Pimpernel and Rosemary

Jasper Tarkington had been speaking without interruption for nearly ten minutes, but he had not spoken without a pause. He was pacing up and down the narrow room with his hands held behind his back, but now and again he had come to a halt, quite close to Rosemary, either to emphasize a point, or to look her up and down with a glance of cruelty or merely mockery. Rosemary withstood every glance without flinching. She was standing close to the table with her hand resting on it, to giver herself support. She did not interrupt him. She wanted to hear everything he had to say, right to the end. When he renewed his threat that he would call false witnesses in order to create deadly scandal around Peter, and warned her that she was as much his slave as if he had bought her in the open market, she had, quite instinctively, glanced down on the tray which contained the remnants of her supper. There was a knife on the tray; one with a broad blade narrowing into a sharp point. She shuddered and turned her eyes away, but Jasper had caught her glance. He had just finished speaking, and he went deliberately up to the table, picked the knife up by its point, and with a mocking smile held it with its handle towards her.

"Very dramatic," he said lightly. "Did you ever see La Tosca?"

When she made no reply he laughed and threw the knife back on the table. Then he sat down and lit another cigarette.

There was silence in the little room now. Rosemary had scarcely moved. The horror and indignation which she had felt at first when Jasper embarked upon the history of his life had given place to a kind of moral numbness. She had ceased to feel. Her body seemed turned to stone; even her soul no longer rebelled. She was this man's wife, and he had warned her of the means which he would adopt to bind her, unresisting, to him. Nothing but death could loosen the bonds which he had tightened by his threats against Peter.

Jasper smoked on in silence. Only the fussy ticking of the old-fashioned little clock broke the stillness that had descended like a pall over this lonely corner of God's earth. A little while ago Rosemary had been vaguely conscious of a certain amount of bustle and animation in the house, and subconsciously she had associated this bustle with the probable arrival of guests who had come off the night train. But that had been some time ago. How long she did not know; probably before Jasper had begun speaking. She looked at her watch. It was half-past two. Jasper jumped to his feet.

"It must be very late," he said coolly. "I really must beg your pardon for having kept you up so long. Reminiscences are apt to run away with one."

He put down his cigarette, deliberately went up to his wife and took her by the shoulders.

"Kiss me, Rosemary," he said quietly.

It seemed to amuse him that she did not respond, for he gave a mocking chuckle and put his arms round her. He pressed his lips upon her mouth, her eyes, her throat. Then suddenly he let her go and she almost fell up against the table.

He then walked across to the door of his room.

CHAPTER XLVI

Jasper Tarkington, on the point of entering his room, had switched on the light and then paused on the threshold, uttering a gasp of astonishment.

"Maurus!" he exclaimed, "what in the world are you doing here?"

Maurus Imrey was sprawling on the horse-hair sofa, apparently fast asleep. At Jasper's ejaculation he opened his eyes, blinked, yawned, and stretched his arms.

"Ah! my dear Tarkington," he said in Hungarian. "I thought you were never coming."

He rose and shook himself like a big, shaggy dog, and passed his fingers through his tousled hair.

"I must have been fast asleep," he said.

"But what are you doing here, my friend?" Jasper asked, frowning.

"Waiting for you to do me a little service. It is so late, I don't really like to ask you. But I should be badly stranded if you did not help me."

"What is it?"

"I left Cluj by the midnight express," Maurus explained. "You know that we have all been turned out of Kis-Imre. And, by the way, it is Peter Blakeney who has bought the place. Isn't it a scandal? I never thought he would be such a swine. You know he is a near relation of my wife's."

"Yes, yes!" Jasper muttered impatiently. "What about it?"

"Well, simply that those damned officials at Cluj station never told me that I could only get as far as Sót. So I arrived here with my luggage and Anton, and, of course, I found this beastly hotel full. Not a room to be had, my dear fellow. Did you ever hear of such a thing? In the olden days one would just have taken a man by the scruff of his neck and thrown him out of any room one happened to want for oneself. I don't know what it's like with you in England, but here—"

"Just as bad," Jasper broke in with a curse, "but in heaven's name get on, man."