THE DIVORCE.
Money being in Russia, as elsewhere, a powerful aid, and Pierre Olsdorf
not sparing it, matters moved forward with great speed. In less than a
month the Holy Synod had closed its inquiry, and one morning the prince
received intimation of the judgment pronounced in favor of his wife and
condemning him to two months' claustral retirement in a convent at
Moscow. The judgment, however, left the children of the marriage under
his care.
We know, as well, that according to the Russian law celibacy is a
consequence of divorce in the case of the guilty husband or wife. Pierre
Olsdorf, therefore, might not marry again without the authority of the
czar; and it was his duty to go at once to St. Petersburg, and submit to
the will of the Holy Synod.
That evening he told Vera that at last he was free, and a smile of
ineffable joy played about her lips; but when he added that they must go
back to Russia, the poor child's happiness changed to despair. In St.
Petersburg or at Pampeln she would not live with Pierre, who was now all
in all to her, though her tenderness was and had been chaste.
This man, young, healthy, full of ardor, such as he had never felt
before, had had the courage not to possess himself of this young maiden
who awaited only the moment to yield herself to him. He loved and knew
himself beloved; but faithful to the oath that he had sworn to himself
he had mastered his passions. His oath was that Vera should return pure
to her father. After suffering himself to be condemned by the law as an
adulterer to gain his end, he would not be one in reality, as much
because his pride dictated the sacrifice to its end, without recompense
or compensation, as for the satisfaction of his own conscience.
The struggle had been a painful and terrible one for him. Very often in
passing through Vera's room to his own he had avoided her glance so that
he might not see in her eyes the fever that was burning within her; and
he would bid her "good-night" by gesture, so that the trembling of his
voice might not betray him.
How many times in the silence of the night he had listened at the door,
softly half opened by him, of the young girl, to hear her gentle
breathing, her sighs, and to aspire with delight the fragrance which
floated from the couch of the adorable young sleeper.
But he had resisted his passions, and was justly proud of conquering
them.
The combat had been less painful for Vera. Spared, by her ignorance and
chastity, those desires of the flesh that burn like a brand, her love
for Pierre, when she believed herself loved in return, was a long sweet
dream, full of charming ecstasies and voluptuous tremors. She suspected
that from this intimacy, from their exchange of tendernesses, the
abandoning of herself at the fateful hour would follow; but she did not
even blush at the thought. Full of confidence in the future, she awaited
the great unknown, forgetful of all--her father, Russia, the past, and
living in a sort of rapture that grew upon her more and more.
And it was at the time when she was in this frame of mind that Pierre
Olsdorf came to tell her of their near return to St. Petersburg; that
was, of the compulsory return to her former life, under the eyes of her
family, perhaps far from the prince whom she would no longer see every
day, almost every hour. At the words, the unhappy girl felt herself on
the edge of an abyss, a terrible vertigo seized her upon looking into
its depths, her face grew deathly pale, her eyes closed. If Pierre had
not caught her in his arms she would have fallen like a stone to the
ground.
The kisses of the prince, delighted and alarmed as he was at one and the
same time, soon recalled the farmer's daughter to consciousness. His
lips spoke such sweet words, laid to her lips, that they gave her full
courage again, she trusted him so entirely; and the next day at the hour
fixed by her master, she was ready to set out.
It was agreed that she should go alone with Yvan, at half past seven, to
the Great Northern Railway Station, where the prince had reserved two
compartments in the train, and that he would join them there.
While Pierre Olsdorf was making ready for his departure, Lise Barineff
was hastening the preparations for her marriage with Paul. Knowing that
the Russian law authorized her to marry, if she thought well, the very
day after the decree of divorce, and being aware of the ill will of the
Meyrins, she would scarcely suffer her lover to be a moment from her
side; first because her love for him grew in proportion as obstacles
were opposed to it, and next because she feared that Paul, whose feeble
and wavering nature she knew, might escape her, yielding to the pressure
brought to bear upon him by his family.
She had not hidden from the painter the oath the prince had sworn, to
kill him if he did not become her husband; nor had she failed to tell
him of the good position, monetarily, that her divorce left her in. Not
only had the prince returned her dowry, eight thousand pounds, but he
had left her his mansion in St. Petersburg, worth twelve thousand more.
She could count on an income, therefore, of from eight hundred to a
thousand pounds a year. She thought, as Paul did, that here was a fact
that would plead in her favor with the Meyrins. When she was informed,
at the same time as he who had been her husband, of the decision of the
Holy Synod, she began to hope that the family in the Rue de Douai would
come to have a better feeling toward her.
The artist himself thought so. Moreover, humiliated at being treated as
a mere boy by his mother and sister-in-law, he had quite made up his
mind to do without a consent that he would have to win, if indeed he
were ever to get it, by too long a struggle; and he had given them to
understand that he would not wait until the day of his marriage to leave
them and set up housekeeping for himself. After dinner one evening,
therefore, he told his mother very plainly that the Princess Olsdorf
being divorced, he was going to marry her as speedily as possible.
At this news, though it was expected, the storm that had been gathering
for several weeks in the Meyrin family burst forth violently. Mme.
Frantz had repressed her feelings too long not to take a full revenge
now.
Mme. Meyrin, who was completely under the domination of her
daughter-in-law, only said to her son:
"I will never consent to your marrying a divorced woman, who is older
than you and belongs to neither your rank nor your class."
Mme. Frantz hastened to add:
"Not to mention that she is the mother of two children, and accustomed
to an idle and luxurious life that would not fit in with ours. Do you
imagine that with eight hundred a year she can keep up an establishment,
when she is used to scattering her money about as she does?"
"Then I am good for nothing, I suppose?" Paul retorted. "Good years and
bad, I make not less than eight hundred, and I hope to make more. I
shall bring to the support of the household as much as my wife."
The artist could not have used a more unwelcome argument to his
sister-in-law. Barbe had the best reason to know what her
brother-in-law's resources were, as she had made herself his cashier. It
was exactly this money that he threw into the common stock that she
regretted, though she would not acknowledge as much. It was therefore a
bad move to let her understand that she would not have it to count on in
future. Beside herself with rage, she went on coarsely:
"Very likely; but that won't alter the fact that your fine princess is a
compromised woman. Do you suppose we don't know of her goings-on with
you? She sha'n't set foot in here, that is certain."
"Ah, bah!" exclaimed Paul, provoked. "You will not receive her when she
is my wife; but you received her--her and her presents--when she was my
mistress. Very well, so be it. We shall each keep to ourselves, that is
all."
"Paul!" said Mme. Meyrin, the mother, in a beseeching tone, frightened
at the anger of her son, whom she had never seen other than gentle and
submissive.
"Well, well, mother," said the painter, in a very different tone, "it is
my sister-in-law that irritates me. One would think she was my guardian.
Besides, I won't have the woman I love insulted--the woman, who, for my
sake, has lost the high position that she had in the world."
"Oh, for your sake," sneered Mme. Frantz.
This was too much for the artist.
"Look here," he exclaimed, "you will never be anything better than a
backbiter and selfish. What maddens you is my shaking myself free from
you. You don't care for the morality of the thing, but for your pocket.
You thought I should make a good fortune-leaving uncle. I love my niece,
I know; but I love Tekla, my dear little baby daughter, better. I shall
marry Lise whether you like it or not. As for you, mother, you know my
affection for you. It won't change, you may be sure, because I am not
living with you. From this night I shall live here no longer. I will
give you timely notice of my marriage, and I hope, in spite of my sweet
sister-in-law, that you will be present at it."
Leaving then his mother and Mme. Frantz, who had not looked for such
determination in him, Paul hurried to the ex-Princess Olsdorf to tell
her what had passed.
Chance had prepared for him in the Rue Lafitte an unexpected and fateful
meeting.
The door had been opened for him, and, without asking any question of
the footman, he was passing through the anteroom to the room where he
expected to find Lise, when the servant stopped him, saying:
"Pardon me, monsieur, but Madame la Princess is with her mother."
"Her mother!" exclaimed Paul, in surprise.
He remembered suddenly that he too, as well as Lise, had ignored rather
too much the woman whose son-in-law he was to be.
Left by her daughter in complete ignorance of the conjugal drama in
which Lise was the heroine, Mme. Podoi had only heard of the divorce at
St. Petersburg as everybody else had, through the talk that the scandal
gave rise to. The news had come upon her like a clap of thunder. It was
the destruction of her dream of ambition, the realization of which she
had striven for so ardently; and, though she knew that the decree of
divorce had been pronounced against Prince Olsdorf, she suspected a
mystery and wished to fathom it.
Not saying a word to anybody of her intended journey, she had left St.
Petersburg, and suddenly appeared before her daughter in Paris.
She had been there but a short time when Paul called. There had been a
violent scene between the two women.
Attacked unexpectedly, and feeling a sort of pride in hiding nothing,
Lise had told her mother everything--her love for the painter, the
prince's ultimatum, what had happened since, and lastly, her intention
to marry again at once.
The general's wife, having listened frowningly to her daughter's story,
broke out at this latter part, exclaiming:
"You are mad. Whether you have deceived your husband, concerns, perhaps,
yourself alone; but that you should become Madame Meyrin after having
been the Princess Olsdorf! No, that you never shall! What! have I lived
for twenty years with this one object before me, that you should be a
great lady, and am I to see you turned into a miserable little artist's
wife? Never! Monsieur Meyrin is a scoundrel. He loved you through
vanity, and would now marry you through interest. I will speak to him
plainly, depend upon me."
Lise tried vainly to calm her mother.
"He knows you are rich," she went on, "and that after my death you will
be richer. That is his sort of love. If you were poor he would not dream
of making you his wife. I swear that neither of you need expect anything
from me. Is it possible that after my training of you, you can be in
love with this showy fellow, a dauber of no name or talent? Ah! you are
your father's own daughter."
"What do you mean?" said Lise, quickly, in great surprise.
"Nothing, nothing," said Mme. Podoi, biting her lips.
She had almost forgotten in her anger that for everybody, and above all
for Lise herself, her daughter was the daughter of Count Barineff.
She went on a moment afterward:
"Have you thought nothing of your children who will be taken from you?"
"The prince will not dream of taking Tekla from me. He knows she is not
his child."
"But your son Alexander? What will he be to you when you are called
Madame Meyrin? You don't suppose Pierre will ever let you see him or
speak to him? What will they tell him when he asks where his mother is?
If he is sick who will care for him?"
Lise Barineff turned very pale. As we have said, she had always been a
good mother. Her head drooped; she answered nothing. It was plain that
she suffered.
"Is your marriage fixed?"
"Yes," said the young woman. "In the first place, I love Monsieur Paul
Meyrin."
"A fine reason!"
"Besides, if he does not marry me--of course, you can't have known
this--the prince will kill him."
"And a good thing, too."
"Oh, mother, mother!"
"Do you suppose I can easily fall in with this ridiculous change in your
life? If my pride could bear it, would not my motherly love take the
alarm! Think of the society you have lived in, and compare it with that
which you will have to live in."
"Monsieur Meyrin is a great artist, and artists, in France, as
elsewhere, are received by everybody."
"To make a Madame Meyrin of a Princess Olsdorf! It is shameful. Any way,
I warn you everything is at an end between us. Adieu. I will never see
you again, until you can tell me that you have made up your mind to
remain Lise Barineff."
As she suddenly opened the door of the room Mme. Podoi found herself
face to face with Paul Meyrin, whom she recognized at once.
"So it is you, Mr. Painter," she said in a haughty voice. "My sincere
compliments. I have paid dearly for my patronage of you in Russia. After
betraying the prince who honored you by his hospitality, you carry off
his wife and part a mother and her child. It is as an honorable man
would have acted--exactly. To pay some debts a man must risk his life.
You prefer marrying. Well, it is your business and my daughter's. Before
a year has passed she will sing a different song."
Paul, hat in hand, let the flood sweep over him.
The young woman, who had followed her mother, put an end to the scene by
drawing her future husband into the room.
The general's wife looked at them for a moment with angry eyes,
muttering, "The idiots!" and disappeared.
"Forgive me," said Lise to Paul, winding her arms about his neck.
"Forgive you?" said Paul, laughing. "Why, I've been hearing worse than
that at home. They are all densely stupid. I beg your pardon for saying
so. If I do not love you as much as I do they would make me adore you."
He crushed her in his arms, covering her eyes and lips with kisses.
A sudden ring was heard at the bell, and almost immediately the footman
brought a letter to his mistress which a commissionaire had brought from
the Great Northern Railway Station.
The letter was from the prince.
After reading the first few lines, Lise cried out and fell back on the
sofa.
"Madame," wrote Pierre Olsdorf to the woman who was once his wife, "the
decree of divorce having left me guardian of my children--I am taking
away Tekla. When you receive this letter we shall be on our way to
Russia, which is closed against you by my order."
The outraged husband avenged himself on the mother. At least, in her
despair, so Lise Barineff interpreted his action.
The prince concluded thus:
"Remember your undertaking to marry again as soon as possible, if you
wish that I should not return to Paris and keep the oath I have sworn.
In due time, when the law permits, you must become Madame Meyrin."
The painter picked up the letter which had fallen from the hand of the
ex-Princess Olsdorf. He stood before her with head lowered, without
daring to address a word of consolation to her.
This day, for the first time, they parted without a word, without the
exchange of a kiss.