Lord Jim (22 page)

“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 né poltron
).
⁹
It is a difficulty—
parbleu!
It would be too easy otherwise. But habit—habit—necessity—do you see?—the eye of others—
voilà
. 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 ça! 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.
¹⁰
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,
¹¹
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 him 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
¹²
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
¹³
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 shall 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 daresay 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.”