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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/494-0.txt b/494-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6d255fd --- /dev/null +++ b/494-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1544 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of To-morrow, by Joseph Conrad + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: To-morrow + +Author: Joseph Conrad + +Release Date: April 1996 [EBook #494] +Posting Date: June 18, 2009 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO-MORROW *** + + + + +Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger + + + + + +TO-MORROW + + +By Joseph Conrad + + +What was known of Captain Hagberd in the little seaport of Colebrook was +not exactly in his favour. He did not belong to the place. He had come +to settle there under circumstances not at all mysterious--he used to +be very communicative about them at the time--but extremely morbid and +unreasonable. He was possessed of some little money evidently, because +he bought a plot of ground, and had a pair of ugly yellow brick cottages +run up very cheaply. He occupied one of them himself and let the other +to Josiah Carvil--blind Carvil, the retired boat-builder--a man of evil +repute as a domestic tyrant. + +These cottages had one wall in common, shared in a line of iron railing +dividing 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 tea-cloths, 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 elbows +on 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 her +father’s landlord in silence--in an informed silence which had an air of +knowledge, 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 +your back yard?” + +Miss Carvil would say nothing to this--she only shook her head +negatively. The tiny back yard on her side had a few stone-bordered +little beds of black earth, in which the simple flowers she found time +to cultivate appeared somehow extravagantly overgrown, as if belonging +to an exotic clime; and Captain Hagberd’s upright, hale person, clad in +No. 1 sail-cloth from head to foot, would be emerging knee-deep out of +rank grass and the tall weeks on his side of the fence. He appeared, +with the colour and uncouth stiffness of the extraordinary material in +which he chose to clothe himself--“for the time being,” would be his +mumbled remark to any observation on the subject--like a man roughened +out of granite, standing in a wilderness not big enough for a decent +billiard-room. A heavy figure of a man of stone, with a red handsome +face, a blue wandering eye, and a great white beard flowing to his waist +and never trimmed as far as Colebrook knew. + +Seven years before, he had seriously answered, “Next month, I think,” + to the chaffing attempt to secure his custom made by that distinguished +local wit, the Colebrook barber, who happened to be sitting insolently +in the tap-room of the New Inn near the harbour, where the captain had +entered to buy an ounce of tobacco. After paying for his purchase with +three half-pence extracted from the corner of a handkerchief which he +carried in the cuff of his sleeve, Captain Hagberd went out. As soon +as the door was shut the barber laughed. “The old one and the young one +will be strolling arm in arm to get shaved in my place presently. The +tailor shall be set to work, and the barber, and the candlestick maker; +high old times are coming for Colebrook, they are coming, to be sure. It +used to be ‘next week,’ now it has come to ‘next month,’ and so on--soon +it will be next spring, for all I know.” + +Noticing a stranger listening to him with a vacant grin, he explained, +stretching out his legs cynically, that this queer old Hagberd, a +retired coasting-skipper, was waiting for the return of a son of his. +The boy had been driven away from home, he shouldn’t wonder; had run +away to sea and had never been heard of since. Put to rest in Davy +Jones’s locker this many a day, as likely as not. That old man came +flying to Colebrook three years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost +his wife lately then), getting out of a third-class smoker as if the +devil had been at his heels; and the only thing that brought him down +was a letter--a hoax probably. Some joker had written to him about a +seafaring man with some such name who was supposed to be hanging about +some girl or other, either in Colebrook or in the neighbourhood. “Funny, +ain’t it?” The old chap had been advertising in the London papers for +Harry Hagberd, and offering rewards for any sort of likely information. +And the barber would go on to describe with sardonic gusto, how that +stranger in mourning had been seen exploring the country, in carts, on +foot, taking everybody into his confidence, visiting all the inns +and alehouses for miles around, stopping people on the road with his +questions, looking into the very ditches almost; first in the greatest +excitement, then with a plodding sort of perseverance, growing slower +and slower; and he could not even tell you plainly how his son looked. +The sailor was supposed to be one of two that had left a timber +ship, and to have been seen dangling after some girl; but the old man +described a boy of fourteen or so--“a clever-looking, high-spirited +boy.” And when people only smiled at this he would rub his forehead in +a confused sort of way before he slunk off, looking offended. He found +nobody, of course; not a trace of anybody--never heard of anything worth +belief, at any rate; but he had not been able somehow to tear himself +away from Colebrook. + +“It was the shock of this disappointment, perhaps, coming soon after the +loss of his wife, that had driven him crazy on that point,” the barber +suggested, with an air of great psychological insight. After a time the +old man abandoned the active search. His son had evidently gone away; +but he settled himself to wait. His son had been once at least in +Colebrook in preference to his native place. There must have been some +reason for it, he seemed to think, some very powerful inducement, that +would bring him back to Colebrook again. + +“Ha, ha, ha! Why, of course, Colebrook. Where else? That’s the only +place in the United Kingdom for your long-lost sons. So he sold up his +old home in Colchester, and down he comes here. Well, it’s a craze, +like any other. Wouldn’t catch me going crazy over any of my youngsters +clearing out. I’ve got eight of them at home.” The barber was showing +off his strength of mind in the midst of a laughter that shook the +tap-room. + +Strange, though, that sort of thing, he would confess, with the +frankness of a superior intelligence, seemed to be catching. His +establishment, for instance, was near the harbour, and whenever a +sailor-man came in for a hair-cut or a shave--if it was a strange face he +couldn’t help thinking directly, “Suppose he’s the son of old Hagberd!” + He laughed at himself for it. It was a strong craze. He could remember +the time when the whole town was full of it. But he had his hopes of the +old chap yet. He would cure him by a course of judicious chaffing. He +was watching the progress of the treatment. Next week--next month--next +year! When the old skipper had put off the date of that return till next +year, he would be well on his way to not saying any more about it. In +other matters he was quite rational, so this, too, was bound to come. +Such was the barber’s firm opinion. + +Nobody had ever contradicted him; his own hair had gone grey since +that time, and Captain Hagberd’s beard had turned quite white, and had +acquired a majestic flow over the No. 1 canvas suit, which he had made +for himself secretly with tarred twine, and had assumed suddenly, coming +out in it one fine morning, whereas the evening before he had been seen +going home in his mourning of broadcloth. It caused a sensation in the +High Street--shopkeepers coming to their doors, people in the houses +snatching up their hats to run out--a stir at which he seemed strangely +surprised at first, and then scared; but his only answer to the +wondering questions was that startled and evasive, “For the present.” + +That sensation had been forgotten, long ago; and Captain Hagberd +himself, if not forgotten, had come to be disregarded--the penalty of +dailiness--as the sun itself is disregarded unless it makes its power +felt heavily. Captain Hagberd’s movements showed no infirmity: he walked +stiffly in his suit of canvas, a quaint and remarkable figure; only his +eyes wandered more furtively perhaps than of yore. His manner abroad had +lost its excitable watchfulness; it had become puzzled and diffident, +as though he had suspected that there was somewhere about him something +slightly compromising, some embarrassing oddity; and yet had remained +unable to discover what on earth this something wrong could be. + +He was unwilling now to talk with the townsfolk. He had earned for +himself the reputation of an awful skinflint, of a miser in the matter +of living. He mumbled regretfully in the shops, bought inferior scraps +of meat after long hesitations; and discouraged all allusions to his +costume. It was as the barber had foretold. For all one could tell, he +had recovered already from the disease of hope; and only Miss Bessie +Carvil knew that he said nothing about his son’s return because with him +it was no longer “next week,” “next month,” or even “next year.” It was +“to-morrow.” + +In their intimacy of back yard and front garden he talked with her +paternally, reasonably, and dogmatically, with a touch of arbitrariness. +They met on the ground of unreserved confidence, which was authenticated +by an affectionate wink now and then. Miss Carvil had come to look +forward rather to these winks. At first they had discomposed her: the +poor fellow was mad. Afterwards she had learned to laugh at them: there +was no harm in him. Now she was aware of an unacknowledged, pleasurable, +incredulous emotion, expressed by a faint blush. He winked not in the +least vulgarly; his thin red face with a well-modelled curved nose, had +a sort of distinction--the more so that when he talked to her he looked +with a steadier and more intelligent glance. A handsome, hale, upright, +capable man, with a white beard. You did not think of his age. His son, +he affirmed, had resembled him amazingly from his earliest babyhood. + +Harry would be one-and-thirty next July, he declared. Proper age to get +married with a nice, sensible girl that could appreciate a good home. He +was a very high-spirited boy. High-spirited husbands were the easiest +to manage. These mean, soft chaps, that you would think butter +wouldn’t melt in their mouths, were the ones to make a woman thoroughly +miserable. And there was nothing like a home--a fireside--a good roof: +no turning out of your warm bed in all sorts of weather. “Eh, my dear?” + +Captain Hagberd had been one of those sailors that pursue their calling +within sight of land. One of the many children of a bankrupt farmer, he +had been apprenticed hurriedly to a coasting skipper, and had remained +on the coast all his sea life. It must have been a hard one at first: +he had never taken to it; his affection turned to the land, with its +innumerable houses, with its quiet lives gathered round its firesides. +Many sailors feel and profess a rational dislike for the sea, but his +was a profound and emotional animosity--as if the love of the stabler +element had been bred into him through many generations. + +“People did not know what they let their boys in for when they let them +go to sea,” he expounded to Bessie. “As soon make convicts of them at +once.” He did not believe you ever got used to it. The weariness of such +a life got worse as you got older. What sort of trade was it in which +more than half your time you did not put your foot inside your house? +Directly you got out to sea you had no means of knowing what went on +at home. One might have thought him weary of distant voyages; and the +longest he had ever made had lasted a fortnight, of which the most part +had been spent at anchor, sheltering from the weather. As soon as his +wife had inherited a house and enough to live on (from a bachelor uncle +who had made some money in the coal business) he threw up his command of +an East-coast collier with a feeling as though he had escaped from the +galleys. After all these years he might have counted on the fingers of +his two hands all the days he had been out of sight of England. He +had never known what it was to be out of soundings. “I have never been +further than eighty fathoms from the land,” was one of his boasts. + +Bessie Carvil heard all these things. In front of their cottage grew an +under-sized ash; and on summer afternoons she would bring out a chair +on the grass-plot and sit down with her sewing. Captain Hagberd, in his +canvas suit, leaned on a spade. He dug every day in his front plot. He +turned it over and over several times every year, but was not going to +plant anything “just at present.” + +To Bessie Carvil he would state more explicitly: “Not till our Harry +comes home to-morrow.” And she had heard this formula of hope so often +that it only awakened the vaguest pity in her heart for that hopeful old +man. + +Everything was put off in that way, and everything was being prepared +likewise for to-morrow. There was a boxful of packets of various +flower-seeds to choose from, for the front garden. “He will doubtless let +you have your say about that, my dear,” Captain Hagberd intimated to her +across the railing. + +Miss Bessie’s head remained bowed over her work. She had heard all this +so many times. But now and then she would rise, lay down her sewing, and +come slowly to the fence. There was a charm in these gentle ravings. He +was determined that his son should not go away again for the want of a +home all ready for him. He had been filling the other cottage with all +sorts of furniture. She imagined it all new, fresh with varnish, piled +up as in a warehouse. There would be tables wrapped up in sacking; rolls +of carpets thick and vertical like fragments of columns, the gleam of +white marble tops in the dimness of the drawn blinds. Captain Hagberd +always described his purchases to her, carefully, as to a person having +a legitimate interest in them. The overgrown yard of his cottage could +be laid over with concrete... after to-morrow. + +“We may just as well do away with the fence. You could have your +drying-line out, quite clear of your flowers.” He winked, and she would +blush faintly. + +This madness that had entered her life through the kind impulses of her +heart had reasonable details. What if some day his son returned? But she +could not even be quite sure that he ever had a son; and if he existed +anywhere he had been too long away. When Captain Hagberd got excited in +his talk she would steady him by a pretence of belief, laughing a little +to salve her conscience. + +Only once she had tried pityingly to throw some doubt on that hope +doomed to disappointment, but the effect of her attempt had scared her +very much. All at once over that man’s face there came an expression of +horror and incredulity, as though he had seen a crack open out in the +firmament. + +“You--you--you don’t think he’s drowned!” + +For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out of his mind, for in his +ordinary state she thought him more sane than people gave him credit +for. On that occasion the violence of the emotion was followed by a most +paternal and complacent recovery. + +“Don’t alarm yourself, my dear,” he said a little cunningly: “the sea +can’t keep him. He does not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did +belong to it. Look at me; I didn’t get drowned. Moreover, he isn’t +a sailor at all; and if he is not a sailor he’s bound to come back. +There’s nothing to prevent him coming back....” + +His eyes began to wander. + +“To-morrow.” + +She never tried again, for fear the man should go out of his mind on +the spot. He depended on her. She seemed the only sensible person in +the town; and he would congratulate himself frankly before her face +on having secured such a levelheaded wife for his son. The rest of the +town, he confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly queer. +The way they looked at you--the way they talked to you! He had never got +on with any one in the place. Didn’t like the people. He would not have +left his own country if it had not been clear that his son had taken a +fancy to Colebrook. + +She humoured him in silence, listening patiently by the fence; +crocheting with downcast eyes. Blushes came with difficulty on her +dead-white complexion, under the negligently twisted opulence of +mahogany-coloured hair. Her father was frankly carroty. + +She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face. When Captain Hagberd +vaunted the necessity and propriety of a home and the delights of one’s +own fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her home delights +had been confined to the nursing of her father during the ten best years +of her life. + +A bestial roaring coming out of an upstairs window would interrupt their +talk. She would begin at once to roll up her crochet-work or fold her +sewing, without the slightest sign of haste. Meanwhile the howls and +roars of her name would go on, making the fishermen strolling upon the +sea-wall on the other side of the road turn their heads towards the +cottages. She would go in slowly at the front door, and a moment +afterwards there would fall a profound silence. Presently she would +reappear, leading by the hand a man, gross and unwieldy like a +hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered, surly face. + +He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness had overtaken years before +in the full flush of business. He behaved to his daughter as if she +had been responsible for its incurable character. He had been heard to +bellow at the top of his voice, as if to defy Heaven, that he did not +care: he had made enough money to have ham and eggs for his breakfast +every morning. He thanked God for it, in a fiendish tone as though he +were cursing. + +Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably impressed by his tenant, that +once he told Miss Bessie, “He is a very extravagant fellow, my dear.” + +She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of socks for her father, who +expected her to keep up the supply dutifully. She hated knitting, +and, as she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her eyes on her +needles. + +“Of course it isn’t as if he had a son to provide for,” Captain +Hagberd went on a little vacantly. “Girls, of course, don’t require so +much--h’m-h’m. They don’t run away from home, my dear.” + +“No,” said Miss Bessie, quietly. + +Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of turned-up earth, chuckled. With +his maritime rig, his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Neptune, +he resembled a deposed sea-god who had exchanged the trident for the +spade. + +“And he must look upon you as already provided for, in a manner. That’s +the best of it with the girls. The husbands...” He winked. Miss +Bessie, absorbed in her knitting, coloured faintly. + +“Bessie! my hat!” old Carvil bellowed out suddenly. He had been sitting +under the tree mute and motionless, like an idol of some remarkably +monstrous superstition. He never opened his mouth but to howl for her, +at her, sometimes about her; and then he did not moderate the terms of +his abuse. Her system was never to answer him at all; and he kept up +his shouting till he got attended to--till she shook him by the arm, or +thrust the mouthpiece of his pipe between his teeth. He was one of the +few blind people who smoke. When he felt the hat being put on his head +he stopped his noise at once. Then he rose, and they passed together +through the gate. + +He weighed heavily on her arm. During their slow, toilful walks she +appeared to be dragging with her for a penance the burden of that infirm +bulk. Usually they crossed the road at once (the cottages stood in the +fields near the harbour, two hundred yards away from the end of the +street), and for a long, long time they would remain in view, ascending +imperceptibly the flight of wooden steps that led to the top of the +sea-wall. It ran on from east to west, shutting out the Channel like a +neglected railway embankment, on which no train had ever rolled within +memory of man. Groups of sturdy fishermen would emerge upon the sky, +walk along for a bit, and sink without haste. Their brown nets, like the +cobwebs of gigantic spiders, lay on the shabby grass of the slope; and, +looking up from the end of the street, the people of the town would +recognise the two Carvils by the creeping slowness of their gait. +Captain Hagberd, pottering aimlessly about his cottages, would raise his +head to see how they got on in their promenade. + +He advertised still in the Sunday papers for Harry Hagberd. These sheets +were read in foreign parts to the end of the world, he informed Bessie. +At the same time he seemed to think that his son was in England--so +near to Colebrook that he would of course turn up “to-morrow.” Bessie, +without committing herself to that opinion in so many words, argued that +in that case the expense of advertising was unnecessary; Captain Hagberd +had better spend that weekly half-crown on himself. She declared she did +not know what he lived on. Her argumentation would puzzle him and cast +him down for a time. “They all do it,” he pointed out. There was a whole +column devoted to appeals after missing relatives. He would bring the +newspaper to show her. He and his wife had advertised for years; only +she was an impatient woman. The news from Colebrook had arrived the very +day after her funeral; if she had not been so impatient she might have +been here now, with no more than one day more to wait. “You are not an +impatient woman, my dear.” + +“I’ve no patience with you sometimes,” she would say. + +If he still advertised for his son he did not offer rewards for +information any more; for, with the muddled lucidity of a mental +derangement he had reasoned himself into a conviction as clear as +daylight that he had already attained all that could be expected in that +way. What more could he want? Colebrook was the place, and there was no +need to ask for more. Miss Carvil praised him for his good sense, and +he was soothed by the part she took in his hope, which had become his +delusion; in that idea which blinded his mind to truth and probability, +just as the other old man in the other cottage had been made blind, by +another disease, to the light and beauty of the world. + +But anything he could interpret as a doubt--any coldness of assent, or +even a simple inattention to the development of his projects of a home +with his returned son and his son’s wife--would irritate him into flings +and jerks and wicked side glances. He would dash his spade into +the ground and walk to and fro before it. Miss Bessie called it his +tantrums. She shook her finger at him. Then, when she came out again, +after he had parted with her in anger, he would watch out of the corner +of his eyes for the least sign of encouragement to approach the iron +railings and resume his fatherly and patronising relations. + +For all their intimacy, which had lasted some years now, they had never +talked without a fence or a railing between them. He described to her +all the splendours accumulated for the setting-up of their housekeeping, +but had never invited her to an inspection. No human eye was to behold +them till Harry had his first look. In fact, nobody had ever been +inside his cottage; he did his own housework, and he guarded his son’s +privilege so jealously that the small objects of domestic use he bought +sometimes in the town were smuggled rapidly across the front garden +under his canvas coat. Then, coming out, he would remark apologetically, +“It was only a small kettle, my dear.” + +And, if not too tired with her drudgery, or worried beyond endurance by +her father, she would laugh at him with a blush, and say: “That’s all +right, Captain Hagberd; I am not impatient.” + +“Well, my dear, you haven’t long to wait now,” he would answer with a +sudden bashfulness, and looking uneasily, as though he had suspected +that there was something wrong somewhere. + +Every Monday she paid him his rent over the railings. He clutched +the shillings greedily. He grudged every penny he had to spend on his +maintenance, and when he left her to make his purchases his bearing +changed as soon as he got into the street. Away from the sanction of her +pity, he felt himself exposed without defence. He brushed the walls with +his shoulder. He mistrusted the queerness of the people; yet, by then, +even the town children had left off calling after him, and the tradesmen +served him without a word. The slightest allusion to his clothing had +the power to puzzle and frighten especially, as if it were something +utterly unwarranted and incomprehensible. + +In the autumn, the driving rain drummed on his sailcloth suit saturated +almost to the stiffness of sheet-iron, with its surface flowing with +water. When the weather was too bad, he retreated under the tiny porch, +and, standing close against the door, looked at his spade left planted +in the middle of the yard. The ground was so much dug up all over, that +as the season advanced it turned to a quagmire. When it froze hard, he +was disconsolate. What would Harry say? And as he could not have so much +of Bessie’s company at that time of the year, the roars of old Carvil, +that came muffled through the closed windows, calling her indoors, +exasperated him greatly. + +“Why don’t that extravagant fellow get you a servant?” he asked +impatiently one mild afternoon. She had thrown something over her head +to run out for a while. + +“I don’t know,” said the pale Bessie, wearily, staring away with her +heavy-lidded, grey, and unexpectant glance. There were always smudgy +shadows under her eyes, and she did not seem able to see any change or +any end to her life. + +“You wait till you get married, my dear,” said her only friend, drawing +closer to the fence. “Harry will get you one.” + +His hopeful craze seemed to mock her own want of hope with so bitter an +aptness that in her nervous irritation she could have screamed at him +outright. But she only said in self-mockery, and speaking to him as +though he had been sane, “Why, Captain Hagberd, your son may not even +want to look at me.” + +He flung his head back and laughed his throaty affected cackle of anger. + +“What! That boy? Not want to look at the only sensible girl for miles +around? What do you think I am here for, my dear--my dear--my dear?... +What? You wait. You just wait. You’ll see to-morrow. I’ll soon--” + +“Bessie! Bessie! Bessie!” howled old Carvil inside. “Bessie!