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

sion, was overtopped by the big face of Don Juste Lopez, softand white, with prominent eyelids and wreathed in impenetrablesolemnity as if in a dense cloud. The President of theProvincial Assembly, coming bravely to save the last shredof parliamentary institutions (on the English model), avertedhis eyes from the Administrador of the San Tome mineas a dignified rebuke of his little faith in that only savingprinciple.The mournful severity of that reproof did not affectCharles Gould, but he was sensible to the glances of the othersdirected upon him without reproach, as if only to readtheir own fate upon his face. All of them had talked, shouted,and declaimed in the great sala of the Casa Gould. Thefeeling of compassion for those men, struck with a strangeimpotence in the toils of moral degradation, did not inducehim to make a sign. He suffered from his fellowship in evilwith them too much. He crossed the Plaza unmolested. TheAmarilla Club was full of festive ragamuffins. Their frowsyheads protruded from every window, and from withincame drunken shouts, the thumping of feet, and the twangingof harps. Broken bottles strewed the pavement below.Charles Gould found the doctor still in his house.Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the shutterthrough which he had been watching the street.‘Ah! You are back at last!’ he said in a tone of relief. ‘I havebeen telling Mrs. Gould that you were perfectly safe, but Iwas not by any means certain that the fellow would havelet you go.’‘Neither was I,’ confessed Charles Gould, laying his hat