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_ THOSE of us whom business or curiosity took to Sulaco in these
years before the first advent of the railway can remember the
steadying effect of the San Tome mine upon the life of that
remote province. The outward appearances had not changed then as
they have changed since, as I am told, with cable cars running
along the streets of the Constitution, and carriage roads far
into the country, to Rincon and other villages, where the foreign
merchants and the Ricos generally have their modern villas, and a
vast railway goods yard by the harbour, which has a quay-side, a
long range of warehouses, and quite serious, organized labour
troubles of its own.
Nobody had ever heard of labour troubles then. The Cargadores of
the port formed, indeed, an unruly brotherhood of all sorts of
scum, with a patron saint of their own. They went on strike
regularly (every bull-fight day), a form of trouble that even
Nostromo at the height of his prestige could never cope with
efficiently; but the morning after each fiesta, before the Indian
market-women had opened their mat parasols on the plaza, when the
snows of Higuerota gleamed pale over the town on a yet black sky,
the appearance of a phantom-like horseman mounted on a
silver-grey mare solved the problem of labour without fail. His
steed paced the lanes of the slums and the weed-grown enclosures
within the old ramparts, between the black, lightless cluster of
huts, like cow-byres, like dog-kennels. The horseman hammered
with the butt of a heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias,
of obscene lean-to sheds sloping against the tumble-down piece of
a noble wall, at the wooden sides of dwellings so flimsy that the
sound of snores and sleepy mutters within could be heard in the
pauses of the thundering clatter of his blows. He called out
men's names menacingly from the saddle, once, twice. The drowsy
answers--grumpy, conciliating, savage, jocular, or
deprecating--came out into the silent darkness in which the
horseman sat still, and presently a dark figure would flit out
coughing in the still air. Sometimes a low-toned woman cried
through the window-hole softly, "He's coming directly, senor,"
and the horseman waited silent on a motionless horse. But if
perchance he had to dismount, then, after a while, from the door
of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious scuffle and
stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first and
hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey
mare, who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was
used to that work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk
away hastily from Nostromo's revolver, reeling a little along the
street and snarling low curses. At sunrise Captain Mitchell,
coming out anxiously in his night attire on to the wooden balcony
running the whole length of the O.S.N. Company's lonely building
by the shore, would see the lighters already under way, figures
moving busily about the cargo cranes, perhaps hear the invaluable
Nostromo, now dismounted and in the checked shirt and red sash of
a Mediterranean sailor, bawling orders from the end of the jetty
in a stentorian voice. A fellow in a thousand!
The material apparatus of perfected civilization which
obliterates the individuality of old towns under the stereotyped
conveniences of modern life had not intruded as yet; but over the
worn-out antiquity of Sulaco, so characteristic with its stuccoed
houses and barred windows, with the great yellowy-white walls of
abandoned convents behind the rows of sombre green cypresses,
that fact--very modern in its spirit--the San Tome mine had
already thrown its subtle influence. It had altered, too, the
outward character of the crowds on feast days on the plaza before
the open portal of the cathedral, by the number of white ponchos
with a green stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tome
miners. They had also adopted white hats with green cord and
braid--articles of good quality, which could be obtained in the
storehouse of the administration for very little money. A
peaceable Cholo wearing these colours (unusual in Costaguana) was
somehow very seldom beaten to within an inch of his life on a
charge of disrespect to the town police; neither ran he much risk
of being suddenly lassoed on the road by a recruiting party of
lanceros--a method of voluntary enlistment looked upon as almost
legal in the Republic. Whole villages were known to have
volunteered for the army in that way; but, as Don Pepe would say
with a hopeless shrug to Mrs. Gould, "What would you! Poor
people! Pobrecitos! Pobrecitos! But the State must have its
soldiers."
Thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter, with pendent
moustaches, a nut-brown, lean face, and a clean run of a
cast-iron jaw, suggesting the type of a cattle-herd horseman from
the great Llanos of the South. "If you will listen to an old
officer of Paez, senores," was the exordium of all his speeches
in the Aristocratic Club of Sulaco, where he was admitted on
account of his past services to the extinct cause of Federation.
The club, dating from the days of the proclamation of
Costaguana's independence, boasted many names of liberators
amongst its first founders. Suppressed arbitrarily innumerable
times by various Governments, with memories of proscriptions and
of at least one wholesale massacre of its members, sadly
assembled for a banquet by the order of a zealous military
commandante (their bodies were afterwards stripped naked and
flung into the plaza out of the windows by the lowest scum of the
populace), it was again flourishing, at that period, peacefully.
It extended to strangers the large hospitality of the cool, big
rooms of its historic quarters in the front part of a house, once
the residence of a high official of the Holy Office. The two
wings, shut up, crumbled behind the nailed doors, and what may be
described as a grove of young orange trees grown in the unpaved
patio concealed the utter ruin of the back part facing the gate.
You turned in from the street, as if entering a secluded orchard,
where you came upon the foot of a disjointed staircase, guarded
by a moss-stained effigy of some saintly bishop, mitred and
staffed, and bearing the indignity of a broken nose meekly, with
his fine stone hands crossed on his breast. The
chocolate-coloured faces of servants with mops of black hair
peeped at you from above; the click of billiard balls came to
your ears, and ascending the steps, you would perhaps see in the
first sala, very stiff upon a straight-backed chair, in a good
light, Don Pepe moving his long moustaches as he spelt his way,
at arm's length, through an old Sta. Marta newspaper. His
horse--a stony-hearted but persevering black brute with a hammer
head--you would have seen in the street dozing motionless under
an immense saddle, with its nose almost touching the curbstone of
the sidewalk.
Don Pepe, when "down from the mountain," as the phrase, often
heard in Sulaco, went, could also be seen in the drawing-room of
the Casa Gould. He sat with modest assurance at some distance
from the tea-table. With his knees close together, and a kindly
twinkle of drollery in his deep-set eyes, he would throw his
small and ironic pleasantries into the current of conversation.
There was in that man a sort of sane, humorous shrewdness, and a
vein of genuine humanity so often found in simple old soldiers of
proved courage who have seen much desperate service. Of course he
knew nothing whatever of mining, but his employment was of a
special kind. He was in charge of the whole population in the
territory of the mine, which extended from the head of the gorge
to where the cart track from the foot of the mountain enters the
plain, crossing a stream over a little wooden bridge painted
green--green, the colour of hope, being also the colour of the
mine.
It was reported in Sulaco that up there "at the mountain" Don
Pepe walked about precipitous paths, girt with a great sword and
in a shabby uniform with tarnished bullion epaulettes of a senior
major. Most miners being Indians, with big wild eyes, addressed
him as Taita (father), as these barefooted people of Costaguana
will address anybody who wears shoes; but it was Basilio, Mr.
Gould's own mozo and the head servant of the Casa, who, in all
good faith and from a sense of propriety, announced him once in
the solemn words, "El Senor Gobernador has arrived."
Don Jose Avellanos, then in the drawing-room, was delighted
beyond measure at the aptness of the title, with which he greeted
the old major banteringly as soon as the latter's soldierly
figure appeared in the doorway. Don Pepe only smiled in his long
moustaches, as much as to say, "You might have found a worse name
for an old soldier."
And El Senor Gobernador he had remained, with his small jokes
upon his function and upon his domain, where he affirmed with
humorous exaggeration to Mrs. Gould--
"No two stones could come together anywhere without the
Gobernador hearing the click, senora."
And he would tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger
knowingly. Even when the number of the miners alone rose to over
six hundred he seemed to know each of them individually, all the
innumerable Joses, Manuels, Ignacios, from the villages
primero--segundo--or tercero (there were three mining villages)
under his government. He could distinguish them not only by their
flat, joyless faces, which to Mrs. Gould looked all alike, as if
run into the same ancestral mould of suffering and patience, but
apparently also by the infinitely graduated shades of
reddish-brown, of blackish-brown, of coppery-brown backs, as the
two shifts, stripped to linen drawers and leather skull-caps,
mingled together with a confusion of naked limbs, of shouldered
picks, swinging lamps, in a great shuffle of sandalled feet on
the open plateau before the entrance of the main tunnel. It was a
time of pause. The Indian boys leaned idly against the long line
of little cradle wagons standing empty; the screeners and
ore-breakers squatted on their heels smoking long cigars; the
great wooden shoots slanting over the edge of the tunnel plateau
were silent; and only the ceaseless, violent rush of water in the
open flumes could be heard, murmuring fiercely, with the splash
and rumble of revolving turbine-wheels, and the thudding march of
the stamps pounding to powder the treasure rock on the plateau
below. The heads of gangs, distinguished by brass medals hanging
on their bare breasts, marshalled their squads; and at last the
mountain would swallow one-half of the silent crowd, while the
other half would move off in long files down the zigzag paths
leading to the bottom of the gorge. It was deep; and, far below,
a thread of vegetation winding between the blazing rock faces
resembled a slender green cord, in which three lumpy knots of
banana patches, palm-leaf roots, and shady trees marked the
Village One, Village Two, Village Three, housing the miners of
the Gould Concession.
Whole families had been moving from the first towards the spot in
the Higuerota range, whence the rumour of work and safety had
spread over the pastoral Campo, forcing its way also, even as the
waters of a high flood, into the nooks and crannies of the
distant blue walls of the Sierras. Father first, in a pointed
straw hat, then the mother with the bigger children, generally
also a diminutive donkey, all under burdens, except the leader
himself, or perhaps some grown girl, the pride of the family,
stepping barefooted and straight as an arrow, with braids of
raven hair, a thick, haughty profile, and no load to carry but
the small guitar of the country and a pair of soft leather
sandals tied together on her back. At the sight of such parties
strung out on the cross trails between the pastures, or camped by
the side of the royal road, travellers on horseback would remark
to each other--
"More people going to the San Tome mine. We shall see others
to-morrow."
And spurring on in the dusk they would discuss the great news of
the province, the news of the San Tome mine. A rich Englishman
was going to work it--and perhaps not an Englishman, Quien sabe!
A foreigner with much money. Oh, yes, it had begun. A party of
men who had been to Sulaco with a herd of black bulls for the
next corrida had reported that from the porch of the posada in
Rincon, only a short league from the town, the lights on the
mountain were visible, twinkling above the trees. And there was a
woman seen riding a horse sideways, not in the chair seat, but
upon a sort of saddle, and a man's hat on her head. She walked
about, too, on foot up the mountain paths. A woman engineer, it
seemed she was.
"What an absurdity! Impossible, senor!"
"Si! Si! Una Americana del Norte."
"Ah, well! if your worship is informed. Una Americana; it need be
something of that sort."
And they would laugh a little with astonishment and scorn,
keeping a wary eye on the shadows of the road, for one is liable
to meet bad men when travelling late on the Campo.
And it was not only the men that Don Pepe knew so well, but he
seemed able, with one attentive, thoughtful glance, to classify
each woman, girl, or growing youth of his domain. It was only the
small fry that puzzled him sometimes. He and the padre could be
seen frequently side by side, meditative and gazing across the
street of a village at a lot of sedate brown children, trying to
sort them out, as it were, in low, consulting tones, or else they
would together put searching questions as to the parentage of
some small, staid urchin met wandering, naked and grave, along
the road with a cigar in his baby mouth, and perhaps his mother's
rosary, purloined for purposes of ornamentation, hanging in a
loop of beads low down on his rotund little stomach. The
spiritual and temporal pastors of the mine flock were very good
friends. With Dr. Monygham, the medical pastor, who had accepted
the charge from Mrs. Gould, and lived in the hospital building,
they were on not so intimate terms. But no one could be on
intimate terms with El Senor Doctor, who, with his twisted
shoulders, drooping head, sardonic mouth, and side-long bitter
glance, was mysterious and uncanny. The other two authorities
worked in harmony. Father Roman, dried-up, small, alert,
wrinkled, with big round eyes, a sharp chin, and a great
snuff-taker, was an old campaigner, too; he had shriven many
simple souls on the battlefields of the Republic, kneeling by the
dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in the gloom of the
forests, to hear the last confession with the smell of gunpowder
smoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum and spatter
of bullets in his ears. And where was the harm if, at the
presbytery, they had a game with a pack of greasy cards in the
early evening, before Don Pepe went his last rounds to see that
all the watchmen of the mine--a body organized by himself--were
at their posts? For that last duty before he slept Don Pepe did
actually gird his old sword on the verandah of an unmistakable
American white frame house, which Father Roman called the
presbytery. Near by, a long, low, dark building, steeple-roofed,
like a vast barn with a wooden cross over the gable, was the
miners' chapel. There Father Roman said Mass every day before a
sombre altar-piece representing the Resurrection, the grey slab
of the tombstone balanced on one corner, a figure soaring
upwards, long-limbed and livid, in an oval of pallid light, and a
helmeted brown legionary smitten down, right across the
bituminous foreground. "This picture, my children, muy linda e
maravillosa," Father Roman would say to some of his flock, "which
you behold here through the munificence of the wife of our Senor
Administrador, has been painted in Europe, a country of saints
and miracles, and much greater than our Costaguana." And he would
take a pinch of snuff with unction. But when once an inquisitive
spirit desired to know in what direction this Europe was
situated, whether up or down the coast, Father Roman, to conceal
his perplexity, became very reserved and severe. "No doubt it is
extremely far away. But ignorant sinners like you of the San Tome
mine should think earnestly of everlasting punishment instead of
inquiring into the magnitude of the earth, with its countries and
populations altogether beyond your understanding."
With a "Good-night, Padre," "Good-night, Don Pepe," the
Gobernador would go off, holding up his sabre against his side,
his body bent forward, with a long, plodding stride in the dark.
The jocularity proper to an innocent card game for a few cigars
or a bundle of yerba was replaced at once by the stern duty mood
of an officer setting out to visit the outposts of an encamped
army. One loud blast of the whistle that hung from his neck
provoked instantly a great shrilling of responding whistles,
mingled with the barking of dogs, that would calm down slowly at
last, away up at the head of the gorge; and in the stillness two
serenos, on guard by the bridge, would appear walking noiselessly
towards him. On one side of the road a long frame building--the
store--would be closed and barricaded from end to end; facing it
another white frame house, still longer, and with a verandah--the
hospital--would have lights in the two windows of Dr. Monygham's
quarters. Even the delicate foliage of a clump of pepper trees
did not stir, so breathless would be the darkness warmed by the
radiation of the over-heated rocks. Don Pepe would stand still
for a moment with the two motionless serenos before him, and,
abruptly, high up on the sheer face of the mountain, dotted with
single torches, like drops of fire fallen from the two great
blazing clusters of lights above, the ore shoots would begin to
rattle. The great clattering, shuffling noise, gathering speed
and weight, would be caught up by the walls of the gorge, and
sent upon the plain in a growl of thunder. The pasadero in Rincon
swore that on calm nights, by listening intently, he could catch
the sound in his doorway as of a storm in the mountains.
To Charles Gould's fancy it seemed that the sound must reach the
uttermost limits of the province. Riding at night towards the
mine, it would meet him at the edge of a little wood just beyond
Rincon. There was no mistaking the growling mutter of the
mountain pouring its stream of treasure under the stamps; and it
came to his heart with the peculiar force of a proclamation
thundered forth over the land and the marvellousness of an
accomplished fact fulfilling an audacious desire. He had heard
this very sound in his imagination on that far-off evening when
his wife and himself, after a tortuous ride through a strip of
forest, had reined in their horses near the stream, and had gazed
for the first time upon the jungle-grown solitude of the gorge.
The head of a palm rose here and there. In a high ravine round
the corner of the San Tome mountain (which is square like a
blockhouse) the thread of a slender waterfall flashed bright and
glassy through the dark green of the heavy fronds of tree-ferns.
Don Pepe, in attendance, rode up, and, stretching his arm up the
gorge, had declared with mock solemnity, "Behold the very
paradise of snakes, senora."
And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden back to sleep
that night at Rincon. The alcalde--an old, skinny Moreno, a
sergeant of Guzman Bento's time--had cleared respectfully out of
his house with his three pretty daughters, to make room for the
foreign senora and their worships the Caballeros. All he asked
Charles Gould (whom he took for a mysterious and official person)
to do for him was to remind the supreme Government--El Gobierno
supreme--of a pension (amounting to about a dollar a month) to
which he believed himself entitled. It had been promised to him,
he affirmed, straightening his bent back martially, "many years
ago, for my valour in the wars with the wild Indios when a young
man, senor."
The waterfall existed no longer. The tree-ferns that had
luxuriated in its spray had died around the dried-up pool, and
the high ravine was only a big trench half filled up with the
refuse of excavations and tailings. The torrent, dammed up
above, sent its water rushing along the open flumes of scooped
tree trunks striding on trestle-legs to the turbines working the
stamps on the lower plateau--the mesa grande of the San Tome
mountain. Only the memory of the waterfall, with its amazing
fernery, like a hanging garden above the rocks of the gorge, was
preserved in Mrs. Gould's water-colour sketch; she had made it
hastily one day from a cleared patch in the bushes, sitting in
the shade of a roof of straw erected for her on three rough poles
under Don Pepe's direction.
Mrs. Gould had seen it all from the beginning: the clearing of
the wilderness, the making of the road, the cutting of new paths
up the cliff face of San Tome. For weeks together she had lived
on the spot with her husband; and she was so little in Sulaco
during that year that the appearance of the Gould carriage on the
Alameda would cause a social excitement. From the heavy family
coaches full of stately senoras and black-eyed senoritas rolling
solemnly in the shaded alley white hands were waved towards her
with animation in a flutter of greetings. Dona Emilia was "down
from the mountain."
But not for long. Dona Emilia would be gone "up to the mountain"
in a day or two, and her sleek carriage mules would have an easy
time of it for another long spell. She had watched the erection
of the first frame-house put up on the lower mesa for an office
and Don Pepe's quarters; she heard with a thrill of thankful
emotion the first wagon load of ore rattle down the then only
shoot; she had stood by her husband's side perfectly silent, and
gone cold all over with excitement at the instant when the first
battery of only fifteen stamps was put in motion for the first
time. On the occasion when the fires under the first set of
retorts in their shed had glowed far into the night she did not
retire to rest on the rough cadre set up for her in the as yet
bare frame-house till she had seen the first spongy lump of
silver yielded to the hazards of the world by the dark depths of
the Gould Concession; she had laid her unmercenary hands, with an
eagerness that made them tremble, upon the first silver ingot
turned out still warm from the mould; and by her imaginative
estimate of its power she endowed that lump of metal with a
justificative conception, as though it were not a mere fact, but
something far-reaching and impalpable, like the true expression
of an emotion or the emergence of a principle.
Don Pepe, extremely interested, too, looked over her shoulder
with a smile that, making longitudinal folds on his face, caused
it to resemble a leathern mask with a benignantly diabolic
expression.
"Would not the muchachos of Hernandez like to get hold of this
insignificant object, that looks, por Dios, very much like a
piece of tin?" he remarked, jocularly.
Hernandez, the robber, had been an inoffensive, small ranchero,
kidnapped with circumstances of peculiar atrocity from his home
during one of the civil wars, and forced to serve in the army.
There his conduct as soldier was exemplary, till, watching his
chance, he killed his colonel, and managed to get clear away.
With a band of deserters, who chose him for their chief, he had
taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless Bolson de Tonoro. The
haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle and horses; extraordinary
stories were told of his powers and of his wonderful escapes from
capture. He used to ride, single-handed, into the villages and
the little towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before him,
with two revolvers in his belt, go straight to the shop or store,
select what he wanted, and ride away unopposed because of the
terror his exploits and his audacity inspired. Poor country
people he usually left alone; the upper class were often stopped
on the roads and robbed; but any unlucky official that fell into
his hands was sure to get a severe flogging. The army officers
did not like his name to be mentioned in their presence. His
followers, mounted on stolen horses, laughed at the pursuit of
the regular cavalry sent to hunt them down, and whom they took
pleasure to ambush most scientifically in the broken ground of
their own fastness. Expeditions had been fitted out; a price had
been put upon his head; even attempts had been made,
treacherously of course, to open negotiations with him, without
in the slightest way affecting the even tenor of his career. At
last, in true Costaguana fashion, the Fiscal of Tonoro, who was
ambitious of the glory of having reduced the famous Hernandez,
offered him a sum of money and a safe conduct out of the country
for the betrayal of his band. But Hernandez evidently was not of
the stuff of which the distinguished military politicians and
conspirators of Costaguana are made. This clever but common
device (which frequently works like a charm in putting down
revolutions) failed with the chief of vulgar Salteadores. It
promised well for the Fiscal at first, but ended very badly for
the squadron of lanceros posted (by the Fiscal's directions) in a
fold of the ground into which Hernandez had promised to lead his
unsuspecting followers They came, indeed, at the appointed time,
but creeping on their hands and knees through the bush, and only
let their presence be known by a general discharge of firearms,
which emptied many saddles. The troopers who escaped came riding
very hard into Tonoro. It is said that their commanding officer
(who, being better mounted, rode far ahead of the rest)
afterwards got into a state of despairing intoxication and beat
the ambitious Fiscal severely with the flat of his sabre in the
presence of his wife and daughters, for bringing this disgrace
upon the National Army. The highest civil official of Tonoro,
falling to the ground in a swoon, was further kicked all over the
body and rowelled with sharp spurs about the neck and face
because of the great sensitiveness of his military colleague.
This gossip of the inland Campo, so characteristic of the rulers
of the country with its story of oppression, inefficiency,
fatuous methods, treachery, and savage brutality, was perfectly
known to Mrs. Gould. That it should be accepted with no indignant
comment by people of intelligence, refinement, and character as
something inherent in the nature of things was one of the
symptoms of degradation that had the power to exasperate her
almost to the verge of despair. Still looking at the ingot of
silver, she shook her head at Don Pepe's remark--
"If it had not been for the lawless tyranny of your Government,
Don Pepe, many an outlaw now with Hernandez would be living
peaceably and happy by the honest work of his hands."
"Senora," cried Don Pepe, with enthusiasm, "it is true! It is as
if God had given you the power to look into the very breasts of
people. You have seen them working round you, Dona Emilia--meek
as lambs, patient like their own burros, brave like lions. I have
led them to the very muzzles of guns--I, who stand here before
you, senora--in the time of Paez, who was full of generosity, and
in courage only approached by the uncle of Don Carlos here, as
far as I know. No wonder there are bandits in the Campo when
there are none but thieves, swindlers, and sanguinary macaques to
rule us in Sta. Marta. However, all the same, a bandit is a
bandit, and we shall have a dozen good straight Winchesters to
ride with the silver down to Sulaco."
Mrs. Gould's ride with the first silver escort to Sulaco was the
closing episode of what she called "my camp life" before she had
settled in her town-house permanently, as was proper and even
necessary for the wife of the administrator of such an important
institution as the San Tome mine. For the San Tome mine was to
become an institution, a rallying point for everything in the
province that needed order and stability to live. Security
seemed to flow upon this land from the mountain-gorge. The
authorities of Sulaco had learned that the San Tome mine could
make it worth their while to leave things and people alone. This
was the nearest approach to the rule of common-sense and justice
Charles Gould felt it possible to secure at first. In fact, the
mine, with its organization, its population growing fiercely
attached to their position of privileged safety, with its
armoury, with its Don Pepe, with its armed body of serenos
(where, it was said, many an outlaw and deserter--and even some
members of Hernandez's band--had found a place), the mine was a
power in the land. As a certain prominent man in Sta. Marta had
exclaimed with a hollow laugh, once, when discussing the line of
action taken by the Sulaco authorities at a time of political
crisis--
"You call these men Government officials? They? Never! They are
officials of the mine--officials of the Concession--I tell you."
The prominent man (who was then a person in power, with a
lemon-coloured face and a very short and curly, not to say
woolly, head of hair) went so far in his temporary discontent as
to shake his yellow fist under the nose of his interlocutor, and
shriek--
"Yes! All! Silence! All! I tell you! The political Gefe, the
chief of the police, the chief of the customs, the general, all,
all, are the officials of that Gould."
Thereupon an intrepid but low and argumentative murmur would flow
on for a space in the ministerial cabinet, and the prominent
man's passion would end in a cynical shrug of the shoulders.
After all, he seemed to say, what did it matter as long as the
minister himself was not forgotten during his brief day of
authority? But all the same, the unofficial agent of the San
Tome mine, working for a good cause, had his moments of anxiety,
which were reflected in his letters to Don Jose Avellanos, his
maternal uncle.
"No sanguinary macaque from Sta. Marta shall set foot on that
part of Costaguana which lies beyond the San Tome bridge," Don
Pepe used to assure Mrs. Gould. "Except, of course, as an
honoured guest--for our Senor Administrador is a deep politico."
But to Charles Gould, in his own room, the old Major would remark
with a grim and soldierly cheeriness, "We are all playing our
heads at this game."
Don Jose Avellanos would mutter "Imperium in imperio, Emilia, my
soul," with an air of profound self-satisfaction which, somehow,
in a curious way, seemed to contain a queer admixture of bodily
discomfort. But that, perhaps, could only be visible to the
initiated. And for the initiated it was a wonderful place, this
drawing-room of the Casa Gould, with its momentary glimpses of
the master--El Senor Administrador--older, harder, mysteriously
silent, with the lines deepened on his English, ruddy,
out-of-doors complexion; flitting on his thin cavalryman's legs
across the doorways, either just "back from the mountain" or with
jingling spurs and riding-whip under his arm, on the point of
starting "for the mountain." Then Don Pepe, modestly martial in
his chair, the llanero who seemed somehow to have found his
martial jocularity, his knowledge of the world, and his manner
perfect for his station, in the midst of savage armed contests
with his kind; Avellanos, polished and familiar, the diplomatist
with his loquacity covering much caution and wisdom in delicate
advice, with his manuscript of a historical work on Costaguana,
entitled "Fifty Years of Misrule," which, at present, he thought
it was not prudent (even if it were possible) "to give to the
world"; these three, and also Dona Emilia amongst them, gracious,
small, and fairy-like, before the glittering tea-set, with one
common master-thought in their heads, with one common feeling of
a tense situation, with one ever-present aim to preserve the
inviolable character of the mine at every cost. And there was
also to be seen Captain Mitchell, a little apart, near one of the
long windows, with an air of old-fashioned neat old bachelorhood
about him, slightly pompous, in a white waistcoat, a little
disregarded and unconscious of it; utterly in the dark, and
imagining himself to be in the thick of things. The good man,
having spent a clear thirty years of his life on the high seas
before getting what he called a "shore billet," was astonished at
the importance of transactions (other than relating to shipping)
which take place on dry land. Almost every event out of the usual
daily course "marked an epoch" for him or else was "history";
unless with his pomposity struggling with a discomfited droop of
his rubicund, rather handsome face, set off by snow-white close
hair and short whiskers, he would mutter--
"Ah, that! That, sir, was a mistake."
The reception of the first consignment of San Tome silver for
shipment to San Francisco in one of the O.S.N. Co.'s mail-boats
had, of course, "marked an epoch" for Captain Mitchell. The
ingots packed in boxes of stiff ox-hide with plaited handles,
small enough to be carried easily by two men, were brought down
by the serenos of the mine walking in careful couples along the
half-mile or so of steep, zigzag paths to the foot of the
mountain. There they would be loaded into a string of two-wheeled
carts, resembling roomy coffers with a door at the back, and
harnessed tandem with two mules each, waiting under the guard of
armed and mounted serenos. Don Pepe padlocked each door in
succession, and at the signal of his whistle the string of carts
would move off, closely surrounded by the clank of spur and
carbine, with jolts and cracking of whips, with a sudden deep
rumble over the boundary bridge ("into the land of thieves and
sanguinary macaques," Don Pepe defined that crossing); hats
bobbing in the first light of the dawn, on the heads of cloaked
figures; Winchesters on hip; bridle hands protruding lean and
brown from under the falling folds of the ponchos. The convoy
skirting a little wood, along the mine trail, between the mud
huts and low walls of Rincon, increased its pace on the camino
real, mules urged to speed, escort galloping, Don Carlos riding
alone ahead of a dust storm affording a vague vision of long ears
of mules, of fluttering little green and white flags stuck upon
each cart; of raised arms in a mob of sombreros with the white
gleam of ranging eyes; and Don Pepe, hardly visible in the rear
of that rattling dust trail, with a stiff seat and impassive
face, rising and falling rhythmically on an ewe-necked
silver-bitted black brute with a hammer head.
The sleepy people in the little clusters of huts, in the small
ranches near the road, recognized by the headlong sound the
charge of the San Tome silver escort towards the crumbling wall
of the city on the Campo side. They came to the doors to see it
dash by over ruts and stones, with a clatter and clank and
cracking of whips, with the reckless rush and precise driving of
a field battery hurrying into action, and the solitary English
figure of the Senor Administrador riding far ahead in the lead.
In the fenced roadside paddocks loose horses galloped wildly for
a while; the heavy cattle stood up breast deep in the grass,
lowing mutteringly at the flying noise; a meek Indian villager
would glance back once and hasten to shove his loaded little
donkey bodily against a wall, out of the way of the San Tome
silver escort going to the sea; a small knot of chilly leperos
under the Stone Horse of the Alameda would mutter: "Caramba!" on
seeing it take a wide curve at a gallop and dart into the empty
Street of the Constitution; for it was considered the correct
thing, the only proper style by the mule-drivers of the San Tome
mine to go through the waking town from end to end without a
check in the speed as if chased by a devil.
The early sunshine glowed on the delicate primrose, pale pink,
pale blue fronts of the big houses with all their gates shut yet,
and no face behind the iron bars of the windows. In the whole
sunlit range of empty balconies along the street only one white
figure would be visible high up above the clear pavement--the
wife of the Senor Administrador--leaning over to see the escort
go by to the harbour, a mass of heavy, fair hair twisted up
negligently on her little head, and a lot of lace about the neck
of her muslin wrapper. With a smile to her husband's single,
quick, upward glance, she would watch the whole thing stream past
below her feet with an orderly uproar, till she answered by a
friendly sign the salute of the galloping Don Pepe, the stiff,
deferential inclination with a sweep of the hat below the knee.
The string of padlocked carts lengthened, the size of the escort
grew bigger as the years went on. Every three months an
increasing stream of treasure swept through the streets of Sulaco
on its way to the strong room in the O.S.N. Co.'s building by the
harbour, there to await shipment for the North. Increasing in
volume, and of immense value also; for, as Charles Gould told his
wife once with some exultation, there had never been seen
anything in the world to approach the vein of the Gould
Concession. For them both, each passing of the escort under the
balconies of the Casa Gould was like another victory gained in
the conquest of peace for Sulaco.
No doubt the initial action of Charles Gould had been helped at
the beginning by a period of comparative peace which occurred
just about that time; and also by the general softening of
manners as compared with the epoch of civil wars whence had
emerged the iron tyranny of Guzman Bento of fearful memory. In
the contests that broke out at the end of his rule (which had
kept peace in the country for a whole fifteen years) there was
more fatuous imbecility, plenty of cruelty and suffering still,
but much less of the old-time fierce and blindly ferocious
political fanaticism. It was all more vile, more base, more
contemptible, and infinitely more manageable in the very
outspoken cynicism of motives. It was more clearly a
brazen-faced scramble for a constantly diminishing quantity of
booty; since all enterprise had been stupidly killed in the land.
Thus it came to pass that the province of Sulaco, once the field
of cruel party vengeances, had become in a way one of the
considerable prizes of political career. The great of the earth
(in Sta. Marta) reserved the posts in the old Occidental State to
those nearest and dearest to them: nephews, brothers, husbands
of favourite sisters, bosom friends, trusty supporters--or
prominent supporters of whom perhaps they were afraid. It was the
blessed province of great opportunities and of largest salaries;
for the San Tome mine had its own unofficial pay list, whose
items and amounts, fixed in consultation by Charles Gould and
Senor Avellanos, were known to a prominent business man in the
United States, who for twenty minutes or so in every month gave
his undivided attention to Sulaco affairs. At the same time the
material interests of all sorts, backed up by the influence of
the San Tome mine, were quietly gathering substance in that part
of the Republic. If, for instance, the Sulaco Collectorship was
generally understood, in the political world of the capital, to
open the way to the Ministry of Finance, and so on for every
official post, then, on the other hand, the despondent business
circles of the Republic had come to consider the Occidental
Province as the promised land of safety, especially if a man
managed to get on good terms with the administration of the mine.
"Charles Gould; excellent fellow! Absolutely necessary to make
sure of him before taking a single step. Get an introduction to
him from Moraga if you can--the agent of the King of Sulaco,
don't you know."
No wonder, then, that Sir John, coming from Europe to smooth the
path for his railway, had been meeting the name (and even the
nickname) of Charles Gould at every turn in Costaguana. The agent
of the San Tome Administration in Sta. Marta (a polished,
well-informed gentleman, Sir John thought him) had certainly
helped so greatly in bringing about the presidential tour that he
began to think that there was something in the faint whispers
hinting at the immense occult influence of the Gould Concession.
What was currently whispered was this--that the San Tome
Administration had, in part, at least, financed the last
revolution, which had brought into a five-year dictatorship Don
Vincente Ribiera, a man of culture and of unblemished character,
invested with a mandate of reform by the best elements of the
State. Serious, well-informed men seemed to believe the fact, to
hope for better things, for the establishment of legality, of
good faith and order in public life. So much the better, then,
thought Sir John. He worked always on a great scale; there was a
loan to the State, and a project for systematic colonization of
the Occidental Province, involved in one vast scheme with the
construction of the National Central Railway. Good faith, order,
honesty, peace, were badly wanted for this great development of
material interests. Anybody on the side of these things, and
especially if able to help, had an importance in Sir John's eyes.
He had not been disappointed in the "King of Sulaco." The local
difficulties had fallen away, as the engineer-in-chief had
foretold they would, before Charles Gould's mediation. Sir John
had been extremely feted in Sulaco, next to the
President-Dictator, a fact which might have accounted for the
evident ill-humour General Montero displayed at lunch given on
board the Juno just before she was to sail, taking away from
Sulaco the President-Dictator and the distinguished foreign guests
in his train.
The Excellentissimo ("the hope of honest men," as Don Jose had
addressed him in a public speech delivered in the name of the
Provincial Assembly of Sulaco) sat at the head of the long table;
Captain Mitchell, positively stony-eyed and purple in the face
with the solemnity of this "historical event," occupied the foot
as the representative of the O.S.N. Company in Sulaco, the hosts
of that informal function, with the captain of the ship and some
minor officials from the shore around him. Those cheery, swarthy
little gentlemen cast jovial side-glances at the bottles of
champagne beginning to pop behind the guests' backs in the hands
of the ship's stewards. The amber wine creamed up to the rims of
the glasses.
Charles Gould had his place next to a foreign envoy, who, in a
listless undertone, had been talking to him fitfully of hunting
and shooting. The well-nourished, pale face, with an eyeglass and
drooping yellow moustache, made the Senor Administrador appear by
contrast twice as sunbaked, more flaming red, a hundred times
more intensely and silently alive. Don Jose Avellanos touched
elbows with the other foreign diplomat, a dark man with a quiet,
watchful, self-confident demeanour, and a touch of reserve. All
etiquette being laid aside on the occasion, General Montero was
the only one there in full uniform, so stiff with embroideries in
front that his broad chest seemed protected by a cuirass of gold.
Sir John at the beginning had got away from high places for the
sake of sitting near Mrs. Gould.
The great financier was trying to express to her his grateful
sense of her hospitality and of his obligation to her husband's
"enormous influence in this part of the country," when she
interrupted him by a low "Hush!" The President was going to make
an informal pronouncement.
The Excellentissimo was on his legs. He said only a few words,
evidently deeply felt, and meant perhaps mostly for
Avellanos--his old friend--as to the necessity of unremitting
effort to secure the lasting welfare of the country emerging
after this last struggle, he hoped, into a period of peace and
material prosperity.
Mrs. Gould, listening to the mellow, slightly mournful voice,
looking at this rotund, dark, spectacled face, at the short body,
obese to the point of infirmity, thought that this man of
delicate and melancholy mind, physically almost a cripple, coming
out of his retirement into a dangerous strife at the call of his
fellows, had the right to speak with the authority of his
self-sacrifice. And yet she was made uneasy. He was more pathetic
than promising, this first civilian Chief of the State Costaguana
had ever known, pronouncing, glass in hand, his simple watchwords
of honesty, peace, respect for law, political good faith abroad
and at home--the safeguards of national honour.
He sat down. During the respectful, appreciative buzz of voices
that followed the speech, General Montero raised a pair of heavy,
drooping eyelids and rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy
dullness from face to face. The military backwoods hero of the
party, though secretly impressed by the sudden novelties and
splendours of his position (he had never been on board a ship
before, and had hardly ever seen the sea except from a distance),
understood by a sort of instinct the advantage his surly,
unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all
these refined Blanco aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was
looking at him? he wondered to himself angrily. He was able to
spell out the print of newspapers, and knew that he had performed
the "greatest military exploit of modern times."
"My husband wanted the railway," Mrs. Gould said to Sir John in
the general murmur of resumed conversations. "All this brings
nearer the sort of future we desire for the country, which has
waited for it in sorrow long enough, God knows. But I will
confess that the other day, during my afternoon drive when I
suddenly saw an Indian boy ride out of a wood with the red flag
of a surveying party in his hand, I felt something of a shock.
The future means change--an utter change. And yet even here
there are simple and picturesque things that one would like to
preserve."
Sir John listened, smiling. But it was his turn now to hush Mrs.
Gould.
"General Montero is going to speak," he whispered, and almost
immediately added, in comic alarm, "Heavens! he's going to
propose my own health, I believe."
General Montero had risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a
ripple of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy
sword-hilt appeared at his side above the edge of the table. In
this gorgeous uniform, with his bull neck, his hooked nose
flattened on the tip upon a blue-black, dyed moustache, he looked
like a disguised and sinister vaquero. The drone of his voice had
a strangely rasping, soulless ring. He floundered, lowering,
through a few vague sentences; then suddenly raising his big head
and his voice together, burst out harshly--
"The honour of the country is in the hands of the army. I assure
you I shall be faithful to it." He hesitated till his roaming
eyes met Sir John's face upon which he fixed a lurid, sleepy
glance; and the figure of the lately negotiated loan came into
his mind. He lifted his glass. "I drink to the health of the man
who brings us a million and a half of pounds."
He tossed off his champagne, and sat down heavily with a
half-surprised, half-bullying look all round the faces in the
profound, as if appalled, silence which succeeded the felicitous
toast. Sir John did not move.
"I don't think I am called upon to rise," he murmured to Mrs.
Gould. "That sort of thing speaks for itself." But Don Jose
Avellanos came to the rescue with a short oration, in which he
alluded pointedly to England's goodwill towards Costaguana--"a
goodwill," he continued, significantly, "of which I, having been
in my time accredited to the Court of St. James, am able to speak
with some knowledge."
Only then Sir John thought fit to respond, which he did
gracefully in bad French, punctuated by bursts of applause and
the "Hear! Hears!" of Captain Mitchell, who was able to
understand a word now and then. Directly he had done, the
financier of railways turned to Mrs. Gould--
"You were good enough to say that you intended to ask me for
something," he reminded her, gallantly. "What is it? Be assured
that any request from you would be considered in the light of a
favour to myself."
She thanked him by a gracious smile. Everybody was rising from
the table.
"Let us go on deck," she proposed, "where I'll be able to point
out to you the very object of my request."
An enormous national flag of Costaguana, diagonal red and yellow,
with two green palm trees in the middle, floated lazily at the
mainmast head of the Juno. A multitude of fireworks being let off
in their thousands at the water's edge in honour of the President
kept up a mysterious crepitating noise half round the harbour.
Now and then a lot of rockets, swishing upwards invisibly,
detonated overhead with only a puff of smoke in the bright sky.
Crowds of people could be seen between the town gate and the
harbour, under the bunches of multicoloured flags fluttering on
tall poles. Faint bursts of military music would be heard
suddenly, and the remote sound of shouting. A knot of ragged
negroes at the end of the wharf kept on loading and firing a
small iron cannon time after time. A greyish haze of dust hung
thin and motionless against the sun.
Don Vincente Ribiera made a few steps under the deck-awning,
leaning on the arm of Senor Avellanos; a wide circle was formed
round him, where the mirthless smile of his dark lips and the
sightless glitter of his spectacles could be seen turning amiably
from side to side. The informal function arranged on purpose on
board the Juno to give the President-Dictator an opportunity to
meet intimately some of his most notable adherents in Sulaco was
drawing to an end. On one side, General Montero, his bald head
covered now by a plumed cocked hat, remained motionless on a
skylight seat, a pair of big gauntleted hands folded on the hilt
of the sabre standing upright between his legs. The white plume,
the coppery tint of his broad face, the blue-black of the
moustaches under the curved beak, the mass of gold on sleeves and
breast, the high shining boots with enormous spurs, the working
nostrils, the imbecile and domineering stare of the glorious
victor of Rio Seco had in them something ominous and incredible;
the exaggeration of a cruel caricature, the fatuity of solemn
masquerading, the atrocious grotesqueness of some military idol
of Aztec conception and European bedecking, awaiting the homage
of worshippers. Don Jose approached diplomatically this weird
and inscrutable portent, and Mrs. Gould turned her fascinated
eyes away at last.
Charles, coming up to take leave of Sir John, heard him say, as
he bent over his wife's hand, "Certainly. Of course, my dear
Mrs. Gould, for a protege of yours! Not the slightest
difficulty. Consider it done."
Going ashore in the same boat with the Goulds, Don Jose Avellanos
was very silent. Even in the Gould carriage he did not open his
lips for a long time. The mules trotted slowly away from the
wharf between the extended hands of the beggars, who for that day
seemed to have abandoned in a body the portals of churches.
Charles Gould sat on the back seat and looked away upon the
plain. A multitude of booths made of green boughs, of rushes, of
odd pieces of plank eked out with bits of canvas had been erected
all over it for the sale of cana, of dulces, of fruit, of cigars.
Over little heaps of glowing charcoal Indian women, squatting on
mats, cooked food in black earthen pots, and boiled the water for
the mate gourds, which they offered in soft, caressing voices to
the country people. A racecourse had been staked out for the
vaqueros; and away to the left, from where the crowd was massed
thickly about a huge temporary erection, like a circus tent of
wood with a conical grass roof, came the resonant twanging of
harp strings, the sharp ping of guitars, with the grave drumming
throb of an Indian gombo pulsating steadily through the shrill
choruses of the dancers.
Charles Gould said presently--
"All this piece of land belongs now to the Railway Company. There
will be no more popular feasts held here."
Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took this
opportunity to mention how she had just obtained from Sir John
the promise that the house occupied by Giorgio Viola should not
be interfered with. She declared she could never understand why
the survey engineers ever talked of demolishing that old
building. It was not in the way of the projected harbour branch
of the line in the least.
She stopped the carriage before the door to reassure at once the
old Genoese, who came out bare-headed and stood by the carriage
step. She talked to him in Italian, of course, and he thanked her
with calm dignity. An old Garibaldino was grateful to her from
the bottom of his heart for keeping the roof over the heads of
his wife and children. He was too old to wander any more.
"And is it for ever, signora?" he asked.
"For as long as you like."
"Bene. Then the place must be named, It was not worth while
before."
He smiled ruggedly, with a running together of wrinkles at the
corners of his eyes. "I shall set about the painting of the name
to-morrow."
"And what is it going to be, Giorgio?"
"Albergo d'Italia Una," said the old Garibaldino, looking away
for a moment. "More in memory of those who have died," he added,
"than for the country stolen from us soldiers of liberty by the
craft of that accursed Piedmontese race of kings and ministers."
Mrs. Gould smiled slightly, and, bending over a little, began to
inquire about his wife and children. He had sent them into town
on that day. The padrona was better in health; many thanks to the
signora for inquiring.
People were passing in twos and threes, in whole parties of men
and women attended by trotting children. A horseman mounted on a
silver-grey mare drew rein quietly in the shade of the house
after taking off his hat to the party in the carriage, who
returned smiles and familiar nods. Old Viola, evidently very
pleased with the news he had just heard, interrupted himself for
a moment to tell him rapidly that the house was secured, by the
kindness of the English signora, for as long as he liked to keep
it. The other listened attentively, but made no response.
When the carriage moved on he took off his hat again, a grey
sombrero with a silver cord and tassels. The bright colours of a
Mexican serape twisted on the cantle, the enormous silver buttons
on the embroidered leather jacket, the row of tiny silver buttons
down the seam of the trousers, the snowy linen, a silk sash with
embroidered ends, the silver plates on headstall and saddle,
proclaimed the unapproachable style of the famous Capataz de
Cargadores--a Mediterranean sailor--got up with more finished
splendour than any well-to-do young ranchero of the Campo had
ever displayed on a high holiday.
"It is a great thing for me," murmured old Giorgio, still
thinking of the house, for now he had grown weary of change. "The
signora just said a word to the Englishman."
"The old Englishman who has enough money to pay for a railway? He
is going off in an hour," remarked Nostromo, carelessly. "Buon
viaggio, then. I've guarded his bones all the way from the
Entrada pass down to the plain and into Sulaco, as though he had
been my own father."
Old Giorgio only moved his head sideways absently. Nostromo
pointed after the Goulds' carriage, nearing the grass-grown gate
in the old town wall that was like a wall of matted jungle.
"And I have sat alone at night with my revolver in the Company's
warehouse time and again by the side of that other Englishman's
heap of silver, guarding it as though it had been my own."
Viola seemed lost in thought. "It is a great thing for me," he
repeated again, as if to himself.
"It is," agreed the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, calmly.
"Listen, Vecchio--go in and bring me, out a cigar, but don't look
for it in my room. There's nothing there."
Viola stepped into the cafe and came out directly, still absorbed
in his idea, and tendered him a cigar, mumbling thoughtfully in
his moustache, "Children growing up--and girls, too! Girls!" He
sighed and fell silent.
"What, only one?" remarked Nostromo, looking down with a sort of
comic inquisitiveness at the unconscious old man. "No matter," he
added, with lofty negligence; "one is enough till another is
wanted."
He lit it and let the match drop from his passive fingers.
Giorgio Viola looked up, and said abruptly--
"My son would have been just such a fine young man as you, Gian'
Battista, if he had lived."
"What? Your son? But you are right, padrone. If he had been like
me he would have been a man."
He turned his horse slowly, and paced on between the booths,
checking the mare almost to a standstill now and then for
children, for the groups of people from the distant Campo, who
stared after him with admiration. The Company's lightermen
saluted him from afar; and the greatly envied Capataz de
Cargadores advanced, amongst murmurs of recognition and
obsequious greetings, towards the huge circus-like erection. The
throng thickened; the guitars tinkled louder; other horsemen sat
motionless, smoking calmly above the heads of the crowd; it
eddied and pushed before the doors of the high-roofed building,
whence issued a shuffle and thumping of feet in time to the dance
music vibrating and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung by
the tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo. The
barbarous and imposing noise of the big drum, that can madden a
crowd, and that even Europeans cannot hear without a strange
emotion, seemed to draw Nostromo on to its source, while a man,
wrapped up in a faded, torn poncho, walked by his stirrup, and,
buffeted right and left, begged "his worship" insistently for
employment on the wharf. He whined, offering the Senor Capataz
half his daily pay for the privilege of being admitted to the
swaggering fraternity of Cargadores; the other half would be
enough for him, he protested. But Captain Mitchell's right-hand
man--"invaluable for our work--a perfectly incorruptible
fellow"--after looking down critically at the ragged mozo, shook
his head without a word in the uproar going on around.
The man fell back; and a little further on Nostromo had to pull
up. From the doors of the dance hall men and women emerged
tottering, streaming with sweat, trembling in every limb, to
lean, panting, with staring eyes and parted lips, against the
wall of the structure, where the harps and guitars played on with
mad speed in an incessant roll of thunder. Hundreds of hands
clapped in there; voices shrieked, and then all at once would
sink low, chanting in unison the refrain of a love song, with a
dying fall. A red flower, flung with a good aim from somewhere in
the crowd, struck the resplendent Capataz on the cheek.
He caught it as it fell, neatly, but for some time did not turn
his head. When at last he condescended to look round, the throng
near him had parted to make way for a pretty Morenita, her hair
held up by a small golden comb, who was walking towards him in
the open space.
Her arms and neck emerged plump and bare from a snowy chemisette;
the blue woollen skirt, with all the fullness gathered in front,
scanty on the hips and tight across the back, disclosed the
provoking action of her walk. She came straight on and laid her
hand on the mare's neck with a timid, coquettish look upwards out
of the corner of her eyes.
"Querido," she murmured, caressingly, "why do you pretend not to
see me when I pass?"
"Because I don't love thee any more," said Nostromo,
deliberately, after a moment of reflective silence.
The hand on the mare's neck trembled suddenly. She dropped her
head before all the eyes in the wide circle formed round the
generous, the terrible, the inconstant Capataz de Cargadores, and
his Morenita.
Nostromo, looking down, saw tears beginning to fall down her
face.
"Has it come, then, ever beloved of my heart?" she whispered. "Is
it true?"
"No," said Nostromo, looking away carelessly. "It was a lie. I
love thee as much as ever."
"Is that true?" she cooed, joyously, her cheeks still wet with
tears.
"It is true."
"True on the life?"
"As true as that; but thou must not ask me to swear it on the
Madonna that stands in thy room." And the Capataz laughed a
little in response to the grins of the crowd.
She pouted--very pretty--a little uneasy.
"No, I will not ask for that. I can see love in your eyes." She
laid her hand on his knee. "Why are you trembling like this? From
love?" she continued, while the cavernous thundering of the gombo
went on without a pause. "But if you love her as much as that,
you must give your Paquita a gold-mounted rosary of beads for the
neck of her Madonna."
"No," said Nostromo, looking into her uplifted, begging eyes,
which suddenly turned stony with surprise.
"No? Then what else will your worship give me on the day of the
fiesta?" she asked, angrily; "so as not to shame me before all
these people."
"There is no shame for thee in getting nothing from thy lover for
once."
"True! The shame is your worship's--my poor lover's," she flared
up, sarcastically.
Laughs were heard at her anger, at her retort. What an audacious
spitfire she was! The people aware of this scene were calling out
urgently to others in the crowd. The circle round the silver-grey
mare narrowed slowly.
The girl went off a pace or two, confronting the mocking
curiosity of the eyes, then flung back to the stirrup, tiptoeing,
her enraged face turned up to Nostromo with a pair of blazing
eyes. He bent low to her in the saddle.
"Juan," she hissed, "I could stab thee to the heart!"
The dreaded Capataz de Cargadores, magnificent and carelessly
public in his amours, flung his arm round her neck and kissed her
spluttering lips. A murmur went round.
"A knife!" he demanded at large, holding her firmly by the
shoulder.
Twenty blades flashed out together in the circle. A young man in
holiday attire, bounding in, thrust one in Nostromo's hand and
bounded back into the ranks, very proud of himself. Nostromo had
not even looked at him.
"Stand on my foot," he commanded the girl, who, suddenly subdued,
rose lightly, and when he had her up, encircling her waist, her
face near to his, he pressed the knife into her little hand.
"No, Morenita! You shall not put me to shame," he said. "You
shall have your present; and so that everyone should know who is
your lover to-day, you may cut all the silver buttons off my
coat."
There were shouts of laughter and applause at this witty freak,
while the girl passed the keen blade, and the impassive rider
jingled in his palm the increasing hoard of silver buttons. He
eased her to the ground with both her hands full. After
whispering for a while with a very strenuous face, she walked
away, staring haughtily, and vanished into the crowd.
The circle had broken up, and the lordly Capataz de Cargadores,
the indispensable man, the tried and trusty Nostromo, the
Mediterranean sailor come ashore casually to try his luck in
Costaguana, rode slowly towards the harbour. The Juno was just
then swinging round; and even as Nostromo reined up again to look
on, a flag ran up on the improvised flagstaff erected in an
ancient and dismantled little fort at the harbour entrance. Half
a battery of field guns had been hurried over there from the
Sulaco barracks for the purpose of firing the regulation salutes
for the President-Dictator and the War Minister. As the mail-boat
headed through the pass, the badly timed reports announced the
end of Don Vincente Ribiera's first official visit to Sulaco, and
for Captain Mitchell the end of another "historic occasion." Next
time when the "Hope of honest men" was to come that way, a year
and a half later, it was unofficially, over the mountain tracks,
fleeing after a defeat on a lame mule, to be only just saved by
Nostromo from an ignominious death at the hands of a mob. It was
a very different event, of which Captain Mitchell used to say--
"It was history--history, sir! And that fellow of mine, Nostromo,
you know, was right in it. Absolutely making history, sir."
But this event, creditable to Nostromo, was to lead immediately
to another, which could not be classed either as "history" or as
"a mistake" in Captain Mitchell's phraseology. He had another
word for it.
"Sir" he used to say afterwards, "that was no mistake. It was a
fatality. A misfortune, pure and simple, sir. And that poor
fellow of mine was right in it--right in the middle of it! A
fatality, if ever there was one--and to my mind he has never been
the same man since." _
Read next: PART SECOND - THE ISABELS: CHAPTER I
Read previous: PART FIRST - THE SILVER OF THE MINE: CHAPTER VII
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