Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 6. CHAPTER SIX (continued)

And Mrs. Gould had hastened to drop the subject. There were
strange rumours of the English doctor. Years ago, in the time of
Guzman Bento, he had been mixed up, it was whispered, in a
conspiracy which was betrayed and, as people expressed it,
drowned in blood. His hair had turned grey, his hairless, seamed
face was of a brick-dust colour; the large check pattern of his
flannel shirt and his old stained Panama hat were an established
defiance to the conventionalities of Sulaco. Had it not been for
the immaculate cleanliness of his apparel he might have been
taken for one of those shiftless Europeans that are a moral
eyesore to the respectability of a foreign colony in almost every
exotic part of the world. The young ladies of Sulaco, adorning
with clusters of pretty faces the balconies along the Street of
the Constitution, when they saw him pass, with his limping gait
and bowed head, a short linen jacket drawn on carelessly over the
flannel check shirt, would remark to each other, "Here is the
Senor doctor going to call on Dona Emilia. He has got his little
coat on." The inference was true. Its deeper meaning was hidden
from their simple intelligence. Moreover, they expended no store
of thought on the doctor. He was old, ugly, learned--and a little
"loco"--mad, if not a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people
suspected him of being. The little white jacket was in reality a
concession to Mrs. Gould's humanizing influence. The doctor, with
his habit of sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of
showing his profound respect for the character of the woman who
was known in the country as the English Senora. He presented this
tribute very seriously indeed; it was no trifle for a man of his
habits. Mrs. Gould felt that, too, perfectly. She would never
have thought of imposing upon him this marked show of deference.