Читать книгу The Dawn of Reckoning - James Hilton - Страница 13

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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 others, and a most reliable friend in the smaller matters of friendship. In the larger ones he was prone to embarrass by his partisanship. If, however, he made a promise, he kept to it. So also if he made a mistake he kept to it—by defend ing himself, or apologising unnecessarily, or in some way advertising the matter to those who might never have heard about it.

Into this somewhat unusual family the advent of Stella was as a breath of fresh air into a darkened room. Within a few months of Mrs. Monsell's arrival in England, rumour and exaggeration had done their utmost. People were saying across dining-tables: "My dear, have you heard of Mrs. Monsell's latest? She's kidnapped some girl from Roumania or Turkey or somewhere and brought her to Chassingford—and a most fascinating little thing she is too—the girl, I mean..."

Certainly Stella had caused something of a commotion during the journey home. There had been customs and frontier difficulties, and her smiles had helped to smooth them over. In every city they passed through men had stared at her—in Innsbruck, Zurich, Basle, Paris, and now London...