"My child, my dear little friend," said Mme. de Calouas, "I beg you not to give way to despondency of any sort. Believe what I say, and do not think me hard, as I may appear to be. I am not hard. I have simply covered myself with a shell, because we are engaged in a merciless conflict. Let us not permit ourselves to be weakened whether by catastrophe or painful loss or bitter trial. To give way to grief is to grow less strong. For the time, we can be sure only of suffering. Each grief should give us the opportunity not to weep, but to do more than before. There is only one aim. How that simplifies things! We look toward it, and toward it alone. We direct our eyes neither to the right nor the left. Anything may happen: we are ready, we will not fail. We may be asked for more than is in reason, but we have offered our services. No hesitation, no boasting; above all, no consideration of ourselves; let us leave all that to women of petty minds, since it is the only motive that can move them. We who know better must set them an example."
[XIX]
Odette went to her room to bathe her eyes, but it was all in vain; she began again to weep; she had an invincible desire for tears; she wept until the hour for going to the hospital.
She had photographs of Jean in her bed-room as in her drawing-room. And now it seemed to her that to give way to her grief was, indeed, "a delight"! She was in the habit of giving herself up to sorrow; who would have believed that it was a way of giving herself up to pleasure? Yet in comparison with the excessive sadness of the present time, to wrap herself up, weeping, in the memory of happy days, was to set herself apart, to abstract herself in herself, to intoxicate herself with the fragrance of the incense on her own private altar, to divest herself of strength for the great common act which it had given her so much pain to accept, but the imperious command of which she could not now deny.
"It is still a pleasure," she repeated to herself. What chaos must have been wrought that her most acute sufferings, recalled to her by imagination, should take on the form of felicity!
Mme. de Calouas had affirmed that, for her part, had she fewer years, she would not hesitate to marry again!—Ah, no, that was too much! Anything, anything, but that! "'They endured the pains of hell, and did not die until afterward?' Yes, their martyrdom, their death, I would gladly accept for myself; but I refuse to be false to my adored memories——"
Another burst of grief overwhelmed her in which her whole tortured personality resisted and asserted itself. She seized Jean's photographs and kissed them frantically. She would fain detest all the rest of the world and give herself wholly to this one sacred memory. For the moment she spurned the opinion of Mme. de Calouas: "If it is a self-indulgence, let it be so! I yield myself to this self-indulgence! I love Jean, I have never loved any one but Jean!"
In the old days she used to bicycle with Jean, and the two, side by side, often exchanging glances, sometimes throwing kisses, would roll breathlessly along the Norman roads, between the high, thick hedges where they were as if enclosed, with only one way out, where they had nothing to do but roll along. An auto would appear; Jean would go first, Odette following in his track, breathing his perfume until the cloud of dust and the smell of oil or of gasolene choked her. Sometimes, going slowly, they would take one another by the hand. She was flexible, slight, and lightly clothed; she would play acrobatic tricks on her machine, and her joyful agility would fill Jean with delight. Suddenly he would jump down, she would follow his example, and they would exchange a kiss, folded lingeringly in one another's arms. There was a little wayside inn where, under the arbor, they would call for cider with bread and white cheese. They had never met any one there; the wind would ruffle the foliage around them, the dog would gaze at them with a twinkle in his eye, the hostess would serve them with a smile. More often than elsewhere they used to go to the orchard, the incomparable orchard of the farm at the foot of the ruins of Saint-Gingolph, where they were welcomed as friends, both so young, so beautiful, so radiant with happiness. There in the autumn they would walk in the little paths bordered with sorrel and thyme; where dahlias were growing beside onions, where there were currant-bushes loaded with rubies, in a corner a fig-tree whose fruit never ripened, under which they must bend to go to the pear-trees. There Odette would bite into a pear as she passed it, and this would make Jean scold; he would gather the pear, nibble at the place which her teeth had damaged, and carry it to the good-natured farmer's wife, saying: "Just see what mischief we have done!"
"Oh!" the farmer's wife would simply reply, "Madame seems to enjoy it so!"
Delicious and terrible memories! Odette could not endure again to visit those places, so near, yet which would now have given her so much pain!