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His Hour

Page 40

"Has he no family?" Tamara asked.

"No, everyone is dead. His mother worshipped 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

Milasláv, 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 godmother

said. "She had the soul and the necessities of a man, but she was truly

great."

Tamara gazed up at the proud débonnaire 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.

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