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

“Peter Blakeney rowed two years in the ’Varsity eights,” one of the young people interposed, hot in the defence of a popular hero. Then he added with characteristic English shamefacedness when subjects of that sort are mentioned, “And he got a V.C. in the war.”

“He is a jolly fine chap, and ever so good-looking,” rejoined the pretty girl with the shingled hair. She shot a provocative glance in the direction of the two ignorant dagoes who had never even heard of Peter Blakeney, and then she added, “He couldn’t help being jolly and fine and all that, as he is the great-grandson⁠—”

“No, kid, not the great-grandson,” broke in one of her friends.

“Yes, the great-grandson,” the young girl insisted.

There was a short and heated argument, while General Naniescu and M. de Kervoisin looked courteously puzzled. Then Miss Fairfax was appealed to.

“Miss Fairfax, isn’t Peter Blakeney the great-grandson of the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’?”

And Miss Fairfax, who knew everything, settled the point.

“Peter,” she said, “is the great-grandson of Jack Blakeney, who was known as the Little Pimpernel, and was the Scarlet Pimpernel’s eldest son. In face and in figure he is the image of that wonderful portrait by Romney of Sir Percy Blakeney.”

“Hurrah for me!” exclaimed the one who had been right whilst the pretty girl with the shingled hair threw a glance at the handsome Romanian which conveyed an eloquent “So there!”

General Naniescu shrugged amiably.

“Ah!” he said, “now I understand. When one gets the youth of England on the subject of its Scarlet Pimpernel, one can only smile and hold one’s tongue.”

“I think,” Miss Fairfax concluded, “that Peter is the best-looking and the best-dressed man in the hall tonight.”

“You stab me to the heart, dear lady,” the general protested with mock chagrin, “though I am willing to admit that the descendant of your national hero has much of his mother’s good looks.”

“Did you know Mrs. Blakeney, then?”

“Only by sight and before her marriage. She was a Hungarian lady of title, Baroness Heves,” General Naniescu replied, with a shrug that had in it a vague suggestion of contempt. “I guessed that our young cricket player was her son from the way he wears the Hungarian national dress.”

“I was wondering what that dress was,” Lady Orange remarked vaguely, thankful that the conversation had drifted back to a more equable atmosphere. “It is very picturesque and very becoming.”

“And quite medieval and Asiatic, do you not think so, dear lady? The Hungarian aristocrats used to go to their Court dressed in that barbaric fashion in the years before the war.”

“And very handsome they must have looked, judging by Peter Blakeney’s appearance tonight.”

“I knew the mother, too,” Miss Fairfax remarked gently; “she was a dear.”

“She is dead, then?” M. de Kervoisin asked.

“Oh, yes, some years ago, my dear friend,” the general replied. “It was a tragic story, I remember, but I have forgotten its details.”

“No one ever knew it over here,” was Miss Fairfax’s somewhat terse comment, which seemed to suggest that further discussion on the subject would be unwelcome.

General Naniescu, nevertheless, went on with an indifferent shrug and that same slightly contemptuous tone in his voice. “Hungarian women are most of them ill-balanced. But by your leave, gracious ladies, we will not trouble our heads any longer with that man, distinguished though his cricket-playing career may have been. To me he is chiefly interesting because he dances in perfect harmony with Venus Aphrodite.”

“Whose Vulcan, I imagine, he would gladly be,” M. de Kervoisin remarked with a smile.

“A desire shared probably by many, or is the one and only Vulcan already found?”

“Yes, in the person of Lord Tarkington,” Miss Fairfax replied.

“Qui ça Lord Tarkington?” the general queried again.

“You are determined to know everything, mon cher général,” Lady Orange retorted playfully.

“Ah, but Mademoiselle Fairfax is such a wonderful encyclopedia of social science, and since my attention has been purposefully drawn to Aphrodite, my curiosity with regard to Vulcan must be satisfied. Mademoiselle, I beg you to tell me all about him.”

“Well,” Julia Fairfax resumed good-humouredly, “all I can tell you is that Jasper Tarkington is one of the few rich peers left in England; and this is all the more remarkable as his uncle, the late Lord Tarkington, was one of the poorest. Nobody seems to know where Jasper got his money. I believe that he practically owns one of the most prosperous seaside towns on the South Coast. I forget which. Anyway, he is in a position to give Rosemary just what she wants and everything that she craves for, except perhaps⁠—”

Miss Fairfax paused and shrugged her thin shoulders. Taunted by General Naniescu, she refused to complete the sentence she had so tantalizingly left half spoken.

“Lord Tarkington is a great friend of your country, General Naniescu,” she said abruptly. “Surely you must know him?”

“Tarkington?” the general mused. “Tarkington? I ought to remember, but⁠—”

“He was correspondent for the Daily Post at the time that your troops marched into Hungary in 1919.”

“Surely you are mistaken, dear lady. Tarkington? I am sure I should remember the name. My poor misjudged country has so few friends in England I should not be likely to forget.”

“Lord Tarkington only came into the title on the death of his uncle a year ago,” Lady Orange condescended to explain.

“And he was called something else before that,” the general sighed affectedly. “Ah, your English titles! Another difficulty we poor foreigners encounter when we come to your wonderful country. I knew once an English gentleman who used to come to Romania to shoot with a friend of mine. He came four times in four years and every time he had a different name.”

“Delicieux!” Lady Orange murmured, feeling that in this statement the Romanian general was paying an unconscious tribute to the English aristocracy. “Do tell me who it was, mon cher général.”

“I cannot exactly tell you who he was, kind lady. When first I knew the gentleman he was Mr. Oldemarsh. Then somebody died and he became Lord