In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (71 page)

I felt that, in Albertine's eyes, my position would be improved by
this meeting. They were the daughters of a kinswoman of Mme. de
Villeparisis, who was also a friend of Mme. de Luxembourg. M. and
Mme. d'Ambresac, who had a small villa at Balbec and were immensely
rich, led the simplest of lives there, and always went about dressed
he in an unvarying frock coat, she in a dark gown. Both of them used
to make sweeping bows to my grandmother, which never led to anything
further. The daughters, who were very pretty, were dressed more
fashionably, but in a fashion suited rather to Paris than to the
seaside. With their long skirts and large hats, they had the look of
belonging to a different race from Albertine. She, I discovered, knew
all about them.

"Oh, so you know the little d'Ambresacs, do you? Dear me, you have
some swagger friends. After all, they're very simple souls," she went
on as though this might account for it. "They're very nice, but so
well brought up that they aren't allowed near the Casino, for fear of
us—we've such a bad tone. They attract you, do they? Well, it all
depends on what you like. They're just little white rabbits, really.
There may be something in that, of course. If little white rabbits are
what appeals to you, they may supply a long–felt want. It seems, there
must be some attraction, because one of them has got engaged already
to the Marquis de Saint–Loup. Which is a cruel blow to the younger
one, who is madly in love with that young man. I'm sure, the way they
speak to you with their lips shut is quite enough for me. And then
they dress in the most absurd way. Fancy going to play golf in silk
frocks! At their age, they dress more showily than grown–up women who
really know about clothes. Look at Mme. Elstir; there's a well dressed
woman if you like." I answered that she had struck me as being dressed
with the utmost simplicity. Albertine laughed. "She does put on the
simplest things, I admit, but she dresses wonderfully, and to get what
you call simplicity costs her a fortune." Mme. Elstir's gowns passed
unnoticed by any one who had not a sober and unerring taste in matters
of attire. This was lacking in me. Elstir possessed it in a supreme
degree, or so Albertine told me. I had not suspected this, nor that
the beautiful but quite simple objects which littered his studio were
treasures long desired by him which he had followed from sale room to
sale room, knowing all their history, until he had made enough money
to be able to acquire them. But as to this Albertine, being as
ignorant as myself, could not enlighten me. Whereas when it came to
clothes, prompted by a coquettish instinct, and perhaps by the
regretful longing of a penniless girl who is able to appreciate with
greater disinterestedness, more delicacy of feeling, in other, richer
people the things that she will never be able to afford for herself,
she expressed herself admirably on the refinement of Elstir's taste,
so hard to satisfy that all women appeared to him badly dressed,
while, attaching infinite importance to right proportions and shades
of colour, he would order to be made for his wife, at fabulous prices,
the sunshades, hats and cloaks which he had learned from Albertine to
regard as charming, and which a person wanting in taste would no more
have noticed than myself. Apart from this, Albertine, who had done a
little painting, though without, she confessed, having any 'gift' for
it, felt a boundless admiration for Elstir, and, thanks to his precept
and example, shewed a judgment of pictures which was in marked
contrast to her enthusiasm for
Cavalleria Rusticana
. The truth was,
though as yet it was hardly apparent, that she was highly intelligent,
and that in the things that she said the stupidity was not her own but
that of her environment and age. Elstir's had been a good but only a
partial influence. All the branches of her intelligence had not
reached the same stage of development. The taste for pictures had
almost caught up the taste for clothes and all forms of smartness, but
had not been followed by the taste for music, which was still a long
way behind.

Albertine might know all about the Ambresacs; but as he who can
achieve great things is not necessarily capable of small, I did not
find her, after I had bowed to those young ladies, any better disposed
to make me known to her friends. "It's too good of you to attach any
importance to them. You shouldn't take any notice of them; they don't
count. What on earth can a lot of kids like them mean to a man like
you? Now Andrée, I must say, is remarkably clever. She is a good girl,
that, though she is perfectly fantastic at times, but the others are
really dreadfully stupid." When I had left Albertine, I felt suddenly
a keen regret that Saint–Loup should have concealed his engagement
from me and that he should be doing anything so improper as to choose
a wife before breaking with his mistress. And then, shortly
afterwards, I met Andrée, and as she went on talking to me for some
time I seized the opportunity to tell her that I would very much like
to see her again next day, but she replied that this was impossible,
because her mother was not at all well, and she would have to stay
beside her. The next day but one, when I was at Elstir's, he told me
how greatly Andrée had been attracted by me; on my protesting: "But it
was I who was attracted by her from the start; I asked her to meet me
again yesterday, but she could not." "Yes, I know; she told me all
about that," was his reply, "she was very sorry, but she had promised
to go to a picnic, somewhere miles from here. They were to drive over
in a break, and it was too late for her to get out of it." Albeit this
falsehood (Andrée knowing me so slightly) was of no real importance, I
ought not to have continued to seek the company of a person who was
capable of uttering it. For what people have once done they will do
again indefinitely, and if you go every year to see a friend who, the
first time, was not able to meet you at the appointed place, or was in
bed with a chill, you will find him in bed with another chill which he
has just caught, you will miss him again at another meeting–place at
which he has failed to appear, for a single and unalterable reason in
place of which he supposes himself to have various reasons, drawn from
the circumstances. One morning, not long after Andrée's telling me
that she would be obliged to stay beside her mother, I was taking a
short stroll with Albertine, whom I had found on the beach tossing up
and catching again on a cord an oddly shaped implement which gave her
a look of Giotto's 'Idolatry'; it was called, for that matter,
'Diabolo,' and is so fallen into disuse now that, when they come upon
the picture of a girl playing with one, the critics of future
generations will solemnly discuss, as it might be over one of the
allegorical figures in the Arena, what it is that she is holding. A
moment later their friend with the penurious and harsh appearance, the
same one who on that first day had sneered so malevolently: "I do feel
sorry for him, poor old man," when, she saw the old gentleman's head
brushed by the flying feet of Andrée, came up to Albertine with "Good
morning,'m I disturbing you?" She had taken off her hat, for comfort,
and her hair, like a strange and fascinating–plant, lay over her brow,
displaying all the delicate tracery of its foliation. Albertine,
perhaps because she resented seeing the other bare–headed, made–no
reply, preserved a frigid silence in spite of which the girl stayed
with us, kept apart from myself by Albertine, who arranged at one
moment to be–alone with her, at another to walk with me leaving her to
follow. I was obliged, to secure an introduction, to ask for it in the
girl's hearing. Then, as Albertine was uttering my name, on the face
and in the blue eyes of this girl, whose expression I had thought so
cruel when I heard her say: "Poor old man, I do feel so sorry for
him," I saw gather and gleam a cordial, friendly smile, and she held
out her hand. Her hair was golden, and not her hair only; for if her
cheeks were pink and her eyes blue it was like the still roseate
morning sky which sparkles everywhere with dazzling points of gold.

At once kindled by her flame, I said to myself that this was a child
who when in love grew shy, that it was for my sake, from love for me
that she had remained with us, despite Albertine's rebuffs, and that
she must have rejoiced in the opportunity to confess to me at last, by
that smiling, friendly gaze, that she would be as kind to me as she
was terrible to other people. Doubtless she had noticed me on the
beach, when I still knew nothing of her, and had been thinking of me
ever since; perhaps it had been to win my admiration that she mocked
at the old gentleman, and because she had not succeeded in getting to
know me that on the following days she appeared so morose. From the
hotel I had often seen her, in the evenings, walking by herself on the
beach. Probably in the hope of meeting me. And now, hindered as much
by Albertine's presence as she would have been by that of the whole
band, she had evidently attached herself to us, braving the increasing
coldness of her friend's attitude, only in the hope of outstaying her,
of being left alone with me, when she might make an appointment with
me for some time when she would find an excuse to slip away without
either her family's or her friends' knowing that she had gone, and
would meet me in some safe place before church or after golf. It was
all the more difficult to see her because Andrée had quarrelled with
her and now detested her. "I have put up far too long with her
terrible dishonesty," she explained to me, "her baseness; I can't tell
you all the vile insults she has heaped on me. I have stood it all
because of the others. But her latest effort was really too much!"
And she told me of some foolish thing that this girl had done, which
might indeed have injurious consequences to Andrée herself.

