Pimpernel and Rosemary E-Book

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Pimpernel and Rosemary is a novel set after the First World War and features Peter Blakeney, a descendant of the Scarlet Pimpernel (Percy Blakeney). The action is mainly set amongst the disaffected Hungarian nobility in Transylvania, allowing Orczy to draw on her knowledge of Hungarian history and politics.

Leseprobe

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

PIMPERNEL AND ROSEMARY

Copyright

First published in 1924

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

To Peter Blakeney, Rosemary Fowkes’ engagement to his friend Tarkington seemed not only incredible but impossible. The end of the world! Death! Annihilation! Hell! Anything!

But it could not be true.

He was playing at Lord’s that day; Tarkington told him the news at the luncheon interval, and Peter had thought for the moment that for once in his life Tarkington must be drunk. But Tarkington looked just as he always did—grave, impassive, and wonderfully kind. Indeed, he seemed specially kind just then. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps Rosemary had told him. Women were so queer. Perhaps she did tell Tarkington that he, Peter, had once been fool enough to—

Anyway, Tarkington was sober, and very grave and kind, and he told Peter in his quiet, unemotional way that he considered himself the happiest man on God’s earth. Of course he was, if Rosemary — But it was impossible. Impossible! Impossible!!

That afternoon Peter hit many boundaries, and at the end of play was 148 not out.

In the evening he went to the Five Arts’ Ball at the Albert Hall. He knew that Rosemary would be there; he had designed the dress she would be wearing, and Tarkington told him, sometime during that afternoon that he was taking his fiancée to the ball.

His fiancée! Dear old Tarkington! So kind, so unemotional! Rosemary’s husband presently! Ye gods!

At the Albert Hall ball Peter wore that beautiful Hungarian national dress that had belonged to his grandfather, a wonderful dress of semi-barbaric splendour, with the priceless fifteenth-century jewellery which he had inherited from his mother—the buttons, the sword-belt, the clasp for the mantle—they had been in the Heves family ever since it was fashioned by Florentine workmen imported into Hungary by a medieval queen. Peter dressed himself with the greatest care. If a thing was worth doing at all, it was worth doing well, and Rosemary had said once that she would like to see him in the dress.

But during that hot afternoon at Lord’s while he dressed, and now inside the crowded, stuffy Albert Hall, Peter did not feel as if he were really alive. He did not feel like a personage in a dream, he only felt that the world as he had seen it since luncheon time, was not a real world. Someone had invented something altogether new in opposition to the Creator, and he, Peter, being no longer alive, was permitted a private view of the novelty.

It appeared to be a very successful novelty. At any rate, the numberless puppets who raised shrill voices so that Peter might hear what they said, all declared that this ball was incontestably the most successful function of the season.

Just as in the real world, Peter thought, where every function is always incontestably the most successful function of the season.

Other shrill voices declared in Peter’s hearing that this function had been more than usually well-managed. It had been splendidly advertised, and the tickets had sold like the proverbial hot cakes.

And Peter was quite sure that somewhere in the dead, forgotten world of long ago he had heard such an expression of opinion over and over again.

Anyway, in this Albert Hall of the newly invented world things were much as they had been in the old. It was crowded. At one time there was hardly room enough to move, let alone to dance. Certain contortions of the body being called dancing, now as then, and certain demoniacal sounds made on hellish instruments by gentlemen of colour being called dance music, the floor of the hall, raised to the level of the lower-tier boxes, was given over to the performance of various gyrations more or less graceful, whilst Peter looked on, strangely familiar with this new world of unrealities which had only been invented a few hours ago, when Tarkington told him of his engagement to Rosemary Fowkes.

He knew just how it would be!

In tomorrow’s issue of the Morning Star or the Talk of the Town, the thousands who gyrated here or who looked on at the gyrations of others would be referred to as being “also present.”

He, Peter Blakeney, the famous cricketer and distinguished V.C., would be referred to as being “also present,” and there would be a photograph of him with a set grin on his face and his eyes staring out of his head like those of a lunatic at large, in all the illustrated weeklies. This was as it should be. It was well worth paying two guineas (supper included) for the privilege of being referred to as “also present” in this distinguished company of puppets that included both home and foreign royalties.

Of course there were others, the select few who would be referred to in the columns of the Morning Star or the Talk of the Town with charming familiarity as Lord Algy Fitznoodle, or Miss Baby Tomkins, or simply as Lady Poots or Lord Tim.

“While I was chatting with Lady Poots, etc.”

“Lady Vi Dartmouth, with her beautiful hair shingled, etc. etc.”

“The Marchioness of Flint came with her girls, etc.”

All of which Peter knew by intuition would be vastly interesting to the suburban little madams who read Talk of the Town in this world of unrealities, that the puppets named Miss Baby or Lady Vi, would not think of being absent from the Five Arts’ Ball. It was the acme of smartness, of Bohemian smartness, that is to say: the smartness of Chelsea and fashionable studios, which is so much smarter than the smartness of Mayfair.

And Peter—a kind of disembodied Peter—watched the throng. Ye gods! what a motley and a medley!

Polychromatic and kaleidoscopic, iridescent and prismatic, ceaselessly on the move, mercurial, restless, ever stirring, fluttering fans, fingering clothes, adjusting coiffures, lapels, frills, hair-ornaments and feathers! And talking! Talking incessantly, with voices hard and high-pitched trying to rise above other voices that were harder and higher of pitch. Dazzling to eye and ear; exciting to nerves and sense, the atmosphere and mixture of odours: of powders, cosmetics, perfumes, heat, gas, and a score of other indefinable scents.

The picture quite brilliant; not without touches of unconscious humour: Marie Antoinette flirting with Robespierre, Russian moujik in familiar converse with a jewelled Catherine, Queen Elizabeth condescending to pre-historic man. And then Pierrots, Pierrots everywhere, of every conceivable motley and shape. Blue Pierrots and yellow Pierrots! white or black, purple with orange frills, and orange with purple frills, black skull caps and tall white peaks. Pierrots of satin, and Pierrots of gingham! Cool and active! Ye gods! how active! Bohemian smartness, it seems, demanded that its Pierrots should be bright and amusing and active.

From his point of vantage on the floor of the hall Peter scanned the semicircle of boxes where sat more puppets, hundreds of them, watching the thousands down below.

What was the good of them? Peter thought. Why has God made them? What use were they in his new world which some wanton sprite had fashioned in opposition to the Creator? They fluttered their fans, they laughed, they jabbered, and did not seem to know that they, just like Peter, had become unreal and disembodied at the precise moment when Rosemary Fowkes promised to become Jasper Tarkington’s wife.

And then suddenly the puppets all faded away. The new world ceased to be, there was no hall, no dancing, no music, no more puppets, no more Pierrots. There was only Rosemary, and she came up to Peter and said quite gaily, naturally, in a voice that belonged to the old world, not the new:

“Won’t you ask me to dance, Peter?”

After that—well, dancing permits, necessitates, holding the partner in one’s arms. And Peter danced with Rosemary.

Chapter 2

Lady Orange always had a box for the big functions at the Albert Hall. It was chic, it was right, and it was convenient. It gave her an opportunity of entertaining distinguished foreigners de passage in London in a manner that was both original and expensive.

Lady Orange prided herself on her internationalism and delighted to gather distinguished foreigners about her; members and attaches of minor embassies invariable graced her dinner parties. She often referred to her attainments as “bilingual,” and in effect she spoke French with a perfect Geneva accent. She thought it bon ton to appear bored at every social function except those which took place at her house in Belgrave Square, and now when a procession made up of bedizened unities marched in double file past her box she remarked languidly:

“I think they show a singular lack of imagination. One would have thought Chelsea artists would have invented something unique, picturesque for themselves.”

“They only thought of comfort, perhaps. But it is they who gave the impetus to the imagination of others. Not?”

The man who sat next to Lady Orange spoke with certain gestures of hands and arms that would have proclaimed him a foreigner ever apart from his appearance—the somewhat wide expanse of white waistcoat, the ultra-smart cut of his evening clothes, the diamond ring on his finger. He had large, mellow dark eyes, which he used with great effect when he spoke to women, and full lips half-concealed under a heavy black moustache. He had a soft, rich voice, and spoke English with that peculiar intonation which is neither Italian nor Slav but has the somewhat unpleasant characteristics of both; and he had large, well-shaped, podgy hands all covered with a soft dark down that extended almost to his fingertips.

Lady Orange, who had pale, round eyes and arched eyebrows that lent to her face a perpetual look of surprise, gazed intelligently about her.

“Ah, oui!” she sighed vaguely. “Vous avez raison!”

She would have liked to continue the conversation in French, but General Naniescu was equally determined to speak English.

As Lady Orange was going to Bucharest shortly, and desired an introduction to august personages there, she thought it best to humour the general’s whim.

“How well you express yourself in our barbarous tongue, Monsieur le General!” she said kindly.

“Ah, madame,” the general replied, with an expressive shrug, “we in our country are at such disadvantage in the social life of great cities like London and Paris, that we must strive to win our way by mastering the intricacies of language, so as to enable us to converse freely with the intelligentsia of the West who honour us by their gracious acceptance.”

“You are a born courtier, Monsieur le General,” Lady Orange rejoined with a gracious smile. “Is he not, ma chere?” And with the edge of her large feather fan she tapped the knees of an elderly lady who sat the other side of Monsieur le General.

“Oh, Mademoiselle Fairfax was not listening to my foolish remarks,” General Naniescu said, turning the battery of his mellow eyes on the somewhat frumpish old maid.

“No,” Miss Fairfax admitted drily. “Monsieur de Kervoisin here on my left was busy trying to convert me to the dullness of Marcel Proust. He is not succeeding.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Naniescu suavely, “you English ladies! You are so intellectual and so deliciously obstinate. So proud of your glorious literature that even the French modernists appear poor in your sight.”

“There, you see, ma chere,” Lady Orange put in with her habitual vagueness, “always the courtier.”

“How can one help being a courtier, dear lady, when for hours one is thrown in a veritable whirlpool of beauty, brilliance and wit? Look at this dazzling throng before us,” the general went on, with a fine sweep of his arm. “The eyes are nearly blinded with its magnificence. Is it not so, my dear Kervoisin?”

This last remark he made in French, for Monsieur de Kervoisin spoke not a word of English. He was a small, spare man, with thin grey beard neatly trimmed into a point, and thin grey hair carefully arranged so as to conceal the beginnings of baldness. Around his deep-set grey eyes there was a network of wrinkles; they were shrewd, piercing eyes, with little, if any, softness in them. Monsieur de Kervoisin, whose name proclaimed him a native of Brittany, was financial adviser to a multiplicity of small, newly created states, all of whom were under the tutelage of France. His manner was quiet and self-effacing when social or political questions were on the tapis, and he only appeared to warm up when literature or the arts were being discussed. He fancied himself as a Maecenas rather than a financier. Marcel Proust was his hobby for the moment, because above all things he prided himself on modernity, and on his desire to keep abreast of every literary and artistic movement that had risen in the one country that he deemed of intellectual importance, namely his own.

For the moment he felt vaguely irritated because Miss Fairfax—a seemingly unpretentious and socially unimportant elderly female—refused to admit that there was not a single modern English prose writer that could compare with Proust. To the general’s direct challenge he only replied drily.

“Very brilliant indeed, my good Naniescu; but you know, I have seen so much in my day that sights like these have no longer the power to stir me.”

“I am sorry for you,” Miss Fairfax retorted with old-maidish bluntness. “I have been about the world a good deal myself, but I find it always a pleasure to look at pretty people. Look at Rosemary Fowkes now,” she went on, addressing no one in particular, “did you ever in all your life see anything so beautiful?”

She made lively little gestures of greeting and pointed to a couple on the dancing-floor below. Lady Orange turned her perpetually surprised gaze in that direction and General Naniescu uttered an exaggerated cry of admiration. Even Monsieur de Kervoisin appeared interested.

“Who is the lady?” he asked.

“She is Rosemary Fowkes,” Miss Fairfax said, “one of the most distinguished—”

“Ah! I entreat you, mademoiselle, tell us no more,” the general exclaimed with mock protest, “a lovely woman needs no other label but her own loveliness. She is distinguished amongst all because she is beautiful. What else should a woman be when she is the finest work the Creator ever produced-an enchantress?”

“Well.” Miss Fairfax rejoined drily, “I would scold you, general, for those lyrical effusions if they were intended for anybody else. Pretty women are usually silly, because from childhood upwards they have been taught to use their intellect solely for purposes of self-contemplation and self-admiration. But Rosemary Fowkes is an exception. She is not only beautiful, but brilliantly clever. Surely you remember those articles in the International Review on the subject of ‘The Evils of Bureaucracy in the Near East’? They were signed ‘Uno,’ and many doubted at the time that the writer was a woman, and a young one at that.”

“Uno?” General Naniescu exclaimed, and threw a significant glance at Monsieur de Kervoisin, who in his turn uttered an astonished “Ah!” and leaned over the edge of the box in order to take a closer view of the lady under discussion.

Chapter 3

Indeed no lyrical effusion would seem exaggerated if dedicated to Rosemary Fowkes. She was one of those women on whom Nature seemed to have showered every one of her most precious gifts. There are few words that could adequately express the peculiar character of her beauty. She was tall, and her figure was superb; had hair the colour of horse-chestnuts when first they fall out of their prickly green cases, and her skin was as delicately transparent as egg-shell china; but Rosemary’s charm did not lie in the colour of her hair or the quality of her skin. It lay in something more undefinable. Perhaps it was in her eyes. Surely, surely it was in her eyes. People were wont to say they were “haunting,” like the eyes of a pixie or of a fairy. They were not blue, nor were they green or grey, but they were all three at times, according as Rosemary was pleased or amused or thoughtful; and when she was pleased or amused she would screw up those pixie eyes of hers, and three adorable little lines that were not wrinkles would form on each side of her nose, like those on the nose of a lion cub.

Her chestnut-coloured hair lay in luscious waves over her forehead and round her perfectly shaped little head, and when she smiled her small white teeth would gleam through her full, parted lips.

Eschewing the fantastic Pierrot costumes of the hour, rosemary Fowkes was dressed in a magnificent Venetian gown of the fifteenth century, the rich crimson folds of which set off her stately figure as well as the radiant colouring of her skin and hair. She wore a peculiarly shaped velvet cap, the wings of which fastened under her chin, thus accentuating the perfect oval of the face and the exquisite contour of forehead and cheeks.

“A woman so beautiful has no right to be clever,” General Naniescu remarked with an affected sigh. “It is not fair to the rest of her sex.”

“Miss Fowkes is certainly very gifted,” Lady Orange remarked drily, her enthusiasm apparently being less keen on the subject of Rosemary than that of Miss Fairfax.

“And who is the happy man,” Monsieur de Kervoisin put in in his dry, ironic tone, “with whom the enchantress is dancing?”

“Peter Blakeney,” Miss Fairfax replied curtly.

“Qui ça, Peter Blakeney?”

“Peter Blakeney, Peter Blakeney! He does not know who is Peter Blakeney!” Lady Orange exclaimed, and for this supreme moment she departed from her habitual vagueness of attitude, whilst her glance became more markedly astonished than before.

Two or three young people who sat at the back of the box tittered audibly and gazed at the foreigner as if he were indeed an extraordinary specimen lately presented to the Zoo.

“Remember, dear lady,” General Naniescu put in, wholly unperturbed by the sensation which his friend’s query had provoked, “that Monsieur de Kervoisin and I are but strangers in your wonderful country, and that no doubt it is our want of knowledge of your language that causes us to seem ignorant of some of your greatest names in literature or the Arts.”

“It is not a case of literature or the Arts, mon cher general,” Lady Orange condescended to explain. “Peter Blakeney is the finest cover-point England ever had.”

“Ah! political sociology?” Monsieur de Kervoisin queried blandly.

“Political what?”

“The Secret Points, no doubt you mean, dear lady?” the general went on, politely puzzled. “Advanced Communism, what? Monsieur Blakeney is then a disciple of Lenin?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Lady Orange sighed. “Peter Blakeney is the finest cricketer Eton and Oxford have ever produced.”

“Cricket!” exclaimed the general, while Monsieur de Kervoisin uttered a significant “Ah!”

There was a moment of quite uncomfortable silence. Naniescu was thoughtfully stroking his luxurious moustache, and a gentle, indulgent smile hovered round the thin lips of Monsieur de Kervoisin.

“It is interesting,” Naniescu said suavely after a moment or two, “to see two such world-famous people given over to the pleasure of the dance.”

“They are excellent dancers, both of them,” Lady Orange assented placidly, even though she had a vague sense of uneasiness that the two foreigners were laughing surreptitiously at something or at her.

“And we may suppose,” the general continued, “that a fine young man like Mr. Blakeney has some other mission in life than the playing of cricket.”

“He hasn’t time for anything else,” came in indignant protest from a young lady with shingled hair. “He plays for England, in Australia, South Africa, all over the world. Isn’t that good enough?”

“More than enough, dear lady,” assented Naniescu with a bland smile. “Indeed, it were foolish to expect the greatest—what did you call him?—secret point to waste his time on other trifling matters.” “Cover-point, mon general,” Lady Orange suggested indulgently, whilst the young people at the back broke into uproarious mirth. “Cover-point, not secret.”

“Peter Blakeney rowed two years in the ‘Varsity eights,” one of the young people interposed, hot in the defence of a popular hero. Then he added with characteristic English shamefacedness when subjects of that sort are mentioned, “And he got a V.C. in the war.”

“He is a jolly fine chap, and ever so good-looking,” rejoined the pretty girl with the shingled hair. She shot a provocative glance in the direction of the two ignorant dagoes who had never even heard of Peter Blakeney, and then she added, “He couldn’t help being jolly and fine and all that, as he is the great-grandson—”

“No, kid, not the great-grandson,” broke in one of her friends.

“Yes, the great-grandson,” the young girl insisted.

There was a short and heated argument, while General Naniescu and Monsieur de Kervoisin looked courteously puzzled. Then Miss Fairfax was appealed to.

“Miss Fairfax, isn’t Peter Blakeney the great-grandson of the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’?”

And Miss Fairfax, who knew everything, settled the point.

“Peter,” she said, “is the great-grandson of Jack Blakeney, who was known as the Little Pimpernel, and was the Scarlet Pimpernel’s eldest son. In face and in figure he is the image of that wonderful portrait by Romney of Sir Percy Blakeney.”

“Hurrah for me!” exclaimed the one who had been right whilst the pretty girl with the shingled hair threw a glance at the handsome Roumanian which conveyed an eloquent “So there!”

General Naniescu shrugged amiably.

“Ah!” he said, “now I understand. When one gets the youth of England on the subject of its Scarlet Pimpernel, one can only smile and hold one’s tongue.”

“I think,” Miss Fairfax concluded, “that Peter is the best-looking and the best-dressed man in the hall tonight.”

“You stab me to the heart, dear lady,” the general protested with mock chagrin, “though I am willing to admit that the descendant of your national hero has much of his mother’s good looks.”

“Did you know Mrs. Blakeney, then?”

“Only by sight and before her marriage. She was a Hungarian lady of title, Baroness Heves,” General Naniescu replied, with a shrug that had in it a vague suggestion of contempt. “I guessed that our young cricket player was her son from the way he wears the Hungarian national dress.”

“I was wondering what that dress was,” Lady Orange remarked vaguely, thankful that the conversation had drifted back to a more equable atmosphere. “It is very picturesque and very becoming.”

“And quite medieval and Asiatic, do you not think so, dear lady? The Hungarian aristocrats used to go to their Court dressed in that barbaric fashion in the years before the war.”

“And very handsome they must have looked, judging by Peter Blakeney’s appearance tonight.”

“I knew the mother, too,” Miss Fairfax remarked gently, “she was a dear.”

“She is dead, then?” Monsieur de Kervoisin asked.

“Oh, yes, some years ago, my dear friend,” the general replied. “It was a tragic story, I remember, but I have forgotten its details.”

“No one ever knew it over here,” was Miss Fairfax’s somewhat terse comment, which seemed to suggest that further discussion on the subject would be unwelcome.

General Naniescu, nevertheless, went on with an indifferent shrug and that same slightly contemptuous tone in his voice. “Hungarian women are most of them ill-balanced. But by your leave, gracious ladies, we will not trouble our heads any longer with that man, distinguished though his cricket-playing career may have been. To me he is chiefly interesting because he dances in perfect harmony with Venus Aphrodite.”

“Whose Vulcan, I imagine, he would gladly be,” Monsieur de Kervoisin remarked with a smile.

“A desire shared probably by many, or is the one and only Vulcan already found?”

“Yes, in the person of Lord Tarkington,” Miss Fairfax replied.

“Qui ça Lord Tarkington?” the general queried again.

“You are determined to know everything, mon cher general,” Lady Orange retorted playfully.

“Ah, but Mademoiselle Fairfax is such a wonderful encyclopaedia of social science, and since my attention has been purposefully drawn to Aphrodite, my curiosity with regard to Vulcan must be satisfied. Mademoiselle, I beg you to tell me all about him.”

“Well,” Julia Fairfax resumed good-humouredly, “all I can tell you is that Jasper Tarkington is one of the few rich peers left in England; and this is all the more remarkable as his uncle, the late Lord Tarkington, was one of the poorest. Nobody seems to know where Jasper got his money. I believe that he practically owns one of the most prosperous seaside towns on the South Coast. I forget which. Anyway, he is in a position to give Rosemary just what she wants and everything that she craves for, except perhaps—”

Miss Fairfax paused and shrugged her thin shoulders. Taunted by General Naniescu, she refused to complete the sentence she had so tantalizingly left half spoken.

“Lord Tarkington is a great friend of your country, General Naniescu,” she said abruptly. “Surely you must know him?”

“Tarkington?” the general mused. “Tarkington? I ought to remember, but—”

“He was correspondent for the Daily Post at the time that your troops marched into Hungary in 1919.”

“Surely you are mistaken, dear lady. Tarkington? I am sure I should remember the name. My poor misjudged country has so few friends in England I should not be likely to forget.”

“Lord Tarkington only came into the title on the death of his uncle a year ago,” Lady Orange condescended to explain.

“And he was called something else before that,” the general sighed affectedly. “Ah, your English titles! Another difficulty we poor foreigners encounter when we come to your wonderful country. I knew once an English gentleman who used to come to Roumania to shoot with a friend of mine. He came four times in four years and every time he had a different name.”

“Delicieux!” Lady Orange murmured, feeling that in this statement the Roumanian general was paying an unconscious tribute to the English aristocracy. “Do tell me who it was, mon cher general.”

“I cannot exactly tell you who he was, kind lady. When first I knew the gentleman he was Mr. Oldemarsh. Then somebody died and he became Lord Henly Oldemarsh. The following year somebody else died and he was Viscount Rawcliffe, and when last I saw him he was the Marquis of Barchester. Since then I have lost sight of him, but I have no doubt that when I see him he will have changed his name again.”

“Vous etes vraiment delicieux, mon cher,” Lady Orange exclaimed, more convinced than ever that there was only one aristocracy in the whole of Europe, and that was the English. “No wonder you were puzzled.”

She would have liked to have entered on a long dissertation on a subject which interested her more than any other—a dissertation which would have embraced the Domesday Book and the entire feudal system; but Naniescu and Miss Fairfax were once more discussing Rosemary Fowkes and her fiancé.

“I suppose,” the Roumanian was saying, “that Lord Tarkington has given up journalism altogether now?”

“I don’t know,” Miss Fairfax replied. “Lord Tarkington never talks about himself. But Rosemary will never give up her work. She may be in love with Jasper for the moment, but she is permanently enamoured of power, of social and political power, which her clever pen will always secure for her, in a greater degree even than Tarkington’s wealth and position.”

“Power?” the general said thoughtfully. “Ah, yes. The writer of those articles in the International Review can lay just claim to political power. They did my unfortunate country a good deal of harm at that time, for they appeared as a part of that insidious propaganda which we are too proud, and alas! also too poor, to combat adequately. Over here in England people do not appear to understand how difficult it is to subdue a set of rebellious, arrogant people like the Hungarians, who don’t seem to have realized yet that they have lost the war.”

Lady Orange gave a little scream of horror.

“Pour l’amour de Dieu,” she exclaimed, “keep away from politics, mon cher general.”

“A thousand pardons, gracious friend,” he retorted meekly, “the sight of that lovely lady who did my poor country so much harm brought words to my tongue which should have remained unspoken in your presence.”

“I expect you would be interested to meet Rosemary,” said the practical Miss Fairfax, with her slightly malicious smile. “You might convert her, you know.”

“My only wish would be,” General Naniescu replied with obvious sincerity, “to make her see the truth. It would indeed be an honour to pay my devoirs to the lovely ‘Uno’.”

“I can arrange that for you easily enough,” rejoined Lady Orange.

She leaned over the edge of the box, and with that playful gesture which seemed habitual to her she tapped with her fan the shoulder of a man who was standing just below, talking to a friend.

“When this dance is over, George,” she said to him, “tell Rosemary Fowkes to come into my box.”

“Tell her that a distinguished Roumanian desires to lay his homage at her feet,” Miss Fairfax added bluntly.

“Do you think Sir George will prevail on the divinity?” the general asked eagerly.

Just then the dance was over, the coloured musicians ceased to bawl, and there was a general movement and confusion down below through which Sir George Orange, ever obedient to his wife’s commands could be seen vainly striving to find a beautiful needle in a tumbled and unruly haystack. He came back to the side of his wife’s box after a while.

“I can’t find her,” he said apologetically. “She has probably gone to get an ice or something. Tarkington was also looking for her.”

“Well,” said Lady Orange placidly, turning her surprised gaze on General Naniescu, “suppose you and Monsieur de Kervoisin take us up to supper in the meanwhile. We’ll capture Rosemary later, I promise you.”

The party in the box broke up. The young people went downstairs to dance whilst the two foreigners gallantly escorted the elderly ladies up innumerable flights of stairs to a cold and cheerless upper story, where an exceedingly indigestible supper washed down with salad dressing and coloured soda-water was served to Pierrots, Marie Antoinettes, Indian squaws, and others who crowded round the tables and fought eagerly for unwashed forks and glasses of doubtful cleanliness.

The Five Arts’ Ball was indeed a huge success.

Chapter 4

“Would you like anything?” Peter Blakeney asked of his partner while he steered her clear of the crowded dancing floor.

“I am rather thirsty,” Rosemary replied, “but I could not stand that awful supper upstairs.”

“Well, look here,” he urged, “you slip into one of the empty boxes and I’ll forage for you.”

They found a box on the upper tier, the occupants of which had probably gone off to supper. Rosemary sat down and pulled the curtain forward; thus ensconced in a cosy corner of the box she drew a contented little sigh, glad to be in the dark and alone. Peter went to forage and she remained quite still, gazing-unseeing-on the moving crowd below. She was hot and felt rather breathless, her chestnut hair, below the velvet cap, clung against her forehead, and tiny beads of moisture appeared round the wings of her delicately modelled nose. The last dance had been intoxicating. Peter was a perfect dancer. Rosemary sighed again quite involuntarily: it was a little sigh of regret for those golden minutes that had gone by all too rapidly. Jasper, she reflected, would never make a dancer, but he would make a kind, considerate, always thoughtful husband. The kindest husband any woman could wish for.

Her eyes now sought the dancing floor more insistently. She had just become aware of Jasper’s tall figure moving aimlessly amidst the crowd. Dear, kind Jasper! He was looking for her, of course. Always not physically and actually, then with his thoughts, trying to find her, to understand her, to guess at an unspoken wish.

“Dear, kind Jasper,” Rosemary sighed and closed her eyes, in order to shut out that sudden glimpse she had just had of Jasper’s anxious gaze scanning the crowd—in search of her. She pulled the curtain an inch or two farther forward, pushed back her chair deeper into the shadow.

Peter returned, carrying a bottle of champagne and a tumbler.

“Will this do?” he asked and busied himself with the cork.

“Delicious,” she replied, “but what about you?”

“Me?”

“Yes; you have only brought one glass.”

“The only one I could get. There’s a regular fight up there for crockery.”

She laughed. “It must be horrible up there.” She exclaimed.

“Dante’s Inferno,” he assented laconically.

He filled the glass till the froth bubbled over and then gave it to her to drink, which she did with delight.

“Lovely,” she exclaimed.

He watched her as she screwed up her eyes and those tantalizing little lines appeared at the sides of her nose.

“I hear you did splendidly at Lord’s this afternoon, Peter,” she said. “There’s a wonderful article about you in the Evening Post.”

Then she held the glass out to be refilled. “Your turn next,” she said.

“Won’t you have some more?”

“Not just now, thank you.”

He put the bottle down on the floor, then put out his hand to take the glass from her. As he did so his fingers closed over hers. She tried to withdraw her hand, and it the brief struggle the glass fell between them and was smashed to smithereens.

“Our one and only glass,” Rosemary exclaimed. “Please, Peter,” she went on with a nervous little laugh, “will you release my hand?”

“No,” he replied, and increased the pressure on her struggling fingers. “I have often been allowed to hold your hand before. Why not now?”

She shrugged her shoulders and ceased to struggle.

“Am I never to be allowed to hold your hand again?” he insisted.

But her head now was turned away; she was apparently deeply interested in the crowd below.

“Oh, Peter,” she exclaimed lightly, “do look at Mrs. Opert in that girlish 1840 costume. Did you ever see anything more ludicrous? Do look at her huge feet in those wee sandals. There’s Jimmy Ransome talking to her now—”

Again she tried to withdraw her hand and still he held her fast. She turned to him with a frown.

“Peter,” she said, “if you are going to be foolish, I’ll go.”

“What do you call being foolish?” he retorted. “Holding your hand? I held you in my arms just now while we danced.”

“I call it being foolish, Peter,” she retorted coolly. “Would you rather I called it disloyal?”

“You are too clever to do that, Rosemary,” he rejoined, “disloyalty being so essentially a feminine attribute.”

“Peter!”

“Oh, I know! I know!” he went on, quite slowly, and then suddenly released her hand. “Presently you will be Jasper’s wife, the wife of my best friend. And if I happen to hold your hand just one instant longer than convention permits I shall be called disloyal, a cad—any ugly word that takes your fancy or the moment. So I must become less than a friend-less than a distant cousin—I must not hold your hand—the others may—I may not. They may come near you, look into your eyes—see you smile—my God! Rosemary, am I never to look into those glorious eyes of yours again?”

For a moment it seemed as if she was going to give him a direct answer, a soft flush rose to her cheeks, and there was a quick intake of her breath as if words would tumble out that she was determined to suppress. The struggle only lasted for a second. The next she had thrown back her head and burst into a peal of laughter.

“Why, Peter,” she exclaimed, and turned great, serious eyes upon him, “I never knew before that you read Browning.”

Her laugh had half sobered him. But evidently he had not grasped her meaning, for he frowned and murmured puzzled: “Browning?”

“Why, yes,” she said gaily. “I forgot exactly how it goes, but it is something like this: ‘I will hold your hand, just as long as all may, Or so very little longer.’”

He made no sign that her flippancy had hurt him; he sat down beside her, his hands clasped between his knees.

“Why should you hate me so, Rosemary?” he asked quietly.

“Hate you, my dear Peter?” she exclaimed. “Whatever put that quaint notion into your head? The heat must have been too much for you this afternoon. You never will wear a cap.”

“I know that I am beneath contempt, of course,” he insisted, “but when one despises a poor creature like me, it seems wanton cruelty just to kick it.”

“I did not mean to hurt you, Peter,” Rosemary rejoined more gently, “But when you are trying to talk nonsense, I must in self-defence bring you back to sanity.”

“Nonsense? Would to God I could talk nonsense, act nonsense, live nonsense. Would to God my poor brain did refuse to take in the fact that you have promised to become Jasper’s wife, and that I like a fool, have lost you for ever.”

“Lost me, Peter?” she retorted, with just the faintest tremor of bitterness in her voice. “I don’t think you ever sought me very seriously, did you?”

“I have loved you, Rosemary,” Peter Blakeney said very slowly and very deliberately, “from the first moment I set eyes on you.”

Then, as the girl shrugged her shoulders with an obvious attempt at indifference, he said more insistently: “You knew it, Rosemary.”

“I know that you often said so, Peter,” she replied coldly.

“You knew it that night on the river when you lay in my arms just like a lovely pixie, with your haunting eyes closed and your lips pressed to mine. You knew it then, Rosemary,” he insisted.

But now she would no longer trust herself to speak. She had drawn herself farther back within the shadows. All that Peter could see of her was the exquisite oval of her face like a cameo carved against the dark, indefinite background. Her eyes he could not see, for they were veiled by the delicate, blue-veined lids, but he had a glimpse of her breast like mother-of-pearl, and of her small hand clinging tightly to the protecting curtain. The rest of her, swathed in the rich folds of her brocaded gown, was merged in the shadows, her auburn hair hidden by the velvet cap. Just by looking at her face, and on that clinging hand, he knew that everything within her was urging her to flee, was warning her not to listen, not to allow her memory to recall that wonderful night in June, on the river, when the tall grasses bending to the breeze, and a nightingale in the big walnut tree sang a lullaby to its mate. Intuitively he knew that she wished to flee, but that a certain something held her back, forced her to listen-a certain something that was a spell, an enchantment, or just the arms of her sister-pixies that clung around her and would not let her go.

“Don’t let us talk about the past, Peter,” she murmured at last involuntarily, with a pathetic note of appeal in her voice.

“I mean to talk about it, Rosemary,” he retorted quietly, “just this once more. After that I will fall out of your life. You can cast me out and I will become one of the crowd. I won’t even take your hand, I will try not to see you, not even in my dreams. Though every inflection of your voice makes my bones ache with longing, I shall try not to listen. Just now I held you while we danced; you never once looked at me, but I held you closer than any man ever held woman before. I held you with my soul and heart and body-just now and for the last time. And though you never looked at me once, Rosemary, you allowed me to hold you as I did-not your body only, but your soul-and whilst we danced and your sweet breath fanned my cheek you belonged to me as completely as you did that night on the river, even though you have pledged your word to Jasper. Though why you did that,” he added, with a quaint change of mood, “God alone knows.”

“Jasper wants me,” she murmured. “He loves me. He sets me above his ambition-”

Peter Blakeney gave a harsh, mirthless laugh.

“Dear old Jasper,” he said, “even he would laugh to hear you say that. Ambition! There’s no room for ambition in the scheme of Jasper’s life. How can a man be ambitious when all the beneficent genii of this world presided at his birth and showered gifts into his lap? It is we, poor devils, who have ambitions-and see them unfulfilled.”

“Ambitions which you set above your love, above everything,” Rosemary broke in, and turned to look him straight in the eyes. “You talk of love, Peter,” she went on with sudden vehemence, while the sharp words came tumbling out at last as if from the depths of her overburdened heart. “What do you know of love? You are quite right, I did lay in your arms that night, loving you with my whole being, my soul seeking yours and finding it in that unforgettable kiss. My God! How I could have loved you, Peter! But you? What were your thoughts of me the next day, and the next day after that, whilst I waited in suspense which turned to torture for a word from you that would recall that hour? What were your thoughts? Where were you? I was waiting for you at the Lascelles as you had promised you would come over from Oxford the very next day. You did not come-not for days-weeks—”

“Rosemary!”

“Not for days-weeks—” she insisted, “and I waited for a sign-a letter—”

“Rosemary, at the time you understood!”

“I only understood,” she retorted with cold irony, “that you blamed yourself for having engaged my young affections-that you had your way to make in the world before you could think of asking a girl to share your poverty-and so on-and so on-every time we met-and in every letter you wrote-whilst I —

“Whilst you did not understand, Peter,” she went on more calmly. “Whilst you spoke of the future, of winning fame and fortune—”

“For you, Rosemary!” he cried involuntarily, and buried his head in his hands. “I was only thinking of you—”

“You were not thinking of me, Peter, or you would have known that there was no poverty or toil I would not gladly have shared with the man I loved.”

“Yes! poverty-toil-on an equal footing. Rosemary; but you were rich, famous: already you had the world at your feet—”

“And you did not care for me enough, Peter,” she said with a note of fatality in her voice, “to accept wealth, comfort, help in your career from me —”

“Peter Blakeney the cricketer,” he declaimed with biting sarcasm, “don’t you know, he is the husband of Rosemary Fowkes now. What a glorious career for a man, eh, to be the husband of a world-famous wife?”

“It would only have been for a time,” she protested.

“A time during which youth would have flown away on the wings of life, taking with it honour, manhood, dignity—”

“And love?”

“Perhaps.”

There was silence between them after that. The last word had been spoken, the immutable word of Fate. Peter still sat with his head buried in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees-a hunched up figure weighed down by the heavy hand of an inexorable past.

Rosemary looked down at the bent head, and there, in the shadow, where no one could save the immortal recorder of sorrows and of tears, a look of great tenderness and of pity crept into her haunting eyes. It was only for a moment. With a great effort of will she shook herself free from the spell that for a while had held possession of her soul. With a deliberate gesture she drew back the curtain, so that her face and figure became all at once flooded with light, she looked down upon the kaleidoscopic picture below: the dusky orchestra had once more begun to belch forth hideous sounds, and hellish screams, the puppets on the dancing floor began one by one to resume their gyrations. Several among the crowd, looking up, saw and recognized Rosemary: she smiled and nodded to them, waved her fan in recognition. She was Rosemary Fowkes once more, the most talked-of woman in England, the fiancée of Jasper Tarkington, queen of her set, admired, adulated, the comet of the past two seasons.

“There’s that tiresome George Orange,” she said in her coldest, most matter-of-fact tone. “He is making desperate and ludicrous signs. I strongly suspect him of making straight for this box. Shall we try to give him the slip?”

Her quiet voice seemed to act like an anodyne on Peter’s jangled nerves. He straightened out his tall figure, quietly pulled the chairs away, to enable her to pass. She, too, rose and prepared to go. It seemed difficult not to say another word, or to look him once more straight in the eyes; and yet to speak words now, after what had just passed between them, seemed more difficult than anything. His hand was on the door handle. The other side of the door people were moving up and down, talking and laughing. Another second or two and she would pass out of his sight-pass out of his life more effectually even than she had done when she gave her word to Jasper Tarkington. Another second. But just then she raised her eyes, and they met his.

“Rosemary!” he said.

She shook her head and smiled gently, ironically perhaps, indulgently also as on a rebuked child.

“I had better go now, Peter,” she said quietly. “I feel sure George Orange is on his way to drag me to his wife’s box.”

Just for another second he did not move.

“It is no use, Rosemary,” he said, and in his turn smiled as on something very dear, very precious, wholly unattainable. “It is no use, my dear.”

“What is no use, Peter?” she murmured.

“Thinking that all is over.”

“In six months’ time, if I am alive,” she rejoined coolly, “I shall be Jasper Tarkington’s wife.”

“I know it, dear. Jasper is my friend, and I would not harbour one disloyal thought against him. But you being the wife of an enemy or of my best friend is beside the point. I cannot shut you out of my life, strive how I may. Never. While I am as I am, and you the exquisite creature you are, so long as we are both alive, you will remain a part of my life. Whenever I catch a glimpse of you, whenever I hear the sound of your voice, my soul will thrill and long for you. Not with one thought will I be disloyal to Jasper, for in my life you will be as an exquisite spirit, an idea greater or less than woman. Just you. If you are happy I shall know it. If you grieve, Heaven help the man or woman who caused your tears. I have been a fool; yet I regret nothing. Sorrow at your hands is sweeter than any happiness on earth.”

It was quite dark where they stood side by side in this moment of supreme farewell. Each felt the inevitableness of it all-the fatality. Pride on either side had built a barrier between them: honour and loyalty would consolidate it in the future. Too late! Everything was too late!

Peter bent his knee to the ground and slowly raised the hem of her gown to his lips. But Rosemary did not move: for that one instant her limbs had become marble, and in her soul she prayed that her heart, too, might turn to stone.

Then Peter rose and opened the door, and she passed out into the world again.

Chapter 5

Outside in the corridor Rosemary met Sir George Orange, who claimed her then and there and dragged her willy-nilly to his wife’s box. She never looked back once to see what Peter was doing. He had become merged in the crowd, and, anyway, this was the end.

She found herself presently being talked to, flattered, adulated by the distinguished Roumanian who turned the full battery of his mellow eyes and his persuasive tongue upon her, bent on making a breach in the wall of her prejudices and her thinly veiled enmity.

She told no one, not even Jasper, the gist of her conversation with Naniescu. He had put a proposal before her-a proposal which meant work for Rosemary Fowkes-the Uno of the International Review. He had proposed that she should go to Transylvania, study for herself the conditions now prevailing in the territory occupied by Roumania and publish the result of her studies in the English and American Press. And this was just the sort of work that Rosemary longed for, now, more than at any other time of her life. Naniescu had played his cards well. He had known how to flatter, insidiously, delicately, this popular writer who had captured the public fancy, and whose influence with pen and personality was paramount with a vast section of review and newspaper readers in England. What he had proposed could in no way hurt the most delicate scruples of an over-sensitive conscience, and the proposal came as a veritable godsend to Rosemary at this moment when her whole soul was in a turmoil of remorse, longing, and rebellion. That her love for Peter Blakeney was not dead, she had known well enough all along, but she had little dreamed until this hour how completely it still possessed her, what power his glance, his touch, his nearness still had over her. She had thought of her love as a heap of smouldering ashes, and lo! it had proved itself to be a devastating fire that burned fiercely beneath.

And Peter?

Peter had set the future above the present; his pride above his love, and she, wounded to the quick, had allowed ambition and pride to throw her into Jasper Tarkington’s arms. It was all done now. Irrevocably done. But even at the moment when she most bitterly regretted the past, she was resolved to keep her word loyally to Jasper. Sitting beside him in the car that took her home from the Albert Hall ball, she allowed her hand to rest contentedly in his. His arm was round her, and her cheek rested against his shoulder. She did not speak, for she was very tired, but she listened, unshrinking, to the tender words which he whispered in her ear. Dear, kind Jasper! He had thoughts only for her. From the moment when she finally promised that she would be his wife, he had loaded her with delicate attentions and exquisite gifts. Every word he spoke was soothing and restful, so different from Peter’s tempestuous outbursts, his unrestrained, passionate eloquence that would leave her limp and bruised, unable to understand his next mood, his sudden indifference to everything save his own future pursuits.

Chapter 6

It was only a couple of days later that Rosemary broached to Jasper Tarkington the subject that was uppermost in her mind. She had lunched with him at the Ritz, and they walked together across St. James’s Park to her flat in Ashley Gardens It was one of those rare days of June which make of England one of the most desirable countries to be alive in. The air was soft, with just that delicious feeling of moisture in it that gives additional fragrance to the scent of the hawthorn: it vibrated with the multitudinous sounds of bird-song, a twitter and a singing and a whistling that thrilled the ear with their heavenly melodies.