Joseph Conrad - The Collected Works of Joseph Conrad - Novels, Short Stories, Letters & Memoirs

‘Jim was silent for a while.

‘“I know he liked me. That’s what made it so hard. Such a splendid man! . . . That morning he slipped his hand under my arm. . . . He, too, was familiar with me.” He burst into a short laugh, and dropped his chin on his breast. “Pah! When I remembered how that mean little beast had been talking to me,” he began suddenly in a vibrating voice, “I couldn’t bear to think of myself . . . I suppose you know . . . ” I nodded. . . . “More like a father,” he cried; his voice sank. “I would have had to tell him. I couldn’t let it go on — could I?” “Well?” I murmured, after waiting a while. “I preferred to go,” he said slowly; “this thing must be buried.”

‘We could hear in the shop Blake upbraiding Egstrom in an abusive, strained voice. They had been associated for many years, and every day from the moment the doors were opened to the last minute before closing, Blake, a little man with sleek, jetty hair and unhappy, beady eyes, could be heard rowing his partner incessantly with a sort of scathing and plaintive fury. The sound of that everlasting scolding was part of the place like the other fixtures; even strangers would very soon come to disregard it completely unless it be perhaps to mutter “Nuisance,” or to get up suddenly and shut the door of the “parlour.” Egstrom himself, a raw-boned, heavy Scandinavian, with a busy manner and immense blonde whiskers, went on directing his people, checking parcels, making out bills or writing letters at a stand-up desk in the shop, and comported himself in that clatter exactly as though he had been stone-deaf. Now and again he would emit a bothered perfunctory “Sssh,” which neither produced nor was expected to produce the slightest effect. “They are very decent to me here,” said Jim. “Blake’s a little cad, but Egstrom’s all right.” He stood up quickly, and walking with measured steps to a tripod telescope standing in the window and pointed at the roadstead, he applied his eye to it. “There’s that ship which has been becalmed outside all the morning has got a breeze now and is coming in,” he remarked patiently; “I must go and board.” We shook hands in silence, and he turned to go. “Jim!” I cried. He looked round with his hand on the lock. “You — you have thrown away something like a fortune.” He came back to me all the way from the door. “Such a splendid old chap,” he said. “How could I? How could I?” His lips twitched. “Here it does not matter.” “Oh! you — you —” I began, and had to cast about for a suitable word, but before I became aware that there was no name that would just do, he was gone. I heard outside Egstrom’s deep gentle voice saying cheerily, “That’s the Sarah W. Granger, Jimmy. You must manage to be first aboard”; and directly Blake struck in, screaming after the manner of an outraged cockatoo, “Tell the captain we’ve got some of his mail here. That’ll fetch him. D’ye hear, Mister What’s-your-name?” And there was Jim answering Egstrom with something boyish in his tone. “All right. I’ll make a race of it.” He seemed to take refuge in the boat-sailing part of that sorry business.

‘I did not see him again that trip, but on my next (I had a six months’ charter) I went up to the store. Ten yards away from the door Blake’s scolding met my ears, and when I came in he gave me a glance of utter wretchedness; Egstrom, all smiles, advanced, extending a large bony hand. “Glad to see you, captain. . . . Sssh. . . . Been thinking you were about due back here. What did you say, sir? . . . Sssh. . . . Oh! him! He has left us. Come into the parlour.” . . . After the slam of the door Blake’s strained voice became faint, as the voice of one scolding desperately in a wilderness. . . . “Put us to a great inconvenience, too. Used us badly — I must say . . . ” “Where’s he gone to? Do you know?” I asked. “No. It’s no use asking either,” said Egstrom, standing bewhiskered and obliging before me with his arms hanging down his sides clumsily, and a thin silver watch-chain looped very low on a rucked-up blue serge waistcoat. “A man like that don’t go anywhere in particular.” I was too concerned at the news to ask for the explanation of that pronouncement, and he went on. “He left — let’s see — the very day a steamer with returning pilgrims from the Red Sea put in here with two blades of her propeller gone. Three weeks ago now.” “Wasn’t there something said about the Patna case?” I asked, fearing the worst. He gave a start, and looked at me as if I had been a sorcerer. “Why, yes! How do you know? Some of them were talking about it here. There was a captain or two, the manager of Vanlo’s engineering shop at the harbour, two or three others, and myself. Jim was in here too, having a sandwich and a glass of beer; when we are busy — you see, captain — there’s no time for a proper tiffin. He was standing by this table eating sandwiches, and the rest of us were round the telescope watching that steamer come in; and by-and-by Vanlo’s manager began to talk about the chief of the Patna; he had done some repairs for him once, and from that he went on to tell us what an old ruin she was, and the money that had been made out of her. He came to mention her last voyage, and then we all struck in. Some said one thing and some another — not much — what you or any other man might say; and there was some laughing. Captain O’Brien of the Sarah W. Granger, a large, noisy old man with a stick — he was sitting listening to us in this arm-chair here — he let drive suddenly with his stick at the floor, and roars out, ‘Skunks!’ . . . Made us all jump. Vanlo’s manager winks at us and asks, ‘What’s the matter, Captain O’Brien?’ ‘Matter! matter!’ the old man began to shout; ‘what are you Injuns laughing at? It’s no laughing matter. It’s a disgrace to human natur’ — that’s what it is. I would despise being seen in the same room with one of those men. Yes, sir!’ He seemed to catch my eye like, and I had to speak out of civility. ‘Skunks!’ says I, ‘of course, Captain O’Brien, and I wouldn’t care to have them here myself, so you’re quite safe in this room, Captain O’Brien. Have a little something cool to drink.’ ‘Dam’ your drink, Egstrom,’ says he, with a twinkle in his eye; ‘when I want a drink I will shout for it. I am going to quit. It stinks here now.’ At this all the others burst out laughing, and out they go after the old man. And then, sir, that blasted Jim he puts down the sandwich he had in his hand and walks round the table to me; there was his glass of beer poured out quite full. ‘I am off,’ he says — just like this. ‘It isn’t half-past one yet,’ says I; ‘you might snatch a smoke first.’ I thought he meant it was time for him to go down to his work. When I understood what he was up to, my arms fell — so! Can’t get a man like that every day, you know, sir; a regular devil for sailing a boat; ready to go out miles to sea to meet ships in any sort of weather. More than once a captain would come in here full of it, and the first thing he would say would be, ‘That’s a reckless sort of a lunatic you’ve got for water-clerk, Egstrom. I was feeling my way in at daylight under short canvas when there comes flying out of the mist right under my forefoot a boat half under water, sprays going over the mast-head, two frightened niggers on the bottom boards, a yelling fiend at the tiller. Hey! hey! Ship ahoy! ahoy! Captain! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake’s man first to speak to you! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake! Hallo! hey! whoop! Kick the niggers — out reefs — a squall on at the time — shoots ahead whooping and yelling to me to make sail and he would give me a lead in — more like a demon than a man. Never saw a boat handled like that in all my life. Couldn’t have been drunk — was he? Such a quiet, soft-spoken chap too — blush like a girl when he came on board. . . . ’ I tell you, Captain Marlow, nobody had a chance against us with a strange ship when Jim was out. The other ship-chandlers just kept their old customers, and . . . ”