`She was a wise woman. How could I fail to come back--?'
He finished the thought mentally: `Since she has prophesied for me an end of poverty, misery, and starvation.' These words of Teresa's anger, from the circumstances in which they had been uttered, like the cry of a soul prevented from making its peace with God, stirred the obscure superstition of personal fortune from which even the greatest genius amongst men of adventure and action is seldom free. They reigned over Nostromo's mind with the force of a potent malediction. And what a curse it was that which her words had laid upon him! He had been orphaned so young that he could remember no other woman whom he called mother. Henceforth there would be no enterprise in which he would not fail. The spell was working already.
Death itself would elude him now. . . . He said violently:
`Come, viejo ! Get me something to eat. I am hungry! Sangre de Dios! The emptiness of my belly makes me lightheaded.'
With his chin dropped again upon his bare breast above his folded arms, barefooted, watching from under a gloomy brow the movements of old Viola foraging amongst the cupboards, he seemed as if indeed fallen under a curse -- a ruined and sinister Capataz.
Old Viola walked out of a dark corner, and, without a word, emptied upon the table out of his hollowed palms a few dry crusts of bread and half a raw onion.
While the Capataz began to devour his beggar's fare, taking up with stony-eyed voracity piece after piece lying by his side, the Garibaldino went off, and squatting down in another corner filled an earthenware mug with red wine out of a wicker-covered demijohn. With a familiar gesture, as when serving customers in the cafe, he had thrust his pipe between his teeth to have his hands free.
The Capataz drank greedily. A slight flush deepened the bronze of his cheek. Before him, Viola, with a turn of his white and massive head towards the staircase, took his empty pipe out of his mouth, and pronounced slowly:
`After the shot was fired down here, which killed her as surely as if the bullet had struck her oppressed heart, she called upon you to save the children. Upon you, Gian' Battista.'
The Capataz looked up.
`Did she do that, Padrone? To save the children! They are with the English senora , their rich benefactress. Hey! old man of the people. Thy benefactress. . . .'
`I am old,' muttered Giorgio Viola. `An Englishwoman was allowed to give a bed to Garibaldi lying wounded in prison. The greatest man that ever lived. A man of the people, too -- a sailor. I may let another keep a roof over my head. Si . . . I am old. I may let her. Life lasts too long sometimes.'
`And she herself may not have a roof over her head before many days are out, unless I . . . What do you say? Am I to keep a roof over her head?
Am I to try -- and save all the Blancos together with her?'
`You shall do it,' said old Viola in a strong voice. `You shall do it as my son would have. . . .'
`Thy son, viejo ! . . . There never has been a man like thy son.
Ha, I must try. . . . But what if it were only a part of the curse to lure me on? . . . And so she called upon me to save -- and then--?'
`She spoke no more.' The heroic follower of Garibaldi, at the thought of the eternal stillness and silence fallen upon the shrouded form stretched out on the bed upstairs, averted his face and raised his hand to his furrowed brow. `She was dead before I could seize her hands,' he stammered out, pitifully.
Before the wide eyes of the Capataz, staring at the doorway of the dark staircase, floated the shape of the Great Isabel, like a strange ship in distress, freighted with enormous wealth and the solitary life of a man.
It was impossible for him to do anything. He could only hold his tongue, since there was no one to trust. The treasure would be lost, probably --unless Decoud. . . . And his thought came abruptly to an end. He perceived that he could not imagine in the least what Decoud was likely to do.
Old Viola had not stirred. And the motionless Capataz dropped his long, soft eyelashes, which gave to the upper part of his fierce, black-whiskered face a touch of feminine ingenuousness. The silence had lasted for a long time.
`God rest her soul!' he murmured, gloomily.