Knight Without Armour

“Of course not. Your best plan is so clearly a denial that I don’t find your denial either surprising or convincing.” He suddenly smiled, and as he did so the years seemed to fall away and leave him just a boy. “But really, don’t let’s worry ourselves. Quite frankly, I don’t care in the least who you are.”

A.J. had been listening to the conversation with growing astonishment and apprehension. There was such a charm about Poushkoff that he had been in constant dread of what Daly might be lured into saying; yet an almost equal lure had worked upon himself and had kept him from intervening. Even now he was waiting for her answer with curiosity that quite outdistanced fear. She said: “That leads up to a rather remarkable conclusion, Captain. You believed I was really the Countess, yet you made every effort to save my life.”

“Yes, perhaps I did, but I don’t see anything very remarkable in it.”

They sat in silence for some time, while the train-wheels jog jogged over the uneven track, across a world that was but a white desert meeting a grey and infinite horizon. A.J. was puzzled still, but less apprehensive; it was queer how the fellow’s charm could melt away even deepest misgivings. More than queer—there was something uncanny in it; and he knew, too, that Daly was aware of the same uncanniness. He glanced at her, and she smiled half- enquiringly, half-reassuringly. Then she said, all at once serene: “Captain, since you do not care who I am, there is no reason why we should not all be the greatest of friends.” And turning to A.J. she added: “Don’t you think we might share our food with the Captain?”

A.J., after a moment’s hesitation, returned her smile; in another moment one of the bundles that had been so neatly and carefully packed at the Valimoffs’ cottage was being opened on that shabby but only slightly verminous compartment-seat. There was a tin of pork and beans, a tin of American mixed fruits, shortbread, chocolate, and—rarest delicacy of all—a bottle of old cognac. As these treasures were displayed one after another, Poushkoff showed all the excitement of a well-mannered schoolboy. “But this is charming of you!” he exclaimed rapturously, and then, with swift prudence, rushed to lock the door leading to the corridor and pull down the blinds. “It will be best for us not to be observed,” he laughed, and continued: “And to think that I offered you my poor biscuits!”

“We were very grateful for them,” Daly said, with a shining sweetness in her eyes.

Then began a most incredible and extraordinary picnic. Zest came over them all, as if they had been friends from the beginning of the world, as if there were no future ever to fear, as if all life held nothing but such friendship and such joyous appetite. Poushkoff’s winsomeness overflowed into sheer, radiant high spirits; Daly laughed and joked with him like a carefree child; A.J. became the suddenly suave and perfect host, handing round the food as gaily as if they had all been on holiday together. It was like some strange dream that they were all, as by a miracle, dreaming at once. They shouted with laughter when Poushkoff tried to open the tin of fruit with the knife-blade and squirted juice over his tunic. They had to eat everything with their fingers and to drink the brandy out of the bottle—but how wonderful it all was, and how real compared with that unreal background of moving snowfields and flicking telegraph-poles! They did silly inconsequential things for no reason but that they wanted to do them; Poushkoff made a fantastic impromptu after-dinner speech; A.J. followed it by another; and Daly exclaimed, in the midst of everything: “Captain, I’m sure you speak French—wouldn’t you like to?” And they all, in madness to be first, began gabbling away like children.