Soldiers -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
“Do you think it is so important?” said Genevieve, leaning towards him
to make herself heard above the clatter of the train.
“Perhaps it isn't. I don't know.”
“I think it always comes sooner or later, if you feel intensely enough.”
“But it is so frightful to feel all you want to express getting away
beyond you. An idea comes into your head, and you feel it grow stronger
and stronger and you can't grasp it; you have no means to express it.
It's like standing on a street corner and seeing a gorgeous procession
go by without being able to join it, or like opening a bottle of beer
and having it foam all over you without having a glass to pour it into.”
Genevieve burst out laughing.
“But you can drink from the bottle, can't you?” she said, her eyes
sparkling.
“I'm trying to,” said Andrews.
“Here we are. There's the cathedral. No, it's hidden,” cried Genevieve.
They got to their feet. As they left the station, Andrews said: “But
after all, it's only freedom that matters. When I'm out of the army!...”
“Yes, I suppose you are right... for you that is. The artist should be
free from any sort of entanglement.”
“I don't see what difference there is between an artist and any other
sort of workman,” said Andrews savagely.
“No, but look.”
From the square where they stood, above the green blur of a little park,
they could see the cathedral, creamy yellow and rust color, with the
sober tower and the gaudy tower, and the great rose window between, the
whole pile standing nonchalantly, knee deep in the packed roofs of the
town.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at it without speaking.
In the afternoon they walked down the hill towards the river, that
flowed through a quarter of tottering, peak-gabled houses and mills,
from which came a sound of grinding wheels. Above them, towering over
gardens full of pear trees in bloom, the apse of the cathedral bulged
against the pale sky. On a narrow and very ancient bridge they stopped
and looked at the water, full of a shimmer of blue and green and grey
from the sky and from the vivid new leaves of the willow trees along the
bank.
Their senses glutted with the beauty of the day and the intricate
magnificence of the cathedral, languid with all they had seen and said,
they were talking of the future with quiet voices.
“It's all in forming a habit of work,” Andrews was saying. “You have to
be a slave to get anything done. It's all a question of choosing your
master, don't you think so?”
“Yes. I suppose all the men who have left their imprint on people's
lives have been slaves in a sense,” said Genevieve slowly. “Everyone has
to give up a great deal of life to live anything deeply. But it's worth,
it.” She looked Andrews full in the eyes.
“Yes, I think it's worth it,” said Andrews. “But you must help me. Now
I am like a man who has come up out of a dark cellar. I'm almost too
dazzled by the gorgeousness of everything. But at least I am out of the
cellar.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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