chapters 19 - 23

'I have told you these two episodes at length to show his manner of
dealing with himself under the new conditions of his life. There were
many others of the sort, more than I could count on the fingers of my
two hands. They were all equally tinged by a high-minded absurdity of
intention which made their futility profound and touching. To fling away
your daily bread so as to get your hands free for a grapple with a ghost
may be an act of prosaic heroism. Men had done it before (though we who
have lived know full well that it is not the haunted soul but the hungry
body that makes an outcast), and men who had eaten and meant to eat
every day had applauded the creditable folly. He was indeed unfortunate,
for all his recklessness could not carry him out from under the shadow.
There was always a doubt of his courage. The truth seems to be that
it is impossible to lay the ghost of a fact. You can face it or shirk
it--and I have come across a man or two who could wink at their familiar
shades. Obviously Jim was not of the winking sort; but what I could
never make up my mind about was whether his line of conduct amounted to
shirking his ghost or to facing him out.

'I strained my mental eyesight only to discover that, as with the
complexion of all our actions, the shade of difference was so delicate
that it was impossible to say. It might have been flight and it might
have been a mode of combat. To the common mind he became known as a
rolling stone, because this was the funniest part: he did after a time
become perfectly known, and even notorious, within the circle of his
wanderings (which had a diameter of, say, three thousand miles), in the
same way as an eccentric character is known to a whole countryside. For
instance, in Bankok, where he found employment with Yucker Brothers,
charterers and teak merchants, it was almost pathetic to see him go
about in sunshine hugging his secret, which was known to the very
up-country logs on the river. Schomberg, the keeper of the hotel where
he boarded, a hirsute Alsatian of manly bearing and an irrepressible
retailer of all the scandalous gossip of the place, would, with both
elbows on the table, impart an adorned version of the story to any guest
who cared to imbibe knowledge along with the more costly liquors. "And,
mind you, the nicest fellow you could meet," would be his generous
conclusion; "quite superior." It says a lot for the casual crowd that
frequented Schomberg's establishment that Jim managed to hang out
in Bankok 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 bar-room 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 boat-load 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'hote, 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
pot-house 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 Bankok 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 the sea in the offing made one smooth ascending plane, and
the outermost ships at anchor seemed to ride motionless in the sky.
He was waiting for his boat, which was being loaded at our feet
with packages of small stores for some vessel ready to leave. After
exchanging greetings, we remained silent--side by side. "Jove!" he said
suddenly, "this is killing work."

'He smiled at me; I must say he generally could manage a smile. I made
no reply. I knew very well he was not alluding to his duties; he had an
easy time of it with De Jongh. Nevertheless, as soon as he had spoken
I became completely convinced that the work was killing. I did not even
look at him. "Would you like," said I, "to leave this part of the world
altogether; try California or the West Coast? I'll see what I can
do . . ." He interrupted me a little scornfully. "What difference would
it make?" . . . I felt at once convinced that he was right. It would make
no difference; it was not relief he wanted; I seemed to perceive dimly
that what he wanted, what he was, as it were, waiting for, was something
not easy to define--something in the nature of an opportunity. I had
given him many opportunities, but they had been merely opportunities to
earn his bread. Yet what more could any man do? The position struck me
as hopeless, and poor Brierly's saying recurred to me, "Let him creep
twenty feet underground and stay there." Better that, I thought, than
this waiting above ground for the impossible. Yet one could not be sure
even of that. There and then, before his boat was three oars' lengths
away from the quay, I had made up my mind to go and consult Stein in the
evening.

'This Stein was a wealthy and respected merchant. His "house" (because
it was a house, Stein & Co., and there was some sort of partner who,
as Stein said, "looked after the Moluccas") had a large inter-island
business, with a lot of trading posts established in the most
out-of-the-way places for collecting the produce. His wealth and his
respectability were not exactly the reasons why I was anxious to seek
his advice. I desired to confide my difficulty to him because he was
one of the most trustworthy men I had ever known. The gentle light of a
simple, unwearied, as it were, and intelligent good-nature illumined his
long hairless face. It had deep downward folds, and was pale as of a
man who had always led a sedentary life--which was indeed very far from
being the case. His hair was thin, and brushed back from a massive and
lofty forehead. One fancied that at twenty he must have looked very much
like what he was now at threescore. It was a student's face; only the
eyebrows nearly all white, thick and bushy, together with the resolute
searching glance that came from under them, were not in accord with his,
I may say, learned appearance. He was tall and loose-jointed; his slight
stoop, together with an innocent smile, made him appear benevolently
ready to lend you his ear; his long arms with pale big hands had rare
deliberate gestures of a pointing out, demonstrating kind. I speak of
him at length, because under this exterior, and in conjunction with
an upright and indulgent nature, this man possessed an intrepidity of
spirit and a physical courage that could have been called reckless had
it not been like a natural function of the body--say good digestion, for
instance--completely unconscious of itself. It is sometimes said of a
man that he carries his life in his hand. Such a saying would have been
inadequate if applied to him; during the early part of his existence in
the East he had been playing ball with it. All this was in the past, but
I knew the story of his life and the origin of his fortune. He was also
a naturalist of some distinction, or perhaps I should say a learned
collector. Entomology was his special study. His collection of
Buprestidae and Longicorns--beetles all--horrible miniature monsters,
looking malevolent in death and immobility, and his cabinet of
butterflies, beautiful and hovering under the glass of cases on
lifeless wings, had spread his fame far over the earth. The name of this
merchant, adventurer, sometime adviser of a Malay sultan (to whom he
never alluded otherwise than as "my poor Mohammed Bonso"), had, on
account of a few bushels of dead insects, become known to learned
persons in Europe, who could have had no conception, and certainly would
not have cared to know anything, of his life or character. I, who knew,
considered him an eminently suitable person to receive my confidences
about Jim's difficulties as well as my own.''Late in the evening I entered his study, after traversing an imposing
but empty dining-room very dimly lit. The house was silent. I was
preceded by an elderly grim Javanese servant in a sort of livery of
white jacket and yellow sarong, who, after throwing the door open,
exclaimed low, "O master!" and stepping aside, vanished in a mysterious
way as though he had been a ghost only momentarily embodied for that
particular service. Stein turned round with the chair, and in the same
movement his spectacles seemed to get pushed up on his forehead. He
welcomed me in his quiet and humorous voice. Only one corner of the vast
room, the corner in which stood his writing-desk, was strongly lighted
by a shaded reading-lamp, and the rest of the spacious apartment melted
into shapeless gloom like a cavern. Narrow shelves filled with dark
boxes of uniform shape and colour ran round the walls, not from floor
to ceiling, but in a sombre belt about four feet broad. Catacombs of
beetles. Wooden tablets were hung above at irregular intervals. The
light reached one of them, and the word Coleoptera written in gold
letters glittered mysteriously upon a vast dimness. The glass cases
containing the collection of butterflies were ranged in three long rows
upon slender-legged little tables. One of these cases had been removed
from its place and stood on the desk, which was bestrewn with oblong
slips of paper blackened with minute handwriting.

'"So you see me--so," he said. His hand hovered over the case where
a butterfly in solitary grandeur spread out dark bronze wings, seven
inches or more across, with exquisite white veinings and a gorgeous
border of yellow spots. "Only one specimen like this they have in _your_
London, and then--no more. To my small native town this my collection I
shall bequeath. Something of me. The best."

'He bent forward in the chair and gazed intently, his chin over the
front of the case. I stood at his back. "Marvellous," he whispered, and
seemed to forget my presence. His history was curious. He had been born
in Bavaria, and when a youth of twenty-two had taken an active part in
the revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily compromised, he managed
to make his escape, and at first found a refuge with a poor republican
watchmaker in Trieste. From there he made his way to Tripoli with a
stock of cheap watches to hawk about,--not a very great opening truly,
but it turned out lucky enough, because it was there he came upon a
Dutch traveller--a rather famous man, I believe, but I don't remember
his name. It was that naturalist who, engaging him as a sort of
assistant, took him to the East. They travelled in the Archipelago
together and separately, collecting insects and birds, for four years or
more. Then the naturalist went home, and Stein, having no home to go to,
remained with an old trader he had come across in his journeys in the
interior of Celebes--if Celebes may be said to have an interior. This
old Scotsman, the only white man allowed to reside in the country at the
time, was a privileged friend of the chief ruler of Wajo States, who
was a woman. I often heard Stein relate how that chap, who was slightly
paralysed on one side, had introduced him to the native court a short
time before another stroke carried him off. He was a heavy man with
a patriarchal white beard, and of imposing stature. He came into
the council-hall where all the rajahs, pangerans, and headmen were
assembled, with the queen, a fat wrinkled woman (very free in her
speech, Stein said), reclining on a high couch under a canopy. He
dragged his leg, thumping with his stick, and grasped Stein's arm,
leading him right up to the couch. "Look, queen, and you rajahs, this is
my son," he proclaimed in a stentorian voice. "I have traded with your
fathers, and when I die he shall trade with you and your sons."

'By means of this simple formality Stein inherited the Scotsman's
privileged position and all his stock-in-trade, together with a
fortified house on the banks of the only navigable river in the country.
Shortly afterwards the old queen, who was so free in her speech, died,
and the country became disturbed by various pretenders to the throne.
Stein joined the party of a younger son, the one of whom thirty years
later he never spoke otherwise but as "my poor Mohammed Bonso." They
both became the heroes of innumerable exploits; they had wonderful
adventures, and once stood a siege in the Scotsman's house for a month,
with only a score of followers against a whole army. I believe the
natives talk of that war to this day. Meantime, it seems, Stein never
failed to annex on his own account every butterfly or beetle he could
lay hands on. After some eight years of war, negotiations, false truces,
sudden outbreaks, reconciliation, treachery, and so on, and just as
peace seemed at last permanently established, his "poor Mohammed
Bonso" was assassinated at the gate of his own royal residence while
dismounting in the highest spirits on his return from a successful
deer-hunt. This event rendered Stein's position extremely insecure,
but he would have stayed perhaps had it not been that a short time
afterwards he lost Mohammed's sister ("my dear wife the princess," he
used to say solemnly), by whom he had had a daughter--mother and child
both dying within three days of each other from some infectious fever.
He left the country, which this cruel loss had made unbearable to
him. Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What
followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which
remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream. He
had a little money; he started life afresh, and in the course of years
acquired a considerable fortune. At first he had travelled a good deal
amongst the islands, but age had stolen upon him, and of late he seldom
left his spacious house three miles out of town, with an extensive
garden, and surrounded by stables, offices, and bamboo cottages for
his servants and dependants, of whom he had many. He drove in his buggy
every morning to town, where he had an office with white and Chinese
clerks. He owned a small fleet of schooners and native craft, and dealt
in island produce on a large scale. For the rest he lived solitary,
but not misanthropic, with his books and his collection, classing and
arranging specimens, corresponding with entomologists in Europe, writing
up a descriptive catalogue of his treasures. Such was the history of
the man whom I had come to consult upon Jim's case without any definite
hope. Simply to hear what he would have to say would have been a relief.
I was very anxious, but I respected the intense, almost passionate,
absorption with which he looked at a butterfly, as though on the bronze
sheen of these frail wings, in the white tracings, in the gorgeous
markings, he could see other things, an image of something as perishable
and defying destruction as these delicate and lifeless tissues
displaying a splendour unmarred by death.

'"Marvellous!" he repeated, looking up at me. "Look! The beauty--but
that is nothing--look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And
so strong! And so exact! This is Nature--the balance of colossal forces.
Every star is so--and every blade of grass stands so--and the mighty
Kosmos ib perfect equilibrium produces--this. This wonder; this
masterpiece of Nature--the great artist."

'"Never heard an entomologist go on like this," I observed cheerfully.
"Masterpiece! And what of man?"

'"Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece," he said, keeping his
eyes fixed on the glass case. "Perhaps the artist was a little mad. Eh?
What do you think? Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is
not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should
he want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making
a great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the
blades of grass? . . ."

'"Catching butterflies," I chimed in.

'He smiled, threw himself back in his chair, and stretched his legs.
"Sit down," he said. "I captured this rare specimen myself one very fine
morning. And I had a very big emotion. You don't know what it is for a
collector to capture such a rare specimen. You can't know."

'I smiled at my ease in a rocking-chair. His eyes seemed to look far
beyond the wall at which they stared; and he narrated how, one night,
a messenger arrived from his "poor Mohammed," requiring his presence
at the "residenz"--as he called it--which was distant some nine or ten
miles by a bridle-path over a cultivated plain, with patches of forest
here and there. Early in the morning he started from his fortified
house, after embracing his little Emma, and leaving the "princess," his
wife, in command. He described how she came with him as far as the
gate, walking with one hand on the neck of his horse; she had on a white
jacket, gold pins in her hair, and a brown leather belt over her left
shoulder with a revolver in it. "She talked as women will talk," he
said, "telling me to be careful, and to try to get back before dark, and
what a great wickedness it was for me to go alone. We were at war, and
the country was not safe; my men were putting up bullet-proof shutters
to the house and loading their rifles, and she begged me to have no fear
for her. She could defend the house against anybody till I returned. And
I laughed with pleasure a little. I liked to see her so brave and young
and strong. I too was young then. At the gate she caught hold of my
hand and gave it one squeeze and fell back. I made my horse stand still
outside till I heard the bars of the gate put up behind me. There was a
great enemy of mine, a great noble--and a great rascal too--roaming with
a band in the neighbourhood. I cantered for four or five miles; there
had been rain in the night, but the musts had gone up, up--and the
face of the earth was clean; it lay smiling to me, so fresh and
innocent--like a little child. Suddenly somebody fires a volley--twenty
shots at least it seemed to me. I hear bullets sing in my ear, and
my hat jumps to the back of my head. It was a little intrigue, you
understand. They got my poor Mohammed to send for me and then laid
that ambush. I see it all in a minute, and I think--This wants a little
management. My pony snort, jump, and stand, and I fall slowly forward
with my head on his mane. He begins to walk, and with one eye I could
see over his neck a faint cloud of smoke hanging in front of a clump
of bamboos to my left. I think--Aha! my friends, why you not wait long
enough before you shoot? This is not yet gelungen. Oh no! I get hold of
my revolver with my right hand--quiet--quiet. After all, there were only
seven of these rascals. They get up from the grass and start running
with their sarongs tucked up, waving spears above their heads, and
yelling to each other to look out and catch the horse, because I was
dead. I let them come as close as the door here, and then bang, bang,
bang--take aim each time too. One more shot I fire at a man's back, but
I miss. Too far already. And then I sit alone on my horse with the clean
earth smiling at me, and there are the bodies of three men lying on the
ground. One was curled up like a dog, another on his back had an arm
over his eyes as if to keep off the sun, and the third man he draws up
his leg very slowly and makes it with one kick straight again. I watch
him very carefully from my horse, but there is no more--bleibt ganz
ruhig--keep still, so. And as I looked at his face for some sign of life
I observed something like a faint shadow pass over his forehead. It was
the shadow of this butterfly. Look at the form of the wing. This species
fly high with a strong flight. I raised my eyes and I saw him fluttering
away. I think--Can it be possible? And then I lost him. I dismounted
and went on very slow, leading my horse and holding my revolver with one
hand and my eyes darting up and down and right and left, everywhere! At
last I saw him sitting on a small heap of dirt ten feet away. At once
my heart began to beat quick. I let go my horse, keep my revolver in one
hand, and with the other snatch my soft felt hat off my head. One step.
Steady. Another step. Flop! I got him! When I got up I shook like a leaf
with excitement, and when I opened these beautiful wings and made sure
what a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen I had, my head went
round and my legs became so weak with emotion that I had to sit on the
ground. I had greatly desired to possess myself of a specimen of that
species when collecting for the professor. I took long journeys and
underwent great privations; I had dreamed of him in my sleep, and here
suddenly I had him in my fingers--for myself! In the words of the poet"
(he pronounced it "boet")--

     "'So halt' ich's endlich denn in meinen Handen,
     Und nenn' es in gewissem Sinne mein.'"

He gave to the last word the emphasis of a suddenly lowered voice, and
withdrew his eyes slowly from my face. He began to charge a long-stemmed
pipe busily and in silence, then, pausing with his thumb on the orifice
of the bowl, looked again at me significantly.

'"Yes, my good friend. On that day I had nothing to desire; I had
greatly annoyed my principal enemy; I was young, strong; I had
friendship; I had the love" (he said "lof") "of woman, a child I had,
to make my heart very full--and even what I had once dreamed in my sleep
had come into my hand too!"

'He struck a match, which flared violently. His thoughtful placid face
twitched once.

'"Friend, wife, child," he said slowly, gazing at the small
flame--"phoo!" The match was blown out. He sighed and turned again to
the glass case. The frail and beautiful wings quivered faintly, as if
his breath had for an instant called back to life that gorgeous object
of his dreams.

'"The work," he began suddenly, pointing to the scattered slips, and in
his usual gentle and cheery tone, "is making great progress. I have been
this rare specimen describing. . . . Na! And what is your good news?"

'"To tell you the truth, Stein," I said with an effort that surprised
me, "I came here to describe a specimen. . . ."

'"Butterfly?" he asked, with an unbelieving and humorous eagerness.

'"Nothing so perfect," I answered, feeling suddenly dispirited with all
sorts of doubts. "A man!"

'"Ach so!" he murmured, and his smiling countenance, turned to me,
became grave. Then after looking at me for a while he said slowly,
"Well--I am a man too."

'Here you have him as he was; he knew how to be so generously
encouraging as to make a scrupulous man hesitate on the brink of
confidence; but if I did hesitate it was not for long.

'He heard me out, sitting with crossed legs. Sometimes his head would
disappear completely in a great eruption of smoke, and a sympathetic
growl would come out from the cloud. When I finished he uncrossed his
legs, laid down his pipe, leaned forward towards me earnestly with his
elbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of his fingers together.

'"I understand very well. He is romantic."

'He had diagnosed the case for me, and at first I was quite startled to
find how simple it was; and indeed our conference resembled so much a
medical consultation--Stein, of learned aspect, sitting in an arm-chair
before his desk; I, anxious, in another, facing him, but a little to one
side--that it seemed natural to ask--

'"What's good for it?"

'He lifted up a long forefinger.

'"There is only one remedy! One thing alone can us from being ourselves
cure!" The finger came down on the desk with a smart rap. The case
which he had made to look so simple before became if possible still
simpler--and altogether hopeless. There was a pause. "Yes," said I,
"strictly speaking, the question is not how to get cured, but how to
live."

'He approved with his head, a little sadly as it seemed. "Ja! ja! In
general, adapting the words of your great poet: That is the
question. . . ." He went on nodding sympathetically. . . . "How to be!
Ach! How to be."

'He stood up with the tips of his fingers resting on the desk.

'"We want in so many different ways to be," he began again. "This
magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it;
but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want to be so,
and again he want to be so. . . ." He moved his hand up, then down. . . .
"He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil--and every time he
shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow--so fine as he can
never be. . . . In a dream. . . ."

'He lowered the glass lid, the automatic lock clicked sharply, and
taking up the case in both hands he bore it religiously away to its
place, passing out of the bright circle of the lamp into the ring of
fainter light--into shapeless dusk at last. It had an odd effect--as
if these few steps had carried him out of this concrete and perplexed
world. His tall form, as though robbed of its substance, hovered
noiselessly over invisible things with stooping and indefinite
movements; his voice, heard in that remoteness where he could be
glimpsed mysteriously busy with immaterial cares, was no longer
incisive, seemed to roll voluminous and grave--mellowed by distance.

'"And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the
real trouble--the heart pain--the world pain. I tell you, my friend, it
is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for
the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough. . . .
Ja! . . . And all the time you are such a fine fellow too! Wie? Was?
Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha! ha!"

'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed
boisterously.

'"Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into
a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into
the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns--nicht wahr?
. . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit
yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water
make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me--how to be?"

'His voice leaped up extraordinarily strong, as though away there in
the dusk he had been inspired by some whisper of knowledge. "I will tell
you! For that too there is only one way."

'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring of
faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the lamp. His
extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his deepset eyes seemed
to pierce through me, but his twitching lips uttered no word, and the
austere exaltation of a certitude seen in the dusk vanished from his
face. The hand that had been pointing at my breast fell, and by-and-by,
coming a step nearer, he laid it gently on my shoulder. There were
things, he said mournfully, that perhaps could never be told, only he
had lived so much alone that sometimes he forgot--he forgot. The light
had destroyed the assurance which had inspired him in the distant
shadows. He sat down and, with both elbows on the desk, rubbed his
forehead. "And yet it is true--it is true. In the destructive element
immerse." . . . He spoke in a subdued tone, without looking at me, one
hand on each side of his face. "That was the way. To follow the dream,
and again to follow the dream--and so--ewig--usque ad finem. . . ." The
whisper of his conviction seemed to open before me a vast and uncertain
expanse, as of a crepuscular horizon on a plain at dawn--or was it,
perchance, at the coming of the night? One had not the courage to
decide; but it was a charming and deceptive light, throwing the
impalpable poesy of its dimness over pitfalls--over graves. His life had
begun in sacrifice, in enthusiasm for generous ideas; he had travelled
very far, on various ways, on strange paths, and whatever he followed
it had been without faltering, and therefore without shame and without
regret. In so far he was right. That was the way, no doubt. Yet for all
that, the great plain on which men wander amongst graves and pitfalls
remained very desolate under the impalpable poesy of its crepuscular
light, overshadowed in the centre, circled with a bright edge as if
surrounded by an abyss full of flames. When at last I broke the silence
it was to express the opinion that no one could be more romantic than
himself.

'He shook his head slowly, and afterwards looked at me with a patient
and inquiring glance. It was a shame, he said. There we were sitting
and talking like two boys, instead of putting our heads together to find
something practical--a practical remedy--for the evil--for the great
evil--he repeated, with a humorous and indulgent smile. For all that,
our talk did not grow more practical. We avoided pronouncing Jim's name
as though we had tried to keep flesh and blood out of our discussion,
or he were nothing but an erring spirit, a suffering and nameless shade.
"Na!" said Stein, rising. "To-night you sleep here, and in the morning
we shall do something practical--practical. . . ." He lit a two-branched
candlestick and led the way. We passed through empty dark rooms,
escorted by gleams from the lights Stein carried. They glided along the
waxed floors, sweeping here and there over the polished surface of
a table, leaped upon a fragmentary curve of a piece of furniture, or
flashed perpendicularly in and out of distant mirrors, while the forms
of two men and the flicker of two flames could be seen for a moment
stealing silently across the depths of a crystalline void. He walked
slowly a pace in advance with stooping courtesy; there was a profound,
as it were a listening, quietude on his face; the long flaxen locks
mixed with white threads were scattered thinly upon his slightly bowed
neck.

'"He is romantic--romantic," he repeated. "And that is very bad--very
bad. . . . Very good, too," he added. "But _is he_?" I queried.

'"Gewiss," he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum, but
without looking at me. "Evident! What is it that by inward pain makes
him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes him--exist?"

'At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim's existence--starting
from a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by clouds of
dust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in a material
world--but his imperishable reality came to me with a convincing, with
an irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in our progress
through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams of light and
the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with flickering flames
within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had approached nearer to
absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half
submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. "Perhaps he is," I
admitted with a slight laugh, whose unexpectedly loud reverberation
made me lower my voice directly; "but I am sure you are." With his head
dropping on his breast and the light held high he began to walk again.
"Well--I exist, too," he said.

'He preceded me. My eyes followed his movements, but what I did see was
not the head of the firm, the welcome guest at afternoon receptions,
the correspondent of learned societies, the entertainer of stray
naturalists; I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had known
how to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humble
surroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war--in
all the exalted elements of romance. At the door of my room he faced me.
"Yes," I said, as though carrying on a discussion, "and amongst other
things you dreamed foolishly of a certain butterfly; but when one
fine morning your dream came in your way you did not let the splendid
opportunity escape. Did you? Whereas he . . ." Stein lifted his hand.
"And do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams
I had lost that had come in my way?" He shook his head regretfully. "It
seems to me that some would have been very fine--if I had made them come
true. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don't know." "Whether his
were fine or not," I said, "he knows of one which he certainly did not
catch." "Everybody knows of one or two like that," said Stein; "and that
is the trouble--the great trouble. . . ."

'He shook hands on the threshold, peered into my room under his
raised arm. "Sleep well. And to-morrow we must do something
practical--practical. . . ."

'Though his own room was beyond mine I saw him return the way he came.
He was going back to his butterflies.'
'I don't suppose any of you have ever heard of Patusan?' Marlow resumed,
after a silence occupied in the careful lighting of a cigar. 'It does
not matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us of
a night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphere
of its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to the
astronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition,
weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of its
light--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering. Thus with Patusan. It
was referred to knowingly in the inner government circles in Batavia,
especially as to its irregularities and aberrations, and it was known
by name to some few, very few, in the mercantile world. Nobody, however,
had been there, and I suspect no one desired to go there in person,
just as an astronomer, I should fancy, would strongly object to being
transported into a distant heavenly body, where, parted from his earthly
emoluments, he would be bewildered by the view of an unfamiliar heavens.
However, neither heavenly bodies nor astronomers have anything to do
with Patusan. It was Jim who went there. I only meant you to understand
that had Stein arranged to send him into a star of the fifth magnitude
the change could not have been greater. He left his earthly failings
behind him and what sort of reputation he had, and there was a totally
new set of conditions for his imaginative faculty to work upon. Entirely
new, entirely remarkable. And he got hold of them in a remarkable way.

'Stein was the man who knew more about Patusan than anybody else. More
than was known in the government circles I suspect. I have no doubt he
had been there, either in his butterfly-hunting days or later on, when
he tried in his incorrigible way to season with a pinch of romance the
fattening dishes of his commercial kitchen. There were very few places
in the Archipelago he had not seen in the original dusk of their being,
before light (and even electric light) had been carried into them for
the sake of better morality and--and--well--the greater profit, too.
It was at breakfast of the morning following our talk about Jim that he
mentioned the place, after I had quoted poor Brierly's remark: "Let him
creep twenty feet underground and stay there." He looked up at me with
interested attention, as though I had been a rare insect. "This could be
done, too," he remarked, sipping his coffee. "Bury him in some sort,"
I explained. "One doesn't like to do it of course, but it would be the
best thing, seeing what he is." "Yes; he is young," Stein mused. "The
youngest human being now in existence," I affirmed. "Schon. There's
Patusan," he went on in the same tone. . . . "And the woman is dead
now," he added incomprehensibly.

'Of course I don't know that story; I can only guess that once before
Patusan had been used as a grave for some sin, transgression, or
misfortune. It is impossible to suspect Stein. The only woman that
had ever existed for him was the Malay girl he called "My wife the
princess," or, more rarely, in moments of expansion, "the mother of my
Emma." Who was the woman he had mentioned in connection with Patusan I
can't say; but from his allusions I understand she had been an educated
and very good-looking Dutch-Malay girl, with a tragic or perhaps only a
pitiful history, whose most painful part no doubt was her marriage with
a Malacca Portuguese who had been clerk in some commercial house in
the Dutch colonies. I gathered from Stein that this man was an
unsatisfactory person in more ways than one, all being more or less
indefinite and offensive. It was solely for his wife's sake that Stein
had appointed him manager of Stein & Co.'s trading post in Patusan;
but commercially the arrangement was not a success, at any rate for
the firm, and now the woman had died, Stein was disposed to try another
agent there. The Portuguese, whose name was Cornelius, considered
himself a very deserving but ill-used person, entitled by his abilities
to a better position. This man Jim would have to relieve. "But I don't
think he will go away from the place," remarked Stein. "That has nothing
to do with me. It was only for the sake of the woman that I . . . But as
I think there is a daughter left, I shall let him, if he likes to stay,
keep the old house."

'Patusan is a remote district of a native-ruled state, and the chief
settlement bears the same name. At a point on the river about forty
miles from the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can
be seen rising above the level of the forests the summits of two steep
hills very close together, and separated by what looks like a deep
fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a matter of fact, the
valley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the appearance from the
settlement is of one irregularly conical hill split in two, and with the
two halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after the full, the
moon, as seen from the open space in front of Jim's house (he had a very
fine house in the native style when I visited him), rose exactly behind
these hills, its diffused light at first throwing the two masses into
intensely black relief, and then the nearly perfect disc, glowing
ruddily, appeared, gliding upwards between the sides of the chasm, till
it floated away above the summits, as if escaping from a yawning grave
in gentle triumph. "Wonderful effect," said Jim by my side. "Worth
seeing. Is it not?"

'And this question was put with a note of personal pride that made me
smile, as though he had had a hand in regulating that unique spectacle.
He had regulated so many things in Patusan--things that would have
appeared as much beyond his control as the motions of the moon and the
stars.

'It was inconceivable. That was the distinctive quality of the part into
which Stein and I had tumbled him unwittingly, with no other notion than
to get him out of the way; out of his own way, be it understood. That
was our main purpose, though, I own, I might have had another motive
which had influenced me a little. I was about to go home for a time;
and it may be I desired, more than I was aware of myself, to dispose of
him--to dispose of him, you understand--before I left. I was going home,
and he had come to me from there, with his miserable trouble and his
shadowy claim, like a man panting under a burden in a mist. I cannot
say I had ever seen him distinctly--not even to this day, after I had
my last view of him; but it seemed to me that the less I understood
the more I was bound to him in the name of that doubt which is the
inseparable part of our knowledge. I did not know so much more about
myself. And then, I repeat, I was going home--to that home distant
enough for all its hearthstones to be like one hearthstone, by which the
humblest of us has the right to sit. We wander in our thousands over the
face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the
seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me
that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account.
We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--those whom we
obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most
free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties,--even those for whom
home holds no dear face, no familiar voice,--even they have to meet the
spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its
valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees--a
mute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy,
to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear
conscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed
very few of us have the will or the capacity to look consciously under
the surface of familiar emotions. There are the girls we love, the men
we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the
pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with
clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I
think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call
their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to
meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit--it is those who
understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular
right to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us understand, but
we all feel it though, and I say _all_ without exception, because those
who do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass has its spot on earth
whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land
from which he draws his faith together with his life. I don't know
how much Jim understood; but I know he felt, he felt confusedly but
powerfully, the demand of some such truth or some such illusion--I don't
care how you call it, there is so little difference, and the difference
means so little. The thing is that in virtue of his feeling he mattered.
He would never go home now. Not he. Never. Had he been capable of
picturesque manifestations he would have shuddered at the thought
and made you shudder too. But he was not of that sort, though he was
expressive enough in his way. Before the idea of going home he would
grow desperately stiff and immovable, with lowered chin and pouted lips,
and with those candid blue eyes of his glowering darkly under a frown,
as if before something unbearable, as if before something revolting.
There was imagination in that hard skull of his, over which the thick
clustering hair fitted like a cap. As to me, I have no imagination (I
would be more certain about him today, if I had), and I do not mean to
imply that I figured to myself the spirit of the land uprising above the
white cliffs of Dover, to ask me what I--returning with no bones broken,
so to speak--had done with my very young brother. I could not make
such a mistake. I knew very well he was of those about whom there is
no inquiry; I had seen better men go out, disappear, vanish utterly,
without provoking a sound of curiosity or sorrow. The spirit of
the land, as becomes the ruler of great enterprises, is careless of
innumerable lives. Woe to the stragglers! We exist only in so far as we
hang together. He had straggled in a way; he had not hung on; but he was
aware of it with an intensity that made him touching, just as a man's
more intense life makes his death more touching than the death of a
tree. I happened to be handy, and I happened to be touched. That's all
there is to it. I was concerned as to the way he would go out. It would
have hurt me if, for instance, he had taken to drink. The earth is so
small that I was afraid of, some day, being waylaid by a blear-eyed,
swollen-faced, besmirched loafer, with no soles to his canvas shoes,
and with a flutter of rags about the elbows, who, on the strength of old
acquaintance, would ask for a loan of five dollars. You know the awful
jaunty bearing of these scarecrows coming to you from a decent past,
the rasping careless voice, the half-averted impudent glances--those
meetings more trying to a man who believes in the solidarity of our
lives than the sight of an impenitent death-bed to a priest. That, to
tell you the truth, was the only danger I could see for him and for
me; but I also mistrusted my want of imagination. It might even come
to something worse, in some way it was beyond my powers of fancy to
foresee. He wouldn't let me forget how imaginative he was, and your
imaginative people swing farther in any direction, as if given a longer
scope of cable in the uneasy anchorage of life. They do. They take to
drink too. It may be I was belittling him by such a fear. How could I
tell? Even Stein could say no more than that he was romantic. I only
knew he was one of us. And what business had he to be romantic? I
am telling you so much about my own instinctive feelings and bemused
reflections because there remains so little to be told of him. He
existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for
you. I've led him out by the hand; I have paraded him before you. Were
my commonplace fears unjust? I won't say--not even now. You may be able
to tell better, since the proverb has it that the onlookers see most of
the game. At any rate, they were superfluous. He did not go out, not at
all; on the contrary, he came on wonderfully, came on straight as a die
and in excellent form, which showed that he could stay as well as spurt.
I ought to be delighted, for it is a victory in which I had taken my
part; but I am not so pleased as I would have expected to be. I ask
myself whether his rush had really carried him out of that mist in
which he loomed interesting if not very big, with floating outlines--a
straggler yearning inconsolably for his humble place in the ranks. And
besides, the last word is not said,--probably shall never be said. Are
not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our
stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given
up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be
pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to
say our last word--the last word of our love, of our desire, faith,
remorse, submissions, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be
shaken, I suppose--at least, not by us who know so many truths about
either. My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved
greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in
the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds.
I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your
imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is
respectable to have no illusions--and safe--and profitable--and dull.
Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that
light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow
of sparks struck from a cold stone--and as short-lived, alas!'

