Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

"No, I don't see myself how we could question that wretched
Hirsch's tale. It's only too true, I fear."

She sat down desolately at the head of the table and looked from
one to the other. The two men, without absolutely turning their
heads away, tried to avoid her glance. The doctor even made a
show of being hungry; he seized his knife and fork, and began to
eat with emphasis, as if on the stage. Charles Gould made no
pretence of the sort; with his elbows raised squarely, he twisted
both ends of his flaming moustaches--they were so long that his
hands were quite away from his face.

"I am not surprised," he muttered, abandoning his moustaches and
throwing one arm over the back of his chair. His face was calm
with that immobility of expression which betrays the intensity of
a mental struggle. He felt that this accident had brought to a
point all the consequences involved in his line of conduct, with
its conscious and subconscious intentions. There must be an end
now of this silent reserve, of that air of impenetrability behind
which he had been safeguarding his dignity. It was the least
ignoble form of dissembling forced upon him by that parody of
civilized institutions which offended his intelligence, his
uprightness, and his sense of right. He was like his father. He
had no ironic eye. He was not amused at the absurdities that
prevail in this world. They hurt him in his innate gravity. He
felt that the miserable death of that poor Decoud took from him
his inaccessible position of a force in the background. It
committed him openly unless he wished to throw up the game--and
that was impossible. The material interests required from him the
sacrifice of his aloofness--perhaps his own safety too. And he
reflected that Decoud's separationist plan had not gone to the
bottom with the lost silver.