“Graham,” she asked “how has he changed? How is he different from the way he was at school? What was he like there?”
She had heard stories about him at the time, of course, so many, in fact, that she had formed a decided and strongly negative opinion of Ralph Stockwood without ever having met him. But she had not known then that one day he would be her husband. She might have listened more attentively and questioned her brother more closely if she had known.
He rested his elbows on the parapet of the bridge as he squinted ahead.
“They are not easy questions to answer,” he said. “Eight years have passed since we left school. It seems a lifetime. We were boys then and are men now. There are bound to be some pretty significant changes—in both of us. But really fundamental ones? I am not so sure there are any. He was . . . charismatic, Chloe. Quite remarkably so. He was good looking, an early developer physically. He was athletic, intelligent, good in most academic subjects, a reader and a thinker, a natural leader with strong convictions. But many of the same things could be said of other boys, including his three closest friends. One might have expected with those four that there would have been no real leader, that they would have been equal in stature and influence. But it was not so. The other three admired and deferred to him just as much as everyone else did. I would say they were dominated by him except that the word would not be quite accurate. He did not dominate anyone. He was never either a tyrant or a bully. He just . . . He had an energy, an enthusiasm that was infectious and quite irresistible to most people. He . . . sparkled. Ah, the English language is a woefully imperfect instrument for the expression of some ideas. Suffice it to say that I have never encountered anyone quite like Ralph Stockwood as he was at school.”
“He has changed, then.” Chloe turned away from the water and continued on her way over the bridge, and Graham followed and caught up with her. They walked into the longish grass of the meadow and were soon surrounded by clover and buttercups and daisies. It was sad to think that once her husband had sparkled with an enthusiasm and a fervor for life. She wished she had known the boy he had been.
“I am not sure he has changed all that much,” Graham said. “I still sense a sort of leashed energy in him, though he is admittedly more subdued than he was. Perhaps a natural maturity will do that to any man, though. Perhaps grief is a part of it too. He was very close to his grandfather, was he?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think more than he was to his father. And Graham, he blames himself for the deaths of those three friends of his.”
“Does he?” He was silent for a few moments while Chloe bent to pick some daisies and weave them into the beginnings of a chain. “His passions swept all before him when he felt strongly about something. During our last year at school he had a fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte. At first he admired the man enormously, but the more he learned about him, the more he changed his mind, until he was obsessed by the idea that the man must be stopped if the world was to be saved from tyranny. He could never be content with passionate ideas, though. If Bonaparte must be stopped, then it was not enough to expect others to do the stopping. One must be prepared to do it oneself, or at least to do one’s part. He could talk of nothing else for weeks on end. It was his duty to take up arms and an officer’s commission as soon as school ended and to go off to fight in the wars. It was everyone’s duty, even men, like himself, who had more reason to stay at home than to face the dangers of war. And if one’s family was opposed to the idea, for whatever reason, then its members must be convinced of one’s greater duty to save the world for freedom. Any reluctance those three might have felt at the start was quickly swept aside and they became as passionately eager as he was to ride into the glory of battle in a righteous cause.”
“And you were accused of cowardice because you would not go too?” she asked him.
He turned his head to smile at her.
“I am not sure he ever pointed a finger directly at me and singled me out for the comment,” he said. “But when I voiced opposing arguments, and eventually I seemed to be the only one who did, then he remarked that anyone who was unwilling to fight for the freedom of his own family and countrymen against a ruthless dictator like Bonaparte was a sniveling, lily-livered coward—or words to that effect. And maybe he was right. If Bonaparte had succeeded in conquering the whole of Europe, as he came perilously close to doing, then he would without a doubt have turned his attention to the invasion of Britain. Would I have held to my pacifist ideals if I had actually witnessed foreign soldiers committing atrocities against women and children, perhaps people I knew personally? It was all very well to hold those beliefs when the English Channel stood safely between me and the reality of ruthless aggression. But if the Channel had been breached? I am not sure, Chloe. I am still a pacifist by principle, but my convictions have never been put to the test. At least Stockwood put his to the test.”
She gathered a few more daisies for her chain.
“Life seems so simple when one is very young, does it not?” she said. “Good and evil, black and white—they seem to be polar opposites with no shady areas between. But as one grows older, everything seems to be variously shaded. How can we know what is good and what is evil, Graham, and what is right and what is wrong? Your job must be very difficult. How do you do it?”
“I try not to make judgments,” he said. “What is your good may be my evil. I try just to love—a simple enough concept, though even loving is not simple. Perhaps it merely means accepting people for who they are and respecting their choices and sympathizing with their pain.”