Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (288 page)

“I could almost wish you had shouted and shown a light.”

This unexpected utterance astounded the Capataz by its character of cold-blooded atrocity. It was as much as to say, “I wish you had shown yourself a coward; I wish you had had your throat cut for your pains.” Naturally he referred it to himself, whereas it related only to the silver, being uttered simply and with many mental reservations. Surprise and rage rendered him speechless, and the doctor pursued, practically unheard by Nostromo, whose stirred blood was beating violently in his ears.

“For I am convinced Sotillo in possession of the silver would have turned short round and made for some small port abroad. Economically it would have been wasteful, but still less wasteful than having it sunk. It was the next best thing to having it at hand in some safe place, and using part of it to buy up Sotillo. But I doubt whether Don Carlos would have ever made up his mind to it. He is not fit for Costaguana, and that is a fact, Capataz.”

The Capataz had mastered the fury that was like a tempest in his ears in time to hear the name of Don Carlos. He seemed to have come out of it a changed man — a man who spoke thoughtfully in a soft and even voice.

“And would Don Carlos have been content if I had surrendered this treasure?”

“I should not wonder if they were all of that way of thinking now,” the doctor said, grimly. “I was never consulted. Decoud had it his own way. Their eyes are opened by this time, I should think. I for one know that if that silver turned up this moment miraculously ashore I would give it to Sotillo. And, as things stand, I would be approved.”

“Turned up miraculously,” repeated the Capataz very low; then raised his voice. “That, senor, would be a greater miracle than any saint could perform.”

“I believe you, Capataz,” said the doctor, drily.

He went on to develop his view of Sotillo’s dangerous influence upon the situation. And the Capataz, listening as if in a dream, felt himself of as little account as the indistinct, motionless shape of the dead man whom he saw upright under the beam, with his air of listening also, disregarded, forgotten, like a terrible example of neglect.

“Was it for an unconsidered and foolish whim that they came to me, then?” he interrupted suddenly. “Had I not done enough for them to be of some account, por Dios? Is it that the hombres finos — the gentlemen — need not think as long as there is a man of the people ready to risk his body and soul? Or, perhaps, we have no souls — like dogs?”

“There was Decoud, too, with his plan,” the doctor reminded him again.

“Si! And the rich man in San Francisco who had something to do with that treasure, too — what do I know? No! I have heard too many things. It seems to me that everything is permitted to the rich.”

“I understand, Capataz,” the doctor began.

“What Capataz?” broke in Nostromo, in a forcible but even voice. “The Capataz is undone, destroyed. There is no Capataz. Oh, no! You will find the Capataz no more.”

“Come, this is childish!” remonstrated the doctor; and the other calmed down suddenly.

“I have been indeed like a little child,” he muttered.

And as his eyes met again the shape of the murdered man suspended in his awful immobility, which seemed the uncomplaining immobility of attention, he asked, wondering gently —

“Why did Sotillo give the estrapade to this pitiful wretch? Do you know? No torture could have been worse than his fear. Killing I can understand. His anguish was intolerable to behold. But why should he torment him like this? He could tell no more.”

“No; he could tell nothing more. Any sane man would have seen that. He had told him everything. But I tell you what it is, Capataz. Sotillo would not believe what he was told. Not everything.”

“What is it he would not believe? I cannot understand.”

“I can, because I have seen the man. He refuses to believe that the treasure is lost.”

“What?” the Capataz cried out in a discomposed tone.

“That startles you — eh?”

“Am I to understand, senor,” Nostromo went on in a deliberate and, as it were, watchful tone, “that Sotillo thinks the treasure has been saved by some means?”

“No! no! That would be impossible,” said the doctor, with conviction; and Nostromo emitted a grunt in the dark. “That would be impossible. He thinks that the silver was no longer in the lighter when she was sunk. He has convinced himself that the whole show of getting it away to sea is a mere sham got up to deceive Gamacho and his Nationals, Pedrito Montero, Senor Fuentes, our new Gefe Politico, and himself, too. Only, he says, he is no such fool.”

“But he is devoid of sense. He is the greatest imbecile that ever called himself a colonel in this country of evil,” growled Nostromo.

“He is no more unreasonable than many sensible men,” said the doctor. “He has convinced himself that the treasure can be found because he desires passionately to possess himself of it. And he is also afraid of his officers turning upon him and going over to Pedrito, whom he has not the courage either to fight or trust. Do you see that, Capataz? He need fear no desertion as long as some hope remains of that enormous plunder turning up. I have made it my business to keep this very hope up.”

