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

When they had gone Rosemary said to her husband: “I would rather not have seen General Naniescu tonight. I am very tired, and honestly I don’t feel at my best.”

“I am so sorry,” Jasper replied at once, full of contrition. “I did my utmost to put him off. I knew, of course, that you must be very tired. But he leaves Budapest early tomorrow morning. He is going to Cluj⁠—”

“Cluj?” she asked, puzzled, then laughed lightly. “Oh, ah!” she went on. “I always forget that dear old Kolozsvár is Cluj now.”

“Naniescu was anxious to see that our passports were quite in order, and as this is important⁠—”

“You did quite right, dear,” Rosemary rejoined gently, “as you always do. I don’t suppose the general will keep us long⁠—though he is a terrible talker,” she added with a sigh.

A moment or two later the handsome Romanian came up to Rosemary’s table.

“Ah, dear lady,” he said, and with habitual elaborate gesture he took her hand and raised it to his lips. “What a joy it is to see that you have fulfilled your promise and that you are here at last.”

He sat down at the table but declined Jasper’s offer of a liqueur or cup of coffee.

“I am only here for a moment,” he said, “Overwhelmed with work and with engagements. But I thought it would save you trouble if I just looked at your passports and saw that they were entirely in order.”

“That is more than kind,” Rosemary rejoined, whilst Jasper went immediately to fetch the passports. For a moment or two Rosemary remained silent and absorbed. An indefinable something had caused her to shrink when she felt General Naniescu’s full lips upon her hand⁠—something hostile and portentous. The next moment this feeling had gone, and she was ready to chide herself for it. Naniescu was earnest, persuasive, elaborately polite in manner and florid of speech just as he had been in London, when first he put his proposal before her, and certainly there was not a hint of anything sinister about him.

“I am looking forward to my visit to Transylvania,” Rosemary said quite gaily.

“You will find every official there ready to welcome you, dear lady,” Naniescu assured her. “You need only express a wish, to find it met in every possible way. And if you should do me the honour of requiring my personal services, needless to say that I should fly immediately to obey your commands.”

Rosemary shrugged her pretty shoulders.

“I don’t anticipate any such call upon your valuable time,” she said coolly.

“Ah, one never knows. You, dear lady, are going amongst a strange people,” he added with a sigh. “People whose supposed grievances have made bitter.”

“I have old friends in Transylvania, and will feel as safe with them as I should in my flat in London.”

“You will stay the whole time with the Imreys?” the general asked.

“Who told you I was going to stay with them?” she retorted quickly.

“You yourself, dear lady,” he replied, unperturbed, “or did I merely make a shrewd guess? Anyway, on that unforgettable evening at the Albert Hall, when first I had the honour of an introduction to you, I saw you dancing with Mr. Blakeney. The Countess Imrey is his mother’s sister⁠—you told me that you had friends in Transylvania⁠—the inference surely was obvious. I trust I have not offended you,” Naniescu went on in his most mellifluous tone, “by the suggestion.”

“No, no,” Rosemary replied, already vexed with herself for having unwittingly provoked the Romanian into one of those elaborate speeches which irritated her and gave her a vague feeling that malicious irony lurked behind so much blandness. “Mrs. Blakeney was a dear friend of mine; she and I travelled a great deal together, and I stayed more than once with the Imreys, not only at Kis-Imre, but in their beautiful house at Kolozsvár.”

“Ah, then,” the general rejoined, “if you know the house at Cluj, you would⁠—in the scarce probable likelihood of your wishing to command my services⁠—know where to find me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I am living in the Imreys’ house now.”

“But⁠—how can that be?” Rosemary retorted, somewhat puzzled, for she knew that in this part of Europe the idea of letting their house to strangers would never occur to proud, wealthy people like the Imreys, as it does so readily to those of their caste in England. But when General Naniescu, with an indifferent shrug, replied dryly: “Oh, the house was a great deal too big for the occupation of a small family. On public grounds we cannot allow the many to suffer for the whims of a few,” Rosemary frowned, no longer puzzled. She felt rather than saw that the Romanian’s dark, mellow eyes rested on her for an instant with a look of quiet mockery. But it was a mere flash. The next moment he was as suave as before, and said with that perfect deference which he had always affected when speaking to her about her work:

“That question, dear lady, will be one which I earnestly hope you will approach with an open mind, and on which your brilliant intellect will, I trust, shed the light of truth.”

Jasper’s return with the passports brought on a fresh train of thought. Naniescu pronounced them to be in perfect order. He added a special note and signature to the visa which had been obtained from the Romanian Consul in London. Rosemary was feeling very tired and longed to go to bed, but Naniescu stayed on, talking desultorily to Jasper about politics and social conditions, all matters which Rosemary did not feel sufficiently alert to discuss. Her thoughts wandered away and she scarcely heard what the two men were saying; she was, in fact, just meditating on a polite-form of abrupt leave-taking when something that Naniescu said arrested her attention.

“My Government,” the Romanian was saying, obviously in reply to a remark from Jasper, “is quite alive to the evil wrought by those pernicious articles which appear from time to time in English and American newspapers⁠ ⁠…”

“Then why doesn’t