Artist and Model Part 2

Somewhat fatigued by b.a.l.l.s and receptions, Lise Olsdorf was not less wishful than her husband to quit the city, so that on the appointed day she did not keep the post-chaise waiting that was to take them to Pampeln.

At the time of which we are writing, in 1860, the railway that now joins St. Petersburg and Konigsberg did not exist. The distance between the prince's town house and his country place at Pampeln was not less than a hundred leagues.

All the household he took with him to Courland where his valet, a faithful servant who, so to speak, had seen his master born; his cook, formerly the head cook at the French Emba.s.sy, and two women servants for the princess. One of them was a French woman. General Podoi had transferred her services to his daughter when Lise married, being a.s.sured thus of always knowing what might be pa.s.sing in the young people's household when he himself would be away from it.

The servants followed their master and mistress in a big coach, which carried the necessary provisions as well, for no dependence was to be placed on the hotel accommodation in the towns they had to pa.s.s through.

In most of them the only thing that could be found was the "samovar,"

ready for the brewing of tea.

After a three days' journey the prince and his people reached the end of their journey.

It was dark when they arrived. All that the princess could make out of the chateau was its monumental appearance, but next day she had to confess that all that had been told her of Pampeln was short of the truth.

Built in the reign of the Empress Anne on a hill which overlooks the Wandau River, the residence of the Olsdorfs shows signs of the eclecticism which influenced Russian architecture in the eighteenth century. After having been Grecian in style, and then Italian, it did not take a truly national character until the time of the Czar Nicholas.

Though, regarded as a building, the ma.s.sive and heavy-looking chateau offered nothing remarkable to the view in its colossal dimensions, the Pampeln estate was, nevertheless, the most important in the neighborhood, from its extent, the richness of the soil, and the immensity of its forests.

A true gentleman farmer, as his father had been before him, Prince Pierre overlooked everything himself, sometimes being on horseback at day-break to visit the most distant parts of his property. His care was not wholly for the improvement of the land; as we have said before, he was ever anxious for the well-being of his tenants.

The inside of the chateau was luxuriously and comfortably furnished.

The wood-work, in cedar, of the great banqueting halls, in the style of Henry II., had been carved by the most skilled Flemish workmen. The fencing-room, the large Gothic windows of which looked on to the park, contained a curious collection of arms of all periods, from the heavy, damasked weapons of the forefathers of the house to the modern musket; while the chapel, whose service was performed by a pope who lived at the chateau the year round, was a marvel of Byzantine art.

As for the suite of apartments of the princess, it was easy for her to think in entering it that she had not left St. Petersburg, so scrupulous had the prince been about the furnis.h.i.+ng of it, and every petty detail.

Besides the princ.i.p.al bed and reception-rooms there were forty guest chambers. The stables could accommodate at least a hundred horses, and the kennels were filled by the handsomest packs of hounds in the country.

The servants' quarters were at the end of the great shady park full of old trees, where huntsmen, grooms, and all the servants, to the number of forty or fifty, who were not employed within the mansion, were lodged. Counting in the gamekeepers who looked after his ponds and woods, the master of Pampeln had thus at his orders quite a small army, disciplined, alert, and wholly devoted to him.

The pride can easily be imagined that Lise Olsdorf felt when a few days after her arrival her husband conducted her over this splendid domain of which she was to be the queen, and wished to be the benefactress.

A week later her mother and General Podoi arrived. About a score of guests soon followed them, and the hunting season began in full earnest.

The princess had scarcely the time to become used to this stirring pleasure. Being _enceinte_, she was obliged to remain comparatively quiet, which she did very willingly.

From this time forth she was satisfied to go with the hunters in her carriage, as far as the state of the roads would permit. Then with her mother and some women friends she would return to the chateau, where in the evening she did the honors of the house with a grace and ease that charmed the guests.

Toward the end of August, Lise, to the great joy of her husband, was delivered of a son, whom they named Alexander. The happy event formed an excuse for a series of entertainments, which brought the season to a close in princely fas.h.i.+on.

September came, and everybody was making the best of their way back to St. Petersburg. The Olsdorf mansion was open again. The princess often stole away from the drawing-room to be with her son.

Lise Olsdorf made a good mother. For two years she was not a single day absent from her child. She had scruples even about trusting him for a few hours to strange hands, and she nursed him through all his infantile troubles.