'The conquest of love, honour, men's confidence--the pride of it, the
power of it, are fit materials for a heroic tale; only our minds are
struck by the externals of such a success, and to Jim's successes there
were no externals. Thirty miles of forest shut it off from the sight of
an indifferent world, and the noise of the white surf along the coast
overpowered the voice of fame. The stream of civilisation, as if divided
on a headland a hundred miles north of Patusan, branches east and
south-east, leaving its plains and valleys, its old trees and its old
mankind, neglected and isolated, such as an insignificant and crumbling
islet between the two branches of a mighty, devouring stream. You find
the name of the country pretty often in collections of old voyages. The
seventeenth-century traders went there for pepper, because the passion
for pepper seemed to burn like a flame of love in the breast of Dutch
and English adventurers about the time of James the First. Where
wouldn't they go for pepper! For a bag of pepper they would cut each
other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls,
of which they were so careful otherwise: the bizarre obstinacy of that
desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes--the unknown seas, the
loathsome and strange diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence,
and despair. It made them great! By heavens! it made them heroic; and
it made them pathetic too in their craving for trade with the inflexible
death levying its toll on young and old. It seems impossible to believe
that mere greed could hold men to such a steadfastness of purpose, to
such a blind persistence in endeavour and sacrifice. And indeed those
who adventured their persons and lives risked all they had for a slender
reward. They left their bones to lie bleaching on distant shores, so
that wealth might flow to the living at home. To us, their less tried
successors, they appear magnified, not as agents of trade but as
instruments of a recorded destiny, pushing out into the unknown in
obedience to an inward voice, to an impulse beating in the blood, to a
dream of the future. They were wonderful; and it must be owned they
were ready for the wonderful. They recorded it complacently in their
sufferings, in the aspect of the seas, in the customs of strange
nations, in the glory of splendid rulers.

'In Patusan they had found lots of pepper, and had been impressed by the
magnificence and the wisdom of the Sultan; but somehow, after a century
of chequered intercourse, the country seems to drop gradually out of the
trade. Perhaps the pepper had given out. Be it as it may, nobody cares
for it now; the glory has departed, the Sultan is an imbecile youth
with two thumbs on his left hand and an uncertain and beggarly revenue
extorted from a miserable population and stolen from him by his many
uncles.

'This of course I have from Stein. He gave me their names and a short
sketch of the life and character of each. He was as full of information
about native states as an official report, but infinitely more amusing.
He _had_ to know. He traded in so many, and in some districts--as in
Patusan, for instance--his firm was the only one to have an agency by
special permit from the Dutch authorities. The Government trusted his
discretion, and it was understood that he took all the risks. The men
he employed understood that too, but he made it worth their while
apparently. He was perfectly frank with me over the breakfast-table in
the morning. As far as he was aware (the last news was thirteen months
old, he stated precisely), utter insecurity for life and property was
the normal condition. There were in Patusan antagonistic forces, and one
of them was Rajah Allang, the worst of the Sultan's uncles, the governor
of the river, who did the extorting and the stealing, and ground down
to the point of extinction the country-born Malays, who, utterly
defenceless, had not even the resource of emigrating--"For indeed," as
Stein remarked, "where could they go, and how could they get away?"
No doubt they did not even desire to get away. The world (which is
circumscribed by lofty impassable mountains) has been given into the
hand of the high-born, and _this_ Rajah they knew: he was of their own
royal house. I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman later on. He
was a dirty, little, used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth,
who swallowed an opium pill every two hours, and in defiance of common
decency wore his hair uncovered and falling in wild stringy locks about
his wizened grimy face. When giving audience he would clamber upon a
sort of narrow stage erected in a hall like a ruinous barn with a rotten
bamboo floor, through the cracks of which you could see, twelve or
fifteen feet below, the heaps of refuse and garbage of all kinds lying
under the house. That is where and how he received us when, accompanied
by Jim, I paid him a visit of ceremony. There were about forty people in
the room, and perhaps three times as many in the great courtyard below.
There was constant movement, coming and going, pushing and murmuring,
at our backs. A few youths in gay silks glared from the distance; the
majority, slaves and humble dependants, were half naked, in ragged
sarongs, dirty with ashes and mud-stains. I had never seen Jim look so
grave, so self-possessed, in an impenetrable, impressive way. In the
midst of these dark-faced men, his stalwart figure in white apparel,
the gleaming clusters of his fair hair, seemed to catch all the sunshine
that trickled through the cracks in the closed shutters of that dim
hall, with its walls of mats and a roof of thatch. He appeared like a
creature not only of another kind but of another essence. Had they not
seen him come up in a canoe they might have thought he had descended
upon them from the clouds. He did, however, come in a crazy dug-out,
sitting (very still and with his knees together, for fear of overturning
the thing)--sitting on a tin box--which I had lent him--nursing on his
lap a revolver of the Navy pattern--presented by me on parting--which,
through an interposition of Providence, or through some wrong-headed
notion, that was just like him, or else from sheer instinctive sagacity,
he had decided to carry unloaded. That's how he ascended the Patusan
river. Nothing could have been more prosaic and more unsafe, more
extravagantly casual, more lonely. Strange, this fatality that would
cast the complexion of a flight upon all his acts, of impulsive
unreflecting desertion of a jump into the unknown.

'It is precisely the casualness of it that strikes me most. Neither
Stein nor I had a clear conception of what might be on the other side
when we, metaphorically speaking, took him up and hove him over the
wall with scant ceremony. At the moment I merely wished to achieve his
disappearance; Stein characteristically enough had a sentimental motive.
He had a notion of paying off (in kind, I suppose) the old debt he had
never forgotten. Indeed he had been all his life especially friendly to
anybody from the British Isles. His late benefactor, it is true, was a
Scot--even to the length of being called Alexander McNeil--and Jim came
from a long way south of the Tweed; but at the distance of six or
seven thousand miles Great Britain, though never diminished, looks
foreshortened enough even to its own children to rob such details of
their importance. Stein was excusable, and his hinted intentions were
so generous that I begged him most earnestly to keep them secret for
a time. I felt that no consideration of personal advantage should be
allowed to influence Jim; that not even the risk of such influence
should be run. We had to deal with another sort of reality. He wanted
a refuge, and a refuge at the cost of danger should be offered
him--nothing more.

