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

the other side of that door, Jasper Tarkington, her husband! The spy of an alien government, Number Ten! A thing! A rag torn and filthy. The man whose name she bore. She could hear his footstep in the next room, his mirthless laugh, his harsh voice muttering curses or else invectives against the other man, who was only a fool. Then suddenly the footsteps came to a halt. The door was pulled open and Rosemary stood face to face with Jasper.

At sight of her he stood stock-still. An ashen hue spread over his face. The curse that had risen to his throat died before it reached his lips.

From the room behind him Major Buriecha’s tremulous voice was asking if anything was amiss. Jasper closed the door and stood with his back to it, still facing Rosemary. His eyes, always hawk-like and closely set, had narrowed till they were mere slits, and his lips had curled up over his jaws, showing his teeth white and sharp, like those of a wolf. An expression of intense cruelty distorted his face. He was about to speak, but Rosemary put up her hand to stop him.

“Not here,” she commanded. “Not now.”

He gave a hard laugh and shrugged his shoulders.

“It had to come some time, I suppose,” he said coolly. “I am not sorry.”

“Nor I,” she replied. “But will you please go now? We’ll meet later⁠—in the hotel.”

He looked her up and down with that glance which she had learned to dread, and for a moment it seemed as if he would yield to that ungovernable passion in him and seize her in his arms. Rosemary did not move. Her luminous eyes, abnormally dilated, never left his face for one instant. She watched the struggle in the man’s tortuous soul, the passion turned to hatred now that he stood revealed. She did not flinch, because she was not afraid. The man was too vile to inspire fear.

“Go!” she said coldly.

For another second he hesitated, but it was the banal sound of Buriecha spluttering and coughing on the other side of the door that clinched his resolve. This was neither the place nor the time to assert his will, to punish her for the humiliation which he was enduring. Once more he laughed and shrugged his shoulders, then he walked slowly out of the room.

XLIV

For over half an hour Rosemary waited in that bare, cheerless room, and gazed unseeing out of the window while she tried vainly to coordinate her thoughts. In the forefront of her mind there was a feeling of great joy which she hardly dared to analyse. Joy! And she also had the feeling, though she had come to the very brink of an awful precipice, though she was looking down into an abyss of shame and horror, with no hope of ever being able to bridge the chasm over, that yet on the other side was peace⁠—peace that she would never attain, but which was there nevertheless, to dwell on, to dream of, when the turmoil was past and she be allowed to rest.

After about half an hour the young officer who had first conducted her to the fateful spot came back to see what had happened. He seemed astonished that she was still there.

“Major Buriecha has not yet come out of his room,” Rosemary managed to say quite coolly. “It is getting near dinnertime. I don’t think I’ll wait any longer.”

The young man appeared relieved. Anyway he was not likely now to get into trouble on the English lady’s account. He clicked his heels together, expressed perfunctory regret at her disappointment, the offered to conduct milady out of the château. Rosemary accepted his escort and took leave of him at the gates.

“If milady will write to the commanding officer,” Lieutenant Uriesu said at the end, “I am sure he will give the permit milady requires.”

“I will certainly take your advice,” Rosemary assented cheerfully. “Goodbye, Lieutenant Uriesu, and thank you for your kind efforts on my behalf.”

She walked back towards the village by way of the path. When she came to the spot where first she had seen Peter that morning, she sat down on the tree-stump and listened to the murmur of the stream. She would not allow herself to think of Peter⁠—only of Philip and Anna, whom he was taking across the frontier by another clever trick⁠—in disguise, probably⁠—and over the mountain passes. Rosemary could not believe that they would stick to the car and be stopped by the frontier police. They would get away into Hungary⁠—on foot. They were young, they knew the country, and they could scramble over the mountain passes and be at Hódmezö soon, where Elza would be waiting for them. Elza knew, of course, and Maurus knew too. That was why he had been so calm and so composed when he was told that he must leave Kis-Imre within four-and-twenty hours. The all knew. Peter had trusted them. Only she, Rosemary, had been kept out of his councils, because she might have betrayed them to Jasper, and Peter could not tell her that it was Jasper who was the miserable spy.

But no, she would not think of Peter, or of how he had worked to circumvent Jasper at every turn. She only wanted to think of Philip and Anna, those two children who were so ingenuously learning the lesson of love one from the other, and of Elza, so patient and so heroic, and of Maurus, who had played his part so well. Maurus would be coming through from Cluj some time today, and he, too, would be held up at Sót, and perhaps spend the night in the funny little hotel. Rosemary hoped that she would see him. His company would be very welcome whilst Jasper was still there. Then tomorrow she and Maurus would get across the frontier somehow, and join up with Elza and the children at Hódmezö. And there was always the British Consul in