________________________________________________
_ 'Late in the evening I entered his study, after traversing an
imposing but empty dining-room very dimly lit. The house was
silent. I was preceded by an elderly grim Javanese servant in a sort
of livery of white jacket and yellow sarong, who, after throwing
the door open, exclaimed low, "O master!" and stepping aside,
vanished in a mysterious way as though he had been a ghost only
momentarily embodied for that particular service. Stein turned
round with the chair, and in the same movement his spectacles
seemed to get pushed up on his forehead. He welcomed me in his
quiet and humorous voice. Only one corner of the vast room, the
corner in which stood his writing-desk, was strongly lighted by a
shaded reading-lamp, and the rest of the spacious apartment melted
into shapeless gloom like a cavern. Narrow shelves filled with
dark boxes of uniform shape and colour ran round the walls, not
from floor to ceiling, but in a sombre belt about four feet broad.
Catacombs of beetles. Wooden tablets were hung above at irregular
intervals. The light reached one of them, and the word Coleoptera
written in gold letters glittered mysteriously upon a vast dimness.
The glass cases containing the collection of butterflies were ranged
in three long rows upon slender-legged little tables. One of these
cases had been removed from its place and stood on the desk, which
was bestrewn with oblong slips of paper blackened with minute
handwriting.
' "So you see me--so," he said. His hand hovered over the case
where a butterfly in solitary grandeur spread out dark bronze wings,
seven inches or more across, with exquisite white veinings and a
gorgeous border of yellow spots. "Only one specimen like this they
have in _your_ London, and then--no more. To my small native town
this my collection I shall bequeath. Something of me. The best."
'He bent forward in the chair and gazed intently, his chin over
the front of the case. I stood at his back. "Marvellous," he whispered,
and seemed to forget my presence. His history was curious.
He had been born in Bavaria, and when a youth of twenty-two had
taken an active part in the revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily
compromised, he managed to make his escape, and at first found a
refuge with a poor republican watchmaker in Trieste. From there
he made his way to Tripoli with a stock of cheap watches to hawk
about,--not a very great opening truly, but it turned out lucky
enough, because it was there he came upon a Dutch traveller--a
rather famous man, I believe, but I don't remember his name. It
was that naturalist who, engaging him as a sort of assistant, took
him to the East. They travelled in the Archipelago together and
separately, collecting insects and birds, for four years or more.
Then the naturalist went home, and Stein, having no home to go
to, remained with an old trader he had come across in his journeys
in the interior of Celebes--if Celebes may be said to have an interior.
This old Scotsman, the only white man allowed to reside in the
country at the time, was a privileged friend of the chief ruler of
Wajo States, who was a woman. I often heard Stein relate how that
chap, who was slightly paralysed on one side, had introduced him
to the native court a short time before another stroke carried him
off. He was a heavy man with a patriarchal white beard, and of
imposing stature. He came into the council-hall where all the rajahs,
pangerans, and headmen were assembled, with the queen, a fat
wrinkled woman (very free in her speech, Stein said), reclining on
a high couch under a canopy. He dragged his leg, thumping with
his stick, and grasped Stein's arm, leading him right up to the
couch. "Look, queen, and you rajahs, this is my son," he proclaimed
in a stentorian voice. "I have traded with your fathers, and when I
die he shall trade with you and your sons."
'By means of this simple formality Stein inherited the Scotsman's
privileged position and all his stock-in-trade, together with a
fortified house on the banks of the only navigable river in the country.
Shortly afterwards the old queen, who was so free in her speech,
died, and the country became disturbed by various pretenders to
the throne. Stein joined the party of a younger son, the one of
whom thirty years later he never spoke otherwise but as "my poor
Mohammed Bonso." They both became the heroes of innumerable
exploits; they had wonderful adventures, and once stood a siege in
the Scotsman's house for a month, with only a score of followers
against a whole army. I believe the natives talk of that war to this
day. Meantime, it seems, Stein never failed to annex on his own
account every butterfly or beetle he could lay hands on. After some
eight years of war, negotiations, false truces, sudden outbreaks,
reconciliation, treachery, and so on, and just as peace seemed at
last permanently established, his "poor Mohammed Bonso" was
assassinated at the gate of his own royal residence while dismounting
in the highest spirits on his return from a successful deer-hunt.
This event rendered Stein's position extremely insecure, but he
would have stayed perhaps had it not been that a short time afterwards
he lost Mohammed's sister ("my dear wife the princess," he used
to say solemnly), by whom he had had a daughter--mother and child
both dying within three days of each other from some infectious fever.
He left the country, which this cruel loss had made unbearable to him.
Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What
followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which
remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream.
He had a little money; he started life afresh, and in the course of
years acquired a considerable fortune. At first he had travelled a
good deal amongst the islands, but age had stolen upon him, and of
late he seldom left his spacious house three miles out of town,
with an extensive garden, and surrounded by stables, offices, and
bamboo cottages for his servants and dependants, of whom he had many.
He drove in his buggy every morning to town, where he had an office
with white and Chinese clerks. He owned a small fleet of schooners
and native craft, and dealt in island produce on a large scale. For
the rest he lived solitary, but not misanthropic, with his books
and his collection, classing and arranging specimens, corresponding
with entomologists in Europe, writing up a descriptive catalogue of
his treasures. Such was the history of the man whom I had come to
consult upon Jim's case without any definite hope. Simply to hear what
he would have to say would have been a relief. I was very anxious, but
I respected the intense, almost passionate, absorption with which he
looked at a butterfly, as though on the bronze sheen of these frail
wings, in the white tracings, in the gorgeous markings, he could see
other things, an image of something as perishable and defying
destruction as these delicate and lifeless tissues displaying a
splendour unmarred by death.
' "Marvellous!" he repeated, looking up at me. "Look! The
beauty--but that is nothing--look at the accuracy, the harmony.
And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact! This is Nature--the
balance of colossal forces. Every star is so--and every blade of
grass stands so--and the mighty Kosmos il perfect equilibrium
produces--this. This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature--the great
artist."
' "Never heard an entomologist go on like this," I observed
cheerfully. "Masterpiece! And what of man?"
' "Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece," he said, keeping
his eyes fixed on the glass case. "Perhaps the artist was a little
mad. Eh? What do you think? Sometimes it seems to me that man is
come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for
if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about
here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about
the stars, disturbing the blades of grass? . . ."
' "Catching butterflies," I chimed in.
'He smiled, threw himself back in his chair, and stretched his
legs. "Sit down," he said. "I captured this rare specimen myself
one very fine morning. And I had a very big emotion. You don't
know what it is for a collector to capture such a rare specimen. You
can't know."
'I smiled at my ease in a rocking-chair. His eyes seemed to look
far beyond the wall at which they stared; and he narrated how, one
night, a messenger arrived from his "poor Mohammed," requiring
his presence at the "residenz"--as he called it--which was distant
some nine or ten miles by a bridle-path over a cultivated plain, with
patches of forest here and there. Early in the morning he started
from his fortified house, after embracing his little Emma, and
leaving the "princess," his wife, in command. He described how she
came with him as far as the gate, walking with one hand on the neck
of his horse; she had on a white jacket, gold pins in her hair, and a
brown leather belt over her left shoulder with a revolver in it. "She
talked as women will talk," he said, "telling me to be careful, and
to try to get back before dark, and what a great wikedness it was
for me to go alone. We were at war, and the country was not safe;
my men were putting up bullet-proof shutters to the house and
loading their rifles, and she begged me to have no fear for her.
She could defend the house against anybody till I returned. And I
laughed with pleasure a little. I liked to see her so brave and young
and strong. I too was young then. At the gate she caught hold of
my hand and gave it one squeeze and fell back. I made my horse
stand still outside till I heard the bars of the gate put up behind me.
There was a great enemy of mine, a great noble--and a great rascal
too--roaming with a band in the neighbourhood. I cantered for
four or five miles; there had been rain in the night, but the musts
had gone up, up--and the face of the earth was clean; it lay smiling
to me, so fresh and innocent--like a little child. Suddenly somebody
fires a volley--twenty shots at least it seemed to me. I hear bullets
sing in my ear, and my hat jumps to the back of my head. It was a
little intrigue, you understand. They got my poor Mohammed to
send for me and then laid that ambush. I see it all in a minute, and
I think--This wants a little management. My pony snort, jump,
and stand, and I fall slowly forward with my head on his mane. He
begins to walk, and with one eye I could see over his neck a faint
cloud of smoke hanging in front of a clump of bamboos to my left.
I think--Aha! my friends, why you not wait long enough before
you shoot? This is not yet gelungen. Oh no! I get hold of my revolver
with my right hand--quiet--quiet. After all, there were only seven
of these rascals. They get up from the grass and start running with
their sarongs tucked up, waving spears above their heads, and yelling
to each other to look out and catch the horse, because I was
dead. I let them come as close as the door here, and then bang,
bang, bang--take aim each time too. One more shot I fire at a man's
back, but I miss. Too far already. And then I sit alone on my horse
with the clean earth smiling at me, and there are the bodies of three
men lying on the ground. One was curled up like a dog, another on
his back had an arm over his eyes as if to keep off the sun, and the
third man he draws up his leg very slowly and makes it with one
kick straight again. I watch him very carefully from my horse, but
there is no more--bleibt ganz ruhig--keep still, so. And as I looked
at his face for some sign of life I observed something like a faint
shadow pass over his forehead. It was the shadow of this butterfly.
Look at the form of the wing. This species fly high with a strong
flight. I raised my eyes and I saw him fluttering away. I think--Can
it be possible? And then I lost him. I dismounted and went on very
slow, leading my horse and holding my revolver with one hand and
my eyes darting up and down and right and left, everywhere! At last
I saw him sitting on a small heap of dirt ten feet away. At once my
heart began to beat quick. I let go my horse, keep my revolver in one
hand, and with the other snatch my soft felt hat off my head. One
step. Steady. Another step. Flop! I got him! When I got up I shook
like a leaf with excitement, and when I opened these beautiful wings
and made sure what a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen I
had, my head went round and my legs became so weak with emotion
that I had to sit on the ground. I had greatly desired to possess myself
of a specimen of that species when collecting for the professor. I took
long journeys and underwent great privations; I had dreamed of him
in my sleep, and here suddenly I had him in my fingers--for myself!
In the words of the poet" (he pronounced it "boet")--
" 'So halt' ich's endlich denn in meinen Handen,
Und nenn' es in gewissem Sinne mein.' "
He gave to the last word the emphasis of a suddenly lowered voice,
and withdrew his eyes slowly from my face. He began to charge a
long-stemmed pipe busily and in silence, then, pausing with his
thumb on the orifice of the bowl, looked again at me significantly.
' "Yes, my good friend. On that day I had nothing to desire; I
had greatly annoyed my principal enemy; I was young, strong; I
had friendship; I had the love" (he said "lof") "of woman, a child
I had, to make my heart very full--and even what I had once
dreamed in my sleep had come into my hand too!"
'He struck a match, which flared violently. His thoughtful placid
face twitched once.
' "Friend, wife, child," he said slowly, gazing at the small flame--
"phoo!" The match was blown out. He sighed and turned again to
the glass case. The frail and beautiful wings quivered faintly, as if
his breath had for an instant called back to life that gorgeous object
of his dreams.
' "The work," he began suddenly, pointing to the scattered slips,
and in his usual gentle and cheery tone, "is making great progress.
I have been this rare specimen describing. . . . Na! And what is
your good news?"
' "To tell you the truth, Stein," I said with an effort that surprised
me, "I came here to describe a specimen. . . ."
' "Butterfly?" he asked, with an unbelieving and humorous eagerness.
' "Nothing so perfect," I answered, feeling suddenly dispirited
with all sorts of doubts. "A man!"
' "Ach so!" he murmured, and his smiling countenance, turned
to me, became grave. Then after looking at me for a while he said
slowly, "Well--I am a man too."
'Here you have him as he was; he knew how to be so generously
encouraging as to make a scrupulous man hesitate on the brink of
confidence; but if I did hesitate it was not for long.
'He heard me out, sitting with crossed legs. Sometimes his head
would disappear completely in a great eruption of smoke, and a
sympathetic growl would come out from the cloud. When I finished
he uncrossed his legs, laid down his pipe, leaned forward towards
me earnestly with his elbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of
his fingers together.
' "I understand very well. He is romantic."
'He had diagnosed the case for me, and at first I was quite startled
to find how simple it was; and indeed our conference resembled so
much a medical consultation--Stein, of learned aspect, sitting in
an arm-chair before his desk; I, anxious, in another, facing him,
but a little to one side--that it seemed natural to ask--
' "What's good for it?"
'He lifted up a long forefinger.
' "There is only one remedy! One thing alone can us from being
ourselves cure!" The finger came down on the desk with a smart
rap. The case which he had made to look so simple before became
if possible still simpler--and altogether hopeless. There was a pause.
"Yes," said I, "strictly speaking, the question is not how to get
cured, but how to live."
'He approved with his head, a little sadly as it seemed. "Ja!
ja! In general, adapting the words of your great poet: That is the
question. . . ." He went on nodding sympathetically. . . . "How
to be! Ach! How to be."
'He stood up with the tips of his fingers resting on the desk.
' "We want in so many different ways to be," he began again.
"This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still
on it; but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want
to be so, and again he want to be so. . . ." He moved his hand up,
then down. . . . "He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a
devil--and every time he shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very
fine fellow--so fine as he can never be. . . . In a dream. . . ."
'He lowered the glass lid, the automatic lock clicked sharply, and
taking up the case in both hands he bore it religiously away to its
place, passing out of the bright circle of the lamp into the ring of
fainter light--into shapeless dusk at last. It had an odd effect--as
if these few steps had carried him out of this concrete and perplexed
world. His tall form, as though robbed of its substance, hovered
noiselessly over invisible things with stooping and indefinite
movements; his voice, heard in that remoteness where he could be
glimpsed mysteriously busy with immaterial cares, was no longer
incisive, seemed to roll voluminous and grave--mellowed by distance.
' "And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there
comes the real trouble--the heart pain--the world pain. I tell you,
my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your
dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or
not clever enough. .Ja! . . . And all the time you are such a fine
fellow too! Wie? Was? Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha!
ha!"
'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed
boisterously.
' "Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls
into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb
out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he
drowns--nicht wahr? . . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive
element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and
feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you
ask me--how to be?"
'His voice leaped up extraordinarily strong, as though away there
in the dusk he had been inspired by some whisper of knowledge.
"I will tell you! For that too there is only one way."
'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring
of faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the
lamp. His extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his
deepset eyes seemed to pierce through me, but his twitching lips uttered
no word, and the austere exaltation of a certitude seen in the dusk
vanished from his face. The hand that had been pointing at my
breast fell, and by-and-by, coming a step nearer, he laid it gently
on my shoulder. There were things, he said mournfully, that perhaps
could never be told, only he had lived so much alone that sometimes
he forgot--he forgot. The light had destroyed the assurance which had
inspired him in the distant shadows. He sat down and, with both elbows
on the desk, rubbed his forehead. "And yet it is true--it is true.
In the destructive element immerse." . . . He spoke in a subdued tone,
without looking at me, one hand on each side of his face. "That was
the way. To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream--and
so--ewig--usque ad finem. . . ." The whisper of his conviction seemed
to open before me a vast and uncertain expanse, as of a crepuscular
horizon on a plain at dawn--or was it, perchance, at the coming of
the night? One had not the courage to decide; but it was a charming
and deceptive light, throwing the impalpable poesy of its dimness
over pitfalls--over graves. His life had begun in sacrifice, in
enthusiasm for generous ideas; he had travelled very far, on various
ways, on strange paths, and whatever he followed it had been without
faltering, and therefore without shame and without regret. In so
far he was right. That was the way, no doubt. Yet for all that, the
great plain on which men wander amongst graves and pitfalls remained
very desolate under the impalpable poesy of its crepuscular light,
overshadowed in the centre, circled with a bright edge as if
surrounded by an abyss full of flames. When at last I broke the
silence it was to express the opinion that no one could be more
romantic than himself.
'He shook his head slowly, and afterwards looked at me with a
patient and inquiring glance. It was a shame, he said. There we
were sitting and talking like two boys, instead of putting our heads
together to find something practical--a practical remedy--for the
evil--for the great evil--he repeated, with a humorous and indulgent
smile. For all that, our talk did not grow more practical. We avoided
pronouncing Jim's name as though we had tried to keep flesh and
blood out of our discussion, or he were nothing but an erring spirit,
a suffering and nameless shade. "Na!" said Stein, rising. "To-night
you sleep here, and in the morning we shall do something practical--
practical. . . ." He lit a two-branched candlestick and led the way.
We passed through empty dark rooms, escorted by gleams from
the lights Stein carried. They glided along the waxed floors, sweeping
here and there over the polished surface of a table, leaped upon
a fragmentary curve of a piece of furniture, or flashed perpendicularly
in and out of distant mirrors, while the forms of two men and the
flicker of two flames could be seen for a moment stealing silently
across the depths of a crystalline void. He walked slowly a pace in
advance with stooping courtesy; there was a profound, as it were a
listening, quietude on his face; the long flaxen locks mixed with
white threads were scattered thinly upon his slightly bowed neck.
' "He is romantic--romantic," he repeated. "And that is very
bad--very bad. . . . Very good, too," he added. "But _is he_?" I
queried.
' "Gewiss," he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum,
but without looking at me. "Evident! What is it that by inward pain
makes him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes
him--exist?"
'At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim's existence--
starting from a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by
clouds of dust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in
a material world--but his imperishable reality came to me with a
convincing, with an irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in
our progress through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams
of light and the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with
flickering flames within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had
approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself,
floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters
of mystery. "Perhaps he is," I admitted with a slight laugh, whose
unexpectedly loud reverberation made me lower my voice directly;
"but I am sure you are." With his head dropping on his breast and
the light held high he began to walk again. "Well--I exist, too," he
said.
'He preceded me. My eyes followed his movements, but what I
did see was not the head of the firm, the welcome guest at afternoon
receptions, the correspondent of learned societies, the entertainer
of stray naturalists; I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he
had known how to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun
in humble surroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in
friendship, love, war--in all the exalted elements of romance. At
the door of my room he faced me. "Yes," I said, as though carrying
on a discussion, "and amongst other things you dreamed foolishly
of a certain butterfly; but when one fine morning your dream came
in your way you did not let the splendid opportunity escape. Did
you? Whereas he . . ." Stein lifted his hand. "And do you know
how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost
that had come in my way?" He shook his head regretfully. "It seems
to me that some would have been very fine--if I had made them
come true. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don't know."
"Whether his were fine or not," I said, "he knows of one which he
certainly did not catch." "Everybody knows of one or two like
that," said Stein; "and that is the trouble--the great trouble. . . ."
'He shook hands on the threshold, peered into my room under
his raised arm. "Sleep well. And to-morrow we must do something
practical--practical. . . ."
'Though his own room was beyond mine I saw him return the
way he came. He was going back to his butterflies.' _
Read next: CHAPTER 21
Read previous: CHAPTER 19
Table of content of Lord Jim
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
