Читать книгу The Dawn of Reckoning - James Hilton - Страница 10

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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.