NCERT Textbook: Tomorrow | Class 12 English Kaleidoscope - Humanities/Arts PDF Download

 Page 1


39/TOMORROW
Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow
Joseph Conrad, born of Polish parents in the Russian
Ukraine, began a seafaring life in 1874. He learnt
English at the age of 21, and in 1886 became a British
citizen. His famous works include The Nigger of the
Narcissus (1898), Lord Jim (1900) and Nostromo
(1904). His greatest skill lies in his capacity to evoke
an atmosphere through careful attention to detail.
He uses the method of story within a story to convey
his sense of the inexplicable inner character of life
and the shifting quality of the mind. All Conrad’s
characters suffer from a sense of isolation.
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
4 4
4 4 4
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924
2024-25
Page 2


39/TOMORROW
Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow
Joseph Conrad, born of Polish parents in the Russian
Ukraine, began a seafaring life in 1874. He learnt
English at the age of 21, and in 1886 became a British
citizen. His famous works include The Nigger of the
Narcissus (1898), Lord Jim (1900) and Nostromo
(1904). His greatest skill lies in his capacity to evoke
an atmosphere through careful attention to detail.
He uses the method of story within a story to convey
his sense of the inexplicable inner character of life
and the shifting quality of the mind. All Conrad’s
characters suffer from a sense of isolation.
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
4 4
4 4 4
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924
2024-25
40/KALEIDOSCOPE
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,’ reported 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 sailcloth from head to foot, would be emerging
knee-deep out of rank grass and the tall weeds 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.
2024-25
Page 3


39/TOMORROW
Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow
Joseph Conrad, born of Polish parents in the Russian
Ukraine, began a seafaring life in 1874. He learnt
English at the age of 21, and in 1886 became a British
citizen. His famous works include The Nigger of the
Narcissus (1898), Lord Jim (1900) and Nostromo
(1904). His greatest skill lies in his capacity to evoke
an atmosphere through careful attention to detail.
He uses the method of story within a story to convey
his sense of the inexplicable inner character of life
and the shifting quality of the mind. All Conrad’s
characters suffer from a sense of isolation.
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
4 4
4 4 4
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924
2024-25
40/KALEIDOSCOPE
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,’ reported 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 sailcloth from head to foot, would be emerging
knee-deep out of rank grass and the tall weeds 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.
2024-25
41/TOMORROW
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.
2024-25
Page 4


39/TOMORROW
Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow
Joseph Conrad, born of Polish parents in the Russian
Ukraine, began a seafaring life in 1874. He learnt
English at the age of 21, and in 1886 became a British
citizen. His famous works include The Nigger of the
Narcissus (1898), Lord Jim (1900) and Nostromo
(1904). His greatest skill lies in his capacity to evoke
an atmosphere through careful attention to detail.
He uses the method of story within a story to convey
his sense of the inexplicable inner character of life
and the shifting quality of the mind. All Conrad’s
characters suffer from a sense of isolation.
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
4 4
4 4 4
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924
2024-25
40/KALEIDOSCOPE
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,’ reported 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 sailcloth from head to foot, would be emerging
knee-deep out of rank grass and the tall weeds 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.
2024-25
41/TOMORROW
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.
2024-25
42/KALEIDOSCOPE
‘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.
Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think
1. What brought Captain Hagberd to Colebrook?
2. Why did the people of Colebrook not have a
favourable opinion of Captain Hagberd?
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 sailorman 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.
2024-25
Page 5


39/TOMORROW
Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow
Joseph Conrad, born of Polish parents in the Russian
Ukraine, began a seafaring life in 1874. He learnt
English at the age of 21, and in 1886 became a British
citizen. His famous works include The Nigger of the
Narcissus (1898), Lord Jim (1900) and Nostromo
(1904). His greatest skill lies in his capacity to evoke
an atmosphere through careful attention to detail.
He uses the method of story within a story to convey
his sense of the inexplicable inner character of life
and the shifting quality of the mind. All Conrad’s
characters suffer from a sense of isolation.
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
4 4
4 4 4
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924
2024-25
40/KALEIDOSCOPE
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,’ reported 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 sailcloth from head to foot, would be emerging
knee-deep out of rank grass and the tall weeds 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.
2024-25
41/TOMORROW
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.
2024-25
42/KALEIDOSCOPE
‘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.
Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think Stop and Think
1. What brought Captain Hagberd to Colebrook?
2. Why did the people of Colebrook not have a
favourable opinion of Captain Hagberd?
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 sailorman 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.
2024-25
43/TOMORROW
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 ‘tomorrow’.
In their intimacy of back yard and front garden he
talked with her paternally, reasonably, and dogmatically,
with a touch or arbitrariness. They met on the ground of
unreserved confidence, which was authenticated by an
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