The morning was as clear as crystal, the sky of a translucent turquoise
blue. Away on the right the masses of soft-toned purple kills stretched
their undulating lines like waving veils, hiding the mysteries of the
horizon.
Rosemary had thrown open the windows of her bedroom and stepped out upon
the balcony. With arms outstretched she drank in the intoxicating air,
laden with the scent of heliotrope and lilies. She had the delicious
feeling of having accomplished something, of having tested her power and
found it absolute. Naniescu, on the telephone, had been almost
apologetic when she told him about Philip's arrest. He declared that
there was some mistake, and that he himself would come over in the
morning and inquire into the matter. Rosemary was young enough to feel a
naïve pleasure in her work. That Philip Imrey was restored then and
there to his mother's arms was her work, the outcome of her position in
the journalistic and political world. And the knowledge that this was so
was as intoxicating as the fragrant air on this perfect late July
morning.
A moment or two later she heard the pleasant noise of the rattling
coffee-cups in the room behind her. She turned in, ready to embrace the
little housemaid who looked after her so cheerfully. In fact, Rosemary
was in a mood to embrace the whole world. Contrary to her usual happy
way, however, the little housemaid did not look up when Rosemary came
in. As a rule she would run and kiss the gracious lady's hand, according
to the pretty custom of her country. To-day she just rattled the
coffee-cups, and Rosemary noticed that her hands were shaking and that
she turned her head very obviously away.
"What is it, Rosa?" Rosemary asked in her best Hungarian, of which she
had learned quite a good deal at different times. "Why don't you come
and say good morning?"
The kind voice and the necessity to respond to the gracious lady's
inquiry broke down the barrier of Rosa's self-control. She raised her
apron to her eyes and burst into a flood of tears. The next moment
Rosemary was by her side, her arms round the girl's shoulders.
"Rosa!" she said, "Rosa! what is it? Tell me, little thing. What is it?
Who has made you cry?"
But Rosa only went on sobbing, and murmuring between her sobs: "Oh,
gracious lady! gracious lady! What a calamity! What a dreadful
calamity!"
After a few seconds of this Rosemary began to lose patience. She was
English and practical, Rosa's continued sobbing and incoherent
mutterings got on her nerves. She gave the girl a good-humoured shake.
"What calamity, Rosa?" she queried. "Bless the girl! I'll smack you,
Rosa, if you don't speak."
Now this was a language that Rosa understood far better than a string of
kindly inquiries. She had been smacked by her mother, almost as soon as
she was born, she had been smacked by her elder sister, by her
grandmother, by her aunt and by her father while she grew up, and when
she started service in the château and was silly or tiresome she had
been smacked by the gracious Countess. Being smacked did not hurt, but
it acted as a tonic, and braced up Rosa's slackened nerves. The threat
of it by the gracious English lady at once dried the well of her tears,
she wiped her nose and eyes with her apron and murmured:
"The gracious Count Philip--they have taken him away."
At first Rosemary did not take it in. She did not trust her ears, or her
knowledge of Hungarian. She must, she thought, have misunderstood Rosa,
or else Rosa was talking like a fool. But Rosemary's grasp tightened on
the girl's arm, her fingers buried themselves in the young, firm flesh.
"What do you mean, Rosa?" she queried. "What do you mean about the
gracious Count? Who has taken him away?"
"The soldiers, gracious lady," Rosa murmured.
"What soldiers?" which was a foolish question on Rosemary's part--and
she knew it. There were no soldiers now in Transylvania except the
Roumanian soldiers. But somehow the thing would not penetrate into her
brain--she felt that, too, and wanted to give it time to sink in slowly,
slowly.
Rosa now ventured to look the English lady in the face. Her big, blue
eyes were still swimming in tears.
"The Roumanian soldiers, gracious lady," she said, "the ones who came
last night."
"But they went away again last night, Rosa," Rosemary explained
deliberately and patiently, "they went away and the gracious Count
Philip remained at home, he went to bed as we all did. Anton must have
waited on him, as he always does."
But Rosa gave a deep sigh and gulped down a fresh flood of tears that
threatened to choke her.
"Anton did wait on the gracious Count when he went to bed. But soon
after midnight the soldiers returned. Feri, the night watchman at the
gate, had to let them in. They ordered him not to make a noise, only to
rouse the gracious Count's valet. So Feri went to call Anton, as quietly
as he could, for the soldiers kept threatening him that if he made a
noise they would beat him. Poor Anton nearly fainted with terror--you
know, gracious lady, Anton always was a coward--what would you," Rosa
added with a shrug. "A gipsy."
"Yes! Yes!" Rosemary urged impatiently. "Go on, girl, go on."
"The soldiers would not even allow Anton to dress himself. Just as he
was he had to go and rouse the gracious Count Philip. The soldiers were
threatening to burn the house down if any one made a noise, but I am
sure that Feri and Anton were too scared to think of screaming. The
gracious Count jumped out of bed: the soldiers stood by while he
dressed, but they would not allow him to take anything with him except
just the clothes he put on--no money--not his watch--not a
letter--nothing. Feri says that the soldiers were in the house and out
again in less than a quarter of an hour. They took the gracious Count
with them, but four of them remained behind; they made Feri and Anton
sit together in the lodge and kept guard over them until an hour ago.
Then they went away and Anton ran in with the news. Oh! you should have
seen the gracious Countess! It was pitiable--pitiable, though she said
nothing and she did not cry. My God! My God! What is to become of us
all?"
The girl started wringing her hands, and her voice became loud and
shrill with the sobs that would no longer be suppressed.
"Be quiet, Rosa, be quiet!" Rosemary said once or twice quite
mechanically. She had taken it all in at last: the trick, the awful
treachery, the cruelty of it all. She stood there beside the sobbing
girl, with hands tightly clenched and a deep frown between her brows.
She wanted to think. To think. Something would have to be done, and done
quickly. But what? Naniescu? What rôle did he play in this mean
trickery? Rosemary was a woman who thought straight and acted straight:
so consistently straight, in fact, that she never could visualise
treachery in others. In the wide, wide world that attitude of mind is
called the attitude of a fool. Yet Rosemary Tarkington was anything but
a fool. Perhaps she was lacking in the intuition of evil: certain it is
that at this moment she would not allow herself to think that Naniescu
was a party to the abominable deed. The young officer, perhaps, or the
local commandant who might have a grudge against the Imreys. But
Naniescu? No!
She sent the girl away; Rosa's round, pink face with the round, blue
eyes and round-tipped nose was getting on her nerves. The girl was
comical in her grief, and when Rosemary looked at her she felt an
uncontrollable desire to laugh. And this would have horrified Rosa. So
she sent Rosa away.
A moment or two later Jasper came in, ready for breakfast. One glance at
his face and Rosemary knew that he, too, had heard the news.
"What do you think of it?" Rosemary asked after she had given him a fond
morning kiss.
"My darling," Jasper replied in his cool, British manner, "I only think
that you are making a grave mistake in throwing yourself headlong into
the politics of these out-of-the-way countries. . . ."
"It is not a question of politics, Jasper," Rosemary broke in,
protesting.
"I know, my dear, I know. Your warm heart prompts you to interfere there
where prudence would dictate the wiser course of closing one's eyes. You
would not be the adorable woman that you are if you acted differently.
But, believe me, my darling, it is not wise. You will only run your
lovely head against a stone wall, and in the end do no good. You must
let these people fight out their quarrels their own way. They are not
our kind; we don't understand them. My firm conviction is that you will
only do harm by interference. Mind you, I haven't a doubt that young
Imrey has done something stupid. They are a hot-headed lot, these
Hungarians, especially the young ones, and, of course, they don't like
the present régime. The government in power has a perfect right to
protect itself against conspiracy and rebellion, even though we
outsiders may think that those conspiracies are futile, and the measures
of repression unduly harsh. Leave them alone, my dear," Jasper concluded
more lightly, with a shrug, "and have a cup of hot coffee."
He settled himself down on the sofa and tried to draw her down to him.
But Rosemary was not in the mood for sentiment. Reason whispered to her
that Jasper was right--he was always right, worse luck!--she knew that
Philip Imrey had acted foolishly--very, very foolishly--and that, as a
matter of fact, in this case the commandant (or whoever was responsible
for Philip's arrest) was entirely within his rights. She, certainly as
an impartial spectator of events, brought here for the express purpose
of seeing the truth and nothing but the truth, could not in conscience
make capital of this incident. She had come out here determined not to
act on impulse, but to judge coolly and without bias, and thus to
consolidate her reputation as one of the foremost women journalists of
the day. With Sir Philip Gibbs as her master, and model, she could not
go back on the ideal of justice and impartiality which she had set
herself. But she did want to save Philip Imrey from the consequences of
his own folly. And, above all, she wanted to know what had become of
Anna.
"I cannot leave them alone, Jasper," she said slowly. "I cannot. All
this petty tyranny makes my blood boil."
Jasper sighed somewhat impatiently. "I know, my dear, I know," he
reiterated vaguely.
Rosemary did not continue the discussion for the moment; Jasper was so
right in everything he said, and Philip Imrey had been desperately
foolish. Now she blamed herself for not having worked on Anna's mind and
dissuaded her from lending herself to her cousin's mad schemes. She
mentioned Anna's name to her husband, but Jasper knowing nothing of the
girl's dangerous activities in Balog's grocery stores, could not, of
course, see that Anna was in any kind of danger.
"But," Rosemary argued, "Anna and Philip are first cousins, they see a
great deal of one another----"
"Do they?" Jasper ejaculated. "But even so, my dear, you surely are not
going to suppose that the Roumanian government is going to lay hands on
all Philip Imrey's relations, just because he has run his silly head
into a noose."
"No! No!" Rosemary protested vaguely.
But she could not say anything more on the subject of Anna. Anna had
told her everything in confidence: "I know I can trust you, Rosemary,"
the child had said, and Rosemary could not betray that confidence--not
even by speaking of it all to Jasper--not even by hinting at it. If the
peril became more imminent--if Anna herself was in danger--then perhaps.
But not now.
Rosemary tried to swallow some breakfast, just to please jasper, for his
kind, grave eyes looked quite sad, and she did not want to add to his
anxiety. But her thoughts were dwelling on Elza.
"I wonder if she could bear to see me," she said presently.
"You can always ask," was Jasper's wise suggestion.
Rosemary found Elza Imrey outwardly quite calm and resigned. That woman
had a marvellous fund of common sense and self-control. What she
suffered no one should know. Only when she read true understanding and
mute sympathy in Rosemary's eyes, she gave an answering look which
contained such a depth of sorrow and anxiety that Rosemary's heart was
overwhelmed with pity. In these few hours Elza had aged twenty years.
Anton had brought the news across from the lodge to the château in the
early morning as soon as the Roumanian soldiers had gone away. The
gracious Countess had received the news with extraordinary indifference,
was the verdict on the incident below stairs; Rosa was crying her eyes
out, all the menservants went about cursing and swearing and threatening
to kill some one, but the gracious Countess had not shed one tear. When
she had heard Anton's report, she asked a few questions: what suit had
the gracious Count put on? did he take an overcoat? what shoes did he
wear? and so on; but never a tear. Then she said: "Very well, Anton, you
may go!" and that was all. No! No! It was not natural. But then these
great ladies! . . . One never knew!
No one ever did know to what height a mother's heroism could go. Elza,
with her heart nearly broken, thought only of what was best for Philip.
"Of course, he has done nothing!" she reiterated over and over again,
"so they can't do anything to him."
Then her voice would break on a note of pathetic appeal; she would seize
Rosemary's hands and search the depths of her English friend's eyes,
with the look of a poor stricken animal begging for sympathy.
"Can they?" she asked, and Rosemary would shake her head, not trusting
herself to speak. It was no use now rending the mother's heart, adding
another load of anxiety to the heavily burdened soul. Elza would know
soon enough. Soon enough! And she could do nothing even if she knew now.
Maurus was shut up in his own apartments, tearing up and down like a
best in its cage, raging and swearing. That was his temperament, Elza
said philosophically, with a shrug; the Armenian blood in him. (She
never would admit the gipsy strain.) Fortunately the servants were all
Hungarian; faithful and discreet. They knew him. When he was in one of
those moods they fled from him; but not one of them would betray him.
Now he was threatening to kill every Roumanian that ever crossed his
path. Well, fortunately there was no one to hear him--only the servants,
and they would hold their tongues.
"Maurus won't understand," Elza explained to Rosemary, "that our chance
is submission. If they turn us out of here it will be the end of
Philip's inheritance. We must save that at all costs. What is the
sacrifice of a little pride when it means so much for Philip's future.
Things can't go on as they are--not for long, and if only I can keep
Maurus quiet, we shall have Philip back here in a week."
Then she harked back on the old refrain. "He has done nothing. They
can't do anything to him. Can they?"