"Dear, kind Rosemary," she murmured; "go to bed, dear, you must be so tired."
Then she quietly slipped into her room and closed the door. And Rosemary was left to face the night alone.
What puzzled Rosemary was the gipsy. What was the mystery of that vagabond found lurking in the park at nightfall with a revolver in his belt? What connexion had he with the eyes that had watched Rosemary the night that she was talking with little Anna? And how had he come in possession of the inner history of Philip's and Anna's temporary release?
There was a mystery here. Somewhere. A disquieting, a terrifying mystery, not altogether to be accounted for by the spy system or other secret organization of the Roumanian Government.
All night Rosemary struggled with the puzzle. All night she wrestled with herself for the right to break her promise to Jasper and to lay all the facts of the case before Peter. She wanted to do this before Jasper's return, and, anyway, he must release her—he must—from that promise which placed her in a false and disloyal position towards Peter. When Rosemary fell asleep the dawn was breaking, and she had almost made up her mind to tell Peter everything.
But the next morning when she went downstairs she found the whole house in a turmoil. Servants rushing to and fro, Elza in close conversation with the chef, Maurus shouting contradictory orders across the galleried hall. Peter was in the drawing-room playing a jazz tune this time, and Philip and Anna were fox-trotting, infusing even in this ugly so-called dance some of their own native grace.
As soon as Rosemary appeared she was greeted with regular war-whoops of delight. In a moment she was drawn into the whirlpool of excitement. Philip and Anna dragged her to the sofa, and they and Maurus and Elza all talked to her at once, while Peter, with the inevitable cigarette in the corner of his mouth, continued to pound away at the jazz tune.
From the deafening hubbub of conversation Rosemary gathered, in the first instance, that the gipsy band from Bonczhida were coming over the next day, and the gipsies of Bonczhida were the finest in Transylvania. Then that the Keletys were driving over from Hajdu, and the Fejérs from Henger; that perhaps Aunt Charlotte would come too and bring Marie; that the Keletys were bringing the Poltys, and the Fejérs having the Kékesy boys staying with them would of course bring them along. They reckoned that there would be ten or a dozen couples to dance, and with the mammas and papas they would be thirty to supper. They expected most of the guests to arrive in time for luncheon, and in the afternoon they could have some tennis; then in the evening they would have a ball to which the officers from the garrison at Cluj had already been invited, and they had accepted by telephone. Among them were those who were going to play cricket with the Hungarians at Hódmezö under Peter's direction.
At this marvellous statement Peter came to a pause in the music with a crashing chord, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and throwing up his hands, exclaimed:
"Going to play cricket with the Hungarians under Peter's direction! Oh, blessed people! Ye ghosts of Fitzgerald, Pycroft, and of Lillywhite, do ye hear them and writhe up there in Heaven?"
Then he struck up the "March of the Men of Harlech."
"If anyone says anything more about cricket," he said solemnly, "I shall force them to play with warped bats and golf-balls on a ploughed field."
Not a trace of anxiety or even preoccupation on any of those dear, beaming faces. Elza was as excited as any of them, worried to death because the carp they had got out of the lake for this evening's supper were not really fat.
"They're no bigger than a good-sized goldfish," she said to Rosemary with a note of real tragedy in her voice, and her blue eyes at once looked anxious and troubled, as if the matter of the carp was the only thing that could worry her.
Rosemary made a great effort not to be a wet blanket in the midst of all this gaiety. In this she succeeded admirably. All she had to do was to smile and to nod her head, and now and then to cry out, "How splendid!" The others did all the talking, and when conversation subsided for a moment Peter came down with a fresh, crashing jazz tune.
Rosemary would have thought the whole scene a phantasmagoria—illusive images that would presently be dispelled—only that she had known these people ever since she was a child. She had studied their curious psychology, half barbaric, with all the primitive disregard of danger and the passion for pleasure, even at the point of death. She gave ungrudging admiration to Elza—Elza who had sat in her room last night, rigid, dry-eyed, a living statue of despair. What went on behind that smooth, white brow of hers? What projects? What hopes? And little Anna? Anna knew. Anna guessed. She had spoken of her fears to Rosemary. Spoken of eyes that watched her, of eyes that were willing her to do something foolish that would compromise her irretrievably this time. Elza and Anna! What an example of self-possession, of self-control! Rosemary was almost ready to persuade herself that something had happened to reassure them both—that, in fact, they knew the danger to be past.
Only that Elza avoided her glance, and that the dear soul, usually so placid, so stable, was just a thought more restless than usual, and her gentle voice would from time to time become shrill.
At last, genuinely tired and bewildered by so much noise, Rosemary jumped up and, laughing, declared that she must escape out of the bear-garden for a moment and get a breath of fresh air in the park. In order to reach the glass door that gave on the veranda, Rosemary had to go past the piano. Quite close. Peter looked up when she was near him, and she said to him as she went past: "They are very gay, aren't they?"
"Elza has a perfectly mad plan in her head," Peter replied, and struck a few loud chords so that no one save Rosemary should hear what he said. "For God's sake, if you have any influence over her, get her to give it up."
Then he shouted merrily: "I've had enough of those horrible American tunes. Who wants acsàrdàs?"
But he did not play acsàrdàsa moment or two his fingers wandered aimlessly over the keys, whilst his eyes followed Rosemary as she stepped through the glass door on to the sun-bathed veranda. And as Rosemary felt the sun, the clear, luscious air, the scent of flowers and of distant pines, envelop her as in a warm mantle, there came wafted to her ears the soft strains of that exquisite Hungarian love-song: "There is but one beautiful girl in all the world." The piano now seemed to sing under Peter's delicate touch, and Rosemary paused and stood quite, quite still, letting the music sink into her, yielding to its voluptuous cadence, and allowing her thoughts, her desires, her longings, to soar upwards to that infinity to which music alone can convey the soul on its magic wings.
Rosemary had wandered beyond the confines of the park, and roamed about in the woods, having lost all sense of time. When presently she came back to the reality of things she looked at her watch and saw that it was close on twelve o'clock. Luncheon at the château was at half-past. It meant stepping out briskly so as to be in time.
As soon as she reached the flower-garden, it struck her as strange that the château suddenly appeared to be so quiet. No sound reached her as she came near to the veranda steps, either of shrill, excited voices, or of laughter or song.
She found the family assembled on the veranda—Maurus, Elza, Philip and Anna. Only Peter was not there. A first glance at them all revealed to Rosemary what had occurred. Elza had told them what the gipsy had said. Maurus sat in his chair like a man in a trance, his dark face flushed, his hair towzeled, his large, dark eyes staring out before him, with a look in them that was not entirely sane.
Philip, on the other hand, was pacing up and down the veranda floor, whilst Anna stood quite still, leaning against a column, looking for all the world like a little martyr tied to the stake, her small, thin hands clasped together, a faint flush on her cheeks. These two children looked excited rather than horror-filled. Anna's face suggested that of an idealist—not altogether resigned, but nevertheless eager to suffer for the cause. But Philip looked like a lighter, seeking for a chance to hit back, a combatant not yet brought to his knees.
Elza's round, blue eyes just wandered from one to the other of these faces all dear to her.
They were dry eyes, anxious eyes, but there was nothing in them to-day of that tragic despair which had been so heart-breaking to behold the evening before.
Rosemary's first thought had been: "They know. Elza has told them!" The second was: "Elza has a plan. Peter said it was a mad one. A plan for Philip and Anna's escape." She wondered if they would tell her.
"I hope I am not late for lunch," she said, rather breathlessly, as she had been walking very fast. Then she added casually: "Where is Peter?"
"He is busy packing," Elza replied.
"Packing?" Rosemary exclaimed, puzzled. "He is not going away—already?"
"Yes," Elza said, "to-night."
"But he did not say anything yesterday," Rosemary insisted, "about going away again so soon. Or even this morning."
"I don't think he knew yesterday," Elza rejoined. "It seems he had a telephone message half an hour ago. He says he must go."
Anna now appeared to wake out of her trance. Rosemary was standing close to her just then; she took Rosemary's hand gently in hers and said:
"You see, darling, it is like this: one of Peter's cricketers has telephoned to him to say that they have such a lot of trouble about their rooms at Hódmezö. Roumanians are not exactly popular in Hungary," she went on with a wan little smile, "and I suppose that hotel-keepers don't care to put them up. So Peter has had to promise to go and put things right for his cricketers."
"He will come back, of course, after the cricket match," Elza concluded placidly. "But it is a great nuisance for him, packing and unpacking all the time."
Rosemary made no further remark. Everything seemed terribly puzzling. That Elza had told the children, had told Maurus, all she knew, was beyond question. That Peter also knew everything, and that he knew and disapproved of some plan which Elza had made, Rosemary supposed, for the escape of Philip and Anna was, to her mind, equally certain. But even if Peter disapproved, how could he go away at this critical time, and leave Elza to plan and contrive alone, hampered by a half-crazy husband, and surrounded by spies? However, no one apparently meant to say anything more just then, and it was quite a relief when the luncheon-bell sounded, and the little party on the veranda broke up and every one trooped downstairs for luncheon.
Peter was already in the dining-room, waiting for the others. Elza in her kind, gentle way asked him about his packing, and whether she could help him to get ready. But Peter declared that he wanted nothing, only the carriage this evening to take him to Cluj.
He grumbled terribly at having to go away. He hated the idea of missing the ball and all the friends who were coming; but when Elza or Maurus tried to persuade him to stay, he was very firm. "I've got to go, Aunt Elza. You don't know what complications might occur if those Roumanians got to Hódmezö and were not properly treated. Good God!" he added, with mock horror, "it might land you all in another war! And all through my fault!"
Rosemary had never seen Peter so gay or so conversational. He appeared entirely unconscious of the undercurrent of tragedy that flowed through Elza's pathetic attempts at conversation, and Maurus's equally tragic silences. He talked incessantly, chiefly about the cricket match and chiefly to Philip, who made desperate efforts to appear interested. Rosemary did her best, too, but she was anxious and puzzled, and frankly she did not believe in the story of the telephone message.
She tried now and then to catch Elza's eye, but in this she never once succeeded. Elza was avoiding her glance. She meant to say nothing about her plan—this mad plan of which Peter disapproved so thoroughly that he preferred to be out of the way. Did these dear, kind people mistrust her then, because of what the gipsy had said? Or was this reticence merely the natural outcome of a sense of supreme danger that mistrusted everything and everybody?
Rosemary felt the mystery deepening around her. She could not understand Peter.
Sometime after luncheon she found Elza and Anna sitting together in the small brick-built summer-house at the farther end of the lake. Rosemary had wandered as far as there with a book, anxious as she was to be out of the way. It was hot, and the air was very still, and the scent of tuberoses and heliotrope was almost too heady. In the perennial border a number of humming-bird moths were busy about a bed of sweet sultan; the soft whirring sound of their wings could be heard quite distinctly in the extreme stillness of this late summer's afternoon. From time to time distant sounds of village life came in quick, short waves to Rosemary's ear, as well as the sharp click of tools wielded by the gardeners at work somewhere in the park. Close beside the summer-house one man was busy hand-weeding the path. As Rosemary drew nearer, he looked up for an instant, and then he shuffled rapidly away. In the long, stooping figure, the dirty rags and the dark skin, Rosemary thought that she recognized the gipsy of the previous night. It was just like Elza, she thought, to give the poor wretch work on the estate.
When Rosemary saw Elza and Anna sitting together in the summer-house, her instinct was to pass discreetly on, with just a hasty, cheery word, but Elza called to her.
"Come and sit here a minute, Rosemary darling," she said. "Anna and I want to tell you everything."
Everything! Rosemary without a word stepped into the little pavilion. Anna pulled a wicker chair forward between herself and Elza, and Rosemary sat down, a little anxious, a little fearful, wondering what these dear, enthusiastic hotheads had devised, and how she herself would act when she knew. Elza at once took hold of her hand and fondled it.
"You asked me last night, darling," she began, "not to give up hope, didn't you?"
Rosemary nodded acquiescence.
"And I promised that I would not give up faith," Elza went on quietly. "Well, I have kept my faith all through last night, which was very trying. With the dawn, hope came to me, and after that I once more felt in charity with all the world."
Rosemary gave Elza's podgy white hand a tender squeeze. "Dear!" she whispered.
"We have a plan, darling," Elza said triumphantly. "A splendid plan! To-morrow night Philip and Anna will be in Hungary, safely out of the way."
Rosemary had known all along what was coming. She looked at Anna, who gave an excited little nod.
"Tell Rosemary, Aunt Elza," she said. "All from the beginning. There's no one in the world you can trust as you can Rosemary."
"Listen then, darling," Elza said, speaking quite quietly at first, then gradually allowing excitement to get hold of her voice, making it tremble while she spoke, and husky with eagerness, while her command of the English tongue became less and less pronounced.
