Lord Jim
was sure to hear slight creakings, faint breathing, a throat cleared
cautiously--and I would know that Tamb’ Itam was still on the prowl.
Though he had (by the favour of the white lord) a house in the compound,
had “taken wife,” and had lately been blessed with a child, I believe
that, during my stay at all events, he slept on the verandah every
night. It was very difficult to make this faithful and grim retainer
talk. Even Jim himself was answered in jerky short sentences, under
protest as it were. Talking, he seemed to imply, was no business of his.
The longest speech I heard him volunteer was one morning when, suddenly
extending his hand towards the courtyard, he pointed at Cornelius and
said, “Here comes the Nazarene.” I don’t think he was addressing me,
though I stood at his side; his object seemed rather to awaken the
indignant attention of the universe. Some muttered allusions, which
followed, to dogs and the smell of roast-meat, struck me as singularly
felicitous. The courtyard, a large square space, was one torrid blaze of
sunshine, and, bathed in intense light, Cornelius was creeping across
in full view with an inexpressible effect of stealthiness, of dark and
secret slinking. He reminded one of everything that is unsavoury. His
slow laborious walk resembled the creeping of a repulsive beetle, the
legs alone moving with horrid industry while the body glided evenly. I
suppose he made straight enough for the place where he wanted to get to,
but his progress with one shoulder carried forward seemed oblique. He
was often seen circling slowly amongst the sheds, as if following
a scent; passing before the verandah with upward stealthy glances;
disappearing without haste round the corner of some hut. That he seemed
free of the place demonstrated Jim’s absurd carelessness or else his
infinite disdain, for Cornelius had played a very dubious part (to say
the least of it) in a certain episode which might have ended fatally for
Jim. As a matter of fact, it had redounded to his glory. But everything
redounded to his glory; and it was the irony of his good fortune that
he, who had been too careful of it once, seemed to bear a charmed life.
‘You must know he had left Doramin’s place very soon after his
arrival--much too soon, in fact, for his safety, and of course a long
time before the war. In this he was actuated by a sense of duty; he had
to look after Stein’s business, he said. Hadn’t he? To that end, with an
utter disregard of his personal safety, he crossed the river and took up
his quarters with Cornelius. How the latter had managed to exist through
the troubled times I can’t say. As Stein’s agent, after all, he must
have had Doramin’s protection in a measure; and in one way or another
he had managed to wriggle through all the deadly complications, while I
have no doubt that his conduct, whatever line he was forced to take, was
marked by that abjectness which was like the stamp of the man. That was
his characteristic; he was fundamentally and outwardly abject, as other
men are markedly of a generous, distinguished, or venerable appearance.
It was the element of his nature which permeated all his acts and
passions and emotions; he raged abjectly, smiled abjectly, was abjectly
sad; his civilities and his indignations were alike abject. I am sure
his love would have been the most abject of sentiments--but can one
imagine a loathsome insect in love? And his loathsomeness, too, was
abject, so that a simply disgusting person would have appeared noble
by his side. He has his place neither in the background nor in the
foreground of the story; he is simply seen skulking on its outskirts,
enigmatical and unclean, tainting the fragrance of its youth and of its
naiveness.
‘His position in any case could not have been other than extremely
miserable, yet it may very well be that he found some advantages in it.
Jim told me he had been received at first with an abject display of
the most amicable sentiments. “The fellow apparently couldn’t contain
himself for joy,” said Jim with disgust. “He flew at me every morning to
shake both my hands--confound him!--but I could never tell whether there
would be any breakfast. If I got three meals in two days I considered
myself jolly lucky, and he made me sign a chit for ten dollars every
week. Said he was sure Mr. Stein did not mean him to keep me for
nothing. Well--he kept me on nothing as near as possible. Put it down to
the unsettled state of the country, and made as if to tear his hair out,
begging my pardon twenty times a day, so that I had at last to entreat
him not to worry. It made me sick. Half the roof of his house had
fallen in, and the whole place had a mangy look, with wisps of dry grass
sticking out and the corners of broken mats flapping on every wall. He
did his best to make out that Mr. Stein owed him money on the last three
years’ trading, but his books were all torn, and some were missing. He
tried to hint it was his late wife’s fault. Disgusting scoundrel! At
last I had to forbid him to mention his late wife at all. It made Jewel
cry. I couldn’t discover what became of all the trade-goods; there was
nothing in the store but rats, having a high old time amongst a litter
of brown paper and old sacking. I was assured on every hand that he had
a lot of money buried somewhere, but of course could get nothing out of
him. It was the most miserable existence I led there in that wretched
house. I tried to do my duty by Stein, but I had also other matters to
think of. When I escaped to Doramin old Tunku Allang got frightened and
returned all my things. It was done in a roundabout way, and with no end
of mystery, through a Chinaman who keeps a small shop here; but as soon
as I left the Bugis quarter and went to live with Cornelius it began
to be said openly that the Rajah had made up his mind to have me killed
before long. Pleasant, wasn’t it? And I couldn’t see what there was to
prevent him if he really _had_ made up his mind. The worst of it was,
I couldn’t help feeling I wasn’t doing any good either for Stein or for
myself. Oh! it was beastly--the whole six weeks of it.”’
