finding his wife in the Rue d'Assas, but merely this brief note, or
rather line: "Paul, my son is dying; I am going to save him," M. Meyrin
was amazed, and supposed that Lise had invented the story as a cover for
her flight from the house. As if a mother would dare to tell this lie.
Vera Soublaieff's telegram, which Mme. Meyrin had not taken with her,
proved at once that he was wrong. Yet for awhile he was uncertain
whether or not to approve the journey. The thought occurred to him
suddenly that Prince Olsdorf might be at Pampeln. He felt himself
growing jealous of this man, whose worth he knew, and who, he was aware,
had been deeply in love with the woman who bore his name.
Moreover, in this chateau, once hers, Mme. Meyrin would feel all the
memories of her former high position. She could not fail to compare it
with the humdrum life she led at Paris. The painter was humiliated in
advance by the comparison.
Unwilling to see that it was only to nurse her son that the poor mother
was gone, pricking himself on to blame her, and feeling offended at not
having been at least consulted, he soon brought himself to think there
was no excuse for her.
"Has she not another child with a claim on all her care?" he said to
himself. "By what right does she go away like this?"
The husband thought not of his sins, of the liberty his abandonment of
her had left his wife, of the sacred rights of maternal love. He took
counsel only with his pride, which had just received a rough blow. He
could not hide from himself that he no longer counted for anything with
the woman who had loved him so well.
In his heart he had not given up the hope that Lise would return to his
arms one day, more passionate and more submissive than even, when he
himself, tired of his mistresses, should make a real attempt to win his
pardon. Seeing her resigned, as she had seemed to be since the scene of
the Boulevard Clichy, he had come to the belief, in his stupid vanity as
a "beauty-man," that some evening, if he said but a word, if he made but
a sign, it would suffice to rouse again in the senses of his wife the
mad love of former days. But now there was no room left for doubt; all
was indeed over between them. He fell into a jealous rage and deep
humiliation, which made him exclaim suddenly:
"Well, so be it. But if so, I too am free."
In this frame of mind, and acting mechanically rather than from
solicitude, he went into Mme. Meyrin's room to see his daughter. As he
entered the bedroom, Mme. Daubrel, faithful to her promise, was with the
child.
"Ah! pardon me; I did not know you were here," said Paul, coldly, to the
young woman. "Marie is fortunate to have you, as her mother has
abandoned her."
"You can not think that Lise would abandon her little girl," said
Marthe. "Frightened by the news she received of her son--"
"Her son!" the painter broke in. "What if Marie were to fall sick while
her mother was away?"
"God will not suffer that. Besides, am not I here?"
"Then you approve of Madame Meyrin's going?"
"I should have acted as she has done."
"Ah! no doubt. To leave one's husband, to desert one's home, would
appear natural enough to you, too."
At this insulting allusion to her past, Mme. Daubrel repressed an
indignant exclamation and replied gently:
"It is bad of you, Monsieur Meyrin, to say that, as you well know. I can
find no excuse for the woman who forgets her duty as a wife."
"Yes, you are right. I beg your pardon," said Paul, ashamed of having
let his temper master him. "You see, things have come to a miserable
pass. I don't blame Lise for loving her son; but she has not reflected
on what the consequences may be of her going. In the first place, she
ought to have had my permission to make the journey; and, then, what
will people think of me when they know that my wife has gone back to her
first husband?"
It was plain that vanity was the prime factor in M. Meyrin's nature.
"Her first husband is not in Russia," replied Marthe. "It is not known
even in what country he is at this moment."
"He may return to Pampeln any day on account of his son's illness."
"It is not at all likely."
"It might happen, and then I should play a pretty part here, while
Lise-- No; I will never forgive her."
"Would you have had her leave her child to die?"
"Her child is here. Marie is her child; she has no other, since Prince
Olsdorf has taken Tekla from her. Ah! how I hate that man! May God never
bring me face to face with him! In deserting her home, Madame Meyrin has
left me free. I shall use my liberty, I swear. She may come back when
she likes. Perhaps, then, I shall be far away."
"And your daughter?"
"My daughter? You will be in the place of a mother to her until her
mother, who ought never to have left her, returns."
"Oh, Monsieur Meyrin! Come, kiss her."
She had lifted up the little girl, who was smiling at her father.
Paul just touched the child with his lips, and went away hurriedly, as
if afraid of yielding to Mme. Daubrel's prayers.
At about this time, exhausted by a two days' agonizing journey, Mme.
Meyrin was taking her seat at Mittau in the carriage that her mother had
sent to meet her at this station on the line from Berlin to St.
Petersburg.
The driver, an old servant at the chateau, whom she recognized and
hastened to question, had no better news of her son. The young Prince
Alexander was still in danger.
The eight leagues from Mittau to Pampeln seemed endless to the poor
woman. Her burning eyes fixed on the horses galloping along the road,
she prayed God that she might not be too late. At last, within three
hours' time, she saw the imposing mass of the chateau; and soon, covered
with foam, dripping with sweat, quivering, the horses were pulled up
before the main entrance.
Lise sprung out, and cried to her mother, who awaited her at the top of
the flight of marble steps:
"My son--how is he?"
"He is still very ill," replied the general's wife, whom her daughter
had not even thought of embracing. "Come. He is in his old room."
Mme. Meyrin heard no more. She ran across the great vestibule and up the
staircase leading to the first floor of the right wing of the building,
and thence, not noticing the servants, who looked at her in astonishment
and bowed respectfully as she passed, she hurried to the room which she
herself had had arranged in the olden time for the heir to the name of
Olsdorf.
As she entered the room Dr. Psaroff, leaning over the child, was
watching with anxious looks the convulsions he was struggling in.
"My son," murmured Lise, falling on her knees beside the bed, "my son!"
The doctor made a sign to her not to trouble him and to be calm. The
crisis was serious; it was needful that he should study its every phase.
The sick child, with convulsed limbs and eyelids of a bluish black,
tried to lift his hands to his head, where he felt intolerable pains.
His low groans were mingled with incoherent words.
Vera, whom Mme. Meyrin did not see, was standing behind the physician.
In the fatigued face of Soublaieff's daughter could be read the effects
of sleepless nights and grief. For three days she had not had an hour's
sleep, for Dr. Psaroff's arrival had added to her fears. The young
prince was suffering from an attack of meningitis which might become
tuberculous, and consequently contagious and mortal.
Vera had thereupon telegraphed to the prince at Singapore, where she
thought he was likely to be. Then, as it was impossible that Pierre
Olsdorf should arrive in time to embrace his son if he was to succumb,
she had not hesitated to send to Mme. Meyrin the telegram which had
brought her thither. She did not think she had the right to deprive a
child of the last caresses of its mother.
Within the last twenty-four hours, however, the skillful physician was
somewhat more hopeful. The abundant bleedings he had practiced,
notwithstanding the tender years of the patient, seemed to have given
some relief. Still, the doctor refused to pronounce a final opinion. All
fear of new complications was not over.
When, the crisis having passed, Dr. Psaroff raised his head, the child
was calm, his eyes were closed, his thin little face no longer bespoke
suffering, but a deep exhaustion. Lise touched with trembling lips the
darkened eyelids of her son, and stretched out her hands to the doctor,
who drew her aside and said:
"You were right to come, madame. From the first day of his illness
Alexander has been tended by an angel of goodness whom fear of contagion
has not checked for a moment; but sometimes a mother's kisses can do
more than all our science. If we can struggle on for five or six days
more, without any new accident, I will answer for the result."
"May God hear you," said the unhappy woman.
Then, through her tears, recognizing Soublaieff's daughter, who had
drawn near and was bending to kiss her hand, as formerly, she took her
to her heart, saying:
"You? Ah, may Heaven reward you!"
"Madame la Comtesse," replied Vera, giving, from an exquisite delicacy
of feeling, her maiden rank to the ex-Princess Olsdorf, "I have only
done my duty."
"Yes; may Heaven reward you!" Mme. Meyrin repeated. "I know well what
your life has been since you left Elva. Calumny itself has not dared to
breathe a word against you. Let us forget the past and speak of it no
more. Let us think of nothing but the union of our efforts to save my
son."
Alexander's mother noticed now that Vera was dressed as humbly as when
she lived with her father, and still wore the national head-dress. Since
her return to Pampeln the adorable girl had kept the oath that she swore
to herself in that hour of despair when she believed that she was
forsaken. She would not have had it that anything in her dress should
recall the blissful days she had spent in Paris; she desired that on
returning home Pierre Olsdorf should meet her again as he had found her
when he took her from the farm at Elva.
Lise Barineff guessed this and her heart thrilled; but banishing every
thought that had not to do with her fears as a mother, she smiled on
Vera, pressing her hands affectionately.
From this day forward there was a sublime struggle between these two
women. They watched in turn by the sick-bed. The disease was at its
worst, and the child could not be left for a moment, for when certain
symptoms were manifest the most energetic remedies had to be used.
From fear of contagion, in case the meningitis Alexander was suffering
from should become tuberculous, Mme. Meyrin was obliged to refrain from
seeing Tekla. She had kissed her hastily, and had hung for a moment only
over the beauty of the little girl, who was growing to be ravishingly
pretty. As a measure of prudence they had placed her with her maid and
Mme. Bernard, the governess of the little prince, in the left wing of
the chateau, while Mme. Meyrin was to share Vera's rooms.
As for Mme. Podoi, Dr. Psaroff required that she should not have a room
near her grandson, as a sick-chamber should be visited by as few people
as possible. In consequence of this arrangement, Lise hardly saw her
mother once a day, and then but for a few minutes. There could,
therefore, be no question between them of anything but the state of
Alexander's health, and she was thus protected from the unkind remarks
that the general's wife would have been sure to make in reference to the
past if their interviews had been more frequent and longer.
For six days and nights Mme. Meyrin took no rest. When she was by her
son her eyes never left him, tortured as she was by his moans, watching
his slightest movement, trying to make out the disconnected words that
he uttered in the height of delirium, beseeching him with sweet words
and a low voice to know her, and caressing with her lips his little
thin, burning hands. When she had to yield her place to Vera, and go and
lie down in an adjoining room, she could not get a moment's sleep. If
her son should die while she was away from his side! And if, on the
other hand, his first look, his first conscious moment, should be
another's, and not hers!
Then she would creep to the half-closed door and listen, panting,
anxious, jealous, and ready to spring forward.
This martyrdom had lasted for a week with alternations of hope and
despair, when one morning, after a night better than any he had had
since he took to his bed, the little patient opened his eyes, and,
through the goodness of God's love and pardon, his look was turned to
his mother and showed the surprise he felt. Then he closed his eyes
again slowly, as if to sink once more into a sweet dream. In a few
moments, opening them again, he hesitated for an instant, like a child
who has scarcely learned to speak, and a smile struggling to his lips,
still discolored by his sickness, he murmured: "Mamma."
Lise stifled a cry of happiness, and fell upon her knees.
"Be calm, madame," said the doctor, appealingly, he and Vera being
present at this return to life.
But Mme. Meyrin heard nothing but this word, "mamma," which told her
that her son knew her again, and was restored to her. What blessed
sunshine for a mother is such a look from her child! How her heart,
turned to ice by fear, is warmed again by it! What a chain of iron are
his little weak arms when they are twined about her neck! What a delight
is his laugh!
Bending over her son, Lise prayed and smiled together. The doctor had
not the heart to order her away; but when, after a short examination, he
declared that the patient was saved, she grew deathly pale, and pressed
her hand to her heart. She felt as if she were being suffocated.
Happily, almost immediately afterward she burst out sobbing:
"Let her weep," said Psaroff to Vera; "tears are the best soothers."
Mme. Meyrin, in fact, soon grew stronger. Pressing in hers the hands of
Soublaieff's daughter, who tended her affectionately, she again went to
the bedside.
The doctor was not mistaken. In a few days' time the young prince's
convalescence began. It was to be rapid, as the time was the beginning
of the summer; but one might have thought that it was his mother's life
that revivified the child, for each day Lise grew paler and weaker.
When, her son and daughter on either side of her, she walked down to the
park, she looked like a sick woman whose uncertain steps two guardian
angels were supporting. If they said to her, in their simplicity,
"Mother, you won't leave us again, will you?" she covered them with
kisses instead of replying. The unhappy woman was in despair at the
thought of being forced to part again from them, now that they were
doubly dear to her.
One day, as they extended their walk rather further than usual, her son
drew her toward the great avenue of larches and fir-trees, where she had
sunk, a few years ago, into the arms of Paul Meyrin. As they were about
to pass into its accursed shadows, the ex-Princess Olsdorf, suddenly
remembering, cried:
"Oh, not there--with you--never!"
She gently drew back Alexander, who did not understand his mother's
emotion.
This day she told herself that she must be going.
Now that her child's health was no longer a subject of inquietude, all
her surroundings reminded her cruelly of the past. In this chateau, the
doors of which pity alone had opened to her again, she had reigned as
its sovereign; in these halls, now deserted, she had received the
representatives of the highest Russian nobility; she had been paid court
to and welcomed throughout this domain whither she had not dared to
return save in fear and trembling. How far away were all these things
now. She was no longer the Princess Olsdorf, and yet no one ventured to
call her Mme. Meyrin. By Vera Soublaieff's directions, she was addressed
in her maiden name--the Countess Lise Barineff--so that in the eyes of
the servants, whose duty it was to wait on her, she might not appear to
have descended from her social rank. Even the respect she was the object
of on the part of every one became a painful humiliation to her.
Besides, in Paris she had duties to fulfill toward that other child, who
was no less than Alexander and Tekla flesh of her flesh, and one of the
objects of the only love henceforward permitted her. It was true that
nearly every day Mme. Daubrel had sent good news of her daughter, but
she had scarcely mentioned her husband. Lise did not know how he had
taken her departure, and Marthe, in her latest letter, had said: "As you
son's life is saved, do not delay your return." Resigned as she was,
complete, too, as was her abandonment beyond recall all hope of
happiness in her married life, she was alarmed by this pressing summons.
She foreboded some new misfortune.
That very evening Mme. Meyrin told her mother of her resolution to leave
Pampeln next day, and the general's wife, whose heart could not but be
touched by her daughter's conduct, found a few kind words to say to her.
Lise had shrunk from letting her know how matters were between herself
and her husband. With heroic courage she affected to be quite at ease
about the future. Paul, it was true, had committed a fault, as so many
other men had done before him, but he had come back to her, and all was
forgotten. The ex-Countess Barineff believed in this untruth, dictated
by her daughter's pride, and promised to keep up with her an
affectionate and frequent correspondence.
After this interview with her mother, Lise went to Soublaieff's daughter
in her rooms.
She was there alone.
"Dear Vera," she said, "I shall leave Pampeln to-morrow at day-break,
before my son and daughter are awake. If I were to hear their voices, if
their eyes were to be turned on mine again, I should not have the
strength to go. You understand my feelings, do you not?"
The young girl replied by a movement of the head simply. She dreaded
this last, inevitable interview, and dared not trust herself to speak.
Lise went on:
"But I can not go without saying how grateful I am, not only for your
devoted care of my children, but for your welcome of myself. The law
forbade my crossing the threshold of Pampeln, and you opened its doors
to me. May God bless you! When Alexander and Tekla ask what has become
of me, find some tale to tell them which will explain and excuse my
absence. Tell them I love them with all my soul, and that I will soon
come back. Let them love and respect me always."
Vera made an earnest gesture of assent.
"Oh, I know that it has always been so," Mme. Meyrin continued. "You are
a noble and saintly girl. God could not give them a more worthy
guardian. I will beg of Him, in my most earnest prayers, never to part
them from you. Swear that you will fill my place always, not because I
am going away, but because I shall not live long."
"Madame la Comtesse!" cried Vera, her eyes full of tears, and covering
with kisses the young woman's hands, which pressed hers convulsively.
"Oh, I feel it. I am mortally wounded. Can a mother divide her heart
into two parts? It is my punishment. You will see the prince again. Tell
him all that I have suffered. I hope he will pardon me when I am dead.
Adieu, I shall go hence, full of love and respect for you."
The ex-Princess Olsdorf had drawn to her the sobbing young girl. She
kissed her with a long and feverish kiss, saying:
"For them Vera--for them, and for you."
Then she fled, stifling her sobs.
Next morning, after having brushed with a kiss the eyelids of her
sleeping children, who it may be were dreaming of her, Mme. Paul Meyrin,
bent with sorrow, took her place in the carriage that was to bring her
to Mittau.
On her arrival in Paris she was scarcely recognizable. In forty-eight
hours she looked ten years older. When Mme. Daubrel saw her come into
the room in the Rue d'Assas, where she was sewing near the sleeping
Marie, she could not hinder a movement of surprise.
"Yes," said Lise, sinking into her friend's arms, "it is so, is it not?
I am much changed?"
"No, no, but the journey has tired you," said Marthe. "What else could
be expected?"
"Yes, it has," she said, with a sad smile. "And Marie?"
"You can see. The dear little thing is as well as possible. I have been
with her every day, and all day long."
"I knew I could depend on you."
Mme. Meyrin kissed her daughter softly, fearing to disturb her; and
sinking into a chair opposite Marthe, asked:
"And--my husband?"
"He has been away some days."
"Where is he?"
"At Rome. He was sent for about some important work."
"At Rome? Work? Marthe, do not lie to me. Can any new misfortune
surprise me? Do not fear. I am brave. Monsieur Meyrin has gone away with
that woman."
"I don't know, but I do not believe it."
"And I am sure of it. Has he left nothing for me--not a word?"
"He sent me this letter before he went."
Mme. Daubrel took from under the clock on the mantel-shelf a sealed
letter and gave it to Mme. Meyrin, who tore open the envelope, devoured
the contents of the inclosed letter, without a muscle of her face
betraying the emotion it occasioned, and, handing it to the young woman:
"Read," she said.
"Oh, it is infamous," cried Marthe, after her eyes had taken in the
purport of the following lines:
"MY DEAR LISE,--You won't blame me for following your
example, that is, acting as a free agent. I am glad
that your son has recovered his health, and that while
you were away nothing serious has happened to your
daughter, who also is your child. It might have been
otherwise; but doubtless the son of a prince fills a
greater space in his mother's heart than the daughter
of a simple artist like me. I am about to start for
Rome where a commission I have to execute will detain
me for a pretty long time. I hope you will be so good
as to send me news there, addressing to the Villa
Medici, of yourself and Marie."
"No, it is not infamous," murmured Mme. Meyrin, "it was fated, and, on
the part of God, it is justice. Twice married, I have now no husband.
The mother of three children, all I have with me is the one in the
cradle there. Dumesnil and you are the only friends I have left now."
"Lise, my dear Lise," said Mme. Daubrel.
"Listen to me, dear friend," continued the unhappy woman, in feverish
excitement. "I am sure that soon you will have to watch by my pillow.
Promise that you will hide my condition from everybody, above all from
Monsieur Meyrin, and from my mother herself, until all hope is gone."
"I promise readily," replied Marthe, "so sure am I that a few days' rest
will bring you calmness and health."
Mme. Daubrel was mistaken. In less than a week Mme. Meyrin, attacked by
a severe fever, had to take to her bed, and the doctors summoned to a
consultation regarded her state as critical. They were in doubt only
about the cause of the malady. They did not guess that the innocent
caresses of her little daughter were insufficient for the poor,
despairing creature who was dying of unsatiated maternal love.
The ex-Princess Olsdorf, so courted of old, had near her only an old
actor and Mme. Daubrel, whose social position we must now sketch more
completely than we have yet done.
CHAPTER VII.
MADAME DAUBREL'S STORY.
At the time of his marriage with Mlle. Marthe Percier, M. Raymond
Daubrel was nearly forty years old. His wife, on the contrary, was
barely twenty.
The son of a Frenchman in business in New York, where he represented the
house of Percier, of Paris, in which he was a partner, Raymond Daubrel
was sent to France by his father on the death of M. Percier, whose widow
retained an interest in the business.
Mme. Percier had then a daughter of seventeen, pretty, gentle,
well-bred, and a good musician, whose youthful charms made a deep
impression on M. Daubrel. Having no relations in Paris, feeling lonely,
and being kept by the serious turn of his mind from loose love affairs,
he had little choice about living as one of the family with the widow of
his father's late partner. He soon fell in love with the young girl, who
was a very tolerable match for him, and proposed for her. Mme. Percier,
a sickly and rather melancholy woman, consulted with Marthe, as a matter
of form, and this business-like marriage was celebrated within less than
six months of M. Daubrel's arrival in France.
Mme. Percier saw in the union a means of avoiding a separation from her
daughter, her son-in-law having to remain at the head of the business
house in Paris. As for Marthe, who was fancy free, notwithstanding that
she had a tender heart and a rather romantic mind, she had accepted
without enthusiasm, but also without repugnance, the first husband that
was offered to her.
The death of her father having happened at the time when she was about
to make her entry into the world as a woman, she had not up to that
moment met with any one who especially pleased her. She could be certain
that M. Daubrel was an excellent man, rather commonplace perhaps, but
presentable enough, and even fairly good-looking, who would no doubt do
his best to make her happy.
His means were far above those of his young wife. Her dowry was only
about four thousand pounds, while he had in hand nearly twice as much,
leaving out of account what his father would bequeath him at his death,
and the considerable profits he derived from the commission house at the
head of which he was in France.
After their marriage, M. and Mme. Daubrel set up housekeeping in a
handsome suite of rooms in the Faubourg Poissonniere, hard by the
merchant's office; and for three years everything went smoothly.
Raymond was neither very demonstrative nor very passionate in his love,
and Marthe felt only a calm and honest affection for her husband; but
this moderate conjugal sentiment seemed enough for both of them. Their
temperament led them to dream of nothing more. Mme. Daubrel became the
mother of a son that she worshiped. Her husband was consistently kind
and attentive to her, refusing her none of the pleasures which his easy
circumstances warranted him in allowing: in the winter, the theaters and
an occasional ball, in the summer a couple of months at the sea-side at
Dieppe or Trouville, outings during which Mme. Percier accompanied her
daughter, so that she might not be left alone when M. Daubrel was kept
in or called back to Paris by his business.
There was, therefore, in this middle-class but fairly refined and
tolerably active life, all that was necessary for the happiness of a
young woman reared simply and in good moral principles; or there would
have been, had not its very monotony, regularity, and calmness roused in
Marthe's mind aspirations, which she herself at first scarcely
understood, for rather more stir and excitement. She was not likely to
find with the Meyrins what she lacked.
Mme. Frantz, we know, was nothing if not staid. There was capital music
at her house, but not much conversation; and the auditors at her
matinees were changed too often for an enduring acquaintance to be
formed among them. It resulted from this that the pretty Mme. Daubrel
had not a single woman friend such as women love to tell their petty
sorrows to, and that her life seemed to her very dull and drear.
As long, however, as her son was an infant, that is, while her care over
and watchfulness of him were needed at every hour, Marthe triumphed over
the weariness of her mode of life; but when the child was handed to the
care of a nurse, the young mother felt herself alone; her husband was
scarcely seen except at meal times, and not unfrequently he returned
home at night so tired out that he would go straight from table to his
bed.
