Books: His Hour
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Elinor Glyn >> His Hour
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"The world," he said, as he arranged himself in the chair, "is an
extremely pleasant place if one takes it as it is, and does not quarrel
with it. One must not be intolerant, and one must not be hypercritical.
See it all and make allowances for the weakness of the human beings who
inhabit it."
"Yes," said Tamara, "I know you are right; but so many of us belong to
a tribe who think their point of view the only one. I do, for instance;
that is why I say I am foolish."
The walkers passed again.
"There is a type for you to study," Stephen Strong said. "Prince
Milaslávski. I have known him for many years, since he was a child
almost; he is about twenty-nine or thirty now, and really a rather
interesting personality."
"Yes," said Tamara, honestly, "I feel that. Tell me about him?"
Stephen Strong lit a cigar and puffed for a few seconds, then he
settled himself with the air of a person beginning a narrative.
"He came into his vast fortune rather too young, and lived rather
fiercely. His mother was a Basmanoff; that means a kind of Croesus in
Russia. He is a great favorite with the powers that be, and is in the
Cossacks of the Escort. Something in their wild freedom appealed to him
more than any other corps. He is a Cossack himself on the mother's side,
and the blood is all rather wild, you know."
Tamara looked as she felt--interested.
"They tell the most tremendous stories about him," the old man went on,
"hugely exaggerated, of course; but the fact remains, he is a
fascinating, restless, dauntless character."
"What sort of stories?" asked Tamara, timidly.
"Not all fit for your ears, gentle lady," laughed Stephen Strong.
"Sheer devilment, mostly. It was the amusement in the beginning to dare
him to anything, the maddest feats. He ran off with a nun once, it is
said, for a bet, and deposited her in the house of the man she had
loved before her vows were taken. That was in Poland. Then he has
orgies sometimes at his country place, when every one is mad for three
days on end. It causes terrible scandal. Then he comes back like a
lamb, and purrs to all the old ladies. They say he obeys neither God
nor the Devil--only the Emperor on this earth."
"How dreadful!" force of habit made Tamara say, while her thoughts
unconsciously ran into interested fascination.
"He is absolutely fearless, and as cool as an Englishman, and there are
not any mean things told about him, though," Steven Strong continued,
"and indeed sometimes he lives the simplest country life with his
horses and dogs, and his own people worship him, I believe. But there
is no wildest prank he is incapable of if his blood is up."
"I think he looks like it," said Tamara. "Is it because he habitually
wears uniform that his ordinary clothes fit so badly? To our eyes he
seems dressed like some commis voyageur."
"Of course," said Stephen Strong. "And even in Paris I don't suppose
you would approve of him in that respect, but if you could see him in
Petersburg, then I believe you would be like all the rest."
"All which rest?" asked Tamara.
"Women. They simply adore him. Bohemians, great ladies, actresses,
dancers, and----"
He was just going to mention those of another world, when he felt
Tamara would hardly understand him, so he stopped short.
Something in her rose up in arms.
"It shows how foolish they are," she said.
Stephen Strong glanced at her sideways, and if she could have read his
thoughts they were:
"This sweet Englishwoman is under Gritzko's spell already, and how she
is battling against it! She won't have a chance, though, if he makes up
his mind to win."
But Tamara, for all her gentle features, was no weakling; only her life
had been a long hibernation; and now the spring had come, and soon the
time of the finding of honey and a new life.
"What can he be talking about to my friend, Mr. Strong?" she asked, as
the two passed again. "Millicent is one of the last women he can have
anything in common with; she would simply die of horror if she heard
any of these stories--and he can't be interested in a word she says."
"He always does the unexpected," and Stephen Strong laughed as he said
it. He himself was amused at this ill-matched pair.
"Mrs. Hardcastle is agreeable to look at, too," he continued.
Tamara smiled scornfully.
"That is the lowest view to take. One should be above material
appearance."
"Charming lady!" said Stephen Strong. "Yes, indeed you do not know the
world."
Tamara was not angry. She looked at him and smiled, showing her
beautiful teeth.
"Of course you think me a goose," she said, "but I warned you I was
one. Tell me, shall I ever grow out of it--tell me, you who know?"
"If the teacher is young and handsome enough to make your heart beat,"
said her old companion. And then Millicent and the Prince joined them.
Mrs. Hardcastle's round blue eyes were flashing brightly, and her fresh
face was aglow with exercise and enjoyment.
"Tamara dear, you are too incorrigibly lazy. Why do you sit here
instead of taking exercise? and you have no idea of the interesting
things the Prince has been telling me. All about a Russian poet
called--oh, I can't pronounce the name, but who wrote of a devil--not
exactly Faust, you know, though something like it."
Tamara noticed that amused, whimsical, mocking gleam in the Cossack's
great eyes, but Millicent went gaily on, unconscious of anything but
herself.
"I mean those mythical, strange sort of devils who come to earth, you
know, and--and--make love to ladies--a sort of Satan like in Marie
Corelli's lovely book. You remember, Tamara, the one you were so funny
about, laughing when you read it."
"You mean 'The Demon' of Lermontoff, probably, Millicent, don't you?"
Tamara said. "A friend of my mother's translated it into English, and I
have known it since I was a child. I think it must be very fine in the
original," and she looked at the Prince.
In one moment his face became serious and sympathetic.
"You know our great poet's work, then?" he said, surprised. "One would
not have thought it!"
Then again Tamara's anger rose. There was always the insinuation in his
remarks, seemingly unconscious, and therefore the more irritating, that
she was a commonplace fool.
"Her name--the heroine's--is the same as my own," she said, gravely;
but there was a challenge in her eyes.
"Tamara!" he said. "Well--it could be--a devil might come your way, but
you would kneel and pray, and eat bonbons, and not listen to him."
"It would depend upon the devil," she said.
"Those who live the longest will see the most," and the Prince put back
his head and laughed with real enjoyment at his thoughts, just as he
had done when the two goats had butted at one another in the road.
Tamara felt her cheeks blaze with rage, but she would not enter the
lists, in spite of the late challenge in her eyes.
Mr. Strong had vacated Millicent's chair and taken his own. The party
soon settled into their legitimate places, and Tamara again took up her
book.
"No, don't read," the Prince said. "You get angry at once with me when
we talk, and the red comes into your cheeks, and I like it."
Exasperation was almost uncontrollable in Tamara. She remained silent,
only the little ear next the Prince burned scarlet.
"Some day you will come to Russia," he said, "and then you will learn
many things."
"I have no desire to go there," said Tamara, lying frankly, as it had
always been her great wish, and indeed her godmother, who never forgot
her, had often begged her to visit that northern clime; but Russia!--as
well have suggested the moon at Underwood.
"It would freeze you, perhaps, or burn you--who can tell?" the Prince
said. "One would see when you got there. I have an old lady, a dear
friend, with white hair and a mole on her cheek--someone who sees
straight. She would be good for your education."
Tamara thought it would be wiser not to show any further annoyance, so
she said lightly:
"Yes, I am only sixteen, and have never left the schoolroom; it would
be delightful to be taught how to live."
He turned and smiled at her.
"You hardly look any more--twenty, perhaps, and--never kissed!"
A memory rose up of a scorched neck, and suddenly Tamara's long
eyelashes rested on her cheek.
Then into his splendid eyes came a fierce, savage, passionate gleam,
which she did not see, but dimly felt, and he said in a low voice a
little thick:
"And--as--yet--never really kissed."
"Milly," said Tamara, as calmly as she could, "what time do we get into
Brindisi to-morrow morning? And think of it, on Thursday night we shall
be at home."
Home seemed so very safe!
The Prince did not come in to luncheon, something was the matter with
his Arab horse, and he had gone to see to it just before--a concern on
his face as of the news of illness to his nearest kin.
Tamara was gay and charming, and laughed with Stephen Strong and the
captain in quite an unusual way for her. They both thought her an
adorable woman. Poor Tamara! and so she really was.
About tea-time Prince Milaslávski turned up again.
"He is all right now," he said, sure that his listeners were in perfect
sympathy with him. "It was those fools down there. I have made them
suffer, I can say," and then he turned to Stephen Strong. "Among the
steerage there is an Alexandrian gipsy troupe. I have ordered them up
to sing to us to-night, since Madame wished it," and he turned upon
Millicent an air of deep devotion.
"Common ragged creatures, but one with some ankles and one with a voice.
In any case, we must celebrate these ladies' last night."
And thus the terrible present end to their acquaintance fell about!
Nothing could have been more charming than the Prince was until
dinner-time, and indeed through that meal, only he made Stephen Strong
change places with him, so that he might be next Mrs. Hardcastle, much
to that lady's delight.