--my pipe!” + That fat blind man had given himself up to a very lust of laziness. He +would not lift his hand to reach for the things she took care to leave +at his very elbow. He would not move a limb; he would not rise from his +chair, he would not put one foot before another, in that parlour (where +he knew his way as well as if he had his sight), without calling her to +his side and hanging all his atrocious weight on her shoulder. He would +not eat one single mouthful of food without her close attendance. He had +made himself helpless beyond his affliction, to enslave her better. She +stood still for a moment, setting her teeth in the dusk, then turned and +walked slowly indoors. + +Captain Hagberd went back to his spade. The shouting in Carvil’s cottage +stopped, and after a while the window of the parlour downstairs was lit +up. A man coming from the end of the street with a firm leisurely step +passed on, but seemed to have caught sight of Captain Hagberd, because +he turned back a pace or two. A cold white light lingered in the western +sky. The man leaned over the gate in an interested manner. + +“You must be Captain Hagberd,” he said, with easy assurance. + +The old man spun round, pulling out his spade, startled by the strange +voice. + +“Yes, I am,” he answered nervously. + +The other, smiling straight at him, uttered very slowly: “You’ve been +advertising for your son, I believe?” + +“My son Harry,” mumbled Captain Hagberd, off his guard for once. “He’s +coming home tomorrow.” + +“The devil he is!” The stranger marvelled greatly, and then went on, +with only a slight change of tone: “You’ve grown a beard like Father +Christmas himself.” + +Captain Hagberd drew a little nearer, and leaned forward over his +spade. “Go your way,” he said, resentfully and timidly at the same time, +because he was always afraid of being laughed at. Every mental +state, even madness, has its equilibrium based upon self-esteem. Its +disturbance causes unhappiness; and Captain Hagberd lived amongst a +scheme of settled notions which it pained him to feel disturbed by +people’s grins. Yes, people’s grins were awful. They hinted at something +wrong: but what? He could not tell; and that stranger was obviously +grinning--had come on purpose to grin. It was bad enough on the streets, +but he had never before been outraged like this. + +The stranger, unaware how near he was of having his head laid open with +a spade, said seriously: “I am not trespassing where I stand, am I? I +fancy there’s something wrong about your news. Suppose you let me come +in.” + +“_You_ come in!” murmured old Hagberd, with inexpressible horror. + +“I could give you some real information about your son--the very latest +tip, if you care to hear.” + +“No,” shouted Hagberd. He began to pace wildly to and fro, he shouldered +his spade, he gesticulated with his other arm. “Here’s a fellow--a +grinning fellow, who says there’s something wrong. I’ve got more +information than you’re aware of. I’ve all the information I want. +I’ve had it for years--for years--for years--enough to last me till +to-morrow. Let you come in, indeed! What would Harry say?” + +Bessie Carvil’s figure appeared in black silhouette on the parlour +window; then, with the sound of an opening door, flitted out before the +other cottage, all black, but with something white over her head. +These two voices beginning to talk suddenly outside (she had heard them +indoors) had given her such an emotion that she could not utter a sound. + +Captain Hagberd seemed to be trying to find his way out of a cage. His +feet squelched in the puddles left by his industry. He stumbled in the +holes of the ruined grass-plot. He ran blindly against the fence. + +“Here, steady a bit!” said the man at the gate, gravely stretching his +arm over and catching him by the sleeve. “Somebody’s been trying to get +at you. Hallo! what’s this rig you’ve got on? Storm canvas, by George!” + He had a big laugh. “Well, you _are_ a character!” + +Captain Hagberd jerked himself free, and began to back away shrinkingly. +“For the present,” he muttered, in a crestfallen tone. + +“What’s the matter with him?” The stranger addressed Bessie with the +utmost familiarity, in a deliberate, explanatory tone. “I didn’t want +to startle the old man.” He lowered his voice as though he had known +her for years. “I dropped into a barber’s on my way, to get a twopenny +shave, and they told me there he was something of a character. The old +man has been a character all his life.” + +Captain Hagberd, daunted by the allusion to his clothing, had retreated +inside, taking his spade with him; and the two at the gate, startled +by the unexpected slamming of the door, heard the bolts being shot, the +snapping of the lock, and the echo of an affected gurgling laugh within. + +“I didn’t want to upset him,” the man said, after a short silence. +“What’s the meaning of all this? He isn’t quite crazy.” + +“He has been worrying a long time about his lost son,” said Bessie, in a +low, apologetic tone. + +“Well, I am his son.” + +“Harry!” she cried--and was profoundly silent. + +“Know my name? Friends with the old man, eh?” + +“He’s our landlord,” Bessie faltered out, catching hold of the iron +railing. + +“Owns both them rabbit-hutches, does he?” commented young Hagberd, +scornfully; “just the thing he would be proud of. Can you tell me who’s +that chap coming to-morrow? You must know something of it. I tell you, +it’s a swindle on the old man--nothing else.” + +She did not answer, helpless before an insurmountable difficulty, +appalled before the necessity, the impossibility and the dread of an +explanation in which she and madness seemed involved together. + +“Oh--I am so sorry,” she murmured. + +“What’s the matter?” he said, with serenity. “You needn’t be afraid +of upsetting me. It’s the other fellow that’ll be upset when he least +expects it. I don’t care a hang; but there will be some fun when he +shows his mug to-morrow. I don’t care _that_ for the old man’s pieces, +but right is right. You shall see me put a head on that coon--whoever he +is!” + +He had come nearer, and towered above her on the other side of the +railings. He glanced at her hands. He fancied she was trembling, and it +occurred to him that she had her part perhaps in that little game that +was to be sprung on his old man to-morrow. He had come just in time +to spoil their sport. He was entertained by the idea--scornful of the +baffled plot. But all his life he had been full of indulgence for all +sorts of women’s tricks. She really was trembling very much; her wrap +had slipped off her head. “Poor devil!” he thought. “Never mind about +that chap. I daresay he’ll change his mind before to-morrow. But what +about me? I can’t loaf about the gate til the morning.” + +She burst out: “It is _you_--you yourself that he’s waiting for. It is +_you_ who come to-morrow.” + +He murmured. “Oh! It’s me!” blankly, and they seemed to become +breathless together. Apparently he was pondering over what he had heard; +then, without irritation, but evidently perplexed, he said: “I don’t +understand. I hadn’t written or anything. It’s my chum who saw the paper +and told me--this very morning.... Eh? what?” + +He bent his ear; she whispered rapidly, and he listened for a while, +muttering the words “yes” and “I see” at times. Then, “But why won’t +today do?” he queried at last. + +“You didn’t understand me!” she exclaimed, impatiently. The clear +streak of light under the clouds died out in the west. Again he stooped +slightly to hear better; and the deep night buried everything of the +whispering woman and the attentive man, except the familiar contiguity +of their faces, with its air of secrecy and caress. + +He squared his shoulders; the broad-brimmed shadow of a hat sat +cavalierly on his head. “Awkward this, eh?” he appealed to her. +“To-morrow? Well, well! Never heard tell of anything like this. It’s all +to-morrow, then, without any sort of to-day, as far as I can see.” + +She remained still and mute. + +“And you have been encouraging this funny notion,” he said. + +“I never contradicted him.” + +“Why didn’t you?” + +“What for should I?” she defended herself. “It would only have made him +miserable. He would have gone out of his mind.” + +“His mind!” he muttered, and heard a short nervous laugh from her. + +“Where was the harm? Was I to quarrel with the poor old man? It was +easier to half believe it myself.” + +“Aye, aye,” he meditated, intelligently. “I suppose the old chap got +around you somehow with his soft talk. You are good-hearted.” + +Her hands moved up in the dark nervously. “And it might have been true. +It was true. It has come. Here it is. This is the to-morrow we have been +waiting for.” + +She drew a breath, and he said, good-humouredly: “Aye, with the door +shut. I wouldn’t care if... And you think he could be brought round +to recognise me... Eh? What?... You could do it? In a week you +say? H’m, I daresay you could--but do you think I could hold out a +week in this dead-alive place? Not me! I want either hard work, or an +all-fired racket, or more space than there is in the whole of England. I +have been in this place, though, once before, and for more than a week. +The old man was advertising for me then, and a chum I had with me had +a notion of getting a couple quid out of him by writing a lot of silly +nonsense in a letter. That lark did not come off, though. We had to +clear out--and none too soon. But this time I’ve a chum waiting for me +in London, and besides...” + +Bessie Carvil was breathing quickly. + +“What if I tried a knock at the door?” he suggested. + +“Try,” she said. + +Captain Hagberd’s gate squeaked, and the shadow of the son moved on, +then stopped with another deep laugh in the throat, like the father’s, +only soft and gentle, thrilling to the woman’s heart, awakening to her +ears. + +“He isn’t frisky--is he? I would be afraid to lay hold of him. The chaps +are always telling me I don’t know my own strength.” + +“He’s the most harmless creature that ever lived,” she interrupted. + +“You wouldn’t say so if you had seen him chasing me upstairs with a hard +leather strap,” he said; “I haven’t forgotten it in sixteen years.” + +She got warm from head to foot under another soft, subdued laugh. At the +rat-tat-tat of the knocker her heart flew into her mouth. + +“Hey, dad! Let me in. I am Harry, I am. Straight! Come back home a day +too soon.” + +One of the windows upstairs ran up. + +“A grinning, information fellow,” said the voice of old Hagberd, up in +the darkness. “Don’t you have anything to do with him. It will spoil +everything.” + +She heard Harry Hagberd say, “Hallo, dad,” then a clanging clatter. The +window rumbled down, and he stood before her again. + +“It’s just like old times. Nearly walloped the life out of me to stop me +going away, and now I come back he throws a confounded shovel at my head +to keep me out. It grazed my shoulder.” + +She shuddered. + +“I wouldn’t care,” he began, “only I spent my last shillings on the +railway fare and my last twopence on a shave--out of respect for the old +man.” + +“Are you really Harry Hagberd?” she asked. “Can you prove it?” + +“Can I prove it? Can any one else prove it?” he said jovially. “Prove +with what? What do I want to prove? There isn’t a single corner in the +world, barring England, perhaps, where you could not find some man, or +more likely woman, that would remember me for Harry Hagberd. I am more +like Harry Hagberd than any man alive; and I can prove it to you in a +minute, if you will let me step inside your gate.” + +“Come in,” she said. + +He entered then the front garden of the Carvils. His tall shadow strode +with a swagger; she turned her back on the window and waited, watching +the shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most material part. The +light fell on a tilted hat; a powerful shoulder, that seemed to cleave +the darkness; on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood still, +facing the illuminated parlour window at her back, turning his head from +side to side, laughing softly to himself. + +“Just fancy, for a minute, the old man’s beard stuck on to my chin. Hey? +Now say. I was the very spit of him from a boy.” + +“It’s true,” she murmured to herself. + +“And that’s about as far as it goes. He was always one of your domestic +characters. Why, I remember how he used to go about looking very sick +for three days before he had to leave home on one of his trips to South +Shields for coal. He had a standing charter from the gas-works. You +would think he was off on a whaling cruise--three years and a tail. Ha, +ha! Not a bit of it. Ten days on the outside. The Skimmer of the Seas +was a smart craft. Fine name, wasn’t it? Mother’s uncle owned her....” + +He interrupted himself, and in a lowered voice, “Did he ever tell you +what mother died of?” he asked. + +“Yes,” said Miss Bessie, bitterly; “from impatience.” + +He made no sound for a while; then brusquely: “They were so afraid I +would turn out badly that they fairly drove me away. Mother nagged at me +for being idle, and the old man said he would cut my soul out of my +body rather than let me go to sea. Well, it looked as if he would do it +too--so I went. It looks to me sometimes as if I had been born to them +by a mistake--in that other hutch of a house.” + +“Where ought you to have been born by rights?” Bessie Carvil interrupted +him, defiantly. + +“In the open, upon a beach, on a windy night,” he said, quick as +lightning. Then he mused slowly. “They were characters, both of them, by +George; and the old man keeps it up well--don’t he? A damned shovel on +the--Hark! who’s that making that row? ‘Bessie, Bessie.’ It’s in your +house.” + +“It’s for me,” she said, with indifference. + +He stepped aside, out of the streak of light. “Your husband?” he +inquired, with the tone of a man accustomed to unlawful trysts. “Fine +voice for a ship’s deck in a thundering squall.” + +“No; my father. I am not married.” + +“You seem a fine girl, Miss Bessie, dear,” he said at once. + +She turned her face away. + +“Oh, I say,--what’s up? Who’s murdering him?” + +“He wants his tea.” She faced him, still and tall, with averted head, +with her hands hanging clasped before her. + +“Hadn’t you better go in?” he suggested, after watching for a while the +nape of her neck, a patch of dazzling white skin and soft shadow above +the sombre line of her shoulders. Her wrap had slipped down to her +elbows. “You’ll have all the town coming out presently. I’ll wait here a +bit.” + +Her wrap fell to the ground, and he stooped to pick it up; she had +vanished. He threw it over his arm, and approaching the window squarely +he saw a monstrous form of a fat man in an armchair, an unshaded lamp, +the yawning of an enormous mouth in a big flat face encircled by a +ragged halo of hair--Miss Bessie’s head and bust. The shouting stopped; +the blind ran down. He lost himself in thinking how awkward it was. +Father mad; no getting into the house. No money to get back; a hungry +chum in London who would begin to think he had been given the go-by. +“Damn!” he muttered. He could break the door in, certainly; but +they would perhaps bundle him into chokey for that without asking +questions--no great matter, only he was confoundedly afraid of being +locked up, even in mistake. He turned cold at the thought. He stamped +his feet on the sodden grass. + +“What are you?--a sailor?” said an agitated voice. + +She had flitted out, a shadow herself, attracted by the reckless shadow +waiting under the wall of her home. + +“Anything. Enough of a sailor to be worth my salt before the mast. Came +home that way this time.” + +“Where do you come from?” she asked. + +“Right away from a jolly good spree,” he said, “by the London +train--see? Ough! I hate being shut up in a train. I don’t mind a house +so much.” + +“Ah,” she said; “that’s lucky.” + +“Because in a house you can at any time open the blamed door and walk +away straight before you.” + +“And never come back?” + +“Not for sixteen years at least,” he laughed. “To a rabbit hutch, and +get a confounded old shovel...” + +“A ship is not so very big,” she taunted. + +“No, but the sea is great.” + +She dropped her head, and as if her ears had been opened to the voices +of the world, she heard, beyond the rampart of sea-wall, the swell +of yesterday’s gale breaking on the beach with monotonous and solemn +vibrations, as if all the earth had been a tolling bell. + +“And then, why, a ship’s a ship. You love her and leave her; and a +voyage isn’t a marriage.” He quoted the sailor’s saying lightly. + +“It is not a marriage,” she whispered. + +“I never took a false name, and I’ve never yet told a lie to a woman. +What lie? Why, _the_ lie--. Take me or leave me, I say: and if you take +me, then it is...” He hummed a snatch very low, leaning against the +wall. + + “Oh, ho, ho Rio! + And fare thee well, + My bonnie young girl, + We’re bound to Rio Grande.” + +“Capstan song,” he explained. Her teeth chattered. + +“You are cold,” he said. “Here’s that affair of yours I picked up.” She +felt his hands about her, wrapping her closely. “Hold the ends together +in front,” he commanded. + +“What did you come here for?” she asked, repressing a shudder. + +“Five quid,” he answered, promptly. “We let our spree go on a little too +long and got hard up.” + +“You’ve been drinking?” she said. + +“Blind three days; on purpose. I am not given that way--don’t you think. +There’s nothing and nobody that can get over me unless I like. I can be +as steady as a rock. My chum sees the paper this morning, and says he to +me: ‘Go on, Harry: loving parent. That’s five quid sure.’ So we scraped +all our pockets for the fare. Devil of a lark!” + +“You have a hard heart, I am afraid,” she sighed. + +“What for? For running away? Why! he wanted to make a lawyer’s clerk of +me--just to please himself. Master in his own house; and my poor mother +egged him on--for my good, I suppose. Well, then--so long; and I went. +No, I tell you: the day I cleared out, I was all black and blue from his +great fondness for me. Ah! he was always a bit of a character. Look at +that shovel now. Off his chump? Not much. That’s just exactly like my +dad. He wants me here just to have somebody to order about. However, +we two were hard up; and what’s five quid to him--once in sixteen hard +years?” + +“Oh, but I am sorry for you. Did you never want to come back home?” + +“Be a lawyer’s clerk and rot here--in some such place as this?” he cried +in contempt. “What! if the old man set me up in a home to-day, I would +kick it down about my ears--or else die there before the third day was +out.” + +“And where else is it that you hope to die?” + +“In the bush somewhere; in the sea; on a blamed mountain-top for choice. +At home? Yes! the world’s my home; but I expect I’ll die in a hospital +some day. What of that? Any place is good enough, as long as I’ve lived; +and I’ve been everything you can think of almost but a tailor or a +soldier. I’ve been a boundary rider; I’ve sheared sheep; and humped my +swag; and harpooned a whale. I’ve rigged ships, and prospected for gold, +and skinned dead bullocks,--and turned my back on more money than the +old man would have scraped in his whole life. Ha, ha!” + +He overwhelmed her. She pulled herself together and managed to utter, +“Time to rest now.” + +He straightened himself up, away from the wall, and in a severe voice +said, “Time to go.” + +But he did not move. He leaned back again, and hummed thoughtfully a bar +or two of an outlandish tune. + +She felt as if she were about to cry. “That’s another of your cruel +songs,” she said. + +“Learned it in Mexico--in Sonora.” He talked easily. “It is the song of +the Gambucinos. You don’t know? The song of restless men. Nothing could +hold them in one place--not even a woman. You used to meet one of them +now and again, in the old days, on the edge of the gold country, away +north there beyond the Rio Gila. I’ve seen it. A prospecting engineer +in Mazatlan took me along with him to help look after the waggons. +A sailor’s a handy chap to have about you anyhow. It’s all a +desert: cracks in the earth that you can’t see the bottom of; and +mountains--sheer rocks standing up high like walls and church spires, +only a hundred times bigger. The valleys are full of boulders and black +stones. There’s not a blade of grass to see; and the sun sets more red +over that country than I have seen it anywhere--blood-red and angry. It +_is_ fine.” + +“You do not want to go back there again?” she stammered out. + +He laughed a little. “No. That’s the blamed gold country. It gave me the +shivers sometimes to look at it--and we were a big lot of men together, +mind; but these Gambucinos wandered alone. They knew that country before +anybody had ever heard of it. They had a sort of gift for prospecting, +and the fever of it was on them too; and they did not seem to want the +gold very much. They would find some rich spot, and then turn their +backs on it; pick up perhaps a little--enough for a spree--and then be +off again, looking for more. They never stopped long where there were +houses; they had no wife, no chick, no home, never a chum. You couldn’t +be friends with a Gambucino; they were too restless--here to-day, and +gone, God knows where, to-morrow. They told no one of their finds, and +there has never been a Gambucino well off. It was not for the gold they +cared; it was the wandering about looking for it in the stony country +that got into them and wouldn’t let them rest; so that no woman yet born +could hold a Gambucino for more than a week. That’s what the song says. +It’s all about a pretty girl that tried hard to keep hold of a Gambucino +lover, so that he should bring her lots of gold. No fear! Off he went, +and she never saw him again.” + +“What became of her?” she breathed out. + +“The song don’t tell. Cried a bit, I daresay. They were the fellows: +kiss and go. But it’s the looking for a thing--a something... +Sometimes I think I am a sort of Gambucino myself.” + +“No woman can hold you, then,” she began in a brazen voice, which +quavered suddenly before the end. + +“No longer than a week,” he joked, playing upon her very heartstrings +with the gay, tender note of his laugh; “and yet I am fond of them all. +Anything for a woman of the right sort. The scrapes they got me into, +and the scrapes they got me out of! I love them at first sight. I’ve +fallen in love with you already, Miss--Bessie’s your name--eh?” + +She backed away a little, and with a trembling laugh: + +“You haven’t seen my face yet.” + +He bent forward gallantly. “A little pale: it suits some. But you are a +fine figure of a girl, Miss Bessie.” + +She was all in a flutter. Nobody had ever said so much to her before. + +His tone changed. “I am getting middling hungry, though. Had no +breakfast to-day. Couldn’t you scare up some bread from that tea for me, +or--” + +She was gone already. He had been on the point of asking her to let him +come inside. No matter. Anywhere would do. Devil of a fix! What would +his chum think? + +“I didn’t ask you as a beggar,” he said, jestingly, taking a piece +of bread-and-butter from the plate she held before him. “I asked as a +friend. My dad is rich, you know.” + +“He starves himself for your sake.” + +“And I have starved for his whim,” he said, taking up another piece. + +“All he has in the world is for you,” she pleaded. + +“Yes, if I come here to sit on it like a dam’ toad in a hole. Thank you; +and what about the shovel, eh? He always had a queer way of showing his +love.” + +“I could bring him round in a week,” she suggested, timidly. + +He was too hungry to answer her; and, holding the plate submissively to +his hand, she began to whisper up to him in a quick, panting voice. +He listened, amazed, eating slower and slower, till at last his jaws +stopped altogether. “That’s his game, is it?” he said, in a rising tone +of scathing contempt. An ungovernable movement of his arm sent the plate +flying out of her fingers. He shot out a violent curse. + +She shrank from him, putting her hand against the wall. + +“No!” he raged. “He expects! Expects _me_--for his rotten money!... +Who wants his home? Mad--not he! Don’t you think. He wants his own way. +He wanted to turn me into a miserable lawyer’s clerk, and now he wants +to make of me a blamed tame rabbit in a cage. Of me! Of me!” His subdued +angry laugh frightened her now. + +“The whole world ain’t a bit too big for me to spread my elbows in, I +can tell you--what’s your name--Bessie--let alone a dam’ parlour in a +hutch. Marry! He wants me to marry and settle! And as likely as not he +has looked out the girl too--dash my soul! And do you know the Judy, may +I ask?” + +She shook all over with noiseless dry sobs; but he was fuming and +fretting too much to notice her distress. He bit his thumb with rage at +the mere idea. A window rattled up. + +“A grinning, information fellow,” pronounced old Hagberd dogmatically, +in measured tones. And the sound of his voice seemed to Bessie to make +the night itself mad--to pour insanity and disaster on the earth. “Now +I know what’s wrong with the people here, my dear. Why, of course! +With this mad chap going about. Don’t you have anything to do with him, +Bessie. Bessie, I say!” + +They stood as if dumb. The old man fidgeted and mumbled to himself at +the window. Suddenly he cried, piercingly: “Bessie--I see you. I’ll tell +Harry.” + +She made a movement as if to run away, but stopped and raised her hands +to her temples. Young Hagberd, shadowy and big, stirred no more than a +man of bronze. Over their heads the crazy night whimpered and scolded in +an old man’s voice. + +“Send him away, my dear. He’s only a vagabond. What you want is a good +home of your own. That chap has no home--he’s not like Harry. He can’t +be Harry. Harry is coming to-morrow. Do you hear? One day more,” he +babbled more excitedly; “never you fear--Harry shall marry you.” + +His voice rose very shrill and mad against the regular deep soughing of +the swell coiling heavily about the outer face of the sea-wall. + +“He will have to. I shall make him, or if not”--he swore a great +oath--“I’ll cut him off with a shilling to-morrow, and leave everything +to you. I shall. To you. Let him starve.” + +The window rattled down. + +Harry drew a deep breath, and took one step toward Bessie. “So it’s +you--the girl,” he said, in a lowered voice. She had not moved, and she +remained half turned away from him, pressing her head in the palms of +her hands. “My word!” he continued, with an invisible half-smile on his +lips. “I have a great mind to stop....” + +Her elbows were trembling violently. + +“For a week,” he finished without a pause. + +She clapped her hands to her face. + +He came up quite close, and took hold of her wrists gently. She felt his +breath on her ear. + +“It’s a scrape I am in--this, and it is you that must see me through.” + He was trying to uncover her face. She resisted. He let her go then, and +stepping back a little, “Have you got any money?” he asked. “I must be +off now.” + +She nodded quickly her shamefaced head, and he waited, looking away from +her, while, trembling all over and bowing her neck, she tried to find +the pocket of her dress. + +“Here it is!” she whispered. “Oh, go away! go away for God’s sake! If I +had more--more--I would give it all to forget--to make you forget.” + +He extended his hand. “No fear! I haven’t forgotten a single one of you +in the world. Some gave me more than money--but I am a beggar now--and +you women always had to get me out of my scrapes.” + +He swaggered up to the parlour window, and in the dim light filtering +through the blind, looked at the coin lying in his palm. It was a +half-sovereign. He slipped it into his pocket. She stood a little on +one side, with her head drooping, as if wounded; with her arms hanging +passive by her side, as if dead. + +“You can’t buy me in,” he said, “and you can’t buy yourself out.” + +He set his hat firmly with a little tap, and next moment she felt +herself lifted up in the powerful embrace of his arms. Her feet lost the +ground; her head hung back; he showered kisses on her face with a silent +and over-mastering ardour, as if in haste to get at her very soul. He +kissed her pale cheeks, her hard forehead, her heavy eyelids, her faded +lips; and the measured blows and sighs of the rising tide accompanied +the enfolding power of his arms, the overwhelming might of his caresses. +It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes +of the town, had sent a wave over her head. It passed on; she staggered +backwards, with her shoulders against the wall, exhausted, as if she had +been stranded there after a storm and a shipwreck. + +She opened her eyes after awhile; and listening to the firm, leisurely +footsteps going away with their conquest, began to gather her skirts, +staring all the time before her. Suddenly she darted through the open +gate into the dark and deserted street. + +“Stop!” she shouted. “Don’t go!” + +And listening with an attentive poise of the head, she could not tell +whether it was the beat of the swell or his fateful tread that seemed +to fall cruelly upon her heart. Presently every sound grew fainter, as +though she were slowly turning into stone. A fear of this awful silence +came to her--worse than the fear of death. She called upon her ebbing +strength for the final appeal: + +“Harry!” + +Not even the dying echo of a footstep. Nothing. The thundering of the +surf, the voice of the restless sea itself, seemed stopped. There was +not a sound--no whisper of life, as though she were alone and lost in +that stony country of which she had heard, where madmen go looking for +gold and spurn the find. + +Captain Hagberd, inside his dark house, had kept on the alert. A window +ran up; and in the silence of the stony country a voice spoke above +her head, high up in the black air--the voice of madness, lies and +despair--the voice of inextinguishable hope. “Is he gone yet--that +information fellow? Do you hear him about, my dear?” + +She burst into tears. “No! no! no! I don’t hear him any more,” she +sobbed. + +He began to chuckle up there triumphantly. “You frightened him away. +Good girl. Now we shall be all right. Don’t you be impatient, my dear. +One day more.” + +In the other house old Carvil, wallowing regally in his arm-chair, with +a globe lamp burning by his side on the table, yelled for her, in a +fiendish voice: “Bessie! Bessie! you Bessie!” + +She heard him at last, and, as if overcome by fate, began to totter +silently back toward her stuffy little inferno of a cottage. It had no +lofty portal, no terrific inscription of forfeited hopes--she did not +understand wherein she had sinned. + +Captain Hagberd had gradually worked himself into a state of noisy +happiness up there. + +“Go in! Keep quiet!” she turned upon him tearfully, from the doorstep +below. + +He rebelled against her authority in his great joy at having got rid at +last of that “something wrong.” It was as if all the hopeful madness of +the world had broken out to bring terror upon her heart, with the voice +of that old man shouting of his trust in an everlasting to-morrow. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of To-morrow, by Joseph Conrad + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO-MORROW *** + +***** This file should be named 494-0.txt or 494-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/9/494/ + +Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: To-morrow + +Author: Joseph Conrad + +Release Date: June 18, 2009 [EBook #494] +Last Updated: September 9, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO-MORROW *** + + + + +Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h1> + TO-MORROW + </h1> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h2> + By Joseph Conrad + </h2> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <p> + What was known of Captain Hagberd in the little seaport of Colebrook was + not exactly in his favour. He did not belong to the place. He had come to + settle there under circumstances not at all mysterious—he used to be + very communicative about them at the time—but extremely morbid and + unreasonable. He was possessed of some little money evidently, because he + bought a plot of ground, and had a pair of ugly yellow brick cottages run + up very cheaply. He occupied one of them himself and let the other to + Josiah Carvil—blind Carvil, the retired boat-builder—a man of + evil repute as a domestic tyrant. + </p> + <p> + These cottages had one wall in common, shared in a line of iron railing + dividing 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 + tea-cloths, blue rags, or an apron that wanted drying. + </p> + <p> + “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. + </p> + <p> + She was a tall girl; the fence was low, and she could spread her elbows on + 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 her father’s + landlord in silence—in an informed silence which had an air of + knowledge, expectation and desire. + </p> + <p> + “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 + your back yard?” + </p> + <p> + Miss Carvil would say nothing to this—she only shook her head + negatively. The tiny back yard on her side had a few stone-bordered little + beds of black earth, in which the simple flowers she found time to + cultivate appeared somehow extravagantly overgrown, as if belonging to an + exotic clime; and Captain Hagberd’s upright, hale person, clad in No. 1 + sail-cloth from head to foot, would be emerging knee-deep out of rank + grass and the tall weeks on his side of the fence. He appeared, with the + colour and uncouth stiffness of the extraordinary material in which he + chose to clothe himself—“for the time being,” would be his mumbled + remark to any observation on the subject—like a man roughened out of + granite, standing in a wilderness not big enough for a decent + billiard-room. A heavy figure of a man of stone, with a red handsome face, + a blue wandering eye, and a great white beard flowing to his waist and + never trimmed as far as Colebrook knew. + </p> + <p> + Seven years before, he had seriously answered, “Next month, I think,” to + the chaffing attempt to secure his custom made by that distinguished local + wit, the Colebrook barber, who happened to be sitting insolently in the + tap-room of the New Inn near the harbour, where the captain had entered to + buy an ounce of tobacco. After paying for his purchase with three + half-pence extracted from the corner of a handkerchief which he carried in + the cuff of his sleeve, Captain Hagberd went out. As soon as the door was + shut the barber laughed. “The old one and the young one will be strolling + arm in arm to get shaved in my place presently. The tailor shall be set to + work, and the barber, and the candlestick maker; high old times are coming + for Colebrook, they are coming, to be sure. It used to be ‘next week,’ now + it has come to ‘next month,’ and so on—soon it will be next spring, + for all I know.” + </p> + <p> + Noticing a stranger listening to him with a vacant grin, he explained, + stretching out his legs cynically, that this queer old Hagberd, a retired + coasting-skipper, was waiting for the return of a son of his. The boy had + been driven away from home, he shouldn’t wonder; had run away to sea and + had never been heard of since. Put to rest in Davy Jones’s locker this + many a day, as likely as not. That old man came flying to Colebrook three + years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost his wife lately then), getting + out of a third-class smoker as if the devil had been at his heels; and the + only thing that brought him down was a letter—a hoax probably. Some + joker had written to him about a seafaring man with some such name who was + supposed to be hanging about some girl or other, either in Colebrook or in + the neighbourhood. “Funny, ain’t it?” The old chap had been advertising in + the London papers for Harry Hagberd, and offering rewards for any sort of + likely information. And the barber would go on to describe with sardonic + gusto, how that stranger in mourning had been seen exploring the country, + in carts, on foot, taking everybody into his confidence, visiting all the + inns and alehouses for miles around, stopping people on the road with his + questions, looking into the very ditches almost; first in the greatest + excitement, then with a plodding sort of perseverance, growing slower and + slower; and he could not even tell you plainly how his son looked. The + sailor was supposed to be one of two that had left a timber ship, and to + have been seen dangling after some girl; but the old man described a boy + of fourteen or so—“a clever-looking, high-spirited boy.” And when + people only smiled at this he would rub his forehead in a confused sort of + way before he slunk off, looking offended. He found nobody, of course; not + a trace of anybody—never heard of anything worth belief, at any + rate; but he had not been able somehow to tear himself away from + Colebrook. + </p> + <p> + “It was the shock of this disappointment, perhaps, coming soon after the + loss of his wife, that had driven him crazy on that point,” the barber + suggested, with an air of great psychological insight. After a time the + old man abandoned the active search. His son had evidently gone away; but + he settled himself to wait. His son had been once at least in Colebrook in + preference to his native place. There must have been some reason for it, + he seemed to think, some very powerful inducement, that would bring him + back to Colebrook again. + </p> + <p> + “Ha, ha, ha! Why, of course, Colebrook. Where else? That’s the only place + in the United Kingdom for your long-lost sons. So he sold up his old home + in Colchester, and down he comes here. Well, it’s a craze, like any other. + Wouldn’t catch me going crazy over any of my youngsters clearing out. I’ve + got eight of them at home.” The barber was showing off his strength of + mind in the midst of a laughter that shook the tap-room. + </p> + <p> + Strange, though, that sort of thing, he would confess, with the frankness + of a superior intelligence, seemed to be catching. His establishment, for + instance, was near the harbour, and whenever a sailor-man came in for a + hair-cut or a shave—if it was a strange face he couldn’t help + thinking directly, “Suppose he’s the son of old Hagberd!” He laughed at + himself for it. It was a strong craze. He could remember the time when the + whole town was full of it. But he had his hopes of the old chap yet. He + would cure him by a course of judicious chaffing. He was watching the + progress of the treatment. Next week—next month—next year! + When the old skipper had put off the date of that return till next year, + he would be well on his way to not saying any more about it. In other + matters he was quite rational, so this, too, was bound to come. Such was + the barber’s firm opinion. + </p> + <p> + Nobody had ever contradicted him; his own hair had gone grey since that + time, and Captain Hagberd’s beard had turned quite white, and had acquired + a majestic flow over the No. 1 canvas suit, which he had made for himself + secretly with tarred twine, and had assumed suddenly, coming out in it one + fine morning, whereas the evening before he had been seen going home in + his mourning of broadcloth. It caused a sensation in the High Street—shopkeepers + coming to their doors, people in the houses snatching up their hats to run + out—a stir at which he seemed strangely surprised at first, and then + scared; but his only answer to the wondering questions was that startled + and evasive, “For the present.” + </p> + <p> + That sensation had been forgotten, long ago; and Captain Hagberd himself, + if not forgotten, had come to be disregarded—the penalty of + dailiness—as the sun itself is disregarded unless it makes its power + felt heavily. Captain Hagberd’s movements showed no infirmity: he walked + stiffly in his suit of canvas, a quaint and remarkable figure; only his + eyes wandered more furtively perhaps than of yore. His manner abroad had + lost its excitable watchfulness; it had become puzzled and diffident, as + though he had suspected that there was somewhere about him something + slightly compromising, some embarrassing oddity; and yet had remained + unable to discover what on earth this something wrong could be. + </p> + <p> + He was unwilling now to talk with the townsfolk. He had earned for himself + the reputation of an awful skinflint, of a miser in the matter of living. + He mumbled regretfully in the shops, bought inferior scraps of meat after + long hesitations; and discouraged all allusions to his costume. It was as + the barber had foretold. For all one could tell, he had recovered already + from the disease of hope; and only Miss Bessie Carvil knew that he said + nothing about his son’s return because with him it was no longer “next + week,” “next month,” or even “next year.” It was “to-morrow.” + </p> + <p> + In their intimacy of back yard and front garden he talked with her + paternally, reasonably, and dogmatically, with a touch of arbitrariness. + They met on the ground of unreserved confidence, which was authenticated + by an affectionate wink now and then. Miss Carvil had come to look forward + rather to these winks. At first they had discomposed her: the poor fellow + was mad. Afterwards she had learned to laugh at them: there was no harm in + him. Now she was aware of an unacknowledged, pleasurable, incredulous + emotion, expressed by a faint blush. He winked not in the least vulgarly; + his thin red face with a well-modelled curved nose, had a sort of + distinction—the more so that when he talked to her he looked with a + steadier and more intelligent glance. A handsome, hale, upright, capable + man, with a white beard. You did not think of his age. His son, he + affirmed, had resembled him amazingly from his earliest babyhood. + </p> + <p> + Harry would be one-and-thirty next July, he declared. Proper age to get + married with a nice, sensible girl that could appreciate a good home. He + was a very high-spirited boy. High-spirited husbands were the easiest to + manage. These mean, soft chaps, that you would think butter wouldn’t melt + in their mouths, were the ones to make a woman thoroughly miserable. And + there was nothing like a home—a fireside—a good roof: no + turning out of your warm bed in all sorts of weather. “Eh, my dear?” + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd had been one of those sailors that pursue their calling + within sight of land. One of the many children of a bankrupt farmer, he + had been apprenticed hurriedly to a coasting skipper, and had remained on + the coast all his sea life. It must have been a hard one at first: he had + never taken to it; his affection turned to the land, with its innumerable + houses, with its quiet lives gathered round its firesides. Many sailors + feel and profess a rational dislike for the sea, but his was a profound + and emotional animosity—as if the love of the stabler element had + been bred into him through many generations. + </p> + <p> + “People did not know what they let their boys in for when they let them go + to sea,” he expounded to Bessie. “As soon make convicts of them at once.” + He did not believe you ever got used to it. The weariness of such a life + got worse as you got older. What sort of trade was it in which more than + half your time you did not put your foot inside your house? Directly you + got out to sea you had no means of knowing what went on at home. One might + have thought him weary of distant voyages; and the longest he had ever + made had lasted a fortnight, of which the most part had been spent at + anchor, sheltering from the weather. As soon as his wife had inherited a + house and enough to live on (from a bachelor uncle who had made some money + in the coal business) he threw up his command of an East-coast collier + with a feeling as though he had escaped from the galleys. After all these + years he might have counted on the fingers of his two hands all the days + he had been out of sight of England. He had never known what it was to be + out of soundings. “I have never been further than eighty fathoms from the + land,” was one of his boasts. + </p> + <p> + Bessie Carvil heard all these things. In front of their cottage grew an + under-sized ash; and on summer afternoons she would bring out a chair on + the grass-plot and sit down with her sewing. Captain Hagberd, in his + canvas suit, leaned on a spade. He dug every day in his front plot. He + turned it over and over several times every year, but was not going to + plant anything “just at present.” + </p> + <p> + To Bessie Carvil he would state more explicitly: “Not till our Harry comes + home to-morrow.” And she had heard this formula of hope so often that it + only awakened the vaguest pity in her heart for that hopeful old man. + </p> + <p> + Everything was put off in that way, and everything was being prepared + likewise for to-morrow. There was a boxful of packets of various + flower-seeds to choose from, for the front garden. “He will doubtless let + you have your say about that, my dear,” Captain Hagberd intimated to her + across the railing. + </p> + <p> + Miss Bessie’s head remained bowed over her work. She had heard all this so + many times. But now and then she would rise, lay down her sewing, and come + slowly to the fence. There was a charm in these gentle ravings. He was + determined that his son should not go away again for the want of a home + all ready for him. He had been filling the other cottage with all sorts of + furniture. She imagined it all new, fresh with varnish, piled up as in a + warehouse. There would be tables wrapped up in sacking; rolls of carpets + thick and vertical like fragments of columns, the gleam of white marble + tops in the dimness of the drawn blinds. Captain Hagberd always described + his purchases to her, carefully, as to a person having a legitimate + interest in them. The overgrown yard of his cottage could be laid over + with concrete... after to-morrow. + </p> + <p> + “We may just as well do away with the fence. You could have your + drying-line out, quite clear of your flowers.” He winked, and she would + blush faintly. + </p> + <p> + This madness that had entered her life through the kind impulses of her + heart had reasonable details. What if some day his son returned? But she + could not even be quite sure that he ever had a son; and if he existed + anywhere he had been too long away. When Captain Hagberd got excited in + his talk she would steady him by a pretence of belief, laughing a little + to salve her conscience. + </p> + <p> + Only once she had tried pityingly to throw some doubt on that hope doomed + to disappointment, but the effect of her attempt had scared her very much. + All at once over that man’s face there came an expression of horror and + incredulity, as though he had seen a crack open out in the firmament. + </p> + <p> + “You—you—you don’t think he’s drowned!” + </p> + <p> + For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out of his mind, for in his + ordinary state she thought him more sane than people gave him credit for. + On that occasion the violence of the emotion was followed by a most + paternal and complacent recovery. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t alarm yourself, my dear,” he said a little cunningly: “the sea + can’t keep him. He does not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did + belong to it. Look at me; I didn’t get drowned. Moreover, he isn’t a + sailor at all; and if he is not a sailor he’s bound to come back. There’s + nothing to prevent him coming back....” + </p> + <p> + His eyes began to wander. + </p> + <p> + “To-morrow.” + </p> + <p> + She never tried again, for fear the man should go out of his mind on the + spot. He depended on her. She seemed the only sensible person in the town; + and he would congratulate himself frankly before her face on having + secured such a levelheaded wife for his son. The rest of the town, he + confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly queer. The way + they looked at you—the way they talked to you! He had never got on + with any one in the place. Didn’t like the people. He would not have left + his own country if it had not been clear that his son had taken a fancy to + Colebrook. + </p> + <p> + She humoured him in silence, listening patiently by the fence; crocheting + with downcast eyes. Blushes came with difficulty on her dead-white + complexion, under the negligently twisted opulence of mahogany-coloured + hair. Her father was frankly carroty. + </p> + <p> + She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face. When Captain Hagberd + vaunted the necessity and propriety of a home and the delights of one’s + own fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her home delights + had been confined to the nursing of her father during the ten best years + of her life. + </p> + <p> + A bestial roaring coming out of an upstairs window would interrupt their + talk. She would begin at once to roll up her crochet-work or fold her + sewing, without the slightest sign of haste. Meanwhile the howls and roars + of her name would go on, making the fishermen strolling upon the sea-wall + on the other side of the road turn their heads towards the cottages. She + would go in slowly at the front door, and a moment afterwards there would + fall a profound silence. Presently she would reappear, leading by the hand + a man, gross and unwieldy like a hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered, surly + face. + </p> + <p> + He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness had overtaken years before + in the full flush of business. He behaved to his daughter as if she had + been responsible for its incurable character. He had been heard to bellow + at the top of his voice, as if to defy Heaven, that he did not care: he + had made enough money to have ham and eggs for his breakfast every + morning. He thanked God for it, in a fiendish tone as though he were + cursing. + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably impressed by his tenant, that + once he told Miss Bessie, “He is a very extravagant fellow, my dear.” + </p> + <p> + She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of socks for her father, who + expected her to keep up the supply dutifully. She hated knitting, and, as + she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her eyes on her needles. + </p> + <p> + “Of course it isn’t as if he had a son to provide for,” Captain Hagberd + went on a little vacantly. “Girls, of course, don’t require so much—h’m-h’m. + They don’t run away from home, my dear.” + </p> + <p> + “No,” said Miss Bessie, quietly. + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of turned-up earth, chuckled. With his + maritime rig, his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Neptune, he + resembled a deposed sea-god who had exchanged the trident for the spade. + </p> + <p> + “And he must look upon you as already provided for, in a manner. That’s + the best of it with the girls. The husbands...” He winked. Miss Bessie, + absorbed in her knitting, coloured faintly. + </p> + <p> + “Bessie! my hat!” old Carvil bellowed out suddenly. He had been sitting + under the tree mute and motionless, like an idol of some remarkably + monstrous superstition. He never opened his mouth but to howl for her, at + her, sometimes about her; and then he did not moderate the terms of his + abuse. Her system was never to answer him at all; and he kept up his + shouting till he got attended to—till she shook him by the arm, or + thrust the mouthpiece of his pipe between his teeth. He was one of the few + blind people who smoke. When he felt the hat being put on his head he + stopped his noise at once. Then he rose, and they passed together through + the gate. + </p> + <p> + He weighed heavily on her arm. During their slow, toilful walks she + appeared to be dragging with her for a penance the burden of that infirm + bulk. Usually they crossed the road at once (the cottages stood in the + fields near the harbour, two hundred yards away from the end of the + street), and for a long, long time they would remain in view, ascending + imperceptibly the flight of wooden steps that led to the top of the + sea-wall. It ran on from east to west, shutting out the Channel like a + neglected railway embankment, on which no train had ever rolled within + memory of man. Groups of sturdy fishermen would emerge upon the sky, walk + along for a bit, and sink without haste. Their brown nets, like the + cobwebs of gigantic spiders, lay on the shabby grass of the slope; and, + looking up from the end of the street, the people of the town would + recognise the two Carvils by the creeping slowness of their gait. Captain + Hagberd, pottering aimlessly about his cottages, would raise his head to + see how they got on in their promenade. + </p> + <p> + He advertised still in the Sunday papers for Harry Hagberd. These sheets + were read in foreign parts to the end of the world, he informed Bessie. At + the same time he seemed to think that his son was in England—so near + to Colebrook that he would of course turn up “to-morrow.” Bessie, without + committing herself to that opinion in so many words, argued that in that + case the expense of advertising was unnecessary; Captain Hagberd had + better spend that weekly half-crown on himself. She declared she did not + know what he lived on. Her argumentation would puzzle him and cast him + down for a time. “They all do it,” he pointed out. There was a whole + column devoted to appeals after missing relatives. He would bring the + newspaper to show her. He and his wife had advertised for years; only she + was an impatient woman. The news from Colebrook had arrived the very day + after her funeral; if she had not been so impatient she might have been + here now, with no more than one day more to wait. “You are not an + impatient woman, my dear.” + </p> + <p> + “I’ve no patience with you sometimes,” she would say. + </p> + <p> + If he still advertised for his son he did not offer rewards for + information any more; for, with the muddled lucidity of a mental + derangement he had reasoned himself into a conviction as clear as daylight + that he had already attained all that could be expected in that way. What + more could he want? Colebrook was the place, and there was no need to ask + for more. Miss Carvil praised him for his good sense, and he was soothed + by the part she took in his hope, which had become his delusion; in that + idea which blinded his mind to truth and probability, just as the other + old man in the other cottage had been made blind, by another disease, to + the light and beauty of the world. + </p> + <p> + But anything he could interpret as a doubt—any coldness of assent, + or even a simple inattention to the development of his projects of a home + with his returned son and his son’s wife—would irritate him into + flings and jerks and wicked side glances. He would dash his spade into the + ground and walk to and fro before it. Miss Bessie called it his tantrums. + She shook her finger at him. Then, when she came out again, after he had + parted with her in anger, he would watch out of the corner of his eyes for + the least sign of encouragement to approach the iron railings and resume + his fatherly and patronising relations. + </p> + <p> + For all their intimacy, which had lasted some years now, they had never + talked without a fence or a railing between them. He described to her all + the splendours accumulated for the setting-up of their housekeeping, but + had never invited her to an inspection. No human eye was to behold them + till Harry had his first look. In fact, nobody had ever been inside his + cottage; he did his own housework, and he guarded his son’s privilege so + jealously that the small objects of domestic use he bought sometimes in + the town were smuggled rapidly across the front garden under his canvas + coat. Then, coming out, he would remark apologetically, “It was only a + small kettle, my dear.” + </p> + <p> + And, if not too tired with her drudgery, or worried beyond endurance by + her father, she would laugh at him with a blush, and say: “That’s all + right, Captain Hagberd; I am not impatient.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, my dear, you haven’t long to wait now,” he would answer with a + sudden bashfulness, and looking uneasily, as though he had suspected that + there was something wrong somewhere. + </p> + <p> + Every Monday she paid him his rent over the railings. He clutched the + shillings greedily. He grudged every penny he had to spend on his + maintenance, and when he left her to make his purchases his bearing + changed as soon as he got into the street. Away from the sanction of her + pity, he felt himself exposed without defence. He brushed the walls with + his shoulder. He mistrusted the queerness of the people; yet, by then, + even the town children had left off calling after him, and the tradesmen + served him without a word. The slightest allusion to his clothing had the + power to puzzle and frighten especially, as if it were something utterly + unwarranted and incomprehensible. + </p> + <p> + In the autumn, the driving rain drummed on his sailcloth suit saturated + almost to the stiffness of sheet-iron, with its surface flowing with + water. When the weather was too bad, he retreated under the tiny porch, + and, standing close against the door, looked at his spade left planted in + the middle of the yard. The ground was so much dug up all over, that as + the season advanced it turned to a quagmire. When it froze hard, he was + disconsolate. What would Harry say? And as he could not have so much of + Bessie’s company at that time of the year, the roars of old Carvil, that + came muffled through the closed windows, calling her indoors, exasperated + him greatly. + </p> + <p> + “Why don’t that extravagant fellow get you a servant?” he asked + impatiently one mild afternoon. She had thrown something over her head to + run out for a while. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t know,” said the pale Bessie, wearily, staring away with her + heavy-lidded, grey, and unexpectant glance. There were always smudgy + shadows under her eyes, and she did not seem able to see any change or any + end to her life. + </p> + <p> + “You wait till you get married, my dear,” said her only friend, drawing + closer to the fence. “Harry will get you one.” + </p> + <p> + His hopeful craze seemed to mock her own want of hope with so bitter an + aptness that in her nervous irritation she could have screamed at him + outright. But she only said in self-mockery, and speaking to him as though + he had been sane, “Why, Captain Hagberd, your son may not even want to + look at me.” + </p> + <p> + He flung his head back and laughed his throaty affected cackle of anger. + </p> + <p> + “What! That boy? Not want to look at the only sensible girl for miles + around? What do you think I am here for, my dear—my dear—my + dear?... What? You wait. You just wait. You’ll see to-morrow. I’ll soon—” + </p> + <p> + “Bessie! Bessie! Bessie!” howled old Carvil inside. “Bessie!—my + pipe!” That fat blind man had given himself up to a very lust of laziness. + He would not lift his hand to reach for the things she took care to leave + at his very elbow. He would not move a limb; he would not rise from his + chair, he would not put one foot before another, in that parlour (where he + knew his way as well as if he had his sight), without calling her to his + side and hanging all his atrocious weight on her shoulder. He would not + eat one single mouthful of food without her close attendance. He had made + himself helpless beyond his affliction, to enslave her better. She stood + still for a moment, setting her teeth in the dusk, then turned and walked + slowly indoors. + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd went back to his spade. The shouting in Carvil’s cottage + stopped, and after a while the window of the parlour downstairs was lit + up. A man coming from the end of the street with a firm leisurely step + passed on, but seemed to have caught sight of Captain Hagberd, because he + turned back a pace or two. A cold white light lingered in the western sky. + The man leaned over the gate in an interested manner. + </p> + <p> + “You must be Captain Hagberd,” he said, with easy assurance. + </p> + <p> + The old man spun round, pulling out his spade, startled by the strange + voice. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I am,” he answered nervously. + </p> + <p> + The other, smiling straight at him, uttered very slowly: “You’ve been + advertising for your son, I believe?” + </p> + <p> + “My son Harry,” mumbled Captain Hagberd, off his guard for once. “He’s + coming home tomorrow.” + </p> + <p> + “The devil he is!” The stranger marvelled greatly, and then went on, with + only a slight change of tone: “You’ve grown a beard like Father Christmas + himself.” + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd drew a little nearer, and leaned forward over his spade. + “Go your way,” he said, resentfully and timidly at the same time, because + he was always afraid of being laughed at. Every mental state, even + madness, has its equilibrium based upon self-esteem. Its disturbance + causes unhappiness; and Captain Hagberd lived amongst a scheme of settled + notions which it pained him to feel disturbed by people’s grins. Yes, + people’s grins were awful. They hinted at something wrong: but what? He + could not tell; and that stranger was obviously grinning—had come on + purpose to grin. It was bad enough on the streets, but he had never before + been outraged like this. + </p> + <p> + The stranger, unaware how near he was of having his head laid open with a + spade, said seriously: “I am not trespassing where I stand, am I? I fancy + there’s something wrong about your news. Suppose you let me come in.” + </p> + <p> + “<i>You</i> come in!” murmured old Hagberd, with inexpressible horror. + </p> + <p> + “I could give you some real information about your son—the very + latest tip, if you care to hear.” + </p> + <p> + “No,” shouted Hagberd. He began to pace wildly to and fro, he shouldered + his spade, he gesticulated with his other arm. “Here’s a fellow—a + grinning fellow, who says there’s something wrong. I’ve got more + information than you’re aware of. I’ve all the information I want. I’ve + had it for years—for years—for years—enough to last me + till to-morrow. Let you come in, indeed! What would Harry say?” + </p> + <p> + Bessie Carvil’s figure appeared in black silhouette on the parlour window; + then, with the sound of an opening door, flitted out before the other + cottage, all black, but with something white over her head. These two + voices beginning to talk suddenly outside (she had heard them indoors) had + given her such an emotion that she could not utter a sound. + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd seemed to be trying to find his way out of a cage. His + feet squelched in the puddles left by his industry. He stumbled in the + holes of the ruined grass-plot. He ran blindly against the fence. + </p> + <p> + “Here, steady a bit!” said the man at the gate, gravely stretching his arm + over and catching him by the sleeve. “Somebody’s been trying to get at + you. Hallo! what’s this rig you’ve got on? Storm canvas, by George!” He + had a big laugh. “Well, you <i>are</i> a character!” + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd jerked himself free, and began to back away shrinkingly. + “For the present,” he muttered, in a crestfallen tone. + </p> + <p> + “What’s the matter with him?” The stranger addressed Bessie with the + utmost familiarity, in a deliberate, explanatory tone. “I didn’t want to + startle the old man.” He lowered his voice as though he had known her for + years. “I dropped into a barber’s on my way, to get a twopenny shave, and + they told me there he was something of a character. The old man has been a + character all his life.” + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd, daunted by the allusion to his clothing, had retreated + inside, taking his spade with him; and the two at the gate, startled by + the unexpected slamming of the door, heard the bolts being shot, the + snapping of the lock, and the echo of an affected gurgling laugh within. + </p> + <p> + “I didn’t want to upset him,” the man said, after a short silence. “What’s + the meaning of all this? He isn’t quite crazy.” + </p> + <p> + “He has been worrying a long time about his lost son,” said Bessie, in a + low, apologetic tone. + </p> + <p> + “Well, I am his son.” + </p> + <p> + “Harry!” she cried—and was profoundly silent. + </p> + <p> + “Know my name? Friends with the old man, eh?” + </p> + <p> + “He’s our landlord,” Bessie faltered out, catching hold of the iron + railing. + </p> + <p> + “Owns both them rabbit-hutches, does he?” commented young Hagberd, + scornfully; “just the thing he would be proud of. Can you tell me who’s + that chap coming to-morrow? You must know something of it. I tell you, + it’s a swindle on the old man—nothing else.” + </p> + <p> + She did not answer, helpless before an insurmountable difficulty, appalled + before the necessity, the impossibility and the dread of an explanation in + which she and madness seemed involved together. + </p> + <p> + “Oh—I am so sorry,” she murmured. + </p> + <p> + “What’s the matter?” he said, with serenity. “You needn’t be afraid of + upsetting me. It’s the other fellow that’ll be upset when he least expects + it. I don’t care a hang; but there will be some fun when he shows his mug + to-morrow. I don’t care <i>that</i> for the old man’s pieces, but right is + right. You shall see me put a head on that coon—whoever he is!” + </p> + <p> + He had come nearer, and towered above her on the other side of the + railings. He glanced at her hands. He fancied she was trembling, and it + occurred to him that she had her part perhaps in that little game that was + to be sprung on his old man to-morrow. He had come just in time to spoil + their sport. He was entertained by the idea—scornful of the baffled + plot. But all his life he had been full of indulgence for all sorts of + women’s tricks. She really was trembling very much; her wrap had slipped + off her head. “Poor devil!” he thought. “Never mind about that chap. I + daresay he’ll change his mind before to-morrow. But what about me? I can’t + loaf about the gate til the morning.” + </p> + <p> + She burst out: “It is <i>you</i>—you yourself that he’s waiting for. + It is <i>you</i> who come to-morrow.” + </p> + <p> + He murmured. “Oh! It’s me!” blankly, and they seemed to become breathless + together. Apparently he was pondering over what he had heard; then, + without irritation, but evidently perplexed, he said: “I don’t understand. + I hadn’t written or anything. It’s my chum who saw the paper and told me—this + very morning.... Eh? what?” + </p> + <p> + He bent his ear; she whispered rapidly, and he listened for a while, + muttering the words “yes” and “I see” at times. Then, “But why won’t today + do?” he queried at last. + </p> + <p> + “You didn’t understand me!” she exclaimed, impatiently. The clear streak + of light under the clouds died out in the west. Again he stooped slightly + to hear better; and the deep night buried everything of the whispering + woman and the attentive man, except the familiar contiguity of their + faces, with its air of secrecy and caress. + </p> + <p> + He squared his shoulders; the broad-brimmed shadow of a hat sat cavalierly + on his head. “Awkward this, eh?” he appealed to her. “To-morrow? Well, + well! Never heard tell of anything like this. It’s all to-morrow, then, + without any sort of to-day, as far as I can see.” + </p> + <p> + She remained still and mute. + </p> + <p> + “And you have been encouraging this funny notion,” he said. + </p> + <p> + “I never contradicted him.” + </p> + <p> + “Why didn’t you?” + </p> + <p> + “What for should I?” she defended herself. “It would only have made him + miserable. He would have gone out of his mind.” + </p> + <p> + “His mind!” he muttered, and heard a short nervous laugh from her. + </p> + <p> + “Where was the harm? Was I to quarrel with the poor old man? It was easier + to half believe it myself.” + </p> + <p> + “Aye, aye,” he meditated, intelligently. “I suppose the old chap got + around you somehow with his soft talk. You are good-hearted.” + </p> + <p> + Her hands moved up in the dark nervously. “And it might have been true. It + was true. It has come. Here it is. This is the to-morrow we have been + waiting for.” + </p> + <p> + She drew a breath, and he said, good-humouredly: “Aye, with the door shut. + I wouldn’t care if... And you think he could be brought round to recognise + me... Eh? What?... You could do it? In a week you say? H’m, I daresay you + could—but do you think I could hold out a week in this dead-alive + place? Not me! I want either hard work, or an all-fired racket, or more + space than there is in the whole of England. I have been in this place, + though, once before, and for more than a week. The old man was advertising + for me then, and a chum I had with me had a notion of getting a couple + quid out of him by writing a lot of silly nonsense in a letter. That lark + did not come off, though. We had to clear out—and none too soon. But + this time I’ve a chum waiting for me in London, and besides...” + </p> + <p> + Bessie Carvil was breathing quickly. + </p> + <p> + “What if I tried a knock at the door?” he suggested. + </p> + <p> + “Try,” she said. + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd’s gate squeaked, and the shadow of the son moved on, then + stopped with another deep laugh in the throat, like the father’s, only + soft and gentle, thrilling to the woman’s heart, awakening to her ears. + </p> + <p> + “He isn’t frisky—is he? I would be afraid to lay hold of him. The + chaps are always telling me I don’t know my own strength.” + </p> + <p> + “He’s the most harmless creature that ever lived,” she interrupted. + </p> + <p> + “You wouldn’t say so if you had seen him chasing me upstairs with a hard + leather strap,” he said; “I haven’t forgotten it in sixteen years.” + </p> + <p> + She got warm from head to foot under another soft, subdued laugh. At the + rat-tat-tat of the knocker her heart flew into her mouth. + </p> + <p> + “Hey, dad! Let me in. I am Harry, I am. Straight! Come back home a day too + soon.” + </p> + <p> + One of the windows upstairs ran up. + </p> + <p> + “A grinning, information fellow,” said the voice of old Hagberd, up in the + darkness. “Don’t you have anything to do with him. It will spoil + everything.” + </p> + <p> + She heard Harry Hagberd say, “Hallo, dad,” then a clanging clatter. The + window rumbled down, and he stood before her again. + </p> + <p> + “It’s just like old times. Nearly walloped the life out of me to stop me + going away, and now I come back he throws a confounded shovel at my head + to keep me out. It grazed my shoulder.” + </p> + <p> + She shuddered. + </p> + <p> + “I wouldn’t care,” he began, “only I spent my last shillings on the + railway fare and my last twopence on a shave—out of respect for the + old man.” + </p> + <p> + “Are you really Harry Hagberd?” she asked. “Can you prove it?” + </p> + <p> + “Can I prove it? Can any one else prove it?” he said jovially. “Prove with + what? What do I want to prove? There isn’t a single corner in the world, + barring England, perhaps, where you could not find some man, or more + likely woman, that would remember me for Harry Hagberd. I am more like + Harry Hagberd than any man alive; and I can prove it to you in a minute, + if you will let me step inside your gate.” + </p> + <p> + “Come in,” she said. + </p> + <p> + He entered then the front garden of the Carvils. His tall shadow strode + with a swagger; she turned her back on the window and waited, watching the + shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most material part. The light + fell on a tilted hat; a powerful shoulder, that seemed to cleave the + darkness; on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood still, facing + the illuminated parlour window at her back, turning his head from side to + side, laughing softly to himself. + </p> + <p> + “Just fancy, for a minute, the old man’s beard stuck on to my chin. Hey? + Now say. I was the very spit of him from a boy.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s true,” she murmured to herself. + </p> + <p> + “And that’s about as far as it goes. He was always one of your domestic + characters. Why, I remember how he used to go about looking very sick for + three days before he had to leave home on one of his trips to South + Shields for coal. He had a standing charter from the gas-works. You would + think he was off on a whaling cruise—three years and a tail. Ha, ha! + Not a bit of it. Ten days on the outside. The Skimmer of the Seas was a + smart craft. Fine name, wasn’t it? Mother’s uncle owned her....” + </p> + <p> + He interrupted himself, and in a lowered voice, “Did he ever tell you what + mother died of?” he asked. + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” said Miss Bessie, bitterly; “from impatience.” + </p> + <p> + He made no sound for a while; then brusquely: “They were so afraid I would + turn out badly that they fairly drove me away. Mother nagged at me for + being idle, and the old man said he would cut my soul out of my body + rather than let me go to sea. Well, it looked as if he would do it too—so + I went. It looks to me sometimes as if I had been born to them by a + mistake—in that other hutch of a house.” + </p> + <p> + “Where ought you to have been born by rights?” Bessie Carvil interrupted + him, defiantly. + </p> + <p> + “In the open, upon a beach, on a windy night,” he said, quick as + lightning. Then he mused slowly. “They were characters, both of them, by + George; and the old man keeps it up well—don’t he? A damned shovel + on the—Hark! who’s that making that row? ‘Bessie, Bessie.’ It’s in + your house.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s for me,” she said, with indifference. + </p> + <p> + He stepped aside, out of the streak of light. “Your husband?” he inquired, + with the tone of a man accustomed to unlawful trysts. “Fine voice for a + ship’s deck in a thundering squall.” + </p> + <p> + “No; my father. I am not married.” + </p> + <p> + “You seem a fine girl, Miss Bessie, dear,” he said at once. + </p> + <p> + She turned her face away. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I say,—what’s up? Who’s murdering him?” + </p> + <p> + “He wants his tea.” She faced him, still and tall, with averted head, with + her hands hanging clasped before her. + </p> + <p> + “Hadn’t you better go in?” he suggested, after watching for a while the + nape of her neck, a patch of dazzling white skin and soft shadow above the + sombre line of her shoulders. Her wrap had slipped down to her elbows. + “You’ll have all the town coming out presently. I’ll wait here a bit.” + </p> + <p> + Her wrap fell to the ground, and he stooped to pick it up; she had + vanished. He threw it over his arm, and approaching the window squarely he + saw a monstrous form of a fat man in an armchair, an unshaded lamp, the + yawning of an enormous mouth in a big flat face encircled by a ragged halo + of hair—Miss Bessie’s head and bust. The shouting stopped; the blind + ran down. He lost himself in thinking how awkward it was. Father mad; no + getting into the house. No money to get back; a hungry chum in London who + would begin to think he had been given the go-by. “Damn!” he muttered. He + could break the door in, certainly; but they would perhaps bundle him into + chokey for that without asking questions—no great matter, only he + was confoundedly afraid of being locked up, even in mistake. He turned + cold at the thought. He stamped his feet on the sodden grass. + </p> + <p> + “What are you?—a sailor?” said an agitated voice. + </p> + <p> + She had flitted out, a shadow herself, attracted by the reckless shadow + waiting under the wall of her home. + </p> + <p> + “Anything. Enough of a sailor to be worth my salt before the mast. Came + home that way this time.” + </p> + <p> + “Where do you come from?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “Right away from a jolly good spree,” he said, “by the London train—see? + Ough! I hate being shut up in a train. I don’t mind a house so much.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah,” she said; “that’s lucky.” + </p> + <p> + “Because in a house you can at any time open the blamed door and walk away + straight before you.” + </p> + <p> + “And never come back?” + </p> + <p> + “Not for sixteen years at least,” he laughed. “To a rabbit hutch, and get + a confounded old shovel...” + </p> + <p> + “A ship is not so very big,” she taunted. + </p> + <p> + “No, but the sea is great.” + </p> + <p> + She dropped her head, and as if her ears had been opened to the voices of + the world, she heard, beyond the rampart of sea-wall, the swell of + yesterday’s gale breaking on the beach with monotonous and solemn + vibrations, as if all the earth had been a tolling bell. + </p> + <p> + “And then, why, a ship’s a ship. You love her and leave her; and a voyage + isn’t a marriage.” He quoted the sailor’s saying lightly. + </p> + <p> + “It is not a marriage,” she whispered. + </p> + <p> + “I never took a false name, and I’ve never yet told a lie to a woman. What + lie? Why, <i>the</i> lie—. Take me or leave me, I say: and if you + take me, then it is...” He hummed a snatch very low, leaning against the + wall. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Oh, ho, ho Rio! + And fare thee well, + My bonnie young girl, + We’re bound to Rio Grande.” + </pre> + <p> + “Capstan song,” he explained. Her teeth chattered. + </p> + <p> + “You are cold,” he said. “Here’s that affair of yours I picked up.” She + felt his hands about her, wrapping her closely. “Hold the ends together in + front,” he commanded. + </p> + <p> + “What did you come here for?” she asked, repressing a shudder. + </p> + <p> + “Five quid,” he answered, promptly. “We let our spree go on a little too + long and got hard up.” + </p> + <p> + “You’ve been drinking?” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Blind three days; on purpose. I am not given that way—don’t you + think. There’s nothing and nobody that can get over me unless I like. I + can be as steady as a rock. My chum sees the paper this morning, and says + he to me: ‘Go on, Harry: loving parent. That’s five quid sure.’ So we + scraped all our pockets for the fare. Devil of a lark!” + </p> + <p> + “You have a hard heart, I am afraid,” she sighed. + </p> + <p> + “What for? For running away? Why! he wanted to make a lawyer’s clerk of me—just + to please himself. Master in his own house; and my poor mother egged him + on—for my good, I suppose. Well, then—so long; and I went. No, + I tell you: the day I cleared out, I was all black and blue from his great + fondness for me. Ah! he was always a bit of a character. Look at that + shovel now. Off his chump? Not much. That’s just exactly like my dad. He + wants me here just to have somebody to order about. However, we two were + hard up; and what’s five quid to him—once in sixteen hard years?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, but I am sorry for you. Did you never want to come back home?” + </p> + <p> + “Be a lawyer’s clerk and rot here—in some such place as this?” he + cried in contempt. “What! if the old man set me up in a home to-day, I + would kick it down about my ears—or else die there before the third + day was out.” + </p> + <p> + “And where else is it that you hope to die?” + </p> + <p> + “In the bush somewhere; in the sea; on a blamed mountain-top for choice. + At home? Yes! the world’s my home; but I expect I’ll die in a hospital + some day. What of that? Any place is good enough, as long as I’ve lived; + and I’ve been everything you can think of almost but a tailor or a + soldier. I’ve been a boundary rider; I’ve sheared sheep; and humped my + swag; and harpooned a whale. I’ve rigged ships, and prospected for gold, + and skinned dead bullocks,—and turned my back on more money than the + old man would have scraped in his whole life. Ha, ha!” + </p> + <p> + He overwhelmed her. She pulled herself together and managed to utter, + “Time to rest now.” + </p> + <p> + He straightened himself up, away from the wall, and in a severe voice + said, “Time to go.” + </p> + <p> + But he did not move. He leaned back again, and hummed thoughtfully a bar + or two of an outlandish tune. + </p> + <p> + She felt as if she were about to cry. “That’s another of your cruel + songs,” she said. + </p> + <p> + “Learned it in Mexico—in Sonora.” He talked easily. “It is the song + of the Gambucinos. You don’t know? The song of restless men. Nothing could + hold them in one place—not even a woman. You used to meet one of + them now and again, in the old days, on the edge of the gold country, away + north there beyond the Rio Gila. I’ve seen it. A prospecting engineer in + Mazatlan took me along with him to help look after the waggons. A sailor’s + a handy chap to have about you anyhow. It’s all a desert: cracks in the + earth that you can’t see the bottom of; and mountains—sheer rocks + standing up high like walls and church spires, only a hundred times + bigger. The valleys are full of boulders and black stones. There’s not a + blade of grass to see; and the sun sets more red over that country than I + have seen it anywhere—blood-red and angry. It <i>is</i> fine.” + </p> + <p> + “You do not want to go back there again?” she stammered out. + </p> + <p> + He laughed a little. “No. That’s the blamed gold country. It gave me the + shivers sometimes to look at it—and we were a big lot of men + together, mind; but these Gambucinos wandered alone. They knew that + country before anybody had ever heard of it. They had a sort of gift for + prospecting, and the fever of it was on them too; and they did not seem to + want the gold very much. They would find some rich spot, and then turn + their backs on it; pick up perhaps a little—enough for a spree—and + then be off again, looking for more. They never stopped long where there + were houses; they had no wife, no chick, no home, never a chum. You + couldn’t be friends with a Gambucino; they were too restless—here + to-day, and gone, God knows where, to-morrow. They told no one of their + finds, and there has never been a Gambucino well off. It was not for the + gold they cared; it was the wandering about looking for it in the stony + country that got into them and wouldn’t let them rest; so that no woman + yet born could hold a Gambucino for more than a week. That’s what the song + says. It’s all about a pretty girl that tried hard to keep hold of a + Gambucino lover, so that he should bring her lots of gold. No fear! Off he + went, and she never saw him again.” + </p> + <p> + “What became of her?” she breathed out. + </p> + <p> + “The song don’t tell. Cried a bit, I daresay. They were the fellows: kiss + and go. But it’s the looking for a thing—a something... Sometimes I + think I am a sort of Gambucino myself.” + </p> + <p> + “No woman can hold you, then,” she began in a brazen voice, which quavered + suddenly before the end. + </p> + <p> + “No longer than a week,” he joked, playing upon her very heartstrings with + the gay, tender note of his laugh; “and yet I am fond of them all. + Anything for a woman of the right sort. The scrapes they got me into, and + the scrapes they got me out of! I love them at first sight. I’ve fallen in + love with you already, Miss—Bessie’s your name—eh?” + </p> + <p> + She backed away a little, and with a trembling laugh: + </p> + <p> + “You haven’t seen my face yet.” + </p> + <p> + He bent forward gallantly. “A little pale: it suits some. But you are a + fine figure of a girl, Miss Bessie.” + </p> + <p> + She was all in a flutter. Nobody had ever said so much to her before. + </p> + <p> + His tone changed. “I am getting middling hungry, though. Had no breakfast + to-day. Couldn’t you scare up some bread from that tea for me, or—” + </p> + <p> + She was gone already. He had been on the point of asking her to let him + come inside. No matter. Anywhere would do. Devil of a fix! What would his + chum think? + </p> + <p> + “I didn’t ask you as a beggar,” he said, jestingly, taking a piece of + bread-and-butter from the plate she held before him. “I asked as a friend. + My dad is rich, you know.” + </p> + <p> + “He starves himself for your sake.” + </p> + <p> + “And I have starved for his whim,” he said, taking up another piece. + </p> + <p> + “All he has in the world is for you,” she pleaded. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, if I come here to sit on it like a dam’ toad in a hole. Thank you; + and what about the shovel, eh? He always had a queer way of showing his + love.” + </p> + <p> + “I could bring him round in a week,” she suggested, timidly. + </p> + <p> + He was too hungry to answer her; and, holding the plate submissively to + his hand, she began to whisper up to him in a quick, panting voice. He + listened, amazed, eating slower and slower, till at last his jaws stopped + altogether. “That’s his game, is it?” he said, in a rising tone of + scathing contempt. An ungovernable movement of his arm sent the plate + flying out of her fingers. He shot out a violent curse. + </p> + <p> + She shrank from him, putting her hand against the wall. + </p> + <p> + “No!” he raged. “He expects! Expects <i>me</i>—for his rotten + money!... Who wants his home? Mad—not he! Don’t you think. He wants + his own way. He wanted to turn me into a miserable lawyer’s clerk, and now + he wants to make of me a blamed tame rabbit in a cage. Of me! Of me!” His + subdued angry laugh frightened her now. + </p> + <p> + “The whole world ain’t a bit too big for me to spread my elbows in, I can + tell you—what’s your name—Bessie—let alone a dam’ + parlour in a hutch. Marry! He wants me to marry and settle! And as likely + as not he has looked out the girl too—dash my soul! And do you know + the Judy, may I ask?” + </p> + <p> + She shook all over with noiseless dry sobs; but he was fuming and fretting + too much to notice her distress. He bit his thumb with rage at the mere + idea. A window rattled up. + </p> + <p> + “A grinning, information fellow,” pronounced old Hagberd dogmatically, in + measured tones. And the sound of his voice seemed to Bessie to make the + night itself mad—to pour insanity and disaster on the earth. “Now I + know what’s wrong with the people here, my dear. Why, of course! With this + mad chap going about. Don’t you have anything to do with him, Bessie. + Bessie, I say!” + </p> + <p> + They stood as if dumb. The old man fidgeted and mumbled to himself at the + window. Suddenly he cried, piercingly: “Bessie—I see you. I’ll tell + Harry.” + </p> + <p> + She made a movement as if to run away, but stopped and raised her hands to + her temples. Young Hagberd, shadowy and big, stirred no more than a man of + bronze. Over their heads the crazy night whimpered and scolded in an old + man’s voice. + </p> + <p> + “Send him away, my dear. He’s only a vagabond. What you want is a good + home of your own. That chap has no home—he’s not like Harry. He + can’t be Harry. Harry is coming to-morrow. Do you hear? One day more,” he + babbled more excitedly; “never you fear—Harry shall marry you.” + </p> + <p> + His voice rose very shrill and mad against the regular deep soughing of + the swell coiling heavily about the outer face of the sea-wall. + </p> + <p> + “He will have to. I shall make him, or if not”—he swore a great oath—“I’ll + cut him off with a shilling to-morrow, and leave everything to you. I + shall. To you. Let him starve.” + </p> + <p> + The window rattled down. + </p> + <p> + Harry drew a deep breath, and took one step toward Bessie. “So it’s you—the + girl,” he said, in a lowered voice. She had not moved, and she remained + half turned away from him, pressing her head in the palms of her hands. + “My word!” he continued, with an invisible half-smile on his lips. “I have + a great mind to stop....” + </p> + <p> + Her elbows were trembling violently. + </p> + <p> + “For a week,” he finished without a pause. + </p> + <p> + She clapped her hands to her face. + </p> + <p> + He came up quite close, and took hold of her wrists gently. She felt his + breath on her ear. + </p> + <p> + “It’s a scrape I am in—this, and it is you that must see me + through.” He was trying to uncover her face. She resisted. He let her go + then, and stepping back a little, “Have you got any money?” he asked. “I + must be off now.” + </p> + <p> + She nodded quickly her shamefaced head, and he waited, looking away from + her, while, trembling all over and bowing her neck, she tried to find the + pocket of her dress. + </p> + <p> + “Here it is!” she whispered. “Oh, go away! go away for God’s sake! If I + had more—more—I would give it all to forget—to make you + forget.” + </p> + <p> + He extended his hand. “No fear! I haven’t forgotten a single one of you in + the world. Some gave me more than money—but I am a beggar now—and + you women always had to get me out of my scrapes.” + </p> + <p> + He swaggered up to the parlour window, and in the dim light filtering + through the blind, looked at the coin lying in his palm. It was a + half-sovereign. He slipped it into his pocket. She stood a little on one + side, with her head drooping, as if wounded; with her arms hanging passive + by her side, as if dead. + </p> + <p> + “You can’t buy me in,” he said, “and you can’t buy yourself out.” + </p> + <p> + He set his hat firmly with a little tap, and next moment she felt herself + lifted up in the powerful embrace of his arms. Her feet lost the ground; + her head hung back; he showered kisses on her face with a silent and + over-mastering ardour, as if in haste to get at her very soul. He kissed + her pale cheeks, her hard forehead, her heavy eyelids, her faded lips; and + the measured blows and sighs of the rising tide accompanied the enfolding + power of his arms, the overwhelming might of his caresses. It was as if + the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes of the town, had + sent a wave over her head. It passed on; she staggered backwards, with her + shoulders against the wall, exhausted, as if she had been stranded there + after a storm and a shipwreck. + </p> + <p> + She opened her eyes after awhile; and listening to the firm, leisurely + footsteps going away with their conquest, began to gather her skirts, + staring all the time before her. Suddenly she darted through the open gate + into the dark and deserted street. + </p> + <p> + “Stop!” she shouted. “Don’t go!” + </p> + <p> + And listening with an attentive poise of the head, she could not tell + whether it was the beat of the swell or his fateful tread that seemed to + fall cruelly upon her heart. Presently every sound grew fainter, as though + she were slowly turning into stone. A fear of this awful silence came to + her—worse than the fear of death. She called upon her ebbing + strength for the final appeal: + </p> + <p> + “Harry!” + </p> + <p> + Not even the dying echo of a footstep. Nothing. The thundering of the + surf, the voice of the restless sea itself, seemed stopped. There was not + a sound—no whisper of life, as though she were alone and lost in + that stony country of which she had heard, where madmen go looking for + gold and spurn the find. + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd, inside his dark house, had kept on the alert. A window + ran up; and in the silence of the stony country a voice spoke above her + head, high up in the black air—the voice of madness, lies and + despair—the voice of inextinguishable hope. “Is he gone yet—that + information fellow? Do you hear him about, my dear?” + </p> + <p> + She burst into tears. “No! no! no! I don’t hear him any more,” she sobbed. + </p> + <p> + He began to chuckle up there triumphantly. “You frightened him away. Good + girl. Now we shall be all right. Don’t you be impatient, my dear. One day + more.” + </p> + <p> + In the other house old Carvil, wallowing regally in his arm-chair, with a + globe lamp burning by his side on the table, yelled for her, in a fiendish + voice: “Bessie! Bessie! you Bessie!” + </p> + <p> + She heard him at last, and, as if overcome by fate, began to totter + silently back toward her stuffy little inferno of a cottage. It had no + lofty portal, no terrific inscription of forfeited hopes—she did not + understand wherein she had sinned. + </p> + <p> + Captain Hagberd had gradually worked himself into a state of noisy + happiness up there. + </p> + <p> + “Go in! Keep quiet!” she turned upon him tearfully, from the doorstep + below. + </p> + <p> + He rebelled against her authority in his great joy at having got rid at + last of that “something wrong.” It was as if all the hopeful madness of + the world had broken out to bring terror upon her heart, with the voice of + that old man shouting of his trust in an everlasting to-morrow. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of To-morrow, by Joseph Conrad + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO-MORROW *** + +***** This file should be named 494-h.htm or 494-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/9/494/ + +Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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He had come to +settle there under circumstances not at all myste- +rious--he used to be very communicative about +them at the time--but extremely morbid and un- +reasonable. He was possessed of some little money +evidently, because he bought a plot of ground, and +had a pair of ugly yellow brick cottages run up +very cheaply. He occupied one of them himself +and let the other to Josiah Carvil--blind Carvil, +the retired boat-builder--a man of evil repute as a +domestic tyrant. + +These cottages had one wall in common, shared +in a line of iron railing dividing their front gar- +dens; a wooden fence separated their back gardens. +Miss Bessie Carvil was allowed, as it were of right, +to throw over it the tea-cloths, 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 elbows on 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 her father's landlord in silence--in +an informed silence which had an air of knowledge, +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 your +back yard?" + +Miss Carvil would say nothing to this--she only +shook her head negatively. The tiny back yard +on her side had a few stone-bordered little beds of +black earth, in which the simple flowers she found +time to cultivate appeared somehow extravagantly +overgrown, as if belonging to an exotic clime; and +Captain Hagberd's upright, hale person, clad in +No. 1 sail-cloth from head to foot, would be emer- +ging knee-deep out of rank grass and the tall weeks +on his side of the fence. He appeared, with the col- +our and uncouth stiffness of the extraordinary ma- +terial in which he chose to clothe himself--"for the +time being," would be his mumbled remark to any +observation on the subject--like a man roughened +out of granite, standing in a wilderness not big +enough for a decent billiard-room. A heavy figure +of a man of stone, with a red handsome face, a blue +wandering eye, and a great white beard flowing +to his waist and never trimmed as far as Colebrook +knew. + +Seven years before, he had seriously answered, +"Next month, I think," to the chaffing attempt to +secure his custom made by that distinguished local +wit, the Colebrook barber, who happened to be sit- +ting insolently in the tap-room of the New Inn near +the harbour, where the captain had entered to buy +an ounce of tobacco. After paying for his pur- +chase with three half-pence extracted from the cor- +ner of a handkerchief which he carried in the cuff +of his sleeve, Captain Hagberd went out. As soon +as the door was shut the barber laughed. "The +old one and the young one will be strolling arm in +arm to get shaved in my place presently. The +tailor shall be set to work, and the barber, and the +candlestick maker; high old times are coming for +Colebrook, they are coming, to be sure. It used to +be 'next week,' now it has come to 'next month,' +and so on--soon it will be next spring, for all I +know." + +Noticing a stranger listening to him with a va- +cant grin, he explained, stretching out his legs cyn- +ically, that this queer old Hagberd, a retired coast- +ing-skipper, was waiting for the return of a son of +his. The boy had been driven away from home, he +shouldn't wonder; had run away to sea and had +never been heard of since. Put to rest in Davy +Jones's locker this many a day, as likely as not. +That old man came flying to Colebrook three +years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost his wife +lately then), getting out of a third-class smoker +as if the devil had been at his heels; and the only +thing that brought him down was a letter--a hoax +probably. Some joker had written to him about a +seafaring man with some such name who was sup- +posed to be hanging about some girl or other, either +in Colebrook or in the neighbourhood. "Funny, +ain't it?" The old chap had been advertising in +the London papers for Harry Hagberd, and offer- +ing rewards for any sort of likely information. +And the barber would go on to describe with sar- +donic gusto, how that stranger in mourning had +been seen exploring the country, in carts, on foot, +taking everybody into his confidence, visiting all +the inns and alehouses for miles around, stopping +people on the road with his questions, looking into +the very ditches almost; first in the greatest excite- +ment, then with a plodding sort of perseverance, +growing slower and slower; and he could not even +tell you plainly how his son looked. The sailor +was supposed to be one of two that had left a tim- +ber ship, and to have been seen dangling after some +girl; but the old man described a boy of fourteen +or so--"a clever-looking, high-spirited boy." And +when people only smiled at this he would rub his +forehead in a confused sort of way before he slunk +off, looking offended. He found nobody, of +course; not a trace of anybody--never heard of +anything worth belief, at any rate; but he had not +been able somehow to tear himself away from Cole- +brook. + +"It was the shock of this disappointment, per- +haps, coming soon after the loss of his wife, that +had driven him crazy on that point," the barber +suggested, with an air of great psychological in- +sight. After a time the old man abandoned the ac- +tive search. His son had evidently gone away; +but he settled himself to wait. His son had been +once at least in Colebrook in preference to his na- +tive place. There must have been some reason for +it, he seemed to think, some very powerful induce- +ment, that would bring him back to Colebrook +again. + +"Ha, ha, ha! Why, of course, Colebrook. +Where else? That's the only place in the United +Kingdom for your long-lost sons. So he sold up +his old home in Colchester, and down he comes here. +Well, it's a craze, like any other. Wouldn't catch +me going crazy over any of my youngsters clear- +ing out. I've got eight of them at home." The +barber was showing off his strength of mind in the +midst of a laughter that shook the tap-room. + +Strange, though, that sort of thing, he would +confess, with the frankness of a superior intelli- +gence, seemed to be catching. His establishment, +for instance, was near the harbour, and whenever a +sailorman came in for a hair-cut or a shave--if it +was a strange face he couldn't help thinking di- +rectly, "Suppose he's the son of old Hagberd!" +He laughed at himself for it. It was a strong +craze. He could remember the time when the whole +town was full of it. But he had his hopes of the +old chap yet. He would cure him by a course of +judicious chaffing. He was watching the progress +of the treatment. Next week--next month--next +year! When the old skipper had put off the date +of that return till next year, he would be well on +his way to not saying any more about it. In other +matters he was quite rational, so this, too, was +bound to come. Such was the barber's firm opin- +ion. + +Nobody had ever contradicted him; his own hair +had gone grey since that time, and Captain Hag- +berd's beard had turned quite white, and had ac- +quired a majestic flow over the No. 1 canvas suit, +which he had made for himself secretly with tarred +twine, and had assumed suddenly, coming out in +it one fine morning, whereas the evening before he +had been seen going home in his mourning of +broadcloth. It caused a sensation in the High +Street--shopkeepers coming to their doors, people +in the houses snatching up their hats to run out-- +a stir at which he seemed strangely surprised at +first, and then scared; but his only answer to the +wondering questions was that startled and evasive, +"For the present." + +That sensation had been forgotten, long ago; +and Captain Hagberd himself, if not forgotten, +had come to be disregarded--the penalty of daili- +ness--as the sun itself is disregarded unless it +makes its power felt heavily. Captain Hagberd's +movements showed no infirmity: he walked stiffly +in his suit of canvas, a quaint and remarkable fig- +ure; only his eyes wandered more furtively perhaps +than of yore. His manner abroad had lost its ex- +citable watchfulness; it had become puzzled and +diffident, as though he had suspected that there +was somewhere about him something slightly com- +promising, some embarrassing oddity; and yet had +remained unable to discover what on earth this +something wrong could be. + +He was unwilling now to talk with the townsfolk. +He had earned for himself the reputation of an +awful skinflint, of a miser in the matter of living. +He mumbled regretfully in the shops, bought in- +ferior scraps of meat after long hesitations; and +discouraged all allusions to his costume. It was +as the barber had foretold. For all one could tell, +he had recovered already from the disease of hope; +and only Miss Bessie Carvil knew that he said noth- +ing about his son's return because with him it was +no longer "next week," "next month," or even +"next year." It was "to-morrow." + +In their intimacy of back yard and front gar- +den he talked with her paternally, reasonably, and +dogmatically, with a touch of arbitrariness. They +met on the ground of unreserved confidence, which +was authenticated by an affectionate wink now and +then. Miss Carvil had come to look forward rather +to these winks. At first they had discomposed her: +the poor fellow was mad. Afterwards she had +learned to laugh at them: there was no harm in +him. Now she was aware of an unacknowledged, +pleasurable, incredulous emotion, expressed by a +faint blush. He winked not in the least vulgarly; +his thin red face with a well-modelled curved nose, +had a sort of distinction--the more so that when he +talked to her he looked with a steadier and more in- +telligent glance. A handsome, hale, upright, ca- +pable man, with a white beard. You did not think +of his age. His son, he affirmed, had resembled +him amazingly from his earliest babyhood. + +Harry would be one-and-thirty next July, he +declared. Proper age to get married with a nice, +sensible girl that could appreciate a good home. +He was a very high-spirited boy. High-spirited +husbands were the easiest to manage. These mean, +soft chaps, that you would think butter wouldn't +melt in their mouths, were the ones to make a wom- +an thoroughly miserable. And there was nothing +like a home--a fireside--a good roof: no turning +out of your warm bed in all sorts of weather. "Eh, +my dear?" + +Captain Hagberd had been one of those sailors +that pursue their calling within sight of land. One +of the many children of a bankrupt farmer, he had +been apprenticed hurriedly to a coasting skipper, +and had remained on the coast all his sea life. It +must have been a hard one at first: he had never +taken to it; his affection turned to the land, with +its innumerable houses, with its quiet lives gathered +round its firesides. Many sailors feel and profess +a rational dislike for the sea, but his was a pro- +found and emotional animosity--as if the love of +the stabler element had been bred into him through +many generations. + +"People did not know what they let their boys in +for when they let them go to sea," he expounded to +Bessie. "As soon make convicts of them at once." +He did not believe you ever got used to it. The +weariness of such a life got worse as you got older. +What sort of trade was it in which more than half +your time you did not put your foot inside your +house? Directly you got out to sea you had no +means of knowing what went on at home. One +might have thought him weary of distant voyages; +and the longest he had ever made had lasted a fort- +night, of which the most part had been spent at +anchor, sheltering from the weather. As soon as +his wife had inherited a house and enough to live on +(from a bachelor uncle who had made some money +in the coal business) he threw up his command of +an East-coast collier with a feeling as though he +had escaped from the galleys. After all these years +he might have counted on the fingers of his two +hands all the days he had been out of sight of Eng- +land. He had never known what it was to be out +of soundings. "I have never been further than +eighty fathoms from the land," was one of his +boasts. + +Bessie Carvil heard all these things. In front of +their cottage grew an under-sized ash; and on sum- +mer afternoons she would bring out a chair on the +grass-plot and sit down with her sewing. Captain +Hagberd, in his canvas suit, leaned on a spade. He +dug every day in his front plot. He turned it over +and over several times every year, but was not go- +ing to plant anything "just at present." + +To Bessie Carvil he would state more explicitly: +"Not till our Harry comes home to-morrow." And +she had heard this formula of hope so often that it +only awakened the vaguest pity in her heart for +that hopeful old man. + +Everything was put off in that way, and every- +thing was being prepared likewise for to-morrow. +There was a boxful of packets of various flower- +seeds to choose from, for the front garden. "He +will doubtless let you have your say about that, my +dear," Captain Hagberd intimated to her across +the railing. + +Miss Bessie's head remained bowed over her +work. She had heard all this so many times. But +now and then she would rise, lay down her sewing, +and come slowly to the fence. There was a charm +in these gentle ravings. He was determined that +his son should not go away again for the want of a +home all ready for him. He had been filling the +other cottage with all sorts of furniture. She im- +agined it all new, fresh with varnish, piled up as +in a warehouse. There would be tables wrapped +up in sacking; rolls of carpets thick and vertical +like fragments of columns, the gleam of white mar- +ble tops in the dimness of the drawn blinds. Cap- +tain Hagberd always described his purchases to +her, carefully, as to a person having a legitimate +interest in them. The overgrown yard of his cot- +tage could be laid over with concrete . . . after +to-morrow. + +"We may just as well do away with the fence. +You could have your drying-line out, quite clear of +your flowers." He winked, and she would blush +faintly. + +This madness that had entered her life through +the kind impulses of her heart had reasonable de- +tails. What if some day his son returned? But +she could not even be quite sure that he ever had a +son; and if he existed anywhere he had been too +long away. When Captain Hagberd got excited +in his talk she would steady him by a pretence of +belief, laughing a little to salve her conscience. + +Only once she had tried pityingly to throw some +doubt on that hope doomed to disappointment, but +the effect of her attempt had scared her very much. +All at once over that man's face there came an ex- +pression of horror and incredulity, as though he +had seen a crack open out in the firmament. + +"You--you--you don't think he's drowned!" + +For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out +of his mind, for in his ordinary state she thought +him more sane than people gave him credit for. +On that occasion the violence of the emotion was +followed by a most paternal and complacent re- +covery. + +"Don't alarm yourself, my dear," he said a lit- +tle cunningly: "the sea can't keep him. He does +not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did +belong to it. Look at me; I didn't get drowned. +Moreover, he isn't a sailor at all; and if he is not a +sailor he's bound to come back. There's nothing +to prevent him coming back. . . ." + +His eyes began to wander. + +"To-morrow." + +She never tried again, for fear the man should +go out of his mind on the spot. He depended on +her. She seemed the only sensible person in the +town; and he would congratulate himself frankly +before her face on having secured such a level- +headed wife for his son. The rest of the town, he +confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly +queer. The way they looked at you--the way they +talked to you! He had never got on with any one +in the place. Didn't like the people. He would +not have left his own country if it had not been +clear that his son had taken a fancy to Colebrook. + +She humoured him in silence, listening patiently +by the fence; crocheting with downcast eyes. +Blushes came with difficulty on her dead-white +complexion, under the negligently twisted opu- +lence of mahogany-coloured hair. Her father was +frankly carroty. + +She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face. +When Captain Hagberd vaunted the necessity and +propriety of a home and the delights of one's own +fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her +home delights had been confined to the nursing of +her father during the ten best years of her life. + +A bestial roaring coming out of an upstairs win- +dow would interrupt their talk. She would begin +at once to roll up her crochet-work or fold her sew- +ing, without the slightest sign of haste. Mean- +while the howls and roars of her name would go on, +making the fishermen strolling upon the sea-wall +on the other side of the road turn their heads to- +wards the cottages. She would go in slowly at the +front door, and a moment afterwards there would +fall a profound silence. Presently she would re- +appear, leading by the hand a man, gross and un- +wieldy like a hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered, +surly face. + +He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness +had overtaken years before in the full flush of busi- +ness. He behaved to his daughter as if she had +been responsible for its incurable character. He +had been heard to bellow at the top of his voice, +as if to defy Heaven, that he did not care: he had +made enough money to have ham and eggs for his +breakfast every morning. He thanked God for it, +in a fiendish tone as though he were cursing. + +Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably im- +pressed by his tenant, that once he told Miss Bes- +sie, "He is a very extravagant fellow, my dear." + +She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of +socks for her father, who expected her to keep up +the supply dutifully. She hated knitting, and, as +she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her +eyes on her needles. + +"Of course it isn't as if he had a son to provide +for," Captain Hagberd went on a little vacantly. +"Girls, of course, don't require so much--h'm-- +h'm. They don't run away from home, my dear." + +"No," said Miss Bessie, quietly. + +Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of +turned-up earth, chuckled. With his maritime rig, +his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Nep- +tune, he resembled a deposed sea-god who had ex- +changed the trident for the spade. + +"And he must look upon you as already pro- +vided for, in a manner. That's the best of it with +the girls. The husbands . . ." He winked. Miss +Bessie, absorbed in her knitting, coloured faintly. + +"Bessie! my hat!" old Carvil bellowed out sud- +denly. He had been sitting under the tree mute +and motionless, like an idol of some remarkably +monstrous superstition. He never opened his +mouth but to howl for her, at her, sometimes about +her; and then he did not moderate the terms of his +abuse. Her system was never to answer him at all; +and he kept up his shouting till he got attended to +--till she shook him by the arm, or thrust the +mouthpiece of his pipe between his teeth. He was +one of the few blind people who smoke. When he +felt the hat being put on his head he stopped his +noise at once. Then he rose, and they passed to- +gether through the gate. + +He weighed heavily on her arm. During their +slow, toilful walks she appeared to be dragging +with her for a penance the burden of that infirm +bulk. Usually they crossed the road at once (the +cottages stood in the fields near the harbour, two +hundred yards away from the end of the street), +and for a long, long time they would remain in +view, ascending imperceptibly the flight of wooden +steps that led to the top of the sea-wall. It ran +on from east to west, shutting out the Channel like +a neglected railway embankment, on which no train +had ever rolled within memory of man. Groups +of sturdy fishermen would emerge upon the sky, +walk along for a bit, and sink without haste. Their +brown nets, like the cobwebs of gigantic spiders, +lay on the shabby grass of the slope; and, looking +up from the end of the street, the people of the +town would recognise the two Carvils by the creep- +ing slowness of their gait. Captain Hagberd, pot- +tering aimlessly about his cottages, would raise his +head to see how they got on in their promenade. + +He advertised still in the Sunday papers for +Harry Hagberd. These sheets were read in for- +eign parts to the end of the world, he informed Bes- +sie. At the same time he seemed to think that his +son was in England--so near to Colebrook that he +would of course turn up "to-morrow." Bessie, +without committing herself to that opinion in so +many words, argued that in that case the expense +of advertising was unnecessary; Captain Hagberd +had better spend that weekly half-crown on him- +self. She declared she did not know what he lived +on. Her argumentation would puzzle him and cast +him down for a time. "They all do it," he pointed +out. There was a whole column devoted to appeals +after missing relatives. He would bring the news- +paper to show her. He and his wife had advertised +for years; only she was an impatient woman. The +news from Colebrook had arrived the very day after +her funeral; if she had not been so impatient she +might have been here now, with no more than one +day more to wait. "You are not an impatient +woman, my dear." + +"I've no patience with you sometimes," she +would say. + +If he still advertised for his son he did not offer +rewards for information any more; for, with the +muddled lucidity of a mental derangement he had +reasoned himself into a conviction as clear as day- +light that he had already attained all that could be +expected in that way. What more could he want? +Colebrook was the place, and there was no need to +ask for more. Miss Carvil praised him for his good +sense, and he was soothed by the part she took in +his hope, which had become his delusion; in that +idea which blinded his mind to truth and probabil- +ity, just as the other old man in the other cottage +had been made blind, by another disease, to the +light and beauty of the world. + +But anything he could interpret as a doubt-- +any coldness of assent, or even a simple inattention +to the development of his projects of a home with +his returned son and his son's wife--would irritate +him into flings and jerks and wicked side glances. +He would dash his spade into the ground and walk +to and fro before it. Miss Bessie called it his tan- +trums. She shook her finger at him. Then, when +she came out again, after he had parted with her +in anger, he would watch out of the corner of his +eyes for the least sign of encouragement to ap- +proach the iron railings and resume his fatherly +and patronising relations. + +For all their intimacy, which had lasted some +years now, they had never talked without a fence +or a railing between them. He described to her all +the splendours accumulated for the setting-up of +their housekeeping, but had never invited her to an +inspection. No human eye was to behold them till +Harry had his first look. In fact, nobody had ever +been inside his cottage; he did his own housework, +and he guarded his son's privilege so jealously that +the small objects of domestic use he bought some- +times in the town were smuggled rapidly across the +front garden under his canvas coat. Then, coming +out, he would remark apologetically, "It was only +a small kettle, my dear." + +And, if not too tired with her drudgery, or wor- +ried beyond endurance by her father, she would +laugh at him with a blush, and say: "That's all +right, Captain Hagberd; I am not impatient." + +"Well, my dear, you haven't long to wait now," +he would answer with a sudden bashfulness, and +looking uneasily, as though he had suspected that +there was something wrong somewhere. + +Every Monday she paid him his rent over the +railings. He clutched the shillings greedily. He +grudged every penny he had to spend on his main- +tenance, and when he left her to make his purchases +his bearing changed as soon as he got into the +street. Away from the sanction of her pity, he felt +himself exposed without defence. He brushed the +walls with his shoulder. He mistrusted the queer- +ness of the people; yet, by then, even the town +children had left off calling after him, and the +tradesmen served him without a word. The slight- +est allusion to his clothing had the power to puzzle +and frighten especially, as if it were something +utterly unwarranted and incomprehensible. + +In the autumn, the driving rain drummed on his +sailcloth suit saturated almost to the stiffness of +sheet-iron, with its surface flowing with water. +When the weather was too bad, he retreated under +the tiny porch, and, standing close against the +door, looked at his spade left planted in the middle +of the yard. The ground was so much dug up all +over, that as the season advanced it turned to a +quagmire. When it froze hard, he was disconso- +late. What would Harry say? And as he could +not have so much of Bessie's company at that time +of the year, the roars of old Carvil, that came muf- +fled through the closed windows, calling her in- +doors, exasperated him greatly. + +"Why don't that extravagant fellow get you a +servant?" he asked impatiently one mild after- +noon. She had thrown something over her head to +run out for a while. + +"I don't know," said the pale Bessie, wearily, +staring away with her heavy-lidded, grey, and un- +expectant glance. There were always smudgy +shadows under her eyes, and she did not seem able +to see any change or any end to her life. + +"You wait till you get married, my dear," said +her only friend, drawing closer to the fence. +"Harry will get you one." + +His hopeful craze seemed to mock her own want +of hope with so bitter an aptness that in her ner- +vous irritation she could have screamed at him out- +right. But she only said in self-mockery, and +speaking to him as though he had been sane, +"Why, Captain Hagberd, your son may not even +want to look at me." + +He flung his head back and laughed his throaty +affected cackle of anger. + +"What! That boy? Not want to look at the +only sensible girl for miles around? What do you +think I am here for, my dear--my dear--my dear? +. . . What? You wait. You just wait. You'll +see to-morrow. I'll soon--" + +"Bessie! Bessie! Bessie!" howled old Carvil in- +side. "Bessie!