Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 11. CHAPTER ELEVEN (continued)

"H'm," grunted the doctor; "getting old, I suppose. Even
Nostromo is getting older--though he is not changed. And,
speaking of that fellow, I wanted to tell you something----"

For some time the house had been full of murmurs, of agitation.
Suddenly the two gardeners, busy with rose trees at the side of
the garden arch, fell upon their knees with bowed heads on the
passage of Antonia Avellanos, who appeared walking beside her
uncle.

Invested with the red hat after a short visit to Rome, where he
had been invited by the Propaganda, Father Corbelan, missionary
to the wild Indians, conspirator, friend and patron of Hernandez
the robber, advanced with big, slow strides, gaunt and leaning
forward, with his powerful hands clasped behind his back. The
first Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco had preserved his fanatical
and morose air; the aspect of a chaplain of bandits. It was
believed that his unexpected elevation to the purple was a
counter-move to the Protestant invasion of Sulaco organized by
the Holroyd Missionary Fund. Antonia, the beauty of her face as
if a little blurred, her figure slightly fuller, advanced with
her light walk and her high serenity, smiling from a distance at
Mrs. Gould. She had brought her uncle over to see dear Emilia,
without ceremony, just for a moment before the siesta.

When all were seated again, Dr. Monygham, who had come to dislike
heartily everybody who approached Mrs. Gould with any intimacy,
kept aside, pretending to be lost in profound meditation. A
louder phrase of Antonia made him lift his head.

"How can we abandon, groaning under oppression, those who have
been our countrymen only a few years ago, who are our countrymen
now?" Miss Avellanos was saying. "How can we remain blind, and
deaf without pity to the cruel wrongs suffered by our brothers?
There is a remedy."

"Annex the rest of Costaguana to the order and prosperity of
Sulaco," snapped the doctor. "There is no other remedy."

"I am convinced, senor doctor," Antonia said, with the earnest
calm of invincible resolution, "that this was from the first poor
Martin's intention."