Nor was Mme. Percier a very agreeable companion for her daughter. Being
in poor health, she rarely left her home, and often several days would
pass without Marthe seeing her. The widow, for that matter, would not
have understood what there was for her daughter to complain of. She had
led a very calm and passionless life. She would have laughed at, or
perhaps sharply blamed, her daughter for not being perfectly happy.
It was inevitable that Mme. Daubrel should soon find the days long and
the evenings endless. She took to reading, first the Parisian
newspapers--echoes of the scandal of love affairs which up to now had
been matters of indifference to her--then the novels of the day. She
took a feverish interest in the heroines of love stories, comparing
their lives with her own, and contrasted the male characters with her
husband, always to his disadvantage.
M. Daubrel naturally saw nothing of what was going on. If he sometimes
noticed the care-worn face or paler complexion of his wife, he
attributed the change to a slight ailment, and would offer her some
trifling amusement or outing, which Marthe would refuse with a
constrained smile.
In this frame of mind, in this hunger of soul and weariness of
everything, Mme. Daubrel was in the fourth year of her marriage when she
went with her mother to Luchon.
M. Daubrel had hesitated about letting his wife go to take the waters at
so distant a place, whither he could not run down to her by train every
Saturday, as his wont was when she went to the sea-side, and was but a
few hours distant from Paris, but Mme. Percier, whose doctor insisted
upon her trying the Pyrenees, having declared that she would not have
the courage to go alone, the worthy merchant had yielded. He kept his
son Charles with him, whom Marthe, indeed, good mother though she was,
had not spoken of taking with her. Besides, the stay was not meant to go
beyond a month, and the child's health was perfect.
Mme. Percier and her daughter accordingly undertook the journey, and
arriving at Luchon engaged rooms at one of the best hotels in this
fashionable watering-place, where, salutary as the waters might be for
certain ailments, people were wont to amuse rather than physic
themselves.
At the beginning of July the season sets in. There are concerts, balls
at the Casino and at private residences, besides hunting parties in the
forests of fir-trees, boating parties on the Oo Lake, and excursions to
the Devil's Cave, the port of Venasque, and the romantic villages of
Oneil and Lys. Here and there an occasional patient was to be found
taking the waters with severe regularity, and likely to feel the benefit
of the course when he came to return home, but at Luchon the treatment
seemed to more commonly consist in pleasure and various amusements.
Acquaintances were readily formed, as they are in all places of this
sort. If the Americans had not invented flirting, it would have been
born in the shades of the Alpine avenues of Etigny or on the banks of
the Pique. What else was there to do if not to flirt, in a charming
neighborhood where were found an Avenue of Sighs and a Fountain of Love,
as in the days of the Queen of Navarre; where one could fancy one heard
constantly retold, in the echoes of the bounding mountain torrents, the
liveliest stories of Heptameron!
Mme. Percier and her daughter found the place very pleasant, and the
next morning after their arrival they began to make acquaintances, in
the garden of the hotel, near the band-stand, and at the medicinal
springs, which were especially welcome to Mme. Daubrel, who, as they
left Paris, had dreaded that during their absence her part would simply
be that of a nurse to her mother. It was, alas! to be otherwise, and one
of the friendships began here was to have a fatal influence on Marthe's
future. The friendship was formed one night at a concert, with a young
poet, Robert Premontier.
He was a good-looking fellow of five- or six-and-twenty, full of conceit
and literary pretensions, and posing, from taste, as a neglected genius,
a sort of Gilbert or Chatterton. Mme. Daubrel, who had introduced him to
her mother, too quickly let him see beyond a doubt the pleasure she took
in listening to him; so much so that he soon came to think he had the
right to pay close court to her.
This was not Robert's first appearance in the lists of gallantry. He
began adroitly with the young woman by avowing his pure and platonic
love for her. He wished only to regard her as a sister; he only besought
that she would permit him to adore her on his knees. The poor, simple
woman heard this sort of thing now for the first time; she believed it,
and the affair ended as all encounters do between the inexperienced and
the bold. Marthe fell, the excuse she found for herself being that she
too, as well as others, had a right to a share of happiness in the
world, and that the loneliness of her heart was the cause of her fault.
In a word, when Mme. Daubrel returned to Paris she had a lover. Her life
henceforward was but a series of wild raptures, lies, and terrors.
Little made, as a whole, for a great passion, too chaste,
notwithstanding her sins, not to be more reserved than formerly with her
husband, she was a poor dissembler; she gave rise to suspicions, and
soon afterward the treachery of a maid in whom she had confided
precipitated the inevitable discovery.
M. Daubrel was neither a violent nor a romantic man, but simply an
honest fellow. At first he would not believe in the frightful misfortune
with which he was so suddenly overwhelmed after four years of peaceful
happiness; but he watched his wife, bought Robert's letters from the
treacherous servant who had already sold her mistress, and, when he had
acquired the certainty that he was deceived, being filled with contempt
rather than anger for the guilty woman, he had her taken _in flagrante
delicto_ and lodged forthwith in St. Lazare.
A month afterward Marthe and Robert were sentenced to three months'
imprisonment, and a judgment of the tribunal pronounced a decree of
separation between M. and Mme. Daubrel, on the petition of the husband.
The decree was pronounced against M. Premontier in his absence, for he
had fled the country, abandoning, like a coward, to her despair the
woman he had ruined. Mme. Percier was nearly killed by the shame of the
scandal.
She said she would never look upon her daughter again.
As for Marthe, she was still a prisoner in St. Lazare, in a state of
moral and physical prostration impossible to describe, when she was told
that her husband had left Paris to return to New York, intrusting to
his cashier the liquidation of the business.
M. Daubrel took with him his son, not giving his mother the chance to
embrace and say good-bye to the child.
When she heard this the poor woman thought she would go out of her mind.
All was over; everything was falling with a crash around her; nothing
was left to her in the world. Her lover, who had so hatefully deserted
when he ought to have supported her, she did not wish to see again,
understanding now the hollowness of the love she had so simply believed
in; her mother cast her off; her son was taken from her. Her health was
so seriously affected by all these trials that for some weeks her life
was despaired of. Mme. Percier hurried to St. Lazare, and having got by
telegraph from M. Daubrel the authority for Marthe's release, she had
her carried to her house, where, four months afterward, the adulterous
wife, weeping tears of shame, was brought to bed of a child that only
lived a few weeks.
For many days the unhappy woman was in danger, but her youth mastered
the illness. Little by little she regained health and strength, to live
on with her regrets and remorse. Her lover, Robert Premontier, died
abroad, after leading a life of debauchery and excess, not having
written to her once. Her heart could not even regret him. Resolved
thenceforward to live an exemplary life, caring nothing whether she were
still young and handsome, Marthe hid herself away and broke with all her
friends, except Mme. Frantz Meyrin, who had steadily shown great
affection for her through all her trials, but whom Marthe did not visit,
and only then at long intervals until more than two years after the
conjugal drama of which she had been the miserable heroine.
There, as we have seen, she made the acquaintance of the Princess
Olsdorf, toward whom she was drawn by an instinctive sympathy and the
similarity between her past and the present circumstances of the great
foreign lady.
Meanwhile Mme. Percier had won upon M. Daubrel to send her each month
news of her grandson which she told to her daughter, whose only happy
moments these were, though they recalled to her a dread time. Mme.
Percier, touched by Marthe's repentance, never failed in replying to her
son-in-law, to tell him how his wife was doing her utmost to expiate her
sin, and M. Daubrel, after avoiding for several years any reference to
this subject which was so painful to him, had come little by little to
show that he was less indifferent as to what would become of the woman
who bore his name.
Then Marthe began to hope that one day she would see her son again. At
last, in reply to a letter from the adulterous wife imploring her
husband's pardon he had written, "perhaps," and sent her kisses from her
son, who had been reared in respect and love for his mother.
This was the state of things between the parted husband and wife when,
in less than three years after her divorce and her marriage with Paul
Meyrin, the ex-Princess Olsdorf found herself the deserted woman whose
humiliation and sorrows we have tried to depict.
CHAPTER VIII.
ABANDONED.
From the early days of the autumn, Mme. Meyrin's condition became so
quickly worse that the doctors summoned to a consultation pronounced her
in danger. They had to deal with a case of anaemia from which nothing
could rally the patient, and they feared grave complications affecting
the lungs, as too often happens in cases of debility. The wasting away
of the poor woman was frightful. Alas! all her dazzling beauty was gone.
Her eyes were hollow, her face as pale as death, while there was from
time to time a hectic flush on the height of her cheeks which augured
the worst.
She could not walk more than a few steps, so great was her weakness. She
scarcely left her bed but to lie on a sofa, by which Mme. Daubrel and
Dumesnil passed part of their time, doing all they could to distract her
thoughts and give her courage. Lise, touched as she was by their
affection, scarcely answered them; and when, to make them believe that
she did not despair, she tried to smile, the smile was heart-breaking
and drew tears from these two friends, whose devotion was admirable. The
old actor especially was deeply affected by the sorrowful sight he saw
every day.
In discovering in Mme. Meyrin the fruit of his amour with Madeleine
Froment, the young girl whose mother's pride had made her a princess,
and whom fate had brought to be the companion of a painter who was
almost a celebrity, Dumesnil had perhaps at first been gratified merely
in his vanity, and, without betraying his secret, had rather inflicted
himself upon the house, where, however, as we have seen, he had always
had a very affectionate welcome. But his paternal love, in the highest
acceptation of the word, had already kindled at Lise's sufferings, and
he accused himself now of all the misfortunes that had come upon her one
after the other.
Why had he been silent when Mme. Froment married Count Barineff? Ought
not he at that time to have claimed his daughter? Had it been really out
of regard for her future that he had consented to her being adopted by
the husband of his old mistress? Had not vanity had much to do with this
abandonment of her? And, besides, had not he feared somewhat the burden
of so young a child? He had been guilty at that time of a bad action for
which he could not pardon himself. It was quite certain that had he
reared Lise she would have become a great artiste, and he would not be
watching her to-day, dying, alone, parted from her children, without a
husband, and in despair.
This was what Dumesnil kept on repeating to himself remorsefully.
One might have fancied that Mme. Meyrin could read the good fellow's
heart and that she knew more of the truth than he supposed, for every
day, as if to punish herself somewhat for having thought him slightly
ridiculous when first she knew him, she was more and more charming
toward him.
Formerly when he came in she would only hold out her hand to him; now
she offered him her forehead to kiss, and when she could dine at table
it was near her that he must sit. She flattered his tastes and his
habits, talking of theatrical matters and of his favorite authors,
reminding him thus of his successes and his youth, and even leading him
to give some of those poetical extracts at which he was so ready and so
skilled.
Sometimes, too, incidentally, without seeming to attach much importance
to what she said, Lise would go back upon the past and speak of the time
when her mother was one of the stock company at the Odeon, in Dumesnil's
time. At the mention of these by-gone days the old actor stammered and
blushed, putting a curb on himself so that he might not say too much,
and turning the conversation into another channel.
These were the best, or rather the only pleasant moments of the woman
who had been the Princess Olsdorf, for when neither Mme. Daubrel nor
Dumesnil was there, Lise sunk into a state of complete lethargy, taking
interest in nothing and not even reading. When her brother-in-law and
sister-in-law came to see her--Barbe coming out of shame--they could not
get her to speak, except to beg them not ever to speak of her husband,
which they sometimes ventured to do, partly out of pity and also to
attempt a defense of Paul. He was young, had easily been led astray,
and would return to her. Then she would pardon him. Unquestionably he
must be suffering, too; it was nothing but his lack of energy that
hindered him returning to France.