"It has all been made possible by this cricket business, for which I thank God and Peter Blakeney. As I told you this morning, Peter's cricket people are all coming here to-morrow for the ball. They have to be at Hódmezö the following day for the cricket. So they will bring their luggage, and make a start from here after the ball—I suppose about midnight—in three motor-cars which the Governor, General Naniescu, has himself placed at their disposition. Hódmezö is, as you know, in Hungary, just the other side of the frontier. It will be about four or five hours' drive from here, as there is a short cut—quite a good road—which avoids Cluj. In two of those motor-cars the cricket people themselves will go; they are mostly young Roumanian officers and men of the better class. General Naniescu has, of course, given them all free passes for the occasion. Fortunately he has also given them passes for four servants to accompany them. These four men will go in the third motor, and they will also go in the motor all the way to Hódmezö. Now two of these servants, whom the local commissary of police has himself chosen and to whom passes have been given, are the two sons of Janos the miller, who is devoted to us all. His two sons have certainly served in the Roumanian army because they were obliged, but they have remained Hungarian at heart, and would do anything for me and for Philip."
Elza paused. Her eager, round eyes searched Rosemary's face. Rosemary, of course, had already guessed the rest, her own excitement while she listened was as tense as Elza's. She gripped the white podgy little hand of her friend, and looked from her to Anna—a mute question in every glance.
"You can guess, of course?" Anna said.
Rosemary nodded: "I can guess," she said, "but do go on."
"I sent for János early this morning," Elza went on. "All I had to tell him was that Philip and Anna were in great danger, and must be got out of the country at any cost. He understood! We Hungarians in this occupied territory all understand one another. We understand danger. We live with danger constantly at our door. And János was so clever, so helpful. I only had to outline my plan, he thought out all the details. The mill is about a kilomètre from here, the last house in the village. As soon as the first two motors have gone with the cricket people and the Roumanian officers, Philip and Anna will at once run round to the mill, and János will give them clothes belonging to his sons. The clothes they will put on. In the meanwhile the third motor-car will have collected the two other men in the village who are going as servants to Hódmezö—one is the brother of the Jew over at the inn, and the other the son of the Roumanian storekeeper. Then it will call at the mill. János will ask the two men to come in. He and his two sons will give them some strong spirit to drink. The brother of the Jew and the son of the storekeeper are both of them great drunkards. When they have become what you English call I thinkblotto, János will take them back into the motor. There they will sit, and will probably at once go to sleep. But Philip and Anna will also get into the motor. They will be dressed in peasant's clothes, and they will have the free passes which Naniescu has given to Janos' sons. They will get to Hódmezö about five o'clock in the morning. And once they are in Hungary they are safe. Rosemary, darling! they are safe!"
Rosemary had remained silent. The whole thing certainly at first glance appeared so easy, so simple that she found herself wondering why she or Jasper—or Peter—had never thought of such a plan. She also wondered why Peter should have spoken of it as a mad plan, and begged her if she had any influence with Elza to dissuade her from it. What had been in his mind when he said that? Of what was he afraid? Spies, of course. But spies, like the poor, were always there, and, after all, Philip and Anna would only be risking what already was forfeit—their lives.
Rosemary sat there in silence, her fingers closed over Elza's soft, warm hand. She gazed straight before her, thinking. Thinking; her mind already following Philip and Anna's flight through this hostile, cruel country, to the land which would mean freedom and life for them. She saw them in her mind's eye, like a vision floating before her across the lake, which in this day-dream had become a wide, dusty road with a motor-car speeding along toward life and toward freedom.
It seemed a solution. It must be a solution. Thank God Jasper would be there to help with counsel and with suggestions. Elza was talking again now. In her quaint English, which became more and more involved, she continued to talk of her plan, as a child will talk of some event that made it happy. She harped on the details, on Janos' devotion, the two sons who would make their way to the frontier in their father's bullock cart, and then cross over to Hungary on foot, through the woods and over a mountain pass where there would be no fear of meeting Roumanian sentinels. At Hódmezö they would find Peter and the cricket people. They would get back their passes, and return quite gaily with the others, having saved the lives of Philip and Anna. Such devotion! Wasn't it splendid?
Rosemary only nodded from time to time, and from time to time she squeezed Elza's hand. It was so hot and so airless here in the little pavilion with those clusters of climbing heliotrope all over the roof and half-blocking up the entrance. The bees and humming bird moths were making such a buzzing and a whirring; it was just like the hum of motor-car wheels on the dusty road. And through it all came the swishing sound of a garden broom upon the gravel path, between the summer-house and the stone coping around the ornamental lake. Rosemary caught herself watching the broom swinging backwards and forwards across the path, and across; she saw the two hands—very dark lean hands they were—that wielded the broom, and finally the gipsy's tall, thin figure bent almost double to his task. It seemed just right that the man should be there at this hour, sweeping the path for Elza to walk on presently, for Philip also and for Anna. It was right because it was the gipsy who had told Elza what she, Rosemary, had not had the courage to say. There was very little mystery about the gipsy now; he was just a ragged, dirty labourer, bending to his task. Did the strange intuition—or was it divination—that had brought him all the way from his native village to speak with Elza whisper to him that his warning had already borne fruit, and that the gracious lady whom he had come to warn had found in faith and hope the way out of dark destiny?
"Oh, that's all right, darling! We spoke English all the time!"
Elza said this with a light laugh. Rosemary woke from her day-dream. She must have been speaking in her dream—about the gipsy who haunted her thoughts.
"Did I say anything?" she asked.
"Yes, darling," Anna replied, "you have been very silent for the last minute or two, and then suddenly you said: 'The gipsy, the gipsy,' twice, like that. It sounded so funny."
"I thought," Elza put in, "that perhaps you were afraid that dirty old gipsy had heard what we said. But gipsies in Hungary don't speak English, you know. For one thing they never go to school."
Elza appeared quite light-hearted now.
"I knew," she said, "that you would approve of my plan."
She said this, but Rosemary herself was quite unconscious that she had spoken. She had dreamed and dreamed, and seen a motor-car speeding along the dusty road. But through it all, she had approved, approved of the plan. It was so feasible, and so simple. She only wondered why Peter disapproved.
"What does Peter Blakeney say to all that?" she asked presently.
"Peter?" Elza asked wide-eyed.
"Yes. You told him about your plan, didn't you?"
"No! No!" Elza asserted firmly. "We have told no one but you. Peter is going away. Why should we tell Peter?"
"I thought——" Rosemary murmured.
"It will be time enough to tell him," Anna put in gaily, "when Philip and I turn up at the hotel at Hódmezö. Won't he be surprised when he sees us?"
How strange it all was! Peter knew, since he spoke of a mad plan in Elza's head, and begged Rosemary to dissuade her from it. Peter knew, though no one had told him. Another mystery added to all those which had of late filled Rosemary with such a torturing sense of foreboding. Another mystery that seemed to surround Peter's changed personality, that seemed a part of this new personality of his, flippant and indifferent, so unlike the Peter she had known.
Now she longed passionately for Jasper—dear, kind Jasper, around whom there hung no mystery—the strong hand that would guide her through this maze of intrigue which bewildered as much as it terrified her. Fortunately her promise to Jasper had been kept. With this new mystery about Peter that she vaguely dreaded, she would have been racked with anxiety if she had confided in him. And yet, how disloyal was this thought, this fear! Fear of Peter! Mistrust of Peter! A very little while ago she would have staked her soul that Peter was true, loyal, the soul of honour, an English gentleman, an English sportsman! A Blakeney! A Scarlet Pimpernel of to-day. What was there in the atmosphere of this unfortunate country groaning under a foreign, hated yoke to taint his simple soul with the foul breath of intrigue?
Walking across the lawn toward the château half an hour later, Rosemary found herself once more laughing at her own suspicions of Peter. Peter! Heavens above! what turn were her suspicions taking?
Did she really believe for one moment that Peter was intriguing with these crafty Roumanians for the undoing or the persecution of his own kith and kin? The very thought was preposterous. The suggestion untenable. Whatever Jasper might think, whatever he might fear, she, Rosemary, was nothing but a traitor if she allowed herself for one moment to harbour such thoughts of Peter.
He was changed, certainly he was changed. But between that and Jasper's suspicions——! It was Jasper who had first put thoughts into Rosemary's head by extracting that strange promise from her. Not to talk to Peter. Not to discuss the situation with Peter. Otherwise she would never for one moment——
Of course, of course, the thought was preposterous. Peter and intrigue! Peter and crafty Machiavellism! Peter and a double game he was ashamed to avow! Why, reason should have rejected the first hint of such a possibility, even if loyalty did not.
"Hallo, Rosemary!"
Peter's voice brought Rosemary back to reality. She had wandered up the veranda steps, hardly conscious of where she was. Thank Heaven, after her musings she was able to look Peter loyally in the face. He had his hands buried as usual in the pockets of his trousers, and the inevitable cigarette between his lips. Rosemary felt hot and tired; the sun had been baking the lawn while she walked across it, and she had no parasol. With a contented little sigh she sank into the basket chair that Peter pulled forward for her.
"I suppose," he said abruptly, "that they have been telling you about the nonsense that's going on in their dear, silly heads."
And with a nod he indicated the summer-house, where, against the creeper-clad entrance, Elza's white dress gleamed in the sunshine. Rosemary made no reply. Peter's words had somehow acted like a douche of cold water upon her sense of rest and well-being. It was true then! He did know. Though Elza and Anna had told him nothing, he knew. How? Rosemary would have given worlds for the right to ask him, but suddenly her promise to Jasper loomed before her with paramount importance, and put a seal upon her lips.
"Won't you tell me?" Peter insisted.
Of course there was a simple explanation for the whole thing. Those dear people, Elza, Maurus, even Anna, were not models of discretion. Their voices were loud and penetrating, and, when they were excited about any project or event, they would discuss it here, there and everywhere at the top of their voices, and with a total disregard of possible eavesdroppers. Peter's knowledge of Elza's plans may have come about quite innocently. Rosemary was quite sure it had come about innocently. But somehow she longed for that perfect security and trust in Peter which she used to feel even when he was most capricious and his love-making most tempestuous. Why hadn't he told Elza that he knew? Why, instead of discussing the plan over with Elza or one of the others, did he feign ignorance with them, and suddenly elect to go away on an obviously futile excuse?
Oh, how Rosemary hated all this mystery! And how she feared it! And how, above all, she hated that promise which she had made to Jasper, and which prevented her at this moment from having a straight talk with Peter.
"So you won't tell me?" he reiterated, and his voice sounded curiously harsh, quite different to his usual very pleasant, musical tones. Peter had the voice of a musician. It was deep in tone and beautifully modulated. Peter's voice had been one of the things about him that had captivated Rosemary's fancy in the past. Now, he spoke through his teeth, with that hateful cigarette in the long holder held between the comers of his lips. Rosemary tried to be flippant.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed, with a little broken laugh, "are you trying to play therôleof the heavy father, Peter, or of the silent strong man? And now you are frowning just like the hero in one of Ethel M. Dell's books. When are you going to seize me by the wrist and whack me with a slipper?"
It was very easy to make Peter laugh. He was laughing now, and the scowl fled for the moment from his face.
"Don't play the fool, Rosemary," he said in his slangy, boyish way. "Tell me what Aunt Elza has been saying to you out here?"
"But, you silly boy," she riposted, "there's nothing to tell."
Back came the scowl on Peter's face, darker than before.
"So," he said curtly, "I suppose that you and Aunt Elza and Anna have been discussing frocks for the past hour and a half."
"No, dear," she replied coolly, "only the arrangements for to-morrow's ball."
Whereupon Peter said "Damn!" and swung round on his heel, as if he meant to leave her there without another word. But for this move of his Rosemary was unprepared. She did not want Peter to go. Not just yet. She was perfectly loyal to him in her thoughts, and she was irrevocably determined not to break her promise to Jasper, but she was not going to let Peter go off to-day without some sort of explanation. She might not see him again after this—for weeks, for months, for years! So she called him back.
"Peter!" she cried.
He swung back and returned to her side. His deep, changeful eyes, which at times were the colour of the ocean on the Cornish coast, and at others recalled the dark tints of his Hungarian ancestors, looked strangely resentful still. But as his glance rested on Rosemary, wandered from her delicate face in the pearly shadow of her garden hat, along the contour of her graceful body in repose, down to the tips of her dainty white shoes, the resentful look fled. And Rosemary, glancing up, caught a momentary flash of that soul-holding gaze which had taken her captive that lovely night in June by the river, when she had lain crushed and bruised in his arms, the gaze which that other night in the Albert Hall box had filled her soul with abiding regret.
"What do you want me to tell you, Peter?" she asked in that stupid way that comes to the lips when the soul is stirred and the mind commands self-control.
"Nothing," he replied roughly, "that you don't want to."
"Peter," she retorted, "why are you so strange with me? One would think I had done something to offend you. You scarcely will speak to me; when you do you are so rough and so abrupt, as if—as if——Oh, I don't know," she went on rapidly, and her voice shook a little as she tried to avoid that memory-conjuring glance of his. "It seems as if something had come between us, almost as if we were enemies."
Peter laughed at this, but his laugh sounded rather forced and harsh.
"Enemies!" he exclaimed. "Good God, no!"
"But something has happened, Peter," she insisted. "I cannot tell you how I find you changed."
"Well," he said curtly, "something did happen, you know, when you married Jasper."
"I don't mean that, Peter. I saw you in London after I was engaged, and you had not changed then. It is here—in this place—that you seem so different."
"You must admit the place gets on one's nerves," he said with a shrug.
"You must make allowances, Peter," she rejoined gently. "They are in such trouble."
