Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 1. CHAPTER ONE (continued)

"Costaguana for the Costaguaneros," interjected the doctor,
sardonically. "It is a fine country, and they have raised a fine
crop of hates, vengeance, murder, and rapine--those sons of the
country."

"Well, I am one of them," Charles Gould's voice sounded, calmly,
"and I must be going on to see to my own crop of trouble. My wife
has driven straight on, doctor?"

"Yes. All was quiet on this side. Mrs. Gould has taken the two
girls with her."

Charles Gould rode on, and the engineer-in-chief followed the
doctor indoors.

"That man is calmness personified," he said, appreciatively,
dropping on a bench, and stretching his well-shaped legs in
cycling stockings nearly across the doorway. "He must be
extremely sure of himself."

"If that's all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing," said
the doctor. He had perched himself again on the end of the table.
He nursed his cheek in the palm of one hand, while the other
sustained the elbow. "It is the last thing a man ought to be sure
of." The candle, half-consumed and burning dimly with a long
wick, lighted up from below his inclined face, whose expression
affected by the drawn-in cicatrices in the cheeks, had something
vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated remorseful bitterness. As he
sat there he had the air of meditating upon sinister things. The
engineer-in-chief gazed at him for a time before he protested.

"I really don't see that. For me there seems to be nothing else.
However----"

He was a wise man, but he could not quite conceal his contempt
for that sort of paradox; in fact. Dr. Monygham was not liked by
the Europeans of Sulaco. His outward aspect of an outcast, which
he preserved even in Mrs. Gould's drawing-room, provoked
unfavourable criticism. There could be no doubt of his
intelligence; and as he had lived for over twenty years in the
country, the pessimism of his outlook could not be altogether
ignored. But instinctively, in self-defence of their activities
and hopes, his hearers put it to the account of some hidden
imperfection in the man's character. It was known that many years
before, when quite young, he had been made by Guzman Bento chief
medical officer of the army. Not one of the Europeans then in the
service of Costaguana had been so much liked and trusted by the
fierce old Dictator.