Page 351 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

the most distinguished Costaguaneros had been impris-
oned and executed upon that accusation. The procedure
had dragged on for years, decimating the better class like
a pestilence. The mere expression of sorrow for the fate of
executed kinsmen had been punished with death. Don Jose
Avellanos was perhaps the only one living who knew the
whole story of those unspeakable cruelties. He had suffered
from them himself, and he, with a shrug of the shoulders
and a nervous, jerky gesture of the arm, was wont to put
away from him, as it were, every allusion to it. But whatever
the reason, Dr. Monygham, a personage in the administra-
tion of the Gould Concession, treated with reverent awe by
the miners, and indulged in his peculiarities by Mrs. Gould,
remained somehow outside the pale.
It was not from any liking for the doctor that the en-
gineer-in-chief had lingered in the inn upon the plain. He
liked old Viola much better. He had come to look upon
the Albergo d’ltalia Una as a dependence of the railway.
Many of his subordinates had their quarters there. Mrs.
Gould’s interest in the family conferred upon it a sort of
distinction. The engineer-in-chief, with an army of workers
under his orders, appreciated the moral influence of the old
Garibaldino upon his countrymen. His austere, old-world
Republicanism had a severe, soldier-like standard of faith-
fulness and duty, as if the world were a battlefield where
men had to fight for the sake of universal love and brother-
hood, instead of a more or less large share of booty.
‘Poor old chap!’ he said, after he had heard the doctor’s
account of Teresa. ‘He’ll never be able to keep the place go-

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard