Page 266 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

holding a bottle, and sobbing gently to herself.
‘I busied myself for some time in fetching water from the
cistern for the wounded. Afterwards I wandered upstairs,
meeting some of the first ladies of Sulaco, paler than I had
ever seen them before, with bandages over their arms. Not
all of them had fled to the ships. A good many had taken
refuge for the day in the Casa Gould. On the landing a girl,
with her hair half down, was kneeling against the wall un-
der the niche where stands a Madonna in blue robes and a
gilt crown on her head. I think it was the eldest Miss Lopez;
I couldn’t see her face, but I remember looking at the high
French heel of her little shoe. She did not make a sound, she
did not stir, she was not sobbing; she remained there, per-
fectly still, all black against the white wall, a silent figure
of passionate piety. I am sure she was no more frightened
than the other white-faced ladies I met carrying bandages.
One was sitting on the top step tearing a piece of linen hast-
ily into strips—the young wife of an elderly man of fortune
here. She interrupted herself to wave her hand to my bow,
as though she were in her carriage on the Alameda. The
women of our country are worth looking at during a revo-
lution. The rouge and pearl powder fall off, together with
that passive attitude towards the outer world which educa-
tion, tradition, custom impose upon them from the earliest
infancy. I thought of your face, which from your infancy
had the stamp of intelligence instead of that patient and re-
signed cast which appears when some political commotion
tears down the veil of cosmetics and usage.
‘In the great sala upstairs a sort of Junta of Notables was