The Dawn of Reckoning Read Free

the
customs people get tired before they come to you. And then, also, if there’s
a boat-train and it’s full when you get to it, they put on a special carriage
for you if you complain loud enough Any way, it’s much pleasanter to wait
till the crush is over.” Almost for the first time since the beginning of the
journey she and Philip were alone together. The other passengers were busy
with their luggage elsewhere, and the saloon was empty save for them selves
and a steward clearing the tables.
    “By the way, Philip, I sent our address to that unfortunate
girl—”
    “You did?”
    “Yes. Why not? I wrote it out on a visiting-card and told the steward to
take it to her.”
    “Bet you she can’t read.”
    “Even if she can’t, she can ask someone who can.”
    “Oh, yes, I dare say…But what made you think of all this?”
    “My dear Philip, my natural intelligence. I’m quite aware that you haven’t
a great deal yourself—”
    “Oh, haven’t I? Anyhow, I don’t need it, with a mother who can decide
everything, arrange every thing, talk five languages, read foreign railway
time tables, give first-aid to the drowning—”
    “Rubbish,” she interrupted him. “I didn’t give first-aid. There was no
need to. The girl wasn’t anywhere near drowning. She was just sick with
misery because she hadn’t had pluck enough to drown herself.”
    “But why on earth should she want to drown herself?”
    “Goodness knows…She seemed cheerful enough after I’d been with her about
ten minutes. She had no money—only the steamer ticket. The few crowns I
gave her won’t last long in Buda. That’s why I sent her the address of our
hotel, so that if she finds herself in difficulties she can…”
    The steward approached. “Pardon, madame, but de ozzers are all
gone…”
    “Come on then, Philip,” said Mrs. Monsell. She gave the steward his
expected trinkgeld , adding: “Did you deliver my message?”
    “Yes, madame.”
    “What did she say?”
    “She say zank-you,’ madame.”
    “Nothing else?”
    “Nothing else, madame.”
VI
    That was how Philip Monsell and his mother came to Buda-
Pesth upon a golden August evening. They took a cab from the quayside to
their hotel in the Andrassy-Ut, where Mrs. Monsell promptly examined the
visitors’ book to see if they were to have interest ing fellow-guests. A
German baron and an Italian from Perugia looked the most promising, though
Mrs. Monsell was clearly doubtful about them. “I guess if it isn’t
interesting enough here we can go some where else,” she remarked. Interest
for her was almost entirely a matter of interesting conversation.
    Philip was different. Slower, less communicative, and inclined to be
easily embarrassed, he was always a trifle bored at his mother’s
dinner-parties. He was interested in people, not merely in interesting
people, and Buda-Pesth, with its curious meeting of East and West, was quick
to exert a fascination over him. While his mother spent the mornings
conversing animatedly in the hotel-lounge, he went out into the streets and
by-ways, braving the smells and the dust-storms and the fierce heat of the
sun. And sometimes he took the funicular up to Buda and sipped iced beer in
the cafes on the hill. He enjoyed travelling, and his mother’s annual
pilgrimages on which he had accompanied her since his early years, had given
him a fairly extensive knowledge of the world. Last year it had been Asia
Minor and Egypt; this year Roumania and the Danubian provinces.
    He was twenty years old, rather tall, quite good-looking, with blue eyes
and brown hair and small, delicate features. An adolescent heart had taught
him to be cautious in his movements; his speech, too, was somewhat slow and
precise, but his brain was sound enough, though perhaps a shade too coldly
intellectual. Already, in his freshman’s year at Cambridge he had done
moderately well, and most likely he would enter the diplomatic