The two boys strolled into the night arm-in-arm and walked silently out on to the huge square of grass behind Fellows’ Buildings. A heavy dew had fallen after this hot day, and the surface of the grass was covered with a shimmering grey mantle of moisture, in which their steps made dark rents. Birds, as became him, whistled gently under his breath, but for a time neither of them broke the secret sense of intimate companionship by speech. No breeze stirred in the towers of the elms to the left; even the willow by the side of the bridge had no movement in its slim pendulous fingers of leaf, and the reflecting surface of the slow stream was unbroken by any wandering ripple. Once or twice a feeding fish made a dim pattern of concentric circles on the water, and still in silence, Birds struck a match to light a final cigarette. Though the night was so windless, he shielded it in his hands, and the light showed through the flesh of his fingers as through the walls of some rosy cave. For the moment his face was vividly illuminated, then, as he dropped the match over the parapet, it was swallowed back into the darkness again. From below, after an interval, came the faint hiss of the extinguished match.The light close to his face had dazzled Jim a little, and after it had gone out he still had before his eyes, faintly swimming in the darkness, the semblance of Birds’ head.
“I can see you still,” he said, “though it’s dark. Why’s that? Oh, now you’ve gone.”
Birds drew on his cigarette.
“No, I haven’t,” he said. “I’m here all right. Ah, listen!”
Early though it was in the summer, this hot spell of weather had set the birds mating, and suddenly from the elms across the field beyond the bridge, there sounded the bubbling song of some love-entranced nightingale. Liquid and clear it rose and fell, with all spring behind it and all the promise of summer to follow. Four long notes it gave, and broke into a torrent of jubilant melody. It rose to the height of its ecstasy and suddenly stopped.
