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.