feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_36_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 37
feat_summary_id: chapter 37
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-37", "summary": "If you thought we were done with Marlow's storytelling, we hate to break it to you. We've got another round coming. In the letters, Marlow describes an encounter he has with a dying pirate named Gentleman Brown. According to Marlow, Brown's story will help fill in the gaps at the end of Jim's story. Marlow then jumps back in time to when he first learned of this story at Stein's house. He was there visiting Stein, and ran into Jewel and Tamb' Itam. Tamb' Itam said that Jim wouldn't fight, and Jewel woodenly said that Jim left her. We're not quite sure what they're talking about, but we have a bad feeling about this.", "analysis": ""}
text: 'It all begins with a remarkable exploit of a man called Brown, who
  stole with complete success a Spanish schooner out of a small bay near
  Zamboanga. Till I discovered the fellow my information was incomplete,
  but most unexpectedly I did come upon him a few hours before he gave up
  his arrogant ghost. Fortunately he was willing and able to talk between
  the choking fits of asthma, and his racked body writhed with malicious
  exultation at the bare thought of Jim. He exulted thus at the idea that
  he had "paid out the stuck-up beggar after all." He gloated over his
  action. I had to bear the sunken glare of his fierce crow-footed eyes if
  I wanted to know; and so I bore it, reflecting how much certain forms
  of evil are akin to madness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by
  resistance, tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigour to
  the body. The story also reveals unsuspected depths of cunning in the
  wretched Cornelius, whose abject and intense hate acts like a subtle
  inspiration, pointing out an unerring way towards revenge.
  
  '"I could see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of a fool he was,"
  gasped the dying Brown. "He a man! Hell! He was a hollow sham. As if he
  couldn't have said straight out, 'Hands off my plunder!' blast him! That
  would have been like a man! Rot his superior soul! He had me there--but
  he hadn't devil enough in him to make an end of me. Not he! A thing like
  that letting me off as if I wasn't worth a kick! . . ." Brown struggled
  desperately for breath. . . . "Fraud. . . . Letting me off. . . . And
  so I did make an end of him after all. . . ." He choked again. . . . "I
  expect this thing'll kill me, but I shall die easy now. You . . . you
  here . . . I don't know your name--I would give you a five-pound note
  if--if I had it--for the news--or my name's not Brown. . . ." He grinned
  horribly. . . . "Gentleman Brown."
  
  'He said all these things in profound gasps, staring at me with his
  yellow eyes out of a long, ravaged, brown face; he jerked his left arm;
  a pepper-and-salt matted beard hung almost into his lap; a dirty ragged
  blanket covered his legs. I had found him out in Bankok through that
  busybody Schomberg, the hotel-keeper, who had, confidentially, directed
  me where to look. It appears that a sort of loafing, fuddled vagabond--a
  white man living amongst the natives with a Siamese woman--had
  considered it a great privilege to give a shelter to the last days of
  the famous Gentleman Brown. While he was talking to me in the wretched
  hovel, and, as it were, fighting for every minute of his life, the
  Siamese woman, with big bare legs and a stupid coarse face, sat in a
  dark corner chewing betel stolidly. Now and then she would get up for
  the purpose of shooing a chicken away from the door. The whole hut shook
  when she walked. An ugly yellow child, naked and pot-bellied like a
  little heathen god, stood at the foot of the couch, finger in mouth,
  lost in a profound and calm contemplation of the dying man.
  
  'He talked feverishly; but in the middle of a word, perhaps, an
  invisible hand would take him by the throat, and he would look at me
  dumbly with an expression of doubt and anguish. He seemed to fear that
  I would get tired of waiting and go away, leaving him with his tale
  untold, with his exultation unexpressed. He died during the night, I
  believe, but by that time I had nothing more to learn.
  
  'So much as to Brown, for the present.
  
  'Eight months before this, coming into Samarang, I went as usual to see
  Stein. On the garden side of the house a Malay on the verandah greeted
  me shyly, and I remembered that I had seen him in Patusan, in Jim's
  house, amongst other Bugis men who used to come in the evening to talk
  interminably over their war reminiscences and to discuss State affairs.
  Jim had pointed him out to me once as a respectable petty trader owning
  a small seagoing native craft, who had showed himself "one of the best
  at the taking of the stockade." I was not very surprised to see him,
  since any Patusan trader venturing as far as Samarang would naturally
  find his way to Stein's house. I returned his greeting and passed on. At
  the door of Stein's room I came upon another Malay in whom I recognised
  Tamb' Itam.
  
