Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN (continued)

"Me?" whispered Mrs. Gould, shrinking a little.

"Yes, you!" the doctor burst out. "He begged me--his enemy, as
he thinks--to bring you to him at once. It seems he has
something to say to you alone."

"Impossible!" murmured Mrs. Gould.

"He said to me, 'Remind her that I have done something to keep a
roof over her head.' . . . Mrs. Gould," the doctor pursued, in
the greatest excitement. "Do you remember the silver? The silver
in the lighter--that was lost?"

Mrs. Gould remembered. But she did not say she hated the mere
mention of that silver. Frankness personified, she remembered
with an exaggerated horror that for the first and last time of
her life she had concealed the truth from her husband about that
very silver. She had been corrupted by her fears at that time,
and she had never forgiven herself. Moreover, that silver, which
would never have come down if her husband had been made
acquainted with the news brought by Decoud, had been in a
roundabout way nearly the cause of Dr. Monygham's death. And
these things appeared to her very dreadful.

"Was it lost, though?" the doctor exclaimed. "I've always felt
that there was a mystery about our Nostromo ever since. I do
believe he wants now, at the point of death----"

"The point of death?" repeated Mrs. Gould.

"Yes. Yes. . . . He wants perhaps to tell you something
concerning that silver which----"

"Oh, no! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Gould, in a low voice. "Isn't it
lost and done with? Isn't there enough treasure without it to
make everybody in the world miserable?"

The doctor remained still, in a submissive, disappointed silence.
At last he ventured, very low--

"And there is that Viola girl, Giselle. What are we to do? It
looks as though father and sister had----"

Mrs. Gould admitted that she felt in duty bound to do her best
for these girls.