The Wedding Dress Page 4

  “Florian has? Loraine, you keep me gasping! You were a retiring schoolgirl when I last saw you. Now I find you a lovely self-possessed young creature, talking of working with the greatest designer in Paris. What has happened to you?”

  “N-nothing.” She smiled shyly, for she did not feel at all self-possessed, whatever he might say. “I’m not any different, really, Philip.”

  “You’re just as sweet as ever, certainly.” He took her hand again and kissed it lightly. “We must get together, darling. Where can I phone you?”

  For a moment she felt as though a gulf opened in front of her. And then, on an inspiration born of necessity, she heard herself say quite coolly:

  “You’d better phone me at Florian’s. I—I might be changing my home number soon.”

  “Very well. In a day or two.” He glanced down into the stalls again and made a slight, answering sign to the girl who had just glanced up. “I must go now.”

  With difficulty she suppressed a pang of passionate jealousy. But she also reminded herself that it was time he went, in any case. Her guardian might return at any moment now.

  “Goodbye, dear Loraine. That’s my fiancée down there, by the way, but there isn’t time to tell you all about her now. We’ll cover the rest of the news over lunch some time soon. And Mother will be here in a week or two. I suppose she’ll be coming to your opening show. She usually does the Florian opening.”

  He held her hand tightly for a moment, in the special clasp which she knew so well. Then he was gone, and Loraine went slowly back to her seat, feeling dazzled and faintly giddy, like someone who had been looking into the sun too long.

  She sat there very still, savoring the memory of every moment he had been there. And she knew that nothing—not her father’s death, nor the move to Paris, nor Florian’s incredible offer—could compare in importance with the fact that she had seen and talked to Philip once again.

  He had said she was lovely and no longer a schoolgirl, too—which must mean that he saw her in a new light. Perhaps it was not only to her that the meeting had been of significance. Again she felt guiltily that one must not pursue such a line of thought since he appeared to be completely and happily committed to someone else. It was impossible not to bask in the knowledge of his undoubted approval and interest.

  Just as the lights were going down once more, Paul slipped back into his seat.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you so long,” he said. “I hope you weren’t bored.”

  “No,” Loraine assured him gently. “I wasn’t in the least bored.”

  “You’re a good, undemanding child,” he remarked unexpectedly. And she found herself wondering guiltily if he would have been quite so sure of that if he had known who had visited the box in his absence.

  When it was all over, he took her straight home, saying that her day had been long and exciting enough already but that on some other occasion he would take her out to supper at Maxim’s.

  She was grateful—and surprised—at the half-promise. But she was genuinely glad to go home now. And she was not sorry that the next day, Sunday, proved quiet and uneventful. With the challenge of her first day at Florian’s looming near, she was going to need all her energy and freshness.

  On the Monday morning she breakfasted early with her guardian, who seemed slightly amused by the fact that her enthusiasm had not wilted before an early rising and the inevitable nervous strain of the first day at any job.

  “I hope it’s all going to be as enthralling as you seem to expect,” he remarked a trifle drily. “They say Florian is a very hard taskmaster.”

  “That’s just because he’s a perfectionist.” Loraine’s tone held a note of near-reverence which would have amused, but not displeased, the great designer. “I don’t in the least mind working hard, if I can really be part of that wonderful enterprise.”

  “Well, that’s the right spirit.” Her guardian gave her an unexpected grin of sheer amusement which made him look very much younger. “Far be it from me to encourage anyone to give any job less than a fair trial. But I think you have a right to know at this point, Loraine, that you’re not entirely dependent on what you can earn.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Your father’s affairs haven’t been settled up yet, but he certainly left you enough to bring in a small income. In addition”—he slightly moved one or two things on the breakfast table in front of him and, if she had not known it was impossible, she would have thought he was nervous—“you do understand that you’re really very welcome here, don’t you?”

  She opened her eyes rather wide.

  “It’s very nice of you to say so—”

  “Well, I was a good deal taken aback to find you thought I was—fed up was, I think, the term—at having to take you in.”

  “But weren’t you?” She smiled at him without rancor and even with a touch of mischief.

  “No.” He colored very slightly, which astonished her. “I was surprised and a bit nonplussed, I suppose. And—although you were not to know this, of course—it so happened that I had a personal crisis to deal with at the same time.”

  “I’m very sorry,” she said gently. “I hope it has—solved itself now.”

  “Not exactly. But I take a good deal of convincing that I’m beaten.” Again he gave that quick, unexpected smile.

  “In any case, it has nothing to do with the present discussion. I just want to have it quite clear that I don’t in any way resent your being here.”

  “You couldn’t really have been blamed much if you had,” Loraine told him candidly. “I was simply wished on to you out of the blue, and if you had resented me—“

  “I didn’t and I don’t,” he asserted categorically. “I’m not sure that I know much about managing a girl of your age—or even how to learn to do so—but you are welcome in my home until you choose to go elsewhere.”

  He stood up then, as though finishing the discussion. But Loraine got up too and came round to him.

  “Thank you very much.” She put her hand lightly on his arm. “And in any case”—once more her smile had a glint of mischief—“you don’t need to learn how to manage me. I’ve always understood that it’s the ward who manages the guardian.”

  “Is that so?” He gave her cheek a slight but not unkindly pat. “I can’t promise that you’ll find me very manageable, Loraine. And now it’s time you started for work. Do you want me to drive you down?”

  “No, of course not! Working girls don’t arrive in private cars. I’ll walk. It’s not far—and it’s a wonderful morning.”

  “All right. Goodbye and good luck,” he said, and he gave her a casual little nod of something between dismissal and salute.

  As Loraine left the tall handsome house in which her guardian’s apartment was, she felt her spirits rise with a bound. For the first time in her life, she was setting out towards independence and perhaps adventure—and she was walking there through the street of Paris on a magical June morning.

  The traffic streaming past, the hurrying crowds, the green of the trees in the Avenue, the incredible variety of lovely things displayed in the shop windows—all contributed to the feeling of enchantment. And, as though this were not enough, Philip was in the same city.

  To others this might be a Monday morning like any other Monday morning. To Loraine it was the most exciting day of her life. And when she came at last to the famous dress house, with the one word florian splashed in letters of gold across the smooth stone of its austere facade, she felt she stood upon the threshold of romance.

  However, as it was now five minutes to nine, there was no question of lingering sentimentally upon that threshold. So she entered instead and inquired shyly for Madame Moisant.

  Immediately, she was wafted up the famous staircase to the small, thickly carpeted room where the directrice of Florian’s sat at a deceptively simple and austere-looking desk. This, in Madame Moisant’s opinion, was the nerve centre of the whole great enterprise, and Flo
rian himself would have hesitated to deny it.

  She had evidently been informed of Florian’s unexpected appointment and, as Loraine knocked diffidently and entered, the Frenchwoman looked up and said:

  “Come in, mademoiselle, and sit down.”

  It was an order rather than an invitation, and in an instant Loraine was subtly informed that she had exchanged the status of a customer for that of a very junior employee.

  She sat down; there was a slight and curiously telling pause. Then the directrice said:

  “Mademoiselle, you are about to become part of the greatest dress house in Paris—which is to say in the world. You probably imagine that this opens a prospect of glamor and gaiety, a life in which one does little but wear beautiful clothes and makes other women envious.”

  It had not really been part of Loraine’s hopeful expectations to make other women envious, but she hardly liked to correct Madame Moisant on so minor a point. She therefore murmured that she knew she was very fortunate to have been chosen for this position but that she expected to work extremely hard.

  “Fine words,” agreed Madame Moisant, though in a tone which implied that they buttered no parsnips. “You will do well to remember them, mon enfant, when you have to model beach wear in the winter and furs in the summer, and above all when you have to stand for hours while Monsieur Florian drapes and designs and re-designs, until your head aches and your arches feel they will never be the same again. This is all part of the romantic”—she curled her lip—“world of the fashion model. It is only just that I should tell you this now.”

  “Thank you, madame,” said Loraine, since another telling pause seemed to indicate that gratitude was due for this somewhat depressing preview of her job.

  “Bon! Then we understand each other.” Madame Moisant rose from behind her desk. “You shall now come and meet your other colleagues.”

  Loraine was not at all sure that they understood each other. But she meekly followed in the wake of the energetic directrice and was conducted to a big, bare room behind the salon, where half a dozen girls, in various stages of undress, were either sitting before the long wall mirror making up or disposed about the room in attitudes of complete relaxation.

  With one exception, even the relaxing ones came to some sort of attention as Madame Moisant entered and announced briskly:

  “This is your new colleague, Mademoiselle Loraine. Monsieur Florian has chosen her to model some of the more jeune fille numbers in the new collection.”

  “I thought I was to model those.”

  The one girl who had shown—or feigned—indifference at their entry now raised a beautiful red-gold head from the fashion paper she had been studying and stared with a faint touch of insolence at Madame Moisant.

  “Then you thought incorrectly, Lisette,” replied Madame Moisant with monumental calm. But the name Lisette awoke uneasy recollections in Loraine’s mind, for this, she remembered, was the girl Marianne had described as dangerous.

  A sullen cloud descended on the features of the redhead, and her curiously attractive green eyes narrowed like a cat’s eyes in the sun.

  “Monsieur Florian promised me—” she began.

  “Monsieur Florian is not so naive as to promise any one of you anything,” cut in the directrice with good-humored cynicism. “He knows how much you would then snatch. As soon would he offer his finger to a boa-constrictor.” Everyone except Lisette looked somewhat impressed by this grisly simile.

  “You have plenty of designs to model, Lisette, without making trouble over the designs of others,” Madame Moisant went on, still in that brisk, astringent manner. “Loraine was picked out by Monsieur Florian himself for her part at Marianne’s wedding.”

  “Why, yes, of course! You were one of the bridesmaids, weren’t you?” exclaimed a charming, rather impudent-looking little blonde, who turned to Loraine with a friendly smile. “It was beautiful, the wedding, eh?”

  “It was lovely.” Loraine smiled shyly in return.

  “We all liked Marianne and wished her well,” declared the blonde kindly.

