Page 422 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

of account the safety of her husband. The doctor had
contrived to be in town at the critical time because he
mistrusted Charles Gould. He considered him hopelessly
infected with the madness of revolutions. That is why he
hobbled in distress in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould
on that morning, exclaiming, ‘Decoud, Decoud!’ in a tone
of mournful irritation.
Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glistening
eyes, looked straight before her at the sudden enormity of
that disaster. The finger-tips on one hand rested lightly on
a low little table by her side, and the arm trembled right up
to the shoulder. The sun, which looks late upon Sulaco, is-
suing in all the fulness of its power high up on the sky from
behind the dazzling snow-edge of Higuerota, had precipi-
tated the delicate, smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which
the town lies steeped during the early hours, into sharp-cut
masses of black shade and spaces of hot, blinding glare.
Three long rectangles of sunshine fell through the windows
of the sala; while just across the street the front of the Avel-
lanos’s house appeared very sombre in its own shadow seen
through the flood of light.
A voice said at the door, ‘What of Decoud?’
It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him coming
along the corredor. His glance just glided over his wife and
struck full at the doctor.
‘You have brought some news, doctor?’
Dr. Monygham blurted it all out at once, in the rough.
For some time after he had done, the Administrador of the
San Tome mine remained looking at him without a word.

1