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

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.