"Are they?" he retorted.
"Why, you know they are!" And her voice rang with a note of indignant reproach. "How can you ask?"
"I ask because I don't know. You say that they—I suppose you mean Aunt Elza and Maurus and the kids—are in trouble. How should I know what you mean? Since I've been here they have done nothing but shout, dance and make plans for more dancing and shouting, and when I ask you anything you only tell me lies."
"Peter!"
"I beg your pardon, dear," he said with sudden gentleness. "I didn't mean to be caddish. But you know," he went on, harshly once more, "you did tell me that Jasper had gone to Budapest on business."
"Well?" she queried.
"Well! Knowing you to be truthful by nature, I am wondering why you should have told me such an unnecessary lie." Then, as Rosemary was silent, he insisted: "Won't you tell me, Rosemary?"
"You are talking nonsense, Peter," she replied obstinately. "There is nothing to tell."
"Which means that Jasper has told you—or insinuated—that I am not to be trusted."
She protested: "Certainly not!"
"Then," he concluded, "the mistrust comes out of your own heart."
"That again is nonsense, Peter. There is no question of trust or mistrust, and I have no idea what you mean. It is you who try to deceive me by feigning ignorance of what is going on in this house. If Aunt Elza has not spoken openly with you, it certainly is not for me to enlighten you. There," she added, as she caught a look of eager questioning in his eyes, "I have already said more than I have any right to say. Elza and Anna are coming across the lawn. If you want to know anything more, you had better ask them."
And abruptly she rose and left him and went into the house. She felt hurt and angry and not a little ashamed. She felt hurt with Peter, angry with Jasper and ashamed of herself. Peter was quite right. She had told him lies—unnecessary lies. And Jasper had forced her to tell them and to be disloyal to Peter. The present situation was a false one, utterly false. It was Peter who should take over the direction of Elza's plan. With his help the chances of Philip's and Anna's escape would be increased ten-fold. It seemed an awful thing—it was an awful thing—that he should be shut out of Elza's councils, that he should go away on a futile and trivial errand while those of his own kith and kin were in such terrible danger, and running into dangers that were worse still.
For the last time the temptation returned, and with double violence, to break her promise to Jasper and go straight back to Peter and tell him everything. She paused in the centre of the drawing-room and looked back through the wide-open glass doors. Peter was still on the veranda. He had picked up a stick and a tennis ball and was hitting the one with the other and humming a tune. He caught Rosemary's eye as she glanced back to look at him.
"Hallo!" he called gaily.
Rosemary went deliberately back to the glass door. She paused under the lintel; then she said earnestly:
"Don't go to Hódmezö to-day, Peter. I am sure there is no necessity for you to go. You can book rooms by telephone, and, anyway——" She paused a moment and then went on more earnestly still: "Wait another twenty-four hours, Peter. Don't go till—till after the ball."
Peter did not look at her. He was taking careful aim with the stick and the tennis ball. He made a swinging hit and watched the ball fly away over the lawn. Then he threw the stick down and turned to Rosemary.
"Sorry," he said lightly, "but I have promised."
She gave an impatient sigh, and after another second's hesitation once more turned to go.
"I say," he called after her, "what about a game of tennis? There's just time for a set before I need make a start."
But by now all temptation to talk openly with Peter had vanished. What would be the use of telling this irresponsible boy anything? Jasper was right. Elza was right. Only she, Rosemary, was foolish, and her vaunted knowledge of human nature nothing but vanity. She had only sufficient self-control left to call back lightly to him:
"No, thank you, Peter, I am rather tired."
Then she fled precipitately out of the room.
Rosemary did not see Peter again before he left. Somehow that last vision which she had of him, hitting at a rubber ball with a stick, and his utterly callous suggestion of a game of tennis at an hour which he must have known was fateful to all his kindred, had caused a revulsion in Rosemary's heart. She felt that never again would she feel tempted to break her work to Jasper. Indeed, she felt how right Jasper had been all along in insisting that she should not discuss the grave events that affected the lives of all the inmates of Kis-Imre with such a callous, empty-headed, irresponsible young jackanapes as Peter had lately become.
So she had gone upstairs to her room, and with a curious heartache, for which she was unable to account, she listened to the familiar bustle and noise that always filled the château whenever visitors came or went. Somehow she could not bring herself to say "Good-bye" to Peter. Elza had told her that he would be coming back within the next week or so, but Rosemary, who felt too tired for introspection, could not have told you whether she was glad or sorry at the prospect of seeing him again quite so soon.
The rest of the day, as well as the long, interminable evening, were taken up with the discussion of household affairs—the luncheon, the dinner, the ball, and even into these Philip and Anna entered whole-heartedly and with apparent complete disregard of what that fateful morrow might bring them. As for Elza, she was perfectly marvellous! Kind, fussy as usual, her menus and the airing of the guest-rooms being, to all appearances, the most important matters in her mind.
After everyone had gone to bed little Anna came to Rosemary's room and sat for a while beside her on the sofa, holding the Englishwoman's hand as if she wished to transfuse through those slender fingers strength and courage into her soul. When Rosemary made a passing allusion to the wonderful stoicism that could allow trivial matters to seem so important at a moment when life and worse were at stake, Anna explained quite gently:
"We are made like that, we Hungarians. We hold our lives cheap, I think, because throughout our history we have always had to sacrifice them for our country. And also, I think, that we have a certain Oriental fatalism in us. Not the fatalism of the Moslem, who abdicates free will, but the faith of the Christian who believes that God ordains everything and that it is useless to fight His decrees."
"And yet you are not a religious people," Rosemary riposted, thinking of what Elza had said to her the night before.
"Only in the sense that children are religious," Anna rejoined. "We accept blindly what some kind nuns and ignorant priests have taught us, and we believe in an Almighty God more absolutely and ingenuously than the more thoughtful people of the West."
Long after Anna had gone Rosemary thought over what the child had said. Well, perhaps it was true. There certainly was an exquisitely beautiful passage in the New Testament where the Divine Master enjoins his disciples to become as little children. And, recollecting Anna's words, Rosemary caught herself wondering whether the childlike faith of these people here would not open the Kingdom of Heaven more easily for them than would a more considered, more rational religion—a compromise between a very erring human reason and the Divine Mysteries which no human thought could fathom.
As for the next day, it was just a whirl, a jumble of gaieties and talk, of arrivals and merry greetings, of meals and tennis and walks, and of talk, talk, talk and endless laughter. Rosemary, when she rose, had made up her mind that she would just shed her real personality for the whole of the day. She would cease to be Rosemary with the aching heart, the soul rent by conflicting duties, by anxieties, determination and sorrow; she would become the "dear Lady Tarkington," the "Rosemary darling" of all these kind, hospitable, wonderful people. She would laugh with them, play with them, and with them lay aside for the next few hours the torturing anxiety of the day.
She would forget, she would laugh, she would talk. The effort would do her good, and when the hour came when the fate of all those she cared for would have to be decided, when on one word, one smile, would perhaps hang the destiny of Philip and of Anna, then she would be strong enough to play the part allotted to her in the tragic farce—the farce that had found birth in the brain of a heart-broken mother.
And it had been a wonderful day. The weather was perfect. Every one was in the highest possible spirits. The chef surpassed himself; every one pronounced the lobster à l'Américaine perfect and the Charlotte Russe Créole quite inimitable.
All afternoon tennis balls were flying, and there was coffee, ices and iced drinks going all day on the lawn. At five o'clock the gipsy musicians from Bonczhida arrived, and after that music never ceased. Rosemary learned something of gipsy endurance that day, for this band of twelve musicians never left off playing from the moment they arrived until—until midnight, when time ceased to be and Fate began to swing her long pendulum.
But between five o'clock and midnight there was music, ceaseless music. While the guests arrived, while everyone played tennis, croquet, drank coffee, walked, flirted, dressed, dined and danced there was music—music all the time.
After dinner the young Roumanian officers from the garrison at Cluj came over in several motors. Among them were the eleven cricketers, very proud of themselves, feeling quite English and real sportsmen, delighted to have been chosen to play in the historic match. Fine-looking young men, most of them, with the unmistakable swaggering air of the conqueror about their whole attitude towards the subject race. Elza was invariably a perfect hostess; but Maurus, after a curt greeting, nursed his wrath in a corner of the ballroom, surrounded by his own friends. He had been drilled to keep his temper in check, and love for his only son, anxiety for him and knowledge of danger gave him for this one evening a certain amount of self-control. Rosemary admired him as much as she did the others, for she knew what it cost Maurus to have these alien conquerors in his house.
Anna's mother and sister had come over from Ujlak. The mother was a hard woman, obviously selfish and unsympathetic. Her own grievances, the confiscation of a great deal of her property, seemed to have smothered every soft, womanly instinct in her. Apparently she knew nothing of the danger that hung over her daughter, and Rosemary had the feeling that if she had known she would not greatly have cared. Her eyes, which were dark and set very wide apart in a flat, colourless face, only softened once, and that was when she spoke about her husband, who had died just before the war.
As for persecutions, humiliations, petty tyrannies, she dismissed them with a shrug of the shoulders. "The Roumanians are the scum of the earth," she said in her quiet, unemotional manner, through her thin, colourless lips, "just a horde of uneducated peasantry; you can't expect anything from a pig but a grunt. I am only thankful that Béla is not here to see it all."
On the other hand, the young people who filled the stately château of Kis-Imre with their flutterings like an army of gaily-painted butterflies did not worry about political grievances. For them the Roumanian officers were just dancing-partners, and their worth was only measured by their proficiency in the latest steps. The mammas and papas either played bridge or sat on the chairs that were ranged against the walls all round the beautiful ballroom placidly admiring the evolutions of their own progeny.
Rosemary, not to be outdone in self-discipline, was outwardly as gay as any of them. She danced impartially with the Hungarians and the Roumanians, and talked cricket knowledgeably with the team. For her the atmosphere was electrical. At times it seemed to her over-strained senses as if she could hear the whir of the spinning-wheel driven by the Fates, the hum of the spindle, and the click of their scissors as they made ready to cut the thread of these people's destiny.
Just before midnight the young Roumanian officers who formed the cricket team left in the two motor-cars which were to take them direct to Hódmezö, a matter of ninety odd miles. Rosemary found herself saying good-bye to them like an automaton—counting them over as if they were ninepins. A kind of mist was before her eyes through which their good-looking faces seemed to be grinning at her, and their moustaches bristling like Alice's Cheshire cat.
Elza, wonderful as ever, fussed around them, stuffing delicacies into the cars at the last moment, fruit, bottles of wine, cakes, chocolates, and lending them rugs and cushions.
"It is a long drive," she said, as she shook hands one by one with the young officers, who clicked their heels together, jingled their spurs and declared that they had had a very pleasant evening. "You will be hungry when you get to Hódmezö," she added, "and all the restaurants will be closed. You will be glad of a glass of wine and some of my home-made cake."
Rosemary was standing next to Maurus Imrey at the time. She heard him mutter between his teeth:
"And may it choke you when you eat and drink."
But even Maurus was wonderful. Wonderful! He shook hands. He smiled—wryly; but he smiled. Wished them all God-speed. He had been well drilled, and he was fully conscious of the danger to Philip and Anna if he lost control over his temper now.
So he, too, gave directions for putting provisions into the cars. He had four bottles of French red wine in his cellar and he insisted that the young officers should have those. "It will make them play that silly cricket better," he said. "And I hate the stuff myself."
The four men who were going with the team as servants were there arranging the rugs, stowing the wine and fruit and cake in the cars. Rosemary knew the two sons of Jànos, the miller, by sight. They were fine, well-set-up young fellows, obviously of the stuff that heroes are made of, for they were going to risk their lives for the children of their feudal lords.
Anna, equally self-possessed, flitted among the guests like a little fairy. She had on a pale blue dress, and out in the open her slim figure was hardly distinguishable in the gloom; only her small, white face told as if carved out of alabaster: that dear little face, with the big eyes that were so like Peter's. When she was saying "good-bye" to one of the young officers, who had been her dancing-partner, she said with a pout:
"I think it was horrid of you to telephone to Peter Blakeney yesterday and take him away from us. I don't believe you would have had any difficulty with the hotel people about your rooms. And, anyway, you might have let Peter have another day's enjoyment."
The young man appeared genuinely bewildered.
"Will the gracious lady deign to explain?" he asked.
"Oh, there is nothing to explain," Anna said, with a light laugh. "We were all of us very angry with you for sending that telephone message which took Peter Blakeney away from us."
"But pardon me, dear lady," the officer rejoined, "we didn't send any telephone message to Monsieur Blakeney. As a matter of fact, we fully expected to find him here."
"But about your rooms——?" Anna insisted.
"Our rooms at Hódmezö have been arranged for ages ago. Everything there is in perfect order and——"
"Anna, dear," Rosemary broke in quickly, "Peter didn't say who sent him the telephone message. He only said that he had one. It may have come from Hódmezö—from one of the hotel people—he didn't say——"
What had prompted Rosemary to interpose at this moment she did not know. It was just an instinct: the blind instinct to protect, to shield Peter from something ugly and vague, that she had not yet had time to see clearly, and Anna then went on lightly:
"Oh, of course he didn't say. Anyway, when you see Peter, tell him he was very silly to go away, and that he missed a great deal by not being here to-night. You can tell him that Marie never danced so well in all her life, and the gipsies from Bonczhida simply surpassed themselves."
