Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
"Yes, all! Silence! All, I tell you! The political jefé, the chief of the police, the chief of the customs, the general, all, all, are the officials of that Gould!"
Thereupon an intrepid but low and argumentative murmur would flow on for a space in the ministerial cabinet, and the prominent man's passion would end in a cynical shrug of the shoulders. After all, he seemed to say, what did it matter as long as the minister himself was not forgotten during his brief day of authority. But all the same, the unofficial agent of the San Tomé mine, working for a good cause, had his moments of anxiety which were reflected in his letters to Don José Avellanos, his maternal uncle.
"No sanguinary macaque from Sta. Marta shall set foot on that part of Costaguana which lies beyond the San Tomé bridge," Don Pépé used to assure Mrs. Gould. "Except, of course, as an honored guest—for our Señor Administrador is a deep politico." But to Charles Gould, in his own room, the old major would remark with. a grim and soldierly cheeriness, "We are all playing our heads at this game."
Don José Avellanos would mutter "Imperium in imperio, Emilia, my soul," with an air of profound self-satisfaction which, somehow, in a curious way, seemed to contain a queer admixture of bodily discomfort. But that, perhaps, could only be visible to the initiated.
And for the initiated it was a wonderful place, this drawing-room of the Casa Gould, with its momentary glimpses of the master—El Señor Administrador—older, harder, mysteriously silent, with the lines deepened on his English, ruddy, out-of-doors complexion;
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