The Dawn of Reckoning Read Online Free PDF

on, Ward, and rag the Dean,”
etc.
    Then Philip heard Ward’s voice, very quiet and calm: “No, it’s too late.
Go back to bed, you fellows, I’m not coming.”
    Then a voice cried out: “I say, who’s this man next door? ‘P.
Monsell’—Anybody heard of ‘P. Monsell’—Who is he, anyway? Come
on, boys, let’s rag P. Monsell’s rooms!”
    Somebody pushed open the door, and Philip, putting down his book, turned
to face a recklessly drunken crowd.
    He turned very pale. It was not that he was afraid, for he was no coward,
and would certainly have defended himself if anybody had set about him. It
was rather that, as his mother had often said, he lacked a certain “tact,”
the power of dealing ingeniously with a difficult situation. As one of the
men staggered and almost fell into his room, knocking over in doing so a
table with crockery on it, he did not know whether to smile and treat the
matter as a joke or to allow himself to get angry. Really, he was embarrassed
almost up to the point of panic.
    “I say, look what you’ve done…” he began, ineffectually. “Mind that desk
or you’ll smash something else.”
    A roar of laughter greeted his protest.
    Then all at once there was a scuffle out on the land ing, and he saw Ward,
in dressing-gown and pyjamas, forcing his way through the crowd and into his
room.
    “Get back…” said Ward sharply.
    No more than that. Somehow they all, even those who were hopelessly drunk,
took notice of him. He stood between Philip and the invaders, with his rather
sunburnt face set very grimly. “Get back,” he repeated, and he gave one of
the foremost men a push that sent him sprawling over the carpet. The crowd on
the landing guffawed with laughter, but Ward did not even smile.
    “Somebody help me to pull Briggs out,” he ordered curtly, and one of the
others, less drunk than the rest, took the prostrate figure by the arms and,
with Ward’s assistance, dragged him ignominiously through the doorway.
    “Better sport your oak now,” Ward said to Philip, as the last intruder
shuffled his way back on to the landing.
    Philip did so, too uncomfortable even to murmur thanks.
II
    Next morning Ward was emptying his letter-box as Philip left
his rooms to attend a lecture. “Quite a little to-do we had last night,
didn’t we?” he said, smiling pleasantly. “Decent fellows, all of them you
know—horribly tight—but didn’t mean any harm. They’ll pay for the
damage to your pots, of course. You must tell me what it comes to.”
    “I ought to thank you for clearing them out for me,” said Philip, rather
nonplussed.
    “Oh, not at all—not at all,” replied the other, shyly. “You must
come to tea with me soon and meet them when they’re more—er—more
themselves…Really you must.”
    Soon afterwards Philip accepted a definite invitation, and found Ward’s
sporting friends genial enough but hardly a type with whom he had much in
common. Ward himself, however, he liked immensely, and during their third
year the two became great friends.
III
    Ever since he was a small boy Philip had learned to mistrust
his body, and to expect it to fail him at critical moments. It was hardly a
surprise, though a bitter disappointment to him, when he fell ill within a
month of the Tripos examinations. “Nervous weakness,” the doctor said, and
remarked cheerfully that a month or two’s rest would effect a complete
cure.
    It was possible, of course, to take a degree by means of an “aegrotat,”
and Philip thought that he would be entitled to do this. Unfortunately, he
bungled his interview with his tutor so badly that the latter judged him to
be malingering and refused to sign the necessary statement.
    “The aegrotat degree is not simply a matter of form,” he assured Philip
severely. “It is not so easy to obtain as a medical certificate, I dare
say…No, Monsell, I am afraid I cannot recommend you as you suggest.”
    So Philip