The Wedding Dress Page 3

  “Paul? I shouldn’t think of going to him if I had any difficulty at work,” Loraine declared, with some energy.

  “No?” Marianne gave her a half amused, half curious glance before turning back to the mirror and running the comb through her hair. “Well, he’s straight, anyway. And that’s more than you can say of some of the people you’ll be dealing with.”

  Loraine was silent, and after a moment Marianne said: “You don’t like him, do you, Loraine?”

  “I—haven’t really made up my mind about him,” Loraine confessed. “He was rather nice about my going to Florian’s. But he’s cold and remote, somehow. And he didn’t make me feel in the least welcome when I arrived.”

  “It wasn’t a good moment in his life, Loraine.”

  “W-wasn’t it?” Somehow, she had never thought of her guardian having personal problems of his own. “How do you mean—”

  “Well—” With some deliberation, Marianne poised an exquisitely ridiculous apology for a hat upon her head. “I suppose there’s no harm in my telling you. It isn’t a breach of confidence because quite a number of people knew about it. And it might give you a more lenient view of him. Only about three days before you came he was chucked for someone else, in rather brutal circumstances, by the girl he was going to marry.”

  “Oh, Marianne! I'm so sorry,” cried Loraine with genuine feeling and sympathy, for she was a tender-hearted girl. “I had no idea.”

  “No, of course not. You couldn’t. And he’s the last person to say anything about such a wounding experience. I suppose with anyone like Paul Cardine it’s a frightful affront to one’s pride as well as one’s affections.”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Loraine soberly. “Did you know her, Marianne?”

  “Only passingly.”

  “Did you like her?”

  “She wasn’t my sort,” said Marianne, justly but, somehow, revealingly.

  “And what about him?—the other man?”

  “I saw him only once,” Marianne explained, “but I’m bound to say he was a charmer of the first water. A very good-looking man. An artist called Philip Otway.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  FOR a moment Loraine continued to gaze in speechless dismay at Marianne’s back, as the other girl stood before the mirror, adding a last dusting of powder to her charming nose. Then, in a stifled sort of voice, she said:

  “Did you say—Philip Otway?’

  “Why, yes. Marianne turned swiftly at her tone. “Is there something the matter?”

  Loraine did not answer immediately. She simply could not. And Marianne added curiously—almost anxiously. “Do you know him, Loraine?”

  “Yes.” Loraine nodded, unable to dissemble. “I know him—quite well.”

  “Then you must have heard about his engagement?” But Loraine shook her head.

  “I haven’t seen him—or his mother—for some months,” she said slowly. “I had no idea.”

  “Loraine—” Hurried as she was, as indeed most brides are when about to depart on their honeymoon, Marianne sat down and held out her hand to the other girl. “Loraine, is this specially important to you? I mean—is Philip Otway specially important to you?”

  “In a way—yes.” Loraine stood there, childishly twisting her hands together instead of taking the hand held out to her. “But—but perhaps only in my mind. There was nothing—” She stopped. Then she said with an effort, “He probably didn’t know that I—that I liked him. I wouldn’t have told anyone, in the ordinary way, but—”

  “You don’t need to worry,” Marianne assured her. “Your secret’s quite safe with me. But if he treated you badly—”

  “Oh, it was nothing like that!” Shattered though she was, Loraine felt she must have justice done to Philip. “He wasn’t in any way committed to me, Marianne. It was just that—he and his mother lived near my home. They were both very kind to me in the holidays. That was all.”

  She made a touching little gesture of resigned finality which would have charmed Florian, and then said:

  “Would you please try not to think any more about it, Marianne?”

  “If that’s what you really want.” Marianne looked doubtful, but she stood up once more, as though she had suddenly remembered her own affairs.

  “That’s what I really want,” Loraine insisted bravely. And she even managed to smile a little as she helped Marianne to complete her final preparations and then accompanied her back to the reception room once more.

  Everyone crowded round. There was a great deal of kissing and congratulation. For a moment Marianne clung to the two pleasant-looking, middle-aged people Loraine knew to be her parents. Then there was a kiss for the Florians before, suddenly catching each other by the hand, Marianne and Roger ran out to the waiting car, almost before anyone could realize what was happening.

  The guests made a concerted rush to the side exit of the hotel; there was a spatter of applause and even a few cheers. Then the car slid away and everyone straggled back into the hotel, with that strange deflated feeling which occurs at every wedding after what someone has tellingly called the point of no return.

  About half the company set about leaving almost immediately. Some of the others stood about for a short while longer, sipping Florian’s excellent champagne and exchanging final comments on the wedding. But then they too began to drift away, and presently Loraine’s guardian came up and said, “Shall we go now?”

  “Yes, if you like.”

  As they moved over to say goodbye to their host and hostess, she could not help glancing at Paul Cardine and seeing him in an entirely new light. Not only as someone who had received a blow curiously similar to her own, but also—incredibly—as Philip’s rival.

  Their thanks and goodbyes said, they turned to go. But, as they did so, Florian said after Loraine:

  “Monday morning, mademoiselle—at nine o’clock. Report to Madame Moisant, please.”