“You have?” the Capataz de Cargadores repeated cautiously. “Well, that is wonderful. And how long do you think you are going to keep it up?”

“As long as I can.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can tell you exactly. As long as I live,” the doctor retorted in a stubborn voice. Then, in a few words, he described the story of his arrest and the circumstances of his release. “I was going back to that silly scoundrel when we met,” he concluded.

Nostromo had listened with profound attention. “You have made up your mind, then, to a speedy death,” he muttered through his clenched teeth.

“Perhaps, my illustrious Capataz,” the doctor said, testily. “You are not the only one here who can look an ugly death in the face.”

“No doubt,” mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be overheard. “There may be even more than two fools in this place. Who knows?”

“And that is my affair,” said the doctor, curtly.

“As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my affair,” retorted Nostromo. “I see. Bueno! Each of us has his reasons. But you were the last man I conversed with before I started, and you talked to me as if I were a fool.”

Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor’s sardonic treatment of his great reputation. Decoud’s faintly ironic recognition used to make him uneasy; but the familiarity of a man like Don Martin was flattering, whereas the doctor was a nobody. He could remember him a penniless outcast, slinking about the streets of Sulaco, without a single friend or acquaintance, till Don Carlos Gould took him into the service of the mine.

“You may be very wise,” he went on, thoughtfully, staring into the obscurity of the room, pervaded by the gruesome enigma of the tortured and murdered Hirsch. “But I am not such a fool as when I started. I have learned one thing since, and that is that you are a dangerous man.”

Dr. Monygham was too startled to do more than exclaim —

“What is it you say?”

“If he could speak he would say the same thing,” pursued Nostromo, with a nod of his shadowy head silhouetted against the starlit window.

“I do not understand you,” said Dr. Monygham, faintly.

“No? Perhaps, if you had not confirmed Sotillo in his madness, he would have been in no haste to give the estrapade to that miserable Hirsch.”

The doctor started at the suggestion. But his devotion, absorbing all his sensibilities, had left his heart steeled against remorse and pity. Still, for complete relief, he felt the necessity of repelling it loudly and contemptuously.

“Bah! You dare to tell me that, with a man like Sotillo. I confess I did not give a thought to Hirsch. If I had it would have been useless. Anybody can see that the luckless wretch was doomed from the moment he caught hold of the anchor. He was doomed, I tell you! Just as I myself am doomed — most probably.”

This is what Dr. Monygham said in answer to Nostromo’s remark, which was plausible enough to prick his conscience. He was not a callous man. But the necessity, the magnitude, the importance of the task he had taken upon himself dwarfed all merely humane considerations. He had undertaken it in a fanatical spirit. He did not like it. To lie, to deceive, to circumvent even the basest of mankind was odious to him. It was odious to him by training, instinct, and tradition. To do these things in the character of a traitor was abhorrent to his nature and terrible to his feelings. He had made that sacrifice in a spirit of abasement. He had said to himself bitterly, “I am the only one fit for that dirty work.” And he believed this. He was not subtle. His simplicity was such that, though he had no sort of heroic idea of seeking death, the risk, deadly enough, to which he exposed himself, had a sustaining and comforting effect. To that spiritual state the fate of Hirsch presented itself as part of the general atrocity of things. He considered that episode practically. What did it mean? Was it a sign of some dangerous change in Sotillo’s delusion? That the man should have been killed like this was what the doctor could not understand.

“Yes. But why shot?” he murmured to himself.

Nostromo kept very still.

CHAPTER NINE

Distracted between doubts and hopes, dismayed by the sound of bells pealing out the arrival of Pedrito Montero, Sotillo had spent the morning in battling with his thoughts; a contest to which he was unequal, from the vacuity of his mind and the violence of his passions. Disappointment, greed, anger, and fear made a tumult, in the colonel’s breast louder than the din of bells in the town. Nothing he had planned had come to pass. Neither Sulaco nor the silver of the mine had fallen into his hands. He had performed no military exploit to secure his position, and had obtained no enormous booty to make off with. Pedrito Montero, either as friend or foe, filled him with dread. The sound of bells maddened him.

