Pimpernel and Rosemary, Baroness Orczy [i have read the book a hundred times .txt] 📗

moment into relief his narrow hatchet face, with the dark eyes set closely together and the harsh Wellingtonian features. Rosemary looked at him curiously. It was the first time she had really studied his face closely since she knew. Once or twice, before she had been repelled by a flash of animal passion in his eyes, and once she had caught sight of his face in the mirror in the smoking room at Kis-Imre, when it was distorted by a wolfish expression of cruelty. Now both the passion and the cruelty were there, expressed around his mouth and in his eyes which looked at her over the tiny flickering flame.

Deliberately he blew the match out, took a long whiff from his cigarette, and said calmly:

“How you are going to hate me after this!”

After a second’s pause he added: “Well, I have had so much cruelty to endure from you in the past, a little more or less won’t make much difference.”

“I have never meant to be cruel, Jasper,” Rosemary rejoined coldly. “But I know now that the cruelest thing I ever did to you was to become your wife.”

“You only found that out, my dear, since you saw Peter Blakeney again.”

To this Rosemary made no answer. She shrugged her shoulders and turned her head away. Jasper jumped up and gripped her by the arm, making her wince with pain.

“Before we go any further, Rosemary,” he said with a savage oath, “I’ll have it out with you. Are you still in love with Peter Blakeney?”

“I refuse to answer,” Rosemary said calmly. “You have no longer the right to ask me such a question.”

“No longer the right,” he retorted with a harsh laugh. “You are still my wife, my dear. What happened this afternoon will not give you your freedom in law, remember.”

“I know that, Jasper. What happened this afternoon has broken my life, but, as you say, it cannot give me my freedom, save with your consent.”

He gave a derisive chuckle. “And you are reckoning on that, are you?” he asked drily.

“I am reckoning on it.”

“Then all I can say, my dear, is that, for a clever woman, your calculations are singularly futile.”

“I don’t think so,” she rejoined. “I know enough about the laws of England to know that they do not compel me to live under your roof.”

“You mean that you intend to leave me?”

“I do.”

“And create a scandal?”

“There need be no scandal. We’ll agree to live apart; that is all.”

“That is not all, my dear,” he retorted drily, “as you will find out to your cost.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Peter Blakeney chose to follow you to Transylvania; any number of witnesses can testify to that. I mean, that we are now in a country where money will purchase everything, even such testimony as will enable Lord Tarkington to divorce his wife, and raise such a hell of scandal around Mr. Blakeney that no decent club would have him as a member, and he would have to live out of England for the benefit of his health.”

Rosemary had listened to him without attempting to interrupt. She even tried hard not to reveal the indignation which she felt. When he had finished speaking, and once more threw himself into a chair, with a sigh of self-satisfaction, she said quite quietly:

“I thought that this afternoon I had probed the lowest depths to which a man’s nature could sink. But, God help me! I have seen worse now!”

“That is as it may be, my dear. A man fights for what he treasures with any weapon that comes to his hand.”

“For what he treasures, yes! But you⁠—”

“I treasure you beyond all things on earth,” he broke in hoarsely. “You are my wife, my property, my own possession. You may love Blakeney and hate me, but I have rights over you that all the sophistries in the world cannot deny me. I am alone,” he went on⁠—and in one second he was on his feet again, and before she had time to defend herself he had her in his arms⁠—“I alone have the right to hold you as I am holding you now. I alone have the right to demand a kiss. Kiss me, Rosemary, my beautiful, exquisite wife, with the pixie eyes! Though you hate me, kiss me⁠—though you love him, kiss me⁠—Mine is still the better part.”

He pressed his lips against hers, and for these few horrible moments Rosemary, half swooning, could only lie rigid in his arms. But horror and loathing gave her strength. With her two hands she pushed against him with all her might. “Let me go,” she murmured. “I hate you.”

But he only laughed. “Of course you hate me. Well, I like your hatred better than the cool indifference I have had from you up to now. You hate me, my dear, because you don’t understand. With all your vaunted cleverness you don’t understand. Women such as you⁠—good women, I suppose we must call them⁠—never would understand all that there is in a man that is evil and vicious and cruel. Yes, in every man! Deep down in our souls we are blackguards, every one of us! Some of us are what women have made us, others have vices ingrained in our souls at birth. Have you ever seen a schoolboy tease a cat, or a lad set a terrier against a stoat? Would you hate him for that? Not you! If he has revolted you too much, you may punish him, but even so you’ll only smile: it is boy’s nature, you will say. Well, boy’s nature is man’s nature. Cruel, vicious! Civilization has laid a veneer over us. Some of us appear gentle and kind and good. Gentle? Yes! On the surface. Deep down in our souls, grown men as we are, we would still love to tease the cat, or to see a terrier worry a stoat. Whilst men had slaves they thrashed them. Where wives are submissive their husbands beat them. Give a man