Pimpernel and Rosemary · Chapter 13 (1/2)

XIII

Naniescu arrived soon after ten o’clock. Rosemary heard the hooting of his motor when it turned in at the gate, also the general bustle, clatter, running about that ensued. Her rooms, with the balcony overlooking the park, were on the other side of the house, so she saw nothing of this; but somehow, after the arrival of his Excellency, the stately château appeared to have lost something of its dignified quietude. Loud voices resounded from end to end of the galleried hall, footsteps that sounded almost aggressive echoed along the corridors.

Jasper had gone down some time ago for a stroll in the park, while Rosemary dressed. She was sorry now that she had not asked him to be sure to come back so as to support her in her interview with Naniescu. However, this wish was only a momentary weakness. She had been accustomed for years past to stand on her own feet, to act for herself, and to take swift decisions without outside advice. So now, with a careless shrug, she turned back to the important task of dressing; this she did with deliberate care, then surveyed herself critically in the glass, and, having satisfied herself that Rosemary Tarkington was in no way less beautiful than Rosemary Fowkes had been, she settled herself down in her boudoir with a book and waited.

A very few minutes later one of the men came to announce that his Excellency General Naniescu desired to pay his respects to Lady Tarkington.

He came in looking breezy and gallant. He kissed Rosemary’s hand, sat down on the chair she indicated to him, inquired after the state of her health, her journey, her work, all in a mellifluous voice and in execrable English. In fact, for the first five minutes of this momentous, visit he was just a pleasant, cheerful man of the world, exchanging banalities with a pretty woman.

“Et ce cher Tarkington?” he queried. “How is he?”

“My husband will be in, in a moment or two,” Rosemary replied, trying to bring the conversation round to the all-important subject. “He will, of course, make a point of not failing to see you.” She made a slight, insignificant pause, then she went on more seriously: “I can assure you, M. le Général, that Lord Tarkington’s interest in our dear host and hostess is just as keen as mine.”

“Of course, of course,” Naniescu rejoined vaguely, with a sweep of his well-manicured hand. “They are very foolish people, these Imreys. And that young man! Dear lady, you have not an idea what trouble we have with these Hungarians! They are all a little toqué! What you call so admirably in your picturesque language: they have a bee in their bonnet. What?”

He laughed, very pleased with himself for what he apparently considered a little joke.

“A bee in their bonnet,” he reiterated, still waving his white, podgy hands about. He set his teeth together and made a sound to represent the buzzing of bees. “Buzz-z! Just like that! But bees,” he added curtly, “are apt to be tiresome. Is it not so?”

“You choose to look upon the matter lightly, M. le Général,” Rosemary rejoined, with a touch of impatience, “but to these unfortunate people the summary arrest of their only son is anything but a light matter. On the telephone last night⁠—”

“Oh, the telephone!” the general broke in with an affected sigh. “A marvellous invention! What? But it is difficult on the telephone to give those little nuances which are the essence of conversation. It was wonderful to hear your melodious voice on the telephone last evening. I was not expecting to hear it, and it was delightful! Like a spirit voice coming from a place unseen to soothe me to pleasant dreams.”

He tried to capture her hand, and when she snatched it away with obvious irritation he gave a soft, guttural laugh and gazed with a look of bold admiration into her eyes. Rosemary felt her temper rising, and nothing but her knowledge that this distinctly unpleasant personage had supreme power over those she cared for kept her impatience in check.

“General Naniescu,” she said, quietly determined, “you must forgive me if I cannot enter into your playful mood just now. The only son of my very dear friend is under arrest for an offence of which he knows nothing, and, moreover, he was arrested under circumstances that are entirely unjustifiable, seeing that this country is not, I presume, under martial law.”

“Not under martial law, certainly, dear lady,” Naniescu was willing to admit, and did so with a certain measure of seriousness, “but under strict disciplinary law, framed by a suzerain state for the protection of its own nationals in occupied territory. But let that pass. You graciously informed me over the telephone last night that young Imrey was arrested, and I gave orders to the captain in charge for his immediate release. As I intended to come over here in the course of the morning, I was willing to let the matter stand until I had investigated it myself.”

“Count Philip Imrey was released at ten o’clock yesterday evening, and rearrested in the middle of the night; he was not even given the chance of saying goodbye to his parents, or of providing himself with the necessary clothing and money. I imagine, M. le Général,” Rosemary went on coldly, “that this was done by your orders, or at any rate that you were not kept in ignorance of it.”

For the fraction of a second Naniescu hesitated; then he said cynically:

“Yes; certainly I knew of it. I may even say that it was done by my orders.”

Rosemary suppressed a cry of indignation.

“Well, then?” she exclaimed hotly.

But Naniescu, not in the least taken aback, only retorted blandly:

“And how am I to interpret that enigmatic query, dear lady?”

“As a challenge to justify your actions,” was Rosemary’s bold reply.

Then, as he gave no immediate answer but allowed his mellow dark eyes to rest with a distinctly mocking glance on her face, Rosemary felt at a disadvantage. She was obviously not in a position to demand explanations from a man who belonged to the governing classes in his own country. With every belief in the power of the press, Rosemary had far too much common sense not to realise that a man in Naniescu’s position would not put up with being dictated to, or cross-examined, by a stranger, however influential he or she might be. So once again she swallowed her resentment, determined that whatever chance she had of helping the Imreys should not be wrecked through want of tact on her part. Diplomacy, good temper, and, if necessary, seeming complaisance, would be more likely to win the day than any attempt at threatening.

“Monsieur le Général,” she resumed, after a while, “I know that you will forgive me for my seeming ill-humour. I have witnessed so much sorrow these last few hours that I suppose my nerves are rather jarred. I know, of course, that it is not my place to criticise the measure which your Government chooses to impose on a subject race. As a suzerain state Romania has a perfect right to defend what she believes to be her own interests, and in a manner that she thinks best. Will you forgive me the sharp words I allowed to slip just now?”

And with a return of that charm of manner which even more than beauty held most men in thrall, Rosemary put out her hand. The gallant Romanian, without a trace of mockery now in his large, dark eyes, took it in both his own; then he stooped and kissed the dainty fingertips.

“And now,” Rosemary went on resolutely, “that I have made amende honorable, will you allow me to plead the Imrey’s cause in all earnestness⁠—in the name of humanity, Monsieur le Général? The boy is only nineteen.”

The general leaned back in his chair, his well-manicured fingers gently stroking his silky moustache, his eyes no longer attempting to conceal the satisfaction which he felt at seeing this exquisitely beautiful woman in the role of a suppliant before him. Now when she paused he gave an indifferent shrug.

“Dear lady,” he said, “my experience of this part of the world is that boys and girls of nineteen who give up jazzing and have not started making love, but who choose to meddle in politics, are veritable pests.”

“But Philip Imrey does not meddle in politics,” Rosemary protested.

“Are you quite sure of that?” he retorted.

As he said this his eyes became quite small, and piercing like two little flaming darts; but though his sudden challenge had sent a stab of apprehension through Rosemary’s heart, her glance never faltered, and she lied straight out, lied boldly without hesitation, without a blush.

“I am quite sure,” she replied.

And the only compunction she felt over that lie was when she realised⁠—as she did at once⁠—that the Romanian did not believe her.

“Little Anna Heves did not confide in you?” he asked, with perfect suavity.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said, dear lady. Anna Heves and Philip Imrey are two young hotheads who have given us an infinity of trouble. For a long time we could not find out how certain pernicious articles, injurious to the good reputation of Romanian, found their way into the English and American press. Now we know.”

“Your spy system seems more efficient than your censorship,” Rosemary retorted bitterly.

“That is beside the point.”

“Yes; the point is that those two are mere children.”

“I dare say the judges will take that into account and deal leniently with them.”

“With them?” Rosemary exclaimed, and suddenly a new terror gripped her heart. “With them? You don’t mean⁠—?”

“What, dear lady?” he queried suavely.

“That Anna⁠—?”

“Anna Heves, yes; the late Baron Heves’ daughter, now a saleswoman in the shop of Balog the grocer. I often wondered how she came to demean herself in that way. Now I understand.”

“But surely, surely,” Rosemary protested, striving in vain to steady her voice, which was quaking with this new, this terrible anxiety, “you have not arrested Anna Heves? The child has done nothing⁠—”

Naniescu put up his hand with a gesture of protest.

“Dear lady,” he said, with quiet irony and in a tone one would use to an obstinate child, “let me assure you once and for all that the accusations against Philip Imrey and his cousin do not rest upon assumptions, but upon facts. Anna Heves was arrested and she will be brought to trial because she was found⁠—actually found, mind you⁠—smuggling newspaper articles, defamatory to the Government of this country, for insertion in foreign journals. English sense of justice is reputed to be very keen; your own must tell you that it is hardly fair to bring the battery of your charms as a weapon to break down my sense of duty. I lay, as always, my homage at your feet, but I should be a traitor if, whilst gazing into your adorable eyes, I were to forget what I owe to my country.”

Gradually he dropped the irony out of his tone, and his voice became once more mellifluous and tender while he leaned forward, almost touching Rosemary’s knees with his, and striving to hold her glance with the challenge of his own. Rosemary shrank back. Suddenly something of the truth had dawned upon her. Not all of it just yet. It was only presently⁠—in a few more days⁠—that she was destined to realise the extent to which this man⁠—half Oriental in his capacity for lying⁠—had hoodwinked and cajoled her. It was his mien, the thinly veiled insult that lurked behind his suave speech and expressive eyes, that suddenly tore the veil from before her own. And yet reason fought for a moment against this wave of aversion. The man was right, unquestionably right. Philip and Anna had been very foolish. And, what is more, they were technically guilty of treason: there was no getting away from that; and Rosemary could not shut her eyes to the fact that the very lives of those she cared for were in the hands of this soft-toned liar. At one moment she longed passionately for Jasper, the next she would dread his coming, for she knew well enough that he, with his straight matter-of-fact mode of thinking, would inevitably give Naniescu his due, insist that the general was within his rights, and advise his wife to keep clear of these imbroglios, which were so contrary to the lenient, sportsmanlike English attitude toward a beaten enemy.

On the whole she felt glad that Jasper was not here. He would hate to see her plead. Yet plead she must. There was nothing else to do. She must plead with fervour, plead with all the strength that she possessed, all the eloquence that she could command.

“In the name of humanity!” That was her chief plea; and with anxious eyes she searched the man’s face for the first trace of pity.

“Anna and Philip are so young,” she urged. “Mere children.”

But Naniescu smiled, that fat, complacent smile of his which she had quickly learned to loathe.

“You would not like me,” she said at one moment, “to send an account of it to all the English and American papers. Two children, one under eighteen, the other not yet twenty, arrested in their beds at dead of night, brought to trial for having smuggled a few newspaper articles through the post. If you do not deal leniently with them⁠—”

“Who said we would not deal leniently with them?” Naniescu broke in blandly. “Surely not I. I am not their judge.”

“General Naniescu,” she retorted, “I have been in Transylvania long enough to know that your powers here as military governor are supreme. Leniency in this case,” she urged insistently, “could only redound to your credit, and to the credit of the country which you serve.”

“But frankly, dear lady, I don’t see what I can do. The case has passed out of my hands⁠—”

“Send these children home with a caution, Monsieur le Général,” Rosemary went on pleading. “That is what we would do in England in a like case.”

“To hatch more treason,” he retorted, with a shrug. “Give us more trouble⁠—more buzzing of bees and pestilential backbiting⁠—”

“No!” she protested hotly. “Not for that, but to be immensely grateful to you for your generosity, and show their gratitude by striving to work for the good of their country, hand in hand with yours.”

“Ah, what noble sentiments, dear lady!” General Naniescu said with a sigh, and clapped his white, fat hands together. “I wish I could believe that some of them will sink into those young hotheads.”

“They will, general, they will.” Rosemary asserted eagerly. “If you will send those two children back to their parents, I will not leave Transylvania until you yourself are satisfied that I have brought them to a reasonable frame of mind.”

“A hard task, dear lady,” Naniescu said, with a smile.

“I would undertake a harder one than that,” Rosemary rejoined, with an answering smile, “to show my appreciation of your generosity.”

“Words, dear lady,” he said softly. “Words!”

“Try me!” she challenged.

He made no immediate reply, and suddenly his eyes again narrowed as they had done before, and their piercing glance rested upon Rosemary until she felt that through those heavy lids something inimical and poisonous had touched her. She felt a little shiver running down her spine, an unaccountable sense of apprehension caused her to glance rapidly toward the door, where she hoped to perceive Jasper’s comforting presence. She was not afraid, of course, nor did she regret her enthusiasm, or her advocacy of the children’s cause; but she had the sudden, vague feeling that she had come to the brink of an abyss and that she was staring down into unknown depths, into which unseen forces were urging her to leap.

Slowly Naniescu’s eyes reopened and the mellow expression crept back into them; he gave a sigh of satisfaction, and settled himself down once more comfortably on the cushions of the chair.

“I am happy indeed, dear lady,” he began, “that you yourself should have made an offer, which I hardly dared place before you.”

“An offer? What do you mean?”

“Surely that was your intention, was it not, to do something in return for the heavy sacrifice you are asking of me?”

“Sacrifice?” Rosemary queried, frowning. “What sacrifice?”