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

‘That’s different. I’ve been away ten years. Dad never hadsuch a long spell; and it was more than thirty years ago.’She was the first person to whom he opened his lips afterreceiving the news of his father’s death.‘It has killed him!’ he said.He had walked straight out of town with the news,straight out before him in the noonday sun on the whiteroad, and his feet had brought him face to face with her inthe hall of the ruined palazzo, a room magnificent and naked,with here and there a long strip of damask, black withdamp and age, hanging down on a bare panel of the wall. Itwas furnished with exactly one gilt armchair, with a brokenback, and an octagon columnar stand bearing a heavy marblevase ornamented with sculptured masks and garlandsof flowers, and cracked from top to bottom. Charles Gouldwas dusty with the white dust of the road lying on his boots,on his shoulders, on his cap with two peaks. Water drippedfrom under it all over his face, and he grasped a thick oakencudgel in his bare right hand.She went very pale under the roses of her big straw hat,gloved, swinging a clear sunshade, caught just as she wasgoing out to meet him at the bottom of the hill, where threepoplars stand near the wall of a vineyard.‘It has killed him!’ he repeated. ‘He ought to have hadmany years yet. We are a long-lived family.’She was too startled to say anything; he was contemplatingwith a penetrating and motionless stare the crackedmarble urn as though he had resolved to fix its shape forever in his memory. It was only when, turning suddenly