He had the gift of finding a special meaning in everything that happened to him.
This was the view he took of his love affair; it was idyllic, a little solemn, and also true, since his belief had all the unshakable seriousness of youth.
Some time after, on another occasion, he said to me,
“I’ve been only two years here, and now, upon my word, I can’t conceive being able to live anywhere else.
The very thought of the world outside is enough to give me a fright; because, don’t you see,” he continued, with downcast eyes watching the action of his boot busied in squashing thoroughly a tiny bit of dried mud (we were strolling on the river-bank)—“because I have not forgotten why I came here.
Not yet!”
‘I refrained from looking at him, but I think I heard a short sigh; we took a turn or two in silence.
“Upon my soul and conscience,” he began again, “if such a thing can be forgotten, then I think I have a right to dismiss it from my mind.
Ask any man here” . . . his voice changed. “Is it not strange,” he went on in a gentle, almost yearning tone, “that all these people, all these people who would do anything for me, can never be made to understand?
Never!
If you disbelieved me I could not call them up.
It seems hard, somehow.
I am stupid, am I not?
What more can I want?
If you ask them who is brave—who is true—who is just—who is it they would trust with their lives?—they would say, Tuan Jim.
And yet they can never know the real, real truth . . .”
‘That’s what he said to me on my last day with him.
I did not let a murmur escape me: I felt he was going to say more, and come no nearer to the root of the matter.
The sun, whose concentrated glare dwarfs the earth into a restless mote of dust, had sunk behind the forest, and the diffused light from an opal sky seemed to cast upon a world without shadows and without brilliance the illusion of a calm and pensive greatness.
I don’t know why, listening to him, I should have noted so distinctly the gradual darkening of the river, of the air; the irresistible slow work of the night settling silently on all the visible forms, effacing the outlines, burying the shapes deeper and deeper, like a steady fall of impalpable black dust.
‘“Jove!” he began abruptly, “there are days when a fellow is too absurd for anything; only I know I can tell you what I like.
I talk about being done with it—with the bally thing at the back of my head . . . Forgetting . . . Hang me if I know!
I can think of it quietly.
After all, what has it proved?
Nothing.
I suppose you don’t think so . . .”
‘I made a protesting murmur.
‘“No matter,” he said. “I am satisfied . . . nearly.
I’ve got to look only at the face of the first man that comes along, to regain my confidence.
They can’t be made to understand what is going on in me.
What of that?
Come!
I haven’t done so badly.”
‘“Not so badly,” I said.
‘“But all the same, you wouldn’t like to have me aboard your own ship hey?”
‘“Confound you!” I cried. “Stop this.”
‘“Aha!
You see,” he said, crowing, as it were, over me placidly. “Only,” he went on, “you just try to tell this to any of them here.
They would think you a fool, a liar, or worse.
And so I can stand it.
I’ve done a thing or two for them, but this is what they have done for me.”
‘“My dear chap,” I cried, “you shall always remain for them an insoluble mystery.”
Thereupon we were silent.
‘“Mystery,” he repeated, before looking up. “Well, then let me always remain here.”
‘After the sun had set, the darkness seemed to drive upon us, borne in every faint puff of the breeze.
In the middle of a hedged path I saw the arrested, gaunt, watchful, and apparently one-legged silhouette of Tamb’ Itam; and across the dusky space my eye detected something white moving to and fro behind the supports of the roof.
As soon as Jim, with Tamb’ Itam at his heels, had started upon his evening rounds, I went up to the house alone, and, unexpectedly, found myself waylaid by the girl, who had been clearly waiting for this opportunity.
‘It is hard to tell you what it was precisely she wanted to wrest from me.
Obviously it would be something very simple—the simplest impossibility in the world; as, for instance, the exact description of the form of a cloud.
She wanted an assurance, a statement, a promise, an explanation—I don’t know how to call it: the thing has no name.