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_ 'After these words, and without a change of attitude, he, so to
speak, submitted himself passively to a state of silence. I kept him
company; and suddenly, but not abruptly, as if the appointed time
had arrived for his moderate and husky voice to come out of his
immobility, he pronounced, "Mon Dieu! how the time passes!"
Nothing could have been more commonplace than this remark;
but its utterance coincided for me with a moment of vision. It's
extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull
ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may
be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable
majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can
be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments
of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much--everything--in
a flash--before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence.
I raised my eyes when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had never
seen him before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, the clumsy
folds of his coat, his clasped hands, his motionless pose, so
curiously suggestive of his having been simply left there. Time
had passed indeed: it had overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left
him hopelessly behind with a few poor gifts: the iron-grey hair,
the heavy fatigue of the tanned face, two scars, a pair of tarnished
shoulder-straps; one of those steady, reliable men who are the raw
material of great reputations, one of those uncounted lives that
are buried without drums and trumpets under the foundations of
monumental successes. "I am now third lieutenant of the Victorieuse"
(she was the flagship of the French Pacific squadron at the time),
he said, detaching his shoulders from the wall a couple of inches
to introduce himself. I bowed slightly on my side of the table,
and told him I commanded a merchant vessel at present anchored in
Rushcutters' Bay. He had "remarked" her,--a pretty little craft.
He was very civil about it in his impassive way. I even fancy he
went the length of tilting his head in compliment as he repeated,
breathing visibly the while, "Ah, yes. A little craft painted
black--very pretty--very pretty (tres coquet)." After a time
he twisted his body slowly to face the glass door on our right. "A
dull town (triste ville)," he observed, staring into the street. It was
a brilliant day; a southerly buster was raging, and we could see the
passers-by, men and women, buffeted by the wind on the sidewalks,
the sunlit fronts of the houses across the road blurred by the tall
whirls of dust. "I descended on shore," he said, "to stretch my legs
a little, but . . ." He didn't finish, and sank into the depths of his
repose. "Pray--tell me," he began, coming up ponderously, "what
was there at the bottom of this affair--precisely (au juste)? It is
curious. That dead man, for instance--and so on."
' "There were living men too," I said; "much more curious."
' "No doubt, no doubt," he agreed half audibly, then, as if after
mature consideration, murmured, "Evidently." I made no difficulty
in communicating to him what had interested me most in this affair.
It seemed as though he had a right to know: hadn't he spent
thirty hours on board the Palna--had he not taken the succession,
so to speak, had he not done "his possible"? He listened to me,
looking more priest-like than ever, and with what--probably on
account of his downcast eyes--had the appearance of devout concentration.
Once or twice he elevated his eyebrows (but without raising his eyelids),
as one would say "The devil!" Once he calmly exclaimed, "Ah, bah!"
under his breath, and when I had finished he pursed his lips in a
deliberate way and emitted a sort of sorrowful whistle.
'In any one else it might have been an evidence of boredom, a
sign of indifference; but he, in his occult way, managed to make
his immobility appear profoundly responsive, and as full of valuable
thoughts as an egg is of meat. What he said at last was nothing
more than a "Very interesting," pronounced politely, and not much
above a whisper. Before I got over my disappointment he added,
but as if speaking to himself, "That's it. That _is_ it." His chin seemed
to sink lower on his breast, his body to weigh heavier on his seat. I
was about to ask him what he meant, when a sort of preparatory
tremor passed over his whole person, as a faint ripple may be seen
upon stagnant water even before the wind is felt. "And so that poor
young man ran away along with the others," he said, with grave
tranquillity.
'I don't know what made me smile: it is the only genuine smile
of mine I can remember in connection with Jim's affair. But somehow
this simple statement of the matter sounded funny in French. . . .
"S'est enfui avec les autres," had said the lieutenant. And suddenly
I began to admire the discrimination of the man. He had made out
the point at once: he did get hold of the only thing I cared about.
I felt as though I were taking professional opinion on the case.
His imperturbable and mature calmness was that of an expert in
possession of the facts, and to whom one's perplexities are
mere child's-play. "Ah! The young, the young," he said indulgently.
"And after all, one does not die of it." "Die of what?" I asked
swiftly. "Of being afraid." He elucidated his meaning and sipped his drink.
'I perceived that the three last fingers of his wounded hand were
stiff and could not move independently of each other, so that he
took up his tumbler with an ungainly clutch. "One is always afraid.
One may talk, but . . ." He put down the glass awkwardly. . . .
"The fear, the fear--look you--it is always there." . . . He touched
his breast near a brass button, on the very spot where Jim had given
a thump to his own when protesting that there was nothing the
matter with his heart. I suppose I made some sign of dissent,
because he insisted, "Yes! yes! One talks, one talks; this is all very
fine; but at the end of the reckoning one is no cleverer than the next
man--and no more brave. Brave! This is always to be seen. I
have rolled my hump (roule ma bosse)," he said, using the slang
expression with imperturbable seriousness, "in all parts of the
world; I have known brave men--famous ones! Allez!" . . . He
drank carelessly. . . . "Brave--you conceive--in the Service--one
has got to be--the trade demands it (le metier veut ca). Is it not so?"
he appealed to me reasonably. "Eh bien! Each of them--I say each
of them, if he were an honest man--bien entendu--would confess
that there is a point--there is a point--for the best of us--there is
somewhere a point when you let go everything (vous lachez tout).
And you have got to live with that truth--do you see? Given a
certain combination of circumstances, fear is sure to come. Abominable
funk (un trac epouvantable). And even for those who do not
believe this truth there is fear all the same--the fear of themselves.
Absolutely so. Trust me. Yes. Yes. . . . At my age one knows what
one is talking about--que diable!" . . . He had delivered himself of
all this as immovably as though he had been the mouthpiece of
abstract wisdom, but at this point he heightened the effect of
detachment by beginning to twirl his thumbs slowly. "It's evident--
parbleu!" he continued; "for, make up your mind as much as you
like, even a simple headache or a fit of indigestion (un derangement
d'estomac) is enough to . . . Take me, for instance--I have made
my proofs. Eh bien! I, who am speaking to you, once . . ."
'He drained his glass and returned to his twirling. "No, no; one
does not die of it," he pronounced finally, and when I found he did
not mean to proceed with the personal anecdote, I was extremely
disappointed; the more so as it was not the sort of story, you know,
one could very well press him for. I sat silent, and he too, as if
nothing could please him better. Even his thumbs were still now.
Suddenly his lips began to move. "That is so," he resumed placidly.
"Man is born a coward (L'homme est ne poltron). It is a difficulty--
parbleu! It would be too easy other vise. But habit--habit--necessity--
do you see?--the eye of others--voila. One puts up with it.
And then the example of others who are no better than yourself,
and yet make good countenance. . . ."
'His voice ceased.
' "That young man--you will observe--had none of these inducements--at
least at the moment," I remarked.
'He raised his eyebrows forgivingly: "I don't say; I don't say.
The young man in question might have had the best dispositions--
the best dispositions," he repeated, wheezing a little.
' "I am glad to see you taking a lenient view," I said. "His own
feeling in the matter was--ah!--hopeful, and . . ."
'The shuffle of his feet under the table interrupted me. He drew
up his heavy eyelids. Drew up, I say--no other expression can
describe the steady deliberation of the act--and at last was disclosed
completely to me. I was confronted by two narrow grey circlets,
like two tiny steel rings around the profound blackness of the
pupils. The sharp glance, coming from that massive body, gave
a notion of extreme efficiency, like a razor-edge on a battle-axe.
"Pardon," he said punctiliously. His right hand went up, and he
swayed forward. "Allow me . . . I contended that one may get on
knowing very well that one's courage does not come of itself (ne
vient pas tout seul). There's nothing much in that to get upset
about. One truth the more ought not to make life impossible. . . .
But the honour--the honour, monsieur! . . . The honour . . . that
is real--that is! And what life may be worth when" . . . he got on
his feet with a ponderous impetuosity, as a startled ox might scramble
up from the grass . . . "when the honour is gone--ah ca! par
exemple--I can offer no opinion. I can offer no opinion--because--
monsieur--I know nothing of it."
'I had risen too, and, trying to throw infinite politeness into our
attitudes, we faced each other mutely, like two china dogs on a
mantelpiece. Hang the fellow! he had pricked the bubble. The
blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon
our conversation, and made it a thing of empty sounds. "Very
well," I said, with a disconcerted smile; "but couldn't it reduce
itself to not being found out?" He made as if to retort readily, but
when he spoke he had changed his mind. "This, monsieur, is too
fine for me--much above me--I don't think about it." He bowed
heavily over his cap, which he held before him by the peak, between
the thumb and the forefinger of his wounded hand. I bowed too.
We bowed together: we scraped our feet at each other with much
ceremony, while a dirty specimen of a waiter looked on critically,
as though he had paid for the performance. "Serviteur," said the
Frenchman. Another scrape. "Monsieur" . . . "Monsieur." . . .
The glass door swung behind his burly back. I saw the southerly
buster get hold of him and drive him down wind with his hand to
his head, his shoulders braced, and the tails of his coat blown hard
against his legs.
'I sat down again alone and discouraged--discouraged about
Jim's case. If you wonder that after more than three years it had
preserved its actuality, you must know that I had seen him only
very lately. I had come straight from Samarang, where I had loaded
a cargo for Sydney: an utterly uninteresting bit of business,--what
Charley here would call one of my rational transactions,--and in
Samarang I had seen something of Jim. He was then working for De
Jongh, on my recommendation. Water-clerk. "My representative
afloat," as De Jongh called him. You can't imagine a mode of life
more barren of consolation, less capable of being invested with a
spark of glamour--unless it be the business of an insurance canvasser.
Little Bob Stanton--Charley here knew him well--had gone through
that experience. The same who got drowned afterwards trying to save
a lady's-maid in the Sephora disaster. A case of collision on a hazy
morning off the Spanish coast--you may remember. All the passengers
had been packed tidily into the boats and shoved clear of the ship,
when Bob sheered alongside again and scrambled back on deck to fetch
that girl. How she had been left behind I can't make out; anyhow,
she had gone completely crazy--wouldn't leave the ship--held to the
rail like grim death. The wrestling-match could be seen plainly from
the boats; but poor Bob was the shortest chief mate in the merchant
service, and the woman stood five feet ten in her shoes and was as
strong as a horse, I've been told. So it went on, pull devil, pull
baker, the wretched girl screaming all the time, and Bob letting out
a yell now and then to warn his boat to keep well clear of the ship.
One of the hands told me, hiding a smile at the recollection, "It was
for all the world, sir, like a naughty youngster fighting with his
mother." The same old chap said that "At the last we could see that
Mr. Stanton had given up hauling at the gal, and just stood by looking
at her, watchful like. We thought afterwards he must've been reckoning
that, maybe, the rush of water would tear her away from the rail
by-and-by and give him a show to save her. We daren't come alongside
for our life; and after a bit the old ship went down all on a sudden
with a lurch to starboard--plop. The suck in was something awful.
We never saw anything alive or dead come up." Poor Bob's spell of
shore-life had been one of the complications of a love affair, I
believe. He fondly hoped he had done with the sea for ever, and made
sure he had got hold of all the bliss on earth, but it came to
canvassing in the end. Some cousin of his in Liverpool put up to it.
He used to tell us his experiences in that line. He made us laugh till
we cried, and, not altogether displeased at the effect, undersized and
bearded to the waist like a gnome, he would tiptoe amongst us and say,
"It's all very well for you beggars to laugh, but my immortal soul was
shrivelled down to the size of a parched pea after a week of that work."
I don't know how Jim's soul accommodated itself to the new conditions of
his life--I was kept too busy in getting him something to do that would
keep body and soul together--but I am pretty certain his adventurous
fancy was suffering all the pangs of starvation. It had certainly
nothing to feed upon in this new calling. It was distressing to see him
at it, though he tackled it with a stubborn serenity for which I must
give him full credit. I kept my eye on his shabby plodding with a sort
of notion that it was a punishment for the heroics of his fancy--an
expiation for his craving after more glamour than he could carry. He
had loved too well to imagine himself a glorious racehorse, and now he
was condemned to toil without honour like a costermonger's donkey. He did
it very well. He shut himself in, put his head down, said never a word.
Very well; very well indeed--except for certain fantastic and violent
outbreaks, on the deplorable occasions when the irrepressible Patna case
cropped up. Unfortunately that scandal of the Eastern seas would not die
out. And this is the reason why I could never feel I had done with Jim
for good.
'I sat thinking of him after the French lieutenant had left, not,
however, in connection with De Jongh's cool and gloomy backshop,
where we had hurriedly shaken hands not very long ago, but
as I had seen him years before in the last flickers of the candle, alone
with me in the long gallery of the Malabar House, with the chill
and the darkness of the night at his back. The respectable sword of
his country's law was suspended over his head. To-morrow--or
was it to-day? (midnight had slipped by long before we parted)--the
marble-faced police magistrate, after distributing fines and terms of
imprisonment in the assault-and-battery case, would take up the
awful weapon and smite his bowed neck. Our communion in the
night was uncommonly like a last vigil with a condemned man. He
was guilty too. He was guilty--as I had told myself repeatedly,
guilty and done for; nevertheless, I wished to spare him the mere
detail of a formal execution. I don't pretend to explain the reasons
of my desire--I don't think I could; but if you haven't got a sort of
notion by this time, then I must have been very obscure in my
narrative, or you too sleepy to seize upon the sense of my words. I
don't defend my morality. There was no morality in the impulse
which induced me to lay before him Brierly's plan of evasion--I
may call it--in all its primitive simplicity. There were the rupees--
absolutely ready in my pocket and very much at his service. Oh! a
loan; a loan of course--and if an introduction to a man (in Rangoon)
who could put some work in his way . . . Why! with the greatest
pleasure. I had pen, ink, and paper in my room on the first floor
And even while I was speaking I was impatient to begin the letter--
day, month, year, 2.30 A.M. . . . for the sake of our old friendship
I ask you to put some work in the way of Mr. James So-and-so, in
whom, &c., &c. . . . I was even ready to write in that strain about
him. If he had not enlisted my sympathies he had done better for
himself--he had gone to the very fount and origin of that sentiment
he had reached the secret sensibility of my egoism. I am concealing
nothing from you, because were I to do so my action would appear
more unintelligible than any man's action has the right to be, and--
in the second place--to-morrow you will forget my sincerity along
with the other lessons of the past. In this transaction, to speak
grossly and precisely, I was the irreproachable man; but the subtle
intentions of my immorality were defeated by the moral simplicity
of the criminal. No doubt he was selfish too, but his selfishness had
a higher origin, a more lofty aim. I discovered that, say what I
would, he was eager to go through the ceremony of execution, and
I didn't say much, for I felt that in argument his youth would tell
against me heavily: he believed where I had already ceased to doubt.
There was something fine in the wildness of his unexpressed, hardly
formulated hope. "Clear out! Couldn't think of it," he said, with a
shake of the head. "I make you an offer for which I neither demand
nor expect any sort of gratitude," I said; "you shall repay the money
when convenient, and . . ." "Awfully good of you," he muttered
without looking up. I watched him narrowly: the future must have
appeared horribly uncertain to him; but he did not falter, as though
indeed there had been nothing wrong with his heart. I felt angry--
not for the first time that night. "The whole wretched business," I
said, "is bitter enough, I should think, for a man of your kind . . ."
"It is, it is," he whispered twice, with his eyes fixed on the floor. It
was heartrending. He towered above the light, and I could see the
down on his cheek, the colour mantling warm under the smooth
skin of his face. Believe me or not, I say it was outrageously
heartrending. It provoked me to brutality. "Yes," I said; "and allow me
to confess that I am totally unable to imagine what advantage you
can expect from this licking of the dregs." "Advantage!" he murmured
out of his stillness. "I am dashed if I do," I said, enraged.
"I've been trying to tell you all there is in it," he went on slowly,
as if meditating something unanswerable. "But after all, it is _my_
trouble." I opened my mouth to retort, and discovered suddenly
that I'd lost all confidence in myself; and it was as if he too had
given me up, for he mumbled like a man thinking half aloud. "Went
away . . . went into hospitals. . . . Not one of them would face
it. . . . They! . . ." He moved his hand slightly to imply disdain.
"But I've got to get over this thing, and I mustn't shirk any of it
or . . . I won't shirk any of it." He was silent. He gazed as though
he had been haunted. His unconscious face reflected the passing
expressions of scorn, of despair, of resolution--reflected them in
turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding passage of
unearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by deceitful ghosts, by austere
shades. "Oh! nonsense, my dear fellow," I began. He had a movement
of impatience. "You don't seem to understand," he said incisively;
then looking at me without a wink, "I may have jumped, but I don't run
away." "I meant no offence," I said; and added stupidly, "Better men
than you have found it expedient to run, at times." He coloured all
over, while in my confusion I half-choked myself with my own tongue.
"Perhaps so," he said at last, "I am not good enough; I can't afford
it. I am bound to fight this thing down--I am fighting it now." I got
out of my chair and felt stiff all over. The silence was embarrassing,
and to put an end to it I imagined nothing better but to remark,
"I had no idea it was so late," in an airy tone. . . . "I dare say you
have had enough of this," he said brusquely: "and to tell you the
truth"--he began to look round for his hat--"so have I."
'Well! he had refused this unique offer. He had struck aside my
helping hand; he was ready to go now, and beyond the balustrade
the night seemed to wait for him very still, as though he had been
marked down for its prey. I heard his voice. "Ah! here it is." He
had found his hat. For a few seconds we hung in the wind. "What
will you do after--after . . ." I asked very low. "Go to the dogs as
likely as not," he answered in a gruff mutter. I had recovered my
wits in a measure, and judged best to take it lightly. "Pray remember,"
I said, "that I should like very much to see you again before
you go." "I don't know what's to prevent you. The damned thing
won't make me invisible," he said with intense bitterness,--"no
such luck." And then at the moment of taking leave he treated me
to a ghastly muddle of dubious stammers and movements, to an
awful display of hesitations. God forgive him--me! He had taken
it into his fanciful head that I was likely to make some difficulty as
to shaking hands. It was too awful for words. I believe I shouted
suddenly at him as you would bellow to a man you saw about to walk
over a cliff; I remember our voices being raised, the appearance of
a miserable grin on his face, a crushing clutch on my hand, a nervous
laugh. The candle spluttered out, and the thing was over at last,
with a groan that floated up to me in the dark. He got himself
away somehow. The night swallowed his form. He was a horrible
bungler. Horrible. I heard the quick crunch-crunch of the gravel
under his boots. He was running. Absolutely running, with nowhere
to go to. And he was not yet four-and-twenty.' _
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