Knight Without Armour

When they all reached Roone’s again it was quite settled that they should arrange with the waiter to have a larger table, so that they could take meals together. They dined that night, the three of them, by the side of the large window, through which the harbour burned with little dark specks on it that were the row-boats bringing the fishermen ashore by dusk. After the out- door air and the long drive over the mountains he felt tired, yet in a way that gave him a certain rich serenity, breaking only into fitful astonishment that she should be there, that he should have found and spoken with her after so many years. But it was she herself who astonished him most of all. The lamplight touched the ivory white of her face with a glow of amber, and there were five lamps, hung on chains from the ceiling, making islands of light in the huge dark room. Her eyes were like pools that might have been in a forest, and the creamy sweep of her neck against that background reminded him of some old brown Vandyke painting. Contentment closed over him as he looked at her; Mrs. Consett’s continual talking echoed in his ears, yet somehow was not heard; all about the room was chatter, rising to the roof and hovering there, yet to him it was no more than a murmur—as if, he thought fantastically, some monster choir at an immense distance were intoning Latin genitive plurals.

So began a week of purest holiday. The Consetts, it appeared, had no definite plans; they just stayed in one place as long as they liked, and Roone’s was apparently suiting them, despite the lack of private bathrooms. The weather, too, held out in a blaze of splendour just beginning to be autumnal; every morning when Fothergill rose and saw through his window the grey-green mountains across the harbour he felt a surge of happiness that reminded him, not of his own childhood, but of some remoter and more marvellously recollected childhood of the world. Then after breakfast came plans for the day—delightful arguments in the verandah-lounge, while Mrs. Roone was packing sandwiches for them, and Roone was tapping the barometer and prophesying fine weather. It was always Mrs. Consett who seemed to make the plans, yet always Fothergill who did the real work of organising—finding the route on road-maps, seeing that food was sufficient, arranging terms with motor-drivers. Then they would set out under the long avenue of just fading leaves, swing down the winding hill through the village, and up the further hill to the mountains. He felt the years falling away from him as he rose into that zestful air, and when they halted for picnic- lunch at some lonely vantage-point, with the valleys like clouds beneath them, he was a child again in his enjoyment. He loved the fire-making routine—the collecting of sticks on the hillsides, with the girl but calling distance away from him, and her mother dozing in the car a hundred feet below; the finding of large stones to build a hearth; the careful watching till the kettle boiled at last. Once, tempted by a glorious sunset, they stayed late round a fire they had made at tea-time and talked till the flames seemed to bring all the darkness suddenly over their heads. As she stirred the fire to a last blaze before they left it, the girl remarked on the heat of the big stones, and he said: “If I were going to camp here for the night I should wrap one of those stones in a piece of blanket and use it instead of a hot- water bottle. That’s always a good dodge if you’re sleeping out.”

“Have you ever slept out?”

“Oh, often.”

“You seem to have done all kinds of things.”

“Many kinds of things, perhaps.”

“I wish you’d tell some of your adventures.”

“I might, some time.”

Yet he continually put it off. Partly, of course, because it was always easier to do so; Mrs. Consett’s chatter was a strong current that could be swum against, but it was far less trouble to relax and let it carry one along. And partly, too, because he felt a curious reluctance to break the tranquillity of those simple days, and what tranquillity or simplicity could remain after he had told his entire story?

He had, in fact, few chances of talking to the girl alone, and he could not, he felt, tell her the final secret—her own identity—at any other time.