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NOSTROMO
port of the most stable, the most effective force they had ever
known to exist in their province.
The doctor, arriving with his sharp, jerky walk, found that
the master had retired into his own room with orders not to
be disturbed on any account. But Dr. Monygham was not anxious to see Charles Gouldat once. He spent some time in a rapid examinati on of his wounded. He gazed down up on each
in turn, rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefi nger;
his steady stare met without expressi on their silently inquisitive look. All these cases were doing well; but when he came to
the dead Cargador he stopped a little longer, surveying not
the man who had ceased to suffer, but the woman kneeling in
silent contemplati on of the rigid face, with its pinched nostrils
and a white gleam in the imperfectly closed eyes. She lifted her
head slowly, and said in a dull voice –
«It is not long since he had become a Cargador – only
a few weeks. His worship the Capataz had accepted him after
many entreaties».
«I am not responsible for the great Capataz», muttered
the doctor, moving off.
Directing his course upstairs towards the door of Charles
Gould’s room, the doctorat the last moment hesitated; then,
turning away from the handle with a shrug of his uneven
shoulders, slunk off hastily along the corredor in search of
Mrs. Gould’s camerista.
Leonardo told him that the senora had not risen yet.
The senora had given into her charge the girls belonging to
that Italian posadero. She, Leonarda, had put them to bed
in her own room. The fair girl had cried herself to sleep, but
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JOSEPH CONRAD
the dark one – the bigger – had not closed her eyes yet. She
sat up in bed clutching the sheets right up under her chin
and staring before her like a little witch. Leonarda did not approve of the Viola children being admitted to the house. She
made this feeling clear by the indifferent tone in which she
inquired whether their mother was dead yet. As to the senora,
she must be asleep. Ever since she had gone into her room after seeing the departure of Dona Antonia with her dying father, there had been no sound behind her door.
The doctor, rousing himself out of profound refl ection,
told her abruptly to call her mistressat once. He hobbled off to
wait for Mrs. Gould in the sala. He was very tired, but too excited to sit down. In this great drawing-room, now empty, in
which his withered soul had been refreshed after many arid
years and his outcast spirit had accepted silently the tolerati on of many side-glances, he wandered haphazard amongst
the chairs and tables till Mrs. Gould, enveloped in a morning
wrapper, came in rapidly.
«You know that I never approved of the silver being sent
away», the doctor began at once, as a preliminary to the narrative of his night’s adventures in associati on with Captain
Mitchell, the engineer-in-chief, and old Viola,at Sotillo’s headquarters. To the doctor, with his special concepti on of this political crisis, the removal of the silver had seemed an irrational
and ill-omened measure. It was as if a general were sending
the best part of his troops away on the eve of battle up on some
recondite pretext. The whole lot of ingots might have been
concealed somewhere where they could have been gotat for
the purpose of staving off the dangers which were menacing
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the security of the Gould Concession. The Administrador had
acted as if the immense and powerful prosperity of the mine
had been founded on methods of probity, on the sense of usefulness. And it was nothing of the kind. The method followed
had been the only one possible. The Gould Concessi on had
ransomed its way through all those years. It was a nauseous
process. He quite understood that Charles Gould had got
sick of it and had left the old path to back up that hopeless
attemptat reform. The doctor did not believe in the reform of
Costaguana. And now the mine was back again in its old path,
with the disadvantage that henceforth it had to deal not only
with the greed provoked by its wealth, but with the resentment awakened by the attempt to free itself from its bondage to moral corruption. That was the penalty of failure. What
made him uneasy was that Charles Gould seemed to him to
have weakenedat the decisive moment when a frank return to
the old methods was the only chance. Listening to Decoud’s
wild scheme had been a weakness.
The doctor fl ung up his arms, exclaiming, «Decoud! Decoud!» He hobbled about the room with slight, angry laughs.
Many years ago both his ankles had been seriously damaged
in the course of a certain investigati on conducted in the castle of Sta. Marta by a commissi on composed of military men.
Their nominati on had been signifi ed to them unexpectedlyat the dead of night, with scowling brow, fl ashing eyes, and
in a tempestuous voice, by Guzman Bento. The old tyrant,
maddened by one of his sudden accesses of suspicion, mingled
spluttering appeals to their fi delity with imprecations and horrible menaces. The cells and casements of the castle on the hill
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JOSEPH CONRAD
had been already fi lled with prisoners. The commissi on was
charged now with the task of discovering the iniquitous conspiracy against the Citizen-Saviour of his country.
Their dread of the raving tyrant translated itself into
a hasty ferocity of procedure. The Citizen-Saviour was not accustomed to wait. A conspiracy had to be discovered. The courtyards of the castle resounded with the clanking of leg-irons,
sounds of blows, yells of pain; and the commissi on of high
offi cers laboured feverishly, concealing their distress and apprehensions from each other, and especially from their secretary, Father Beron, an army chaplain,at that time very much
in the confi dence of the Citizen-Saviour. That priest was a big
round-shouldered man, with an unclean-looking, overgrown
tonsure on the top of his fl at head, of a dingy, yellow complexion, softly fat, with greasy stains all down the front of his
lieutenant’s uniform, and a small cross embroidered in white
cott on on his left breast. He had a heavy nose and a pendant
lip. Dr. Monygham remembered him still. He remembered
him against all the force of his will striving its utmost to forget.
Father Ber on had been adjoined to the commissi on by Guzman Bento expressly for the purpose that his enlightened zeal
should assist them in their labours. Dr. Monygham could by no
manner of means forget the zeal of Father Beron, or his face,
or the pitiless, monotonous voice in which he pronounced
the words, «Will you confess now?»
This memory did not make him shudder, but it had made of
him what he was in the eyes of respectable people, a man careless of comm on decencies, something between a clever vagabond and a disreputable doctor. But not all respectable people
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would have had the necessary delicacy of sentiment to understand with what trouble of mind and accuracy of visi on
Dr. Monygham, medical offi cer of the San Tome mine, remembered Father Beron, army chaplain, and once a secretary of
a military commission. After all these years Dr. Monygham, in
his roomsat the end of the hospital building in the San Tome
gorge, remembered Father Ber on as distinctly as ever. He remembered that priestat night, sometimes, in his sleep. On such
nights the doctor waited for daylight with a candle lighted,
and walking the whole length of his rooms to and fro, staring downat his bare feet, his arms hugging his sides tightly.
He would dream of Father Ber on sittingat the end of a long
black table, behind which, in a row, appeared the heads,
shoulders, and epaulettes of the military members, nibbling
the feather of a quill pen, and listening with weary and impatient scorn to the protestations of some prisoner calling
heaven to witness of his innocence, till he burst out, «What’s
the use of wasting time over that miserable nonsense! Let me
take him outside for a while». And Father Ber on would go
outside after the clanking prisoner, led away between two soldiers. Such interludes happened on many days, many times,
with many prisoners. When the prisoner returned he was
ready to make a full confession, Father Ber on would declare,
leaning forward with that dull, surfeited look which can be
seen in the eyes of gluttonous persons after a heavy meal.
The priest’s inquisitorial instincts suffered but little from
the want of classical apparatus of the Inquisiti onAt no time of
the world’s history have men beenat a loss how to infl ict
mental and bodily anguish up on their fellow-creatures. This
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JOSEPH CONRAD
aptitude came to them in the growing complexity of their
passions and the early refi nement of their ingenuity. But it
may safely be said that primeval man did not go to the trouble of inventing tortures. He was indolent and pure of heart.
He brained his neighbour ferociously with a stone axe from
necessity and without malice. The stupidest mind may invent
a rankling phrase or brand the innocent with a cruel aspersion. A piece of string and a ramrod; a few muskets in combinati on with a length of hide rope; or even a simple mallet of heavy, hard wood applied with a swing to human fi ngers
or to the joints of a human body is enough for the infl icti on of
the most exquisite torture. The doctor had been a very stubborn prisoner, and, as a natural consequence of that «bad
disposition» (so Father Ber on called it), his subjugati on had
been very crushing and very complete. That is why the limp
in his walk, the twist of his shoulders, the scars on his cheeks
were so pronounced. His confessions, when they cameat last,
were very complete, too. Sometimes on the nights when he
walked the fl oor, he wondered, grinding his teeth with shame
and rage,at the fertility of his imaginati on when stimulated by
a sort of pain which makes truth, honour, selfrespect, and life
itself matters of little moment.
And he could not forget Father Ber on with his monotonous phrase, «Will you confess now?» reaching him in an awful iterati on and lucidity of meaning through the delirious
incoherence of unbearable pain. He could not forget. But that
was not the worst. Had he met Father Ber on in the street after
all these years Dr. Monygham was sure he would have quailed
before him. This contingency was not to be feared now. Fa-
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ther Ber on was dead; but the sickening certitude prevented
Dr. Monygham from looking anybody in the face.
Dr. Monygham had become, in a manner, the slave of
a ghost. It was obviously impossible to take his knowledge of
Father Ber on home to Europe. When making his extorted
confessions to the Military Board, Dr. Monygham was not
seeking to avoid death. He longed for it. Sitting half-naked for
hours on the wet earth of his prison, and so motionless that
the spiders, his companions, attached their webs to his matted hair, he consoled the misery of his soul with acute reasonings that he had confessed to crimes enough for a sentence of
death – that they had gone too far with him to let him live to
tell the tale.
But, as if by a refi nement of cruelty, Dr. Monygham was
left for months to decay slowly in the darkness of his gravelike prison. It was no doubt hoped that it would fi nish him
off without the trouble of an execution; but Dr. Monygham
had an ir on constitution. It was Guzman Bento who died,
not by the knife thrust of a conspirator, but from a stroke of
apoplexy, and Dr. Monygham was liberated hastily. His fetters
were struck off by the light of a candle, which, after months of
gloom, hurt his eyes so much that he had to cover his face with
his hands. He was raised up. His heart was beating violently
with the fear of this liberty. When he tried to walk the extraordinary lightness of his feet made him giddy, and he fell down.
Two sticks were thrust into his hands, and he was pushed
out of the passage. It was dusk; candles glimmered already in
the windows of the offi cers’ quarters round the courtyard; but
the twilight sky dazed him by its enormous and overwhelming
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brilliance. A thin poncho hung over his naked, bony shoulders; the rags of his trousers came down no lower than his
knees; an eighteen months’ growth of hair fell in dirty grey
locks on each side of his sharp cheek-bones. As he dragged
himself past the guard-room door, one of the soldiers, lolling
outside, moved by some obscure impulse, leaped forward with
a strange laugh and rammed a broken old straw hat on his
head. And Dr. Monygham, after having tottered, continued on
his way. He advanced one stick, then one maimed foot, then
the other stick; the other foot followed only a very short distance along the ground, toilfully, as though it were almost too
heavy to be movedat all; and yet his legs under the hanging
angles of the poncho appeared no thicker than the two sticks
in his hands. A ceaseless trembling agitated his bent body, all
his wasted limbs, his bony head, the conical, ragged crown of
the sombrero, whose ample fl at rim rested on his shoulders.
In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr. Monygham
go forth to take possessi on of his liberty. And these conditions seemed to bind him indissolubly to the land of Costaguana like an awful procedure of naturalization, involving him
deep in the national life, far deeper than any amount of success and honour could have done. They did away with his Europeanism; for Dr. Monygham had made himself an ideal concepti on of his disgrace. It was a concepti on eminently fi t and
proper for an offi cer and a gentleman. Dr. Monygham, before
he went out to Costaguana, had been surge on in one of Her
Majesty’s regiments of foot. It was a concepti on which took
no account of physiological facts or reasonable arguments;
but it was not stupid for all that. It was simple. A rule of con-
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duct resting mainly on severe rejections is necessarily simple.
Dr. Monygham’s view of what it behoved him to do was severe;
it was an ideal view, in so much that it was the imaginative
exaggerati on of a correct feeling. It was also, in its force, infl uence, and persistency, the view of an eminently loyal nature.
There was a great fund of loyalty in Dr. Monygham’s nature. He had settled it all on Mrs. Gould’s head. He believed
her worthy of every devotion.At the bottom of his heart he
felt an angry uneasiness before the prosperity of the San Tome
mine, because its growth was robbing her of all peace of mind.
Costaguana was no place for a woman of that kind. What
could Charles Gould have been thinking of when he brought
her out there! It was outrageous! And the doctor had watched
the course of events with a grim and distant reserve which, he
imagined, his lamentable history imposed up on him.
Loyalty to Mrs. Gould could not, however, leave out of account the safety of her husband. The doctor had contrived to
be in townat the critical time because he mistrusted Charles
Gould. He considered him hopelessly infected with the madness of revolutions. That is why he hobbled in distress in
the drawing-room of the Casa Gould on that morning, exclaiming, «Decoud, Decoud!» in a tone of mournful irritation.
Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glistening
eyes, looked straight before herat the sudden enormity of
that disaster. The fi nger-tips on one hand rested lightly on
a low little table by her side, and the arm trembled right up to
the shoulder. The sun, which looks late up on Sulaco, issuing in all the fulness of its power high up on the sky from
behind the dazzling snow-edge of Higuerota, had precipi-
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JOSEPH CONRAD
tated the delicate, smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which
the town lies steeped during the early hours, into sharp-cut
masses of black shade and spaces of hot, blinding glare. Three
long rectangles of sunshine fell through the windows of
the sala; while just across the street the front of the Avellanos’s
house appeared very sombre in its own shadow seen through
the fl ood of light.
A voice saidat the door, «What of Decoud?»
It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him coming
along the corredor. His glance just glided over his wife and
struck fullat the doctor.
«You have brought some news, doctor?»
Dr. Monygham blurted it all outat once, in the rough.
For some time after he had done, the Administrador of
the San Tome mine remained lookingat him without a word.
Mrs. Gould sank into a low chair with her hands lying on her
lap. A silence reigned between those three motionless persons.
Then Charles Gould spoke –
«You must want some breakfast».
He stood aside to let his wife pass fi rst. She caught up
her husband’s hand and pressed it as she went out, raising
her handkerchief to her eyes. The sight of her husband had
brought Antonia’s position to her mind, and she could not
contain her tearsat the thought of the poor girl. When she rejoined the two men in the diningroom after having bathed her
face, Charles Gould was saying to the doctor across the table –
«No, there does not seem any room for doubt».
And the doctor assented.
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