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

the château. But not so at the mill, while János was telling funny stories and plying his guests with drink. Leaden-footed! My God! how slowly did those clock hands move! Only half an hour gone by since Elza had switched off all the lights, and the whole château was plunged in darkness, and every sound was stilled.

So still! Only the ticking of the clock, and at times the click of the scissors of Fate, ready to cut the thread of two young lives⁠—of more perhaps⁠—if anything went wrong, if the slightest mistake was made, if any one man proved disloyal⁠—or a liar.

Rosemary shuddered although the night was hot. She could not sit still. At times she felt that she could not breathe. She went out upon the balcony and listened. Listened. The air was so still that she felt she must hear presently the whir of the motor when it made a fresh start from the mill half a mile away. Far away on the hillside a fox gave a cry, and from the old thatched barn close by came the melancholy hoot of an owl.

Then the village church clock struck the half-hour. Half-past one. More than an hour since Rosemary, going into the ballroom, had noted that Philip and Anna were no longer there. In one of the homesteads on the outskirts of the village a cock crew. In another two hours dawn would be breaking, and the motor was to be in Hódmezö before sunrise. And suddenly Rosemary heard right through the stillness a crepitation and then a whir. And then the whirring died away very gradually, and stillness reigned once more. Absolute!

“They’ve started!”

It was Elza’s voice close to Rosemary’s elbow. Rosemary had not heard her timid knock, and Elza had slipped into the room and now stood by the open window, listening. The voice was quite calm, with just a ring in it of exultation rather than excitement. Rosemary took her hand. It was quite cold. She fondled it and warmed it between her own.

There was a wicker chair on the balcony and some cushions. Rosemary made Elza sit down, and then she piled up the cushions and squatted on them at Elza’s feet, fondling her hands and caressing them by laying her young velvety cheek against them.

The night was exquisitely beautiful, with the waning moon mysterious and honey-coloured in a firmament shimmering with stars. In the borders the flowers slept, the evening primroses had folded their golden petals, the scarlet pentstemons hidden their brilliance in the gloom; only the heliotrope and the nicotiana swung their censers, lazily sending their heady perfume through the night, and the white tufted pansies shone like numberless tiny mirrors, reflecting the stars.

“Did Maurus get to sleep?” Rosemary asked after a while.

“Yes,” Elza replied. “I gave him a cachet of aspirin. It quietened his nerves, and after a while he went to sleep.”

“Won’t you just close your eyes, Elza, and try to rest a little? The night is young yet, and I am afraid you’ll be ill if you don’t get a little rest. You’ve gone through so much!”

“Presently, darling,” Elza said quietly. “I dare say I shall drop to sleep, as I am very tired. But not just yet. I would like to stay here a little longer⁠—unless I am bothering you.” Then, as Rosemary gave her knees an affectionate hug, she went on gently: “I love the smell of flowers in the night, don’t you? They smell quite differently from what they do in the daytime.” And presently she went on apropos of nothing at all:

“There is just one difficult place where the driver might miss his way. That would delay them a little, but even so they should be very near the frontier by now.”

“Have you arranged to get any news?” Rosemary asked.

“Philip is to telephone from Hódmezö as soon as the office is open.”

“You won’t hear before then?”

“Yes. I told János to say to the motor-driver that if he will drive straight back here from Hódmezö there will be a thousand leis for him, and if he gets here before eight o’clock then he will get two thousand.”

After the village church clock had struck three Elza became very still, but Rosemary did not think that she was actually asleep. Her hands were very cold, and her breath came and went more rapidly than usual. Rosemary rose noiselessly to her feet, she got the eiderdown from her bed and wrapped it round Elza’s knees. Elza did not move. Her pretty, round face showed very white in the light of the waning moon, and all her hair seemed to have lost its golden tint and shimmered like threads of silver.

Rosemary went back into the room and lay down on the sofa. The air was very close, and she was very tired, so tired that she must have fallen asleep. Presently something roused her and she opened her eyes. The room was flooded with the golden light of dawn. She jumped to her feet and went to the window. Elza was not on the balcony; but Rosemary, looking over the balustrade, saw her on the veranda about to descend the steps.

“Elza,” she called down softly, “wait for me.”

Elza nodded acquiescence, and Rosemary ran downstairs just as she was, in dressing-gown and slippers, with her hair all hanging loosely round her shoulders. Elza had waited on the veranda for her quite patiently; she linked her arm in Rosemary’s.

“You were able to sleep a little, darling,” she said. “I am so glad.”

“And what about you, Elza?” Rosemary retorted.

“Oh, I slept quite nicely,” Elza replied in her quiet, simple way, “until the dawn closed the eyes of the night one by one, and the moon went down behind the old acacia trees.”

“I quite forgot to look at the time,” Rosemary rejoined.

“It was half-past four when I left your room. I went to have a peep at Maurus. He is still asleep.”

“Thank God for that. He will only wake to hear the good news.”

Rosemary could