the necessary force? To the secret
societies amongst immigrants and natives, where Nostromo - I should say Captain
Fidanza - is the great man. What gives him that position? Who can say? Genius?
He has genius. He is greater with the populace than ever he was before. It was
as if he had some secret power; some mysterious means to keep up his influence.
He holds conferences with the Archbishop, as in those old days which you and I
remember. Barrios is useless. But for a military head they have the pious
Hernandez. And they may raise the country with the new cry of the wealth for the
people.«
    »Will there be never any peace? 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?« she cried out, as if hurt in the most
sensitive place of her soul.
    »I can say what is true,« the doctor insisted, obstinately. »It'll weigh as
heavily, and provoke resentment, bloodshed, and vengeance, because the men have
grown different. Do you think that now the mine would march upon the town to
save their Señor Administrador? Do you think that?«
    She pressed the backs of her entwined hands on her eyes and murmured
hopelessly -
    »Is it this we have worked for, then?«
    The doctor lowered his head. He could follow her silent thought. Was it for
this that her life had been robbed of all the intimate felicities of daily
affection which her tenderness needed as the human body needs air to breathe?
And the doctor, indignant with Charles Gould's blindness, hastened to change the
conversation.
    »It is about Nostromo that I wanted to talk to you. Ah! that fellow has some
continuity and force. Nothing will put an end to him. But never mind that.
There's something inexplicable going on - or perhaps only too easy to explain.
You know, Linda is practically the lighthouse keeper of the Great Isabel light.