The Dawn of Reckoning Read Free Page A

service on
leaving the University. “For there,” as his mother observed cynically, “your
ignorance of life will be a positive asset to you.”
    During the lazy, drowsy hours of the afternoon, when all good Pesthians
were asleep, he used to climb the pathway up the hill of Buda, on whose
summit the cool Danubian breeze played softly beneath the glare of the sun.
And it was there that, on the third day after his arrival, he met the
Hungarian girl again.
VII
    He was resting in the shadow of a rock, and she came
suddenly round the corner of it and stood before him. A bright-coloured scarf
bound back her hair and straggled over her shoulders; she was stockingless
but wore a pair of exceedingly shabby sandals that were too large for her.
And she held out her hand and displayed his mother’s visiting-card, crumpled
and limp with perspiration.
    He rose, startled, and smiled at her. She smiled back. He really did not
know what on earth to do. Finally he took the proffered visiting-card and
read on it, in his mother’s pencilled handwriting smudged almost into
illegibility: “Hotel Europeen, Andrassy Ut.” And here he showed what Mrs.
Monsell would have termed a lamentable deficiency in common sense. He pointed
down in the valley in the rather vague direction of the city and the
hotel.
    Still smiting at him, the girl nodded, yet seemed unsatisfied. He asked
her in German if anything was the matter, but she did not understand. Then
she came nearer, touched first him and then herself, and pointed downwards
over the city. At last he divined a possible meaning—that she wanted
him to take her back with him to the hotel. When he nodded and made signs
that they should descend the steep, rocky path together, she smiled eagerly.
That seemed to confirm the supposition.
    They began the scramble down over the sharp stones, and at the foot of the
hill, by the greatest of good fortune, an open droschky was plying for hire.
The driver stared curiously as Monsell helped the girl inside and gave his
directions. A smartly-dressed foreigner with a Hungarian girl, tattered and
shabby, but diabolically pretty—it was something to be curious
about.
    Driving over the suspension-bridge from Buda into Pesth, Monsell had time
and opportunity to observe the girl more closely than he had done before. She
was, undoubtedly, as beautiful as any girl he had ever seen; and hers,
moreover, was a vital, not a languid beauty. The sunlight, split by the
chains of the bridge, threw her small brown face into ever-changing light and
shadow; she shut her eyes, and opened them again as soon as the droschky
turned into a shady side-street. Then her foot seemed to be troubling her,
and she bent down to adjust the sandal.
    She looked up and saw that Monsell was watching her. And he, again
embarrassed, smiled and pointed interrogatively to her foot, as if inquiring
whether it were hurt. The carriage swept into a wide and sunlit boulevard,
crowded with promenaders seeking the stuffy shade of the shop-awnings. And
the girl suddenly kicked off her sandal, and with a quick movement of her leg
showed Monsell a foot that was desperately torn and bleeding.
    A queer thrill went over him. He hated physical pain, and the girl’s
nonchalant revelation of what must have been the acute torture of that
scramble up and down the hill, affected him with a strange mingling of pity
and indignation. Involuntarily he moved closer, not knowing how else to
indicate his instinctive sympathy.
    But she laughed—a silvery cascade of laughter that echoed curiously
amongst the clatter of the boulevard. And, out of pure devilment, as it were,
she kicked off the other sandal and showed the second foot, as bad as, or
worse than, the first. Something in his shocked face evidently amused her.
And she shrugged her shoulders, still laughing at him.
VIII
    An hour later Mrs. Monsell came down to the lounge. “I’ve
sent for a doctor and made arrangements