Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad (7 ebook reader TXT) 📗

must have a man. There!⁠ ⁠…’ He stamped his foot and smiled unpleasantly. ‘Anyhow, I could guarantee the island wouldn’t sink under him⁠—and I believe he is a bit particular on that point.’ ‘Good morning,’ I said curtly. He looked at me as though I had been an incomprehensible fool.⁠ ⁠… ‘Must be moving, Captain Robinson,’ he yelled suddenly into the old man’s ear. ‘These Parsee Johnnies are waiting for us to clinch the bargain.’ He took his partner under the arm with a firm grip, swung him round, and, unexpectedly, leered at me over his shoulder. ‘I was trying to do him a kindness,’ he asserted, with an air and tone that made my blood boil. ‘Thank you for nothing⁠—in his name,’ I rejoined. ‘Oh! you are devilish smart,’ he sneered; ‘but you are like the rest of them. Too much in the clouds. See what you will do with him.’ ‘I don’t know that I want to do anything with him.’ ‘Don’t you?’ he spluttered; his grey moustache bristled with anger, and by his side the notorious Robinson, propped on the umbrella, stood with his back to me, as patient and still as a worn-out cab-horse. ‘I haven’t found a guano island,’ I said. ‘It’s my belief you wouldn’t know one if you were led right up to it by the hand,’ he riposted quickly; ‘and in this world you’ve got to see a thing first, before you can make use of it. Got to see it through and through at that, neither more nor less.’ ‘And get others to see it, too,’ I insinuated, with a glance at the bowed back by his side. Chester snorted at me. ‘His eyes are right enough⁠—don’t you worry. He ain’t a puppy.’ ‘Oh, dear, no!’ I said. ‘Come along, Captain Robinson,’ he shouted, with a sort of bullying deference under the rim of the old man’s hat; the Holy Terror gave a submissive little jump. The ghost of a steamer was waiting for them, Fortune on that fair isle! They made a curious pair of Argonauts. Chester strode on leisurely, well set up, portly, and of conquering mien; the other, long, wasted, drooping, and hooked to his arm, shuffled his withered shanks with desperate haste.” XV

“I did not start in search of Jim at once, only because I had really an appointment which I could not neglect. Then, as ill-luck would have it, in my agent’s office I was fastened upon by a fellow fresh from Madagascar with a little scheme for a wonderful piece of business. It had something to do with cattle and cartridges and a Prince Ravonalo something; but the pivot of the whole affair was the stupidity of some admiral⁠—Admiral Pierre, I think. Everything turned on that, and the chap couldn’t find words strong enough to express his confidence. He had globular eyes starting out of his head with a fishy glitter, bumps on his forehead, and wore his long hair brushed back without a parting. He had a favourite phrase which he kept on repeating triumphantly, ‘The minimum of risk with the maximum of profit is my motto. What?’ He made my head ache, spoiled my tiffin, but got his own out of me all right; and as soon as I had shaken him off, I made straight for the waterside. I caught sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay. Three native boatmen quarrelling over five annas were making an awful row at his elbow. He didn’t hear me come up, but spun round as if the slight contact of my finger had released a catch. ‘I was looking,’ he stammered. I don’t remember what I said, not much anyhow, but he made no difficulty in following me to the hotel.

“He followed me as manageable as a little child, with an obedient air, with no sort of manifestation, rather as though he had been waiting for me there to come along and carry him off. I need not have been so surprised as I was at his tractability. On all the round earth, which to some seems so big and that others affect to consider as rather smaller than a mustard-seed, he had no place where he could⁠—what shall I say?⁠—where he could withdraw. That’s it! Withdraw⁠—be alone with his loneliness. He walked by my side very calm, glancing here and there, and once turned his head to look after a Sidiboy fireman in a cutaway coat and yellowish trousers, whose black face had silky gleams like a lump of anthracite coal. I doubt, however, whether he saw anything, or even remained all the time aware of my companionship, because if I had not edged him to the left here, or pulled him to the right there, I believe he would have gone straight before him in any direction till stopped by a wall or some other obstacle. I steered him into my bedroom, and sat down at once to write letters. This was the only place in the world (unless, perhaps, the Walpole Reef⁠—but that was not so handy) where he could have it out with himself without being bothered by the rest of the universe. The damned thing⁠—as he had expressed it⁠—had not made him invisible, but I behaved exactly as though he were. No sooner in my chair I bent over my writing-desk like a medieval scribe, and, but for the movement of the hand holding the pen, remained anxiously quiet. I can’t say I was frightened; but I certainly kept as still as if there had been something dangerous in the room, that at the first hint of a movement on my part would be provoked to pounce upon me. There was not much in the room⁠—you know how these bedrooms are⁠—a sort of four-poster bedstead under a mosquito-net, two or three chairs, the table I was writing at, a bare floor. A glass door opened on an upstairs verandah, and he stood with his