第176章

`Mrs Gould, you are wanted. Do you know what has happened? You remember what I told you yesterday about Nostromo. Well, it seems that a lancha , a decked boat, coming from Zapiga, with four Negroes in her, passing close to the Great Isabel, was hailed from the cliff by a woman's voice -- Linda's, as a matter of fact -- commanding them (it's a moonlight night) to go round to the beach and take up a wounded man to the town. The patron (from whom I've heard all this), of course, did so at once. He told me that when they got round to the low side of the Great Isabel, they found Linda Viola waiting for them. They followed her: she led them under a tree not far from the cottage. There they found Nostromo lying on the ground with his head in the younger girl's lap, and father Viola standing some distance off leaning on his gun. Under Linda's direction they got a table out of the cottage for a stretcher, after breaking off the legs. They are here, Mrs Gould. I mean Nostromo and -- and Giselle. The Negroes brought him in to the first-aid hospital near the harbour. He made the attendant send for me. But it is not me he wanted to see -- it was you, Mrs Gould! It was you.'

`Me?' whispered Mrs Gould, shrinking a little.

`Yes, you!' the doctor burst out. `He begged me -- his enemy, as he thinks -- to bring you to him at once. It seems he has something to say to you alone.'

`Impossible!' murmured Mrs Gould.

`He said to me, "Remind her that I have done something to keep a roof over her head." . . . Mrs Gould,' the doctor pursued, in the greatest excitement.

`Do you remember the silver? The silver in the lighter -- that was lost!'

Mrs Gould remembered. But she did not say she hated the mere mention of that silver. Frankness personified, she remembered with an exaggerated horror that for the first and last time of her life she had concealed the truth from her husband about that very silver. She had been corrupted by her fears at that time, and she had never forgiven herself. Moreover, that silver, which would never have come down if her husband had been made acquainted with the news brought by Decould, had been in a roundabout way nearly the cause of Dr Monygham's death. And these things appeared to her very dreadful.

`Was it lost, though?' the doctor exclaimed. `I've always felt that there was a mystery about our Nostromo ever since. I do believe he wants now, at the point of death--'

`The point of death,' repeated Mrs Gould.

`Yes. Yes . . . He wants perhaps to tell you something concerning that silver which--'

`Oh, no! No!' exclaimed Mrs Gould, in a low voice. `Isn't it lost and done with? Isn't there enough treasure without it to make everybody in the world miserable?'

The doctor remained still, in a submissive, disappointed silence. At last he ventured, very low:

`And there is that Viola girl, Giselle. What are we to do? It looks as though father and sister had--'

Mrs Gould admitted that she felt in duty bound to do her best for these girls.

`I have a volante here,' the doctor said. `If you don't mind getting into that--'

He waited, all impatience, till Mrs Gould reappeared, having thrown over her dress a grey cloak with a deep hood.

It was thus that, cloaked and monastically hooded over her evening costume, this woman, full of endurance and compassion, stood by the side of the bed on which the splendid Capataz de Cargadores lay stretched out motionless on his back. The whiteness of sheets and pillows gave a sombre and energetic relief to his bronzed face, to the dark, nervous hands, so good on a tiller, upon a bridle, and on a trigger, lying open and idle upon a white coverlet.

`She is innocent,' the Capataz was saying in a deep and level voice, as though afraid that a louder word would break the slender hold his spirit still kept upon his body. `She is innocent. It is I alone. But no matter.

For these things I would answer to no man or woman alive.'

He paused. Mrs Gould's face, very white within the shadow of the hood, bent over him with an invincible and dreary sadness. And the low sobs of Giselle Viola, kneeling at the end of the bed, her gold hair with coppery gleams loose and scattered over the Capataz's feet, hardly troubled the silence of the room.

`Ha! Old Giorgio -- the guardian of thine honour! Fancy the Vecchio coming upon me so light of foot, so steady of aim. I myself could have done no better. But the price of a charge of powder might have been saved.

The honour was safe. . . . Senora , she would have followed to the end of the world Nostromo the thief. . . . I have said the word. The spell is broken!'

A low moan from the girl made him cast his eyes down.

`I cannot see her. . . . No matter,' he went on, with the shadow of the old magnificent carelessness in his voice. `One kiss is enough, if there is no time for more. An airy soul, senora ! Bright and warm, like sunshine -- soon clouded, and soon serene. They would crush it there between them. Senora , cast on her the eye of your compassion, as famed from one end of the land to the other as the courage and daring of the man who speaks to you. She will console herself in time. And even Ramirez is not a bad fellow. I am not angry. No! It is not Ramirez who overcame the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores.' He paused, made an effort, and in a louder voice, a little wildly, declared:

`I die betrayed -- betrayed by--'

But he did not say by whom or by what he was dying betrayed.

`She would not have betrayed me,' he began again, opening his eyes very wide. `She was faithful. We were going very far -- very soon. I could have torn myself away from that accursed treasure for her. For that child Iwould have left boxes and boxes of it -- full. And Decoud took four. Four ingots. Why? Picardia ! To betray me? How could I give back the treasure with four ingots missing? They would have said I had purloined them. The doctor would have said that. Alas! it holds me yet!'

Mrs Gould bent low, fascinated -- cold with apprehension.

`What became of Don Martin on that night, Nostromo?'