Pimpernel and Rosemary Baroness Orczy (mobi reader TXT) 📖

“Anna,” she said earnestly, “I think you are absolutely splendid! I admire your pluck more than I can say. But surely, surely you could find more congenial work than selling groceries!”

She paused a moment, her active brain at once turning to projects that had little Anna’s welfare for their aim. Little Anna could not go on selling groceries in an obscure Romanian town. It was unthinkable! Surely Peter did not know. And how could Rosemary face him with the news that she had found little Anna selling groceries at Cluj?

Something must be done, and quickly, to alter such an awful state of things. While she remained silent, thinking, and Anna, equally silent, fidgeted with long, thin fingers the tassel of her friend’s dressing-gown, Rosemary became conscious that Jasper was watching her from the doorway of the next room. How long he had been standing there she did not know. She looked at him over Anna’s bent head, and, as usual, she read in his expressive face a divination of her thoughts. It almost seemed as if, with a slight nod of his head, he was actually approving of what she had not yet put into words. Then he stepped back into the other room and quietly closed the door.

“Listen, little one,” Rosemary said eagerly. “I am here at the invitation of the Romanian Government; that is to say, General Naniescu, who, I understand, is military governor of Transylvania, has asked me to come over here and study the conditions, both social and political. I shall be writing several articles for English and American papers, and I simply must have a secretary for my ordinary correspondence, and⁠—”

Anna shook her head.

“I don’t know how to type,” she said rather curtly, “and I can’t do shorthand.”

“Neither of which is necessary,” Rosemary retorted.

Anna looked her straight in the eyes. “You don’t imagine,” she said quietly, “that if your articles revealed even a particle of the truth they would ever be allowed to pass the censor, and if they concealed the truth you would not expect my father’s daughter to associate herself with them.”

“That’s a brave patriotic speech, Anna,” Rosemary rejoined with a triumphant little laugh, “but you need not be the least afraid. My articles will contain the truth, and the censor will have not power over them. I give you my word.”

But Anna was unconvinced.

“Rosemary dear,” she said earnestly, “don’t think me ungrateful or obstinate. Just imagine what it would mean to me to give up this awful grinding routine that wearies me at times to such an extent that I go into the cathedral and beg and pray to God that I might soon die and escape from it all. But you know, dear, when one’s country is as unfortunate as ours has become, one must do one’s utmost to help and serve her, mustn’t one?”

“Why, of course,” Rosemary assented, puzzled by the girl’s strange earnestness, the glow of ardent patriotism that all at once emanated from that drooping, slender figure; “but I don’t quite see how you are serving your country by selling groceries in Balog’s shop.”

“No! no! not by that,” Anna went on eagerly. “Oh, I know that I can trust you, Rosemary, and you can’t imagine what a relief it is to me to have someone to talk to. I have not spoken like this to a soul for nearly two years. And sometimes I feel as if I must choke. But one dare not talk to anyone these days, for government spies are everywhere. You never know who will betray you; the concierge of your house, the woman who washes the stairs, or the beggar to whom you give alms. Oh! I could tell you things⁠—However all of us who are suffering unspeakably under our new tyrants are determined that the outside world shall hear the truth, but there is such a strict censorship that one dare not send anything through the post except what is absolutely banal and meaningless.”

The girl paused a moment, her eyes wandered searchingly around the room, rested for an instant first on one door, then on another, as if in fear that those spies whom she so dreaded were lurking behind them, then, satisfied that she was alone with her English friend, whom she knew she could trust, she said abruptly:

“You remember my cousin, Philip Imrey?”

“Of course.”

“He always had a great talent for writing. When he was quite a boy he used to write poetry and little stories. He is only nineteen now; next year he will have to do his military service in the Romanian army, and that is a perfect hell for every Hungarian! Just think, Rosemary, if an Englishman had to serve in the German army! Isn’t it unthinkable? But still, that cannot be helped! We are the vanquished race, and we have to pay the price. But we are determined that the nations of the West shall know the truth! So Philip and I, between us, thought of a plan. We thought of it for two years, and it took some time to organise. At last I obtained what I wanted, mother’s consent that I should come to Cluj to earn my living, and a post in Balog’s grocery shop. Balog sends Transylvanian goods regularly to Budapest: mustard, cheese, vegetable seeds; I have to pack them. Now do you understand?”

Rosemary nodded. “Yes, I think I do! Philip writes those articles which appeared in the Evening Post and caused such an outburst of sympathy for the Hungarians of Transylvania throughout Great Britain. And you⁠—?” she added, and her eyes full of tenderness and compassion rested with undisguised admiration on the shrinking little figure of Anna Heves.

“He rides over from Kis-Imre,” the girl continued simply, “and brings me the articles which he has written, and I consign them inside the grocery parcels to the firm at Budapest, who, of course, are in entire sympathy with us, and post them on to England. Oh! it is splendid,