Читать книгу The Dawn of Reckoning - James Hilton - Страница 24

Table of Contents

The lunch-party was neither a success nor a failure, but a phenomenon. Mrs. Monsell, discussing the matter afterwards, declared that she had never been so completely bored in her life. The men whom Philip had invited were clever and interesting, but somehow they mixed badly. Ward, especially, was rather grimly silent, though he became charming as soon as the demand for coffee gave him a chance to be up and doing something.

Philip, leaning back in his chair, looked from face to face and wondered what was the matter. Was his mother over-aweing them? It did not seem probable, for Stella, whom nobody could over-awe, was just as silent as the others. Then what was it? There was certainly a queer something in the atmosphere—a something, moreover, that had to do with Stella.

While they sat over their coffee Stella went to the piano and sang. She seemed strangely nervous or else uninterested, and accompanied herself very badly. After singing two verses of an old Danubian folk-tune that Philip knew to possess many more than two, she stopped, swung round suddenly on the stool, and exclaimed: "Sorry, but I don't feel much like singing.. But I'll recite you a little Hungarian poem about springtime. You won't understand the words, but perhaps the sound of them will give you the sense." She began to recite very beautifully and softly, but she rather spoilt the effect by a laugh and a shrug of the shoulders at the end.