at ease with neither of them, and yet both of them attracted her
inexplicably. She felt herself at a distance from them while yet being
influenced by them, to a degree that surprised some indefinable part of
herself. Both of them shocked her, wounded her, even; she was appalled
before their stoicism. She looked at them darkly, almost malevolently,
when they seemed to gaze with reprobation upon the mourning garments
which she persisted in wearing. These women, brought up to worship the
dead, uprose like spectres from the depths of the past which was their
element, and uttered a word unfamiliar to their lips: "Forward!" The
impression was most disturbing.
Not that she envied them, under the pretext that both appeared to have
adjusted themselves to the sorrows of the time. Odette had no desire
thus to adjust herself. On the contrary, she implored to be left alone,
to bury herself in unending grief. And yet she felt a secret sympathy
with these unavowed foes of the perpetuation of her love.
XXI
Crossing the Champs-Elysées on her homeward way, Odette met two groups
of blinded soldiers, each one led by a woman who helped him to pass from
refuge to refuge. A blinded soldier invariably caused Odette to shudder
with dismay. Of all the wounded by the war, such as he most painfully
touched her sympathies. She stood on the first refuge as if petrified,
gazing at these men led by the hand by young women, a third clinging to
his comrade's coat, groping in the air with a timid arm.
In the face of distress like this, coachmen and chauffeurs, however much
in haste, stopped short as before a funeral procession, which all Paris
respects. The double stream of circulation was arrested in both
directions recalling pictures of the waters of the Red Sea. The crowded
foot-passengers formed a rampart with their bodies. No one saluted, for
that is not the custom, but the seriousness of all faces spoke of the
impulse, almost the need, thus to act. Veneration, such as has never
before been seen on French faces, was stamped upon the features of men
and women, even of children. That which was taking place was almost
nothing, simply a group of soldiers whose organs of sight had been
destroyed, with charitable women serving them as guides. For two minutes
they interrupted the movement of the Champs-Elysées. Yet it was a moral
influence, an unrecognized, unclassified power, poor and even lamentable
of aspect, which had suddenly arrested the prosperous physical movement
of a great city. Odette felt her heart throb; her eyes were so blurred
that as she reached the sidewalk she almost failed to recognize her
friend La Villaumer, who was standing there, gazing at that simple,
pathetic transit.
After the first greeting he said to Odette:
"I have often imagined Jesus returning among us; I thought just now that
I saw him at the head of that group, motioning with his gentle hand to
the crowd of busy mortals, 'Pause, travellers!' He had come back as the
God of justice and of love, just when the demon was making his most
determined attack upon his beloved, just when each one of us is obliged
to look into the inmost recesses of his heart and ask himself: 'What is
going to be left?' And he was replying to us, 'Verily, I say unto you,
henceforth cherish, all of you, a concern for human distress.' I
thought, too, that I heard him whisper--pardon the blasphemy if it
shocks you!--I heard him whisper softly: 'My sufferings have been
surpassed; the sufferings of my martyrs have been surpassed.'"
"Oh!"
"Yes, they and he, while suffering, had the assurance of entering the
Kingdom of God, and that within a relatively short time. The majority of
these poor fellows are without that assurance; many of them are without
hope, and their martyrdom has already lasted for twenty-eight months!
They are about to endure a third winter, and some of them will last for
a fourth! And who knows? From all this will be born into the world, my
friend, a 'religion of mankind.' It is not simply the human blood shed,
it is the indefinitely prolonged torture of men, millions and millions
of men, which will create a new mystic element upon which the religions
of the future will draw. It is a dangerous vision; the salvation of
humanity lies at the present time in nothing that in the least resembles
humanitarianism.
"But I have something to tell you, my friend; Misson, the husband of our
good Rose, whom we have so often ridiculed because he stuck to his
automobile-- Well, he has been killed, the good fellow, blown to pieces
by the bursting of a shell, as he was driving some officers----"
"Oh, my dear Rose! I must hasten to her!"
"Do not go yet. It happened on the road to Rheims. She has obtained
leave to go for his body-- Do you know what Mme. Leconque said, when she
learned that Misson's body had been blown to fragments by a bursting
shell? She said: 'In his auto?--What a stupid death!' The death that one
receives in an automobile, you see, is not noble. It was, we now learn,
the one-hundred-and-fourth time that a shell has fallen within less than
thirty metres of his machine, and the ninth machine that has been struck
in the course of his journeys. He will forever be unrecognized."
Odette could not refrain from wiping her eyes.
La Villaumer, who lost nothing of her actions, said to her:
"You are weeping for another sorrow than your own?"
"Is that what you think?" asked Odette; "it is still my sorrow; it is he
who makes me more alive to the sorrows of others."
"Yes, but from the moment when you can thus weep for others your own
grief becomes more tolerable."
"I would not wish to suffer less."
"You are not suffering less; there is room in your heart for a still
greater sorrow."
"You always make me afraid when you say that."
"Odette, you must not be afraid of anything."
As they went up the avenue La Villaumer went on:
"I remember, last spring, regretting in your presence the marvellous
aspect of the Champs-Elysées in the days of prosperity. And yet not one
of those beautiful old days ever aroused in me so much feeling as the
crossing over of those ten war-blinded soldiers. I do not cease to
regret the time when these poor young fellows enjoyed the light; but I
am asking myself by what mystery the greatest suffering uplifts us above
the greatest pleasure. I even believe that the stimulus of the greatest
pleasure is short-lived and degenerates rapidly, while the other lasts
long and is endlessly purified."
"You are being converted, La Villaumer!"
"You know that there is no more convinced sceptic than I, and you know
my predilection for the simple life, frank, wholesome, normally
developing; one may say, happy in the pagan manner. But this mode of
life does not exhaust life, though I believe it to conform most
perfectly to the destiny of man. Life has acquired other dispositions,
other tendencies. And this does not prevent asceticism, for instance,
attractive as it is, from having at its base an incontestable
psychological truth. In the present state of civilization we are not
permitted to allow inconsistencies of which nevertheless the world is
composed. If you so much as mention two contradictory propositions you
are accused of instability, if not of dishonesty. Each of us remains
shut up in his little, partial, incomplete truth; that is why the human
race seems to one inconsequential and sometimes stupid."
"Come, explain yourself a little; how, for example, can one at the same
time love pleasure and that which forbids it?"
"The problem does appear to be insoluble; but observe that there are
none like the greatly self-indulgent to recognize the importance of an
event which consists in renouncing all pleasure. It is those who most
intensely enjoy the exquisite things of life who are thrilled to their
inmost souls at the sight of a voluntary death. I have been present, as
a relative, or as a mere onlooker, at more than one taking of the veil.
Think what the taking of the veil must be to a beautiful young girl!
Well, fathers excepted, I have never seen tears in the eyes of men
professing the same faith as the novice, but I have seen robust artists
almost faint at the sight. They were wholly indifferent to the person
who was thus leaving the world, but they adored beauty and love. They
believed in nothing else than beauty and love, and they were the only
ones in the company to be overwhelmed by the power of the motive that
can tear a human being away from the attraction of such a magnet. These
unbelievers, these intruders in the temple, experienced such a shock
that they came nearer to fervent adherence to a God to them unknown than
the men of tranquil faith, who looked upon the ceremony as something
usual and in conformity with the order of things. Ardent converts are
not recruited from among the friends of religion, but from among its
declared enemies or those totally ignorant of it."
XXII
Odette must leave a card with a word of sympathy at the door of the
bereaved Rose, and see her, stand by her, try, however vainly, to
console her.
Fortunately Simone overpowered both Rose and Odette with her chatter.
She was as well-informed, as in the time of peace, of everything that
went on in private life. Mathilde Aviron--another Germaine Le Gault--was
in love with a deputy.
"But," said Odette, "she lost her husband only four weeks after me."
"That is two years and two months ago, my dear!"
"That is true."
"It all depends on circumstances. They are going to be married, it
appears.--And that poor Ogivier is slowly wasting away, in solitary
misery, because his wife believes herself called to be heroic in the
hospitals! Opinions differ; some say: 'She is doing right. What would
you have? Ogivier is fifty-five years old; he is useless----'"
"But after all, he is her husband. Are her services indispensable in the
hospitals?"
"No one is indispensable, every one says."
"Well, then?"
"Well, then, it is war. Some forget their duties, others don't know
where they are. Mme. de Gaspari is absolutely bent upon making shells.
She used to shed perfume at fifteen paces; she had her hair waved by X.,
and the beautiful hands that you remember--Some one has given her a
chance in a factory! And how many things are happening that no one talks
about! There are husbands who were in love with their wives, and who
after the wives have been doing service in the hospitals, no longer feel
the same toward them. It is not their fault! I know some who did not in
the least object to it; but love is what it can be; many love in their
wives only an illusion pleasing to themselves, such, for example, as
that a wife should come physically near only to her husband. When their
wives come back after having spent whole days--perhaps nights--in those
hospital rooms--what would you hear? Every one cannot get over a painful
impression simply by the aid of reason."
