Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

No wonder, then, that Sir John, coming from Europe to smooth the
path for his railway, had been meeting the name (and even the
nickname) of Charles Gould at every turn in Costaguana. The agent
of the San Tome Administration in Sta. Marta (a polished,
well-informed gentleman, Sir John thought him) had certainly
helped so greatly in bringing about the presidential tour that he
began to think that there was something in the faint whispers
hinting at the immense occult influence of the Gould Concession.
What was currently whispered was this--that the San Tome
Administration had, in part, at least, financed the last
revolution, which had brought into a five-year dictatorship Don
Vincente Ribiera, a man of culture and of unblemished character,
invested with a mandate of reform by the best elements of the
State. Serious, well-informed men seemed to believe the fact, to
hope for better things, for the establishment of legality, of
good faith and order in public life. So much the better, then,
thought Sir John. He worked always on a great scale; there was a
loan to the State, and a project for systematic colonization of
the Occidental Province, involved in one vast scheme with the
construction of the National Central Railway. Good faith, order,
honesty, peace, were badly wanted for this great development of
material interests. Anybody on the side of these things, and
especially if able to help, had an importance in Sir John's eyes.
He had not been disappointed in the "King of Sulaco." The local
difficulties had fallen away, as the engineer-in-chief had
foretold they would, before Charles Gould's mediation. Sir John
had been extremely feted in Sulaco, next to the
President-Dictator, a fact which might have accounted for the
evident ill-humour General Montero displayed at lunch given on
board the Juno just before she was to sail, taking away from
Sulaco the President-Dictator and the distinguished foreign guests
in his train.

The Excellentissimo ("the hope of honest men," as Don Jose had
addressed him in a public speech delivered in the name of the
Provincial Assembly of Sulaco) sat at the head of the long table;
Captain Mitchell, positively stony-eyed and purple in the face
with the solemnity of this "historical event," occupied the foot
as the representative of the O.S.N. Company in Sulaco, the hosts
of that informal function, with the captain of the ship and some
minor officials from the shore around him. Those cheery, swarthy
little gentlemen cast jovial side-glances at the bottles of
champagne beginning to pop behind the guests' backs in the hands
of the ship's stewards. The amber wine creamed up to the rims of
the glasses.