Nostromo Joseph Conrad (best large ereader .TXT) 📖

desires passionately to possess himself of it. And he is also afraid of his officers turning upon him and going over to Pedrito, whom he has not the courage either to fight or trust. Do you see that, capataz? He need fear no desertion as long as some hope remains of that enormous plunder turning up. I have made it my business to keep this very hope up.”

“You have?” the capataz de cargadores repeated cautiously. “Well, that is wonderful. And how long do you think you are going to keep it up?”

“As long as I can.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can tell you exactly. As long as I live,” the doctor retorted in a stubborn voice. Then, in a few words, he described the story of his arrest and the circumstances of his release. “I was going back to that silly scoundrel when we met,” he concluded.

Nostromo had listened with profound attention. “You have made up your mind, then, to a speedy death,” he muttered through his clenched teeth.

“Perhaps, my illustrious capataz,” the doctor said, testily. “You are not the only one here who can look an ugly death in the face.”

“No doubt,” mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be overheard. “There may be even more than two fools in this place. Who knows?”

“And that is my affair,” said the doctor, curtly.

“As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my affair,” retorted Nostromo. “I see. Bueno! Each of us has his reasons. But you were the last man I conversed with before I started, and you talked to me as if I were a fool.”

Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor’s sardonic treatment of his great reputation. Decoud’s faintly ironic recognition used to make him uneasy; but the familiarity of a man like Don Martin was flattering, whereas the doctor was a nobody. He could remember him a penniless outcast, slinking about the streets of Sulaco, without a single friend or acquaintance, till Don Carlos Gould took him into the service of the mine.

“You may be very wise,” he went on, thoughtfully, staring into the obscurity of the room, pervaded by the gruesome enigma of the tortured and murdered Hirsch. “But I am not such a fool as when I started. I have learned one thing since, and that is that you are a dangerous man.”

Dr. Monygham was too startled to do more than exclaim⁠—

“What is it you say?”

“If he could speak he would say the same thing,” pursued Nostromo, with a nod of his shadowy head silhouetted against the starlit window.

“I do not understand you,” said Dr. Monygham, faintly.

“No? Perhaps, if you had not confirmed Sotillo in his madness, he would have been in no haste to give the estrapade to that miserable Hirsch.”

The doctor started at the suggestion. But his devotion, absorbing all his sensibilities, had left his heart steeled against remorse and pity. Still, for complete relief, he felt the necessity of repelling it loudly and contemptuously.

“Bah! You dare to tell me that, with a man like Sotillo. I confess I did not give a thought to Hirsch. If I had it would have been useless. Anybody can see that the luckless wretch was doomed from the moment he caught hold of the anchor. He was doomed, I tell you! Just as I myself am doomed⁠—most probably.”

This is what Dr. Monygham said in answer to Nostromo’s remark, which was plausible enough to prick his conscience. He was not a callous man. But the necessity, the magnitude, the importance of the task he had taken upon himself dwarfed all merely humane considerations. He had undertaken it in a fanatical spirit. He did not like it. To lie, to deceive, to circumvent even the basest of mankind was odious to him. It was odious to him by training, instinct, and tradition. To do these things in the character of a traitor was abhorrent to his nature and terrible to his feelings. He had made that sacrifice in a spirit of abasement. He had said to himself bitterly, “I am the only one fit for that dirty work.” And he believed this. He was not subtle. His simplicity was such that, though he had no sort of heroic idea of seeking death, the risk, deadly enough, to which he exposed himself, had a sustaining and comforting effect. To that spiritual state the fate of Hirsch presented itself as part of the general atrocity of things. He considered that episode practically. What did it mean? Was it a sign of some dangerous change in Sotillo’s delusion? That the man should have been killed like this was what the doctor could not understand.

“Yes. But why shot?” he murmured to himself.

Nostromo kept very still.

IX

Distracted between doubts and hopes, dismayed by the sound of bells pealing out the arrival of Pedrito Montero, Sotillo had spent the morning in battling with his thoughts; a contest to which he was unequal, from the vacuity of his mind and the violence of his passions. Disappointment, greed, anger, and fear made a tumult, in the colonel’s breast louder than the din of bells in the town. Nothing he had planned had come to pass. Neither Sulaco nor the silver of the mine had fallen into his hands. He had performed no military exploit to secure his position, and had obtained no enormous booty to make off with. Pedrito Montero, either as friend or foe, filled him with dread. The sound of bells maddened him.

Imagining at first that he might be attacked at once, he had made his battalion stand to arms on the shore. He walked to and fro all the length of the room, stopping sometimes to gnaw the fingertips of his right hand with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with a sullen, repelling glance all round, he would resume his tramping in savage aloofness. His hat, horsewhip, sword, and revolver were lying on the table. His officers, crowding the window giving the view of the town gate,