feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/Lord Jim/section_14_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 15
feat_summary_id: chapter 15
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210118112654/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/lord-jim/summary/chapter-15", "summary": "Despite his distrust of Jim's choices, Marlow decides to help the guy. He tracks him down and the two return to Marlow's hotel, where Jim is totally in shock. Our resident good guy Marlow starts a letter-writing campaign on Jim's behalf. He writes to just about anyone he can think of who can help get Jim a job.", "analysis": ""}
text: '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 water-side.
  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 face to it, having a hard time with all possible
  privacy. Dusk fell; I lit a candle with the greatest economy of movement
  and as much prudence as though it were an illegal proceeding. There is
  no doubt that he had a very hard time of it, and so had I, even to the
  point, I must own, of wishing him to the devil, or on Walpole Reef at
  least. It occurred to me once or twice that, after all, Chester was,
  perhaps, the man to deal effectively with such a disaster. That strange
  idealist had found a practical use for it at once--unerringly, as it
  were. It was enough to make one suspect that, maybe, he really could see
  the true aspect of things that appeared mysterious or utterly hopeless
  to less imaginative persons. I wrote and wrote; I liquidated all the
  arrears of my correspondence, and then went on writing to people who had
  no reason whatever to expect from me a gossipy letter about nothing at
  all. At times I stole a sidelong glance. He was rooted to the spot,
  but convulsive shudders ran down his back; his shoulders would heave
  suddenly. He was fighting, he was fighting--mostly for his breath, as it
  seemed. The massive shadows, cast all one way from the straight flame of
  the candle, seemed possessed of gloomy consciousness; the immobility of
  the furniture had to my furtive eye an air of attention. I was becoming
  fanciful in the midst of my industrious scribbling; and though, when the
  scratching of my pen stopped for a moment, there was complete silence
  and stillness in the room, I suffered from that profound disturbance
  and confusion of thought which is caused by a violent and menacing
  uproar--of a heavy gale at sea, for instance. Some of you may know what
  I mean: that mingled anxiety, distress, and irritation with a sort of
  craven feeling creeping in--not pleasant to acknowledge, but which gives
  a quite special merit to one's endurance. I don't claim any merit
  for standing the stress of Jim's emotions; I could take refuge in the
  letters; I could have written to strangers if necessary. Suddenly, as I
  was taking up a fresh sheet of notepaper, I heard a low sound, the first
  sound that, since we had been shut up together, had come to my ears in
  the dim stillness of the room. I remained with my head down, with my
  hand arrested. Those who have kept vigil by a sick-bed have heard such
  faint sounds in the stillness of the night watches, sounds wrung from a
  racked body, from a weary soul. He pushed the glass door with such force
  that all the panes rang: he stepped out, and I held my breath, straining
  my ears without knowing what else I expected to hear. He was really
  taking too much to heart an empty formality which to Chester's rigorous
  criticism seemed unworthy the notice of a man who could see things as
  they were. An empty formality; a piece of parchment. Well, well. As to
  an inaccessible guano deposit, that was another story altogether. One
  could intelligibly break one's heart over that. A feeble burst of many
  voices mingled with the tinkle of silver and glass floated up from the
  dining-room below; through the open door the outer edge of the light
  from my candle fell on his back faintly; beyond all was black; he stood
  on the brink of a vast obscurity, like a lonely figure by the shore of
  a sombre and hopeless ocean. There was the Walpole Reef in it--to
  be sure--a speck in the dark void, a straw for the drowning man. My
  compassion for him took the shape of the thought that I wouldn't have
  liked his people to see him at that moment. I found it trying myself.
  His back was no longer shaken by his gasps; he stood straight as an
  arrow, faintly visible and still; and the meaning of this stillness sank
  to the bottom of my soul like lead into the water, and made it so heavy
  that for a second I wished heartily that the only course left open for
  me was to pay for his funeral. Even the law had done with him. To bury
  him would have been such an easy kindness! It would have been so much
  in accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in putting out of
  sight all the reminders of our folly, of our weakness, of our mortality;
  all that makes against our efficiency--the memory of our failures, the
  hints of our undying fears, the bodies of our dead friends. Perhaps he
  did take it too much to heart. And if so then--Chester's offer. . . . At
  this point I took up a fresh sheet and began to write resolutely. There
  was nothing but myself between him and the dark ocean. I had a sense of
  responsibility. If I spoke, would that motionless and suffering youth
  leap into the obscurity--clutch at the straw? I found out how difficult
  it may be sometimes to make a sound. There is a weird power in a spoken
  word. And why the devil not? I was asking myself persistently while I
  drove on with my writing. All at once, on the blank page, under the very
  point of the pen, the two figures of Chester and his antique partner,
  very distinct and complete, would dodge into view with stride and
  gestures, as if reproduced in the field of some optical toy. I would
  watch them for a while. No! They were too phantasmal and extravagant
  to enter into any one's fate. And a word carries far--very far--deals
  destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. I said
  nothing; and he, out there with his back to the light, as if bound
  and gagged by all the invisible foes of man, made no stir and made no
  sound.'
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 15
target: Despite his distrust of Jim's choices, Marlow decides to help the guy. He tracks him down and the two return to Marlow's hotel, where Jim is totally in shock. Our resident good guy Marlow starts a letter-writing campaign on Jim's behalf. He writes to just about anyone he can think of who can help get Jim a job.