Page 519 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

Silent in inhospitable darkness, the Casa Viola seemed
to have changed its nature; his home appeared to repel him
with an air of hopeless and inimical mystery. The doctor
said—
‘You will be safe there. Go in, Capataz.’
‘How can I go in?’ Nostromo seemed to ask himself in
a low, inward tone. ‘She cannot unsay what she said, and I
cannot undo what I have done.’
‘I tell you it is all right. Viola is all alone in there. I looked
in as I came out of the town. You will be perfectly safe in
that house till you leave it to make your name famous on
the Campo. I am going now to arrange for your departure
with the engineer-in-chief, and I shall bring you news here
long before daybreak.’
Dr. Monygham, disregarding, or perhaps fearing to
penetrate the meaning of Nostromo’s silence, clapped him
lightly on the shoulder, and starting off with his smart,
lame walk, vanished utterly at the third or fourth hop in
the direction of the railway track. Arrested between the two
wooden posts for people to fasten their horses to, Nostro-
mo did not move, as if he, too, had been planted solidly in
the ground. At the end of half an hour he lifted his head to
the deep baying of the dogs at the railway yards, which had
burst out suddenly, tumultuous and deadened as if coming
from under the plain. That lame doctor with the evil eye
had got there pretty fast.
Step by step Nostromo approached the Albergo d’Italia
Una, which he had never known so lightless, so silent, be-
fore. The door, all black in the pale wall, stood open as he

1 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard