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.