Artist and Model Part 32

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 Sat.u.r.day, 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, b.a.l.l.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nts.

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 pa.s.sion, 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 p.r.o.nounced a decree of separation between M. and Mme. Daubrel, on the pet.i.tion of the husband.

The decree was p.r.o.nounced 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 circ.u.mstances 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.suring 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.