The Dawn of Reckoning Read Online Free Page A

anything wrong. On the contrary, her long dark-lashed eyes
danced with suppressed glee, as if she imagined that his curious utterance of
her name was to be the prelude of something novel and exciting.
    An idea struck him. Among the heap of articles on the settee was a short
hunting-crop. Supposing he…? Just in dumb-show, to indicate his
displeasure.
    He waved his hands to indicate the disorder in the room, and frowned
heavily. Then he went over to the settee, took up the hunting-crop, and
brandished it threateningly.
    It was the sort of stupid thing from which what ever cleverness he
possessed did not attempt to save him. A moment later he was bitterly
regretting it, as he regretted so many of his blunders. For he saw a sudden
change come over the girl, saw the joyousness leave her eyes and give place
to stark fear, saw her cringe back, forcing herself against the window and
holding up her hands in instinctive self-defence. It appalled him, and
appalled him so much that he did not even think to drop the weapon…
    “Stella!” he cried, approaching her. “Stella—I didn’t mean
it—I was only—joking…” Then he remembered to drop the
hunting-crop. “Stella—my noor little girl—how could you, how
could you think I meant it?”
    He did not realise the absurdity of speaking in English. And perhaps,
after all, it was not so very absurd, for the tone, if not the words,
conveyed a meaning. Gradually, at any rate, the fear left her eyes, though
the old joyousness did not immediately return. She looked
puzzled—relieved certainly, but still doubtful.
    “Stella, I’m sorry.”
    Suddenly her eyes darkened, and with a movement of lightning swiftness she
slipped aside her dress and showed him her bare shoulder—plump and
brown, but ridged with long dark weals.
    “Stella!”
    His face was quite white, twitching so much that he had to look away. The
spectacle or the revelation of cruelty always frightened him. It cast a spell
over him that was half-dreadful, half-fascinating. Some sensitive spot was
stirred by it and intoxicated.
    Then she laughed—the sharp melodious laughter that he had heard once
before as he rode with her through the boulevards of Pesth.
    “Stella, don’t—please—please—Stella—stop
it—” he cried hoarsely.
    And she answered, holding up the button-hook which had all the time been
in her hand: “Fee-lip what—is—zees?”
    The incident was closed.
III
    But though it was closed it troubled and worried him, and
eventually he confided in his mother, telling her rather embarrassedly the
full details. When he had finished she smiled.
    “What extraordinarily foolish things you do!” she exclaimed. “Really,
Philip, you have no tact at all. Didn’t I tell you at Buda that she had a
brute of a father and ran away from him? As for the marks on her shoulder,
you should have seen them when I examined her first.”
    He nodded uncomfortably. “Do you think she will get over the
misunderstanding?
    “My dear Philip, she will have forgotten the incident years before you do.
You don’t understand her.”
    It was true. He could not forget the incident. Something lured him to it,
time after time; and once he tried to draw her to speak of those early
childhood days of cruelty and neglect.
    To his intense surprise she replied: “Oh, I was—so—so
happee…I used to play all ze time…Ver nice…Happee ver nice…”
Evidently she had already forgotten.
IV
    When he came home from Cambridge in December he found there
was no need for any more formal lessons. As the taxi curved along the drive
she came running out to him, shouting: “Hallo, Fee-lip Hallo!”
    She was a child of amazing quickness and adaptability. Not only had she
learned in two months to chatter English coherently if not always
grammatically, but she had thoroughly acclimatised herself to the district in
which she lived and to the friends she met. She had, too, something of Mrs.
Monsell’s