Page 166 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

much of the ignominy of the situation. At bottom, perhaps,
he suffered from it, for he was not a man of cowardly illu-
sions, but he refused to discuss the ethical view with his
wife. He trusted that, though a little disenchanted, she
would be intelligent enough to understand that his char-
acter safeguarded the enterprise of their lives as much or
more than his policy. The extraordinary development of the
mine had put a great power into his hands. To feel that pros-
perity always at the mercy of unintelligent greed had grown
irksome to him. To Mrs. Gould it was humiliating. At any
rate, it was dangerous. In the confidential communications
passing between Charles Gould, the King of Sulaco, and
the head of the silver and steel interests far away in Califor-
nia, the conviction was growing that any attempt made by
men of education and integrity ought to be discreetly sup-
ported. ‘You may tell your friend Avellanos that I think so,’
Mr. Holroyd had written at the proper moment from his in-
violable sanctuary within the eleven-storey high factory of
great affairs. And shortly afterwards, with a credit opened
by the Third Southern Bank (located next door but one to
the Holroyd Building), the Ribierist party in Costaguana
took a practical shape under the eye of the administrator
of the San Tome mine. And Don Jose, the hereditary friend
of the Gould family, could say: ‘Perhaps, my dear Carlos, I
shall not have believed in vain.’

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