Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (motivational novels for students TXT) đ
- Author: Joseph Conrad
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With that I lay down my knife and fork. âYou would like to sit in it yourselfâthatâs where the shoe pinches,â he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Yes.
Adriftâon shoreâafter ten yearsâ serviceâand with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir! I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his night-glassesâhere they are; and he wished me to take care of the dogâhere he is. Hallo, Rover, poor boy. Whereâs the captain, Rover?â The dog looked up at us with mournful yellow eyes, gave one desolate bark, and crept under the table.
âAll this was taking place, more than two years afterwards, on board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones had got charge ofâquite by a funny accident, tooâfrom Mathersonâmad Matherson they generally called himâthe same who used to hang out in Hai-phong, you know, before the occupation days. The old chap snuffled onâ
â âAy, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if thereâs no other place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a word in replyâneither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!ânothing!
Perhaps they did not want to know.â
âThe sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierlyâs remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate terrors. Almost! Perhaps wholly. Who can tell what flattering view he had induced himself to take of his own suicide?
â âWhy did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlowâcan you think?â asked Jones, pressing his palms together. âWhy? It beats me! Why?â He slapped his low and wrinkled forehead. âIf he had been poor and old and in debtâand never a showâor else mad.
But he wasnât of the kind that goes mad, not he. You trust me.
What a mate donât know about his skipper isnât worth knowing.
Young, healthy, well off, no cares⊠. I sit here sometimes thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. There was some reason.â
â âYou may depend on it, Captain Jones,â said I, âit wasnât anything that would have disturbed much either of us two,â I said; and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding at me dolefully: âAy, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever thought so much of ourselves.â
âOf course the recollection of my last conversation with Brierly is tinged with the knowledge of his end that followed so close upon it. I spoke with him for the last time during the progress of the inquiry. It was after the first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street. He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with surprise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if the existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good joke. âThey caught me for that inquiry, you see,â he began, and for a while enlarged complainingly upon the inconveniences of daily attendance in court. âAnd goodness knows how long it will last. Three days, I suppose.â I heard him out in silence; in my then opinion it was a way as good as another of putting on side. âWhatâs the use of it? It is the stupidest set-out you can imagine,â he pursued hotly.
I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me with a sort of pent-up violence. âI feel like a fool all the time.â I looked up at him. This was going very farâfor Brierlyâwhen talking of Brierly.
He stopped short, and seizing the lapel of my coat, gave it a slight tug. âWhy are we tormenting that young chap?â he asked. This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding renegade in my eye, I answered at once, âHanged if I know, unless it be that he lets you.â
I was astonished to see him fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought to have been tolerably cryptic. He said angrily, âWhy, yes. Canât he see that wretched skipper of his has cleared out? What does he expect to happen? Nothing can save him.
Heâs done for.â We walked on in silence a few steps. âWhy eat all that dirt?â he exclaimed, with an oriental energy of expressionâ
about the only sort of energy you can find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. I wondered greatly at the direction of his thoughts, but now I strongly suspect it was strictly in character: at bottom poor Brierly must have been thinking of himself. I pointed out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to have feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure almost anywhere the means of getting away. With Jim it was otherwise: the Government was keeping him in the Sailorsâ Home for the time being, and probably he hadnât a penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some money to run away. âDoes it? Not always,â he said, with a bitter laugh, and to some further remark of mineââWell, then, let him creep twenty feet underground and stay there! By heavens! I
would.â I donât know why his tone provoked me, and I said, âThere is a kind of courage in facing it out as he does, knowing very well that if he went away nobody would trouble to run after hmm.â
âCourage be hanged!â growled Brierly. âThat sort of courage is of no use to keep a man straight, and I donât care a snap for such courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice nowâof softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hundred rupees if you put up another hundred and undertake to make the beggar clear out early to-morrow morning. The fellowâs a gentleman if he ainât fit to be touchedâhe will understand. He must! This infernal publicity is too shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence thatâs enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. This is abominable.
Why, Marlow, donât you think, donât you feel, that this is abominable; donât you nowâcomeâas a seaman? If he went away all this would stop at once.â Brierly said these words with a most unusual animation, and made as if to reach after his pocket-book. I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice of these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance. âAnd you call yourself a seaman, I suppose,â he pronounced angrily. I said thatâs what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. He heard me out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of my individuality, to push me away into the crowd. âThe worst of it,â he said, âis that all you fellows have no sense of dignity; you donât think enough of what you are supposed to be.â
âWe had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped opposite the harbour office, in sight of the very spot from which the immense captain of the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny feather blown away in a hurricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: âThis is a disgrace. Weâve got all kinds amongst usâsome anointed scoundrels in the lot; but, hang it, we must preserve professional decency or we become no better than so many tinkers going about loose. We are trusted. Do you understand?âtrusted! Frankly, I donât care a snap for all the pilgrims that ever came out of Asia, but a decent man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo of old rags in bales. We arenât an organised body of men, and the only thing that holds us together is just the name for that kind of decency. Such an affair destroys oneâs confidence. A man may go pretty near through his whole sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip. But when the call comes ⊠Aha! ⊠If I âŠâ
âHe broke off, and in a changed tone, âIâll give you two hundred rupees now, Marlow, and you just talk to that chap. Confound him!
I wish he had never come out here. Fact is, I rather think some of my people know his. The old manâs a parson, and I remember now I met him once when staying with my cousin in Essex last year. If I am not mistaken, the old chap seemed rather to fancy his sailor son. Horrible. I canât do it myselfâbut you âŠâ
âThus, apropos of Jim, I had a glimpse of the real Brierly a few days before he committed his reality and his sham together to the keeping of the sea. Of course I declined to meddle. The tone of this last âbut youâ (poor Brierly couldnât help it), that seemed to imply I was no more noticeable than an insect, caused me to look at the proposal with indignation, and on account of that provocation, or for some other reason, I became positive in my mind that the inquiry was a severe punishment to that Jim, and that his facing itâ
practically of his own free willâwas a redeeming feature in his abominable case. I hadnât been so sure of it before. Brierly went off in a huff.
At the time his state of mind was more of a mystery to me than it is now.
âNext day, coming into court late, I sat by myself. Of course I could not forget the conversation I had with Brierly, and now I had them both under my eyes. The demeanour of one suggested gloomy impudence and of the other a contemptuous boredom; yet one attitude might not have been truer than the other, and I was aware that one was not true. Brierly was not boredâhe was exasperated; and if so, then Jim might not have been impudent. According to my theory he was not. I imagined he was hopeless. Then it was that our glances met. They met, and the look he gave me was discouraging of any intention I might have had to speak to him. Upon either hypothesisâinsolence or despairâI felt I could be of no use to him. This was the second day of the proceedings. Very soon after that exchange of glances the inquiry was adjourned again to the next day. The white men began to troop out at once. Jim had been told to stand down some time before, and was able to leave amongst the first. I saw his broad shoulders and his head outlined in the light of the door, and while I made my way slowly out talking with some oneâsome stranger who had addressed me casuallyâI could see him from within the court-room resting both elbows on the
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