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!'

CHAPTER 22

'The conquest of love, honour, men's confidence--the pride of it, the
power of it, are fit materials for a heroic tale; only our minds are
struck by the externals of such a success, and to Jim's s