every day after the first, and
had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up the
oars slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great
Isabel, that stood behind him warm with sunshine,
as if with the heat of life, bathed in a rich light from
head to foot as if in a radiance of hope and joy. He
pulled straight towards the setting sun. When the gulf
had grown dark, he ceased rowing and flung the sculls
in. The hollow clatter they made in falling was the
loudest noise he had ever heard in his life. It was a
revelation. It seemed to recall him from far away,
Actually the thought, "Perhaps I may sleep to-night,"
passed through his mind. But he did not believe it.
He believed in nothing; and he remained sitting on the
thwart.
The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam
into his unwinking eyes. After a clear daybreak the
sun appeared splendidly above the peaks of the range.
The great gulf burst into a glitter all around the boat;
and in this glory of merciless solitude the silence appeared
again before him, stretched taut like a dark,
thin string.
His eyes looked at it while, without haste, he shifted
his seat from the thwart to the gunwale. They looked
at it fixedly, while his hand, feeling about his waist,
unbuttoned the flap of the leather case, drew the revolver,
cocked it, brought it forward pointing at his
sent the still-smoking weapon hurtling through the air.
His eyes looked at it while he fell forward and hung
with his breast on the gunwale and the fingers of his
right hand hooked under the thwart. They looked —
"It is done," he stammered out, in a sudden flow of
blood. His last thought was: "I wonder how that
Capataz died." The stiffness of the fingers relaxed,
and the lover of Antonia Avellanos rolled overboard
without having heard the cord of silence snap in the
solitude of the Placid Gulf, whose glittering surface
remained untroubled by the fall of his body.
A victim of the disillusioned weariness which is the
retribution meted out to intellectual audacity, the brilliant
Don Martin Decoud, weighted by the bars of San
Tomé silver, disappeared without a trace, swallowed
up in the immense indifference of things. His sleepless,
crouching figure was gone from the side of the
San Tomé silver; and for a time the spirits of good and
evil that hover near every concealed treasure of the
earth might have thought that this one had been forgotten
by all mankind. Then, after a few days, another
form appeared striding away from the setting
sun to sit motionless and awake in the narrow black
gully all through the night, in nearly the same pose, in
the same place in which had sat that other sleepless man
who had gone away for ever so quietly in a small boat,
about the time of sunset. And the spirits of good and
evil that hover about a forbidden treasure understood
well that the silver of San Tomé was provided now with
a faithful and lifelong slave.
The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of
the disenchanted vanity which is the reward of audacious
action, sat in the weary pose of a hunted outcast
through a night of sleeplessness as tormenting as any
affair of his life. And he wondered how Decoud had
died. But he knew the part he had played himself.
First a woman, then a man, abandoned both in their
last extremity, for the sake of this accursed treasure.
It was paid for by a soul lost and by a vanished life.
The blank stillness of awe was succeeded by a gust of
immense pride. There was no one in the world but
Gian' Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, the
incorruptible and faithful Nostromo, to pay such a
price.
He had made up his mind that nothing should be
allowed now to rob him of his bargain. Nothing. Decoud
had died. But how? That he was dead he had
not a shadow of a doubt. But four ingots? . . .
What for? Did he mean to come for more — some
other time?
The treasure was putting forth its latent power.
It troubled the clear mind of the man who had paid
the price. He was sure that Decoud was dead. The
island seemed full of that whisper. Dead! Gone!
And he caught himself listening for the swish of bushes
and the splash of the footfalls in the bed of the brook.
Dead! The talker, the novio of Doña Antonia!
"Ha!" he murmured, with his head on his knees,
under the livid clouded dawn breaking over the liberated
Sulaco and upon the gulf as gray as ashes. "It
is to her that he will fly. To her that he will fly!"
And four ingots! Did he take them in revenge, to
cast a spell, like the angry woman who had prophesied
remorse and failure, and yet had laid upon him the
task of saving the children? Well, he had saved the
children. He had defeated the spell of poverty and
starvation. He had done it all alone — or perhaps
helped by the devil. Who cared? He had done it,
San Tomé mine, which appeared to him hateful and
immense, lording it by its vast wealth over the valour,
the toil, the fidelity of the poor, over war and peace,
over the labours of the town, the sea, and the Campo.
The sun lit up the sky behind the peaks of the Cordillera.
The Capataz looked down for a time upon the
fall of loose earth, stones, and smashed bushes, concealing
the hiding-place of the silver.
"I must grow rich very slowly," he meditated, aloud.
11. CHAPTER ELEVEN
SULACO outstripped Nostromo's prudence, growing
rich swiftly on the hidden treasures of the earth, hovered
over by the anxious spirits of good and evil, torn out
by the labouring hands of the people. It was like a
second youth, like a new life, full of promise, of unrest,
of toil, scattering lavishly its wealth to the four corners
of an excited world. Material changes swept along
in the train of material interests. And other changes
more subtle, outwardly unmarked, affected the minds
and hearts of the workers. Captain Mitchell had gone
home to live on his savings invested in the San Tomé
mine; and Dr. Monygham had grown older, with his
head steel-grey and the unchanged expression of his
face, living on the inexhaustible treasure of his devotion
drawn upon in the secret of his heart like a store
of unlawful wealth.
The Inspector-General of State Hospitals (whose
maintenance is a charge upon the Gould Concession),
Official Adviser on Sanitation to the Municipality,
Chief Medical Officer of the San Tomé Consolidated
Mines (whose territory, containing gold, silver, copper,
lead, cobalt, extends for miles along the foot-hills of
the Cordillera), had felt poverty-stricken, miserable,
and starved during the prolonged, second visit the
Goulds paid to Europe and the United States of America.
Intimate of the casa, proved friend, a bachelor
without ties and without establishment (except of
the professional sort), he had been asked to take up his
quarters in the Gould house. In the eleven months
glance the woman to whom he had given all his loyalty,
had grown intolerable. As the day approached for
the arrival of the mail boat Hermes (the latest addition
to the O. S. N. Co.'s splendid fleet), the doctor hobbled
about more vivaciously, snapped more sardonically
at simple and gentle out of sheer nervousness.
He packed up his modest trunk with speed, with
fury, with enthusiasm, and saw it carried out past the
old porter at the gate of the Casa Gould with delight,
with intoxication; then, as the hour approached, sitting
alone in the great landau behind the white mules, a
little sideways, his drawn-in face positively venomous
with the effort of self-control, and holding a pair of new
gloves in his left hand, he drove to the harbour.
His heart dilated within him so, when he saw the
Goulds on the deck of the Hermes, that his greetings
were reduced to a casual mutter. Driving back to
town, all three were silent. And in the patio the doctor,
in a more natural manner, said —
"I'll leave you now to yourselves. I'll call to-morrow
if I may?"
"Come to lunch, dear Dr. Monygham, and come
early," said Mrs. Gould, in her travelling dress and her
veil down, turning to look at him at the foot of the
stairs; while at the top of the flight the Madonna, in
blue robes and the Child on her arm, seemed to welcome
her with an aspect of pitying tenderness.
"Don't expect to find me at home," Charles Gould
warned him. "I'll be off early to the mine."
After lunch, Doña Emilia and the señor doctor came
slowly through the inner gateway of the patio. The
large gardens of the Casa Gould, surrounded by high
walls, and the red-tile slopes of neighbouring roofs, lay
open before them, with masses of shade under the trees
row of old orange trees surrounded the whole. Barefooted,
brown gardeners, in snowy white shirts and wide
calzoneras, dotted the grounds, squatting over flower-
beds, passing between the trees, dragging slender India-
rubber tubes across the gravel of the paths; and the
fine jets of water crossed each other in graceful curves,
sparkling in the sunshine with a slight pattering noise
upon the bushes, and an effect of showered diamonds
upon the grass.
Doña Emilia, holding up the train of a clear dress,
walked by the side of Dr. Monygham, in a longish
black coat and severe black bow on an immaculate shirt-
front. Under a shady clump of trees, where stood scattered
little tables and wicker easy-chairs, Mrs. Gould
sat down in a low and ample seat.
"Don't go yet," she said to Dr. Monygham, who was
unable to tear himself away from the spot. His chin
nestling within the points of his collar, he devoured her
stealthily with his eyes, which, luckily, were round and
hard like clouded marbles, and incapable of disclosing
his sentiments. His pitying emotion at the marks of
time upon the face of that woman, the air of frailty
and weary fatigue that had settled upon the eyes and
temples of the "Never-tired Señora" (as Don Pépé
years ago used to call her with admiration), touched
him almost to tears. "Don't go yet. To-day is all
my own," Mrs. Gould urged, gently. "We are not back
yet officially. No one will come. It's only to-morrow
that the windows of the Casa Gould are to be lit up for
a reception."
The doctor dropped into a chair.
"Giving a tertulia?" he said, with a detached air.
"A simple greeting for all the kind friends who care to
come."
"And only to-morrow?"
"Yes. Charles would be tired out after a day at the
mine, and so I — It would be good to have him to
myself for one evening on our return to this house I love.
It has seen all my life."
"Ah, yes!" snarled the doctor, suddenly. "Women
count time from the marriage feast. Didn't you live a
little before?"
"Yes; but what is there to remember? There were no
cares."
Mrs. Gould sighed. And as two friends, after a long
separation, will revert to the most agitated period of
their lives, they began to talk of the Sulaco Revolution.
It seemed strange to Mrs. Gould that people who had
taken part in it seemed to forget its memory and its
lesson.
"And yet," struck in the doctor, "we who played our
part in it had our reward. Don Pépé, though superannuated,
still can sit a horse. Barrios is drinking himself
to death in jovial company away somewhere on his
fundacion beyond the Bolson de Tonoro. And the heroic
Father Romàn — I imagine the old padre blowing up
systematically the San Tomé mine, uttering a pious
exclamation at every bang, and taking handfuls of snuff
between the explosions — the heroic Padre Romàn says
that he is not afraid of the harm Holroyd's missionaries
can do to his flock, as long as he is alive."
Mrs. Gould shuddered a little at the allusion to the
destruction that had come so near to the San Tomé mine.
"Ah, but you, dear friend?"
"I did the work I was fit for."
"You faced the most cruel dangers of all. Something
more than death."
"No, Mrs. Gould! Only death — by hanging. And
I am rewarded beyond my deserts."
Noticing Mrs. Gould's gaze fixed upon him, he dropped
his eyes.
"I've made my career — as you see," said the Inspector-General
of State Hospitals, taking up lightly
the lapels of his superfine black coat. The doctor's
self-respect marked inwardly by the almost complete
disappearance from his dreams of Father Beron appeared
visibly in what, by contrast with former carelessness,
seemed an immoderate cult of personal appearance.
Carried out within severe limits of form and
colour, and in perpetual freshness, this change of apparel
gave to Dr. Monygham an air at the same time
professional and festive; while his gait and the unchanged
crabbed character of his face acquired from it a
startling force of incongruity.
"Yes," he went on. "We all had our rewards — the
engineer-in-chief, Captain Mitchell —"
"We saw him," interrupted Mrs. Gould, in her
charming voice. "The poor dear man came up from
the country on purpose to call on us in our hotel in
London. He comported himself with great dignity,
but I fancy he regrets Sulaco. He rambled feebly
about 'historical events' till I felt I could have a cry."
"H'm," grunted the doctor; "getting old, I suppose.
Even Nostromo is getting older — though he is not
changed. And, speaking of that fellow, I wanted to
tell you something —"
For some time the house had been full of murmurs, of
agitation. Suddenly the two gardeners, busy with rose
trees at the side of the garden arch, fell upon their knees
with bowed heads on the passage of Antonia Avellanos,
who appeared walking beside her uncle.
