Page 409 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

uglier than ever in the light of failure. His taciturnity, as-
sumed with a purpose, had prevented him from tampering
openly with his thoughts; but the Gould Concession had
insidiously corrupted his judgment. He might have known,
he said to himself, leaning over the balustrade of the corre-
dor, that Ribierism could never come to anything. The mine
had corrupted his judgment by making him sick of bribing
and intriguing merely to have his work left alone from day
to day. Like his father, he did not like to be robbed. It ex-
asperated him. He had persuaded himself that, apart from
higher considerations, the backing up of Don Jose’s hopes of
reform was good business. He had gone forth into the sense-
less fray as his poor uncle, whose sword hung on the wall of
his study, had gone forth—in the defence of the common-
est decencies of organized society. Only his weapon was the
wealth of the mine, more far-reaching and subtle than an
honest blade of steel fitted into a simple brass guard.
More dangerous to the wielder, too, this weapon of
wealth, double-edged with the cupidity and misery of
mankind, steeped in all the vices of self-indulgence as in a
concoction of poisonous roots, tainting the very cause for
which it is drawn, always ready to turn awkwardly in the
hand. There was nothing for it now but to go on using it. But
he promised himself to see it shattered into small bits before
he let it be wrenched from his grasp.
After all, with his English parentage and English upbring-
ing, he perceived that he was an adventurer in Costaguana,
the descendant of adventurers enlisted in a foreign legion,
of men who had sought fortune in a revolutionary war, who

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard