Pimpernel and Rosemary

"There is just one difficult place where the driver might miss his way. That would delay them a little, but even so they should be very near the frontier by now."

"Have you arranged to get any news?" Rosemary asked.

"Philip is to telephone from Hódmezö as soon as the office is open."

"You won't hear before then?"

"Yes. I told János to say to the motor-driver that if he will drive straight back here from Hódmezö there will be a thousand leis for him, and if he gets here before eight o'clock then he will get two thousand."

After the village church clock had struck three Elza became very still, but Rosemary did not think that she was actually asleep. Her hands were very cold, and her breath came and went more rapidly than usual. Rosemary rose noiselessly to her feet, she got the eiderdown from her bed and wrapped it round Elza's knees. Elza did not move. Her pretty, round face showed very white in the light of the waning moon, and all her hair seemed to have lost its golden tint and shimmered like threads of silver.

Rosemary went back into the room and lay down on the sofa. The air was very close, and she was very tired, so tired that she must have fallen asleep. Presently something roused her and she opened her eyes. The room was flooded with the golden light of dawn. She jumped to her feet and went to the window. Elza was not on the balcony; but Rosemary, looking over the balustrade, saw her on the veranda about to descent the steps.

"Elza," she called down softly, "wait for me."

Elza nodded acquiescence, and Rosemary ran down-stairs just as she was, in dressing-gown and slippers, with her hair all hanging loosely round her shoulders. Elza had waited on the veranda for her quite patiently; she linked her arm in Rosemary's.

"You were able to sleep a little, darling," she said. "I am so glad."

"And what about you, Elza?" Rosemary retorted.

"Oh, I slept quite nicely," Elza replied in her quiet, simple way," until the dawn closed the eyes of the night one by one, and the moon went down behind the old acacia trees."

"I quite forgot to look at the time," Rosemary rejoined.

"It was half-past four when I left your room. I went to have a peep at Maurus. He is still asleep."

"Thank God for that. He will only wake to hear the good news."

Rosemary could no longer keep the excitement out of her voice. Another two or three hours and this terrible suspense would be over. She hardly dared to look at Elza, for she felt the dear creature's body quivering against hers. The first glance had shown her Elza's face the colour of ashes, with swollen eyelids and red hectic spots on her cheek-bones. But outwardly she was still quite calm, and when together they reached the dew-wet lawn she threw back her head and with obvious delight drank in the sweet morning air.

"It is astonishing," she said, "that one should be able to sleep when-when things happen like they did to-night."

"You were dog-tired, Elza, and the air was so wonderfully balmy and soothing. I think," Rosemary went on gently, "that God sent down a couple of his guardian angels to fan you to sleep with their wings."

"Perhaps," Elza assented with a tired smile.

"Do you feel like a walk, as far as the perennial border?"

"Why, yes. I should love it. And we still have hours to kill."

Already sounds of awakening village life filled the morning with their welcome strains. The fox and the owl were silent, but two cocks gave answer to one another, and from the homesteads and the farms came a lowing and a bleating and a barking, the beasts rousing the humans to activity and calling them to the work of the day.

As Elza's and Rosemary's footsteps crunched the gravel of the path, Mufti, the big sheep-dog, and Karo, the greyhound, came from nowhere in particular, bounding across the lawn, and threw themselves, in the exuberance of their joy, upon these two nice humans who had shortened the lonely morning hours for them.

"Let's go and see the moss-roses," Rosemary suggested, "see if they smell as sweet as they did in the night."

They walked on to the end of the perennial border, where two or three clumps of moss-roses nestled at the foot of a tall crimson Rugosa laden with blossom.

"Dear little things," Elza said. "They are my favourite flowers. I like them so much better than all those wonderful new roses that get the prizes at the horticultural shows."

She stooped to inhale the fragrance of the roses, and while she was stooping a faint, very distant whirring sound became audible, which grew in volume every moment. Just for the space of one second Elza did not move; she remained just as she was, stooping and with her face buried in the roses. Then she straightened out her fine figure and grasped Rosemary's hand.

"The motor," she said huskily. "Let us go."