Marlow paused, as if expecting an answer. Nobody spoke.
‘Quite right,’ he began again. ‘Let no soul know, since the truth can be wrung out of us only by some cruel, little, awful catastrophe. But he is one of us, and he could say he was satisfied . . . nearly. Just fancy this! Nearly satisfied. One could almost envy him his catastrophe. Nearly satisfied. After this nothing could matter. It did not matter who suspected him, who trusted him, who loved him, who hated him — especially as it was Cornelius who hated him.
‘Yet after all this was a kind of recognition. You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends, and this enemy of Jim was such as no decent man would be ashamed to own, without, however, making too much of him. This was the view Jim took, and in which I shared; but Jim disregarded him on general grounds. “My dear Marlow,” he said, “I feel that if I go straight nothing can touch me. Indeed I do. Now you have been long enough here to have a good look round — and, frankly, don’t you think I am pretty safe? It all depends upon me, and, by Jove! I have lots of confidence in myself. The worst thing he could do would be to kill me, I suppose. I don’t think for a moment he would. He couldn’t, you know — not if I were myself to hand him a loaded rifle for the purpose, and then turn my back on him. That’s the sort of thing he is. And suppose he would — suppose he could? Well — what of that? I didn’t come here flying for my life — did I? I came here to set my back against the wall, and I am going to stay here . . .”
‘“Till you are quite satisfied,” I struck in.
‘We were sitting at the time under the roof in the stern of his boat; twenty paddles flashed like one, ten on a side, striking the water with a single splash, while behind our backs Tamb’ Itam dipped silently right and left, and stared right down the river, attentive to keep the long canoe in the greatest strength of the current. Jim bowed his head, and our last talk seemed to flicker out for good. He was seeing me off as far as the mouth of the river. The schooner had left the day before, working down and drifting on the ebb, while I had prolonged my stay overnight. And now he was seeing me off.
‘Jim had been a little angry with me for mentioning Cornelius at all. I had not, in truth, said much. The man was too insignificant to be dangerous, though he was as full of hate as he could hold. He had called me “honourable sir” at every second sentence, and had whined at my elbow as he followed me from the grave of his “late wife” to the gate of Jim’s compound. He declared himself the most unhappy of men, a victim, crushed like a worm; he entreated me to look at him. I wouldn’t turn my head to do so; but I could see out of the corner of my eye his obsequious shadow gliding after mine, while the moon, suspended on our right hand, seemed to gloat serenely upon the spectacle. He tried to explain — as I’ve told you — his share in the events of the memorable night. It was a matter of expediency. How could he know who was going to get the upper hand? “I would have saved him, honourable sir! I would have saved him for eighty dollars,” he protested in dulcet tones, keeping a pace behind me. “He has saved himself,” I said, “and he has forgiven you.” I heard a sort of tittering, and turned upon him; at once he appeared ready to take to his heels. “What are you laughing at?” I asked, standing still. “Don’t be deceived, honourable sir!” he shrieked, seemingly losing all control over his feelings. “He save himself! He knows nothing, honourable sir — nothing whatever. Who is he? What does he want here — the big thief? What does he want here? He throws dust into everybody’s eyes; he throws dust into your eyes, honourable sir; but he can’t throw dust into my eyes. He is a big fool, honourable sir.” I laughed contemptuously, and, turning on my heel, began to walk on again. He ran up to my elbow and whispered forcibly, “He’s no more than a little child here — like a little child — a little child.” Of course I didn’t take the slightest notice, and seeing the time pressed, because we were approaching the bamboo fence that glittered over the blackened ground of the clearing, he came to the point. He commenced by being abjectly lachrymose. His great misfortunes had affected his head. He hoped I would kindly forget what nothing but his troubles made him say. He didn’t mean anything by it; only the honourable sir did not know what it was to be ruined, broken down, trampled upon. After this introduction he approached the matter near his heart, but in such a rambling, ejaculatory, craven fashion, that for a long time I couldn’t make out what he was driving at. He wanted me to intercede with Jim in his favour. It seemed, too, to be some sort of money affair. I heard time and again the words, “Moderate provision — suitable present.” He seemed to be claiming value for something, and he even went the length of saying with some warmth that life was not worth having if a man were to be robbed of everything. I did not breathe a word, of course, but neither did I stop my ears. The gist of the affair, which became clear to me gradually, was in this, that he regarded himself as entitled to some money in exchange for the girl. He had brought her up. Somebody else’s child. Great trouble and pains — old man now — suitable present. If the honourable sir would say a word. . . . I stood still to look at him with curiosity, and fearful lest I should think him extortionate, I suppose, he hastily brought himself to make a concession. In consideration of a “suitable present” given at once, he would, he declared, be willing to undertake the charge of the girl, “without any other provision — when the time came for the gentleman to go home.” His little yellow face, all crumpled as though it had been squeezed together, expressed the most anxious, eager avarice. His voice whined coaxingly, “No more trouble — natural guardian — a sum of money . . .”
‘I stood there and marvelled. That kind of thing, with him, was evidently a vocation. I discovered suddenly in his cringing attitude a sort of assurance, as though he had been all his life dealing in certitudes. He must have thought I was dispassionately considering his proposal, because he became as sweet as honey. “Every gentleman made a provision when the time came to go home,” he began insinuatingly. I slammed the little gate. “In this case, Mr. Cornelius,” I said, “the time will never come.” He took a few seconds to gather this in. “What!” he fairly squealed. “Why,” I continued from my side of the gate, “haven’t you heard him say so himself? He will never go home.” “Oh! this is too much,” he shouted. He would not address me as “honoured sir” any more. He was very still for a time, and then without a trace of humility began very low: “Never go — ah! He — he — he comes here devil knows from where — comes here — devil knows why — to trample on me till I die — ah — trample” (he stamped softly with both feet), “trample like this — nobody knows why — till I die. . . .” His voice became quite extinct; he was bothered by a little cough; he came up close to the fence and told me, dropping into a confidential and piteous tone, that he would not be trampled upon. “Patience — patience,” he muttered, striking his breast. I had done laughing at him, but unexpectedly he treated me to a wild cracked burst of it. “Ha! ha! ha! We shall see! We shall see! What! Steal from me! Steal from me everything! Everything! Everything!” His head drooped on one shoulder, his hands were hanging before him lightly clasped. One would have thought he had cherished the girl with surpassing love, that his spirit had been crushed and his heart broken by the most cruel of spoliations. Suddenly he lifted his head and shot out an infamous word. “Like her mother — she is like her deceitful mother. Exactly. In her face, too. In her face. The devil!” He leaned his forehead against the fence, and in that position uttered threats and horrible blasphemies in Portuguese in very weak ejaculations, mingled with miserable plaints and groans, coming out with a heave of the shoulders as though he had been overtaken by a deadly fit of sickness. It was an inexpressibly grotesque and vile performance, and I hastened away. He tried to shout something after me. Some disparagement of Jim, I believe — not too loud though, we were too near the house. All I heard distinctly was, “No more than a little child — a little child.”‘
CHAPTER 35
‘But next morning, at the first bend of the river shutting off the houses of Patusa
n, all this dropped out of my sight bodily, with its colour, its design, and its meaning, like a picture created by fancy on a canvas, upon which, after long contemplation, you turn your back for the last time. It remains in the memory motionless, unfaded, with its life arrested, in an unchanging light. There are the ambitions, the fears, the hate, the hopes, and they remain in my mind just as I had seen them — intense and as if for ever suspended in their expression. I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones. I wasn’t going to dive into it; I would have enough to do to keep my head above the surface. But as to what I was leaving behind, I cannot imagine any alteration. The immense and magnanimous Doramin and his little motherly witch of a wife, gazing together upon the land and nursing secretly their dreams of parental ambition; Tunku Allang, wizened and greatly perplexed; Dain Waris, intelligent and brave, with his faith in Jim, with his firm glance and his ironic friendliness; the girl, absorbed in her frightened, suspicious adoration; Tamb’ Itam, surly and faithful; Cornelius, leaning his forehead against the fence under the moonlight — I am certain of them. They exist as if under an enchanter’s wand. But the figure round which all these are grouped — that one lives, and I am not certain of him. No magician’s wand can immobilise him under my eyes. He is one of us.
‘Jim, as I’ve told you, accompanied me on the first stage of my journey back to the world he had renounced, and the way at times seemed to lead through the very heart of untouched wilderness. The empty reaches sparkled under the high sun; between the high walls of vegetation the heat drowsed upon the water, and the boat, impelled vigorously, cut her way through the air that seemed to have settled dense and warm under the shelter of lofty trees.
‘The shadow of the impending separation had already put an immense space between us, and when we spoke it was with an effort, as if to force our low voices across a vast and increasing distance. The boat fairly flew; we sweltered side by side in the stagnant superheated air; the smell of mud, of mush, the primeval smell of fecund earth, seemed to sting our faces; till suddenly at a bend it was as if a great hand far away had lifted a heavy curtain, had flung open un immense portal. The light itself seemed to stir, the sky above our heads widened, a far-off murmur reached our ears, a freshness enveloped us, filled our lungs, quickened our thoughts, our blood, our regrets — and, straight ahead, the forests sank down against the dark-blue ridge of the sea.
‘I breathed deeply, I revelled in the vastness of the opened horizon, in the different atmosphere that seemed to vibrate with the toil of life, with the energy of an impeccable world. This sky and this sea were open to me. The girl was right — there was a sign, a call in them — something to which I responded with every fibre of my being. I let my eyes roam through space, like a man released from bonds who stretches his cramped limbs, runs, leaps, responds to the inspiring elation of freedom. “This is glorious!” I cried, and then I looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said “Yes,” without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience.
‘I remember the smallest details of that afternoon. We landed on a bit of white beach. It was backed by a low cliff wooded on the brow, draped in creepers to the very foot. Below us the plain of the sea, of a serene and intense blue, stretched with a slight upward tilt to the thread-like horizon drawn at the height of our eyes. Great waves of glitter blew lightly along the pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers chased by the breeze. A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing the wide estuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked multitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe put off from amongst them with two tiny men, all black, who toiled exceedingly, striking down at the pale water: and the canoe seemed to slide painfully on a mirror. This bunch of miserable hovels was the fishing village that boasted of the white lord’s especial protection, and the two men crossing over were the old headman and his son-in-law. They landed and walked up to us on the white sand, lean, dark-brown as if dried in smoke, with ashy patches on the skin of their naked shoulders and breasts. Their heads were bound in dirty but carefully folded headkerchiefs, and the old man began at once to state a complaint, voluble, stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim his old bleared eyes confidently. The Rajah’s people would not leave them alone; there had been some trouble about a lot of turtles’ eggs his people had collected on the islets there — and leaning at arm’s-length upon his paddle, he pointed with a brown skinny hand over the sea. Jim listened for a time without looking up, and at last told him gently to wait. He would hear him by-and-by. They withdrew obediently to some little distance, and sat on their heels, with their paddles lying before them on the sand; the silvery gleams in their eyes followed our movements patiently; and the immensity of the outspread sea, the stillness of the coast, passing north and south beyond the limits of my vision, made up one colossal Presence watching us four dwarfs isolated on a strip of glistening sand.
‘“The trouble is,” remarked Jim moodily, “that for generations these beggars of fishermen in that village there had been considered as the Rajah’s personal slaves — and the old rip can’t get it into his head that . . .”
‘He paused. “That you have changed all that,” I said.
