Sulaco outstripped Nostromo's prudence, growing rich swiftly on the hidden treasures of the earth, hovered over by the anxious spirits of good and evil, torn out by the labouring hands of the people. It was like a second youth, like a new life, full of promise, of unrest, of toil, scattering lavishly its wealth to the four corners of an excited world. Material changes swept along in the train of material interests. And other changes more subtle, outwardly unmarked, affected the minds and hearts of the workers.
Captain Mitchell had gone home to live on his savings invested in the San Tome mine; and Dr Monygham had grown older, with his head steel-grey and the unchanged expression of his face, living on the inexhaustible treasure of his devotion drawn upon in the secret of his heart like a store of unlawful wealth.
The Inspector-General of State Hospitals (whose maintenance is a charge upon the Gould Concession), Official Adviser on Sanitation to the Municipality, Chief Medical Officer of the San Tome Consolidated Mines (whose territory, containing gold, silver, copper, lead, cobalt, extends for miles along the foothills of the Cordillera), had felt poverty-stricken, miserable, and starved during the prolonged, second visit the Goulds paid to Europe and the United States of America. Intimate of the casa , proved friend, a bachelor without ties and without establishment (except of the professional sort), he had been asked to take up his quarters in the Gould house. In the eleven months of their absence the familiar rooms, recalling at every glance the woman to whom he had given all his loyalty, had grown intolerable.
As the day approached for the arrival of the mail boat Hermes (the latest addition to the O.S.N. Company's splendid fleet), the doctor hobbled about more vivaciously, snapped more sardonically at simple and gentle out of sheer nervousness.
He packed up his modest trunk with speed, with fury, with enthusiasm, and saw it carried out past the old porter at the gate of the Casa Gould with delight, with intoxication; then, as the hour approached, sitting alone in the great landau behind the white mules, a little sideways, his drawn-in face positively venomous with the effort of self-control, and holding a pair of new gloves in his left hand, he drove to the harbour.
His heart dilated within him so, when he saw the Goulds on the deck of the Hermes , that his greetings were reduced to a casual mutter.
Driving back to town, all three were silent. And in the patio the doctor, in a more natural manner, said:
`I'll leave you now to yourselves. I'll call tomorrow if I may?'
`Come to lunch, dear Dr Monygham, and come early,' said Mrs Gould, in her travelling dress and her veil down, turning to look at him at the foot of the stairs; while at the top of the flight the Madonna, in blue robes and the Child on her arm, seemed to welcome her with an aspect of pitying tenderness.
`Don't expect to find me at home,' Charles Gould warned him. `I'll be off early to the mine.'
After lunch, Dona Emilia and the Senor Doctor came slowly through the inner gateway of the patio. The large gardens of the Casa Gould, surrounded by high walls, and the red-tile slopes of neighbouring roofs, lay open before them, with masses of shade under the trees and level surfaces of sunlight upon the lawns. A triple row of old orange trees surrounded the whole. Barefooted, brown gardeners, in snowy white shirts and wide calzoneras , dotted the grounds, squatting over flowerbeds, passing between the trees, dragging slender india-rubber tubes across the gravel of the paths; and the fine jets of water crossed each other in graceful curves, sparkling in the sunshine with a slight pattering noise upon the bushes, and an effect of showered diamonds upon the grass.
Dona Emilia, holding up the train of a clear dress, walked by the side of Dr Monygham, in a longish black coat and severe black bow on an immaculate shirt-front. Under a shady clump of trees, where stood scattered little tables and wicker easy-chairs, Mrs Gould sat down in a low and ample seat.
`Don't go yet,' she said to Dr Monygham, who was unable to tear himself away from the spot. His chin nestling within the points of his collar, he devoured her stealthily with his eyes, which, luckily, were round and hard like clouded marbles, and incapable of disclosing his sentiments.
His pitying emotion at the marks of time upon the face of that woman, the air of frailty and weary fatigue that had settled upon the eyes and temples of the `Never-tired Senora' (as Don Pepe years ago used to call her with admiration), touched him almost to tears. `Don't go yet. Today is all my own,' Mrs Gould urged, gently. `We are not back yet officially. No one will come. It's only tomorrow that the windows of the Casa Gould are to be lit up for a reception.'
The doctor dropped into a chair.
`Giving a tertulia ?' he said, with a detached air.
`A simple greeting for all the kind friends who care to come.'
`And only tomorrow?'
`Yes. Charles would be tired out after a day at the mine, and so I--It would be good to have him to myself for one evening on our return to this house I love. It has seen all my life.'
`Ah, yes!' snarled the doctor, suddenly. `Women count time from the marriage feast. Didn't you live a little before?'
`Yes; but what is there to remember? There were no cares.'
Mrs Gould sighed. And as two friends, after a long separation, will revert to the most agitated period of their lives, they began to talk of the Sulaco Revolution. It seemed strange to Mrs Gould that people who had taken part in it seemed to forget its memory and its lesson.
