Section 39

The priest’s inquisitorial instincts suffered but little from the want of classical apparatus of the Inguisition.
_ THE LIGHTHOUSE 873
At no time of the world’s history have men been at a loss how to inflict mental and bodily anguish upon their fellow-creatures. This aptitude came to them in the growing complexity of their passions and the early refinement 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 combination with a length of hide rope; or even a simple mallet of heavy, hard wood applied with a swing to human fingers or to the joints of a human body is enough for the infliction of the most exquisite torture. The doctor had been a very stubborn prisoner, and, as a natural consequence of that “bad disposition” (so Father Beron called it), his subjugation 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 con- fessions, when they came at last, were very complete, too. Sometimes on the nights when he walked the floor, he wondered, grinding his teeth with shame and rage, at the fertility of his imagination when stimulated by a sort of pain which makes truth, honour, self- respect, and life itself matters of little moment.
And he could not forget Father Beron with his mo- notonous phrase, “‘ Will you confess now?” reaching him in an awful iteration 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 Beron 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. Father
374 ‘“NOSTROMO
Beron 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 knowl- edge of Father Beron home to Europe. When making his extorted confessions to the Military Board, Dr.
Monygham was not seeking to avoid death. Helonged © 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 refinement of cruelty, Dr. Monygham
was left for months to decay slowly in the darkness of his
grave-like prison. It was no doubt hoped that it would finish him off without the trouble of an execution; but Dr. Monygham had an iron 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 officers’ quarters round the court- yard; but the twilight sky dazed him by its enormous and overwhelming 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’
THE LIGHTHOUSE 375
growth of hair fell in dirty grey locks on each side cf 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 moved at 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 flat rim rested on his shoulders.
In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr. Monygham go forth to take possession 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 conception of his disgrace. It was a conception eminently fit and proper for an officer and a gentleman. Dr. Monygham, before he went out to Costaguana, had been surgeon in one of Her Majesty’s regiments of foot. It was a con- ception which took no account of physiological facts or reasonable arguments; but it was not stupid for all that. It was simple. A rule of conduct resting mainly on severe rejections is necessarily simple. Dr. Monyg- ham’s view of what it behoved him to do was severe; it was an ideal view, in so much that it was the imagina- tive exaggeration of a correct feeling. It was also, in its
376 NOSTROMO > force, influence, and persistency, the view of an -emix | nently 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 pros- perity of the San Tomé mine, because its growth was robbing her of all peace of mind. Costaguana was ne
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 im- posed upon him. ; Loyalty to Mrs. Gould could not, however, leave out |
of account the safety of her husband. The doctor had ~
contrived to be in town at the critical time because he mistrusted Charles Gould. He considered him hope- lessly 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 glisten- ing eyes, looked straight before her at the sudden enormity of that disaster. ‘The finger-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 upon Sulaco, issuing in all the fulness of its power high up on the sky from behind the dazzling snow-edge of Higuerota, had precipitated 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 jys+ acxoss the street the front of the
THE LIGHTHOUSE 377
Avellanos’s house appeared very sombre in its own shadow seen through the flood of light.
A voice said at 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 full at the doctor.
. “You have brought some news, doctor?”
Dr. Monygham blurted it all out at once, in the rough. For some time after he had done, the Administrador of the San Tomé mine remained looking at 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 first. 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 tears at the thought of the poor girl. When she rejoined the two men in the dining- room 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.
“No, I don’t see myself how we could question that wretched Hirsch’s tale. It’s only too true, I fear.”’
- She sat down desolately at the head of the table and looked from one to the other. The two men, without absolutely turning their heads away, tried to avoid her glance. The doctor even made a show of being hungry; he seized his knife and fork, and began to eat with emphasis, as if on the stage. Charles Gould made no pretence of the sort; with his elbows raised squarely, he twisted both ends of his flaming moustaches—they were so long that his hands were quite away from his face,
378 NOSTROMO
“I am not surprised,” he muttered, abandoning his moustaches and throwing one arm over the back of his chair. His face was calm with that immobility of expression which betrays the intensity of a mental struggle. He felt that this accident had brought to a point all the consequences involved in his line of con- duct, with its conscious and subconscious intentions.
There must be an end now of this silent reserve, of that — air of impenetrability behind which he had been safe-.
guarding his dignity. It was the least ignoble form of dissembling forced upon him by that parody of civilized institutions which offended his intelligence, his up- rightness, and his sense of right. He was like his father. He had no ironic eye. He was not amused at the absurdities that prevail in this world. ‘They hurt him inhis innate gravity. He felt that the miserable death of _that poor Decoud took from him his inaccessible position of a force in the background. It committed him openly unless he wished to throw up the game—and that was impossible. The material interests required from him the sacrifice of his aloofness—perhaps his own safety too. And he reflected that Decoud’s separationist plan had not gone to the bottom with the lost silver. The only thing that was not changed was his position towards Mr. Holroyd. The head of silver and steel
interests had entered into Costaguana affairs with a sort:
of passion. Costaguana had become necessary to his existence; in the San Tomé mine he had found the
imaginative satisfaction which other minds would get
from drama, from art, or from a risky and fascinating
sport. It was a special form of the great man’s ex-.
travagance, sanctioned by a moral intention, big enough to flatter his vanity. Even in this aberration of his genius he served the progress of the world. Charles Gould felt sure of being understood with precision and
4 bs
THE LIGHTHOUSE 379
judged with the indulgence of their common passion.
Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. And Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to San Francisco in some such words: “. . . . The men at the head of the movement are dead or have fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end for the present; the Blanco party in Sulaco has col- - lapsed inexcusably, but in the characteristic manner of this country. But Barrios, untouched in Cayta, remains still available. I am forced to take up openly the plan of a provincial revolution as the only way of placing the enormous material interests involved in the prosperity and peace of Sulaco in a position of perma- nent safety. .? That was clear. He saw these words as if written in letters of fire upon the wall at which he was gazing abstractedly. |
Mrs Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It! was a domestic and frightful phenomenon that dark-, ened and chilled the house for her like a thunder- cloud passing over the sun. Charles Gould’s fits of abstraction depicted the energetic concentration of a will haunted by a fixed idea. A man haunted by a fixed idea is insane. He is dangerous even if that idea is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the heaven down pitilessly upon a loved head? ‘The eyes of Mrs. Gould, watching her husband’s profile, filled with tears again. And again she seemed to see the despair of the unfortunate Antonia.
“What would I have done if Charley had been drowned while we were engaged?” she exclaimed, men- tally, with horror. Her heart turned to ice, while her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of a funeral pyre consuming all her earthly affections. The tears burst out of her eyes. |
“Antonia will kill herself!” she cried out,
380 -~ NOSTROMO
This cry fell into the silence of the room with : strangely little effect. Only the doctor, crumbling ‘up a piece of bread, with his head inclined on one side, q
raised his face, and the few long hairs sticking out of his shaggy eyebrows stirred in a slight frown. Dr. Monygham thought quite sincerely that Decoud was a singularly unworthy object for any woman’s affection. Then he lowered his head again, with a curl of his lip, and his heart full of tender admiration for Mrs. Gould.
“She thinks of that girl,” he said to himself; ‘“‘she |
thinks of the Viola children; she thinks of me; of the wounded; of the miners; she always thinks of everybody who is poor and miserable! But what will she do if Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal scrimmage
those confounded Avellanos have drawn him into? Ne .
one seems to be thinking of her.”
Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his re- flections subtly.
“T shall write to Holroyd that the San Tomé mine is big enough to take in hand the making of a new State. It'll please him. It'll reconcile him to the risk.”
But was Barrios really available? Perhaps. But he was inaccessible. To send off a boat to Cayta was no longer possible, since Sotillo was master of the harbour, and had a steamer at his disposal. And now, with all the democrats in the province up, and every Campo township in a state of disturbance, where could he find a man who would make his way successfully overland to Cayta with a message, a ten days’ ride at least; a man of courage and resolution, who would avoid arrest or murder, and if arrested would faithfully eat the paper? The Capataz de Cargadores would have been just such aman. But the Capataz of the Cargadores was no more.
And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the
} THE LIGHTHOUSE 381
wall, said gently, “That Hirsch! What an extraor- dinary thing! Saved himself by clinging to the an-. chor, did he? I had no idea that he was still in Sulaco. I thought he had gone back overland to Esmeralda more than a week ago. He came here once to talk to me about his hide business and some other things. I made it clear to him that nothing could be done.” ©
‘He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez being about,” remarked the doctor.
“ And but for him we might not have known anything of what has happened,” marvelled Charles Gould.
Mrs. Gould cried out— .
“Antonia must not know! She must not be told. Not now.”
“Nobody’s likely to carry the news,” remarked the doctor. “It’s no one’s interest. Moreover, the people here are afraid of Hernandez as if he were the devil.” He turned to Charles Gould. “It’s even awkward, because if you wanted to communicate with the ref- ugees you could find no messenger. When Hernandez was ranging hundreds of miles away from here the Sulaco populace used to shudder at the tales of him roasting his prisoners alive.” .
“Yes,” murmured Charles Gould; ‘Captain Mit- chell’s Capataz was the only man in the town who had seen Hernandez eye to eye. Father Corbelan em- ployed him. He opened the communications first. It is a pity tha es
His voice was covered by the booming of the great bell of the cathedral. Three single strokes, one after another, burst out explosively, dying away in deep and mellow vibrations. And then ali the bells in the tower of every church, convent, or chapel in town, even those that had remained shut up for years, pealed out to- gether with a crash. In this furious flood of metallic
382 _ NOSTROMO
uproar there was a power of suggesting images of strife and violence which blanched Mrs. Gould’s cheek. Basilio, who had been waiting at table, shrinking within himself, clung to the sideboard with chattering teeth. It was impossible to hear yourself speak.