Invested with the red hat after a short visit to Rome,
where he had been invited by the Propaganda, Father
Corbelàn, missionary to the wild Indians, conspirator,
with big, slow strides, gaunt and leaning forward, with
his powerful hands clasped behind his back. The first
Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco had preserved his fanatical
and morose air; the aspect of a chaplain of bandits.
It was believed that his unexpected elevation to the
purple was a counter-move to the Protestant invasion
of Sulaco organized by the Holroyd Missionary Fund.
Antonia, the beauty of her face as if a little blurred,
her figure slightly fuller, advanced with her light walk
and her high serenity, smiling from a distance at Mrs.
Gould. She had brought her uncle over to see dear
Emilia, without ceremony, just for a moment before the
siesta.
When all were seated again, Dr. Monygham, who had
come to dislike heartily everybody who approached
Mrs. Gould with any intimacy, kept aside, pretending
to be lost in profound meditation. A louder phrase
of Antonia made him lift his head.
"How can we abandon, groaning under oppression,
those who have been our countrymen only a few years
ago, who are our countrymen now?" Miss Avellanos
was saying. "How can we remain blind, and deaf
without pity to the cruel wrongs suffered by our
brothers? There is a remedy."
"Annex the rest of Costaguana to the order and prosperity
of Sulaco," snapped the doctor. "There is no
other remedy."
"I am convinced, señor doctor," Antonia said, with
the earnest calm of invincible resolution, "that this
was from the first poor Martin's intention."
"Yes, but the material interests will not let you
jeopardize their development for a mere idea of pity
and justice," the doctor muttered grumpily. "And
it is just as well perhaps."
The Cardinal-Archbishop straightened up his gaunt,
bony frame.
"We have worked for them; we have made them,
these material interests of the foreigners," the last of
the Corbelàns uttered in a deep, denunciatory tone.
"And without them you are nothing," cried the doctor
from the distance. "They will not let you."
"Let them beware, then, lest the people, prevented
from their aspirations, should rise and claim their share
of the wealth and their share of the power," the popular
Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco declared, significantly,
menacingly.
A silence ensued, during which his Eminence stared,
frowning at the ground, and Antonia, graceful and rigid
in her chair, breathed calmly in the strength of her convictions.
Then the conversation took a social turn,
touching on the visit of the Goulds to Europe. The
Cardinal-Archbishop, when in Rome, had suffered from
neuralgia in the head all the time. It was the climate
— the bad air.
When uncle and niece had gone away, with the servants
again falling on their knees, and the old porter,
who had known Henry Gould, almost totally blind
and impotent now, creeping up to kiss his Eminence's
extended hand, Dr. Monygham, looking after them,
pronounced the one word —
"Incorrigible!"
Mrs. Gould, with a look upwards, dropped wearily
on her lap her white hands flashing with the gold and
stones of many rings.
"Conspiring. Yes!" said the doctor. "The last of
the Avellanos and the last of the Corbelàns are conspiring
with the refugees from Sta. Marta that flock
here after every revolution. The Café Lambroso at
the corner of the Plaza is full of them; you can hear
house. They are conspiring for the invasion of Costaguana.
And do you know where they go for strength,
for the necessary force? To the secret societies amongst
immigrants and natives, where Nostromo — I should
say Captain Fidanza — is the great man. What gives
him that position? Who can say? Genius? He has
genius. He is greater with the populace than ever
he was before. It is as if he had some secret power;
some mysterious means to keep up his influence. He
holds conferences with the Archbishop, as in those old
days which you and I remember. Barrios is useless.
But for a military head they have the pious Hernandez.
And they may raise the country with the new cry of
the wealth for the people."
"Will there be never any peace? Will there be no
rest?" Mrs. Gould whispered. "I thought that
we —"
"No!" interrupted the doctor. "There is no peace
and no rest in the development of material interests.
They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded
on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude,
without the continuity and the force that can be found
only in a moral principle. Mrs. Gould, the time approaches
when all that the Gould Concession stands
for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as the barbarism,
cruelty, and misrule of a few years back."
"How can you say that, Dr. Monygham?" she cried
out, as if hurt in the most sensitive place of her soul.
"I can say what is true," the doctor insisted, obstinately.
"It'll weigh as heavily, and provoke resentment,
bloodshed, and vengeance, because the men have
grown different. Do you think that now the mine
would march upon the town to save their Señor Administrador?
Do you think that?"
She pressed the backs of her entwined hands on her
eyes and murmured hopelessly —
"Is it this we have worked for, then?"
The doctor lowered his head. He could follow her
silent thought. Was it for this that her life had been
robbed of all the intimate felicities of daily affection
which her tenderness needed as the human body needs
air to breathe? And the doctor, indignant with Charles
Gould's blindness, hastened to change the conversation.
"It is about Nostromo that I wanted to talk to you.
Ah! that fellow has some continuity and force. Nothing
will put an end to him. But never mind that.
There's something inexplicable going on — or perhaps
only too easy to explain. You know, Linda is practically
the lighthouse keeper of the Great Isabel light.
The Garibaldino is too old now. His part is to clean
the lamps and to cook in the house; but he can't get
up the stairs any longer. The black-eyed Linda sleeps
all day and watches the light all night. Not all day,
though. She is up towards five in the afternoon, when
our Nostromo, whenever he is in harbour with his
schooner, comes out on his courting visit, pulling in a
small boat."
"Aren't they married yet?" Mrs. Gould asked.
"The mother wished it, as far as I can understand,
while Linda was yet quite a child. When I had the
girls with me for a year or so during the War of Separation,
that extraordinary Linda used to declare quite
simply that she was going to be Gian' Battista's wife."
"They are not married yet," said the doctor, curtly.
"I have looked after them a little."
"Thank you, dear Dr. Monygham," said Mrs.
Gould; and under the shade of the big trees her little,
even teeth gleamed in a youthful smile of gentle malice.
"People don't know how really good you are. You
who have put my faith in your good heart long ago."
The doctor, with a lifting up of his upper lip, as
though he were longing to bite, bowed stiffly in his chair.
With the utter absorption of a man to whom love
comes late, not as the most splendid of illusions, but
like an enlightening and priceless misfortune, the sight
of that woman (of whom he had been deprived for
nearly a year) suggested ideas of adoration, of kissing
the hem of her robe. And this excess of feeling translated
itself naturally into an augmented grimness of
speech.
"I am afraid of being overwhelmed by too much
gratitude. However, these people interest me. I
went out several times to the Great Isabel light to look
after old Giorgio."
He did not tell Mrs. Gould that it was because he
found there, in her absence, the relief of an atmosphere
of congenial sentiment in old Giorgio's austere admiration
for the "English signora — the benefactress";
in black-eyed Linda's voluble, torrential, passionate
affection for "our Doña Emilia — that angel"; in the
white-throated, fair Giselle's adoring upward turn of
the eyes, which then glided towards him with a sidelong,
half-arch, half-candid glance, which made the doctor
exclaim to himself mentally, "If I weren't what I am,
old and ugly, I would think the minx is making eyes
at me. And perhaps she is. I dare say she would
make eyes at anybody." Dr. Monygham said nothing
of this to Mrs. Gould, the providence of the Viola
family, but reverted to what he called "our great
Nostromo."
"What I wanted to tell you is this: Our great Nostromo
did not take much notice of the old man and
the children for some years. It's true, too, that he
out of the twelve. He was making his fortune, as he
told Captain Mitchell once. He seems to have done
uncommonly well. It was only to be expected. He is
a man full of resource, full of confidence in himself,
ready to take chances and risks of every sort. I remember
being in Mitchell's office one day, when he
came in with that calm, grave air he always carries
everywhere. He had been away trading in the Gulf of
California, he said, looking straight past us at the wall,
as his manner is, and was glad to see on his return
that a lighthouse was being built on the cliff of the
Great Isabel. Very glad, he repeated. Mitchell explained
that it was the O. S. N. Co. who was building
it, for the convenience of the mail service, on his own
advice. Captain Fidanza was good enough to say that
it was excellent advice. I remember him twisting up
his moustaches and looking all round the cornice of the
room before he proposed that old Giorgio should be
made the keeper of that light."
"I heard of this. I was consulted at the time," Mrs.
Gould said. "I doubted whether it would be good for
these girls to be shut up on that island as if in a prison."
"The proposal fell in with the old Garibaldino's
humour. As to Linda, any place was lovely and delightful
enough for her as long as it was Nostromo's suggestion.
She could wait for her Gian' Battista's good
pleasure there as well as anywhere else. My opinion
is that she was always in love with that incorruptible
Capataz. Moreover, both father and sister were
anxious to get Giselle away from the attentions of a
certain Ramirez."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Gould, interested. "Ramirez?
What sort of man is that?"
"Just a mozo of the town. His father was a Cargador.
till Nostromo took him up and made a man of him.
When he got a little older, he put him into a lighter
and very soon gave him charge of the No. 3 boat — the
boat which took the silver away, Mrs. Gould. Nostromo
selected that lighter for the work because she was
the best sailing and the strongest boat of all the Company's
fleet. Young Ramirez was one of the five Cargadores
entrusted with the removal of the treasure
from the Custom House on that famous night. As the
boat he had charge of was sunk, Nostromo, on leaving
the Company's service, recommended him to Captain
Mitchell for his successor. He had trained him in the
routine of work perfectly, and thus Mr. Ramirez, from
a starving waif, becomes a man and the Capataz of the
Sulaco Cargadores."
"Thanks to Nostromo," said Mrs. Gould, with warm
approval.
"Thanks to Nostromo," repeated Dr. Monygham.
"Upon my word, the fellow's power frightens me when
I think of it. That our poor old Mitchell was only too
glad to appoint somebody trained to the work, who
saved him trouble, is not surprising. What is wonderful
is the fact that the Sulaco Cargadores accepted
Ramirez for their chief, simply because such was Nostromo's
good pleasure. Of course, he is not a second
Nostromo, as he fondly imagined he would be; but still,
the position was brilliant enough. It emboldened him
to make up to Giselle Viola, who, you know, is the
recognized beauty of the town. The old Garibaldino,
however, took a violent dislike to him. I don't know
why. Perhaps because he was not a model of perfection
like his Gian' Battista, the incarnation of the
courage, the fidelity, the honour of 'the people.' Signor
Viola does not think much of Sulaco natives. Both of
with her red mouth and coal-black eyes, were looking
rather fiercely after the fair one. Ramirez was warned
off. Father Viola, I am told, threatened him with his
gun once."
"But what of Giselle herself?" asked Mrs. Gould.
"She's a bit of a flirt, I believe," said the doctor. "I
don't think she cared much one way or another. Of
course she likes men's attentions. Ramirez was not
the only one, let me tell you, Mrs. Gould. There was
one engineer, at least, on the railway staff who got
warned off with a gun, too. Old Viola does not allow
any trifling with his honour. He has grown uneasy
and suspicious since his wife died. He was very pleased
to remove his youngest girl away from the town. But
look what happens, Mrs. Gould. Ramirez, the honest,
lovelorn swain, is forbidden the island. Very well.
He respects the prohibition, but naturally turns his
eyes frequently towards the Great Isabel. It seems as
though he had been in the habit of gazing late at night
upon the light. And during these sentimental vigils
he discovers that Nostromo, Captain Fidanza that is,
returns very late from his visits to the Violas. As
late as midnight at times."
The doctor paused and stared meaningly at Mrs.
Gould.
