Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

of lust between bands of absurd devils let loose upon theland with sabres and uniforms and grandiloquent phrases.And on all the lips she found a weary desire for peace, thedread of officialdom with its nightmarish parody of administrationwithout law, without security, and without justice.She bore a whole two months of wandering very well; shehad that power of resistance to fatigue which one discovershere and there in some quite frail-looking women with surprise—likea state of possession by a remarkably stubbornspirit. Don Pepe—the old Costaguana major—after muchdisplay of solicitude for the delicate lady, had ended by conferringupon her the name of the ‘Never-tired Senora.’ Mrs.Gould was indeed becoming a Costaguanera. Having acquiredin Southern Europe a knowledge of true peasantry,she was able to appreciate the great worth of the people. Shesaw the man under the silent, sad-eyed beast of burden. Shesaw them on the road carrying loads, lonely figures uponthe plain, toiling under great straw hats, with their whiteclothing flapping about their limbs in the wind; she rememberedthe villages by some group of Indian women at thefountain impressed upon her memory, by the face of someyoung Indian girl with a melancholy and sensual profile,raising an earthenware vessel of cool water at the door of adark hut with a wooden porch cumbered with great brownjars. The solid wooden wheels of an ox-cart, halted with itsshafts in the dust, showed the strokes of the axe; and a partyof charcoal carriers, with each man’s load resting above hishead on the top of the low mud wall, slept stretched in a rowwithin the strip of shade.