Knight Without Armour

They slipped out through the verandah and began, hatless and coatless, the steep scramble through the woods, drenched with dew, and then up the rough, boulder-strewn borcen to the summit. They climbed too swiftly and breathlessly for speech, and all the way he was dizzily making up his mind for all the things he would say when they reached the topmost ridge. He imagined himself telling her: “Dear child, you are all that means anything in my life, and I want to tell you how and why—I want you to know how I missed my way in life, over and over again, yet found in the end something that was worth it all. You see, I want us always to be friends—great friends—you and I, not just as if we were chance travellers and had taken to each other. Much more than that. And it’s all so strange that I want you to try to understand.” And other confessions equally wild and enchanting. But when lie stood finally on that moonlit peak, with the sky a blue-black sea all around him, he could not think of anything to say at all. She stood so still and close to him, thrilling with rapture at the view, pointing down excitedly to the tiny winking lights of the cruiser, and then swinging round to peer into the silver dimness of the valley on the other side. “I shall never, never forget this as long as I live,” she whispered. “It’s far more wonderful than in the day-time when we climbed before.”

Then suddenly he realised why, or perhaps one reason why, he was not speaking. He was in pain. He felt as if a bar of white-hot steel were bending round his body and being tightened. Yet he hardly felt the pain, even though he knew it was there; it was as if the moonlight and the thoughts that swam in his mind were anaesthetising him. He opened his mouth and tried to speak, but could only hear himself gasping; and lie felt, beyond the knowledge of pain, an impotent fury with his body for spoiling such a moment. He smiled a twisted smile; he had been too venturesome, too defiant; he had climbed too fast. And all at once, just then, the thought came to him: Supposing I were to drop dead, up here—poor child, what a shock it would be for her, and what a lot of damned unpleasant fuss for her afterward…

“You are tired,” she said, staring at him intently. “Shall we go down?”

He nodded slowly and hoped she did not see the tears that were filling his eyes.

They began the descent, and after a few yards she took his arm and helped him over the rough places. Half-way down he felt better; the pain was beginning to leave him. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry? For what? I enjoyed it ever so much, but it tired you, I could see—we mustn’t do such mad things again.”

“Except that I like mace things just as much as you do.”

She smiled, and he smiled back, and with her arm still linked in his he felt a marvellous happiness enveloping him, especially now that the pain was subsiding with every second.

“I’m not so bad for my age,” he added. “I suppose I oughtn’t to expect to be able to skip up and down mountains like an eighteen-year-old.”

“Your age?” she said quietly. “I never think of it, or of mine either. What does it matter?”

He laughed, then; he was so happy; and now that the pain had all gone he could believe it had been no more than a fit of breathlessness after the climb—a warning, no doubt, that he must avoid such strenuous risks in future. His only big regret was that he had missed the chance of telling her what had been in his mind, but it was too late now—the lights of the hotel were already glimmering through the trees. As they entered along the verandah he said: “I really am sorry for being such an old crock—sorry on my own account, anyway, because I’d rather wanted to have a particular talk with you about something.”

“Had you? And you’d stage-managed it for the top of a mountain in moonlight—how thrilling! But it will do somewhere else, surely?”

He laughed. “Of course. The question is when rather than where.”

“Why not to-morrow morning? We could go out on the harbour in the motor-boat—mother wouldn’t come with us—she hates sailing.”

“Good idea. That’ll do fine.”

“Directly after Mass, then. I think they’ll be having it in the hotel to-morrow—I heard Roone saying something about it. That’ll save the walk down to the village and we can have a longer time on the water.”

“Splendid.”

“And I’m so thrilled to wonder what you have to tell me.”

“Are you?” He looked at her with piercing eagerness; yet he could not, could not read what was in her mind.