Pimpernel and Rosemary by Baroness Orczy (ebook reader 7 inch TXT) 📕

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.

X

It was a week later and Jasper and Rosemary had been spending that time at Kis-Imre. No one who has not travelled in that part of the world can form a conception of the large-hearted hospitality that welcomes the stranger in a Hungarian château.

And Rosemary at once took the Imreys to her heart. She had known them before, of course, in the days before the war, when they dispensed that same wonderful hospitality, light-heartedly, gaily, as a matter of course. A lavish table, horses to ride, dancing, music, luxury, it was all there, not just for the asking, but poured forth like water by ungrudging hands. They had plenty and they gave in plenty. One loved them as one loved children and puppies and youth and dance-music, because their gaiety thrilled the heart and painted the picture of life in radiant colors.

But most of that had become a thing of the past. So much of it had gone, been irretrievably lost in the cataclysm of war and alien occupation. The will to give was still there, the love of the stranger, the boundless hospitality, but giving now meant a sacrifice somewhere, giving up something to give to others. All the sweeter, all the more lovable for being tinged with sadness. To Rosemary, Elza Imrey now was a woman; before that she had been just like a child, naively proud of her home, her table, her horses, without a hint of ostentation in her display of the rich gifts the good God had showered upon her. Now Elza’s large, prominent blue eyes had become a little dim with constant weeping, and her mouth, when at rest, drooped slightly at the corners. Elza was still a very handsome woman, with her hair of ruddy gold like the cornfields of her native land, but all around the temples there was now a sprinkling of silver, a sprinkling that softened the face as powder does when applied lightly to the hair.

Though in outward appearance she was very unlike her sister, yet she constantly reminded Rosemary of Mrs. Blakeney; it was a question of movements, a gesture here and there, and also the tone of the voice. Elza, too, like her sister, had a magnificent figure, and the perfect hands, arms and wrists peculiar to her race. She had suffered, of course: badly during the war, terribly since the peace. At all times a maîtresse femme, it was she who had carried on the administration of her husband’s estates, she who used to interview bailiffs, lawyers, tenants. She had always been looked up to by the local officials and by the surrounding peasantry as the head of the house. Maurus Imrey had always been neurasthenic, and the privations of the war, and the humiliations consequent on the alien occupation of his country, had exasperated his nervous system and further embittered his quarrelsome disposition. In the happy days before the war his contribution to the management of his estates consisted in grumbling daily at his chef and swearing unremittingly at those of his servants who came to him for orders in anything pertaining to the house. Malicious tongues were wont to say that Maurus Imrey had gipsy blood in his veins; more likely it was an Armenian strain. Certain it is that his face and hands were swarthy, his nose hooked and his eyes very dark and piercing; characteristics which he had transmitted in a softened degree to his son Philip. But he was a man of culture for all that. He had read a great deal and thought over what he had read. Jasper Tarkington found him at the outset an interesting, if not very genial, companion.

Then there was Philip, worshipped by his mother, adored by his father, handsome, a splendid dancer, an accomplished musician. Philip was very attractive; if there was gipsy blood in his veins it had given him nothing but physical beauty and the highly developed musical talent of that race. He had dark, curly hair, and large mellow eyes, fringed with long lashes that would have been a gift of the gods to a girl. Jasper at first sight pronounced him effeminate, but Rosemary⁠—knowing what she did about him⁠—would not allow this for a moment. How could a boy be called effeminate who staked his life time and again, every time he rode into Cluj with those newspaper articles of his in his pocket?

But this, of course, Jasper did not know.

XI

Elza Imrey talked very freely with Rosemary, and often referred to her husband having taken the oath of allegiance to the King of Romania. It was all because of Philip. “What I am working for,” she said, with the light almost of a fanatic in her eyes, “and what I shall work for so long as I have breath left in my body, is to save Philip’s inheritance. The Romanians are lying in wait for us, watching for an excuse to expel us from Transylvania. Many have had to go. Nothing would induce them to be false to the oath that they had sworn to the anointed King of Hungary. So they had to go. Sometimes at twenty-four hours’ notice, bag and baggage, turned out of the home their forbears had owned for hundreds of years. But I would not do that. I had to think of Philip. The Romanian occupation is now an accomplished fact, and we are too helpless, too friendless, not to accept it. But we must be very careful. One false step and we are done. Imagine how I tremble every time Maurus lets himself go. You know how unguarded he always is in his speech.”

Rosemary felt an actual physical pain in her heart when she thought