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

dead sunlight. There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery. It is to our sunshine, which⁠—say what you like⁠—is all we have to live by, what the echo is to the sound: misleading and confusing whether the note be mocking or sad. It robs all forms of matter⁠—which, after all, is our domain⁠—of their substance, and gives a sinister reality to shadows alone. And the shadows were very real around us, but Jim by my side looked very stalwart, as though nothing⁠—not even the occult power of moonlight⁠—could rob him of his reality in my eyes. Perhaps, indeed, nothing could touch him since he had survived the assault of the dark powers. All was silent, all was still; even on the river the moonbeams slept as on a pool. It was the moment of high water, a moment of immobility that accentuated the utter isolation of this lost corner of the earth. The houses crowding along the wide shining sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping into the water in a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with black masses of shadow, were like a spectral herd of shapeless creatures pressing forward to drink in a spectral and lifeless stream. Here and there a red gleam twinkled within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living spark, significant of human affections, of shelter, of repose.

“He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny warm gleams go out one by one, that he loved to see people go to sleep under his eyes, confident in the security of tomorrow. ‘Peaceful here, eh?’ he asked. He was not eloquent, but there was a deep meaning in the words that followed. ‘Look at these houses; there’s not one where I am not trusted. Jove! I told you I would hang on. Ask any man, woman, or child⁠ ⁠…’ He paused. ‘Well, I am all right anyhow.’

“I observed quickly that he had found that out in the end. I had been sure of it, I added. He shook his head. ‘Were you?’ He pressed my arm lightly above the elbow. ‘Well, then⁠—you were right.’

“There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in that low exclamation. ‘Jove!’ he cried, ‘only think what it is to me.’ Again he pressed my arm. ‘And you asked me whether I thought of leaving. Good God! I! want to leave! Especially now after what you told me of Mr. Stein’s⁠ ⁠… Leave! Why! That’s what I was afraid of. It would have been⁠—it would have been harder than dying. No⁠—on my word. Don’t laugh. I must feel⁠—every day, every time I open my eyes⁠—that I am trusted⁠—that nobody has a right⁠—don’t you know? Leave! For where? What for? To get what?’

“I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my visit) that it was Stein’s intention to present him at once with the house and the stock of trading goods, on certain easy conditions which would make the transaction perfectly regular and valid. He began to snort and plunge at first. ‘Confound your delicacy!’ I shouted. ‘It isn’t Stein at all. It’s giving you what you had made for yourself. And in any case keep your remarks for M’Neil⁠—when you meet him in the other world. I hope it won’t happen soon.⁠ ⁠…’ He had to give in to my arguments, because all his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love⁠—all these things that made him master had made him a captive, too. He looked with an owner’s eye at the peace of the evening, at the river, at the houses, at the everlasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind, at the secrets of the land, at the pride of his own heart; but it was they that possessed him and made him their own to the innermost thought, to the slightest stir of blood, to his last breath.

“It was something to be proud of. I, too, was proud⁠—for him, if not so certain of the fabulous value of the bargain. It was wonderful. It was not so much of his fearlessness that I thought. It is strange how little account I took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to be at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by the other gifts he had displayed. He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation, his intellectual alertness in that field of thought. There was his readiness, too! Amazing. And all this had come to him in a manner like keen scent to a well-bred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was a dignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high seriousness in his stammerings. He had still his old trick of stubborn blushing. Now and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the certitude of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love the land and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous tenderness.”

XXV

“ ‘This is where I was prisoner for three days,’ he murmured to me (it was on the occasion of our visit to the Rajah), while we were making our way slowly through a kind of awestruck riot of dependants across Tunku Allang’s courtyard. ‘Filthy place, isn’t it? And I couldn’t get anything to eat either, unless I made a row about it, and then it was only a small plate of rice and a fried fish not much bigger than a stickleback⁠—confound them! Jove! I’ve been hungry prowling inside this stinking enclosure with some of these vagabonds shoving their mugs right under my nose. I had given up that famous revolver of yours at the first demand. Glad to get rid of the bally thing. Look like a fool walking about with an empty shooting-iron