Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

Don Jose Avellanos would mutter "Imperium in imperio, Emilia, my
soul," with an air of profound self-satisfaction which, somehow,
in a curious way, seemed to contain a queer admixture of bodily
discomfort. But that, perhaps, could only be visible to the
initiated. And for the initiated it was a wonderful place, this
drawing-room of the Casa Gould, with its momentary glimpses of
the master--El Senor Administrador--older, harder, mysteriously
silent, with the lines deepened on his English, ruddy,
out-of-doors complexion; flitting on his thin cavalryman's legs
across the doorways, either just "back from the mountain" or with
jingling spurs and riding-whip under his arm, on the point of
starting "for the mountain." Then Don Pepe, modestly martial in
his chair, the llanero who seemed somehow to have found his
martial jocularity, his knowledge of the world, and his manner
perfect for his station, in the midst of savage armed contests
with his kind; Avellanos, polished and familiar, the diplomatist
with his loquacity covering much caution and wisdom in delicate
advice, with his manuscript of a historical work on Costaguana,
entitled "Fifty Years of Misrule," which, at present, he thought
it was not prudent (even if it were possible) "to give to the
world"; these three, and also Dona Emilia amongst them, gracious,
small, and fairy-like, before the glittering tea-set, with one
common master-thought in their heads, with one common feeling of
a tense situation, with one ever-present aim to preserve the
inviolable character of the mine at every cost. And there was
also to be seen Captain Mitchell, a little apart, near one of the
long windows, with an air of old-fashioned neat old bachelorhood
about him, slightly pompous, in a white waistcoat, a little
disregarded and unconscious of it; utterly in the dark, and
imagining himself to be in the thick of things. The good man,
having spent a clear thirty years of his life on the high seas
before getting what he called a "shore billet," was astonished at
the importance of transactions (other than relating to shipping)
which take place on dry land. Almost every event out of the usual
daily course "marked an epoch" for him or else was "history";
unless with his pomposity struggling with a discomfited droop of
his rubicund, rather handsome face, set off by snow-white close
hair and short whiskers, he would mutter--

"Ah, that! That, sir, was a mistake."