Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 6. CHAPTER SIX (continued)

They were her first visitors from abroad, and they had come to
look at the San Tome mine. She jested most agreeably, 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 towards 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 silver 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 plutocrats. 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 narrow, blade-like leaves over the square pool
of water, and the fat coachman sat muffled up on the edge,
holding lazily the ends of halters in his hand. Barefooted
servants passed to and fro, issuing from dark, low doorways
below; two laundry girls with baskets of washed linen; the baker
with the tray of bread made for the day; Leonarda--her own
camerista--bearing high up, swung from her hand raised above her
raven black head, a bunch of starched under-skirts dazzlingly
white in the slant of sunshine. Then the old porter would hobble
in, sweeping the flagstones, and the house was ready for the day.
All the lofty rooms on three sides of the quadrangle opened into
each other and into the corredor, with its wrought-iron railings
and a border of flowers, whence, like the lady of the mediaeval
castle, she could witness from above all the departures and
arrivals of the Casa, to which the sonorous arched gateway lent
an air of stately importance.