________________________________________________
_ AT ABOUT that time, in the Intendencia of Sulaco, Charles Gould
was assuring Pedrito Montero, who had sent a request for his
presence there, that he would never let the mine pass out of his
hands for the profit of a Government who had robbed him of it.
The Gould Concession could not be resumed. His father had not
desired it. The son would never surrender it. He would never
surrender it alive. And once dead, where was the power capable of
resuscitating such an enterprise in all its vigour and wealth out
of the ashes and ruin of destruction? There was no such power in
the country. And where was the skill and capital abroad that
would condescend to touch such an ill-omened corpse? Charles
Gould talked in the impassive tone which had for many years
served to conceal his anger and contempt. He suffered. He was
disgusted with what he had to say. It was too much like heroics.
In him the strictly practical instinct was in profound discord
with the almost mystic view he took of his right. The Gould
Concession was symbolic of abstract justice. Let the heavens
fall. But since the San Tome mine had developed into world-wide
fame his threat had enough force and effectiveness to reach the
rudimentary intelligence of Pedro Montero, wrapped up as it was
in the futilities of historical anecdotes. The Gould Concession
was a serious asset in the country's finance, and, what was more,
in the private budgets of many officials as well. It was
traditional. It was known. It was said. It was credible. Every
Minister of Interior drew a salary from the San Tome mine. It was
natural. And Pedrito intended to be Minister of the Interior and
President of the Council in his brother's Government. The Duc de
Morny had occupied those high posts during the Second French
Empire with conspicuous advantage to himself.
A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured for His
Excellency, who, after a short siesta, rendered absolutely
necessary by the labours and the pomps of his entry into Sulaco,
had been getting hold of the administrative machine by making
appointments, giving orders, and signing proclamations. Alone
with Charles Gould in the audience room, His Excellency managed
with his well-known skill to conceal his annoyance and
consternation. He had begun at first to talk loftily of
confiscation, but the want of all proper feeling and mobility in
the Senor Administrador's features ended by affecting adversely
his power of masterful expression. Charles Gould had repeated:
"The Government can certainly bring about the destruction of the
San Tome mine if it likes; but without me it can do nothing
else." It was an alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to
hurt the sensibilities of a politician whose mind is bent upon
the spoils of victory. And Charles Gould said also that the
destruction of the San Tome mine would cause the ruin of other
undertakings, the withdrawal of European capital, the
withholding, most probably, of the last instalment of the foreign
loan. That stony fiend of a man said all these things (which were
accessible to His Excellency's intelligence) in a coldblooded
manner which made one shudder.
A long course of reading historical works, light and gossipy in
tone, carried out in garrets of Parisian hotels, sprawling on an
untidy bed, to the neglect of his duties, menial or otherwise,
had affected the manners of Pedro Montero. Had he seen around him
the splendour of the old Intendencia, the magnificent hangings,
the gilt furniture ranged along the walls; had he stood upon a
dais on a noble square of red carpet, he would have probably been
very dangerous from a sense of success and elevation. But in this
sacked and devastated residence, with the three pieces of common
furniture huddled up in the middle of the vast apartment,
Pedrito's imagination was subdued by a feeling of insecurity and
impermanence. That feeling and the firm attitude of Charles
Gould who had not once, so far, pronounced the word "Excellency,"
diminished him in his own eyes. He assumed the tone of an
enlightened man of the world, and begged Charles Gould to dismiss
from his mind every cause for alarm. He was now conversing, he
reminded him, with the brother of the master of the country,
charged with a reorganizing mission. The trusted brother of the
master of the country, he repeated. Nothing was further from the
thoughts of that wise and patriotic hero than ideas of
destruction. "I entreat you, Don Carlos, not to give way to your
anti-democratic prejudices," he cried, in a burst of
condescending effusion.
Pedrito Montero surprised one at first sight by the vast
development of his bald forehead, a shiny yellow expanse between
the crinkly coal-black tufts of hair without any lustre, the
engaging form of his mouth, and an unexpectedly cultivated voice.
But his eyes, very glistening as if freshly painted on each side
of his hooked nose, had a round, hopeless, birdlike stare when
opened fully. Now, however, he narrowed them agreeably, throwing
his square chin up and speaking with closed teeth slightly
through the nose, with what he imagined to be the manner of a
grand seigneur.
In that attitude, he declared suddenly that the highest
expression of democracy was Caesarism: the imperial rule based
upon the direct popular vote. Caesarism was conservative. It was
strong. It recognized the legitimate needs of democracy which
requires orders, titles, and distinctions. They would be showered
upon deserving men. Caesarism was peace. It was progressive. It
secured the prosperity of a country. Pedrito Montero was carried
away. Look at what the Second Empire had done for France. It was
a regime which delighted to honour men of Don Carlos's stamp.
The Second Empire fell, but that was because its chief was devoid
of that military genius which had raised General Montero to the
pinnacle of fame and glory. Pedrito elevated his hand jerkily to
help the idea of pinnacle, of fame. "We shall have many talks
yet. We shall understand each other thoroughly, Don Carlos!" he
cried in a tone of fellowship. Republicanism had done its work.
Imperial democracy was the power of the future. Pedrito, the
guerrillero, showing his hand, lowered his voice forcibly. A man
singled out by his fellow-citizens for the honourable nickname of
El Rey de Sulaco could not but receive a full recognition from an
imperial democracy as a great captain of industry and a person of
weighty counsel, whose popular designation would be soon replaced
by a more solid title. "Eh, Don Carlos? No! What do you say?
Conde de Sulaco--Eh?--or marquis . . ."
He ceased. The air was cool on the Plaza, where a patrol of
cavalry rode round and round without penetrating into the
streets, which resounded with shouts and the strumming of guitars
issuing from the open doors of pulperias. The orders were not to
interfere with the enjoyments of the people. And above the roofs,
next to the perpendicular lines of the cathedral towers the snowy
curve of Higuerota blocked a large space of darkening blue sky
before the windows of the Intendencia. After a time Pedrito
Montero, thrusting his hand in the bosom of his coat, bowed his
head with slow dignity. The audience was over.
Charles Gould on going out passed his hand over his forehead as
if to disperse the mists of an oppressive dream, whose grotesque
extravagance leaves behind a subtle sense of bodily danger and
intellectual decay. In the passages and on the staircases of the
old palace Montero's troopers lounged about insolently, smoking
and making way for no one; the clanking of sabres and spurs
resounded all over the building. Three silent groups of civilians
in severe black waited in the main gallery, formal and helpless,
a little huddled up, each keeping apart from the others, as if in
the exercise of a public duty they had been overcome by a desire
to shun the notice of every eye. These were the deputations
waiting for their audience. The one from the Provincial Assembly,
more restless and uneasy in its corporate expression, was
overtopped by the big face of Don Juste Lopez, soft and white,
with prominent eyelids and wreathed in impenetrable solemnity as
if in a dense cloud. The President of the Provincial Assembly,
coming bravely to save the last shred of parliamentary
institutions (on the English model), averted his eyes from the
Administrador of the San Tome mine as a dignified rebuke of his
little faith in that only saving principle.
The mournful severity of that reproof did not affect Charles
Gould, but he was sensible to the glances of the others directed
upon him without reproach, as if only to read their own fate upon
his face. All of them had talked, shouted, and declaimed in the
great sala of the Casa Gould. The feeling of compassion for those
men, struck with a strange impotence in the toils of moral
degradation, did not induce him to make a sign. He suffered from
his fellowship in evil with them too much. He crossed the Plaza
unmolested. The Amarilla Club was full of festive ragamuffins.
Their frowsy heads protruded from every window, and from within
came drunken shouts, the thumping of feet, and the twanging of
harps. Broken bottles strewed the pavement below. Charles Gould
found the doctor still in his house.
Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the shutter through
which he had been watching the street.
"Ah! You are back at last!" he said in a tone of relief. "I have
been telling Mrs. Gould that you were perfectly safe, but I was
not by any means certain that the fellow would have let you go."
"Neither was I," confessed Charles Gould, laying his hat on the
table.
"You will have to take action."
The silence of Charles Gould seemed to admit that this was the
only course. This was as far as Charles Gould was accustomed to
go towards expressing his intentions.
"I hope you did not warn Montero of what you mean to do," the
doctor said, anxiously.
"I tried to make him see that the existence of the mine was bound
up with my personal safety," continued Charles Gould, looking
away from the doctor, and fixing his eyes upon the water-colour
sketch upon the wall.
"He believed you?" the doctor asked, eagerly.
"God knows!" said Charles Gould. "I owed it to my wife to say
that much. He is well enough informed. He knows that I have Don
Pepe there. Fuentes must have told him. They know that the old
major is perfectly capable of blowing up the San Tome mine
without hesitation or compunction. Had it not been for that I
don't think I'd have left the Intendencia a free man. He would
blow everything up from loyalty and from hate--from hate of these
Liberals, as they call themselves. Liberals! The words one knows
so well have a nightmarish meaning in this country. Liberty,
democracy, patriotism, government--all of them have a flavour of
folly and murder. Haven't they, doctor? . . . I alone can
restrain Don Pepe. If they were to--to do away with me, nothing
could prevent him."
"They will try to tamper with him," the doctor suggested,
thoughtfully.
"It is very possible," Charles Gould said very low, as if
speaking to himself, and still gazing at the sketch of the San
Tome gorge upon the wall. "Yes, I expect they will try that."
Charles Gould looked for the first time at the doctor. "It would
give me time," he added.
"Exactly," said Dr. Monygham, suppressing his excitement.
"Especially if Don Pepe behaves diplomatically. Why shouldn't he
give them some hope of success? Eh? Otherwise you wouldn't gain
so much time. Couldn't he be instructed to--"
Charles Gould, looking at the doctor steadily, shook his head,
but the doctor continued with a certain amount of fire--
"Yes, to enter into negotiations for the surrender of the mine.
It is a good notion. You would mature your plan. Of course, I
don't ask what it is. I don't want to know. I would refuse to
listen to you if you tried to tell me. I am not fit for
confidences."
"What nonsense!" muttered Charles Gould, with displeasure.
He disapproved of the doctor's sensitiveness about that far-off
episode of his life. So much memory shocked Charles Gould. It was
like morbidness. And again he shook his head. He refused to
tamper with the open rectitude of Don Pepe's conduct, both from
taste and from policy. Instructions would have to be either
verbal or in writing. In either case they ran the risk of being
intercepted. It was by no means certain that a messenger could
reach the mine; and, besides, there was no one to send. It was on
the tip of Charles's tongue to say that only the late Capataz de
Cargadores could have been employed with some chance of success
and the certitude of discretion. But he did not say that. He
pointed out to the doctor that it would have been bad policy.
Directly Don Pepe let it be supposed that he could be bought
over, the Administrador's personal safety and the safety of his
friends would become endangered. For there would be then no
reason for moderation. The incorruptibility of Don Pepe was the
essential and restraining fact. The doctor hung his head and
admitted that in a way it was so.
He couldn't deny to himself that the reasoning was sound enough.
Don Pepe's usefulness consisted in his unstained character. As to
his own usefulness, he reflected bitterly it was also his own
character. He declared to Charles Gould that he had the means of
keeping Sotillo from joining his forces with Montero, at least
for the present.
"If you had had all this silver here," the doctor said, "or even
if it had been known to be at the mine, you could have bribed
Sotillo to throw off his recent Monterism. You could have
induced him either to go away in his steamer or even to join
you."
"Certainly not that last," Charles Gould declared, firmly. "What
could one do with a man like that, afterwards--tell me, doctor?
The silver is gone, and I am glad of it. It would have been an
immediate and strong temptation. The scramble for that visible
plunder would have precipitated a disastrous ending. I would
have had to defend it, too. I am glad we've removed it--even if
it is lost. It would have been a danger and a curse."
"Perhaps he is right," the doctor, an hour later, said hurriedly
to Mrs. Gould, whom he met in the corridor. "The thing is done,
and the shadow of the treasure may do just as well as the
substance. Let me try to serve you to the whole extent of my evil
reputation. I am off now to play my game of betrayal with
Sotillo, and keep him off the town."
She put out both her hands impulsively. "Dr. Monygham, you are
running a terrible risk," she whispered, averting from his face
her eyes, full of tears, for a short glance at the door of her
husband's room. She pressed both his hands, and the doctor stood
as if rooted to the spot, looking down at her, and trying to
twist his lips into a smile.
"Oh, I know you will defend my memory," he uttered at last, and
ran tottering down the stairs across the patio, and out of the
house. In the street he kept up. a great pace with his smart
hobbling walk, a case of instruments under his arm. He was known
for being loco. Nobody interfered with him. From under the
seaward gate, across the dusty, arid plain, interspersed with low
bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the ugly enormity of the
Custom House, and the two or three other buildings which at that
time constituted the seaport of Sulaco. Far away to the south
groves of palm trees edged the curve of the harbour shore. The
distant peaks of the Cordillera had lost their identity of
clearcut shapes in the steadily deepening blue of the eastern
sky. The doctor walked briskly. A darkling shadow seemed to fall
upon him from the zenith. The sun had set. For a time the snows
of Higuerota continued to glow with the reflected glory of the
west. The doctor, holding a straight course for the Custom House,
appeared lonely, hopping amongst the dark bushes like a tall bird
with a broken wing.
Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in the clear
water of the harbour. A long tongue of land, straight as a wall,
with the grass-grown ruins of the fort making a sort of rounded
green mound, plainly visible from the inner shore, closed its
circuit; while beyond the Placid Gulf repeated those splendours
of colouring on a greater scale and with a more sombre
magnificence. The great mass of cloud filling the head of the
gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted folds of grey and
black, as of a floating mantle stained with blood. The three
Isabels, overshadowed and clear cut in a great smoothness
confounding the sea and sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in
the air. The little wavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red
sparks upon the sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water along
the horizon gave out a fiery red glow, as if fire and water had
been mingled together in the vast bed of the ocean.
At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying embraced and
still in a flaming contact upon the edge of the world, went out.
The red sparks in the water vanished together with the stains of
blood in the black mantle draping the sombre head of the Placid
Gulf; a sudden breeze sprang up and died out after rustling
heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined earthwork of the fort.
Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours' sleep, and arose full
length from his lair in the long grass. He stood knee deep
amongst the whispering undulations of the green blades with the
lost air of a man just born into the world. Handsome, robust, and
supple, he threw back his head, flung his arms open, and
stretched himself with a slow twist of the waist and a leisurely
growling yawn of white teeth, as natural and free from evil in
the moment of waking as a magnificent and unconscious wild beast.
Then, in the suddenly steadied glance fixed upon nothing from
under a thoughtful frown, appeared the man. _
Read next: PART THIRD - THE LIGHTHOUSE: CHAPTER VIII
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