His Hour.
by Elinor Glyn.
"His Hour" is called in England and Russia "When the Hour Came."
With grateful homage and devotion I dedicate this book to
Her Imperial Highness The Grand d.u.c.h.ess Vladimir Of Russia
In memory of the happy evenings spent in her gracious presence when reading to her these pages, which her sympathetic aid, in facilitating my opportunities for studying the Russian character, enabled me to write. Her kind appreciation of the finished work is a source of the deepest gratification to me.
Elinor Glyn
St. Petersburg, May, 1910
CHAPTER I
The Sphinx was smiling its eternal smile. It was two o"clock in the morning. The tourists had returned to Cairo, and only an Arab or two lingered near the boy who held Tamara"s camel, and then gradually slunk away; thus, but for Hafis, she was alone--alone with her thoughts and the Sphinx.
The strange, mystical face looked straight at her from the elevation where she sat. Its sensual mocking calm penetrated her brain. The creature seemed to be laughing at all humanity--and saying--"There is no beyond--live and enjoy the things of the present--Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die, and I--I who sit here and know, tell you there is no beyond. The things you can touch and hold to your bodies are the only ones worth grasping."
"No, no!" said Tamara, half aloud, "I will not--I will not believe it."
"Fool," said the Sphinx. "What is your soul? And if you have one, what have you done with it hitherto? Are you any light in the world?--No, you have lived upon the orders of others, you have let your individuality be crushed these twenty-four years--since the day you could speak. Just an echo it is--that fine thing, your soul! Show it then, if you have one! Do you possess an opinion? Not a bit of it. You simply announce plat.i.tudes that you have been taught were the right answers to all questions! Believe me, you have no soul. So take what you can--a body! You certainly have that, one can see it--well, s.n.a.t.c.h what it can bring you, since you have not enough will to try for higher things. Grasp what you may, poor weakling. That is the wisdom sitting here for eternity has taught me."
Tamara stirred her hands in protest--but she knew the indictment was true. Yes, her life had been one long commonplace vista of following leads--like a sheep.
But was it too late to change? Had she the courage? Dared she think for herself? If not, the mystic message of the Sphinx"s smile were better followed: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die."
The blue of the sky seemed to soothe her, and speak of hope. Could any other country produce a sky of so deep a sapphire as the night sky of Egypt? All around was intense sensuous warmth and stillness almost as light as day.
How wise she had been to break through the conventionality which surrounded her--and it had required some nerve--so as to be able to come here alone, on this one of her last nights in Egypt.
She half smiled when she thought of Millicent Hardcastle"s face when she had first suggested it.
"My dear Tamara, what--what an extraordinary thing for a woman to do!
Go to the Sphinx all alone at two o"clock in the morning. Would not people think it very strange?"
Tamara felt a qualm for a second, but was rebellious.
"Well, perhaps--but do you know, Millicent, I believe I don"t care.
That carven block of stone has had a curious effect upon me. It has made me think as I have never done before. I want to take the clearest picture away with me--I must go."
And even Mrs. Hardcastle"s mild a.s.sertion that it could equally well be viewed and studied at a more reasonable hour did not move Tamara, and while her friend slumbered comfortably in her bed at Mena House, she had set off, a self-conscious feeling of a truant schoolboy exalting and yet frightening her.
Tamara was a widow. James Loraine had been everything that a thoroughly respectable English husband ought to be. He had treated her with kindness, he had given her a comfortable home--he had only asked her to spend ten months of the year in the country, and he had never caused her a moment"s jealousy.
She could not remember her heart having beaten an atom faster--or slower--for his coming or going. She had loved him, and her sisters and brother, and father, all in the same devoted way, and when pneumonia had carried him off nearly two years before, she had grieved with the measure the loss of any one of them would have caused her--that was sincerely and tenderly.
They were such a nice family, Tamara"s!
For hundreds of years they had lived on the same land, doing their duty to their neighbors and helping to form that backbone of England of which we hear so much nowadays, in its pa.s.sing away.
They had been members of Parliament, of solid Whig, and later of Unionist, views. They had been staunch Generals, Chairmen of Quarter-Sessions, riders to hounds, subscribers to charities, rigid church-goers, disciplined, orthodox, worthy members of society.
Underdown was their name, and Underwood their home.
That Tamara should have been given that Russian appellation, in a group of Gladys, Mabels and Dorothys, must have surely indicated that fate meant her to follow a line not quite so mapped out as that of her sisters". The very manner of her entry into the world was not in accordance with the Underdown plan.
Her mother, Lady Gertrude Underdown, had contracted a friendship with the wife of the First Secretary of the Russian Emba.s.sy.
Foreigners were not looked upon with favor in the home circle, and instead of staying only the two months of May and June, as she was fully ent.i.tled to, in London, she had insisted upon remaining for July as well that year--to be near her friend Vera and enjoy the gay world.
The Squire had grumbled, but acquiesced, though when afterward a fourth daughter was presented to him with a request that she might have Princess Vera for a G.o.dmother and a Russian name to be called by, he felt himself justified in carping at fate.
"Foreign fandangoes," he designated such ideas. However, Lady Gertrude was very ill, and had to be humored, so the affair took place, and Tamara the baby was christened, with due state.
There were no more Russian suggestions in the family; the son and heir who arrived a year later became plain Tom, and then Lady Gertrude Underdown made her bow to the world and retired to the family vault in Underwood Church.
They were all estimably brought up by an aunt, and hardly ever left the country until each one came up in turn to be presented at Court, and go through a fairly dull season among country neighbors on the same bent.
Two of them, including Tamara, had secured suitable husbands, and at the age of twenty-three years the latter had been left a well-dowered widow.
She had worn mourning for just the right period, had looked after her affairs--handed James" place over with a good grace to James" brother and an unliked sister-in-law, and finally, when she was wearing grays and mauves, two years almost after her loss, she had allowed herself to be persuaded into taking a trip to Egypt with her friend, Millicent Hardcastle, who was recovering from influenza.
It had caused the greatest flutter at Underwood, this journey abroad!
None of them had been further than Dresden, where each girl had learned German for a year or so before her presentation.
And what had Egypt done for Tamara? Lifted just one pretty white eyelid, perhaps. Stirred something which only once or twice in her life she had been dimly conscious of. Everything had been a kind of shock to her. A shock of an agreeable description. And once driving at night in the orange groves of Ghezireh, after some open-air fete, the heavy scent and intoxicating atmosphere had made her blood tingle. She felt it was almost wrong that things should so appeal to her senses.
Anything which appealed deliberately to the senses had always been considered as more than almost wrong at Underwood Chase.
The senses were improper things which Aunt Clara for her part never quite understood why the Almighty should have had the bad taste to permit in human beings.
But the Sphinx was again talking to Tamara--only this time in the voice of a young man--who without a word of warning had risen from a bank of sand where he had been stretched motionless and unperceived.
"A fine G.o.ddess, is she not, Madame," he said. And to add to the impertinence of a stranger"s addressing her at all, Tamara was further incensed by the voice being that of a foreigner!
But it was an extraordinarily pleasant voice, deep and tuneful, and the "_Insolent_" stood over six feet high and was as slender as Tamara herself almost--in spite of his shoulders and air of strength.
She hardly knew what to answer, he had spoken with such ease and a.s.surance, almost with the tone of one who hails a fellow worshiper and has a right to exchange sympathy.
Tamara had been startled, too, by the sudden rising of the man when she thought she was alone, but at last she answered slowly, "Yes."