The Dawn of Reckoning Read Free Page B

with the hotel people,” she
announced. “I don’t think there’s much the matter, except her feet, which are
badly cut about. By the way, I’ve found out a bit of her history. Her name’s
Srolta and some other name that’s quite unpronounceable, so I think we shall
have to call her Stella. She’s been ill-treated by a brutal father, and he
wanted to marry her to somebody—she’s fifteen, by the way—and she
ran off rather than submit…That’s the kind she is…No nonsense about
her…”
    “But, mother, how on earth did you find out all that? You don’t know any
Hungarian, do you?”
    “Not a word of it. But I use my intelligence…I also found out why she
didn’t come here straight away. She was frightened of being turned off by the
hotel people, and when you went out she followed you till she could get a
chance of meeting you alone. Of course it was like you to drag her up to the
top of a mountain!”
    “Do you mean to say that you understood all that too?”
    “My dear Philip, as I said before, I used my intelligence. So did the
girl—she has plenty—and between us…Perhaps she will encourage
you to use yours when we get back to England.”
    “England?”
    “Yes, England. I have decided to take the girl back home with us.”
    “But why?”
    “Well, why not? Am I to understand that you have any objection?”
    Philip stared vacantly in front of him, and did not answer for several
moments. Then at last he replied: “I have certainly no objection, but the
idea surprises me, I must admit. I suppose you have taken a fancy to
her?”
    “Well?”
    He glanced at her with a strange mingling of despair and admiration. She
was so capable, so managerial, and, unlike himself, so quick to make
decisions of all kinds.
    “I prefer the girl,” he said, “to the usual sort of souvenir we take home
with us. That awful Egyptian sarcophagus last year, for instance…Oh yes, I
much prefer the girl…”
    Mrs. Monsell smiled.
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CHAPTER II
I
    The Monsells lived in the Essex market-town of Chassingford,
and had the reputation of being “peculiar.” Mr. Monsell, a high Foreign
Office official, had died when Philip was quite young, and his wife’s
managerial efficiency had made a fairish private income into a rather good
one. Philip had grown up amidst surroundings which only his mother’s
shrewdness had prevented from being luxurious.
    The house was old without being historic, and he had learned everything
within its grey walls. His “everything” was rather extensive, for being too
weakly to play games or go to a boarding-school, he had begun the solemn
acquisition of learning at a very early age. Learning, however, did not
include wisdom. He lost as much as he gained by those lonely years, for he
grew nervous of strangers and fully upheld the Monsell tradition of being
“peculiar” Burly farmers who met him on market-day in the town found that he
could not look them straight in the face; there was something odd about
him—something that they scornfully associated with book-learning.
    He was not very popular. Indeed, at one time he was definitely disgraced,
for he was publicly censured by a coroner. He had been walking along by the
river-bank, and had failed to rescue a child from drowning. He told the
coroner that he could not swim, and that he did all he could in running for
help, whereupon the latter had observed acidly that most men would have had a
try for it, whether they could swim or not. It was an unfair attack, and
Philip would have done better to ignore it. Instead of that, however, he
wrote a solemn letter to the local paper, explaining and protesting. Others
replied, and the whole ethical problem was remorselessly thrashed out, The
prevalent opinion was that Philip, though possibly justified, had not exactly
covered himself with glory.
    People who knew him well liked him. He was courteous, extremely willing to
spend his time and energy in helping