The deserted woman only replied by long, sad looks to these consoling
words, which were hypocritical on the part of Mme. Frantz. Her husband
was an honorable man and severely blamed the conduct of his brother,
while Mme. Meyrin, the mother, dared never speak of her son. Lise's sad
looks said, better than any words could have done: "I do not believe
you; and if he were ever to return it would be too late."
While the ex-Princess Olsdorf was thus gently fading away, a strange
change came over her: she was again coquettish and elegant as of old.
One might have supposed that, only too certain that very little time
remained for her to live, she wished to avenge the privations which the
jealousy and avarice of her husband had imposed upon her since the
second year of their marriage. She took delight in loosening her hair,
which was still wondrously beautiful; she adorned her arms and wasted
shoulders with the jewelry which had been so long put away; she affected
to be cold, that she might wrap herself in splendid furs, as in the good
old times, and she had taken again, with an undefinable sense of luxury,
to the wearing of the wrappers trimmed with lace, and the excessively
fine under-linen which had so greatly offended Mme. Frantz's sense of
propriety.
"I don't want to die like a petty tradesman's wife, but like a
princess," she said to Marthe, showing her embroidered coverlet and her
pillow trimmed with rich lace. "If my mother were to come she would not
know her daughter by my looks, but she shall find her again at least in
all my surroundings."
And with childish pleasure and vanity she moved her little feet covered
by silken hose, in their velvet slippers embroidered with pearls.
There was but one thing in the past that she would not hear spoken of,
that she refused to see again--Paul's studio. Since her husband's
departure she had not gone into it, and had given orders that it should
be closed against everybody. She caused to be removed from her sight
everything that could remind her of art and artists, never asking about
the theaters, new books, or exhibitions of pictures.
Nevertheless, she had kept in her bedroom Paul's painting of her, half
nude, as Diana the Huntress, before which Mme. Daubrel had surprised her
one day, her eyes filled with tears, murmuring: "And I was as beautiful
as that once!"
Marthe wanted them to have the picture taken away, but Lise opposed it,
saying:
"No; I will see myself so to my dying hour. It will be my punishment."
At her friend's, so to speak, posthumous coquetries, Mme. Daubrel smiled
courageously, but she could not without grief hear her speak of her
mother, for if Lise still hoped to soon receive a visit from the
general's wife, and attributed her silence to ignorance of her
daughter's condition, Marthe knew that the ex-Countess Barineff was
acquainted with the facts. Indeed, she had written to her at Carlsbad,
where the newspapers had mentioned that she was with her husband, and
the answer had been sharp and ill-natured, proving that she was far from
having pardoned her daughter, as the latter might have reasonably hoped
in view of the terms on which she had parted from her mother at Pampeln.
"I am, of course, concerned about Lise's poor state of
health, but I am sure she will soon be better, if she
will forget her second husband as she forgot her
first. When I come to Paris at the beginning of the
winter, I shall find her as well as ever, and,
perhaps, for all one can say, ready to be divorced
again.
"You can tell her, in the meantime, that I have lately
had a good account of my grandchildren, Alexander and
Tekla, to whom Vera Soublaieff continues to be an
excellent mother."
Marthe was careful not to read these sad lines to Mme. Paul Meyrin; she
thought it better to let her fancy that the general's wife was ignorant
of her illness, and to say, by way of reassuring her, that she had heard
from St. Petersburg that Mme. Podoi was coming to Paris in or about
November.
Mme. Daubrel had done more than this.
Acting in concert with Dumesnil, she had written to Prince Olsdorf a
letter describing Lise's position, the disgraceful conduct of her
husband, the desertion and loneliness in which she was living; then
another to say that the doctors could give no hope of the unhappy young
woman; she had but some months, perhaps only a few weeks to live, and it
would be generous to let her embrace her children before she died.
Well acquainted with all the circumstances prior to the divorce of her
friend, Marthe ended her second letter to Pierre Olsdorf thus:
"PRINCE,--I have lived for a long time in friendship
with the woman who had the honor to bear your name,
and I swear to you, in the presence of God, that, for
three years, she has cruelly expiated the sin she was
guilty of toward you. A wife without her husband, a
mother without her children, she deserves your pity.
Her mother herself has deserted her. There is barely
time left for you to pardon her.
"You could have inflicted on her no more dreadful
punishment than to join her with the wretch who made
her forget her duty. Monsieur Paul Meyrin has avenged
you hatefully. He knows his wife is dying, and he
remains in Rome with that woman, that Sarah Lamber,
who will not let him come and close the eyes of the
woman whose heart she has broken and whose life she
has ruined. Will you dare to refuse her the last
kisses of her children?"
The prince had not replied, and Mme. Daubrel feared that her letters had
not reached him, for she learned from inquiries at the Russian Embassy
in Paris that within the past three years Prince Olsdorf had not
appeared again in either Courland or St. Petersburg.
All that was known was that after leaving Russia he had visited Egypt,
Zanzibar, and Mozambique, and that he had sailed for Japan, by way of
Bourbon, the Isle de France, and the Sunda Straits.
In despair, Marthe decided to write to Vera Soublaieff and implore her
to bring Alexander and Tekla to Paris. She had received an affecting
letter from her in reply.
After mentioning that the latest account of the prince was dated from
Calcutta, and that, according to his plans, he was to go straight to
Bombay, the daughter of the farmer of Elva, still out of delicacy not
calling by the name of her second husband her whom she had known as the
Princess Olsdorf, wrote:
"MADAME,--Pitying more than any one, from the bottom
of my heart, Madame la Comtesse Lise Barineff, I could
wish to give relief to her sufferings. I have not
forgotten the affection that she deigned to show me
when I was young, and I shall ever remember the agony
she felt as a mother when she joined me to watch over
her sick son, as well as that she had to leave
Pampeln, alone, and bearing with her only the memory
of the last caresses of her children.
"If I have devoted myself to them, tell her, I beg of
you, that it was as much in memory of her as to
fulfill the duty that I was proud to be charged with.
But you ask of me what I can not do. I have not the
right, and I am in despair about it. Prince Olsdorf
ordered me never to take away Alexander and his sister
from Pampeln, even for a day, though it were at the
request of Madame Podoi. Providing against any chance,
he even appointed the residence to which they were to
be taken should anything happen at the chateau to
force them to leave it.
"Forgive me, then, madame, and beg Madame la Comtesse
to forgive me, too. Her children, whom I have taught
to pray for her, will win from God the return of their
mother's health, and perhaps better times are in store
for her whom you love and whose hands I respectfully
kiss."
"What a good and pure girl," murmured Mme. Paul Meyrin, when this letter
was read to her.
Then, after a short and useless struggle with the thoughts which took
hold upon her, she sunk into Marthe's arms, adding:
"And how worthy to be loved."
CHAPTER IX.
FAR AWAY.
The particulars that Mme. Daubrel had got from Vera Soublaieff as well
as from the Russian Embassy about Prince Olsdorf were correct, or as
nearly so as is possible in the case of a traveler from whom letters are
received only at long intervals, and who goes hither and thither,
aimless and without guide but his whim, or with no wish but to forget.
As if in leaving a place one did not carry all with one--hate, love,
memories, and remorse.
So Pierre Olsdorf had lived since his departure from Pampeln, and
since, having acquired the certainty that Vera loved him, he was forced
to confess to himself that he loved her with all his soul. They who have
not loved say: "Out of sight, out of mind." The contrary is the fact
with the true affections which are not born solely of sensual appetites
which other objects can appease, for speedily, to the sorrow of parting
and to the passion itself, are joined the torments of jealousy. One
thinks naught of the imperfections of the loved one; only the good
qualities are remembered. Having lost the satisfaction of his mistress's
presence, the lover wonders, fearfully, whether he may not be already
forgotten; whether he has indeed done and said all that was needful to
be remembered.
The situation was the more painful for Prince Olsdorf inasmuch as to the
regrets he felt was joined his remorse at having been the cause of the
evil. He saw no escape from the consequences of his action and he
regarded both himself and Vera as condemned to a life-long sorrow.
Whithersoever he fled, the memory of Soublaieff's daughter followed him.
Through the distance that divided them he saw her, in fancy, at Pampeln,
with the children he had intrusted to her; and her parting words,
"Pierre Alexandrowich, you speak of happiness for me and you leave me,"
were always ringing in his ears.
When he had from her, at long intervals, letters that were adorable in
their sweetness and resignation, in which only Alexander and Tekla were
spoken of, he would be taken with a mad longing to hurry back to
Courland and throw himself at the feet of the woman he had, without the
right to do so, associated with his misfortunes.
Once, especially, he was on the point of putting the idea into
execution, on finding awaiting his arrival at Singapore a telegram
stating that his son was seriously ill; but as, following upon the first
telegram which had been lying there for him a week, others came, first
encouraging and then wholly reassuring, he had the courage to go on
with his wandering travels, while regretting, in a sense, that his
anxiety had not been prolonged, as then his fatherly love would have
taken him back to Pampeln.
However, Prince Olsdorf had attempted the impossible in trying to weary
his body and so bring peace to his soul. After traveling along the
eastern coast of Africa, he crossed the Indian Ocean to China. There he
saw Shanghai, Nankin, Amoy, the English colony of Hong Kong, and Macao,
the old Portuguese possession where Camoens wrote the Lusiads. He went
up the river to Wampoa, and thence to Canton, by way of the River of
Pearls. Then he sailed south to Singapore, on the voyage to Batavia,
through the Straits of Banca. But nothing could win him from the past,
neither the strange manners of the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire,
nor the fairy-like view of the Straits of Sunda, nor the terrible wild
beast hunts in the interior of Java.
From the Malayan world he went to Ceylon, passing through its entire
length from Point de Galle to Trincomalee, but neither the subterranean
caverns of Candy, nor the splendor of the Valley of Rubies, nor the
luxuriant vegetation of the jungle, had calmed his mind. At the top of
Adam's Peak, before the foot-mark of Buddha, his eyes turned only to the
north, where was his love, and where he was waited for.
He sailed up the coast of Coromandal, visiting in turn Tanjore,
Trichinopoly, Pondicherry, Madras, and Melapore, where St. Thomas was
martyred and where Christ perhaps lived during His absence from Judea,
drawing from the books of the Brahmins the most perfect precepts of His
divine teaching.
But neither the sight of the voluntary penitents, who torture themselves
in honor of Shiva; nor the fantastical spectacle of the ruins of the
city of the great Bali, the domes of the pagodas of which were still
wholly visible at the beginning of this century at low tide; nor the
chants of the victims of Juggernaut under the wheels of the car of
Kali, the goddess of blood; nor the rumbling of the bear of
Orissa--nothing had stifled the pain of his heart.
The Hooghly, with its floating corpses, had scarcely moved him. When,
despising the iron road already open, at least in part, from Calcutta to
Bombay, he crossed the peninsula of Hindoostan by the ancient routes
which traverse the forests of Malwa, in the rude halting places where
only shelter for the night and water are to be had, Vera Soublaieff's
image never ceased to be before him. In the grottoes of Illora, in the
depths of the caverns of Salcette, his ear was dulled to the roaring of
the tigers, as it was to the hymns of the Hindoo priests, chanting
verses of the Vedas, while he heard eternally the last adieu of
Soublaieff's daughter.
His travels had lasted nearly three years, his only companion being the
honest Yvan, whose sad and stern face reflected the state of his
master's mind, when, returning from an excursion into the country of the
Sikhs, the warrior people whom the English have never completely
subdued, Pierre Olsdorf found at Bombay the last two letters from Mme.
Daubrel.
The accent of truth in them struck him deeply, and, in the state of
feeling he was in, a great pity possessed him for the woman he had
cursed. She, too, suffered; then she, too, was pitiable. To this had
come the woman once called the Princess Olsdorf. Was not the punishment
too severe? Had not he abused his power in inflicting it on her? Would
not it have been more humane to have avenged his honor in the blood of
the guilty pair! Ought not he at least to have left Lise her child,
whose presence would have softened her sorrows? And how had the man he
had spared been punished for his hateful conduct? Could he suffer him to
go longer unpunished? This Paul Meyrin had taken from him his honor, his
wife, and, like a villain, he now deserted the home to which he should
have felt himself bound by so many obligations. And he was living
happy, careless of the misery he had caused. No, that must not be.
Three years ago the prince had condemned him to death unless he married
the woman who had stooped to him. Ceasing to be the legal protector of
this woman, forgetting his duty to her, he now exposed himself to the
just revenge of the outraged husband; it was for him, Pierre Olsdorf, to
avenge the woman who was so cruelly expiating her fault.
What the prince did not say, what he wished not to confess to himself,
was that if these wretched events authorized the ending of his exile, he
was less drawn to Europe again by all the sentiments of his heart than
by the duty to play the role which he felt was his. Now it was Paul
Meyrin he accused of the sufferings of the past three years. It was he
alone who made so many tears fall from Vera's eyes; him alone he hated;
him alone he would punish.
Pierre Olsdorf, therefore, determined to set out as quickly as possible,
and when Yvan, sent to make inquiries, returned and told him that one of
the steamers of a regular service between Bombay and Brindisi was to
sail next day, he at once engaged a cabin. Then he sent Mme. Daubrel the
following telegram:
"I shall be in Paris within twenty or at most
twenty-five days. As you judge it best to do, tell the
patient so and try to give her some courage. I am
sending orders to Russia for the children to be in
Paris by the time I am. Send news to me in Rome at the
Minerva Hotel."
Then, also by telegraph, he begged Vera to be ready to go to Paris at
the appointed time with Alexander and Tekla. She was to put up at the
Grand Hotel, where she would receive his instructions, awaiting his own
arrival there.
Next day, as the Russian nobleman was embarking on the "Osiris," for a
voyage which was to be more trying and to seem longer than any that he
had yet made, the two telegrams arrived at Paris and Pampeln, causing
emotions easy to understand.
Mme. Daubrel was beginning to think that her letters to Prince Olsdorf
would remain unanswered; and yet, the very morning that the telegram
from Lise's first husband came to hand, her pretty face, usually so sad,
betrayed heartfelt joy, great as her uneasiness was as to Mme. Paul
Meyrin's health.
The fact was that her mother, Mme. Percier, had come to acquaint her
with news, secretly and timidly longed for, and yet unexpected. M.
Daubrel had written from New York, that, touched by the life of
expiation and the penitence of his wife, he had almost forgiven the
past.
At this news Mme. Daubrel threw herself, weeping, into her mother's
arms. She was impatient to tell Lise, who loved her so much, of this
new-born hope. But she had now something more and better to tell; she
had to tell the poor mother that soon she would embrace her children.
However, when Marthe saw Mme. Meyrin, the patient's feebleness was such
that she hesitated. She put the case to Dumesnil, who was there, and
whom under some flimsy pretext she got into the little room adjoining
the bed-chamber.
"People do not die of joy," exclaimed the old artist, having been told
the facts. "Let us not lose a moment in giving our dear patient the only
hope that can calm her grief a little."
And leading back Mme. Daubrel to Lise, he said to the latter:
"Our friend has good news to tell you, but she won't speak if you do not
promise to be calm."
"Good news," said Mme. Meyrin, with the heart-breaking smile that always
played about her discolored lips when they sought to console her. "Can
there be any for me? The kisses of my children alone lighten my
sufferings, and I shall never see them."
Her husband's name did not even occur to her.
"Well, well, perhaps," said Marthe, in her gentlest voice.
"Perhaps?" Lise repeated, raising herself suddenly with staring eyes.
"Perhaps, you say. Ah! don't deceive me. It would kill me."
Her thin hands had drawn Mme. Daubrel to her with strange energy. Her
eyes questioned not less than her voice.
Frightened by this excitement, Marthe dared not say another word.
Dumesnil saw that an end must be put to this agony, even at the risk of
a dangerous crisis.
"Well, then, yes," said he, in his turn. "Your children will soon be
with you. The prince has telegraphed to your friend that he will be in
Paris within a month with Alexander and Tekla. If he has them brought to
France, it won't be to deprive you longer of their caresses."
The poor woman's face betrayed that she could not believe what was told
her.
"The prince," she stammered, "the prince? He will give me back my
children? I shall see my son again--my daughter? Ah, no, it is
impossible."
"Read this," said Marthe, giving her Pierre Olsdorf's telegram.
Mme. Meyrin seized it, and when she had read it slowly, in a low voice,
several times, as if the better to take in the sense of these blessed
words which had winged their way through space to bring her a crowning
consolation, she grew deathly pale, crossed her hands and, with a sob,
raising her eyes, brilliant from fever, to heaven, murmured:
"Oh, God, I pray that Thou wilt let me live a month longer."
Almost at the same moment, more than five hundred leagues distant, at
Pampeln, there was passing another scene not less touching, though of
another kind.
Vera Soublaieff had been two months without a letter from the prince,
and her anxiety was great when she received his telegram from Bombay
begging her to get ready to go to Paris.
At first she thought she must have misread and was dreaming; but soon
she calmed herself, understood the truth, and felt her heart swell with
a great joy. She was going to see again the man she loved, whom she had
waited for three years, whose long absence had caused her such cruel
sorrow.
Suddenly Vera reflected that if the prince charged her to take his
children to Paris, some painful event must have happened. She who had
been the Princess Olsdorf was doubtless dead, and Vera was ashamed of
having thought of her own happiness alone. And yet, she thought, if Mme.
Meyrin was dead, she would have been told of it by Mme. Daubrel. Without
trying to fathom the mystery of what was going on, she ran out to
Alexander and Tekla, who were playing a little way off before the main
entrance to the chateau, and covered them with kisses, telling them they
would soon see their father again. She dared not, however, in spite of
their tenderly questioning looks, utter their mother's name; but she
prepared to follow the instructions she had received.
CHAPTER X.
TWO HUSBANDS.
On arriving at Brindisi, twenty days after sailing from Bombay, Pierre
Olsdorf sent a telegram to Vera Soublaieff, asking her to leave Pampeln
for Paris at once. A few hours later he took train from Brindisi,
arriving in Rome the next day, where a letter from Mme. Daubrel was
awaiting him, in reply to the telegram he had sent her before embarking
for Europe.
The gentle Marthe confirmed the bad news she had sent before. On
learning that the prince was coming to Paris, Mme. Meyrin had expressed
the deepest gratitude, but no hope was felt of her recovery. The doctors
had given her up, and the patient knew the gravity of her illness. She
only prayed of God that He would suffer her to live until the coming of
the man whose forgiveness she wished to implore.
Pierre Olsdorf replied immediately to Mme. Daubrel that he would be in
Paris in three or four days, as would his children. Then he went to the
Russian Embassy. It was at the Palace Feoli, on the Corso. He sent his
card in to Count Panen, the first secretary, who had been a
school-fellow of his at the Institute of Nobles.
Having been introduced at once and most cordially received by the young
diplomatist, the prince went straight to the object of his visit.
"My dear count," said he to his countryman, "I have a great favor to ask
of you."
"I am quite at your orders, prince," replied the secretary to the
embassy.
"I wish you to act as my second in a very serious business. If you
require it, I will give you all the explanations that you have the right
to ask for; but I should prefer to be silent."
"From a man such as you," replied the count, quickly, "no confidence is
needed, for he could not desire anything contrary to the strictest
propriety. Keep your secret and command me."
"Thank you. The man whom honor calls upon me to fight to the death,
until one or the other of us falls, is Monsieur Paul Meyrin, a painter
living in Rome."
"Paul Meyrin, the husband--"
Count Panen was going to exclaim, "The husband of the ex-Princess
Olsdorf;" for like the rest of the Russian nobility he was not ignorant
of the divorce pronounced a few years ago.
"Yes, he himself," said the prince, bitterly; "he himself."
"Forgive me."
"I should beg your pardon. Later on you shall know more. Meanwhile I
must kill Monsieur Paul Meyrin. I don't know where he is living, but you
will easily get his address at the Ecole Francaise, at the Villa Medici.
Be so good as to take a friend with you, to whom you can answer for me
if I am unknown to him. Whatever conditions Monsieur Meyrin stipulates
for accept, provided that they are of a kind to give a fatal issue to
our encounter. I only desire one thing--that this affair may be over
quickly, to-morrow morning, if possible. I mean to leave for Paris
immediately afterward, if I do not fall."
"In a couple of hours, unless Monsieur Meyrin meets us with a refusal,
all will be arranged. A good friend of mine--Baron Zamoieff, our second
secretary---will feel it his duty to join with me. Besides, he has the
honor of knowing you."
"It is true, indeed; we are distantly related. I remember that in
happier days I had the pleasure of receiving him in Courland."
"As for Monsieur Meyrin, I think I know where to find him. But what if
he should ask us for explanations?"
"I hope he will understand with half a word. If he does not, you may
tell him I will hesitate at no provocation, no matter what scandal may
follow upon it. This man, in the past, has done me the deepest outrage
possible; it has suited me to wait until now before demanding reparation
from him, that is all."
"I understand."
"Thank you once more, dear count. I shall see you again soon, shall I
not?"
"As soon as I have seen Zamoieff and we have been to Monsieur Meyrin's,
who lives near the Pia Gate, I take it. If you will go back to the
Minerva we will join you there as soon as our mission is fulfilled."
"Yes, I will go back to the hotel. Good-bye for a short time."
In less than two hours' time, at the Minerva, a footman announced to
Prince Olsdorf the two visitors he was expecting.
Pierre went forward quickly to meet them, offering his hand to Baron
Zamoieff, and thanking him for kindly acting as his other second.
The Russian noblemen responded cordially to the grasp of his hand, and
the first secretary spoke at once.
"My dear prince," he said, seating himself on a divan with his colleague
of the embassy, "we had no trouble in finding Monsieur Paul Meyrin, whom
we both know slightly. He was in his studio on the Via Venti Settembri,
close to the Pia Gate. I told him the object of our visit, and I must
say that he seemed astounded for a moment. At first he could not
understand what to think. However, recovering himself after a few
moments' reflection, he replied: 'Very well, gentlemen; I ask no
explanation, singular as this challenge is, coming from a man whom I
have not seen for four years, and who has kept silence all this time.
Two of my friends will have the honor to present themselves at the
Palace Feoli within an hour.' We are going back to the embassy to wait
for them. As soon as we have arranged everything we will come back and
tell you about it."
"Thanks, gentlemen," said Pierre Olsdorf, "I feared Monsieur Meyrin
might escape me. Let me remind you I accept in advance his conditions,
provided they are of the kind I have mentioned; if they are not, make
your own: four balls at twenty paces, with the right for each of us to
advance five paces; and in default of result we fight with swords until
it is absolutely impossible for one of the combatants to hold his
weapon."
"Depend upon us, prince, all shall be arranged as you wish," said Count
Panen. "Until this evening."
"Until this evening, count; until this evening, cousin, for we are
relatives, my dear baron."
"I have that honor," replied Zamoieff, "and I thank you for the further
one you do me in accepting me as a second. Until this evening."
In a few moments Pierre Olsdorf, left alone again, was putting his
affairs in order, writing to Mme. Daubrel, to Vera, and to his son
Alexander, letters which would be forwarded by Count Panen, if the
writer should be killed in the duel with Paul Meyrin.
The Russian nobleman wrote these letters with a firm hand, with all the
calmness and courage of a soldier who, in advance, makes the sacrifice
to duty of his life.
To Mme. Daubrel he commended the unhappy Lise Barineff; to his son he
said in simple and touching terms that he must never forget he was the
heir to a stainless name, and that honor was priceless; to Vera he again
avowed his love, praying her to forgive him for failing in his promise
to return to her.
Meanwhile Paul Meyrin received the two friends he had sent for---two
artists they were, like himself; one an Italian, Giacomo Rimaldi; the
other a Frenchman, a student at the Ecole de Rome, Alfred Bertin--and he
explained what service he claimed of them.
Less discreet than Prince Olsdorf with his countrymen, he told them the
story of his amour and marriage with the wife of the man who now came,
at the end of four years, to ask for satisfaction for an outrage
effaced, one would have supposed, by the marriage with the divorced
wife.
"I could well refuse any satisfaction to the prince," he said, "but I
won't have it that he shall be able to say a Roumanian was afraid of a
Russian. So settle this affair as you please with his seconds; sword or
pistol, whichever he likes."
Paul Meyrin did not add, though he understood, that what the prince
wished to avenge was not the past but the present. And it was precisely
the present that the painter hoped to free himself from in accepting the
proposed duel. It seemed to him that in challenging him Pierre Olsdorf
furnished him with a weapon against his wife whom he would then have the
right to abandon altogether.
The wretched man had not heard anything of her for two months. His
brother had indeed written to him that she was ill; but he did not know
her condition was desperate. Like all men without energy, not daring to
face the tears and the reproaches of the woman he had basely deserted,
he shrunk from learning anything about her, in fear of being forced to
return to the Rue d'Assas, if it were but out of common humanity and to
avoid making himself a scoundrel in the eyes of even the most indulgent.
It is probable, however, that had he known the true situation of his
wife, Paul would have left Rome; but at the time we have reached, Sarah,
with whom he lived wholly, was intercepting all the letters from Paris,
which she did not even read, out of womanly cunning, that she might have
an excuse in reserve for the future. She simply put them on one side.
The painter was also urged on by another reason to finish with Pierre
Olsdorf, of whom he could not be jealous, for he knew through Mme.
Daubrel that Lise had not met him at Pampeln when she went thither to
nurse her son.
In the early days of his marriage with the ex-Princess Olsdorf he had
been applauded and envied. Flattered that one of them had carried off
the wife of a great Russian lord, Paul's brother artists congratulated
him; for several months he was quite a romantic hero, but when they saw
him so soon wreck his home, when they knew he had taken up again with
Sarah Lamber, there was surprise that this love which had made so much
noise had passed so quickly. Inquiries were made, and in a short time
there came whispers from St. Petersburg which gave a handle to the
jealous and the envious.
It was told that it was Prince Olsdorf himself who had made the princess
sue for a divorce and forced Paul to marry her. He was thrown down from
the pedestal he had been planted on; there was much laughter at the
quite novel revenge of the outraged husband; Paul was nicknamed "the
husband by order," and, being questioned by his mistress, he lied so
poorly that she, in the midst of a quarrel about his household in Paris,
retorted upon him, not knowing she had hit the mark so exactly:
"Ah, don't bother me. You won't dare to be away from Paris a couple of
days. Your wife's former husband would look you up and lead you back by
the ear to your lawful home."
It was after this that Paul Meyrin, to prove he was free and his own
master, had left Paris with Sarah and established himself in Rome, where
his feebleness, his cowardice, and also his passion for the model, soon
made so complete a slave of him that he gave up all idea of going back
to Lise, and scarcely thought of his child.
During the first month of his absence he wrote to Mme. Meyrin once or
twice to tell her that important commissions were detaining him in
Italy; then, when he did not know how to explain his prolonged absence,
he rarely answered the letters Mme. Daubrel wrote to him unknown to
Lise, for she, too proud to complain, wrapped up in her maternal love,
and not desiring to furnish her husband with new occasions for lying,
had given up writing to him.
Receiving no replies now from the husband of her poor friend, Marthe
told her that Paul had left Rome and was traveling East, where his
letters had doubtless not reached him; but the deserted wife did not
believe this pious fib; she knew then how unworthy had become the man
she had loved so well; and she begged Mme. Daubrel not only to address
not another line to him, in any circumstances, but not even to utter his
name before her.
It was from this time forth that Sarah had ventured on hiding away all
letters from France. The miserable creature began to hate the woman she
had inflicted such torments on. To excuse herself to herself she said
that Mme. Meyrin's sickness was a farce, got up by her friends with the
idea alone of bringing back Paul to his wife.
Being thus without news, the painter soon came to think it was so
himself. Then he fell under the absolute sway of this girl who flattered
his vanity and satisfied his senses.
The husband of poor Lise Barineff had rented on the Via Venti Settembri,
a couple of hundred yards from the Pia Gate, a small villa, one of the
rooms of which he had made into a studio. There he was living with
Sarah, not knowing what was really going on in Paris in the Rue d'Assas,
when he received the visit he so little looked for from Prince Olsdorf's
seconds, and replied to the challenge as has been written above.
A man of stronger fiber than Paul would have been careful to say nothing
to his mistress, from self-respect and even from affection. The painter,
on the contrary, hurried to tell her all, and then there was a torrent
of abuse poured out by the model on the Russian nobleman and the woman
who had borne his name.
Sarah loved Paul as a master loves a slave, as a female a male. Even so,
but, after all, she loved him with her violent and passionate nature;
besides, she was jealous of the past, and as her ignorance in matters of
honor did not allow her to suppose that Pierre Olsdorf was desirous of
avenging the outrage done to him four years ago, she interpreted the
challenge in quite another sense. Either the prince again in love with
the wife, wanted to kill her husband to regain her, or his duel with M.
Meyrin was nothing but a means of intimidation to force him to return
to Lise.
"You see," she exclaimed, when her lover had told her everything, "all
these people are against you. After making you marry his wife that he
might be rid of her, here is the prince come now to call you to account.
And what for? Does he suppose he has the right to govern your present
conduct? Are not you free to live as you please? Do your household
affairs concern him? It would be too absurd. A divorced woman sending
for her first husband to help her! If it is not so, he wants to fight
you because you--betrayed him in the olden time. That would be a still
more absurd idea. He has taken time for reflection, and you may be sure
that he has not come without some urging on. Well, if I were you I
should send this Cossack off about his business. It is simply his former
wife who has plotted all this. If you fight you are a fool."
"I can not do otherwise," said Paul, when Sarah let him get in a word,
"Prince Olsdorf would say everywhere that I was frightened of him."
"And if he did?"
"If he did? You don't consider that if I refuse to fight, my friends, to
begin with, would call me a coward, and I should be the scoff of every
studio in Paris; besides, my foreign patrons, who are mostly Russians,
would desert me. Moreover, I have a grudge to pay off. I should not have
gone to look for him, but since he challenges me-- Well, we shall see.
It is time that there was an end put to people saying I married his wife
by order. I am not quite so unskilled as I was four years ago. If he
thinks I am he makes a mistake, as I will prove to him."
Paul Meyrin spoke the truth. Like all artists, he had devoted a portion
of his time to fencing, which had been brought into vogue by some of his
most eminent brother painters, first and foremost being Carolus Duran,
and had acquired a respectable skill in the use of the weapon. Tall,
muscular, active, and robust as he was, he would not be cowed by this
undersized, delicately built Russian noble. In a word, he wished to put
an end to all the tittle-tattle about, and to have his full liberty.
Sarah in the end agreed that his view was the right one, and the
painter, as we have shown, then gave his seconds a free hand, partly
from anger and more out of boastfulness.
Everything was soon arranged between the seconds, and next morning, at
eight o'clock, the two adversaries were to fire twice, beginning at
twenty paces distance and having the right to advance five paces toward
each other; and if this first encounter were without result it was to be
followed by one with the sword until one or other of the combatants
could no longer defend himself.
So Count Panen told the prince in reply to the question put to him on
entering the prince's room with Baron Zamoieff.
The first secretary added:
"I will bring our countryman, Doctor Saniative, physician to the
embassy. As to the place of meeting, I will inform Monsieur Paul
Meyrin's seconds of it after I have seen Prince Charles B----, who, I do
not doubt, the princess and their children being away from home, will
let us use one of the avenues of the park in which his villa stands near
the Pia Gate. It is essential that the duel should be fought on private
ground, for before midnight all Rome will have heard of what is going to
happen. I know the police here; we shall be watched from day-break
to-morrow."
Pierre Olsdorf warmly expressed his gratitude and accompanied his two
friends to the Corso. He returned then to the Minerva where, a couple of
hours later, a message from Count Panen reported that all was arranged
and that he would be with the prince by seven next morning.
Prince Charles B----, a type of good-heartedness, honor and simplicity,
had granted the request of the Russian nobleman, whom he had known
intimately for some time, and he had given orders to the gate porter to
be ready at day-break to admit the party.
Being told by his seconds of the conditions of the meeting with Prince
Olsdorf, Paul Meyrin, from pride, dared not make any remark to them; nor
did he say anything to Sarah about the exchange of shots which was to
begin and perhaps end the duel. Next morning, having embraced the young
woman with tolerable composure, he accompanied MM. Rimaldi and Bertin.
It had been agreed between these gentlemen and the two Russian noblemen
that the latter should provide the weapons.
The painter and his seconds had little further to go than across the
street. Prince Charles B----'s villa was on the other side of the
avenue, not a hundred yards off. When they reached the gate the porter
opened it a little way for them and saluted them as they passed. They
soon caught sight of two men awaiting them under the trees forming the
entrance to the avenue on the left of the park.
They were Baron Zamoieff and Dr. Saniative.
A little further off was the prince, walking with Count Panen, to whom
he was giving his final instructions.
Seeing M. Meyrin's seconds approach, the count left Pierre Olsdorf after
pressing his hand, and went to MM. Rimaldi and Bertin, whom Baron
Zamoieff had drawn a little on one side, to arrange the last conditions
of the duel and load the pistols.
This task having been done with scrupulous care, Count Panen and M.
Rimaldi drew deep marks in the sand of the avenue at the points where
the two combatants were to take their stand, and also the lines they
might advance to before firing. It had been agreed that either might
fire instantly upon the signal being given by the count, or wait until
he had advanced the five paces stipulated for.
Baron Zamoieff and M. Bertin handed the loaded and cocked pistols to
Pierre Olsdorf and Paul Meyrin, and led them to the marks which they
were not to overpass until Count Panen had said "Fire!"
The adversaries being opposite to each other, their seconds stood aside
to the right and the left. The prince was as calm as if he were in a
shooting gallery, and kept his pistol lowered. The painter, clothed in
black from top to toe, without an edging of linen at neck or wrist to
serve as a mark, and presenting as little as possible of his body by
standing sideways, grasped his weapon, on the contrary, with a nervous
hand, pointing it straight at his foe.
Lying in their green serge scabbards, a few paces off, were the swords
ready to play their part when the time came.
With a last look Count Panen satisfied himself that all was in order,
and, breaking the silence that reigned under the lofty trees he said, in
a firm voice:
"Are you ready, gentlemen?"
Then immediately he gave the order:
"One, two, three! Fire!"
At the last word of the signal Paul Meyrin, aiming at his enemy,
advanced quickly toward him, but before he had taken two steps a shot
was heard and, with a half turn, the painter fell forward on his face
like a log.
Dr. Saniative and his seconds rushed to him, but it was to hear his last
sigh. Pierre Olsdorf's bullet had pierced the heart of Lise Barineff's
second husband.
The prince understood, from the gesture of the doctor and the
consternation of MM. Rimaldi and Bertin, that all was over. Then, and
not till then, his face grew ghastly pale, and for a moment his eyes
rested on the corpse that his justice had made. Then he uncovered
respectfully, and walked away without a word, leaning on Count Panen's
arm.
That day Mme. Daubrel and Vera each received in Paris a telegram to say
that Prince Pierre Olsdorf would be at the Grand Hotel by the evening of
the next day.
CHAPTER XI.
LISE AND MARTHE.
When she received at Pampeln the telegram which Prince Olsdorf had sent
to her from Brindisi to ask her to go at once to Paris with Alexander
and Tekla, Vera Soublaieff had stifled a cry of joy; for at first she
thought of nothing but the happiness of seeing again the man she had
loved with all her soul for more than three years, whose name was spoken
night and morning in her prayers, and whom she had for so long dreaded
she would not meet again. But soon she felt shame at this first emotion,
natural though it was; and, feeling that if the exile was returning so
quickly some great misfortune must be threatening, she wept over the
poor children who were going to embrace their mother on her death-bed
only. She determined to set out at once.
That evening, thanks to the preparations made some weeks before, she was
able to take the express train at Mittau with the young prince, his
sister, and Mme. Bernard, the governess. She was sure thus, rapidly as
he might travel, to be in Paris before Pierre Olsdorf.
She was not mistaken. On arriving at the Grand Hotel she found the
telegram in which the prince announced that he would be there next day.
As for Mme. Daubrel, whose second telegram from Rome had come some hours
earlier, she had hurried to her friend to tell her of it, and, to her
surprise, had found Mme. Podoi there, who had arrived but a few minutes
ago.
Having been told by the Soublaieff's daughter that Mme. Meyrin was as
ill as she could be, the ex-Countess Barineff had suddenly started from
St. Petersburg without a word of warning to anybody.
The interview between Lise and her mother had been heart-breaking. In
seeing her daughter deserted, aged, in danger of her life, she felt
changed in her that maternal love which for so long had been only pride;
and, in spite of her efforts to seem calm and not agitate the patient,
despair was in her face.
Mme. Meyrin had been unable to leave her bed for several days. She had
had her little daughter brought to her, and at the moment when Marthe
entered the bedroom she was saying to her mother, and pointing to Marie,
who was playing with the lace of the pillows:
"You will love her dearly, will you not, when I am no more, and you will
rear her strictly as you reared me? But you will not try to make a fine
lady of her; try to make of her no more than a happy woman. Above all
things, do not marry her where divorce can follow. Divorce, mother, is
nothing but a legal prostitution--a sort of challenge to adultery. It is
an outrage on the laws of the Church and on modesty. Has any woman the
right to pass from the arms of a living husband into those of another
husband? Must not the divorced woman's brow redden at the thought of a
possible, perhaps of an inevitable meeting between the two men who have
possessed her? And her mother's heart, when she has to make two parts of
it, one for the children who are no longer hers even in name, and one
for those who come to her--must not it bleed mortally? If ever my
daughter marries, let it be without the possibility of divorce, I
beseech you."
"My dear Lise," said the general's wife, forcing a smile, "I promise to
follow your wishes in every respect; but why look so far into the
future, why despair? Oh, I am sure you will get better; Marie will have
no need of a second mother; you will be here to watch over her, having
come forth brave and beautiful from your present trials. You are no
longer alone; Alexander and Tekla will soon be here, and who knows but
that your husband, ashamed and penitent, will soon return to you? It is
an every-day occurrence."
At these last words of her mother, Mme. Meyrin shivered with horror, and
in a strange voice said:
"My husband! Never speak of him to me. And your hopes are but dreams.
Yes, if God spares me, I shall see Alexander and Tekla again, since the
man I deceived has taken pity on me; but it will be too late. I lived
for my passion, I die of maternal love. God is full of mercy in His
justice."
As she spoke Lise closed her eyes. When she opened them again in a few
moments she saw Mme. Daubrel, who had softly drawn near the bed.
"See," she said to her mother, designating her friend with a grateful
look, "here is my guardian angel. For four months Marthe has been by me.
I owe to her my power to live to see you."
The general's wife offered her hand to Mme. Daubrel, without speaking,
however, for she felt that sobs would hinder her. She knew the young
woman already by what her daughter had said of her at Pampeln, and from
the touching letters she had sent to Vera Soublaieff at the time of
Alexander's sickness.
"My dear Lise," said Marthe, after returning the pressure of the
ex-Countess Barineff's hand, "I bring you good news."
"My children?" asked Mme. Meyrin, with an accent of indescribable
tenderness.
"Yes, your children and Prince Olsdorf. He telegraphs that he will be in
Paris in less than forty-eight hours, at the same time as your son and
daughter. They were to have left Pampeln two days ago."
"Heaven be praised! Where did the prince telegraph from?"
"From Rome."
"From Rome? Rome? Why did he go there? It was not on his way from
Brindisi to Paris. Marthe, you are hiding something from me."
Lise had started up in bed, her eyes dilated.
"No, I swear it," replied Mme. Daubrel. "Read for yourself."
The sick woman read rapidly through the telegram which her friend
offered her. She sunk back exhausted on the pillows, half dead, and they
heard her murmur:
"From Rome! And Pierre Olsdorf is coming to me, Madame Meyrin! Oh, God!"
"Lise, be calm, I beseech you," said her mother. "These emotions kill
you."
The unhappy woman seemed to hear nothing; her eyes wandered, her
discolored lips spoke disconnected words. Struggling with some terrible
hallucination, she tried with her thin, transparent, bloodless hands to
push away the phantoms crowding about her.
This crisis lasted nearly a quarter of an hour, while the general's wife
and Marthe thought that Lise was dying. However, the poor martyr
presently became calmer, and a little blood returned to her face.
In a few moments, when she had quite regained her senses, and had once
more recognized her mother and Marthe, she reassured them with a
gesture; then, suddenly, her smiling eyes were turned to the door of the
room which had just been softly opened. The ex-Countess Barineff and
Mme. Daubrel turned around.
It was Dumesnil who came in.
Recognizing her old lover, though she had not seen him for twenty years,
the general's wife could not master her movement of surprise. She knew
nothing of the friendly relations between her daughter and the old
comedian.
The good man did not seem to recognize Mme. Froment. Thinking only of
his cherished patient, whose eyes called him to her side, he drew near,
bent to kiss her tenderly, and then only he coldly saluted Mme. Podoi,
to whom Lise said, in a faint voice:
"This is another friend, mother, whom you must love too as you will love
Marthe. His devotion to me has been boundless. If I had been his
daughter he could not have tended me more carefully. She and he have
been all my family these six months. But I remember; you are not
strangers. Yes, Dumesnil told me formerly, when I was happy, that he
knew me as quite a baby. It seems I was pretty then; and he was
infatuated with me. How far away all that is now. I was beautiful as I
grew older--too beautiful. And now?"
This was too much for their two hearts. Their grief, so long repressed,
was about to burst forth in sobs, when the doctor was announced who paid
Mme. Meyrin a daily visit, though he had given up all hope of her
recovery.
While the doctor, to acquit his conscience, was examining the patient
and trying to encourage her with some generous, professional untruths,
the other actors in the painful scene were silent. When the doctor left
the room, Lise's mother and Dumesnil followed him out.
In the next room they stopped, but he did not give them the time to
question him.
"My duty is not to deceive you, madame," he said to the ex-Countess
Barineff. "I can give no hope. Madame Meyrin is so weak that the danger
is more imminent. She may struggle for two or three days more; not
longer."
The general's wife pressed her handkerchief to her mouth to stifle a cry
of grief.
"Courage, madame," said the doctor, as he left them. "She is at least
free from pain. Hide your fears from her. She will pass away gently,
without a moan, as if she were but falling asleep."
Dumesnil, who stood leaning against the wall, was crying.
"Yes, the doctor is right; do not let her read anything in our faces,"
said the old man, going up to his former mistress. "With what a cruel
punishment, Madeleine, God punishes your ambition and my weakness. Poor
Lise! For six months and more I have witnessed her martyrdom, and have
never given myself the supreme joy of calling her my daughter. Come, dry
your tears, as I force back mine to the bottom of my heart, and let us
go back to her."
"Forgive me, Armand; I have not the courage. If I were to go in there
again I should betray my feelings. Give me a few moments."
Seeing that it was indeed better so, the comedian went back alone into
the bedroom. Lise was calm and seemed half stupefied. He sat down a
short way from the bed and let his tears flow silently.
The night following upon this day of emotions was a bad one for Mme.
Meyrin. She was delirious almost throughout it, watched by her mother,
Marthe, and a Sister of Charity, who did not leave her for a moment.
Next day, at noon, the general's wife saw there was time only to summon
a priest to her daughter's bedside. She sent word at once to the
Reverend Pope Wasilieff who, for that matter, had been several times to
see Lise since the beginning of her illness.
Meanwhile, Mme. Daubrel drove to the Grand Hotel.
Vera Soublaieff had arrived there the previous evening, with Alexander
and Tekla. When Mme. Daubrel was announced, she foreboded some
misfortune. Leaving the young prince and his sister in the care of Mme.
Bernard, she went quickly to the room into which the visitor had been
shown.
"Mademoiselle," said Marthe, recognizing Vera in this beautiful girl
with the sweet and serious face, "Madame Meyrin is dying; if you would
have her embrace her son and daughter, there is not a moment to lose."
"You are Madame Daubrel, are you not?" said the farmer's daughter, "the
devoted friend Madame la Comtesse spoke of to me at Pampeln. Yes,
assuredly, I will take her children to her. I am expecting the prince at
every moment. He will forgive me for acting without his orders. Poor
mother!"
Vera Soublaieff rang, and gave the order to the footman, who answered
the bell to send for a carriage.
"You are indeed the noble woman we all love," said Marthe, offering her
hand.
"I only ask for time to write two lines, in case Prince Olsdorf should
come while I am away. I will ask the governess to have the children
ready. Go now; we will be at the Rue d'Assas as soon as you are."
"Thanks, mademoiselle, thanks. May God bless you!"
And quickly leaving the room, Mme. Daubrel went to her cab.
In ten minutes' time Vera was in the landau, with Alexander and Tekla,
which had been driven up to the entrance to the Grand Hotel. The young
prince and his sister knew they were going to see their mother again,
and that she was dangerously ill. Alexander, who had his father's
temperament, was grave; his paleness alone betrayed his emotion. Tekla
was crying in the arms of Soublaieff's daughter.
In less than a quarter of an hour, the landau drew up in the Rue
d'Assas, at the same time as Mme. Daubrel's cab. The two women quickly
crossed the vestibule, and, after asking Vera to wait with the children
in the little room next to the bed-chamber, Marthe was going to pass in
to Lise, when Dumesnil stopped her, saying, in a broken voice:
"The priest is with her. He came a few moments after the departure of
the commissionaire Madame Podoi had sent for him. He had a presentiment
that his presence was necessary."
Vera Soublaieff, to whom the old man spoke as much as to Marthe, sat in
a chair and took Tekla on her knees. The little girl wished to do as she
was told by her big sister--so in her simplicity she called the daughter
of the farmer of Elva--who had asked her not to cry, so as not to pain
her mother; and her little face was convulsed by the efforts she made to
keep back her tears.
Leaning against the mantel-piece, his head lowered, the young Prince
Alexander did not speak, but the nervous movements of his clasped hands
showed plainly enough with what difficulty he kept command over himself.
With the heroic courage that women often possess in the most terrible
circumstances, Mme. Daubrel by a look tried to calm Dumesnil. It seemed
as if in this heavy silence they could hear their bruised hearts beating
in unison.
Almost half an hour had passed when the venerable J. Wasilieff left the
sick-chamber. At the sight of the dying woman's children he called them
to him, kissed them tenderly, and blessed them. Then, sad and deeply
moved, he walked from the room, raising his eyes to heaven, and not
speaking again.
Mme. Daubrel was already with her friend, whom she found calm, almost
smiling. It seemed as if in freeing her soul from its agony the priest's
pardon had given new strength to her body.
"Will you promise me to keep calm?" asked Marthe, in her soft voice.
"Yes," said Lise, slowly, as if seeking to guess why the question was
put to her.
Then, suddenly, she cried:
"My children, my children!"
Her mother-heart had guessed. Was there any other happiness that could
be given her but to see her children?
And, raising herself a little, she received in her arms Alexander and
Tekla, who, brought to the threshold of the door by Vera, had heard her
cry and ran to her. Pressing them to her heart, and devouring them with
kisses, covering them with tears, caressing them with her smiles, she
repeated:
"My son--my daughter. Thank God!"
She held them from her a little--oh! only the length of her arms--to see
them better for a moment or two, then snatched them back to her heart,
raining on them again tears and kisses and a thousand endearments, to
which the children replied only by their kisses, their tears, their
tenderness, and one word: "Mamma."
Great as was the happiness of the poor mother, and on account indeed of
the fullness of her joy, Mme. Daubrel thought it prudent to put an end
to so touching a scene.
"You promised me to be good and calm," she said to Lise, calling
Alexander and Tekla from her with a look.
"Already?" murmured Mme. Meyrin, who understood. "You want to take them
from me already?"
"No," said Marthe; "but you must have a little rest. They shall not
leave the house."
"I promise they shall not, Madame la Comtesse," said Soublaieff's
daughter, taking the children by the hand.
"Is it you, Vera? Forgive me; I could see only them. Let Marthe take
them, and you come here to me, while I can still speak."
The young prince and his sister went out with Mme. Daubrel.
"How beautiful you are! And you are as good as you are beautiful," said
Lise to the young girl, who, before she could hinder it, had kissed her
hand as in the olden time. "How worthy to be loved, too!"
"Madame la Comtesse!" said Vera, blushing.
"Oh, I am not jealous," said Mme. Meyrin, with a mournful smile. "You
will always love them, will you not, when I am dead? For I am going to
die; I know it; I feel it. What strength God had left me to see them I
have given them just now. What would have become of them but for you
these three years? What will become of them without you, without a
mother to guard them? Swear that you will never leave them--swear it, I
beg of you. Then I can go before my God grateful and resigned."
"I promise you, madame," said Vera, crying.
"Thank you," murmured Lise, in a voice that could scarcely be heard, her
eyes closing.
The young girl sprung up. Thinking the patient was dying, she called
Mme. Daubrel. She ran in with Dumesnil, leaving the young prince and his
sister in the neighboring room under the care of the Sister of Charity.
But the last hour of the deserted woman was not yet come. Her heart beat
feebly; with her crooked fingers now and then she tried to draw the
bed-clothes about her--a movement common to the dying.
Mme. Meyrin lay thus until the evening. When Marthe, then, was about to
take Alexander and Tekla to the room made ready for them, she reopened
her eyes, looked round vaguely, and stammered:
"My children."
Mme. Daubrel took them to the bedside. The poor mother scarcely knew
them.
At this moment a carriage was heard to stop before the house; the bell
was rung; some moments passed, and a man, pale, and with uncovered head,
appeared on the threshold of the room.
It was Pierre Olsdorf. On reaching the Grand Hotel he had found Vera's
letter, and had hurried thither.
"The prince!" cried Mme. Podoi, with an ineffable expression of
gratitude.
"He," murmured Vera, growing pale.
As if the word "prince" spoken by her mother had suddenly revived her,
Lise raised herself and uttered a cry.
The Russian nobleman quickly drew near to the woman who had borne his
name.
"You?" she said, raising herself as if galvanized. "Can you pardon me?"
"I think of nothing now, Lise, but that you are suffering," replied
Pierre Olsdorf, pressing softly in his the suppliant hands which the
unhappy woman raised to him.
"Then I can die. Pierre Alexandrowich, listen to me. Vera, come
near--very near. Lose not a word, either of you. Oh, God! give me
strength. Pierre, Vera loves you. She is a noble and saintly girl. When
I am dead you will have the right to marry again. Promise me that she
shall be the mother of my children--promise it!"
"I promise--I swear it," replied the prince, in a firm and grave voice.
The daughter of the farmer of Elva felt the blood rush to her heart.
The dying woman spoke now so low that she could hardly be heard, as if
she were speaking to herself.
"With her the name of the Olsdorfs will remain unstained."
She would have fallen back heavily if the prince, who was supporting
her, had not laid her gently on the pillows.
This effort was her last. In a few moments the dying woman
was delirious. Her widely opened eyes were expressionless;
her lips, distorted by a convulsive smile, spoke only broken
words, the last expression of the last beating of her heart: "My
children--Pierre--Vera--Marthe--mother--Dumesnil--all--all are here--and
he--only he--"
Pierre Olsdorf understood that Lise's thoughts had turned for a moment
to her husband; and he lowered his head that he might not see in a
corner of the death-chamber the cradle of the child whose father he had
killed.
Suddenly a cry of horror was heard.
Leaning over her daughter, Mme. Podoi had felt her last breath upon her
face.
Mme. Meyrin, the ex-Princess Olsdorf, was no more.
Dumesnil, staggering, his eyes haggard, stretched out his arms as if to
save himself from falling. Mme. Daubrel, deeply as she herself was
moved, rushed to him to support him. But the comedian pushed her away,
crying:
"She was my daughter--my daughter!"
And he fell on his knees beside the death-bed.
Despair had wrung from the old man the secret which his paternal love
had made him keep so bravely for more than twenty years.
A fortnight later, after a funeral ceremony performed in the chapel at
Pampeln, in presence of the prince, his children, Vera Soublaieff, and
Mme. Podoi, the mortal remains of the Countess Lise were lowered into
the vault of the Olsdorfs.
The "divorced princess" had come again under the roof of the man whose
name she had borne--but she came a corpse.
Almost at the same hour, on one of the piers of New York, Mme. Daubrel
was weeping over her son, while her husband smiled upon them.
Repentant and pardoned, the woman separated by decree from her husband
had now a new future before her, and took again her place by her
husband's hearth.
THE END.
THE HART SERIES
Laura Jean Libbey Barbara Howard Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
Charlotte M. Braeme Mrs. E. Burke Collins Mary E. Bryan
Miss Caroline Hart Lucy Randall Comfort Marie Corelli
Was there ever a galaxy of names representing such authors offered to
the public before?
Masters all of writing stories that arouse the emotions in sentiment,
passion and love, their books excel any that have ever been written.
133--A Beautiful Fiend By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
134--Victor's Triumph By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
135--Cruel as the Grave By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
136--Tried for Her Life By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
137--The Deserted Wife By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
138--The Bride of Llewellyn By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
139--Retribution By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
140--The Mother-in-Law By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
141--A Noble Lord By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
142--The Discarded Daughter By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
143--The Lost Heiress By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
144--The Widow's Son By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
145--The Lost Heir of Linlithgow By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
146--The Bride's Fate By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
147--Allworth Abbey By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
148--Changed Brides By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
149--Capitola the Madcap By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
150--Hidden Hand By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
151--Miriam the Avenger By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
152--Mystery of a Dark Hollow By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
153--The Three Beauties By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
154--Viva By Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
155--Lena Rivers By Mary J. Holmes
156--Aikenside By Mary J. Holmes
157--Bad Hugh By Mary J. Holmes
158--Cousin Maud By Mary J. Holmes
159--The English Orphans By Mary J. Holmes
160--Maggie Miller By Mary J. Holmes
161--Marion Grey By Mary J. Holmes
162--Miss McDonald By Mary J. Holmes
163--Rector of St. Marks By Mary J. Holmes
164--Rosamond By Mary J. Holmes
165--Madame Sans Gene By Victor Sardou
166--Miss Bretherton By Mrs. Humphrey Ward
167--Living or Dead By Hugh Conway
168--The Other Man's Wife By John Strange Winter
169--A Fiery Ordeal By Charlotte M. Braeme
170--For Another's Sin By Bertha M. Clay
171--Artist and Model By Rene De Pont-Jest
172--A Daughter's Sacrifice By F. C. Phillips
173--Only a Mill Girl By Eric St. C. Ross
174--Margaret Byng By F. C. Phillips
175--I Have Lived and Loved By Mrs. Forrester
176--Aunt Johnnie By John Strange Winter
177--Sylvia Arden By Oswald Crawford
178--The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Hart Series books are for sale everywhere, or they will be sent by
mail, postage paid, for 20 cents a copy, by the publisher; 6 copies for
$1.00. Postage stamps taken the same as money.
THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK CO., Cleveland, O., U.S.A.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The original edition did not contain a table of contents. A table
of contents has been created for this electronic edition.
The following typographical errors present in the original edition have
been corrected.
On the title page, "RENE DE PONT-JEST" was changed to "RENE DE
PONT-JEST".
In Part I, Chapter II, "the actor as the Odeon Theatre" was changed to
"the actor at the Odeon Theatre", and "Well, well we will begin" was
changed to "Well, well, we will begin".
In Part I, Chapter IV, "she was _enciente_ by Paul Meyrin" was changed
to "she was _enceinte_ by Paul Meyrin".
In Part I, Chapter V, "some skill as a violinst" was changed to "some
skill as a violinist", "she cauld give herself rein" was changed to "she
could give herself rein", "It was the Princes Olsdorf" was changed to
"It was the Princess Olsdorf", "she bad driven off" was changed to "she
had driven off", and a quotation mark was added after "I thought you
were alone."
In Part I, Chapter VI, "his wife life lives publicly" was changed to
"his wife lives publicly".
In Part I, Chapter VIII, "you were _enciente_ by him" was changed to
"you were _enceinte_ by him".
In Part I, Chapter IX, "when, being drassed" was changed to "when, being
dressed".
In Part I, Chapter XII, a question mark was changed to a period after
"you are your father's own daughter", and "fell back on the soft" was
changed to "fell back on the sofa".
In Part I, Chapter XIII, "ove you more than ever" was changed to "owe
you more than ever".
In Part II, Chapter II, "Mme. Frantz eat scarcely anything" was changed
to "Mme. Frantz ate scarcely anything", and a missing quotation mark was
added after "most adorable little thing ever seen."
In Part II, Chapter III, "expressiong her gratitude" was changed to
"expressing her gratitude", "When she was _enciente_ with Tekla" was
changed to "When she was _enceinte_ with Tekla", "so long as you are
suckling, Marie" was changed to "so long as you are suckling Marie", and
a missing period was added after "let us speak no more of it".
In Part II, Chapter IV, "his artist friends; her dream" was changed to
"his artist friends, her dream".
In Part II, Chapter V, "Her letter ended with these wrods" was changed
to "Her letter ended with these words".
In Part II, Chapter VI, "the Countess Lise Barnieff" was changed to "the
Countess Lise Barineff", "no less than Alexander and Telka" was changed
to "no less than Alexander and Tekla", and a missing period was added
after "She was there alone".
In Part II, Chapter VII, "tell their petty sorrows too" was changed to
"tell their petty sorrows to", and "especially welcome to Mme. Daudrel"
was changed to "especially welcome to Mme. Daubrel".
In Part II, Chapter X, "went to Mm. Rimaldi and Bertin" was changed to
"went to MM. Rimaldi and Bertin".
In Part II, Chapter XI, a missing quotation mark was added after "You
are Madame Daubrel, are you not?"