Lord Jim
shape and substance _we_ know, the air _we_ breathe! Sometimes I fancy
it must be a region of unreasonable sublimities seething with the
excitement of their adventurous souls, lighted by the glory of all
possible risks and renunciations. However, I suspect there are very few
women in the world, though of course I am aware of the multitudes of
mankind and of the equality of sexes--in point of numbers, that is. But
I am sure that the mother was as much of a woman as the daughter seemed
to be. I cannot help picturing to myself these two, at first the young
woman and the child, then the old woman and the young girl, the awful
sameness and the swift passage of time, the barrier of forest, the
solitude and the turmoil round these two lonely lives, and every word
spoken between them penetrated with sad meaning. There must have
been confidences, not so much of fact, I suppose, as of innermost
feelings--regrets--fears--warnings, no doubt: warnings that the younger
did not fully understand till the elder was dead--and Jim came along.
Then I am sure she understood much--not everything--the fear mostly, it
seems. Jim called her by a word that means precious, in the sense of a
precious gem--jewel. Pretty, isn’t it? But he was capable of anything.
He was equal to his fortune, as he--after all--must have been equal to
his misfortune. Jewel he called her; and he would say this as he might
have said “Jane,” don’t you know--with a marital, homelike, peaceful
effect. I heard the name for the first time ten minutes after I had
landed in his courtyard, when, after nearly shaking my arm off, he
darted up the steps and began to make a joyous, boyish disturbance at
the door under the heavy eaves. “Jewel! O Jewel! Quick! Here’s a friend
come,” . . . and suddenly peering at me in the dim verandah, he mumbled
earnestly, “You know--this--no confounded nonsense about it--can’t tell
you how much I owe to her--and so--you understand--I--exactly as
if . . .” His hurried, anxious whispers were cut short by the flitting of
a white form within the house, a faint exclamation, and a child-like but
energetic little face with delicate features and a profound, attentive
glance peeped out of the inner gloom, like a bird out of the recess of a
nest. I was struck by the name, of course; but it was not till later
on that I connected it with an astonishing rumour that had met me on my
journey, at a little place on the coast about 230 miles south of Patusan
River. Stein’s schooner, in which I had my passage, put in there, to
collect some produce, and, going ashore, I found to my great surprise
that the wretched locality could boast of a third-class deputy-assistant
resident, a big, fat, greasy, blinking fellow of mixed descent, with
turned-out, shiny lips. I found him lying extended on his back in a cane
chair, odiously unbuttoned, with a large green leaf of some sort on the
top of his steaming head, and another in his hand which he used lazily
as a fan . . . Going to Patusan? Oh yes. Stein’s Trading Company. He
knew. Had a permission? No business of his. It was not so bad there now,
he remarked negligently, and, he went on drawling, “There’s some sort of
white vagabond has got in there, I hear. . . . Eh? What you say?
Friend of yours? So! . . . Then it was true there was one of these
verdammte--What was he up to? Found his way in, the rascal. Eh? I had
not been sure. Patusan--they cut throats there--no business of ours.” He
interrupted himself to groan. “Phoo! Almighty! The heat! The heat! Well,
then, there might be something in the story too, after all, and . . .”
He shut one of his beastly glassy eyes (the eyelid went on quivering)
while he leered at me atrociously with the other. “Look here,” says
he mysteriously, “if--do you understand?--if he has really got hold of
something fairly good--none of your bits of green glass--understand?--I
am a Government official--you tell the rascal . . . Eh? What? Friend of
yours?” . . . He continued wallowing calmly in the chair . . . “You said
so; that’s just it; and I am pleased to give you the hint. I suppose
you too would like to get something out of it? Don’t interrupt. You
just tell him I’ve heard the tale, but to my Government I have made no
report. Not yet. See? Why make a report? Eh? Tell him to come to me if
they let him get alive out of the country. He had better look out
for himself. Eh? I promise to ask no questions. On the quiet--you
understand? You too--you shall get something from me. Small commission
for the trouble. Don’t interrupt. I am a Government official, and make
no report. That’s business. Understand? I know some good people that
will buy anything worth having, and can give him more money than
the scoundrel ever saw in his life. I know his sort.” He fixed me
steadfastly with both his eyes open, while I stood over him utterly
amazed, and asking myself whether he was mad or drunk. He perspired,
puffed, moaning feebly, and scratching himself with such horrible
composure that I could not bear the sight long enough to find out. Next
day, talking casually with the people of the little native court of the
place, I discovered that a story was travelling slowly down the
coast about a mysterious white man in Patusan who had got hold of
an extraordinary gem--namely, an emerald of an enormous size, and
altogether priceless. The emerald seems to appeal more to the Eastern
imagination than any other precious stone. The white man had obtained
it, I was told, partly by the exercise of his wonderful strength and
partly by cunning, from the ruler of a distant country, whence he had
fled instantly, arriving in Patusan in utmost distress, but frightening
the people by his extreme ferocity, which nothing seemed able to subdue.
Most of my informants were of the opinion that the stone was probably
unlucky,--like the famous stone of the Sultan of Succadana, which in
the old times had brought wars and untold calamities upon that country.
Perhaps it was the same stone--one couldn’t say. Indeed the story of a
fabulously large emerald is as old as the arrival of the first white men
in the Archipelago; and the belief in it is so persistent that less than
forty years ago there had been an official Dutch inquiry into the truth
of it. Such a jewel--it was explained to me by the old fellow from whom
I heard most of this amazing Jim-myth--a sort of scribe to the wretched
little Rajah of the place;--such a jewel, he said, cocking his poor
purblind eyes up at me (he was sitting on the cabin floor out of
respect), is best preserved by being concealed about the person of a
woman. Yet it is not every woman that would do. She must be young--he
sighed deeply--and insensible to the seductions of love. He shook his
head sceptically. But such a woman seemed to be actually in existence.
He had been told of a tall girl, whom the white man treated with great
respect and care, and who never went forth from the house unattended.
People said the white man could be seen with her almost any day; they
walked side by side, openly, he holding her arm under his--pressed to
his side--thus--in a most extraordinary way. This might be a lie, he
conceded, for it was indeed a strange thing for any one to do: on the
other hand, there could be no doubt she wore the white man’s jewel
concealed upon her bosom.’
CHAPTER 29
‘This was the theory of Jim’s marital evening walks. I made a third on
more than one occasion, unpleasantly aware every time of Cornelius,
who nursed the aggrieved sense of his legal paternity, slinking in
the neighbourhood with that peculiar twist of his mouth as if he were
perpetually on the point of gnashing his teeth. But do you notice how,
three hundred miles beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat
lines, the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilisation wither and die,
to be replaced by pure exercises of imagination, that have the futility,
often the charm, and sometimes the deep hidden truthfulness, of works of
art? Romance had singled Jim for its own--and that was the true part of
the story, which otherwise was all wrong. He did not hide his jewel. In
fact, he was extremely proud of it.
‘It comes to me now that I had, on the whole, seen very little of her.
What I remember best is the even, olive pallor of her complexion, and
the intense blue-black gleams of her hair, flowing abundantly from under
a small crimson cap she wore far back on her shapely head. Her movements
were free, assured, and she blushed a dusky red. While Jim and I were
talking, she would come and go with rapid glances at us, leaving on her
passage an impression of grace and charm and a distinct suggestion of
watchfulness. Her manner presented a curious combination of shyness and
audacity. Every pretty smile was succeeded swiftly by a look of silent,
repressed anxiety, as if put to flight by the recollection of some
abiding danger. At times she would sit down with us and, with her soft
cheek dimpled by the knuckles of her little hand, she would listen
to our talk; her big clear eyes would remain fastened on our lips, as
though each pronounced word had a visible shape. Her mother had taught
her to read and write; she had learned a good bit of English from
Jim, and she spoke it most amusingly, with his own clipping, boyish
intonation. Her tenderness hovered over him like a flutter of wings. She
lived so completely in his contemplation that she had acquired something
of his outward aspect, something that recalled him in her movements, in
the way she stretched her arm, turned her head, directed her glances.
Her vigilant affection had an intensity that made it almost perceptible
to the senses; it seemed actually to exist in the ambient matter
of space, to envelop him like a peculiar fragrance, to dwell in the
sunshine like a tremulous, subdued, and impassioned note. I suppose you
think that I too am romantic, but it is a mistake. I am relating to you
the sober impressions of a bit of youth, of a strange uneasy romance
that had come in my way. I observed with interest the work of
his--well--good fortune. He was jealously loved, but why she should
be jealous, and of what, I could not tell. The land, the people, the
forests were her accomplices, guarding him with vigilant accord, with
an air of seclusion, of mystery, of invincible possession. There was
no appeal, as it were; he was imprisoned within the very freedom of his
power, and she, though ready to make a footstool of her head for his
feet, guarded her conquest inflexibly--as though he were hard to keep.
The very Tamb’ Itam, marching on our journeys upon the heels of his
white lord, with his head thrown back, truculent and be-weaponed like a
janissary, with kriss, chopper, and lance (besides carrying Jim’s gun);
even Tamb’ Itam allowed himself to put on the airs of uncompromising
guardianship, like a surly devoted jailer ready to lay down his life for
his captive. On the evenings when we sat up late, his silent, indistinct
form would pass and repass under the verandah, with noiseless footsteps,
or lifting my head I would unexpectedly make him out standing rigidly
erect in the shadow. As a general rule he would vanish after a time,
without a sound; but when we rose he would spring up close to us as if
from the ground, ready for any orders Jim might wish to give. The girl
too, I believe, never went to sleep till we had separated for the night.
More than once I saw her and Jim through the window of my room come out
together quietly and lean on the rough balustrade--two white forms very
close, his arm about her waist, her head on his shoulder. Their soft
murmurs reached me, penetrating, tender, with a calm sad note in the
stillness of the night, like a self-communion of one being carried on
in two tones. Later on, tossing on my bed under the mosquito-net, I