Whereupon the young officer clicked his heels and promised that he would deliver the message.
"But we shan't see Monsieur Blakeney," he said, "until the evening. You know the match is not until Thursday. Monsieur Blakeney arranged to meet us in Hódmezö on Wednesday evening, and this is only Tuesday."
"It will be Wednesday morning before we start," one of his friends broke in lightly, "if you don't hurry, you old chatterbox."
After that, more "good-byes" and waving of hands as the motor-cars rounded the courtyard and finally swung out of the gates. Rosemary looked round to catch sight of Elza. She was quite placid, and on her dear, round face there was a set smile. Evidently she was unconscious of the fact that something stupendous had happened, something that had hit Rosemary on the head like a blow from a sledgehammer. No, no! Elza had not noticed. Elza's mind was no longer here. It was way out upon the dusty road, watching a motor-car travelling at full speed over the frontier away from this land of bondage, to Hungary to freedom. Elza had noticed nothing. Anna and Philip were still laughing and chattering, Maurus muttering curses. No one had noticed anything. Only for Rosemary had the world—her own beautiful world of truth and loyalty—come to an end. Peter had lied. Peter was playing a double game. It was no use arguing, no use hoping. The only thing to do was to go on groping in this mystery that deepened and deepened, until it became tangible, material like a thick, dark fog through which glided ghouls and demons who whispered and laughed. And they whispered and laughed because Peter had lied and because she, Rosemary, saw all her hopes, her faith, her ideals lying shattered in a tangled heap at her feet. Peter had lied. He had acted a lie. He told her that he had promised to go to Hódmezö to see about rooms for the cricket team. Well, that was not true. Rosemary had interposed, made some excuse for Peter. She wouldn't have those Roumanians think that Peter was a liar. They would have smiled, suggested some amorous intrigue which Monsieur Blakeney wished to keep dark. At the thought Rosemary's gorge rose, and she put in a lame defence for Peter. But all the time she knew that he had lied. If Peter did not go to Hódmezö yesterday, where was he now? Why all this secrecy? These lies?
Why? Oh, God, why?
Rosemary had found a quiet corner in the hall where she could sit and think for a moment. Yet thinking was the one thing she could not do. Always, at every turn she was confronted with that hideous query: Why had Peter lied? After a while she had to give up trying to think. Fate's spindle was whirring, the scissors clinking. She, Rosemary, a mere atom in the hands of Fate, must continue to play her part.
A quarter of an hour must have gone by while she sat—trying to think—in the dark. Perhaps more. Anyway, when she returned to the ballroom she found the company much diminished in numbers. All the Roumanian officers had gone, also one large party who lived just the other side of Cluj. Only a few remained whose châteaux were too far away for a midnight start, seeing that motors were forbidden to the conquered race. They were going to spend the night at Kis-Imre, and probably make a start in the morning. The young people had already resumed dancing; the gipsies were playing the latest fox-trot. The mammas and papas were placidly admiring their respective progeny.
All this Rosemary took in at a glance.
Then she looked round for Elza. But neither Elza nor Maurus was there. And Philip and Anna had also gone.
A few minutes later Elza came back. To Rosemary, who had been watching for her by the door, she just whispered as she entered: "It is all right. They have gone."
She still was wonderful. Quite calm and with that set smile on her face. Only her round, blue eyes had an unusual glitter, and the pretty silvered hair clung matted against the smooth, white brow. Rosemary watched the scene, now entranced. She had never seen anything like it. It did not seem reality at all. It could not be. All these people here were just puppets and they were play-acting. They could not have behaved as they did if they had been real.
There were no longer any Roumanians there. They were all Hungarians together—just a few of them, all from Transylvania, the wretched, occupied territory, in which everybody was something of a slave, never allowed to forget for an instant that they were the defeated, and that they must submit. All were relatives or else very intimate friends. And, after a while, they began to notice that Philip and Anna were not there. At first they asked questions. Where were Philip and Anna? Elza said nothing. She only gave an answering look here and there, a quiver of the eyelid and certain setting of the lips. She did not say anything, but it was remarkable how everybody understood.
Rosemary watched every face and knew that they understood. They asked no more questions. They accepted the situation. Philip and Anna had gone. They had to go as countless others, who had to fly at dead of night, get the other side of the frontier as quickly as possible, to escape from military tribunal, chicanery, persecution, or even death.
It was late now, long past midnight. The gipsies had been sent downstairs to get some supper. The mammas and papas declared that it was time to go to bed. The young people thanked dear Aunt Elza for such a happy time, the young men kissed her hand. One or two of the older people whispered: "Good luck!" Others said reassuringly: "Don't fret, they will be all right." Never a question about Philip and Anna. Never a comment. They knew. They understood.
Orders were given for the carriages to be ready at nine o'clock the next morning. With the innate delicacy that underlay so much apparent pleasure-loving, they wished to relieve as soon as practicable this house of sorrow from the burden of their presence.
By half-past twelve ballroom, hall, reception-rooms were all empty. Elza waited downstairs till the last of the servants had gone. Rosemary helped her at the last to put the gold service away in the strong cupboard. It consisted of half a dozen pieces of great artistic beauty and equally great value. Each piece had to be wrapped up in cotton wool and green baize. Elza did it all, and Rosemary could see that her podgy, white hands did not tremble, and that she put every piece away with her usual meticulous care. Only when her task was accomplished and there was nothing more to do but to switch off the light, did Elza's stoicism give way. She sank into a chair, her head fell back against the cushions, and a leaden tint spread over her cheeks and lips. Rosemary quickly poured some brandy into a glass, and kneeling beside her tried to get her to drink some of it. To please her, Elza sipped a few drops. A wan smile spread over her face.
"Don't worry about me, Rosemary darling," she said, "I am quite well."
She jumped up at once and added: "I must see how poor Maurus is."
"Come into my room afterwards," Rosemary suggested, "and rest there on the sofa. I know you won't sleep."
"Yes," Elza replied, "I will come as soon as I can get Maurus to sleep. I think he may get to sleep presently. But I don't think I shall. You see, we ought to get a telephone message through from Hódmezö the first thing in the morning. Philip and I agreed on a code. If everything is all right he is to give Peter Blakeney's name and say that the weather is beautiful in Hungary, and every arrangement for the cricket match splendid. After I get that message I shall probably sleep."
She had toiled up the stairs while she was talking, and Rosemary followed close behind her, ready to catch her if she swooned.
"I won't say 'good night' now," Elza said when she neared her bedroom door. "You go to bed, Rosemary darling, and I will come in presently for a little talk when Maurus is asleep."
Rosemary went into her room. She undid her hair and slipped into a dressing-gown. It was no use going to bed; she knew she would not be able to go to sleep. It was just a case of waiting. Of watching, of praying, and commending those two young creatures to God. Watching and praying, with eyes fixed upon the hands of the clock, following in imagination every phase of to-night's adventures. Every detail. At this hour they would be at the mill, all the actors in the drama which poor Elza had invented. Philip and Anna would be there, changing into peasants' clothes, and Jànos the miller would be setting out the mugs and the spirit, which would make the Jew's son and the brother of the Roumanian storekeeper blind to the world. Old Emma would be there too, the miller's wife, the mother of the two boys who were going to risk so much for Philip's sake and Anna's. Emma would be fussing round with cloth and duster. Grumbling and fussing. Knowing nothing of the drama on which the curtain would ring up in the parlour of her cottage, and in which her two sons would be playing leading rôles. Jànos would not have told her. He, the father, had agreed to it all; had even suggested it. But the mother? No! If she knew she would protest. Weep, of course. Weaken the resolution of the two boys who just had to go through with it all.
And now the motor would be drawing up at the mill, and Jànos the miller would ask the company to walk in and have a drink. Even the motor-driver would be persuaded. Just a drop of spirit as it was a long drive all the way to Hódmezö. Time was moving leaden-footed up here in the château. But not so at the mill while Janos 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 oil 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—or 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 quieted his nerves, and after a while he went to sleep."
"Won't you just dose 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 to what they do in the daytime." And presently she went onà proposof 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 Jànos 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 no longer keep the excitement out of her voice. Another two or three hours and this terrible suspense would be over. She hardly dared to look at Elza, for she felt the dear creature's body quivering against hers. The first glance had shown her Elza's face the colour of ashes, with swollen eyelids and red hectic spots on her cheek-bones. But outwardly she was still quite calm, and when together they reached the dew-wet lawn she threw back her head and with obvious delight drank in the sweet morning air.
"It is astonishing," she said, "that one should be able to sleep when—when things happen like they did to-night."
"You were dog-tired, Elza, and the air was so wonderfully balmy and soothing. I think," Rosemary went on gently, "that God sent down a couple of his guardian angels to fan you to sleep with their wings."
"Perhaps," Elza assented with a tired smile.
"Do you feel like a walk, as far as the perennial border?"
"Why, yes. I should love it. And we still have hours to kill."
Already sounds of awakening village life filled the morning with their welcome strains. The fox and the owl were silent, but two cocks gave answer to one another, and from the homesteads and the farms came a lowing and a bleating and a barking, the beasts rousing the humans to activity, and calling them to the work of the day.
As Elza's and Rosemary's footsteps crunched the gravel of the path, Mufti, the big sheep-dog, and Karo, the greyhound, came from nowhere in particular, bounding across the lawn, and threw themselves in the exuberance of their joy upon these two nice humans who had shortened the lonely morning hours for them.
"Let's go and see the moss-roses," Rosemary suggested, "and see if they smell as sweet as they did in the night."
They walked on to the end of the perennial border, where two or three clumps of moss-roses nestled at the foot of a tall crimson Rugosa laden with blossom.
"Dear little things," Elza said. "They are my favourite flowers. I like them so much better than all those wonderful new roses that get the prizes at the horticultural shows."
She stooped to inhale the fragrance of the roses, and while she was stooping a faint, very distant whirring sound became audible, which grew in volume every moment. Just for the space of one second Elza did not move; she remained just as she was, stooping, and with her face buried in the roses. Then she straightened out her fine figure and grasped Rosemary's hand.
"The motor," she said huskily. "Let us go."
The end of the perennial border where they were was nearly a quarter of a mile away from the house, and then there was the house to get round, the courtyard to cross——The whirring grew louder every moment, then slower, and then it ceased. The car had come to a halt, but not in front of the gates which were still closed. Rosemary and Elza were in the courtyard with Mufti and Karo jumping about them and getting in the way. The motor was not in sight.
"Down, Mufti! Karo, down!" Elza kept repeating mechanically.
She was rather breathless after that race across the garden. Rosemary ran to the lodge to call Feri, the night-watchman, who had the keys of the gate. He had heard the dogs barking and the voice of the gracious countess, so he was on the doorstep wondering what had brought the ladies out at this hour of the morning.
"Quick, Feri, open the gates!" Rosemary called to him.
It took Feri a few moments to get the keys to unlock the gates. An eternity.
From the direction of the village there had come a loud cry, followed after a few seconds by shouts and the sound of men running. Running and shouting, and now and then another shrill cry.
"Run ahead quickly, Feri," Rosemary whispered to the watchman. "Quickly, see what it is."
She held Elza's hand in a tight clutch, and under her arm. But even so Elza succeeded in breaking free, and while Feri ran on ahead, she did not lag far behind. Past the thick clump of acacias, the village street came in sight. At the end of it, a quarter of a mile away, in front of the inn which was kept by the Jew, a motor-car had come to a halt, and some half-dozen peasants stood round it, gesticulating and arguing. Down the street, from one or two of the cottages, men, women and children came running out to see what was happening, and when they caught sight of the gracious countess and the gracious foreign lady they paused, bewildered. The gracious countess—at this hour in the village! Such a thing had never happened before. The men doffed their hats, the women hastily bobbed a curtsey, the children stood stock-still, finger in mouth, staring. A few, bolder than the rest, ran forward to kiss the ladies' hands. But Elza hastened on, seeing nothing, heeding nothing, whilst Rosemary kept close by her side. Feri, as he drew near to the inn, shouted to the people to make way. But as soon as he came in close sight of the car he turned and hastened back to Elza. He clasped his hands together and cried:
"Don't come, gracious countess. Don't come! It is nothing, nothing, just an accident, a——"
Silently, with lips tightly pressed together, Elza pushed past him, but Rosemary now had once more taken hold of her hand. She held Elza tight, with one arm round her waist and the other clutching her hand. Struggle as she might, Elza could not free herself this time.
The next moment they stood together by the side of the motor. It was a large, rather shabby touring car, painted a dull grey and fitted with leather cushions. It was smothered in dust. There was no one in the back seats, but the innkeeper was just in the act of climbing in beside the chauffeur. The chauffeur appeared to be asleep; he sat like a huddled-up heap, wrapped in a dirty, military coat, and with his peaked cap pulled down over his face. The innkeeper appeared rather scared. He took hold of the military coat and pulled it open, and immediately he clapped his hand to his mouth, smothering a scream. The cap rolled off the chauffeur's head, and his right arm dropped down the side of the car. One man who stood quite near, not knowing probably that the two ladies were there, cried excitedly: