She
had fled from the ennui of a childless home to enter into the eventful
life of the war hospital.
The major's wife had been sitting in the garden with the gentlemen ever
since seven o'clock, always on the point of leaving, quite ready to go
in her hat and jacket, but she let herself be induced again and again to
remain a little longer. She kept up her flirtatious conversation in the
gayest of spirits, as if she had no knowledge of all the torments she
had seen during the day in the very house against which she was leaning
her back. The sad little woman breathed a sigh of relief when it grew so
dark that she could move away from the frivolous chatterbox unnoticed.
And yet in spite of her titillating conversation and the air of
importance with which she spoke of her duties as a nurse, the Frau Major
was penetrated by a feeling that, without her being conscious of it,
raised her high above herself. The great wave of motherliness that had
swept over all the women when the fatal hour struck for the men, had
borne her aloft, too. She had seen the three men with whom she was now
genially exchanging light nothings come to the hospital--like thousands
of others--streaming with blood, helpless, whimpering with pain. And
something of the joy of the hen whose brood has safely hatched warmed
her coquetry.
Since the men have been going for months, crouching, creeping on all
fours, starving, carrying their own death as mothers carry their
children; since suffering and waiting and the passive acceptance of
danger and pain have reversed the sexes, the women have felt strong, and
even in their sensuality there has been a little glimmer of the new
passion for mothering.
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