CHAPTER XII.

THE DIVORCE.

Money being in Russia, as elsewhere, a powerful aid, and Pierre Olsdorf not sparing it, matters moved forward with great speed. In less than a month the Holy Synod had closed its inquiry, and one morning the prince received intimation of the judgment pronounced in favor of his wife and condemning him to two months' claustral retirement in a convent at Moscow. The judgment, however, left the children of the marriage under his care.

We know, as well, that according to the Russian law celibacy is a consequence of divorce in the case of the guilty husband or wife. Pierre Olsdorf, therefore, might not marry again without the authority of the czar; and it was his duty to go at once to St. Petersburg, and submit to the will of the Holy Synod.

That evening he told Vera that at last he was free, and a smile of ineffable joy played about her lips; but when he added that they must go back to Russia, the poor child's happiness changed to despair. In St. Petersburg or at Pampeln she would not live with Pierre, who was now all in all to her, though her tenderness was and had been chaste.

This man, young, healthy, full of ardor, such as he had never felt before, had had the courage not to possess himself of this young maiden who awaited only the moment to yield herself to him. He loved and knew himself beloved; but faithful to the oath that he had sworn to himself he had mastered his passions. His oath was that Vera should return pure to her father. After suffering himself to be condemned by the law as an adulterer to gain his end, he would not be one in reality, as much because his pride dictated the sacrifice to its end, without recompense or compensation, as for the satisfaction of his own conscience.

The struggle had been a painful and terrible one for him. Very often in passing through Vera's room to his own he had avoided her glance so that he might not see in her eyes the fever that was burning within her; and he would bid her "good-night" by gesture, so that the trembling of his voice might not betray him.

How many times in the silence of the night he had listened at the door, softly half opened by him, of the young girl, to hear her gentle breathing, her sighs, and to aspire with delight the fragrance which floated from the couch of the adorable young sleeper.

But he had resisted his passions, and was justly proud of conquering them.

The combat had been less painful for Vera. Spared, by her ignorance and chastity, those desires of the flesh that burn like a brand, her love for Pierre, when she believed herself loved in return, was a long sweet dream, full of charming ecstasies and voluptuous tremors. She suspected that from this intimacy, from their exchange of tendernesses, the abandoning of herself at the fateful hour would follow; but she did not even blush at the thought. Full of confidence in the future, she awaited the great unknown, forgetful of all--her father, Russia, the past, and living in a sort of rapture that grew upon her more and more.

And it was at the time when she was in this frame of mind that Pierre Olsdorf came to tell her of their near return to St. Petersburg; that was, of the compulsory return to her former life, under the eyes of her family, perhaps far from the prince whom she would no longer see every day, almost every hour. At the words, the unhappy girl felt herself on the edge of an abyss, a terrible vertigo seized her upon looking into its depths, her face grew deathly pale, her eyes closed. If Pierre had not caught her in his arms she would have fallen like a stone to the ground.

The kisses of the prince, delighted and alarmed as he was at one and the same time, soon recalled the farmer's daughter to consciousness. His lips spoke such sweet words, laid to her lips, that they gave her full courage again, she trusted him so entirely; and the next day at the hour fixed by her master, she was ready to set out.

It was agreed that she should go alone with Yvan, at half past seven, to the Great Northern Railway Station, where the prince had reserved two compartments in the train, and that he would join them there.

While Pierre Olsdorf was making ready for his departure, Lise Barineff was hastening the preparations for her marriage with Paul. Knowing that the Russian law authorized her to marry, if she thought well, the very day after the decree of divorce, and being aware of the ill will of the Meyrins, she would scarcely suffer her lover to be a moment from her side; first because her love for him grew in proportion as obstacles were opposed to it, and next because she feared that Paul, whose feeble and wavering nature she knew, might escape her, yielding to the pressure brought to bear upon him by his family.

She had not hidden from the painter the oath the prince had sworn, to kill him if he did not become her husband; nor had she failed to tell him of the good position, monetarily, that her divorce left her in. Not only had the prince returned her dowry, eight thousand pounds, but he had left her his mansion in St. Petersburg, worth twelve thousand more. She could count on an income, therefore, of from eight hundred to a thousand pounds a year. She thought, as Paul did, that here was a fact that would plead in her favor with the Meyrins. When she was informed, at the same time as he who had been her husband, of the decision of the Holy Synod, she began to hope that the family in the Rue de Douai would come to have a better feeling toward her.

The artist himself thought so. Moreover, humiliated at being treated as a mere boy by his mother and sister-in-law, he had quite made up his mind to do without a consent that he would have to win, if indeed he were ever to get it, by too long a struggle; and he had given them to understand that he would not wait until the day of his marriage to leave them and set up housekeeping for himself. After dinner one evening, therefore, he told his mother very plainly that the Princess Olsdorf being divorced, he was going to marry her as speedily as possible.

At this news, though it was expected, the storm that had been gathering for several weeks in the Meyrin family burst forth violently. Mme. Frantz had repressed her feelings too long not to take a full revenge now.

Mme. Meyrin, who was completely under the domination of her daughter-in-law, only said to her son:

"I will never consent to your marrying a divorced woman, who is older than you and belongs to neither your rank nor your class."

Mme. Frantz hastened to add:

"Not to mention that she is the mother of two children, and accustomed to an idle and luxurious life that would not fit in with ours. Do you imagine that with eight hundred a year she can keep up an establishment, when she is used to scattering her money about as she does?"

"Then I am good for nothing, I suppose?" Paul retorted. "Good years and bad, I make not less than eight hundred, and I hope to make more. I shall bring to the support of the household as much as my wife."

The artist could not have used a more unwelcome argument to his sister-in-law. Barbe had the best reason to know what her brother-in-law's resources were, as she had made herself his cashier. It was exactly this money that he threw into the common stock that she regretted, though she would not acknowledge as much. It was therefore a bad move to let her understand that she would not have it to count on in future. Beside herself with rage, she went on coarsely:

"Very likely; but that won't alter the fact that your fine princess is a compromised woman. Do you suppose we don't know of her goings-on with you? She sha'n't set foot in here, that is certain."

"Ah, bah!" exclaimed Paul, provoked. "You will not receive her when she is my wife; but you received her--her and her presents--when she was my mistress. Very well, so be it. We shall each keep to ourselves, that is all."

"Paul!" said Mme. Meyrin, the mother, in a beseeching tone, frightened at the anger of her son, whom she had never seen other than gentle and submissive.

"Well, well, mother," said the painter, in a very different tone, "it is my sister-in-law that irritates me. One would think she was my guardian. Besides, I won't have the woman I love insulted--the woman, who, for my sake, has lost the high position that she had in the world."

"Oh, for your sake," sneered Mme. Frantz.

This was too much for the artist.

"Look here," he exclaimed, "you will never be anything better than a backbiter and selfish. What maddens you is my shaking myself free from you. You don't care for the morality of the thing, but for your pocket. You thought I should make a good fortune-leaving uncle. I love my niece, I know; but I love Tekla, my dear little baby daughter, better. I shall marry Lise whether you like it or not. As for you, mother, you know my affection for you. It won't change, you may be sure, because I am not living with you. From this night I shall live here no longer. I will give you timely notice of my marriage, and I hope, in spite of my sweet sister-in-law, that you will be present at it."

Leaving then his mother and Mme. Frantz, who had not looked for such determination in him, Paul hurried to the ex-Princess Olsdorf to tell her what had passed.

Chance had prepared for him in the Rue Lafitte an unexpected and fateful meeting.

The door had been opened for him, and, without asking any question of the footman, he was passing through the anteroom to the room where he expected to find Lise, when the servant stopped him, saying:

"Pardon me, monsieur, but Madame la Princess is with her mother."

"Her mother!" exclaimed Paul, in surprise.

He remembered suddenly that he too, as well as Lise, had ignored rather too much the woman whose son-in-law he was to be.

Left by her daughter in complete ignorance of the conjugal drama in which Lise was the heroine, Mme. Podoi had only heard of the divorce at St. Petersburg as everybody else had, through the talk that the scandal gave rise to. The news had come upon her like a clap of thunder. It was the destruction of her dream of ambition, the realization of which she had striven for so ardently; and, though she knew that the decree of divorce had been pronounced against Prince Olsdorf, she suspected a mystery and wished to fathom it.

Not saying a word to anybody of her intended journey, she had left St. Petersburg, and suddenly appeared before her daughter in Paris.

She had been there but a short time when Paul called. There had been a violent scene between the two women.

Attacked unexpectedly, and feeling a sort of pride in hiding nothing, Lise had told her mother everything--her love for the painter, the prince's ultimatum, what had happened since, and lastly, her intention to marry again at once.

The general's wife, having listened frowningly to her daughter's story, broke out at this latter part, exclaiming:

"You are mad. Whether you have deceived your husband, concerns, perhaps, yourself alone; but that you should become Madame Meyrin after having been the Princess Olsdorf! No, that you never shall! What! have I lived for twenty years with this one object before me, that you should be a great lady, and am I to see you turned into a miserable little artist's wife? Never! Monsieur Meyrin is a scoundrel. He loved you through vanity, and would now marry you through interest. I will speak to him plainly, depend upon me."

Lise tried vainly to calm her mother.

"He knows you are rich," she went on, "and that after my death you will be richer. That is his sort of love. If you were poor he would not dream of making you his wife. I swear that neither of you need expect anything from me. Is it possible that after my training of you, you can be in love with this showy fellow, a dauber of no name or talent? Ah! you are your father's own daughter."

"What do you mean?" said Lise, quickly, in great surprise.

"Nothing, nothing," said Mme. Podoi, biting her lips.

She had almost forgotten in her anger that for everybody, and above all for Lise herself, her daughter was the daughter of Count Barineff.

She went on a moment afterward:

"Have you thought nothing of your children who will be taken from you?"

"The prince will not dream of taking Tekla from me. He knows she is not his child."

"But your son Alexander? What will he be to you when you are called Madame Meyrin? You don't suppose Pierre will ever let you see him or speak to him? What will they tell him when he asks where his mother is? If he is sick who will care for him?"

Lise Barineff turned very pale. As we have said, she had always been a good mother. Her head drooped; she answered nothing. It was plain that she suffered.

"Is your marriage fixed?"

"Yes," said the young woman. "In the first place, I love Monsieur Paul Meyrin."

"A fine reason!"

"Besides, if he does not marry me--of course, you can't have known this--the prince will kill him."

"And a good thing, too."

"Oh, mother, mother!"

"Do you suppose I can easily fall in with this ridiculous change in your life? If my pride could bear it, would not my motherly love take the alarm! Think of the society you have lived in, and compare it with that which you will have to live in."

"Monsieur Meyrin is a great artist, and artists, in France, as elsewhere, are received by everybody."

"To make a Madame Meyrin of a Princess Olsdorf! It is shameful. Any way, I warn you everything is at an end between us. Adieu. I will never see you again, until you can tell me that you have made up your mind to remain Lise Barineff."

As she suddenly opened the door of the room Mme. Podoi found herself face to face with Paul Meyrin, whom she recognized at once.

"So it is you, Mr. Painter," she said in a haughty voice. "My sincere compliments. I have paid dearly for my patronage of you in Russia. After betraying the prince who honored you by his hospitality, you carry off his wife and part a mother and her child. It is as an honorable man would have acted--exactly. To pay some debts a man must risk his life. You prefer marrying. Well, it is your business and my daughter's. Before a year has passed she will sing a different song."

Paul, hat in hand, let the flood sweep over him.

The young woman, who had followed her mother, put an end to the scene by drawing her future husband into the room.

The general's wife looked at them for a moment with angry eyes, muttering, "The idiots!" and disappeared.

"Forgive me," said Lise to Paul, winding her arms about his neck.

"Forgive you?" said Paul, laughing. "Why, I've been hearing worse than that at home. They are all densely stupid. I beg your pardon for saying so. If I do not love you as much as I do they would make me adore you."

He crushed her in his arms, covering her eyes and lips with kisses.

A sudden ring was heard at the bell, and almost immediately the footman brought a letter to his mistress which a commissionaire had brought from the Great Northern Railway Station.

The letter was from the prince.

After reading the first few lines, Lise cried out and fell back on the sofa.

"Madame," wrote Pierre Olsdorf to the woman who was once his wife, "the decree of divorce having left me guardian of my children--I am taking away Tekla. When you receive this letter we shall be on our way to Russia, which is closed against you by my order."

The outraged husband avenged himself on the mother. At least, in her despair, so Lise Barineff interpreted his action.

The prince concluded thus:

"Remember your undertaking to marry again as soon as possible, if you wish that I should not return to Paris and keep the oath I have sworn. In due time, when the law permits, you must become Madame Meyrin."

The painter picked up the letter which had fallen from the hand of the ex-Princess Olsdorf. He stood before her with head lowered, without daring to address a word of consolation to her.

This day, for the first time, they parted without a word, without the exchange of a kiss.