Page 221 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

had risen, and, waiting for Antonia, listened with a slightly
worried graciousness to the engineer-in-chief of the railway,
who stooped over her, relating slowly, without the slightest
gesture, something apparently amusing, for his eyes had a
humorous twinkle. Antonia, before she advanced into the
room to join Mrs. Gould, turned her head over her shoulder
towards Decoud, only for a moment.
‘Why should any one of us think his aspirations unreal-
izable?’ she said, rapidly.
‘I am going to cling to mine to the end, Antonia,’ he an-
swered, through clenched teeth, then bowed very low, a
little distantly.
The engineer-in-chief had not finished telling his amus-
ing story. The humours of railway building in South America
appealed to his keen appreciation of the absurd, and he told
his instances of ignorant prejudice and as ignorant cunning
very well. Now, Mrs. Gould gave him all her attention as he
walked by her side escorting the ladies out of the room. Fi-
nally all three passed unnoticed through the glass doors in
the gallery. Only a tall priest stalking silently in the noise
of the sala checked himself to look after them. Father Cor-
belan, whom Decoud had seen from the balcony turning
into the gateway of the Casa Gould, had addressed no one
since coming in. The long, skimpy soutane accentuated the
tallness of his stature; he carried his powerful torso thrown
forward; and the straight, black bar of his joined eyebrows,
the pugnacious outline of the bony face, the white spot of a
scar on the bluish shaven cheeks (a testimonial to his apos-
tolic zeal from a party of unconverted Indians), suggested

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard