And Tamara went on to her own, trembling with excitement.
This was passion truly, but what if some love lurked underneath?--and
when she reached her great white bed she fell upon her knees, and
burying her face in her hands she prayed to God.
* * * * * Now of what use to write of the days that followed--the stiff
restrained days--or of the arrival of Tom Underdown and his sister, and
Millicent Hardcastle--or of the splendid Russian ceremonies in the
church or the quieter ones at the Embassy. All that it concerns us to
know is that Gritzko and Tamara were at last alone on this their
wedding night. Alone with all their future before them. Both their
faces had been grave and solemn through all the vows and prayers, but
afterward his had shone with a wild triumph. And as they had driven to
his house on the Fontonka he had held Tamara's hand but had not spoken.
It was a strange eventful moment when he led her up the great stairs
between the rows of bowing servants--up into the salons all decorated
with flowers. Then, still never speaking, he opened the ballroom doors,
and when they had walked its great length and came to the rooms
beyond, he merely said: "These you must have done by that man in Paris--or how you please," as
though the matter were aloof, and did not interest him. And then
instead of turning into his own sitting-room, he opened a door on the
right, which Tamara did not know, and they entered what had been his
mother's bedroom. It was warmed and lit, but it wore that strange air
of gloom and melancholy which untenanted rooms, consecrated to the
memory of the dead, always have, in spite of blue satin and bright
gilding.
"Tamara," he said, and he took her hand, "these were my mother's rooms.
I loved her very much, and I always thought I would never let any
woman--even my wife--enter them. I have left them just as she used them
last. But now I know that is not what she would have wished."
His deep voice trembled a little with a note of feeling in it which was
new, and which touched Tamara's innermost being.
"I want you to see them now with me, and then while we are in the South
all these things shall be taken away, and they shall be left bare and
white for you to arrange them when we come back, just as you would
like. I want my mother's blessing to rest on us--which it will do--"