Page 195 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

Since he had heard the name of Montero pronounced,
young Scarfe had been eager to express his simple feelings.
In a loud and youthful tone he hoped that this Montero was
going to be licked once for all and done with. There was no
saying what would happen to the railway if the revolution
got the upper hand. Perhaps it would have to be abandoned.
It would not be the first railway gone to pot in Costagua-
na. ‘You know, it’s one of their so-called national things,’
he ran on, wrinkling up his nose as if the word had a suspi-
cious flavour to his profound experience of South American
affairs. And, of course, he chatted with animation, it had
been such an immense piece of luck for him at his age to
get appointed on the staff ‘of a big thing like that—don’t
you know.’ It would give him the pull over a lot of chaps all
through life, he asserted. ‘Therefore—down with Montero!
Mrs. Gould.’ His artless grin disappeared slowly before the
unanimous gravity of the faces turned upon him from the
carriage; only that ‘old chap,’ Don Jose, presenting a mo-
tionless, waxy profile, stared straight on as if deaf. Scarfe
did not know the Avellanos very well. They did not give
balls, and Antonia never appeared at a ground-floor win-
dow, as some other young ladies used to do attended by
elder women, to chat with the caballeros on horseback in
the Calle. The stares of these creoles did not matter much;
but what on earth had come to Mrs. Gould? She said, ‘Go
on, Ignacio,’ and gave him a slow inclination of the head.
He heard a short laugh from that round-faced, Frenchified
fellow. He coloured up to the eyes, and stared at Giorgio Vi-
ola, who had fallen back with the children, hat in hand.

1 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard