Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

This memory did not make him shudder, but it had made of him what
he was in the eyes of respectable people, a man careless of
common decencies, something between a clever vagabond and a
disreputable doctor. But not all respectable people would have
had the necessary delicacy of sentiment to understand with what
trouble of mind and accuracy of vision Dr. Monygham, medical
officer of the San Tome mine, remembered Father Beron, army
chaplain, and once a secretary of a military commission. After
all these years Dr. Monygham, in his rooms at the end of the
hospital building in the San Tome gorge, remembered Father Beron
as distinctly as ever. He remembered that priest at night,
sometimes, in his sleep. On such nights the doctor waited for
daylight with a candle lighted, and walking the whole length of
his rooms to and fro, staring down at his bare feet, his arms
hugging his sides tightly. He would dream of Father Beron sitting
at the end of a long black table, behind which, in a row,
appeared the heads, shoulders, and epaulettes of the military
members, nibbling the feather of a quill pen, and listening with
weary and impatient scorn to the protestations of some prisoner
calling heaven to witness of his innocence, till he burst out,
"What's the use of wasting time over that miserable nonsense! Let
me take him outside for a while." And Father Beron would go
outside after the clanking prisoner, led away between two
soldiers. Such interludes happened on many days, many times, with
many prisoners. When the prisoner returned he was ready to make a
full confession, Father Beron would declare, leaning forward with
that dull, surfeited look which can be seen in the eyes of
gluttonous persons after a heavy meal.