Balloons | Page 4

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.
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--
"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."
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.
"I have had everything," she says, "and now I have found peace."
It is the severity of suffering bravely borne. She has called her house
"Haven."

II
TWO PARIS EPISODES
[To ANTHONY ASQUITH]
I: THE STORY OF A COAT
"Le Printemps a brûlé cette nuit." The news greeted me when I was
called. It had no special significance, but spread through my
semi-consciousness into meaningless patterns. Then I woke up.
"Comme c'est terrible," I said, "quelle chance que ça s'est fait la nuit!" I
saw visions of leaping flames and angry reds reflected in the sky.
Then I remembered. It was at the Printemps that I had chosen my
divine coat. They had promised faithfully to send it me to-day. The
loveliest coat in the world--"fumée de Londres," the salesman had
called it, and in fact, it was the colour of the purple-grey smoke that
ascends in solid spirals from factory chimneys. There were stripes too

of silvery grey chenil which made a play-ground for lights and shadows.
In shape it was like an old print of a coachman driving a four-in-hand,
long with a flapping cape, and the lining was the colour of the sky
when the sun has set.
I saw my coat giving new life to the dying flames. Tongues of fire were
darting down the lines of silvery grey chenil, greedily eating up the
smoky back-ground. Finally, a mass of ashes--purple-grey like their
victim--was carried by the wind into the unknown. All day long my
coat became more and more beautiful. The texture was solid smoke and
the stripes were shafts of moonlight. How it shimmered through the
mirage of my regrets.
When I got home that afternoon I found a cardboard box. The inspector
of the Printemps, knowing that I was leaving for England, had brought
me a coat from the reserve stock which was not kept in the shop.
Infinitely touched, my heart overflowing with gratitude, I wrote a love
letter to the Printemps.
Then I looked at my coat. The silvery stripes turned out to be black and
white, giving a grey effect. The texture of the back-ground was not
purple smoke, but rather scratchy wool. Evidently it was no longer the
coat of my sad dreams. In becoming once more "la création" of the
Printemps it had ceased to be the creation of my imagination.
Resurrection is a dangerous thing.
My coat which was once a legend is a reality again. It has travelled
from fairy-land to life. Now it is a symbol. Isn't this the story of the
Life of Christ?
II: BALLOONS
All my life I have loved balloons--all balloons--the heavy English sort,
immense and round, that have to be pushed about, and the gay, light,
gas-filled French ones that soar into the air the moment you let go of
them. How well I remember