Meekly and obediently Jasper went off to see after the luggage, and Rosemary wandered away as far as the village. Her first thought was to ascertain definitely whether indeed there was no chance of hiring some sort of conveyance to take her as far as Hódmezö. The first man she spoke to was the keeper of the inevitable grocery store. He had heard a rumour that there was a block on the railway line somewhere near the frontier, and this annoyed him very much because he was expecting a consignment of maize from Hungary, and he supposed that he would not now get it for two or three days. He had no horse. Hadn't had one since the beginning of the war, when his nag was commandeered. Now even an old crock was so dear it did not pay to buy.
Rosemary asked him if he knew of anyone in the village from whom she could hire a horse and cart to take her as far as the frontier, but the man shook his head. The Jew at the hotel had two horses, and the priest had one, but the military were down from the barracks yesterday and took those away. There were manœuvres in progress somewhere, it seems. The soldiers said they would bring the horses back in two or three days, but it was very hard and inconvenient for everybody when that sort of thing was done.
Rosemary asked, what about oxen? But draft-oxen and some buffaloes belonging to the mayor had also been commandeered. It was very hard. Did not the gracious lady think so?
Finally the storekeeper made a suggestion that with the help of a little baksheesh the gracious lady might succeed in getting the officer at the château to let her have what she wanted. The château was only a couple of kilomètres from the village. It lay close to the road; the gracious lady couldn't fail to spy the great iron gates. It had belonged at one time to Count Fekete, but the family had been gone some time, and the château was now a cavalry barrack, and some prisoners of war were still kept there.
The storekeeper offered his son as an escort to the gracious lady, so that she should not miss her way. But Rosemary declined the offer; she purchased a few stale biscuits from the man, intending to ask for a glass of milk from some cottage on the way; then she set out at a brisk pace down the road. It ran along the mountain-side, and some fifty feet below the turbulent little stream tossed and tumbled over stones and boulders, its incessant murmuring making a soothing accompaniment to Rosemary's thoughts. At the last cottage in the village, where Rosemary had obtained a glass of fresh milk from a comely peasant woman, the latter had directed her to a mountain path which ran below the road, parallel with it, and close to the edge of the stream. Here it was perfectly lovely; the moist, sweet air, the occasional call of birds, the beech and oak and dense undergrowth, the carpet of moss, the occasional clearing where the grass was of a luscious green, and the mauve campanula grew to a stately height. At times the path rose sharply, twenty feet or more above the stream; at others it ran level with the water's edge; and at one place the stream widened into a little bay, where the water was as clear as a fairy pool and of a translucent blue.
Rosemary lingered for a little while beside the pool, thinking how delicious it would be to bathe in it. When she went on again she came to a sharp bend in the path, and as soon as she had rounded this she saw some twenty yards farther on a man dressed in the uniform of a Roumanian officer, sitting upon a tree stump close by the water's edge. The man sat with his elbows resting on his knees, and his head was buried in his hands. He looked like a man in trouble. Rosemary walked on, a dry twig crackled under her tread, and the man suddenly looked up.
It was Peter.
The moment he caught sight of Rosemary he jumped up, and then made a movement as if he meant to run away. But Rosemary, with sudden impulse, called to him at once.
"Don't go, Peter."
It seemed as if the magic of her voice rooted him to the spot. He stood quite still, but with his back to her; and then he took off his képi with one hand, and passed the other once or twice across his forehead.
Rosemary felt strangely disturbed and puzzled. Why was Peter here? How did he come to be here? And in this uniform?
"Aren't you going to speak to me, Peter?" she asked, because Peter being here seemed so amazing that for the moment she thought that she was seeing a vision; "or even look at me?" she added.
"I did not suppose you particularly wished me to speak to you," he said, without turning round to face her.
"Why should you say that?" she asked simply.
"Because I imagine that you look upon me as such an unmitigated blackguard that the very sight of me must be hateful to you."
She said nothing for a moment or two. Perhaps she was still wondering if he was real, and if so, how he came to be here—just to-day and at this hour. Then she went deliberately up to him, put her hand on his arm, and forced him to look at her.
"It is true, then?" she asked, and her eyes, those pixie eyes of hers, luminous and searching, were fastened on his as if seeking to penetrate to the very soul within him. But a look of dull and dogged obstinacy was all that she got in response.
"It is all true, Peter?" she insisted, trying with all her might to steady her voice, so that he should not hear the catch in her throat.
He shrugged his shoulders, indifferent and still obstinate.
"I don't know what you mean," he retorted, almost roughly.
"I mean," she said slowly, "that these last few days have not just been a hideous nightmare, as I still hoped until—until two minutes ago. That things have really happened—that you—that you——"
She paused, physically unable to continue. It was all too vile, too hideous to put into words. Peter gave a harsh laugh.
"Oh, don't spare me," he said, with a flippant laugh. "You mean that you did not believe until two minutes ago that I was really a spy in the pay of the Roumanian government, and that you did not believe that I had intrigued to have Philip and Anna arrested, stolen your articles for the Times, and bought Kis-Imre over Aunt Elza's head, and turned her and Maurus out of their home. Well, you believe it now, don't you? So that's that. And as I am on my way to meet a friend, you'll excuse me, won't you, if I run away? Is there anything else I can do for you?"
"Yes," she said. "You can look me straight in the eyes and tell me what has brought you down to—to this. Is it money?"
Peter shrugged. "The want of it, I suppose," he replied.
"I have no right to ask, I know. Only—only—we were friends once, Peter," she went on, with a note of pleading in her tone. "You used to tell me all your plans—your ambitions. You used to say that you did not want to—to bind me to a promise until you had made a name for yourself. If you had told me that you were short of money, and that you were actually thinking of taking up this—this sort of work, I could have helped you. I know I could have helped you. I know I should have found the right words to dissuade you. Oh, Peter!" she went on almost wildly, unable to hold her tears longer in check, or to control the tremor in her voice, "it is all so horrible! Can't you see? Can't you see? We were such friends! You used to tell me everything. You were taking up your father's work. Some of your scientific experiments were already attracting attention. And you were a sportsman, too! And your V.C. And now this—this. Oh, it is too horrible—too horrible!"
Her words were carrying her away. The murmur of the water grew louder and louder in her ears, and in the trees the soughing of the wind among the leaves grew almost deafening. She felt herself swaying, and for a few seconds she closed her eyes. But when she put out her hand she felt it resting on Peter's arm. There was the feel of the rough cloth of his tunic. So she opened her eyes and raised them slowly until they met his. Her glance had wandered on the ugly uniform, the livery of this unspeakable shame. Her eyes expressed the contempt which she felt, the loathing which was almost physical. But Peter's glance now was not only dogged, but defiant. In it she read the determination to follow the path of life which he had chosen for himself, and a challenge to her power to drag him away from it. This was no longer the Peter of Kis-Imre, the irresponsible young English athlete, whose thoughts would never soar above the interest in a cricket-match. It was more the Peter of olden times—the tempestuous lover, the wayward creature of caprice, the temperamental enthusiast capable of heroic deeds, and always chafing under the restraint imposed by twentieth century conventions; the Peter whose soul had once been equally great in virtue as it was now steeped in crime, the gallant soldier, the worthy descendant of the Scarlet Pimpernel. It was the Peter of olden times, but his love for her was dead. Dead. If one spark of it had remained alive, if something of her image had remained in his heart, he could never have given himself over to this vile, vile thing. But while she had been battling bravely to banish from her mind all memories of their early love, he had torn her out of his heart, and turned to this ignominious calling to help him to forget.
Rosemary felt giddy and ill; even the sweet woodland air seemed to have turned to poisonous fumes of intrigue and venality. She pushed Peter's arm that supported her roughly away, but she was still swaying; her hat fell from her head, and her glorious hair lay in a tumbled mass of ruddy gold around her face.
"Better sit down on this old stump," Peter remarked drily. "You'll have to lean on me till you get to it."
But Rosemary did not really know what happened just then. She had such a gnawing pain in her heart. She certainly tottered forward a step or two until she reached the tree-stump, and she sank down on it, helped thereto no doubt by Peter's arm. The next thing of which she was conscious was a flood of tears that would not be checked. It welled up to her eyes, and eased that heavy pain in her heart. Great sobs shook her bowed shoulders, and she buried her face in her hands, for she was ashamed of her tears. Ashamed that she cared so much.
And the next thing that struck her consciousness was that Peter sunk down on his knees before her, that he raised her skirt to his lips, and that he murmured: "Good-bye, sweetheart. My Rosemary for remembrance. God bless and keep you. Try and forget." Then he jumped to his feet and was gone. Gone! She called him back with a cry of despair. "Peter!" But he was nowhere to be seen. He must have scrambled up the incline that led to the road. She certainly heard high above her the crackling of dry twigs, but nothing more. Peter had passed out of her life, more completely, more effectually, indeed, than on the day when she became Jasper Tarkington's wife. Peter—her Peter, the friend of her girlhood, the master from whom she had learned her first lesson of love, was dead. The thing that remained was a vague speck, a creation of this venal post-war world. It was as well that he should go out of her life.
"Try to forget!" were the last words she would ever hear him speak.
"Try to forget?" If she only could!