Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
"Drive carefully." cried Mrs. Gould, in a tremulous voice.
"Si, carefully, si, nina," he mumbled, chewing his lips, his round leathery cheeks quivering. And the landau rolled slowly out of the light.
"I will see them as far as the ford," said Charles Gould to his wife. She stood on the edge of the sidewalk with her hands clasped lightly, and nodded to him as he followed after the carriage. And now the windows of the Amarilla Club were dark. The last spark of resistance had died out. Turning his head at the corner, Charles Gould saw his wife crossing over to their own gate in the lighted patch of the street. One of their neighbors, a well-known merchant and land-owner of the province, followed at her elbow, talking with great gestures. As she passed in all the lights went out in the street, which remained dark and empty from end to end.
The houses of the vast plaza were lost in the night. High up, like a star, there was a small gleam in one of the towers of the cathedral; and the equestrian statue gleamed pale against the black trees of the Alameda, like a ghost of royalty haunting the scenes of revolution. The rare prowlers they met ranged themselves against the wall. Beyond the last houses the carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft cushion of dust, and with a greater obscurity a feeling of freshness seemed to fall from the foliage of the trees bordering the country road. The emissary from Hernandez's camp pushed his horse close to Charles Gould.
"Caballero," he said, in an interested voice, "you are he whom they call the King of Sulaco, the master of the mine. Is it not so?"
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