Nostromo — Part 1: Chapter 06 pt 2
To be told repeatedly that one’s future is blighted because of the possession of a silver mine is not, at the age of fourteen, a matter of prime importance as to its main statement; but in its form it is calculated to excite a certain amount of wonder and attention.
In course of time the boy, at first only puzzled by the angry jeremiads, but rather sorry for his dad, began to turn the matter over in his mind in such moments as he could spare from play and study.
In about a year he had evolved from the lecture of the letters a definite conviction that there was a silver mine in the Sulaco province of the Republic of Costaguana, where poor Uncle Harry had been shot by soldiers a great many years before.
There was also connected closely with that mine a thing called the “iniquitous Gould Concession,” apparently written on a paper which his father desired ardently to “tear and fling into the faces” of presidents, members of judicature, and ministers of State.
And this desire persisted, though the names of these people, he noticed, seldom remained the same for a whole year together.
This desire (since the thing was iniquitous) seemed quite natural to the boy, though why the affair was iniquitous he did not know.
Afterwards, with advancing wisdom, he managed to clear the plain truth of the business from the fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the Sea, vampires, and ghouls, which had lent to his father’s correspondence the flavour of a gruesome Arabian Nights tale.
In the end, the growing youth attained to as close an intimacy with the San Tome mine as the old man who wrote these plaintive and enraged letters on the other side of the sea.
He had been made several times already to pay heavy fines for neglecting to work the mine, he reported, besides other sums extracted from him on account of future royalties, on the ground that a man with such a valuable concession in his pocket could not refuse his financial assistance to the Government of the Republic.
The last of his fortune was passing away from him against worthless receipts, he wrote, in a rage, whilst he was being pointed out as an individual who had known how to secure enormous advantages from the necessities of his country.
And the young man in Europe grew more and more interested in that thing which could provoke such a tumult of words and passion.
He thought of it every day; but he thought of it without bitterness.
It might have been an unfortunate affair for his poor dad, and the whole story threw a queer light upon the social and political life of Costaguana.
The view he took of it was sympathetic to his father, yet calm and reflective.
His personal feelings had not been outraged, and it is difficult to resent with proper and durable indignation the physical or mental anguish of another organism, even if that other organism is one’s own father.
By the time he was twenty Charles Gould had, in his turn, fallen under the spell of the San Tome mine.
But it was another form of enchantment, more suitable to his youth, into whose magic formula there entered hope, vigour, and self-confidence, instead of weary indignation and despair.
Left after he was twenty to his own guidance (except for the severe injunction not to return to Costaguana), he had pursued his studies in Belgium and France with the idea of qualifying for a mining engineer.
But this scientific aspect of his labours remained vague and imperfect in his mind.
Mines had acquired for him a dramatic interest.
He studied their peculiarities from a personal point of view, too, as one would study the varied characters of men.
He visited them as one goes with curiosity to call upon remarkable persons.
He visited mines in Germany, in Spain, in Cornwall.
Abandoned workings had for him strong fascination.
Their desolation appealed to him like the sight of human misery, whose causes are varied and profound.
They might have been worthless, but also they might have been misunderstood.
His future wife was the first, and perhaps the only person to detect this secret mood which governed the profoundly sensible, almost voiceless attitude of this man towards the world of material things.
And at once her delight in him, lingering with half-open wings like those birds that cannot rise easily from a flat level, found a pinnacle from which to soar up into the skies.
They had become acquainted in Italy, where the future Mrs. Gould was staying with an old and pale aunt who, years before, had married a middle-aged, impoverished Italian marquis.
She now mourned that man, who had known how to give up his life to the independence and unity of his country, who had known how to be as enthusiastic in his generosity as the youngest of those who fell for that very cause of which old Giorgio Viola was a drifting relic, as a broken spar is suffered to float away disregarded after a naval victory.
The Marchesa led a still, whispering existence, nun-like in her black robes and a white band over the forehead, in a corner of the first floor of an ancient and ruinous palace, whose big, empty halls downstairs sheltered under their painted ceilings the harvests, the fowls, and even the cattle, together with the whole family of the tenant farmer.
The two young people had met in Lucca.
After that meeting Charles Gould visited no mines, though they went together in a carriage, once, to see some marble quarries, where the work resembled mining in so far that it also was the tearing of the raw material of treasure from the earth.
Charles Gould did not open his heart to her in any set speeches.
He simply went on acting and thinking in her sight.
This is the true method of sincerity.
One of his frequent remarks was, “I think sometimes that poor father takes a wrong view of that San Tome business.
” And they discussed that opinion long and earnestly, as if they could influence a mind across half the globe; but in reality they discussed it because the sentiment of love can enter into any subject and live ardently in remote phrases.
For this natural reason these discussions were precious to Mrs. Gould in her engaged state.
Charles feared that Mr. Gould, senior, was wasting his strength and making himself ill by his efforts to get rid of the Concession.
“I fancy that this is not the kind of handling it requires,” he mused aloud, as if to himself.
And when she wondered frankly that a man of character should devote his energies to plotting and intrigues, Charles would remark, with a gentle concern that understood her wonder, “You must not forget that he was born there.
” She would set her quick mind to work upon that, and then make the inconsequent retort, which he accepted as perfectly sagacious, because, in fact, it was so-- “Well, and you?
You were born there, too.
” He knew his answer.
“That’s different.
I’ve been away ten years.
Dad never had such a long spell; and it was more than thirty years ago.
” She was the first person to whom he opened his lips after receiving the news of his father’s death.
“It has killed him!
” he said.
He had walked straight out of town with the news, straight out before him in the noonday sun on the white road, and his feet had brought him face to face with her in the hall of the ruined palazzo, a room magnificent and naked, with here and there a long strip of damask, black with damp and age, hanging down on a bare panel of the wall.
It was furnished with exactly one gilt armchair, with a broken back, and an octagon columnar stand bearing a heavy marble vase ornamented with sculptured masks and garlands of flowers, and cracked from top to bottom.
Charles Gould was dusty with the white dust of the road lying on his boots, on his shoulders, on his cap with two peaks.
Water dripped from under it all over his face, and he grasped a thick oaken cudgel in his bare right hand.
She went very pale under the roses of her big straw hat, gloved, swinging a clear sunshade, caught just as she was going out to meet him at the bottom of the hill, where three poplars stand near the wall of a vineyard.
“It has killed him!
” he repeated.
“He ought to have had many years yet.
We are a long-lived family.
” She was too startled to say anything; he was contemplating with a penetrating and motionless stare the cracked marble urn as though he had resolved to fix its shape for ever in his memory.
It was only when, turning suddenly to her, he blurted out twice, “I’ve come to you--I’ve come straight to you--,” without being able to finish his phrase, that the great pitifulness of that lonely and tormented death in Costaguana came to her with the full force of its misery.
He caught hold of her hand, raised it to his lips, and at that she dropped her parasol to pat him on the cheek, murmured “Poor boy,” and began to dry her eyes under the downward curve of her hat-brim, very small in her simple, white frock, almost like a lost child crying in the degraded grandeur of the noble hall, while he stood by her, again perfectly motionless in the contemplation of the marble urn.
Afterwards they went out for a long walk, which was silent till he exclaimed suddenly-- “Yes.
But if he had only grappled with it in a proper way!
” And then they stopped.
Everywhere there were long shadows lying on the hills, on the roads, on the enclosed fields of olive trees; the shadows of poplars, of wide chestnuts, of farm buildings, of stone walls; and in mid-air the sound of a bell, thin and alert, was like the throbbing pulse of the sunset glow.
Her lips were slightly parted as though in surprise that he should not be looking at her with his usual expression.
His usual expression was unconditionally approving and attentive.
He was in his talks with her the most anxious and deferential of dictators, an attitude that pleased her immensely.
It affirmed her power without detracting from his dignity.
That slight girl, with her little feet, little hands, little face attractively overweighted by great coils of hair; with a rather large mouth, whose mere parting seemed to breathe upon you the fragrance of frankness and generosity, had the fastidious soul of an experienced woman.
She was, before all things and all flatteries, careful of her pride in the object of her choice.
But now he was actually not looking at her at all; and his expression was tense and irrational, as is natural in a man who elects to stare at nothing past a young girl’s head.
“Well, yes.
It was iniquitous.
They corrupted him thoroughly, the poor old boy.
Oh!
why wouldn’t he let me go back to him?
But now I shall know how to grapple with this.
” After pronouncing these words with immense assurance, he glanced down at her, and at once fell a prey to distress, incertitude, and fear.
The only thing he wanted to know now, he said, was whether she did love him enough--whether she would have the courage to go with him so far away?
He put these questions to her in a voice that trembled with anxiety--for he was a determined man.
She did.
She would.
And immediately the future hostess of all the Europeans in Sulaco had the physical experience of the earth falling away from under her.
It vanished completely, even to the very sound of the bell.
When her feet touched the ground again, the bell was still ringing in the valley; she put her hands up to her hair, breathing quickly, and glanced up and down the stony lane.
It was reassuringly empty.
Meantime, Charles, stepping with one foot into a dry and dusty ditch, picked up the open parasol, which had bounded away from them with a martial sound of drum taps.
He handed it to her soberly, a little crestfallen.
They turned back, and after she had slipped her hand on his arm, the first words he pronounced were-- “It’s lucky that we shall be able to settle in a coast town.
You’ve heard its name.
It is Sulaco.
I am so glad poor father did get that house.
He bought a big house there years ago, in order that there should always be a Casa Gould in the principal town of what used to be called the Occidental Province.
I lived there once, as a small boy, with my dear mother, for a whole year, while poor father was away in the United States on business.
You shall be the new mistress of the Casa Gould.
” And later, in the inhabited corner of the Palazzo above the vineyards, the marble hills, the pines and olives of Lucca, he also said-- “The name of Gould has been always highly respected in Sulaco.
My uncle Harry was chief of the State for some time, and has left a great name amongst the first families.
By this I mean the pure Creole families, who take no part in the miserable farce of governments.
Uncle Harry was no adventurer.
In Costaguana we Goulds are no adventurers.
He was of the country, and he loved it, but he remained essentially an Englishman in his ideas.
He made use of the political cry of his time.
It was Federation.
But he was no politician.
He simply stood up for social order out of pure love for rational liberty and from his hate of oppression.
There was no nonsense about him.
He went to work in his own way because it seemed right, just as I feel I must lay hold of that mine.
” In such words he talked to her because his memory was very full of the country of his childhood, his heart of his life with that girl, and his mind of the San Tome Concession.
He added that he would have to leave her for a few days to find an American, a man from San Francisco, who was still somewhere in Europe.
A few months before he had made his acquaintance in an old historic German town, situated in a mining district.
The American had his womankind with him, but seemed lonely while they were sketching all day long the old doorways and the turreted corners of the mediaeval houses.
Charles Gould had with him the inseparable companionship of the mine.
The other man was interested in mining enterprises, knew something of Costaguana, and was no stranger to the name of Gould.
They had talked together with some intimacy which was made possible by the difference of their ages.
Charles wanted now to find that capitalist of shrewd mind and accessible character.
His father’s fortune in Costaguana, which he had supposed to be still considerable, seemed to have melted in the rascally crucible of revolutions.
Apart from some ten thousand pounds deposited in England, there appeared to be nothing left except the house in Sulaco, a vague right of forest exploitation in a remote and savage district, and the San Tome Concession, which had attended his poor father to the very brink of the grave.
He explained those things.
It was late when they parted.
She had never before given him such a fascinating vision of herself.
All the eagerness of youth for a strange life, for great distances, for a future in which there was an air of adventure, of combat--a subtle thought of redress and conquest, had filled her with an intense excitement, which she returned to the giver with a more open and exquisite display of tenderness.
He left her to walk down the hill, and directly he found himself alone he became sober.
That irreparable change a death makes in the course of our daily thoughts can be felt in a vague and poignant discomfort of mind.
It hurt Charles Gould to feel that never more, by no effort of will, would he be able to think of his father in the same way he used to think of him when the poor man was alive.
His breathing image was no longer in his power.
This consideration, closely affecting his own identity, filled his breast with a mournful and angry desire for action.
In this his instinct was unerring.
Action is consolatory.
It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.
Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates.
For his action, the mine was obviously the only field.
It was imperative sometimes to know how to disobey the solemn wishes of the dead.
He resolved firmly to make his disobedience as thorough (by way of atonement) as it well could be.
The mine had been the cause of an absurd moral disaster; its working must be made a serious and moral success.
He owed it to the dead man’s memory.
Such were the--properly speaking--emotions of Charles Gould.
His thoughts ran upon the means of raising a large amount of capital in San Francisco or elsewhere; and incidentally there occurred to him also the general reflection that the counsel of the departed must be an unsound guide.
Not one of them could be aware beforehand what enormous changes the death of any given individual may produce in the very aspect of the world.
The latest phase in the history of the mine Mrs. Gould knew from personal experience.
It was in essence the history of her married life.
The mantle of the Goulds’ hereditary position in Sulaco had descended amply upon her little person; but she would not allow the peculiarities of the strange garment to weigh down the vivacity of her character, which was the sign of no mere mechanical sprightliness, but of an eager intelligence.
It must not be supposed that Mrs. Gould’s mind was masculine.
A woman with a masculine mind is not a being of superior efficiency; she is simply a phenomenon of imperfect differentiation--interestingly barren and without importance.
Dona Emilia’s intelligence being feminine led her to achieve the conquest of Sulaco, simply by lighting the way for her unselfishness and sympathy.
She could converse charmingly, but she was not talkative.
The wisdom of the heart having no concern with the erection or demolition of theories any more than with the defence of prejudices, has no random words at its command.
The words it pronounces have the value of acts of integrity, tolerance, and compassion.
A woman’s true tenderness, like the true virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering kind.
The ladies of Sulaco adored Mrs. Gould.
“They still look upon me as something of a monster,” Mrs. Gould had said pleasantly to one of the three gentlemen from San Francisco she had to entertain in her new Sulaco house just about a year after her marriage.
They were her first visitors from abroad, and they had come to look at the San Tome mine.
She jested most agreeably, they thought; and Charles Gould, besides knowing thoroughly what he was about, had shown himself a real hustler.
These facts caused them to be well disposed towards his wife.
An unmistakable enthusiasm, pointed by a slight flavour of irony, made her talk of the mine absolutely fascinating to her visitors, and provoked them to grave and indulgent smiles in which there was a good deal of deference.
Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired by an idealistic view of success they would have been amazed at the state of her mind as the Spanish-American ladies had been amazed at the tireless activity of her body.
She would--in her own words--have been for them “something of a monster.
” However, the Goulds were in essentials a reticent couple, and their guests departed without the suspicion of any other purpose but simple profit in the working of a silver mine.
Mrs. Gould had out her own carriage, with two white mules, to drive them down to the harbour, whence the Ceres was to carry them off into the Olympus of plutocrats.
Captain Mitchell had snatched at the occasion of leave-taking to remark to Mrs. Gould, in a low, confidential mutter, “This marks an epoch.
” Mrs. Gould loved the patio of her Spanish house.
A broad flight of stone steps was overlooked silently from a niche in the wall by a Madonna in blue robes with the crowned child sitting on her arm.
Subdued voices ascended in the early mornings from the paved well of the quadrangle, with the stamping of horses and mules led out in pairs to drink at the cistern.
A tangle of slender bamboo stems drooped its narrow, blade-like leaves over the square pool of water, and the fat coachman sat muffled up on the edge, holding lazily the ends of halters in his hand.
Barefooted servants passed to and fro, issuing from dark, low doorways below; two laundry girls with baskets of washed linen; the baker with the tray of bread made for the day; Leonarda--her own camerista--bearing high up, swung from her hand raised above her raven black head, a bunch of starched under-skirts dazzlingly white in the slant of sunshine.
Then the old porter would hobble in, sweeping the flagstones, and the house was ready for the day.
All the lofty rooms on three sides of the quadrangle opened into each other and into the corredor, with its wrought-iron railings and a border of flowers, whence, like the lady of the mediaeval castle, she could witness from above all the departures and arrivals of the Casa, to which the sonorous arched gateway lent an air of stately importance.
