Section 55

“Behold thy husband, master, and benefactor.” Old
532 NOSTROMO
the whole gulf.
She stepped forward with her eyes nearly closed, like a —
sleep-walker in a beatific dream. ,
Nostromo made a superhuman effort. “It is time, Linda, we two were betrothed.” he said, steadily, in his. level, careless, unbending tone.
She put her hand into his offered palm, lowering her head, dark with bronze glints, upon which her father’s hand rested for a moment.
“And so the soul of the dead is satisfied.”
- This came from Giorgio Viola, who went on talking for a while of his dead wife; while the two, sitting side by side, never looked at each other. Then the old man ceased; and Linda, motionless, began to speak.
“Ever since I felt I lived in the world, I have lived for you alone, Gian’ Battista. And that you knew! You knewit . . . Battistino.”
She pronounced the name exactly with her mother’s
intonation. A gloom as of the grave covered Nos- -
tromo’s heart.
“Yes. I knew,” he said.
The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing his hoary head, his old soul dwelling alone with its memories, tender and violent, terrible and dreary— solitary on the earth full of men.
And Linda, his best-loved daughter, was saying, “‘I was yours ever since I can remember. I had only to think of you for the earth to become empty to my eyes. When you were there, I could see no one else. I was yours. Nothing is changed. The world belongs to you, and you let me liveinit.” . . . She dropped
her low, vibrating voice to a still lower note, and found
other things to say—torturing for the man at her side. Her murmur ran on ardent and voluble. She did not
4
Viola’s voice resounded with a force that seemed to fill
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seem to see her sister, who came out with an altar-cloth she was embroidering in her hands, and passed in front of them, silent, fresh, fair, with a quick glance and a faint smile, to sit a little away on the other side of Nostromo.
The evening was still. The sun sank almost to the edge of a purple ocean; and the white lighthouse, livid against the background of clouds filling the head of the gulf, bore the lantern red and glowing, like a live ember kindled by the fire of the sky. Giselle, indolent and demure, raised the altar-cloth from time to time to hide nervous yawns, as of a young panther.
Suddenly Linda rushed at her sister, and seizing her head, covered her face with kisses. Nostromo’s brain reeled. When she left her, as if stunned by the violent caresses, with her hands lying in her lap, the slave of the treasure felt as if he could shoot that woman. Old Giorgio lifted his leonine head.
“Where are you going, Linda?”’
“To the light, padre mio.”
**Si, si—to your duty.”
He got up, too, looked after his eldest daughter; then, in a tone whose festive note seemed the echo of a mood lost in the night of ages—
“T am going in to cook something. Aha! Son! The old man knows where to find a bottle of wine, too.”
He turned to Giselle, with a change to austere ten- derness.
“And you, little one, pray not to the God of priests and slaves, but to the God of orphans, of the oppressed, of the poor, of little children, to give thee a man like this one for a husband.”
His hand rested heavily for a moment on Nostromo’s shoulder; then he went in. The hopeless slave of the San Tomé silver felt at these words the venomous fangs
an
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of jealousy biting deep into his heart. He was ap
palled by the novelty of the experience, by its force, by its physical intimacy. A husband! A husband for her! And yet it was natural that Giselle should have a husband at some time or other. He had never
realized that before. In discovering that her beauty |
could belong to another he felt as though he could kill this one of old Giorgio’s daughters also. He mut- tered moodily—
“They say you love Ramirez.”
She shook her head without looking at him. Cop- pery glints rippled to and fro on the wealth of her gold hair, Her smooth forehead had the soft, pure sheen
of a priceless pearl in the splendour of the sunset, mingl- —
ing the gloom of starry spaces, the purple of the sea, and the crimson of the sky in a magnificent stillness.
“No,” she said, slowly. “I never loved him, IT think Inever . . . He loves me—perhaps.”
The seduction of her slow voice died out of the air,
and her raised eyes remained fixed on nothing, as if
indifferent and without thought.
“Ramirez told you he loved you?” asked Nostromo, restraining himself.
“Ah! once—one evening ...
“The miserable . . . Ha!”
He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood before her mute with anger.
“Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian’ Battista! Poor wretch that I am!” she lamented in ingenuous tones. “I told Linda, and she scolded—she scolded. Am I to live blind, dumb, and deaf in this world? And she told father, who took down his gun and cleaned it. Poor Ramirez! Then you came, and she told you.”