--my pipe!" That fat blind man +had given himself up to a very lust of laziness. He +would not lift his hand to reach for the things she +took care to leave at his very elbow. He would not +move a limb; he would not rise from his chair, he +would not put one foot before another, in that par- +lour (where he knew his way as well as if he had his +sight), without calling her to his side and hanging +all his atrocious weight on her shoulder. He would +not eat one single mouthful of food without her +close attendance. He had made himself helpless +beyond his affliction, to enslave her better. She +stood still for a moment, setting her teeth in the +dusk, then turned and walked slowly indoors. + +Captain Hagberd went back to his spade. The +shouting in Carvil's cottage stopped, and after a +while the window of the parlour downstairs was lit +up. A man coming from the end of the street with +a firm leisurely step passed on, but seemed to have +caught sight of Captain Hagberd, because he +turned back a pace or two. A cold white light lin- +gered in the western sky. The man leaned over the +gate in an interested manner. + +"You must be Captain Hagberd," he said, with +easy assurance. + +The old man spun round, pulling out his spade, +startled by the strange voice. + +"Yes, I am," he answered nervously. + +The other, smiling straight at him, uttered very +slowly: "You've been advertising for your son, I +believe?" + +"My son Harry," mumbled Captain Hagberd, +off his guard for once. "He's coming home to- +morrow." + +"The devil he is!" The stranger marvelled +greatly, and then went on, with only a slight +change of tone: "You've grown a beard like +Father Christmas himself." + +Captain Hagberd drew a little nearer, and +leaned forward over his spade. "Go your way," +he said, resentfully and timidly at the same time, +because he was always afraid of being laughed at. +Every mental state, even madness, has its equi- +librium based upon self-esteem. Its disturbance +causes unhappiness; and Captain Hagberd lived +amongst a scheme of settled notions which it pained +him to feel disturbed by people's grins. Yes, peo- +ple's grins were awful. They hinted at something +wrong: but what? He could not tell; and that +stranger was obviously grinning--had come on +purpose to grin. It was bad enough on the streets, +but he had never before been outraged like this. + +The stranger, unaware how near he was of hav- +ing his head laid open with a spade, said seriously: +"I am not trespassing where I stand, am I? I +fancy there's something wrong about your news. +Suppose you let me come in." + +"YOU come in!" murmured old Hagberd, with +inexpressible horror. + +"I could give you some real information about +your son--the very latest tip, if you care to +hear." + +"No," shouted Hagberd. He began to pace +wildly to and fro, he shouldered his spade, he ges- +ticulated with his other arm. "Here's a fellow-- +a grinning fellow, who says there's something +wrong. I've got more information than you're +aware of. I've all the information I want. I've +had it for years--for years--for years--enough +to last me till to-morrow. Let you come in, indeed! +What would Harry say?" + +Bessie Carvil's figure appeared in black silhou- +ette on the parlour window; then, with the sound of +an opening door, flitted out before the other cot- +tage, all black, but with something white over +her head. These two voices beginning to talk sud- +denly outside (she had heard them indoors) had +given her such an emotion that she could not utter +a sound. + +Captain Hagberd seemed to be trying to find his +way out of a cage. His feet squelched in the pud- +dles left by his industry. He stumbled in the holes +of the ruined grass-plot. He ran blindly against +the fence. + +"Here, steady a bit!" said the man at the gate, +gravely stretching his arm over and catching him +by the sleeve. "Somebody's been trying to get at +you. Hallo! what's this rig you've got on? Storm +canvas, by George!" He had a big laugh. +"Well, you ARE a character!" + +Captain Hagberd jerked himself free, and began +to back away shrinkingly. "For the present," he +muttered, in a crestfallen tone. + +"What's the matter with him?" The stranger +addressed Bessie with the utmost familiarity, in a +deliberate, explanatory tone. "I didn't want to +startle the old man." He lowered his voice as +though he had known her for years. "I dropped +into a barber's on my way, to get a twopenny +shave, and they told me there he was something of +a character. The old man has been a character all +his life." + +Captain Hagberd, daunted by the allusion to his +clothing, had retreated inside, taking his spade +with him; and the two at the gate, startled by the +unexpected slamming of the door, heard the bolts +being shot, the snapping of the lock, and the echo +of an affected gurgling laugh within. + +"I didn't want to upset him," the man said, +after a short silence. "What's the meaning of all +this? He isn't quite crazy." + +"He has been worrying a long time about his +lost son," said Bessie, in a low, apologetic tone. + +"Well, I am his son." + +"Harry!" she cried--and was profoundly si- +lent. + +"Know my name? Friends with the old man, +eh?" + +"He's our landlord," Bessie faltered out, catch- +ing hold of the iron railing. + +"Owns both them rabbit-hutches, does he?" +commented young Hagberd, scornfully; "just the +thing he would be proud of. Can you tell me who's +that chap coming to-morrow? You must know +something of it. I tell you, it's a swindle on the old +man--nothing else." + +She did not answer, helpless before an insur- +mountable difficulty, appalled before the necessity, +the impossibility and the dread of an explanation +in which she and madness seemed involved together. + +"Oh--I am so sorry," she murmured. + +"What's the matter?" he said, with serenity. +"You needn't be afraid of upsetting me. It's the +other fellow that'll be upset when he least expects +it. I don't care a hang; but there will be some fun +when he shows his mug to-morrow. I don't care +THAT for the old man's pieces, but right is right. +You shall see me put a head on that coon--whoever +he is!" + +He had come nearer, and towered above her on +the other side of the railings. He glanced at her +hands. He fancied she was trembling, and it oc- +curred to him that she had her part perhaps in that +little game that was to be sprung on his old man +to-morrow. He had come just in time to spoil their +sport. He was entertained by the idea--scornful +of the baffled plot. But all his life he had been full +of indulgence for all sorts of women's tricks. She +really was trembling very much; her wrap had +slipped off her head. "Poor devil!" he thought. +"Never mind about that chap. I daresay he'll +change his mind before to-morrow. But what +about me? I can't loaf about the gate til the morn- +ing." + +She burst out: "It is YOU--you yourself that he's +waiting for. It is YOU who come to-morrow." + +He murmured. "Oh! It's me!" blankly, and +they seemed to become breathless together. Ap- +parently he was pondering over what he had heard; +then, without irritation, but evidently perplexed, +he said: "I don't understand. I hadn't written or +anything. It's my chum who saw the paper and +told me--this very morning. . . . Eh? what?" + +He bent his ear; she whispered rapidly, and he +listened for a while, muttering the words "yes" +and "I see" at times. Then, "But why won't to- +day do?" he queried at last. + +"You didn't understand me!" she exclaimed, +impatiently. The clear streak of light under the +clouds died out in the west. Again he stooped +slightly to hear better; and the deep night buried +everything of the whispering woman and the +attentive man, except the familiar contiguity of +their faces, with its air of secrecy and caress. + +He squared his shoulders; the broad-brimmed +shadow of a hat sat cavalierly on his head. "Awk- +ward this, eh?" he appealed to her. "To-morrow? +Well, well! Never heard tell of anything like this. +It's all to-morrow, then, without any sort of to-day, +as far as I can see." + +She remained still and mute. + +"And you have been encouraging this funny +notion," he said. + +"I never contradicted him." + +"Why didn't you?" + +"What for should I?" she defended herself. +"It would only have made him miserable. He +would have gone out of his mind." + +"His mind!" he muttered, and heard a short +nervous laugh from her. + +"Where was the harm? Was I to quarrel with +the poor old man? It was easier to half believe it +myself." + +"Aye, aye," he meditated, intelligently. "I +suppose the old chap got around you somehow with +his soft talk. You are good-hearted." + +Her hands moved up in the dark nervously. +"And it might have been true. It was true. It +has come. Here it is. This is the to-morrow we +have been waiting for." + +She drew a breath, and he said, good-humour- +edly: "Aye, with the door shut. I wouldn't care +if . . . And you think he could be brought round +to recognise me . . . Eh? What? . . . You +could do it? In a week you say? H'm, I daresay +you could--but do you think I could hold out a +week in this dead-alive place? Not me! I want +either hard work, or an all-fired racket, or more +space than there is in the whole of England. I +have been in this place, though, once before, and for +more than a week. The old man was advertising +for me then, and a chum I had with me had a no- +tion of getting a couple quid out of him by writ- +ing a lot of silly nonsense in a letter. That lark did +not come off, though. We had to clear out--and +none too soon. But this time I've a chum waiting +for me in London, and besides . . ." + +Bessie Carvil was breathing quickly. + +"What if I tried a knock at the door?" he sug- +gested. + +"Try," she said. + +Captain Hagberd's gate squeaked, and the shad- +ow of the son moved on, then stopped with another +deep laugh in the throat, like the father's, only +soft and gentle, thrilling to the woman's heart, +awakening to her ears. + +"He isn't frisky--is he? I would be afraid to +lay hold of him. The chaps are always telling me +I don't know my own strength." + +"He's the most harmless creature that ever +lived," she interrupted. + +"You wouldn't say so if you had seen him chas- +ing me upstairs with a hard leather strap," he said; +"I haven't forgotten it in sixteen years." + +She got warm from head to foot under another +soft, subdued laugh. At the rat-tat-tat of the +knocker her heart flew into her mouth. + +"Hey, dad! Let me in. I am Harry, I am. +Straight! Come back home a day too soon." + +One of the windows upstairs ran up. + +"A grinning, information fellow," said the voice +of old Hagberd, up in the darkness. "Don't you +have anything to do with him. It will spoil every- +thing." + +She heard Harry Hagberd say, "Hallo, dad," +then a clanging clatter. The window rumbled +down, and he stood before her again. + +"It's just like old times. Nearly walloped the +life out of me to stop me going away, and now I +come back he throws a confounded shovel at my +head to keep me out. It grazed my shoulder." + +She shuddered. + +"I wouldn't care," he began, "only I spent my +last shillings on the railway fare and my last two- +pence on a shave--out of respect for the old man." + +"Are you really Harry Hagberd?" she asked. +"Can you prove it?" + +"Can I prove it? Can any one else prove it?" +he said jovially. "Prove with what? What do I +want to prove? There isn't a single corner in the +world, barring England, perhaps, where you could +not find some man, or more likely woman, that +would remember me for Harry Hagberd. I am +more like Harry Hagberd than any man alive; and +I can prove it to you in a minute, if you will let me +step inside your gate." + +"Come in," she said. + +He entered then the front garden of the Carvils. +His tall shadow strode with a swagger; she turned +her back on the window and waited, watching the +shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most mate- +rial part. The light fell on a tilted hat; a power- +ful shoulder, that seemed to cleave the darkness; +on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood +still, facing the illuminated parlour window at her +back, turning his head from side to side, laughing +softly to himself. + +"Just fancy, for a minute, the old man's beard +stuck on to my chin. Hey? Now say. I was the +very spit of him from a boy." + +"It's true," she murmured to herself. + +"And that's about as far as it goes. He was al- +ways one of your domestic characters. Why, I re- +member how he used to go about looking very sick +for three days before he had to leave home on one +of his trips to South Shields for coal. He had a +standing charter from the gas-works. You would +think he was off on a whaling cruise--three years +and a tail. Ha, ha! Not a bit of it. Ten days on +the outside. The Skimmer of the Seas was a smart +craft. Fine name, wasn't it? Mother's uncle +owned her. . . ." + +He interrupted himself, and in a lowered voice, +"Did he ever tell you what mother died of?" he +asked. + +"Yes," said Miss Bessie, bitterly; "from impa- +tience." + +He made no sound for a while; then brusquely: +"They were so afraid I would turn out badly that +they fairly drove me away. Mother nagged at me +for being idle, and the old man said he would cut +my soul out of my body rather than let me go to +sea. Well, it looked as if he would do it too--so I +went. It looks to me sometimes as if I had been +born to them by a mistake--in that other hutch of +a house." + +"Where ought you to have been born by +rights?" Bessie Carvil interrupted him, defiantly. + +"In the open, upon a beach, on a windy night," +he said, quick as lightning. Then he mused slowly. +"They were characters, both of them, by George; +and the old man keeps it up well--don't he? A +damned shovel on the--Hark! who's that mak- +ing that row? 'Bessie, Bessie.' It's in your +house." + +"It's for me," she said, with indifference. + +He stepped aside, out of the streak of light. +"Your husband?" he inquired, with the tone of a +man accustomed to unlawful trysts. "Fine voice +for a ship's deck in a thundering squall." + +"No; my father. I am not married." + +"You seem a fine girl, Miss Bessie, dear," he said +at once. + +She turned her face away. + +"Oh, I say,--what's up? Who's murdering +him?" + +"He wants his tea." She faced him, still and +tall, with averted head, with her hands hanging +clasped before her. + +"Hadn't you better go in?" he suggested, after +watching for a while the nape of her neck, a patch +of dazzling white skin and soft shadow above the +sombre line of her shoulders. Her wrap had slipped +down to her elbows. "You'll have all the town +coming out presently. I'll wait here a bit." + +Her wrap fell to the ground, and he stooped to +pick it up; she had vanished. He threw it over +his arm, and approaching the window squarely he +saw a monstrous form of a fat man in an arm- +chair, an unshaded lamp, the yawning of an enor- +mous mouth in a big flat face encircled by a ragged +halo of hair--Miss Bessie's head and bust. The +shouting stopped; the blind ran down. He lost +himself in thinking how awkward it was. Father +mad; no getting into the house. No money to get +back; a hungry chum in London who would begin +to think he had been given the go-by. "Damn!" +he muttered. He could break the door in, cer- +tainly; but they would perhaps bundle him into +chokey for that without asking questions--no great +matter, only he was confoundedly afraid of being +locked up, even in mistake. He turned cold at the +thought. He stamped his feet on the sod- +den grass. + +"What are you?--a sailor?" said an agitated +voice. + +She had flitted out, a shadow herself, attracted +by the reckless shadow waiting under the wall of +her home. + +"Anything. Enough of a sailor to be worth +my salt before the mast. Came home that way this +time." + +"Where do you come from?" she asked. + +"Right away from a jolly good spree," he said, +"by the London train--see? Ough! I hate being +shut up in a train. I don't mind a house so +much." + +"Ah," she said; "that's lucky." + +"Because in a house you can at any time open +the blamed door and walk away straight before +you." + +"And never come back?" + +"Not for sixteen years at least," he laughed. +"To a rabbit hutch, and get a confounded old +shovel . . ." + +"A ship is not so very big," she taunted. + +"No, but the sea is great." + +She dropped her head, and as if her ears had +been opened to the voices of the world, she heard, +beyond the rampart of sea-wall, the swell of yester- +day's gale breaking on the beach with monotonous +and solemn vibrations, as if all the earth had been +a tolling bell. + +"And then, why, a ship's a ship. You love her +and leave her; and a voyage isn't a marriage." He +quoted the sailor's saying lightly. + +"It is not a marriage," she whispered. + +"I never took a false name, and I've never yet +told a lie to a woman. What lie? Why, THE lie--. +Take me or leave me, I say: and if you take me, +then it is . . ." He hummed a snatch very low, +leaning against the wall. + + Oh, ho, ho Rio! + + And fare thee well, + + My bonnie young girl, + + We're bound to Rio Grande + +"Capstan song," he explained. Her teeth chat- +tered. + +"You are cold," he said. "Here's that affair +of yours I picked up." She felt his hands about +her, wrapping her closely. "Hold the ends to- +gether in front," he commanded. + +"What did you come here for?" she asked, re- +pressing a shudder. + +"Five quid," he answered, promptly. "We let +our spree go on a little too long and got hard up." + +"You've been drinking?" she said. + +"Blind three days; on purpose. I am not given +that way--don't you think. There's nothing and +nobody that can get over me unless I like. I can +be as steady as a rock. My chum sees the paper +this morning, and says he to me: 'Go on, Harry: +loving parent. That's five quid sure.' So we +scraped all our pockets for the fare. Devil of a +lark!" + +"You have a hard heart, I am afraid," she +sighed. + +"What for? For running away? Why! he +wanted to make a lawyer's clerk of me--just to +please himself. Master in his own house; and my +poor mother egged him on--for my good, I sup- +pose. Well, then--so long; and I went. No, I +tell you: the day I cleared out, I was all black and +blue from his great fondness for me. Ah! he was +always a bit of a character. Look at that shovel +now. Off his chump? Not much. That's just +exactly like my dad. He wants me here just to +have somebody to order about. However, we two +were hard up; and what's five quid to him--once +in sixteen hard years?" + +"Oh, but I am sorry for you. Did you never +want to come back home?" + +"Be a lawyer's clerk and rot here--in some such +place as this?" he cried in contempt. "What! if +the old man set me up in a home to-day, I would +kick it down about my ears--or else die there be- +fore the third day was out." + +"And where else is it that you hope to die?" + +"In the bush somewhere; in the sea; on a blamed +mountain-top for choice. At home? Yes! the +world's my home; but I expect I'll die in a hospital +some day. What of that? Any place is good +enough, as long as I've lived; and I've been every- +thing you can think of almost but a tailor or a +soldier. I've been a boundary rider; I've sheared +sheep; and humped my swag; and harpooned a +whale. I've rigged ships, and prospected for gold, +and skinned dead bullocks,--and turned my back +on more money than the old man would have +scraped in his whole life. Ha, ha!" + +He overwhelmed her. She pulled herself to- +gether and managed to utter, "Time to rest +now." + +He straightened himself up, away from the wall, +and in a severe voice said, "Time to go." + +But he did not move. He leaned back again, +and hummed thoughtfully a bar or two of an out- +landish tune. + +She felt as if she were about to cry. "That's +another of your cruel songs," she said. + +"Learned it in Mexico--in Sonora." He talked +easily. "It is the song of the Gambucinos. You +don't know? The song of restless men. Nothing +could hold them in one place--not even a woman. +You used to meet one of them now and again, in +the old days, on the edge of the gold country, away +north there beyond the Rio Gila. I've seen it. A +prospecting engineer in Mazatlan took me along +with him to help look after the waggons. A +sailor's a handy chap to have about you anyhow. +It's all a desert: cracks in the earth that you can't +see the bottom of; and mountains--sheer rocks +standing up high like walls and church spires, only +a hundred times bigger. The valleys are full of +boulders and black stones. There's not a blade of +grass to see; and the sun sets more red over that +country than I have seen it anywhere--blood-red +and angry. It IS fine." + +"You do not want to go back there again?" +she stammered out. + +He laughed a little. "No. That's the blamed +gold country. It gave me the shivers sometimes +to look at it--and we were a big lot of men together, +mind; but these Gambucinos wandered alone. +They knew that country before anybody had ever +heard of it. They had a sort of gift for prospect- +ing, and the fever of it was on them too; and they +did not seem to want the gold very much. They +would find some rich spot, and then turn their backs +on it; pick up perhaps a little--enough for a +spree--and then be off again, looking for more. +They never stopped long where there were houses; +they had no wife, no chick, no home, never a chum. +You couldn't be friends with a Gambucino; they +were too restless--here to-day, and gone, God +knows where, to-morrow. They told no one of +their finds, and there has never been a Gambucino +well off. It was not for the gold they cared; it was +the wandering about looking for it in the stony +country that got into them and wouldn't let them +rest; so that no woman yet born could hold a Gam- +bucino for more than a week. That's what the +song says. It's all about a pretty girl that tried +hard to keep hold of a Gambucino lover, so that he +should bring her lots of gold. No fear! Off he +went, and she never saw him again." + +"What became of her?" she breathed out. + +"The song don't tell. Cried a bit, I daresay. +They were the fellows: kiss and go. But it's the +looking for a thing--a something . . . Sometimes +I think I am a sort of Gambucino myself." + +"No woman can hold you, then," she began in +a brazen voice, which quavered suddenly before the +end. + +"No longer than a week," he joked, playing +upon her very heartstrings with the gay, tender +note of his laugh; "and yet I am fond of them +all. Anything for a woman of the right sort. +The scrapes they got me into, and the scrapes they +got me out of! I love them at first sight. I've +fallen in love with you already, Miss--Bessie's your +name--eh?" + +She backed away a little, and with a trembling +laugh: + +"You haven't seen my face yet." + +He bent forward gallantly. "A little pale: it +suits some. But you are a fine figure of a girl, Miss +Bessie." + +She was all in a flutter. Nobody had ever said +so much to her before. + +His tone changed. "I am getting middling +hungry, though. Had no breakfast to-day. +Couldn't you scare up some bread from that tea +for me, or--" + +She was gone already. He had been on the point +of asking her to let him come inside. No matter. +Anywhere would do. Devil of a fix! What would +his chum think? + +"I didn't ask you as a beggar," he said, jest- +ingly, taking a piece of bread-and-butter from the +plate she held before him. "I asked as a friend. +My dad is rich, you know." + +"He starves himself for your sake." + +"And I have starved for his whim," he said, tak- +ing up another piece. + +"All he has in the world is for you," she +pleaded. + +"Yes, if I come here to sit on it like a dam' toad +in a hole. Thank you; and what about the shovel, +eh? He always had a queer way of showing his +love." + +"I could bring him round in a week," she sug- +gested, timidly. + +He was too hungry to answer her; and, holding +the plate submissively to his hand, she began to +whisper up to him in a quick, panting voice. He +listened, amazed, eating slower and slower, till at +last his jaws stopped altogether. "That's his +game, is it?" he said, in a rising tone of scathing +contempt. An ungovernable movement of his arm +sent the plate flying out of her fingers. He shot +out a violent curse. + +She shrank from him, putting her hand against +the wall. + +"No!" he raged. "He expects! Expects ME +--for his rotten money! . . . . Who wants his +home? Mad--not he! Don't you think. He +wants his own way. He wanted to turn me into a +miserable lawyer's clerk, and now he wants to make +of me a blamed tame rabbit in a cage. Of me! Of +me!" His subdued angry laugh frightened her +now. + +"The whole world ain't a bit too big for me to +spread my elbows in, I can tell you--what's your +name--Bessie--let alone a dam' parlour in a hutch. +Marry! He wants me to marry and settle! And +as likely as not he has looked out the girl too-- +dash my soul! And do you know the Judy, may +I ask?" + +She shook all over with noiseless dry sobs; but +he was fuming and fretting too much to notice her +distress. He bit his thumb with rage at the mere +idea. A window rattled up. + +"A grinning, information fellow," pronounced +old Hagberd dogmatically, in measured tones. +And the sound of his voice seemed to Bessie to make +the night itself mad--to pour insanity and dis- +aster on the earth. "Now I know what's wrong +with the people here, my dear. Why, of course! +With this mad chap going about. Don't you have +anything to do with him, Bessie. Bessie, I say!" + +They stood as if dumb. The old man fidgeted +and mumbled to himself at the window. Suddenly +he cried, piercingly: "Bessie--I see you. I'll tell +Harry." + +She made a movement as if to run away, but +stopped and raised her hands to her temples. +Young Hagberd, shadowy and big, stirred no more +than a man of bronze. Over their heads the crazy +night whimpered and scolded in an old man's voice. + +"Send him away, my dear. He's only a vaga- +bond. What you want is a good home of your own. +That chap has no home--he's not like Harry. He +can't be Harry. Harry is coming to-morrow. Do +you hear? One day more," he babbled more ex- +citedly; "never you fear--Harry shall marry +you." + +His voice rose very shrill and mad against the +regular deep soughing of the swell coiling heavily +about the outer face of the sea-wall. + +"He will have to. I shall make him, or if not" +--he swore a great oath--"I'll cut him off with a +shilling to-morrow, and leave everything to you. +I shall. To you. Let him starve." + +The window rattled down. + +Harry drew a deep breath, and took one step +toward Bessie. "So it's you--the girl," he said, +in a lowered voice. She had not moved, and she re- +mained half turned away from him, pressing her +head in the palms of her hands. "My word!" he +continued, with an invisible half-smile on his lips. +"I have a great mind to stop. . . ." + +Her elbows were trembling violently. + +"For a week," he finished without a pause. + +She clapped her hands to her face. + +He came up quite close, and took hold of her +wrists gently. She felt his breath on her ear. + +"It's a scrape I am in--this, and it is you that +must see me through." He was trying to uncover +her face. She resisted. He let her go then, and +stepping back a little, "Have you got any +money?" he asked. "I must be off now." + +She nodded quickly her shamefaced head, and he +waited, looking away from her, while, trembling +all over and bowing her neck, she tried to find the +pocket of her dress. + +"Here it is!" she whispered. "Oh, go away! +go away for God's sake! If I had more--more-- +I would give it all to forget--to make you for- +get." + +He extended his hand. "No fear! I haven't +forgotten a single one of you in the world. Some +gave me more than money--but I am a beggar now +--and you women always had to get me out of my +scrapes." + +He swaggered up to the parlour window, and in +the dim light filtering through the blind, looked at +the coin lying in his palm. It was a half-sovereign. +He slipped it into his pocket. She stood a little on +one side, with her head drooping, as if wounded; +with her arms hanging passive by her side, as if +dead. + +"You can't buy me in," he said, "and you can't +buy yourself out." + +He set his hat firmly with a little tap, and next +moment she felt herself lifted up in the powerful +embrace of his arms. Her feet lost the ground; +her head hung back; he showered kisses on her face +with a silent and over-mastering ardour, as if in +haste to get at her very soul. He kissed her pale +cheeks, her hard forehead, her heavy eyelids, her +faded lips; and the measured blows and sighs of +the rising tide accompanied the enfolding power +of his arms, the overwhelming might of his caresses. +It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall pro- +tecting all the homes of the town, had sent a wave +over her head. It passed on; she staggered back- +wards, with her shoulders against the wall, ex- +hausted, as if she had been stranded there after a +storm and a shipwreck. + +She opened her eyes after awhile; and listening +to the firm, leisurely footsteps going away with +their conquest, began to gather her skirts, staring +all the time before her. Suddenly she darted +through the open gate into the dark and deserted +street. + +"Stop!" she shouted. "Don't go!" + +And listening with an attentive poise of the head, +she could not tell whether it was the beat of the +swell or his fateful tread that seemed to fall cruelly +upon her heart. Presently every sound grew +fainter, as though she were slowly turning into +stone. A fear of this awful silence came to her-- +worse than the fear of death. She called upon her +ebbing strength for the final appeal: + +"Harry!" + +Not even the dying echo of a footstep. Noth- +ing. The thundering of the surf, the voice of the +restless sea itself, seemed stopped. There was not +a sound--no whisper of life, as though she were +alone and lost in that stony country of which she +had heard, where madmen go looking for gold and +spurn the find. + +Captain Hagberd, inside his dark house, had +kept on the alert. A window ran up; and in the +silence of the stony country a voice spoke above her +head, high up in the black air--the voice of mad- +ness, lies and despair--the voice of inextinguish- +able hope. "Is he gone yet--that information +fellow? Do you hear him about, my dear?" + +She burst into tears. "No! no! no! I don't +hear him any more," she sobbed. + +He began to chuckle up there triumphantly. +"You frightened him away. Good girl. Now we +shall be all right. Don't you be impatient, my dear. +One day more." + +In the other house old Carvil, wallowing regally +in his arm-chair, with a globe lamp burning by his +side on the table, yelled for her, in a fiendish voice: +"Bessie! Bessie! you Bessie!" + +She heard him at last, and, as if overcome by +fate, began to totter silently back toward her stuffy +little inferno of a cottage. It had no lofty portal, +no terrific inscription of forfeited hopes--she did +not understand wherein she had sinned. + +Captain Hagberd had gradually worked himself +into a state of noisy happiness up there. + +"Go in! Keep quiet!" she turned upon him +tearfully, from the doorstep below. + +He rebelled against her authority in his great +joy at having got rid at last of that "something +wrong." It was as if all the hopeful madness of the +world had broken out to bring terror upon her +heart, with the voice of that old man shouting of +his trust in an everlasting to-morrow. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of To-morrow, by Joseph Conrad + diff --git a/old/2mrow10.zip b/old/2mrow10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9cb8b4c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/2mrow10.zip diff --git a/old/494.txt b/old/494.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3adc7d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/494.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1542 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of To-morrow, by Joseph Conrad + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: To-morrow + +Author: Joseph Conrad + +Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #494] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO-MORROW *** + + + + +Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger + + + + + +TO-MORROW + +by Joseph Conrad + + +What was known of Captain Hagberd in the little seaport of Colebrook was +not exactly in his favour. He did not belong to the place. He had come +to settle there under circumstances not at all mysterious--he used to +be very communicative about them at the time--but extremely morbid and +unreasonable. He was possessed of some little money evidently, because +he bought a plot of ground, and had a pair of ugly yellow brick cottages +run up very cheaply. He occupied one of them himself and let the other +to Josiah Carvil--blind Carvil, the retired boat-builder--a man of evil +repute as a domestic tyrant. + +These cottages had one wall in common, shared in a line of iron railing +dividing 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 tea-cloths, 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 elbows +on 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 her +father's landlord in silence--in an informed silence which had an air of +knowledge, 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 +your back yard?" + +Miss Carvil would say nothing to this--she only shook her head +negatively. The tiny back yard on her side had a few stone-bordered +little beds of black earth, in which the simple flowers she found time +to cultivate appeared somehow extravagantly overgrown, as if belonging +to an exotic clime; and Captain Hagberd's upright, hale person, clad in +No. 1 sail-cloth from head to foot, would be emerging knee-deep out of +rank grass and the tall weeks on his side of the fence. He appeared, +with the colour and uncouth stiffness of the extraordinary material in +which he chose to clothe himself--"for the time being," would be his +mumbled remark to any observation on the subject--like a man roughened +out of granite, standing in a wilderness not big enough for a decent +billiard-room. A heavy figure of a man of stone, with a red handsome +face, a blue wandering eye, and a great white beard flowing to his waist +and never trimmed as far as Colebrook knew. + +Seven years before, he had seriously answered, "Next month, I think," +to the chaffing attempt to secure his custom made by that distinguished +local wit, the Colebrook barber, who happened to be sitting insolently +in the tap-room of the New Inn near the harbour, where the captain had +entered to buy an ounce of tobacco. After paying for his purchase with +three half-pence extracted from the corner of a handkerchief which he +carried in the cuff of his sleeve, Captain Hagberd went out. As soon +as the door was shut the barber laughed. "The old one and the young one +will be strolling arm in arm to get shaved in my place presently. The +tailor shall be set to work, and the barber, and the candlestick maker; +high old times are coming for Colebrook, they are coming, to be sure. It +used to be 'next week,' now it has come to 'next month,' and so on--soon +it will be next spring, for all I know." + +Noticing a stranger listening to him with a vacant grin, he explained, +stretching out his legs cynically, that this queer old Hagberd, a +retired coasting-skipper, was waiting for the return of a son of his. +The boy had been driven away from home, he shouldn't wonder; had run +away to sea and had never been heard of since. Put to rest in Davy +Jones's locker this many a day, as likely as not. That old man came +flying to Colebrook three years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost +his wife lately then), getting out of a third-class smoker as if the +devil had been at his heels; and the only thing that brought him down +was a letter--a hoax probably. Some joker had written to him about a +seafaring man with some such name who was supposed to be hanging about +some girl or other, either in Colebrook or in the neighbourhood. "Funny, +ain't it?" The old chap had been advertising in the London papers for +Harry Hagberd, and offering rewards for any sort of likely information. +And the barber would go on to describe with sardonic gusto, how that +stranger in mourning had been seen exploring the country, in carts, on +foot, taking everybody into his confidence, visiting all the inns +and alehouses for miles around, stopping people on the road with his +questions, looking into the very ditches almost; first in the greatest +excitement, then with a plodding sort of perseverance, growing slower +and slower; and he could not even tell you plainly how his son looked. +The sailor was supposed to be one of two that had left a timber +ship, and to have been seen dangling after some girl; but the old man +described a boy of fourteen or so--"a clever-looking, high-spirited +boy." And when people only smiled at this he would rub his forehead in +a confused sort of way before he slunk off, looking offended. He found +nobody, of course; not a trace of anybody--never heard of anything worth +belief, at any rate; but he had not been able somehow to tear himself +away from Colebrook. + +"It was the shock of this disappointment, perhaps, coming soon after the +loss of his wife, that had driven him crazy on that point," the barber +suggested, with an air of great psychological insight. After a time the +old man abandoned the active search. His son had evidently gone away; +but he settled himself to wait. His son had been once at least in +Colebrook in preference to his native place. There must have been some +reason for it, he seemed to think, some very powerful inducement, that +would bring him back to Colebrook again. + +"Ha, ha, ha! Why, of course, Colebrook. Where else? That's the only +place in the United Kingdom for your long-lost sons. So he sold up his +old home in Colchester, and down he comes here. Well, it's a craze, +like any other. Wouldn't catch me going crazy over any of my youngsters +clearing out. I've got eight of them at home." The barber was showing +off his strength of mind in the midst of a laughter that shook the +tap-room. + +Strange, though, that sort of thing, he would confess, with the +frankness of a superior intelligence, seemed to be catching. His +establishment, for instance, was near the harbour, and whenever a +sailor-man came in for a hair-cut or a shave--if it was a strange face he +couldn't help thinking directly, "Suppose he's the son of old Hagberd!" +He laughed at himself for it. It was a strong craze. He could remember +the time when the whole town was full of it. But he had his hopes of the +old chap yet. He would cure him by a course of judicious chaffing. He +was watching the progress of the treatment. Next week--next month--next +year! When the old skipper had put off the date of that return till next +year, he would be well on his way to not saying any more about it. In +other matters he was quite rational, so this, too, was bound to come. +Such was the barber's firm opinion. + +Nobody had ever contradicted him; his own hair had gone grey since +that time, and Captain Hagberd's beard had turned quite white, and had +acquired a majestic flow over the No. 1 canvas suit, which he had made +for himself secretly with tarred twine, and had assumed suddenly, coming +out in it one fine morning, whereas the evening before he had been seen +going home in his mourning of broadcloth. It caused a sensation in the +High Street--shopkeepers coming to their doors, people in the houses +snatching up their hats to run out--a stir at which he seemed strangely +surprised at first, and then scared; but his only answer to the +wondering questions was that startled and evasive, "For the present." + +That sensation had been forgotten, long ago; and Captain Hagberd +himself, if not forgotten, had come to be disregarded--the penalty of +dailiness--as the sun itself is disregarded unless it makes its power +felt heavily. Captain Hagberd's movements showed no infirmity: he walked +stiffly in his suit of canvas, a quaint and remarkable figure; only his +eyes wandered more furtively perhaps than of yore. His manner abroad had +lost its excitable watchfulness; it had become puzzled and diffident, +as though he had suspected that there was somewhere about him something +slightly compromising, some embarrassing oddity; and yet had remained +unable to discover what on earth this something wrong could be. + +He was unwilling now to talk with the townsfolk. He had earned for +himself the reputation of an awful skinflint, of a miser in the matter +of living. He mumbled regretfully in the shops, bought inferior scraps +of meat after long hesitations; and discouraged all allusions to his +costume. It was as the barber had foretold. For all one could tell, he +had recovered already from the disease of hope; and only Miss Bessie +Carvil knew that he said nothing about his son's return because with him +it was no longer "next week," "next month," or even "next year." It was +"to-morrow." + +In their intimacy of back yard and front garden he talked with her +paternally, reasonably, and dogmatically, with a touch of arbitrariness. +They met on the ground of unreserved confidence, which was authenticated +by an affectionate wink now and then. Miss Carvil had come to look +forward rather to these winks. At first they had discomposed her: the +poor fellow was mad. Afterwards she had learned to laugh at them: there +was no harm in him. Now she was aware of an unacknowledged, pleasurable, +incredulous emotion, expressed by a faint blush. He winked not in the +least vulgarly; his thin red face with a well-modelled curved nose, had +a sort of distinction--the more so that when he talked to her he looked +with a steadier and more intelligent glance. A handsome, hale, upright, +capable man, with a white beard. You did not think of his age. His son, +he affirmed, had resembled him amazingly from his earliest babyhood. + +Harry would be one-and-thirty next July, he declared. Proper age to get +married with a nice, sensible girl that could appreciate a good home. He +was a very high-spirited boy. High-spirited husbands were the easiest +to manage. These mean, soft chaps, that you would think butter +wouldn't melt in their mouths, were the ones to make a woman thoroughly +miserable. And there was nothing like a home--a fireside--a good roof: +no turning out of your warm bed in all sorts of weather. "Eh, my dear?" + +Captain Hagberd had been one of those sailors that pursue their calling +within sight of land. One of the many children of a bankrupt farmer, he +had been apprenticed hurriedly to a coasting skipper, and had remained +on the coast all his sea life. It must have been a hard one at first: +he had never taken to it; his affection turned to the land, with its +innumerable houses, with its quiet lives gathered round its firesides. +Many sailors feel and profess a rational dislike for the sea, but his +was a profound and emotional animosity--as if the love of the stabler +element had been bred into him through many generations. + +"People did not know what they let their boys in for when they let them +go to sea," he expounded to Bessie. "As soon make convicts of them at +once." He did not believe you ever got used to it. The weariness of such +a life got worse as you got older. What sort of trade was it in which +more than half your time you did not put your foot inside your house? +Directly you got out to sea you had no means of knowing what went on +at home. One might have thought him weary of distant voyages; and the +longest he had ever made had lasted a fortnight, of which the most part +had been spent at anchor, sheltering from the weather. As soon as his +wife had inherited a house and enough to live on (from a bachelor uncle +who had made some money in the coal business) he threw up his command of +an East-coast collier with a feeling as though he had escaped from the +galleys. After all these years he might have counted on the fingers of +his two hands all the days he had been out of sight of England. He +had never known what it was to be out of soundings. "I have never been +further than eighty fathoms from the land," was one of his boasts. + +Bessie Carvil heard all these things. In front of their cottage grew an +under-sized ash; and on summer afternoons she would bring out a chair +on the grass-plot and sit down with her sewing. Captain Hagberd, in his +canvas suit, leaned on a spade. He dug every day in his front plot. He +turned it over and over several times every year, but was not going to +plant anything "just at present." + +To Bessie Carvil he would state more explicitly: "Not till our Harry +comes home to-morrow." And she had heard this formula of hope so often +that it only awakened the vaguest pity in her heart for that hopeful old +man. + +Everything was put off in that way, and everything was being prepared +likewise for to-morrow. There was a boxful of packets of various +flower-seeds to choose from, for the front garden. "He will doubtless let +you have your say about that, my dear," Captain Hagberd intimated to her +across the railing. + +Miss Bessie's head remained bowed over her work. She had heard all this +so many times. But now and then she would rise, lay down her sewing, and +come slowly to the fence. There was a charm in these gentle ravings. He +was determined that his son should not go away again for the want of a +home all ready for him. He had been filling the other cottage with all +sorts of furniture. She imagined it all new, fresh with varnish, piled +up as in a warehouse. There would be tables wrapped up in sacking; rolls +of carpets thick and vertical like fragments of columns, the gleam of +white marble tops in the dimness of the drawn blinds. Captain Hagberd +always described his purchases to her, carefully, as to a person having +a legitimate interest in them. The overgrown yard of his cottage could +be laid over with concrete . . . after to-morrow. + +"We may just as well do away with the fence. You could have your +drying-line out, quite clear of your flowers." He winked, and she would +blush faintly. + +This madness that had entered her life through the kind impulses of her +heart had reasonable details. What if some day his son returned? But she +could not even be quite sure that he ever had a son; and if he existed +anywhere he had been too long away. When Captain Hagberd got excited in +his talk she would steady him by a pretence of belief, laughing a little +to salve her conscience. + +Only once she had tried pityingly to throw some doubt on that hope +doomed to disappointment, but the effect of her attempt had scared her +very much. All at once over that man's face there came an expression of +horror and incredulity, as though he had seen a crack open out in the +firmament. + +"You--you--you don't think he's drowned!" + +For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out of his mind, for in his +ordinary state she thought him more sane than people gave him credit +for. On that occasion the violence of the emotion was followed by a most +paternal and complacent recovery. + +"Don't alarm yourself, my dear," he said a little cunningly: "the sea +can't keep him. He does not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did +belong to it. Look at me; I didn't get drowned. Moreover, he isn't +a sailor at all; and if he is not a sailor he's bound to come back. +There's nothing to prevent him coming back. . . ." + +His eyes began to wander. + +"To-morrow." + +She never tried again, for fear the man should go out of his mind on +the spot. He depended on her. She seemed the only sensible person in +the town; and he would congratulate himself frankly before her face +on having secured such a levelheaded wife for his son. The rest of the +town, he confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly queer. +The way they looked at you--the way they talked to you! He had never got +on with any one in the place. Didn't like the people. He would not have +left his own country if it had not been clear that his son had taken a +fancy to Colebrook. + +She humoured him in silence, listening patiently by the fence; +crocheting with downcast eyes. Blushes came with difficulty on her +dead-white complexion, under the negligently twisted opulence of +mahogany-coloured hair. Her father was frankly carroty. + +She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face. When Captain Hagberd +vaunted the necessity and propriety of a home and the delights of one's +own fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her home delights +had been confined to the nursing of her father during the ten best years +of her life. + +A bestial roaring coming out of an upstairs window would interrupt their +talk. She would begin at once to roll up her crochet-work or fold her +sewing, without the slightest sign of haste. Meanwhile the howls and +roars of her name would go on, making the fishermen strolling upon the +sea-wall on the other side of the road turn their heads towards the +cottages. She would go in slowly at the front door, and a moment +afterwards there would fall a profound silence. Presently she would +reappear, leading by the hand a man, gross and unwieldy like a +hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered, surly face. + +He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness had overtaken years before +in the full flush of business. He behaved to his daughter as if she +had been responsible for its incurable character. He had been heard to +bellow at the top of his voice, as if to defy Heaven, that he did not +care: he had made enough money to have ham and eggs for his breakfast +every morning. He thanked God for it, in a fiendish tone as though he +were cursing. + +Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably impressed by his tenant, that +once he told Miss Bessie, "He is a very extravagant fellow, my dear." + +She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of socks for her father, who +expected her to keep up the supply dutifully. She hated knitting, +and, as she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her eyes on her +needles. + +"Of course it isn't as if he had a son to provide for," Captain +Hagberd went on a little vacantly. "Girls, of course, don't require so +much--h'm-h'm. They don't run away from home, my dear." + +"No," said Miss Bessie, quietly. + +Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of turned-up earth, chuckled. With +his maritime rig, his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Neptune, +he resembled a deposed sea-god who had exchanged the trident for the +spade. + +"And he must look upon you as already provided for, in a manner. That's +the best of it with the girls. The husbands . . ." He winked. Miss +Bessie, absorbed in her knitting, coloured faintly. + +"Bessie! my hat!" old Carvil bellowed out suddenly. He had been sitting +under the tree mute and motionless, like an idol of some remarkably +monstrous superstition. He never opened his mouth but to howl for her, +at her, sometimes about her; and then he did not moderate the terms of +his abuse. Her system was never to answer him at all; and he kept up +his shouting till he got attended to--till she shook him by the arm, or +thrust the mouthpiece of his pipe between his teeth. He was one of the +few blind people who smoke. When he felt the hat being put on his head +he stopped his noise at once. Then he rose, and they passed together +through the gate. + +He weighed heavily on her arm. During their slow, toilful walks she +appeared to be dragging with her for a penance the burden of that infirm +bulk. Usually they crossed the road at once (the cottages stood in the +fields near the harbour, two hundred yards away from the end of the +street), and for a long, long time they would remain in view, ascending +imperceptibly the flight of wooden steps that led to the top of the +sea-wall. It ran on from east to west, shutting out the Channel like a +neglected railway embankment, on which no train had ever rolled within +memory of man. Groups of sturdy fishermen would emerge upon the sky, +walk along for a bit, and sink without haste. Their brown nets, like the +cobwebs of gigantic spiders, lay on the shabby grass of the slope; and, +looking up from the end of the street, the people of the town would +recognise the two Carvils by the creeping slowness of their gait. +Captain Hagberd, pottering aimlessly about his cottages, would raise his +head to see how they got on in their promenade. + +He advertised still in the Sunday papers for Harry Hagberd. These sheets +were read in foreign parts to the end of the world, he informed Bessie. +At the same time he seemed to think that his son was in England--so +near to Colebrook that he would of course turn up "to-morrow." Bessie, +without committing herself to that opinion in so many words, argued that +in that case the expense of advertising was unnecessary; Captain Hagberd +had better spend that weekly half-crown on himself. She declared she did +not know what he lived on. Her argumentation would puzzle him and cast +him down for a time. "They all do it," he pointed out. There was a whole +column devoted to appeals after missing relatives. He would bring the +newspaper to show her. He and his wife had advertised for years; only +she was an impatient woman. The news from Colebrook had arrived the very +day after her funeral; if she had not been so impatient she might have +been here now, with no more than one day more to wait. "You are not an +impatient woman, my dear." + +"I've no patience with you sometimes," she would say. + +If he still advertised for his son he did not offer rewards for +information any more; for, with the muddled lucidity of a mental +derangement he had reasoned himself into a conviction as clear as +daylight that he had already attained all that could be expected in that +way. What more could he want? Colebrook was the place, and there was no +need to ask for more. Miss Carvil praised him for his good sense, and +he was soothed by the part she took in his hope, which had become his +delusion; in that idea which blinded his mind to truth and probability, +just as the other old man in the other cottage had been made blind, by +another disease, to the light and beauty of the world. + +But anything he could interpret as a doubt--any coldness of assent, or +even a simple inattention to the development of his projects of a home +with his returned son and his son's wife--would irritate him into flings +and jerks and wicked side glances. He would dash his spade into +the ground and walk to and fro before it. Miss Bessie called it his +tantrums. She shook her finger at him. Then, when she came out again, +after he had parted with her in anger, he would watch out of the corner +of his eyes for the least sign of encouragement to approach the iron +railings and resume his fatherly and patronising relations. + +For all their intimacy, which had lasted some years now, they had never +talked without a fence or a railing between them. He described to her +all the splendours accumulated for the setting-up of their housekeeping, +but had never invited her to an inspection. No human eye was to behold +them till Harry had his first look. In fact, nobody had ever been +inside his cottage; he did his own housework, and he guarded his son's +privilege so jealously that the small objects of domestic use he bought +sometimes in the town were smuggled rapidly across the front garden +under his canvas coat. Then, coming out, he would remark apologetically, +"It was only a small kettle, my dear." + +And, if not too tired with her drudgery, or worried beyond endurance by +her father, she would laugh at him with a blush, and say: "That's all +right, Captain Hagberd; I am not impatient." + +"Well, my dear, you haven't long to wait now," he would answer with a +sudden bashfulness, and looking uneasily, as though he had suspected +that there was something wrong somewhere. + +Every Monday she paid him his rent over the railings. He clutched +the shillings greedily. He grudged every penny he had to spend on his +maintenance, and when he left her to make his purchases his bearing +changed as soon as he got into the street. Away from the sanction of her +pity, he felt himself exposed without defence. He brushed the walls with +his shoulder. He mistrusted the queerness of the people; yet, by then, +even the town children had left off calling after him, and the tradesmen +served him without a word. The slightest allusion to his clothing had +the power to puzzle and frighten especially, as if it were something +utterly unwarranted and incomprehensible. + +In the autumn, the driving rain drummed on his sailcloth suit saturated +almost to the stiffness of sheet-iron, with its surface flowing with +water. When the weather was too bad, he retreated under the tiny porch, +and, standing close against the door, looked at his spade left planted +in the middle of the yard. The ground was so much dug up all over, that +as the season advanced it turned to a quagmire. When it froze hard, he +was disconsolate. What would Harry say? And as he could not have so much +of Bessie's company at that time of the year, the roars of old Carvil, +that came muffled through the closed windows, calling her indoors, +exasperated him greatly. + +"Why don't that extravagant fellow get you a servant?" he asked +impatiently one mild afternoon. She had thrown something over her head +to run out for a while. + +"I don't know," said the pale Bessie, wearily, staring away with her +heavy-lidded, grey, and unexpectant glance. There were always smudgy +shadows under her eyes, and she did not seem able to see any change or +any end to her life. + +"You wait till you get married, my dear," said her only friend, drawing +closer to the fence. "Harry will get you one." + +His hopeful craze seemed to mock her own want of hope with so bitter an +aptness that in her nervous irritation she could have screamed at him +outright. But she only said in self-mockery, and speaking to him as +though he had been sane, "Why, Captain Hagberd, your son may not even +want to look at me." + +He flung his head back and laughed his throaty affected cackle of anger. + +"What! That boy? Not want to look at the only sensible girl for miles +around? What do you think I am here for, my dear--my dear--my dear? . . . +What? You wait. You just wait. You'll see to-morrow. I'll soon--" + +"Bessie! Bessie! Bessie!" howled old Carvil inside. "Bessie!--my pipe!" +That fat blind man had given himself up to a very lust of laziness. He +would not lift his hand to reach for the things she took care to leave +at his very elbow. He would not move a limb; he would not rise from his +chair, he would not put one foot before another, in that parlour (where +he knew his way as well as if he had his sight), without calling her to +his side and hanging all his atrocious weight on her shoulder. He would +not eat one single mouthful of food without her close attendance. He had +made himself helpless beyond his affliction, to enslave her better. She +stood still for a moment, setting her teeth in the dusk, then turned and +walked slowly indoors. + +Captain Hagberd went back to his spade. The shouting in Carvil's cottage +stopped, and after a while the window of the parlour downstairs was lit +up. A man coming from the end of the street with a firm leisurely step +passed on, but seemed to have caught sight of Captain Hagberd, because +he turned back a pace or two. A cold white light lingered in the western +sky. The man leaned over the gate in an interested manner. + +"You must be Captain Hagberd," he said, with easy assurance. + +The old man spun round, pulling out his spade, startled by the strange +voice. + +"Yes, I am," he answered nervously. + +The other, smiling straight at him, uttered very slowly: "You've been +advertising for your son, I believe?" + +"My son Harry," mumbled Captain Hagberd, off his guard for once. "He's +coming home tomorrow." + +"The devil he is!" The stranger marvelled greatly, and then went on, +with only a slight change of tone: "You've grown a beard like Father +Christmas himself." + +Captain Hagberd drew a little nearer, and leaned forward over his +spade. "Go your way," he said, resentfully and timidly at the same time, +because he was always afraid of being laughed at. Every mental +state, even madness, has its equilibrium based upon self-esteem. Its +disturbance causes unhappiness; and Captain Hagberd lived amongst a +scheme of settled notions which it pained him to feel disturbed by +people's grins. Yes, people's grins were awful. They hinted at something +wrong: but what? He could not tell; and that stranger was obviously +grinning--had come on purpose to grin. It was bad enough on the streets, +but he had never before been outraged like this. + +The stranger, unaware how near he was of having his head laid open with +a spade, said seriously: "I am not trespassing where I stand, am I? I +fancy there's something wrong about your news. Suppose you let me come +in." + +"_You_ come in!" murmured old Hagberd, with inexpressible horror. + +"I could give you some real information about your son--the very latest +tip, if you care to hear." + +"No," shouted Hagberd. He began to pace wildly to and fro, he shouldered +his spade, he gesticulated with his other arm. "Here's a fellow--a +grinning fellow, who says there's something wrong. I've got more +information than you're aware of. I've all the information I want. +I've had it for years--for years--for years--enough to last me till +to-morrow. Let you come in, indeed! What would Harry say?" + +Bessie Carvil's figure appeared in black silhouette on the parlour +window; then, with the sound of an opening door, flitted out before the +other cottage, all black, but with something white over her head. +These two voices beginning to talk suddenly outside (she had heard them +indoors) had given her such an emotion that she could not utter a sound. + +Captain Hagberd seemed to be trying to find his way out of a cage. His +feet squelched in the puddles left by his industry. He stumbled in the +holes of the ruined grass-plot. He ran blindly against the fence. + +"Here, steady a bit!" said the man at the gate, gravely stretching his +arm over and catching him by the sleeve. "Somebody's been trying to get +at you. Hallo! what's this rig you've got on? Storm canvas, by George!" +He had a big laugh. "Well, you _are_ a character!" + +Captain Hagberd jerked himself free, and began to back away shrinkingly. +"For the present," he muttered, in a crestfallen tone. + +"What's the matter with him?" The stranger addressed Bessie with the +utmost familiarity, in a deliberate, explanatory tone. "I didn't want +to startle the old man." He lowered his voice as though he had known +her for years. "I dropped into a barber's on my way, to get a twopenny +shave, and they told me there he was something of a character. The old +man has been a character all his life." + +Captain Hagberd, daunted by the allusion to his clothing, had retreated +inside, taking his spade with him; and the two at the gate, startled +by the unexpected slamming of the door, heard the bolts being shot, the +snapping of the lock, and the echo of an affected gurgling laugh within. + +"I didn't want to upset him," the man said, after a short silence. +"What's the meaning of all this? He isn't quite crazy." + +"He has been worrying a long time about his lost son," said Bessie, in a +low, apologetic tone. + +"Well, I am his son." + +"Harry!" she cried--and was profoundly silent. + +"Know my name? Friends with the old man, eh?" + +"He's our landlord," Bessie faltered out, catching hold of the iron +railing. + +"Owns both them rabbit-hutches, does he?" commented young Hagberd, +scornfully; "just the thing he would be proud of. Can you tell me who's +that chap coming to-morrow? You must know something of it. I tell you, +it's a swindle on the old man--nothing else." + +She did not answer, helpless before an insurmountable difficulty, +appalled before the necessity, the impossibility and the dread of an +explanation in which she and madness seemed involved together. + +"Oh--I am so sorry," she murmured. + +"What's the matter?" he said, with serenity. "You needn't be afraid +of upsetting me. It's the other fellow that'll be upset when he least +expects it. I don't care a hang; but there will be some fun when he +shows his mug to-morrow. I don't care _that_ for the old man's pieces, +but right is right. You shall see me put a head on that coon--whoever he +is!" + +He had come nearer, and towered above her on the other side of the +railings. He glanced at her hands. He fancied she was trembling, and it +occurred to him that she had her part perhaps in that little game that +was to be sprung on his old man to-morrow. He had come just in time +to spoil their sport. He was entertained by the idea--scornful of the +baffled plot. But all his life he had been full of indulgence for all +sorts of women's tricks. She really was trembling very much; her wrap +had slipped off her head. "Poor devil!" he thought. "Never mind about +that chap. I daresay he'll change his mind before to-morrow. But what +about me? I can't loaf about the gate til the morning." + +She burst out: "It is _you_--you yourself that he's waiting for. It is +_you_ who come to-morrow." + +He murmured. "Oh! It's me!" blankly, and they seemed to become +breathless together. Apparently he was pondering over what he had heard; +then, without irritation, but evidently perplexed, he said: "I don't +understand. I hadn't written or anything. It's my chum who saw the paper +and told me--this very morning. . . . Eh? what?" + +He bent his ear; she whispered rapidly, and he listened for a while, +muttering the words "yes" and "I see" at times. Then, "But why won't +today do?" he queried at last. + +"You didn't understand me!" she exclaimed, impatiently. The clear +streak of light under the clouds died out in the west. Again he stooped +slightly to hear better; and the deep night buried everything of the +whispering woman and the attentive man, except the familiar contiguity +of their faces, with its air of secrecy and caress. + +He squared his shoulders; the broad-brimmed shadow of a hat sat +cavalierly on his head. "Awkward this, eh?" he appealed to her. +"To-morrow? Well, well! Never heard tell of anything like this. It's all +to-morrow, then, without any sort of to-day, as far as I can see." + +She remained still and mute. + +"And you have been encouraging this funny notion," he said. + +"I never contradicted him." + +"Why didn't you?" + +"What for should I?" she defended herself. "It would only have made him +miserable. He would have gone out of his mind." + +"His mind!" he muttered, and heard a short nervous laugh from her. + +"Where was the harm? Was I to quarrel with the poor old man? It was +easier to half believe it myself." + +"Aye, aye," he meditated, intelligently. "I suppose the old chap got +around you somehow with his soft talk. You are good-hearted." + +Her hands moved up in the dark nervously. "And it might have been true. +It was true. It has come. Here it is. This is the to-morrow we have been +waiting for." + +She drew a breath, and he said, good-humouredly: "Aye, with the door +shut. I wouldn't care if . . . And you think he could be brought round +to recognise me . . . Eh? What? . . . You could do it? In a week you +say? H'm, I daresay you could--but do you think I could hold out a +week in this dead-alive place? Not me! I want either hard work, or an +all-fired racket, or more space than there is in the whole of England. I +have been in this place, though, once before, and for more than a week. +The old man was advertising for me then, and a chum I had with me had +a notion of getting a couple quid out of him by writing a lot of silly +nonsense in a letter. That lark did not come off, though. We had to +clear out--and none too soon. But this time I've a chum waiting for me +in London, and besides . . ." + +Bessie Carvil was breathing quickly. + +"What if I tried a knock at the door?" he suggested. + +"Try," she said. + +Captain Hagberd's gate squeaked, and the shadow of the son moved on, +then stopped with another deep laugh in the throat, like the father's, +only soft and gentle, thrilling to the woman's heart, awakening to her +ears. + +"He isn't frisky--is he? I would be afraid to lay hold of him. The chaps +are always telling me I don't know my own strength." + +"He's the most harmless creature that ever lived," she interrupted. + +"You wouldn't say so if you had seen him chasing me upstairs with a hard +leather strap," he said; "I haven't forgotten it in sixteen years." + +She got warm from head to foot under another soft, subdued laugh. At the +rat-tat-tat of the knocker her heart flew into her mouth. + +"Hey, dad! Let me in. I am Harry, I am. Straight! Come back home a day +too soon." + +One of the windows upstairs ran up. + +"A grinning, information fellow," said the voice of old Hagberd, up in +the darkness. "Don't you have anything to do with him. It will spoil +everything." + +She heard Harry Hagberd say, "Hallo, dad," then a clanging clatter. The +window rumbled down, and he stood before her again. + +"It's just like old times. Nearly walloped the life out of me to stop me +going away, and now I come back he throws a confounded shovel at my head +to keep me out. It grazed my shoulder." + +She shuddered. + +"I wouldn't care," he began, "only I spent my last shillings on the +railway fare and my last twopence on a shave--out of respect for the old +man." + +"Are you really Harry Hagberd?" she asked. "Can you prove it?" + +"Can I prove it? Can any one else prove it?" he said jovially. "Prove +with what? What do I want to prove? There isn't a single corner in the +world, barring England, perhaps, where you could not find some man, or +more likely woman, that would remember me for Harry Hagberd. I am more +like Harry Hagberd than any man alive; and I can prove it to you in a +minute, if you will let me step inside your gate." + +"Come in," she said. + +He entered then the front garden of the Carvils. His tall shadow strode +with a swagger; she turned her back on the window and waited, watching +the shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most material part. The +light fell on a tilted hat; a powerful shoulder, that seemed to cleave +the darkness; on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood still, +facing the illuminated parlour window at her back, turning his head from +side to side, laughing softly to himself. + +"Just fancy, for a minute, the old man's beard stuck on to my chin. Hey? +Now say. I was the very spit of him from a boy." + +"It's true," she murmured to herself. + +"And that's about as far as it goes. He was always one of your domestic +characters. Why, I remember how he used to go about looking very sick +for three days before he had to leave home on one of his trips to South +Shields for coal. He had a standing charter from the gas-works. You +would think he was off on a whaling cruise--three years and a tail. Ha, +ha! Not a bit of it. Ten days on the outside. The Skimmer of the Seas +was a smart craft. Fine name, wasn't it? Mother's uncle owned her. . . ." + +He interrupted himself, and in a lowered voice, "Did he ever tell you +what mother died of?" he asked. + +"Yes," said Miss Bessie, bitterly; "from impatience." + +He made no sound for a while; then brusquely: "They were so afraid I +would turn out badly that they fairly drove me away. Mother nagged at me +for being idle, and the old man said he would cut my soul out of my +body rather than let me go to sea. Well, it looked as if he would do it +too--so I went. It looks to me sometimes as if I had been born to them +by a mistake--in that other hutch of a house." + +"Where ought you to have been born by rights?" Bessie Carvil interrupted +him, defiantly. + +"In the open, upon a beach, on a windy night," he said, quick as +lightning. Then he mused slowly. "They were characters, both of them, by +George; and the old man keeps it up well--don't he? A damned shovel on +the--Hark! who's that making that row? 'Bessie, Bessie.' It's in your +house." + +"It's for me," she said, with indifference. + +He stepped aside, out of the streak of light. "Your husband?" he +inquired, with the tone of a man accustomed to unlawful trysts. "Fine +voice for a ship's deck in a thundering squall." + +"No; my father. I am not married." + +"You seem a fine girl, Miss Bessie, dear," he said at once. + +She turned her face away. + +"Oh, I say,--what's up? Who's murdering him?" + +"He wants his tea." She faced him, still and tall, with averted head, +with her hands hanging clasped before her. + +"Hadn't you better go in?" he suggested, after watching for a while the +nape of her neck, a patch of dazzling white skin and soft shadow above +the sombre line of her shoulders. Her wrap had slipped down to her +elbows. "You'll have all the town coming out presently. I'll wait here a +bit." + +Her wrap fell to the ground, and he stooped to pick it up; she had +vanished. He threw it over his arm, and approaching the window squarely +he saw a monstrous form of a fat man in an armchair, an unshaded lamp, +the yawning of an enormous mouth in a big flat face encircled by a +ragged halo of hair--Miss Bessie's head and bust. The shouting stopped; +the blind ran down. He lost himself in thinking how awkward it was. +Father mad; no getting into the house. No money to get back; a hungry +chum in London who would begin to think he had been given the go-by. +"Damn!" he muttered. He could break the door in, certainly; but +they would perhaps bundle him into chokey for that without asking +questions--no great matter, only he was confoundedly afraid of being +locked up, even in mistake. He turned cold at the thought. He stamped +his feet on the sodden grass. + +"What are you?--a sailor?" said an agitated voice. + +She had flitted out, a shadow herself, attracted by the reckless shadow +waiting under the wall of her home. + +"Anything. Enough of a sailor to be worth my salt before the mast. Came +home that way this time." + +"Where do you come from?" she asked. + +"Right away from a jolly good spree," he said, "by the London +train--see? Ough! I hate being shut up in a train. I don't mind a house +so much." + +"Ah," she said; "that's lucky." + +"Because in a house you can at any time open the blamed door and walk +away straight before you." + +"And never come back?" + +"Not for sixteen years at least," he laughed. "To a rabbit hutch, and +get a confounded old shovel . . ." + +"A ship is not so very big," she taunted. + +"No, but the sea is great." + +She dropped her head, and as if her ears had been opened to the voices +of the world, she heard, beyond the rampart of sea-wall, the swell +of yesterday's gale breaking on the beach with monotonous and solemn +vibrations, as if all the earth had been a tolling bell. + +"And then, why, a ship's a ship. You love her and leave her; and a +voyage isn't a marriage." He quoted the sailor's saying lightly. + +"It is not a marriage," she whispered. + +"I never took a false name, and I've never yet told a lie to a woman. +What lie? Why, _the_ lie--. Take me or leave me, I say: and if you take +me, then it is . . ." He hummed a snatch very low, leaning against the +wall. + + "Oh, ho, ho Rio! + And fare thee well, + My bonnie young girl, + We're bound to Rio Grande." + +"Capstan song," he explained. Her teeth chattered. + +"You are cold," he said. "Here's that affair of yours I picked up." She +felt his hands about her, wrapping her closely. "Hold the ends together +in front," he commanded. + +"What did you come here for?" she asked, repressing a shudder. + +"Five quid," he answered, promptly. "We let our spree go on a little too +long and got hard up." + +"You've been drinking?" she said. + +"Blind three days; on purpose. I am not given that way--don't you think. +There's nothing and nobody that can get over me unless I like. I can be +as steady as a rock. My chum sees the paper this morning, and says he to +me: 'Go on, Harry: loving parent. That's five quid sure.' So we scraped +all our pockets for the fare. Devil of a lark!" + +"You have a hard heart, I am afraid," she sighed. + +"What for? For running away? Why! he wanted to make a lawyer's clerk of +me--just to please himself. Master in his own house; and my poor mother +egged him on--for my good, I suppose. Well, then--so long; and I went. +No, I tell you: the day I cleared out, I was all black and blue from his +great fondness for me. Ah! he was always a bit of a character. Look at +that shovel now. Off his chump? Not much. That's just exactly like my +dad. He wants me here just to have somebody to order about. However, +we two were hard up; and what's five quid to him--once in sixteen hard +years?" + +"Oh, but I am sorry for you. Did you never want to come back home?" + +"Be a lawyer's clerk and rot here--in some such place as this?" he cried +in contempt. "What! if the old man set me up in a home to-day, I would +kick it down about my ears--or else die there before the third day was +out." + +"And where else is it that you hope to die?" + +"In the bush somewhere; in the sea; on a blamed mountain-top for choice. +At home? Yes! the world's my home; but I expect I'll die in a hospital +some day. What of that? Any place is good enough, as long as I've lived; +and I've been everything you can think of almost but a tailor or a +soldier. I've been a boundary rider; I've sheared sheep; and humped my +swag; and harpooned a whale. I've rigged ships, and prospected for gold, +and skinned dead bullocks,--and turned my back on more money than the +old man would have scraped in his whole life. Ha, ha!" + +He overwhelmed her. She pulled herself together and managed to utter, +"Time to rest now." + +He straightened himself up, away from the wall, and in a severe voice +said, "Time to go." + +But he did not move. He leaned back again, and hummed thoughtfully a bar +or two of an outlandish tune. + +She felt as if she were about to cry. "That's another of your cruel +songs," she said. + +"Learned it in Mexico--in Sonora." He talked easily. "It is the song of +the Gambucinos. You don't know? The song of restless men. Nothing could +hold them in one place--not even a woman. You used to meet one of them +now and again, in the old days, on the edge of the gold country, away +north there beyond the Rio Gila. I've seen it. A prospecting engineer +in Mazatlan took me along with him to help look after the waggons. +A sailor's a handy chap to have about you anyhow. It's all a +desert: cracks in the earth that you can't see the bottom of; and +mountains--sheer rocks standing up high like walls and church spires, +only a hundred times bigger. The valleys are full of boulders and black +stones. There's not a blade of grass to see; and the sun sets more red +over that country than I have seen it anywhere--blood-red and angry. It +_is_ fine." + +"You do not want to go back there again?" she stammered out. + +He laughed a little. "No. That's the blamed gold country. It gave me the +shivers sometimes to look at it--and we were a big lot of men together, +mind; but these Gambucinos wandered alone. They knew that country before +anybody had ever heard of it. They had a sort of gift for prospecting, +and the fever of it was on them too; and they did not seem to want the +gold very much. They would find some rich spot, and then turn their +backs on it; pick up perhaps a little--enough for a spree--and then be +off again, looking for more. They never stopped long where there were +houses; they had no wife, no chick, no home, never a chum. You couldn't +be friends with a Gambucino; they were too restless--here to-day, and +gone, God knows where, to-morrow. They told no one of their finds, and +there has never been a Gambucino well off. It was not for the gold they +cared; it was the wandering about looking for it in the stony country +that got into them and wouldn't let them rest; so that no woman yet born +could hold a Gambucino for more than a week. That's what the song says. +It's all about a pretty girl that tried hard to keep hold of a Gambucino +lover, so that he should bring her lots of gold. No fear! Off he went, +and she never saw him again." + +"What became of her?" she breathed out. + +"The song don't tell. Cried a bit, I daresay. They were the fellows: +kiss and go. But it's the looking for a thing--a something . . . +Sometimes I think I am a sort of Gambucino myself." + +"No woman can hold you, then," she began in a brazen voice, which +quavered suddenly before the end. + +"No longer than a week," he joked, playing upon her very heartstrings +with the gay, tender note of his laugh; "and yet I am fond of them all. +Anything for a woman of the right sort. The scrapes they got me into, +and the scrapes they got me out of! I love them at first sight. I've +fallen in love with you already, Miss--Bessie's your name--eh?" + +She backed away a little, and with a trembling laugh: + +"You haven't seen my face yet." + +He bent forward gallantly. "A little pale: it suits some. But you are a +fine figure of a girl, Miss Bessie." + +She was all in a flutter. Nobody had ever said so much to her before. + +His tone changed. "I am getting middling hungry, though. Had no +breakfast to-day. Couldn't you scare up some bread from that tea for me, +or--" + +She was gone already. He had been on the point of asking her to let him +come inside. No matter. Anywhere would do. Devil of a fix! What would +his chum think? + +"I didn't ask you as a beggar," he said, jestingly, taking a piece +of bread-and-butter from the plate she held before him. "I asked as a +friend. My dad is rich, you know." + +"He starves himself for your sake." + +"And I have starved for his whim," he said, taking up another piece. + +"All he has in the world is for you," she pleaded. + +"Yes, if I come here to sit on it like a dam' toad in a hole. Thank you; +and what about the shovel, eh? He always had a queer way of showing his +love." + +"I could bring him round in a week," she suggested, timidly. + +He was too hungry to answer her; and, holding the plate submissively to +his hand, she began to whisper up to him in a quick, panting voice. +He listened, amazed, eating slower and slower, till at last his jaws +stopped altogether. "That's his game, is it?" he said, in a rising tone +of scathing contempt. An ungovernable movement of his arm sent the plate +flying out of her fingers. He shot out a violent curse. + +She shrank from him, putting her hand against the wall. + +"No!" he raged. "He expects! Expects _me_--for his rotten money! . . . . +Who wants his home? Mad--not he! Don't you think. He wants his own way. +He wanted to turn me into a miserable lawyer's clerk, and now he wants +to make of me a blamed tame rabbit in a cage. Of me! Of me!" His subdued +angry laugh frightened her now. + +"The whole world ain't a bit too big for me to spread my elbows in, I +can tell you--what's your name--Bessie--let alone a dam' parlour in a +hutch. Marry! He wants me to marry and settle! And as likely as not he +has looked out the girl too--dash my soul! And do you know the Judy, may +I ask?" + +She shook all over with noiseless dry sobs; but he was fuming and +fretting too much to notice her distress. He bit his thumb with rage at +the mere idea. A window rattled up. + +"A grinning, information fellow," pronounced old Hagberd dogmatically, +in measured tones. And the sound of his voice seemed to Bessie to make +the night itself mad--to pour insanity and disaster on the earth. "Now +I know what's wrong with the people here, my dear. Why, of course! +With this mad chap going about. Don't you have anything to do with him, +Bessie. Bessie, I say!" + +They stood as if dumb. The old man fidgeted and mumbled to himself at +the window. Suddenly he cried, piercingly: "Bessie--I see you. I'll tell +Harry." + +She made a movement as if to run away, but stopped and raised her hands +to her temples. Young Hagberd, shadowy and big, stirred no more than a +man of bronze. Over their heads the crazy night whimpered and scolded in +an old man's voice. + +"Send him away, my dear. He's only a vagabond. What you want is a good +home of your own. That chap has no home--he's not like Harry. He can't +be Harry. Harry is coming to-morrow. Do you hear? One day more," he +babbled more excitedly; "never you fear--Harry shall marry you." + +His voice rose very shrill and mad against the regular deep soughing of +the swell coiling heavily about the outer face of the sea-wall. + +"He will have to. I shall make him, or if not"--he swore a great +oath--"I'll cut him off with a shilling to-morrow, and leave everything +to you. I shall. To you. Let him starve." + +The window rattled down. + +Harry drew a deep breath, and took one step toward Bessie. "So it's +you--the girl," he said, in a lowered voice. She had not moved, and she +remained half turned away from him, pressing her head in the palms of +her hands. "My word!" he continued, with an invisible half-smile on his +lips. "I have a great mind to stop. . . ." + +Her elbows were trembling violently. + +"For a week," he finished without a pause. + +She clapped her hands to her face. + +He came up quite close, and took hold of her wrists gently. She felt his +breath on her ear. + +"It's a scrape I am in--this, and it is you that must see me through." +He was trying to uncover her face. She resisted. He let her go then, and +stepping back a little, "Have you got any money?" he asked. "I must be +off now." + +She nodded quickly her shamefaced head, and he waited, looking away from +her, while, trembling all over and bowing her neck, she tried to find +the pocket of her dress. + +"Here it is!" she whispered. "Oh, go away! go away for God's sake! If I +had more--more--I would give it all to forget--to make you forget." + +He extended his hand. "No fear! I haven't forgotten a single one of you +in the world. Some gave me more than money--but I am a beggar now--and +you women always had to get me out of my scrapes." + +He swaggered up to the parlour window, and in the dim light filtering +through the blind, looked at the coin lying in his palm. It was a +half-sovereign. He slipped it into his pocket. She stood a little on +one side, with her head drooping, as if wounded; with her arms hanging +passive by her side, as if dead. + +"You can't buy me in," he said, "and you can't buy yourself out." + +He set his hat firmly with a little tap, and next moment she felt +herself lifted up in the powerful embrace of his arms. Her feet lost the +ground; her head hung back; he showered kisses on her face with a silent +and over-mastering ardour, as if in haste to get at her very soul. He +kissed her pale cheeks, her hard forehead, her heavy eyelids, her faded +lips; and the measured blows and sighs of the rising tide accompanied +the enfolding power of his arms, the overwhelming might of his caresses. +It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes +of the town, had sent a wave over her head. It passed on; she staggered +backwards, with her shoulders against the wall, exhausted, as if she had +been stranded there after a storm and a shipwreck. + +She opened her eyes after awhile; and listening to the firm, leisurely +footsteps going away with their conquest, began to gather her skirts, +staring all the time before her. Suddenly she darted through the open +gate into the dark and deserted street. + +"Stop!" she shouted. "Don't go!" + +And listening with an attentive poise of the head, she could not tell +whether it was the beat of the swell or his fateful tread that seemed +to fall cruelly upon her heart. Presently every sound grew fainter, as +though she were slowly turning into stone. A fear of this awful silence +came to her--worse than the fear of death. She called upon her ebbing +strength for the final appeal: + +"Harry!" + +Not even the dying echo of a footstep. Nothing. The thundering of the +surf, the voice of the restless sea itself, seemed stopped. There was +not a sound--no whisper of life, as though she were alone and lost in +that stony country of which she had heard, where madmen go looking for +gold and spurn the find. + +Captain Hagberd, inside his dark house, had kept on the alert. A window +ran up; and in the silence of the stony country a voice spoke above +her head, high up in the black air--the voice of madness, lies and +despair--the voice of inextinguishable hope. "Is he gone yet--that +information fellow? Do you hear him about, my dear?" + +She burst into tears. "No! no! no! I don't hear him any more," she +sobbed. + +He began to chuckle up there triumphantly. "You frightened him away. +Good girl. Now we shall be all right. Don't you be impatient, my dear. +One day more." + +In the other house old Carvil, wallowing regally in his arm-chair, with +a globe lamp burning by his side on the table, yelled for her, in a +fiendish voice: "Bessie! Bessie! you Bessie!" + +She heard him at last, and, as if overcome by fate, began to totter +silently back toward her stuffy little inferno of a cottage. It had no +lofty portal, no terrific inscription of forfeited hopes--she did not +understand wherein she had sinned. + +Captain Hagberd had gradually worked himself into a state of noisy +happiness up there. + +"Go in! Keep quiet!" she turned upon him tearfully, from the doorstep +below. + +He rebelled against her authority in his great joy at having got rid at +last of that "something wrong." It was as if all the hopeful madness of +the world had broken out to bring terror upon her heart, with the voice +of that old man shouting of his trust in an everlasting to-morrow. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of To-morrow, by Joseph Conrad + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO-MORROW *** + +***** This file should be named 494.txt or 494.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/9/494/ + +Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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