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

lives of those she cared for were in the hands of this soft-toned liar. At one moment she longed passionately for Jasper, the next she would dread his coming, for she knew well enough that he, with his straight matter-of-fact mode of thinking, would inevitably give Naniescu his due, insist that the general was within his rights, and advise his wife to keep clear of these imbroglios, which were so contrary to the lenient, sportsmanlike English attitude toward a beaten enemy.

On the whole she felt glad that Jasper was not here. He would hate to see her plead. Yet plead she must. There was nothing else to do. She must plead with fervour, plead with all the strength that she possessed, all the eloquence that she could command.

“In the name of humanity!” That was her chief plea; and with anxious eyes she searched the man’s face for the first trace of pity.

“Anna and Philip are so young,” she urged. “Mere children.”

But Naniescu smiled, that fat, complacent smile of his which she had quickly learned to loathe.

“You would not like me,” she said at one moment, “to send an account of it to all the English and American papers. Two children, one under eighteen, the other not yet twenty, arrested in their beds at dead of night, brought to trial for having smuggled a few newspaper articles through the post. If you do not deal leniently with them⁠—”

“Who said we would not deal leniently with them?” Naniescu broke in blandly. “Surely not I. I am not their judge.”

“General Naniescu,” she retorted, “I have been in Transylvania long enough to know that your powers here as military governor are supreme. Leniency in this case,” she urged insistently, “could only redound to your credit, and to the credit of the country which you serve.”

“But frankly, dear lady, I don’t see what I can do. The case has passed out of my hands⁠—”

“Send these children home with a caution, Monsieur le Général,” Rosemary went on pleading. “That is what we would do in England in a like case.”

“To hatch more treason,” he retorted, with a shrug. “Give us more trouble⁠—more buzzing of bees and pestilential backbiting⁠—”

“No!” she protested hotly. “Not for that, but to be immensely grateful to you for your generosity, and show their gratitude by striving to work for the good of their country, hand in hand with yours.”

“Ah, what noble sentiments, dear lady!” General Naniescu said with a sigh, and clapped his white, fat hands together. “I wish I could believe that some of them will sink into those young hotheads.”

“They will, general, they will.” Rosemary asserted eagerly. “If you will send those two children back to their parents, I will not leave Transylvania until you yourself are satisfied that I have brought them to a reasonable frame of mind.”

“A hard task, dear lady,” Naniescu said, with a smile.

“I would undertake a harder one than that,” Rosemary rejoined, with an answering smile, “to show my appreciation of your generosity.”

“Words, dear lady,” he said softly. “Words!”

“Try me!” she challenged.

He made no immediate reply, and suddenly his eyes again narrowed as they had done before, and their piercing glance rested upon Rosemary until she felt that through those heavy lids something inimical and poisonous had touched her. She felt a little shiver running down her spine, an unaccountable sense of apprehension caused her to glance rapidly toward the door, where she hoped to perceive Jasper’s comforting presence. She was not afraid, of course, nor did she regret her enthusiasm, or her advocacy of the children’s cause; but she had the sudden, vague feeling that she had come to the brink of an abyss and that she was staring down into unknown depths, into which unseen forces were urging her to leap.

Slowly Naniescu’s eyes reopened and the mellow expression crept back into them; he gave a sigh of satisfaction, and settled himself down once more comfortably on the cushions of the chair.

“I am happy indeed, dear lady,” he began, “that you yourself should have made an offer, which I hardly dared place before you.”

“An offer? What do you mean?”

“Surely that was your intention, was it not, to do something in return for the heavy sacrifice you are asking of me?”

“Sacrifice?” Rosemary queried, frowning. “What sacrifice?”

“Sacrifice of my convictions. Duty calls me to very insistently in the matter of those young traitors whom you, dear lady, are pleased to refer to as children. I know that I should be doing wrong in giving them the chance of doing more mischief. I know it,” he reiterated emphatically, “with as much certainty as I do the fact that they will not give up trying to do mischief. But⁠—”

He paused and fell to studying with obvious satisfaction Rosemary’s beautiful eager eyes fixed intently upon him.

“But what, Monsieur le Général?” she asked.

“But I am prepared to make the sacrifice of my convictions at your bidding, if you, on the other hand, will do the same at mine.”

Rosemary’s frown deepened. “I don’t think I quite understand,” she said.

“No,” he retorted; “but you will⁠—soon. Let me explain. You, dear lady, have come to Transylvania wrapped in prejudice as in sheet-armour against my unfortunate country. Oh, yes, you have,” he went on blandly, checking with an elegant gesture the cry of protest that had risen to Rosemary’s lips. “I am even prepared to admit that nothing that you have seen in these first few days has tended to pierce that armour of prejudice. Well, well!” and the general sighed again in that affected way of his. “You have one of your wonderful sayings in England that exactly meets this case: ‘East is East,’ you say, ‘and West is West.’ This is the East really, and you Occidentals will never think as we do. But I am wandering from my point, and you, dear lady, are getting impatient. Having admitted everything that you would wish me to admit, I now will come forward with my little proposition⁠—what?”

“If you please,” Rosemary replied coldly.

“The children,