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."