Chapter XX: THE ARM OF THE LAW
At high noon upon a morning towards the end of January, Jim happened to saunter across the hot sand to the terrace of the temple where Monimé was painting, and there found her engaged in conversation with a benevolent, grey-bearded clergyman and a stout, beaming woman who appeared to be his wife, both of whom wore blue spectacles, carried large white umbrellas lined with green, and wore pith helmets adorned with green veiling—appurtenances which stamped them as tourists. Jim himself was somewhat disreputably dressed, having a slouch hat pulled over his eyes, a canvas shirt open at the neck, a pair of well-worn flannel trousers held up by an old leather belt, and red native slippers upon his bare feet, and he therefore hesitated to approach.
Monimé, however, beckoned to him to come to her, and, when he had done so, introduced him to her new friends, whose acquaintance, it was explained, she had made an hour previously. The clergyman, it appeared, whose name was Jones, was a man of some wealth who was now touring these upper reaches of the Nile on a small private steamer, in search of the good health of which his work in the underworld of London had deprived him; and Monimé, in taking the trouble to show him and his wife around the temple, perhaps had a woman’s eye to business, for a painter, after all, has wares for sale, and is dependent on the conversion of all colours into plain gold.
Be this as it may, she now invited them to luncheon upon the dahabiyeh, and Jim, not to be churlish, was obliged to support the suggestion with every mark of assent.
The meal was served under the awnings, and when coffee had been drunk Monimé took Mrs. Jones down to the saloon, while the two men were left to smoke on deck. Jim was in a communicative mood, and for some time entertained his guest with narrations of his adventures in many lands, being careful, however, to draw a veil over the years he had spent in England. The clergyman responded, at length, with tales of his life in the slums, expressing the opinion that, owing to the failure of the Church to adapt itself to the exigencies of the present day, callousness in regard to crime was on the increase.
“Here’s an instance of what I mean,” he said. “I was walking late one night along a well-known London street when I was accosted by a young woman who, in spite of my cloth and my age, made certain suggestions to me. I was so astounded that I stopped and spoke to her, and presently she confessed to me that this was the first time she had ever done such a thing, but that she was engaged to be married to a penniless man, and somehow money had to be obtained. Now there’s callousness for you! Can you imagine such a proceeding?”
“Yes, that’s pretty low down,” Jim answered. “What did you do?”
The clergyman smiled. “Ah, that is another story,” he said. “To test her I told her to come to my house the next day and to bring her fiancé with her; and to my surprise they turned up. Well, to cut the story short, I agreed to set them up in business, and I gave them quite a large sum of money for the purpose, hardly expecting, however, that it would prove anything but a dead loss. You may imagine my gratification, therefore, when I began to receive regular quarterly repayments, each accompanied by a gracious little letter of thanks stating that things were prospering splendidly. At last the whole debt was paid off, and the woman came to see me, smartly dressed, and in the best of spirits. I congratulated her on her honesty, and told her that her action had strengthened my belief in the basic goodness of human nature.”
“‘Well, you see,’ she said, ‘we felt we ought to pay our debt to you, as we had made in the business ten times the original sum you gave us.’
“‘And what is the business?’ I asked.