Page 524 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

decaying strength.
He extended his hand grasping the briar-wood pipe,
whose bowl was charred on the edge, and knitted his bushy
eyebrows heavily at the light.
‘You have returned,’ he said, with shaky dignity. ‘Ah!
Very well! I——‘
He broke off. Nostromo, leaning back against the table,
his arms folded on his breast, nodded at him slightly.
‘You thought I was drowned! No! The best dog of the rich,
of the aristocrats, of these fine men who can only talk and
betray the people, is not dead yet.’
The Garibaldino, motionless, seemed to drink in the
sound of the well-known voice. His head moved slightly
once as if in sign of approval; but Nostromo saw clearly that
the old man understood nothing of the words. There was no
one to understand; no one he could take into the confidence
of Decoud’s fate, of his own, into the secret of the silver. That
doctor was an enemy of the people—a tempter….
Old Giorgio’s heavy frame shook from head to foot with
the effort to overcome his emotion at the sight of that man,
who had shared the intimacies of his domestic life as though
he had been a grown-up son.
‘She believed yon would return,’ he said, solemnly.
Nostromo raised his head.
‘She was a wise woman. How could I fail to come back—
—?’
He finished the thought mentally: ‘Since she has prophe-
sied for me an end of poverty, misery, and starvation.’ These
words of Teresa’s anger, from the circumstances in which