Page 213 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

‘A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular
pulse, and this man is one of the leaders of the populace. A
journalist ought to know remarkable men—and this man is
remarkable in his way.’
‘Ah, yes!’ said Antonia, thoughtfully. ‘It is known that
this Italian has a great influence.’
The horseman had passed below them, with a gleam of
dim light on the shining broad quarters of the grey mare,
on a bright heavy stirrup, on a long silver spur; but the short
flick of yellowish flame in the dusk was powerless against
the muffled-up mysteriousness of the dark figure with an
invisible face concealed by a great sombrero.
Decoud and Antonia remained leaning over the balcony,
side by side, touching elbows, with their heads overhanging
the darkness of the street, and the brilliantly lighted sala
at their backs. This was a tete-a-tete of extreme impropri-
ety; something of which in the whole extent of the Republic
only the extraordinary Antonia could be capable—the poor,
motherless girl, never accompanied, with a careless father,
who had thought only of making her learned. Even Decoud
himself seemed to feel that this was as much as he could
expect of having her to himself till—till the revolution was
over and he could carry her off to Europe, away from the
endlessness of civil strife, whose folly seemed even harder
to bear than its ignominy. After one Montero there would
be another, the lawlessness of a populace of all colours and
races, barbarism, irremediable tyranny. As the great Liber-
ator Bolivar had said in the bitterness of his spirit, ‘America
is ungovernable. Those who worked for her independence

1 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard