Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr. Monygham go
forth to take possession of his liberty. And these conditions
seemed to bind him indissolubly to the land of Costaguana like an
awful procedure of naturalization, involving him deep in the
national life, far deeper than any amount of success and honour
could have done. They did away with his Europeanism; for Dr.
Monygham had made himself an ideal conception of his disgrace. It
was a conception eminently fit and proper for an officer and a
gentleman. Dr. Monygham, before he went out to Costaguana, had
been surgeon in one of Her Majesty's regiments of foot. It was a
conception which took no account of physiological facts or
reasonable arguments; but it was not stupid for all that. It was
simple. A rule of conduct resting mainly on severe rejections is
necessarily simple. Dr. Monygham's view of what it behoved him
to do was severe; it was an ideal view, in so much that it was
the imaginative exaggeration of a correct feeling. It was also,
in its force, influence, and persistency, the view of an
eminently loyal nature.

There was a great fund of loyalty in Dr. Monygham's nature. He
had settled it all on Mrs. Gould's head. He believed her worthy
of every devotion. At the bottom of his heart he felt an angry
uneasiness before the prosperity of the San Tome mine, because
its growth was robbing her of all peace of mind. Costaguana was
no place for a woman of that kind. What could Charles Gould have
been thinking of when he brought her out there! It was
outrageous! And the doctor had watched the course of events with
a grim and distant reserve which, he imagined, his lamentable
history imposed upon him.

Loyalty to Mrs. Gould could not, however, leave out of account
the safety of her husband. The doctor had contrived to be in town
at the critical time because he mistrusted Charles Gould. He
considered him hopelessly infected with the madness of
revolutions. That is why he hobbled in distress in the
drawing-room of the Casa Gould on that morning, exclaiming,
"Decoud, Decoud!" in a tone of mournful irritation.