In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (27 page)

"Aren't we to see anything of your delicious child?" she wound up.
"No, my delicious child is dining with a friend," replied Mme. Swann,
and then, turning to me: "I believe she's written to you, asking you
to come and see her to–morrow. And your babies?" she went on to Mme.
Cottard. I breathed a sigh of relief. These words by which Mme. Swann
proved to me that I could see Gilberte whenever I chose gave me
precisely the comfort which I had come to seek, and which at that time
made my visits to Mme. Swann so necessary. "No, I'm afraid not; I
shall write to her, anyhow, this evening. Gilberte and I never seem to
see one another now," I added, pretending to attribute our separation
to some mysterious agency, which gave me a further illusion of being
in love, supported as well by the affectionate way in which I spoke of
Gilberte and she of me. "You know, she's simply devoted to you," said
Mme. Swann. "Really, you won't come to–morrow?" Suddenly my heart rose
on wings; the thought had just struck me—"After all, why shouldn't I,
since it's her own mother who suggests it?" But with the thought I
fell back into my old depression. I was afraid now lest, when she saw
me again, Gilberte might think that my indifference of late had been
feigned, and it seemed wiser to prolong our separation. During these
asides Mme. Bontemps had been complaining of the insufferable dulness
of politicians' wives, for she pretended to find everyone too deadly
or too stupid for words, and to deplore her husband's official
position. "Do you mean to say you can shake hands with fifty doctors'
wives, like that, one after the other?" she exclaimed to Mme.
Cottard, who, unlike her, was full of the kindest feelings for
everybody and of determination to do her duty in every respect. "Ah!
you're a law–abiding woman! You see, in my case', at the Ministry,
don't you know, I simply have to keep it up, of course. It's too much
for me, I can tell you; you know what those officials' wives are like,
it's all I can do not to put my tongue out at them. And my niece
Albertine is just like me. You really wouldn't believe the impudence
that girl has. Last week, on my 'day,' I had the wife of the Under
Secretary of State for Finance, who told us that she knew nothing at
all about cooking. 'But surely, ma'am,' my niece chipped in with her
most winning smile, 'you ought to know everything about it, after all
the dishes your father had to wash.'" "Oh, I do love that story; I
think it's simply exquisite!" cried Mme. Swann. "But certainly on the
Doctor's consultation days you should make a point of being 'at home,'
among your flowers and books and all your pretty things," she urged
Mme. Cottard. "Straight out like that! Bang! Right in the face; bang!
She made no bones about it, I can tell you! And she'd never said a
word to me about it, the little wretch; she's as cunning as a monkey.
You are lucky to be able to control yourself; I do envy people who can
hide what is in their minds." "But I've no need to do that, Mme.
Bontemps, I'm not so hard to please," Mme. Cottard gently
expostulated. "For one thing, I'm not in such a privileged position,"
she went on, slightly raising her voice as was her custom, as though
she were underlining the point of her remark, whenever she slipped
into the conversation any of those delicate courtesies, those skilful
flatteries which won her the admiration and assisted the career of her
husband. "And besides I'm only too glad to do anything that can be of
use to the Professor."

"But, my dear, it isn't what one's glad to do; it's what one is able
to do! I expect you're not nervous. Do you know, whenever I see the
War Minister's wife making faces, I start copying her at once. It's a
dreadful thing to have a temperament like mine."

"To be sure, yes," said Mme. Cottard, "I've heard people say that she
had a twitch; my husband knows someone else who occupies a very high
position, and it's only natural, when gentlemen get talking
together…"

"And then, don't you know, it's just the same with the Chief of the
Registry; he's a hunchback. Whenever he comes to see me, before he's
been in the room five minutes my fingers are itching to stroke his
hump. My husband says I'll cost him his place. What if I do! A fig
for the Ministry! Yes, a fig for the Ministry! I should like to have
that printed as a motto on my notepaper. I can see I am shocking you;
you're so frightfully proper, but I must say there's nothing amuses me
like a little devilry now and then. Life would be dreadfully
monotonous without it." And she went on talking about the Ministry all
the time, as though it had been Mount Olympus. To change the
conversation, Mme. Swann turned to Mme. Cottard: "But you're looking
very smart to–day. Redfern
fecit
?"

"No, you know, I always swear by Rauthnitz. Besides, it's only an old
thing I've had done up." "Not really! It's charming!"

"Guess how much…. No, change the first figure!"

