Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

"You go in at once, Giorgio," she directed. "One would think you
do not wish to have any pity on me--with four Signori Inglesi
staying in the house." "Va bene, va bene," Giorgio would mutter.
He obeyed. The Signori Inglesi would require their midday meal
presently. He had been one of the immortal and invincible band
of liberators who had made the mercenaries of tyranny fly like
chaff before a hurricane, "un uragano terribile." But that was
before he was married and had children; and before tyranny had
reared its head again amongst the traitors who had imprisoned
Garibaldi, his hero.

There were three doors in the front of the house, and each
afternoon the Garibaldino could be seen at one or another of them
with his big bush of white hair, his arms folded, his legs
crossed, leaning back his leonine head against the side, and
looking up the wooded slopes of the foothills at the snowy dome
of Higuerota. The front of his house threw off a black long
rectangle of shade, broadening slowly over the soft ox-cart
track. Through the gaps, chopped out in the oleander hedges, the
harbour branch railway, laid out temporarily on the level of the
plain, curved away its shining parallel ribbons on a belt of
scorched and withered grass within sixty yards of the end of the
house. In the evening the empty material trains of flat cars
circled round the dark green grove of Sulaco, and ran, undulating
slightly with white jets of steam, over the plain towards the
Casa Viola, on their way to the railway yards by the harbour. The
Italian drivers saluted him from the foot-plate with raised hand,
while the negro brakesmen sat carelessly on the brakes, looking
straight forward, with the rims of their big hats flapping in the
wind. In return Giorgio would give a slight sideways jerk of the
head, without unfolding his arms.