He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the hollow of her white throat, which had the invincible
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charm of things young, palpitating, delicate, and alive. Was this the child he had known? Was it possible? It dawned upon him that in these last years he had really seen very litthe—nothing—of her. Nothing. She had come into the world like a thing unknown. She had come upon him unawares. She was a danger. A frightful danger. The instinctive mood of fierce determination that had never failed him before the perils of this life added its steady force to the violence of his passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the song of running water, the tinkling of a silver bell, continued—
“And between you three you have brought me here into this captivity to the sky and water. Nothing else. Sky and water. Oh, Sanctissima Madre. My hair shall turn grey on this tedious island. I could hate you, Gian’ Battista!”
He laughed loudly. Her voice enveloped him like a caress. She bemoaned her fate, spreading unconsciously, like a flower its pertume in the coolness of the evening, the indefinable seduction of her person. Was it her fault that nobody ever had admired Linda? Even when they were little, going out with their mother to Mass, she remembered that people took no notice of Linda, who was fearless, and chose instead to frighten her, who was timid, with their attention. It was her hair like gold, she supposed.
He broke out—
“Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and your lips like the rose; your round arms, your white throat.”. . ...
Imperturbable in the indolence of her pose, she blushed deeply all over to the roots of her hair. She was not conceited. She was no more self-conscious than # flower. But she was pleased. And perhaps eveD @&
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flower loves to hear itself praised. He glahied down, and added, impetuously—
“Your little feet!’
Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the cottage, she seemed to bask languidly in the warmth of the rosy flush. Only her lowered eyes glanced at her little feet.
“And so you are going at last to marry our Linda. She is terrible. Ah! now she will understand better since you have told her you love her. She will not be so fierce.”
“Chica!” said Nostromo, “I have not told her any- thing.”
“Then make haste. Come to-morrow. Come and tell her, so that I may have some peace from her scolding
and—perhaps—who knows . .
“Be allowed to listen to your ime eh? Is that itP@liVous Hapisy
“Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni,” she said, unmoved. “Who is Ramirez Ramirez . . . Who is he?” she repeated, dieands ily, in the dusk and gloom of the clouded gulf, with a low red streak in the west like a hot bar of glowing iron laid across the entrance of a world sombre as a cavern, where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores had hidden his conquests of love and wealth.
“Listen, Giselle,” he said, in measured tones; “I will tell no word of love to your sister. Do you want to know why?”
“Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni. Father says you are not like other men; that no one had ever understood you properly; that the rich will be surprised yet. . . . Oh! saints in heaven! I am weary.”
She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower
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part’ of her face, then let it fall! on her lap. The lantern was shaded on the land side, but slanting away from the dark column of the lighthouse they could see the long shaft of light, kindled by Linda, go out to strike the expiring glow in a horizon of purple and red.
Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of the house, her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in white stockings and black slippers, crossed over each other, seemed to surrender herself, tranquil and fatal, to the gathering dusk. The charm of her body, the promising mysteriousness of her indolence, went out into the night of the Placid Gulf like a fresh and intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the shadows, impregnating the air. The incorruptible Nostromo breathed her ambient seduction in the tumultuous, heaving of his breast. Before leaving the harbour he had thrown off the store clothing of Captain Fidanza,' for greater ease in the long pull out to the islands. He, stood before her in the red sash and check shirt as he used to appear on the Company’s wharfi—a Mediter-’ ranean sailor come ashore to try his luck in Costaguana., The dusk of purple and red enveloped him, too—close, soft, profound, as no more than fifty yards from that spot it had gathered evening after evening about the self-destructive passion of Don Martin Decoud’s utter scepticism, flaming up to death in solitude.
“You have got to hear,” he began at last, with per- fect self-control. “I shall say no word of love to your sister, to whom I am betrothed from this evening, because it is you that I love. It is you!”
The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous smile that came instinctively upon her lips shaped for love and kisses, freeze hard in the drawn, haggard lines of terror. He could not restrain himself any longer.
538 NOSTROMO
While she shrank from his approach, her arms went out to him, abandoned and regal in the dignity of her languid surrender. He held her head in his two hands, and showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face that gleamed in the purple dusk. Masterful and tender, he was entering slowly upon the fulness of his possession. And he perceived that she was crying. Then the in- comparable Capataz, the man of careless loves, became gentle and caressing, like a woman to the grief of a child. He murmured to her fondly. He sat down by her and nursed her fair head on his breast. He called her his star and his little flower.
It had grown dark. From the living-room of the light-keeper’s cottage, where Giorgio, one of the Im- mortal Thousand, was bending his leonine and heroic head over a charcoal fire, there came the sound of sizzling and the aroma of an artistic frittura.
