Directly the cargo boat had slipped away from the wharf and got lost
in the darkness of the harbour the Europeans of Sulaco separated, to
prepare for the coming of the Monterist regime, which was approaching
Sulaco from the mountains, as well as from the sea.
This bit of manual work in loading the silver was their last concerted
action. It ended the three days of danger, during which, according to
the newspaper press of Europe, their energy had preserved the town
from the calamities of popular disorder. At the shore end of the jetty,
Captain Mitchell said good-night and turned back. His intention was to
walk the planks of the wharf till the steamer from Esmeralda turned up.
The engineers of the railway staff, collecting their Basque and Italian
workmen, marched them away to the railway yards, leaving the Custom
House, so well defended on the first day of the riot, standing open to
the four winds of heaven. Their men had conducted themselves bravely
and faithfully during the famous “three days” of Sulaco. In a great part
this faithfulness and that courage had been exercised in self-defence
rather than in the cause of those material interests to which Charles
Gould had pinned his faith. Amongst the cries of the mob not the least
loud had been the cry of death to foreigners. It was, indeed, a lucky
circumstance for Sulaco that the relations of those imported workmen
with the people of the country had been uniformly bad from the first.
Doctor Monygham, going to the door of Viola’s kitchen, observed this
retreat marking the end of the foreign interference, this withdrawal of
the army of material progress from the field of Costaguana revolutions.
Algarrobe torches carried on the outskirts of the moving body sent their
penetrating aroma into his nostrils. Their light, sweeping along the
front of the house, made the letters of the inscription, “Albergo
d’ltalia Una,” leap out black from end to end of the long wall. His eyes
blinked in the clear blaze. Several young men, mostly fair and tall,
shepherding this mob of dark bronzed heads, surmounted by the glint of
slanting rifle barrels, nodded to him familiarly as they went by. The
doctor was a well-known character. Some of them wondered what he was
doing there. Then, on the flank of their workmen they tramped on,
following the line of rails.
“Withdrawing your people from the harbour?” said the doctor, addressing
himself to the chief engineer of the railway, who had accompanied
Charles Gould so far on his way to the town, walking by the side of the
horse, with his hand on the saddle-bow. They had stopped just outside
the open door to let the workmen cross the road.
“As quick as I can. We are not a political faction,” answered the
engineer, meaningly. “And we are not going to give our new rulers a
handle against the railway. You approve me, Gould?”
“Absolutely,” said Charles Gould’s impassive voice, high up and outside
the dim parallelogram of light falling on the road through the open
door.
With Sotillo expected from one side, and Pedro Montero from the other,
the engineer-in-chief’s only anxiety now was to avoid a collision with
either. Sulaco, for him, was a railway station, a terminus, workshops,
a great accumulation of stores. As against the mob the railway defended
its property, but politically the railway was neutral. He was a brave
man; and in that spirit of neutrality he had carried proposals of truce
to the self-appointed chiefs of the popular party, the deputies Fuentes
and Gamacho. Bullets were still flying about when he had crossed the
Plaza on that mission, waving above his head a white napkin belonging to
the table linen of the Amarilla Club.
He was rather proud of this exploit; and reflecting that the doctor,
busy all day with the wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould, had
not had time to hear the news, he began a succinct narrative. He had
communicated to them the intelligence from the Construction Camp as to
Pedro Montero. The brother of the victorious general, he had assured
them, could be expected at Sulaco at any time now. This news (as he
anticipated), when shouted out of the window by Senor Gamacho, induced
a rush of the mob along the Campo Road towards Rincon. The two deputies
also, after shaking hands with him effusively, mounted and galloped off
to meet the great man. “I have misled them a little as to the time,” the
chief engineer confessed. “However hard he rides, he can scarcely get
here before the morning. But my object is attained. I’ve secured several
hours’ peace for the losing party. But I did not tell them anything
about Sotillo, for fear they would take it into their heads to try
to get hold of the harbour again, either to oppose him or welcome
him--there’s no saying which. There was Gould’s silver, on which rests
the remnant of our hopes. Decoud’s retreat had to be thought of, too.
I think the railway has done pretty well by its friends without
compromising itself hopelessly. Now the parties must be left to
themselves.”
“Costaguana for the Costaguaneros,” interjected the doctor,
sardonically. “It is a fine country, and they have raised a fine crop of
hates, vengeance, murder, and rapine--those sons of the country.”
“Well, I am one of them,” Charles Gould’s voice sounded, calmly, “and
I must be going on to see to my own crop of trouble. My wife has driven
straight on, doctor?”
“Yes. All was quiet on this side. Mrs. Gould has taken the two girls
with her.”
Charles Gould rode on, and the engineer-in-chief followed the doctor
indoors.
“That man is calmness personified,” he said, appreciatively, dropping on
a bench, and stretching his well-shaped legs in cycling stockings nearly
across the doorway. “He must be extremely sure of himself.”
“If that’s all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing,” said the
doctor. He had perched himself again on the end of the table. He nursed
his cheek in the palm of one hand, while the other sustained the
elbow. “It is the last thing a man ought to be sure of.” The candle,
half-consumed and burning dimly with a long wick, lighted up from below
his inclined face, whose expression affected by the drawn-in cicatrices
in the cheeks, had something vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated
remorseful bitterness. As he sat there he had the air of meditating upon
sinister things. The engineer-in-chief gazed at him for a time before he
protested.
“I really don’t see that. For me there seems to be nothing else.
However----”
He was a wise man, but he could not quite conceal his contempt for that
sort of paradox; in fact. Dr. Monygham was not liked by the Europeans
of Sulaco. His outward aspect of an outcast, which he preserved even in
Mrs. Gould’s drawing-room, provoked unfavourable criticism. There could
be no doubt of his intelligence; and as he had lived for over twenty
years in the country, the pessimism of his outlook could not be
altogether ignored. But instinctively, in self-defence of their
activities and hopes, his hearers put it to the account of some hidden
imperfection in the man’s character. It was known that many years
before, when quite young, he had been made by Guzman Bento chief medical
officer of the army. Not one of the Europeans then in the service
of Costaguana had been so much liked and trusted by the fierce old
Dictator.
Afterwards his story was not so clear. It lost itself amongst the
innumerable tales of conspiracies and plots against the tyrant as a
stream is lost in an arid belt of sandy country before it emerges,
diminished and troubled, perhaps, on the other side. The doctor made
no secret of it that he had lived for years in the wildest parts of
the Republic, wandering with almost unknown Indian tribes in the great
forests of the far interior where the great rivers have their sources.
But it was mere aimless wandering; he had written nothing, collected
nothing, brought nothing for science out of the twilight of the forests,
which seemed to cling to his battered personality limping about Sulaco,
where it had drifted in casually, only to get stranded on the shores of
the sea.
It was also known that he had lived in a state of destitution till the
arrival of the Goulds from Europe. Don Carlos and Dona Emilia had taken
up the mad English doctor, when it became apparent that for all his
savage independence he could be tamed by kindness. Perhaps it was
only hunger that had tamed him. In years gone by he had certainly been
acquainted with Charles Gould’s father in Sta. Marta; and now, no matter
what were the dark passages of his history, as the medical officer of
the San Tome mine he became a recognized personality. He was recognized,
but not unreservedly accepted. So much defiant eccentricity and such
an outspoken scorn for mankind seemed to point to mere recklessness of
judgment, the bravado of guilt. Besides, since he had become again of
some account, vague whispers had been heard that years ago, when fallen
into disgrace and thrown into prison by Guzman Bento at the time of the
so-called Great Conspiracy, he had betrayed some of his best friends
amongst the conspirators. Nobody pretended to believe that whisper; the
whole story of the Great Conspiracy was hopelessly involved and obscure;
it is admitted in Costaguana that there never had been a conspiracy
except in the diseased imagination of the Tyrant; and, therefore,
nothing and no one to betray; though the most distinguished
Costaguaneros had been imprisoned and executed upon that accusation. The
procedure had dragged on for years, decimating the better class like
a pestilence. The mere expression of sorrow for the fate of executed
kinsmen had been punished with death. Don Jose Avellanos was perhaps the
only one living who knew the whole story of those unspeakable cruelties.
He had suffered from them himself, and he, with a shrug of the shoulders
and a nervous, jerky gesture of the arm, was wont to put away from him,
as it were, every allusion to it. But whatever the reason, Dr. Monygham,
a personage in the administration of the Gould Concession, treated with
reverent awe by the miners, and indulged in his peculiarities by Mrs.
Gould, remained somehow outside the pale.
It was not from any liking for the doctor that the engineer-in-chief had
lingered in the inn upon the plain. He liked old Viola much better. He
had come to look upon the Albergo d’ltalia Una as a dependence of the
railway. Many of his subordinates had their quarters there. Mrs. Gould’s
interest in the family conferred upon it a sort of distinction. The
engineer-in-chief, with an army of workers under his orders, appreciated
the moral influence of the old Garibaldino upon his countrymen. His
austere, old-world Republicanism had a severe, soldier-like standard of
faithfulness and duty, as if the world were a battlefield where men had
to fight for the sake of universal love and brotherhood, instead of a
more or less large share of booty.
“Poor old chap!” he said, after he had heard the doctor’s account of
Teresa. “He’ll never be able to keep the place going by himself. I shall
be sorry.”
“He’s quite alone up there,” grunted Doctor Monygham, with a toss of his
heavy head towards the narrow staircase. “Every living soul has cleared
out, and Mrs. Gould took the girls away just now. It might not be
over-safe for them out here before very long. Of course, as a doctor I
can do nothing more here; but she has asked me to stay with old Viola,
and as I have no horse to get back to the mine, where I ought to be, I
made no difficulty to stay. They can do without me in the town.”
“I have a good mind to remain with you, doctor, till we see
whether anything happens to-night at the harbour,” declared the
engineer-in-chief. “He must not be molested by Sotillo’s soldiery, who
may push on as far as this at once. Sotillo used to be very cordial to
me at the Goulds’ and at the club. How that man’ll ever dare to look any
of his friends here in the face I can’t imagine.”
“He’ll no doubt begin by shooting some of them to get over the first
awkwardness,” said the doctor. “Nothing in this country serves better
your military man who has changed sides than a few summary executions.”
He spoke with a gloomy positiveness that left no room for protest. The
engineer-in-chief did not attempt any. He simply nodded several times
regretfully, then said--
“I think we shall be able to mount you in the morning, doctor. Our peons
have recovered some of our stampeded horses. By riding hard and taking
a wide circuit by Los Hatos and along the edge of the forest, clear of
Rincon altogether, you may hope to reach the San Tome bridge without
being interfered with. The mine is just now, to my mind, the safest
place for anybody at all compromised. I only wish the railway was as
difficult to touch.”
“Am I compromised?” Doctor Monygham brought out slowly after a short
silence.
“The whole Gould Concession is compromised. It could not have remained
for ever outside the political life of the country--if those convulsions
may be called life. The thing is--can it be touched? The moment was
bound to come when neutrality would become impossible, and Charles Gould
understood this well. I believe he is prepared for every extremity. A
man of his sort has never contemplated remaining indefinitely at the
mercy of ignorance and corruption. It was like being a prisoner in a
cavern of banditti with the price of your ransom in your pocket, and
buying your life from day to day. Your mere safety, not your liberty,
mind, doctor. I know what I am talking about. The image at which you
shrug your shoulders is perfectly correct, especially if you conceive
such a prisoner endowed with the power of replenishing his pocket by
means as remote from the faculties of his captors as if they were magic.
You must have understood that as well as I do, doctor. He was in the
position of the goose with the golden eggs. I broached this matter to
him as far back as Sir John’s visit here. The prisoner of stupid and
greedy banditti is always at the mercy of the first imbecile ruffian,
who may blow out his brains in a fit of temper or for some prospect of
an immediate big haul. The tale of killing the goose with the golden
eggs has not been evolved for nothing out of the wisdom of mankind. It
is a story that will never grow old. That is why Charles Gould in his
deep, dumb way has countenanced the Ribierist Mandate, the first public
act that promised him safety on other than venal grounds. Ribierism has
failed, as everything merely rational fails in this country. But Gould
remains logical in wishing to save this big lot of silver. Decoud’s plan
of a counter-revolution may be practicable or not, it may have a
chance, or it may not have a chance. With all my experience of this
revolutionary continent, I can hardly yet look at their methods
seriously. Decoud has been reading to us his draft of a proclamation,
and talking very well for two hours about his plan of action. He had
arguments which should have appeared solid enough if we, members of old,
stable political and national organizations, were not startled by the
mere idea of a new State evolved like this out of the head of a scoffing
young man fleeing for his life, with a proclamation in his pocket, to a
rough, jeering, half-bred swashbuckler, who in this part of the world is
called a general. It sounds like a comic fairy tale--and behold, it may
come off; because it is true to the very spirit of the country.”
“Is the silver gone off, then?” asked the doctor, moodily.
The chief engineer pulled out his watch. “By Captain Mitchell’s
reckoning--and he ought to know--it has been gone long enough now to
be some three or four miles outside the harbour; and, as Mitchell says,
Nostromo is the sort of seaman to make the best of his opportunities.”
Here the doctor grunted so heavily that the other changed his tone.
“You have a poor opinion of that move, doctor? But why? Charles Gould
has got to play his game out, though he is not the man to formulate his
conduct even to himself, perhaps, let alone to others. It may be that
the game has been partly suggested to him by Holroyd; but it accords
with his character, too; and that is why it has been so successful.
Haven’t they come to calling him ‘El Rey de Sulaco’ in Sta. Marta? A
nickname may be the best record of a success. That’s what I call putting
the face of a joke upon the body of a truth. My dear sir, when I first
arrived in Sta. Marta I was struck by the way all those journalists,
demagogues, members of Congress, and all those generals and judges
cringed before a sleepy-eyed advocate without practice simply because he
was the plenipotentiary of the Gould Concession. Sir John when he came
out was impressed, too.”
“A new State, with that plump dandy, Decoud, for the first President,”
mused Dr. Monygham, nursing his cheek and swinging his legs all the
time.
“Upon my word, and why not?” the chief engineer retorted in an
unexpectedly earnest and confidential voice. It was as if something
subtle in the air of Costaguana had inoculated him with the local faith
in “pronunciamientos.” All at once he began to talk, like an expert
revolutionist, of the instrument ready to hand in the intact army at
Cayta, which could be brought back in a few days to Sulaco if only
Decoud managed to make his way at once down the coast. For the military
chief there was Barrios, who had nothing but a bullet to expect from
Montero, his former professional rival and bitter enemy. Barrios’s
concurrence was assured. As to his army, it had nothing to expect from
Montero either; not even a month’s pay. From that point of view the
existence of the treasure was of enormous importance. The mere knowledge
that it had been saved from the Monterists would be a strong inducement
for the Cayta troops to embrace the cause of the new State.
The doctor turned round and contemplated his companion for some time.
“This Decoud, I see, is a persuasive young beggar,” he remarked at last.
“And pray is it for this, then, that Charles Gould has let the whole lot
of ingots go out to sea in charge of that Nostromo?”
“Charles Gould,” said the engineer-in-chief, “has said no more about his
motive than usual. You know, he doesn’t talk. But we all here know his
motive, and he has only one--the safety of the San Tome mine with the
preservation of the Gould Concession in the spirit of his compact with
Holroyd. Holroyd is another uncommon man. They understand each other’s
imaginative side. One is thirty, the other nearly sixty, and they have
been made for each other. To be a millionaire, and such a millionaire
as Holroyd, is like being eternally young. The audacity of youth
reckons upon what it fancies an unlimited time at its disposal; but a
millionaire has unlimited means in his hand--which is better. One’s time
on earth is an uncertain quantity, but about the long reach of millions
there is no doubt. The introduction of a pure form of Christianity into
this continent is a dream for a youthful enthusiast, and I have been
trying to explain to you why Holroyd at fifty-eight is like a man on the
threshold of life, and better, too. He’s not a missionary, but the San
Tome mine holds just that for him. I assure you, in sober truth, that he
could not manage to keep this out of a strictly business conference upon
the finances of Costaguana he had with Sir John a couple of years ago.
Sir John mentioned it with amazement in a letter he wrote to me here,
from San Francisco, when on his way home. Upon my word, doctor, things
seem to be worth nothing by what they are in themselves. I begin to
believe that the only solid thing about them is the spiritual value
which everyone discovers in his own form of activity----”
“Bah!” interrupted the doctor, without stopping for an instant the idle
swinging movement of his legs. “Self-flattery. Food for that vanity
which makes the world go round. Meantime, what do you think is going to
happen to the treasure floating about the gulf with the great Capataz
and the great politician?”
“Why are you uneasy about it, doctor?”
“I uneasy! And what the devil is it to me? I put no spiritual value into
my desires, or my opinions, or my actions. They have not enough
vastness to give me room for self-flattery. Look, for instance, I should
certainly have liked to ease the last moments of that poor woman. And
I can’t. It’s impossible. Have you met the impossible face to face--or
have you, the Napoleon of railways, no such word in your dictionary?”
“Is she bound to have a very bad time of it?” asked the chief engineer,
with humane concern.
Slow, heavy footsteps moved across the planks above the heavy hard wood
beams of the kitchen. Then down the narrow opening of the staircase made
in the thickness of the wall, and narrow enough to be defended by one
man against twenty enemies, came the murmur of two voices, one faint and
broken, the other deep and gentle answering it, and in its graver tone
covering the weaker sound.
The two men remained still and silent till the murmurs ceased, then the
doctor shrugged his shoulders and muttered--
“Yes, she’s bound to. And I could do nothing if I went up now.”
A long period of silence above and below ensued.
“I fancy,” began the engineer, in a subdued voice, “that you mistrust
Captain Mitchell’s Capataz.”
“Mistrust him!” muttered the doctor through his teeth. “I believe him
capable of anything--even of the most absurd fidelity. I am the last
person he spoke to before he left the wharf, you know. The poor woman up
there wanted to see him, and I let him go up to her. The dying must not
be contradicted, you know. She seemed then fairly calm and resigned,
but the scoundrel in those ten minutes or so has done or said something
which seems to have driven her into despair. You know,” went on
the doctor, hesitatingly, “women are so very unaccountable in every
position, and at all times of life, that I thought sometimes she was in
a way, don’t you see? in love with him--the Capataz. The rascal has his
own charm indubitably, or he would not have made the conquest of all the
populace of the town. No, no, I am not absurd. I may have given a wrong
name to some strong sentiment for him on her part, to an unreasonable
and simple attitude a woman is apt to take up emotionally towards a
man. She used to abuse him to me frequently, which, of course, is not
inconsistent with my idea. Not at all. It looked to me as if she were
always thinking of him. He was something important in her life. You
know, I have seen a lot of those people. Whenever I came down from
the mine Mrs. Gould used to ask me to keep my eye on them. She likes
Italians; she has lived a long time in Italy, I believe, and she took
a special fancy to that old Garibaldino. A remarkable chap enough. A
rugged and dreamy character, living in the republicanism of his
young days as if in a cloud. He has encouraged much of the Capataz’s
confounded nonsense--the high-strung, exalted old beggar!”
“What sort of nonsense?” wondered the chief engineer. “I found the
Capataz always a very shrewd and sensible fellow, absolutely fearless,
and remarkably useful. A perfect handy man. Sir John was greatly
impressed by his resourcefulness and attention when he made that
overland journey from Sta. Marta. Later on, as you might have heard,
he rendered us a service by disclosing to the then chief of police
the presence in the town of some professional thieves, who came from
a distance to wreck and rob our monthly pay train. He has certainly
organized the lighterage service of the harbour for the O.S.N. Company
with great ability. He knows how to make himself obeyed, foreigner
though he is. It is true that the Cargadores are strangers here, too,
for the most part--immigrants, Islenos.”
“His prestige is his fortune,” muttered the doctor, sourly.
“The man has proved his trustworthiness up to the hilt on innumerable
occasions and in all sorts of ways,” argued the engineer. “When this
question of the silver arose, Captain Mitchell naturally was very warmly
of the opinion that his Capataz was the only man fit for the trust. As
a sailor, of course, I suppose so. But as a man, don’t you know, Gould,
Decoud, and myself judged that it didn’t matter in the least who went.
Any boatman would have done just as well. Pray, what could a thief do
with such a lot of ingots? If he ran off with them he would have in
the end to land somewhere, and how could he conceal his cargo from the
knowledge of the people ashore? We dismissed that consideration from our
minds. Moreover, Decoud was going. There have been occasions when the
Capataz has been more implicitly trusted.”
“He took a slightly different view,” the doctor said. “I heard him
declare in this very room that it would be the most desperate affair of
his life. He made a sort of verbal will here in my hearing, appointing
old Viola his executor; and, by Jove! do you know, he--he’s not grown
rich by his fidelity to you good people of the railway and the harbour.
I suppose he obtains some--how do you say that?--some spiritual value
for his labours, or else I don’t know why the devil he should be
faithful to you, Gould, Mitchell, or anybody else. He knows this country
well. He knows, for instance, that Gamacho, the Deputy from Javira, has
been nothing else but a ‘tramposo’ of the commonest sort, a petty pedlar
of the Campo, till he managed to get enough goods on credit from Anzani
to open a little store in the wilds, and got himself elected by the
drunken mozos that hang about the Estancias and the poorest sort of
rancheros who were in his debt. And Gamacho, who to-morrow will be
probably one of our high officials, is a stranger, too--an Isleno.
He might have been a Cargador on the O. S. N. wharf had he not (the
posadero of Rincon is ready to swear it) murdered a pedlar in the woods
and stolen his pack to begin life on. And do you think that Gamacho,
then, would have ever become a hero with the democracy of this place,
like our Capataz? Of course not. He isn’t half the man. No; decidedly, I
think that Nostromo is a fool.”
The doctor’s talk was distasteful to the builder of railways. “It is
impossible to argue that point,” he said, philosophically. “Each man has
his gifts. You should have heard Gamacho haranguing his friends in the
street. He has a howling voice, and he shouted like mad, lifting his
clenched fist right above his head, and throwing his body half out
of the window. At every pause the rabble below yelled, ‘Down with the
Oligarchs! Viva la Libertad!’ Fuentes inside looked extremely miserable.
You know, he is the brother of Jorge Fuentes, who has been Minister of
the Interior for six months or so, some few years back. Of course, he
has no conscience; but he is a man of birth and education--at one time
the director of the Customs of Cayta. That idiot-brute Gamacho fastened
himself upon him with his following of the lowest rabble. His sickly
fear of that ruffian was the most rejoicing sight imaginable.”
He got up and went to the door to look out towards the harbour. “All
quiet,” he said; “I wonder if Sotillo really means to turn up here?”