Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 7. CHAPTER SEVEN (continued)

"She freed her wrists from my clutch and began to cry in her
handkerchief. I disregarded her sorrow; I would rather see her
miserable than not see her at all, never any more; for whether I
escaped or stayed to die, there was for us no coming together, no
future. And that being so, I had no pity to waste upon the
passing moments of her sorrow. I sent her off in tears to fetch
Dona Emilia and Don Carlos, too. Their sentiment was necessary to
the very life of my plan; the sentimentalism of the people that
will never do anything for the sake of their passionate desire,
unless it comes to them clothed in the fair robes of an idea.

"Late at night we formed a small junta of four--the two women,
Don Carlos, and myself--in Mrs. Gould's blue-and-white boudoir.

"El Rey de Sulaco thinks himself, no doubt, a very honest man.
And so he is, if one could look behind his taciturnity. Perhaps
he thinks that this alone makes his honesty unstained. Those
Englishmen live on illusions which somehow or other help them to
get a firm hold of the substance. When he speaks it is by a rare
'yes' or 'no' that seems as impersonal as the words of an oracle.
But he could not impose on me by his dumb reserve. I knew what he
had in his head; he has his mine in his head; and his wife had
nothing in her head but his precious person, which he has bound
up with the Gould Concession and tied up to that little woman's
neck. No matter. The thing was to make him present the affair to
Holroyd (the Steel and Silver King) in such a manner as to secure
his financial support. At that time last night, just twenty-four
hours ago, we thought the silver of the mine safe in the Custom
House vaults till the north-bound steamer came to take it away.
And as long as the treasure flowed north, without a break, that
utter sentimentalist, Holroyd, would not drop his idea of
introducing, not only justice, industry, peace, to the benighted
continents, but also that pet dream of his of a purer form of
Christianity. Later on, the principal European really in Sulaco,
the engineer-in-chief of the railway, came riding up the Calle,
from the harbour, and was admitted to our conclave. Meantime, the
Junta of the Notables in the great sala was still deliberating;
only, one of them had run out in the corredor to ask the servant
whether something to eat couldn't be sent in. The first words the
engineer-in-chief said as he came into the boudoir were, 'What is
your house, dear Mrs. Gould? A war hospital below, and apparently
a restaurant above. I saw them carrying trays full of good
things into the sala.'