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

to Hódmezö today, 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.

XXII

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 word 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 “Goodbye” 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 wholeheartedly 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 guestrooms 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 Muslim, 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 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 heartbroken mother.

XXIII

And it had been a wonderful day. The weather was perfect. Everyone