Page 287 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

me to keep on being what I am: every day alike.’
‘You never change, indeed,’ she said, bitterly. ‘Always
thinking of yourself and taking your pay out in fine words
from those who care nothing for you.’
There was between them an intimacy of antagonism as
close in its way as the intimacy of accord and affection. He
had not walked along the way of Teresa’s expectations. It
was she who had encouraged him to leave his ship, in the
hope of securing a friend and defender for the girls. The
wife of old Giorgio was aware of her precarious health, and
was haunted by the fear of her aged husband’s loneliness
and the unprotected state of the children. She had wanted
to annex that apparently quiet and steady young man, af-
fectionate and pliable, an orphan from his tenderest age, as
he had told her, with no ties in Italy except an uncle, owner
and master of a felucca, from whose ill-usage he had run
away before he was fourteen. He had seemed to her cou-
rageous, a hard worker, determined to make his way in
the world. From gratitude and the ties of habit he would
become like a son to herself and Giorgio; and then, who
knows, when Linda had grown up…. Ten years’ difference
between husband and wife was not so much. Her own great
man was nearly twenty years older than herself. Gian’ Bat-
tista was an attractive young fellow, besides; attractive to
men, women, and children, just by that profound quietness
of personality which, like a serene twilight, rendered more
seductive the promise of his vigorous form and the resolu-
tion of his conduct.
Old Giorgio, in profound ignorance of his wife’s views

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard