He hadn’t at first, but he did then, suddenly. “Yes,” he
said.
“Well, we could, couldn’t we? It’s bright moonlight and
we know the way. It’s quite early—we should be back before the
others begin clearing off to bed. I love doing odd things that most people
would think quite mad.”
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.
But later, after she had said good-night and gone to bed, his mood of
perplexity changed. Beyond a certain natural fatigue he felt himself no worse
for the mountain adventure, but to brace himself after the strain he did what
he had not often done at Roone’s—he went into the bar for a
night-cap. The Roones were there with a few naval men and a fishing youth in
plus-fours; they tried to get him into conversation, but he said little and
stayed only for a few minutes. The fact was, he could not even think of
anything but the talk he would have on the morrow.
Then he took his candle (Roone’s was old-fashioned enough for that)
and went to his room on the first floor. He would get up early, he decided,
and go to Mass—his first for so long—too long. He saw the moon
and the clear sky through the window, promising another fine day. He saw the
cruiser’s masthead light shimmering softly over the harbour. He
undressed and got into bed and closed his eyes—the whisky had made him
drowsy—and suddenly, falling asleep, he felt most magnificently and
boyishly certain of everything, and especially that he had loved, in all the
possible ways of love.