His Hour. Glyn Elinor

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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

       Table of Contents

      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 passed 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 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," Stephen 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 СКАЧАТЬ