Page 81 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

They turned back, and after she had slipped her hand on
his arm, the first words he pronounced were—
‘It’s lucky that we shall be able to settle in a coast town.
You’ve heard its name. It is Sulaco. I am so glad poor fa-
ther did get that house. He bought a big house there years
ago, in order that there should always be a Casa Gould in
the principal town of what used to be called the Occidental
Province. I lived there once, as a small boy, with my dear
mother, for a whole year, while poor father was away in the
United States on business. You shall be the new mistress of
the Casa Gould.’
And later, in the inhabited corner of the Palazzo above
the vineyards, the marble hills, the pines and olives of
Lucca, he also said—
‘The name of Gould has been always highly respected in
Sulaco. My uncle Harry was chief of the State for some time,
and has left a great name amongst the first families. By this
I mean the pure Creole families, who take no part in the
miserable farce of governments. Uncle Harry was no adven-
turer. In Costaguana we Goulds are no adventurers. He was
of the country, and he loved it, but he remained essentially
an Englishman in his ideas. He made use of the political cry
of his time. It was Federation. But he was no politician. He
simply stood up for social order out of pure love for rational
liberty and from his hate of oppression. There was no non-
sense about him. He went to work in his own way because it
seemed right, just as I feel I must lay hold of that mine.’
In such words he talked to her because his memory was
very full of the country of his childhood, his heart of his life

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard