It was late in the afternoon when Rosemary at last made her way back to the small hotel in Sót. She had spent the day roaming about the forests, and eating such scrappy food as she could purchase at one or other of the cottages. Twice she had been to the railway station to meet the trains that were due in from Cluj. She hoped that Maurus might have come by one of them. Now there was not another due before the midnight express, which got to Sot in the small hours of the morning. The farce of there being a block on the line was still kept up. Passengers got out of the train, grumbling, and the small hotel was full to capacity. It was a low, irregular building, with a very large courtyard closed on three sides, and a wide archway through which cars and carriages could drive in, intersecting the fourth. One side of the house was given over to stabling and cowsheds, another to kitchens and offices, the other two held the guest-rooms and one or two public rooms. Some of the bedrooms were level with the ground, and on the floor above a wooden gallery ran right round the courtyard. The courtyard itself seemed to be the principal meeting place for cows and chickens, and even pigs, which roamed freely about the place and entered any door that happened to be conveniently open. The best bedrooms gave on the balcony above. On inquiry Rosemary was informed that the English milord had booked three rooms that morning for himself and milady who would be coming during the day. A buxom, bare-footed peasant girl then conducted milady up to these rooms.
Rosemary went along heavy-footed. She was more tired than she would have cared to admit. She had had very little food all day, and her nerves by now were terribly on edge. It had been a day packed full of emotions and there was more to come. There was the inevitable interview with Jasper. Horrible as it would be, she had no intention of shirking it. She would leave him, of course, with the hope never to set eyes on him again, but certain matters would have to be arranged between them, and Rosemary's moral courage would not allow her to have recourse to letter-writing or to the help of lawyers. She knew what she wished to say to Jasper and would have despised herself if she had shrunk from the ordeal.
The hours went slowly by. Later, in the evening, she ordered some supper to be brought up to her room. She found it difficult to swallow any food, but she drank two cups of deliciously strong coffee, and munched some of the excellent and very sustaining maize bread for which this part of the country is famous. She had a book in her suit-case and contrived to read for a while, but she could not concentrate on what she was reading, and soon had to put the book away. Time hung very heavily. She was terribly weary and yet she could not sleep. And she could not understand what had become of Jasper. She had seen or heard nothing of him since they parted in that ugly, bare room, the picture of which would for ever remain graven in her mind as the place where she had experienced the greatest horror in her life. No one in the hotel had seen him. A vague sense of uneasiness began to stir within her. At the same time she dismissed from her mind any fear for his safety. She was quite sure that whatever he ultimately decided to do, he would not pass out of her life without a final struggle for mastery. She did not dread the interview. She knew it to be inevitable; but she longed passionately for it to be over—to know the worst—to feel certain of that measure of freedom for which she meant to fight.
And because she longed for the interview to be over she would not go to bed before Jasper returned. She sat in the narrow slip-room, grandiosely described by the hotel proprietor as the salon, which divided Jasper's room from hers. The one window, which was wide open, gave her a beautiful view over the mountains, and the evening sky studded with stars. Somewhere the other side of those mountaintops Philip and Anna were speeding towards freedom—the freedom which Peter had won for them by dint of courage, resource and wit. Instinctively memory recalled that other weary waiting at Kis-Imre, when she and Elza had watched and prayed together through the hours of the night. And torturing fears rose out of the darkness lest this second attempt at flight should prove as unsuccessful as the first.
It was past midnight when Rosemary heard Jasper's familiar step along the wooden balcony. He came straight to the door of the salon and entered, apparently without the slightest hesitation. He closed the door behind him, and throwing down his hat said coolly: "I saw the light under the door, so I knew you had not gone to bed yet. I've been in some time, but stayed to have some supper in the coffee-room. Very good supper, too. They know how to cook in Hungary. That is the one thing the Roumanians might with advantage learn from them."
He threw himself into a chair and drew his cigarette-case out of his pocket. Having selected one he offered his case to Rosemary.