'Upon every other point I was perfectly frank with him, and I even (as
I believed at the time) exaggerated the danger of the undertaking. As
a matter of fact I did not do it justice; his first day in Patusan was
nearly his last--would have been his last if he had not been so reckless
or so hard on himself and had condescended to load that revolver. I
remember, as I unfolded our precious scheme for his retreat, how his
stubborn but weary resignation was gradually replaced by surprise,
interest, wonder, and by boyish eagerness. This was a chance he had been
dreaming of. He couldn't think how he merited that I . . . He would be
shot if he could see to what he owed . . . And it was Stein, Stein the
merchant, who . . . but of course it was me he had to . . . I cut him
short. He was not articulate, and his gratitude caused me inexplicable
pain. I told him that if he owed this chance to any one especially, it
was to an old Scot of whom he had never heard, who had died many years
ago, of whom little was remembered besides a roaring voice and a rough
sort of honesty. There was really no one to receive his thanks. Stein
was passing on to a young man the help he had received in his own young
days, and I had done no more than to mention his name. Upon this he
coloured, and, twisting a bit of paper in his fingers, he remarked
bashfully that I had always trusted him.

'I admitted that such was the case, and added after a pause that I
wished he had been able to follow my example. "You think I don't?" he
asked uneasily, and remarked in a mutter that one had to get some sort
of show first; then brightening up, and in a loud voice he protested he
would give me no occasion to regret my confidence, which--which . . .

'"Do not misapprehend," I interrupted. "It is not in your power to make
me regret anything." There would be no regrets; but if there were, it
would be altogether my own affair: on the other hand, I wished him to
understand clearly that this arrangement, this--this--experiment, was
his own doing; he was responsible for it and no one else. "Why? Why," he
stammered, "this is the very thing that I . . ." I begged him not to
be dense, and he looked more puzzled than ever. He was in a fair way
to make life intolerable to himself . . . "Do you think so?" he asked,
disturbed; but in a moment added confidently, "I was going on though.
Was I not?" It was impossible to be angry with him: I could not help a
smile, and told him that in the old days people who went on like
this were on the way of becoming hermits in a wilderness. "Hermits be
hanged!" he commented with engaging impulsiveness. Of course he didn't
mind a wilderness. . . . "I was glad of it," I said. That was where
he would be going to. He would find it lively enough, I ventured to
promise. "Yes, yes," he said, keenly. He had shown a desire, I continued
inflexibly, to go out and shut the door after him. . . . "Did I?" he
interrupted in a strange access of gloom that seemed to envelop him
from head to foot like the shadow of a passing cloud. He was wonderfully
expressive after all. Wonderfully! "Did I?" he repeated bitterly. "You
can't say I made much noise about it. And I can keep it up, too--only,
confound it! you show me a door." . . . "Very well. Pass on," I struck
in. I could make him a solemn promise that it would be shut behind him
with a vengeance. His fate, whatever it was, would be ignored,
because the country, for all its rotten state, was not judged ripe
for interference. Once he got in, it would be for the outside world as
though he had never existed. He would have nothing but the soles of his
two feet to stand upon, and he would have first to find his ground at
that. "Never existed--that's it, by Jove," he murmured to himself. His
eyes, fastened upon my lips, sparkled. If he had thoroughly understood
the conditions, I concluded, he had better jump into the first gharry he
could see and drive on to Stein's house for his final instructions. He
flung out of the room before I had fairly finished speaking.'

'He did not return till next morning. He had been kept to dinner and for
the night. There never had been such a wonderful man as Mr. Stein. He
had in his pocket a letter for Cornelius ("the Johnnie who's going to
get the sack," he explained, with a momentary drop in his elation), and
he exhibited with glee a silver ring, such as natives use, worn down
very thin and showing faint traces of chasing.

'This was his introduction to an old chap called Doramin--one of the
principal men out there--a big pot--who had been Mr. Stein's friend in
that country where he had all these adventures. Mr. Stein called him
"war-comrade." War-comrade was good. Wasn't it? And didn't Mr. Stein
speak English wonderfully well? Said he had learned it in Celebes--of
all places! That was awfully funny. Was it not? He did speak with an
accent--a twang--did I notice? That chap Doramin had given him the ring.
They had exchanged presents when they parted for the last time. Sort of
promising eternal friendship. He called it fine--did I not? They had
to make a dash for dear life out of the country when that
Mohammed--Mohammed--What's-his-name had been killed. I knew the story,
of course. Seemed a beastly shame, didn't it? . . .

'He ran on like this, forgetting his plate, with a knife and fork in
hand (he had found me at tiffin), slightly flushed, and with his eyes
darkened many shades, which was with him a sign of excitement. The ring
was a sort of credential--("It's like something you read of in books,"
he threw in appreciatively)--and Doramin would do his best for him. Mr.
Stein had been the means of saving that chap's life on some occasion;
purely by accident, Mr. Stein had said, but he--Jim--had his own opinion
about that. Mr. Stein was just the man to look out for such accidents.
No matter. Accident or purpose, this would serve his turn immensely.
Hoped to goodness the jolly old beggar had not gone off the hooks
meantime. Mr. Stein could not tell. There had been no news for more
than a year; they were kicking up no end of an all-fired row amongst
themselves, and the river was closed. Jolly awkward, this; but, no fear;
he would manage to find a crack to get in.

'He impressed, almost frightened, me with his elated rattle. He was
voluble like a youngster on the eve of a long holiday with a prospect of
delightful scrapes, and such an attitude of mind in a grown man and in
this connection had in it something phenomenal, a little mad, dangerous,
unsafe. I was on the point of entreating him to take things seriously
when he dropped his knife and fork (he had begun eating, or rather
swallowing food, as it were, unconsciously), and began a search all
round his plate. The ring! The ring! Where the devil . . . Ah! Here it
was . . . He closed his big hand on it, and tried all his pockets one
after another. Jove! wouldn't do to lose the thing. He meditated gravely
over his fist. Had it? Would hang the bally affair round his neck! And
he proceeded to do this immediately, producing a string (which looked
like a bit of a cotton shoe-lace) for the purpose. There! That would do
the trick! It would be the deuce if . . . He seemed to catch sight of my
face for the first time, and it steadied him a little. I probably didn't
realise, he said with a naive gravity, how much importance he attached
to that token. It meant a friend; and it is a good thing to have a
friend. He knew something about that. He nodded at me expressively, but
before my disclaiming gesture he leaned his head on his hand and for
a while sat silent, playing thoughtfully with the bread-crumbs on the
cloth . . . "Slam the door--that was jolly well put," he cried, and
jumping up, began to pace the room, reminding me by the set of the
shoulders, the turn of his head, the headlong and uneven stride, of
that night when he had paced thus, confessing, explaining--what you
will--but, in the last instance, living--living before me, under his
own little cloud, with all his unconscious subtlety which could draw
consolation from the very source of sorrow. It was the same mood, the
same and different, like a fickle companion that to-day guiding you
on the true path, with the same eyes, the same step, the same impulse,
to-morrow will lead you hopelessly astray. His tread was assured, his
straying, darkened eyes seemed to search the room for something. One of
his footfalls somehow sounded louder than the other--the fault of his
boots probably--and gave a curious impression of an invisible halt in
his gait. One of his hands was rammed deep into his trousers' pocket,
the other waved suddenly above his head. "Slam the door!" he shouted.
"I've been waiting for that. I'll show yet . . . I'll . . . I'm ready
for any confounded thing . . . I've been dreaming of it . . . Jove! Get
out of this. Jove! This is luck at last . . . You wait. I'll . . ."

'He tossed his head fearlessly, and I confess that for the first and
last time in our acquaintance I perceived myself unexpectedly to be
thoroughly sick of him. Why these vapourings? He was stumping about
the room flourishing his arm absurdly, and now and then feeling on
his breast for the ring under his clothes. Where was the sense of such
exaltation in a man appointed to be a trading-clerk, and in a place
where there was no trade--at that? Why hurl defiance at the universe?
This was not a proper frame of mind to approach any undertaking; an
improper frame of mind not only for him, I said, but for any man. He
stood still over me. Did I think so? he asked, by no means subdued, and
with a smile in which I seemed to detect suddenly something insolent.
But then I am twenty years his senior. Youth is insolent; it is its
right--its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in
this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence. He went off into a
far corner, and coming back, he, figuratively speaking, turned to rend
me. I spoke like that because I--even I, who had been no end kind
to him--even I remembered--remembered--against him--what--what had
happened. And what about others--the--the--world? Where's the wonder he
wanted to get out, meant to get out, meant to stay out--by heavens! And
I talked about proper frames of mind!

'"It is not I or the world who remember," I shouted. "It is you--you,
who remember."

'He did not flinch, and went on with heat, "Forget everything,
everybody, everybody." . . . His voice fell. . . "But you," he added.

'"Yes--me too--if it would help," I said, also in a low tone. After this
we remained silent and languid for a time as if exhausted. Then he began
again, composedly, and told me that Mr. Stein had instructed him to wait
for a month or so, to see whether it was possible for him to remain,
before he began building a new house for himself, so as to avoid
"vain expense." He did make use of funny expressions--Stein did. "Vain
expense" was good. . . . Remain? Why! of course. He would hang on. Let
him only get in--that's all; he would answer for it he would remain.
Never get out. It was easy enough to remain.

'"Don't be foolhardy," I said, rendered uneasy by his threatening tone.
"If you only live long enough you will want to come back."

'"Come back to what?" he asked absently, with his eyes fixed upon the
face of a clock on the wall.

'I was silent for a while. "Is it to be never, then?" I said. "Never,"
he repeated dreamily without looking at me, and then flew into sudden
activity. "Jove! Two o'clock, and I sail at four!"

'It was true. A brigantine of Stein's was leaving for the westward that
afternoon, and he had been instructed to take his passage in her, only
no orders to delay the sailing had been given. I suppose Stein forgot.
He made a rush to get his things while I went aboard my ship, where
he promised to call on his way to the outer roadstead. He turned up
accordingly in a great hurry and with a small leather valise in his
hand. This wouldn't do, and I offered him an old tin trunk of mine
supposed to be water-tight, or at least damp-tight. He effected the
transfer by the simple process of shooting out the contents of his
valise as you would empty a sack of wheat. I saw three books in the
tumble; two small, in dark covers, and a thick green-and-gold volume--a
half-crown complete Shakespeare. "You read this?" I asked. "Yes. Best
thing to cheer up a fellow," he said hastily. I was struck by this
appreciation, but there was no time for Shakespearian talk. A
heavy revolver and two small boxes of cartridges were lying on the
cuddy-table. "Pray take this," I said. "It may help you to remain."
No sooner were these words out of my mouth than I perceived what grim
meaning they could bear. "May help you to get in," I corrected myself
remorsefully. He however was not troubled by obscure meanings; he
thanked me effusively and bolted out, calling Good-bye over his
shoulder. I heard his voice through the ship's side urging his boatmen
to give way, and looking out of the stern-port I saw the boat rounding
under the counter. He sat in her leaning forward, exciting his men with
voice and gestures; and as he had kept the revolver in his hand and
seemed to be presenting it at their heads, I shall never forget the
scared faces of the four Javanese, and the frantic swing of their stroke
which snatched that vision from under my eyes. Then turning away, the
first thing I saw were the two boxes of cartridges on the cuddy-table.
He had forgotten to take them.

'I ordered my gig manned at once; but Jim's rowers, under the impression
that their lives hung on a thread while they had that madman in the
boat, made such excellent time that before I had traversed half the
distance between the two vessels I caught sight of him clambering over
the rail, and of his box being passed up. All the brigantine's canvas
was loose, her mainsail was set, and the windlass was just beginning to
clink as I stepped upon her deck: her master, a dapper little half-caste
of forty or so, in a blue flannel suit, with lively eyes, his round
face the colour of lemon-peel, and with a thin little black moustache
drooping on each side of his thick, dark lips, came forward smirking. He
turned out, notwithstanding his self-satisfied and cheery exterior, to
be of a careworn temperament. In answer to a remark of mine (while Jim
had gone below for a moment) he said, "Oh yes. Patusan." He was going to
carry the gentleman to the mouth of the river, but would "never ascend."
His flowing English seemed to be derived from a dictionary compiled by
a lunatic. Had Mr. Stein desired him to "ascend," he would have
"reverentially"--(I think he wanted to say respectfully--but devil only
knows)--"reverentially made objects for the safety of properties."
If disregarded, he would have presented "resignation to quit." Twelve
months ago he had made his last voyage there, and though Mr. Cornelius
"propitiated many offertories" to Mr. Rajah Allang and the "principal
populations," on conditions which made the trade "a snare and ashes
in the mouth," yet his ship had been fired upon from the woods by
"irresponsive parties" all the way down the river; which causing his
crew "from exposure to limb to remain silent in hidings," the brigantine
was nearly stranded on a sandbank at the bar, where she "would have
been perishable beyond the act of man." The angry disgust at the
recollection, the pride of his fluency, to which he turned an attentive
ear, struggled for the possession of his broad simple face. He scowled
and beamed at me, and watched with satisfaction the undeniable effect
of his phraseology. Dark frowns ran swiftly over the placid sea, and
the brigantine, with her fore-topsail to the mast and her main-boom
amidships, seemed bewildered amongst the cat's-paws. He told me further,
gnashing his teeth, that the Rajah was a "laughable hyaena" (can't
imagine how he got hold of hyaenas); while somebody else was many
times falser than the "weapons of a crocodile." Keeping one eye on the
movements of his crew forward, he let loose his volubility--comparing
the place to a "cage of beasts made ravenous by long impenitence." I
fancy he meant impunity. He had no intention, he cried, to "exhibit
himself to be made attached purposefully to robbery." The long-drawn
wails, giving the time for the pull of the men catting the anchor,
came to an end, and he lowered his voice. "Plenty too much enough of
Patusan," he concluded, with energy.

'I heard afterwards he had been so indiscreet as to get himself tied up
by the neck with a rattan halter to a post planted in the middle of a
mud-hole before the Rajah's house. He spent the best part of a day and a
whole night in that unwholesome situation, but there is every reason
to believe the thing had been meant as a sort of joke. He brooded for
a while over that horrid memory, I suppose, and then addressed in a
quarrelsome tone the man coming aft to the helm. When he turned to me
again it was to speak judicially, without passion. He would take the
gentleman to the mouth of the river at Batu Kring (Patusan town "being
situated internally," he remarked, "thirty miles"). But in his eyes,
he continued--a tone of bored, weary conviction replacing his previous
voluble delivery--the gentleman was already "in the similitude of a
corpse." "What? What do you say?" I asked. He assumed a startlingly
ferocious demeanour, and imitated to perfection the act of stabbing from
behind. "Already like the body of one deported," he explained, with the
insufferably conceited air of his kind after what they imagine a display
of cleverness. Behind him I perceived Jim smiling silently at me, and
with a raised hand checking the exclamation on my lips.

'Then, while the half-caste, bursting with importance, shouted his
orders, while the yards swung creaking and the heavy boom came surging
over, Jim and I, alone as it were, to leeward of the mainsail, clasped
each other's hands and exchanged the last hurried words. My heart was
freed from that dull resentment which had existed side by side with
interest in his fate. The absurd chatter of the half-caste had given
more reality to the miserable dangers of his path than Stein's careful
statements. On that occasion the sort of formality that had been always
present in our intercourse vanished from our speech; I believe I
called him "dear boy," and he tacked on the words "old man" to some
half-uttered expression of gratitude, as though his risk set off against
my years had made us more equal in age and in feeling. There was a
moment of real and profound intimacy, unexpected and short-lived like a
glimpse of some everlasting, of some saving truth. He exerted himself to
soothe me as though he had been the more mature of the two. "All right,
all right," he said, rapidly, and with feeling. "I promise to take care
of myself. Yes; I won't take any risks. Not a single blessed risk. Of
course not. I mean to hang out. Don't you worry. Jove! I feel as if
nothing could touch me. Why! this is luck from the word Go. I wouldn't
spoil such a magnificent chance!" . . . A magnificent chance! Well, it
_was_ magnificent, but chances are what men make them, and how was I
to know? As he had said, even I--even I remembered--his--his misfortune
against him. It was true. And the best thing for him was to go.

'My gig had dropped in the wake of the brigantine, and I saw him aft
detached upon the light of the westering sun, raising his cap high above
his head. I heard an indistinct shout, "You--shall--hear--of--me." Of
me, or from me, I don't know which. I think it must have been of me. My
eyes were too dazzled by the glitter of the sea below his feet to see
him clearly; I am fated never to see him clearly; but I can assure you
no man could have appeared less "in the similitude of a corpse," as that
half-caste croaker had put it. I could see the little wretch's face,
the shape and colour of a ripe pumpkin, poked out somewhere under Jim's
elbow. He, too, raised his arm as if for a downward thrust. Absit omen!'

sparknotes
Jim continues to wander from job to job, "fling away  daily bread so as to get  hands free to grapple with a ghost" as "an act of prosaic heroism." He becomes well-known as an eccentric in his part of the world; although he runs away every time the Patna is mentioned, everyone knows who he is. After Jim rejects Marlow's suggestion that he go to America, Marlow decides to consult Stein, the proprietor of a large trading company with posts in "out-of-the-way places" where Jim could more easily live in peace. Stein, according to Marlow, is extremely trustworthy and wise. We learn a little about Stein's past: he escaped Germany as a young man after getting entangled with revolutionaries, then came to the East Indies with a Dutch naturalist. Stein remained in the area with a Scottish trader he had met, who bequeathed him his trading empire and introduced him to a Malay queen. Stein became an adviser to the queen's son, Mohammed Bonso, who was battling several relatives for the throne. He married Bonso's sister and had a child with her, and began to collect beetles and butterflies. Bonso was assassinated, and Stein's wife and child died from a fever. Stein tells Marlow an anecdote about a particular butterfly specimen in his collection. One morning, he was tricked into leaving his compound by an enemy of Bonso's and was ambushed along the road. After feigning death, he attacked and dispatched his attackers with bullets, but a few escaped. Suddenly, he saw a rare butterfly glide past him. Moving quickly, he captured it in his hat, holding a revolver in his other hand in case the bandits should reappear. Stein describes that day as one of the best of his life; he had defeated his enemy, possessed friendship and love, and acquired a butterfly he had long desired. Marlow tells Stein he has come to him to discuss a "specimen." He recounts Jim's story for Stein, who immediately "diagnose" Jim as "romantic." Stein elaborates on Jim's crisis of self-identity, saying that what Jim needs is to learn "how to live" in a world that he cannot always ignore. Stein says that he himself has had moments in which he has let heroic dreams slip away, and he tells Marlow that he will help him do something "practical" for Jim. Stein suggests that they send Jim to Patusan, a remote territory where he has a trading post. The place will, Marlow says, turn out to offer him "a totally new set of conditions for his imaginative faculty to work upon." Patusan seems to be a place no one visits, whose very name stands in for the hidden and unknown. Stein has used Patusan as an exile for those in need before; he tells Marlow of a Dutch-Malay woman with a troubled history married to an odious trading agent named Cornelius whom he wished to help. He made Cornelius the manager of the Patusan post, but the woman has since died, and the woman's daughter, under the guardianship of Cornelius, is the only obstacle to his replacement by Jim. Stein offers Jim the post, with the understanding that Cornelius and the girl be allowed to stay on in Patusan. Marlow jumps forward in time, to a moment when he visits Jim in Patusan. Although it is not yet clear how, Jim has become an incredible success, and Marlow is astonished. He reminds himself that he and Stein had only sought to keep Jim out of the way, and that, on his part, he had just wanted to dispose of Jim before returning to Europe for a time. He admits that he had feared the claim that Jim now has on him because of their acquaintance. Marlow digresses for a moment to describe Patusan more fully: it is a small territory thirty miles inland up a river, which the flow of history has largely bypassed. In the seventeenth century, Dutch traders often visited in order to trade for pepper. Somehow, though, the trade stopped, and now the country is a backwater, ruled by a "Sultan  is an imbecile youth with two thumbs on his left hand." The de facto ruler of Patusan, however, is the Sultan's uncle, Rajah Allang, a decaying, power-mad opium fiend whom Marlow encounters when he visits Jim. Stein and Marlow offer Jim the Patusan post, which he accepts. Marlow makes him a gift of a revolver, and Stein, wishing to repay his debt to the Scottish trader who launched him, gives Jim letters of introduction and a silver ring, which he is to present to Doramin, an old comrade of Stein's. Jim returns from receiving Stein's commission full of fire, eager to impress upon Marlow the romantic aspects of the situation, particularly the idea of the ring as a token of friendship and recognition. Marlow finds himself "thoroughly sick" of Jim, who is foolish enough to "hurl defiance" at the universe. Jim hurriedly packs his possessions, including a volume of Shakespeare  and ships for Patusan. The captain of the ship that is to carry him tells Marlow, who comes aboard to offer Jim cartridges for the revolver, that he will carry Jim only to the mouth of the river leading to Patusan, since he was fired upon by the natives the last time he tried to ascend the river. Marlow later learns that the man was publicly humiliated and imprisoned by Rajah Allang. The ship is about to depart, so Marlow takes leave of Jim, who is still ecstatic over the "magnificent chance" before him. As Marlow's boat pulls away from the ship, Jim shouts a prediction: "'You--shall--hear--of--me.'
" Commentary Stein offers a contrast to both Marlow and Jim. Like Jim, he is, or at least was as a youth, invested in ideas of the heroic, starting out as a revolutionary, then becoming a traveler, a partisan fighter, and finally a conquering capitalist. Despite some self-admitted defeats and the loss of his wife and child, he has constructed a satisfying existence for himself by taking advantage of the opportunities offered him by others . Like Marlow, he feels an immediate sense of identification with Jim. His approach to Jim is quite different from Marlow's, however. While Marlow considers Jim "one of us," Stein sees him, as Marlow suggests he will, as a "specimen," like one of his butterflies. Marlow, and even the members of the court of inquiry, have been considering Jim almost as a sort of mutation--an average man who for some reason displays the worst that lurks inside of all men. The court of inquiry must cast Jim out, symbolically casting the evil out of themselves. Marlow is fascinated, seeing in Jim his own dark side. Stein, however, "diagnoses" Jim as displaying one among an infinite variety of "maladies" or abnormalities. Stein determines him to be a "romantic," and accordingly sends him to the same place he has sent another damaged romantic, the Dutch-Malay woman. Patusan is an appropriate place for Jim in more ways than one. Notice the resemblance between the words "Patna" and "Patusan"; we know before he gets there that Jim is destined to repeat in some way the incident aboard the Patna. Patusan, too, is a place where romantic, heroic idealism--the high adventure of the quest for pepper--coexists with pragmatism and harsh reality. The territory was abandoned by history, is difficult to reach, and has degenerated to the point of being ruled by a youth with congenital deformities that would seem to be the result of inbreeding. Jim is thrilled to have another chance, and his hubris is unmistakable: "You--shall--hear--of--me." Marlow and Stein's parting gifts, though, foreshadow the kind of place he will find. The revolver suggests Jim will need to rely, to some extent, on brute force, and the technological superiority of the white man. The ring suggests that Jim is entering a world of suspicion, distrust, and factions, where identity requires physical proof and a man's word is not enough. Both hint that heroic ideals may be irrelevant here. Ironically, Stein and Marlow are burying Jim the way Chester and Robinson suggested. The only escape for Jim, it seems, is to go somewhere where no one has heard of the Patna. Yet in the echo of the name of the ship in the name of the territory, and in Marlow's repeated incursions to see Jim despite being "sick" of him and wanting to "dispose" of him, it is implied that escape will not be possible, that, no matter what he does, Jim will still be the same man who abandoned the Patna. At this point in the narrative, Marlow's most recent information is that Jim is a total success. Yet Marlow, at the end of Chapter 21, tells his audience that he still awaits "the last word" on Jim. He goes further to say, too, that it may be that the "last word" cannot be trusted, since it will be open to misinterpretation in the minds of its hearers.