 | CHAPTER THREE Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad |  |
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!"
| CHAPTER THREE Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad | |