Page 408 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

his back against the rim of the fountain, fingering a guitar
discreetly, while two girls of the lower class, standing up
before him, shuffled their feet a little and waved their arms,
humming a popular dance tune.
Most of the wounded during the two days of rioting
had been taken away already by their friends and relations,
but several figures could be seen sitting up balancing their
bandaged heads in time to the music. Charles Gould dis-
mounted. A sleepy mozo coming out of the bakery door
took hold of the horse’s bridle; the practicante endeavoured
to conceal his guitar hastily; the girls, unabashed, stepped
back smiling; and Charles Gould, on his way to the stair-
case, glanced into a dark corner of the patio at another
group, a mortally wounded Cargador with a woman kneel-
ing by his side; she mumbled prayers rapidly, trying at the
same time to force a piece of orange between the stiffening
lips of the dying man.
The cruel futility of things stood unveiled in the levity
and sufferings of that incorrigible people; the cruel futility
of lives and of deaths thrown away in the vain endeavour to
attain an enduring solution of the problem. Unlike Decoud,
Charles Gould could not play lightly a part in a tragic farce.
It was tragic enough for him in all conscience, but he could
see no farcical element. He suffered too much under a con-
viction of irremediable folly. He was too severely practical
and too idealistic to look upon its terrible humours with
amusement, as Martin Decoud, the imaginative materialist,
was able to do in the dry light of his scepticism. To him, as
to all of us, the compromises with his conscience appeared

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