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

me to keep on being what I am: every day alike.’‘You never change, indeed,’ she said, bitterly. ‘Alwaysthinking of yourself and taking your pay out in fine wordsfrom those who care nothing for you.’There was between them an intimacy of antagonism asclose in its way as the intimacy of accord and affection. Hehad not walked along the way of Teresa’s expectations. Itwas she who had encouraged him to leave his ship, in thehope of securing a friend and defender for the girls. Thewife of old Giorgio was aware of her precarious health, andwas haunted by the fear of her aged husband’s lonelinessand the unprotected state of the children. She had wantedto annex that apparently quiet and steady young man, affectionateand pliable, an orphan from his tenderest age, ashe had told her, with no ties in Italy except an uncle, ownerand master of a felucca, from whose ill-usage he had runaway before he was fourteen. He had seemed to her courageous,a hard worker, determined to make his way inthe world. From gratitude and the ties of habit he wouldbecome like a son to herself and Giorgio; and then, whoknows, when Linda had grown up…. Ten years’ differencebetween husband and wife was not so much. Her own greatman was nearly twenty years older than herself. Gian’ Battistawas an attractive young fellow, besides; attractive tomen, women, and children, just by that profound quietnessof personality which, like a serene twilight, rendered moreseductive the promise of his vigorous form and the resolutionof his conduct.Old Giorgio, in profound ignorance of his wife’s views