Lord Jim Joseph Conrad (epub ebook reader .txt) 📖

the casual crowd that frequented Schomberg’s establishment that Jim managed to hang out in Bangkok for a whole six months. I remarked that people, perfect strangers, took to him as one takes to a nice child. His manner was reserved, but it was as though his personal appearance, his hair, his eyes, his smile, made friends for him wherever he went. And, of course, he was no fool. I heard Siegmund Yucker (native of Switzerland), a gentle creature ravaged by a cruel dyspepsia, and so frightfully lame that his head swung through a quarter of a circle at every step he took, declare appreciatively that for one so young he was ‘of great gabasidy,’ as though it had been a mere question of cubic contents. ‘Why not send him up country?’ I suggested anxiously. (Yucker Brothers had concessions and teak forests in the interior.) ‘If he has capacity, as you say, he will soon get hold of the work. And physically he is very fit. His health is always excellent.’ ‘Ach! It’s a great ting in dis goundry to be vree vrom tispep-shia,’ sighed poor Yucker enviously, casting a stealthy glance at the pit of his ruined stomach. I left him drumming pensively on his desk and muttering, ‘Es ist ein idee. Es ist ein idee.’ Unfortunately, that very evening an unpleasant affair took place in the hotel.

“I don’t know that I blame Jim very much, but it was a truly regrettable incident. It belonged to the lamentable species of barroom scuffles, and the other party to it was a cross-eyed Dane of sorts whose visiting-card recited under his misbegotten name: first lieutenant in the Royal Siamese Navy. The fellow, of course, was utterly hopeless at billiards, but did not like to be beaten, I suppose. He had had enough to drink to turn nasty after the sixth game, and make some scornful remark at Jim’s expense. Most of the people there didn’t hear what was said, and those who had heard seemed to have had all precise recollection scared out of them by the appalling nature of the consequences that immediately ensued. It was very lucky for the Dane that he could swim, because the room opened on a verandah and the Menam flowed below very wide and black. A boatload of Chinamen, bound, as likely as not, on some thieving expedition, fished out the officer of the King of Siam, and Jim turned up at about midnight on board my ship without a hat. ‘Everybody in the room seemed to know,’ he said, gasping yet from the contest, as it were. He was rather sorry, on general principles, for what had happened, though in this case there had been, he said, ‘no option.’ But what dismayed him was to find the nature of his burden as well known to everybody as though he had gone about all that time carrying it on his shoulders. Naturally after this he couldn’t remain in the place. He was universally condemned for the brutal violence, so unbecoming a man in his delicate position; some maintained he had been disgracefully drunk at the time; others criticised his want of tact. Even Schomberg was very much annoyed. ‘He is a very nice young man,’ he said argumentatively to me, ‘but the lieutenant is a first-rate fellow too. He dines every night at my table d’hôte, you know. And there’s a billiard-cue broken. I can’t allow that. First thing this morning I went over with my apologies to the lieutenant, and I think I’ve made it all right for myself; but only think, captain, if everybody started such games! Why, the man might have been drowned! And here I can’t run out into the next street and buy a new cue. I’ve got to write to Europe for them. No, no! A temper like that won’t do!’⁠ ⁠… He was extremely sore on the subject.

“This was the worst incident of all in his⁠—his retreat. Nobody could deplore it more than myself; for if, as somebody said hearing him mentioned, ‘Oh yes! I know. He has knocked about a good deal out here,’ yet he had somehow avoided being battered and chipped in the process. This last affair, however, made me seriously uneasy, because if his exquisite sensibilities were to go the length of involving him in pothouse shindies, he would lose his name of an inoffensive, if aggravating, fool, and acquire that of a common loafer. For all my confidence in him I could not help reflecting that in such cases from the name to the thing itself is but a step. I suppose you will understand that by that time I could not think of washing my hands of him. I took him away from Bangkok in my ship, and we had a longish passage. It was pitiful to see how he shrank within himself. A seaman, even if a mere passenger, takes an interest in a ship, and looks at the sea-life around him with the critical enjoyment of a painter, for instance, looking at another man’s work. 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. He infected me so that I avoided speaking on professional matters, such as would suggest themselves naturally to two sailors during a passage. For whole days we did not exchange a word; I felt extremely unwilling to give orders to my officers in his presence. Often, when alone with him on deck or in the cabin, we didn’t know what to do with our eyes.

“I placed him with De Jongh, as you know, glad enough to dispose of him in any way, yet persuaded that his position was now growing intolerable. He had lost some of that elasticity which had enabled him to rebound back into his uncompromising position after every overthrow. One day, coming ashore, I saw him standing on the quay; the water of the roadstead and