In the obscure disarray of that thing, happening like a cataclysm, it was in her feminine head that some gleam of reason survived. He was lost to the world in their embraced stillness. But she said, whispering into his ear—
“God of mercy! What will become of me—here— now—between this sky and this water I hate? Linda, Linda—I see her!” . . . She tried to get out of his arms, suddenly relaxed at the sound of that name. But there was no one approaching their black shapes, en- laced and struggling on the white background of the wall. “Linda! Poor Linda! I tremble! I shall die of fear before my poor sister Linda, betrothed to-day to Giovanni—my lover! Giovanni, you must have been mad! I cannot understand you! You are not like other men! I will not give you up—never—only to God himself! But why have you done this blind, ae cruel, frightful thing?”
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Released, she hung her head, let fall her hands. The altar-cloth, as if tossed by a great wind, lay far away from them, gleaming white on the black ground.
“From fear of losing my hope of you,”’ said Nostromo,
“You knew that you had my soul! You know every- thing! It was made for you! But what could stand between you and me? What? Tell me!’’ she re- peated, without impatience, in superb assurance.
“Your dead mother,” he said, very low.
“Ah! . . . Poor mother! She has always... She is a saint in heaven now, and I cannot give you up to her. No, Giovanni. Only to God alone. You were mad—br = it is done. Oh! what have you done? Giovanni, my »deloved, my life, my master, do not leave me here in this grave of clouds. You cannot leave me now. You must take me away—at once—this instant —in the little boat. Giovanni, carry me off to-night, from my fear of Linda’s eyes, before I have to look at her again.”
She nestled close tohim. The slave of the San Tomé silver felt the weight as of chains upon his limbs, a pres- sure as of a cold hand upon his lips. He struggled against the spell.
“TI cannot,” hesaid. ‘“‘Notyet. There is something that stands between us two and the freedom of the world.”
She pressed her form closer to his side with a subtle and naive instinct of seduction.
“You rave, Giovanni—my lover!” she whispered, engagingly. ‘‘What can there be? Carry me off—in thy very hands—to Dofia Emilia—away from here. I am not very heavy.”
It seemed as though she expected him to lift her up at once in his two palms. She had lost the notion of all impossibility. Anything could happen on this night of
540 ’ NOSTROMO ©
wonder. As he made no movement, she almost cried aloud— . .
“T tell youl am afraid of Linda!”’ And still he did not move. She became quiet and wily. ‘What can there be?” she asked, coaxingly.
He felt her warm, breathing, alive, quivering in the hollow of his arm. In the exulting consciousness of his strength, and the triumphant excitement of his mind, he struck out for his freedom.
“A treasure,” he said. All was still. She did not understand. “A treasure. A treasure of silver to buy a gold crown for thy brow.”
“A treasure?”’ she repeated in a faint voice, as i*
from the depths of a dream. “What is it you say?” She disengaged herself gently. He got up and looked down at her, aware of her face, of her hair, her lips, the dimples on her cheeks—seeing the fascination of her person inthe night of the gulf as if in the blaze of noon-
day. Her nonchalant and seductive voice trembled
with the excitement of admiring awe and ungovernable curiosity.
“A treasure of silver!’’? she stammered out. Then pressed on faster: “What? Where? How did. you get it, Giovanni?”
He wrestled with the spell of captivity. It was as if striking a heroic blow that he burst out—
“Like a thief!”
The densest blackness of the Placid Gulf seemed to fall upon his head. He could not see her now. She had vanished into a long, obscure abysmal silence, whence her voice came back to him after a time with a faint glimmer, which was her face.
“IT love you! I love you!”
These words gave him an unwonted sense of freedom; they cast a spell stronger than the accursed spell of the
= i
THE LIGHTHOUSE 541 treasure; they changed his weary subjection to that
dead thing into an exulting conviction of his power.
He would cherish her, he said, in a splendour as great as Dofia Emilia’s. The rich lived on wealth stolen from the people, but he had taken from the rich noth- ing—nothing that was not lost to them already by their folly and their betrayal. For he had been betrayed— he said—deceived, tempted. She believed him.... He had kept the treasure for purposes of revenge; but now he cared nothing for it. He cared only for her. He would put her beauty in a palace on a hill crowned with olive trees—a white palace above a blue sea. He would keep her there like a jewel in a casket. He would get land for her—her own land fertile with vines and corn —to set her little feet upon. Hekissed them... . He had already paid for it all with the soul of a woman and the life of a man. . . . The Capataz de Cargadores tasted the supreme intoxication of his gen- erosity. He flung the mastered treasure superbly at her feet in the impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in the darkness defying—as men said—the knowledge of God and the wit of the devil. But she must let him grow rich first—he warned her.
She listened as if in a trance. Her fingers stirred in hishair. Hegot up from his knees reeling, weak, empty, as though he had flung his soul away.