Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad — Read

'He told me further that he didn't know what made him hang on--but of course we may guess. He sympathised deeply with the defenceless girl, at the mercy of that "mean, cowardly scoundrel." It appears Cornelius led her an awful life, stopping only short of actual ill-usage, for which he had not the pluck, I suppose. He insisted upon her calling him father--"and with respect, too--with respect," he would scream, shaking a little yellow fist in her face. "I am a respectable man, and what are you? Tell me--what are you? You think I am going to bring up somebody else's child and not be treated with respect? You ought to be glad I let you. Come--say Yes, father. No?. You wait a bit." Thereupon he would begin to abuse the dead woman, till the girl would run off with her hands to her head. He pursued her, dashing in and out and round the house and amongst the sheds, would drive her into some corner, where she would fall on her knees stopping her ears, and then he would stand at a distance and declaim filthy denunciations at her back for half an hour at a stretch. "Your mother was a devil, a deceitful devil--and you too are a devil," he would shriek in a final outburst, pick up a bit of dry earth or a handful of mud (there was plenty of mud around the house), and fling it into her hair. Sometimes, though, she would hold out full of scorn, confronting him in silence, her face sombre and contracted, and only now and then uttering a word or two that would make the other jump and writhe with the sting. Jim told me these scenes were terrible.