For a long time Odette hesitated. Again she shut herself up with her adored memories. She was irritated that Mme. de Calouas had not said a word about that exquisite man who was her Jean, and whom she had met at the hotel. When she went out it was precisely at an hour when she knew Mme. de Calouas to be at her hospitals. When the sea-wind was too strong she would walk in the dull streets of the deserted summer city, a pleasure resort in which the word "pleasure" had become strange and unfitting. The streets crossed at right angles; nearly all of them were bordered by hedges beyond which one could see a garden, the wire cage of a tennis-court, a Norman villa, and no one. Often, the whole length of her walk she met only one human being, a big man, almost impotent, whose duty it was to sweep up the dead leaves—an absurd duty since the wind scattered them as fast as he swept, and the trees shed down behind him another layer of little golden, rolling, dead things.
Sometimes, walking daringly, Odette crossed the long terrace, and braving the wind went as far as to the sea.
At certain hours the beach was covered with men under treatment. You recognized them by the slings that supported their arms, by their crutches, their bandaged heads, not often by their uniforms, of which they preserved only odd parts. They wore old jackets, knitted waistcoats, trousers brought forth from old Norman wardrobes. Some of the men limped, others wearily dragged their feet along the sand; those who had legs wrestled with one another, ran races, played like children. They delighted in the edge of the sea, gathering shells, and regaling themselves with the slimy flesh of cockles. Some of them cast a too expressive glance upon the young woman, with an awkward word which at another time would have made her smile. It was an amazing group of tatterdemalions; within the memory of man no eye had ever looked upon such a sight. It excited compassion; and yet almost every man in particular had gained, without trying, the manly merit of always seeming to be in good humor.
Whenever she saw them Odette felt moved, and at the same time somewhat jealous. He had not been washed, bandaged, ministered to, nor even clothed in rags; he had not been able to drag his mangled limbs along the seashore; he had been killed outright. She would say to herself: "Perhaps one of these soldiers knew him, perhaps he saw him fall; he could tell me the details, could describe his last days, his last hour, his last minute." And she grew faint at the possibility of asking them, of learning.
The low tide, the stormy sky, the wind, the grayish hillsides, the transports on the horizon, always this immense deserted beach, these wretched relics of the war, and she, disconsolate widow, imploring the wind to snatch her away and destroy her in its eddies! The constant reminders of the past, the sight of these same places, natural background of all the pleasant things of life! The thought of that water which had bathed the limbs of Jean, and of the August sun, and the restless multitude, gay and elegant, whom the many-colored sweaters set off like a profusion of tulips; the movement of automobiles, the music of the orchestra! Her heart ached at these contrasts even more than it had done in Paris. The solitude, the approaching winter, and the near contact with suffering aroused in her an unwelcome agitation. The restless air, dark with cawing crows, brought a bitter taste to her lips, and yet aroused in her an indescribable sense of splendor.
[VII]
Nothing less than the thought of meeting Mme. de Calouas at church on the following Sunday before she had paid her promised visit could have induced Odette to cross the threshold of the hospital.
She went on Saturday, between two and four o'clock. An orderly wearing a corporal's bands detained her as if her hand-bag might conceal incendiary bombs, but was softened on hearing the name of Mme. de Calouas, and led her to room 74. Odette was kept a long time standing at the door of room 74; at last a doctor came out, carrying a case of instruments. He was followed by Mme. de Calouas, who said:
"It is too bad, dear madame! I beg you to excuse me; one of my patients detained me. But now I am at your service; just let me change my blouse before taking you to see the wards."
Her change of costume was soon made, and she took Odette to a neighboring room where a very young nurse and two military orderlies were with great difficulty holding down a patient in an attack of tetanus. The sick man's head with its contracted jaws and inflexible neck reminded her of certain "attractions" of the waxworks; the upheaved body, forming an arc from head to heels, was as rigid and unyielding as the arch of a bridge. Odette turned pale, and Mme. de Calouas said: