Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 11. CHAPTER ELEVEN (continued)

"Conspiring. Yes!" said the doctor. "The last of the Avellanos
and the last of the Corbelans are conspiring with the refugees
from Sta. Marta that flock here after every revolution. The Cafe
Lambroso at the corner of the Plaza is full of them; you can hear
their chatter across the street like the noise of a parrothouse.
They are conspiring for the invasion of Costaguana. And do you
know where they go for strength, for the necessary force? To the
secret societies amongst immigrants and natives, where
Nostromo--I should say Captain Fidanza--is the great man. What
gives him that position? Who can say? Genius? He has genius. He
is greater with the populace than ever he was before. It is as if
he had some secret power; some mysterious means to keep up his
influence. He holds conferences with the Archbishop, as in those
old days which you and I remember. Barrios is useless. But for a
military head they have the pious Hernandez. And they may raise
the country with the new cry of the wealth for the people."

"Will there be never any peace? Will there be no rest?" Mrs.
Gould whispered. "I thought that we----"

"No!" interrupted the doctor. "There is no peace and no rest in
the development of material interests. They have their law, and
their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman;
it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force
that can be found only in a moral principle. Mrs. Gould, the time
approaches when all that the Gould Concession stands for shall
weigh as heavily upon the people as the barbarism, cruelty, and
misrule of a few years back."

"How can you say that, Dr. Monygham?" she cried out, as if hurt
in the most sensitive place of her soul.

"I can say what is true," the doctor insisted, obstinately.
"It'll weigh as heavily, and provoke resentment, bloodshed, and
vengeance, because the men have grown different. Do you think
that now the mine would march upon the town to save their Senor
Administrador? Do you think that?"

She pressed the backs of her entwined hands on her eyes and
murmured hopelessly--

"Is it this we have worked for, then?"