  “Yes, monsieur!” Loraine spoke quickly and obediently over her shoulder, already as one addressing not her host but her employer. And then she followed Paul out to his car reflecting—as many had before her—on the extraordinary talent Florian possessed for creating the exact atmosphere he required.

  In the car, she had a sudden and crazy impulse to ask her guardian something about his broken engagement. She suppressed it immediately, of course, for she simply could not imagine herself really talking to him on any personal matter. And yet—here, sitting beside her, was one of the few people who could presumably have told her quite a lot about the one subject she was burning to discuss.

  She wondered if he hated Philip. It was difficult to see how he could do otherwise. And then—in what circumstances had it all happened? Marianne had spoken of a “brutal” break. Possibly that meant that Paul had never even met his rival. He might simply have been presented with a fait accompli by a girl who had changed her mind and was ruthlessly determined to make that clear.

  Not that one could blame her, in a way, Loraine thought reluctantly. What did one do if one were engaged to Paul Cardine and Philip came along? She knew what she would have done—what she would simply have had to do. Only it was desperately hard to be the one who lost.

  Again she glanced at Paul, and at that moment he said:

  “You’re very quiet, Loraine. Are you tired?”

  “Oh, no!” she assured him. “Not a bit. I enjoyed it all.”

  “Did you?” He smiled faintly. “But, even so, one feels rather flat after a wedding. Unless one is one of the principals, when I suppose it’s different.” He curled his lip very slightly. “Would you care to come out somewhere this evening?”

  It was the first time he had made any such suggestion, and she was so surprised that she immediately countered with:

  “Would you like that?”

  “I’m giving you the choice,” he reminded her. “There’s a gala performance at the Opera, if that interests you.”

  “Why—of course it does!’ She caught her breath on a gasp of ing
enuous delight. “But would you be able to get tickets at this late hour?”

  “I got tickets several weeks ago, when it was first announced,” he said flatly. “I intended to take someone else.”

  “Oh—” Somehow Loraine contrived to hide her keen awareness of what this meant, and summoned a brilliant smile. “If I’m not doing anyone else out of a great treat, I should simply love it. Only”—she suddenly looked dashed—“I don’t know if I’ve got anything suitable to wear.”

  “You can wear what you have on—without the headdress. You could hardly look lovelier,” he told her quite impersonally.

  “Oh—thank you.” For some reason or other, she felt herself blush. “Yes, of course. I forgot I had this heavenly dress. I’ll wear it, as you say—and we’ll go—and it will be wonderful.”

  “Let us hope so,” he agreed, as they drew up before his home. And, although his tone was not enthusiastic, it was not exactly unkindly either.

  Loraine made no secret of her eager anticipation, as they dined together. In this way, she felt, she might perhaps help to reduce the bitterness of his inevitable reflection that he had originally planned the evening in very different circumstances. It was his fiancée, not his insignificant ward, he had visualized with him, in the happy days before he had any idea of what was going to hit him.

  In trying to make the occasion less painful for him, she even succeeded in thrusting her own unhappiness to the outer rim of her consciousness. She did not forget Philip for one single instant. But at least she held off the, final and agonizing realization of her loss until she should be alone, with no guardian—; not anyone—to stand between her and the bleak truth.

  Paul was not very talkative as they drove to the Opera. But then that was not his way in any case. He was, however, both amused and pleased by Loraine’s wholehearted delight at the sight of the immense red carpet which had been laid not only down the famous centre staircase but also right down the steps outside the building.

  “I never saw anything like it!” she gasped.

  “The French do this sort of thing supremely well,” he conceded as, in the brilliant glare of floodlights, they mounted the steps together. And, when they finally entered the great building, Loraine caught her breath afresh at the sight of flowers banked in extravagant profusion on every side, while among the elegant crowds who were slowly making their way up the grand staircase, she saw dresses and furs of a beauty and splendor she had never imagined before.

  To Loraine—who had been born too late to know the wonderful days when “a well-dressed house” was the natural order of things—it seemed that the scene was fascinating enough even before the curtain went up. And seated in a box beside her guardian, she leaned forward eagerly to study the dresses and jewellery of the women and the splendid orders worn by some of the men.

  She was just about to sit back at last, with a sigh of pure contentment, when suddenly she felt the blood rush into her face and then away again. Her gaze became riveted on a box which was just within her range of vision if she leaned forward. Two people had entered even as her gaze came idly to rest there. The girl was tall and fair and supremely elegant. The man was Philip.

  For a moment she hardly dared to move, lest she should betray to Paul that something of enormous significance had just happened. Then, with deliberately controlled leisureliness, she sat back, slightly rearranged her wrap, and glanced casually at her guardian.

  He was not looking at her. He was also leaning slightly forward, and the one glance at his set mouth and grim jawline was sufficient to tell her that he too had seen the couple in the circle of boxes below them.

  “That’s the girl, of course!” thought Loraine. “It’s as much of a shock for him as for me. At least—I suppose it is. Or did he expect her to be here? Was that why he wanted to come, even though it must be a horribly empty occasion for him?”

  The lights began slowly to dim at this point and her guardian—reluctantly, she thought—sat back in his seat once more. The conductor had entered. The gala was about to begin.

  In the ordinary way, Loraine would have been fascinated by the performance and lost to all outside considerations. But tonight the outside considerations, incredibly, included Philip—in circumstances impossible to ignore.

  Until she had that one brief glimpse of him she had been desperately pretending to herself that, if she never saw him again, she could perhaps somehow relegate him to the beautiful, nostalgic past. He would become a loved but lost figure who had nothing to do with the exciting, challenging life thrown open to her by Florian’s astounding offer.

  But now she had seen him. And she had realized instantaneously that there was no dismissing him as a loved figure of the past. He was terribly and overwhelmingly of the present. But, in all that mattered, she had already lost him to the fair, cool, lovely girl beside him.

  Despair engulfed her, even as the music from the orchestra engulfed her. And then she found herself wondering if her guardian were pursuing a similar line of thought. Was he also bitterly accepting the fact that defeat had really been inevitable from the moment that Philip and that girl came together?

  She stole a glance at him, in the light from the stage. But it struck her immediately that he did not look at all like someone who was accepting defeat as inevitable. On the contrary, his expression. suggested grim determination rather than despair. And, for the first time since Marianne had stunned her with the news of Philip’s engagement, the idea crossed Loraine’s mind that perhaps the last word had not yet been said.

  Suppose her guardian were not prepared to accept ’ defeat? Suppose he thought—and was correct in his belief—that he could get his fiancée back again? What then?

  It seemed faintly mean even to think along these lines when Philip had looked so radiantly happy. But—suppose it all fell out that way, then the first and most obvious result would be that Philip would be left in sad need of consolation.

  The idea excited her so powerfully that she made, a slight, involuntary movement, and her companion glanced at her. But she managed to go on looking at the stage, with an air of great attention. And presently the curtain fell on the first act.

  In the interval, she eagerly accepted her guardian’s suggestion that they should go out. But the moment they had left the shelter of the box, she realized that she was being foolishly rash. For, however much she might long to see Philip, to see him in company with Paul would be disastrous.

  Once he realized the connection, Philip could only be highly embarrassed and would probably avoid her thereafter. While Paul, for his part, might even take a high hand and, with what guardianly rights he might have, forbid her to see Philip again.

  She could not quite imagine her guardian doing such a thing—nor herself submitting if he tried it—but, in any case, whatever she hoped for the future would most certainly be jeopardized by a meeting of all the parties at this point.

  In spite of her anxiety, however, the interval passed safely, and they returned to the box unidentified. Determined not to run any further risks, Loraine devoted her whole attention to the stage during the next act and, even when the curtain fell once more, she firmly refused to accompany her guardian when he explained that he had promised to meet a colleague during the second interval.

  “You go,” she urged him. “I’m perfectly happy watching the audience.” And the moment he had left her she leaned forward eagerly in the hope that she might be able to look at Philip for several undisturbed minutes.

  Luck was with her. He was alone in the box, standing looking down into the stalls, where his fiancée was talking animatedly to an elderly but very elegant woman.

  Loraine lost all awareness of anyone or anything else. In all her meetings with Philip she had not, of course, ever been able to gaze at him in uninhibited delight, noting every line and plane of his handsome, interesting face. Now she could—in the blissful certainty that he had no idea she was within a hundred miles of him.

  In spite of everything, a
sigh of complete happiness escaped her. And, at that moment, as though he had actually heard that faint breath of a sound, he moved sharply and looked straight up at her. There was not the smallest chance of concealment. Their glances met with an impact that was almost physical, and she saw his lips form the word, “Loraine!” And then he turned and was out of his box in a flash.

  He was coming up to her—of that there was no doubt. And for a moment of sheer joy, nothing else mattered. Not the risk of her guardian’s return, nor the necessity of making awkward explanations, nor the fact that she was totally unprepared to deal with either contingency. Philip was coming at last.

  She stood up when she heard his knock, and as he entered, she turned to him with her hands out. Then everything else in the world was forgotten as he took hold of her lightly, kissed her on both cheeks and exclaimed: “Darling child! What a wonderful surprise. What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I’m—living in Paris now.” She could not stop looking at him and smiling with sheer joy. “My father died. I expect you heard.”

  “Yes. I’m terribly sorry, my dear. We were abroad, as you probably know. Otherwise we would at least have been with you for the funeral. We didn’t hear until two or three weeks afterwards.”

  “And, then I was probably already ... here.”

  “But how come, Loraine? Good heavens, how lovely you’re looking, child! I’ve never seen you in a more becoming dress.”

  “It’s a Florian,” she said simply.

  “Well, that explains it.” He laughed. “But it doesn’t explain everything else. You’re not living on your own here in Paris, are you?”

  “Oh, no. Not at the moment.” She must be careful now! she told herself. She must be terribly careful. “I had—my father had a sort of cousin living here. He was made my guar—trustee. So it was thought best that I should come here for the time being. But I expect I’ll be on my own soon, because something wonderful happened. I’ve been offered a job. Florian has taken me on as one of his mannequins.”