To-morrow
- ISBN-10
- ISBN-13
- 9798710085295
- Series
- To-Morrow
- Pages
- 30
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-02-17
- Author
- Joseph Conrad
Description
What was known of Captain Hagberd in the little seaport of Colebrookwas not exactly in his favour. He did not belong to the place. He had cometo settle there under circumstances not at all mysterious-he used to bevery communicative about them at the time-but extremely morbid andunreasonable. He was possessed of some little money evidently, because hebought a plot of ground, and had a pair of ugly yellow brick cottages runup very cheaply. He occupied one of them himself and let the other toJosiah Carvil-blind Carvil, the retired boat-builder-a man of evil reputeas a domestic tyrant.These cottages had one wall in common, shared in a line of iron railingdividing their front gardens; a wooden fence separated their back gardens.Miss Bessie Carvil was allowed, as it were of right, to throw over it the teacloths, blue rags, or an apron that wanted drying."It rots the wood, Bessie my girl," the captain would remark mildly, from his side of the fence, each time he saw her exercising that privilege.She was a tall girl; the fence was low, and she could spread her elbowson the top. Her hands would be red with the bit of washing she had done, but her forearms were white and shapely, and she would look at herfather's landlord in silence-in an informed silence which had an air ofknowledge, expectation and desire."It rots the wood," repeated Captain Hagberd. "It is the only unthrifty, careless habit I know in you. Why don't you have a clothes line out in yourback yard?"Miss Carvil would say nothing to this-she only shook her headnegatively. The tiny back yard on her side had a few stone-bordered littlebeds of black earth, in which the simple flowers she found time to cultivateappeared somehow extravagantly overgrown, as if belonging to an exoticclime; and Captain Hagberd's upright, hale person, clad in No. 1 sail-clothfrom head to foot, would be emerging knee-deep out of rank grass and thetall weeks on his side of the fence. He appeared, with the colour anduncouth stiffness of the extraordinary material in which he chose to clothehimself-"for the time being," would be his mumbled remark to anyobservation on the subject-like a man roughened out of granite, standingin a wilderness not big enough for a decent billiard-ro
