Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (best non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

‘The next case was that of assault and battery committed upon a money-lender, I believe; and the defendant—a venerable villager with a straight white beard—sat on a mat just outside the door with his sons, daughters, sons-in-law, their wives, and, I should think, half the population of his village besides, squatting or standing around him. A slim dark woman, with part of her back and one black shoulder bared, and with a thin gold ring in her nose, suddenly began to talk in a high-pitched, shrewish tone. The man with me instinctively looked up at her. We were then just through the door, passing behind Jim’s burly back.

‘Whether those villagers had brought the yellow dog with them, I don’t know. Anyhow, a dog was there, weaving himself in and out amongst people’s legs in that mute stealthy way native dogs have, and my companion stumbled over him. The dog leaped away without a sound; the man, raising his voice a little, said with a slow laugh, “Look at that wretched cur,” and directly afterwards we became separated by a lot of people pushing in. I stood back for a moment against the wall while the stranger managed to get down the steps and disappeared. I saw Jim spin round. He made a step forward and barred my way. We were alone; he glared at me with an air of stubborn resolution. I became aware I was being held up, so to speak, as if in a wood. The verandah was empty by then, the noise and movement in court had ceased: a great silence fell upon the building, in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice began to whine abjectly. The dog, in the very act of trying to sneak in at the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for fleas.

‘ “Did you speak to me?” asked Jim very low, and bending forward, not so much towards me but at me, if you know what I mean. I said “No” at once. Something in the sound of that quiet tone of his warned me to be on my defence. I watched him. It was very much like a meeting in a wood, only more uncertain in its issue, since he could possibly want neither my money nor my life—nothing that I could simply give up or defend with a clear conscience. “You say you didn’t,” he said, very sombre. “But I heard.” “Some mistake,”

I protested, utterly at a loss, and never taking my eyes off him. To watch his face was like watching a darkening sky before a clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming on, the doom growing mysteriously intense in the calm of maturing violence.

‘ “As far as I know, I haven’t opened my lips in your hearing,”

I affirmed with perfect truth. I was getting a little angry, too, at the absurdity of this encounter. It strikes me now I have never in my life been so near a beating—I mean it literally; a beating with fists.

I suppose I had some hazy prescience of that eventuality being in the air. Not that he was actively threatening me. On the contrary, he was strangely passive—don’t you know? but he was lowering, and, though not exceptionally big, he looked generally fit to demolish a wall. The most reassuring symptom I noticed was a kind of slow and ponderous hesitation, which I took as a tribute to the evident sincerity of my manner and of my tone. We faced each other. In the court the assault case was proceeding. I caught the words: “Well—buffalo—stick—in the greatness of my fear… .”

‘ “What did you mean by staring at me all the morning?” said Jim at last. He looked up and looked down again. “Did you expect us all to sit with downcast eyes out of regard for your susceptibilities?”

I retorted sharply. I was not going to submit meekly to any of his nonsense. He raised his eyes again, and this time continued to look me straight in the face. “No. That’s all right,” he pronounced with an air of deliberating with himself upon the truth of this statement—“that’s all right. I am going through with that.

Only”—and there he spoke a little faster—“I won’t let any man call me names outside this court. There was a fellow with you. You spoke to him—oh yes—I know; ‘tis all very fine. You spoke to him, but you meant me to hear… .”

‘I assured him he was under some extraordinary delusion. I had no conception how it came about. “You thought I would be afraid to resent this,” he said, with just a faint tinge of bitterness. I was interested enough to discern the slightest shades of expression, but I was not in the least enlightened; yet I don’t know what in these words, or perhaps just the intonation of that phrase, induced me suddenly to make all possible allowances for him. I ceased to be annoyed at my unexpected predicament. It was some mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I had an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as one is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence. The funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations of the higher order I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to the possibility—nay, likelihood—of this encounter ending in some disreputable brawl which could not possibly be explained, and would make me ridiculous.

I did not hanker after a three days’ celebrity as the man who got a black eye or something of the sort from the mate of the Patna.

He, in all probability, did not care what he did, or at any rate would be fully justified in his own eyes. It took no magician to see he was amazingly angry about something, for all his quiet and even torpid demeanour. I don’t deny I was extremely desirous to pacify him at all costs, had I only known what to do. But I didn’t know, as you may well imagine. It was a blackness without a single gleam. We confronted each other in silence. He hung fire for about fifteen seconds, then made a step nearer, and I made ready to ward off a blow, though I don’t think I moved a muscle. “If you were as big as two men and as strong as six,” he said very softly, “I would tell you what I think of you. You …” “Stop!” I exclaimed. This checked him for a second. “Before you tell me what you think of me,” I went on quickly, “will you kindly tell me what it is I’ve said or done?” During the pause that ensued he surveyed me with indignation, while I made supernatural efforts of memory, in which I was hindered by the oriental voice within the court-room expostulating with impassioned volubility against a charge of falsehood. Then we spoke almost together. “I will soon show you I am not,” he said, in a tone suggestive of a crisis. “I declare I don’t know,” I protested earnestly at the same time. He tried to crush me by the scorn of his glance. “Now that you see I am not afraid you try to crawl out of it,” he said. “Who’s a cur now—hey?” Then, at last, I understood.

‘He had been scanning my features as though looking for a place where he would plant his fist. “I will allow no man,” … he mumbled threateningly. It was, indeed, a hideous mistake; he had given himself away utterly. I can’t give you an idea how shocked I was. I suppose he saw some reflection of my feelings in my face, because his expression changed just a little. “Good God!” I stammered, “you don’t think I …” “But I am sure I’ve heard,” he persisted, raising his voice for the first time since the beginning of this deplorable scene. Then with a shade of disdain he added, “It wasn’t you, then?

Very well; I’ll find the other.” “Don’t be a fool,” I cried in exasperation; “it wasn’t that at all.” “I’ve heard,” he said again with an unshaken and sombre perseverance.

‘There may be those who could have laughed at his pertinacity; I didn’t.

Oh, I didn’t! There had never been a man so mercilessly shown up by his own natural impulse. A single word had stripped him of his discretion—of that discretion which is more necessary to the decencies of our inner being than clothing is to the decorum of our body. “Don’t be a fool,”

I repeated. “But the other man said it, you don’t deny that?” he pronounced distinctly, and looking in my face without flinching. “No, I don’t deny,” said I, returning his gaze. At last his eyes followed downwards the direction of my pointing finger. He appeared at first uncomprehending, then confounded, and at last amazed and scared as though a dog had been a monster and he had never seen a dog before.

“Nobody dreamt of insulting you,” I said.

‘He contemplated the wretched animal, that moved no more than an effigy: it sat with ears pricked and its sharp muzzle pointed into the doorway, and suddenly snapped at a fly like a piece of mechanism.

‘I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt complexion deepened suddenly under the down of his cheeks, invaded his forehead, spread to the roots of his curly hair. His ears became intensely crimson, and even the clear blue of his eyes was darkened many shades by the rush of blood to his head. His lips pouted a little, trembling as though he had been on the point of bursting into tears.

I perceived he was incapable of pronouncing a word from the excess of his humiliation. From disappointment too—who knows? Perhaps he looked forward to that hammering he was going to give me for rehabilitation, for appeasement? Who can tell what relief he expected from this chance of a row? He was naive enough to expect anything; but he had given himself away for nothing in this case.

He had been frank with himself—let alone with me—in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective refutation, and the stars had been ironically unpropitious. He made an inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the head. It was pitiful.

‘I didn’t catch up again with him till well outside the gate. I had even to trot a bit at the last, but when, out of breath at his elbow, I taxed him with running away, he said, “Never!” and at once turned at bay. I explained I never meant to say he was running away from me. “From no man—from not a single man on earth,” he affirmed with a stubborn mien. I forbore to point out the one obvious exception which would hold good for the bravest of us; I thought he would find out by himself very soon. He looked at me patiently while I was thinking of something to say, but I could find nothing on the spur of the moment, and he began to walk on. I kept up, and anxious not to lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn’t think of leaving him under a false impression of my—of my—I stammered. The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I was trying to finish it, but the power of sentences has nothing to do with their sense or the logic of their construction. My idiotic mumble seemed to please him. He cut it short