Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

0. Dedication and Author's Note (continued)

One more figure of those stirring times I would like to mention:
and that is Antonia Avellanos--the "beautiful Antonia." Whether
she is a possible variation of Latin-American girlhood I wouldn't
dare to affirm. But, for me, she is. Always a little in the
background by the side of her father (my venerated friend) I hope
she has yet relief enough to make intelligible what I am going to
say. Of all the people who had seen with me the birth of the
Occidental Republic, she is the only one who has kept in my
memory the aspect of continued life. Antonia the Aristocrat and
Nostromo the Man of the People are the artisans of the New Era,
the true creators of the New State; he by his legendary and
daring feat, she, like a woman, simply by the force of what she
is: the only being capable of inspiring a sincere passion in the
heart of a trifler.

If anything could induce me to revisit Sulaco (I should hate to
see all these changes) it would be Antonia. And the true reason
for that--why not be frank about it?--the true reason is that I
have modelled her on my first love. How we, a band of tallish
schoolboys, the chums of her two brothers, how we used to look up
to that girl just out of the schoolroom herself, as the
standard-bearer of a faith to which we all were born but which
she alone knew how to hold aloft with an unflinching hope! She
had perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than Antonia,
but she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism with no taint
of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only
one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her
scathing criticism of my levities--very much like poor Decoud--or
stand the brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. She did
not quite understand--but never mind. That afternoon when I came
in, a shrinking yet defiant sinner, to say the final good-bye I
received a hand-squeeze that made my heart leap and saw a tear
that took my breath away. She was softened at the last as though
she had suddenly perceived (we were such children still!) that I
was really going away for good, going very far away--even as far
as Sulaco, lying unknown, hidden from our eyes in the darkness of
the Placid Gulf.