Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

He sat down. During the respectful, appreciative buzz of voices
that followed the speech, General Montero raised a pair of heavy,
drooping eyelids and rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy
dullness from face to face. The military backwoods hero of the
party, though secretly impressed by the sudden novelties and
splendours of his position (he had never been on board a ship
before, and had hardly ever seen the sea except from a distance),
understood by a sort of instinct the advantage his surly,
unpolished attitude of a savage fighter gave him amongst all
these refined Blanco aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was
looking at him? he wondered to himself angrily. He was able to
spell out the print of newspapers, and knew that he had performed
the "greatest military exploit of modern times."

"My husband wanted the railway," Mrs. Gould said to Sir John in
the general murmur of resumed conversations. "All this brings
nearer the sort of future we desire for the country, which has
waited for it in sorrow long enough, God knows. But I will
confess that the other day, during my afternoon drive when I
suddenly saw an Indian boy ride out of a wood with the red flag
of a surveying party in his hand, I felt something of a shock.
The future means change--an utter change. And yet even here
there are simple and picturesque things that one would like to
preserve."

Sir John listened, smiling. But it was his turn now to hush Mrs.
Gould.

"General Montero is going to speak," he whispered, and almost
immediately added, in comic alarm, "Heavens! he's going to
propose my own health, I believe."

General Montero had risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a
ripple of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy
sword-hilt appeared at his side above the edge of the table. In
this gorgeous uniform, with his bull neck, his hooked nose
flattened on the tip upon a blue-black, dyed moustache, he looked
like a disguised and sinister vaquero. The drone of his voice had
a strangely rasping, soulless ring. He floundered, lowering,
through a few vague sentences; then suddenly raising his big head
and his voice together, burst out harshly--