Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

to the execration of future years. It appears to be true thathe, too, loved his country. He had given it twelve years ofpeace; and, absolute master of lives and fortunes as he was,he died poor. His worst fault, perhaps, was not his ferocity,but his ignorance;’ the man who could write thus of a cruelpersecutor (the passage occurs in his ‘History of Misrule’)felt at the foreshadowing of success an almost boundless affectionfor his two helpers, for these two young people fromover the sea.Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of practicalnecessity, stronger than any abstract political doctrine,Henry Gould had drawn the sword, so now, the times beingchanged, Charles Gould had flung the silver of the SanTome into the fray. The Inglez of Sulaco, the ‘CostaguanaEnglishman’ of the third generation, was as far from being apolitical intriguer as his uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler.Springing from the instinctive uprightness of theirnatures their action was reasoned. They saw an opportunityand used the weapon to hand.Charles Gould’s position—a commanding position inthe background of that attempt to retrieve the peace andthe credit of the Republic—was very clear. At the beginninghe had had to accommodate himself to existing circumstancesof corruption so naively brazen as to disarm thehate of a man courageous enough not to be afraid of its irresponsiblepotency to ruin everything it touched. It seemedto him too contemptible for hot anger even. He made use ofit with a cold, fearless scorn, manifested rather than concealedby the forms of stony courtesy which did away with