Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN (continued)

She felt a shock, as though the bullet had struck her breast. She
ran on without pausing. The cottage was dark. She cried at the
door, "Giselle! Giselle!" then dashed round the corner and
screamed her sister's name at the open window, without getting an
answer; but as she was rushing, distracted, round the house,
Giselle came out of the door, and darted past her, running
silently, her hair loose, and her eyes staring straight ahead.
She seemed to skim along the grass as if on tiptoe, and vanished.

Linda walked on slowly, with her arms stretched out before her.
All was still on the island; she did not know where she was
going. The tree under which Martin Decoud spent his last days,
beholding life like a succession of senseless images, threw a
large blotch of black shade upon the grass. Suddenly she saw her
father, standing quietly all alone in the moonlight.

The Garibaldino--big, erect, with his snow-white hair and
beard--had a monumental repose in his immobility, leaning upon a
rifle. She put her hand upon his arm lightly. He never stirred.

"What have you done?" she asked, in her ordinary voice.

"I have shot Ramirez--infame!" he answered, with his eyes
directed to where the shade was blackest. "Like a thief he came,
and like a thief he fell. The child had to be protected."

He did not offer to move an inch, to advance a single step. He
stood there, rugged and unstirring, like a statue of an old man
guarding the honour of his house. Linda removed her trembling
hand from his arm, firm and steady like an arm of stone, and,
without a word, entered the blackness of the shade. She saw a
stir of formless shapes on the ground, and stopped short. A
murmur of despair and tears grew louder to her strained hearing.

"I entreated you not to come to-night. Oh, my Giovanni! And you
promised. Oh! Why--why did you come, Giovanni?"