On the day Mrs Gould was going, in Dr Monygham's words, to `give a tertulia ', Captain Fidanza went down the side of his schooner lying in Sulaco harbour, calm, unbending, deliberate in the way he sat down in his dinghy and took up his sculls. He was later than usual. The afternoon was well advanced before he landed on the beach of the Great Isabel, and with a steady pace climbed the slope of the island.
From a distance he made out Giselle sitting in a chair tilted back against the end of the house, under the window of the girl's room. She had her embroidery in her hands, and held it well up to her eyes. The tranquillity of that girlish figure exasperated the feeling of perpetual struggle and strife he carried in his breast. He became angry. It seemed to him that she ought to hear the clanking of his fetters -- his silver fetters, from afar. And while ashore that day, he had met the doctor with the evil eye, who had looked at him very hard.
The raising of her eyes mollified him. They smiled in their flower-like freshness straight upon his heart. Then she frowned. It was a warning to be cautious. He stopped some distance away, and in a loud, indifferent tone, said:
`Good day, Giselle. Is Linda up yet?'
`Yes. She is in the big room with father.'
He approached then, and, looking through the window into the bedroom for fear of being detected by Linda returning there for some reason, he said, moving only his lips:
`You love me?'
`More than my life,' She went on with her embroidery under his contemplating gaze and continued to speak, looking at her work, `Or I could not live.
I could not, Giovanni. For this life is like death. Oh, Giovanni, I shall perish if you do not take me away.'
He smiled carelessly. `I will come to the window when it's dark,' he said.
`No, don't, Giovanni. Not tonight. Linda and father have been talking together for a long time today.'
`What about?'
`Ramirez, I fancy I heard. I do not know. I am afraid. I am always afraid.
It is like dying a thousand times a day. Your love is to me like your treasure to you. It is there, but I can never get enough of it.'
He looked at her very still. She was beautiful. His desire had grown within him. He had two masters now. But she was incapable of sustained emotion. She was sincere in what she said, but she slept placidly at night.
When she saw him she flamed up always. Then only an increased taciturnity marked the change in her. She was afraid of betraying herself. She was afraid of pain, of bodily harm, of sharp words, of facing anger, and witnessing violence. For her soul was light and tender with a pagan sincerity in its impulses. She murmured:
`Give up the palazzo, Giovanni, and the vineyard on the hills, for which we are starving our love.'
She ceased, seeing Linda standing silent at the corner of the house.
Nostromo turned to his affianced wife with a greeting, and was amazed at her sunken eyes, at her hollow cheeks, at the air of illness and anguish in her face.
`Have you been ill?' he asked, trying to put some concern into this question.
Her black eyes blazed at him. `Am I thinner?' she asked.
`Yes -- perhaps -- a little.'
`And older?'
`Every day counts -- for all of us.'
`I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my finger,' she said, slowly, keeping her gaze fastened upon him.
She waited for what he would say, rolling down her turnedup sleeves.
`No fear of that,' he said, absently.
She turned away as if it had been something final, and busied herself with household cares while Nostromo talked with her father. Conversation with the old Garibaldino was not easy. Age had left his faculties unimpaired, only they seemed to have withdrawn somewhere deep within him. His answers were slow in coming, with an effect of august gravity. But that day he was more animated, quicker; there seemed to be more life in the old lion.
He was uneasy for the integrity of his honour. He believed Sidoni's warning as to Ramirez's designs upon his younger daughter. And he did not trust her. She was flighty. He said nothing of his cares to `Son Gian' Battista'.
It was a touch of senile vanity. He wanted to show that he was equal yet to the task of guarding alone the honour of his house.
Nostromo went away early. As soon as he had disappeared, walking towards the beach, Linda stepped over the threshold and, with a haggard smile, sat down by the side of her father.
Ever since that Sunday, when the infatuated and desperate Ramirez had waited for her on the wharf, she had no doubts whatever. The jealous ravings of that man were no revelation. They had only fixed with precision, as with a nail driven into her heart, that sense of unreality and deception which, instead of bliss and security, she had found in her intercourse with her promised husband. She had passed on, pouring indignation and scorn upon Ramirez; but, that Sunday, she nearly died of wretchedness and shame, lying on the carved and lettered stone of Teresa's grave, subscribed for by the engine-drivers and the fitters of the railway workshops, in sign of their respect for the hero of Italian Unity. Old Viola had not been able to carry out his desire of burying his wife in the sea; and Linda wept upon the stone.
The gratuitous outrage appalled her. If he wished to break her heart -- well and good. Everything was permitted to Gian' Battista. But why trample upon the pieces; why seek to humiliate her spirit? Aha! He could not break that. She dried her tears. And Giselle! Giselle! The little one that, ever since she could toddle, had always clung to her skirt for protection. What duplicity! But she could not help it probably. When there was a man in the case the poor featherheaded wretch could not help herself.
Linda had a good share of the Viola stoicism. She resolved to say nothing.