"He is really too fascinating," she said, as she came into Tamara's
cabin to fetch her for the evening meal. "I hardly think Henry would
like his devotion to me. What do you think, dear?"
"I am sure he would be awfully jealous, Milly darling; you really must
be careful," Tamara said. And with a conscious air of complacent
pleasantly tickled virtue Mrs. Hardcastle led the way to the saloon.
It was not possible, Tamara thought, that anything so terribly
unpleasant as the Prince's having too much champagne at dinner, could
have accounted for his simply scandalous behavior after; and yet surely
that would have been the kindest thing to say. But, no, it was not
that.
This was, in brief, the scene which was enacted on the upper deck:
With the permission of the captain, the gipsy troupe were brought, and
began their performance, tame enough at the commencement until the
Prince gave orders for them to be supplied with unlimited champagne,
and then the wildest dancing began. They writhed and gesticulated and
undulated in a manner which made Millicent cling on to her chair, grow
crimson in the face, and finally start to her feet.
But the worst happened when the Prince rose and, taking a tambourine,
began, with a weird shriek, to beat it wildly, his eyes ablaze and his
lips apart.
Then, seizing the chief dancer and banging it upon her head, he held
his arm about her heaving breast, as she turned to him with a
serpentine movement of voluptuous delight.
In a second he had caught hold of her, and had lifted and swung her far
out over the dark blue waters, then, with a swirl to the side, held her
suspended in the air above the open deck below.
"Ha, ha!" yelled the troupe, in frenzied pleasure, and, nimble as a
cat, one rough dark man rushed down the ladder and caught the hanging
woman in his arms. Then they all clapped and cheered and shrieked with
joy, while the Prince, putting his hands in his pockets, pulled out
heaps of gold and flung it among them.
"Back to hell, rats!" he shouted, laughing. "See, you have frightened
the ladies. You should all be killed!"
For Tamara and Millicent had risen, and with stately steps had quitted
the scene.
It was all too terrible and too vulgarly melodramatic, Tamara thought,
especially that touching of the woman and that flinging of the gold,
the latter caused by the same barbaric instinct which made him throw
the silver in the Sheikh's village by the moonlit Sphinx, only this was
worse a thousandfold.
The next morning the two ladies left the ship at Brindisi before
either the Prince or Stephen Strong was awake. Both were silent upon
the subject of the night before, until Millicent at last said when they
were in the train:
"Tamara--you won't tell Henry or your family, will you, dear? Because
really, last night he was so fascinating--but that dancing! I am sure
you feel, with me, we could have died of shame."
CHAPTER VI
When Tamara reached Underwood and saw a letter from her Russian
godmother among the pile which awaited her, she felt it was the finger
of fate, and when she read it and found it contained not only New
Year's wishes, but an invitation couched in affectionate and persuasive
terms that she should visit St. Petersburg, she suddenly, and without
consulting her family, decided she would go.
"There is something drawing me to Russia," she said to herself. "One
gets into the current of things. I felt it in the air. And why should I
hesitate now I am free? Why should I not accept, just because one
Russian man has horrified me. It is, I suppose, a big city, and perhaps
I shall never see him there."
So she announced her decision to the dumfounded household, and in less
than a week took the Nord Express.
"The Court, alas! is in mourning,"--her godmother had written,--
"so you will see no splendid Court balls, but I daresay we can divert
you otherwise, Tamara, and I am so anxious to make the acquaintance of
my godchild."
The morning after she left them Aunt Clara expressed herself thus at
breakfast:
"I see a great and most unwelcome change in dear Tamara since she
returned from Egypt, I had hoped Millicent Hardcastle would be all that
was steadying and well-balanced as a companion for her, but it seems
this modern restlessness has got into her blood. I tremble to think
what ideas she will bring from Russia. Almost savages they are there!--
She may be sent to Siberia or something dreadful, and we may never see
her again."
"Oh! come Aunt Clara!" Tom Underdown protested, as he buttered his
toast. "I think you are a little behind the times. There is a Russian
at Oxford with me and he is the decentest chap in the world. You speak
as though they almost lived on raw fish!"
"My dear Tom," said Miss Underdown, severely. "I was reading only
yesterday, in the 'Christian Clarion,' how one of their Emperors cut
off everyone's head. Dreadful customs they have, it seems; and one of
their Empresses--Catherine, I think; her name was. Well, dear, it is
too shocking to speak of--and most people were sent to the mines!"
"Oh! hang it all, Aunt Clara, you can't have looked at the date! You
can hunt up just those jolly kind of stories about our Henry VIII. if
you want to, you know, and our Elizabeth wasn't the saint they made
out. And as for Siberia, I am going there myself some day, on the
Trans-Siberian Railway. Tamara will be all right. I wish to heavens she
had taken me with her. We have got dry rot in this house, that is what
is the matter with us!"
"Tom!" almost gasped Miss Underdown. "Your manners are extremely
displeasing, and the tone of your remarks is far from what one could
wish!"
Meanwhile Tamara was speeding on her way to the North, her interest and
excitement in her journey deepening with each mile.
The snow and the vast forests impressed her from the train windows.
Every smallest shade made its effect upon her brain. Tamara was
sensitive to all form and color. She was a person who apprehended
things, and from the habit of keeping all her observations to herself
perhaps the faculty of perception had grown the keener.
The silence seemed to be the first thing she remarked on reaching the
frontier. The porters were so grave and quiet, with their bearded
kindly faces, many of them like the saints and Biblical characters in
Sunday-school picture books at home.
And finally she arrived at St. Petersburg, and found her godmother
waiting for her on the platform. They recognized each other
immediately. Tamara had several photographs of the Princess Ardácheff.
"Welcome, _ma filleule_," that lady cried, while she shook her hand.
"After all these years I can have you in my house."
They said all sorts of mutually agreeable things on their way thither,
and they looked at each other shyly.
"She is not beautiful," ran the Princess' comments. "Though she has a
superb air of breeding--that is from her poor mother--but her eyes are
her father's eyes. She is very sweet, and what a lovely skin--yes, and
eyelashes--and probably a figure when one can see beneath the furs--
tall and very slender in any case. Yes, I am far from disappointed--
far."
And Tamara thought:
"My godmother is a splendid looking lady! I like her bright brown eyes
and that white hair; and what a queer black mole upon her left cheek,
like an early eighteenth-century beauty spot. Where have I heard lately
of someone with a mole------?
"You fortunately see our city with a fresh mantle of snow, Tamara," the
Princess said, glancing from the automobile window as they sped along.
"It is not, alas! always so white as this."
It appeared wonderful to Tamara--so quite unlike anything she had
imagined. The tiny sleighs seemingly too ridiculously small for the
enormously padded coachman on the boxes--the good horses with their
sweeping tails--the unusual harness. And, above all, again the silence
caused by the snow.
Her first remark was almost a childish one of glee and appreciation,
and then she stopped short. What would her godmother think of such an
outburst! She must return to the contained self-repression of the time
before her visit to the Sphinx--surely in this strange land!
The Princess Ardácheff's frank face was illuminated with a smile.
"She is extremely young," she thought, "in spite of her widowhood, but
I like her, and I know we shall be friends."
Just then they arrived at her house in the Serguiefskaia. It had not
appeared to Tamara that they were approaching any particularly
fashionable quarter. A fine habitation seemed the neighbor of quite a
humble one, and here there was even a shop a few doors down, and except
for the very tall windows there was nothing exceptionally imposing on
the outside. But when they entered the first hall and the gaily-
liveried suisse and two footmen had removed their furs, and the
Princess' snow boots, then Tamara perceived she was indeed in a
glorious home.
Princess Ardácheff's house was, and is, perhaps the most stately in all
Petersburg.
As they ascended the enormous staircase dividing on the first landing,
and reaching the surrounding galleries above in two sweeps, a grave
major-domo and more footmen met them, and opened wide the doors of a
lofty room. It was full of fine pictures and objets d'art, and though
the furniture dated from the time of Alexander II., and even a little
earlier--when a flood of frightful taste pervaded all Europe--still the
stuffs and the colors were beautiful and rich, and time had softened
their crudity into a harmonious whole.
Be the decorations of a house what they will, it is the mistress of it
who gives the rooms their soul. If hers is vulgar, so will the rooms
be, even though Monsieur Nelson himself has but just designed them in
purest Louis XVI. But the worst of all are those which look as though
their owner constantly attended bazaars, and brought the superfluous
horrors she secured there back with her. Then there are vapid rooms,
and anaemic rooms, and fiddly, and messy rooms, and there are monuments
of wealth with no individuality at all.
Tamara felt all these _nuances_ directly, and she knew that here dwelt
a woman of natural refinement and a broad outlook.
She sank into an old-fashioned sofa, covered with silk a quarter of an
inch thick, and the atmosphere seemed to breathe life and completeness.
Tea and quantities of different little _bonnes bouches_ awaited them.
But if there was a samovar she did not recognize it as such; in fact,
she had seen nothing which many writers describe as "Russian."
The Princess talked on in a fashion of perfect simplicity and
directness. She told her that her friends would all welcome her and be
glad that an Englishwoman should really see their country, and find it
was not at all the grotesque place which fancy painted it.
"We are so far away that you do not even imagine us," she said. "You
English have read that there was an Ivan the Terrible and a Peter the
Great, who crushed through your Evelyn's hedges, and was a giant of
seven foot high! Many of you believe wolves prowl in the streets at
night, and that among the highest society Nihilists stalk, disguised as
heaven knows what! While the sudden disappearance of a member of any
great or small family can be accounted for by a nocturnal visit of
police, and a transportation in chains to Siberian mines! Is it not so,
Tamara?"
Tamara laughed. "Yes, indeed," she said. "I am sure that is what Aunt
Clara thinks now! Are we not a ridiculously insular people, Marraine?"
She said the last word timidly and put out her hand. "May I call you
Marraine, Princess?" she asked. "I never knew my mother, and it sounds
nice."
"Indeed, yes!" the Princess said, and she rose and kissed Tamara. "Your
mother was very dear to me, long ago, before you were born, we spent a
wild season together of youth and happiness. You shall take the place
of my child Tamara, if she had lived."
Before they had finished drinking their tea, other guests came in--a
tall old General in a beautiful uniform, and two ladies, one young and
the other old. They all spoke English perfectly, and were so agreeable
and _sans façon_, Tamara's first impression was distinctly good.
Presently she heard the elder lady say to her godmother:
"Have you seen Gritzko since his return, Vera? One hears he has a wild
fit on and is at Milasláv with------" the rest of the words were almost
whispered. Tamara found herself unpleasantly on the alert--how
ridiculous, though, she thought--Gritzko!--there might be a dozen
Gritzkos in Petersburg.
"No, he returns tonight," Princess Ardácheff said; "but I never listen
to these tales, and as no matter what he does we all forgive him, and
let him fly back into our good graces as soon as he purses up that
handsome mouth of his--it is superfluous to make critiques upon his
conduct--it seems to me!"
The lady appeared to agree to this, for she laughed, and they talked of
other things, and soon all left.
And when they were gone--"Tonight I have one or two of my nicest
friends dining," the Princess said, "whom I wish you to know, so I
thought if you rested now you would not be too tired for a little
society," and she carried Tamara off to her warm comfortable bedroom,
an immense apartment in gorgeous Empire taste, and here was a great
bunch of roses to greet her, and her maid could be seen unpacking in
the anti-chamber beyond.
The company, ten or twelve of them, were all assembled when Tamara
reached one of the great salons, which opened from the galleries
surrounding the marble hall. She came in--a slender willowy creature,
with a gentle smile of contrition--was she late?
And then the presentations took place. What struck her first was that
dark or fair, fat-faced or thin, high foreheads or low, all the ladies
wore _coiffées_ exactly the same--the hair brushed up from the forehead
and tightly _ondulés_. It gave a look of universal distinction, but in
some cases was not very becoming. They were beautifully dressed in
mourning, and no one seemed to have much of a complexion, from an
English point of view, but before the end of the evening Tamara felt
she had never met women with such charm. Surely no other country could
produce the same types, perfectly simple in manner--perfectly at ease.
Extremely highly educated, with a wide range of subjects, and a
knowledge of European literature which must be unsurpassed. Afterwards
when she knew them better she realized that here was one place left in
Europe where there were no _parvenues_ and no snobs--or if there were
any, they were beautifully concealed. Such absolute simplicity and
charm can only stay in a society where no one is trying "to arrive,"
all being there naturally by birth. There could be no room for the
_métier_ adopted by several impecunious English ladies of title--that
of foisting anyone, however unsuitable, upon society and their friends
for a well-gilded consideration.
In Russia, at least, it is the round peg in the round hole. No square
peg would have a chance of admission. Thus there are the ease and
elegance of one large and interesting family.
It seemed to Tamara that each one was endowed with natural fascination.
They made no "frais" for her. There were no compliments or gushing
welcomes. They were just casual and delightful and made her feel at
home and happy with them all.
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