Page 150 - HEART OF DARKNESS
P. 150
Heart of Darkness
about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was
offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in
the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no
particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some
difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces
so full of stupid importance. I dareway I was not very well
at that time. I tottered about the streets—there were
various affairs to settle—grinning bitterly at perfectly
respectable persons. I admit my behaviour was
inexcusable, but then my temperature was seldom normal
in these days. My dear aunt’s endeavours to ‘nurse up my
strength’ seemed altogether beside the mark. It was not
my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination
that wanted soothing. I kept the bundle of papers given
me by Kurtz, not knowing exactly what to do with it. His
mother had died lately, watched over, as I was told, by his
Intended. A clean-shaved man, with an official manner
and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, called on me one
day and made inquiries, at first circuitous, afterwards
suavely pressing, about what he was pleased to denominate
certain ‘documents.’ I was not surprised, because I had had
two rows with the manager on the subject out there. I had
refused to give up the smallest scrap out of that package,
and I took the same attitude with the spectacled man. He
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