finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_14_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 20-21
chapters 20-21
{"name": "Chapters 20-21", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-2021", "summary": "Marlow entered Stein's house late in the evening and was struck immediately by the dramatic figure of the old man, sitting at his desk, washed in the glow of a single spot of light in the darkened room. Then Marlow's eyes caught the outlines of the cases containing Stein's hobbies. He was surrounded by catacombs of beetles and long glass cases of butterflies. \"Marvelous,\" Stein whispered over one of the cases of butterflies. Marlow admired one butterfly in particular, and Stein told him that a butterfly was a masterpiece of nature. In comparison, man was amazing, but he was no masterpiece. Then Stein told Marlow how he had acquired this particular specimen. One day while on the outpost where he lived for so many years, he was called away to a meeting. The summons was fraudulent, however, and Stein encountered an ambush. But he feigned death and was able to kill three soldiers and drive off the others. He looked at one of the men whom he had killed, and suddenly, a shadow seemed to pass over the dead man's forehead. It was this very butterfly, a particularly rare variety that he had dreamed of and searched for all his life. Suddenly, here it was, fluttering slowly away from the corpse of a man who had tried to murder him. Acting just as instantly as he had during the ambush attempt, he clapped his hat over the butterfly. Immediately, Stein was so stunned by his good fortune that his knees collapsed under him. Life had reached its climax for him at that moment. Stein wanted nothing more. He had been victorious against his enemies, he had a beloved wife and daughter, and now he had the butterfly of his dreams. Marlow told Stein that he had come to him to discuss another kind of rare specimen -- a rare specimen of a man. Then he began describing Jim's unusual nature. Stein murmured that he understood Jim well: Jim was a romantic. Marlow accepted the diagnosis immediately. But what was to be done to cure him? he asked Stein. Stein answered that it was futile to try and \"cure\" a romantic. Instead, one should focus on helping him to understand how to live with his romanticism -- that is, \"how to live. . . . How to be. Ach! How to be.\" A man, he said, is born and it is as though he has fallen into a sea, a dream. And if he tries to crawl out of his dream, he drowns. To triumph in this sea of dreams, he must immerse himself in the destructive element and battle it into submission in his own individual way. \"Reality\" is only a dream; we should treat it with great seriousness, and yet we should hold ourselves at a distance from it, knowing that none of it matters ultimately. Thus, we are prevented from \"taking matters too much to heart.\" Jim's problem, Stein said, was taking matters \"too much to heart.\" He proposed that, for the present, he and Marlow should retire. In the morning, they would speak of \"practical\" solutions to Jim's problem. They would not try to cure Jim of his romanticism; instead, they would search for ways that they could give Jim a chance to live successfully with his romanticism. Marlow begins Chapter 21 by explaining where the settlement of Patusan is. It is a little-known post in the Malay Islands, forty miles inland and upriver, controlled by three warring factions. It is known to very few people in the mercantile world. Two years after Jim accepted Stein's offer of resident manager of the trading post, Marlow went to visit him in Patusan, and he marveled at the change that had been wrought in the young man. Clearly, Jim had accomplished much and had regulated much in Patusan. Marlow, of course, was filled with happiness. Jim's victory over his self-punishing romanticism had been an excellent triumph. And it was a victory, Marlow says, \"in which I had taken my part.\" Jim had achieved greatness. In fact, he had achieved such greatness that most of those who heard about it could never fathom it because their imaginations were too starved and too dull. Comparing Jim, who was once so flawed as to seem suicidal, with the masses of other men, Marlow says that Jim was like a \"light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone -- and as short-lived, alas!\"", "analysis": "In Chapter 19, Marlow had decided to take Jim's problems to a wealthy merchant named Stein, a respected and trustworthy man. Stein was also a world-renowned collector of rare butterflies and beetles. Marlow  now offers us a history  to Mr. Stein. The main point of this digression is to show us Stein's reaction to treachery, ambush, and betrayal as opposed to the capture of the most beautiful butterfly in the world. In other words, Stein thinks nothing of being betrayed, ambushed, and shot at by would-be assassins , but when, in the next moment, he finds one of the rarest butterflies in the world, his knees collapse with wonderment and joy. Therefore, this digression shows Stein to be probably one of the most magnificent romantics in the world, and thus, he will recognize immediately that Jim is also a romantic. Indeed, after hearing Jim's story, Stein immediately pronounces: \"He is romantic -- romantic.\" Clearly, Stein identifies with Jim and thinks of how many wonderful opportunities have come his way that he has missed while Jim has missed only one -- the chance to be the hero of the Patna episode instead of its scapegoat. Stein then suggests to Marlow that their problem is not how to cure Jim, but instead, how to teach him to live  with himself. Chapter 21 introduces us to Patusan, where it is decided that Jim will be sent to replace the present, dishonest manager. The importance of Patusan is that it is the most isolated place in that part of the world. Consequently, it will allow Jim to be extremely isolated and so preoccupied that he will not have time to confront himself with massive attacks of guilt and self-recrimination. At the end of this chapter, we gain somewhat of an understanding of why Marlow has taken such pains with Jim: Marlow believes that \"We exist only in so far as we hang together,\" and since Jim is one of us, it becomes necessary for Marlow and Stein  to look after Jim."}
'Late in the evening I entered his study, after traversing an imposing
but empty dining-room very dimly lit. The house was silent. I was
preceded by an elderly grim Javanese servant in a sort of livery of
white jacket and yellow sarong, who, after throwing the door open,
exclaimed low, "O master!" and stepping aside, vanished in a mysterious
way as though he had been a ghost only momentarily embodied for that
particular service. Stein turned round with the chair, and in the same
movement his spectacles seemed to get pushed up on his forehead. He
welcomed me in his quiet and humorous voice. Only one corner of the vast
room, the corner in which stood his writing-desk, was strongly lighted
by a shaded reading-lamp, and the rest of the spacious apartment melted
into shapeless gloom like a cavern. Narrow shelves filled with dark
boxes of uniform shape and colour ran round the walls, not from floor
to ceiling, but in a sombre belt about four feet broad. Catacombs of
beetles. Wooden tablets were hung above at irregular intervals. The
light reached one of them, and the word Coleoptera written in gold
letters glittered mysteriously upon a vast dimness. The glass cases
containing the collection of butterflies were ranged in three long rows
upon slender-legged little tables. One of these cases had been removed
from its place and stood on the desk, which was bestrewn with oblong
slips of paper blackened with minute handwriting.

