His Hour Part 5

As for his eyes, they were enormous, with broad full lids, mystical, pa.s.sionate, and yet unconcerned. Always they suggested something Eastern, though on the whole he was fair. Tamara's own soft brown hair was only a shade lighter than his.

She was not sure yet, but now thought his eyes were gray.

She could have asked him a number of questions she wanted answered, but she refrained. He suddenly turned and looked at her full in the face.

He had been gazing fixedly at the sea, and these movements of quickness were disconcerting, especially as Tamara found herself caught in the act of studying his features.

"What on earth made you go to the Sphinx?" he asked.

Anger rose in Tamara; the inference was not flattering, in his speech, or the tone in which he uttered it.

"To count the number of stones the creature is made of, of course," she said. "Those technical things are what one would go for at that time of night."

And now her companion rippled with laughter, infectious, joyous laughter.

"Ah, you are not so stupid as I thought!" he said, frankly. "You looked poetic and fine with that gauze scarf around your head sitting there--and then afterwards. Wheugh! It was like a pretty wax doll. I regretted having wasted the village on you. All that is full of meaning for me."

Tamara was interested in spite of her will to remain reserved, although she resented the wax-doll part.

"Yes?"--he faltered.

"You can learn all the lessons you want in life from the Sphinx," he went on. "What paltry atoms you and I are, and how little we matter to anyone but ourselves! She is cruel, too, and does not hesitate to tear one in pieces if she wishes and she could make one ready to get drunk on blood."

Tamara rounded her sweet eyes.

"Then the village there, full of men with the pa.s.sions of animals, living from father to son forever the same, wailing for a death, rejoicing at a birth, taking strong physical pleasure in their marriage rights and their women, and beating them when they are tired; but you are too civilized in your country to understand any of these things."

Tamara was stirred; she felt she ought to be shocked.

Contrary to her determination, she asked a question:

"Then you are not civilized in yours?"

"Not nearly so badly," he said. "The primitive forces of life still give us emotions, when we are not wild; when we are then it is the jolliest h.e.l.l."

Tamara was almost repulsed. How could one be so odd as this man? she thought. Was he a type, or was he mad, or just only most annoyingly attractive and different from any one else? She found herself thrilled.

Then with a subtle change he turned and almost tenderly wrapped the rug, which had blown a little down, more securely round her.

"You have such a small white face," he said, the words a caress. "One must see that you are warm and the naughty winds do not blow you away."

Tamara s.h.i.+vered; she could not have told why.

After this the conversation became general.

Millicent joined in with her obvious remarks. The sea was much smoother; they would be able to eat some dinner; she had heard there was a gipsy troupe on board in the third-cla.s.s, and how nice it would be to have some music!

And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince a.s.sisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness, while his grave face betrayed him not even by a twinkle in the eye. Only when he caught hers; then he laughed a sudden short laugh, and he whispered:

"What a perfect woman! everything in the right place. Heaven! at the best times she would do her knitting, and hand one a child every year!

I'll marry when I can find a wife like that!"

Tamara was furious. She resented his ridicule of Millicent, and she was horrified at the whole speech; so, gathering her rug together, she said she was cold, and asked Mr. Strong to pace the deck with her. Nor would she take the faintest further notice of the Prince, until they all went below to the evening meal.

At dinner he seemed to be practically a stranger again. He was Tamara's neighbor, but he risked no startling speeches; in fact, he hardly spoke to her, contenting himself with discussing seafaring matters with the captain, and an occasional remark to Stephen Strong, who sat beyond Mrs. Hardcastle. It was unnecessary for her to have decided beforehand to snub him; he did not give her the chance.

CHAPTER V

On Monday they heard they would arrive at Brindisi on the Tuesday morning, and Tamara persuaded Mrs. Hardcastle to agree to disembarking there instead of going on to Trieste.

"We shall be home all the sooner," she said. And so it was settled. But there was still all Monday to be got through.

It was a perfect day, the blue Mediterranean was not belying its name.

Tamara felt in great spirits, as she came on deck at about eleven o'clock, to find Millicent taking a vigorous walk round and round with the Russian Prince. They seemed to be laughing and chattering like old friends. Again Tamara resented it.

"He is only making fun of poor Millie," she thought, "who never sees a thing," and she settled herself in her chair and let her eyes feast on the blue sea----

What should she do with her life? This taste of change and foreign skies had unsettled her. How could she return to Underwood and the humdrum everyday existence there? She seemed to see it mapped out on a plain as one who stood on a mountain. She seemed to realize that always there had been dormant in her some difference from the others. She remembered now how often she perceived things that none of them saw, and she knew it was because of this that it had grown into a habit with her from early childhood to suppress the expression of her thoughts, and keep them to herself--until outwardly, at all events, she was of the same stolid mould as her family. The dears! they could not help it.

But about one point she was determined. She would think and act for herself in future. Aunt Clara's frown should not prohibit any book or any action. The world should teach her what it could.

Tamara had received a solid education; now she would profit by it, and instead of letting all her knowledge lie like a bulb in a root-house, she would plant it and tend it, and would hope to see sweet flowers springing forth.

"Next summer I shall be twenty-five years old," she said to herself, "and the whole thing has been a waste."

Each time the energetic promenaders pa.s.sed her chair she heard a few words of their conversation, on hunting often, and the dogs, and the children, Bertie's cleverness, and Muriel's chickenpox, but always the Prince seemed interested and polite.

Presently the old man, Stephen Strong, came up and took Mrs.

Hardcastle's chair.

"May I disturb your meditations?" he said. "You look so wise."

"No, I am foolish," Tamara answered. "Now you who know the world must come and talk and teach me its meaning."

He was rather a wonderful old man, Stephen Strong, purely English to look at, and purely cosmopolitan in habits and life. He had been in the diplomatic service years ago, and had been in Egypt in the gorgeous Ismail time; then a fortune came his way, and he traveled the earth over. There were years spent in Vienna and Petersburg and Paris, and always the early winter back in the land of the Sphinx.

"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 pa.s.sed again.

"There is a type for you to study," Stephen Strong said. "Prince Milaslavski. 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?"