Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

"Do you know whom you have killed?" he answered--

"Ramirez the vagabond."

White, and staring insanely at her father, Linda laughed in his
face. After a time he joined her faintly in a deep-toned and
distant echo of her peals. Then she stopped, and the old man
spoke as if startled--

"He cried out in son Gian' Battista's voice."

The gun fell from his opened hand, but the arm remained extended
for a moment as if still supported. Linda seized it roughly.

"You are too old to understand. Come into the house."

He let her lead him. On the threshold he stumbled heavily, nearly
coming to the ground together with his daughter. His excitement,
his activity of the last few days, had been like the flare of a
dying lamp. He caught at the back of his chair.

"In son Gian' Battista's voice," he repeated in a severe tone. "I
heard him--Ramirez--the miserable----"

Linda helped him into the chair, and, bending low, hissed into
his ear--

"You have killed Gian' Battista."

The old man smiled under his thick moustache. Women had strange
fancies.

"Where is the child?" he asked, surprised at the penetrating
chilliness of the air and the unwonted dimness of the lamp by
which he used to sit up half the night with the open Bible before
him.

Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her eyes.

"She is asleep," she said. "We shall talk of her tomorrow."

She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with terror and
with an almost unbearable feeling of pity. She had observed the
change that came over him. He would never understand what he had
done; and even to her the whole thing remained incomprehensible.
He said with difficulty--