Читать книгу Pimpernel and Rosemary - Emmuska Orczy - Страница 11

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Until the moment of her arrival in Cluj, Rosemary had felt nothing but exhilaration whenever she thought of her work and of the good which she proposed to do, thanks to the facilities so magnanimously accorded her by Naniescu. Just for one moment at Budapest, when she first met the handsome Roumanian, she had been conscious of a slight feeling of mistrust, an instinctive dislike of the man's fluent speech and affected gestures. But on reflection she had persuaded herself that this sudden aversion was bound to arise at first contact with those elaborate manners which pass for gallantry in most of the Latin and Slav countries of Europe. The contrast between Naniescu's exaggerated politeness and Jasper's unobtrusive consideration had naturally reacted on her sensibilities to the detriment of the Roumanian.

Anyway, the sensation soon wore off. She had a very happy time in Budapest. The Paysons were charming; she met several friends, both English and Hungarian, who made her very welcome, and Jasper was, as usual, thoughtfulness itself. The journey across Hungary filled her with that gentle melancholy which those limitless expanses of earth and sky engender in the mind of imaginative people. It was close on harvesting time, and to right and left of the permanent way the great fields of corn stretched out like a sea of ruddy gold to the purple line of the horizon far away. Rosemary loved to gaze on these measureless stretches of country, whereon for mile upon mile nothing showed above the line of waving corn save, at rare intervals, the thatched roof of a tiny homestead peeping from behind a clump of grey-green willow, or an isolated well, with one gaunt arm stretched skywards, around which a herd of young horses had halted for the midday rest. Her eyes followed with loving intensity the winding ribbon of the dust-laden road, bordered by tall, slender poplars or twisted acacia trees, and at intervals the great patches of vivid green amidst the gold, where row upon row of water-melons turned their huge, shimmering carcases to the warmth of the sun.

A faint perfume of heliotrope and mignonette hung in the air, and just for one moment Rosemary's dreamy gaze caught a glimpse of an exquisite mirage on the far distant horizon—a vision of towers and minarets and of a cool, shady stream painted with fairy brush upon the moisture-laden atmosphere. It was a phantom picture that vanished almost as soon as it appeared, but upon the watcher's super-sensitive mind it left in its swift transit an impression as of a magic land, a paradise the gates of which had for one brief second been opened by celestial hands, so that she might glimpse the garden of Eden beyond—the world of happiness and of love which for her must ever remain elusive and unattainable.

The arrival at Cluj was dreary and disappointing. From Budapest she herself had telegraphed to the hotel she knew so well, and had sent a letter at the same time asking the proprietor to have a hot supper ready for herself and Lord Tarkington. The hotel appeared unfamiliar when she stepped out of the little cab which had brought them from the station. The smiling hall-porter who used to greet Mrs. Blakeney with respectful familiarity on arrival was no longer there; an out-at-elbows, ill-dressed, unwashed porter took charge of their luggage. The proprietor, he said, was not in the house, and he himself was in charge of the place. He bluntly explained in broken German that under the new management no meals except early morning coffee were served in the hotel, the restaurant being now under separate ownership. The lady and gentleman could get something to eat there, no doubt.

It was all very cheerless, and to Rosemary very strange. The gay little town of Kolozsvár, usually so full of animation at this late evening hour, seemed already asleep. The streets were ill-lighted; there was an air of desolation and melancholy about this place. The hotel itself had become stuffy, dirty and ill-lighted. The furniture looked dilapidated, the bed-linen was coarse and the rooms none too clean. Rosemary spent a wretched night; but she was a hardened traveller and had before now put up with worse inconveniences that these. There was always the comforting thought that it was the only night that she would spend in Cluj. The next day Count Imrey's carriage and horses (he was not allowed to have a motor-car) would be taking her and Jasper to Kis-Imre, where a big welcome and every conceivable luxury awaited them both.

All that she was waiting for now was to see Anna Heves; little Anna, as Peter called her, the pretty, enthusiastic child to whom Rosemary had promised to give a kiss for Peter's sake. And in the morning, just as Rosemary had finished putting up her hair and slipped into a dressing-gown preparatory to going in to breakfast with Jasper, there was a knock at the door and Anna came in. Sweet, enthusiastic Anna, who gazed at her shyly with Peter's eyes and then smiled with Peter's smile. She would have been pretty, too, but for the unhealthy pallor of her cheeks and the dark rings that circled her eyes—Peter's eyes!