"Yes. But I don't understand," she began, looking
puzzled.
"Now comes the strange part," went on Dr. Monygham.
"Viola, who is king on his island, will allow no
visitor on it after dark. Even Captain Fidanza has
got to leave after sunset, when Linda has gone up to
tend the light. And Nostromo goes away obediently.
But what happens afterwards? What does he do in the
gulf between half-past six and midnight? He has been
into the harbour. Ramirez is devoured by jealousy.
He dared not approach old Viola; but he plucked up
courage to rail at Linda about it on Sunday morning as
she came on the mainland to hear mass and visit her
mother's grave. There was a scene on the wharf, which,
as a matter of fact, I witnessed. It was early morning.
He must have been waiting for her on purpose. I was
there by the merest chance, having been called to an
urgent consultation by the doctor of the German gunboat
in the harbour. She poured wrath, scorn, and
flame upon Ramirez, who seemed out of his mind. It
was a strange sight, Mrs. Gould: the long jetty, with
this raving Cargador in his crimson sash and the girl
all in black, at the end; the early Sunday morning
quiet of the harbour in the shade of the mountains;
nothing but a canoe or two moving between the ships
at anchor, and the German gunboat's gig coming to
take me off. Linda passed me within a foot. I noticed
her wild eyes. I called out to her. She never heard
me. She never saw me. But I looked at her face. It
was awful in its anger and wretchedness."
Mrs. Gould sat up, opening her eyes very wide.
"What do you mean, Dr. Monygham? Do you
mean to say that you suspect the younger sister?"
"Quien sabe! Who can tell?" said the doctor,
shrugging his shoulders like a born Costaguanero.
"Ramirez came up to me on the wharf. He reeled — he
looked insane. He took his head into his hands. He
had to talk to someone — simply had to. Of course
for all his mad state he recognized me. People know
me well here. I have lived too long amongst them to
be anything else but the evil-eyed doctor, who can cure
all the ills of the flesh, and bring bad luck by a glance.
He came up to me. He tried to be calm. He tried
against Nostromo. It seems that Captain Fidanza at
some secret meeting or other had mentioned me as the
worst despiser of all the poor — of the people. It's very
possible. He honours me with his undying dislike.
And a word from the great Fidanza may be quite enough
to send some fool's knife into my back. The Sanitary
Commission I preside over is not in favour with the
populace. 'Beware of him, señor doctor. Destroy
him, señor doctor,' Ramirez hissed right into my face.
And then he broke out. 'That man,' he spluttered,
'has cast a spell upon both these girls.' As to himself,
he had said too much. He must run away now — run
away and hide somewhere. He moaned tenderly about
Giselle, and then called her names that cannot be re-@@@
peated. If he thought she could be made to love him
by any means, he would carry her off from the island.
Off into the woods. But it was no good. . . . He
strode away, flourishing his arms above his head. Then
I noticed an old negro, who had been sitting behind a
pile of cases, fishing from the wharf. He wound up his
lines and slunk away at once. But he must have heard
something, and must have talked, too, because some of
the old Garibaldino's railway friends, I suppose, warned
him against Ramirez. At any rate, the father has been
warned. But Ramirez has disappeared from the town."
"I feel I have a duty towards these girls," said Mrs.
Gould, uneasily. "Is Nostromo in Sulaco now?"
"He is, since last Sunday."
"He ought to be spoken to — at once."
"Who will dare speak to him? Even the love-mad
Ramirez runs away from the mere shadow of Captain
Fidanza."
"I can. I will," Mrs. Gould declared. "A word
will be enough for a man like Nostromo."
The doctor smiled sourly.
"He must end this situation which lends itself to —
I can't believe it of that child," pursued Mrs. Gould.
"He's very attractive," muttered the doctor,
gloomily.
"He'll see it, I am sure. He must put an end to all
this by marrying Linda at once," pronounced the first
lady of Sulaco with immense decision.
Through the garden gate emerged Basilio, grown fat
and sleek, with an elderly hairless face, wrinkles at the
corners of his eyes, and his jet-black, coarse hair plastered
down smoothly. Stooping carefully behind an
ornamental clump of bushes, he put down with precaution
a small child he had been carrying on his shoulder
— his own and Leonarda's last born. The pouting,
spoiled Camerista and the head mozo of the Casa Gould
had been married for some years now.
He remained squatting on his heels for a time, gazing
fondly at his offspring, which returned his stare with
imperturbable gravity; then, solemn and respectable,
walked down the path.
"What is it, Basilio?" asked Mrs. Gould.
"A telephone came through from the office of the
mine. The master remains to sleep at the mountain
to-night."
Dr. Monygham had got up and stood looking away.
A profound silence reigned for a time under the shade
of the biggest trees in the lovely gardens of the Casa
Gould.
"Very well, Basilio," said Mrs. Gould. She watched
him walk away along the path, step aside behind the
flowering bush, and reappear with the child seated on
his shoulder. He passed through the gateway between
the garden and the patio with measured steps, careful
of his light burden.
The doctor, with his back to Mrs. Gould, contemplated
a flower-bed away in the sunshine. People
believed him scornful and soured. The truth of his
nature consisted in his capacity for passion and in the
sensitiveness of his temperament. What he lacked
was the polished callousness of men of the world, the
callousness from which springs an easy tolerance for
oneself and others; the tolerance wide as poles asunder
from true sympathy and human compassion. This
want of callousness accounted for his sardonic turn
of mind and his biting speeches.
In profound silence, and glaring viciously at the brilliant
flower-bed, Dr. Monygham poured mental imprecations
on Charles Gould's head. Behind him the
immobility of Mrs. Gould added to the grace of her
seated figure the charm of art, of an attitude caught
and interpreted for ever. Turning abruptly, the doctor
took his leave.
Mrs. Gould leaned back in the shade of the big trees
planted in a circle. She leaned back with her eyes
closed and her white hands lying idle on the arms of
her seat. The half-light under the thick mass of leaves
brought out the youthful prettiness of her face; made
the clear, light fabrics and white lace of her dress appear
luminous. Small and dainty, as if radiating a light
of her own in the deep shade of the interlaced boughs,
she resembled a good fairy, weary with a long career
of well-doing, touched by the withering suspicion of
the uselessness of her labours, the powerlessness of her
magic.
Had anybody asked her of what she was thinking,
alone in the garden of the Casa, with her husband at the
mine and the house closed to the street like an empty
dwelling, her frankness would have had to evade the
question. It had come into her mind that for life to
and of the future in every passing moment of the present.
Our daily work must be done to the glory of the
dead, and for the good of those who come after. She
thought that, and sighed without opening her eyes —
without moving at all. Mrs. Gould's face became set and
rigid for a second, as if to receive, without flinching, a
great wave of loneliness that swept over her head. And
it came into her mind, too, that no one would ever ask
her with solicitude what she was thinking of. No one.
No one, but perhaps the man who had just gone away.
No; no one who could be answered with careless sincerity
in the ideal perfection of confidence.
The word "incorrigible" — a word lately pronounced
by Dr. Monygham — floated into her still and sad immobility.
Incorrigible in his devotion to the great
silver mine was the Señor Administrador! Incorrigible
in his hard, determined service of the material interests
to which he had pinned his faith in the triumph of order
and justice. Poor boy! She had a clear vision of the
grey hairs on his temples. He was perfect — perfect.
What more could she have expected? It was a colossal
and lasting success; and love was only a short moment
of forgetfulness, a short intoxication, whose delight
one remembered with a sense of sadness, as if it
had been a deep grief lived through. There was something
inherent in the necessities of successful action
which carried with it the moral degradation of the idea.
She saw the San Tomé mountain hanging over the
Campo, over the whole land, feared, hated, wealthy;
more soulless than any tyrant, more pitiless and autocratic
than the worst Government; ready to crush
innumerable lives in the expansion of its greatness.
He did not see it. He could not see it. It was not his
fault. He was perfect, perfect; but she would never
altogether to herself in this old Spanish house she loved
so well! Incorrigible, the last of the Corbelàns, the
last of the Avellanos, the doctor had said; but she saw
clearly the San Tomé mine possessing, consuming,
burning up the life of the last of the Costaguana Goulds;
mastering the energetic spirit of the son as it had mastered
the lamentable weakness of the father. A terrible
success for the last of the Goulds. The last! She had
hoped for a long, long time, that perhaps — But no!
There were to be no more. An immense desolation, the
dread of her own continued life, descended upon the first
lady of Sulaco. With a prophetic vision she saw herself
surviving alone the degradation of her young ideal of
life, of love, of work — all alone in the Treasure House
of the World. The profound, blind, suffering expression
of a painful dream settled on her face with its closed
eyes. In the indistinct voice of an unlucky sleeper.
lying passive in the grip of a merciless nightmare, she
stammered out aimlessly the words —
"Material interest."
12. CHAPTER TWELVE
NOSTROMO had been growing rich very slowly. It was
an effect of his prudence. He could command himself
even when thrown off his balance. And to become the
slave of a treasure with full self-knowledge is an occurrence
rare and mentally disturbing. But it was also
in a great part because of the difficulty of converting
it into a form in which it could become available. The
mere act of getting it away from the island piecemeal,
little by little, was surrounded by difficulties, by the
dangers of imminent detection. He had to visit the
Great Isabel in secret, between his voyages along the
coast, which were the ostensible source of his fortune.
The crew of his own schooner were to be feared as if
they had been spies upon their dreaded captain. He
did not dare stay too long in port. When his coaster
was unloaded, he hurried away on another trip, for he
feared arousing suspicion even by a day's delay.
Sometimes during a week's stay, or more, he could only
manage one visit to the treasure. And that was all. A
couple of ingots. He suffered through his fears as much
as through his prudence. To do things by stealth humiliated
him. And he suffered most from the concentration
of his thought upon the treasure.
A transgression, a crime, entering a man's existence,
eats it up like a malignant growth, consumes it like a
fever. Nostromo had lost his peace; the genuineness of
all his qualities was destroyed. He felt it himself,
and often cursed the silver of San Tomé. His courage,
his magnificence, his leisure, his work, everything was
was real. He clung to it with a more tenacious,
mental grip. But he hated the feel of the ingots.
Sometimes, after putting away a couple of them in his
cabin — the fruit of a secret night expedition to the
Great Isabel — he would look fixedly at his fingers, as if
surprised they had left no stain on his skin.
He had found means of disposing of the silver bars in
distant ports. The necessity to go far afield made his
coasting voyages long, and caused his visits to the Viola
household to be rare and far between. He was fated
to have his wife from there. He had said so once to
Giorgio himself. But the Garibaldino had put the
subject aside with a majestic wave of his hand, clutching
a smouldering black briar-root pipe. There was
plenty of time; he was not the man to force his girls
upon anybody.
As time went on, Nostromo discovered his preference
for the younger of the two. They had some profound
similarities of nature, which must exist for complete
confidence and understanding, no matter what outward
differences of temperament there may be to exercise
their own fascination of contrast. His wife would
have to know his secret or else life would be impossible.
He was attracted by Giselle, with her candid gaze and
white throat, pliable, silent, fond of excitement under
her quiet indolence; whereas Linda, with her intense,
passionately pale face, energetic, all fire and words,
touched with gloom and scorn, a chip of the old block,
true daughter of the austere republican, but with Teresa's
voice, inspired him with a deep-seated mistrust.
Moreover, the poor girl could not conceal her love for
Gian' Battista. He could see it would be violent, exacting,
suspicious, uncompromising — like her soul.
Giselle, by her fair but warm beauty, by the surface
by the charm of her girlish mysteriousness, excited
his passion and allayed his fears as to the future.
