Lord Jim: Chapters 13–23

'After these words, and without a change of attitude, he, so to speak, submitted himself passively to a state of silence.

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.

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.

'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.

"Very well," I said, with a disconcerted smile; "but couldn't it reduce itself to not being found out?"

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.

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.

Very well; very well indeed -- except for certain fantastic and violent outbreaks, on the deplorable occasions when the irrepressible Patna case cropped up.

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.

"I've been trying to tell you all there is in it," he went on slowly, as if meditating something unanswerable.

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.

"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."

This is how I looked at it that morning -- and even now I seem to see an undeniable vestige of truth in that exaggerated view of a common occurrence.

For a time I was aware of the magistrate's voice as a sound merely; but in a moment it shaped itself into distinct words . . . "in utter disregard of their plain duty," it said.

There had been, as you know, a period of probation amongst infernal ship-chandlers, during which he had suffered and I had worried about -- about -- my trust -- you may call it.

The Pacific is the most discreet of live, hot-tempered oceans: the chilly Antarctic can keep a secret too, but more in the manner of a grave.

"No better than a vagabond now" . . . the end of the cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . "without a single -- single," he pronounced slowly; "and yet .

It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.

An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain and passing shadow.

It seemed to me on reading this letter that my friend had found in his heart more than tolerance for Jim -- that there were the beginnings of active liking.

To the common mind he became known as a rolling stone, because this was the funniest part: he did after a time become perfectly known, and even notorious, within the circle of his wanderings (which had a diameter of, say, three thousand miles), in the same way as an eccentric character is known to a whole countryside.

In every sense of the expression he is "on deck"; but my Jim, for the most part, skulked down below as though he had been a stowaway.

'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.

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.

'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.

Nobody, however, had been there, and I suspect no one desired to go there in person -- just as an astronomer, I should fancy, would strongly object to being transported into a distant heavenly body, where, parted from his earthly emoluments, he would be bewildered by the view of an unfamiliar heaven.

'Of course I don't know that story; I can only guess that once before Patusan had been used as a grave for some sin, transgression, or misfortune.

The Portuguese, whose name was Cornelius, considered himself a very deserving but ill-used person, entitled by his abilities to a better position.

I think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit -- it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience.

I affirm he had achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in the hearing.

By heavens! it made them heroic; and it made them pathetic too in their craving for trade with the inflexible death levying its toll on young and old.

There were in Patusan antagonistic forces, and one of them was Rajah Allang, the worst of the Sultan's uncles, the governor of the river, who did the extorting and the stealing, and ground down to the point of extinction the country-born Malays, who, utterly defenceless, had not even the resource of emigrating -- "For indeed," as Stein remarked, "where could they go, and how could they get away?"

He was a dirty, little, used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth, who swallowed an opium pill every two hours, and in defiance of common decency wore his hair uncovered and falling in wild stringy locks about his wizened grimy face.

I had never seen Jim look so grave, so self-possessed, in an impenetrable, impressive way.

In the midst of these dark-faced men, his stalwart figure in white apparel, the gleaming clusters of his fair hair, seemed to catch all the sunshine that trickled through the cracks in the closed shutters of that dim hall, with its walls of mats and a roof of thatch.

He was stumping about the room flourishing his arm absurdly, and now and then feeling on his breast for the ring under his clothes.

Keeping one eye on the movements of his crew forward, he let loose his volubility -- comparing the place to a "cage of beasts made ravenous by long impenitence."

He exerted himself to soothe me as though he had been the more mature of the two.