'"So you see me--so," he said. His hand hovered over the case where
a butterfly in solitary grandeur spread out dark bronze wings, seven
inches or more across, with exquisite white veinings and a gorgeous
border of yellow spots. "Only one specimen like this they have in _your_
London, and then--no more. To my small native town this my collection I
shall bequeath. Something of me. The best."

'He bent forward in the chair and gazed intently, his chin over the
front of the case. I stood at his back. "Marvellous," he whispered, and
seemed to forget my presence. His history was curious. He had been born
in Bavaria, and when a youth of twenty-two had taken an active part in
the revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily compromised, he managed
to make his escape, and at first found a refuge with a poor republican
watchmaker in Trieste. From there he made his way to Tripoli with a
stock of cheap watches to hawk about,--not a very great opening truly,
but it turned out lucky enough, because it was there he came upon a
Dutch traveller--a rather famous man, I believe, but I don't remember
his name. It was that naturalist who, engaging him as a sort of
assistant, took him to the East. They travelled in the Archipelago
together and separately, collecting insects and birds, for four years or
more. Then the naturalist went home, and Stein, having no home to go to,
remained with an old trader he had come across in his journeys in the
interior of Celebes--if Celebes may be said to have an interior. This
old Scotsman, the only white man allowed to reside in the country at the
time, was a privileged friend of the chief ruler of Wajo States, who
was a woman. I often heard Stein relate how that chap, who was slightly
paralysed on one side, had introduced him to the native court a short
time before another stroke carried him off. He was a heavy man with
a patriarchal white beard, and of imposing stature. He came into
the council-hall where all the rajahs, pangerans, and headmen were
assembled, with the queen, a fat wrinkled woman (very free in her
speech, Stein said), reclining on a high couch under a canopy. He
dragged his leg, thumping with his stick, and grasped Stein's arm,
leading him right up to the couch. "Look, queen, and you rajahs, this is
my son," he proclaimed in a stentorian voice. "I have traded with your
fathers, and when I die he shall trade with you and your sons."

'By means of this simple formality Stein inherited the Scotsman's
privileged position and all his stock-in-trade, together with a
fortified house on the banks of the only navigable river in the country.
Shortly afterwards the old queen, who was so free in her speech, died,
and the country became disturbed by various pretenders to the throne.
Stein joined the party of a younger son, the one of whom thirty years
later he never spoke otherwise but as "my poor Mohammed Bonso." They
both became the heroes of innumerable exploits; they had wonderful
adventures, and once stood a siege in the Scotsman's house for a month,
with only a score of followers against a whole army. I believe the
natives talk of that war to this day. Meantime, it seems, Stein never
failed to annex on his own account every butterfly or beetle he could
lay hands on. After some eight years of war, negotiations, false truces,
sudden outbreaks, reconciliation, treachery, and so on, and just as
peace seemed at last permanently established, his "poor Mohammed
Bonso" was assassinated at the gate of his own royal residence while
dismounting in the highest spirits on his return from a successful
deer-hunt. This event rendered Stein's position extremely insecure,
but he would have stayed perhaps had it not been that a short time
afterwards he lost Mohammed's sister ("my dear wife the princess," he
used to say solemnly), by whom he had had a daughter--mother and child
both dying within three days of each other from some infectious fever.
He left the country, which this cruel loss had made unbearable to
him. Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What
followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which
remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream. He
had a little money; he started life afresh, and in the course of years
acquired a considerable fortune. At first he had travelled a good deal
amongst the islands, but age had stolen upon him, and of late he seldom
left his spacious house three miles out of town, with an extensive
garden, and surrounded by stables, offices, and bamboo cottages for
his servants and dependants, of whom he had many. He drove in his buggy
every morning to town, where he had an office with white and Chinese
clerks. He owned a small fleet of schooners and native craft, and dealt
in island produce on a large scale. For the rest he lived solitary,
but not misanthropic, with his books and his collection, classing and
arranging specimens, corresponding with entomologists in Europe, writing
up a descriptive catalogue of his treasures. Such was the history of
the man whom I had come to consult upon Jim's case without any definite
hope. Simply to hear what he would have to say would have been a relief.
I was very anxious, but I respected the intense, almost passionate,
absorption with which he looked at a butterfly, as though on the bronze
sheen of these frail wings, in the white tracings, in the gorgeous
markings, he could see other things, an image of something as perishable
and defying destruction as these delicate and lifeless tissues
displaying a splendour unmarred by death.

