Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

"Senores, have no apprehension. Go on quietly making your Ferro
Carril--your railways, your telegraphs. Your--There's enough
wealth in Costaguana to pay for everything--or else you would not
be here. Ha! ha! Don't mind this little picardia of my friend
Montero. In a little while you shall behold his dyed moustaches
through the bars of a strong wooden cage. Si, senores! Fear
nothing, develop the country, work, work!"

The little group of engineers received this exhortation without a
word, and after waving his hand at them loftily, he addressed
himself again to Mrs. Gould--

"That is what Don Jose says we must do. Be enterprising! Work!
Grow rich! To put Montero in a cage is my work; and when that
insignificant piece of business is done, then, as Don Jose wishes
us, we shall grow rich, one and all, like so many Englishmen,
because it is money that saves a country, and--"

But a young officer in a very new uniform, hurrying up from the
direction of the jetty, interrupted his interpretation of Senor
Avellanos's ideals. The general made a movement of impatience;
the other went on talking to him insistently, with an air of
respect. The horses of the Staff had been embarked, the steamer's
gig was awaiting the general at the boat steps; and Barrios,
after a fierce stare of his one eye, began to take leave. Don
Jose roused himself for an appropriate phrase pronounced
mechanically. The terrible strain of hope and fear was telling on
him, and he seemed to husband the last sparks of his fire for
those oratorical efforts of which even the distant Europe was to
hear. Antonia, her red lips firmly closed, averted her head
behind the raised fan; and young Decoud, though he felt the
girl's eyes upon him, gazed away persistently, hooked on his
elbow, with a scornful and complete detachment. Mrs. Gould
heroically concealed her dismay at the appearance of men and
events so remote from her racial conventions, dismay too deep to
be uttered in words even to her husband. She understood his
voiceless reserve better now. Their confidential intercourse
fell, not in moments of privacy, but precisely in public, when
the quick meeting of their glances would comment upon some fresh
turn of events. She had gone to his school of uncompromising
silence, the only one possible, since so much that seemed
shocking, weird, and grotesque in the working out of their
purposes had to be accepted as normal in this country.
Decidedly, the stately Antonia looked more mature and infinitely
calm; but she would never have known how to reconcile the sudden
sinkings of her heart with an amiable mobility of expression.