"Have one?" he asked. When she shook her head he shrugged and laughed, then he struck a match and lighted his cigarette. His hand was perfectly steady. The flame of the match brought for a moment into relief his narrow hatchet face, with the dark eyes set closely together and the harsh Wellingtonian features. Rosemary looked at him curiously. It was the first time she had really studied his face closely since she knew. Once or twice before she had been repelled by a flash of animal passion in his eyes, and once she had caught sight of his face in the mirror in the smoking-room at Kis-Imre, when it was distorted by a wolfish expression of cruelty. Now both the passion and the cruelty were there, expressed around his mouth and in his eyes which looked at her over the tiny flickering flame.
Deliberately he blew the match out, took a long whiff from his cigarette, and said calmly:
"How you are going to hate me after this!" After a second's pause he added: "Well, I have had so much cruelty to endure from you in the past, a little more or less won't make much difference."
"I have never meant to be cruel, Jasper," Rosemary rejoined coldly. "But I know now that the cruelest thing I ever did to you was to become your wife."
"You only found that out, my dear, since you saw Peter Blakeney again."
To this Rosemary made no answer. She shrugged her shoulders and turned her head away. Jasper jumped up and gripped her by the arm, making her wince with pain.
"Before we go any further, Rosemary," he said with a savage oath, "I'll have it out with you. Are you still in love with Peter Blakeney?"
"I refuse to answer," Rosemary said calmly. "You have no longer the right to ask me such a question."
"No longer the right," he retorted with a harsh laugh. "You are still my wife, my dear. What happened this morning will not give you your freedom in law, remember."
"I know that, Jasper. What happened this morning has broken my life, but, as you say, it cannot give me my freedom, save with your consent."
He gave a derisive chuckle. "And you are reckoning on that, are you?" he asked dryly.
"I am reckoning on it."
"Then all I can say, my dear, is that, for a clever woman, your calculations are singularly futile."
"I don't think so," she rejoined. "I know enough about the laws of England to know that they do not compel me to live under your roof."
"You mean that you intend to leave me?"
"I do."
"And create a scandal?"
"There need be no scandal. We'll agree to live apart; that is all."
"That is not all, my dear," he retorted dryly, "as you will find out to your cost."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that Peter Blakeney chose to follow you to Transylvania; any number of witnesses can testify to that. I mean, that we are now in a country where money will purchase everything, even such testimony as will enable Lord Tarkington to divorce his wife, and raise such a hell of scandal around Mr. Blakeney that no decent club would have him as a member, and he would have to live out of England for the benefit of his health."
Rosemary had listened to him without attempting to interrupt. She even tried hard not to reveal the indignation which she felt. When he had finished speaking, and once more threw himself into a chair, with a sigh of self-satisfaction, she said quite quietly:
"I thought that this morning I had probed the lowest depths to which a man's nature could sink. But God help me! I have seen worse now!"
"That is as it may be, my dear. A man fights for what he treasures with any weapon that comes to his hand."
"For what he treasures, yes! But you——"
"I treasure you beyond all things on earth," he broke in hoarsely. "You are my wife, my property, my own possession. You may love Blakeney and hate me, but I have rights over you that all the sophistries in the world cannot deny me. I alone," he went on, and in one second he was on his feet again, and before she had time to defend herself he had her in his arms. "I alone have the right to hold you as I am holding you now. I alone have the right to demand a kiss. Kiss me, Rosemary, my beautiful, exquisite wife, with the pixie eyes! Though you hate me, kiss me—though you love him, kiss me——Mine is still the better part."
He pressed his lips against hers, and for these few horrible moments Rosemary, half swooning, could only lie rigid in his arms. But horror and loathing gave her strength. With her two hands she pushed against him with all her might. "Let me go," she murmured. "I hate you."
But he only laughed. "Of course you hate me. Well, I like your hatred better than the cool indifference I have had from you up to now. You hate me, my dear, because you don't understand. With all your vaunted cleverness you don't understand. Women such as you—good women, I suppose we must call them—never would understand all that there is in a man that is evil and vicious and cruel. Yes, in every man! Deep down in our souls we are blackguards, every one of us! Some of us are what women have made us, others have vices ingrained in our souls at birth. Have you ever seen a schoolboy tease a cat, or a lad set a terrier against a stoat? Would you hate him for that? Not you! If he has revolted you too much, you may punish him, but even so you'll only smile: it is boy's nature, you will say. Well, boy's nature is man's nature. Cruel, vicious! Civilization has laid a veneer over us. Some of us appear gentle and kind and good. Gentle? Yes! On the surface. Deep down in our souls, grown men as we are, we would still love to tease the cat, or to see a terrier worry a stoat. Whilst men had slaves they thrashed them. Where wives are submissive their husband beat them. Give a man power to torture and he will do it. Boy's nature, I tell you, but we dare not show it. We are gentlemen now, not men. And most of us have a false idea that women would despise us if they knew. And so we smirk, and toady, and pretend, and those of us who are not puppets writhe against this pretence. I was born a savage. When I was a schoolboy I was not content with teasing a cat, I loved to torture it; if a horse was restive I would thrash it with the greatest joy. Later I revelled in twisting a smaller boy's wrist until he screamed, in pulling a girl's hair or pinching her arm—anything that hurt. Boy's nature. Most women only smiled! Then came the war and the world was plunged in an orgy of cruelty. I was a very fine linguist and became attached to the secret service. I worked for the French army. I no longer pulled girls' hair nor pinched their arms, but I—the spy—tracked enemy spies down—women and men—dragged them out of their lair as a terrier would a stoat, and brought them before the military tribunals to be condemned and shot. But the women still smiled. Good women, mind you! Those whom I was tracking down were Germans, and so I—the spy—was a hero and they were only human refuse whom to torture was a duty. When war was over and my uncle died I inherited a title, and civilization threw the mantle of convention over me, imposed on me certain obligations. My work was done. I became a puppet. I smirked and toadied and tried to pretend. Oh, how I loathed it! Restrictions, civilization, drove me mad! If I had never met you I should have gone off to a land where I could keep slaves and work my will on them, or turned Moslem and keep numberless wives, whom I could beat when the mood seized me. But I met you, and all my desires were merged in the one longing to have you for my own. You were adulated, famous, rich probably. I had a title to offer you and nothing else. My friend de Kervoisin, who knew my capabilities, spoke to me of Transylvania, a conquered country where rebellion was rife. He spoke to me of Naniescu, an ambitious man, unscrupulous and venal, who wanted help to consolidate his position, to put himself right before his government and before the world by bringing to light intrigues and conspiracies that did not always exist. The work meant money. I took it on. I made over £100,000 in three years, and there was more to come. Already I was a rich man and the work satisfied the boy's nature in me. Following up a clue. Disguises. Tracking a man down, or a woman. Seeing their fear, watching their terror. Arrests, secret trials. Executions in the early dawn. Scenes of desolation and farewells. I had them all! They helped me to endure the London seasons, the evenings at the club, the balls, the crowds, the futility of it all. And the money which. I earned brought me nearer and nearer to you. Luck was on my side. Peter Blakeney courted you, and like a fool he lost you. How? I did not know and cared less. I won you because I was different from other men, because you were piqued, and because I interested you. Because I knew how to smirk and to toady better than most. Then came the question of Transylvania. Naniescu entrusted me with the task of discovering the authorship of certain articles that had appeared in English and American newspapers which impugned his administration. He offered me ten thousand pounds if I succeeded in bringing the author to justice, and ten thousand more if certain articles which you were to write were published in the Times. The very first morning that we were in Cluj the girl Anna Heves gave away her secret. Once I had her and Philip under arrest it was easy enough to bring pressure to bear upon you. I almost succeeded, as you know. At first it was difficult—whilst Elza and Maurus Imrey were ignorant of the bargain that Naniescu had proposed to you. I had only gained one victory, I was not likely to win the other. So while you thought me in Bucharest, I came back disguised as a gipsy and warned Elza that Philip and Anna were in danger of death. This brought everything to a head. Unfortunately Peter Blakeney already suspected me. It began probably in England—exactly when I shall never know—but he was my friend once, and then suddenly I felt that we had become enemies. I must have given myself away at one time, I suppose, and he is as sharp as a wild cat. He followed us to Transylvania—to make sure. . . . Then at Cluj Anna Heves confided in him. The children's arrest confirmed his suspicions, and that night at Kis-Imre he recognised me under my disguise as a gipsy. Curse him! After that the whole adventure became a battle of wits between him and me. I won the first round when I spied out the plan for Philip and Anna's escape; I won again when I persuaded you to place the whole bargain between yourself and Naniescu before Elza, and indirectly induced you to write the newspaper articles which he wanted. I thought I had won an easy victory then. But Peter Blakeney stole your manuscript and I feared then that I had lost everything. The death of Philip and Anna Heves would have been some compensation, it is true, but I wanted that extra ten thousand pounds more than I did the joy of seeing those two children shot. I thought that Peter had stolen the manuscript in order to bargain with it for the lives of his two cousins, but I know better now. He sold your manuscript to Naniescu for the Kis-Imre property. It will stand in his name until he can hand it over to the Imreys again. In the meanwhile by a clever ruse he has got Philip and Anna out of the country. And by now he will have sent a telegram in your name to the Times. He has won the battle hands down. I am beaten in all, except in one thing, I have you. Not all his cleverness—and he is as clever as a monkey, it seems—can take you away from me. If you leave me, you do so knowing the consequences. Remember what I said: we are in a country where money can purchase everything, even such testimony as will enable me to divorce you and to raise such a hell of scandal around Peter Blakeney that no decent man in England would shake him by the hand. So now you know. I have told you my history, and I have extolled Peter Blakeney's virtues—his heroism, if you like to call it so. And I have done it deliberately so that you may admire him, regret him, love him if you must, even whilst you feel yourself irrevocably bound to me. You are just as much my slave now, as if I had bought you in the open market. If you continue to hate me, I shall probably hate you too in the end. But that would not help to free you. On the contrary, I think it would rather amuse me. I was never content to tease a cat, I invariably tortured it."
Jasper Tarkington had been speaking without interruption for nearly ten minutes, but he had not spoken without a pause. He was pacing up and down the narrow room with his hands held behind his back, but now and again he had come to halt, quite close to Rosemary, either to emphasize a point, or to look her up and down with a glance of cruelty or merely mockery. Rosemary withstood every glance without flinching. She was standing close to the table with her hand resting on it, to give herself support. She did not interrupt him. She wanted to hear everything he had to say, right to the end. When he renewed his threat that he would call false witnesses in order to create deadly scandal around Peter, and warned her that she was as much his slave as if he had bought her in the open market, she had, quite instinctively, glanced down on the tray which contained the remnants of her supper. There was a knife on the tray; one with a broad blade narrowing into a sharp point. She shuddered and turned her eyes away, but Jasper had caught her glance. He had just finished speaking, and he went deliberately up to the table, picked the knife up by its point, and with a mocking smile held it with its handle towards her.
"Very dramatic," he said lightly. "Did you ever see La Tosca?"
When she made no reply he laughed and threw the knife back on the table. Then he sat down and lit another cigarette.
There was silence in the little room now. Rosemary had scarcely moved. The horror and indignation which she had felt at first when Jasper embarked upon the history of his life had given place to a kind of moral numbness. She had ceased to feel. Her body seemed turned to stone; even her soul no longer rebelled. She was this man's wife, and he had warned her of the means which he would adopt to bind her, unresisting, to him. Nothing but death could loosen the bonds which he had tightened by his threats against Peter.
Jasper smoked on in silence. Only the fussy ticking of the old-fashioned little clock broke the stillness that had descended over this lonely corner of God's earth like a pall. A little while ago Rosemary had been vaguely conscious of a certain amount of bustle and animation in the house, and subconsciously she had associated this bustle with the probable arrival of guests who had come off the night train. But that had been some time ago. How long she did not know; probably before Jasper had begun speaking. She looked at her watch. It was half past two. Jasper jumped to his feet.
"It must be very late," he said coolly. "I really must beg your pardon for having kept you up so long. Reminiscences are apt to run away with one."
He put down his cigarette, deliberately went up to his wife and took her by the shoulders.
"Kiss me, Rosemary," he said quietly.
It seemed to amuse him that she did not respond, for he gave a mocking chuckle and put his arms round her. He pressed his lips upon her mouth, her eyes, her throat. Then suddenly he let her go and she almost fell up against the table.
He then walked across to the door of his room.