She dragged the obviously unwilling Anna with her into the next room. Jasper was there, waiting. His hand was on the bell-pull at the moment, and his kind, grave, eyes at once sought those of Anna, who, reluctantly, allowed herself to be drawn toward him.
Rosemary effected a quick introduction. In a moment Jasper's kind words had gained the victory over Anna's shyness; less than two minutes later they were seated side by side at the table, while Rosemary ordered coffee of the slatternly chambermaid who had come in answer to the bell.
It was wonderful how splendidly Jasper and Anna got on; he seemed in a few seconds to have caught the knack of gaining the girl's confidence. She became animated, quite pretty, with shinning eyes and full red lips that had lost for the moment their pathetic droop. She did not refer to her cousin, Philip Imrey, or to the dangerous game he and she were playing together, but she talked of her mother and of Ujlak, of the horses and the farm and the difficulties that beset the Hungarian landowners at every turn.
"I dare say that to a great extent it is our fault," she was even willing to admit in response to gentle criticism from Jasper. "We did not make ourselves beloved by the peasantry; they spoke a different language from ours, theirs was a different religion, and they were the alien race. We did little, if anything, for them. But tell me," she went on, and fixed her shrewd glance upon Jasper, "do you think that you landowners over in England, who do so much for your tenantry and your villagers, cricket-clubs, football, concerts-oh! I don't know what else, but things that you pay for and that they enjoy-well! do you think that in their hearts they love you any better than the Roumanian peasantry loved us Hungarians? And do you really believe that if you were in trouble, as we are now, and they were given a certain power over you, they would use it to show their gratitude for past generosity? Do you really believe that, Lord Tarkington?" she insisted.
And Jasper, with a smile at her vehemence, could only shrug his shoulders.
He was evidently very much taken with little Anna.
CHAPTER X
It was a week later and Jasper and Rosemary had been spending that time at Kis-Imre. No one who has not travelled in that part of the world can form a conception of the large-hearted hospitality that welcomes the stranger in a Hungarian chateau.
And Rosemary at once took the Imreys to her heart. She had known them before, of course, in the days before the war, when they dispensed that same wonderful hospitality, light-heartedly, gaily, as a matter of course.
But most of that had become a thing of the past. So much of it had gone, been irretrievably lost in the cataclysm of war and alien occupation. The will to give was still there, the love of the stranger, the boundless hospitality, but giving now meant a sacrifice somewhere, giving up something to give to others. All the sweeter, all the more lovable for being tinged with sadness. To Rosemary, Elza Imrey now was a woman' before that she had been just like a child, naïvely proud of her home, her table, her horses, without a hint of ostentation in her display of the rich gifts the good God had showered upon her. Now Elza's large, prominent blue eyes had become a little dim with constant weeping, and her mouth, when at rest, drooped slightly at the corners. Elza was still a very handsome woman, with her hair of ruddy gold like the cornfields of her native land, but all around the temples there was now a sprinkling of silver, a sprinkling that softened the face as powder does when applied lightly to the hair.
Though in outward appearance she was very unlike her sister, yet she constantly reminded Rosemary of Mrs. Blakeney; it was a question of movements, a gesture here and there, and also the tone of the voice. Elza, too, like her sister, had a magnificent figure, and the perfect hands, arms and wrists peculiar to her race. She had suffered, of course: badly during the war, terribly since the peace. At all times a maîtresse femme, it was she who had carried on the administration of her husband's estates, she who used to interview bailiffs, lawyers, tenants. She had always been looked up to by the local officials and by the surrounding peasantry as the head of the house. Maurus Imrey had always been neurasthenic, and the privations of the war, and the humiliations consequent on the alien occupation of his country, had exasperated his nervous system and further embittered his quarrelsome disposition. In the happy days before the war his contribution to the management of his estates consisted in grumbling daily at his chef and swearing unremittingly at those of his servants who came to him for orders in anything pertaining to the house. Malicious tongues were wont to say that Maurus Imrey had gipsy blood in his veins; more likely it was an Armenian strain. Certain it is that his face and hands were swarthy, his nose hooked and his eyes very dark and piercing; characteristics which he had transmitted in a softened degree to his son Philip. But he was a man of culture for all that. He had read a great deal and thought over what he had read. Jasper Tarkington found him at the outset an interesting, if not very genial, companion.
Then there was Philip, worshipped by his mother, adored by his father, handsome, a splendid dancer, an accomplished musician. Philip was very attractive; if there was gipsy blood in his veins it had given him nothing but physical beauty and the highly developed musical talent of that race. He had dark, curly hair, and large mellow eyes, fringed with long lashes that would have been a gift of the gods to a girl. Jasper at first sight pronounced him effeminate, but Rosemary-knowing what she did about him-would not allow this for a moment. How could a boy be called effeminate who staked his life time and again, every time he rode into Cluj with those newspaper articles of his in his pocket?
But this, of course, Jasper did not know.
CHAPTER XI
Elza Imrey talked very freely with Rosemary, and often referred to her husband having taken the oath of allegiance to the King of Roumania. It was all because of Philip. "What I am working for," she said, with the light almost of a fanatic in her eyes, "and what I shall work for so long as I have breath left in my body, is to save Philip's inheritance. The Roumanians are lying in wait for us, watching for an excuse to expel us from Transylvania. Many have had to go. Nothing would induce them to be false to the oath that they had sworn to the anointed King of Hungary. So they had to go. Sometimes at twenty-four hours' notice, bag and baggage, turned out of the home their forbears had owned for hundreds of years. But I would not do that. I had to think of Philip. The Roumanian occupation is now an accomplished fact, and we are too helpless, too friendless, not to accept it. But we must be very careful. One false step and we are done. Imagine how I tremble every time Maurus lets himself go. You know how unguarded he always is in his speech."
Rosemary felt an actual physical pain in her heart when she thought of this devoted mother's brave struggle to guard her son's inheritance, and how little she guessed that Philip himself was jeopardizing his future and risking his life in a cause that she was proclaiming hopeless. Those rides to Cluj! The meeting with Anna Heves! The dispatch of those newspaper articles of his! And Government spies lurking everywhere!
But during meals all unpleasant subjects were vetoed. Rosemary would have none of them, and her wishes, as the honoured guest, were law in this hospitable house. These good people, with their mercurial temperament, had a wonderful gift of casting aside trouble and giving themselves over to the pleasures of the moment. And so at dinner in the evenings the gipsy band not yet driven forth out of the neighbouring village would discourse sweet music, the tender, sad Hungarian refrains that appeal to the stranger almost as much as they do to the native.