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."