Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

The word had fixed itself tenaciously in his intelligence. His
imagination had seized upon the clear and simple notion of
betrayal to account for the dazed feeling of enlightenment as to
being done for, of having inadvertently gone out of his existence
on an issue in which his personality had not been taken into
account. A man betrayed is a man destroyed. Signora Teresa (may
God have her soul!) had been right. He had never been taken into
account. Destroyed! Her white form sitting up bowed in bed, the
falling black hair, the wide-browed suffering face raised to him,
the anger of her denunciations appeared to him now majestic with
the awfulness of inspiration and of death. For it was not for
nothing that the evil bird had uttered its lamentable shriek over
his head. She was dead--may God have her soul!

Sharing in the anti-priestly freethought of the masses, his mind
used the pious formula from the superficial force of habit, but
with a deep-seated sincerity. The popular mind is incapable of
scepticism; and that incapacity delivers their helpless strength
to the wiles of swindlers and to the pitiless enthusiasms of
leaders inspired by visions of a high destiny. She was dead. But
would God consent to receive her soul? She had died without
confession or absolution, because he had not been willing to
spare her another moment of his time. His scorn of priests as
priests remained; but after all, it was impossible to know
whether what they affirmed was not true. Power, punishment,
pardon, are simple and credible notions. The magnificent Capataz
de Cargadores, deprived of certain simple realities, such as the
admiration of women, the adulation of men, the admired publicity
of his life, was ready to feel the burden of sacrilegious guilt
descend upon his shoulders.

Bareheaded, in a thin shirt and drawers, he felt the lingering
warmth of the fine sand under the soles of his feet. The narrow
strand gleamed far ahead in a long curve, defining the outline of
this wild side of the harbour. He flitted along the shore like a
pursued shadow between the sombre palm-groves and the sheet of
water lying as still as death on his right hand. He strode with
headlong haste in the silence and solitude as though he had
forgotten all prudence and caution. But he knew that on this
side of the water he ran no risk of discovery. The only
inhabitant was a lonely, silent, apathetic Indian in charge of
the palmarias, who brought sometimes a load of cocoanuts to the
town for sale. He lived without a woman in an open shed, with a
perpetual fire of dry sticks smouldering near an old canoe lying
bottom up on the beach. He could be easily avoided.