But those private words promised me by Gisèle's confiding eyes for the
moment when Albertine should have left us by ourselves, were destined
never to be spoken, because after Albertine, stubbornly planted
between us, had answered with increasing curtness, and finally had
ceased to respond at all to her friend's remarks, Gisèle at length
abandoned the attempt and turned back. I found fault with Albertine
for having been so disagreeable. "It will teach her to be more
careful how she behaves. She's not a bad kid, but she'd talk the head
off a donkey. She's no business, either, to go poking her nose into
everything. Why should she fasten herself on to us without being
asked? In another minute, I'd have told her to go to blazes. Besides
I can't stand her going about with her hair like that; it's such bad
form." I gazed at Albertine's cheeks as she spoke, and asked myself
what might be the perfume, the taste of them: this time they were not
cool, but glowed with a uniform pink, violet–tinted, creamy, like
certain roses whose petals have a waxy gloss. I felt a passionate
longing for them such as one feels sometimes for a particular flower.
"I hadn't noticed it," was all that I said. "You stared at her hard
enough; anyone would have said you wanted to paint her portrait," she
scolded, not at all softened by the fact that it was at herself that I
was now staring so fixedly. "I don't believe you would care for her,
all the same. She's not in the least a flirt. You like little girls
who flirt with you, I know. Anyhow, she won't have another chance of
fastening on to us and being sent about her business; she's going off
to–day to Paris." "Are the rest of your friends going too?" "No; only
she and 'Miss,' because she's got an exam, coming; she's got to stay
at home and swot for it, poor kid. It's not much fun for her, I don't
mind telling you. Of course, you may be set a good subject, you never
know. But it's a tremendous risk. One girl I know was asked:
Describe
an accident that you have witnessed
. That was a piece of luck. But I
know another girl who got:
State which you would rather have as a
friend, Alceste or Philinte
. I'm sure I should have dried up
altogether! Apart from everything else, it's not a question to set to
girls. Girls go about with other girls; they're not supposed to have
gentlemen friends." (This announcement, which shewed that I had but
little chance of being admitted to the companionship of the band,
froze my blood.) "But in any case, supposing it was set to boys, what
on earth would you expect them to say to a question like that? Several
parents wrote to the
Gaulois
, to complain of the difficult questions
that were being set. The joke of it is that in a collection of
prize–winning essays they gave two which treated the question in
absolutely opposite ways. You see, it all depends on which examiner
you get. One would like you to say that Philinte was a flatterer and a
scoundrel, the other that you couldn't help admiring Alceste, but that
he was too cantankerous, and that as a friend you ought to choose
Philinte. How can you expect a lot of unfortunate candidates to know
what to say when the professors themselves can't make up their minds.
But that's nothing. They get more difficult every year. Gisèle will
want all her wits about her if she's to get through." I returned to
the hotel. My grandmother was not there. I waited for her for some
time; when at last she appeared, I begged her to allow me, in quite
unexpected circumstances, to make an expedition which might keep me
away for a couple of days. I had luncheon with her, ordered a carriage
and drove to the station. Gisèle would shew no surprise at seeing me
there. After we had changed at Doncières, in the Paris train, there
would be a carriage with a corridor, along which, while the governess
dozed, I should be able to lead Gisèle into dark corners, and make an
appointment to meet her on my return to Paris, which I would then try
to put forward to the earliest possible date. I would travel with her
as far as Caen or Evreux, whichever she preferred, and would take the
next train back to Balbec. And yet, what would she have thought of me
had she known that I had hesitated for a long time between her and her
friends, that quite as much as with her I had contemplated falling in
love with Albertine, with the bright–eyed girl, with Rosemonde. I felt
a pang of remorse now that a bond of mutual affection was going to
unite me with Gisèle. I could, moreover, truthfully have assured her
that Albertine no longer interested me. I had seen her that morning as
she swerved aside, almost turning her back on me, to speak to Gisèle.
On her head, which was bent sullenly over her bosom, the hair that
grew at the back, different from and darker even than the rest, shone
as though she had just been bathing. "Like a dying duck in a
thunderstorm!" I thought to myself, this view of her hair having let
into Albertine's body a soul entirely different from that implied
hitherto by her glowing complexion and mysterious gaze. That shining
cataract of hair at the back of her head had been for a moment or two
all that I was able to see of her, and continued to be all that I saw
in retrospect. Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is
exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a
rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be
seen. While the coachman whipped on his horse I sat there listening to
the words of gratitude and affection which Gisèle was murmuring in my
ear, born, all of them, of her friendly smile and outstretched hand,
the fact being that in those periods of my life in which I was not
actually, but desired to be in love, I carried in my mind not only an
ideal form of beauty once seen, which I recognised at a glance in
every passing stranger who kept far enough from me for her confused
features to resist any attempt at identification, but also the moral
phantom—ever ready to be incarnate—of the woman who was 'going to
fall in love with me, to take up her cues in the amorous comedy which
I had had written out in my mind from my earliest boyhood, and in
which every nice girl seemed to me to be equally desirous of playing,
provided that she had also some of the physical qualifications
required. In this play, whoever the new star might be whom I invited
to create or to revive the leading part, the plot, the incidents, the
lines themselves preserved an unalterable form.