Page 482 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

where he would be of the greatest use in the work of sav-
ing the San Tome mine. The doctor was loyal to the mine.
It presented itself to his fifty-years’ old eyes in the shape of
a little woman in a soft dress with a long train, with a head
attractively overweighted by a great mass of fair hair and
the delicate preciousness of her inner worth, partaking of
a gem and a flower, revealed in every attitude of her per-
son. As the dangers thickened round the San Tome mine
this illusion acquired force, permanency, and authority. It
claimed him at last! This claim, exalted by a spiritual de-
tachment from the usual sanctions of hope and reward,
made Dr. Monygham’s thinking, acting, individuality ex-
tremely dangerous to himself and to others, all his scruples
vanishing in the proud feeling that his devotion was the
only thing that stood between an admirable woman and a
frightful disaster.
It was a sort of intoxication which made him utterly in-
different to Decoud’s fate, but left his wits perfectly clear for
the appreciation of Decoud’s political idea. It was a good
idea—and Barrios was the only instrument of its realiza-
tion. The doctor’s soul, withered and shrunk by the shame
of a moral disgrace, became implacable in the expansion
of its tenderness. Nostromo’s return was providential. He
did not think of him humanely, as of a fellow-creature just
escaped from the jaws of death. The Capataz for him was
the only possible messenger to Cayta. The very man. The
doctor’s misanthropic mistrust of mankind (the bitterer be-
cause based on personal failure) did not lift him sufficiently
above common weaknesses. He was under the spell of an

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