Pimpernel and Rosemary

It was late in the afternoon when Rosemary at last made her way back to the small hotel in Sót. She had spent the day roaming about the forests, and eating such scrappy food as she could purchase at one or other of the cottages. Twice she had been to the railway station to meet the trains that were due in from Cluj. She hoped that Maurus might have come by one of them. Now there was not another due before the midnight express, which got to Sót in the small hours of the morning. The farce of there being a block on the line was still kept up. Passengers got out of the train, grumbling, and the small hotel was full to capacity. It was a low, irregular building, with a very large courtyard closed on three sides, and a wide archway, through which cars and carriages could drive in, intersecting the fourth. One side of the house was given over to stabling and cowsheds, another to kitchens and offices, the other two held the guest-rooms and one or two public rooms. Some of the bedrooms were level with the ground, and on the floor above a wooden gallery ran right round the courtyard. The courtyard itself seemed to be the principal meeting-place for cows and chickens, and even pigs, which roamed freely about the place and entered any door that happened to be conveniently open. The best bedrooms gave on the balcony above. On inquiry Rosemary was informed that the English milord had booked three rooms that morning for himself and milady who would be coming during the day. A buxom, bare-footed peasant girl then conducted milady up to these rooms.

Rosemary went along heavy-footed. She was more tired than she would have cared to admit. She had had very little food all day, and her nerves by now were terribly on edge. It had been a day packed full of emotion and there was more to come. There was the inevitable interview with Jasper. Horrible as it would be, she had no intention of shirking it. she would leave him, of course, with the hope never to set eyes on him again, but certain matters would have to be arranged between them, and Rosemary's moral courage would not allow her to have recourse to letter-writing or to the help of lawyers. She knew what she wished to say to Jasper, and would have despised herself if she had shrunk from the ordeal.

The hours went slowly by. Later in the evening she ordered some supper to be brought up to her room. She found it difficult to swallow any food, but she drank two cups of deliciously strong coffee, and munched some of the excellent and very sustaining maize bread for which this part of the country is famous. She had a book in her suit-case and contrived to read for a while, but she could not concentrate on what she was reading, and soon had to put the book away. Time hung very heavily. She was terribly weary and yet she could not sleep. And she could not understand what had become of Jasper. She had seen or heard nothing of him since they parted in that ugly, bare room, the picture of which would for ever remain graven in her mind as the place where she had experienced the greatest horror in her life. No one in the hotel had seen him. A vague sense of uneasiness began to stir within her. At the same time she dismissed from her mind any fear for his safety. She was quite sure that whatever he ultimately decided to do, he would not pass out of her life without a final struggle for mastery. She did not dread the interview. she knew it to be inevitable; but she longed passionately for it to be over—to know the worst—to feel certain of that measure of freedom for which she meant to fight.

And because she longed for the interview to be over she would not go to bed before Jasper returned. She sat in the narrow slip-room, grandiosely described by the hotel proprietor as the salon, which divided Jasper's room from hers. The one window, which was wide open, gave her a beautiful view over the mountains, and the evening sky studded with stars. Somewhere the other side of those mountain-tops Philip and Anna were speeding towards freedom-the freedom which Peter had won for them by dint of courage, resource and wit. Instinctively, memory recalled that other weary waiting at Kis-Imre, when she and Elza had watched and prayed together through the hours of the night. And torturing fears rose out of the darkness lest this second attempt at flight should prove as unsuccessful as the first.

It was past midnight when Rosemary heard Jasper's familiar step along the wooden balcony. He came straight to the door of the salon and entered, apparently without the slightest hesitation. He closed the door behind him, and throwing down his hat said coolly:

"I saw the light under the door, so I knew you had not gone to bed yet. I've been in some time, but stayed to have some supper in the coffee-room. Very good supper, too. They know how to cook in Hungary. That is the one thing the Roumanians might with advantage learn from them."