'"Marvellous!" he repeated, looking up at me. "Look! The beauty--but
that is nothing--look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And
so strong! And so exact! This is Nature--the balance of colossal forces.
Every star is so--and every blade of grass stands so--and the mighty
Kosmos ib perfect equilibrium produces--this. This wonder; this
masterpiece of Nature--the great artist."

'"Never heard an entomologist go on like this," I observed cheerfully.
"Masterpiece! And what of man?"

'"Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece," he said, keeping his
eyes fixed on the glass case. "Perhaps the artist was a little mad. Eh?
What do you think? Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is
not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should
he want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making
a great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the
blades of grass? . . ."

'"Catching butterflies," I chimed in.

'He smiled, threw himself back in his chair, and stretched his legs.
"Sit down," he said. "I captured this rare specimen myself one very fine
morning. And I had a very big emotion. You don't know what it is for a
collector to capture such a rare specimen. You can't know."

'I smiled at my ease in a rocking-chair. His eyes seemed to look far
beyond the wall at which they stared; and he narrated how, one night,
a messenger arrived from his "poor Mohammed," requiring his presence
at the "residenz"--as he called it--which was distant some nine or ten
miles by a bridle-path over a cultivated plain, with patches of forest
here and there. Early in the morning he started from his fortified
house, after embracing his little Emma, and leaving the "princess," his
wife, in command. He described how she came with him as far as the
gate, walking with one hand on the neck of his horse; she had on a white
jacket, gold pins in her hair, and a brown leather belt over her left
shoulder with a revolver in it. "She talked as women will talk," he
said, "telling me to be careful, and to try to get back before dark, and
what a great wickedness it was for me to go alone. We were at war, and
the country was not safe; my men were putting up bullet-proof shutters
to the house and loading their rifles, and she begged me to have no fear
for her. She could defend the house against anybody till I returned. And
I laughed with pleasure a little. I liked to see her so brave and young
and strong. I too was young then. At the gate she caught hold of my
hand and gave it one squeeze and fell back. I made my horse stand still
outside till I heard the bars of the gate put up behind me. There was a
great enemy of mine, a great noble--and a great rascal too--roaming with
a band in the neighbourhood. I cantered for four or five miles; there
had been rain in the night, but the musts had gone up, up--and the
face of the earth was clean; it lay smiling to me, so fresh and
innocent--like a little child. Suddenly somebody fires a volley--twenty
shots at least it seemed to me. I hear bullets sing in my ear, and
my hat jumps to the back of my head. It was a little intrigue, you
understand. They got my poor Mohammed to send for me and then laid
that ambush. I see it all in a minute, and I think--This wants a little
management. My pony snort, jump, and stand, and I fall slowly forward
with my head on his mane. He begins to walk, and with one eye I could
see over his neck a faint cloud of smoke hanging in front of a clump
of bamboos to my left. I think--Aha! my friends, why you not wait long
enough before you shoot? This is not yet gelungen. Oh no! I get hold of
my revolver with my right hand--quiet--quiet. After all, there were only
seven of these rascals. They get up from the grass and start running
with their sarongs tucked up, waving spears above their heads, and
yelling to each other to look out and catch the horse, because I was
dead. I let them come as close as the door here, and then bang, bang,
bang--take aim each time too. One more shot I fire at a man's back, but
I miss. Too far already. And then I sit alone on my horse with the clean
earth smiling at me, and there are the bodies of three men lying on the
ground. One was curled up like a dog, another on his back had an arm
over his eyes as if to keep off the sun, and the third man he draws up
his leg very slowly and makes it with one kick straight again. I watch
him very carefully from my horse, but there is no more--bleibt ganz
ruhig--keep still, so. And as I looked at his face for some sign of life
I observed something like a faint shadow pass over his forehead. It was
the shadow of this butterfly. Look at the form of the wing. This species
fly high with a strong flight. I raised my eyes and I saw him fluttering
away. I think--Can it be possible? And then I lost him. I dismounted
and went on very slow, leading my horse and holding my revolver with one
hand and my eyes darting up and down and right and left, everywhere! At
last I saw him sitting on a small heap of dirt ten feet away. At once
my heart began to beat quick. I let go my horse, keep my revolver in one
hand, and with the other snatch my soft felt hat off my head. One step.
Steady. Another step. Flop! I got him! When I got up I shook like a leaf
with excitement, and when I opened these beautiful wings and made sure
what a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen I had, my head went
round and my legs became so weak with emotion that I had to sit on the
ground. I had greatly desired to possess myself of a specimen of that
species when collecting for the professor. I took long journeys and
underwent great privations; I had dreamed of him in my sleep, and here
suddenly I had him in my fingers--for myself! In the words of the poet"
(he pronounced it "boet")--

     "'So halt' ich's endlich denn in meinen Handen,
     Und nenn' es in gewissem Sinne mein.'"

He gave to the last word the emphasis of a suddenly lowered voice, and
withdrew his eyes slowly from my face. He began to charge a long-stemmed
pipe busily and in silence, then, pausing with his thumb on the orifice
of the bowl, looked again at me significantly.

'"Yes, my good friend. On that day I had nothing to desire; I had
greatly annoyed my principal enemy; I was young, strong; I had
friendship; I had the love" (he said "lof") "of woman, a child I had,
to make my heart very full--and even what I had once dreamed in my sleep
had come into my hand too!"

'He struck a match, which flared violently. His thoughtful placid face
twitched once.

'"Friend, wife, child," he said slowly, gazing at the small
flame--"phoo!" The match was blown out. He sighed and turned again to
the glass case. The frail and beautiful wings quivered faintly, as if
his breath had for an instant called back to life that gorgeous object
of his dreams.

'"The work," he began suddenly, pointing to the scattered slips, and in
his usual gentle and cheery tone, "is making great progress. I have been
this rare specimen describing. . . . Na! And what is your good news?"

'"To tell you the truth, Stein," I said with an effort that surprised
me, "I came here to describe a specimen. . . ."

'"Butterfly?" he asked, with an unbelieving and humorous eagerness.

'"Nothing so perfect," I answered, feeling suddenly dispirited with all
sorts of doubts. "A man!"

'"Ach so!" he murmured, and his smiling countenance, turned to me,
became grave. Then after looking at me for a while he said slowly,
"Well--I am a man too."

'Here you have him as he was; he knew how to be so generously
encouraging as to make a scrupulous man hesitate on the brink of
confidence; but if I did hesitate it was not for long.

'He heard me out, sitting with crossed legs. Sometimes his head would
disappear completely in a great eruption of smoke, and a sympathetic
growl would come out from the cloud. When I finished he uncrossed his
legs, laid down his pipe, leaned forward towards me earnestly with his
elbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of his fingers together.

'"I understand very well. He is romantic."

'He had diagnosed the case for me, and at first I was quite startled to
find how simple it was; and indeed our conference resembled so much a
medical consultation--Stein, of learned aspect, sitting in an arm-chair
before his desk; I, anxious, in another, facing him, but a little to one
side--that it seemed natural to ask--

'"What's good for it?"

'He lifted up a long forefinger.

'"There is only one remedy! One thing alone can us from being ourselves
cure!" The finger came down on the desk with a smart rap. The case
which he had made to look so simple before became if possible still
simpler--and altogether hopeless. There was a pause. "Yes," said I,
"strictly speaking, the question is not how to get cured, but how to
live."

'He approved with his head, a little sadly as it seemed. "Ja! ja! In
general, adapting the words of your great poet: That is the
question. . . ." He went on nodding sympathetically. . . . "How to be!
Ach! How to be."

'He stood up with the tips of his fingers resting on the desk.

'"We want in so many different ways to be," he began again. "This
magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it;
but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want to be so,
and again he want to be so. . . ." He moved his hand up, then down. . . .
"He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil--and every time he
shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow--so fine as he can
never be. . . . In a dream. . . ."

'He lowered the glass lid, the automatic lock clicked sharply, and
taking up the case in both hands he bore it religiously away to its
place, passing out of the bright circle of the lamp into the ring of
fainter light--into shapeless dusk at last. It had an odd effect--as
if these few steps had carried him out of this concrete and perplexed
world. His tall form, as though robbed of its substance, hovered
noiselessly over invisible things with stooping and indefinite
movements; his voice, heard in that remoteness where he could be
glimpsed mysteriously busy with immaterial cares, was no longer
incisive, seemed to roll voluminous and grave--mellowed by distance.

'"And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the
real trouble--the heart pain--the world pain. I tell you, my friend, it
is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for
the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough. . . .
Ja! . . . And all the time you are such a fine fellow too! Wie? Was?
Gott im Himmel! How can that be? Ha! ha! ha!"

'The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed
boisterously.

