<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1>BALLOONS</h1>
<h3>BY</h3>
<h2>ELIZABETH BIBESCO</h2>
<h4><i>Author of "I Have Only Myself to Blame," etc.</i></h4>
<br/>
<br/>
<h6>NEW YORK<br/>
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</h6>
<h4>1922</h4>
<h6>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</h6>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
<table summary="Table of Contents">
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">I</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#I">Haven</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To Clarence Day, Jr.</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">II</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#II">Two Paris Episodes</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To Anthony Asquith</div>
<div class="content3"><SPAN href="#IIa">I: THE STORY OF A COAT</SPAN></div>
<div class="content3"><SPAN href="#IIb">II: BALLOONS</SPAN></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">III</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#III">Courtship</SPAN></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">IV</td>
<td>
<div class="content1">
<SPAN href="#IV">"Do You Remember...?"</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To Leslie Hartley</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">V</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#V">The Martyr</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To H.G. Wells</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">VI</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#VI">A Motor</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To Alice Longworth</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">VII</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#VII">The Masterpiece</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To Harold Child</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">VIII</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#VIII">Tea Time</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To Sylvester Gates</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">IX</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#IX">The End</SPAN></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">X</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#X">Misunderstood</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To John Maynard Keynes</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">XI</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#XI">Counterpoint</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To the Marchese Giovanni Visconti Venosta</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">XII</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#XII">Villegiatura</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To Marcel Proust</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">XIII</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#XIII">Auld Lang Syne</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To Harold Nicolson</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">XIV</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#XIV">Two Taxi Drives</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To Paul Morand</div>
<div class="content3"><SPAN href="#XIVa">I: SUNSHINE</SPAN></div>
<div class="content3"><SPAN href="#XIVb">II: LAMPS</SPAN></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">XV</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#XV">A Touch of Spring</SPAN></div>
<div class="content2">To W.Y. Turner</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="chapnum">XVI</td>
<td>
<div class="content1"><SPAN href="#XVI">Fido And Ponto</SPAN></div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>BALLOONS</h2>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<SPAN name="I"></SPAN>
<h2>I</h2>
<h3>HAVEN</h3>
<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Clarence Day, Jr.</span></i>]</h4>
<p>"You should only," we are told, "wear white in early youth and old age.
It is very becoming with a fresh complexion or white hair. When you no
longer feel as young as you were, other colours are more flattering.
Also, you should avoid bright lights and worry."</p>
<p>Here, the beauty specialist reminds you of the specialist who says in
winter, "Avoid wet feet and germs." In spite of both, we are still
subjected to sunshine and anxiety and rain and microbes.</p>
<p>But there are risks which the would-be young can and should avoid.
Surely Miss Wilcox ought to have known better than to flop down on the
grass with an effort and a bump, clasping (with some difficulty) her
knees because Vera, who is sixteen, slim and lithe, with the gawky grace
of a young colt, had made such an obvious success of the operation!</p>
<p>It is better not to sit on the grass after thirty when sprawling at all
is difficult, let alone sprawling gracefully.</p>
<p>Poor Miss Wilcox! At seventeen she had been a pretty, bouncing girl with
bright blue eyes, bright pink cheeks and brighter yellow hair. All the
young men of the neighbourhood had kissed her in conservatories or
bushes and to each in turn, she had answered, "Well, I never!"</p>
<p>Then an era of intellectual indifference to the world set in. She read
Milton in a garret and ate very little. When addressed, she gave the
impression of being suddenly dragged down from some sublime pinnacle of
thought. This was the period of absent-mindedness, of untidiness, of
unpunctuality, for she was convinced that these three ingredients
compose the spiritual life. But it was not a success. True, her cheeks
lost their roses, but without attaining an interesting transparent
whiteness and her figure became angular, rather than thin. Cold food,
ugly clothes and enforced isolation began to lose their charms and Miss
Wilcox abandoned the intellectual life.</p>
<p>She discovered that men were her only interest—probably she had always
known it. Even the curate, who was like a curate on the stage, was
glorified into an adventurous possibility from the mere fact that he
belonged to that strange, tropical species—the other sex.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Miss Wilcox, who was practical and orderly, knew just
"what men liked in a woman." It was, it appeared, necessary to be
bright—relentlessly bright, with a determined, irrelevant cheerfulness
which no considerations of appropriateness could check and it was
necessary to have "something to say for yourself" which in Miss Wilcox's
hands, meant a series of pert tu quoques of the "you're another"
variety. Her two other axioms, "Don't let them see that you care for
them" and "feed the beasts," were alas! never put to the test as no man
had ever considered the possibility of being loved by Miss Wilcox and
the feeding stage had, in consequence, never been reached.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, in defence of her theses, Miss Wilcox was rough-toughed in
public, while in private, she studied recipes and articles on cooking.
As hope gradually began to give way to experience, Miss Wilcox came to
the conclusion that she frightened men off. They regarded her, she
imagined, as cold and indifferent and unapproachable. "I don't cheapen
myself," she would say, forgetting her conservatory days. In her heart
of hearts, she imagined herself in humble surrender, laying her strong
personality at the feet of a still stronger one and being gently lifted
up on to a pedestal. It was curious, she thought, that her wonderful,
unique gift of tenderness should go unperceived. But how is one to show
that one is tender? It is so difficult for a maiden lady, living alone.
She saw visions of a huge man with whimsical, smiling eyes, who after
seeing her two or three times would call at her cottage. He would stand
in the door and simply say, "Ellen," and she would put her head on his
shoulder and cry gently while he stroked her hair. "Does my loving you
make you sad, little one?" he would say, and she would answer, "No, no,
they are tears of happiness."</p>
<p>Miss Wilcox thought it would be delightful to be called "little one."
And then, rather nervously and tremulously, she would murmur, "I am
afraid I am not very beautiful," and he would laugh a deep, joyous laugh
and say, "To me, you are the most beautiful woman in the world."</p>
<p>But it never happened. Even the chinless curate, whose voice without
consonants gave the effect of an intoning bumble-bee, never took
advantage of her suggestions (frequently repeated) that he should drop
in to tea.</p>
<p>She tried to learn lawn-tennis and chess, but driving a ball into a net
and studying problems in the Sunday papers becomes very monotonous. It
was extraordinary how little provision life seemed to have made for
superior people with fastidious tastes, whereas an empty head and a
pretty face conquers the world! Miss Wilcox was very proud of the
epigram, "empty heads and pretty faces." She used it frequently, more
in sorrow than in anger. Vera was an excellent example. She was
incapable of "conducting a conversation," she never read a book, but
simply because her eyes sparkled and somehow or other, she always
reminded you of a Shepperson drawing, she was invariably surrounded by a
host of adorers. She was indifferent to the axioms, "boys will be boys"
and "gentlemen are different." In her philosophy, "girls would be boys"
and the difference between the sexes was simply one of what you might
and might not do.</p>
<p>"A positive savage," Miss Wilcox would explain and then, "You should be
more womanly, dear; men like a womanly woman." And Vera's eyes would
sparkle maliciously, for men undoubtedly did like Vera.</p>
<p>I do not know at what moment in life, if ever, we realise that we are
neither George Sands nor Juliets. Of course, if we are not beautiful, we
recognise early that beauty is nothing. What are features? The only
thing that matters is to have charm and expression. Then comes that
horrible gnawing doubt of our own magnetism. Is it possible that, though
we are not lovely, we are not irresistible either? That we will have to
go through life belonging neither to the triumphantly beautiful nor to
the triumphantly ugly? Miss Wilcox knew that she was not exactly
clever. But after all, what is prettiness and "men don't like clever
women." So she consoled herself with the thought that though her manner
"permitted no liberties," the warm tenderness of her true nature must be
apparent to the really discerning.</p>
<p>Poor Miss Wilcox! She had tried brightness and common-sense, Milton and
lawn-tennis, the arch and the aloof. She would have liked to have been
seductive and a little wicked, but she had found it easier to be
dignified and very good. Easier but no more satisfactory. Evidently
charm was a strange, mysterious thing, for which there was no recipe. A
dangerous force governing many things and subject to no law.</p>
<p>Every one was kind to Miss Wilcox. Lady Mary (Vera's mother) was always
asking her to picnics and lawn-tennis, parties and festivities of all
sorts. On these occasions, Sir Harry invariably chaffed her about the
curate, little knowing that his foolish jokes were a source of exquisite
and almost guilty pleasure to her. Was it, she wondered, altogether fair
to let him think that Mr. Simpson loved her? But she did enjoy it so
much, the nervous agonising sense of expectancy and then the sudden hot
blush. "Their little secret," Sir Harry called it and though, of course,
it was very wicked of her to let him continue under a misapprehension,
it was so difficult to clear the matter up, as, the more she protested,
the more confused she became, the more he was bound to think that there
was something in it.</p>
<p>Poor Miss Wilcox, battling with her conscience when Mr. Simpson's
passion was an invention of Vera's to whom old maids and curates were
simply stage properties. Vera with her long legs and her laughing eyes
and her happy, unimaginative youth—how was she to know that the
Simpsons of life stand for romance and mystery and longings unachieved?
To some people the impossible is impossible. One fine day they wake up
in the morning knowing that they will never hold the moon in their hands
and with the certainty, perfect peace descends on them.</p>
<p>Miss Wilcox was not like that. She couldn't settle down to decorating
the church and organising village entertainments. She woke up every
morning sure that something was going to happen and went to bed every
night dissatisfied in proportion to her confidence.</p>
<p>And then, quite close together, two things did happen. Miss Wilcox was
left a small fortune and Vera became engaged to be married.</p>
<p>The wedding, of course, was a great dramatic event. The preparations
engulfed everybody. What flowers should the triumphal arches be made of
and were the fair or the dark bridesmaids to be considered in the
bridesmaids' dresses? Miss Wilcox gave her advice freely and tied cards
on to presents but she felt unaccountably depressed. This, of course,
was because dear little Vera whom she had known since a child, whom she
had loved as a child, was leaving them and plunging into this strange,
unknown adventure. What an uncertain thing marriage, what an elusive
thing happiness! At nights she would dream of white satin figures
shrouded in white tulle veils, of shy, passionate bridegrooms and shy,
radiant brides. Sometimes she would see Vera's face and sometimes her
own and often in the morning, she would find her pillow wet. "It will be
you and Simpson next," Sir Harry teased her. But somehow the remark no
longer pleased her and she no longer blushed.</p>
<p>And then, one day she couldn't bear it any more. Without saying a word
to any one she went to London. A thick orange fog greeted her, a
wonderful, mysterious fog, creating immense prehistoric silhouettes, a
fog which freed you from old accustomed sights and sounds so that your
individuality seemed at last to be released and to belong exclusively to
you.</p>
<p>Gratefully Miss Wilcox accepted this gift of privacy. London belonged to
her, there were no prying eyes. Slowly she walked along the pavement
peering into shop windows. It was difficult to see anything. At last
she distinguished a blur of gold and jewels. She walked on and then back
again. She stood still. Her heart was in her mouth. Resolutely she
pushed the door open. The brightness blinded her, the sudden warmth made
her feel dizzy. Weakly she sat on a chair. A sympathetic salesman asked
her if he could do anything for her. "No, thank you," she murmured
faintly, "if I might sit here a moment."</p>
<p>Gradually she recovered and walked out again. The fog was thicker than
ever. The traffic had stopped. People bumped into her with muttered
apologies. Hesitatingly, wearily, she walked along. At last, she reached
another jeweller's. Firmly, quickly she walked in. How was she to ask
for what she wanted?</p>
<p>"What can I do for you, Madam?"</p>
<p>She looked up like a frightened animal.</p>
<p>"I've lost my wedding ring," she stammered. "It was a broad gold one.
I—I don't want my husband to discover it."</p>
<p>How easy it was after all.</p>
<p>The salesman was very sympathetic. She looked at a great number of
rings, toying with them in voluptuous hesitation. She enjoyed fingering
them. At last she chose one. The gold band on her finger frightened her.
It made her feel a strange, different person, rather disreputable and
quite unlike herself.</p>
<p>Miss Wilcox went to the Ritz. It was, she felt, a place where married
ladies without husbands would be neither noticed nor commented on. There
is, after all, nothing so very unusual in a wedding ring and Miss
Wilcox's appearance did not arouse idle and libelous speculations. But
still, she felt safer at the Ritz—there is something so conspicuous
about a quiet hotel.</p>
<p>The next day the fog had been cleared away and the sun, emerging after a
day's rest, sparkled with refreshed gaiety. Miss Wilcox, in deep
mourning, went out to buy new black clothes—lovely they were,
intentionally, not accidentally black, filmy chiffons, rippling
crêpe-de-chines, demure cashmeres, severe, perfect tailleurs. Here and
there touches of snowy crepe gave a relief suitable to deep unhappiness
and her widow's cap, low on the forehead, was the softest and most
nun-like frame to her face. Seeing herself in the glass, Miss Wilcox
blushed with pleasure.</p>
<p>"My husband was so fond of clothes," she murmured to the vendeuse with a
break in her voice, "and he always said that nothing became a woman like
black."</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>There is a little village on the Seine. An old grey church nestles among
the huddling houses. A platoon of poplars guards the river, and little
pink almond bushes spring out of patches of violets. Miss Wilcox,
calling herself Mrs. Demarest, lives in a charming old house surrounded
by box hedges, paved paths lead through beds of old-fashioned
sweet-scented flowers, stocks and wall flowers and mignonette and moss
roses, lavender, myrtle, thyme and sweet geranium. Mr. Demarest, it
appears, could not bear the wonderful new varieties of huge, smell-less
blooms.</p>
<p>Miss Wilcox has never gone out of mourning, though she sometimes wears
grey and mauve. Her gracious sweetness has made her much beloved in the
village where her gentle presence is loved and honoured. She can often
be seen bringing soup to some old invalid, or taking flowers to the
church she loves to decorate. Her charity and her piety are revered by
all. Sometimes in the evening she plays a game of cards with her
neighbours or chess with the curé. It is known that a rich man from the
adjoining town proposed marriage to her, but she continues to mourn her
late husband with profound devoted fidelity. She is too unselfish to
force her grief on to others, but every one knows that her heart is
broken. Sometimes she talks of her sorrow—very gently, very
uncomplainingly, and there are always flowers in front of the photograph
of her husband on her writing table. He must have been a magnificent
man—huge, with whimsical smiling eyes. Every one in the village feels
as if they had known him. They have heard so much about him. He had only
seen Miss Wilcox three times when he walked into her cottage. Standing
in the doorway—"Ellen," he said, and she went to him—</p>
<p>"I suppose I knew it was for always," she explains gently. "It has been
a short always on earth—but so happy, so very happy."</p>
<p>All the girls of the village go to Mrs. Demarest before they marry. Her
wise counsel and the radiant memory of her happiness lights them on
their way.</p>
<p>"I have had everything," she says, "and now I have found peace."</p>
<p>It is the severity of suffering bravely borne. She has called her house
"Haven."</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.