"And what about the girls who do the same?"
"Yes, it is evident that men will have to accept new ideas."
"Say, that unlucky Gendron has had an attack."
"What, at his age?"
"Yes, he is still young; and he was so healthy! He was by no means a
useless man. Here he is cut down; he cannot endure the idea of the war.
War perhaps seems worse to him at a distance than if he were in the
trenches. 'My head is splitting; it seems as if a petard had been fired
into my ear. I would rather explode than watch for it.'"
"He is a singular man."
"He didn't 'explode' as he said. He is 'watching for it' with his mouth
drawn to one side and an arm and a leg paralyzed--his intellect intact.
People's lots are different. We see all sorts."
"There are unfortunate people; here and there are some who, whether they
will or no, find the war turning to their advantage; and then there are
many who really do not know what they are going through; they are as if
possessed."
"What do you think of La Villaumer?" asked Simone.
"I hope that you don't propose to have him exorcised," said Odette.
"No, but has he told you that he is trying to sell all his property, his
collections, his books? He wants to realize on all that he owns, and
give it for the war."
"He is very much touched by it."
"But, my dear friends, who is there who is not?"
"Mme. de Boulainvilliers has distributed her entire fortune among war
works; she has mortgaged her house to enable her to support an auxiliary
hospital which she has opened in it; she is already begging right and
left. She will come to be a charge upon the public charities. All her
sons have been killed; but her relatives are furious."
"Little do I care about relatives," said Odette; "she is doing a good
thing, and all the more because every one knows that she isn't in the
least pretentious. 'There is no great merit in what I am doing,' the old
lady says modestly. 'Why, I shall soon be seventy years old; if I do not
take care of my wounded the state will have to do it, and that would
impair the fortune of my relatives as well as of everybody else.' But
she does not say everything that she thinks. What she thinks is much
simpler than that; she enjoys, above all things, making little creams
for her soldiers. 'But for my hospital,' she says, 'they wouldn't get
any!'"
"Have you heard of Clotilde's adventure?" asked Simone.
"My goodness! has Clotilde too been touched by the war?"
"Oh, in the most unexpected way. You know that she vowed to keep the war
away from her. Her husband is at General Headquarters; when she sees him
she forbids him to speak about the war. But Avvogade had a friend of his
childhood, a school comrade--a man whom one never met at their house in
the old days--a modest employee in a Trust Company, but a tall,
well-made fellow. The poor fellow lost his sight as the result of
trepanning. His condition produced a great effect upon Avvogade;
Avvogade suddenly felt all the old friendship for his comrade revive; he
goes to him as often as he can, takes him out to walk, brings him home
to lunch. Clotilde dares not object, but she is simply aghast. The
mutilated man's conversation does not interest her and the sight of him
horrifies her. 'We don't talk about the war,' says her husband. 'I am
not breaking our agreement.' They don't talk about the war, but this man
with his closed eyes embodies the war to her, and thus the war has
entered her house. And no one has anything to say to her but: 'You can't
escape it, my dear.' If Clotilde was not such a dear every one would
laugh, for, after all, her trouble is not a great one and there is
something absurd in the adventure."
XXIII
As she went about among her friends Odette perceived that she was
regarded in Paris as one of the women who during the war was sacrificing
herself for the public good. One must have a "war" reputation at all
costs. No one said a word as to her conduct as a widow, or as to her
moral ideas. But because she had been absent and was known to have been
for a long time a hospital nurse, every one ascribed to her that spirit
of self-abnegation which gives reason to expect all things from certain
exceptional persons, born for sublimities. The compliments that she
received were not ironical. Her profound and unalterable grief for her
husband's death, the very discretion which she observed in making no
lamentation before her friends, were not lost upon them. Odette, sad and
silent, enjoyed what might be called "a good press." The praises
bestowed upon her simply transformed into extraordinary virtue what was
only natural to her. At first she found it stupid; then it disturbed
her.
"But what am I, after all?" she would ask.
"You are an exquisite woman! Your conduct is admirable!"
And every one present would acquiesce. It was in a drawing-room which
might have been supposed to be the seat of the War Committee, where were
young women, women on the further verge of youth, poetesses, princesses;
through which passed generals, convalescent heroes, ministers, men of
all shades of politics, literary celebrities, and the sad relics of
before-the-war æstheticism. The secrets of military operations were
known there, whether carried out or simply planned, the underside of
diplomacy, future declarations of war, historic nights, scandals unknown
to the public. News was handed about, discredited, misconstrued, torn to
pieces. An apparition from another world, like Odette, felt herself
facing all Europe in arms, or some world-congress; rising from the
modest tomb in which she had been living she was dazzled, her head was
turned with it all. She rose to return to her solitude.
On the staircase she met La Villaumer, his smile scornful at the thought
of the foolishness which he was about to hear.
"What do they expect of me?" she asked. "Imagine, there are those
up-stairs who were ready to swear that I, all by myself, directed the
battle of the Somme!"
"Not at all," he replied. "It is simply that you are a very worthy
woman; you honor the house."
"All very well! But they frighten me. They seem to be expecting
something of me----"
"That you will do the house still greater honor! Receptions of this sort
would fain be taken as pictures of the country, in the small."
"Tell me about yourself, La Villaumer; how much truth is there in what
they tell me--that you are going to distribute all your property and
live in a garret?"
"Oh, it is a naturally erroneous paraphrase of an expression of which,
like you, like many others, I have often made use. I have said: 'I no
longer count. None of us any longer counts.' Which means: 'Whatever our
value may formerly have been, the common cause is too grand for us to
indulge in the fatuity of putting a value upon ourselves. Whoever we may
be, we are reduced to nothingness by something superior to ourselves.'
It is a rather stern assertion, and just because it is so it sets
imaginations to work. Our amiable gossips immediately translate it into
a child's picture, impressive by its crude coloring, in which they see
me shivering on a pallet."
"And the story of Mme. de Boulainvilliers?"
"So they have told you the story of Mme. de Boulainvilliers as well?
She is a truly generous woman, but not an imprudent one. She so well
knows what a snare there is for her in the pleasure of coddling her
hundred and twenty soldiers, that, having no direct heirs, she has put a
part of her property into an annuity, in order to become a charge upon
no one as long as she may live. All the rest she gives away. She detests
her relations and delights in frustrating them. No one would talk about
her, perhaps, if it were not for the cream of the end of the story, a
little detail which happens to be true, and which does good."
"Let us have done with our good women and our special cases. But you,
yourself, what do you think, on the whole, of sacrifice?"
"The general opinion is that men are without exception ruled by base
personal interests; but this view only takes into consideration the calm
level of the human ocean; in reality it has its tempests, which are the
passions, and man in a state of passion no longer thinks of his
interests. In the depths of my soul I believe that sacrifice may very
well cause the greatest happiness."
XXIV
Some little time later Odette went to see Clotilde. It was early in a
mortally cold winter; for two months already cold weather had raged,
bitter and uninterrupted. The question of fuel was beginning to be
serious; there were rumors of restrictions in many things. Paris was
uneasy, though the newspapers, with their miracle-working ink, turned
adversity into beauty.
Odette found Clotilde in her usual atmosphere, a happy accident having
permitted her apartment to be warmed. She was surrounded by books and
flowers, and wore a robe of some silken fabric which moulded itself to
her sinuous form. She at once exclaimed:
"Do you notice anything changed here?"
"Not you, certainly!"
"I have had the rooms done over; how do you like this gray?"
"It's lovely! With the cherry color of the curtains it is really
perfect."
"Ah! I was sure that you would think so! The others go through the rooms
as if they were daft; they don't notice anything."
"You have a new photograph of your husband. It is wonderfully good."
"Doesn't he grow handsome? And yet the dear fellow is overworking. It
isn't a sinecure, I assure you, his position at General Headquarters!
But I feel sure that I amuse him; I divert him from his worries. Without
flattering myself I please him, these days. And I love him, Oh, how I
love him!"
"You are two lucky people."
"Forgive me, dear Odette, I am almost ashamed to dwell upon my happiness
before you. But you are the only person who understands; you, who have
truly loved."
"Who love still, Clotilde."
Clotilde opened her eyes wide, thinking that she had not heard aright.
She knew what love was, surely, but it was difficult for her to admit
that after two years and a half one could love a dead man, as she loved
her strong and handsome husband. Yet she certainly could entertain no
suspicion concerning Odette, and she at once resolved to make the most
of her friend's enduring sentiments to talk to her about her own
personal love. She overwhelmed her with it as with a flood. Her love had
reached an intensity which it had never known in times of peace. The
seclusion which she had chosen in order to avoid hearing any talk of war
had built around her an ivory tower; and no longer meeting any one but
her husband, her pleasures ministered to only by him, she had found him
taking a place of unusual importance in her life; in himself he embodied
all the delights of which the war had deprived her, and which she had
learned to forget.
Odette herself began to speak of love. The subject was painful to her,
and yet she enjoyed it. Clotilde was the only creature with whom, since
the war, she had been able to converse on the subject without
diffidence. Letting herself go along the lines of her memories and her
habitual reveries, she began to taste the joy of a prisoner shut up in
a dark cell, who finds an opportunity to mention the brook that flows
through the sun-bathed field below his father's house.
"After all," she concluded, "the things that we have been saying, if
they could be noted down, would interest the world more, fifty or a
hundred years hence, than all the terrible events that are taking
place."
Clotilde would hear nothing about "terrible events." Love alone was
worth considering.
"We meet love everywhere," said Odette. "I find it springing up under my
feet wherever I go; in the operating-room, at the bedside of the wounded
and the dying. The towns nearest to the front are fuller of it than any
others, it would seem. They say that it has never caused such a stir."
"It represents life, which must be perpetuated, whatever happens. In
your case, my dear Odette, love is joined to death, but in general, no;
it severs itself from death. Those of our day who sing of love and
practise it are more surely serving the future than those who conceive
of restraint as the sole virtue."
In spite of herself, these unpremeditated words brought a sudden light
into the perplexed thoughts with which Odette's persistent sorrow and
her natural disposition as a loving young woman inspired Clotilde. She
felt impelled to cry out to her: "You think you are loving a dead man,
my poor dear! but you are not twenty-eight years old; you are in love
with love; it is always here, and is waiting for you!"
Both of them were equally incapable of disguising the truth as it
appeared to them. Odette, bound by a tie whose almost inconceivable
strength kept down every other sort of desire; Clotilde simply deep in
love to the point of hardly being able to imagine a case different from
her own. By chance she had not uttered words which deeply wound a
bleeding heart, but Odette's acute senses at once perceived that there
is hardly any conversation possible even upon the dearest subject that
they may have in common, between two creatures, one of whom is happy and
the other in sorrow.
She at least observed this: that Clotilde, from an absolutely opposite
point of view, was at one with Mme. de Blauve, with Mme. de Calouas,
with La Villaumer, with each and every one, in saying to her: "My dear
friend, you should not always mourn."
And her grief, so genuine, was increased tenfold.
But Clotilde, self-indulgent, egotistic, and thinking only of her own
pleasure or of sparing herself pain, was saying to Odette:
"See here, my dear; will you do me a great service? Will you come to
lunch with us to-morrow? Would that bore you?"
"Why should it bore me? Why do you call it doing you a service?"
"It is settled, then. See here; I must tell you a secret. You know how I
love my husband, how happy I am. There is only one dark spot: my husband
has a friend, a blinded officer--Captain Dessaud. He brings him two or
three times a week to lunch, on the pretext that he is lonely, with no
family, and desperate. Of course I cannot object, you understand; but
the sight of that man is painful to me to a degree that you would never
believe. I have to talk to him, and I have nothing to say to a fellow
who has lost his sight, who hopes for nothing, who has no motive for
being happy. I am sick with it. Come to my help--you are used to
wretchedness, you know!"
"Yes indeed, yes indeed, I will come."
XXV
Once at home, Odette thought more about Clotilde's conversation than
about the coming meeting with the blinded man, which she dreaded. On the
other side of the thin partition of her little drawing-room, her
neighbor, the musician, who was sometimes reinforced by a 'cellist, was
filling all space with enamoured, passionate, and agitating sounds,
enough to rend the heart. Love, love, everywhere and always love! For
the first time in her life Odette, who adored love, who but now had been
delighting in talking freely of love, who even admitted the justice of
some of Clotilde's assertions on the superlatively beneficent office of
love, Odette felt that in thinking of love and talking of love with her
friend she had lost tone, and now she had only one thought, heard only
the one voice from beyond the tomb. "When I am talking with my friend,"
she said to herself, "I seem to be taking part in what is said, or is
laughed at; yes, but I take part in it like the dead to whom it is given
to perceive earthly things once more. The war, when it robbed me of my
Jean, crushed the vitality of my body. My heart has become forever
insensible. I am carried along in the whirlwind of present events like
the threshed straw which might float above the standing harvest,
thinking to recognize in it stalks like itself, without realizing that
the iron has cut it off, separated it forever from the earth."
The moaning of the violoncello, the influence of the music, gave a sort
of lyric inclination to her usually modest thought and contributed to
increase her agitation.
"The times are so hard," she continued, "that I have not had, for two
years, the slight consolation of talking with any one of my love-sorrow.
I could hope to do so with one alone, because her love is, so to speak,
apart from the war. But when she speaks to me of love I perceive that
her idea of love is not mine, or is no longer mine. The love that I bear
within me is no longer accessible to any human creature!"
The musician in the next room took up, as usual, her favorite
_Nocturne_, accompanying it with her voice, wordlessly, until the grand,
inspired utterance of desolation, thrice repeated, enwrapped the hearer
like the long dark locks of night itself.
Then Odette, solitary amidst the pictures of her well-beloved, fell into
a long fit of weeping, as she had so often done before.
XXVI
She found Clotilde alone next day at the lunch-hour, her husband being
almost always late, especially when he had to go to fetch the blinded
man. At last she recognized the voice of the handsome George in the
anteroom, and saw him pushing before him, as a ventriloquist guides his
automaton, a tall young man, neither handsome nor plain, in the uniform
of a captain of light infantry, and with closed eyes. The blinded man
bowed, and clasped the hand that Clotilde laid within his own; George
explained to him that one of their friends was with them, a young
war-widow, Mme. Jacquelin. The blind man also pressed the hand that
Odette extended to him.
He already knew the apartment with minute exactness. He walked to the
table without aid, almost without feeling his way; and recognized each
flower by its perfume; they directed his fingers to the primroses which
have no perfume, and one would have said that his eager fingers
recognized the table decorations as strange little mute personages.
After a brief touch he knew the precise situation of each object; with
the blade of his knife he recognized the nature of the food on his
plate, and cut it adroitly. Possibly he might have been able to help
himself, like others, from the dish presented by the servant, but he was
spared the necessity of this feat by the question: "What do you prefer,
captain?"
He talked freely, almost gayly, though with an evident effort. He
appeared to be intelligent without ever having been cultivated; but
neither his person nor his mind revealed anything remarkable. He would
doubtless have been a man like any other if he had not been blinded.
Odette shuddered on looking at those closed eyelids on the face of a man
in whom one divined, notwithstanding his effort to conceal it, a secret
suffering. Yet his voice was not that of a man who bore a mystery about
with him; his suffering probably did not attain to those higher regions
which a rich imagination transforms into torture-chambers for men
unhappily deprived of the light of day; he did not dream of romantic
sunsets, of the contemplation of the celestial vault, or of Correggio's
sunlight, nor even of the beauty of houris.
As George was offering to his touch the cigars in a box, he whispered in
his ear:
"You have been lunching with a pretty-woman, old fellow, don't you
know?"
"Your wife? I should think so!"
"My wife, yes, but the other one, young, very pretty!"
The blind man seemed to reflect, shook his head and said:
"That always gives pleasure."
"Her husband," George went on, "was killed in the early days----"
"Has she children?" asked the blinded man.
"They had only been married three or four years; they would have
had----"
"Perhaps she loved him too much? That sometimes happens, it appears."
"Yes," said George.
The blinded man turned his closed eyes, like an extinguished lighthouse,
in Odette's direction. He experienced a curious feeling, almost envy, of
the dead man who had been so much beloved.
He became more interested in Odette. It appeared that she had nursed one
of his comrades through a bad affair at Surville. Men cut to pieces,
gaping wounds, sensational operations, and the agonized resignation of
those young men did not produce in her one-quarter of the pitying revolt
which was caused her by the eternal privation from light which a living,
healthy being might suffer by her side.
In his presence she recovered something of her manner of speaking with
the wounded, but her natural frankness was not animated by that smiling
perspective of a still possible future which a woman perceives at the
bedside of a soldier, even one who has lost a limb. The nurse speaks no
falsehood when she says: "My little friend, when you are well, when you
once more see your home, your village--" But when she is constrained to
omit from her vocabulary the radiant word see, how constrained and
powerless she is!
