"Conrad, Joseph - Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

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,