Page 85 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

ably, they thought; and Charles Gould, besides knowing
thoroughly what he was about, had shown himself a real
hustler. These facts caused them to be well disposed to-
wards his wife. An unmistakable enthusiasm, pointed by a
slight flavour of irony, made her talk of the mine absolutely
fascinating to her visitors, and provoked them to grave and
indulgent smiles in which there was a good deal of deference.
Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired by an
idealistic view of success they would have been amazed at
the state of her mind as the Spanish-American ladies had
been amazed at the tireless activity of her body. She would—
in her own words—have been for them ‘something of a
monster.’ However, the Goulds were in essentials a reticent
couple, and their guests departed without the suspicion of
any other purpose but simple profit in the working of a sil-
ver mine. Mrs. Gould had out her own carriage, with two
white mules, to drive them down to the harbour, whence
the Ceres was to carry them off into the Olympus of plu-
tocrats. Captain Mitchell had snatched at the occasion of
leave-taking to remark to Mrs. Gould, in a low, confidential
mutter, ‘This marks an epoch.’
Mrs. Gould loved the patio of her Spanish house. A broad
flight of stone steps was overlooked silently from a niche in
the wall by a Madonna in blue robes with the crowned child
sitting on her arm. Subdued voices ascended in the early
mornings from the paved well of the quadrangle, with the
stamping of horses and mules led out in pairs to drink at the
cistern. A tangle of slender bamboo stems drooped its nar-
row, blade-like leaves over the square pool of water, and the

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard