In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (28 page)

Meanwhile Mme. Bontemps, who had been heard a hundred times to declare
that nothing would induce her to go to the Verdurins', delighted at
being asked to the famous Wednesdays, was planning in her own mind how
she could manage to attend as many of them as possible. She was not'
aware that Mme. Verdurin liked people not to miss a single one; also
she was one of those people whose company is but little sought, who,
when a hostess invites them to a series of parties, do not accept and
go to them without more ado, like those who know that it is always a
pleasure to see them, whenever they have a moment to spare and feel
inclined to go out; people of her type deny themselves it may be the
first evening and the third, imagining that their absence will be
noticed, and save themselves up for the second and fourth, unless it
should happen that, having heard from a trustworthy source that the
third is to be a particularly brilliant party, they reverse the
original order, assuring their hostess that "most unfortunately, we
had another engagement last week." So Mme. Bontemps was calculating
how many Wednesdays there could still be left before Easter, and by
what means she might manage to secure one extra, and yet not appear to
be thrusting herself upon her hostess. She relied upon Mme. Cottard,
whom she would have with her in the carriage going home, to give her a
few hints. "Oh, Mme. Bontemps, I see you getting up to go; it is very
bad of you to give the signal for flight like that! You owe me some
compensation for not turning up last Thursday…. Come, sit down
again, just for a minute. You can't possibly be going anywhere else
before dinner. Really, you won't let yourself be tempted?" went on
Mme. Swann, and, as she held out a plate of cakes, "You know, they're
not at all bad, these little horrors. They don't look nice, but just
taste one, I know you'll like it." "On the contrary, they look quite
delicious," broke in Mme. Cottard. "In your house, Odette, one is
never short of victuals. I have no need to ask to see the trade–mark;
I know you get everything from Rebattet. I must say that I am more
eclectic. For sweet biscuits and everything of that sort I repair, as
often as not, to Bourbonneux. But I agree that they simply don't know
what an ice means. Rebattet for everything iced, and syrups and
sorbets; they're past masters. As my husband would say, they're the
ne plus ultra
." "Oh, but we just make these in the house. You won't,
really?" "I shan't be able to eat a scrap of dinner," pleaded Mme.
Bontemps, "but I will just sit down again for a moment; you know, I
adore talking to a clever woman like you." "You will think me highly
indiscreet, Odette, but I should so like to know what you thought of
the hat Mme. Trombert had on. I know, of course, that big hats are the
fashion just now. All the same, wasn't it just the least little bit
exaggerated? And compared to the hat she came to see me in the other
day, the one she had on just now was microscopic!" "Oh no, I am not at
all clever," said Odette, thinking that this sounded well. "I am a
perfect simpleton, I believe everything people say, and worry myself
to death over the least thing." And she insinuated that she had, just
at first, suffered terribly from the thought of having married a man
like Swann, who had a separate life of his own and was unfaithful to
her. Meanwhile the Prince d'Agrigente, having caught the words "I am
not at all clever," thought it incumbent on him to protest;
unfortunately he had not the knack of repartee. "Tut, tut, tut, tut!"
cried Mme. Bontemps, "Not clever; you!" "That's just what I was saying
to myself—'What do I hear?'," the Prince clutched at this straw, "My
ears must have played me false!" "No, I assure you," went on Odette,
"I am really just an ordinary woman, very easily shocked, full of
prejudices, living in my own little groove and dreadfully ignorant."
And then, in case he had any news of the Baron de Charlus, "Have you
seen our dear Baronet?" she asked him. "You, ignorant!" cried Mme.
Bontemps. "Then I wonder what you'd say of the official world, all
those wives of Excellencies who can talk of nothing but their
frocks…. Listen to this, my friend; not more than a week ago I
happened to mention
Lohengrin
to the Education Minister's wife. She
stared at me, and said '
Lohengrin
? Oh, yes, the new review at the
Folies–Bergères. I hear it's a perfect scream!' What do you say to
that, eh? You can't help yourself; when people say things like that it
makes your blood boil. I could have struck her. Because I have a bit
of a temper of my own. What do you say, sir;" she turned to me, "was I
not right?" "Listen," said Mme. Cottard, "people can't help answering
a little off the mark when they're asked a thing like that point
blank, without any warning. I know something about it, because Mme.
Verdurin also has a habit of putting a pistol to your head." "Speaking
of Mme. Verdurin," Mme. Bontemps asked Mme. Cottard, "do you know who
will be there on Wednesday? Oh, I've just remembered that we've
accepted an invitation for next Wednesday. You wouldn't care to dine
with us on Wednesday week? We could go on together to Mme.
Verdurin's. I should never dare to go there by myself; I don't know
why it is, that great lady always terrifies me." "I'll tell you what
it is," replied Mme. Cottard, "what frightens you about Mme. Verdurin
is her organ. But you see everyone can't have such a charming organ
as Mme. Swann. Once you've found your tongue, as the 'Mistress' says,
the ice will soon be broken. For she's a very easy person, really, to
get on with. But I can quite understand what you feel; it's never
pleasant to find oneself for the first time in a strange country."
"Won't you dine with us, too?" said Mme. Bontemps to Mme. Swann.
"After dinner we could all go to the Verdurins' together, 'do a
Verdurin'; and even if it means that the 'Mistress' will stare me out
of countenance and never ask me to the house again, once we are there
we'll just sit by ourselves and have a quiet talk, I'm sure that's
what I should like best." But this assertion can hardly have been
quite truthful, for Mme. Bontemps went on to ask: "Who do you think
will be there on Wednesday week? What will they be doing? There won't
be too big a crowd, I hope!" "I certainly shan't be there," said
Odette. "We shall just look in for a minute on the last Wednesday of
all. If you don't mind waiting till then——" But Mme. Bontemps did
not appear to be tempted by the proposal.

Granted that the intellectual distinction of a house and its smartness
are generally in inverse rather than direct ratio, one must suppose,
since Swann found Mme. Bontemps attractive, that any forfeiture of
position once accepted has the consequence of making us less
particular with regard to the people among whom we have resigned
ourselves to finding entertainment, less particular with regard to
their intelligence as to everything else about them. And if this be
true, men, like nations, must see their culture and even their
language disappear with their independence. One of the effects of this
indulgence is to aggravate the tendency which after a certain age we
have towards finding pleasure in speeches that are a homage to our own
turn of mind, to our weaknesses, an encouragement to us to yield to
them; that is the age at which a great artist prefers to the company
of original minds that of pupils who have nothing in common with him
save the letter of his doctrine, who listen to him and offer incense;
at which a man or woman of mark, who is living entirely for love, will
find that the most intelligent person in a gathering is one perhaps of
no distinction, but one who has shewn by some utterance that he can
understand and approve what is meant by an existence devoted to
gallantry, and has thus pleasantly excited the voluptuous instincts of
the lover or mistress; it was the age, too, at which Swann, in so
far as he had become the husband of Odette, enjoyed hearing Mme.
Bontemps say how silly it was to have nobody in one's house but
duchesses (concluding from that, quite the contrary of what he would
have decided in the old days at the Verdurins', that she was a good
creature, extremely sensible and not at all a snob) and telling her
stories which made her 'die laughing' because she had not heard them
before, although she always 'saw the point' at once, liked flattering
her for his own amusement. "Then the Doctor is not mad about flowers,
like you?" Mme. Swann asked Mme. Cottard. "Oh, well, you know, my
husband is a sage; he practises moderation in all things. Yet, I must
admit, he has a passion." Her eye aflame with malice, joy, curiosity,
"And what is that, pray?" inquired Mme. Bontemps. Quite simply Mme.
Cottard answered her, "Reading." "Oh, that's a very restful passion in
a husband!" cried Mme. Bontemps suppressing an impish laugh. "When
the Doctor gets a book in his hands, you know!" "Well, that needn't
alarm you much…" "But it does, for his eyesight. I must go now and
look after him, Odette, and I shall come back on the very first
opportunity and knock at your door. Talking of eyesight, have you
heard that the new house Mme. Verdurin has just bought is to be
lighted by electricity? I didn't get that from my own little secret
service, you know, but from quite a different source; it was the
electrician himself, Mildé, who told me. You see, I quote my
authorities! Even the bedrooms, he says, are to have electric lamps
with shades which will filter the light. It is evidently a charming
luxury, for those who can afford it. But it seems that our
contemporaries must absolutely have the newest thing if it's the only
one of its kind in the world. Just fancy, the sister–in–law of a
friend of mine has had the telephone installed in her house! She can
order things from her tradesmen without having to go out of doors! I
confess that I've made the most bare–faced stratagems to get
permission to go there one day, just to speak into the instrument.
It's very tempting, but more in a friend's house than at home. I don't
think I should like to have the telephone in my establishment. Once
the first excitement is over, it must be a perfect racket going on all
the time. Now, Odette, I must be off; you're not to keep Mme. Bontemps
any longer, she's looking after me. I must absolutely tear myself
away; you're making me behave in a nice way, I shall be getting home
after my husband!"

And for myself also it was time to return home, before I had tasted
those wintry delights of which the chrysanthemums had seemed to me to
be the brilliant envelope. These pleasures had not appeared, and yet
Mme. Swann did not look as though she expected anything more. She
allowed the servants to carry away the tea–things, as who should say
"Time, please, gentlemen!" And at last she did say to me: "Really,
must you go? Very well; good–bye!" I felt that I might have stayed
there without encountering those unknown pleasures, and that my
unhappiness was not the cause of my having to forego them. Were they
to be found, then, situated not upon that beaten track of hours which
leads one always to the moment of departure, but rather upon some
cross–road unknown to me along which I ought to have digressed? At
least, the object of my visit had been attained; Gilberte would know
that I had come to see her parents when she was not at home, and that
I had, as Mme. Cottard had incessantly assured me, "made a complete
conquest, first shot, of Mme. Verdurin," whom, she added, she had
never seen 'make so much' of anyone. ("You and she must have hooked
atoms.") She would know that I had spoken of her as was fitting, with
affection, but that I had not that incapacity for living without our
seeing one another which I believed to be at the root of the boredom
that she had shewn at our last meetings. I had told Mme. Swann that I
should not be able to see Gilberte again. I had said this as though I
had finally decided not to see her any more. And the letter which I
was going to send Gilberte would be framed on those lines. Only to
myself, to fortify my courage, I proposed no more than a supreme and
concentrated effort, lasting a few days only. I said to myself: "This
is the last time that I shall refuse to meet her; I shall accept the
next invitation." To make our separation less difficult to realise, I
did not picture it to myself as final. But I knew very well that it
would be.

The first of January was exceptionally painful to me that winter. So,
no doubt, is everything that marks a date and an anniversary when we
are unhappy. But if our unhappiness is due to the loss of some dear
friend, our suffering consists merely in an unusually vivid comparison
of the present with the past. There was added to this, in my case, the
unexpressed hope that Gilberte, having intended to leave me to take
the first steps towards a reconciliation, and discovering that I had
not taken them, had been waiting only for the excuse of New Year's Day
to write to me, saying: "What is the matter? I am madly in love with
you; come, and let us explain things properly; I cannot live without
seeing you." As the last days of the old year went by, such a letter
began to seem probable. It was, perhaps, nothing of the sort, but to
make us believe that such a thing is probable the desire, the need
that we have for it suffices. The soldier is convinced that a certain
interval of time, capable of being indefinitely prolonged, will be
allowed him before the bullet finds him, the thief before he is taken,
men in general before they have to die. That is the amulet which
preserves people—and sometimes peoples—not from danger but from the
fear of danger, in reality from the belief in danger, which in certain
cases allows them to brave it without their actually needing to be
brave. It is confidence of this sort, and with as little foundation,
that sustains the lover who is counting upon a reconciliation, upon a
letter. For me to cease to expect a letter it would have sufficed that
I should have ceased to wish for one. However unimportant one may know
that one is in the eyes of her whom one still loves, one attributes to
her a series of thoughts (though their sum–total be indifference) the
intention to express those thoughts, a complication of her inner life
in which one is the constant object possibly of her antipathy but
certainly of her attention. But to imagine what was going on in
Gilberte's mind I should have required simply the power to anticipate
on that New Year's Day what I should feel on the first day of any of
the years to come, when the attention or the silence or the affection
or the coldness of Gilberte would pass almost unnoticed by me and I
should not dream, should not even be able to dream of seeking a
solution of problems which would have ceased to perplex me. When we
are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether
to contain it within us. It radiates towards the beloved object, finds
in her a surface which arrests it, forcing it to return to its
starting–point, and it is this shock of the repercussion of our own
affection which we call the other's regard for ourselves, and which
pleases us more then than on its outward journey because we do not
recognise it as having originated in ourselves. New Year's Day rang
out all its hours without there coming to me that letter from
Gilberte. And as I received a few others containing greetings tardy or
retarded by the overburdening of the mails at that season, on the
third and fourth of January I hoped still, but my hope grew hourly
more faint. Upon the days that followed I gazed through a mist of
tears. This undoubtedly meant that, having been less sincere than I
thought in my renunciation of Gilberte, I had kept the hope of a
letter from her for the New Year. And seeing that hope exhausted
before I had had time to shelter myself behind another, I suffered as
would an invalid who had emptied his phial of morphia without having
another within his reach. But perhaps also in my case—and these two
explanations are not mutually exclusive, for a single feeling is often
made up of contrary elements—the hope that I entertained of
ultimately receiving a letter had brought to my mind's eye once again
the image of Gilberte, had reawakened the emotions which the
expectation of finding myself in her presence, the sight of her, her
way of treating me had aroused in me before. The immediate possibility
of a reconciliation had suppressed in me that faculty the immense
importance of which we are apt to overlook: the faculty of
resignation. Neurasthenics find it impossible to believe the friends
who assure them that they will gradually recover their peace of mind
if they will stay in bed and receive no letters, read no newspapers.
They imagine that such a course will only exasperate their twitching
nerves. And similarly lovers, who look upon it from their enclosure in
a contrary state of mind, who have not begun yet to make trial of it,
are unable to believe in the healing power of renunciation.