"You don't say so! Why, that's nothing; it's given away! Three times
that at least, I should have said." "You see how history comes to be
written," apostrophised the doctor's wife. And pointing to a
neck–ribbon which had been a present from Mme. Swann: "Look, Odette!
Do you recognise this?"

Through the gap between a pair of curtains a head peeped with
ceremonious deference, making a playful pretence of being afraid of
disturbing the party; it was Swann. "Odette, the Prince d'Agrigente is
with me in the study. He wants to know if he may pay his respects to
you. What am I to tell him?" "Why, that I shall be delighted," Odette
would reply, secretly flattered, but without losing anything of the
composure which came to her all the more easily since she had always,
even in her 'fast' days, been accustomed to entertain men of fashion.
Swann disappeared to deliver the message, and would presently return
with the Prince, unless in the meantime Mme. Verdurin had arrived.
When he married Odette Swann had insisted on her ceasing to frequent
the little clan. (He had several good reasons for this stipulation,
though, had he had none, he would have made it just the same in
obedience to a law of ingratitude which admits no exception, and
proves that every 'go–between' is either lacking in foresight or else
singularly disinterested.) He had conceded only that Odette and Mme.
Verdurin might exchange visits once a year, and even this seemed
excessive to some of the 'faithful,' indignant at the insult offered
to the 'Mistress' who for so many years had treated Odette and even
Swann himself as the spoiled children of her house. For if it
contained false brethren who 'failed' upon certain evenings in order
that they might secretly accept an invitation from Odette, ready, in
the event of discovery, with the excuse that they were anxious to meet
Bergotte (although the Mistress assured them that he never went to the
Swanns', and even if he did, had no vestige of talent, really—in
spite of which she was making the most strenuous efforts, to quote one
of her favourite expressions, to 'attract' him), the little group had
its 'die–hards' also. And these, though ignorant of those conventional
refinements which often dissuade people from the extreme attitude one
would have liked to see them adopt in order to annoy some one else,
would have wished Mme. Verdurin, but had never managed to prevail upon
her, to sever all connection with Odette, and thus deprive Odette of
the satisfaction of saying, with a mocking laugh: "We go to the
Mistress's very seldom now, since the Schism. It was all very well
while my husband was still a bachelor, but when one is married, you
know, it isn't always so easy…. If you must know, M. Swann can't
abide old Ma Verdurin, and he wouldn't much like the idea of my going
there regularly, as I used to. And I, as a dutiful spouse, don't you
see…?" Swann would accompany his wife to their annual evening there
but would take care not to be in the room when Mme. Verdurin came to
call. And so, if the 'Mistress' was in the drawing–room, the Prince
d'Agrigente would enter it alone. Alone, too, he was presented to her
by Odette, who preferred that Mme. Verdurin should be left in
ignorance of the names of her humbler guests, and so might, seeing
more than one strange face in the room, be led to believe that she was
mixing with the cream of the aristocracy, a device which proved so far
successful that Mme. Verdurin said to her husband, that evening, with
profound contempt: "Charming people, her friends! I met all the fine
flower of the Reaction!" Odette was living, with respect to Mme.
Verdurin, under a converse illusion. Not that the latter's salon had
ever begun, at that time, to develop into what we shall one day see it
to have become. Mme. Verdurin had not yet reached the period of
incubation in which one dispenses with one's big parties, where the
few brilliant specimens recently acquired would be lost in too
numerous a crowd, and prefers to wait until the generative force of
the ten righteous whom one has succeeded in attracting shall have
multiplied those ten seventyfold. As Odette was not to be long now in
doing, Mme. Verdurin did indeed entertain the idea of 'Society' as her
final objective, but her zone of attack was as yet so restricted, and
moreover so remote from that in which Odette had some chance of
arriving at an identical goal, of breaking the line of defence, that
the latter remained absolutely ignorant of the strategic plans which
the 'Mistress' was elaborating. And it was with the most perfect
sincerity that Odette, when anyone spoke to her of Mme. Verdurin as a
snob, would answer, laughing, "Oh, no, quite the opposite! For one
thing, she never gets a chance of being a snob; she doesn't know
anyone. And then, to do her justice, I must say that she seems quite
pleased not to know anyone. No, what she likes are her Wednesdays, and
people who talk well." And in her heart of hearts she envied Mme.
Verdurin (for all that she did not despair of having herself, in so
eminent a school, succeeded in acquiring them) those arts to which the
'Mistress' attached such paramount importance, albeit they did but
discriminate, between shades of the Non–existent, sculpture the void,
and were, properly speaking, the Arts of Nonentity: to wit those, in
the lady of a house, of knowing how to 'bring people together,' how to
'group,' to 'draw out,' to 'keep in the background,' to act as a
'connecting link.'

In any case, Mme. Swann's friends were impressed when they saw in her
house a lady of whom they were accustomed to think only as in her own,
in an inseparable setting of her guests, amid the whole of her little
group which they were astonished to behold thus suggested, summarised,
assembled, packed into a single armchair in the bodily form of the
'Mistress,' the hostess turned visitor, muffled in her cloak with its
grebe trimming, as shaggy as the white skins that carpeted that
drawing–room embowered in which Mme. Verdurin was a drawing–room in
herself. The more timid among the women thought it prudent to retire,
and using the plural, as people do when they mean to hint to the rest
of the room that it is wiser not to tire a convalescent who is out of
bed for the first time: "Odette," they murmured, "we are going to
leave you." They envied Mme. Cottard, whom the 'Mistress' called by
her Christian name. "Can I drop you anywhere?" Mme. Verdurin asked
her, unable to bear the thought that one of the faithful was going to
remain behind instead of following her from the room. "Oh, but this
lady has been so very kind as to say, she'll take me," replied Mme.
Cottard, not wishing to appear to be forgetting, when approached by a
more illustrious personage, that she had accepted the offer which Mme.
Bontemps had made of driving her home behind her cockaded coachman. "I
must say that I am always specially grateful to the friends who are so
kind as to take me with them in their vehicles. It is a regular
godsend to me, who have no Automedon." "Especially," broke in the
'Mistress,' who felt that she must say something, since she knew Mme.
Bontemps slightly and had just invited her to her Wednesdays, "as at
Mme. de Crécy's house you're not very near home. Oh, good gracious, I
shall never get into the way of saying Mme. Swann!" It was a
recognised pleasantry in the little clan, among those who were not
over endowed with wit, to pretend that they could never grow used to
saying 'Mme. Swann.' "I have been so accustomed to saying Mme. de
Crécy that I nearly went wrong again!" Only Mme. Verdurin, when she
spoke to Odette, was not content with the nearly, but went wrong on
purpose. "Don't you feel afraid, Odette, living out in the wilds like
this? I'm sure I shouldn't feel at all comfortable, coming home after
dark. Besides, it's so damp. It can't be at all good for your
husband's eczema. You haven't rats in the house, I hope!" "Oh, dear
no. What a horrid idea!" "That's a good thing; I was told you had. I'm
glad to know it's not true, because I have a perfect horror of the
creatures, and I should never have come to see you again. Goodbye, my
dear child, we shall meet again soon; you know what a pleasure it is
to me to see you. You don't know how to put your chrysanthemums in
water," she went on, as she prepared to leave the room, Mme. Swann
having risen to escort her. "They are Japanese flowers; you must
arrange them the same way as the Japanese." "I do not agree with Mme.
Verdurin, although she is the Law and the Prophets to me in all
things! There's no one like you, Odette, for finding such lovely
chrysanthemums, or chrysanthema rather, for it seems that's what we
ought to call them now," declared Mme. Cottard as soon as the
'Mistress' had shut the door behind her. "Dear Mme. Verdurin is not
always very kind about other people's flowers," said Odette sweetly.
"Whom do you go to, Odette," asked Mme. Cottard, to forestall any
further criticism of the 'Mistress.' "Lemaître? I must confess, the
other day in Lemaître's window I saw a huge, great pink bush which
made me do something quite mad." But modesty forbade her to give any
more precise details as to the price of the bush, and she said merely
that the Professor, "and you know, he's not at all a quick–tempered
man," had 'waved his sword in the air' and told her that she "didn't
know what money meant." "No, no, I've no regular florist except
Debac." "Nor have I," said Mme. Cottard, "but I confess that I am
unfaithful to him now and then with Lachaume." "Oh, you forsake him
for Lachaume, do you; I must tell Debac that," retorted Odette, always
anxious to shew her wit, and to lead the conversation in her own
house, where she felt more at her ease than in the little clan.
"Besides, Lachaume is really becoming too dear; his prices are quite
excessive, don't you know; I find his prices impossible!" she added,
laughing.