Page 99 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

bred Englishmen, but all born in the country. His uncle
went into politics, was the last Provincial President of Su-
laco, and got shot after a battle. His father was a prominent
business man in Sta. Marta, tried to keep clear of their poli-
tics, and died ruined after a lot of revolutions. And that’s
your Costaguana in a nutshell.’
Of course, he was too great a man to be questioned as to
his motives, even by his intimates. The outside world was at
liberty to wonder respectfully at the hidden meaning of his
actions. He was so great a man that his lavish patronage of
the ‘purer forms of Christianity’ (which in its naive form of
church-building amused Mrs. Gould) was looked upon by
his fellow-citizens as the manifestation of a pious and hum-
ble spirit. But in his own circles of the financial world the
taking up of such a thing as the San Tome mine was regard-
ed with respect, indeed, but rather as a subject for discreet
jocularity. It was a great man’s caprice. In the great Hol-
royd building (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and blocks
of stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by the
radiation of telegraph wires) the heads of principal depart-
ments exchanged humorous glances, which meant that they
were not let into the secrets of the San Tome business. The
Costaguana mail (it was never large—one fairly heavy en-
velope) was taken unopened straight into the great man’s
room, and no instructions dealing with it had ever been
issued thence. The office whispered that he answered per-
sonally—and not by dictation either, but actually writing
in his own hand, with pen and ink, and, it was to be sup-
posed, taking a copy in his own private press copy-book,

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard