NCERT Book Class 12 English (kaleidoscope) Short Stories 4 Tomorrow

39/TOMORROW

4
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
Joseph Conrad and the shifting quality of the mind. All Conrad’s
1857-1924 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