“‘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 enthusiasm, 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.”
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Chapter Twenty-One
“I DON’T suppose any of you had 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 that 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.