nothing, she had known nothing, she had no conception
of anything. I ask myself whether she were sure
that anything else existed. What notions she may
have formed of the outside world is to me inconceivable:
all that she knew of its inhabitants were a betrayed
woman and a sinister pantaloon. Her lover also
came to her from there, gifted with irresistible seductions;
but what would become of her if he should return to
these inconceivable regions that seemed always to
claim back their own? Her mother had warned her
of this with tears, before she died .
. .
’She had caught hold of my arm firmly, and as
soon as I had stopped she had withdrawn her hand in
haste. She was audacious and shrinking. She
feared nothing, but she was checked by the profound
incertitude and the extreme strangeness—a
brave person groping in the dark. I belonged to
this Unknown that might claim Jim for its own at any
moment. I was, as it were, in the secret of its
nature and of its intentions—the confidant
of a threatening mystery—armed with its
power perhaps! I believe she supposed I could
with a word whisk Jim away out of her very arms; it
is my sober conviction she went through agonies of
apprehension during my long talks with Jim; through
a real and intolerable anguish that might have conceivably
driven her into plotting my murder, had the fierceness
of her soul been equal to the tremendous situation
it had created. This is my impression, and it
is all I can give you: the whole thing dawned
gradually upon me, and as it got clearer and clearer
I was overwhelmed by a slow incredulous amazement.
She made me believe her, but there is no word that
on my lips could render the effect of the headlong
and vehement whisper, of the soft, passionate tones,
of the sudden breathless pause and the appealing movement
of the white arms extended swiftly. They fell;
the ghostly figure swayed like a slender tree in the
wind, the pale oval of the face drooped; it was impossible
to distinguish her features, the darkness of the eyes
was unfathomable; two wide sleeves uprose in the dark
like unfolding wings, and she stood silent, holding
her head in her hands.’
’I was immensely touched: her youth, her
ignorance, her pretty beauty, which had the simple
charm and the delicate vigour of a wild-flower, her
pathetic pleading, her helplessness, appealed to me
with almost the strength of her own unreasonable and
natural fear. She feared the unknown as we all
do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely
vast. I stood for it, for myself, for you fellows,
for all the world that neither cared for Jim nor needed
him in the least. I would have been ready enough
to answer for the indifference of the teeming earth
but for the reflection that he too belonged to this
mysterious unknown of her fears, and that, however
much I stood for, I did not stand for him. This
made me hesitate. A murmur of hopeless pain unsealed
my lips. I began by protesting that I at least
had come with no intention to take Jim away.