His absences from Sulaco were long. On returning
from the longest of them, he made out lighters loaded
with blocks of stone lying under the cliff of the Great
Isabel; cranes and scaffolding above; workmen's figures
moving about, and a small lighthouse already rising
from its foundations on the edge of the cliff.
At this unexpected, undreamt-of, startling sight, he
thought himself lost irretrievably. What could save
him from detection now? Nothing! He was struck
with amazed dread at this turn of chance, that would
kindle a far-reaching light upon the only secret spot of
his life; that life whose very essence, value, reality,
consisted in its reflection from the admiring eyes of
men. All of it but that thing which was beyond common
comprehension; which stood between him and
the power that hears and gives effect to the evil intention
of curses. It was dark. Not every man had
such a darkness. And they were going to put a light
there. A light! He saw it shining upon disgrace,
poverty, contempt. Somebody was sure to. . . .
Perhaps somebody had already. . . .
The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the respected
and feared Captain Fidanza, the unquestioned
patron of secret societies, a republican like old Giorgio,
and a revolutionist at heart (but in another manner),
was on the point of jumping overboard from the deck
of his own schooner. That man, subjective almost to
insanity, looked suicide deliberately in the face. But
he never lost his head. He was checked by the thought
that this was no escape. He imagined himself dead,
and the disgrace, the shame going on. Or, rather, properly
speaking, he could not imagine himself dead. He
a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to
grasp the notion of finality. The earth goes on for
ever.
And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage,
but it was as good for his purposes as the other kind.
He sailed close to the cliff of the Great Isabel, throwing
a penetrating glance from the deck at the mouth of the
ravine, tangled in an undisturbed growth of bushes.
He sailed close enough to exchange hails with the workmen,
shading their eyes on the edge of the sheer drop
of the cliff overhung by the jib-head of a powerful crane.
He perceived that none of them had any occasion even
to approach the ravine where the silver lay hidden; let
alone to enter it. In the harbour he learned that no
one slept on the island. The labouring gangs returned
to port every evening, singing chorus songs in the
empty lighters towed by a harbour tug. For the
moment he had nothing to fear.
But afterwards? he asked himself. Later, when a
keeper came to live in the cottage that was being built
some hundred and fifty yards back from the low light-
tower, and four hundred or so from the dark, shaded,
jungly ravine, containing the secret of his safety, of his
influence, of his magnificence, of his power over the future,
of his defiance of ill-luck, of every possible betrayal
from rich and poor alike — what then? He could
never shake off the treasure. His audacity, greater
than that of other men, had welded that vein of silver
into his life. And the feeling of fearful and ardent subjection,
the feeling of his slavery — so irremediable and
profound that often, in his thoughts, he compared
himself to the legendary Gringos, neither dead nor
alive, bound down to their conquest of unlawful wealth
on Azuera — weighed heavily on the independent Captain
whose smart appearance (and fabulous good-luck in
trading) were so well known along the western seaboard
of a vast continent.
Fiercely whiskered and grave, a shade less supple in
his walk, the vigour and symmetry of his powerful
limbs lost in the vulgarity of a brown tweed suit, made
by Jews in the slums of London, and sold by the clothing
department of the Compañia Anzani, Captain
Fidanza was seen in the streets of Sulaco attending to
his business, as usual, that trip. And, as usual, he allowed
it to get about that he had made a great profit
on his cargo. It was a cargo of salt fish, and Lent was
approaching. He was seen in tramcars going to and
fro between the town and the harbour; he talked with
people in a café or two in his measured, steady voice.
Captain Fidanza was seen. The generation that would
know nothing of the famous ride to Cayta was not born
yet.
Nostromo, the miscalled Capataz de Cargadores, had
made for himself, under his rightful name, another
public existence, but modified by the new conditions,
less picturesque, more difficult to keep up in the increased
size and varied population of Sulaco, the progressive
capital of the Occidental Republic.
Captain Fidanza, unpicturesque, but always a little
mysterious, was recognized quite sufficiently under the
lofty glass and iron roof of the Sulaco railway station.
He took a local train, and got out in Rincon, where he
visited the widow of the Cargador who had died of his
wounds (at the dawn of the New Era, like Don José
Avellanos) in the patio of the Casa Gould. He consented
to sit down and drink a glass of cool lemonade
in the hut, while the woman, standing up, poured a
perfect torrent of words to which he did not listen.
children, growing up and well schooled, calling him
uncle, clamoured for his blessing. He gave that, too;
and in the doorway paused for a moment to look at the
flat face of the San Tomé mountain with a faint frown.
This slight contraction of his bronzed brow casting a
marked tinge of severity upon his usual unbending expression,
was observed at the Lodge which he attended
— but went away before the banquet. He wore it at
the meeting of some good comrades, Italians and Occidentals,
assembled in his honour under the presidency
of an indigent, sickly, somewhat hunchbacked little
photographer, with a white face and a magnanimous
soul dyed crimson by a bloodthirsty hate of all capitalists,
oppressors of the two hemispheres. The heroic
Giorgio Viola, old revolutionist, would have understood
nothing of his opening speech; and Captain
Fidanza, lavishly generous as usual to some poor comrades,
made no speech at all. He had listened, frowning,
with his mind far away, and walked off unapproachable,
silent, like a man full of cares.
His frown deepened as, in the early morning, he
watched the stone-masons go off to the Great Isabel,
in lighters loaded with squared blocks of stone, enough
to add another course to the squat light-tower. That
was the rate of the work. One course per day.
And Captain Fidanza meditated. The presence of
strangers on the island would cut him completely off the
treasure. It had been difficult and dangerous enough
before. He was afraid, and he was angry. He thought
with the resolution of a master and the cunning of a
cowed slave. Then he went ashore.
He was a man of resource and ingenuity; and, as
usual, the expedient he found at a critical moment was
effective enough to alter the situation radically. He
this incomparable Nostromo, this "fellow in a thousand."
With Giorgio established on the Great Isabel,
there would be no need for concealment. He would be
able to go openly, in daylight, to see his daughters —
one of his daughters — and stay late talking to the old
Garibaldino. Then in the dark . . . Night after
night . . . He would dare to grow rich quicker
now. He yearned to clasp, embrace, absorb, subjugate
in unquestioned possession this treasure, whose tyranny
had weighed upon his mind, his actions, his very sleep.
He went to see his friend Captain Mitchell — and the
thing was done as Dr. Monygham had related to Mrs.
Gould. When the project was mooted to the Garibaldino,
something like the faint reflection, the dim ghost
of a very ancient smile, stole under the white and enormous
moustaches of the old hater of kings and ministers.
His daughters were the object of his anxious care. The
younger, especially. Linda, with her mother's voice,
had taken more her mother's place. Her deep, vibrating
"Eh, Padre?" seemed, but for the change of the
word, the very echo of the impassioned, remonstrating
"Eh, Giorgio?" of poor Signora Teresa. It was his
fixed opinion that the town was no proper place for
his girls. The infatuated but guileless Ramirez was
the object of his profound aversion, as resuming the
sins of the country whose people were blind, vile
esclavos.
On his return from his next voyage, Captain Fidanza
found the Violas settled in the light-keeper's cottage.
His knowledge of Giorgio's idiosyncrasies had not
played him false. The Garibaldino had refused to entertain
the idea of any companion whatever, except
his girls. And Captain Mitchell, anxious to please his
poor Nostromo, with that felicity of inspiration which
Linda Viola as under-keeper of the Isabel's Light.
"The light is private property," he used to explain.
"It belongs to my Company. I've the power to nominate
whom I like, and Viola it shall be. It's about the
only thing Nostromo — a man worth his weight in gold,
mind you — has ever asked me to do for him."
Directly his schooner was anchored opposite the New
Custom House, with its sham air of a Greek temple, flat-
roofed, with a colonnade, Captain Fidanza went pulling
his small boat out of the harbour, bound for the Great
Isabel, openly in the light of a declining day, before
all men's eyes, with a sense of having mastered the
fates. He must establish a regular position. He
would ask him for his daughter now. He thought of
Giselle as he pulled. Linda loved him, perhaps, but
the old man would be glad to keep the elder, who had
his wife's voice.
He did not pull for the narrow strand where he had
landed with Decoud, and afterwards alone on his first
visit to the treasure. He made for the beach at the
other end, and walked up the regular and gentle slope
of the wedge-shaped island. Giorgio Viola, whom he
saw from afar, sitting on a bench under the front wall
of the cottage, lifted his arm slightly to his loud hail.
He walked up. Neither of the girls appeared.
"It is good here," said the old man, in his austere,
far-away manner.
Nostromo nodded; then, after a short silence —
"You saw my schooner pass in not two hours ago?
Do you know why I am here before, so to speak, my
anchor has fairly bitten into the ground of this port of
Sulaco?"
"You are welcome like a son," the old man declared,
quietly, staring away upon the sea.
"Ah! thy son. I know. I am what thy son would
have been. It is well, viejo. It is a very good welcome.
Listen, I have come to ask you for —"
A sudden dread came upon the fearless and incorruptible
Nostromo. He dared not utter the name in his
mind. The slight pause only imparted a marked weight
and solemnity to the changed end of the phrase.
"For my wife!" . . . His heart was beating
fast." It is time you —"
The Garibaldino arrested him with an extended arm.
"That was left for you to judge."
He got up slowly. His beard, unclipped since
Teresa's death, thick, snow-white, covered his powerful
chest. He turned his head to the door, and called out
in his strong voice —
"Linda."
Her answer came sharp and faint from within; and the
appalled Nostromo stood up, too, but remained mute,
gazing at the door. He was afraid. He was not afraid
of being refused the girl he loved — no mere refusal could
stand between him and a woman he desired — but the
shining spectre of the treasure rose before him, claiming
his allegiance in a silence that could not be gainsaid.
He was afraid, because, neither dead nor alive, like the
Gringos on Azuera, he belonged body and soul to the
unlawfulness of his audacity. He was afraid of being
forbidden the island. He was afraid, and said
nothing.
Seeing the two men standing up side by side to await
her, Linda stopped in the doorway. Nothing could alter
the passionate dead whiteness of her face; but her black
eyes seemed to catch and concentrate all the light of the
low sun in a flaming spark within the black depths,
covered at once by the slow descent of heavy eyelids.
"Behold thy husband, master, and benefactor." Old
the whole gulf.
She stepped forward with her eyes nearly closed, like a
sleep-walker in a beatific dream.
Nostromo made a superhuman effort. "It is time,
Linda, we two were betrothed," he said, steadily, in his
level, careless, unbending tone.
She put her hand into his offered palm, lowering her
head, dark with bronze glints, upon which her father's
hand rested for a moment.
"And so the soul of the dead is satisfied."
This came from Giorgio Viola, who went on talking
for a while of his dead wife; while the two, sitting side by
side, never looked at each other. Then the old man
ceased; and Linda, motionless, began to speak.
"Ever since I felt I lived in the world, I have lived
for you alone, Gian' Battista. And that you knew!
You knew it . . . Battistino."
She pronounced the name exactly with her mother's
intonation. A gloom as of the grave covered Nostromo's
heart.
"Yes. I knew," he said.
The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing
his hoary head, his old soul dwelling alone with its
memories, tender and violent, terrible and dreary —
solitary on the earth full of men.
And Linda, his best-loved daughter, was saying, "I
was yours ever since I can remember. I had only to
think of you for the earth to become empty to my eyes.
