Page 91 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

to grow rich eventually if possible, but at any rate to put
some money at once in his pocket. No. Even if it had been
feasible—which I doubt—I would not have done so. Poor fa-
ther did not understand. He was afraid I would hang on to
the ruinous thing, waiting for just some such chance, and
waste my life miserably. That was the true sense of his pro-
hibition, which we have deliberately set aside.’
They were walking up and down the corredor. Her head
just reached to his shoulder. His arm, extended downwards,
was about her waist. His spurs jingled slightly.
‘He had not seen me for ten years. He did not know me.
He parted from me for my sake, and he would never let me
come back. He was always talking in his letters of leaving
Costaguana, of abandoning everything and making his
escape. But he was too valuable a prey. They would have
thrown him into one of their prisons at the first suspicion.’
His spurred feet clinked slowly. He was bending over his
wife as they walked. The big parrot, turning its head askew,
followed their pacing figures with a round, unblinking eye.
‘He was a lonely man. Ever since I was ten years old he
used to talk to me as if I had been grown up. When I was in
Europe he wrote to me every month. Ten, twelve pages ev-
ery month of my life for ten years. And, after all, he did not
know me! Just think of it—ten whole years away; the years I
was growing up into a man. He could not know me. Do you
think he could?’
Mrs. Gould shook her head negatively; which was just
what her husband had expected from the strength of the ar-
gument. But she shook her head negatively only because she

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard