‘An abrupt heavy rumble made me lift my head. The noise seemed to roll away, and suddenly a searching and violent glare fell on the blind face of the night. The sustained and dazzling flickers seemed to last for an unconscionable time. The growl of the thunder increased steadily while I looked at him, distinct and black, planted solidly upon the shores of a sea of light. At the moment of greatest brilliance the darkness leaped back with a culminating crash, and he vanished before my dazzled eyes as utterly as though he had been blown to atoms. A blustering sigh passed; furious hands seemed to tear at the shrubs, shake the tops of the trees below, slam doors, break window-panes, all along the front of the building. He stepped in, closing the door behind him, and found me bending over the table: my sudden anxiety as to what he would say was very great, and akin to a fright. “May I have a cigarette?” he asked. I gave a push to the box without raising my head. “I want — want — tobacco,” he muttered. I became extremely buoyant. “Just a moment.” I grunted pleasantly. He took a few steps here and there. “That’s over,” I heard him say. A single distant clap of thunder came from the sea like a gun of distress. “The monsoon breaks up early this year,” he remarked conversationally, somewhere behind me. This encouraged me to turn round, which I did as soon as I had finished addressing the last envelope. He was smoking greedily in the middle of the room, and though he heard the stir I made, he remained with his back to me for a time.
‘“Come — I carried it off pretty well,” he said, wheeling suddenly. “Something’s paid off — not much. I wonder what’s to come.” His face did not show any emotion, only it appeared a little darkened and swollen, as though he had been holding his breath. He smiled reluctantly as it were, and went on while I gazed up at him mutely. . . . “Thank you, though — your room — jolly convenient — for a chap — badly hipped.” . . . The rain pattered and swished in the garden; a water-pipe (it must have had a hole in it) performed just outside the window a parody of blubbering woe with funny sobs and gurgling lamentations, interrupted by jerky spasms of silence. . . . “A bit of shelter,” he mumbled and ceased.
‘A flash of faded lightning darted in through the black framework of the windows and ebbed out without any noise. I was thinking how I had best approach him (I did not want to be flung off again) when he gave a little laugh. “No better than a vagabond now” . . . the end of the cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . “without a single — single,” he pronounced slowly; “and yet . . .” He paused; the rain fell with redoubled violence. “Some day one’s bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all back again. Must!” he whispered distinctly, glaring at my boots.
‘I did not even know what it was he wished so much to regain, what it was he had so terribly missed. It might have been so much that it was impossible to say. A piece of ass’s skin, according to Chester. . . . He looked up at me inquisitively. “Perhaps. If life’s long enough,” I muttered through my teeth with unreasonable animosity. “Don’t reckon too much on it.”
‘“Jove! I feel as if nothing could ever touch me,” he said in a tone of sombre conviction. “If this business couldn’t knock me over, then there’s no fear of there being not enough time to — climb out, and . . .” He looked upwards.
‘It struck me that it is from such as he that the great army of waifs and strays is recruited, the army that marches down, down into all the gutters of the earth. As soon as he left my room, that “bit of shelter,” he would take his place in the ranks, and begin the journey towards the bottomless pit. I at least had no illusions; but it was I, too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the power of words, and now was afraid to speak, in the same way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery hold. It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. 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. It was the fear of losing him that kept me silent, for it was borne upon me suddenly and with unaccountable force that should I let him slip away into the darkness I would never forgive myself.
‘“Well. Thanks — once more. You’ve been — er — uncommonly — really there’s no word to . . . Uncommonly! I don’t know why, I am sure. I am afraid I don’t feel as grateful as I would if the whole thing hadn’t been so brutally sprung on me. Because at bottom . . . you, yourself . . .” He stuttered.
‘“Possibly,” I struck in. He frowned.
‘“All the same, one is responsible.” He watched me like a hawk.
‘“And that’s true, too,” I said.
‘“Well. I’ve gone with it to the end, and I don’t intend to let any man cast it in my teeth without — without — resenting it.” He clenched his fist.
‘“There’s yourself,” I said with a smile — mirthless enough, God knows — but he looked at me menacingly. “That’s my business,” he said. An air of indomitable resolution came and went upon his face like a vain and passing shadow. Next moment he looked a dear good boy in trouble, as before. He flung away the cigarette. “Good-bye,” he said, with the sudden haste of a man who had lingered too long in view of a pressing bit of work waiting for him; and then for a second or so he made not the slightest movement. The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one’s mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined mountains. No man could breast the colossal and headlong stream that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness in which we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. The perforated pipe gurgled, choked, spat, and splashed in odious ridicule of a swimmer fighting for his life. “It is raining,” I remonstrated, “and I . . .” “Rain or shine,” he began brusquely, checked himself, and walked to the window. “Perfect deluge,” he muttered after a while: he leaned his forehead on the glass. “It’s dark, too.”
‘“Yes, it is very dark,” I said.
‘He pivoted on his heels, crossed the room, and had actually opened the door leading into the corridor before I leaped up from my chair. “Wait,” I cried, “I want you to . . .” “I can’t dine with you again to-night,” he flung at me, with one leg out of the room already. “I haven’t the slightest intention to ask you,” I shouted. At this he drew back his foot, but remained mistrustfully in the very doorway. I lost no time in entreating him earnestly not to be absurd; to come in and shut the door.’
CHAPTER 17
‘He came in at last; but I believe it was mostly the rain that did it; it was falling just then with a devastating violence which quieted down gradually while we talked. His manner was very sober and set; his bearing was that of a naturally taciturn man possessed by an idea. My talk was of the material aspect of his position; it had the sole aim of saving him from the degradation, ruin, and despair that out there close so swiftly upon a friendless, homeless man; I pleaded with him to accept my help; I argued reasonably: and every time I looked up at that absorbed smooth face, so grave and youthful, I had a disturbing sense of being no help but rather an obstacle to some mysterious, inexplicable, impalpable striving of his wounded spirit.
‘“I suppose you intend to eat and drink and to sleep under shelter in the usual way,” I remember saying with irritation. “You say you won’t touch the money that is due to you.” . . . He came as near as his sort can to making a gesture of horror. (There were three weeks and five days’ pay owing him as mate of the Patna.) “Well, that’s too little to matter anyhow; but what will you do to-morrow? Where will you turn? You must live . . .” “That isn’t the thing,” was the comment that escaped him under his breath. I ignored it, and went on combating what I assumed to be the scruples of an exaggerated delicacy. “On every conceivable ground,” I concluded, �
��you must let me help you.” “You can’t,” he said very simply and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I could detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, but which I despaired of ever approaching near enough to fathom. I surveyed his well-proportioned bulk. “At any rate,” I said, “I am able to help what I can see of you. I don’t pretend to do more.” He shook his head sceptically without looking at me. I got very warm. “But I can,” I insisted. “I can do even more. I am doing more. I am trusting you . . .” “The money . . .” he began. “Upon my word you deserve being told to go to the devil,” I cried, forcing the note of indignation. He was startled, smiled, and I pressed my attack home. “It isn’t a question of money at all. You are too superficial,” I said (and at the same time I was thinking to myself: Well, here goes! And perhaps he is, after all). “Look at the letter I want you to take. I am writing to a man of whom I’ve never asked a favour, and I am writing about you in terms that one only ventures to use when speaking of an intimate friend. I make myself unreservedly responsible for you. That’s what I am doing. And really if you will only reflect a little what that means . . .”
‘He lifted his head. The rain had passed away; only the water-pipe went on shedding tears with an absurd drip, drip outside the window. It was very quiet in the room, whose shadows huddled together in corners, away from the still flame of the candle flaring upright in the shape of a dagger; his face after a while seemed suffused by a reflection of a soft light as if the dawn had broken already.
‘“Jove!” he gasped out. “It is noble of you!”
‘Had he suddenly put out his tongue at me in derision, I could not have felt more humiliated. I thought to myself — Serve me right for a sneaking humbug. . . . His eyes shone straight into my face, but I perceived it was not a mocking brightness. All at once he sprang into jerky agitation, like one of those flat wooden figures that are worked by a string. His arms went up, then came down with a slap. He became another man altogether. “And I had never seen,” he shouted; then suddenly bit his lip and frowned. “What a bally ass I’ve been,” he said very slow in an awed tone. . . . “You are a brick!” he cried next in a muffled voice. He snatched my hand as though he had just then seen it for the first time, and dropped it at once. “Why! this is what I — you — I . . .” he stammered, and then with a return of his old stolid, I may say mulish, manner he began heavily, “I would be a brute now if I . . .” and then his voice seemed to break. “That’s all right,” I said. I was almost alarmed by this display of feeling, through which pierced a strange elation. I had pulled the string accidentally, as it were; I did not fully understand the working of the toy. “I must go now,” he said. “Jove! You have helped me. Can’t sit still. The very thing . . .” He looked at me with puzzled admiration. “The very thing . . .”
‘Of course it was the thing. It was ten to one that I had saved him from starvation — of that peculiar sort that is almost invariably associated with drink. This was all. I had not a single illusion on that score, but looking at him, I allowed myself to wonder at the nature of the one he had, within the last three minutes, so evidently taken into his bosom. I had forced into his hand the means to carry on decently the serious business of life, to get food, drink, and shelter of the customary kind while his wounded spirit, like a bird with a broken wing, might hop and flutter into some hole to die quietly of inanition there. This is what I had thrust upon him: a definitely small thing; and — behold! — by the manner of its reception it loomed in the dim light of the candle like a big, indistinct, perhaps a dangerous shadow. “You don’t mind me not saying anything appropriate,” he burst out. “There isn’t anything one could say. Last night already you had done me no end of good. Listening to me — you know. I give you my word I’ve thought more than once the top of my head would fly off. . .” He darted — positively darted — here and there, rammed his hands into his pockets, jerked them out again, flung his cap on his head. I had no idea it was in him to be so airily brisk. I thought of a dry leaf imprisoned in an eddy of wind, while a mysterious apprehension, a load of indefinite doubt, weighed me down in my chair. He stood stock-still, as if struck motionless by a discovery. “You have given me confidence,” he declared, soberly. “Oh! for God’s sake, my dear fellow — don’t!” I entreated, as though he had hurt me. “All right. I’ll shut up now and henceforth. Can’t prevent me thinking though. . . . Never mind! . . . I’ll show yet . . .” He went to the door in a hurry, paused with his head down, and came back, stepping deliberately. “I always thought that if a fellow could begin with a clean slate . . . And now you . . . in a measure . . . yes . . . clean slate.” I waved my hand, and he marched out without looking back; the sound of his footfalls died out gradually behind the closed door — the unhesitating tread of a man walking in broad daylight.
‘But as to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I remained strangely unenlightened. I was no longer young enough to behold at every turn the magnificence that besets our insignificant footsteps in good and in evil. I smiled to think that, after all, it was yet he, of us two, who had the light. And I felt sad. A clean slate, did he say? As if the initial word of each our destiny were not graven in imperishable characters upon the face of a rock.’
CHAPTER 18
‘Six months afterwards my friend (he was a cynical, more than middle-aged bachelor, with a reputation for eccentricity, and owned a rice-mill) wrote to me, and judging, from the warmth of my recommendation, that I would like to hear, enlarged a little upon Jim’s perfections. These were apparently of a quiet and effective sort. “Not having been able so far to find more in my heart than a resigned toleration for any individual of my kind, I have lived till now alone in a house that even in this steaming climate could be considered as too big for one man. I have had him to live with me for some time past. It seems I haven’t made a mistake.” 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. Of course he stated his grounds in a characteristic way. For one thing, Jim kept his freshness in the climate. Had he been a girl — my friend wrote — one could have said he was blooming — blooming modestly — like a violet, not like some of these blatant tropical flowers. He had been in the house for six weeks, and had not as yet attempted to slap him on the back, or address him as “old boy,” or try to make him feel a superannuated fossil. He had nothing of the exasperating young man’s chatter. He was good-tempered, had not much to say for himself, was not clever by any means, thank goodness — wrote my friend. It appeared, however, that Jim was clever enough to be quietly appreciative of his wit, while, on the other hand, he amused him by his naiveness. “The dew is yet on him, and since I had the bright idea of giving him a room in the house and having him at meals I feel less withered myself. The other day he took it into his head to cross the room with no other purpose but to open a door for me; and I felt more in touch with mankind than I had been for years. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Of course I guess there is something — some awful little scrape — which you know all about — but if I am sure that it is terribly heinous, I fancy one could manage to forgive it. For my part, I declare I am unable to imagine him guilty of anything much worse than robbing an orchard. Is it much worse? Perhaps you ought to have told me; but it is such a long time since we both turned saints that you may have forgotten we, too, had sinned in our time? It may be that some day I shall have to ask you, and then I shall expect to be told. I don’t care to question him myself till I have some idea what it is. Moreover, it’s too soon as yet. Let him open the door a few times more for me. . . .” Thus my friend. I was trebly pleased — at Jim’s shaping so well, at the tone of the letter, at my own cleverness. Evidently I had known what I was doing. I had read characters aright, and so on. And what if something unexpected and wonderful were to come of it? That evening, reposing in a deck-chair under the shade of my own poop awning (it was in Hong-Kong harbour), I laid on Jim’s behalf the first stone of a castle in S
pain.
‘I made a trip to the northward, and when I returned I found another letter from my friend waiting for me. It was the first envelope I tore open. “There are no spoons missing, as far as I know,” ran the first line; “I haven’t been interested enough to inquire. He is gone, leaving on the breakfast-table a formal little note of apology, which is either silly or heartless. Probably both — and it’s all one to me. Allow me to say, lest you should have some more mysterious young men in reserve, that I have shut up shop, definitely and for ever. This is the last eccentricity I shall be guilty of. Do not imagine for a moment that I care a hang; but he is very much regretted at tennis-parties, and for my own sake I’ve told a plausible lie at the club. . . .” I flung the letter aside and started looking through the batch on my table, till I came upon Jim’s handwriting. Would you believe it? One chance in a hundred! But it is always that hundredth chance! That little second engineer of the Patna had turned up in a more or less destitute state, and got a temporary job of looking after the machinery of the mill. “I couldn’t stand the familiarity of the little beast,” Jim wrote from a seaport seven hundred miles south of the place where he should have been in clover. “I am now for the time with Egstrom & Blake, ship-chandlers, as their — well — runner, to call the thing by its right name. For reference I gave them your name, which they know of course, and if you could write a word in my favour it would be a permanent employment.” I was utterly crushed under the ruins of my castle, but of course I wrote as desired. Before the end of the year my new charter took me that way, and I had an opportunity of seeing him.
‘He was still with Egstrom & Blake, and we met in what they called “our parlour” opening out of the store. He had that moment come in from boarding a ship, and confronted me head down, ready for a tussle. “What have you got to say for yourself?” I began as soon as we had shaken hands. “What I wrote you — nothing more,” he said stubbornly. “Did the fellow blab — or what?” I asked. He looked up at me with a troubled smile. “Oh, no! He didn’t. He made it a kind of confidential business between us. He was most damnably mysterious whenever I came over to the mill; he would wink at me in a respectful manner — as much as to say ‘We know what we know.’ Infernally fawning and familiar — and that sort of thing . . .” He threw himself into a chair and stared down his legs. “One day we happened to be alone and the fellow had the cheek to say, ‘Well, Mr. James’ — I was called Mr. James there as if I had been the son — ’here we are together once more. This is better than the old ship — ain’t it?’ . . . Wasn’t it appalling, eh? I looked at him, and he put on a knowing air. ‘Don’t you be uneasy, sir,’ he says. ‘I know a gentleman when I see one, and I know how a gentleman feels. I hope, though, you will be keeping me on this job. I had a hard time of it too, along of that rotten old Patna racket.’ Jove! It was awful. I don’t know what I should have said or done if I had not just then heard Mr. Denver calling me in the passage. It was tiffin-time, and we walked together across the yard and through the garden to the bungalow. He began to chaff me in his kindly way . . . I believe he liked me . . .”
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 83