  'I asked him at once what he was doing there; it occurred to me that
  Jim might have come on a visit. I own I was pleased and excited at the
  thought. Tamb' Itam looked as if he did not know what to say. "Is Tuan
  Jim inside?" I asked impatiently. "No," he mumbled, hanging his head
  for a moment, and then with sudden earnestness, "He would not fight. He
  would not fight," he repeated twice. As he seemed unable to say anything
  else, I pushed him aside and went in.
  
  'Stein, tall and stooping, stood alone in the middle of the room between
  the rows of butterfly cases. "Ach! is it you, my friend?" he said
  sadly, peering through his glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca hung,
  unbuttoned, down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his head, and
  there were deep furrows on his pale cheeks. "What's the matter now?"
  I asked nervously. "There's Tamb' Itam there. . . ." "Come and see the
  girl. Come and see the girl. She is here," he said, with a half-hearted
  show of activity. I tried to detain him, but with gentle obstinacy he
  would take no notice of my eager questions. "She is here, she is here,"
  he repeated, in great perturbation. "They came here two days ago. An old
  man like me, a stranger--sehen Sie--cannot do much. . . . Come this way.
  . . . Young hearts are unforgiving. . . ." I could see he was in utmost
  distress. . . . "The strength of life in them, the cruel strength of
  life. . . ." He mumbled, leading me round the house; I followed him,
  lost in dismal and angry conjectures. At the door of the drawing-room he
  barred my way. "He loved her very much," he said interrogatively, and
  I only nodded, feeling so bitterly disappointed that I would not trust
  myself to speak. "Very frightful," he murmured. "She can't understand
  me. I am only a strange old man. Perhaps you . . . she knows you. Talk
  to her. We can't leave it like this. Tell her to forgive him. It was
  very frightful." "No doubt," I said, exasperated at being in the dark;
  "but have you forgiven him?" He looked at me queerly. "You shall hear,"
  he said, and opening the door, absolutely pushed me in.
  
  'You know Stein's big house and the two immense reception-rooms,
  uninhabited and uninhabitable, clean, full of solitude and of shining
  things that look as if never beheld by the eye of man? They are cool
  on the hottest days, and you enter them as you would a scrubbed cave
  underground. I passed through one, and in the other I saw the girl
  sitting at the end of a big mahogany table, on which she rested her
  head, the face hidden in her arms. The waxed floor reflected her dimly
  as though it had been a sheet of frozen water. The rattan screens were
  down, and through the strange greenish gloom made by the foliage of the
  trees outside a strong wind blew in gusts, swaying the long draperies
  of windows and doorways. Her white figure seemed shaped in snow; the
  pendent crystals of a great chandelier clicked above her head like
  glittering icicles. She looked up and watched my approach. I was chilled
  as if these vast apartments had been the cold abode of despair.
  
  'She recognised me at once, and as soon as I had stopped, looking down
  at her: "He has left me," she said quietly; "you always leave us--for
  your own ends." Her face was set. All the heat of life seemed withdrawn
  within some inaccessible spot in her breast. "It would have been easy to
  die with him," she went on, and made a slight weary gesture as if giving
  up the incomprehensible. "He would not! It was like a blindness--and yet
  it was I who was speaking to him; it was I who stood before his eyes;
  it was at me that he looked all the time! Ah! you are hard, treacherous,
  without truth, without compassion. What makes you so wicked? Or is it
  that you are all mad?"
  
  'I took her hand; it did not respond, and when I dropped it, it hung
  down to the floor. That indifference, more awful than tears, cries, and
  reproaches, seemed to defy time and consolation. You felt that nothing
  you could say would reach the seat of the still and benumbing pain.
  
  'Stein had said, "You shall hear." I did hear. I heard it all, listening
  with amazement, with awe, to the tones of her inflexible weariness.
  She could not grasp the real sense of what she was telling me, and her
  resentment filled me with pity for her--for him too. I stood rooted to
  the spot after she had finished. Leaning on her arm, she stared with
  hard eyes, and the wind passed in gusts, the crystals kept on clicking
  in the greenish gloom. She went on whispering to herself: "And yet he
  was looking at me! He could see my face, hear my voice, hear my grief!
  When I used to sit at his feet, with my cheek against his knee and his
  hand on my head, the curse of cruelty and madness was already within
  him, waiting for the day. The day came! . . . and before the sun had
  set he could not see me any more--he was made blind and deaf and without
  pity, as you all are. He shall have no tears from me. Never, never. Not
  one tear. I will not! He went away from me as if I had been worse than
  death. He fled as if driven by some accursed thing he had heard or seen
  in his sleep. . . ."
  
  'Her steady eyes seemed to strain after the shape of a man torn out of
  her arms by the strength of a dream. She made no sign to my silent bow.
  I was glad to escape.
  
  'I saw her once again, the same afternoon. On leaving her I had gone
  in search of Stein, whom I could not find indoors; and I wandered out,
  pursued by distressful thoughts, into the gardens, those famous gardens
  of Stein, in which you can find every plant and tree of tropical
  lowlands. I followed the course of the canalised stream, and sat for
  a long time on a shaded bench near the ornamental pond, where some
  waterfowl with clipped wings were diving and splashing noisily. The
  branches of casuarina trees behind me swayed lightly, incessantly,
  reminding me of the soughing of fir trees at home.
  
  'This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my
  meditations. She had said he had been driven away from her by a
  dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there seemed to be
  no forgiveness for such a transgression. And yet is not mankind itself,
  pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and
  its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive
  devotion? And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
  
  'When I rose to get back to the house I caught sight of Stein's drab
  coat through a gap in the foliage, and very soon at a turn of the path
  I came upon him walking with the girl. Her little hand rested on his
  forearm, and under the broad, flat rim of his Panama hat he bent over
  her, grey-haired, paternal, with compassionate and chivalrous deference.
  I stood aside, but they stopped, facing me. His gaze was bent on the
  ground at his feet; the girl, erect and slight on his arm, stared
  sombrely beyond my shoulder with black, clear, motionless eyes.
  "Schrecklich," he murmured. "Terrible! Terrible! What can one do?" He
  seemed to be appealing to me, but her youth, the length of the days
  suspended over her head, appealed to me more; and suddenly, even as I
  realised that nothing could be said, I found myself pleading his cause
  for her sake. "You must forgive him," I concluded, and my own voice
  seemed to me muffled, lost in un irresponsive deaf immensity. "We all
  want to be forgiven," I added after a while.
  
  '"What have I done?" she asked with her lips only.
  
  '"You always mistrusted him," I said.
  
  '"He was like the others," she pronounced slowly.
  
  '"Not like the others," I protested, but she continued evenly, without
  any feeling--
  
  '"He was false." And suddenly Stein broke in. "No! no! no! My poor
  child! . . ." He patted her hand lying passively on his sleeve. "No! no!
  Not false! True! True! True!" He tried to look into her stony face. "You
  don't understand. Ach! Why you do not understand? . . . Terrible," he
  said to me. "Some day she _shall_ understand."
  
  '"Will you explain?" I asked, looking hard at him. They moved on.
  
  'I watched them. Her gown trailed on the path, her black hair fell
  loose. She walked upright and light by the side of the tall man, whose
  long shapeless coat hung in perpendicular folds from the stooping
  shoulders, whose feet moved slowly. They disappeared beyond that
  spinney (you may remember) where sixteen different kinds of bamboo grow
  together, all distinguishable to the learned eye. For my part, I was
  fascinated by the exquisite grace and beauty of that fluted grove,
  crowned with pointed leaves and feathery heads, the lightness, the
  vigour, the charm as distinct as a voice of that unperplexed luxuriating
  life. I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would
  linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It
  was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories
  crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces.
  
  'I drove back to town the same afternoon, taking with me Tamb' Itam
  and the other Malay, in whose seagoing craft they had escaped in the
  bewilderment, fear, and gloom of the disaster. The shock of it seemed to
  have changed their natures. It had turned her passion into stone, and
  it made the surly taciturn Tamb' Itam almost loquacious. His surliness,
  too, was subdued into puzzled humility, as though he had seen the
  failure of a potent charm in a supreme moment. The Bugis trader, a shy
  hesitating man, was very clear in the little he had to say. Both were
  evidently over-awed by a sense of deep inexpressible wonder, by the
  touch of an inscrutable mystery.'
  
  There with Marlow's signature the letter proper ended. The privileged
  reader screwed up his lamp, and solitary above the billowy roofs of the
  town, like a lighthouse-keeper above the sea, he turned to the pages of
  the story.
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 37
target: If you thought we were done with Marlow's storytelling, we hate to break it to you. We've got another round coming. In the letters, Marlow describes an encounter he has with a dying pirate named Gentleman Brown. According to Marlow, Brown's story will help fill in the gaps at the end of Jim's story. Marlow then jumps back in time to when he first learned of this story at Stein's house. He was there visiting Stein, and ran into Jewel and Tamb' Itam. Tamb' Itam said that Jim wouldn't fight, and Jewel woodenly said that Jim left her. We're not quite sure what they're talking about, but we have a bad feeling about this.