Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

"I have a volante here," the doctor said. "If you don't mind
getting into that----"

He waited, all impatience, till Mrs. Gould reappeared, having
thrown over her dress a grey cloak with a deep hood.

It was thus that, cloaked and monastically hooded over her
evening costume, this woman, full of endurance and compassion,
stood by the side of the bed on which the splendid Capataz de
Cargadores lay stretched out motionless on his back. The
whiteness of sheets and pillows gave a sombre and energetic
relief to his bronzed. face, to the dark, nervous hands, so good
on a tiller, upon a bridle and on a trigger, lying open and idle
upon a white coverlet.

"She is innocent," the Capataz was saying in a deep and level
voice, as though afraid that a louder word would break the
slender hold his spirit still kept upon his body. "She is
innocent. It is I alone. But no matter. For these things I would
answer to no man or woman alive."

He paused. Mrs. Gould's face, very white within the shadow of the
hood, bent over him with an invincible and dreary sadness. And
the low sobs of Giselle Viola, kneeling at the end of the bed,
her gold hair with coppery gleams loose and scattered over the
Capataz's feet, hardly troubled the silence of the room.

"Ha! Old Giorgio--the guardian of thine honour! Fancy the
Vecchio coming upon me so light of foot, so steady of aim. I
myself could have done no better. But the price of a charge of
powder might have been saved. The honour was safe. . . . Senora,
she would have followed to the end of the world Nostromo the
thief. . . . I have said the word. The spell is broken!"

A low moan from the girl made him cast his eyes down.