 CHAPTER V The Gould carriage was the first to return from the harbor to the empty town. On the ancient pavement, laid out in patterns, sunk into ruts and holes, the portly Ignacio, mindful of the springs of the Parisian-built land-out, had pulled up to a walk, and D'Cou and his corner contemplated mootily the inner aspect of the gate. The squat, turreted sides held up between them a mass of masonry with bunches of grass growing at the top, and a gray, heavily-scrolled, armorial shield of stone above the apex of the arch, with the arms of Spain nearly smoothed out as if in readiness for some new device typical of the impending progress. The explosive noise of the railway truck seemed to augment D'Cou's irritation. He muttered something to himself, then began to talk aloud in curt, angry phrases thrown at the silence of the two women. They did not look at him at all. While Don José, with his semi-translucent, waxy complexion, overshadowed by the soft gray hat, swayed a little to the jolt of the carriage by the side of Mrs. Gould. This sound puts a new edge on a very old truth. D'Cou spoke in French, perhaps because of Ignacio on the box above him. The old coachman, with his broad back filling a short, silver-rated jacket, had a big pair of ears, whose thick rim stood well away from his cropped head. Yes, the noise outside the city wall is new, but the principal is old. He ruminated his discontent for a while, then began afresh with a side-long glance at Antonia. No, but just imagine our forefathers in Morio and Corslitz drawn up outside this gate, and a band of adventurers just landed from their ships in the harbor there. Thieves, of course, speculators, too. Their expeditions, each one, were the speculations of grave and reverent persons in England. That is history, as that absurd sailor Mitchell is always saying. Mitchell's arrangements for the embarkation of the troops was excellent, exclaimed Don Jose. That! That! Oh, that's really the work of that Genoese seaman. But to return to my noises. There used to be, in the old days, the sound of trumpets outside that gate. War trumpets! I'm sure they were trumpets. I have read somewhere that Drake, who was the greatest of these men, used to dine alone in his cabin on board ship to the sound of trumpets. In those days this town was full of wealth. Those men came to take it. Now the whole land is like a treasure house, and all these people are breaking into it, whilst we are cutting each other's throats. The only thing that keeps them out is mutual jealousy. But they'll come to an agreement some day. By the time we've settled our quarrels and become decent and honorable, there'll be nothing left for us. It has always been the same. We are a wonderful people, but it has always been our fate to be—he did not say robbed, but had it after a pause—exploited. Mrs. Gould said, Oh, this is unjust, and Antonia interjected. Don't answer him, Emilia. He is attacking me. You surely do not think I was attacking Don Carlos? D'Cou answered. And then the carriage stopped before the door of the Casa Gould. The young man offered his hand to the ladies. They went in first together. Don Jose walked by the side of D'Cou, and the gouty old porter tottered after them with some light wraps on his arm. Don Jose slipped his hand under the arm of the journalist of Sulaco. The poor veneer must have a long and confident article upon Barrios and the irresistableness of his army of Cata. The moral effect should be kept up in the country. We must cable encouraging extracts to Europe and the United States to maintain a favorable impression abroad. D'Cou muttered, Oh, yes, we must comfort our friends, the speculators. The long open gallery was in shadow, with its screen of plants and vases along the balustrade, holding out motionless blossoms and all the glass doors of the reception rooms thrown open. A jingle of spurs died out at the further end. Basilio, standing against the wall, set in a soft tone to the passing ladies. The Señor Administrador is just back from the mountain. In the great sala, with its groups of ancient Spanish and modern European furniture making as if different centers under the high white spread of the ceiling, the silver and porcelain of the tea service gleamed among a cluster of dwarf chairs, like a bit of a lady's boudoir, putting in a note of feminine and intimate delicacy. Don Jose and his rocking chair placed his hat on his lap, and D'Cou walked up and down the whole length of the room, passing between tables loaded with knick-knacks and almost disappearing behind the high backs of the leather and sofas. He was thinking of the angry face of Antonia. He was confident that he would make his peace with her. He had not stayed in Sulaco to quarrel with Antonia. Martin D'Cou was angry with himself. All he saw and heard going on around him exasperated the preconceived views of his European civilization. To contemplate revolutions from the distance of the Parisian boulevards was quite another matter. Here on the spot it was not possible to dismiss their tragic comedy with the expression Kelf Fars. The reality of the political action, such as it was, seemed closer and acquired poignancy by Antonia's belief in the cause. Its crudeness hurt his feelings. He was surprised at his own sensitiveness. I suppose I am more of a casso on aro than I would have believed possible, he thought to himself. His disdain grew like a reaction of his skepticism against the action into which he was forced by his infatuation for Antonia. He soothed himself by saying he was not a patriot, but a lover. The ladies came in bareheaded, and Mrs. Gould sank low before the little tea table. Antonia took up her usual place at the reception hour, the corner of a leathered couch with rigid grace in her pose and a fan in her hand. D'Cou, swerving from the straight line of his march, came to lean over the high back of her seat. For a long time he talked into her ear from behind, softly, with a half-smile and an air of apologetic familiarity. Her fan lay half-grasped on her knees. She never looked at him. His rapid utterance grew more and more insistent and caressing. At last he ventured a slight laugh. No, really, you must forgive me. One must be serious sometimes. He paused. She turned her head a little. Her blue eyes glided slowly towards him, slightly upwards, mollified and questioning. You can't think I am serious when I call Montero a grand bestia every second day in the porvenir. That is not a serious occupation. No occupation is serious, not even when a bullet through the heart is the penalty of failure. Her hand closed firmly on her fan. Some reason, you understand, I mean some sense, may creep into thinking. Some glimpse of truth. I mean some effective truth, for which there is no room in politics or journalism. I happen to have said what I thought. And you are angry. If you do me the kindness to think a little, you will see that I spoke like a patriot. She opened her red lips for the first time, not unkindly. Yes, but you never see the aim. Men must be used as they are. I suppose nobody is really disinterested, unless, perhaps, you, Don Martín. God forbid, it's the last thing I should like you to believe of me. He spoke lightly and paused. She began to fan herself with a slow movement without raising her hand. After a time he whispered passionately, Antonia. She smiled and extended her hand after the English manner towards Charles Gould, who was bowing before her, while Dekou, with his elbows spread on the back of the sofa, dropped his eyes and murmured, Bonjour. The senor administered the oar of the Santome mine bent over his wife for a moment. They exchanged a few words, of which only the phrase, The greatest enthusiasm, pronounced by Mrs. Gould, could be heard. Yes, Dekou began in a murmur. Even he. This is sheer calamity, said Antonia, not very severely. You just asked him to throw his mind into the melting pot for the great cause, Dekou whispered. Don Jose had raised his voice. He rubbed his hands cheerily. The excellent aspect of the troops and the great quantity of new deadly rifles on the shoulders of those brave men seemed to fill him with an ecstatic confidence. Charles Gould, very tall and thin before his chair, listened, but nothing could be discovered in his face except a kind and deferential attention. Meanwhile, Antonia had risen, and, crossing the room, stood looking out of one of the three long windows giving on the street. Dekou followed her. The window was thrown open, and he leaned against the thickness of the wall. The long folds of the damask curtain, falling straight from the broad brass cornice, hid him partly from the room. He folded his arms on his breast and looked steadily at Antonia's profile. The people returning from the harbor filled the pavements. The shuffle of sandals and a low murmur of voices ascended to the window. Now and then a coach rolled slowly along the disjointed roadway of the Cal de la Constitucion. There were not many private carriages in Sulaco. At the most crowded hour on the Alameda they could be counted with one glance at the eye. The great family arcs swayed on high-leathered springs, full of pretty powdered faces in which the eyes looked intensely alive and black. At first Don Just Lopez, the president of the provincial assembly, passed with his three lovely daughters, solemn in black frock coat and stiff white tie, as when directing a debate from a high tribune. Though they all raised their eyes, Antonia did not make the usual greeting gesture of a fluttered hand, and they affected not to see the two young people, Costugan Eros with European manners, whose eccentricities were discussed behind the barred windows of the first families of Sulaco. And then the widowed Señora Gavilazo de Valdez rolled by, handsome and dignified, in a great machine in which she used to travel to and from her country house, surrounded by an armed retinue in leather suits and big sombreros, with carbines at the bows of their saddles. She was a woman of most distinguished family, proud, rich, and kind-hearted. Her second son, Jamie, had just gone off to the staff of Barrios. The eldest, a worthless fellow of a moody disposition, filled Sulaco with the noise of his dissipations, and gambled heavily at the club. The two youngest boys, with yellow ribiarrist, cockades in their caps, sat on the front seat. She, too, affected not to see the Señora D'Cou talking publicly with Antonia in defiance of every convention, and he not even her novio as far as the world knew. Though, even in that case, it would have been scandal enough. But the dignified old lady, respected and admired by the first families, would have been still more shocked if she could have heard the words they were exchanging. Did you say I have lost sight of the aim? I have only one aim in the world. She made an almost imperceptible negative movement of her head, still staring across the street at the Avellanos' house, gray, marked with decay, and with iron bars like a prison. And it would be so easy of attainment, he continued, this aim which, whether knowingly or not, I have always had in my heart, ever since the day when you snubbed me so horribly once in Paris, you remember. A slight smile seemed to move the corner of the lip that was on his side. You know you were a very terrible person, a sort of Charlotte Corday in a schoolgirl's dress, a ferocious patriot. I suppose you would have stuck a knife into Guzmán Bento. She interrupted him. You do me too much honour. At any rate, he said, changing suddenly to a tone of bitter levity, you would have sent me to stab him without compunction. A par exemple, she murmured in a shocked tone. Well, he argued mockingly, you do keep me here writing deadly nonsense. Deadly to me. It has already killed my self-respect. And you may imagine, he continued, his tone passing into light banter, that Montero, should he be successful, would get even with me in the only way such a brute can get even with a man of intelligence who condescends to call him a grand bestia three times a week. It's a sort of intellectual death. But there is the other one in the background for a journalist of my ability. If he is successful, said Antonia thoughtfully. You seem satisfied to see my life hang on a thread, D'Cou replied with a broad smile. And the other Montero, the my trusted brother of the proclamations, the Guerrillero. Haven't I written that he was taking the guests overcoats and changing plates in Paris at our legation in the intervals of spying on our refugees there in the time of Rojas? He will wash out that sacred truth in blood, in my blood. Why do you look annoyed? This is simply a bit of the biography of one of our great men. What do you think he will do to me? There is a certain convent wall around the corner of the plaza opposite the door of the bull ring. You know, opposite the door with the inscription, Entrada de la sombra? Appropriate, perhaps. That's where the uncle of our host gave up his Anglo-South American soul. And note, he might have run away. A man who has fought with weapons may run away. You might have let me go with barrios if you had cared for me. I would have carried one of those rifles in which Don Jose believes with the greatest satisfaction in the ranks of the poor peons and indios that know nothing either of reason or politics. The most forlorn hope and the most forlorn army on earth would have been safer than that for which you have made me stay here. When you make war you may retreat. But not when you spend your time in inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to die. His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his presence she stood motionless, her hands clasped lightly, the fan hanging down from her interlaced fingers. He waited for a while, and then. I shall go to the wall, he said, with a sort of jocular desperation. Even that declaration did not make her look at him. Her head remained still, her eyes fixed upon the house of the Avelanos, whose chipped pilasters, broken cornices, the whole degradation of dignity was hidden now by the gathering dusk of the street. In her whole figure her lips moved alone, forming the words, Marta, you will make me cry. He remained silent for a minute, startled as if overwhelmed by a sort of odd happiness, with the lines of the mocking smile still stiffened about his mouth, and incredulous surprise in his eyes. The value of a sentence is in the personality which utters it, for nothing new can be said by man or woman. And those were the last words, it seemed to him, that could ever have been spoken by Antonia. He had never made it up with her so completely in all their intercourse of small encounters, but even before she had time to turn towards him, which she did slowly with a rigid grace, he had begun to plead. My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My father is transported with joy. I won't say anything of my mother. Our mothers were like sisters. There is the mailboat for the south next week. Let us go. That moraga is a fool. A man like Montero is bribed. It's the practice of the country. It's tradition. It's politics. Read fifty years of misrule. Leave poor papa alone, Domarte. He believes, I have the greatest tenderness for your father, he began hurdly. But I love you, Antonia, and Moraga has miserably mismanaged this business. Perhaps your father did too. I don't know. Montero was bribeable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his share of this famous loan for national development. Why didn't the stupid Stamarte people give him a mission to Europe or something? He would have taken five years' salary in advance and got on loafing in Paris this stupid ferocious indio. The man, she said thoughtfully and very calm before this outburst, was intoxicated with vanity. We had all the information, not from Moraga only, from others too. There was his brother intriguing too. Oh yes, he said. Of course you know. You know everything. You read all the correspondence. You write all the papers. All those state papers that are inspired here. In this room, in blind deference to a theory of political purity. Hadn't you, Charles Gould, before your eyes, read the Sulaco. He and his mind are the practical demonstration of what could have been done. Do you think he succeeded by his fidelity to a theory of virtue? And all those railway people with their honest work. Of course their work is honest. But what if you cannot work honestly till the thieves are satisfied? Could he not, a gentleman, have told his Sir John what's his name that Montero had to be bought off? He and all his negro liberals hanging on to his gold-laced sleeve. He ought to have been bought off with his own stupid weight of gold. His weight of gold, I tell you. Boots, sabers, spurs, cocked hat, and all. She shook her head slightly. It was impossible, she murmured. He wanted the whole lot? What? She was facing him now in the deep recess of the window, very close and motionless. Her lips moved rapidly. D'Cou, leaning his back against the wall, listened with crossed arms and lowered eyelids. He drank the tones of her even voice and watched the agitated life of her throat as if waves of emotion had run from her heart to pass out into the air in her reasonable words. He also had his aspirations. He aspired to carry her away out of these deadly futilities of pronunciamentos and reforms. All this was wrong, utterly wrong. But she fascinated him, and sometimes this sheer sagacity of a phrase would break the charm, replace the fascination by a sudden unwilling thrill of interest. Some women hovered, as it were, on the threshold of genius, he reflected. They did not want to know or think or understand. Passion stood for all that, and he was ready to believe that some startlingly profound remark, some appreciation of character, or a judgment upon an event, bordered on the miraculous. In the mature Antonia he could see with an extraordinary vividness the austere schoolgirl of the earlier days. She seduced his attention. Sometimes he could not restrain a murmur of assent. Now and then he advanced an objection quite seriously. Gradually they began to argue. The curtain half hid them from the people in the Sala. End of Part 2, The Isabels, Chapter 5, Part 1. Part 2, Chapter 5, Section 2 of Mastromo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Daryl Neely. Mastromo by Joseph Conrad. Part 2, Chapter 5, Section 2. Outside it had grown dark. From the deep trench of shadow between the houses, lit up vaguely by the glimmer of street lamps, ascended the evening silence of Sulaco, the silence of a town with few carriages of unshawed horses, and a softly sandaled population. The windows of the Kaza Guli flung their shiny parallelograms upon the house of the Avayanics. Now and then a shuffle of feet passed below, with the pulsating red glow of a cigarette at the foot of the walls, and the night air, as it cooled by the snows of Iguerota, refreshed their faces. Re-Occidentals, said Martin de Koo, using the usual term the provincials of Sulaco apply to themselves, have been always distinct and separated. As long as we hold kaita, nothing can reach us. In all our troubles, no army has marched over those mountains. A revolution in the central provinces isolates us at once. Look how complete it is now. The news of Barrios' movement will be cabled to the United States, and only in that way will it reach Santa Marta by the cable from the other seaboard. We have the greatest riches, the greatest fertility, the purest blood in our great families, the most laborious population. The Occidental province should stand alone. The early federalism was not bad for us, then came this union which dawned and reeked Gourde easily. It opened the road to tyranny, and ever since, the rest of Costa Guana hangs like a millstone around our necks. The accidental territory is large enough to make any man's country. Look at the mountains. Nature itself seems to cry to us, separate. She made an energetic gesture of negation. A silence fell. Oh, yes, I know it's contrary to the doctrine laid down in the history of 50 years, misrule. I am only trying to be sensible, but my sense seems always to give you cause for offense. Have I startled you very much with this perfectly reasonable aspiration? She shook her head. No, she was not startled, but the idea shocked her early convictions. Her patriotism was larger. She had never considered that possibility. It may yet be the means of saving some of your convictions, he said, prophetically. She did not answer. She seemed tired. They leaned side by side on the radio at the little balcony, very friendly, having exhausted politics, giving themselves up to the silent