Part 8 (1/2)
”You fortunately see our city with a fresh mantle of snow, Tamara,” the Princess said, glancing from the automobile window as they sped along.
”It is not, alas! always so white as this.”
It appeared wonderful to Tamara--so quite unlike anything she had imagined. The tiny sleighs seemingly too ridiculously small for the enormously padded coachman on the boxes--the good horses with their sweeping tails--the unusual harness. And, above all, again the silence caused by the snow.
Her first remark was almost a childish one of glee and appreciation, and then she stopped short. What would her G.o.dmother think of such an outburst! She must return to the contained self-repression of the time before her visit to the Sphinx--surely in this strange land!
The Princess Ardacheff's frank face was illuminated with a smile.
”She is extremely young,” she thought, ”in spite of her widowhood, but I like her, and I know we shall be friends.”
Just then they arrived at her house in the Serguiefskaia. It had not appeared to Tamara that they were approaching any particularly fas.h.i.+onable quarter. A fine habitation seemed the neighbor of quite a humble one, and here there was even a shop a few doors down, and except for the very tall windows there was nothing exceptionally imposing on the outside. But when they entered the first hall and the gaily-liveried suisse and two footmen had removed their furs, and the Princess' snow boots, then Tamara perceived she was indeed in a glorious home.
Princess Ardacheff's house was, and is, perhaps the most stately in all Petersburg.
As they ascended the enormous staircase dividing on the first landing, and reaching the surrounding galleries above in two sweeps, a grave major-domo and more footmen met them, and opened wide the doors of a lofty room. It was full of fine pictures and objets d'art, and though the furniture dated from the time of Alexander II., and even a little earlier--when a flood of frightful taste pervaded all Europe--still the stuffs and the colors were beautiful and rich, and time had softened their crudity into a harmonious whole.
Be the decorations of a house what they will, it is the mistress of it who gives the rooms their soul. If hers is vulgar, so will the rooms be, even though Monsieur Nelson himself has but just designed them in purest Louis XVI. But the worst of all are those which look as though their owner constantly attended bazaars, and brought the superfluous horrors she secured there back with her. Then there are vapid rooms, and anaemic rooms, and fiddly, and messy rooms, and there are monuments of wealth with no individuality at all.
Tamara felt all these _nuances_ directly, and she knew that here dwelt a woman of natural refinement and a broad outlook.
She sank into an old-fas.h.i.+oned sofa, covered with silk a quarter of an inch thick, and the atmosphere seemed to breathe life and completeness.
Tea and quant.i.ties of different little _bonnes bouches_ awaited them.
But if there was a samovar she did not recognize it as such; in fact, she had seen nothing which many writers describe as ”Russian.”
The Princess talked on in a fas.h.i.+on of perfect simplicity and directness. She told her that her friends would all welcome her and be glad that an Englishwoman should really see their country, and find it was not at all the grotesque place which fancy painted it.
”We are so far away that you do not even imagine us,” she said. ”You English have read that there was an Ivan the Terrible and a Peter the Great, who crushed through your Evelyn's hedges, and was a giant of seven foot high! Many of you believe wolves prowl in the streets at night, and that among the highest society Nihilists stalk, disguised as heaven knows what! While the sudden disappearance of a member of any great or small family can be accounted for by a nocturnal visit of police, and a transportation in chains to Siberian mines! Is it not so, Tamara?”
Tamara laughed. ”Yes, indeed,” she said. ”I am sure that is what Aunt Clara thinks now! Are we not a ridiculously insular people, Marraine?”
She said the last word timidly and put out her hand. ”May I call you Marraine, Princess?” she asked. ”I never knew my mother, and it sounds nice.”
”Indeed, yes!” the Princess said, and she rose and kissed Tamara. ”Your mother was very dear to me, long ago, before you were born, we spent a wild season together of youth and happiness. You shall take the place of my child Tamara, if she had lived.”
Before they had finished drinking their tea, other guests came in--a tall old General in a beautiful uniform, and two ladies, one young and the other old. They all spoke English perfectly, and were so agreeable and _sans facon_, Tamara's first impression was distinctly good.
Presently she heard the elder lady say to her G.o.dmother:
”Have you seen Gritzko since his return, Vera? One hears he has a wild fit on and is at Milaslav with------” the rest of the words were almost whispered. Tamara found herself unpleasantly on the alert--how ridiculous, though, she thought--Gritzko!--there might be a dozen Gritzkos in Petersburg.
”No, he returns tonight,” Princess Ardacheff said; ”but I never listen to these tales, and as no matter what he does we all forgive him, and let him fly back into our good graces as soon as he purses up that handsome mouth of his--it is superfluous to make critiques upon his conduct--it seems to me!”
The lady appeared to agree to this, for she laughed, and they talked of other things, and soon all left.
And when they were gone--”Tonight I have one or two of my nicest friends dining,” the Princess said, ”whom I wish you to know, so I thought if you rested now you would not be too tired for a little society,” and she carried Tamara off to her warm comfortable bedroom, an immense apartment in gorgeous Empire taste, and here was a great bunch of roses to greet her, and her maid could be seen unpacking in the anti-chamber beyond.
The company, ten or twelve of them, were all a.s.sembled when Tamara reached one of the great salons, which opened from the galleries surrounding the marble hall. She came in--a slender willowy creature, with a gentle smile of contrition--was she late?
And then the presentations took place. What struck her first was that dark or fair, fat-faced or thin, high foreheads or low, all the ladies wore _coiffees_ exactly the same--the hair brushed up from the forehead and tightly _ondules_. It gave a look of universal distinction, but in some cases was not very becoming. They were beautifully dressed in mourning, and no one seemed to have much of a complexion, from an English point of view, but before the end of the evening Tamara felt she had never met women with such charm. Surely no other country could produce the same types, perfectly simple in manner--perfectly at ease.