From, however, not one o’clock in the morning (the limit fixed by the lift-boy), but three o’clock, I no longer felt as in former times the anguish of seeing the chance of her coming diminish. The certainty that she would not now come brought me a complete, refreshing calm; this night was simply a night like all the rest during which I did not see her, such was the idea from which I started.
After which, the thought that I should see her in the morning, or some other day, outlining itself upon the blank which I submissively accepted, became pleasant. Sometimes, during these nights of waiting, our anguish is due to a drug which we have taken. The sufferer, misinterpreting his own symptoms, thinks that he is anxious about the woman who fails to appear. Love is engendered in these cases, as are certain nervous maladies, by the inaccurate explanation of a state of discomfort. An explanation which it is useless to correct, at any rate so far as love is concerned, a sentiment which (whatever its cause) is invariably in error.
Next day, when Albertine wrote to me that she had only just got back to Epreville, and so had not received my note in time, and was coming, if she might, to see me that evening, behind the words of her letter, as behind those that she had said to me once over the telephone, I thought I could detect the presence of pleasures, of people whom she had preferred to me. Once again, I was stirred from head to foot by the painful longing to know what she could have been doing, by the latent love which we always carry within us; I almost thought for a moment that it was going to attach me to Albertine, but it confined itself to a stationary throbbing, the last echo of which died away without the machine’s having been set in motion.
I had failed during my first visit to Balbec—and perhaps, for that matter, Andrée had failed equally—to understand Albertine’s character. I had put it down as frivolous, but had not known whether our combined supplications might not succeed in keeping her with us and making her forego a garden-party, a donkey ride, a picnic.
During my second visit to Balbec, I began to suspect that this frivolity was only for show, the garden-party a mere screen, if not an invention. She shewed herself in various colours in the following incident (by which I mean the incident as seen by me, from my side of the glass which was by no means transparent, and without my having any means of determining what reality there was on the other side).
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
