Joseph Conrad

Tales of Unrest Joseph Conrad

We were driving along the road from Treguier to Kervanda. We passed at a smart trot betweenthe hedges topping an earth wall on each side of the road; then at the foot of the steep ascent beforePloumar the horse dropped into a walk, and the driver jumped down heavily from the box. Heflicked his whip and climbed the incline, stepping clumsily uphill by the side of the carriage, onehand on the footboard, his eyes on the ground. After a while he lifted his head, pointed up the roadwith the end of the whip, and said-"The idiot!"The sun was shining violently upon the undulating surface of the land. The rises were topped byclumps of meagre trees, with their branches showing high on the sky as if they had been perchedupon stilts. The small fields, cut up by hedges and stone walls that zig-zagged over the slopes, lay inrectangular patches of vivid greens and yellows, resembling the unskilful daubs of a naive picture. And the landscape was divided in two by the white streak of a road stretching in long loops far away, like a river of dust crawling out of the hills on its way to the sea."Here he is," said the driver, again. In the long grass bordering the road a face glided past the carriage at the level of the wheels as wedrove slowly by. The imbecile face was red, and the bullet head with close-cropped hair seemed tolie alone, its chin in the dust. The body was lost in the bushes growing thick along the bottom of thedeep ditch. It was a boy's face. He might have been sixteen, judging from the size-perhaps less, perhapsmore. Such creatures are forgotten by time, and live untouched by years till death gathers them upinto its compassionate bosom; the faithful death that never forgets in the press of work the mostinsignificant of its children."Ah! there's another," said the man, with a certain satisfaction in his tone, as if he had caughtsight of something expected. There was another. That one stood nearly in the middle of the road in the blaze of sunshine at theend of his own short shadow. And he stood with hands pushed into the opposite sleeves of his longcoat, his head sunk between the shoulders, all hunched up in the flood of heat. From a distance hehad the aspect of one suffering from intense cold