“All this piece of land belongs now to the Railway Company. There will
be no more popular feasts held here.”
Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took this opportunity to
mention how she had just obtained from Sir John the promise that the
house occupied by Giorgio Viola should not be interfered with. She
declared she could never understand why the survey engineers ever talked
of demolishing that old building. It was not in the way of the projected
harbour branch of the line in the least.
She stopped the carriage before the door to reassure at once the old
Genoese, who came out bare-headed and stood by the carriage step.
She talked to him in Italian, of course, and he thanked her with calm
dignity. An old Garibaldino was grateful to her from the bottom of his
heart for keeping the roof over the heads of his wife and children. He
was too old to wander any more.
“And is it for ever, signora?” he asked.
“For as long as you like.”
“Bene. Then the place must be named, It was not worth while before.”
He smiled ruggedly, with a running together of wrinkles at the corners
of his eyes. “I shall set about the painting of the name to-morrow.”
“And what is it going to be, Giorgio?”
“Albergo d’Italia Una,” said the old Garibaldino, looking away for a
moment. “More in memory of those who have died,” he added, “than for the
country stolen from us soldiers of liberty by the craft of that accursed
Piedmontese race of kings and ministers.”
Mrs. Gould smiled slightly, and, bending over a little, began to inquire
about his wife and children. He had sent them into town on that day. The
padrona was better in health; many thanks to the signora for inquiring.
People were passing in twos and threes, in whole parties of men and
women attended by trotting children. A horseman mounted on a silver-grey
mare drew rein quietly in the shade of the house after taking off his
hat to the party in the carriage, who returned smiles and familiar
nods. Old Viola, evidently very pleased with the news he had just heard,
interrupted himself for a moment to tell him rapidly that the house was
secured, by the kindness of the English signora, for as long as he liked
to keep it. The other listened attentively, but made no response.
When the carriage moved on he took off his hat again, a grey sombrero
with a silver cord and tassels. The bright colours of a Mexican serape
twisted on the cantle, the enormous silver buttons on the embroidered
leather jacket, the row of tiny silver buttons down the seam of the
trousers, the snowy linen, a silk sash with embroidered ends, the silver
plates on headstall and saddle, proclaimed the unapproachable style of
the famous Capataz de Cargadores--a Mediterranean sailor--got up with
more finished splendour than any well-to-do young ranchero of the Campo
had ever displayed on a high holiday.
“It is a great thing for me,” murmured old Giorgio, still thinking of
the house, for now he had grown weary of change. “The signora just said
a word to the Englishman.”
“The old Englishman who has enough money to pay for a railway? He is
going off in an hour,” remarked Nostromo, carelessly. “_Buon viaggio_,
then. I’ve guarded his bones all the way from the Entrada pass down to
the plain and into Sulaco, as though he had been my own father.”
Old Giorgio only moved his head sideways absently. Nostromo pointed
after the Goulds’ carriage, nearing the grass-grown gate in the old town
wall that was like a wall of matted jungle.
“And I have sat alone at night with my revolver in the Company’s
warehouse time and again by the side of that other Englishman’s heap of
silver, guarding it as though it had been my own.”
Viola seemed lost in thought. “It is a great thing for me,” he repeated
again, as if to himself.
“It is,” agreed the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, calmly. “Listen,
Vecchio--go in and bring me, out a cigar, but don’t look for it in my
room. There’s nothing there.”
Viola stepped into the cafe and came out directly, still absorbed in his
idea, and tendered him a cigar, mumbling thoughtfully in his moustache,
“Children growing up--and girls, too! Girls!” He sighed and fell silent.
“What, only one?” remarked Nostromo, looking down with a sort of comic
inquisitiveness at the unconscious old man. “No matter,” he added, with
lofty negligence; “one is enough till another is wanted.”
He lit it and let the match drop from his passive fingers. Giorgio Viola
looked up, and said abruptly--
“My son would have been just such a fine young man as you, Gian’
Battista, if he had lived.”
“What? Your son? But you are right, padrone. If he had been like me he
would have been a man.”
He turned his horse slowly, and paced on between the booths, checking
the mare almost to a standstill now and then for children, for the
groups of people from the distant Campo, who stared after him with
admiration. The Company’s lightermen saluted him from afar; and the
greatly envied Capataz de Cargadores advanced, amongst murmurs of
recognition and obsequious greetings, towards the huge circus-like
erection. The throng thickened; the guitars tinkled louder; other
horsemen sat motionless, smoking calmly above the heads of the crowd; it
eddied and pushed before the doors of the high-roofed building, whence
issued a shuffle and thumping of feet in time to the dance music
vibrating and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung by the
tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo. The barbarous and
imposing noise of the big drum, that can madden a crowd, and that even
Europeans cannot hear without a strange emotion, seemed to draw Nostromo
on to its source, while a man, wrapped up in a faded, torn poncho,
walked by his stirrup, and, buffeted right and left, begged “his
worship” insistently for employment on the wharf. He whined, offering
the Senor Capataz half his daily pay for the privilege of being admitted
to the swaggering fraternity of Cargadores; the other half would
be enough for him, he protested. But Captain Mitchell’s right-hand
man--“invaluable for our work--a perfectly incorruptible fellow”--after
looking down critically at the ragged mozo, shook his head without a
word in the uproar going on around.
The man fell back; and a little further on Nostromo had to pull up. From
the doors of the dance hall men and women emerged tottering, streaming
with sweat, trembling in every limb, to lean, panting, with staring eyes
and parted lips, against the wall of the structure, where the harps
and guitars played on with mad speed in an incessant roll of thunder.
Hundreds of hands clapped in there; voices shrieked, and then all at
once would sink low, chanting in unison the refrain of a love song, with
a dying fall. A red flower, flung with a good aim from somewhere in the
crowd, struck the resplendent Capataz on the cheek.
He caught it as it fell, neatly, but for some time did not turn his
head. When at last he condescended to look round, the throng near him
had parted to make way for a pretty Morenita, her hair held up by a
small golden comb, who was walking towards him in the open space.
Her arms and neck emerged plump and bare from a snowy chemisette; the
blue woollen skirt, with all the fullness gathered in front, scanty on
the hips and tight across the back, disclosed the provoking action of
her walk. She came straight on and laid her hand on the mare’s neck with
a timid, coquettish look upwards out of the corner of her eyes.
“_Querido_,” she murmured, caressingly, “why do you pretend not to see me
when I pass?”
“Because I don’t love thee any more,” said Nostromo, deliberately, after
a moment of reflective silence.
The hand on the mare’s neck trembled suddenly. She dropped her head
before all the eyes in the wide circle formed round the generous, the
terrible, the inconstant Capataz de Cargadores, and his Morenita.
Nostromo, looking down, saw tears beginning to fall down her face.
“Has it come, then, ever beloved of my heart?” she whispered. “Is it
true?”
“No,” said Nostromo, looking away carelessly. “It was a lie. I love thee
as much as ever.”
“Is that true?” she cooed, joyously, her cheeks still wet with tears.
“It is true.”
“True on the life?”
“As true as that; but thou must not ask me to swear it on the Madonna
that stands in thy room.” And the Capataz laughed a little in response
to the grins of the crowd.
She pouted--very pretty--a little uneasy.
“No, I will not ask for that. I can see love in your eyes.” She laid
her hand on his knee. “Why are you trembling like this? From love?” she
continued, while the cavernous thundering of the gombo went on without a
pause. “But if you love her as much as that, you must give your Paquita
a gold-mounted rosary of beads for the neck of her Madonna.”
“No,” said Nostromo, looking into her uplifted, begging eyes, which
suddenly turned stony with surprise.
“No? Then what else will your worship give me on the day of the fiesta?”
she asked, angrily; “so as not to shame me before all these people.”
“There is no shame for thee in getting nothing from thy lover for once.”
“True! The shame is your worship’s--my poor lover’s,” she flared up,
sarcastically.
Laughs were heard at her anger, at her retort. What an audacious
spitfire she was! The people aware of this scene were calling out
urgently to others in the crowd. The circle round the silver-grey mare
narrowed slowly.
The girl went off a pace or two, confronting the mocking curiosity of
the eyes, then flung back to the stirrup, tiptoeing, her enraged face
turned up to Nostromo with a pair of blazing eyes. He bent low to her in
the saddle.
“Juan,” she hissed, “I could stab thee to the heart!”
The dreaded Capataz de Cargadores, magnificent and carelessly public
in his amours, flung his arm round her neck and kissed her spluttering
lips. A murmur went round.
“A knife!” he demanded at large, holding her firmly by the shoulder.
Twenty blades flashed out together in the circle. A young man in holiday
attire, bounding in, thrust one in Nostromo’s hand and bounded back into
the ranks, very proud of himself. Nostromo had not even looked at him.
“Stand on my foot,” he commanded the girl, who, suddenly subdued, rose
lightly, and when he had her up, encircling her waist, her face near to
his, he pressed the knife into her little hand.
“No, Morenita! You shall not put me to shame,” he said. “You shall have
your present; and so that everyone should know who is your lover to-day,
you may cut all the silver buttons off my coat.”
There were shouts of laughter and applause at this witty freak, while
the girl passed the keen blade, and the impassive rider jingled in his
palm the increasing hoard of silver buttons. He eased her to the ground
with both her hands full. After whispering for a while with a very
strenuous face, she walked away, staring haughtily, and vanished into
the crowd.
The circle had broken up, and the lordly Capataz de Cargadores, the
indispensable man, the tried and trusty Nostromo, the Mediterranean
sailor come ashore casually to try his luck in Costaguana, rode slowly
towards the harbour. The Juno was just then swinging round; and even
as Nostromo reined up again to look on, a flag ran up on the improvised
flagstaff erected in an ancient and dismantled little fort at the
harbour entrance. Half a battery of field guns had been hurried over
there from the Sulaco barracks for the purpose of firing the regulation
salutes for the President-Dictator and the War Minister. As the
mail-boat headed through the pass, the badly timed reports announced the
end of Don Vincente Ribiera’s first official visit to Sulaco, and for
Captain Mitchell the end of another “historic occasion.” Next time when
the “Hope of honest men” was to come that way, a year and a half later,
it was unofficially, over the mountain tracks, fleeing after a defeat on
a lame mule, to be only just saved by Nostromo from an ignominious death
at the hands of a mob. It was a very different event, of which Captain
Mitchell used to say--
“It was history--history, sir! And that fellow of mine, Nostromo, you
know, was right in it. Absolutely making history, sir.”
But this event, creditable to Nostromo, was to lead immediately to
another, which could not be classed either as “history” or as “a
mistake” in Captain Mitchell’s phraseology. He had another word for it.
“Sir” he used to say afterwards, “that was no mistake. It was a
fatality. A misfortune, pure and simple, sir. And that poor fellow of
mine was right in it--right in the middle of it! A fatality, if ever
there was one--and to my mind he has never been the same man since.”