Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
out ties and without establishment (except of the professional sort), he had been asked to take up his quarters in the Gould house. In the eighteen months of their absence these familiar rooms, recalling at every glance the woman to whom he had given all his loyalty, had grown intolerable. As the day approached for the arrival of the mail-boat Hermes (the latest addition to the O.S.N. Company's splendid fleet), the doctor hobbled about more vivaciously, snapped more sardonically at simple and gentle, out of sheer nervousness.
He packed up his modest trunk with speed, with fury, with enthusiasm, and saw it carried out past the old porter at the gate of the Casa Gould with delight, with intoxication; then, as the hour approached, sitting alone in the great landau behind the white mules, a little sideways, his drawn-up face positively venomous with the effort of self-control, and holding a pair of new gloves in his left hand, he drove to the harbor.
His heart dilated within him so when he saw the Goulds on the deck of the Hermes that his greetings were reduced to a casual mutter. Driving back to town, all three were silent. And in the patio the doctor, in a more natural manner, said:
"I'll leave you now to yourselves. I'll call to-morrow, if I may?"
"Come to lunch, dear Dr. Monygham, and come early," said Mrs. Gould, in her travelling-dress and her veil down, turning to look at him at the foot of the stairs; while at the top of the flight the Madonna, in blue robes, and the Child on her arm, seemed to welcome her with an aspect of pitying tenderness.
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