CHAPTER VI.

LISE AND VERA.

On returning next day from Amiens, whither he had really been, and not 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.