Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

To be told repeatedly that one's future is blighted because of
the possession of a silver mine is not, at the age of fourteen, a
matter of prime importance as to its main statement; but in its
form it is calculated to excite a certain amount of wonder and
attention. In course of time the boy, at first only puzzled by
the angry jeremiads, but rather sorry for his dad, began to turn
the matter over in his mind in such moments as he could spare
from play and study. In about a year he had evolved from the
lecture of the letters a definite conviction that there was a
silver mine in the Sulaco province of the Republic of Costaguana,
where poor Uncle Harry had been shot by soldiers a great many
years before. There was also connected closely with that mine a
thing called the "iniquitous Gould Concession," apparently
written on a paper which his father desired ardently to "tear and
fling into the faces" of presidents, members of judicature, and
ministers of State. And this desire persisted, though the names
of these people, he noticed, seldom remained the same for a whole
year together. This desire (since the thing was iniquitous)
seemed quite natural to the boy, though why the affair was
iniquitous he did not know. Afterwards, with advancing wisdom, he
managed to clear the plain truth of the business from the
fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the Sea, vampires, and
ghouls, which had lent to his father's correspondence the flavour
of a gruesome Arabian Nights tale. In the end, the growing youth
attained to as close an intimacy with the San Tome mine as the
old man who wrote these plaintive and enraged letters on the
other side of the sea. He had been made several times already to
pay heavy fines for neglecting to work the mine, he reported,
besides other sums extracted from him on account of future
royalties, on the ground that a man with such a valuable
concession in his pocket could not refuse his financial
assistance to the Government of the Republic. The last of his
fortune was passing away from him against worthless receipts, he
wrote, in a rage, whilst he was being pointed out as an
individual who had known how to secure enormous advantages from
the necessities of his country. And the young man in Europe grew
more and more interested in that thing which could provoke such a
tumult of words and passion.