The Dawn of Reckoning Read Online Free PDF Page A

not mind, particularly as the witticisms were often
too subtle for her to understand. “Is it a choke?” she used to say,
interrogatively. And when somebody nodded, she would reply, tranquilly: “Ah,
yes, I thought it was a choke.”
    Many a calm hour during the University vacations she used to squat down on
the hearth-rug in the library with her head propped up comfortably against
Philip’s legs, while he treated her to learned talks about English history,
politics, and literature. Not always were these talks enthrallingly
interesting, and sometimes Mrs. Monsell used to say, in her pert mocking
manner: “My dear Philip, I’m sure you must bore that girl dreadfully.” But if
Stella were present she always took up the defence. “Sometimes Philip is most dreadfully boring,” she admitted once, “but he is so nice to be bored
by.”
    Outsiders, seeing the extent to which the two were together, gave many
warnings and much advice. “She really is extraordinarily pretty,” said the
wife of the vicar of Chassingford. “But aren’t you afraid that Philip will
fall madly in love with her?”
    To which Mrs. Monsell replied characteristically “My dear, I assure you I
should be perfectly delighted if Philip ever did anything half so
sensible.”
----

CHAPTER III
I
    Philip’s rooms at Cambridge were at the top of the corner
staircase of Christ’s, with windows that faced on the one side the
delightful, not quite rectangular quadrangle, and on the other the junction
of two narrow and busy streets. Opposite on the same staircase was another
set of rooms, and these were occupied, as the inscription on the door
announced, by a certain “A. Ward.”
    They had come up to Christ’s together, Philip from his years of private
tuition and study, and Aubrey Ward from one of the lesser public-schools.
Though tenants of adjacent rooms they hardly spoke during their first year,
except for an occasional greet ing on the stairs; and indeed, it seemed that
they had little, if anything at all, in common. Philip was a “reading” man,
taking no part in sports of any kind, and allowing himself no recreation save
now and then a grim walk over the ploughed fields to Madingley. Ward, on the
other hand, was a keen Rugby player (having more than once been tried for the
University team), and the leading figure not only in most of the College
sports but in all the College “rags.”
    The “gyp” who attended both sets of rooms was never tired of giving Philip
information about his neighbour. “I must say ‘e’s a very fair man, is Mr.
Ward, and very generous an’ open-‘anded. You’d think ‘e was so quiet an’ shy
when you speak to by ‘imself, but crikey, when ‘e lets ‘imself go!—I
never seed a gentleman get so mad as he can when there’s a rag or anythin’
on…No, ‘e don’t drink—‘e’s a teetotaller. The other gentlemen bring
beer and wines up to ‘is room when ‘e ‘as a party, but he ‘as lemonade
‘imself. I know ‘cos ‘e ‘as me to wait on ‘em…But crikey, ‘e can get
noisier on lemonade than what all the others put together can on whisky!”
    One night during Philip’s second year, Ward was holding a large party in
his rooms to celebrate the success of the College hockey team. It began about
eight o’clock and became progressively noisier until midnight. About that
time Philip, who was reading late, heard the party breaking up, and from the
way they clattered and clumped down the narrow winding stairs he guessed that
they were all pretty drunk. Five minutes later they were racing round the
quadrangle, shouting and catcalling, and in a little while Philip heard them
clumsily reascending the stairs to Ward’s rooms. Ward had sported his oak,
but they hammered on it with their fists till he came to the door. “Come out
and let’s have a rag,” one of them yelled ferociously, and others shouted,
“Let’s raid the porter’s lodge!”—“Come