CHAPTER IX.

FAR AWAY.

The particulars that Mme. Daubrel had got from Vera Soublaieff as well as from the Russian Embassy 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 hither 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 appetites which other objects can appease, for speedily, to the sorrow of parting and to the passion 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, associated 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 reassuring, 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, passing 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 pagodas 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 goddess 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 nobleman 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. "Perhaps, you say. Ah! don't deceive me. It would kill me."

Her thin hands had drawn Mme. Daubrel to her with strange energy. Her eyes questioned not less than her voice.

Frightened by this excitement, Marthe dared not say another word.

Dumesnil saw that an end must be put to this agony, even at the risk of a dangerous crisis.

"Well, then, yes," said he, in his turn. "Your children will soon be with you. The prince has telegraphed to your friend that he will be in Paris within a month with Alexander and Tekla. If he has them brought to France, it won't be to deprive you longer of their caresses."

The poor woman's face betrayed that she could not believe what was told her.

"The prince," she stammered, "the prince? He will give me back my children? I shall see my son again--my daughter? Ah, no, it is impossible."

"Read this," said Marthe, giving her Pierre Olsdorf's telegram.

Mme. Meyrin seized it, and when she had read it slowly, in a low voice, several times, as if the better to take in the sense of these blessed words which had winged their way through space to bring her a crowning consolation, she grew deathly pale, crossed her hands and, with a sob, raising her eyes, brilliant from fever, to heaven, murmured:

"Oh, God, I pray that Thou wilt let me live a month longer."

Almost at the same moment, more than five hundred leagues distant, at Pampeln, there was passing another scene not less touching, though of another kind.

Vera Soublaieff had been two months without a letter from the prince, and her anxiety was great when she received his telegram from Bombay begging her to get ready to go to Paris.

At first she thought she must have misread and was dreaming; but soon she calmed herself, understood the truth, and felt her heart swell with a great joy. She was going to see again the man she loved, whom she had waited for three years, whose long absence had caused her such cruel sorrow.

Suddenly Vera reflected that if the prince charged her to take his children to Paris, some painful event must have happened. She who had been the Princess Olsdorf was doubtless dead, and Vera was ashamed of having thought of her own happiness alone. And yet, she thought, if Mme. Meyrin was dead, she would have been told of it by Mme. Daubrel. Without trying to fathom the mystery of what was going on, she ran out to Alexander and Tekla, who were playing a little way off before the main entrance to the chateau, and covered them with kisses, telling them they would soon see their father again. She dared not, however, in spite of their tenderly questioning looks, utter their mother's name; but she prepared to follow the instructions she had received.