feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_29_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 30
feat_summary_id: chapter 30
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 30", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim39.asp", "summary": "When Jim saw Jewel being ill treated by Cornelius, he felt like thrashing Cornelius. Cornelius was also planning to kill Jim with the help of assassins. Jewel knew about the threats on Jim's life and watched over him constantly.", "analysis": "Notes The flashback in this chapter again confuses the chronological telling of the story. The first part of the chapter describes the brutalities of Cornelius. His inhuman behavior towards his stepdaughter makes him totally detestable. Jim sympathizes with Jewel fully and wants to save her. Jewel also wants to save Jim from the threats being made on his life."}
text: 
  'He told me further that he didn't know what made him hang on--but of
  course we may guess. He sympathised deeply with the defenceless girl, at
  the mercy of that "mean, cowardly scoundrel." It appears Cornelius led
  her an awful life, stopping only short of actual ill-usage, for which
  he had not the pluck, I suppose. He insisted upon her calling him
  father--"and with respect, too--with respect," he would scream, shaking
  a little yellow fist in her face. "I am a respectable man, and what are
  you? Tell me--what are you? You think I am going to bring up somebody
  else's child and not be treated with respect? You ought to be glad I let
  you. Come--say Yes, father. . . . No? . . . You wait a bit." Thereupon
  he would begin to abuse the dead woman, till the girl would run off with
  her hands to her head. He pursued her, dashing in and out and round the
  house and amongst the sheds, would drive her into some corner, where she
  would fall on her knees stopping her ears, and then he would stand at a
  distance and declaim filthy denunciations at her back for half an hour
  at a stretch. "Your mother was a devil, a deceitful devil--and you too
  are a devil," he would shriek in a final outburst, pick up a bit of dry
  earth or a handful of mud (there was plenty of mud around the house),
  and fling it into her hair. Sometimes, though, she would hold out full
  of scorn, confronting him in silence, her face sombre and contracted,
  and only now and then uttering a word or two that would make the other
  jump and writhe with the sting. Jim told me these scenes were terrible.
  It was indeed a strange thing to come upon in a wilderness. The
  endlessness of such a subtly cruel situation was appalling--if you think
  of it. The respectable Cornelius (Inchi 'Nelyus the Malays called him,
  with a grimace that meant many things) was a much-disappointed man. I
  don't know what he had expected would be done for him in consideration
  of his marriage; but evidently the liberty to steal, and embezzle, and
  appropriate to himself for many years and in any way that suited him
  best, the goods of Stein's Trading Company (Stein kept the supply up
  unfalteringly as long as he could get his skippers to take it there) did
  not seem to him a fair equivalent for the sacrifice of his honourable
  name. Jim would have enjoyed exceedingly thrashing Cornelius within an
  inch of his life; on the other hand, the scenes were of so painful
  a character, so abominable, that his impulse would be to get out of
  earshot, in order to spare the girl's feelings. They left her agitated,
  speechless, clutching her bosom now and then with a stony,
  desperate face, and then Jim would lounge up and say unhappily,
  "Now--come--really--what's the use--you must try to eat a bit," or give
  some such mark of sympathy. Cornelius would keep on slinking through
  the doorways, across the verandah and back again, as mute as a fish, and
  with malevolent, mistrustful, underhand glances. "I can stop his game,"
  Jim said to her once. "Just say the word." And do you know what she
  answered? She said--Jim told me impressively--that if she had not been
  sure he was intensely wretched himself, she would have found the courage
  to kill him with her own hands. "Just fancy that! The poor devil of a
  girl, almost a child, being driven to talk like that," he exclaimed in
  horror. It seemed impossible to save her not only from that mean
  rascal but even from herself! It wasn't that he pitied her so much, he
  affirmed; it was more than pity; it was as if he had something on his
  conscience, while that life went on. To leave the house would have
  appeared a base desertion. He had understood at last that there was
  nothing to expect from a longer stay, neither accounts nor money, nor
  truth of any sort, but he stayed on, exasperating Cornelius to the
  verge, I won't say of insanity, but almost of courage. Meantime he felt
  all sorts of dangers gathering obscurely about him. Doramin had sent
  over twice a trusty servant to tell him seriously that he could do
  nothing for his safety unless he would recross the river again and live
  amongst the Bugis as at first. People of every condition used to call,
  often in the dead of night, in order to disclose to him plots for
  his assassination. He was to be poisoned. He was to be stabbed in the
  bath-house. Arrangements were being made to have him shot from a boat
  on the river. Each of these informants professed himself to be his very
  good friend. It was enough--he told me--to spoil a fellow's rest for
  ever. Something of the kind was extremely possible--nay, probable--but
  the lying warnings gave him only the sense of deadly scheming going on
  all around him, on all sides, in the dark. Nothing more calculated to
  shake the best of nerve. Finally, one night, Cornelius himself, with a
  great apparatus of alarm and secrecy, unfolded in solemn wheedling tones
  a little plan wherein for one hundred dollars--or even for eighty; let's
  say eighty--he, Cornelius, would procure a trustworthy man to smuggle
  Jim out of the river, all safe. There was nothing else for it now--if
  Jim cared a pin for his life. What's eighty dollars? A trifle. An
  insignificant sum. While he, Cornelius, who had to remain behind, was
  absolutely courting death by this proof of devotion to Mr. Stein's young
  friend. The sight of his abject grimacing was--Jim told me--very hard
  to bear: he clutched at his hair, beat his breast, rocked himself to
  and fro with his hands pressed to his stomach, and actually pretended to
  shed tears. "Your blood be on your own head," he squeaked at last, and
  rushed out. It is a curious question how far Cornelius was sincere in
  that performance. Jim confessed to me that he did not sleep a wink after
  the fellow had gone. He lay on his back on a thin mat spread over the
  bamboo flooring, trying idly to make out the bare rafters, and listening
  to the rustlings in the torn thatch. A star suddenly twinkled through a
  hole in the roof. His brain was in a whirl; but, nevertheless, it was on
  that very night that he matured his plan for overcoming Sherif Ali. It
  had been the thought of all the moments he could spare from the hopeless
  investigation into Stein's affairs, but the notion--he says--came to him
  then all at once. He could see, as it were, the guns mounted on the top
  of the hill. He got very hot and excited lying there; sleep was out of
  the question more than ever. He jumped up, and went out barefooted
  on the verandah. Walking silently, he came upon the girl, motionless
  against the wall, as if on the watch. In his then state of mind it did
  not surprise him to see her up, nor yet to hear her ask in an anxious
  whisper where Cornelius could be. He simply said he did not know. She
  moaned a little, and peered into the campong. Everything was very quiet.
  He was possessed by his new idea, and so full of it that he could not
  help telling the girl all about it at once. She listened, clapped her
  hands lightly, whispered softly her admiration, but was evidently on the
  alert all the time. It seems he had been used to make a confidant of
  her all along--and that she on her part could and did give him a lot of
  useful hints as to Patusan affairs there is no doubt. He assured me more
  than once that he had never found himself the worse for her advice. At
  any rate, he was proceeding to explain his plan fully to her there and
  then, when she pressed his arm once, and vanished from his side. Then
  Cornelius appeared from somewhere, and, perceiving Jim, ducked sideways,
  as though he had been shot at, and afterwards stood very still in the
  dusk. At last he came forward prudently, like a suspicious cat. "There
  were some fishermen there--with fish," he said in a shaky voice. "To
  sell fish--you understand." . . . It must have been then two o'clock in
  the morning--a likely time for anybody to hawk fish about!
  
  'Jim, however, let the statement pass, and did not give it a single
  thought. Other matters occupied his mind, and besides he had neither
  seen nor heard anything. He contented himself by saying, "Oh!" absently,
  got a drink of water out of a pitcher standing there, and leaving
  Cornelius a prey to some inexplicable emotion--that made him embrace
  with both arms the worm-eaten rail of the verandah as if his legs had
  failed--went in again and lay down on his mat to think. By-and-by he
  heard stealthy footsteps. They stopped. A voice whispered tremulously
  through the wall, "Are you asleep?" "No! What is it?" he answered
  briskly, and there was an abrupt movement outside, and then all was
  still, as if the whisperer had been startled. Extremely annoyed at this,
  Jim came out impetuously, and Cornelius with a faint shriek fled
  along the verandah as far as the steps, where he hung on to the broken
  banister. Very puzzled, Jim called out to him from the distance to know
  what the devil he meant. "Have you given your consideration to what
  I spoke to you about?" asked Cornelius, pronouncing the words with
  difficulty, like a man in the cold fit of a fever. "No!" shouted Jim in
  a passion. "I have not, and I don't intend to. I am going to live here,
  in Patusan." "You shall d-d-die h-h-here," answered Cornelius,
  still shaking violently, and in a sort of expiring voice. The whole
  performance was so absurd and provoking that Jim didn't know whether he
  ought to be amused or angry. "Not till I have seen you tucked away,
  you bet," he called out, exasperated yet ready to laugh. Half seriously
  (being excited with his own thoughts, you know) he went on shouting,
  "Nothing can touch me! You can do your damnedest." Somehow the shadowy
  Cornelius far off there seemed to be the hateful embodiment of all the
  annoyances and difficulties he had found in his path. He let himself
  go--his nerves had been over-wrought for days--and called him many
  pretty names,--swindler, liar, sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an
  extraordinary way. He admits he passed all bounds, that he was quite
  beside himself--defied all Patusan to scare him away--declared he would
  make them all dance to his own tune yet, and so on, in a menacing,
  boasting strain. Perfectly bombastic and ridiculous, he said. His ears
  burned at the bare recollection. Must have been off his chump in some
  way. . . . The girl, who was sitting with us, nodded her little head at
  me quickly, frowned faintly, and said, "I heard him," with child-like
  solemnity. He laughed and blushed. What stopped him at last, he said,
  was the silence, the complete deathlike silence, of the indistinct
  figure far over there, that seemed to hang collapsed, doubled over the
  rail in a weird immobility. He came to his senses, and ceasing suddenly,
  wondered greatly at himself. He watched for a while. Not a stir, not a
  sound. "Exactly as if the chap had died while I had been making all that
  noise," he said. He was so ashamed of himself that he went indoors in a
  hurry without another word, and flung himself down again. The row seemed
  to have done him good though, because he went to sleep for the rest of
  the night like a baby. Hadn't slept like that for weeks. "But _I_ didn't
  sleep," struck in the girl, one elbow on the table and nursing her
  cheek. "I watched." Her big eyes flashed, rolling a little, and then she
  fixed them on my face intently.'
feat_summary_name: Chapter 30
target: When Jim saw Jewel being ill treated by Cornelius, he felt like thrashing Cornelius. Cornelius was also planning to kill Jim with the help of assassins. Jewel knew about the threats on Jim's life and watched over him constantly.
feat_summary_analysis: Notes The flashback in this chapter again confuses the chronological telling of the story. The first part of the chapter describes the brutalities of Cornelius. His inhuman behavior towards his stepdaughter makes him totally detestable. Jim sympathizes with Jewel fully and wants to save her. Jewel also wants to save Jim from the threats being made on his life.