"I am so ashamed, Miss Fowkes," Anna murmured shyly; but at once Rosemary broke in, stretching out her arms:

"Aren't you going to kiss me, Anna?"

With a pathetic little cry the girl ran into Rosemary's arms, and, her head buried on her friend's shoulder, she burst into tears. Rosemary let her cry for a moment of two; her own eyes were anything but dry, for with a quick glance she had taken in the girl's changed appearance, also the shabby clothing, the worn boots, the unmistakable air of grinding poverty and, worse still, of insufficient food. Poor little Anna! If Peter saw her now!

After a few moments the girl raised her head and dabbed away her tears. Rosemary led her to the sofa, made her sit down beside her, and took both her thin little hands in hers.

"To begin with you must not call me Miss Fowkes, Anna," she said. "I was always Rosemary, wasn't I?"

Anna nodded, and a wan little smile struggled round her lips.

"And, you know, I am married now," Rosemary went on. "Hadn't you heard?"

Anna shook her head. She could not yet trust herself to speak.

"Of course," Rosemary said gaily, "how stupid of me. Jasper and I were married very quietly in London, and we are not people of such importance that your Hungarian papers would chronicle the fact. My husband is Lord Tarkington, the best and kindest of men. I'll tell him presently that you are here. He would love to see you."

"No, no, Rosemary dear!" Anna broke in quickly, "don't tell Lord Tarkington that I am here. I—I never see strangers now. You see, I have no decent clothes, and—"

"Jasper would look at your sweet little face, Anna, and never notice your clothes. And you are not going to call my husband a stranger, are you?"

Then, as Anna was silent, and with head bent appeared to be staring into nothingness, Rosemary continued lightly, even though her heart felt heavy at sight of the havoc wrought in this young thing by miseries at which she could still only guess.

"By the way, little 'un," she said, "I don't yet know what you are doing in Kolozsvár—or Cluj—tiresome name, I never can remember it! Your cousin, Peter Blakeney, told me I should find you here, and that he had written to tell you I should be at the Pannonia to-day; but that is all I know. Where is your mother?"

"She is still in Ujlak, of course," the girl replied more calmly, "looking after the place as best she can. But, of course, it is very hard and very, very difficult. They have taken away so much of the land, some of the best pasture, over twelve hundred acres; mother has only about two hundred left. There is not enough for the horses' feed. Mother had to have ten brood mares destroyed this spring. It was no use trying to keep them, and she could not bring herself to sell them. Imagine mother having her mares killed! It would have broken her heart, only she has had so much to endure lately she—"

Once more the girl broke down; a lump in her throat choked the bitter words. Rosemary frowned.

"But, then, why are you not at home with your mother, Anna? she asked.

"I earn a little money here, and Marie is at home. She is younger than I, you remember, and she was always mother's favourite."

"How do you earn money, Anna? At what?"

Anna hesitated for a moment. She looked up and saw Rosemary's eyes fixed questioningly upon her, and those eyes were so full of kindness that the girl's reticence, even her bitterness, melted under the warmth of that gaze.

"I help in the shop of Balog, the grocer," she replied simply.

"Balog, the grocer? You?"

The cry of surprise, almost of horror, had come involuntarily to Rosemary's lips. She thought of Mrs. Blakeney, the exquisite grande dame who, after her marriage to Peter's father, the eminent scientist, had won her position in English society by her charm, her tact and that air of high breeding which is becoming so obsolete these days. She thought of Peter himself, who had inherited so much of his mother's charm and all her high-souled notions of noblesse oblige, of what was due to birth and descent. Did Peter know what little Anna was suffering under this new regime brought about by a treaty of peace that was to bring the millennium to all the peoples of Europe? With a sudden impulse Rosemary put her arms once more round the shrinking little figure.

"Anna," she said earnestly, "I think you are absolutely splendid! I admire your pluck more than I can say. But surely, surely you could find more congenial work than selling groceries!"

She paused a moment, her active brain at once turning to projects that had little Anna's welfare for their aim. Little Anna could not go on selling groceries in an obscure Roumanian town. It was unthinkable! Surely Peter did not know. And how could Rosemary face him with the news that she had found little Anna selling groceries at Cluj?

Something must be done, and quickly, to alter such an awful state of things. While she remained silent, thinking, and Anna, equally silent, fidgeted with long, thin fingers the tassel of her friend's dressing-gown, Rosemary became conscious that Jasper was watching her from the doorway of the next room. How long he had been standing there she did not know. She looked at him over Anna's bent head, and, as usual, she read in his expressive face a divination of her thoughts. It almost seemed as if, with a slight nod of his head, he was actually approving of what she had not yet put into words. Then he stepped back into the other room and quietly closed the door.

"Listen, little one," Rosemary said eagerly. "I am here at the invitation of the Roumanian Government; that is to say, General Naniescu, who, I understand, is military governor of Transylvania, has asked me to come over here and study the conditions, both social and political. I shall be writing several articles for English and American papers, and I simply must have a secretary for my ordinary correspondence, and—"

Anna shook her head.

"I don't know how to type," she said rather curtly, "and I can't do shorthand."

"Neither of which is necessary," Rosemary retorted.

Anna looked her straight in the eyes. "You don't imagine," she said quietly, "that if your articles revealed even a particle of the truth they would ever be allowed to pass the censor, and if they concealed the truth you would not expect my father's daughter to associate herself with them."

"That's a brave patriotic speech, Anna," Rosemary rejoined with a triumphant little laugh, "but you need not be the least afraid. My articles will contain the truth, and the censor will have not power over them. I give you my word."

But Anna was unconvinced.

"Rosemary dear," she said earnestly, "don't think me ungrateful or obstinate. Just imagine what it would mean to me to give up this awful grinding routine that wearies me at times to such an extent that I go into the cathedral and beg and pray to God that I might soon die and escape from it all. But you know, dear, when one's country is as unfortunate as ours has become, one must do one's utmost to help and serve her, mustn't one?"

"Why, of course," Rosemary assented, puzzled by the girl's strange earnestness, the glow of ardent patriotism that all at once emanated from that drooping, slender figure; "but I don't quite see how you are serving your country by selling groceries in Balog's shop."

"No! no! not by that," Anna went on eagerly. "Oh, I know that I can trust you, Rosemary, and you can't imagine what a relief it is to me to have someone to talk to. I have not spoken like this to a soul for nearly two years. And sometimes I feel as if I must choke. But one dare not talk to anyone these days, for government spies are everywhere. You never know who will betray you; the concierge of your house, the woman who washes the stairs, or the beggar to whom you give alms. Oh! I could tell you things—However all of us who are suffering unspeakably under our new tyrants are determined that the outside world shall hear the truth, but there is such a strict censorship that one dare not send anything through the post except what is absolutely banal and meaningless."

The girl paused a moment, her eyes wandered searchingly around the room, rested for an instant first on one door, then on another, as if in fear that those spies whom she so dreaded were lurking behind them, then, satisfied that she was alone with her English friend, whom she knew she could trust, she said abruptly:

"You remember my cousin, Philip Imrey?"

"Of course."

"He always had a great talent for writing. When he was quite a boy he used to write poetry and little stories. He is only nineteen now; next year he will have to do his military service in the Roumanian army, and that is a perfect hell for every Hungarian! Just think, Rosemary, if an Englishman had to serve in the German army! Isn't it unthinkable? But still, that cannot be helped! We are the vanquished race, and we have to pay the price. But we are determined that the nations of the West shall know the truth! So Philip and I, between us, thought of a plan. We thought of it for two years, and it took some time to organize. At last I obtained what I wanted, mother's consent that I should come to Cluj to earn my living, and a post in Balog's grocery shop. Balog sends Transylvanian goods regularly to Budapest: mustard, cheese, vegetable seeds; I have to pack them. Now do you understand?"

Rosemary nodded. "Yes, I think I do! Philip writes those articles which appeared in the Evening Post and caused such an outburst of sympathy for the Hungarians of Transylvania throughout Great Britain. And you—?" she added, and her eyes full of tenderness and compassion rested with undisguised admiration on the shrinking little figure of Anna Heves.

"He rides over from Kis-Imre," the girl continued simply, "and brings me the articles which he has written, and I consign them inside the grocery parcels to the firm at Budapest, who, of course, are in entire sympathy with us, and post them on to England. Oh! it is splendid, Rosemary dear," the girl continued with glowing eyes, "to be able to do all this. Now you see, don't you? that I could not possibly give it all up."

"Yes, Anna, I do see that. But you are running terrible risks, little 'un."

"I know I am, and so does Philip; but you don't know how happy it makes us. The days when an article of his goes to Budapest is a fete day for us both. It is usually a Saturday when the parcels are sent off, and," the girl went on with pathetic naivete, "on the Sunday morning when I go to Mass, I no longer bother God with my troubles and with senseless prayers, I just thank Him, and thank Him for letting me do something for Hungary."

Rosemary said nothing for the moment. Indeed, what could she say? To try and dissuade this young fanatic from all her high-souled foolishness was an attempt foredoomed to failure. Rosemary had far too keen a knowledge of human nature, and held far too high an opinion of patriotism as a virtue not to understand the intense happiness that this constant sacrifice brought into Anna's dreary life. To have suggested that the girl give up this joy—these constant risks—would have been futile.

"You are a splendid, brave thing, Anna!" was all that she could say, and her voice sounded quite harsh as she spoke, because she was fighting against emotion.

She gazed with real admiration on the poor wizened little figure of this girl, in whose soul burned a flame of ardent patriotism. Anna had counted the cost of what she was doing; with her eyes open, envisaging every risk, she was accomplishing quietly and unostentatiously what she believed to be her duty to her poor native land. A heroine of the peace, she risked more than the thousands of heroines of the war had done—save perhaps one. Like Edith Cavell, she faced and risked death for an ideal, happy in her quiet way for the privilege of doing it, enduring a life of grinding routine, of dreary monotony more trying for the young to bear than active sorrow or physical pain.

The two girls had not spoken for some time, they sat side by side on the sofa with hands clasped, and eyes fixed upon one another. Anna, with nerves weakened by privations, was on the verge of giving way to an emotion which would have eased the tension that for the past months was threatening to break down her spirit. Rosemary, on the other hand, felt for the moment almost ashamed of her robust health, her virile brain, the contentment—if not happiness—in life which was her portion since she had married Jasper, and her compassionate heart longed for the power to comfort and to help this gentle, high-souled girl who looked at her with Peter Blakeney's eyes, and whose lips when she smiled were so like his. Anna was running her head against a stonewall. Rosemary felt that inevitably she would sooner or later be crushed in the process. Her thoughts flew to her husband, the man on whom she knew that she could always rely when knotty problems of life threatened to be beyond her powers to unravel. Jasper would be of good counsel: selfless, generous to a fault, his unerring tact would perhaps find a way into the innermost recesses of Anna's heart, and find the means to save the child from further fanatical folly without wounding the susceptibilities of her high-mettled patriotism.

"And now, Anna," Rosemary said after that moment of silence which had sealed a bond of sympathy between herself and Peter's kinswoman, "you are going to have a cup of hot coffee with me and Jasper. No! No!" she went on determinedly, and took hold of the girl's wrist. "I shall not let you go till you have seen Jasper. He will just love you, and you and he will get on splendidly together. You two fine creatures are made to understand one another."

She dragged the obviously unwilling Anna with her into the next room. Jasper was there, waiting. His hand was on the bell-pull at the moment, and his kind, grave, eyes at once sought those of Anna, who, reluctantly, allowed herself to be drawn toward him.

Rosemary effected a quick introduction. In a moment Jasper's kind words had gained the victory over Anna's shyness; less than two minutes later they were seated side by side at the table, while Rosemary ordered coffee of the slatternly chambermaid who had come in answer to the bell.

It was wonderful how splendidly Jasper and Anna got on; he seemed in a few seconds to have caught the knack of gaining the girl's confidence. She became animated, quite pretty, with shinning eyes and full red lips that had lost for the moment their pathetic droop. She did not refer to her cousin, Philip Imrey, or to the dangerous game he and she were playing together, but she talked of her mother and of Ujlak, of the horses and the farm and the difficulties that beset the Hungarian landowners at every turn.

"I dare say that to a great extent it is our fault," she was even willing to admit in response to gentle criticism from Jasper. "We did not make ourselves beloved by the peasantry; they spoke a different language from ours, theirs was a different religion, and they were the alien race. We did little, if anything, for them. But tell me," she went on, and fixed her shrewd glance upon Jasper, "do you think that you landowners over in England, who do so much for your tenantry and your villagers, cricket-clubs, football, concerts—oh! I don't know what else, but things that you pay for and that they enjoy—well! do you think that in their hearts they love you any better than the Roumanian peasantry loved us Hungarians? And do you really believe that if you were in trouble, as we are now, and they were given a certain power over you, they would use it to show their gratitude for past generosity? Do you really believe that, Lord Tarkington?" she insisted.

And Jasper, with a smile at her vehemence, could only shrug his shoulders.

He was evidently very much taken with little Anna.