Swann's Way
might embed it, would continue to shew, by their overlapping angles and
by the gaps which she had forgotten to fill, that its proper place was
elsewhere.
"She admits that she heard me ring, and then knock, that she knew it was
myself, that she wanted to see me," Swann thought to himself. "But that
doesn't correspond with the fact that she did not let me in."
He did not, however, draw her attention to this inconsistency, for he
thought that, if left to herself, Odette might perhaps produce some
falsehood which would give him a faint indication of the truth; she
spoke; he did not interrupt her, he gathered up, with an eager and
sorrowful piety, the words that fell from her lips, feeling (and rightly
feeling, since she was hiding the truth behind them as she spoke) that,
like the veil of a sanctuary, they kept a vague imprint, traced a
faint outline of that infinitely precious and, alas, undiscoverable
truth;--what she had been doing, that afternoon, at three o'clock, when
he had called,--a truth of which he would never possess any more than
these falsifications, illegible and divine traces, a truth which would
exist henceforward only in the secretive memory of this creature, who
would contemplate it in utter ignorance of its value, but would never
yield it up to him. It was true that he had, now and then, a strong
suspicion that Odette's daily activities were not in themselves
passionately interesting, and that such relations as she might have with
other men did not exhale, naturally, in a universal sense, or for every
rational being, a spirit of morbid gloom capable of infecting with
fever or of inciting to suicide. He realised, at such moments, that that
interest, that gloom, existed in him only as a malady might exist, and
that, once he was cured of the malady, the actions of Odette, the kisses
that she might have bestowed, would become once again as innocuous as
those of countless other women. But the consciousness that the painful
curiosity with which Swann now studied them had its origin only in
himself was not enough to make him decide that it was unreasonable to
regard that curiosity as important, and to take every possible step
to satisfy it. Swann had, in fact, reached an age the philosophy of
which--supported, in his case, by the current philosophy of the day, as
well as by that of the circle in which he had spent most of his life,
the group that surrounded the Princesse des Laumes, in which one's
intelligence was understood to increase with the strength of one's
disbelief in everything, and nothing real and incontestable was to be
discovered, except the individual tastes of each of its members--is no
longer that of youth, but a positive, almost a medical philosophy, the
philosophy of men who, instead of fixing their aspirations upon external
objects, endeavour to separate from the accumulation of the years
already spent a definite residue of habits and passions which they
can regard as characteristic and permanent, and with which they will
deliberately arrange, before anything else, that the kind of existence
which they choose to adopt shall not prove inharmonious. Swann deemed
it wise to make allowance in his life for the suffering which he derived
from not knowing what Odette had done, just as he made allowance for the
impetus which a damp climate always gave to his eczema; to anticipate
in his budget the expenditure of a considerable sum on procuring, with
regard to the daily occupations of Odette, information the lack of
which would make him unhappy, just as he reserved a margin for the
gratification of other tastes from which he knew that pleasure was to be
expected (at least, before he had fallen in love) such as his taste for
collecting things, or for good cooking.
When he proposed to take leave of Odette, and to return home, she begged
him to stay a little longer, and even detained him forcibly, seizing him
by the arm as he was opening the door to go. But he gave no thought to
that, for, among the crowd of gestures and speeches and other little
incidents which go to make up a conversation, it is inevitable that we
should pass (without noticing anything that arouses our interest) by
those that hide a truth for which our suspicions are blindly searching,
whereas we stop to examine others beneath which nothing lies concealed.
She kept on saying: "What a dreadful pity; you never by any chance come
in the afternoon, and the one time you do come then I miss you." He knew
very well that she was not sufficiently in love with him to be so
keenly distressed merely at having missed his visit, but as she was a
good-natured woman, anxious to give him pleasure, and often sorry when
she had done anything that annoyed him, he found it quite natural that
she should be sorry, on this occasion, that she had deprived him of that
pleasure of spending an hour in her company, which was so very great a
pleasure, if not to herself, at any rate to him. All the same, it was a
matter of so little importance that her air of unrelieved sorrow began
at length to bewilder him. She reminded him, even more than was
usual, of the faces of some of the women created by the painter of
the Primavera.' She had, at that moment, their downcast, heartbroken
expression, which seems ready to succumb beneath the burden of a grief
too heavy to be borne, when they are merely allowing the Infant Jesus to
play with a pomegranate, or watching Moses pour water into a trough. He
had seen the same sorrow once before on her face, but when, he could
no longer say. Then, suddenly, he remembered it; it was when Odette had
lied, in apologising to Mme. Verdurin on the evening after the dinner
from which she had stayed away on a pretext of illness, but really so
that she might be alone with Swann. Surely, even had she been the most
scrupulous of women, she could hardly have felt remorse for so innocent
a lie. But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and
served to prevent discoveries which might have involved her in the most
terrible difficulties with one or another of her friends. And so, when
she lied, smitten with fear, feeling herself to be but feebly armed for
her defence, unconfident of success, she was inclined to weep from sheer
exhaustion, as children weep sometimes when they have not slept. She
knew, also, that her lie, as a rule, was doing a serious injury to the
man to whom she was telling it, and that she might find herself at
his mercy if she told it badly. Therefore she felt at once humble and
culpable in his presence. And when she had to tell an insignificant,
social lie its hazardous associations, and the memories which it
recalled, would leave her weak with a sense of exhaustion and penitent
with a consciousness of wrongdoing.
What depressing lie was she now concocting for Swann's benefit, to give
her that pained expression, that plaintive voice, which seemed to falter
beneath the effort that she was forcing herself to make, and to plead
for pardon? He had an idea that it was not merely the truth about what
had occurred that afternoon that she was endeavouring to hide from him,
but something more immediate, something, possibly, which had not yet
happened, but might happen now at any time, and, when it did, would
throw a light upon that earlier event. At that moment, he heard the
front-door bell ring. Odette never stopped speaking, but her words
dwindled into an inarticulate moan. Her regret at not having seen Swann
that afternoon, at not having opened the door to him, had melted into a
universal despair.
He could hear the gate being closed, and the sound of a carriage, as
though some one were going away--probably the person whom Swann must on
no account meet--after being told that Odette was not at home. And then,
when he reflected that, merely by coming at an hour when he was not in
the habit of coming, he had managed to disturb so many arrangements of
which she did not wish him to know, he had a feeling of discouragement
that amounted, almost, to distress. But since he was in love with
Odette, since he was in the habit of turning all his thoughts towards
her, the pity with which he might have been inspired for himself he felt
for her only, and murmured: "Poor darling!" When finally he left her,
she took up several letters which were lying on the table, and asked him
if he would be so good as to post them for her. He walked along to the
post-office, took the letters from his pocket, and, before dropping each
of them into the box, scanned its address. They were all to tradesmen,
except the last, which was to Forcheville. He kept it in his hand. "If
I saw what was in this," he argued, "I should know what she calls him,
what she says to him, whether there really is anything between them.
Perhaps, if I don't look inside, I shall be lacking in delicacy towards
Odette, since in this way alone I can rid myself of a suspicion which
is, perhaps, a calumny on her, which must, in any case, cause her
suffering, and which can never possibly be set at rest, once the letter
is posted."
He left the post-office and went home, but he had kept the last letter
in his pocket. He lighted a candle, and held up close to its flame the
envelope which he had not dared to open. At first he could distinguish
nothing, but the envelope was thin, and by pressing it down on to the
stiff card which it enclosed he was able, through the transparent paper,
to read the concluding words. They were a coldly formal signature. If,
instead of its being himself who was looking at a letter addressed to
Forcheville, it had been Forcheville who had read a letter addressed
to Swann, he might have found words in it of another, a far more tender
kind! He took a firm hold of the card, which was sliding to and fro, the
envelope being too large for it and then, by moving it with his finger
and thumb, brought one line after another beneath the part of the
envelope where the paper was not doubled, through which alone it was
possible to read.
In spite of all these manoeuvres he could not make it out clearly. Not
that it mattered, for he had seen enough to assure himself that the
letter was about some trifling incident of no importance, and had
nothing at all to do with love; it was something to do with Odette's
uncle. Swann had read quite plainly at the beginning of the line "I
was right," but did not understand what Odette had been right in doing,
until suddenly a word which he had not been able, at first, to decipher,
came to light and made the whole sentence intelligible: "I was right to
open the door; it was my uncle." To open the door! Then Forcheville had
been there when Swann rang the bell, and she had sent him away; hence
the sound that Swann had heard.
After that he read the whole letter; at the end she apologised for
having treated Forcheville with so little ceremony, and reminded him
that he had left his cigarette-case at her house, precisely what she
had written to Swann after one of his first visits. But to Swann she had
added: "Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never have let
you have that back." To Forcheville nothing of that sort; no allusion
that could suggest any intrigue between them. And, really, he was
obliged to admit that in all this business Forcheville had been worse
treated than himself, since Odette was writing to him to make him
believe that her visitor had been an uncle. From which it followed that
he, Swann, was the man to whom she attached importance, and for whose
sake she had sent the other away. And yet, if there had been nothing
between Odette and Forcheville, why not have opened the door at once,
why have said, "I was right to open the door; it was my uncle." Right?
if she was doing nothing wrong at that moment how could Forcheville