Mrs. Gould

“ Gould asked. "The mother wished it, as far as I can understand, while Linda was yet quite a child. When I had the girls with me for a year or so during the war of separation, that extraordinary Linda used to declare quite simply that she was going to be Gian' Battista's wife."
"They are not married yet," said the doctor, curtly. "I have looked after them a little."
"Thank you, dear Dr. Monygham," said Mrs. Gould; and under the shade of the big trees her little, even teeth gleamed in a youthful smile of gentle malice. "People don't know how really good you are. ”

“ Mrs. Gould’s face became set and rigid for a second, as if to receive, without flinching, a great wave of loneliness that swept over her head. And it came into her mind, too, that no one would ever ask her with solicitude what she was thinking of. No one. No one, but perhaps the man who had just gone away. No; no one who could be answered with careless sincerity in the ideal perfection of confidence.
The word “incorrigible”—a word lately pronounced by Dr. Monygham—floated into her still and sad immobility. Incorrigible in his devotion to the great silver mine was the Senor Administrador! ”

“ Gould said that Mrs. Brownlow was not coming to town, adding, “It would be very unbecoming in her, though of course she will hold on at Belforest as long as there is any quibble of the law.”
“Oh, I don’t want to lose the season; she promised me!”
Then Mrs. Gould made a great stroke.
“My dear, you could not return to her. Not when the young man has just broken with you. You would have more proper pride.”
“Poor Allen!” said Elvira. “If he would only let me alone, to have my fun like other girls.” ”

“ Gould, who was a stout invalid in a chair, to the dim, discouraged aunt who waited on her and was ill used by all the others. Their smiles made an illumination in the hall; people turned to look in astonishment; and Miss Gregory was overwhelmed and captured before she could strike a single blow. Mr. Gould, maintaining an appearance of almost light-headed gaiety, introduced her all round, and she found herself sitting at Mrs. Gould's side and being served with tea and invited to dinner. ”

“ A woman’s true tenderness, like the true virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering kind. The ladies of Sulaco adored Mrs. Gould. “They still look upon me as something of a monster,” Mrs. Gould had said pleasantly to one of the three gentlemen from San Francisco she had to entertain in her new Sulaco house just about a year after her marriage.
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. ”

“ His English, rocklike quality of character was his best safeguard, Don José affirmed; and, turning to Mrs. Gould, "As to you, Emilia, my soul"—he would address her with the familiarity of his age and old friendship—"you are as true a patriot as though you had been born in our midst."
This might have been less or more than the truth. Mrs. Gould, accompanying her husband all over the province in the search for labor, had seen the land with a deeper glance than a true-born Costaguanera could have done. In her travel-worn riding-habit. ”

“ Gould's habit to withdraw quietly into a little drawing-room, especially her own, next to the great sala. She had risen, and, waiting for Antonia, listened with a slightly worried graciousness to the engineer-in-chief of the railway, who stooped over her, relating slowly, without the slightest gesture, something apparently amusing, for his eyes had a humorous twinkle. Antonia, before she advanced into the room to join Mrs. Gould, turned her head over her shoulder towards Decoud, only for a moment.
"Why should any one of us think his aspirations unrealizable?" ”

“ Can it be that they really wish to become, for an immense consideration, drawers of water and hewers of wood to all the countries and nations of the earth?"
"A man must work to some end," Charles Gould said, vaguely.
Mrs. Gould, frowning, surveyed him from head to foot. With his riding-breeches, leather leggings (an article of apparel never before seen in Costaguana) , a Norfolk coat of gray flannel, and those great flaming mustaches, he suggested an officer of cavalry turned gentleman farmer. This combination was gratifying to Mrs. Gould's tastes. "How thin the poor boy is!" she thought. ”

“ Gould. “Is there no nurse that can be got in, sir?” she continued. “I never saw such a stupid woman as that Mrs. Gould is in illness.”
“Nurse? To be sure. Time enough for that. Frederick,” Mr. Stephen called out to his son, as he crossed the hall, “if your uncle comes in before I am back, tell him I am at Widow Gould’s. A lady who has come to lodge there is taken ill.”
Judith ran on first, and got back before Mr. Stephen. Somewhat to her surprise, she found Mrs. Crane seated at the table, writing.
“You are better, ma'am!” ”

“ The humours of railway building in South America appealed to his keen appreciation of the absurd, and he told his instances of ignorant prejudice and as ignorant cunning very well. Now, Mrs. Gould gave him all her attention as he walked by her side escorting the ladies out of the room. Finally all three passed unnoticed through the glass doors in the gallery. Only a tall priest stalking silently in the noise of the sala checked himself to look after them. Father Corbelan, whom Decoud had seen from the balcony turning into the gateway of the Casa Gould, had addressed no one since coming in. ”

“ Will there be no rest?” Mrs. Gould whispered. “I thought that we——”
“No!” interrupted the doctor. “There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle. Mrs. Gould, the time approaches when all that the Gould Concession stands for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as the barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back.”
“How can you say that, Dr. Monygham?” ”

“ The doctor came out and shut the door. He looked into the drawing-room for a moment. “Miss Tower,” he said, “if Mrs. Gould lives until after twelve to-night, look out.”
“I had meant to,” I said.
Then he went up to his patient.
At twelve that night Mrs. Gould was alive and sleeping peacefully. As soon as Mr. Gould had heard this glad news he went up to bed. That night, for the first time, I had not received my fee. At breakfast next morning he was distinctly disrespectful in his manner. “Look here,” he said, “the best of friends must part. ”