CHAPTER 30
‘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.
It was indeed a strange thing to come upon in a wilderness. The
endlessness of such a subtly cruel situation was appalling--if you think
of it. The respectable Cornelius (Inchi ‘Nelyus the Malays called him,
with a grimace that meant many things) was a much-disappointed man. I
don’t know what he had expected would be done for him in consideration
of his marriage; but evidently the liberty to steal, and embezzle, and
appropriate to himself for many years and in any way that suited him
best, the goods of Stein’s Trading Company (Stein kept the supply up
unfalteringly as long as he could get his skippers to take it there) did
not seem to him a fair equivalent for the sacrifice of his honourable
name. Jim would have enjoyed exceedingly thrashing Cornelius within an
inch of his life; on the other hand, the scenes were of so painful
a character, so abominable, that his impulse would be to get out of
earshot, in order to spare the girl’s feelings. They left her agitated,
speechless, clutching her bosom now and then with a stony,
desperate face, and then Jim would lounge up and say unhappily,
“Now--come--really--what’s the use--you must try to eat a bit,” or give
some such mark of sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through
the doorways, across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and
with malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. “I can stop his game,”
Jim said to her once. “Just say the word.” And do you know what she
answered? She said--Jim told me impressively--that if she had not been
sure he was intensely wretched himself, she would have found the courage
to kill him with her own hands. “Just fancy that! The poor devil of a
girl, almost a child, being driven to talk like that,” he exclaimed in
horror. It seemed impossible to save her not only from that mean
rascal but even from herself! It wasn’t that he pitied her so much, he
affirmed; it was more than pity; it was as if he had something on his
conscience, while that life went on. To leave the house would have
appeared a base desertion. He had understood at last that there was
nothing to expect from a longer stay, neither accounts nor money, nor
truth of any sort, but he stayed on, exasperating Cornelius to the
verge, I won’t say of insanity, but almost of courage. Meantime he felt
all sorts of dangers gathering obscurely about him. Doramin had sent
over twice a trusty servant to tell him seriously that he could do
nothing for his safety unless he would recross the river again and live
amongst the Bugis as at first. People of every condition used to call,
often in the dead of night, in order to disclose to him plots for
his assassination. He was to be poisoned. He was to be stabbed in the
bath-house. Arrangements were being made to have him shot from a boat
on the river. Each of these informants professed himself to be his very
good friend. It was enough--he told me--to spoil a fellow’s rest for
ever. Something of the kind was extremely possible--nay, probable--but
the lying warnings gave him only the sense of deadly scheming going on
all around him, on all sides, in the dark. Nothing more calculated to
shake the best of nerve. Finally, one night, Cornelius himself, with a
great apparatus of alarm and secrecy, unfolded in solemn wheedling tones
a little plan wherein for one hundred dollars--or even for eighty; let’s
say eighty--he, Cornelius, would procure a trustworthy man to smuggle
Jim out of the river, all safe. There was nothing else for it now--if
Jim cared a pin for his life. What’s eighty dollars? A trifle. An
insignificant sum. While he, Cornelius, who had to remain behind, was
absolutely courting death by this proof of devotion to Mr. Stein’s young
friend. The sight of his abject grimacing was--Jim told me--very hard
to bear: he clutched at his hair, beat his breast, rocked himself to
and fro with his hands pressed to his stomach, and actually pretended to
shed tears. “Your blood be on your own head,” he squeaked at last, and
rushed out. It is a curious question how far Cornelius was sincere in