His Hour Part 9

"No?" said Tamara. "Well, the women seem to make up for it. I have never met so many clever delightful ones."

"It is our education," the Princess said. "You see from babyhood we learn many languages, and thus the literatures of countries are open to us before we begin to a.n.a.lyze anything, and English especially we know well, because in that language there are so many books for young girls."

"In England," said Tamara, "what may be given to young girls seems to rule everything, no one is allowed a thought for herself, every idea almost is brought down to that dead level--one rebels after a while--but tell me, Marraine, if I may ask, what makes them all so tired and gray looking, the people I have seen tonight I mean. Do they sit up very late at parties, or what is it?"

"In the season, yes, but it is not that, it is our climate and our hot closed-up rooms, and the impossibility of taking proper exercise. In the summer you will not know them for the same faces."

And then she kissed her G.o.ddaughter good-night, but just at the door she paused. "You were not shocked about the Alexandrian dancers, I hope, child?" she said. "If one knew the truth, they were poor people who were starving, probably, and Gritzko paid them money and helped them out of the kindness of his heart--those are the sort of things he generally does I find when I investigate, so I never pay attention to what he says."

Tamara, left to herself, gazed into the glowing embers of her wood fire.

"I wonder--I wonder," she said. But what she wondered she hardly dared admit--even to herself.

CHAPTER VII

The next day was the last of the Russian old year--the 13th of January new style--and when Tamara appeared about ten o'clock in her G.o.dmother's own sitting-room, a charming apartment full of the most interesting miniatures and bibelots collected by the great Ardacheff, friend of Catherine II., she found the Princess already busy at her writing table.

"Good-morning, my child," she said. "You behold me up and working at a time when most of my countrywomen are not yet in their baths. We keep late hours here in the winter, while it is dark and cold. You will get quite accustomed to going to bed at two and rising at ten; but to-night, if it pleases you to fall in with what is on the tapis for you, I fear it will be even four in the morning before you sleep.

Prince Milaslavski has telephoned that he gives a party at his house on the Fontonka, to dine first and then go on to a cafe to hear the Bohemians sing. It is a peculiarity of the place these Bohemians--we shall drink in the New Year and then go. It will not bore you. No? Then it is decided," and she pressed a lovely little Faberger enamel bell which lay on the table near, and one of the innumerable servants, who seemed to be always waiting in the galleries, appeared. She spoke to him in Russian, and then took up the telephone by her side, and presently was in communication with the person she had called.

"It is thou, Gritzko? Awake? Of course she is awake, and here in the room. Yes, it is arranged--we dine--not until nine o'clock?--you cannot be in before. Bon. Now promise you will be good.--Indeed, yes.--Of course any English lady would be shocked at you--So!--I tell you she is in the room--pray be more discreet," and she smiled at Tamara, and then continued her conversation. "No, I will not talk in Russian, it is very rude.--If you are not completely _sage_ at dinner we shall not go on.--I am serious! Well, good-bye,"--and with a laugh the Princess put the receiver down.

"He says nothing would shock you--he is sure you understand the world!

Well, we must amuse ourselves, and try and restrain him if he grows too wild."

"He is often wild, then?" Tamara said.

The Princess rose and stood by the window looking out on the thickly falling snow.

"I am afraid--a little--yes, though never in the wrong situation; above all things Gritzko is a gentleman; but sometimes I wish he would take life less as a game. One cannot help speculating how it can end."

"Has he no family?" Tamara asked.

"No, everyone is dead. His mother wors.h.i.+pped him, but she died when he was scarcely eighteen, and his father before that. His mother is his adored memory. In all the mad scenes which he and his companions, I am afraid, have enacted in the Fontonka house, there is one set of rooms no one has dared to enter--her rooms--and he keeps flowers there, and an ever-burning lamp. There is a strange touch of sentiment and melancholy in Gritzko, and of religion too. Sometimes I think he is unhappy, and then he goes off to his castle in the Caucasus or to Milaslav, and no one sees him for weeks. Last year we hoped he would marry a charming Polish girl--he quite paid her attention for several nights; but he said she laughed one day when he felt sad, and answered seriously when he was gay, and made crunching noises with her teeth when she eat biscuits!--and her mother was fat and she might grow so too! And for these serious reasons he could not face her at breakfast for the rest of his life! Thus that came to an end. No one has any influence upon him. I have given up trying. One must accept him as he is, or leave him alone--he will go his own way."

Tamara had ceased fighting with herself about the interest she took in conversations relating to the Prince. She could not restrain her desire to hear of him, but she explained it now by telling herself he was a rather lurid and unusual foreign character, which must naturally be an interesting study for a stranger.

"It was an escape for the girl at least, perhaps," she said, when the Princess paused.

"Of that I am not sure; he is so tender to children and animals, and his soul is full of generosity and poetry--and justice too. Poor Gritzko," and the Princess sighed.

Then Tamara remembered their conversation during their night ride from the Sphinx, and she felt again the humiliating certainty of how commonplace he must have found her.

Presently the Princess took her to see the house. Every room filled with relics of the grand owners who had gone before. There were portraits of Peter the Great, and the splendid Catherine, in almost every room.

"An Empress so much misjudged in your country, Tamara," her G.o.dmother said. "She had the soul and the necessities of a man, but she was truly great."

Tamara gazed up at the proud _debonnaire_ face, and she thought how at home they would think of the most unconventional part of her character, to the obliteration of all other aspects, and each moment she was realizing how ridiculous and narrow was the view from the standpoint from which she had been made to look at life.

For luncheon quite a number of guests arrived, the Princess, she found afterward, was hardly ever alone.

"I don't care to go out, Tamara, as a rule, to dejeuner," she said, "but I love my house to be filled with young people and mirth."

The names were very difficult for Tamara to catch, especially as they all called each other by their _pet.i.ts noms_--all having been friends since babyhood, if not, as often was the case, related by ties of blood; but at last she began to know that "Olga" was the Countess Gleboff, and "Sonia," the Princess Solentzeff-Zasiekin--both young, under thirty, and both attractive and quite _sans gene_.

"Olga" was little and plump, with an oval face and rather prominent eyes, but with a way of saying things which enchanted Tamara's ear. Her manner was casualness itself, and had a wonderful charm; and another thing struck her now that she saw them in daylight, not a single woman present--and there were six or seven at least--had even the slightest powder on her face. They were as nature made them, not the faintest aid from art in any way. "They cannot be at all coquette like the French,"

she thought, "or even like us in England, or they could not all do their hair like that whether it suits them or no! But what charm they have--much more than we, or the French, or any one I know."

They were all so amusing and gay at lunch and talked of teeny scandals with a whimsical humor at themselves for being so small, which was delightful, and no one said anything spiteful or mean. Quant.i.ties of pleasant things were planned, and Tamara found her days arranged for a week ahead.

That night, as they drove to Prince Milaslavski's dinner, an annoying sense of excitement possessed Tamara. She refused to ask herself why.

Curiosity to see the house of this strange man--most likely--in any case, emotion enough to make her eyes bright.

It was one of the oldest houses in Petersburg, built in the time of Catherine, about 1768, and although in a highly florid rococo style of decoration, as though something gorgeous and barbaric had amalgamated with the Louis XV., still it had escaped the terrible wave of 1850 vandalism, and stood, except for a few Empire rooms, a monument of its time.

Everything about it interested Tamara. The strange Cossack servants in the hall; the splendid staircase of stone and marble, and then finally they reached the salons above.

"One can see no woman lives here," she thought, though the one they entered was comfortable enough. Huge English leather armchairs elbowed some ma.s.sively gilt seats of the time of Nicholas I., and an ugly English high fender with its padded seat, surrounded the blazing log fire.

The guests were all a.s.sembled, but host, there was not!

"What an impertinence to keep them waiting like this," Tamara thought!

However, no one seemed to mind but herself, and they all stood laughing or sitting on the fender in the best of spirits.

"I will bet you," said Olga Gleboff, in her attractive voice, "that Gritzko comes in with no apology, and that we shall none of us be able to drag from him where he has been!"

As she spoke he entered the room.

"Ah! you are all very early," he said, shaking their hands in frank welcome. "So good of you, dear friends. Perhaps I am a little late, you will forgive me, I know; and now for Zacouska, a wolf is tearing at my vitals, I feel, and yours too. It is nine o'clock!"

Then the dining-room doors at the side opened and they all went in _en bande_, and gathered round the high table, where they began to eat like hungry natural people, selecting the dishes they wanted. Some of the men taking immense spoonfuls of caviare, and spreading them on bread, like children with jam. All were so joyous and so perfectly without ceremony. Nothing could be more agreeable than this society, Tamara thought.

Some of the men were elderly, and a number the husbands of the various ladies; there were a few young officers and several diplomats from the Emba.s.sies, too. But young or old, all were gay and ready to enjoy life.

"You must taste some vodka, Madame," Prince Milaslavski said, pouring a small gla.s.s at Tamara's side. "You will not like it, but it is Russian, and you must learn. See I take some, too, and drink your health!"

Tamara bowed and sipped the stuff, which she found very nasty, with a whiff of ether in it. And then they all trouped to the large table in this huge dining-hall.

Tamara sat on her host's right hand, and Princess Sonia on his left.

To-night his coat was brown and the underdress black, it was quite as becoming as the others she had seen him in, with the strange belt and gold and silver tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and the Eastern hang of it all, and his great dark gray-blue eyes blazed at Tamara now and then with a challenge in them she could hardly withstand.

"Now tell us, Gritzko, what did you do in Egypt this year?" Princess Sonia said. "It is the first time that no histories of your ways have come to our ears--were you ill?--or bored? We feared you were dead."

"On the contrary, I was greatly alive," he answered gravely. "I was studying mummies and falling in love with the Sphinx. And just at the end I had a most interesting kind of experience; I came upon what looked like a woman, but turned out to be a mummy and later froze into a block of ice!"