Albertine was making me the most passionate protestations of affection. She looked at the time because she had to go and call upon a lady who was at home, it appeared, every afternoon at five o’clock, at Infreville. Tormented by suspicion, and feeling at the same time far from well, I asked Albertine, I implored her to remain with me.
It was impossible (and indeed she could wait only five minutes longer) because it would annoy the lady who was far from hospitable, highly susceptible and, said Albertine, a perfect nuisance. “But one can easily cut a call.” “No, my aunt has always told me that the chief thing is politeness.” “But I have so often seen you being impolite.” “It’s not the same thing, the lady would be angry with me and would say nasty things about me to my aunt.
I’m pretty well in her bad books already. She expects me to go and see her.” “But if she’s at home every day?” Here Albertine, feeling that she was caught, changed her line of argument. “So she is at home every day. But to-day I’ve made arrangements to meet some other girls there. It will be less boring that way.” “So then, Albertine, you prefer this lady and your friends to me, since, rather than miss paying an admittedly boring call, you prefer to leave me here alone, sick and wretched?” “I don’t care if it is boring. I’m going for their sake. I shall bring them home in my trap. Otherwise they won’t have any way of getting back.”
I pointed out to Albertine that there were trains from Infreville up to ten o’clock at night. “Quite true, but don’t you see, it is possible that we may be asked to stay to dinner. She is very hospitable.” “Very well then, you won’t.” “I should only make my aunt angry.” “Besides, you can dine with her and catch the ten o’clock train.” “It’s cutting it rather fine.” “Then I can never go and dine in town and come back by train.
But listen, Albertine. We are going to do something quite simple, I feel that^the fresh air will do me good; since you can’t give up your lady, I am going to come with you to Infreville. Don’t be alarmed, I shan’t go as far as the Tour Elisabeth” (the lady’s villa), “I shall see neither the lady nor your friends.” Albertine started as though she had received a violent blow. For a moment, she was unable to speak. She explained that the sea bathing was not doing her any good. “If you don’t want me to come with you?” “How can you say such a thing, you know there’s nothing I enjoy more than going out with you.”
A sudden change of tactics had occurred. “Since we are going for a drive together,” she said to me, “why not go out in the other direction, we might dine together. It would be so nice. After all, that side of Balbec is much the prettier. I’m getting sick of Infreville and all those little spinach-bed places.” “But your aunt’s friend will be annoyed if you don’t go and see her.” “Very well, let her be.”
“No, it is wrong to annoy people.” “But she won’t even notice that I’m not there, she has people every day; I can go to-morrow, the next day, next week, the week after, it’s exactly the same.” “And what about your friends?” “Oh, they’ve cut me often enough. It’s my turn now.” “But from the side you suggest there’s no train back after nine.” “Well, what’s the matter with that? Nine will do perfectly. Besides, one need never think about getting back.
We can always find a cart, a bike, if the worse comes to the worst, we have legs.” “We can always find, Albertine, how you go on! Out Infreville way, where the villages run into one another, well and good. But the other way, it’s a very different matter.” “That way too. I promise to bring you back safe and sound.” I felt that Albertine was giving up for my sake some plan arranged beforehand of which she refused to tell me, and that there was some one else who would be as unhappy as I was. Seeing that what she had intended to do was out of the question, since I insisted upon accompanying her, she gave it up altogether.
She knew that the loss was not irremediable. For, like all women who have a number of irons in the fire, she had one resource that never failed: suspicion and jealousy. Of course she did not seek to arouse them, quite the contrary. But lovers are so suspicious that they instantly scent out falsehood. With the result that Albertine, being no better than anyone else, knew by experience (without for a moment imagining that she owed her experience to jealousy) that she could always be certain of meeting people again after she had failed to keep an appointment.
The stranger whom she was deserting for me would be hurt, would love her all the more for that (though Albertine did not know that this was the reason), and, so as not to prolong the agony, would return to her of his own accord, as I should have done. But I had no desire either to give pain to another, or to tire myself, or to enter upon the terrible course of investigation, of multiform, unending vigilance.
“No, Albertine, I do not wish to spoil your pleasure, go to your lady at Infreville, or rather to the person you really mean to see, it is all the same to me. The real reason why I am not coming with you is that you do not wish it, the outing you would be taking with me is not the one you meant to take, which is proved by your having contradicted yourself at least five times without noticing it.” Poor Albertine was afraid that her contradictions, which she had not noticed, had been more serious than they were. Not knowing exactly what fibs she had told me: “It is quite on the cards that I did contradict myself. The sea air makes me lose my head altogether.
I’m always calling things by the wrong names.” And (what proved to me that she would not, now, require many tender affirmations to make me believe her) I felt a stab in my heart as I listened to this admission of what I had but faintly imagined. “Very well, that’s settled, I’m off,” she said in a tragic tone, not without looking at the time to see whether she was making herself late for the other person, now that I had provided her with an excuse for not spending the evening with myself. “It’s too bad of you. I alter all my plans to spend a nice, long evening with you, and it’s you that won’t have it, and you accuse me of telling lies. I’ve never known you to be so cruel.
The sea shall be my tomb. I will never see you any more.” (My heart leaped at these words, albeit I was certain that she would come again next day, as she did.) “I shall drown myself, I shall throw myself into the water.” “Like Sappho.” “There you go, insulting me again. You suspect not only what I say but what I do.” “But, my lamb, I didn’t mean anything, I swear to you, you know Sappho flung herself into the sea.” “Yes, yes, you have no faith in me.”
She saw that it was twenty minutes to the hour by the clock; she was afraid of missing her appointment, and choosing the shortest form of farewell (for which as it happened she apologised by coming to see me again next day, the other person presumably not being free then), she dashed from the room, crying: “Good-bye for ever,” in a heartbroken tone.
And perhaps she was heartbroken. For knowing what she was about at that moment better than I, being at the same time more strict and more indulgent towards herself than I was towards her, she may all the same have had a fear that I might refuse to see her again after the way in which she had left me. And I believe that she was attached to me, so much so that the other person was more jealous than I was.
Some days later, at Balbec, while we were in the ballroom of the casino, there entered Bloch’s sister and cousin, who had both turned out quite pretty, but whom I refrained from greeting on account of my girl friends, because the younger one, the cousin, was notoriously living with the actress whose acquaintance she had made during my first visit. Andrée, at a murmured allusion to this scandal, said to me: “Oh! About that sort of thing I’m like Albertine; there’s nothing we both loathe so much as that sort of thing.”
As for Albertine, on sitting down to talk to me upon the sofa, she had turned her back on the disreputable pair. I had noticed, however, that, before she changed her position, at the moment when Mlle. Bloch and her cousin appeared,