This tender, complete, and devoted maternal love estranged her somewhat from her husband, and gave her a special distaste for the life he led at Pampeln. She went with the prince, of course, to Courland, but she was rarely to be seen with him on his hunting expeditions and excursions on the banks of the Livonian gulf. The result of this was the birth of a sort of coolness between the prince and his wife, which was sure to grow day by day. Mme. Podoi very quickly saw what was happening. She spoke to her daughter about it, but Lise only replied:

"Why, mother, the prince is a very amiable man, but he is far from being the husband I dreamed of. He never in his life had a pa.s.sion, and never will have, except for horses and dogs; I am sure of it."

The princess spoke the words in so bitter a tone, and with such a gleam in her fine eyes, that the ex-actress, well versed in this sort of thing, felt a presentiment of some catastrophe in the future.

She was careful, however, to betray no sign of uneasiness. She smiled even, and, smiling, made up her mind to watch.

At the end of three years from the birth of her son, when her constant care for him had become less indispensable, the princess showed a disposition to return to worldly pleasures. At first she was seen at the Michael Theatre, then she began to hold receptions anew, opening her doors to the foreign artistes that her mother introduced to her; and, finally, her reappearance at the court b.a.l.l.s was triumphantly welcomed.

Then, when the season in the capital was over, she became, to the surprise and joy of the prince, the hardy amazon that she had been in the first months of their marriage.

It was like a new birth in Lise, attributable, one might suppose, to the development of her symmetrical and dazzling beauty, while her bearing betrayed a kind of new vigor, surprising to her friends, which seemed to welcome noise and movement. She was soon a constant attendant at all entertainments, and took her place at the head of fas.h.i.+onable women in the highest circles of Russian society.

Still, notwithstanding the active, frivolous, and trying life she was leading, the heart of the Princess Olsdorf was calm. Amid the crowd of adorers her high position and beauty had won for her, she remained an irreproachable wife, but a radical change had occurred in both her mind and disposition. Her comparative indifference for frivolous things was replaced by a sort of unhealthy curiosity. She now lent a ready ear to risky stories which formerly had been very distasteful to her. Her imagination, suddenly aroused, seemed to question the unknown, and be in search of emotions of which she was ignorant. In theatrical performances she preferred a love story to a comedy of modern life and manners. After having for long read nothing in French but the historical romances of the elder Alexander Dumas, she began to devour highly spiced novels, which she obtained from France by stealth; for in Russia then, as now, the government forbade the introduction into the country of many of the best-known and least moral novels of the day.

In the earliest days of her marriage, as we have said, the princess would accompany her husband in his excursions, but only to please him.

Now she was grown into a daring sportswoman, eager in the pursuit of the quarry, greedy of danger, and finding a sharp pleasure in encountering it. In these mad gallops, mounted on one of the small, fiery, and swift horses that are used in the country for hunting purposes, she was wonderfully handsome, her eyes glistening, her bosom heaving, her lips quivering. She seemed to try, by wearying her body, to keep her soul in repose.

These were the only moments in their married life in which there was a full community of ideas and sensations between Pierre Olsdorf and his wife; for when once the prince was on horseback and in pursuit of the game, he was no longer the cold and self-contained man he ordinarily was. He was like a soldier on the field of battle. For the time being he was on fire. The most spirited horses were controlled by his strong hand; no horn sounded so clear and loud as his. He was superbly cool and brave when he had a bear at bay. He seemed to be possessed with a love of courage when he attacked a wolf in its lair, and watched the beast being tossed piece by piece to the hounds.

The day over, all this manly energy vanished. Sitting down to table in the evening at the chateau, when the guests saw Pierre in his black coat, his face calm, his eyelids drooping, it was hard to believe that this was the man whose impetuous daring would sometimes frighten his companions in the chase.

The strange glances which Lise cast furtively on her husband then might have been observed. Her face expressed surprise and contempt, and when the prince paid her a compliment, she would reply dryly or sarcastically, though she tried not to betray the state of her mind.

The fact was that the princess, who had never really loved the man whose name she bore, and, above all, had never felt any sensual attraction toward him, began to avoid him, inst.i.tuting comparisons between him and the other men by whom she was surrounded.

The calm and respectful affection of Pierre was not enough for her. That was not the love which, as a consequence of the active life she led, her awakened senses gave her glimpses. She felt that the contact of two beings really in love with each other must be more troubling to both. By what right was she cheated of the deep emotions, the burning pleasures, that she had heard some of her women friends whispering about? Was not her beauty worthy of being pa.s.sionately loved? Was not she desirable from every point of view? Where, then, was the excuse for this monotony in her life, this lake without a ripple on its surface, this heaven without a cloud? She thirsted unconsciously, as it were, for unknown storms, and the fact made her irritable and nervous.

This moral and physical excitement led the princess at first to try and rouse her husband. Supposing that she might succeed by making him jealous, she grew coquettish, whimsical, frivolous, much like many of the young women of the Russian aristocracy; but Pierre did not seem to even notice the change. Lise's strangest whims drew from him no reproach. But as, doubtless, he had not found in her his ideal of a woman, he saw less and less of her each day, giving himself up to his own pursuits. Then Lise, humiliated and offended, isolated too, began to look about her with disquieted curiosity.

This happened in the middle of summer, when there were many guests at Pampeln, and certainly the princess had only to choose. None of them, however, brilliant as they were, pleased her so much that she distinguished him by particular favor.

They were what the young men were who had formed her court since her marriage--most of them military men, handsome cavaliers, elegant, brave, extravagant. They had all much the same good qualities and much the same bad. Their declarations offered no variety, they scarcely made her smile. Their attempts to win her heart were alike. The same madrigals were used, the same melodramatic protestations were spoken by all. There was nothing about them that was simple or natural, true or from the heart. Some of them loved or desired her ardently, no doubt; but such of them as dared to tell her so, all did it in the same way, with the tone of that frivolous world for which love is a pleasant episode of life, and not its end and aim.

Besides, each of these sighers and adorers was a friend of the prince, and Lise was revolted by the thought. She thought them vile to wish to abuse the confidence of the man whose hand they pressed with a thousand protestations of devotion.

This was the state of mind of the Countess Barineff's daughter when Count Barewski, a regular visitor at Pampeln, arrived at the chateau. He brought with him his wife and a young painter from Paris, M. Paul Meyrin, whom General Podoi had already presented to the Olsdorfs at one of their last receptions of the previous winter, on the eve, almost, of their departure for Courland, so that the prince scarcely remembered the young man's name.

Paul Meyrin was none the less hospitably received, like all guests at the chateau. When he approached and saluted the princess, she recalled so vividly at the sight of him how the beauty of this young foreigner had struck her at St. Petersburg, that she was for the moment confused.

She recovered herself quickly, however, and offering her hand, after the English and Russian fas.h.i.+on, to the young man, she bade him welcome in a perfectly calm voice.

Still, while Count Barewski was telling Prince Olsdorf that M. Paul Meyrin was only an indifferent huntsman, though a skillful horseman, so that he was more often to be seen with his sketching materials than with a gun, Lise examined the new-comer with curious eyes, such as she had turned on n.o.body else as yet.

Above the middle height, broad-shouldered, and carrying himself with a slight swagger, the friend of Count Barewski was quite the romantic hero in appearance. His colorless face made his silky beard look the darker.

He had fine eyes, and boldly marked eyebrows. On his full red lips the smile of youth played. His expression of face was gentle in the extreme, almost simple. Born in Bucharest, he was, in a word, one of the purest specimens of that handsome Latin race which crossing is making rarer and rarer.

As though he felt the young woman's eyes were fixed on him, Paul Meyrin turned abruptly toward her, and as their eyes met both of them felt a secret tremor.

Lise, surprised, bent to caress a dog lying at her feet, while Paul, certainly not a.n.a.lyzing or fully understanding what he felt, took leave of the prince for the moment, Pierre having said kindly, in reply to Count Barewski:

"Monsieur Meyrin must make himself at home. At Pampeln every one lives in his own way. I shall console myself about his indifference to hunting by admiring the pictures he will be inspired to paint by his walks and musings."

No one remarked that the princess returned the artist's bow with downcast eyes.

We are not of those who believe in love at first sight, but we do believe that, in given cases, the attraction of two beings one for the other is, in a degree, a matter of fate; and that, from the first, each of them has a vague presentiment of possession in the future. The feeling is due to neither the heart nor the imagination.