Blinded men always awoke in her extreme compassion when she met them in
the street, when they were spoken of in her presence. She remembered how
tears had risen to her eyes, how her throat had contracted, when Simone
had described that wedding at the Madeleine, the handsome couple coming
down the steps, the bridegroom all adorned with decorations, in the face
of an admiring crowd who suddenly perceived that he could not see. But
she had never before been obliged to carry on a conversation with one of
those beings whom the deprivation of a sense makes more different from
ourselves than the loss of many limbs. She instinctively managed it very
well, though she was moved to the last degree; she knew at once how to
speak to one who had been greatly afflicted--as she would have done to
a normal man, without appearing to notice his condition. The captain was
grateful to her for it, and it was evident that he was much more at ease
with Odette, on this first meeting, than he had ever succeeded in being
with Clotilde, whom he had known a long time. Clotilde, incapable of
dominating her selfishness, could have been brought by no human power to
the point of forcing herself to an act not agreeable to herself. Her
husband, who was pained by her attitude, said to her: "See how gracious
Odette is!"
The blinded man went away with his friend, evidently happy for having
chatted with a pretty and afflicted woman, for having been able to
induce her to act as if neither she nor he had been touched by
misfortune.
"Judge," said Clotilde when the two men had gone out, "to what point I
am stupid and benumbed, and what a service you have rendered me! But I
beg pardon for having inflicted it upon you."
"When a thing of this sort pains me," said Odette, "I do not know what I
feel. I have noticed that at the hospital, especially in the early days.
I don't deny that it seems as if I were being rubbed the wrong way, but
there is a sort of miraculous cure that acts of itself, penetrating like
a drop of balm, to the very depths of the wound."
"I don't understand you at all," said Clotilde; "a thing that bores me
bores me, and when anything hurts me I simply must push it away or go
away myself."
"I used to be like you," said Odette; "I am still, in all that concerns
my grief. For that there is no balm; nothing will ever heal it. Perhaps
there is something exceptional in love; it takes possession of us, it
makes us happy to an extent that blinds us to everything besides, or it
wounds us to death. But all that is not love, and what tries to embitter
us must carry its antidote within itself."
"When we love," said Clotilde, "nothing else can seriously affect us."
"Notwithstanding which, I assure you that I have often within the past
two years been painfully affected, and I have not ceased to love."
"You think so, my poor Odette! But if Jean had continued to be with you,
you would have had no feeling but for him."
"Clotilde, you are spoiled by happiness; you understand nothing!"
Clotilde shook her head. She felt that she had somewhat nettled her
friend in unveiling her thought to her.
"You will come again all the same, Odette? Even to face my blind man?"
"If you wish," said Odette sadly.
XXVII
Clotilde's state of mind, which she had until now rather enjoyed, began
to trouble Odette. She had thought herself entirely in harmony with
Clotilde, just as Clotilde had imagined herself to think in unison with
Odette, because both of them loved, and because until then nothing had
seemed to come between them. But to-day Odette was repelled by
Clotilde's attitude, her ivory tower, her aversion to suffering, and her
lack of suavity. "I used to be like her," Odette said to herself. "Am I
different now because events have taken me by storm? Or is it indeed, as
she says, because Jean, whom I surely do not love less, is not here to
engross me?"
She was terrorized by this idea, which nevertheless she felt to be
false. She was overwhelmed with remorse and accused herself of having
grown cool in the worship of her husband. It was true that too many
things were conspiring to lead her away from the thought which ought to
be her only one. She returned once more to her mortuary chapel, her
relics, her portraits. To guard against her sorrow being frittered away
by the many sympathies with which her walks inspired her, she shut
herself up at home. The winter, aggravated by the hostile cold, was so
depressing, the news from without was so gloomy, that Odette fell into a
sort of neurasthenia. She, who had never known illness, was constrained
to call in a physician. He ordered, not medicine, but diversion at any
cost.
"There are still many theatres open," he said; "I don't ask you to go to
see 'gay pieces,' which are cruder than anything else, but go to
something good. A woman of your years," he added, "has no right to let
herself die of inanition."
She obeyed the doctor, not to save her health, but because she was
touched with shame. Here was another who said to her: "You have no
right." It was a middle-aged physician of great celebrity, and even
intelligent; he had lost his two sons in the war; his wife had died of
grief, he himself was mobilized and was working hard in the hospitals.
She went once to a benefit performance. _Carmen_ was given. She had
adored that work whose obscure and brilliant genius had often benumbed
her like a bunch of dark carnations with their pungent fragrance. But
her attention was captured by the presence at her side of a
sublieutenant whose sleeve hung empty by his side, and when the young
man, all on fire, turned to his neighbor on the other side, who must
have been his mother, or to some friends behind him, the soft,
superfluous cloth, with its short gold braid brushed Odette's knee. The
officer became aware of it and, excusing himself, gathered up the cloth
with his right hand. More than this, from one of the boxes broke out, at
almost regular and too frequent intervals, a man's laugh, abrupt,
uncontrollable, and without the least relation to the dramatic work that
was being given. Several persons turned that way, indignant at first,
even angry, until one of them perceived that this ill-timed gayety came
from an officer who was listening with the utmost seriousness, but who
was affected by the results of a cerebral shock. Word was whispered
about, no head was again turned; every one was universally commiserating
the infirmity whose tragic character equalled that of the masterpiece to
which they were listening.
"'You must be diverted at any cost,'" thought Odette.
"In the matter of therapeutics," her friend La Villaumer said to her,
not long after this experience, "for my part I believe in a very old
rule, which says: 'For great evils great remedies.' In times like ours,
for any one who has greatly suffered, diversions are less appropriate
than strenuous tasks."
XXVIII
Odette went occasionally to lunch with Clotilde to help her entertain
her blinded man. In general she went about fitfully, now here, now
there, to offer her small services. She was welcomed at sales, for she
pleased people.
She even inspired, at her booths, what people call passions--sudden and
burning--which, however, manifested themselves indirectly and
discreetly, so much did even the boldest man dread to approach a young
widow universally known to be so proper, and so faithful to her grief.
The first was a commandant of infantry who had been wounded three or
four times, and who had a long convalescent leave; he was barely
thirty-four years old, and was one of the finest types of soldier in the
present war. After having conversed with Odette he sent a friend to ask
her if later, strictly speaking, much later, she would consent to become
his wife. She declined the request as if it had been insane; could any
one suppose that she would ever marry again?
The second was a man about fifty years of age, well known about town, a
member of the Jockey Club, enjoying, as the novels say, an immense
fortune and unquestionably holding a very prominent position in society.
He was the organizer of most of the war charities in which Odette's help
had been sought. He loaned for them his buildings and what remained to
him of his staff of servants, gave to them his time and his purse.
Odette had touched him with one of those lightning strokes which reach
only men of that age, and after her refusal he fell violently ill,
remained depressed, downcast, aged, incapable of managing his business,
obliged to retire to one of his country-places, where he became
oblivious of everything, even of the war and its evils, of which up to
this time he had thought only to seek a remedy, thinking now only of the
cruel Odette.
She was as indifferent to this adventure as to the other,
notwithstanding the friendly remonstrances that poured in upon her. The
latter offer had been made to her through Mme. de Blauve, and this
friend, while bowing to the sentiment of fidelity which bound Odette to
a beloved memory, took courage to point out to her that in the midst of
her married happiness she had failed to found a family. Odette, with all
her intelligence, her sincere devotion, did not understand. She had
loved one man; she continued to love his memory. No other idea, with
whatever importance it might be clothed, commanded her respect; she
understood only her own heart, which simply clung like an ivy to the
tree, however dried up it might be, and to which no power could prevent
her clinging.
All Odette's friends shared Mme. de Blauve's opinion, however unlike
they might be to this noble woman--ail of them, even to Clotilde.
Yes, even Clotilde blamed her for not having at least accepted the young
commandant. Odette was amazed at this, the result being that these two
loving women fell out.
La Villaumer, to whom Odette confided this trouble, said to her:
"If your friend Clotilde were to be so unfortunate as to lose her
husband, whom she adores, the chances are sixty to a hundred that after
a certain time she would love another as much or almost as much as him,
while you judge such a transferrence of love inadmissible."
"But, after all, one loves or one does not love; that is perfectly
simple!"
"No, indeed, it is not so simple as that. One loves and one can love as
Clotilde does, or as you do, yourself. We do not easily distinguish
differences so long as lovers, being united, are happy."
"You frighten me. Are there then loves that are not love? Is not
sentiment the finest thing in love? And can there be a fine sentiment
that is not lasting?"
"In the first place, my dear friend, permit me to believe that you do
not profess your sentiment because it is fine, nor does it last with you
because you find it beautiful. You find your sentiment beautiful because
it is yours. You look upon it as lasting indefinitely because your eyes
are incapable of looking as far as its end; that is all. In your case
there is no constraint, no submission to any law, aesthetic or moral.
You feel that way. Your friend Clotilde loves in her way, and she finds
it beautiful, believe me."
"All the same! All the same, there is an almost general consent to
consider that love superior which is adorned with sentiment, and does
not consent to be short-lived."
"Yes; and this is in conformity with the morality which has ruled us
thus far. This morality is all delicacy. But, reduced to this degree of
purity, will it suffice to keep alive a struggle as ardent as the one
which we are now witnessing, for the possession of a part of the outside
of the world, or even for the supremacy of certain ideas? It must
concede provisionally a preponderance to material, mortal life, since it
is evident that the morality of the just will triumph only on condition
that it has force on its side. Do you follow me, my poor friend? All
this is very dry. But this is my way of telling you that these
crystalline sentiments, that are an 'ornament' in ordinary times, become
a luxury in our age of iron and fire. Luxury is no longer permissible.
The time has come when all refinements must give way to a very stern
reality. As you have been very well told: 'We are not our own.' General
consent? It should be given to the best good of the cause which unites
us all, and carries us all away with itself. Forgive me, my very dear
friend. I am going to commit a rudeness which gives me pain--and you
know that only the extremity of an unheard-of calamity could bring me to
that--yes, your sentiment, with its persistence, is beautiful in itself,
most beautiful; but we are no longer at leisure to look at things 'in
themselves.' Well, if your friend Clotilde had lost her husband in your
place and at the same time, and if she were to-day the wife of another
who had made her a mother, for example, we ought really to hold her case
in higher esteem than yours!"
A sob choked Odette. They were walking along the Champs-Elysées. She
sought for a chair and sank upon it.
"I am not vexed with you," she said as soon as she could speak;
"something in my inmost being understands you-- It has already been said
to me-- But it is hard!"
"The time is exceptional."
XXIX
Odette spent much of her time in consoling poor Rose. Her husband's
death had passed almost unnoticed. But other and very dramatic deaths
had also passed unnoticed. When men were brought home in fragments it
made a sensation, but once they were dead the sad equality of the earth
obscured their memory. Indescribable episodes had attained such a
character, and had reached such numbers, that people hardly dared speak
of them. Minds were saturated and automatically closed against any new
sensation. Many were unable to endure any story of the war, whether in
the newspapers or in books. Odette recalled to mind the impression which
the wounded had formerly made. They were already saying "formerly" when
speaking of the present war! Now there were wounded everywhere. It was
rather the unscathed men upon whom one looked as if to say to them: "See
here, you! what are you doing with your arms, with your legs?" Certain
persons, with a strong revulsion of the instinct of self-preservation,
refused, like Clotilde, even to think about the war; others, on the
other hand, buried themselves in it with passionate intensity.
Mme. de Blauve, who had become fond of Odette and occasionally came to
see her, now came to announce the marriage of her eldest daughter. She
told the news almost as if saying: "At last!" as if it were the case of
an old maid whom she had despaired of marrying off. Mlle. de Blauve was
barely sixteen, she was attractive and endowed with much charm, had been
most carefully educated, and promised to be really beautiful. She was to
marry a wounded sublieutenant.
"Ah!" said Odette; "does she love him?"
"He is a young man of good family," said Mme. de Blauve, "and he has
behaved admirably."
"But he will return to the front! You will be in perpetual anxiety!"
"Not that," replied Mme. de Blauve. "To be sure, my daughter would have
liked to be the wife of a soldier who remained a soldier, like her
father. But soldiers in active service will always find some one to
marry them, and wives must be found for those less favored, who have
been checked in their career----"
"Has her fiancé been retired?" asked Odette. "Don't tell me that he is
badly----"
"Oh, this is not the time to think about things that girls used to care
for; the question is to save our men by giving them wives, so that they
may be in a position to found a family. This young man is from the
devastated regions. He has lost all his family--some of them have been
shot, others have died during the occupation of the enemy--and it is
entirely impossible for him to earn a decent living. We ourselves have
sacrificed more blood than money; my daughter will still have a certain
amount of fortune, therefore----"
"But what is the matter with him? What has he lost?" asked Odette,
thinking only of that absolute union of two beings which had illuminated
her own life.
"Oh, it is very sad," said Mme. de Blauve; "my future son-in-law is one
of those most deserving of interest, who have received face wounds. His
face--how can I tell you?--lacks almost everything except the passages
that are necessary for eating and breathing----"
Odette uttered an inarticulate exclamation and rang the bell. But she
did not faint until Mme. de Blauve was gone.
The case of Mlle. de Blauve evoked more criticism than admiration.
According to some it was absolutely too terrible and not to be thought
about. In most cases, however, sensitiveness had been so dulled by the
constant hearing of war-stories that very little attention was paid to
this act of superhuman devotion. Some said: "The mother is crazy and the
young girl does not realize what she is doing. One may do violence to
nature, or may dupe it for a short time; this is a time when we ought to
resolve upon any sacrifice, even to throwing ourselves into the arms of
death; but death is either the end or the beginning of the unknown. The
idea of marrying a superb girl of sixteen to a man without a face!"
Yet every one knew that far from bringing pressure to bear upon her
daughter, Mme. de Blauve had made every possible effort to prevent her
marrying another wounded man, an unlucky fellow who, approaching a
trench with a grenade in each hand, had had both eyes burned at the very
moment when a bursting shell had set off the two grenades and shattered
both hands. What she was now doing was a slight thing in comparison with
the thing that she had prevented.
Odette felt that she must know La Villaumer's opinion on this matter.
They had no regular engagement for meeting, and met only by chance. She
decided to go to his house shortly before the luncheon hour. An old
servant ushered her into a room where, to her great surprise, she heard
the tones of a harmonium mingled with a man's voice entirely untrained.
It proceeded from the neighboring room, separated from her by a glass
door partly screened by a curtain of Chinese silk. The thing was so
unusual and so puzzling that she could not refrain from peeping around
the edge of the curtain. She saw at the instrument an organist whom she
knew, and standing beside him a man bereft of both arms, and the pose of
whose head was that of a blind man trying to catch the notes which the
teacher was patiently repeating. All around them were soldiers wearing
black glasses, with closed eyes or with bandaged faces, and Villaumer in
his dressing-gown coming and going among them. He suddenly disappeared
and came into the room where Odette was standing.
"I have caught you!" said she. "Try now to convince me that what I have
been told of you is not true! You are no longer in your own home!"
"My good friend," he replied, "I am having lessons given to the most
unfortunate of those unhappy ones whom evil fortune and inaction are
driving to despair. They are being taught the rudiments of music; they
are trying to sing; it occupies them."
"I knew that you were kind----"
"I am not kind; I am generally severe upon men. But the sight of
misfortune is intolerable to me; and for men like these, who have been
three-quarters destroyed for the sake of saving us, yes, I confess that
I could give my last shirt; I would wait upon them at table-- Will you
take luncheon with us?"
Through the half-open door into the dining-room she could see a table
spread for twelve.
"Do you take lunch with them?" asked Odette.
"I permit myself that honor-- It is my last self-indulgence. Well, will
you take advantage of it?"
"I cannot, my friend, I cannot. I should weep through the whole meal.
That is not what they need."
"No. One must have the courage to bestow upon them the gayety--which we
don't possess. Social hypocrisy has not been practised all this time in
vain, if it has taught this to some of us."
"I am ashamed of my weakness," said Odette. "I should not flinch before
any sort of wound, but the thought that the war has deprived a man of
the light of day forces me to ask myself whether I myself have a right
to look upon these beautiful silks, this sunlight----"
"Take pleasure in the silks, in objects of art, and in sunlight, you who
are made to charm that portion of humanity that remains intact. You
would not, on the pretext that millions of men have been plunged into
darkness or death, irritate them gratuitously by an ill-regulated
sympathy? Innumerable lives have, alas, been shattered, but life
remains, the light is brilliant, plants are growing, animals and even
men still swarm upon the earth. Recall to mind the tragic and
paradoxical truth that human life, which is the highest work and appears
to have been the purpose of the creation of the world, is that for
which, on the whole, that great work appears to care the least. Whatever
part man may be called to play, his destiny is to pass away. That horror
of war with which we are inspired by the extermination of men is in the
long run kept up and perpetuated by material depredations; the memory of
an illustrious building destroyed will last longer than that of a
hundred thousand young men mown down in their youth."
"And meanwhile you are throwing overboard all you possess to rescue men
who are only half alive. That is all that I wanted to know."
XXX
Odette spent several days in bed as a consequence of the marriage of the
little de Blauve girl--which took place in the strictest privacy, and
which she had not attended. But her imagination was lively, and she
pictured things to herself.
She sought out her friend La Villaumer, as it were, now that she had
detected him in an act of kindness. As for him, in her presence he took
less pains to conceal his acts, now that she understood him better.
"I have always loved men," he said. "Why should I not love them since I
have always professed to criticise them? Have I misunderstood them?
Remember how indulgent I was for all that in them is so far removed from
the only thing that I really prize--intelligence. How vulnerable I have
been to their instincts! How I have smiled at their innumerable follies!
I simply enjoyed studying them, without the slightest partiality,
notwithstanding my secret reverence for reason, which seems to me to be
a torch lighted at the altar of a god and carefully transmitted by
certain privileged beings to certain privileged beings, while yet the
chain that they form never succeeds--no one can tell why--in producing
an illumination. Therefore, I have never believed that the world
belonged to what we have learned to venerate under the name of
intelligence. Intelligence is a divine part which no doubt gives us
notions of what there is on high, but which has almost no application to
things here below. The world is not governed by intelligence. Sometimes
intelligence makes converts, and we believe that its reign has come.
Illusion! It is precisely then that we are upon the point of falling
again into blessed ignorance, and going back to the age of barbarism. Do
you know, I am tempted to believe that the age of barbarism is the
normal period of humanity! We probably need cruelty, absurdity,
injustice, superstition, torrents of bloodshed, in order that the
mystery which we admire under the name of life may exist and perpetuate
itself. Our bodies can be fed only by offensive means. The majority of
human pleasures are unfathomably stupid. The great masses obey certain
elementary formulas, sayings of which they have never weighed the
meaning, and which often have no meaning. Governments are not carried on
by luminous reasoning, but by the allurement of sounding words that
flatter the senses. In order to hold our own in a large and influential
social group, my poor friend, are we going to be called to admit the
timeliness of belief in prophets, in wonder-workers, in ghosts, in the
platitudes of 'apparitions,' in the genius of simple minds? Is a torrent
of puerility about to inundate the surface of the globe? May it be that
this is the indispensable element of reparation? Intelligence, reduced
to its own resources, has in fact no power of expansion, no means of
action. It is enough to make one die of shame and vexation! Law,
justice, liberty--we can imagine men shrugging their shoulders when they
hear the words, for the words are efficacious only when they are emptied
of their significance and travestied into elementary ideas which
naturally lead to the violation of law, liberty, justice. In the matter
of ideas men believe only in their tutelary virtue; they are protecting
divinities; and the idea is nothing but a word that men symbolize on
their flagstaffs, like a fetich. We are as credulous as Homer's
warriors. Minerva fights with us. For that matter, I do not think that
there ever was a better opportunity for adopting the theocratic
conception of the world, for men are at this moment given over to the
elements, and the greatest political genius imaginable would probably be
powerless so long as the convulsions with which the world is attacked
are not quieted of themselves. In these conditions there is no room in
the home of a poor fellow for any but the virtues of pity and affection.
I confess the fact, my dear Odette, I can no longer control my heart."
"To be moved to compassion is to be weakened, I have been told."
"There is truth in that opinion so far as those persons are concerned
who are more especially called by circumstances to act, and especially
to direct the actions of others; such must put on blinders and look only
to the immediate purpose which demands all their energies. But it is
desirable that in the midst of this tempest-tossed world a few
contemplative persons shall devote themselves to pity as to the
conservation of a 'precious blood'; if only for the sake of the
efficacy, or at least of the beauty of the thing. And the worshippers at
this altar will need to contend--do you know with whom?--with humanity
itself, which has little remembrance of its own ills, and which, like a
kitten, hastens to play with the first ray of sunshine. It is true that
the dead keep a great silence."
XXXI
Odette was at home one evening, and alone. Stretched out upon a lounge,
she was gazing at the photographs of Jean on little tables or within her
reach upon the walls, hypnotizing herself with the sight of them,
kissing them as she always did.
Amelia came in saying that the next apartment was "crammed full."
"Madame, if there aren't twenty men six feet high in that room, my own
poor husband isn't a prisoner with the Boches!"
In fact there was a great commotion on the other side of the partition.
Furniture and chairs were being moved about, and as all sounds
penetrated through the cracks of the door, the syllables of an
unfamiliar language could be heard, perhaps Rumanian or Russian. The
neighbor was a foreigner.
Suddenly there was silence. Amelia had withdrawn. It was an imposed,
perhaps a concerted, silence. "It is a musical recital," said Odette to
herself. In fact she almost immediately recognized the sprightly touch
of the pianist, mellow, languishing, melting into the keyboard as into a
tender flesh, by turns nervous, light, cruel as a hammer, heavy as a
pile-driver, seeming to crush the instrument, then suddenly soft,
fluttering on the keys like the wing of a dying bird. Though the woman
often played for herself alone, this was not the first time that many
people had gathered around her to hear her music.
A chorus of men's voices burst forth. It was strange, weird, enough to
make one catch one's breath. Odette listened. That sensitiveness to
music which often reached depths in her unknown to herself, was suddenly
wrought up to its utmost pitch. She did not know the chorus, and sought
in vain for an author to whom to ascribe it. It might be a popular song,
perhaps very ancient, to judge by its artless simplicity, its pure
rhythm, and its wild, sweet accent. At times a soprano voice uprose in a
solo, and the chorus, a third below, responded softly in whisperings
that grew nearer and nearer, quickly spreading like oil upon the sea, or
as if transmitted from man to man over immense plains and endlessly
flowing rivers. Suddenly two or three raucous or strident cries gathered
up all the voices to a sharp point directed toward the heavens. Then all
sound ceased, and one felt as if falling from a superb altitude into the
depths of an abyss.
Then the fingers of the enchantress executed a ballad of Balakireff,
or Dvorak's hymn, "On the Death of a Hero." And then, after a pause,
another chorus broke forth.
There was in it all a melancholy which no words could so much as
suggest, in which amid the uniformly plaintive murmur one discerned such
lifelike wailings that one could have stretched out the hands to succor
these vague, unrecognized, and multiplied sufferings. They swelled,
spread abroad, took on so mighty an extension that in spite of oneself
one saw the surface of the suffering world, heard the feeble and
resigned voice of man, of man always the sport of fate, always in
leading-strings, always sacrificed like cattle to gods whose secret he
could not fathom. It was the lament of the ancient earth of humanity,
timid, uncouth, and despairing, issuing from bruised hearts, from torn
flesh, from souls robbed of their innocent ideals, a disturbing lament
issuing from the borders of marshes, from forests, from glacial plains,
from desert steppes, from nameless villages, prisons, palaces,
battlefields, tombs, and stoically, pathetically, and yet childishly
addressed to--no one!
Odette had often been on the verge of sentiments corresponding to this
music, primitive, barbarous, perhaps divine, but when music comes to be
mingled with our sentiments it reveals them to themselves and amplifies
them without measure. Odette saw what she had never dared to see; for
the first time she was transported outside of herself, or at least she
felt the conviction that she was. It produced in her such an overturning
of her points of view as almost to make her dizzy. She suddenly
discovered how completely she had considered everything with reference
to herself, even in her seemingly most generous moments. At this instant
she thought of herself in relation to the incalculable number of persons
who were not she. It was not that the moans of humanity were now
reaching her for the first time, but it was the first time that the sobs
of others came to her ears with a tone of majestic sadness which forced
her to grovel upon the earth, saying: "I no longer count; I am only the
servant of grief."
It was a painful sentiment if there is one, and yet, by a curious
contradiction, a sentiment in the same degree joyful. A boundless
commiseration caused her heart to throb and tears to come to her eyes,
and yet this painful sympathy, far from being cruel or depressing,
wrought in her soul an unsuspected outflowering, like an outburst of
inconceivable elation in which was mingled bitterness and pity.
There is no compensation for the personal suffering that we may
experience. On the contrary, in a close and complete union with the
sufferings of others is hidden a joy of mutual pain; an active desire to
give aid impels to the beginning of a helpful act, provokes to so
fervent a prayer for heavenly mercy that the heart no longer knows
whether it lies prone in utter distress or has attained to a radiant
phase of existence incomparably higher than its paltry estate as an
isolated being. The word "love" presents itself to a soul thus
irradiated without any sustaining form which might limit its character;
it is without extent as without form; as to the source that feeds it,
springing up no one knows where, one is convinced that there is no fear
that it will ever be exhausted.
Odette often wept, but to-day it was with other tears. She took up one
of Jean's photographs and found but one word to say to it:
"Forgive me!"
She understood neither what she felt nor what she was doing, but she was
conscious of failing Jean. Not of failing Jean in favor of another, but
for the sake of a multitude of others among whom no one man could be
discerned. When she was able to formulate a thought, she said to
herself: "I was pitying." She might have said: "Charity has taken
possession of me."
XXXII
There was no sign that any event had occurred that evening. Odette had
spent it alone in her little drawing-room. The chorus in the next
apartment was stilled. But that evening was made up of the most
important hours which the young wife had experienced since the death of
her husband.
Odette was aware that something had been revealed within herself, but
she was ill adapted to analyze herself, and the phenomenon was still
wrapped in mist. It had manifested its reality only by a single act of
hers--an act which she remembered, which abode with her: the prayer for
forgiveness addressed to the picture of her beloved Jean. She returned
continually to this material fact; she had seized the photograph and had
kissed it as if she had been at fault. Thanks to this fact, the
spiritual operations of which it was the conclusion were not arrested,
did not vanish like smoke, and pursued her that night, on the morrow,
and during the following days.
So sudden a burst of light might indeed have been ephemeral in
character. We are all subject, especially under an exterior influence
acting upon the senses, to similar spasms of enthusiasm, or to dreams of
a like generosity which may be only a passing impulse. They die away and
we return to a condition which we call reasonable, that is to say,
lucid, calm, well-balanced, and tame.
With Odette this illumination had not the character of a sudden impulse,
but was rather the outcome of a long and almost unconscious preparation.
How many words, how many tidings, how many hints registered in her
memory, how many puzzling suggestions, how many dramatic scenes, how
many ideas had been as so many arrows of direction, guiding her toward
the place where she had received the divine spark! How many books read,
how many musings, apparently without result, had determined the
direction that had brought her here! Odette was like a clay which during
two and a half years had been continually receiving the touches of a
thumb or chisel, powerless to give her the form which an invisible
artist desired her to take, and the last touch, removing an encumbering
bit, had produced precisely the shape desired.
Odette awoke next morning in the same condition in which she had fallen
asleep, with the one difference that she no longer wept. But the tears
of the evening had had their sweetness. She found herself in an almost
grateful tranquillity. She went and came in the midst of Jean's
photographs, and Jean did not reproach her for her new state of mind.
His memory seemed to be in nowise outraged. And yet Odette did not
forget that she had begged his forgiveness, as if it had been possible
that she had failed him. This fact marked a well-determined date in the
perturbations of her soul. But it seemed to her that she had received to
her "Forgive me!" a gentle, calming reply, a loving approbation.
XXXIII
Yet the moment came when it seemed to her that she was losing her
reason. She had seen many cases of cerebral disturbance since the war;
they had been more or less apparent. Some persons of her acquaintance
had been duly shut up in insane asylums, but there were many at large
who showed the almost imperceptible wound by which the microbe had
penetrated.
By way of discovering whether or no she was mentally affected, she
imposed upon herself the test of behaving for a while like a woman who
has decided to lead the usual life until the end. She said to herself:
"I am not insane, for I think it requires more courage to adopt, every
day and every hour, the attitude of ordinary life, as if the war did not
exist--seeing that the majority of people who act thus have been crushed
or tortured by it--than to give oneself up to the monster bound hand and
foot. I am the less strong in not being able to endure the commingling
of both interests and throwing myself into these horrors. I should be
senseless if I deemed my own actions alone to be good, beautiful, and
worthy. But I am judging myself. I am therefore not demented."
Out of curiosity she went one day to see Clotilde, still by way of test.
"To measure myself," she said to herself.
Clotilde's undue self-satisfaction made her friends really
uncomfortable, a discomfort which from the first they had sought to hide
or refused to recognize, which until now such a friend as Odette had
even refused to admit, but which to-day she could not endure. Clotilde,
surrounded by flowers, bathed in a perfumed atmosphere, talked only of a
change she had made in the decoration of her rooms, of her clothes, or
of matters so utterly foreign to current events that it seemed as if for
her the latter had no existence. She never went out, lest she should be
obliged to see or hear disagreeable things, and yet never had she bought
so many hats and gowns as since the war. On her earlier visits Odette
had slightly shrugged her shoulders as if amused and not wholly
displeased. By degrees, the disproportion between such interests and the
wound with which the whole world was bleeding overmastered her ability
to make allowances.
Odette reminded her friend that she had not of late called upon her for
help, and asked if she had lost her blind man. Clotilde was amazingly
frank in her reply:
"My darling, 'my blind man,' as you call him, continues to exist and to
charm my husband. But what would you have? It is not that I am lost to
all sense of humanity, but you can imagine how the presence of this man
annoys me. He cannot see me, I am nothing to him, and it is necessary
for me to please----"
"But one may please even those who don't see us. One can try to amuse
these unfortunates, to make time pass pleasantly for them----"
"You speak as if you possessed some gift in which I am lacking. It is
only that you like them, and know how to please them----"
"Oh!"
"You succeed in pleasing them! This man who visits us, with whom you
took lunch, is always asking for you. He never so much as speaks of me.
And yet it is I who permit him to come!"
"A man who cannot see you in your place at the head of the table, and to
whom you never give any proof that you are there, may naturally forget
you."
"You find it all right because he doesn't forget you. He dotes upon you,
by what George says; he asks for news of you, he longs to hear your
voice! He annoys me. In fact, child, it was precisely on your account,
I admit, that I was obliged to turn him away; he was falling in love
with you. Can you imagine it? You ought to thank me!"
"In love with me! If that were true I should be all the more sorry for
him, poor man! But he must have heard about me? He knows that I am not
to be had?"
"He hasn't gone as far as that; he only feels happy in your company.
When you are not there he misses you. That is all."
"Well, where is the love in that? He is like the wounded men whom I have
nursed; they were happy in my company; when I went away, I suppose they
missed me. If I had concluded from that that they were in love with
me----"
"You didn't conclude it, on your part, but as for them, what do you
know? Perhaps you broke their hearts!"
"You are romantic and think only of love! Men who have suffered as they
have, prefer to think of their own comfort, and of those who make them
comfortable. I knew a nurse seventy years old for whom her patients
clamored like children. Were they in love with her?"
"That proves nothing. A blind man feels very clearly whether the woman
near him is one who charms."
"Then he ought also to feel the compassion that he inspires, and that
does not lead to love."
"Are you uncomfortable in the presence of a blind man?"
"It is an undefinable emotion; my head turns. I lose my self-command."
"You didn't seem to, here."
"One does almost involuntarily the thing that costs the most, if one is
determined to comfort those whose misfortunes arouse your emotions."
And they talked of other things.
XXXIV
Odette would no doubt have forgotten "her" blind man if a visit which
Mme. de Blauve paid her had not recalled him to mind in the most
unexpected manner.
Mme. de Blauve, whose calmness had always impressed every one, from the
time when she was living under the bombardment of Rheims through the
days in which she had made the sacrifice of her husband, her two sons,
and, one may say, her daughter, now appeared unnerved. She had grown
thin; her eyes were sunken; she was evidently suffering.
With her habitual resolution she opened to Odette the purpose of her
visit. She had heard--it was rumored--that her dear friend, having amply
and worthily overpassed the period of her widowhood, was purposing--not
by inclination, but in order to accomplish a great act of charity--to
become the wife of a blinded officer. People were talking about it. She
herself had been extremely moved by the news, and all the more because
she feared that she had incurred a certain responsibility in the matter,
having probably been one of the first to urge upon the young widow the
duty of a second marriage.
Odette was amazed. What were people about? Never had she had the
slightest idea of such a thing. Startled at first, she went on, almost
laughing, to hear what Mme. de Blauve had to say.
"It is untrue, you say," said Mme. de Blauve; "but, my little friend,
experience has taught me that there is always a grain of truth at the
bottom of a wide-spread rumor. Whether good or bad, such plants do not
grow out of nothing."
Odette told her upon how slight a fact this rumor might possibly have
been based. She had lunched at Clotilde Avvogade's with a blinded
officer, and Clotilde insisted that she had pleased him.
"Nothing more would be needed!" said Mme. de Blauve, "and your friend
has probably told the story all around. It must be so, for I have heard
the name of the man, the institution where he has been re-educated; I
even know all about his circumstances; he is a widower without fortune
of any sort, and father of two little children about whom he feels great
anxiety."
"Well," said Odette, "for my part I knew nothing of these last
particulars, and this is surely a proof that my romance has not gone
very far."
Mme. de Blauve was lost in apologies. Nevertheless, she did not go so
far as to regret the step she had taken. If it proved to have no reason
in the present case, an analogous case might arise; she knew Odette's
susceptibility, the noble impulses of her soul, and it was her duty to
warn her against impressions and impulses----
"What!" interrupted Odette; "you, madame, whose daughter----"
"Yes, yes, precisely I, 'whose daughter'--It is because my daughter has
made a marriage--beautiful, surely, from the moral point of view, but,
after all, a marriage--how shall I say it--somewhat daring, that I
believe myself to be authorized to say to you: 'My very dear child, be
careful, reflect!' Understand me; I regret nothing that has occurred; I
congratulate myself on the happiness which my daughter is assuring to a
victim of the war, who is a hundred times deserving of it. Let me tell
you, by way of parenthesis, that my daughter has hope of a child, and I
trust that God will bring everything out right, although----"
"Although," repeated Odette anxiously.
"Although--oh, the dear child is lacking neither in love nor in
admiration for her husband, who is a hero; but our poor human nature has
strange revulsions--I tell you, you alone, in confidence; since my
daughter has reason for hope of becoming a mother, she feels--alas! it
is frightful, let me whisper it to you--she feels a sort of apprehension
at the sight of her husband, whose terrible affliction you know of!-- We
must, at all costs, prevent her husband having the slightest suspicion
of the--temporary--feeling that he inspires, and the young wife is
obliged to put the strongest restraint upon herself in order to show
nothing. Just how far this incessant constraint is consistent with the
happy maintenance of her condition, and with hope for its normal
outcome, who shall say? This is what we are asking ourselves, this is
our anxiety."
"Oh, dear, dear madame, how sorry I am for you!"
"You understand that I would not wish to have to be sorry for you, in my
turn, for a reason like this. It was to avoid it that I came here, as
much humiliated by my apprehensions as I was proud on the day of the
marriage. You have no plan of the sort, you tell me, my child? So much
the better! But I have become excessively apprehensive; I am afraid of
characters like yours, which may be inclined to do too well. Sometimes a
little pride enters into the good or the noble things that we do. Do you
understand?"
XXXV
Mme. de Blauve had taken her leave with these words, and Odette, still
breathless at the thought that there could be any question of her
marrying, a little ruffled, even, remembered only the secret
discomfiture confessed to by the mother of the poor little bride. It was
one more cause of horror added to all those of which she was the daily
witness. Her calamity had doubtless shaken Mme. de Blauve's spirit to
the point of causing in her mind a sort of hallucination as to the fate
which might be threatening the young widow. Or else Mme. de Blauve had
made the most of slight rumors with no basis of truth, as a pretext for
coming to confess her own anxiety. Or else--a conjecture which barely
touched Odette's mind--Mme. de Blauve, as she had herself intimated,
always erring through pride, felt a frightful satisfaction in the
dangers with which she and her family were perpetually menaced,
jealously guarding this bitter eminence, lest it might be seized upon by
others! For one can come even to such a point.
What analogy could there be between the marriage of the little de Blauve
girl, an ignorant child, with one of the most horribly mutilated of
soldiers, and an imaginary marriage between her, Odette, who was going
on to her thirtieth year, with a blinded man who was not disfigured?
Young girls, women, were marrying blinded men every day; many more of
them would do so, one must hope! The case might indeed be peculiarly
delicate for her, a widow still in love with her husband, and who was
peculiarly sensitive to blindness; but if the case ever occurred it was
she alone who had the right to judge of it. No one knew either the
lasting nature of her grief or her personal repugnances; the matter in
no slightest degree deserved attention.
In fact, at the point that Odette had reached, she could imagine no
limit to devotion. In the marriages now in question, there was no
mention of anything that had formerly been called happiness; the only
thought was of kindliness toward most deserving beings who were
suffering under the greatest of misfortunes, and the greater their
misfortune, the greater, it appeared, ought to be the pleasure of
alleviating it. She did not approve of Mme. de Blauve, if it was she who
had urged her daughter to a marriage of charity, but she could perfectly
understand the daughter's having made such a marriage. If a temporary
check now and then occurred, it was due to a pathological condition
which would eventually cease. She recalled to mind one of her friends, a
perfectly well-balanced girl, married to a very fine man whom she
adored, who had taken a dislike to her husband during the whole period
of her pregnancy, without in the least knowing why.
A few days later Odette received a letter from Mme. de Calouas, still in
Surville, alluding to the prospect of her marriage to a blinded officer.
So the utterly unfounded rumor had made its way to the depths of
Normandy! And Mme. de Calouas, who was wisdom itself, and utterly
removed from any suggestion that might have acted upon Mme. de Blauve,
wrote to her as Mme. de Blauve had spoken: "Yes, dear friend, marry; I
have never concealed from you that it is almost your duty. But beware of
an excess of zeal! Take care not to undertake more than a woman of your
temperament, brought up as you have been, attached to a beloved memory
as you still are, will be able to endure. Remember that many of us can
be heroic for a few seconds, a few hours, a few days, but that is very
different from a whole lifetime."
Odette smiled, not only at the thought of what people were thinking of
her, but at the solicitude which they expressed for her, and that sort
of obsession for heroic acts which every one seemed to cherish. Odette
had not the slightest intention of performing a heroic act. Nothing in
her character had ever inclined her in that direction. Her heart was
made for loving. She loved, she was sure that she loved. The one whom
she loved was her husband--her Jean. She could ill analyze the character
of the tenderness which at the same time she felt for every suffering
creature on earth. And that was all. What would they have of her?
XXXVI
Nevertheless she continued to be disturbed by the strange rumor which
had been set afloat, which was still afloat, and she promised herself to
speak about it to Clotilde, who without doubt had been the cause of its
diffusion.
On drawing near to the house in which Clotilde lived, she met Lieutenant
Avvogade guiding his blinded man by the arm. She had not so much as
thought of avoiding such an encounter.
When the blind man recognized Odette's voice his whole face was
transfigured. He turned pale; he hardly had courage to speak. But she
felt the effort with which his closed eyelids were directed toward the
point in space from which her voice had come; her perfume had been
wafted to him. This blinded man was looking at her, was seeing her in
his imagination; perhaps he was seeing her much more beautiful, more
alluring, than he had dreamed! He had been disturbed because
opportunities to be with her had no longer been afforded him, and he did
not know that it was not she herself who had prevented them. But an
inward instinct, stronger than he had yet known, filled him with ecstasy
in that moment of the young woman's presence. He inhaled her like a
flower, he listened to her, was saturated with her. Believing himself to
be behind the veil which hid the daylight from him, as behind a screen,
he neglected to keep a watch on himself, to impose constraint upon
himself. His emotion was evident to those who saw him, and the agitation
of a man so much to be pitied impressed her profoundly.
Odette told him that she had learned that he had two little children.
Then the blinded man extended his hand to her; his throat contracted; he
could not utter a word. Without hesitation Odette took the hand of this
man, so good-hearted and so wretched, and let her own be enfolded in
his. Not a word had been added to those alluding to the children, yet
she felt that she had never heard from human lips such an expression of
gratitude.
*
* *
They were there, under the trees of the Square of the United States, one
of the beauty spots of opulent, worldly Paris, where so many
conventional words and actions must have been exchanged; and this
agitated silence, those clasped hands, result of the universal woe,
seemed to embody as in marble the symbol of a new beauty which effaced
all that had before been known.
As the blind man made a motion to relinquish her hand, Odette said:
"_Au revoir_, messieurs"; and left them. The blind man remained
motionless, either because he could not think it possible that she
should go, or because he waited for his friend, who hesitated to urge
him to leave the place.
*
* *
Odette did not go up to Clotilde, even at the risk of permitting her
lack of protestation to be accepted as acquiescence. She felt herself
incapable of talking with any one whose heart was not overflowing. She
did not disdain the sight of her flowers, her preoccupation with
personal pleasures; she would despise nothing, these were tastes which
inspired her rather with pity. Toward those who have greatly suffered it
was not pity that she felt, but _attraction_; an irresistible
attraction.
*
* *
She was soon joined by one who greeted her. It was La Villaumer,
returning from a visit to a sick man in the Rue Bizet. He turned toward
the two men who were going away and asked Odette:
"Then it is true? They told me----"
"Only one single thing is true," said Odette, "and that is that they
told you."
"There is only one single thing true," replied La Villaumer, "and that
is that you feel as imperative a need to do good, as most poor mortals
of good being done to them. If I had not seen--I should say to you, as
others will say to you: 'My friend, take care, keep yourself in hand!'
But I have just seen the face of this man who is deprived of light, and
who perhaps feels the lack of you more than of the beauty of the light,
and I tremble-- It seems to me that I see you, my poor dear friend,
reaching the last stage of an evolution which I have watched as if it
had been my own. Many will look upon this acme of your self-sacrifice as
an immolation. But I recall to mind the words that I have so often
spoken to myself: 'You no longer Count!' The individual is dead--
Provisionally, but for a time which we cannot estimate, the individual
is dead-- In fact, you yourself have perceived that you no longer have
any rights, not even the right to mourn your unending grief. The moment
has come to mourn more largely, more grandly, with the only grief that
can save a soul like yours. The only hope of a resurrection lies in
giving oneself to the common need, and losing oneself in it with love."