When you were there, I could see no one else. I was
yours. Nothing is changed. The world belongs to
you, and you let me live in it." . . . She dropped
her low, vibrating voice to a still lower note, and found
other things to say — torturing for the man at her side.
Her murmur ran on ardent and voluble. She did not
she was embroidering in her hands, and passed in front
of them, silent, fresh, fair, with a quick glance and a
faint smile, to sit a little away on the other side of
Nostromo.
The evening was still. The sun sank almost to the
edge of a purple ocean; and the white lighthouse, livid
against the background of clouds filling the head of the
gulf, bore the lantern red and glowing, like a live ember
kindled by the fire of the sky. Giselle, indolent and
demure, raised the altar-cloth from time to time to hide
nervous yawns, as of a young panther.
Suddenly Linda rushed at her sister, and seizing her
head, covered her face with kisses. Nostromo's brain
reeled. When she left her, as if stunned by the violent
caresses, with her hands lying in her lap, the slave of
the treasure felt as if he could shoot that woman. Old
Giorgio lifted his leonine head.
"Where are you going, Linda?"
"To the light, padre mio."
"Si, si — to your duty."
He got up, too, looked after his eldest daughter; then,
in a tone whose festive note seemed the echo of a mood
lost in the night of ages —
"I am going in to cook something. Aha! Son! The
old man knows where to find a bottle of wine, too."
He turned to Giselle, with a change to austere tenderness.
"And you, little one, pray not to the God of priests
and slaves, but to the God of orphans, of the oppressed,
of the poor, of little children, to give thee a man like
this one for a husband."
His hand rested heavily for a moment on Nostromo's
shoulder; then he went in. The hopeless slave of the
San Tomé silver felt at these words the venomous fangs
by the novelty of the experience, by its force,
by its physical intimacy. A husband! A husband
for her! And yet it was natural that Giselle should
have a husband at some time or other. He had never
realized that before. In discovering that her beauty
could belong to another he felt as though he could
kill this one of old Giorgio's daughters also. He muttered
moodily —
"They say you love Ramirez."
She shook her head without looking at him. Coppery
glints rippled to and fro on the wealth of her gold
hair. Her smooth forehead had the soft, pure sheen
of a priceless pearl in the splendour of the sunset, mingling
the gloom of starry spaces, the purple of the sea, and
the crimson of the sky in a magnificent stillness.
"No," she said, slowly. "I never loved him. I
think I never . . . He loves me — perhaps."
The seduction of her slow voice died out of the air,
and her raised eyes remained fixed on nothing, as if
indifferent and without thought.
"Ramirez told you he loved you?" asked Nostromo,
restraining himself.
"Ah! once — one evening . . ."
"The miserable . . . Ha!"
He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood
before her mute with anger.
"Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian' Battista!
Poor wretch that I am!" she lamented in ingenuous
tones. "I told Linda, and she scolded — she scolded.
Am I to live blind, dumb, and deaf in this world? And
she told father, who took down his gun and cleaned it.
Poor Ramirez! Then you came, and she told you."
He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the
hollow of her white throat, which had the invincible
Was this the child he had known? Was it possible?
It dawned upon him that in these last years he had
really seen very little — nothing — of her. Nothing.
She had come into the world like a thing unknown.
She had come upon him unawares. She was a danger.
A frightful danger. The instinctive mood of fierce
determination that had never failed him before the
perils of this life added its steady force to the violence
of his passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the
song of running water, the tinkling of a silver bell,
continued —
"And between you three you have brought me here
into this captivity to the sky and water. Nothing else.
Sky and water. Oh, Sanctissima Madre. My hair
shall turn grey on this tedious island. I could hate you,
Gian' Battista!"
He laughed loudly. Her voice enveloped him like a
caress. She bemoaned her fate, spreading unconsciously,
like a flower its perfume in the coolness of the evening,
the indefinable seduction of her person. Was it her
fault that nobody ever had admired Linda? Even
when they were little, going out with their mother to
Mass, she remembered that people took no notice of
Linda, who was fearless, and chose instead to frighten
her, who was timid, with their attention. It was her
hair like gold, she supposed.
He broke out —
"Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and
your lips like the rose; your round arms, your white
throat." . . .
Imperturbable in the indolence of her pose, she
blushed deeply all over to the roots of her hair. She
was not conceited. She was no more self-conscious than
a flower. But she was pleased. And perhaps even a
and added, impetuously —
"Your little feet!"
Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the
cottage, she seemed to bask languidly in the warmth
of the rosy flush. Only her lowered eyes glanced at
her little feet.
"And so you are going at last to marry our Linda.
She is terrible. Ah! now she will understand better
since you have told her you love her. She will not be so
fierce."
"Chica!" said Nostromo, "I have not told her anything."
"Then make haste. Come to-morrow. Come and
tell her, so that I may have some peace from her scolding
and — perhaps — who knows . . ."
"Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that
it? You . . ."
"Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni,"
she said, unmoved. "Who is Ramirez . . .
Ramirez . . . Who is he?" she repeated, dreamily,
in the dusk and gloom of the clouded gulf, with a
low red streak in the west like a hot bar of glowing
iron laid across the entrance of a world sombre as a
cavern, where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores
had hidden his conquests of love and wealth.
"Listen, Giselle," he said, in measured tones; "I
will tell no word of love to your sister. Do you want
to know why?"
"Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni.
Father says you are not like other men; that no one had
ever understood you properly; that the rich will be
surprised yet. . . . Oh! saints in heaven! I am
weary."
She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower
lantern was shaded on the land side, but slanting
away from the dark column of the lighthouse they
could see the long shaft of light, kindled by Linda, go
out to strike the expiring glow in a horizon of purple
and red.
Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of
the house, her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in
white stockings and black slippers, crossed over each
other, seemed to surrender herself, tranquil and fatal,
to the gathering dusk. The charm of her body, the
promising mysteriousness of her indolence, went out
into the night of the Placid Gulf like a fresh and
intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the shadows,
impregnating the air. The incorruptible Nostromo
breathed her ambient seduction in the tumultuous
heaving of his breast. Before leaving the harbour
he had thrown off the store clothing of Captain Fidanza,
for greater ease in the long pull out to the islands. He
stood before her in the red sash and check shirt as he
used to appear on the Company's wharf — a Mediterranean
sailor come ashore to try his luck in Costaguana.
The dusk of purple and red enveloped him, too — close,
soft, profound, as no more than fifty yards from that
spot it had gathered evening after evening about the
self-destructive passion of Don Martin Decoud's utter
scepticism, flaming up to death in solitude.
"You have got to hear," he began at last, with perfect
self-control. "I shall say no word of love to your
sister, to whom I am betrothed from this evening,
because it is you that I love. It is you!" . . .
The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous
smile that came instinctively upon her lips shaped for
love and kisses, freeze hard in the drawn, haggard lines
of terror. He could not restrain himself any longer.
out to him, abandoned and regal in the dignity of her
languid surrender. He held her head in his two hands,
and showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face that
gleamed in the purple dusk. Masterful and tender,
he was entering slowly upon the fulness of his possession.
And he perceived that she was crying. Then the incomparable
Capataz, the man of careless loves, became
gentle and caressing, like a woman to the grief of a
child. He murmured to her fondly. He sat down by
her and nursed her fair head on his breast. He called
her his star and his little flower.
It had grown dark. From the living-room of the
light-keeper's cottage, where Giorgio, one of the Immortal
Thousand, was bending his leonine and heroic
head over a charcoal fire, there came the sound of
sizzling and the aroma of an artistic frittura.
In the obscure disarray of that thing, happening like a
cataclysm, it was in her feminine head that some gleam
of reason survived. He was lost to the world in their
embraced stillness. But she said, whispering into his
ear —
"God of mercy! What will become of me — here —
now — between this sky and this water I hate? Linda,
Linda — I see her!" . . . She tried to get out of his
arms, suddenly relaxed at the sound of that name. But
there was no one approaching their black shapes, enlaced
and struggling on the white background of the
wall. "Linda! Poor Linda! I tremble! I shall die
of fear before my poor sister Linda, betrothed to-day
to Giovanni — my lover! Giovanni, you must have been
mad! I cannot understand you! You are not like
other men! I will not give you up — never — only to
God himself! But why have you done this blind, mad,
cruel, frightful thing?"
Released, she hung her head, let fall her hands. The
altar-cloth, as if tossed by a great wind, lay far away
from them, gleaming white on the black ground.
"From fear of losing my hope of you," said Nostromo.
"You knew that you had my soul! You know everything!
It was made for you! But what could stand
between you and me? What? Tell me!" she repeated,
without impatience, in superb assurance.
"Your dead mother," he said, very low.
"Ah! . . . Poor mother! She has always . . .
She is a saint in heaven now, and I cannot give you
up to her. No, Giovanni. Only to God alone. You
were mad — but it is done. Oh! what have you done?
Giovanni, my beloved, my life, my master, do not leave
me here in this grave of clouds. You cannot leave me
now. You must take me away — at once — this instant
— in the little boat. Giovanni, carry me off to-night,
from my fear of Linda's eyes, before I have to look at
her again."
She nestled close to him. The slave of the San Tomé
silver felt the weight as of chains upon his limbs, a pressure
as of a cold hand upon his lips. He struggled
against the spell.
"I cannot," he said. "Not yet. There is something
that stands between us two and the freedom of the
world."
She pressed her form closer to his side with a subtle
and naïve instinct of seduction.
"You rave, Giovanni — my lover!" she whispered,
engagingly. "What can there be? Carry me off — in
thy very hands — to Doña Emilia — away from here.
I am not very heavy."
It seemed as though she expected him to lift her up at
once in his two palms. She had lost the notion of all
impossibility. Anything could happen on this night of
aloud —
"I tell you I am afraid of Linda!" And still he did not
move. She became quiet and wily. "What can there
be?" she asked, coaxingly.
He felt her warm, breathing, alive, quivering in the
hollow of his arm. In the exulting consciousness of his
strength, and the triumphant excitement of his mind, he
struck out for his freedom.
"A treasure," he said. All was still. She did not
understand. "A treasure. A treasure of silver to buy
a gold crown for thy brow."
"A treasure?" she repeated in a faint voice, as if
from the depths of a dream. "What is it you say?"
She disengaged herself gently. He got up and looked
down at her, aware of her face, of her hair, her lips, the
dimples on her cheeks — seeing the fascination of her
person in the night of the gulf as if in the blaze of noonday.
Her nonchalant and seductive voice trembled
with the excitement of admiring awe and ungovernable
curiosity.
"A treasure of silver!" she stammered out. Then
pressed on faster: "What? Where? How did you
get it, Giovanni?"
He wrestled with the spell of captivity. It was as if
striking a heroic blow that he burst out —
"Like a thief!"
The densest blackness of the Placid Gulf seemed to
fall upon his head. He could not see her now. She had
vanished into a long, obscure abysmal silence, whence
her voice came back to him after a time with a faint
glimmer, which was her face.
"I love you! I love you!"
These words gave him an unwonted sense of freedom;
they cast a spell stronger than the accursed spell of the
dead thing into an exulting conviction of his power.
He would cherish her, he said, in a splendour as great
as Doña Emilia's. The rich lived on wealth stolen
from the people, but he had taken from the rich nothing
— nothing that was not lost to them already by their
folly and their betrayal. For he had been betrayed —
he said — deceived, tempted. She believed him. . . .
He had kept the treasure for purposes of revenge; but
now he cared nothing for it. He cared only for her.
He would put her beauty in a palace on a hill crowned
with olive trees — a white palace above a blue sea. He
would keep her there like a jewel in a casket. He would
get land for her — her own land fertile with vines and
corn — to set her little feet upon. He kissed them. . . .
He had already paid for it all with the soul of a woman
and the life of a man. . . . The Capataz de
Cargadores tasted the supreme intoxication of his generosity.
He flung the mastered treasure superbly at
her feet in the impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in
the darkness defying — as men said — the knowledge
of God and the wit of the devil. But she must let him
grow rich first — he warned her.
She listened as if in a trance. Her fingers stirred in
his hair. He got up from his knees reeling, weak, empty,
as though he had flung his soul away.
"Make haste, then," she said. "Make haste,
Giovanni, my lover, my master, for I will give thee
up to no one but God. And I am afraid of Linda."
He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best.
He trusted the courage of her love. She promised to be
brave in order to be loved always — far away in a white
palace upon a hill above a blue sea. Then with a timid,
tentative eagerness she murmured —
"Where is it? Where? Tell me that, Giovanni."
He opened his mouth and remained silent — thunder-
struck.
"Not that! Not that!" he gasped out, appalled at
the spell of secrecy that had kept him dumb before so
many people falling upon his lips again with unimpaired
force. Not even to her. Not even to her. It was too
dangerous. "I forbid thee to ask," he cried at her,
deadening cautiously the anger of his voice.
He had not regained his freedom. The spectre of the
unlawful treasure arose, standing by her side like a figure
of silver, pitiless and secret, with a finger on its pale lips.
His soul died within him at the vision of himself creeping
in presently along the ravine, with the smell of earth, of
damp foliage in his nostrils — creeping in, determined in
a purpose that numbed his breast, and creeping out
again loaded with silver, with his ears alert to every
sound. It must be done on this very night — that work
of a craven slave!
He stooped low, pressed the hem of her skirt to his
lips, with a muttered command —
"Tell him I would not stay," and was gone suddenly
from her, silent, without as much as a footfall in the
dark night.
She sat still, her head resting indolently against the
wall, and her little feet in white stockings and black
slippers crossed over each other. Old Giorgio, coming
out, did not seem to be surprised at the intelligence as
much as she had vaguely feared. For she was full of
inexplicable fear now — fear of everything and everybody
except of her Giovanni and his treasure. But that was
incredible.
The heroic Garibaldino accepted Nostromo's abrupt
departure with a sagacious indulgence. He remembered
his own feelings, and exhibited a masculine penetration
of the true state of the case.
"Va bene. Let him go. Ha! ha! No matter how
fair the woman, it galls a little. Liberty, liberty.
There's more than one kind! He has said the great
word, and son Gian' Battista is not tame." He seemed
to be instructing the motionless and scared Giselle.
. . . "A man should not be tame," he added, dogmatically
out of the doorway. Her stillness and silence
seemed to displease him. "Do not give way to the
enviousness of your sister's lot," he admonished her,
very grave, in his deep voice.
Presently he had to come to the door again to call in
his younger daughter. It was late. He shouted her
name three times before she even moved her head. Left
alone, she had become the helpless prey of astonishment.
She walked into the bedroom she shared with
Linda like a person profoundly asleep. That aspect
was so marked that even old Giorgio, spectacled, raising
his eyes from the Bible, shook his head as she shut the
door behind her.
She walked right across the room without looking at
anything, and sat down at once by the open window.
Linda, stealing down from the tower in the exuberance
of her happiness, found her with a lighted candle at her
back, facing the black night full of sighing gusts of wind
and the sound of distant showers — a true night of the
gulf, too dense for the eye of God and the wiles of the
devil. She did not turn her head at the opening of the
door.
There was something in that immobility which
reached Linda in the depths of her paradise. The elder
sister guessed angrily: the child is thinking of that
wretched Ramirez. Linda longed to talk. She said
in her arbitrary voice, "Giselle!" and was not answered
by the slightest movement.
The girl that was going to live in a palace and walk on
for anything in the world would she have turned her
head to face her sister. Her heart was beating madly.
She said with subdued haste —
"Do not speak to me. I am praying."
Linda, disappointed, went out quietly; and Giselle
sat on unbelieving, lost, dazed, patient, as if waiting for
the confirmation of the incredible. The hopeless blackness
of the clouds seemed part of a dream, too. She
waited.
She did not wait in vain. The man whose soul was
dead within him, creeping out of the ravine, weighted
with silver, had seen the gleam of the lighted window,
and could not help retracing his steps from the
beach.
On that impenetrable background, obliterating the
lofty mountains by the seaboard, she saw the slave of
the San Tomé silver, as if by an extraordinary power
of a miracle. She accepted his return as if henceforth
the world could hold no surprise for all eternity.
She rose, compelled and rigid, and began to speak long
before the light from within fell upon the face of the
approaching man.
"You have come back to carry me off. It is
well! Open thy arms, Giovanni, my lover. I am
coming."
His prudent footsteps stopped, and with his eyes
glistening wildly, he spoke in a harsh voice:
"Not yet. I must grow rich slowly." . . . A
threatening note came into his tone. "Do not forget
that you have a thief for your lover."
"Yes! Yes!" she whispered, hastily. "Come nearer!
Listen! Do not give me up, Giovanni! Never,
never! . . . I will be patient! . . ."
Her form drooped consolingly over the low casement
the room went out, and weighted with silver, the magnificent
Capataz clasped her round her white neck in the
darkness of the gulf as a drowning man clutches at a
straw.
13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ON THE day Mrs. Gould was going, in Dr. Monygham's
words, to "give a tertulia," Captain Fidanza
went down the side of his schooner lying in Sulaco
harbour, calm, unbending, deliberate in the way he sat
down in his dinghy and took up his sculls. He was later
than usual. The afternoon was well advanced before
he landed on the beach of the Great Isabel, and with a
steady pace climbed the slope of the island.
From a distance he made out Giselle sitting in a chair
tilted back against the end of the house, under the window
of the girl's room. She had her embroidery in her
hands, and held it well up to her eyes. The tranquillity
of that girlish figure exasperated the feeling of perpetual
struggle and strife he carried in his breast. He became
angry. It seemed to him that she ought to hear the
clanking of his fetters — his silver fetters, from afar.
And while ashore that day, he had met the doctor with
the evil eye, who had looked at him very hard.
The raising of her eyes mollified him. They smiled in
their flower-like freshness straight upon his heart. Then
she frowned. It was a warning to be cautious. He
stopped some distance away, and in a loud, indifferent
tone, said —
"Good day, Giselle. Is Linda up yet?"
"Yes. She is in the big room with father."
He approached then, and, looking through the window
into the bedroom for fear of being detected by
Linda returning there for some reason, he said, moving
only his lips —
"You love me?"
"More than my life." She went on with her embroidery
under his contemplating gaze and continued
to speak, looking at her work, "Or I could not live. I
could not, Giovanni. For this life is like death. Oh,
Giovanni, I shall perish if you do not take me away."
He smiled carelessly. "I will come to the window
when it's dark," he said.
"No, don't, Giovanni. Not-to-night. Linda and
father have been talking together for a long time today."
"What about?"
"Ramirez, I fancy I heard. I do not know. I
am afraid. I am always afraid. It is like dying a
thousand times a day. Your love is to me like your
treasure to you. It is there, but I can never get enough
of it."
He looked at her very still. She was beautiful. His
desire had grown within him. He had two masters
now. But she was incapable of sustained emotion.
She was sincere in what she said, but she slept placidly
at night. When she saw him she flamed up always.
Then only an increased taciturnity marked the change
in her. She was afraid of betraying herself. She was
afraid of pain, of bodily harm, of sharp words, of facing
anger, and witnessing violence. For her soul was light
and tender with a pagan sincerity in its impulses. She
murmured —
"Give up the palazzo, Giovanni, and the vineyard on
the hills, for which we are starving our love."
She ceased, seeing Linda standing silent at the corner
of the house.
Nostromo turned to his affianced wife with a greeting,
and was amazed at her sunken eyes, at her hollow
cheeks, at the air of illness and anguish in her face.
"Have you been ill?" he asked, trying to put some
concern into this question.
Her black eyes blazed at him. "Am I thinner?"
she asked.
"Yes — perhaps — a little."
"And older?"
"Every day counts — for all of us."
"I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my
finger," she said, slowly, keeping her gaze fastened upon
him.
She waited for what he would say, rolling down her
turned-up sleeves.
"No fear of that," he said, absently.
She turned away as if it had been something final, and
busied herself with household cares while Nostromo
talked with her father. Conversation with the old
Garibaldino was not easy. Age had left his faculties
unimpaired, only they seemed to have withdrawn somewhere
deep within him. His answers were slow in coming,
with an effect of august gravity. But that day
he was more animated, quicker; there seemed to be
more life in the old lion. He was uneasy for the integrity
of his honour. He believed Sidoni's warning as
to Ramirez's designs upon his younger daughter. And
he did not trust her. She was flighty. He said nothing
of his cares to "Son Gian' Battista." It was a touch
of senile vanity. He wanted to show that he was equal
yet to the task of guarding alone the honour of his house.
Nostromo went away early. As soon as he had disappeared,
walking towards the beach, Linda stepped
over the threshold and, with a haggard smile, sat down
by the side of her father.
Ever since that Sunday, when the infatuated and
desperate Ramirez had waited for her on the wharf, she
had no doubts whatever. The jealous ravings of that
precision, as with a nail driven into her heart, that sense
of unreality and deception which, instead of bliss and
security, she had found in her intercourse with her promised
husband. She had passed on, pouring indignation
and scorn upon Ramirez; but, that Sunday, she nearly
died of wretchedness and shame, lying on the carved
and lettered stone of Teresa's grave, subscribed for by
the engine-drivers and the fitters of the railway workshops,
in sign of their respect for the hero of Italian
Unity. Old Viola had not been able to carry out his
desire of burying his wife in the sea; and Linda wept
upon the stone.
The gratuitous outrage appalled her. If he wished to
break her heart — well and good. Everything was permitted
to Gian' Battista. But why trample upon the
pieces; why seek to humiliate her spirit? Aha! He
could not break that. She dried her tears. And
Giselle! Giselle! The little one that, ever since she
could toddle, had always clung to her skirt for protection.
What duplicity! But she could not help it
probably. When there was a man in the case the poor
featherheaded wretch could not help herself.
Linda had a good share of the Viola stoicism. She
resolved to say nothing. But woman-like she put passion
into her stoicism. Giselle's short answers, prompted
by fearful caution, drove her beside herself by their
curtness that resembled disdain. One day she flung
herself upon the chair in which her indolent sister was
lying and impressed the mark of her teeth at the base
of the whitest neck in Sulaco. Giselle cried out. But
she had her share of the Viola heroism. Ready to faint
with terror, she only said, in a lazy voice, "Madre de
Dios! Are you going to eat me alive, Linda?" And
this outburst passed off leaving no trace upon the situation.
thing," reflected Giselle. "Perhaps it is not true.
It cannot be true," Linda tried to persuade herself.
But when she saw Captain Fidanza for the first time
after her meeting with the distracted Ramirez, the
certitude of her misfortune returned. She watched
him from the doorway go away to his boat, asking herself
stoically, "Will they meet to-night?" She made up
her mind not to leave the tower for a second. When he
had disappeared she came out and sat down by her
father.
The venerable Garibaldino felt, in his own words, "a
young man yet." In one way or another a good deal of
talk about Ramirez had reached him of late; and his
contempt and dislike of that man who obviously was
not what his son would have been, had made him restless.
He slept very little now; but for several nights
past instead of reading — or only sitting, with Mrs.
Gould's silver spectacles on his nose, before the open
Bible, he had been prowling actively all about the island
with his old gun, on watch over his honour.
Linda, laying her thin brown hand on his knee, tried
to soothe his excitement. Ramirez was not in Sulaco.
Nobody knew where he was. He was gone. His talk
of what he would do meant nothing.
"No," the old man interrupted. "But son Gian'
Battista told me — quite of himself — that the cowardly
esclavo was drinking and gambling with the rascals of
Zapiga, over there on the north side of the gulf. He
may get some of the worst scoundrels of that scoundrelly
town of negroes to help him in his attempt upon
the little one. . . . But I am not so old. No!"
She argued earnestly against the probability of any
attempt being made; and at last the old man fell silent,
chewing his white moustache. Women had their obstinate
was like that, and Linda resembled her mother. It was
not seemly for a man to argue. "May be. May be,"
he mumbled.
She was by no means easy in her mind. She loved
Nostromo. She turned her eyes upon Giselle, sitting at
a distance, with something of maternal tenderness, and
the jealous anguish of a rival outraged in her defeat.
Then she rose and walked over to her.
"Listen — you," she said, roughly.
The invincible candour of the gaze, raised up all violet
and dew, excited her rage and admiration. She had
beautiful eyes — the Chica — this vile thing of white flesh
and black deception. She did not know whether she
wanted to tear them out with shouts of vengeance or
cover up their mysterious and shameless innocence with
kisses of pity and love. And suddenly they became
empty, gazing blankly at her, except for a little fear not
quite buried deep enough with all the other emotions
in Giselle's heart.
Linda said, "Ramirez is boasting in town that he will
carry you off from the island."
"What folly!" answered the other, and in a perversity
born of long restraint, she added: "He is not the
man," in a jesting tone with a trembling audacity.
"No?" said Linda, through her clenched teeth. "Is
he not? Well, then, look to it; because father has been
walking about with a loaded gun at night."
"It is not good for him. You must tell him not to,
Linda. He will not listen to me."
"I shall say nothing — never any more — to anybody,"
cried Linda, passionately.
This could not last, thought Giselle. Giovanni must
take her away soon — the very next time he came. She
would not suffer these terrors for ever so much silver.
uneasy at her father's watchfulness. She had begged
Nostromo not to come to the window that night. He
had promised to keep away for this once. And she
did not know, could not guess or imagine, that he had
another reason for coming on the island.
Linda had gone straight to the tower. It was time to
light up. She unlocked the little door, and went heavily
up the spiral staircase, carrying her love for the magnificent
Capataz de Cargadores like an ever-increasing load
of shameful fetters. No; she could not throw it off.
No; let Heaven dispose of these two. And moving
about the lantern, filled with twilight and the sheen of
the moon, with careful movements she lighted the lamp.
Then her arms fell along her body.
"And with our mother looking on," she murmured.
"My own sister — the Chica!"
The whole refracting apparatus, with its brass fittings
and rings of prisms, glittered and sparkled like a dome-
shaped shrine of diamonds, containing not a lamp, but
some sacred flame, dominating the sea. And Linda, the
keeper, in black, with a pale face, drooped low in a
wooden chair, alone with her jealousy, far above the
shames and passions of the earth. A strange, dragging
pain as if somebody were pulling her about brutally
by her dark hair with bronze glints, made her put her
hands up to her temples. They would meet. They
would meet. And she knew where, too. At the window.
The sweat of torture fell in drops on her cheeks, while
the moonlight in the offing closed as if with a colossal
bar of silver the entrance of the Placid Gulf — the sombre
cavern of clouds and stillness in the surf-fretted seaboard.
Linda Viola stood up suddenly with a finger on her lip.
He loved neither her nor her sister. The whole thing
some hope. Why did he not carry her off? What prevented
him? He was incomprehensible. What were
they waiting for? For what end were these two lying
and deceiving? Not for the ends of their love. There
was no such thing. The hope of regaining him for
herself made her break her vow of not leaving the tower
that night. She must talk at once to her father, who
was wise, and would understand. She ran down the
spiral stairs. At the moment of opening the door at
the bottom she heard the sound of the first shot ever
fired on the Great Isabel.
She felt a shock, as though the bullet had struck her
breast. She ran on without pausing. The cottage was
dark. She cried at the door, "Giselle! Giselle!" then
dashed round the corner and screamed her sister's name
at the open window, without getting an answer; but
as she was rushing, distracted, round the house, Giselle
came out of the door, and darted past her, running
silently, her hair loose, and her eyes staring straight
ahead. She seemed to skim along the grass as if on
tiptoe, and vanished.
Linda walked on slowly, with her arms stretched out
before her. All was still on the island; she did not know
where she was going. The tree under which Martin
Decoud spent his last days, beholding life like a succession
of senseless images, threw a large blotch of
black shade upon the grass. Suddenly she saw her
father, standing quietly all alone in the moonlight.
The Garibaldino — big, erect, with his snow-white
hair and beard — had a monumental repose in his immobility,
leaning upon a rifle. She put her hand upon
his arm lightly. He never stirred.
"What have you done?" she asked, in her ordinary
voice.
"I have shot Ramirez — infame!" he answered, with
his eyes directed to where the shade was blackest.
"Like a thief he came, and like a thief he fell. The
child had to be protected."
He did not offer to move an inch, to advance a single
step. He stood there, rugged and unstirring, like a
statue of an old man guarding the honour of his house.
Linda removed her trembling hand from his arm, firm
and steady like an arm of stone, and, without a word,
entered the blackness of the shade. She saw a stir of
formless shapes on the ground, and stopped short. A
murmur of despair and tears grew louder to her strained
hearing.
"I entreated you not to come to-night. Oh, my
Giovanni! And you promised. Oh! Why — why did
you come, Giovanni?"
It was her sister's voice. It broke on a heartrending
sob. And the voice of the resourceful Capataz de
Cargadores, master and slave of the San Tomé treasure,
who had been caught unawares by old Giorgio while
stealing across the open towards the ravine to get some
more silver, answered careless and cool, but sounding
startlingly weak from the ground.
"It seemed as though I could not live through the
night without seeing thee once more — my star, my little
flower."
* * * * *
The brilliant tertulia was just over, the last guests had
departed, and the Señor Administrador had gone to his
room already, when Dr. Monygham, who had been expected
in the evening but had not turned up, arrived
driving along the wood-block pavement under the
electric-lamps of the deserted Calle de la Constitucion,
and found the great gateway of the Casa still open.
He limped in, stumped up the stairs, and found the
fat and sleek Basilio on the point of turning off the
lights in the sala. The prosperous majordomo remained
open-mouthed at this late invasion.
"Don't put out the lights," commanded the doctor.
"I want to see the señora."
"The señora is in the Señor Adminstrador's cancillaria,"
said Basilio, in an unctuous voice. "The Señor
Administrador starts for the mountain in an hour.
There is some trouble with the workmen to be feared, it
appears. A shameless people without reason and decency.
And idle, señor. Idle."
"You are shamelessly lazy and imbecile yourself,"
said the doctor, with that faculty for exasperation which
made him so generally beloved. "Don't put the lights
out."
Basilio retired with dignity. Dr. Monygham, waiting
in the brilliantly lighted sala, heard presently a door close
at the further end of the house. A jingle of spurs
died out. The Señor Administrador was off to the
mountain.
With a measured swish of her long train, flashing with
jewels and the shimmer of silk, her delicate head bowed
as if under the weight of a mass of fair hair, in which
the silver threads were lost, the "first lady of Sulaco,"
as Captain Mitchell used to describe her, moved along
the lighted corredor, wealthy beyond great dreams of
wealth, considered, loved, respected, honoured, and as
solitary as any human being had ever been, perhaps,
on this earth.
The doctor's "Mrs. Gould! One minute!" stopped
her with a start at the door of the lighted and empty
sala. From the similarity of mood and circumstance,
the sight of the doctor, standing there all alone amongst
the groups of furniture, recalled to her emotional memory
seemed to hear in the silence the voice of that man,
dead miserably so many years ago, pronounce the
words, "Antonia left her fan here." But it was the
doctor's voice that spoke, a little altered by his excitement.
She remarked his shining eyes.
"Mrs. Gould, you are wanted. Do you know what
has happened? You remember what I told you yesterday
about Nostromo. Well, it seems that a lancha,
a decked boat, coming from Zapiga, with four negroes
in her, passing close to the Great Isabel, was hailed
from the cliff by a woman's voice — Linda's, as a matter
of fact — commanding them (it's a moonlight night) to
go round to the beach and take up a wounded man to
the town. The patron (from whom I've heard all this),
of course, did so at once. He told me that when they
got round to the low side of the Great Isabel, they
found Linda Viola waiting for them. They followed
her: she led them under a tree not far from the cottage.
There they found Nostromo lying on the ground with
his head in the younger girl's lap, and father Viola
standing some distance off leaning on his gun. Under
Linda's direction they got a table out of the cottage for a
stretcher, after breaking off the legs. They are here,
Mrs. Gould. I mean Nostromo and — and Giselle.
The negroes brought him in to the first-aid hospital
near the harbour. He made the attendant send for
me. But it was not me he wanted to see — it was you,
Mrs. Gould! It was you."
"Me?" whispered Mrs. Gould, shrinking a little.
"Yes, you!" the doctor burst out. "He begged me
— his enemy, as he thinks — to bring you to him at once.
It seems he has something to say to you alone."
"Impossible!" murmured Mrs. Gould.
"He said to me, 'Remind her that I have done something
Gould," the doctor pursued, in the greatest excitement.
"Do you remember the silver? The silver in
the lighter — that was lost?"
Mrs. Gould remembered. But she did not say she
hated the mere mention of that silver. Frankness
personified, she remembered with an exaggerated horror
that for the first and last time of her life she had concealed
the truth from her husband about that very
silver. She had been corrupted by her fears at that
time, and she had never forgiven herself. Moreover,
that silver, which would never have come down if her
husband had been made acquainted with the news
brought by Decoud, had been in a roundabout way
nearly the cause of Dr. Monygham's death. And these
things appeared to her very dreadful.
"Was it lost, though?" the doctor exclaimed. "I've
always felt that there was a mystery about our Nostromo
ever since. I do believe he wants now, at the
point of death —"
"The point of death?" repeated Mrs. Gould.
"Yes. Yes. . . . He wants perhaps to tell
you something concerning that silver which —"
"Oh, no! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Gould, in a low
voice. "Isn't it lost and done with? Isn't there
enough treasure without it to make everybody in the
world miserable?"
The doctor remained still, in a submissive, disappointed
silence. At last he ventured, very low —
"And there is that Viola girl, Giselle. What are
we to do? It looks as though father and sister had —"
Mrs. Gould admitted that she felt in duty bound to
do her best for these girls.
"I have a volante here," the doctor said. "If you
don't mind getting into that —"
He waited, all impatience, till Mrs. Gould reappeared,
having thrown over her dress a grey cloak
with a deep hood.
It was thus that, cloaked and monastically hooded
over her evening costume, this woman, full of endurance
and compassion, stood by the side of the bed on which
the splendid Capataz de Cargadores lay stretched out
motionless on his back. The whiteness of sheets and
pillows gave a sombre and energetic relief to his bronzed.
face, to the dark, nervous hands, so good on a tiller,
upon a bridle and on a trigger, lying open and idle
upon a white coverlet.
"She is innocent," the Capataz was saying in a deep
and level voice, as though afraid that a louder word
would break the slender hold his spirit still kept upon
his body. "She is innocent. It is I alone. But no
matter. For these things I would answer to no man
or woman alive."
He paused. Mrs. Gould's face, very white within the
shadow of the hood, bent over him with an invincible
and dreary sadness. And the low sobs of Giselle Viola,
kneeling at the end of the bed, her gold hair with coppery
gleams loose and scattered over the Capataz's
feet, hardly troubled the silence of the room.
"Ha! Old Giorgio — the guardian of thine honour!
Fancy the Vecchio coming upon me so light of foot, so
steady of aim. I myself could have done no better.
But the price of a charge of powder might have been
saved. The honour was safe. . . . Señora, she
would have followed to the end of the world Nostromo
the thief. . . . I have said the word. The spell
is broken!"
A low moan from the girl made him cast his eyes
down.
"I cannot see her. . . . No matter," he went on,
his voice. "One kiss is enough, if there is no time for
more. An airy soul, señora! Bright and warm, like
sunshine — soon clouded, and soon serene. They would
crush it there between them. Señora, cast on her the
eye of your compassion, as famed from one end of the
land to the other as the courage and daring of the man
who speaks to you. She will console herself in time.
And even Ramirez is not a bad fellow. I am not angry.
No! It is not Ramirez who overcame the Capataz
of the Sulaco Cargadores." He paused, made an effort,
and in louder voice, a little wildly, declared —
"I die betrayed — betrayed by —"
But he did not say by whom or by what he was dying
betrayed.
"She would not have betrayed me," he began again,
opening his eyes very wide. "She was faithful. We
were going very far — very soon. I could have torn
myself away from that accursed treasure for her. For
that child I would have left boxes and boxes of it — full.
And Decoud took four. Four ingots. Why? Picardia!
To betray me? How could I give back the treasure
with four ingots missing? They would have said I
had purloined them. The doctor would have said that.
Alas! it holds me yet!"
Mrs. Gould bent low, fascinated — cold with apprehension.
"What became of Don Martin on that night, Nostromo?"
"Who knows? I wondered what would become of
me. Now I know. Death was to come upon me unawares.
He went away! He betrayed me. And you
think I have killed him! You are all alike, you fine
people. The silver has killed me. It has held me. It
holds me yet. Nobody knows where it is. But you are
said, 'Save it on your life.' And when I returned, and
you all thought it was lost, what do I hear? 'It was
nothing of importance. Let it go. Up, Nostromo, the
faithful, and ride away to save us, for dear life!'"
"Nostromo!" Mrs. Gould whispered, bending very
low. "I, too, have hated the idea of that silver from
the bottom of my heart."
"Marvellous! — that one of you should hate the
wealth that you know so well how to take from the
hands of the poor. The world rests upon the poor,
as old Giorgio says. You have been always good to the
poor. But there is something accursed in wealth.
Señora, shall I tell you where the treasure is? To you
alone. . . . Shining! Incorruptible!"
A pained, involuntary reluctance lingered in his tone,
in his eyes, plain to the woman with the genius of sympathetic
intuition. She averted her glance from the
miserable subjection of the dying man, appalled, wishing
to hear no more of the silver.
"No, Capataz," she said. "No one misses it now.
Let it be lost for ever."
After hearing these words, Nostromo closed his eyes,
uttered no word, made no movement. Outside the
door of the sick-room Dr. Monygham, excited to the
highest pitch, his eyes shining with eagerness, came up
to the two women.
"Now, Mrs. Gould," he said, almost brutally in his
impatience, "tell me, was I right? There is a mystery.
You have got the word of it, have you not? He told
you —"
"He told me nothing," said Mrs. Gould, steadily.
The light of his temperamental enmity to Nostromo
went out of Dr. Monygham's eyes. He stepped back
submissively. He did not believe Mrs. Gould. But
inexplicable fatality affirming the victory of Nostromo's
genius over his own. Even before that woman, whom
he loved with secret devotion, he had been defeated
by the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, the man
who had lived his own life on the assumption of unbroken
fidelity, rectitude, and courage!
"Pray send at once somebody for my carriage,"
spoke Mrs. Gould from within her hood. Then, turning
to Giselle Viola, "Come nearer me, child; come
closer. We will wait here."
Giselle Viola, heartbroken and childlike, her face
veiled in her falling hair, crept up to her side. Mrs.
Gould slipped her hand through the arm of the unworthy
daughter of old Viola, the immaculate republican,
the hero without a stain. Slowly, gradually,
as a withered flower droops, the head of the girl, who
would have followed a thief to the end of the world,
rested on the shoulder of Doña Emilia, the first lady
of Sulaco, the wife of the Señor Administrador of the
San Tomé mine. And Mrs. Gould, feeling her suppressed
sobbing, nervous and excited, had the first
and only moment of bitterness in her life. It was
worthy of Dr. Monygham himself.
"Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have
forgotten you for his treasure."
"Señora, he loved me. He loved me," Giselle whispered,
despairingly. "He loved me as no one had ever
been loved before."
"I have been loved, too," Mrs. Gould said in a severe
tone.
Giselle clung to her convulsively. "Oh, señora,
but you shall live adored to the end of your life," she
sobbed out.
Mrs. Gould kept an unbroken silence till the carriage
the doctor had shut the door of the landau, she leaned
over to him.
"You can do nothing?" she whispered.
"No, Mrs. Gould. Moreover, he won't let us touch
him. It does not matter. I just had one look. . . .
Useless."
But he promised to see old Viola and the other girl
that very night. He could get the police-boat to take
him off to the island. He remained in the street, looking
after the landau rolling away slowly behind the
white mules.
The rumour of some accident — an accident to Captain
Fidanza — had been spreading along the new quays
with their rows of lamps and the dark shapes of towering
cranes. A knot of night prowlers — the poorest of
the poor — hung about the door of the first-aid hospital,
whispering in the moonlight of the empty street.
There was no one with the wounded man but the pale
photographer, small, frail, bloodthirsty, the hater of
capitalists, perched on a high stool near the head of the
bed with his knees up and his chin in his hands. He
had been fetched by a comrade who, working late on
the wharf, had heard from a negro belonging to a lancha,
that Captain Fidanza had been brought ashore mortally
wounded.
"Have you any dispositions to make, comrade?"
he asked, anxiously. "Do not forget that we want
money for our work. The rich must be fought with
their own weapons."
Nostromo made no answer. The other did not insist,
remaining huddled up on the stool, shock-headed,
wildly hairy, like a hunchbacked monkey. Then, after
a long silence —
"Comrade Fidanza," he began, solemnly, "you have
enemy of the people?"
In the dimly lit room Nostromo rolled his head slowly
on the pillow and opened his eyes, directing at the weird
figure perched by his bedside a glance of enigmatic and
profound inquiry. Then his head rolled back, his eyelids
fell, and the Capataz de Cargadores died without a
word or moan after an hour of immobility, broken by
short shudders testifying to the most atrocious sufferings.
Dr. Monygham, going out in the police-galley to the
islands, beheld the glitter of the moon upon the gulf
and the high black shape of the Great Isabel sending
a shaft of light afar, from under the canopy of clouds.
"Pull easy," he said, wondering what he would find
there. He tried to imagine Linda and her father, and
discovered a strange reluctance within himself. "Pull
easy," he repeated.
* * * * * *
From the moment he fired at the thief of his honour,
Giorgio Viola had not stirred from the spot. He stood,
his old gun grounded, his hand grasping the barrel near
the muzzle. After the lancha carrying off Nostromo
for ever from her had left the shore, Linda, coming up,
stopped before him. He did not seem to be aware of
her presence, but when, losing her forced calmness,
she cried out —
"Do you know whom you have killed?" he answered
—
"Ramirez the vagabond."
White, and staring insanely at her father, Linda
laughed in his face. After a time he joined her faintly
in a deep-toned and distant echo of her peals. Then
she stopped, and the old man spoke as if startled —
"He cried out in son Gian' Battista's voice."
The gun fell from his opened hand, but the arm remained
extended for a moment as if still supported.
Linda seized it roughly.
"You are too old to understand. Come into the
house."
He let her lead him. On the threshold he stumbled
heavily, nearly coming to the ground together with
his daughter. His excitement, his activity of the last
few days, had been like the flare of a dying lamp. He
caught at the back of his chair.
"In son Gian' Battista's voice," he repeated in a
severe tone. "I heard him — Ramirez — the miserable
—"
Linda helped him into the chair, and, bending low,
hissed into his ear —
"You have killed Gian' Battista."
The old man smiled under his thick moustache.
Women had strange fancies.
"Where is the child?" he asked, surprised at the penetrating
chilliness of the air and the unwonted dimness
of the lamp by which he used to sit up half the night
with the open Bible before him.
Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her eyes.
"She is asleep," she said. "We shall talk of her tomorrow."
She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with
terror and with an almost unbearable feeling of pity.
She had observed the change that came over him. He
would never understand what he had done; and even
to her the whole thing remained incomprehensible.
He said with difficulty —
"Give me the book."
Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn
leather cover, the Bible given him ages ago by an
Englishman in Palermo.
"The child had to be protected," he said, in a strange,
mournful voice.
Behind his chair Linda wrung her hands, crying without
noise. Suddenly she started for the door. He
heard her move.
"Where are you going? "he asked.
"To the light," she answered, turning round to look
at him balefully.
"The light! Si — duty."
Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his
absorbed quietness, he felt in the pocket of his red shirt
for the spectacles given him by Doña Emilia. He put
them on. After a long period of immobility he opened
the book, and from on high looked through the glasses
at the small print in double columns. A rigid, stern
expression settled upon his features with a slight frown,
as if in response to some gloomy thought or unpleasant
sensation. But he never detached his eyes from the
book while he swayed forward, gently, gradually, till
his snow-white head rested upon the open pages. A
wooden clock ticked methodically on the white-washed
wall, and growing slowly cold the Garibaldino lay
alone, rugged, undecayed, like an old oak uprooted by
a treacherous gust of wind.
The light of the Great Isabel burned unfailing above
the lost treasure of the San Tomé mine. Into the
bluish sheen of a night without stars the lantern sent
out a yellow beam towards the far horizon. Like a
black speck upon the shining panes, Linda, crouching
in the outer gallery, rested her head on the rail. The
moon, drooping in the western board, looked at her
radiantly.
Below, at the foot of the cliff, the regular splash of
oars from a passing boat ceased, and Dr. Monygham
stood up in the stern sheets.
"Linda!" he shouted, throwing back his head.
"Linda!"
Linda stood up. She had recognized the voice.
"Is he dead?" she cried, bending over.
"Yes, my poor girl. I am coming round," the doctor
answered from below. "Pull to the beach," he said
to the rowers.
Linda's black figure detached itself upright on the
light of the lantern with her arms raised above her head
as though she were going to throw herself over.
"It is I who loved you," she whispered, with a face
as set and white as marble in the moonlight. "I!
Only I! She will forget thee, killed miserably for
her pretty face. I cannot understand. I cannot understand.
But I shall never forget thee. Never!"
She stood silent and still, collecting her strength to
throw all her fidelity, her pain, bewilderment, and despair
into one great cry.
"Never! Gian' Battista!"
Dr. Monygham, pulling round in the police-galley,
heard the name pass over his head. It was another
of Nostromo's triumphs, the greatest, the most enviable,
the most sinister of all. In that true cry of
undying passion that seemed to ring aloud from Punta
Mala to Azuera and away to the bright line of the
horizon, overhung by a big white cloud shining like a
mass of solid silver, the genius of the magnificent Capataz
de Cargadores dominated the dark gulf containing
his conquests of treasure and love.
| Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad | |