“Nothing could make us enemies,” said Andrew in a rush. Laurie didn’t look around, in case his happiness showed in his eyes. Andrew said with sudden awkwardness, “I’m sorry to be so adolescent. It was what you thought, of course. Sometimes one can get one’s mind straight but one’s feelings take longer.”
“You’re telling me,” said Laurie smiling. But he mustn’t indulge this private humor, he thought, it was far too dangerous. He said briskly, “I thought you wanted to ask me about the army, or something.”
Andrew paused hesitantly, trailing a foot in the stream. Laurie watched with a moment’s sharp envy his relaxed body unconscious of its own ease. The knee had started a cramp, from the evening chill and lying in one position; he moved it stiffly and carefully when Andrew wasn’t looking. “I can guess what you want to ask anyway. Have I killed anyone and how did it feel? Well, my answer’s as good as yours. I don’t know. Any half of us will tell you the same. Our lot fired, and some of their lot died, that’s all. It encourages loose thinking, like you say. Funny thing, though, when you think, all those murder trials before the war, people coming for miles to stare at a man merely because he’d killed just one human being. And then overnight, snap, homicides are much commoner than bank clerks, they sit around in pubs talking boring shop about it. ‘Oh, by the way, Laurie, how many men have you killed, approximately?’ ‘Honestly, my dear, I was so rushed, you know, I couldn’t stop to look, a couple perhaps.’ Have an apple.”
They bit into the glossy winesaps; on the sunny side of the fruit, the clear crimson had run below the skin and streaked the crisp, white flesh.
“You see,” said Laurie presently, “it’s all a muddle, nothing clear-cut.”
Andrew didn’t answer. As soon as Laurie turned he looked away, not furtively but rather shyly. During his last term at school, when it had seemed to be a fairly generally held view that he hadn’t made too bad a job of the House, Laurie had sometimes caught the tail-end of looks like that. But this time it seemed too much that it should be true, and he dared not believe in it. He put his head back in the grass, watching its fine stalks laced against the sky. The world was full of a golden undemanding stillness. Even the wretchedness of the afternoon now seemed only the gate that had brought him to this place. But this reminded him to look at his watch; it was time to go.
Andrew got up first and held out his arm smiling, managing to make it seem a light-hearted gesture like that of children who pull each other up from the ground for fun. Laurie had observed sometimes in the ward how his tact would conquer his diffidence. His grip was firm and his rough hand had a kindly warmth in it. He had remembered to have the crutch ready in the other hand before he pulled.
As they walked back through the orchard the grass was deep green in the twilight; but across the stream the tops of the beeches, catching the last sun, burned a deep copper against a cloudless aquamarine sky.
“My gramophone’s come,” said Laurie. “But—” He stopped, because the door of the cottage had opened, disclosing a square of dusky lamplight against which Mrs. Chivers stood sharply black and animated, like a figure in an early bioscope. She still had her hat on.
“Hello, Mrs. Chivers,” said Laurie. “We’re just going. Thank you so much. This is a friend of mine, Andrew Raynes.”
Mrs. Chivers came nearer. As she left the lamplit door she grew three-dimensional again. Her little face, yellow and creased with wrinkles as if the skin had been wrung out and hung over the bone, peered up at them, bright-eyed.
“Young man,” she said, “why aren’t you in khaki?”
Laurie gazed at her blankly; it was as if one of the ripe apples had proved, as one bit it, to contain a bee. Andrew said seriously, “I’m a pacifist, Mrs. Chivers, I belong to the Friends.”
Mrs. Chivers looked up under her hat, rattling the cherries; she stood no more than five feet, and had to tilt the brim to see them. “Take shame to yourself. I’ve heard of that. Friends, indeed. A big strong lad as you be, I wonder you can look your friends in the face. It’s all foretold in the blessed Scriptures, Battle of Armageddon, that’s what our lads are fighting. Conscientious, I never heard such stuff.”
“Mrs. Chivers,” said Laurie when he could get it in endways, “Andrew’s a friend of mine. He’s doing war work, you know. He’s all right.”
Ignoring him, she thrust her head out at Andrew, like a furious little wren. “And mark my words, young man, if you come here talking your wicked nonsense to this dear wounded boy of mine, and trying to make him run away from the war, I’ll write to Lord Kitchener myself about you. He’ll know what to do.”
“I won’t hurt him,” said Andrew gently. “I promise you that.”
“I should think not indeed. Get away with you out of my garden, it’s no place for the likes of you. Now, sonny, that’s enough, I’m ashamed of you speaking up for him, and you in the King’s uniform. Run away home, the pair of you. I’ve no patience.”
The orchard smelt of September and early dew; the grass in the deep light was now the color of emerald. A blackbird, the last awake, was meditating aloud in a round, sweet whistle. Everything had the colors of farewell.
Andrew was walking ahead, but when he noticed Laurie’s awkward haste behind him he waited, surrendering his breathing space: Laurie reflected that being a cripple involves special kinds of social finesse, which only come gradually. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said.
“No, I ought to have thought, it’s being with you that makes me forget. I shouldn’t have come in and spoilt all this for you.”
“She’ll have forgotten by tomorrow.” They had come to the tall yews by the gate; it was very old, and flakes of paint and rust came away as he touched it. He had said the sensible thing and it would be wise to leave it there. The huge bulk of the yew trees was like dark-veined malachite against the bronze-gold sky. He was filled with a vast sense of the momentous, of unknown mysteries. He did not know what he should demand of himself, nor did it seem to matter, for he had not chosen this music he moved to, it had chosen him. He smiled at Andrew in the shadow of the yews.
“They looking back, all th’ eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Wav’d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng’d and fiery Arms …”
Andrew put his hands on the top of the gate and swung it open. His face had a solemn improvising look. He said,
“… They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.”
Laurie went through the gate, out into the lane. Two great horses, ringing with idle brass, were being led home, their coats steaming in the cool. He felt absolute, filled; he could have died then content, empty-handed and free. All gifts he had ever wished for seemed only traps, now, to dim him and make him less. This, he thought with perfect certainty, this after all is to be young, it is for this. Now we have the strength to make our memories, out of hard stuff, out of steel and crystal.
The steam of the horses, a good strong russet smell, hung on the air. Sailing in a deep inlet of sky off the black coast of an elm tree, the first star appeared, flickering like a riding-light in a fresh wind. Andrew walked beside him silently.
An eddy of air in the quiet lane brought back like an echo the stamp and jingle of the horses, a shake of the bridle and a snort.
… Let us say, then, that the soul resembles the joined powers of a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the horses and drivers of the gods are of equal temper and breed, but with men it is otherwise. …