Elizabeth Bibesco

“ How she had loved his motor! Surreptitiously she would caress it with her hand, stroking the cool shiny leather, and seeing him looking at her, she would say, "I think my purse must have fallen behind the seat." It had become to her a child and a mother, a refuge and an adventure, an island cut off from all the wretched necessities of existence, associated only with her and with him. It was a much better kingdom than a room; for a room is full of paraphernalia and impedimenta, with books and photographs, and the envelopes of letters to remind you of people and things that you want to forget. ”

“ Lucy was extremely pleased about all of these things. She was pleased, too, to have married a foreigner, to be sailing away into a new milieu, where she would be surrounded by the strange exciting faces of her husband's friends. It would be delightful to have nothing to do, but make yourself liked, to be automatically disentangled from all of your own complicated, complicating relationships with nothing around you but a new world to conquer. And how thrilled and curious every one must be about her. What sort of a woman had succeeded in catching dear old Tony! ”

“ But he was beautiful, as beautiful as a Greek athlete—to see him run was to see the Olympic games, and in the house he would curl and stretch and tangle up his paws, and put his head on my lap and reassure me with his eyes.
Once more I lived with motion made concrete, with beauty made absolute—once more a wagging tail brought the inexhaustible dot of gaiety.
Ponto had finer manners than Fido. He was maturer, with a deeper sense of noblesse oblige. He never forgot that even if he had been born a Dalmatian, privilege entails certain obligations. ”

“ I, myself, have always liked Delancey Woburn. To begin with, there is something so endearing about the way he displays his defects, never hiding them or tidying them away or covering them up. There they are for all the world to see, a reassuring shop window full of frank shortcomings. Besides, I never can resist triumphant vitality. Delancey is overflowing with joie de vivre, with curiosity, with a certainty of imminent adventure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That was no doubt the result of the Hotel Bungalow. On the velvet lawn with the cedar, the rose garden, the sun dial and the iced lemonade, he would have been enjoying to the full his usual ironic detachment, but St. Jean-les-Flots would throw any one to romance.
He walked into the dining room. At the far end with her back to him sat the lady. She wore a white coat embroidered with black, a white skirt, a white hat with a white lace veil. On the chair beside her lay a Holland sunshade lined with green. ”

“ Sometimes, too, there was an absent-minded dreamer, and villainous business men worked indefatigably in the interests of their own ultimate frustration.
But this, of course, would never do for America where there isn't a market for ne'er-do-wells, frayed carpets inspire no glamour, and dreamers who before the war were despised as harmless, are now damned as dangerous. No, America must have her special line and no one better than Delancey knew how to mix the fragrance of true love with the flavour of Wall Street and serve at the right temperature. ”

“ 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.
Poor Miss Wilcox! She had tried brightness and common-sense, Milton and lawn-tennis, the arch and the aloof. ”

“ She was shimmering in silvery blue, her eyes like cloudy star sapphires, her hair like primroses and ashes.
In the motor she leant against him, a discreet gentle pressure. She always gave you a feeling of delicately intertwined reticencies and avowals, a faint New England flavouring which she had never lost.
"I do hope they'll like me," she murmured.
Dinner was a great success. Lucy loved her neighbours and her neighbours loved her, while secretly congratulating themselves on having always been right about Boston (which they had never visited and of which they knew nothing) . ”

“ And then he would lie sprawling in front of the fire with a half open eye and when you said "Fido" his ears would answer you, taut with response, while his tail would beat the floor in indolent happiness. Is there anything in life so infectiously joyous as a wagging tail? Worry, distress, crossness, all melt at the sight of it—a hypnotic conductor's, baton beating the rhythm of triumphant joie de vivre. ”

“ He wanted a velvet lawn, a cedar, a rose garden, lavender, a sun dial, iced lemonade and solitude. Or he wanted his own cool apartment, with drawn sunblinds, vases full of flowers, his immense writing table, and a deserted Paris around him.
Women always did to you as they wanted to be done by. That sort of literal interpretation of Christianity showed such a lack of imagination. It was no good telling Marthe that you didn't like the sea, she simply wouldn't believe it. ”

“ Then she said:
"I want to go for a long walk."
They walked for miles and miles. The mist sprinkled her hair with dew-drops. It looked quite white. Her eyes were deep and brooding and you couldn't catch them.
"Paula," Maurice said, "how remote you are."
"Am I?" she said. And it made her more remote than ever.
He walked desperately, as if each step were an obstacle painfully overcome. She walked with a swaying unconscious rhythm, as if she did not know what she was doing.
She cut off his perfunctory attempts at conversation with a monosyllable. When they got home they were both tired. ”

“ She got out of bed and her bare feet sank into the warm furry rug; without putting on her slippers she walked across the room, stepping like a child into the puddles of sunshine on the carpet. Leaning out of the window the air pierced through her transparent nightgown—a tingling quality underlying a faint veil of warmth. Everywhere mist and dew lay on the countryside like the bloom on a grape. The gardener's boy walking across the lawn had left his footprints stamped in emerald on the grass. ”

“ Her clothes fell into perfection—she walked slowly and calmly with appraising steps. The lace veil was over her face. She did not forget her sunshade, her bag, or her handkerchief. Louis, the waiter, opened the door for her. She sailed out like a gondola on the stage, or Lohengrin's swan. Her movements gave an effect of invisible wheels.
During the afternoon she remained undetectable, which was a tour de force at St. Jean-les-Flots, where the landscape was a successful conspiracy against concealment, and a sunshade could be seen for miles. ”

“ The wonderful distribution of black and white, the ruffle at the side of his arched neck made by the meeting of two competitive rhythms of hairs, the looseness of his skin, his long lithe legs that would tie themselves into a tangled heap of grace when he lay down.
To see him move was to see motion made concrete—to see him run was to realise that even Pavlova had never quite overcome the obstacle of being a human.
At night he seemed phosphorescent, the dark itself was defeated by his whiteness. ”

“ And yet it is the way all borderland letters begin, whether the frontier is between acquaintanceship and friendship, or between friendship and love. For there are moments in life when if you can't say "My own Blessed," you can say nothing—omission is the substitute for the absolute. Only with her, formality was a flavouring of intimacy, a curious fragrance like a faint clinging of unseen pot-pourri. ”

“ He felt like a dog that knows exactly which trick follows what word of command, but as, from force of habit, he invariably became lover-like when he was absent-minded, he stroked her arm with a significant caressing gesture that filled her with joy.
"Are you glad I love you?" she murmured.
"Of course."
"There is an intelligent woman," he thought, "who has had hundreds of men in love with her, making a demand for verbal assurances that can't possibly add anything to her peace of mind. ”

“ Maurice imagined himself merging into a huge armchair, just able to see a square glass vase of Juliette roses—gilt petals lined with deep pink velvet. Why on earth were there never any flowers in the country? And no one would disturb him—no one. Privacy is only possible in a big town. Every detail of life in the Hotel Bungalow was revealed to him in a series of sights, sounds and smells. ”

“ 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.
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. ”

“ He began to whistle, and then—because he did feel most frightfully well—to run.
"Run a mile without being out of breath," he thought complacently, and then—because he hadn't meant to— ("wasn't even thinking of her," he grumbled to Providence) —he found himself outside her door. And in the road there was a motor, a little coral coloured motor. He looked at it in dismay and then he looked at the house. He saw it was lit up and he imagined the room he knew so well. The crimson damask curtains and the creamy walls, the glowing fire and the red roses, the roses he had sent for her. ”

“ Delancey is the life and soul of a party—or perhaps I should say the life and body. He likes eating and drinking and talking to women and talking to men and smoking and telling a story. And if he does address his neighbour a little as if she were a meeting at a bye-election, open air, he at any rate never addresses her as if she were a duty and no one had ever wanted to kiss her.
To Delancey all women have had lovers and husbands and children and religious conversions and railway accidents. ”

“ She retraced her steps, putting down her feet with the delicate fastidiousness of a cat in order not to tread on a flower. "I'm alone with you," she said shyly and ecstatically to the day. Never before had she had the Spring to herself. Always there had been the children (now on a visit) dragging plans and occupations, games, picnics, and bicycles across the pure joy of living, or her husband like a violin very close to her ear tearing her nerves to shreds with poignant urgent beauty. ”

“ Slowly she would pull off her long, clinging gloves and he would hold his breath with joy as she unsheathed her marvelous arms and hands. And then very tenderly, he would lift them to his lips, one by one, laying them down on her lap again where he could see them. And they would smile at one another—a faint smile hers would be, seen as it were, through the veils of her exquisite reticencies. And then because she knew it made him happy, she would take off her hat and release the shimmer of her silvery gold hair, a halo made of sunshine and moonlight, inextricably interwoven. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are so many delightful things about being a bride besides actual happiness, little peaks of pleasure that gradually sink into the level of existence, unimportant, all-important things that never come again. To begin with, there is your wedding ring which keeps glistening up at you, unexpectedly making such an absurd difference, not only to the look of your hand but to everything else, as well. ”

“ Politicians and preachers, workers and capitalists, artists and philistines, "good" women and prostitutes, soldiers and conscientious objectors jostled one another in the mêlée. Bloomsbury, Westminster, Chelsea and Mayfair each had its appointed place, while race-courses and night-clubs alternated with mining villages and methodist chapels. But, unlike Delancey's other stories, the soldiers had no V.C.'s and the workers didn't touch their caps. My eyes ached and my brain tired as I read on, but I forced myself forward with the thought that no one else in the world would reach the end. ”

“ 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 tried to think of larks and primroses, but my thoughts were dragged back to thick, half-drawn red curtains, black woolen shawls and silver photograph frames. Then I had an idea. "I will buy a balloon," I thought. My spirits rose and my heart leapt. Should I buy a green one like a bad emerald, or a red one like wine and water, or a thick bright yellow one? ”