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-CHAPTER 15
'I did not start in search of Jim at once, only because I had really an appointment
which I could not neglect.
Then, as ill-luck would have it, in my agent's office I was fastened upon by a
fellow fresh from Madagascar with a little scheme for a wonderful piece of business.
It had something to do with cattle and cartridges and a Prince Ravonalo something;
but the pivot of the whole affair was the stupidity of some admiral--Admiral Pierre,
I think.
Everything turned on that, and the chap couldn't find words strong enough to
express his confidence.
He had globular eyes starting out of his head with a fishy glitter, bumps on his
forehead, and wore his long hair brushed back without a parting.
He had a favourite phrase which he kept on repeating triumphantly, "The minimum of
risk with the maximum of profit is my motto.
What?"
He made my head ache, spoiled my tiffin, but got his own out of me all right; and as
soon as I had shaken him off, I made straight for the water-side.
I caught sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay.
Three native boatmen quarrelling over five annas were making an awful row at his
elbow.
He didn't hear me come up, but spun round as if the slight contact of my finger had
released a catch. "I was looking," he stammered.
I don't remember what I said, not much anyhow, but he made no difficulty in
following me to the hotel.
'He followed me as manageable as a little child, with an obedient air, with no sort
of manifestation, rather as though he had been waiting for me there to come along and
carry him off.
I need not have been so surprised as I was at his tractability.
On all the round earth, which to some seems so big and that others affect to consider
as rather smaller than a mustard-seed, he had no place where he could--what shall I
say?--where he could withdraw.
That's it! Withdraw--be alone with his loneliness.
He walked by my side very calm, glancing here and there, and once turned his head to
look after a Sidiboy fireman in a cutaway coat and yellowish trousers, whose black
face had silky gleams like a lump of anthracite coal.
I doubt, however, whether he saw anything, or even remained all the time aware of my
companionship, because if I had not edged him to the left here, or pulled him to the
right there, I believe he would have gone
straight before him in any direction till stopped by a wall or some other obstacle.
I steered him into my bedroom, and sat down at once to write letters.
This was the only place in the world (unless, perhaps, the Walpole Reef--but
that was not so handy) where he could have it out with himself without being bothered
by the rest of the universe.
The damned thing--as he had expressed it-- had not made him invisible, but I behaved
exactly as though he were.
No sooner in my chair I bent over my writing-desk like a medieval scribe, and,
but for the movement of the hand holding the pen, remained anxiously quiet.
I can't say I was frightened; but I certainly kept as still as if there had
been something dangerous in the room, that at the first hint of a movement on my part
would be provoked to pounce upon me.
There was not much in the room--you know how these bedrooms are--a sort of four-
poster bedstead under a mosquito-net, two or three chairs, the table I was writing
at, a bare floor.
A glass door opened on an upstairs verandah, and he stood with his face to it,
having a hard time with all possible privacy.
Dusk fell; I lit a candle with the greatest economy of movement and as much prudence as
though it were an illegal proceeding.
There is no doubt that he had a very hard time of it, and so had I, even to the
point, I must own, of wishing him to the devil, or on Walpole Reef at least.
It occurred to me once or twice that, after all, Chester was, perhaps, the man to deal
effectively with such a disaster. That strange idealist had found a practical
use for it at once--unerringly, as it were.
It was enough to make one suspect that, maybe, he really could see the true aspect
of things that appeared mysterious or utterly hopeless to less imaginative
persons.
I wrote and wrote; I liquidated all the arrears of my correspondence, and then went
on writing to people who had no reason whatever to expect from me a gossipy letter
about nothing at all.
At times I stole a sidelong glance. He was rooted to the spot, but convulsive
shudders ran down his back; his shoulders would heave suddenly.
He was fighting, he was fighting--mostly for his breath, as it seemed.
The massive shadows, cast all one way from the straight flame of the candle, seemed
possessed of gloomy consciousness; the immobility of the furniture had to my
furtive eye an air of attention.
I was becoming fanciful in the midst of my industrious scribbling; and though, when
the scratching of my pen stopped for a moment, there was complete silence and
stillness in the room, I suffered from that
profound disturbance and confusion of thought which is caused by a violent and
menacing uproar--of a heavy gale at sea, for instance.
Some of you may know what I mean: that mingled anxiety, distress, and irritation
with a sort of craven feeling creeping in-- not pleasant to acknowledge, but which
gives a quite special merit to one's endurance.
I don't claim any merit for standing the stress of Jim's emotions; I could take
refuge in the letters; I could have written to strangers if necessary.
Suddenly, as I was taking up a fresh sheet of notepaper, I heard a low sound, the
first sound that, since we had been shut up together, had come to my ears in the dim
stillness of the room.
I remained with my head down, with my hand arrested.
Those who have kept vigil by a sick-bed have heard such faint sounds in the
stillness of the night watches, sounds wrung from a racked body, from a weary
soul.
He pushed the glass door with such force that all the panes rang: he stepped out,
and I held my breath, straining my ears without knowing what else I expected to
hear.
He was really taking too much to heart an empty formality which to Chester's rigorous
criticism seemed unworthy the notice of a man who could see things as they were.
An empty formality; a piece of parchment.
Well, well. As to an inaccessible guano deposit, that
was another story altogether. One could intelligibly break one's heart
over that.
A feeble burst of many voices mingled with the *** of silver and glass floated up
from the dining-room below; through the open door the outer edge of the light from
my candle fell on his back faintly; beyond
all was black; he stood on the brink of a vast obscurity, like a lonely figure by the
shore of a sombre and hopeless ocean.
There was the Walpole Reef in it--to be sure--a speck in the dark void, a straw for
the drowning man.
My compassion for him took the shape of the thought that I wouldn't have liked his
people to see him at that moment. I found it trying myself.
His back was no longer shaken by his gasps; he stood straight as an arrow, faintly
visible and still; and the meaning of this stillness sank to the bottom of my soul
like lead into the water, and made it so
heavy that for a second I wished heartily that the only course left open for me was
to pay for his funeral. Even the law had done with him.
To bury him would have been such an easy kindness!
It would have been so much in accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in
putting out of sight all the reminders of our folly, of our weakness, of our
mortality; all that makes against our
efficiency--the memory of our failures, the hints of our undying fears, the bodies of
our dead friends. Perhaps he did take it too much to heart.
And if so then--Chester's offer....At this point I took up a fresh sheet and began to
write resolutely. There was nothing but myself between him
and the dark ocean.
I had a sense of responsibility. If I spoke, would that motionless and
suffering youth leap into the obscurity-- clutch at the straw?
I found out how difficult it may be sometimes to make a sound.
There is a weird power in a spoken word. And why the devil not?
I was asking myself persistently while I drove on with my writing.
All at once, on the blank page, under the very point of the pen, the two figures of
Chester and his antique partner, very distinct and complete, would dodge into
view with stride and gestures, as if
reproduced in the field of some optical toy.
I would watch them for a while. No!
They were too phantasmal and extravagant to enter into any one's fate.
And a word carries far--very far--deals destruction through time as the bullets go
flying through space.
I said nothing; and he, out there with his back to the light, as if bound and gagged
by all the invisible foes of man, made no stir and made no sound.'
CHAPTER 16
'The time was coming when I should see him loved, trusted, admired, with a legend of
strength and prowess forming round his name as though he had been the stuff of a hero.
It's true--I assure you; as true as I'm sitting here talking about him in vain.
He, on his side, had that faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire
and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no
adventurer.
He captured much honour and an Arcadian happiness (I won't say anything about
innocence) in the bush, and it was as good to him as the honour and the Arcadian
happiness of the streets to another man.
Felicity, felicity--how shall I say it?--is quaffed out of a golden cup in every
latitude: the flavour is with you--with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating
as you please.
He was of the sort that would drink deep, as you may guess from what went before.
I found him, if not exactly intoxicated, then at least flushed with the elixir at
his lips.
He had not obtained it at once.
There had been, as you know, a period of probation amongst infernal ship-chandlers,
during which he had suffered and I had worried about--about--my trust--you may
call it.
I don't know that I am completely reassured now, after beholding him in all his
brilliance.
That was my last view of him--in a strong light, dominating, and yet in complete
accord with his surroundings--with the life of the forests and with the life of men.
I own that I was impressed, but I must admit to myself that after all this is not
the lasting impression.
He was protected by his isolation, alone of his own superior kind, in close touch with
Nature, that keeps faith on such easy terms with her lovers.
But I cannot fix before my eye the image of his safety.
I shall always remember him as seen through the open door of my room, taking, perhaps,
too much to heart the mere consequences of his failure.
I am pleased, of course, that some good-- and even some splendour--came out of my
endeavours; but at times it seems to me it would have been better for my peace of mind
if I had not stood between him and Chester's confoundedly generous offer.
I wonder what his exuberant imagination would have made of Walpole islet--that most
hopelessly forsaken crumb of dry land on the face of the waters.
It is not likely I would ever have heard, for I must tell you that Chester, after
calling at some Australian port to patch up his brig-rigged sea-anachronism, steamed
out into the Pacific with a crew of twenty-
two hands all told, and the only news having a possible bearing upon the mystery
of his fate was the news of a hurricane which is supposed to have swept in its
course over the Walpole shoals, a month or so afterwards.
Not a vestige of the Argonauts ever turned up; not a sound came out of the waste.
Finis!
The Pacific is the most discreet of live, hot-tempered oceans: the chilly Antarctic
can keep a secret too, but more in the manner of a grave.
'And there is a sense of blessed finality in such discretion, which is what we all
more or less sincerely are ready to admit-- for what else is it that makes the idea of
death supportable?
End! Finis! the potent word that exorcises from
the house of life the haunting shadow of fate.
This is what--notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes and his own earnest assurances--
I miss when I look back upon Jim's success. While there's life there is hope, truly;
but there is fear too.
I don't mean to say that I regret my action, nor will I pretend that I can't
sleep o' nights in consequence; still, the idea obtrudes itself that he made so much
of his disgrace while it is the guilt alone that matters.
He was not--if I may say so--clear to me. He was not clear.
And there is a suspicion he was not clear to himself either.
There were his fine sensibilities, his fine feelings, his fine longings--a sort of
sublimated, idealised selfishness.
He was--if you allow me to say so--very fine; very fine--and very unfortunate.
A little coarser nature would not have borne the strain; it would have had to come
to terms with itself--with a sigh, with a grunt, or even with a guffaw; a still
coarser one would have remained
invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting.
'But he was too interesting or too unfortunate to be thrown to the dogs, or
even to Chester.
I felt this while I sat with my face over the paper and he fought and gasped,
struggling for his breath in that terribly stealthy way, in my room; I felt it when he
rushed out on the verandah as if to fling
himself over--and didn't; I felt it more and more all the time he remained outside,
faintly lighted on the background of night, as if standing on the shore of a sombre and
hopeless sea.
'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 ***'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 *** 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 ***.
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,
*** 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.'