Free I'll Never Be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier Page B

forsake us, but he waved his hand to me as a signal and I knew it was the end. We turned then and went down the stony track into the forests below.
    That night we camped in a clearing of trees, and we lit a fire that crackled and glowed, rising high into the air with a red tongue of flame. We leant forward, our knees drawn up to our chins, the firelight on our faces, and smoked and listened to silence.
    ‘I don’t want this to end,’ I said; ‘I wish it would go on for ever.’
    ‘Tomorrow,’ said Jake, ‘we get to Laardal and the first fjord. There’ll be some sort of a village, I expect. Maybe there’ll be one of those cruising steamers that’ll take us on.’
    ‘I don’t want it,’ I said, ‘not to see people once more and hear them laugh and talk. Everything and everyone after this will seem a sham.’
    ‘You’ll change your mind when you leave the mountains behind, Dick. You’ll feel same as you did in Oslo.’
    ‘No, I shan’t, I’ll never feel like that again. These mountains have done something to me - I don’t know. I hate everything I’ve been before. I want to go on feeling like I do now.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘We ought to build a hut, Jake, and live up here.’
    ‘You wouldn’t care about it for long.’
    ‘I would. I’d like it better than anything in the world. There’d be a reason for being alive. What are you smiling at?’
    ‘I’m not smiling.’
    ‘Yes, you are. You’ve got me all wrong, Jake; you think I’m just a damn fool hanging round in towns trying to get drunk.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Do you know what this has meant to me, seeing what we’ve seen, and riding, and listening, and not bothering about anything?’
    ‘I think so.’
    ‘I never could explain much, Jake.’
    ‘You don’t have to.’
    ‘You’ve liked it too, haven’t you, Jake?’
    ‘Yes, I’ve liked it.’
    ‘I’d never have thought of it on my own. Remember you spreading out the map in that café at Oslo? I wasn’t much good that night. That’s ages ago, isn’t it?’
    ‘Not so long.’
    ‘It’s centuries to me. I feel a whole lot of difference in myself. What do you feel?’
    ‘Oh! I guess I’m just the same.’
    ‘You’d say that anyway. You know, Jake, being up here has made me hate the thoughts I used to have. There’s something so small in looking back on that life at home, whining about nothing, grubbing over my own bad poetry. I hate to remember it.’
    ‘Don’t remember it.’
    ‘Well, it’s difficult to quite get away. It’s fine, the time one gets for thinking on this trip though, like giving one’s mind a wash. Do you feel that too?’
    ‘I think I’ve probably been giving my mind a rest, Dick. I used up all my thoughts in prison.’
    ‘Now you’re laughing at me,’ I said.
    ‘No, I mean that.’
    ‘Did prison alter you, Jake, at all?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What - you got a different angle on things?’
    ‘I saw clearer there.’
    ‘I can’t understand that. I’d have gone mad. I’d have wanted to bash somebody’s head in.’
    ‘That had been done already.’
    ‘Oh! hell, Jake - you know what I mean. I’m sorry.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter.’
    He smiled at me across the fire and I knew I had not hurt him. I wanted him to go on talking. ‘Tell me about that chap,’ I said.
    ‘There isn’t much,’ said Jake, ‘that I can make into a story for you. He was all right, just like a million other fellows, that’s all. I made the mistake of believing he was different.’
    ‘How d’you mean?’
    ‘We were on a ranch together for a while - there’s another thing I’ve done, Dick, besides sailing and boxing and being in prison!’
    ‘Was it fun?’
    ‘Sure, it was grand. We used to like it.’
    He laughed, and I felt I should never really understand how he could have killed this man who had been his friend.
    ‘We used to talk ourselves sick in those days,’ said Jake; ‘we had ideas on everything. He was an enthusiast all right.We thought of going to a leper