Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

Going ashore in the same boat with the Goulds, Don Jose Avellanos
was very silent. Even in the Gould carriage he did not open his
lips for a long time. The mules trotted slowly away from the
wharf between the extended hands of the beggars, who for that day
seemed to have abandoned in a body the portals of churches.
Charles Gould sat on the back seat and looked away upon the
plain. A multitude of booths made of green boughs, of rushes, of
odd pieces of plank eked out with bits of canvas had been erected
all over it for the sale of cana, of dulces, of fruit, of cigars.
Over little heaps of glowing charcoal Indian women, squatting on
mats, cooked food in black earthen pots, and boiled the water for
the mate gourds, which they offered in soft, caressing voices to
the country people. A racecourse had been staked out for the
vaqueros; and away to the left, from where the crowd was massed
thickly about a huge temporary erection, like a circus tent of
wood with a conical grass roof, came the resonant twanging of
harp strings, the sharp ping of guitars, with the grave drumming
throb of an Indian gombo pulsating steadily through the shrill
choruses of the dancers.

Charles Gould said presently--

"All this piece of land belongs now to the Railway Company. There
will be no more popular feasts held here."

Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took this
opportunity to mention how she had just obtained from Sir John
the promise that the house occupied by Giorgio Viola should not
be interfered with. She declared she could never understand why
the survey engineers ever talked of demolishing that old
building. It was not in the way of the projected harbour branch
of the line in the least.

She stopped the carriage before the door to reassure at once the
old Genoese, who came out bare-headed and stood by the carriage
step. She talked to him in Italian, of course, and he thanked her
with calm dignity. An old Garibaldino was grateful to her from
the bottom of his heart for keeping the roof over the heads of
his wife and children. He was too old to wander any more.

"And is it for ever, signora?" he asked.