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

where he would be of the greatest use in the work of savingthe San Tome mine. The doctor was loyal to the mine.It presented itself to his fifty-years’ old eyes in the shape ofa little woman in a soft dress with a long train, with a headattractively overweighted by a great mass of fair hair andthe delicate preciousness of her inner worth, partaking ofa gem and a flower, revealed in every attitude of her person.As the dangers thickened round the San Tome minethis illusion acquired force, permanency, and authority. Itclaimed him at last! This claim, exalted by a spiritual detachmentfrom the usual sanctions of hope and reward,made Dr. Monygham’s thinking, acting, individuality extremelydangerous to himself and to others, all his scruplesvanishing in the proud feeling that his devotion was theonly thing that stood between an admirable woman and afrightful disaster.It was a sort of intoxication which made him utterly indifferentto Decoud’s fate, but left his wits perfectly clear forthe appreciation of Decoud’s political idea. It was a goodidea—and Barrios was the only instrument of its realization.The doctor’s soul, withered and shrunk by the shameof a moral disgrace, became implacable in the expansionof its tenderness. Nostromo’s return was providential. Hedid not think of him humanely, as of a fellow-creature justescaped from the jaws of death. The Capataz for him wasthe only possible messenger to Cayta. The very man. Thedoctor’s misanthropic mistrust of mankind (the bitterer becausebased on personal failure) did not lift him sufficientlyabove common weaknesses. He was under the spell of an