“ Women are idealists; but then they are so perspicacious."
But whatever was the reason of that remark, disparaging and complimentary at the same time, Mrs. Gould seemed not to pay attention to it. The name of Holroyd had given a new tone to her anxiety.
"The silver escort is coming down to the harbor to- morrow; a whole six months' working, Don Martin!" she cried in dismay.
" Let it come down then," breathed out Decoud, earnestly, almost into her ear.
"But if the rumor should get about, and especially if it turned out true, troubles might break out in the town," objected Mrs. Gould. ”

“ To feel that prosperity always at the mercy of unintelligent greed had grown irksome to him. To Mrs. Gould it was humiliating. At any rate, it was dangerous. In the confidential communications passing between Charles Gould, the King of Sulaco, and the head of the silver and steel interests far away in California, the conviction was growing that any attempt made by men of education and integrity ought to be discreetly supported. ”

“ That fellow" he addressed himself in English to Mrs. Gould "is always stealing up behind one's back on his bare feet. I set him to look for that fan directly I came in, to justify my reappearance, my sudden return."
He paused, and Mrs. Gould said, amiably, "You are always welcome." She paused for a second, too. "But I am waiting to learn the cause of your return."
Decoud affected suddenly the utmost nonchalance.
"I can't bear to be spied upon. Oh, the cause? Yes, there is a cause; there is something else that is lost besides Antonia's favorite fan. ”

“ Gould in the adjoining room putting sheets upon the bed. The widow was in spirits at the prospect of her rooms being wanted for some months, as she believed they would be, and had placed the last weekly South Wennock newspaper on the table beside the tea-tray, a little mark of extra attention to her new lodger.
In obedience to the ring when tea was over, Mrs. Gould came up to remove the things. Mrs. Crane was seated before them. A fair young girl she looked with her bonnet off, in her silk dress and her golden brown hair. The widow kept no servant, but waited on her lodgers herself. ”

“ Gould could keep his unbelief in men’s motives within due bounds; but even to her (on an occasion not connected with Nostromo, and in a tone which for him was gentle) , even to her, he had said once, “Really, it is most unreasonable to demand that a man should think of other people so much better than he is able to think of himself.”
And Mrs. Gould had hastened to drop the subject. There were strange rumours of the English doctor. Years ago, in the time of Guzman Bento, he had been mixed up, it was whispered, in a conspiracy which was betrayed and, as people expressed it, drowned in blood. ”

“ Gould, almost shocked. The allusion was not to the point. Don José was a dear good man, who talked very well, and was enthusiastic about the greatness of the San Tomé mine. "How can you compare them, Charles?" she
1 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 muddle-headed. ”

“ A man may be thrown off. The papers had unfortunately trumpeted all over the land his journey to Costaguana. If he was pleased at the way Charles Gould was going on, he infused an added grimness into his assurances of support. Even at the very last interview, half an hour or so before he rolled out of the patio, hat in hand, behind Mrs. Gould's white mules, he had said in Charles's room:
"You go ahead in your own way, and I shall know how to help you as long as you hold your own. ”

“ Martha Gould was a tall, ascetic-looking woman, with great eyes sunken in deep hollows. She had a curious way of puckering her mouth, and at the same time wrinkling her forehead between the two leaflike curves of her gray hair. Her sister-in-law, Sarah Gould, who had been in her day a very pretty girl, much like Catherine, but had never married, knitted and eyed her niece. She had been engaged to be married in her late youth, but her lover had died. Since then she had occupied herself with the small interests of life.
“Aren't you coming into the parlor, John?” Catherine asked again. ”

“ Gould knew every one of them by name.
In another apartment was a wilderness of roses, pink and white, and gold and Guelder, Burgundy and Austrian in an endless tangle of color and a delirious, odorous atmosphere that would have enraptured the soul of a lotus eater. No wonder that Mr. Gould236 abandoned care when he entered the portals of his conservatory. He did not have many warm personal friends, yet surely a man can not be altogether bad who is a friend of the roses. There must be some good in the heart of a man whose eyes grow tender as he bends over a lily. ”

“ That man concealed on the stairs must have been her husband.”
“What, Mr. Crane?”
“Of course it was. He killed her. I feel as certain of it as if I had seen it done. How came that fat nurse, Pepperfly, not to tell me this?”
“Mother Pepperfly don’t believe in it,” said Mrs. Gould. “She’s as certain as I be, that no man was there.”
“You might have told me this,” resumed Mrs. Smith, turning to Judith. “Why, it throws more light upon the subject than all the rest put together.” ”

“ Of course she likes men’s attentions. Ramirez was not the only one, let me tell you, Mrs. Gould. There was one engineer, at least, on the railway staff who got warned off with a gun, too. Old Viola does not allow any trifling with his honour. He has grown uneasy and suspicious since his wife died. He was very pleased to remove his youngest girl away from the town. But look what happens, Mrs. Gould. Ramirez, the honest, lovelorn swain, is forbidden the island. Very well. He respects the prohibition, but naturally turns his eyes frequently towards the Great Isabel. ”

“ But I do ask, let me see her, let me hear her talk, let me be near her, and for that I will be a scullery-maid in your house.'
'Mother!'
'Let me speak. My heart is bursting. I shall die if you interrupt. You say that I am a violent woman, unfit to be with other servants, impossible in a house. Try me. Let me be near her, and you shall see. You will find me docile and meek. I will give no offence. I will do nothing, nothing to render myself unendurable. You say I am a raging fire. I have been, I am now but a heap of grey ash with one spark in it—my love for Winefred. ”

“ The staring heads of men blocked the doorway in an instant—mozos from stable, gardeners, nondescript helpers living on crumbs of the munificent house—and Charles Gould beheld all the extent of his domestic establishment even to the gate-keeper. This was a half-paralyzed old man, whose long, white locks fell down to his shoulders—an heirloom taken up by Charles Gould's familial piety. He could remember Henry Gould, an Englishman and Costaguanero of the second generation, chief of the Sulaco province ”