  “I did not wish her well,” stated Lisette categorically. But to Loraine’s surprise, no one seemed to take much notice of this somewhat embarrassing remark.

  “Now I shall leave Loraine with you, Clotilde.” With faultless acumen, Madame Moisant now handed over Loraine to the care of the friendly blonde. “You will show her where to put her things and how to conduct herself on this first day. Later it will be decided if she is to wear any of Julie’s numbers in the present Collection.”

  “Who is Julie?” inquired Loraine, as Clotilde good-humoredly began to instruct her in the day-to-day running of the models’ room.

  “She was our youngest model. She left a week ago—also to get married. Monsieur Florian was very angry.”

  “Why?” asked Loraine, who had not noticed any special antipathy to marriage on Monsieur Florian’s part.

  “We had not finished the showing of the present Collection,” Clotilde explained, as though to a child. “It is very difficult to show a design on another model. It was very wrong of Julie, since her husband wished her immediately to leave with him for Australia.”

  “What ought she to have done, then?” inquired Loraine, half amused and half impressed by the other girl’s gravity.

  “She should have waited,” was the simple reply. “The Collection must come first.”

  “I see,” said Loraine, somewhat sobered by this first introduction to a scale of values entirely new to her.

  During the next half-hour most of the girls were called away at various times, either to be fitted for designs in the new Collection or to display something for private customers, Clotilde explained. Finally, Clotilde herself was summoned and, to her secret embarrassment and even faint alarm, Loraine was left alone with Lisette, who still sat in her corner, her feet up on another chair, apparently absorbed once more in her fashion paper.

  Loraine seated herself before the mirror and pretended to do some running repairs to her very simple make-up. But presently, in the glass, she saw the other girl lay down her paper and look across.

  There was something indescribably disconcerting in the knowledge that one was being studied by those catlike green eyes, and Loraine actually felt the short hairs at the nape of her neck lift. Then Lisette said, without preamble: “I remember now. I saw you on Saturday.”

  “At Marianne’s—at the wedding?” asked Loraine doubtfully.

  “No. At the Opera Gala. You were in a box—with a very good-looking man.”

  “Oh!” Loraine smiled slightly at this description of Paul, though she supposed it was strictly accurate. “That was my guardian.”

  There was a slight pause. Then Lisette said:

  “Who was the other man?”

  “The ... other man?” Loraine met the thoughtful stare of those green eyes in the mirror, and at the same moment it was exactly as though a danger signal flashed a warning in her own mind.

  “Yes,” said Lisette. “The man who came in and kissed you—when your guardian wasn’t there.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A WAVE of quite illogical panic swept over Loraine as Lisette asked that mock innocent question about Philip, and it was only with an effort that she reminded herself there had been absolutely nothing wrong in her meeting with him, however much Lisette’s tone might imply there had. It was merely that—one would not have liked Paul to know anything about it.

  There was probably no more than a second’s pause before she said, in a steady voice, though not quite accurately: “That was an old family friend, if you must know.”

  “He didn’t kiss you like an old family friend. He kissed you like a lover,” stated Lisette, contriving to give the last word a slightly questionable flavor.

  “You are mistaken.” Loraine spoke firmly and coldly, though secretly she felt a sort of frightened elation that anyone—even Lisette—should find such a quality in Philip’s attitude towards her.

  Lisett
e laughed slightly—probably because she was aware that she had disconcerted the other girl.

  “You didn’t tell your guardian about it when he came back, though, did you?” she said. And once more Loraine felt an irrepressible little thrill of panic at the almost uncannily complete knowledge which this strange, inimical girl seemed to have about her.

  However, with resolution and quite admirable calm, she said:

  “I can’t imagine why you should take so much interest in my very ordinary affairs. But whatever your efforts, you couldn’t possibly have been in a position to know what I said or did not say to my guardian or anyone else. Where were you, anyway?”

  “I was selling programmes.”

  “Selling programmes?” Loraine looked mystified.

  “Yes. It was part of the gala atmosphere that the programme girls should be supplied—and dressed—by the great fashion houses. I did not want to go. Opera bores me inexpressibly,” stated Lisette simply. “But Monsieur Florian insisted. And so I was there, with nothing to do after I had sold my programmes, except to look round. And then I saw you and knew from your dress that you must have been one of Marianne’s bridesmaids.”

  “I see.” It gave Loraine the most uncomfortable feeling to realize that, during most of the, evening at the Opera Gala, she had been under the scrutiny of those unfriendly green eyes. “Well, I’m afraid I couldn’t have provided much antidote to your boredom.”

  “On the contrary. It is interesting to see a girl arrive in the company of one good-looking man and then, in his absence, throw herself into the arms of another.”

  “I did not throw—Oh, look here, this is all dreadfully silly!” Loraine turned at last from the mirror to face Lisette. “I could tell you to mind your own business, but I don’t want to start by being unfriendly to a colleague. I must say, though, it’s too absurd of you to try to give some sort of guilty significance to a perfectly ordinary incident. I hadn’t seen—the other friend for quite a while. Then, to our complete surprise, we saw each other—though I suppose you noted that too if you had me under such complete observation,” added Loraine sarcastically.