Artist and Model Part 33

Well acquainted with all the circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d, 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 Emba.s.sy 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 j.a.pan, 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 G.o.d 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 Emba.s.sy 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. .h.i.ther 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 appet.i.tes which other objects can appease, for speedily, to the sorrow of parting and to the pa.s.sion 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, a.s.sociated 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 rea.s.suring, 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, pa.s.sing 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 paG.o.das 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 G.o.ddess 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 n.o.bleman 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.