His Hour Part 17

And there sitting by Olga Gleboff, already perfectly at home, was Lord Courtray; and further down the Princess Ardacheff sat by Stephen Strong.

"Gritzko--we could not wait!" Countess Olga said.

Then both the Englishmen got up and greeted Tamara.

"Fancy seeing you here, Tamara! What a bit of luck!" Jack Courtray said.

CHAPTER XI

Jack Courtray was a thoroughly good all-around sportsman, and had an immense success with women as a rule. His methods were primitive and direct. When not hunting or shooting, he went straight to the point with a beautiful simplicity unhampered by sentiment, and then when wearied with one woman, moved on to the next.

He was a tremendously good fellow every man said. Just a natural animal creature, whom grooming and polishing in the family for some hundred or so of years had made into a gentleman.

He was as ignorant as he could well be. To him the geography of the world meant different places for sport. India represented tigers and elephants. It had no towns or histories that mattered, it had jungles and forests. Africa said lions. Austria, chamois--and Russia, bears!

Women were either sisters, or old friends and jolly comrades--like Tamara. Or they came under the category of sport. A lesser sport, to be indulged in when the rarer beasts were not obtainable for his gun--but still sport!

He found himself in a delightful milieu. The prospect of certain bears in the near future--a dear old friend to frolic with in the immediate present, and the problematic joys of a possible affair to be indulged in meanwhile. No wonder he was in the best of spirits, and when Tamara, without _arriere pensee_, took the empty place at his side, he bent over her and filled her plate with the thinnest ham he had been able to cut, with all the apparent air of a devoted lover. And if she had looked up she would have seen that the Prince suddenly had begun to watch her with a fierceness in his eyes.

"This is a jolly place," Jack Courtray said. He had just the faintest lisp, which sounded rather attractive, and Tamara, after the storms and emotions of the past few days, found a distinct pleasure and rest in his obviousness.

It is an ill wind which blows no one any good, for presently the Prince turned and devoted himself to Tatiane Shebanoff.

She was quite the prettiest of all this little clique, pet.i.te and fair and sweet. Divorced from a brute of a husband a year or so ago, and now married to an elderly Prince.

And she loved Gritzko with pa.s.sion, and while she was silent about it, her many friends told him so.

For his part he remained unconcerned, and sometimes troubled himself about her, and sometimes not.

And so the evening wore on, and apparently it had no distinct sign that it was to be one of the finger-posts of fate.

When all had finished supper, they moved back into another great room.

"You must notice this, Tamara, it is very Russian," her G.o.dmother said.

It was an immense apartment with a great porcelain stove at one corner, and panelled with wood, and it suggested to Tamara, for no sane reason, something of an orthodox church! One end was bare, and the other carpeted with great Persian rugs, had huge divans spread about; there was an electric piano and an organ, and there were also crossed foils, and masks, and everything for a fencing bout.

The Prince went to the piano and started a valse. Then he came up to Tamara and asked her to dance.

There was no trace left of his respectful friendliness! His sleepy eyes were blazing, he had never looked more oriental, or more savage, or more intense.

It was almost with a thrill of fear that Tamara yielded herself to his request. He clasped her so tightly she could hardly breathe, all she knew was she seemed to be floating in the air, and to be crushed against his breast.

"Prince, please, I am suffocating!" she cried at last.

Then he swung her off her feet, and stopped by an armchair, and Tamara subsided into it, panting, not able to speak. And all across her milk-white chest there were a row of red marks from the heavy silver cartridges, which cross in two rows in the Cossack dress.

"I would like those brands of me to last forever," the Prince said.

Tamara lay back in the chair a prey to tumultuous emotions. She ought to be disgusted she supposed, and of course she was--such an uncivilized horrible thought! but at the same time every nerve was tingling and her pulse was beating with the strange thrills she had only lately begun to dream of.

"Tamara! By jove! What have you done to your neck?" Jack Courtray said, as he came up.

And Tamara was glad she had a gauze scarf over her arm, which she wrapped around carelessly as she said:

"Nothing, Jack--let's dance!"

"What an awfully decent chap our host is, isn't he!" Lord Courtray said, as they ambled along in their valse. "And jolly good-looking too--for a foreigner. These Russians are men after my own heart!"

"Yes, he is good-looking," admitted Tamara. "If he weren't so wild; but don't you think he has a frightfully savage expression, Jack?"

"If you are intending to play with him, old girl, take my advice, you had better look out," and he laughed his merry laugh as they stopped because the piano stopped.

Meanwhile the Prince had left the room.

"Gritzko has gone to telephone for a Tzigane band," Princess Sonia said. "And to the club and to the reception at Madame Sueboffs, and soon we shall have enough people for a contre-danse--and some real fun."

That it was almost three o'clock in the morning never seemed to have struck anyone!

"Now, tell me everything, Tamara," Lord Courtray said, as they sat down on one of the big divans. "Give me a few wrinkles. I can see one wants to comprehend these tent ropes."

"Well, first they are the nicest people you could possibly meet, Jack,"

Tamara said. "And don't imagine because they skylark like this, and sit up all night, that they aren't most dignified when they have to be.

That is their charm, this sense of the fitness of things. They have not got to have any pretence like some of us have. Not one of them has a sc.r.a.p of pose. They are nice to you because they like you, or they leave you entirely alone if they do not. And some days when they are all together they will whisper and t.i.tter and have jokes among themselves, leaving you completely out in the cold--what would really be fearful ill-manners with us, but it is not in the least, it is just they have forgotten you are there, and as likely as not you will be the center of the whispering in the next minute. They are all like volcanoes with the most beautiful Faberger enamel on the top."

"And the men? I suppose they make awful love?"

"I don't think so," went on Tamara, while she stupidly blushed. "They all seem to be just merry friends, and the young ones don't go out very much. I don't mean the quite, quite young who dance with girls, but the young men. My G.o.dmother says they are very hard worked, and in their leisure they like to have dinners in their regiments--or at restaurants--with, with other sort of ladies, where they can do what they please. It seems a little elementary--don't you think so?"

"Jolly common-sense!" said Jack Courtray.

"And then, you see, if by chance, when they are in the world, if they do fall in love, it is possible for the lady to get a divorce here without any scandal and fuss, and the whole clan stick to their own member, no matter how much in the wrong she may be, and so all is arranged, and life seems much simpler and apparently happier than it is with us. If it is really so I cannot say, I have not been here long enough to judge."

"It sounds a kind of Utopia," and Lord Courtray laughed. And just then the Prince came into the room again, and over to them and they got up and the two men went off together to examine the foils.

Presently the band arrived and more guests, and soon the contre-danse was begun. That grown-up people could seriously take pleasure in this amazing romp was a new and delightful idea to Tamara.

It was a sort of enormous quadrille with numerous figures and farandole, while one sat on a chair between the figures, as at a cotillon. And toward the end the company stamped and cried, and the band sang, and nothing could have been more gay and exciting and wild.

Before they began, the Prince came up to Tamara and said:

"I want you to dance this with me. I have had it on purpose to show you a real Russian sight."

They had moved into the ballroom by then, which was now a blaze of light, while as if by magic the sheet coverings had been removed from the chairs.