 | CHAPTER ELEVEN Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad |  |
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."
| CHAPTER ELEVEN Nostromo: a Tale of the Seaboard / Joseph Conrad | |