feeling of their nearness in one of those profound pauses that fall upon the rhythm of passion. Towards the plaza end of the street, the glowing coals in the broseros of the market women, cooking their evening meal, leaned red along the edge of the pavement. A man appeared without a sound in the light of a streetlight, showing the colored inverted triangle of his bordered poncho square on his shoulders, hanging to a point below his knees. From the harbor end of the callea, a horseman walked his soft-stepping mount, gleaming silver-gray abreast each lamp under the dark shape of the rider. Behold the illustrious Capitaus de Cargadoris, said de Cude gently, coming in all his splendor after his work is done. The next great man of Sulaco after Don Carlos Cude. But he is good-natured, and let me make friends with him. I indeed, said Antonio. How did you make friends? A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular pulse, and this man is one of the leaders of the populace. A journalist ought to know the remarkable men, and this man is remarkable in his way. Ah, yes, said Antonio, thoughtfully. It is known that this Italian has a great influence. The horsemen had passed below them with a gleam of dim light on the shining broad quarters of the gray man, on a bright heavy stirrup, on a long silver spur. But the short flick of yellowish flame in the dusk was powerless against the muffled-up mysteriousness of the dark figure with an invisible face concealed by a great sombrero. De Cude and Antonio remained weaning over the balcony, side by side, touching elbows. With their heads overhanging the darkness of the street, and the brilliantly lighted salla at their backs. This was a tetetet of extreme impropriety, something in which, in the whole extent of the Republic, only the extraordinary Antonio could be capable. Poor motherless girl, never accompanied with a careless father who had thought only of making her learn it. Even De Cude himself seemed to feel that this was as much as he could expect of having her to himself till, till the revolution was over, and he could carry her off to Europe, away from the endlessness of civil strife, whose folly seemed even harder to bear than its ignominy. After one montero, there would be another. The lawlessness of a populace of all colors and races, barbarism, irremediable tyranny. As the great liberator, Rulibar, had said in the bitterness of his spirit, America is ungovernable. Those who worked for independence have plowed the sea. He did not care, he declared bolding. He seized every opportunity to tell her that those she had managed to make a Blanco journalist of him, he was no patriot. First of all, the word had no sense for cultured minds, to whom the narrowness of every belief is odious. And secondly, in connection with the everlasting troubles of this unhappy country, it was hopelessly besmirched. It had been the cry of dark barbarism, the cloak of lawlessness, of crimes, of rapacity, of simple feeding. He was surprised at the warmth of his own utterance. He had no need to drop his voice. It had been low all the time, a mere murmur in silence of dark houses with their shutters closed, early against the night air, as in the custom of Sulaco. Only the sala of Kazagud flung active violently the blaze of its four windows, the bright appeal of light in the whole gum obscurity of the street, and the murmur on the little balcony went on after a short pause. But we are laboring to change all that until we are protested. It is exactly what we desire. It is our object. It is the great cause, and the word you despise has stood also for sacrifice, for courage, for constancy, for suffering. Papa who, plowing the sea, interrupted Deku, looking down. There was below the sound of hasty and tondrous footsteps. Your uncle, the grand vicar of the cathedral, has just turned under the gate, observed Deku. He said mass for the troops in the plaza this morning. They had built for him an altar of grungs, you know, and they brought outside all the painted blocks to take the air. All the wooden saints stood militarily in a row at the top of the great flight of steps. They looked like a gorgeous escort, attending the vicar general. I saw the great function from the windows of the poor veneer. He is amazing, your uncle, the last of the corbeons. He glittered exceedingly in his vestments with a great crimson velvet cross down his back. And all the time our savior, Barrios, sat in the avaria club drinking punch at an open window. As free for our Barrios, I expected every moment your uncle to launch excommunication there and then at the black eyepatch in the window across the plaza. But not at all. Ultimately the troops marched off. Later Barrios came down with some of the officers and stood with his uniform all on button, discoursing at the edge of the peak. Suddenly your uncle appeared, no longer glittering, but all black at the cathedral door with that threatening aspect he has, you know, like a sort of avenging spirit. He gives one look, strides over straight at the group of uniforms, and leads away to general by the elbow. He walked them for a quarter of an hour in the shade of a wall. Never let go of his elbow for a moment, talking all the time with exaltation and gesticulating with a long black arm. It was a curious scene. The officers seemed struck with astonishment. Remarkable man, your missionary uncle, he hates an infidel much less than heritage and prefers a heathen many times to infidel. He condescends graciously to call me a heathen sometimes, you know. Antonia listened with her hands over the balustrade, opening and shutting the fan gently. And they cooed, talked a little nervously, as if afraid that she would leave him at the first pause. Their comparative isolation and precious sense of intimacy, the slight contact of their arms, affected him softly. For now and then, a tender inflection crept into the glow of his ironic murmurs. Any slight sign of favor from a relative of yours is welcome, Antonia. And perhaps he understands me after all. But I know him too, our Padre Corvallian. The idea of political honor, justice, and honesty for him consists in the restitution of the confiscated church property. Nothing else could have drawn that fierce converter of savage Indians out of the wilds to work for the year's cause. Nothing else but that wild hope. He would make a pronuncia meanto himself as such an object against any government if he could only get followers. What does Don Carlos Gold do that? But of course, with his English impenetrability, nobody can tell what he thinks. Probably he thinks of nothing apart from his mind of his Imperium in Imperio. As to Mrs. Gold, she thinks of her schools, of her hospitals, of the mothers with the young babies, of every sick old man in the three villages. If you were to turn your head now, you would see her extracting a report from that sinister doctor in a checked shirt. What's his name? Onigya, or else catechizing Don Pepe, or perhaps listening to Padre Roman. They are all down here today, all her ministers at stake. Well, she is a sensible woman, and perhaps Don Carlos is a sensible man. It's a part of solid English sense not to think too much, to see only what may be a practical use at the moment. These people are not like ourselves. We have no political reason. We have political passions, sometimes. What is a conviction? A particular view of our personal advantage, either practical or emotional. No one is a patriot enough. The word serves us well. I am clear-sighted, and I shall not use that word to you, Antonio. I have no patriotic illusions. I have only the supreme illusion of a lover. He paused, then muttered almost inaudibly. That can lead one very far, though. Behind their backs, the political tide at once in every 24 hours set with a strong flood through the grueled drawing room could be heard. Rising higher in a hum of voices, men had been dropping in singly, or in twos and trees. The higher officials of the province, engineers of the railway, sunburnt and in tweets, with a frosted head of their chief, smiling with slow, humorous indulgence amongst the young, eager faces. Scarfé, a lover of fondangos, had already slipped out in search of some dance, no matter where, on the outskirts of the town. Beyond Yuste Lopez, after taking his daughter's home, had entered solemnly in a black crease coat buttoned up under his spreading brown beard. The few members of the provincial assembly present clustered at once around their president to discuss the news of the war and the last proclamation of the rebel Montero, the miserable Montero, calling in the name of a justly incensed democracy upon all the provincial assemblies of the republic to suspend their sittings till his sword had made peace, and the will of the people could be consulted. It was practically an invitation to dissolve. In unheard of audacity of that evil madman, the indignation ran high in the mouth of deputies behind José Avellanos. Don José, lifting up his voice, cried out to them over the high back of his chair. Sulaco has answered by sending today an army upon his flank, if all the other promises show only half as much patriotism as we occidentals. A great outburst of acclamations covered the vibrating treble of the light and soul of the car. Yes, yes, this was true, a great truth. Sulaco was in the forefront, as ever. It was a boastful tumult, the hopefulness inspired by the event of the day breaking out amongst these caballeros of the campo, thinking of their herds, of their lands, of the safety of their families. Everything was at stake. No, it was impossible that Montero should succeed. This criminal, the shameless indial. The clamor continued for some time. Everybody else in the room looked towards the group where Don José had put on his air of impartial solemnity, as if presiding at a sitting of the provincial assembly. De Cude had turned round at the noise and, meeting his back on the balustrade, shouted into the room with all the strength in his lungs, Grombacia, his unexpected cry at the effect of stilling the noise. All the eyes were directed to the window with an approving expectation, but De Cude had already turned his back upon the room and was again leaning out over the quiet street. This is the clintessence of my journalism. That is the subprime argument, he said to Antonio. I have invented this definition, this last word on a great question, but I am no patriot. I am no more of a patriot than the capitals of the Sulaco Calderdores, this Genoese who had done such great things for this harbor, this active usher in of the material implements for our progress. You have heard Captain Mitchell confess over and over again that till he got this man, he could never tell how long it would take to unload a ship. That is bad for progress. You have seen him pass by after his labor is on his famous horse to dazzle the girls in some ballroom with a broken floor. He is a fortunate fellow, his work is an exercise of personal powers, his leisure is spent in receiving the marks of extraordinary adulation, and he likes it too. If anybody be more fortunate to be feared and admired is, and are these your highest aspirations, don't mark too interrupted, Antonio. I was speaking of a man of that sort, said Decude Curtley. The heroes of the world have been feared and admired. What more could he want? Decude had often felt this familiar habit of ironic thought all shattered against Antonio's gravity. She irritated him as if she too had suffered from that inexplicable feminine obtuseness which stands so often between a man and a woman of the more ordinary sort. But he overcame his vexation at once. He was very far from thinking Antonio ordinary. Whatever verdict his skepticism might have pronounced upon himself. With a touch of penetrating tenderness in his voice, he assured her that his only aspiration was to a felicity so high that it seemed almost unrealizable on this earth. She colored invisibly with a warmth against which the breeze from the Sierra seemed to have lost its cooling power in the sudden melting of his nose. His whisper could not have carried so far, though there was enough barter in his tone to melt a heart of ice. Antonio turned away abruptly as if to carry his whispered assurance into the room behind full of light, noisy with voices. The tide of political speculation was beating high within the four walls of the Great Sala. As it driven beyond the marks by a great breasted hook, Antonio's stays span-shaped veered with still the center of loud and animated discussions. There was a self-confident ring in all the voices. Even the few Europeans around Charles Gould, a dame, a couple of Frenchmen, a discreet fat German, smiling with downcast eyes. The representatives of those material interests that had got a footing in Sulaco under the protecting might of the San Antonio mine had infused a lot of good humor into their deference. Charles Gould, to whom they were paying their court, was the visible sign of the stability that could be achieved on the shifting ground of revolutions. They felt hopeful about their various undertakings. One of the two Frenchmen, small, black, with glittering eyes lost in an immense grove of bushy beard, waved his tiny brown hands in delicate wrists. He had been traveling in the interior of the province for a syndicate of European capitalists. His forceful mosture felt administrateur returning every minute shrilled against the steady harm of conversations. He was relating his discoveries. He was ecstatic. Charles Gould glanced down at him courteously. At a given moment of these necessary receptions, it was Mrs. Gould's habit to withdraw quietly into a little drawing especially her own next to the Great Sala. She had risen and, waiting for Antonio, listened with a slightly worried graciousness to the engineering chief of the railway, who stooped over her, relating slowly, without the slightest gesture, something apparently amusing, for his eyes had a humorous twinkle. Antonio, before she advanced into the room to join Mrs. Gould, turned her head over her shoulder towards the coup only for a moment. Why should any one of us think his aspirations unrealizable? She said rapidly, I am going to cling to mine to the end, Antonio. He answered through clenched teeth, then bowed very low, a little distantly. The engineering chief had not finished telling his amusing story. The humors of railway building in South America appealed to his keen appreciation of the absurd, and he told his instances of ignorant prejudice and as ignorant cunning very well. Now Mrs. Gould gave in all her attention as he walked by her side, escorting the ladies out of the room. Finally, all three passed unnoticed through the glass doors in the gallery. Only a tall priest, stalking silently in the moys of the Sala, checked himself to look after them. Father Corbeón, the dude had seen from the balcony, turning into the gateway of the Casi Gould, had addressed no one since coming in. The long-skimpy Zután accentuated the tallness of his stature. He carried his powerful torso thrown forward, and the straight black bar of his joint eyebrows, the pugnacious outlining of the bony face, the white spot of a scar on the bluish-shaven cheeks, a testimonial to his apostolic zeal from a party of unconverted Indians, suggested something unlawful behind his priesthood, the idea of a chaplain of bandits. He separated his bony knotted hands clasped behind his back to shake his finger at Martín. They could have stepped into the room after Antonia, but he did not go far. He had remained just within, against the curtain, with an expression of not quite genuine gravity, like a grown-up person taking part in a game of children. He gazed quietly at the threatening finger. I have watched your reverence, converting General Barrios by a special sermon on the Plaza, he said, without making the slightest movement. What miserable nonsense, Father Corbeán's voice resounded all over the room, making all the heads turn on the shoulders. The man was a drunkard. Senoras, the god of your general is a bottle. This contemptuous, arbitrary voice caused an uneasy suspension of every sound, as if the self-confidence of the gathering had been staggered by a blow. But nobody took up Father Corbeán's declaration. Part 2 Chapter 5 Section 3 of Nostromo This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Nostromo by Joseph Conrad Part 2 Chapter 5 Section 3 It was known that Father Corbeán had come out of the wilds to advocate the sacred rites of the Church with the same fanatical fearlessness with which he had gone preaching to bloodthirsty savages, devoid of human compassion or worship of any kind. Rumours of legendary proportions told of his successes as a missionary beyond the eye of Christian men. He had baptized whole nations of Indians, living with them like a savage himself. It was related that the Padre used to ride with his Indians for days, half-naked, carrying a Balakhaid shield, and, no doubt, a long lance too, who knows, that he had wandered clothed in skins, seeking for proselytes somewhere near the snowline of the Cordillera. Of these exploits, Padre Corbeán himself was never known to talk, but he made no secret of his opinion that the politicians of Santa Marta had harder hearts and more corrupt minds than the heathen to whom he had carried the Word of God. His injudicious zeal for the temporal welfare of the Church was damaging the rebierist cause. It was common knowledge that he had refused to be made titular bishop of the Occidental Diocese till justice was done to a despoiled Church. The political hefe of Sulaco, the same dignitary whom Captain Mitchell saved from the mob afterwards, hinted with naive cynicism that, doubtless their excellencies, the ministers sent the Padre over the mountains to Sulaco in the worst season of the year in the hope that he would be frozen to death by the icy blasts of the High Paramus. Every year a few hardy muleteers, men enured to exposure, were known to perish in that way. But what would you have? Their excellencies possibly had not realized what a tough priest he was. Meantime the ignorant were beginning to murmur that the rebierist reforms meant simply the taking away of the land from the people. Some of it was to be given to foreigners who made the railway, the greater part was to go to the Padres. These were the results of the Grand Vicar's zeal. Even from the short allocution to the troops on the placer, which only the first ranks could have heard, he had not been able to keep out his fixed idea of an outraged church waiting for reparation from a penitent country. The political hefe had been exasperated, but he could not very well throw the brother-in-law of Don José into the prison of the Cabildo. The chief magistrate, an easygoing and popular official, visited the Casa Gold, walking over after sunset from the Intendencia, unattended, acknowledging with dignified courtesy the salutations of high and low alike. That evening he had walked up straight to Charles Gold and had hissed out to him that he would have liked to deport the Grand Vicar out of Sulaco, anywhere to some desert island, to the Isabels, for instance. The one without water preferably, eh, Don Carlos? He had added in a tone between jest and earnest. This uncontrollable priest, who had rejected his offer of the Episcopal Palace for a residence and preferred to hang his shabby hammock amongst the rubble and spiders of the sequestrated Dominican convent, had taken into his head to advocate an unconditional pardon for Hernández the robber. And this was not enough. He seemed to have entered into communication with the most audacious criminal the country had known for years. The Sulaco police knew, of course, what was going on. Padre Corvelan had got hold of that reckless Italian, the Capitas de Cargadores, the only man fit for such an errand, and had sent a message through him. Father Corvelan had studied in Rome and could speak Italian. The Capitas was known to visit the Old Dominican convent at night. An old woman who served the Grand Vicar had heard the name of Hernández pronounced, and only last Saturday afternoon the Capitas had been observed galloping out of town. He did not return for two days. The police would have laid the Italian by the heels if it had not been for fear of the Cargadores, a turbulent body of men, quite apt to raise a tumult. Nowadays it was not so easy to govern Sulaco. Bad characters flocked into it, attracted by the money in the pockets of the railway workmen. The populace was made restless by Father Corvelan's discourses, and the First Magistrate explained to Charles Gold that now the province was stripped of troops, any outbreak of lawlessness would find the authorities with their boots off, as it were. Then he went away moodily to sit in an armchair, smoking a long thin cigar, not very far from Don José, with whom, bending over sideways, he exchanged a few words from time to time. He ignored the entrance of the priest, and whenever Father Corvelan's voice was raised behind him, he shrugged his shoulders impatiently. Father Corvelan had remained quite motionless for a time with that something vengeful in his immobility which seemed to characterize all his attitudes. A lurid glow of strong convictions gave its peculiar aspect to the black figure, but its fierceness became softened, as the Padre, fixing his eyes upon Diku, raised his long black arm slowly, impressively. And you, you are a perfect heathen, he said in a subdued deep voice. He made a step nearer, pointing a forefinger at the young man's breast. Diku, very calm, felt the wall behind the curtain with the back of his head. Then, with his chin tilted well up, he smiled. Very well, he agreed with a slightly weary nonchalance of a man well used to these passages. But is it perhaps that you have not discovered yet what is the God of my worship? It was an easier task with our barrios. The priest suppressed a gesture of discouragement. You believe neither and stick nor stone, he said. No bottle added Diku without stirring. Neither does the other of your reverence's confidence. I mean the capitas of the Cargadores, he does not drink. Your reading of my character does honour to your perspicacity, but why call me a heathen? True, retorted the priest, you are ten times worse. A miracle could not convert you. I certainly do not believe in miracles, said Diku quietly. Father Corbilan shrugged his high-brood shoulders doubtfully. A sort of Frenchman, godless, a materialist. He pronounced slowly, as if weighing the terms of a careful analysis. Neither the son of his own country, nor of any other, he continued thoughtfully. A scarcely human, in fact, Diku commented under his breath, his head addressed against the wall, his eyes gazing up at the ceiling. The victim of this faithless age, Father Corbilan resumed in a deep but subdued voice. But of some use as a journalist, Diku changed his pose and spoke in a more animated tone. Has your worship neglected to read the last number of the porvenir? I assure you it is just like the others. On the general level, it is the most important. On the general policy, it continues to call Montero a grand bestia, and stigmatize his brother, the guerrillero, for a combination of lackey and spy. What could be more effective? In local affairs, it urges the provincial government to enlist bodily into the national army the band of Hernandez the robber, who is apparently the protege of the church, or at least of the grand vicar. Nothing could be more sound. The priest nodded and turned on the heels of his square-toed shoes with big steel buckles. Again, with his hands clasped behind his back, he paced to and fro, planting his feet firmly. When he swung about, the skirt of his sultan was inflated slightly by the brusqueness of his movements. The great sala had been emptying itself slowly. When the jefe político rose to go, most of those still remaining stood up suddenly in sign of respect, and Don José Avellanos stopped the rocking of his chair. But the good-natured first official made a deprecatory gesture, waved his hand to Charles Gold and went out discreetly. In the comparative piece of the room, the screaming Monsieur l'administrateur of the frail Harry Frenchman seemed to acquire a preternatural shrillness. The explorer of the capitalist syndicate was still enthusiastic. Ten million dollars worth of copper practically in sight, Monsieur l'administrateur, ten millions in sight, and a railway coming, a railway. They will never believe my report, c'est trop beau. He fell a prey to a screaming ecstasy in the midst of sagely nodding heads, before Charles Gold's imperturbable calm, and only the priest continued his pacing, flinging round the skirt of his sultan at each end of his beat. Dicou murmured to him ironically, those gentlemen talk about their gores. Father Corbillan stopped short, looked at the journalist of Sulaco fixedly for a moment, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and resumed his plodding walk of an obstinate traveller. And now the Europeans were dropping off from the group around Charles Gold, till the administrator of the great silver mine could be seen in his whole length, from head to foot, left stranded by the ebbing tide of his guests on the great square of carpet, as it were a multicolored shawl of flowers and arabesques under his brown boots. Father Corbillan approached the rocking chair of Don José Aueanos. Come, brother, he said, with kindly brusqueness, and a touch of relieved impatience, a man may feel at the end of a perfectly useless ceremony. Alacasa, Alacasa, this has been all talk. Let us now go and think and pray for guidance from heaven. He rolled his black eyes upwards. By the side of the frail diplomatist, the life and soul of the party, he seemed gigantic, with a gleam of fanaticism in the glance. But the voice of the party, or rather its mouthpiece, the son Dicou from Paris, turned journalist for the sake of Antonia's eyes, knew very well that it was not so, that he was only a strenuous priest with one idea, feared by the women and executed by the men of the people. Martin Dicou, the dilitante in life, imagined himself to derive an artistic pleasure from watching the picturesque extreme of wrong-headedness into which an honest, almost sacred conviction may drive a man. It is like madness. It must be because it is self-destructive, Dicou had said to himself often. It seemed to him that every conviction, every conviction, as soon as it became effective, turned into that form of dementia, the gods send upon those they wish to destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavor of that example with a zest of a connoisseur in the art of his choice. Those two men got on well together, as if each had felt respectively that a masterful conviction, as well as utter scepticism, may lead a man very far from the bypass of political action. Don José obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand. Dicou followed out the brothers-in-law, and there remained only one visitor in the vast empty sala, bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a heavy-eyed, round-cheeked man with a drooping moustache, a hide-merchant from Esmeralda, who had come overland to Sulaco, riding with a few peons across the coast range. He was very full of his journey, undertaken mostly for the purpose of seeing the Señor Administrador of Santome in relation to some assistance he required in his hide-exporting business. He hoped to enlarge it greatly now that the country was going to be settled. It was going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrading by a strange, anxious whine the sonority of the Spanish language, which he pattered rapidly, like some sort of cringing jargon. A plain man could carry on his little business now in the country, and even think of enlarging it with safety. Was it not so? Was it not so? He seemed to beg Charles Gold for a confirmatory word, a grunt of his scent, a simple nod even. He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in the pauses he would dart his eyes here and there. Then, loath to give up, he would branch off into feeling allusion to the dangers of his journey. The audacious Anandes, leaving his usual haunts, had crossed the Campo of Sulaco and was known to be lurking in the ravines of the coast range. Yesterday, when distant only a few hours from Sulaco, the hide-merchant and his servants had seen three men on the road arrested suspiciously with their horses' heads together. Two of these rode off at once and disappeared in a shallow kebrada to the left. We stopped, continued the man from Esmeralda, and I tried to hide behind a small bush, but none of my morsels would go forward to find out what it meant, and the third horseman seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was no use. We had been seen, so we rode slowly on, trembling. He let us pass, a man on a grey horse with his hat down on his eyes, without a word of greeting, but by and by we heard him galloping after us. We faced about, but that did not seem to intimidate him. He rode up at speed and, touching my foot with a toe of his boot, asked me for a cigar with a blood-curdling laugh. He did not seem armed, but when he put his hand back to reach for the matches, I saw an enormous revolver strapped to his waist. I shuddered. He had very fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and as he did not offer to go on, we dared not move. At last, blowing the smoke of my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said, Senor, it would be perhaps better for you if I rode behind your party. You are not very far from Sulaco now. Go you with God. What would you do? We went on. There was no resisting him. He might have been Hernandez himself, though my servant, who has been many times to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he had recognized him very well for the capitas of the steamship company's Cargadores. Later, that same evening, I saw that very man at the corner of the plaza talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the stirrup with her hand on the gray horse's main. I assure you, Senor Hirsch, murmured Charles Gold, that you ran no risk on this occasion. That may be, Senor, though I tremble yet, a most fierce man to look at. And what does it mean? A person employed by the steamship company talking with Salteadores, no less, Senor. The other horsemen were Salteadores in a lonely place and behaving like a robber himself. A cigar is nothing, but what was there to prevent him asking for my purse? No, no, Senor Hirsch, Charles Gold murmured, letting his glance stray away a little vacantly from the round face with its hooked beak upturned towards him in an almost childlike appeal. If it was the capitas the Cargadores you met, and there is no doubt, is there, you were perfectly safe. Thank you, you are very good. Very fierce-looking man, Don Carlos. He asked me for a cigar in the most familiar manner. What would have happened if I had not had a cigar? I shudder yet. What business had he to be talking with robbers in a lonely place? But Charles Gold, openly preoccupied now, gave not a sign, made no sound. The impenetrability of the embodied gold concession had its surface shades. To be dumb is merely a fatal affliction. But the king of Sulaco had words enough to give him all the mysterious weight of a taciturn force. His silences, backed by the power of speech, had as many shades of significance as uttered words in the way of ascent of doubt, of negation, even of simple comment. Some seemed to say plainly, think it over. Others meant clearly, go ahead. A simple, low, I see. With an affirmative nod at the end of a patient listening half-hour was the equivalent of a verbal contract, which men had learned to trust implicitly. Since behind it all there was the great Santomi mine, the head and front of the material interests so strong that it depended on no man's goodwill in the whole length and breadth of the Occidental province, that is, on no goodwill which it could not buy ten times over. But to the little hook-nosed man from Esmeralda, anxious about the export of hides, the silence of Charles Gold portended a failure. Evidently, this was no time for extending a modest man's business. He enveloped in a swift mental malediction the whole country with all its inhabitants, partisans of Ribiera and Montero alike. And there were incipient tears in his mute anger at the thought of the innumerable ox hides going to waste upon the dreamy expanse of the Campo, with its single palms rising like ships at sea within the perfect circle of the horizon, its clumps of heavy timber motionless like solid islands of leaves above the running waves of grass. There were hides there, rotting with no profit to anybody, rotting where they had been dropped by men called away to attend the urgent necessities of political revolutions. The practical, mercantile soul of Senor Hirsch rebelled against all that foolishness, while he was taking a respectful but disconcerted leave of the might and majesty of the Santome mine in the person of Charles Gold. He could not restrain a heartbroken murmur, wrung out of his very aching heart as it were. It is a great great foolishness, Don Carlos, all this. The price of hides in Hamburg is gone up, up. Of course, the rebierist government will do away with all that when it gets established firmly. Meantime, he sighed. Yes, meantime, repeated Charles Gold, inscrutably. The other shrugged his shoulders. But he was not ready to go yet. There was a little matter he would like to mention very much, if permitted. It appeared he had some good friends in Hamburg, he murmured the name of the firm, who were very anxious to do business in dynamite, he explained, a contract for dynamite with the Santome mine, and then perhaps later on other mine which were sure to. The little man from Esmeralda was ready to enlarge, but Charles interrupted him. It seemed as though the patience of the Senor Administrador was giving way at last. Senor Hirsch, he said, I have enough dynamite stored up at the mountain to send it down crashing into the valley, his voice rose a little, to send half Sulaco into the air if I liked. Charles Gold smiled at the round startled eyes of the dealer in hides, who was murmuring hastily, just so, just so. And now he was going. It was impossible to do business in explosives with an Administrador so well provided and so discouraging. He had suffered agonies in the saddle and had exposed himself to the atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for nothing at all, neither hides nor dynamite, and the very shoulders of the enterprising Israelite expressed dejection. At the door he bowed low to the engineering chief, but at the bottom of the stairs in the patio he stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an attitude of meditative astonishment. What does he want to keep so much dynamite for? he muttered. And why does he talk like this to me? The engineering chief, looking in at the door of the empty sala, whence the political tide had ebbed out to the last insignificant drop, nodded familiarly to the master of the house, standing motionless like a tall beacon amongst the deserted shoals of furniture. Good night, I am going, got my bike downstairs, the railway will know where to go for dynamite should we get short at any time, we have done cutting and chopping for a while now, we shall begin soon to blast our way through. Don't come to me, said Charles Gold with perfect serenity, I shan't have an ounce to spare for anybody, not an ounce, not for my own brother if I had a brother, and he were the engineering chief of the most promising railway in the world. What's that? asked the engineering chief with equanimity. Unkindness. No, said Charles Gold stolidly. Policy. Radical, I should think, the engineering chief observed from the doorway. Is that the right name? Charles Gold said from the middle of the room. I mean going to the roots, you know, the engineer explained with an air of enjoyment. Why? Yes, Charles pronounced slowly. The Gold concession has struck such deep roots in this country, in this province, in that gorge of the mountains that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to dislodge it from there. It's my choice, it's my last card to play. The engineering chief whistled low. A pretty game, he said, with a shade of discretion. And have you told Horoid of that extraordinary trump card you hold in your hand? Card only when it's played, when it falls at the end of the game. Till then you might call it a... a weapon, suggested the railway man. No, you may call it rather an argument, corrected Charles Gold gently. And that's how I've presented it to Mr. Horoid. And what did he say to it? asked the engineer with undisguised interest. He, Charles Gold spoke after a slight pause. He said something about holding on like grim death and putting our trust in God. I should imagine he must have been rather startled. But then pursued the administrator of the Santome mine. But then he is very far away, you know. And as they say in this country, God is very high above. The engineer's appreciative laugh died away on the stairs, where the Madonna with the child on her arm seemed to look after his shaking broad back from her shallow niche. End of Chapter 5. Part 2, Chapter 6 of Nostromo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. Part 2, Chapter 6. A profound stillness reigned in the Casa Gold. The master of the house, walking along the corridor, opened the door of his room and saw his wife sitting in a big armchair, his own smoking armchair, thoughtful contemplating her little shoes. And she did not raise her eyes when he walked in. Tired asked Charles Gold. A little said Mrs. Gold. Still without looking up, she added with feeling, there is an awful sense of unreality about all this. Charles Gold, before the long table strewn with papers on which lay a hunting crop and a pair of spurs, stood looking at his wife. The heat and dust must have been awful this afternoon by the water side. He murmured sympathetically. The glare on the water must have been simply terrible. One could close one's eyes to the glare, said Mrs. Gold. But, my dear Charlie, it is impossible for me to close my eyes to our position. To this awful... She raised her eyes and looked at her husband's face. From which all sign of sympathy or any other feeling had disappeared. Why don't you tell me something? She almost wailed. I thought you had understood me perfectly from the first, Charles Gold said, slowly. I thought we had said all there was to say a long time ago. There is nothing to say now. There were things to be done. We have done them. We have done them. We have gone on doing them. There is no going back now. I don't suppose that, even from the first, there was really any possible way back. And what's more, we can't even afford to stand still. Ah, if one only knew how far you mean to go, said his wife, inwardly trembling, but in an almost playful tone. Any distance, any length, of course, was the answer, in a matter-of-fact tone, which caused Mrs. Gold to make another report to repress a shudder. She stood up, smiling graciously, and her little figure seemed to be diminished still more by the heavy mass of her hair and the long train of her gown. But always to success, she said persuasively. Charles Gold, enveloping her in the steely blue glance of his attentive eyes, answered without hesitation, Oh, there is no alternative. He put an immense assurance into his tone. As to the words, this was all that his conscience would allow him to say. Mrs. Gold's smile remained a shade too long upon her lips. She murmured, I will leave you, I have a slight headache. The heat, the dust, were indeed. I suppose you are going back to the mine before the morning? At midnight, said Charles Gold, We are bringing down the silver tomorrow. Then I shall take three whole days off in town with you. Ah, you are going to meet the escort. I shall be on the balcony at five o'clock to see you pass. Till then, goodbye. Charles Gold walked rapidly round the table, and, seizing her hands, bent down, pressing them both to his lips. Before he straightened himself up again to his full height, she had disengaged one to smooth his cheek with a light touch, as if he were a little boy. Try to get some rest for a couple of hours, she murmured, with a glance at a hammock stretched in a distant part of the room. Her long trains swished softly after her on the red tiles. At the door she looked back. Two big lamps with unpolished glass globes bathed in a soft and abundant light, the four white walls of the room, with a glass case of arms, the brass hilt of Henry Gold's cavalry sabre on its square of velvet, and the water-colour sketch of the Santormee Gorge. And Mrs. Gold, gazing at the last in its black wooden frame, sighed out, Ah, if we had left it alone, Charlie. No, Charles Gold said moodyly. It was impossible to leave it alone. Perhaps it was impossible, Mrs. Gold admitted slowly. Her lips quivered a little, but she smiled with an air of dainty bravado. We have disturbed a good many snakes at that paradise, Charlie, haven't we? Yes, I remember, said Charles Gold. It was Don Pippe who called the gorge the paradise of snakes. No doubt we have disturbed a great many. But remember, my dear, that it is not as it was when you made that sketch. He waved his hand towards the small water-colour hanging alone on the great bare wall. It is no longer a paradise of snakes. We have brought mankind into it, and we cannot turn our backs upon them to go and begin a new life elsewhere. He confronted his wife with a firm, concentrated gaze, which Mrs. Gold returned with a brave assumption of fearlessness before she went out, closing the door gently after her. In contrast with a white glaring room, the dimly lit corridor had a restful mysteriousness of a forest glade, suggested by the stems and the leaves of the plants, ranged along the ballast trade of the open side. In the streaks of light falling through the open doors of the reception rooms, the blossoms, white and red, and pale lilac, came out vivid with the brilliance of flowers in a stream of sunshine, and Mrs. Gold, passing on, had the vividness of a figure seen in the clear patches of sun that checker the gloom of open glades in the woods. The stones and the rings upon her hand pressed to her forehead, glittered in the lamplight, abreast of the door of the sala. Who's there? she asked in a startled voice. Is that you, Basilio? She looked in and saw Martin D'Cou walking about, with an air of having lost something, amongst the chairs and tables. Antonia has forgotten her fan in here, said D'Cou, with a strange air of distraction, so I entered to see. But, even as he said this, he had obviously given up his search, and walked straight towards Mrs. Gold, who looked at him with doubtful surprise. Senora, he began in a low voice. What is it, Don Martin? asked Mrs. Gold, and then she added, with a slight laugh, I am so nervous today, as if to explain the eagerness of the question. Nothing immediately dangerous, said D'Cou, who now could not conceal his agitation. Pray, don't distress yourself. No, really, you must not distress yourself. Mrs. Gold, with her candid eyes very wide open, her lips composed into a smile, was steadying herself, with a little bejeweled hand, against the side of the door. Perhaps you don't know how alarming you are, appearing like this unexpectedly. I, alarming, he protested, sincerely vexed and surprised. I assure you that I am not in the least alarmed myself. A fan is lost. Well, it will be found again. But I don't think it is here. It is a fan I am looking for. I cannot understand how Antonia could… Well, have you found it, amigo? No, senor, said behind Mrs. Gold the soft voice of Basilio, the head servant of the Casa. I don't think the senorita could have left it in this house at all. Go and look for it in the patio again. Go now, my friend, look for it on the steps, under the gate. Examine every flagstone. Search for it till I come down again. That fellow, he addressed himself in English to Mrs. Gold, is always stealing up behind one's back on his bare feet. I set him to look for that fan directly. I came in to justify my reappearance, my sudden return. He paused, and Mrs. Gold said, amiably, You are always welcome. She paused for a second, too. But I am waiting to learn the cause of your return. Dekou affected suddenly the utmost nonchalance. I can't bear to be spied upon. Oh, the cause? Yes, there is a cause. There is something else that is lost besides Antonia's favorite fan. As I was walking home after seeing Don Jose and Antonia to their house, the Capatas de Cargadores, riding down the street, spoke to me. Has anything happened to the violas? inquired Mrs. Gold. The violas? You mean the old Garibaldino, who keeps the hotel where the engineers live? Nothing happened there. The Capatas said nothing of them. He only told me that the telegraphist of the cable company was walking on the plaza. Bear had it looking out for me. There is news from the interior, Mrs. Gold. I should rather say rumors of news. Good news, said Mrs. Gold in a low voice. Worthless, I should think. But if I must define them, I would say bad. They are to the effect that a two-days battle had been fought near Santa Marta, and that the Riberists are defeated. It must have happened a few days ago, perhaps a week. The rumor has just reached Caeta, and the man in charge of the cable station there has telegraphed the news to his colleague here. We might just as well have kept barrios in Sulaco. What's to be done now? murmured Mrs. Gold. Nothing. He's at sea with the troops. He will get to Caeta in a couple of days' time and learn the news there. What he will do then, who can say, hold Caeta, offer his submission to Montero, disband his army? This last most likely, and go himself in one of the OSN company's steamers, north or south, to Valparaiso or to San Francisco, no matter where. Our barrios has a great practice in exiles and repatriations, which mark the points in the political game. Decou exchanging a steady stare with Mrs. Gold added tentatively, as it were. And yet, if we had barrios with his 2000 improved rifles here, something could have been done. Montero victorious. Completely victorious. Mrs. Gold breathed out in a tone of unbelief. A canard, probably. That sort of bird is hatched in great numbers in such times as these. And even if it were true, well, let us put things at their worst. Let us say it is true. Then, everything is lost, said Mrs. Gold with the calmness of despair. Suddenly, she seemed to divine. She seemed to see Decou's tremendous excitement under its cloak of studied carelessness. It was indeed becoming visible in his audacious and watchful stare, in the curve, half reckless, half contemptuous of his lips. And a French phrase came upon them, as if, for this costa guanero of the boulevard, that had been the only forcible language. Non, madame, rien n'est perdu. It electrified Mrs. Gold out of her benumbed attitude, and she said, vivaciously, what would you think of doing? But already there was something of mockery in Decou's suppressed excitement. What would you expect a true costa guanero to do? Another revolution, of course. On my word of honor, Mrs. Gold, I believe I am a true hijo del país, a true son of the country, whatever father Corvelan may say. And I'm not so much of an unbeliever as not to have faith in my own ideas, in my own remedies, in my own desires. Yes, said Mrs. Gold doubtfully, you don't seem convinced. Decou went on again in French. Say, then, in my passions. Mrs. Gold received this addition unflinchingly. To understand it thoroughly, she did not require to hear his muttered assurance. There is nothing I would not do for the sake of Antonia. There is nothing I am not prepared to undertake. There is no risk I am not ready to run. Decou seemed to find a fresh audacity in this voicing of his thoughts. You would not believe me if I were to say that it is the love of the country which she made a sort of discouraged protest, with her arm, as if to express that she had given up expecting that motive from anyone. A Sulaco revolution, Decou pursued in a forcible undertone. The great cause may be served here on the very spot of its inception, in the place of its birth, Mrs. Gold. Frowning and biting her lower lip thoughtfully, she made a step away from the door. You are not going to speak to your husband. Decou arrested her anxiously. But you will need his help? No doubt, Decou admitted without hesitation. Everything turns upon the Sant'Homme mine. But I would rather he didn't know anything as yet of my hopes. A puzzled look came upon Mrs. Gold's face, and Decou, approaching, explained confidentially, Don't you see, he is such an idealist. Mrs. Gold flushed pink, and her eyes grew darker at the same time. Charlie, an idealist, she said as if to herself, wonderingly, What on earth do you mean? Yes, conceded Decou. It's a wonderful thing to say with the sight of the Sant'Homme mine, the greatest fact in the whole of South America, perhaps, before our very eyes. But look even at that. He has idealized this fact to a point. He paused. Mrs. Gold, are you aware to what point he has idealized the existence, the worth, the meaning of the Sant'Homme mine? Are you aware of it? He must have known what he was talking about. The effect he expected was produced. Mrs. Gold, ready to take fire, gave it up suddenly with the low little sound that resembled a moan. What do you know? She asked in a feeble voice. Nothing, answered Decou firmly. But then, don't you see, he's an Englishman. Well, what of that? asked Mrs. Gold. Simply that he cannot act or exist without idealizing every simple feeling, desire or achievement. He could not believe his own motives if he did not make them first a part of some fairy tale. The earth is not quite good enough for him, I fear. Do you excuse my frankness? Besides, whether you excuse it or not, it is part of the truth of things which hurts the, what do you call them, the Anglo-Saxons susceptibilities. And at the present moment, I don't feel as if I could treat seriously either his conception of things or, if you allow me to say so, or yet yours. Mrs. Gold gave no sign of being offended. I suppose Antonia understands you thoroughly. Understands? Well, yes, but I am not sure that she approves. That, however, makes no difference. I am honest enough to tell you that, Mrs. Gold. Your idea, of course, is separation, she said. Separation, of course, declared Martin. Yes, separation of the whole occidental province from the rest of the unquiet body. But my true idea, the only one I care for, is not to be separated from Antonia. And that is all, asked Mrs. Gold, without severity. Absolutely, I am not deceiving myself about my motives. She won't leave Sulaco for my sake. Therefore, Sulaco must leave the rest of the Republic to its fate. Nothing could be clearer than that. I like a clearly defined situation. I cannot part with Antonia, therefore the one and indivisible Republic of Costa Guana must be made to part with its western province. Fortunately, it happens to be also a sound policy. The richest, the most fertile part of this land may be saved from anarchy. Personally, I care little, very little. But it's a fact that the establishment of Montero in power would mean death to me. In all the proclamations of general pardon, which I have seen, my name, with a few others, is specially accepted. The brothers hate me, as you know very well, Mrs. Gold. And behold, here is the rumor of them having won a battle. You say that supposing it is true, I