Paris - And My Love Read online

  She was nervous, of course. But she was eager, too. And, as she walked along through the bright, chilly winter sunshine, she savored afresh the entrancing fact that she was now part of the fascinating, intricate, inexplicable design that makes up the fashion world of Paris.

  At the boutique she was greeted pleasantly but briskly by Madame Rachel, and introduced to her colleagues, Celestine, Jeanne and Marcelle. She judged the first two to be rather older than herself, but they possessed that indefinable elegance and finish that make age immaterial. Marcelle, more her own age, seemed conscientious rather than brilliant, but she might well, Marianne thought shrewdly, prove the easiest to get on with.

  As Madame Rachel had promised, it was largely a day of observing and learning. Marianne was fortunate, she knew, to come into the boutique at a time when stock was low in preparation for the tremendous flowering of novelties and exclusive lines that would accompany the launching of the new collection. She had time, in these two quiet weeks, to familiarize herself with general routine and to learn about the new stock before it actually came before an eager and demanding public.

  Marianne had not exaggerated when she had told Florian that she could “sell anything.” She was, indeed, a born saleswoman, with a real and intense enjoyment in the subtle area of combining respect for a customer’s wishes with the discreet employment of her own knowledge and judgment.

  “That was good,” Madame Rachel observed unequivocally when, during the early part of the afternoon, she had unobtrusively watched Marianne dealing with a difficult and undecided customer who had finally gone away completely satisfied, after spending more than she had seemed likely to spend at first.

  “Thank you, madame.” Marianne smiled.

  “There is nothing hard and fast about your technique, I notice, and this is good, for one must always be flexible when dealing with people. Also you are not overburdened with the missionary spirit.”

  “The missionary spirit, Madame?” Marianne looked inquiring.

  “The determination to convert the customer from her own view to yours,” Madame Rachel explained. “This is often a temptation when one’s taste is good. The little Marcelle has this fault. She is so earnest and she always knows what is right. This is not always interesting to the customer who does not know what is right but knows what she wants. Friendly advice—this is one thing. The earnest lecture—this is something quite else. But these things are not to be learned. One either knows them or not. You, mademoiselle, seem to know them.”

  This unexpectedly early praise delighted Marianne. And she was just beginning to feel what a delightful place this was and how happy she was going to be in the Florian boutique, when an ominous little shadow fell across the brightness of her mood. For down the stairs from the salon above came Lisette. And at the sight of that inscrutable young face beneath the burnished hair, Marianne felt her heart begin to beat with the remembered anguish of the night before.

  “Madame Moisant said that I might come down and ask you about evening bags, madame,” Lisette explained to the director of the boutique. “She said there might be a little one from last season’s stock that would not be too expensive. That possibly, even, there might be one that you would no longer consider suitable for the public and that I might have for nothing.”

  “Indeed?” Madame Rachel cast an ironical glance over the too casual suppliant. “I am well aware, Lisette, that Madame Moisant would not think of making such an impertinent suggestion, and when you have been here longer you will learn that it does not do to make what the English call the ‘try-on’ with me. If, however, you mean that you wish to buy an evening bag within your means—taking into account the discount to a member of the firm—then Mademoiselle Marianne will show you some.”

  Lisette pouted slightly, but made no protestations of innocence. It was perfectly obvious that she had, in Madame Rachel’s words, “made the try-on,” but as it had failed, she saw no sense in endeavoring to maintain it.

  Equally, she was not at all embarrassed at being found out. Smiling faintly, she drifted over to Marianne and stated frankly, “I must have an evening bag. I am going dancing tonight, and I have no bag. Once the new collection goes on show, we shall be modeling and posing for photographers far into the night. There won’t be any dancing for me then, so I’m making the most of my time now. Besides—I have a new beau. And he’s English, and the English notice details like bags and gloves, don’t they?”

  For a moment Marianne thought she would not be able to answer at all. Then she cleared her throat and said a trifle huskily that the English did notice such details.

  With an immense effort she managed to keep her hands steady as she brought out some of the less expensive bags for Lisette’s inspection. And having conquered herself so far, she even managed to ask with the right degree of smiling interest, “Is he very nice, this English beau of yours?”

  “Oh, yes.” The other girl’s attention was almost entirely on the bags, but she switched it for a moment to add, “He is more like a Latin than an Englishman. Dark and vivid and not all solid virtue.”

  It was on the tip of Marianne’s tongue to say indignantly that Nat was intensely British, with most of the solid virtues, even if he did look dark and lively. But with an effort, she controlled herself and asked calmly instead, “Have you known him long?”

  “Long enough.” The other girl shrugged carelessly. “What is time in these matters?”

  Marianne longed to ask quite what she meant by “these matters.” But as this was impossible, she searched anxiously in her mind for some other innocuous-sounding question that might elicit a little more information about the situation.

  Lisette had now, however—and with great determination—made up her mind about the bag, and she proceeded to try to beat down the price, in a shameless but oddly engaging way.

  Marianne glanced over at Madame Rachel with the very slightest raising of her eyebrows. Madame replied with an equally slight shake of her head. So Marianne, pleasantly but with unshakable firmness, indicated that Lisette was wasting her time. And presently Lisette paid for the bag and departed upstairs with it.

  “She is not the best element to have in any business,” Madame Rachel remarked dryly. “I myself would not have her. But Madame Moisant, of course, knows best,” she added, in much the tone Anthony must have used when he described Brutus as an honorable man.

  Wisely, Marianne refused to take this up, merely according the remark a noncommittal smile. And presently the long, long first day came to an end.

  She made every excuse she could to stay until the last minute, in the hope that Nat would come to collect Lisette. But once Lisette had drifted out through the boutique clutching her new bag under her arm, there was no point in waiting further. She bade her new colleagues good-night and went home—tired by the strain of her first day, but quite unable to rest for the thought of Lisette, complete with new bag, dancing out the evening with Nat.

  And this, to her mingled dismay and incredulity, proved to be the pattern of her life during the next ten days.

  She would not have believed it possible that Nat could be in the same city and yet so completely elusive, or that she should hear of him—as she did from time to time, in an indirect sort of way, when Lisette spoke casually of “her English beau”—and not be able to reach him. But of whom could she inquire his whereabouts?

  Certainly not of Lisette. Presumably not by letter from anyone at home. For, with the engagement broken, Nat was hardly likely to remain in contact with either Yvonne or her mother. She had to wait—and wait—for him to contact her.

  If her work had not been so absorbing, Marianne would have been in despair, and she was almost glad of the crescendo of activity, which increased indescribably as the day of the new fashion show approached.

  From the lowest little apprentice to the great man himself, everyone was nervous, excited, madly optimistic or inordinately depressed, according to temperament and day-to-day events.

 
“It’s like waiting for a theatrical first night,” Marianne declared. And Madame Moisant, who happened to be down in the boutique at the time, turned to her and said coldly, “Only a sensationally important first night can compare with a Florian fashion show.”

  “All the same, Marianne has used the right comparison,” observed Madame Rachel, who was not going to have one of her staff put down by her rival. “The show is in many ways pure theater.”

  “It is a great deal more than that.” Madame Moisant drew herself up disdainfully. “If you were upstairs, madame, you would understand better.”

  “You forget that I was for many years a vendeuse in the salon.” Madame Rachel also drew herself up. “There is little I do not know about the madhouse it must be at the moment. How I pity you, madame!” And she permitted herself the luxury of a compassionate glance.

  “For me, I would not be anywhere else,” retorted the other lady angrily. And she flounced off upstairs again, back in her “madhouse.”

  On the evening before the show, there was a sort of dress rehearsal, for the benefit of all who worked in the firm. And, for the first time, Marianne fully realized the genius of Florian.

  Until then, she had supposed she knew quite a lot about beautiful clothes—the charm, the elegance, the variety which they could encompass. But as the incredible pageant unfolded itself before her dazzled gaze, she experienced a feeling of something like awe. All this—the whole show, the immense business enterprise, the entire structure of an industry that employed hundreds of people—sprang from the inspiration and genius of one man.

  She turned her head to look at Florian, who stood at the side of the salon, pale with strain and fatigue, but with an expression of almost boyish eagerness and interest on his face. Almost, thought Marianne, as though he were seeing this all for the first time.

  Beside him was a fair-haired, beautiful girl in the loveliest mink coat Marianne had ever seen. And, even as she wondered curiously who the stranger was, Marcelle informed her in a whisper that this was Madame Florian.

  “How lovely—and how young!” exclaimed Marianne.

  “Not so young,” Marcelle, to whom thirty seemed a trifle passé. “She was herself a model here, you know. Monsieur Florian took her on, unknown and at the last minute, some years ago, because his star model broke her leg just before the show. Gabrielle, as they called Madame Florian then, had exactly the same coloring and measurements. She even wore the wedding dress. It was an immense sensation. Then he married her.”

  “What a romantic story,” Marianne said, and glanced again at the girl.

  “Yes, it was romantic,” agreed Marcelle in her solemn way. And then they both fell silent as Lisette glided forth in a breathtaking evening gown, in which layers and layers of gossamer-like chiffon combined the exact shades of her red hair and her green eyes. Against the dress and her shining hair, her skin looked pearly white, and she herself looked faintly unreal.

  Silence fell over the room as she went by—only to be succeeded by rapturous exclamations and applause when she had passed, it was the most extraordinary thing. She looked like someone out of a legend, Marianne thought, and she moved like some enchantress casting a spell.

  There were many other wonderful dresses and coats and suits that evening. But to Marianne, the almost dangerously arresting moment remained that one when Lisette passed in the green and red dress.

  Afterward, to her surprise, Florian himself addressed her in quite a friendly tone.

  “Well, mademoiselle, how did you enjoy your first fashion show?”

  “It was fantastic! I have been telling myself all evening that this comes from the inspiration of one man—and still I can’t believe it,” Marianne said candidly. “I’m happier than ever, monsieur, to be allowed to work here.”

  “Come, that’s a very pretty speech, on the spur of the moment.” He gave her that half cynical, half kindly smile. “I hear Madame Rachel is pleased with you.”

  “I’m very glad, monsieur.” Marianne smiled and flushed slightly.

  “I, too,” he said dryly. “In the next few weeks there will be no time to make allowances for inefficiency.” Then, as the fair-haired girl came up, he added, “Have you met my wife? She also is English. Gabrielle, this is Mademoiselle Marianne, who has come to work in the boutique.”

  “Why, of course! Roger Senloe told me he met you somewhere. In the boutique itself, wasn’t it?” Gabrielle Florian took Marianne’s hand in a warm and friendly clasp. “He said he was sure you were going to be a great success.”

  “Did he really?” Marianne was surprised and gratified. “How nice of him.”

  “Particularly as he knows nothing whatever about the working of the boutique,” commented Florian, but not really unkindly. “Come, chérie—” he took his wife by the arm “—it has been a long enough evening.”

  They both bade Marianne good-night. And making her way through the slowly dispersing crowd of workers, models, vendeuses and others, Marianne went downstairs again. Here Madame Rachel waited to give the absolutely final instructions for the morrow. But she was cool and calm, like a good general before battle.

  “And now—” she addressed her staff collectively “—you must go home and sleep well. For tomorrow you will need all your strength and energy.”

  Tingling already with a sort of anticipatory excitement, Marianne said good-night and went out into the street, telling herself that this had been one of the really memorable evenings of her life.

  The cold air struck sharply on her cheeks, and she gave a slight gasp. But not only because of the cold. For there, in the light that streamed from the windows of the boutique, stood Nat, with a welcoming smile on his dark, attractive face.

  “Nat!” She ran to him, with all the pent-up eagerness of weeks in her voice. “How won—”

  And then she stopped. For his expression changed to astonishment, and then to something like perplexity, and in a horrible moment of realization she knew that the welcoming smile had not been for her. He had been looking past her—and now she turned her head and looked, too.

  For the second time that evening she caught her breath in a gasp. For Lisette was standing in the doorway, not half a dozen yards from her—her full red mouth drawn into a sullen line and her green eyes narrowed to almost catlike slits.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was an appalling moment for Marianne as she stood there, feeling that she was nothing but an unwelcome barrier between Nat and Lisette. But then, with a composure that astonished herself, she forced both voice and expression into some semblance of naturalness.

  “Why, Nat—” she said, and this time her tone was that of any girl greeting any pleasant acquaintance unexpectedly, “I thought for a moment you’d found out where I worked. But I see you’ve come to fetch Lisette. I mustn’t keep you.”

  “But—wait a moment!” Nat, too, had now recovered himself, and he caught her by the hand, with an eagerness that made her feel a little better. “I had no idea you were working here. Lisette didn’t tell me.”

  “Lisette didn’t even know you and I knew each other. How could she?” And, with a smile that cost her a good deal, Marianne turned, as though to include Lisette in this conversation.

  The other girl approached slowly, and although her face no longer wore that extraordinarily dangerous expression, she still looked very much on the defensive, as though she thought she might at any moment find it necessary to assert herself in no uncertain manner.

  “Mr. Gilmore is an old friend of mine, Lisette,” Marianne said. “You must forgive me if I assumed he had come here to meet me.”

  “He has come to meet me,” stated Lisette unequivocally, determined evidently that this at least should be clear, whatever else might be obscure about the situation.

  “So I see.” Marianne’s tone was colder than she had intended. “We must see each other another time, Nat. I—”

  “But wait a minute!” he exclaimed again, and his hand tightened on hers. “I don’t w
ant to lose you now I’ve found you again. Where can I get hold of you?”

  “Why, you know, surely? Didn’t they give you my address at home?”

  “Only the first one. Then your mother said you’d moved, and that she would tell me when she got the new one. But she never did because—oh, quite a lot has happened, Marianne. I haven’t seen anything of the family for some while—”

  “I know. Yvonne wrote and told me. Don’t worry, Nat. I completely understand. But if you had written to my first Paris address they would have sent it on. I left word—”

  “Yes, I daresay. But—” he hesitated, looked put out, and then smiled at her, the old engaging, sparkling smile she remembered with such heartwarming joy “—I guess I’ve been rather silly about this. Though—”

  “Are we going somewhere to eat, or shall I go home?” inquired Lisette at this moment, and her tone implied that she had heard just about as much of the joint affairs of Marianne and Nat as she cared to take.

  “I’m sorry!” Nat laughed and took her by the arm, with an easy intimacy that made Marianne wince. “I mustn’t keep you hanging about any longer, Lisette. But Marianne and I are old friends and—”

  “This I have already been told, and it is not especially interesting to me,” Lisette pointed out a trifle sulkily.

  “Then we’ll go.” Nat gave Marianne a quick smile, which seemed to invite her to share his amused indulgence toward Lisette—an invitation she felt unable to accept. “Here’s my phone number—” He scribbled on a page torn from his diary and handed it to her. “Give me a call, and we’ll go out somewhere together and catch upon each other’s news.”

  “That will be fine,” Marianne said. Then she bade the other two goodbye and turned away.

  But it was not fine at all, of course. She simply hated the idea of leaving Nat to go with Lisette, while she—the onlooker once more, the understanding friend—took herself off home alone.