Imagining at first that he might be attacked at once, he had made his battalion stand to arms on the shore. He walked to and fro all the length of the room, stopping sometimes to gnaw the finger-tips of his right hand with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with a sullen, repelling glance all round, he would resume his tramping in savage aloofness. His hat, horsewhip, sword, and revolver were lying on the table. His officers, crowding the window giving the view of the town gate, disputed amongst themselves the use of his field-glass bought last year on long credit from Anzani. It passed from hand to hand, and the possessor for the time being was besieged by anxious inquiries.

“There is nothing; there is nothing to see!” he would repeat impatiently.

There was nothing. And when the picket in the bushes near the Casa Viola had been ordered to fall back upon the main body, no stir of life appeared on the stretch of dusty and arid land between the town and the waters of the port. But late in the afternoon a horseman issuing from the gate was made out riding up fearlessly. It was an emissary from Senor Fuentes. Being all alone he was allowed to come on. Dismounting at the great door he greeted the silent bystanders with cheery impudence, and begged to be taken up at once to the “muy valliente” colonel.

Senor Fuentes, on entering upon his functions of Gefe Politico, had turned his diplomatic abilities to getting hold of the harbour as well as of the mine. The man he pitched upon to negotiate with Sotillo was a Notary Public, whom the revolution had found languishing in the common jail on a charge of forging documents. Liberated by the mob along with the other “victims of Blanco tyranny,” he had hastened to offer his services to the new Government.

He set out determined to display much zeal and eloquence in trying to induce Sotillo to come into town alone for a conference with Pedrito Montero. Nothing was further from the colonel’s intentions. The mere fleeting idea of trusting himself into the famous Pedrito’s hands had made him feel unwell several times. It was out of the question — it was madness. And to put himself in open hostility was madness, too. It would render impossible a systematic search for that treasure, for that wealth of silver which he seemed to feel somewhere about, to scent somewhere near.

But where? Where? Heavens! Where? Oh! why had he allowed that doctor to go! Imbecile that he was. But no! It was the only right course, he reflected distractedly, while the messenger waited downstairs chatting agreeably to the officers. It was in that scoundrelly doctor’s true interest to return with positive information. But what if anything stopped him? A general prohibition to leave the town, for instance! There would be patrols!

The colonel, seizing his head in his hands, turned in his tracks as if struck with vertigo. A flash of craven inspiration suggested to him an expedient not unknown to European statesmen when they wish to delay a difficult negotiation. Booted and spurred, he scrambled into the hammock with undignified haste. His handsome face had turned yellow with the strain of weighty cares. The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp; the audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched. The velvety, caressing glance of his fine eyes seemed dead, and even decomposed; for these almond-shaped, languishing orbs had become inappropriately bloodshot with much sinister sleeplessness. He addressed the surprised envoy of Senor Fuentes in a deadened, exhausted voice. It came pathetically feeble from under a pile of ponchos, which buried his elegant person right up to the black moustaches, uncurled, pendant, in sign of bodily prostration and mental incapacity. Fever, fever — a heavy fever had overtaken the “muy valliente” colonel. A wavering wildness of expression, caused by the passing spasms of a slight colic which had declared itself suddenly, and the rattling teeth of repressed panic, had a genuineness which impressed the envoy. It was a cold fit. The colonel explained that he was unable to think, to listen, to speak. With an appearance of superhuman effort the colonel gasped out that he was not in a state to return a suitable reply or to execute any of his Excellency’s orders. But to-morrow! To-morrow! Ah! to-morrow! Let his Excellency Don Pedro be without uneasiness. The brave Esmeralda Regiment held the harbour, held — And closing his eyes, he rolled his aching head like a half-delirious invalid under the inquisitive stare of the envoy, who was obliged to bend down over the hammock in order to catch the painful and broken accents. Meantime, Colonel Sotillo trusted that his Excellency’s humanity would permit the doctor, the English doctor, to come out of town with his case of foreign remedies to attend upon him. He begged anxiously his worship the caballero now present for the grace of looking in as he passed the Casa Gould, and informing the English doctor, who was probably there, that his services were immediately required by Colonel Sotillo, lying ill of fever in the Custom House. Immediately. Most urgently required. Awaited with extreme impatience. A thousand thanks. He closed his eyes wearily and would not open them again, lying perfectly still, deaf, dumb, insensible, overcome, vanquished, crushed, annihilated by the fell disease.