‘“Yes I’ve changed all that,” he muttered in a gloomy voice.
‘“You have had your opportunity,” I pursued.
‘“Have I?” he said. “Well, yes. I suppose so. Yes. I have got back my confidence in myself — a good name — yet sometimes I wish . . . No! I shall hold what I’ve got. Can’t expect anything more.” He flung his arm out towards the sea. “Not out there anyhow.” He stamped his foot upon the sand. “This is my limit, because nothing less will do.”
‘We continued pacing the beach. “Yes, I’ve changed all that,” he went on, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fishermen; “but only try to think what it would be if I went away. Jove! can’t you see it? Hell loose. No! To-morrow I shall go and take my chance of drinking that silly old Tunku Allang’s coffee, and I shall make no end of fuss over these rotten turtles’ eggs. No. I can’t say — enough. Never. I must go on, go on for ever holding up my end, to feel sure that nothing can touch me. I must stick to their belief in me to feel safe and to — to” . . . He cast about for a word, seemed to look for it on the sea . . . “to keep in touch with” . . . His voice sank suddenly to a murmur . . . “with those whom, perhaps, I shall never see any more. With — with — you, for instance.”
‘I was profoundly humbled by his words. “For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t set me up, my dear fellow; just look to yourself.” I felt a gratitude, an affection, for that straggler whose eyes had singled me out, keeping my place in the ranks of an insignificant multitude. How little that was to boast of, after all! I turned my burning face away; under the low sun, glowing, darkened and crimson, like un ember snatched from the fire, the sea lay outspread, offering all its immense stillness to the approach of the fiery orb. Twice he was going to speak, but checked himself; at last, as if he had found a formula —
‘“I shall be faithful,” he said quietly. “I shall be faithful,” he repeated, without looking at me, but for the first time letting his eyes wander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy purple under the fires of sunset. Ah! he was romantic, romantic. I recalled some words of Stein’s. . . . “In the destructive element immerse! . . . To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream — and so — always — usque ad finem . . .” He was romantic, but none the less true. Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he cou
ld see in the glow of the west! . . . A small boat, leaving the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two oars, towards the sandbank to take me off. “And then there’s Jewel,” he said, out of the great silence of earth, sky, and sea, which had mastered my very thoughts so that his voice made me start. “There’s Jewel.” “Yes,” I murmured. “I need not tell you what she is to me,” he pursued. “You’ve seen. In time she will come to understand . . .” “I hope so,” I interrupted. “She trusts me, too,” he mused, and then changed his tone. “When shall we meet next, I wonder?” he said.
‘“Never — unless you come out,” I answered, avoiding his glance. He didn’t seem to be surprised; he kept very quiet for a while.
‘“Good-bye, then,” he said, after a pause. “Perhaps it’s just as well.”
‘We shook hands, and I walked to the boat, which waited with her nose on the beach. The schooner, her mainsail set and jib-sheet to windward, curveted on the purple sea; there was a rosy tinge on her sails. “Will you be going home again soon?” asked Jim, just as I swung my leg over the gunwale. “In a year or so if I live,” I said. The forefoot grated on the sand, the boat floated, the wet oars flashed and dipped once, twice. Jim, at the water’s edge, raised his voice. “Tell them . . .” he began. I signed to the men to cease rowing, and waited in wonder. Tell who? The half-submerged sun faced him; I could see its red gleam in his eyes that looked dumbly at me. . . . “No — nothing,” he said, and with a slight wave of his hand motioned the boat away. I did not look again at the shore till I had clambered on board the schooner.
‘By that time the sun had set. The twilight lay over the east, and the coast, turned black, extended infinitely its sombre wall that seemed the very stronghold of the night; the western horizon was one great blaze of gold and crimson in which a big detached cloud floated dark and still, casting a slaty shadow on the water beneath, and I saw Jim on the beach watching the schooner fall off and gather headway.
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 96