'"Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into
a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into
the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns--nicht wahr?
. . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit
yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water
make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me--how to be?"

'His voice leaped up extraordinarily strong, as though away there in
the dusk he had been inspired by some whisper of knowledge. "I will tell
you! For that too there is only one way."

'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring of
faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the lamp. His
extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his deepset eyes seemed
to pierce through me, but his twitching lips uttered no word, and the
austere exaltation of a certitude seen in the dusk vanished from his
face. The hand that had been pointing at my breast fell, and by-and-by,
coming a step nearer, he laid it gently on my shoulder. There were
things, he said mournfully, that perhaps could never be told, only he
had lived so much alone that sometimes he forgot--he forgot. The light
had destroyed the assurance which had inspired him in the distant
shadows. He sat down and, with both elbows on the desk, rubbed his
forehead. "And yet it is true--it is true. In the destructive element
immerse." . . . He spoke in a subdued tone, without looking at me, one
hand on each side of his face. "That was the way. To follow the dream,
and again to follow the dream--and so--ewig--usque ad finem. . . ." The
whisper of his conviction seemed to open before me a vast and uncertain
expanse, as of a crepuscular horizon on a plain at dawn--or was it,
perchance, at the coming of the night? One had not the courage to
decide; but it was a charming and deceptive light, throwing the
impalpable poesy of its dimness over pitfalls--over graves. His life had
begun in sacrifice, in enthusiasm for generous ideas; he had travelled
very far, on various ways, on strange paths, and whatever he followed
it had been without faltering, and therefore without shame and without
regret. In so far he was right. That was the way, no doubt. Yet for all
that, the great plain on which men wander amongst graves and pitfalls
remained very desolate under the impalpable poesy of its crepuscular
light, overshadowed in the centre, circled with a bright edge as if
surrounded by an abyss full of flames. When at last I broke the silence
it was to express the opinion that no one could be more romantic than
himself.

'He shook his head slowly, and afterwards looked at me with a patient
and inquiring glance. It was a shame, he said. There we were sitting
and talking like two boys, instead of putting our heads together to find
something practical--a practical remedy--for the evil--for the great
evil--he repeated, with a humorous and indulgent smile. For all that,
our talk did not grow more practical. We avoided pronouncing Jim's name
as though we had tried to keep flesh and blood out of our discussion,
or he were nothing but an erring spirit, a suffering and nameless shade.
"Na!" said Stein, rising. "To-night you sleep here, and in the morning
we shall do something practical--practical. . . ." He lit a two-branched
candlestick and led the way. We passed through empty dark rooms,
escorted by gleams from the lights Stein carried. They glided along the
waxed floors, sweeping here and there over the polished surface of
a table, leaped upon a fragmentary curve of a piece of furniture, or
flashed perpendicularly in and out of distant mirrors, while the forms
of two men and the flicker of two flames could be seen for a moment
stealing silently across the depths of a crystalline void. He walked
slowly a pace in advance with stooping courtesy; there was a profound,
as it were a listening, quietude on his face; the long flaxen locks
mixed with white threads were scattered thinly upon his slightly bowed
neck.

'"He is romantic--romantic," he repeated. "And that is very bad--very
bad. . . . Very good, too," he added. "But _is he_?" I queried.

'"Gewiss," he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum, but
without looking at me. "Evident! What is it that by inward pain makes
him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes him--exist?"

'At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim's existence--starting
from a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by clouds of
dust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in a material
world--but his imperishable reality came to me with a convincing, with
an irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in our progress
through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams of light and
the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with flickering flames
within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had approached nearer to
absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half
submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. "Perhaps he is," I
admitted with a slight laugh, whose unexpectedly loud reverberation
made me lower my voice directly; "but I am sure you are." With his head
dropping on his breast and the light held high he began to walk again.
"Well--I exist, too," he said.

'He preceded me. My eyes followed his movements, but what I did see was
not the head of the firm, the welcome guest at afternoon receptions,
the correspondent of learned societies, the entertainer of stray
naturalists; I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had known
how to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humble
surroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war--in
all the exalted elements of romance. At the door of my room he faced me.
"Yes," I said, as though carrying on a discussion, "and amongst other
things you dreamed foolishly of a certain butterfly; but when one
fine morning your dream came in your way you did not let the splendid
opportunity escape. Did you? Whereas he . . ." Stein lifted his hand.
"And do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams
I had lost that had come in my way?" He shook his head regretfully. "It
seems to me that some would have been very fine--if I had made them come
true. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don't know." "Whether his
were fine or not," I said, "he knows of one which he certainly did not
catch." "Everybody knows of one or two like that," said Stein; "and that
is the trouble--the great trouble. . . ."

'He shook hands on the threshold, peered into my room under his
raised arm. "Sleep well. And to-morrow we must do something
practical--practical. . . ."

'Though his own room was beyond mine I saw him return the way he came.
He was going back to his butterflies.'
'I don't suppose any of you have ever heard of Patusan?' Marlow resumed,
after a silence occupied in the careful lighting of a cigar. 'It does
not matter; there's many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us of
a night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphere
of its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to the
astronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition,
weight, path--the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of its
light--a sort of scientific scandal-mongering. Thus with Patusan. It
was referred to knowingly in the inner government circles in Batavia,
especially as to its irregularities and aberrations, and it was known
by name to some few, very few, in the mercantile world. Nobody, however,
had been there, and I suspect no one desired to go there in person,
just as an astronomer, I should fancy, would strongly object to being
transported into a distant heavenly body, where, parted from his earthly
emoluments, he would be bewildered by the view of an unfamiliar heavens.
However, neither heavenly bodies nor astronomers have anything to do
with Patusan. It was Jim who went there. I only meant you to understand
that had Stein arranged to send him into a star of the fifth magnitude
the change could not have been greater. He left his earthly failings
behind him and what sort of reputation he had, and there was a totally
new set of conditions for his imaginative faculty to work upon. Entirely
new, entirely remarkable. And he got hold of them in a remarkable way.

'Stein was the man who knew more about Patusan than anybody else. More
than was known in the government circles I suspect. I have no doubt he
had been there, either in his butterfly-hunting days or later on, when
he tried in his incorrigible way to season with a pinch of romance the
fattening dishes of his commercial kitchen. There were very few places
in the Archipelago he had not seen in the original dusk of their being,
before light (and even electric light) had been carried into them for
the sake of better morality and--and--well--the greater profit, too.
It was at breakfast of the morning following our talk about Jim that he
mentioned the place, after I had quoted poor Brierly's remark: "Let him
creep twenty feet underground and stay there." He looked up at me with
interested attention, as though I had been a rare insect. "This could be
done, too," he remarked, sipping his coffee. "Bury him in some sort,"
I explained. "One doesn't like to do it of course, but it would be the
best thing, seeing what he is." "Yes; he is young," Stein mused. "The
youngest human being now in existence," I affirmed. "Schon. There's
Patusan," he went on in the same tone. . . . "And the woman is dead
now," he added incomprehensibly.

'Of course I don't know that story; I can only guess that once before
Patusan had been used as a grave for some sin, transgression, or
misfortune. It is impossible to suspect Stein. The only woman that
had ever existed for him was the Malay girl he called "My wife the
princess," or, more rarely, in moments of expansion, "the mother of my
Emma." Who was the woman he had mentioned in connection with Patusan I
can't say; but from his allusions I understand she had been an educated
and very good-looking Dutch-Malay girl, with a tragic or perhaps only a
pitiful history, whose most painful part no doubt was her marriage with
a Malacca Portuguese who had been clerk in some commercial house in
the Dutch colonies. I gathered from Stein that this man was an
unsatisfactory person in more ways than one, all being more or less
indefinite and offensive. It was solely for his wife's sake that Stein
had appointed him manager of Stein & Co.'s trading post in Patusan;
but commercially the arrangement was not a success, at any rate for
the firm, and now the woman had died, Stein was disposed to try another
agent there. The Portuguese, whose name was Cornelius, considered
himself a very deserving but ill-used person, entitled by his abilities
to a better position. This man Jim would have to relieve. "But I don't
think he will go away from the place," remarked Stein. "That has nothing
to do with me. It was only for the sake of the woman that I . . . But as
I think there is a daughter left, I shall let him, if he likes to stay,
keep the old house."

'Patusan is a remote district of a native-ruled state, and the chief
settlement bears the same name. At a point on the river about forty
miles from the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can
be seen rising above the level of the forests the summits of two steep
hills very close together, and separated by what looks like a deep
fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a matter of fact, the
valley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the appearance from the
settlement is of one irregularly conical hill split in two, and with the
two halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after the full, the
moon, as seen from the open space in front of Jim's house (he had a very
fine house in the native style when I visited him), rose exactly behind
these hills, its diffused light at first throwing the two masses into
intensely black relief, and then the nearly perfect disc, glowing
ruddily, appeared, gliding upwards between the sides of the chasm, till
it floated away above the summits, as if escaping from a yawning grave
in gentle triumph. "Wonderful effect," said Jim by my side. "Worth
seeing. Is it not?"

'And this question was put with a note of personal pride that made me
smile, as though he had had a hand in regulating that unique spectacle.
He had regulated so many things in Patusan--things that would have
appeared as much beyond his control as the motions of the moon and the
stars.

'It was inconceivable. That was the distinctive quality of the part into
which Stein and I had tumbled him unwittingly, with no other notion than
to get him out of the way; out of his own way, be it understood. That
was our main purpose, though, I own, I might have had another motive
which had influenced me a little. I was about to go home for a time;
and it may be I desired, more than I was aware of myself, to dispose of
him--to dispose of him, you understand--before I left. I was going home,
and he had come to me from there, with his miserable trouble and his
shadowy claim, like a man panting under a burden in a mist. I cannot
say I had ever seen him distinctly--not even to this day, after I had
my last view of him; but it seemed to me that the less I understood
the more I was bound to him in the name of that doubt which is the
inseparable part of our knowledge. I did not know so much more about
myself. And then, I repeat, I was going home--to that home distant
enough for all its hearthstones to be like one hearthstone, by which the
humblest of us has the right to sit. We wander in our thousands over the
face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the
seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me
that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account.
We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--those whom we
obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most
free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties,--even those for whom
home holds no dear face, no familiar voice,--even they have to meet the
spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its
valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees--a
mute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy,
to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear
conscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed
very few of us have the will or the capacity to look consciously under
the surface of familiar emotions. There are the girls we love, the men
we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the
pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with
clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I
think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call
their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to
meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit--it is those who
understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular
right to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us understand, but
we all feel it though, and I say _all_ without exception, because those
who do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass has its spot on earth
whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land
from which he draws his faith together with his life. I don't know
how much Jim understood; but I know he felt, he felt confusedly but
powerfully, the demand of some such truth or some such illusion--I don't
care how you call it, there is so little difference, and the difference
means so little. The thing is that in virtue of his feeling he mattered.
He would never go home now. Not he. Never. Had he been capable of
picturesque manifestations he would have shuddered at the thought
and made you shudder too. But he was not of that sort, though he was
expressive enough in his way. Before the idea of going home he would
grow desperately stiff and immovable, with lowered chin and pouted lips,
and with those candid blue eyes of his glowering darkly under a frown,
as if before something unbearable, as if before something revolting.
There was imagination in that hard skull of his, over which the thick
clustering hair fitted like a cap. As to me, I have no imagination (I
would be more certain about him today, if I had), and I do not mean to
imply that I figured to myself the spirit of the land uprising above the
white cliffs of Dover, to ask me what I--returning with no bones broken,
so to speak--had done with my very young brother. I could not make
such a mistake. I knew very well he was of those about whom there is
no inquiry; I had seen better men go out, disappear, vanish utterly,
without provoking a sound of curiosity or sorrow. The spirit of
the land, as becomes the ruler of great enterprises, is careless of
innumerable lives. Woe to the stragglers! We exist only in so far as we
hang together. He had straggled in a way; he had not hung on; but he was
aware of it with an intensity that made him touching, just as a man's
more intense life makes his death more touching than the death of a
tree. I happened to be handy, and I happened to be touched. That's all
there is to it. I was concerned as to the way he would go out. It would
have hurt me if, for instance, he had taken to drink. The earth is so
small that I was afraid of, some day, being waylaid by a blear-eyed,
swollen-faced, besmirched loafer, with no soles to his canvas shoes,
and with a flutter of rags about the elbows, who, on the strength of old
acquaintance, would ask for a loan of five dollars. You know the awful
jaunty bearing of these scarecrows coming to you from a decent past,
the rasping careless voice, the half-averted impudent glances--those
meetings more trying to a man who believes in the solidarity of our
lives than the sight of an impenitent death-bed to a priest. That, to
tell you the truth, was the only danger I could see for him and for
me; but I also mistrusted my want of imagination. It might even come
to something worse, in some way it was beyond my powers of fancy to
foresee. He wouldn't let me forget how imaginative he was, and your
imaginative people swing farther in any direction, as if given a longer
scope of cable in the uneasy anchorage of life. They do. They take to
drink too. It may be I was belittling him by such a fear. How could I
tell? Even Stein could say no more than that he was romantic. I only
knew he was one of us. And what business had he to be romantic? I
am telling you so much about my own instinctive feelings and bemused
reflections because there remains so little to be told of him. He
existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for
you. I've led him out by the hand; I have paraded him before you. Were
my commonplace fears unjust? I won't say--not even now. You may be able
to tell better, since the proverb has it that the onlookers see most of
the game. At any rate, they were superfluous. He did not go out, not at
all; on the contrary, he came on wonderfully, came on straight as a die
and in excellent form, which showed that he could stay as well as spurt.
I ought to be delighted, for it is a victory in which I had taken my
part; but I am not so pleased as I would have expected to be. I ask
myself whether his rush had really carried him out of that mist in
which he loomed interesting if not very big, with floating outlines--a
straggler yearning inconsolably for his humble place in the ranks. And
besides, the last word is not said,--probably shall never be said. Are
not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our
stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given
up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be
pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to
say our last word--the last word of our love, of our desire, faith,
remorse, submissions, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be
shaken, I suppose--at least, not by us who know so many truths about
either. My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved
greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in
the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds.
I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your
imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is
respectable to have no illusions--and safe--and profitable--and dull.
Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that
light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow
of sparks struck from a cold stone--and as short-lived, alas!'

Chapters 20-21
Marlow entered Stein's house late in the evening and was struck immediately by the dramatic figure of the old man, sitting at his desk, washed in the glow of a single spot of light in the darkened room. Then Marlow's eyes caught the outlines of the cases containing Stein's hobbies. He was surrounded by catacombs of beetles and long glass cases of butterflies. "Marvelous," Stein whispered over one of the cases of butterflies. Marlow admired one butterfly in particular, and Stein told him that a butterfly was a masterpiece of nature. In comparison, man was amazing, but he was no masterpiece. Then Stein told Marlow how he had acquired this particular specimen. One day while on the outpost where he lived for so many years, he was called away to a meeting. The summons was fraudulent, however, and Stein encountered an ambush. But he feigned death and was able to kill three soldiers and drive off the others. He looked at one of the men whom he had killed, and suddenly, a shadow seemed to pass over the dead man's forehead. It was this very butterfly, a particularly rare variety that he had dreamed of and searched for all his life. Suddenly, here it was, fluttering slowly away from the corpse of a man who had tried to murder him. Acting just as instantly as he had during the ambush attempt, he clapped his hat over the butterfly. Immediately, Stein was so stunned by his good fortune that his knees collapsed under him. Life had reached its climax for him at that moment. Stein wanted nothing more. He had been victorious against his enemies, he had a beloved wife and daughter, and now he had the butterfly of his dreams. Marlow told Stein that he had come to him to discuss another kind of rare specimen -- a rare specimen of a man. Then he began describing Jim's unusual nature. Stein murmured that he understood Jim well: Jim was a romantic. Marlow accepted the diagnosis immediately. But what was to be done to cure him? he asked Stein. Stein answered that it was futile to try and "cure" a romantic. Instead, one should focus on helping him to understand how to live with his romanticism -- that is, "how to live. . . . How to be. Ach! How to be." A man, he said, is born and it is as though he has fallen into a sea, a dream. And if he tries to crawl out of his dream, he drowns. To triumph in this sea of dreams, he must immerse himself in the destructive element and battle it into submission in his own individual way. "Reality" is only a dream; we should treat it with great seriousness, and yet we should hold ourselves at a distance from it, knowing that none of it matters ultimately. Thus, we are prevented from "taking matters too much to heart." Jim's problem, Stein said, was taking matters "too much to heart." He proposed that, for the present, he and Marlow should retire. In the morning, they would speak of "practical" solutions to Jim's problem. They would not try to cure Jim of his romanticism; instead, they would search for ways that they could give Jim a chance to live successfully with his romanticism. Marlow begins Chapter 21 by explaining where the settlement of Patusan is. It is a little-known post in the Malay Islands, forty miles inland and upriver, controlled by three warring factions. It is known to very few people in the mercantile world. Two years after Jim accepted Stein's offer of resident manager of the trading post, Marlow went to visit him in Patusan, and he marveled at the change that had been wrought in the young man. Clearly, Jim had accomplished much and had regulated much in Patusan. Marlow, of course, was filled with happiness. Jim's victory over his self-punishing romanticism had been an excellent triumph. And it was a victory, Marlow says, "in which I had taken my part." Jim had achieved greatness. In fact, he had achieved such greatness that most of those who heard about it could never fathom it because their imaginations were too starved and too dull. Comparing Jim, who was once so flawed as to seem suicidal, with the masses of other men, Marlow says that Jim was like a "light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone -- and as short-lived, alas!"
In Chapter 19, Marlow had decided to take Jim's problems to a wealthy merchant named Stein, a respected and trustworthy man. Stein was also a world-renowned collector of rare butterflies and beetles. Marlow  now offers us a history  to Mr. Stein. The main point of this digression is to show us Stein's reaction to treachery, ambush, and betrayal as opposed to the capture of the most beautiful butterfly in the world. In other words, Stein thinks nothing of being betrayed, ambushed, and shot at by would-be assassins , but when, in the next moment, he finds one of the rarest butterflies in the world, his knees collapse with wonderment and joy. Therefore, this digression shows Stein to be probably one of the most magnificent romantics in the world, and thus, he will recognize immediately that Jim is also a romantic. Indeed, after hearing Jim's story, Stein immediately pronounces: "He is romantic -- romantic." Clearly, Stein identifies with Jim and thinks of how many wonderful opportunities have come his way that he has missed while Jim has missed only one -- the chance to be the hero of the Patna episode instead of its scapegoat. Stein then suggests to Marlow that their problem is not how to cure Jim, but instead, how to teach him to live  with himself. Chapter 21 introduces us to Patusan, where it is decided that Jim will be sent to replace the present, dishonest manager. The importance of Patusan is that it is the most isolated place in that part of the world. Consequently, it will allow Jim to be extremely isolated and so preoccupied that he will not have time to confront himself with massive attacks of guilt and self-recrimination. At the end of this chapter, we gain somewhat of an understanding of why Marlow has taken such pains with Jim: Marlow believes that "We exist only in so far as we hang together," and since Jim is one of us, it becomes necessary for Marlow and Stein  to look after Jim.