Page 425 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. And
Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to San
Francisco in some such words: ‘…. The men at the head of
the movement are dead or have fled; the civil organization
of the province is at an end for the present; the Blanco party
in Sulaco has collapsed inexcusably, but in the characteris-
tic manner of this country. But Barrios, untouched in Cayta,
remains still available. I am forced to take up openly the
plan of a provincial revolution as the only way of placing
the enormous material interests involved in the prosperity
and peace of Sulaco in a position of permanent safety….’
That was clear. He saw these words as if written in letters of
fire upon the wall at which he was gazing abstractedly.
Mrs Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It was
a domestic and frightful phenomenon that darkened and
chilled the house for her like a thundercloud passing over
the sun. Charles Gould’s fits of abstraction depicted the en-
ergetic concentration of a will haunted by a fixed idea. A
man haunted by a fixed idea is insane. He is dangerous even
if that idea is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the
heaven down pitilessly upon a loved head? The eyes of Mrs.
Gould, watching her husband’s profile, filled with tears
again. And again she seemed to see the despair of the un-
fortunate Antonia.
‘What would I have done if Charley had been drowned
while we were engaged?’ she exclaimed, mentally, with hor-
ror. Her heart turned to ice, while her cheeks flamed up as
if scorched by the blaze of a funeral pyre consuming all her
earthly affections. The tears burst out of her eyes.

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard