feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_34_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 35
feat_summary_id: chapter 35
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 35", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-35", "summary": "After the world's worst vacation, Marlow splits from Patusan. Jim accompanies Marlow to the shore to see him off and starts to give Marlow a message to take back home to his family. But at the last moment he stops himself and opts to just say good-bye. As he describes how he watched Jim waving from shore, Marlow tells us that this is the last time he ever saw Jim. So ends the storytelling session on the verandah.", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  'But next morning, at the first bend of the river shutting off the
  houses of Patusan, all this dropped out of my sight bodily, with its
  colour, its design, and its meaning, like a picture created by fancy on
  a canvas, upon which, after long contemplation, you turn your back for
  the last time. It remains in the memory motionless, unfaded, with its
  life arrested, in an unchanging light. There are the ambitions, the
  fears, the hate, the hopes, and they remain in my mind just as I had
  seen them--intense and as if for ever suspended in their expression. I
  had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where
  events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream,
  no matter whether over mud or over stones. I wasn't going to dive into
  it; I would have enough to do to keep my head above the surface. But
  as to what I was leaving behind, I cannot imagine any alteration. The
  immense and magnanimous Doramin and his little motherly witch of a
  wife, gazing together upon the land and nursing secretly their dreams
  of parental ambition; Tunku Allang, wizened and greatly perplexed;
  Dain Waris, intelligent and brave, with his faith in Jim, with his
  firm glance and his ironic friendliness; the girl, absorbed in her
  frightened, suspicious adoration; Tamb' Itam, surly and faithful;
  Cornelius, leaning his forehead against the fence under the moonlight--I
  am certain of them. They exist as if under an enchanter's wand. But the
  figure round which all these are grouped--that one lives, and I am not
  certain of him. No magician's wand can immobilise him under my eyes. He
  is one of us.
  
  'Jim, as I've told you, accompanied me on the first stage of my journey
  back to the world he had renounced, and the way at times seemed to
  lead through the very heart of untouched wilderness. The empty reaches
  sparkled under the high sun; between the high walls of vegetation the
  heat drowsed upon the water, and the boat, impelled vigorously, cut her
  way through the air that seemed to have settled dense and warm under the
  shelter of lofty trees.
  
  'The shadow of the impending separation had already put an immense space
  between us, and when we spoke it was with an effort, as if to force our
  low voices across a vast and increasing distance. The boat fairly flew;
  we sweltered side by side in the stagnant superheated air; the smell of
  mud, of mush, the primeval smell of fecund earth, seemed to sting our
  faces; till suddenly at a bend it was as if a great hand far away had
  lifted a heavy curtain, had flung open un immense portal. The light
  itself seemed to stir, the sky above our heads widened, a far-off murmur
  reached our ears, a freshness enveloped us, filled our lungs, quickened
  our thoughts, our blood, our regrets--and, straight ahead, the forests
  sank down against the dark-blue ridge of the sea.
  
  'I breathed deeply, I revelled in the vastness of the opened horizon, in
  the different atmosphere that seemed to vibrate with the toil of life,
  with the energy of an impeccable world. This sky and this sea were open
  to me. The girl was right--there was a sign, a call in them--something
  to which I responded with every fibre of my being. I let my eyes roam
  through space, like a man released from bonds who stretches his cramped
  limbs, runs, leaps, responds to the inspiring elation of freedom. "This
  is glorious!" I cried, and then I looked at the sinner by my side. He
  sat with his head sunk on his breast and said "Yes," without raising his
  eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the
  reproach of his romantic conscience.
  
  'I remember the smallest details of that afternoon. We landed on a bit
  of white beach. It was backed by a low cliff wooded on the brow, draped
  in creepers to the very foot. Below us the plain of the sea, of a serene
  and intense blue, stretched with a slight upward tilt to the thread-like
  horizon drawn at the height of our eyes. Great waves of glitter blew
  lightly along the pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers chased by
  the breeze. A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing the wide
  estuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully
  the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary
  bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with
  a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy
  mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked
  multitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe put off
  from amongst them with two tiny men, all black, who toiled exceedingly,
  striking down at the pale water: and the canoe seemed to slide painfully
  on a mirror. This bunch of miserable hovels was the fishing village
  that boasted of the white lord's especial protection, and the two men
  crossing over were the old headman and his son-in-law. They landed
  and walked up to us on the white sand, lean, dark-brown as if dried
  in smoke, with ashy patches on the skin of their naked shoulders
  and breasts. Their heads were bound in dirty but carefully folded
  headkerchiefs, and the old man began at once to state a complaint,
  voluble, stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim his old bleared eyes
  confidently. The Rajah's people would not leave them alone; there had
  been some trouble about a lot of turtles' eggs his people had collected
  on the islets there--and leaning at arm's-length upon his paddle, he
  pointed with a brown skinny hand over the sea. Jim listened for a time
  without looking up, and at last told him gently to wait. He would hear
  him by-and-by. They withdrew obediently to some little distance, and sat
  on their heels, with their paddles lying before them on the sand; the
  silvery gleams in their eyes followed our movements patiently; and the
  immensity of the outspread sea, the stillness of the coast, passing
  north and south beyond the limits of my vision, made up one colossal
  Presence watching us four dwarfs isolated on a strip of glistening sand.
  
  '"The trouble is," remarked Jim moodily, "that for generations these
  beggars of fishermen in that village there had been considered as the
  Rajah's personal slaves--and the old rip can't get it into his head that
  . . ."
  
  'He paused. "That you have changed all that," I said.
  
  '"Yes I've changed all that," he muttered in a gloomy voice.
  
  '"You have had your opportunity," I pursued.
  
  '"Have I?" he said. "Well, yes. I suppose so. Yes. I have got back my
  confidence in myself--a good name--yet sometimes I wish . . . No! I
  shall hold what I've got. Can't expect anything more." He flung his arm
  out towards the sea. "Not out there anyhow." He stamped his foot upon
  the sand. "This is my limit, because nothing less will do."
  
  'We continued pacing the beach. "Yes, I've changed all that," he went
  on, with a sidelong glance at the two patient squatting fishermen; "but
  only try to think what it would be if I went away. Jove! can't you see
  it? Hell loose. No! To-morrow I shall go and take my chance of drinking
  that silly old Tunku Allang's coffee, and I shall make no end of fuss
  over these rotten turtles' eggs. No. I can't say--enough. Never. I must
  go on, go on for ever holding up my end, to feel sure that nothing can
  touch me. I must stick to their belief in me to feel safe and to--to"
  . . . He cast about for a word, seemed to look for it on the sea . . .
  "to keep in touch with" . . . His voice sank suddenly to a murmur . . .
  "with those whom, perhaps, I shall never see any more. With--with--you,
  for instance."
  
  'I was profoundly humbled by his words. "For God's sake," I said, "don't
  set me up, my dear fellow; just look to yourself." I felt a gratitude,
  an affection, for that straggler whose eyes had singled me out, keeping
  my place in the ranks of an insignificant multitude. How little that
  was to boast of, after all! I turned my burning face away; under the
  low sun, glowing, darkened and crimson, like un ember snatched from the
  fire, the sea lay outspread, offering all its immense stillness to the
  approach of the fiery orb. Twice he was going to speak, but checked
  himself; at last, as if he had found a formula--
  
  '"I shall be faithful," he said quietly. "I shall be faithful," he
  repeated, without looking at me, but for the first time letting his eyes
  wander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy purple
  under the fires of sunset. Ah! he was romantic, romantic. I recalled
  some words of Stein's. . . . "In the destructive element immerse! . . .
  To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream--and
  so--always--usque ad finem . . ." He was romantic, but none the
  less true. Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what
  forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west! . . . A small boat,
  leaving the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two oars,
  towards the sandbank to take me off. "And then there's Jewel," he said,
  out of the great silence of earth, sky, and sea, which had mastered my
  very thoughts so that his voice made me start. "There's Jewel." "Yes,"
  I murmured. "I need not tell you what she is to me," he pursued.
  "You've seen. In time she will come to understand . . ." "I hope so," I
  interrupted. "She trusts me, too," he mused, and then changed his tone.
  "When shall we meet next, I wonder?" he said.
  
  '"Never--unless you come out," I answered, avoiding his glance. He
  didn't seem to be surprised; he kept very quiet for a while.
  
  '"Good-bye, then," he said, after a pause. "Perhaps it's just as well."
  
  'We shook hands, and I walked to the boat, which waited with her nose
  on the beach. The schooner, her mainsail set and jib-sheet to windward,
  curveted on the purple sea; there was a rosy tinge on her sails. "Will
  you be going home again soon?" asked Jim, just as I swung my leg over
  the gunwale. "In a year or so if I live," I said. The forefoot grated on
  the sand, the boat floated, the wet oars flashed and dipped once, twice.
  Jim, at the water's edge, raised his voice. "Tell them . . ." he began.
  I signed to the men to cease rowing, and waited in wonder. Tell who? The
  half-submerged sun faced him; I could see its red gleam in his eyes that
  looked dumbly at me. . . . "No--nothing," he said, and with a slight
  wave of his hand motioned the boat away. I did not look again at the
  shore till I had clambered on board the schooner.
  
  'By that time the sun had set. The twilight lay over the east, and the
  coast, turned black, extended infinitely its sombre wall that seemed the
  very stronghold of the night; the western horizon was one great blaze of
  gold and crimson in which a big detached cloud floated dark and still,
  casting a slaty shadow on the water beneath, and I saw Jim on the beach
  watching the schooner fall off and gather headway.
  
  'The two half-naked fishermen had arisen as soon as I had gone; they
  were no doubt pouring the plaint of their trifling, miserable, oppressed
  lives into the ears of the white lord, and no doubt he was listening to
  it, making it his own, for was it not a part of his luck--the luck "from
  the word Go"--the luck to which he had assured me he was so completely
  equal? They, too, I should think, were in luck, and I was sure their
  pertinacity would be equal to it. Their dark-skinned bodies vanished on
  the dark background long before I had lost sight of their protector. He
  was white from head to foot, and remained persistently visible with
  the stronghold of the night at his back, the sea at his feet, the
  opportunity by his side--still veiled. What do you say? Was it still
  veiled? I don't know. For me that white figure in the stillness of coast
  and sea seemed to stand at the heart of a vast enigma. The twilight
  was ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the strip of sand had sunk
  already under his feet, he himself appeared no bigger than a child--then
  only a speck, a tiny white speck, that seemed to catch all the light
  left in a darkened world. . . . And, suddenly, I lost him. . . .
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 35
target: After the world's worst vacation, Marlow splits from Patusan. Jim accompanies Marlow to the shore to see him off and starts to give Marlow a message to take back home to his family. But at the last moment he stops himself and opts to just say good-bye. As he describes how he watched Jim waving from shore, Marlow tells us that this is the last time he ever saw Jim. So ends the storytelling session on the verandah.