第30章

` Viva Costaguana !' he shrieked, with intense self-assertion, and, instantly ruffling up his feathers, assumed an air of puffed-up somnolence behind the glittering wires.

`And do you believe that, Charley?' Mrs Gould asked. `This seems to me most awful materialism, and--'

`My dear, it's nothing to me,' interrupted her husband, in a reasonable tone. `I make use of what I see. What's it to me whether his talk is the voice of destiny or simply a bit of claptrap eloquence? There's a good deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in both Americas. The air of the New World seems favourable to the art of declamation. Have you forgotten how dear Avellanos can hold forth for hours here--?'

`Oh, but that's different,' protested Mrs Gould, almost shocked. The allusion was not to the point. Don Jose was a dear good man, who talked very well, and was enthusiastic about the greatness of the San Tome mine.

`How can you compare them, Charles?' she exclaimed, reproachfully. `He has suffered--and yet he hopes.'

The working competence of men--which she never questioned--was very surprising to Mrs Gould, because upon so many obvious issues they showed themselves strangely muddleheaded.

Charles Gould, with a careworn calmness which secured for him at once his wife's anxious sympathy, assured her that he was not comparing. He was an American himself, after all, and perhaps he could understand both kinds of eloquence--`if it were worth while to try,' he added, grimly.

But he had breathed the air of England longer than any of his people had done for three generations, and really he begged to be excused. His poor father could be eloquent, too. And he asked his wife whether she remembered a passage in one of his father's last letters where Mr Gould had expressed the conviction that `God looked wrathfully at these countries, or else He would let some ray of hope fall through a rift in the appalling darkness of intrigue, bloodshed, and crime that hung over the Queen of Continents'.

Mrs Gould had not forgotten. `You read it to me, Charley,' she murmured.

`It was a striking pronouncement. How deeply your father must have felt its terrible sadness!'

`He did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him,' said Charles Gould.

`But the image will serve well enough. What is wanted here is law, good faith, order, security. Anyone can declaim about these things, but I pin my faith to material interests. Only let the material interests once get a firm footing, and they are bound to impose the conditions on which alone they can continue to exist. That's how your money-making is justified here in the face of lawlessness and disorder. It is justified because the security which it demands must be shared with an oppressed people. A better justice will come afterwards. That's your ray of hope.' His arm pressed her slight form closer to his side for a moment. `And who knows whether in that sense even the San Tome mine may not become that little rift in the darkness which poor Father despaired of ever seeing?'

She glanced up at him with admiration. He was competent; he had given a vast shape to the vagueness of her unselfish ambitions.

`Charley,' she said, `you are splendidly disobedient.'

He left her suddenly in the corredor to go and get his hat, a soft, grey sombrero, an article of national costume which combined unexpectedly well with his English get-up. He came back, a riding-whip under his arm, buttoning up a dogskin glove; his face reflected the resolute nature of his thoughts. His wife had waited for him at the head of the stairs, and before he gave her the parting kiss he finished the conversation:

`What should be perfectly clear to us,' he said, `is the fact that there is no going back. Where could we begin life afresh? We are in now for all that there is in us.'

He bent over her upturned face very tenderly and a little remorsefully.

Charles Gould was competent because he had no illusions. The Gould Concession had to fight for life with such weapons as could be found at once in the mire of corruption that was so universal as to almost lose its significance.

He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment he felt as if the silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed him further than he meant to go; and with the roundabout logic of emotions, he felt that the worthiness of his life was bound up with success. There was no going back.