Elza paused. Her eager, round eyes searched Rosemary's face. Rosemary, of course, had already guessed the rest, her own excitement while she listened was as tense as Elza's. She gripped the white podgy little hand of her friend, and looked from her to Anna-a mute question in every glance.
"You can guess, of course?" Anna said.
Rosemary nodded: "I can guess," she said, "but do go on."
"I sent for János early this morning," Elza went on. "All I had to tell him was that Philip and Anna were in great danger, and must be got out of the country at any cost. He understood! We Hungarians in this occupied territory all understand one another. We understand danger. We live with danger constantly at our door. And János was so clever, so helpful. I only had to outline my plan, he thought out all the details. The mill is about a kilometre from here, the last house in the village; as soon as the first two motors have gone with the cricket people and the Roumanian officers, Philip and Anna will at once run round to the mill, and János will give them clothes belonging to his sons. The clothes they will put on. In the meanwhile the third motor-car will have collected the two other men in the village who are going as servants to Hódmezö-one is the brother of the Jew over at the inn, and the other the son of the Roumanian storekeeper. Then it will call at the mill. János will ask the two men to come in. He and his two sons will give them some strong spirit to drink. The brother of the Jew and the son of the storekeeper are both of them great drunkards. When they have become what you English call, I think, blotto, János will take them back into the motor. There they will sit; and will probably at once go to sleep. But Philip and Anna will also get into the motor. They will be dressed in peasant's clothes, and they will have the free passes which Naniescu has given to János' sons. They will get to Hódmezö about five o'clock in the morning. And once they are in Hungary they are safe. Rosemary darling! they are safe!"
Rosemary had remained silent. The whole thing certainly at first glance appeared so easy, so simple that she found herself wondering why she or Jasper-or Peter-had never thought of such a plan. She also wondered why Peter should have spoken of it as a mad plan, and begged her if she had any influence with Elza to dissuade her from it. What had been in his mind when he said that? Of what was he afraid? Spies, of course. But spies, like the poor, were always there, and, after all, Philip and Anna would only be risking what already was forfeit-their lives.
Rosemary sat there in silence, her fingers closed over Elza's soft, warm hand. She gazed straight before her, thinking. Thinking; her mind already following Philip and Anna's flight through this hostile, cruel country, to the land which would mean freedom and life for them. She saw them in her mind's eye, like a vision floating before her across the lake, which in this daydream had become a wide, dusty road with a motor-car speeding along toward life and toward freedom.
It seemed a solution. It must be a solution. Thank God Jasper would be there to help with counsel and with suggestions. Elza was talking again now. In her quaint English, which became more and more involved, she continued to talk of her plan, as a child will talk of some event that made it happy. She harped on the details, on János' devotion, the two sons who would make their way to the frontier in their father's bullock cart, and then cross over to Hungary on foot, through the woods and over a mountain pass where there would be no fear of meeting Roumanian sentinels. At Hódmezö they would find Peter and the cricket people. They would get back their passes, and return quite gaily with the others, having saved the lives of Philip and Anna. Such devotion! Wasn't it splendid?
Rosemary only nodded from time to time, and from time to time she squeezed Elza's hand. It was so hot and so airless here in the little pavilion with those clusters of climbing heliotrope all over the roof and half-blocking up the entrance. The bees and humming bird moths were making such a buzzing and a whirring; it was just like the hum of motor-car wheels on the dusty road. And through it all came the swishing sound of a garden broom upon the gravel path, between the summer-house and the stone coping around the ornamental lake. Rosemary caught herself watching the broom swinging backwards and forwards across the path, and across; she saw the two hands-very dark lean hands they were-that wielded the broom, and finally the gipsy's tall, thin figure bent almost double to his task. It seemed just right that the man should be there at this hour, sweeping the path for Elza to walk on presently, for Philip also and for Anna. It was right because it was the gipsy who had told Elza what she, Rosemary, had not had the courage to say. There was very little mystery about the gipsy now; he was just a ragged, dirty labourer, bending to his task. Did the strange intuition-or was it divination-that had brought him all the way from his native village to speak with Elza whisper to him that his warning had already borne fruit, and that the gracious lady whom he had come to warn had found in faith and hope the way out of dark destiny?
"Oh, that's all right, darling! We spoke English all the time!"
Elza said this with a light laugh. Rosemary woke from her day-dream. She must have been speaking in her dream-about the gipsy who haunted her thoughts.
"Did I say anything?" she asked.
"Yes, darling," Anna replied, "you have been very silent for the last minute or two, and then suddenly you said: 'The gipsy, the gipsy,' twice, like that. It sounded so funny."
"I thought," Elza put in, "that perhaps you were afraid that the dirty old gipsy had heard what we said. But gipsies in Hungary don't speak English, you know. For one thing they never go to school."
Elza appeared quite light-hearted now.
"I knew," she said, "that you would approve of my plan."
She said this, but Rosemary herself was quite unconscious that she had spoken. She had dreamed and dreamed, and seen a motor-car speeding along the dusty road. But through it all, she had approved, approved of the plan. It was so feasible, and so simple. She only wondered why Peter disapproved.
"What does Peter Blakeney say to all that?" she asked presently.
"Peter?"
Elza asked wide-eyed.
"Yes. You told him about your plan, didn't you?"
"No! No!" Elza asserted firmly. "We have told no one but you. Peter is going away. Why should we tell Peter?"
"I thought—" Rosemary murmured.
"It will be time enough to tell him," Anna put in gaily, "when Philip and I turn up at the hotel at Hódmezö. Won't he be surprised when he sees us?"
How strange it all was! Peter knew, since he spoke of a mad plan in Elza's head, and begged Rosemary to dissuade her from it. Peter knew, though no one had told him. Another mystery added to all those which had of late filled Rosemary with such a torturing sense of foreboding. Another mystery that seemed to surround Peter's changed personality, that seemed a part of this new personality of his, flippant and indifferent, so unlike the Peter she had known.
Now she longed passionately for Jasper-dear, kind Jasper, around whom there hung no mystery-the strong hand that would guide her through this maze of intrigue which bewildered as much as it terrified her. Fortunately her promise to Jasper had been kept. With this new mystery about Peter that she vaguely dreaded, she would have been racked with anxiety if she had confided in him. And yet, how disloyal was this thought, this fear! Fear of Peter! Mistrust of Peter! A very little while ago she would have staked her soul that Peter was true, loyal, the soul of honour, an English gentleman, an English sportsman! A Blakeney! A Scarlet Pimpernel of to-day! What was there in the atmosphere of this unfortunate country groaning under a foreign, hated yoke to taint his simple soul with the foul breath of intrigue?