Nostromo Joseph Conrad (best large ereader .TXT) 📖

with precision and judged with the indulgence of their common passion. Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. And Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to San Francisco in some such words: “… The men at the head of the movement are dead or have fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end for the present; the Blanco party in Sulaco has collapsed inexcusably, but in the characteristic manner of this country. But Barrios, untouched in Cayta, remains still available. I am forced to take up openly the plan of a provincial revolution as the only way of placing the enormous material interests involved in the prosperity and peace of Sulaco in a position of permanent safety⁠ ⁠…” That was clear. He saw these words as if written in letters of fire upon the wall at which he was gazing abstractedly.

Mrs. Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It was a domestic and frightful phenomenon that darkened and chilled the house for her like a thundercloud passing over the sun. Charles Gould’s fits of abstraction depicted the energetic concentration of a will haunted by a fixed idea. A man haunted by a fixed idea is insane. He is dangerous even if that idea is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the heaven down pitilessly upon a loved head? The eyes of Mrs. Gould, watching her husband’s profile, filled with tears again. And again she seemed to see the despair of the unfortunate Antonia.

“What would I have done if Charley had been drowned while we were engaged?” she exclaimed, mentally, with horror. Her heart turned to ice, while her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of a funeral pyre consuming all her earthly affections. The tears burst out of her eyes.

“Antonia will kill herself!” she cried out.

This cry fell into the silence of the room with strangely little effect. Only the doctor, crumbling up a piece of bread, with his head inclined on one side, raised his face, and the few long hairs sticking out of his shaggy eyebrows stirred in a slight frown. Dr. Monygham thought quite sincerely that Decoud was a singularly unworthy object for any woman’s affection. Then he lowered his head again, with a curl of his lip, and his heart full of tender admiration for Mrs. Gould.

“She thinks of that girl,” he said to himself; “she thinks of the Viola children; she thinks of me; of the wounded; of the miners; she always thinks of everybody who is poor and miserable! But what will she do if Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal scrimmage those confounded Avellanos have drawn him into? No one seems to be thinking of her.”

Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his reflections subtly.

“I shall write to Holroyd that the San Tome mine is big enough to take in hand the making of a new state. It’ll please him. It’ll reconcile him to the risk.”

But was Barrios really available? Perhaps. But he was inaccessible. To send off a boat to Cayta was no longer possible, since Sotillo was master of the harbour, and had a steamer at his disposal. And now, with all the democrats in the province up, and every campo township in a state of disturbance, where could he find a man who would make his way successfully overland to Cayta with a message, a ten days’ ride at least; a man of courage and resolution, who would avoid arrest or murder, and if arrested would faithfully eat the paper? The capataz de cargadores would have been just such a man. But the capataz of the cargadores was no more.

And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the wall, said gently, “That Hirsch! What an extraordinary thing! Saved himself by clinging to the anchor, did he? I had no idea that he was still in Sulaco. I thought he had gone back overland to Esmeralda more than a week ago. He came here once to talk to me about his hide business and some other things. I made it clear to him that nothing could be done.”

“He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez being about,” remarked the doctor.

“And but for him we might not have known anything of what has happened,” marvelled Charles Gould.

Mrs. Gould cried out⁠—

“Antonia must not know! She must not be told. Not now.”

“Nobody’s likely to carry the news,” remarked the doctor. “It’s no one’s interest. Moreover, the people here are afraid of Hernandez as if he were the devil.” He turned to Charles Gould. “It’s even awkward, because if you wanted to communicate with the refugees you could find no messenger. When Hernandez was ranging hundreds of miles away from here the Sulaco populace used to shudder at the tales of him roasting his prisoners alive.”

“Yes,” murmured Charles Gould; “Captain Mitchell’s capataz was the only man in the town who had seen Hernandez eye to eye. Father Corbelan employed him. He opened the communications first. It is a pity that⁠—”

His voice was covered by the booming of the great bell of the cathedral. Three single strokes, one after another, burst out explosively, dying away in deep and mellow vibrations. And then all the bells in the tower of every church, convent, or chapel in town, even those that had remained shut up for years, pealed out together with a crash. In this furious flood of metallic uproar there was a power of suggesting images of strife and violence which blanched Mrs. Gould’s cheek. Basilio, who had been waiting at table, shrinking within himself, clung to the sideboard with chattering teeth. It was impossible to hear yourself speak.

“Shut these windows!” Charles Gould yelled at him, angrily. All the other servants, terrified at what they took for the signal of a general massacre, had rushed upstairs, tumbling over each other, men and women, the obscure and generally invisible population of the ground floor on the four sides of the patio. The women, screaming “Misericordia!” ran right into the