oul!" Captain Mitchell was
given to affirm; and though nobody, perhaps, could have explained why it
should be so, it was impossible on a survey of their relation to throw
doubt on that statement, unless, indeed, one were a bitter, eccentric
character like Dr. Monygham--for instance--whose short, hopeless laugh
expressed somehow an immense mistrust of mankind. Not that Dr. Monygham
was a prodigal either of laughter or of words. He was bitterly taciturn
when at his best. At his worst people feared the open scornfulness of
his tongue. Only Mrs. 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. His hair had
turned grey, his hairless, seamed face was of a brick-dust colour; the
large check pattern of his flannel shirt and his old stained Panama hat
were an established defiance to the conventionalities of Sulaco. Had
it not been for the immaculate cleanliness of his apparel he might have
been taken for one of those shiftless Europeans that are a moral eyesore
to the respectability of a foreign colony in almost every exotic part of
the world. The young ladies of Sulaco, adorning with clusters of pretty
faces the balconies along the Street of the Constitution, when they saw
him pass, with his limping gait and bowed head, a short linen jacket
drawn on carelessly over the flannel check shirt, would remark to each
other, "Here is the Senor doctor going to call on Dona Emilia. He has
got his little coat on." The inference was true. Its deeper meaning was
hidden from their simple intelligence. Moreover, they expended no
store of thought on the doctor. He was old, ugly, learned--and a little
"loco"--mad, if not a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people suspected
him of being. The little white jacket was in reality a concession
to Mrs. Gould's humanizing influence. The doctor, with his habit of
sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of showing his profound
respect for the character of the wom