In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (35 page)

For the first time I began to feel that it was possible that my mother
might live without me, otherwise than for me, a separate life. She was
going to stay with my father, whose existence it may have seemed to
her that my feeble health, my nervous excitability complicated
somewhat and saddened. This separation made me all the more wretched
because I told myself that it probably marked for my mother an end of
the successive disappointments which I had caused her, of which she
had never said a word to me but which had made her realise the
difficulty of our taking our holidays together; and perhaps also the
first trial of a form of existence to which she was beginning, now, to
resign herself for the future, as the years crept on for my father and
herself, an existence in which I should see less of her, in which (a
thing that not even in my nightmares had yet been revealed to me) she
would already have become something of a stranger, a lady who might be
seen going home by herself to a house in which I should not be, asking
the porter whether there was not a letter for her from me.

I could scarcely answer the man in the station who offered to take my
bag. My mother, to comfort me, tried the methods which seemed to her
most efficacious. Thinking it to be useless to appear not to notice my
unhappiness, she gently teased me about it:

"Well, and what would Balbec church say if it knew that people pulled
long faces like that when they were going to see it? Surely this is
not the enraptured tourist Ruskin speaks of. Besides, I shall know if
you rise to the occasion, even when we are miles apart I shall still
be with my little man. You shall have a letter to–morrow from Mamma."

"My dear," said my grandmother, "I picture you like Mme. de Sévigné,
your eyes glued to the map, and never losing sight of us for an
instant."

Then Mamma sought to distract my mind, asked me what I thought of
having for dinner, drew my attention to Françoise, complimented her on
a hat and cloak which she did not recognise, in spite of their having
horrified her long ago when she first saw them, new, upon my
great–aunt, one with an immense bird towering over it, the other
decorated with a hideous pattern and jet beads. But the cloak having
grown too shabby to wear, Françoise had had it turned, exposing an
'inside' of plain cloth and quite a good colour. As for the bird, it
had long since come to grief and been thrown away. And just as it is
disturbing, sometimes, to find the effects which the most conscious
artists attain only by an effort occurring in a folk–song, on the wall
of some peasant's cottage where above the door, at the precisely right
spot in the composition, blooms a white or yellow rose—so the velvet
band, the loop of ribbon which would have delighted one in a portrait
by Chardin or Whistler, Françoise had set with a simple but unerring
taste upon the hat, which was now charming.

To take a parallel from an earlier age, the modesty and integrity
which often gave an air of nobility to the face of our old servant
having spread also to the garments which, as a woman reserved but not
humbled, who knew how to hold her own and to keep her place, she had
put on for the journey so as to be fit to be seen in our company
without at the same time seeming or wishing to make herself
conspicuous,—Françoise in the cherry–coloured cloth, now faded, of
her cloak, and the discreet nap of her fur collar, brought to mind one
of those miniatures of Anne of Brittany painted in Books of Hours by
an old master, in which everything is so exactly in the right place,
the sense of the whole is so evenly distributed throughout the parts
that the rich and obsolete singularity of the costume expresses the
same pious gravity as the eyes, lips and hands.

Of thought, in relation to Françoise, one could hardly speak. She knew
nothing, in that absolute sense in which to know nothing means to
understand nothing, save the rare truths to which the heart is capable
of directly attaining. The vast world of ideas existed not for her.
But when one studied the clearness of her gaze, the lines of nose and
lips, all those signs lacking from so many people of culture in whom
they would else have signified a supreme distinction, the noble
detachment of a chosen spirit, one was disquieted, as one is by the
frank, intelligent eyes of a dog, to which, nevertheless, one knows
that all our human concepts must be alien, and was led to ask oneself
whether there might not be, among those other humble brethren, our
peasant countrymen, creatures who were, like the great ones of the
earth, of simple mind, or rather, doomed by a harsh fate to live among
the simple–minded, deprived of heavenly light, were yet more
naturally, more instinctively akin to the chosen spirits than most
educated people, were, so to speak, all members, though scattered,
straying, robbed of their heritage of reason, of the celestial family,
kinsfolk, that have been lost in infancy, of the loftiest minds to
whom—as is apparent from the unmistakable light in their eyes,
although they can concentrate that light on nothing—there has been
lacking, to endow them with talent, knowledge only.

My mother, seeing that I had difficulty in keeping back my tears, said
to me: "'Regulus was in the habit, when things looked grave….'
Besides, it isn't nice for Mamma! What does Mme. de Sévigné say? Your
grandmother will tell you: 'I shall be obliged to draw upon all the
courage that you lack.'" And remembering that affection for another
distracts one's selfish griefs, she endeavoured to beguile me by
telling me that she expected the removal to Saint–Cloud to go without
a hitch, that she liked the cab, which she had kept waiting, that the
driver seemed civil and the seats comfortable. I made an effort to
smile at these trifles, and bowed my head with an air of acquiescence
and satisfaction. But they helped me only to depict to myself with
more accuracy Mamma's imminent departure, and it was with an agonised
heart that I gazed at her as though she were already torn from me,
beneath that wide–brimmed straw hat which she had bought to wear in
the country, in a flimsy dress which she had put on in view of the
long drive through the sweltering midday heat; hat and dress making
her some one else, some one who belonged already to the Villa
Montretout, in which I should not see her.

To prevent the choking fits which the journey might otherwise give me
the doctor had advised me to take, as we started, a good stiff dose of
beer or brandy, so as to begin the journey in a state of what he
called 'euphoria,' in which the nervous system is for a time less
vulnerable. I had not yet made up my mind whether I should do this,
but I wished at least that my grandmother should admit that, if I did
so decide, I should have wisdom and authority on my side. I spoke
therefore as if my hesitation were concerned only with where I should
go for my drink, to the bar on the platform or to the restaurant–car
on the train. But immediately, at the air of reproach which my
grandmother's face assumed, an air of not wishing even to entertain
such an idea for a moment, "What!" I said to myself, suddenly
determining upon this action of going out to drink, the performance of
which became necessary as a proof of my independence since the verbal
announcement of it had not succeeded in passing unchallenged, "What!
You know how ill I am, you know what the doctor ordered, and you treat
me like this!"

When I had explained to my grandmother how unwell I felt, her distress,
her kindness were so apparent as she replied, "Run along then,
quickly; get yourself some beer or a liqueur if it will do you any
good," that I flung myself upon her, almost smothering her in kisses.
And if after that I went and drank a great deal too much in the
restaurant–car of the train, that was because I felt that otherwise I
should have a more violent attack than usual, which was just what
would vex her most. When at the first stop I clambered back into our
compartment I told my grandmother how pleased I was to be going to
Balbec, that I felt that everything would go off splendidly, that
after all I should soon grow used to being without Mamma, that the
train was most comfortable, the steward and attendants in the bar so
friendly that I should like to make the journey often so as to have
opportunities of seeing them again. My grandmother, however, did not
appear to feel the same joy as myself at all these good tidings. She
answered, without looking me in the face:

"Why don't you try to get a little sleep?" and turned her gaze to the
window, the blind of which, though we had drawn it, did not completely
cover the glass, so that the sun could and did slip in over the
polished oak of the door and the cloth of the seat (like an
advertisement of a life shared with nature far more persuasive than
those posted higher upon the walls of the compartment, by the railway
company, representing places in the country the names of which I could
not make out from where I sat) the same warm and slumberous light
which lies along a forest glade.

But when my grandmother thought that my eyes were shut I could see
her, now and again, from among the large black spots on her veil,
steal a glance at me, then withdraw it, and steal back again, like a
person trying to make himself, so as to get into the habit, perform
some exercise that hurts him.

Thereupon I spoke to her, but that seemed not to please her either.
And yet to myself the sound of my own voice was pleasant, as were the
most imperceptible, the most internal movements of my body. And so I
endeavoured to prolong it. I allowed each of my inflexions to hang
lazily upon its word, I felt each glance from my eyes arrive just at
the spot to which it was directed and stay there beyond the normal
period. "Now, now, sit still and rest," said my grandmother. "If you
can't manage to sleep, read something." And she handed me a volume of
Madame de Sévigné which I opened, while she buried herself in the
Mémoires de Madame de Beausergent
. She never travelled anywhere
without a volume of each. They were her two favourite authors. With no
conscious movement of my head, feeling a keen pleasure in maintaining
a posture after I had adopted it, I lay back holding in my hands the
volume of Madame de Sévigné which I had allowed to close, without
lowering my eyes to it, or indeed letting them see anything but the
blue window–blind. But the contemplation of this blind appeared to me
an admirable thing, and I should not have troubled to answer anyone
who might have sought to distract me from contemplating it. The blue
colour of this blind seemed to me, not perhaps by its beauty but by
its intense vivacity, to efface so completely all the colours that had
passed before my eyes from the day of my birth up to the moment in
which I had gulped down the last of my drink and it had begun to take
effect, that when compared with this blue they were as drab, as void
as must be retrospectively the darkness in which he has lived to a man
born blind whom a subsequent operation has at length enabled to see
and to distinguish colours. An old ticket–collector came to ask for
our tickets. The silvery gleam that shone from the metal buttons of
his jacket charmed me in spite of my absorption. I wanted to ask him
to sit down beside us. But he passed on to the next carriage, and I
thought with longing of the life led by railwaymen for whom, since
they spent all their time on the line, hardly a day could pass without
their seeing this' old collector. The pleasure that I found in staring
at the blind, and in feeling that my mouth was half–open, began at
length to diminish. I became more mobile; I even moved in my seat; I
opened the book that my grandmother had given me and turned its pages
casually, reading whatever caught my eye. And as I read I felt my
admiration for Madame de Sévigné grow.

It is a mistake to let oneself be taken in by the purely formal
details, idioms of the period or social conventions, the effect of
which is that certain people believe that they have caught the Sévigné
manner when they have said: "Tell me, my dear," or "That Count struck
me as being a man of parts," or "Haymaking is the sweetest thing in
the world." Mme. de Simiane imagines already that she is being like
her grandmother because she can write: "M. de la Boulie is bearing
wonderfully, Sir, and is in excellent condition to hear the news of
his death," or "Oh, my dear Marquis, how your letter enchanted me!
What can I do but answer it?" or "Meseems, Sir, that you owe me a
letter, and I owe you some boxes of bergamot. I discharge my debt to
the number of eight; others shall follow…. Never has the soil borne
so many. Apparently for your gratification." And she writes in this
style also her letter on bleeding, on lemons and so forth, supposing
it to be typical of the letters of Madame de Sévigné. But my
grandmother who had approached that lady from within, attracted to her
by her own love of kinsfolk and of nature, had taught me to enjoy the
real beauties of her correspondence, which are altogether different.
They were presently to strike me all the more forcibly inasmuch as
Madame de Sévigné is a great artist of the same school as a painter
whom I was to meet at Balbec, where his influence on my way of seeing
things was immense. I realised at Balbec that it was in the same way
as he that she presented things to her readers, in the order of our
perception of them, instead of first having to explain them in
relation to their several causes. But already that afternoon in the
railway carriage, as I read over again that letter in which the
moonlight comes: "I cannot resist the temptation: I put on all my
bonnets and veils, though there is no need of them, I walk along this
mall, where the air is as sweet as in my chamber; I find a thousand
phantasms, monks white and black, sisters grey and white, linen cast
here and there on the ground, men enshrouded upright against the
tree–trunks," I was enraptured by what, a little later, I should have
described (for does not she draw landscapes in the same way as he
draws characters?) as the Dostoievsky side of Madame de Sévigné's
Letters.