by James Hilton
The steward approached. “Pardon, madame, but de ozzers are all gone…”
“Come on then, Philip,” said Mrs. Monsell. She gave the steward his expected trinkgeld, adding: “Did you deliver my message?”
“Yes, madame.”
“What did she say?”
“She say zank-you,’ madame.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else, madame.”
VI
That was how Philip Monsell and his mother came to Buda- Pesth upon a golden August evening. They took a cab from the quayside to their hotel in the Andrassy-Ut, where Mrs. Monsell promptly examined the visitors’ book to see if they were to have interest ing fellow-guests. A German baron and an Italian from Perugia looked the most promising, though Mrs. Monsell was clearly doubtful about them. “I guess if it isn’t interesting enough here we can go some where else,” she remarked. Interest for her was almost entirely a matter of interesting conversation.
Philip was different. Slower, less communicative, and inclined to be easily embarrassed, he was always a trifle bored at his mother’s dinner-parties. He was interested in people, not merely in interesting people, and Buda-Pesth, with its curious meeting of East and West, was quick to exert a fascination over him. While his mother spent the mornings conversing animatedly in the hotel-lounge, he went out into the streets and by-ways, braving the smells and the dust-storms and the fierce heat of the sun. And sometimes he took the funicular up to Buda and sipped iced beer in the cafes on the hill. He enjoyed travelling, and his mother’s annual pilgrimages on which he had accompanied her since his early years, had given him a fairly extensive knowledge of the world. Last year it had been Asia Minor and Egypt; this year Roumania and the Danubian provinces.
He was twenty years old, rather tall, quite good-looking, with blue eyes and brown hair and small, delicate features. An adolescent heart had taught him to be cautious in his movements; his speech, too, was somewhat slow and precise, but his brain was sound enough, though perhaps a shade too coldly intellectual. Already, in his freshman’s year at Cambridge he had done moderately well, and most likely he would enter the diplomatic service on leaving the University. “For there,” as his mother observed cynically, “your ignorance of life will be a positive asset to you.”
During the lazy, drowsy hours of the afternoon, when all good Pesthians were asleep, he used to climb the pathway up the hill of Buda, on whose summit the cool Danubian breeze played softly beneath the glare of the sun. And it was there that, on the third day after his arrival, he met the Hungarian girl again.
VII
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.
VIII
An hour later Mrs. Monsell came down to the lounge. “I’ve sent for a doctor and made arrangements 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.
* * *
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 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…
II
Venner, for nearly half a century butler at Chassingford, met Philip at the door of the library one bright October morning. “Miss Stella has been up early to-day,” he said suggestively.
Philip looked puzzled. “Really?—Oh, well, it’s a nice morning for early rising, eh?”
Venner stared severely at the ground. “I’m afraid, Mr. Philip, you will find she has been meddling with a good many of your things. Not knowing the—er language, sir, I did not know quite how to—to interfere.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Venner…I’ll settle matters.”
He laughed, but really he was rather cross, and when he entered the library and took a look round he was crosser still. For the library was his own special preserve, his private and intimate sanctum, where all his books and papers were arranged in neat and orderly fashion. Even his mother would hardly have dared to upset any of those arrangements, much less to create the appearance of utter confusion that now awaited him. To begin with, his desk was heaped up with a miscellany of odd articles—an umbrella, a sporting gun, a thermos flask, a bicycle pump, and what seemed to him the contents of a dressing-table drawer from one of the bedrooms. A similar medley of unclassifiable articles was heaped up round his chair and on the settee…What on earth had she been doing? Was it a practical joke? If so, he must somehow or other take steps to show her that such jokes were neither appreciated nor allowed. If these were Hungarian manners, the sooner they were eradicated the better.
At last she danced into the room, brimful of that triumphant vitality that was somehow more fascinating than her beauty. Even amidst his clear determination to rebuke her, he could not help noticing how the gloomy book-lined library seemed to grow lighter and less funereal as she romped into it. But he did not smile. He wanted her to see that he was angry.
She sat down quickly, laughing and looking about as if proud of her handiwork. Then she held up the thing nearest her (a button-hook) and cried: “Feelip, what—is—zees?”
Then it became clear to him. She had organised this medley in order to learn new words. It had been his earliest way of teaching—holding up something and telling her the name of it. Recently they had come to the somewhat duller business of grammar, and this was no doubt her way of showing preference for the earlier method of tuition. He was amused, but all the same he must still show her that no reason could justify her taking such liberties with his possessions.
“Stella!” he said severely, ignoring the button hook. He stood up so that his tallness should have its full effect. How could he express disapproval?
She stood before him quite demurely, looking perfectly unconscious that she had done 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.
“Wh
at 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 fond ness for company, as well as a passionate love of the open-air.
Christmas, Stella’s first Christmas at Chassingford, was bitterly cold, and the pond in the woods was frozen over. She clapped her hands in ecstasy when Venner, reputed an expert on the subject, declared that skating was possible. Philip was in the library as usual; he was working for some University prize for which a good deal of research was necessary. She came rushing in, making a draught that blew some of his papers off the desk on to the floor. “Oh—Fee-lip—I’m sorry—I’ll pick them up—Fee-lip, you come down to the pond to see me skate!—Oh, yes, you do come, don’t you! I skate beautiful…And I skate with you, I do, eh?”
