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

constant ‘saving of the country,’ which to his wife seemed apuerile and bloodthirsty game of murder and rapine playedwith terrible earnestness by depraved children. In the earlydays of her Costaguana life, the little lady used to clenchher hands with exasperation at not being able to take thepublic affairs of the country as seriously as the incidentalatrocity of methods deserved. She saw in them a comedyof naive pretences, but hardly anything genuine except herown appalled indignation. Charles, very quiet and twistinghis long moustaches, would decline to discuss them at all.Once, however, he observed to her gently—‘My dear, you seem to forget that I was born here.’ Thesefew words made her pause as if they had been a sudden revelation.Perhaps the mere fact of being born in the countrydid make a difference. She had a great confidence in herhusband; it had always been very great. He had struck herimagination from the first by his unsentimentalism, bythat very quietude of mind which she had erected in herthought for a sign of perfect competency in the businessof living. Don Jose Avellanos, their neighbour across thestreet, a statesman, a poet, a man of culture, who had representedhis country at several European Courts (and hadsuffered untold indignities as a state prisoner in the time ofthe tyrant Guzman Bento), used to declare in Dona Emilia’sdrawing-room that Carlos had all the English qualities ofcharacter with a truly patriotic heart.Mrs. Gould, raising her eyes to her husband’s thin, redand tan face, could not detect the slightest quiver of a featureat what he must have heard said of his patriotism.