have plenty of time to run away. The slight protesting murmur on the part of Mrs. Gold made him pause for a moment, while he looked at her with a somber and resolute glance. Ah, but I would, Mrs. Gold. I would run away if it served that which at present is my only desire. I am courageous enough to say that. And to do it, too. But women, even our women, are idealists. It is Antonia that won't run away. A novel sort of vanity. You call it vanity? said Mrs. Gold in a shocked voice. Say pride then, which Father Corbelan would tell you, is a mortal sin. But I am not proud. I am simply too much in love to run away. At the same time I want to live. There is no love for a dead man. Therefore it is necessary that Sulaco should not recognize the victorious Monteiro. And you think my husband will give you his support? I think he can be drawn into it, like all idealists, when he once sees a sentimental basis for his action. But I wouldn't talk to him. Mere clear facts won't appeal to his sentiment. It is much better for him to convince himself in his own way. And frankly I could not, perhaps, just now pay sufficient respect to either his motives or even, perhaps, to yours, Mrs. Gold. It was evident that Mrs. Gold was very determined not to be offended. She smiled vaguely while she seemed to think the matter over. As far as she could judge from the girl's half-confidences, Antonia understood that young man. Obviously there was promise of safety in his plan, or rather in his idea. Moreover, right or wrong, the idea could do no harm. And it was quite possible also that the rumor was false. You have some sort of a plan, she said. Simplicity itself. Barrios has started. Let him go on then. He will hold Caeta, which is the door of the sea route to Solaco. They cannot send a sufficient force over the mountains. No, not even to cope with the band of Hernandez. Meantime, we shall organize our resistance here. And for that, this very Hernandez will be useful. He has defeated troops as a bandit. He will no doubt accomplish the same thing if he is made a colonel or even a general. You know the country well enough not to be shocked by what I say, Mrs. Gold. I have heard you assert that this poor bandit was the living, breathing example of cruelty, injustice, stupidity, and oppression that ruin man's souls as well as their fortunes in this country. Well, there would be some poetical retribution in that man, arising to crush the evils which had driven an honest Dancero into a life of crime. A fine idea of retribution in that, isn't there? Diku had dropped easily into English, which he spoke with precision, very correctly, but with too many Z-sounds. Think also of your hospitals, of your schools, of your railing mothers and feeble old men, of all that population which you and your husband have brought into the rocky gorge of Santomi. Are you not responsible to your conscience for all these people? Is it not worthwhile to make another effort, which is not at all so desperate as it looks, rather than... Diku finished his thought with an upward toss of the arm, suggesting annihilation. And Mrs. Gold turned away her head with a look of horror. Why don't you say all this to my husband? She asked, without looking at Diku, who stood watching the effect of his words. Ah, but Don Carlos is so English, he began. Mrs. Gold interrupted. Leave that alone, Don Martin. He's as much a Costa Guanero... No, he's more of a Costa Guanero than yourself. Sentimentalist, Sentimentalist. Diku almost cooed, in a tone of gentle and soothing deference. Sentimentalist, after the amazing manner of your people. I have been watching El Rey the Sulaco since I came here on a fool's errand, and perhaps impelled by some treason of fate lurking behind the unaccountable turns of a man's life. But I don't matter. I'm not a sentimentalist. I cannot endow my personal desires with a shining robe of silk and jewels. Life is not for me a moral romance derived from the tradition of a pretty fairy tale. No, Mrs. Gold, I am practical. I am not afraid of my motives. But, pardon me, I have been rather carried away. What I wish to say is that I have been observing. I won't tell you what I have discovered. No, that is unnecessary, whispered Mrs. Gold once more reverting her head. It is, except one little fact, that your husband does not like me. It's a small matter which, in the circumstances, seems to acquire a perfectly ridiculous importance. Ridiculous and immense. For clearly money is required for my plan, he reflected, then added meaningfully, and we have two sentimentalists to deal with. I don't know that I understand you, Don Martin, said Mrs. Gold coldly, preserving the low key of their conversation. But speaking as if I did, who is the other? The great Holroyd in San Francisco, of course. D'Coup whispered lightly. I think you understand me very well. Women are idealists, but then they are so perspicacious. But whatever was the reason of that remark, disparaging and complimentary at the same time, Mrs. Gold seemed not to pay attention to it. The name of Holroyd had given a new tone to her anxiety. The silver escort is coming down to the harbour tomorrow. A whole six months working, Don Martin, she cried in dismay. Let it come down, then, breathed out D'Coup, earnestly, almost into her ear. But if the rumour should get about, and especially if it turned out true, troubles might break out in the town, objected Mrs. Gold. D'Coup admitted that it was possible. He knew well the town children of the Sulaco Campo, sullen, thievish, vindictive, and bloodthirsty, whatever great qualities their brothers of the plain might have had. But then there was that other sentimentalist, who attached a strangely idealistic meaning to the concrete facts. This stream of silver must be kept flowing north to return in the form of financial backing from the great house of Holroyd. Up at the mountain, in the strong room of the mine, the silver bars were worth less for his purpose than so much lead, from which at least bullets may be run. Let it come down to the harbour ready for shipment. The next north-going steamer would carry it off for the very salvation of the Santomi mine, which had produced so much treasure. And, moreover, the rumour was probably false, he remarked, with much conviction in his hurried tone. Besides, senora, concluded D'Coup, we may suppress it for many days. I have been talking with a telegraphist in the middle of the Plaza Mayor. Thus I am certain that we could not have been overheard. There was not even a bird in the air near us. And also let me tell you something more. Let me tell you something more. I have been making friends with this man called Nostromo, the Capataz. We had a conversation this very evening. I walking by the side of his horse, as he rode slowly out of the town just now. He promised me that if a riot took place for any reason, even for the most political of reasons, you understand, his cargadores, an important part of the populace, you will admit, should be found on the side of the Europeans. He has promised you that? Mrs. Gold inquired, with interest. What made him make that promise to you? Upon my word, I don't know, declared D'Coup in a slightly surprised tone. He certainly promised me that. But now you ask me why I could not tell you his reasons. He talked with his usual carelessness, which, if he had been anything else but a common sailor, I would call a pose or an affectation. D'Coup interrupting himself looked at Mrs. Gold curiously. Upon the whole, he continued, I suppose he expects something to his advantage from it. You mustn't forget that he does not exercise his extraordinary power over the lower classes without a certain amount of personal risk and without a great profusion in spending his money. One must pay in some way or other for such a solid thing as individual prestige. He told me, after we made friends at a dance, in a posada kept by a Mexican just outside the walls, that he had come here to make his fortune. I suppose he looks upon his prestige as a sort of investment. Perhaps he prizes it for its own sake. Mrs. Gold said in a tone as if she were repelling an undeserved as Persian. Viola, the Garibaldino with whom he has lived for some years, calls him the incorruptible. Ah, he belongs to the group of your protégés over there towards the harbour, Mrs. Gold. Muy bien. And Captain Mitchell calls him wonderful. I have heard no end of tales of his strength, his audacity, his fidelity. No end of fine things. Incorruptible. It is indeed a name of honour for the capatas of the cargadores of Sulaco. Incorruptible. Fine, but vague. However, I suppose he is sensible too, and I talk to him upon that same and practical assumption. I prefer to think him disinterested and therefore trustworthy. Mrs. Gold said, with a nearest approach to cuteness, it was in her nature to assume. Well, if so, then the silver will be still more safe. Let it come down, senora. Let it come down, so that it may go north and return to us in the shape of credit. Mrs. Gold glanced along the corridor towards the door of her husband's room. Dicou, watching her as if she had his fate in her hands, detected an almost imperceptible nod of assent. He bowed with a smile, and, putting his hand into the breast pocket of his coat, pulled out a fan of light feathers set upon painted leaves of sandalwood. I had it in my pocket, he murmured triumphantly, for a plausible pretext. He bowed again. Good night, senora. Mrs. Gold continued along the corridor away from her husband's room. The fate of the san tome mine was lying heavy upon her heart. It was a long time now since she had begun to fear it. It had been an idea. She had watched it with misgivings turning into a fetish, and now the fetish had grown into a monstrous and crushing weight. It was as if the inspiration of their early years had left her heart to turn into a wall of silver bricks erected by the silent work of evil spirits between her and her husband. He seemed to dwell alone within a circumvalation of precious metal, leaving her outside with her school, her hospital, the sick mothers and the feeble old men, mere insignificant vestiges of the initial inspiration. Those poor people, she murmured she murmured to herself. Below she heard the voice of Martin D'Cou in the patio speaking loudly. I have found Don Antonia's fan, Basilio. Look, here it is.