The Wedding Dress Read online

  “Monsieur, h-how did you know?”

  “By exercising my natural judgement, which is good, and a certain flair for inspired guesswork which I poses,” Florian told her, without either conceit or false modesty.

  Then he glanced at his watch and exclaimed, “It is already after half-past twelve. Come.” He whipped the material off her with good-humored speed. “It is time you were off.”

  “Oh, monsieur! But your work isn’t finished.” In spite of Philip—and the flight of time—she was mortified at the idea that she might have proved unequal to the very first demand made upon her in the designing world. “On the contrary, it is most satisfactorily finished.”

  “But,” she was more disappointed than she could have said, “there is no dress!—No complete design.”

  He laughed.

  “The design, ma chère, is here.” He tapped his forehead. “And I assure you it is complete. I found what I wanted in the last three minutes. Go now and enjoy your lunch. What is his name, by the way?”

  “His—name, monsieur? Philip,” she admitted reluctantly, because there seemed no possible way of telling her employer to mind his own business.

  “Philippe?” He repeated the name thoughtfully, giving it its French version. “Does your guardian know him?”

  “My—guardian?” She gasped. But this was really too much, and she found the courage to say, “Forgive me, monsieur, but—but is that your business?”

  “I forgive you absolutely, mon enfant,” replied the famous designer, with a good deal of amusement. “My wife tells me I am inordinately inquisitive, though I call it taking an intelligent interest in my staff. However—perhaps she is right, so Monsieur Philippe shall be allowed to retain his aura of mystery. Now go. But on no account be late for this afternoon’s show.”

  “Oh, no, monsieur,” promised Loraine fervently, and she hurried away, faintly disturbed by the curious conviction that if Florian put himself out he could discover almost anything he wanted.

  In spite of everything, she emerged from the dress house as the nearby church clock struck a quarter to one, and Philip waved to her from a car parked at the curb, and exclaimed, as she slipped in beside him:

  “Hallo, sweet child! You’re a model of punctuality.”

  “I very nearly wasn’t,” she told him, with a breathless little laugh. “Florian was designing on me, and I was terrified he wouldn’t finish in time.”

  “I should have waited, you know.” Philip gave her a smiling, affectionate glance as he started the car. “It would have taken a lot to make me miss this meeting, Loraine.” Less than five minutes’ driving brought them to a small, quiet restaurant, where he had a corner table reserved, and a swift attentive waiter to take care of their every want. And Loraine relaxed, with a sigh of Contentment, impressed and charmed all over again that Philip always seemed able to make everything easy and enjoyable.

  But, once their meal was ordered, relaxation was at an end, for he smiled full at her and said:

  “Now tell me everything. I want the full story of the transformation of my little schoolgirl friend into a Paris mannequin.”

  So, with an air of smiling candor which concealed a good deal of anxious thought, Loraine proceeded to give him a fairly comprehensive account of what had happened since her father’s death.

  It was not, of course, an impromptu effort. Ever since, he had given the invitation the previous afternoon she had been working out, at intervals, what she should say to him when he asked the inevitable questions. And, without telling any actual untruth, she managed to lay much stress on the contact with Marianne and Roger Senloe, which had led to her engagement by Florian, while any reference to the guardian left him as a very shadowy and impersonal force in the background.

  Then, as soon as she had brought Philip up to date with her affairs, and before he could ask any awkward additional questions, she said:

  “And now it’s your turn! I’ve done all the talking. You must tell me your news too.”

  “I don’t know that I have very much—in comparison with your fantastic story.” He smiled.

  “Oh, Philip, of course you have! You told me at the Opera. You’re engaged, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes—I’m engaged,” he agreed, still smiling.

  “Tell me about her,” Loraine urged.

  “She’s fair—and very lovely, and her name is Elinor Roye,” he said obligingly.

  “And when are you going to be—married, Philip?”

  “We haven’t really decided yet. We’ve been engaged only a matter of weeks, you know. We haven’t been able to agree yet on where we shall live after we’re married.”

  She wondered if that particular wording implied some degree of argument. But she said, with an air of friendly interest:

  “Do you mean that you don’t know whether to make it England or France?”

  “Exactly. I’d like to live here in Paris—”

  “Oh. Philip, would you?” She was half scared, half enchanted by the thought of him indefinitely in the same city as herself, whatever the future might hold.

  “Yes. I find it artistically stimulating and professionally rewarding. In addition”—he laughed a little vexedly—“I don’t need to tell you, Loraine, that I have a very charming, clever, and altogether delightful mama—”

  “Of course.”

  “But an incurably interfering one too.”

  “Oh,” said Loraine, and she felt a nervous little flutter in her throat which made it difficult to say more.

  “To be frank, she doesn’t really like the idea of my marrying at all,” Philip went on. “The only thing which would have reconciled her to the idea would have been more or less to have chosen the girl herself. She’s much too civilized and clever to say anything, of course, and we amiably avoid all argument. But if—when I start married life, it might be wiser to have the Channel between me and my charming parent, much though I love her.”

  “I—see.” Loraine tried to look deeply concerned and innocently unknowing at the same time. An almost impossible feat.

  “You needn’t look so solemn.” He laughed lightly. “These things have a way of solving themselves.”

  “Yes—I suppose so. Have you—explained the position to your fiancée?”

  “Well, no, Loraine. No girl wants to be told that her future mother-in-law resents her and that it would be advisable to give her a wide berth for a while.”

  “Oh—no. And yet, for her part, she—your fiancée”—somehow Loraine could not bring herself to say Elinor’s name—“prefers to live in England?”

  “At least she is anxious not to settle in Paris.”

  “For any special reason?”

  “Well—yes. The fact is, Loraine, that she was engaged to another fellow before she met me. He took the break extremely badly, and I think she would find it profoundly embarrassing if our two circles tended to cross.”

  “Perhaps”—Loraine was astonished to hear herself say coldly—“she feels that she treated him rather badly.”

  “I don’t think so.” Philip sounded almost careless about that. “It was just a case of finding that she preferred someone else and having to tell him so.”

  “Regretfully?” inquired Loraine, with quite unusual irony.

  “Regretfully, I don’t doubt.” Philip still spoke as though they were discussing an unimportant aspect of the question. “These things are always difficult and upsetting.”

  “Particularly for the one who loses.”

  “Well, of course,” Philip agreed, with an easy laugh. “But I don’t think you need shed any tears over Paul Cardine. He’s a pretty tough nut.”

  “He’s nothing of the sort! He’s a very nice person,” exclaimed Loraine indignantly—and then sat there staring at an astonished Philip, wondering what on earth had induced her to endanger her relationship with the man she really loved, in order to fly to her guardian’s defence in this inexplicable fashion.

  “Why, Loraine—” Philip sound
ed amused, annoyed and wholly astounded. “You dark little horse! What do you know about Paul Cardine, for heaven’s sake?”

  “I’ve—met him more than once.” She made a tremendous effort to retrieve the position. “And I like what I know of him. He was a friend of Roger Senloe’s. I met several people in their circle, you know, before they married and went to Vienna.”

  “And, of all people, there had to be Paul Cardine among them!” He gave a vexed little laugh.

  “But we don’t need to quarrel over that, do we, Philip?” she said anxiously.

  “We’re not going to quarrel over anything, so far as I’m concerned,” he assured her.

  “And it isn’t necessary for us to—well, to enlarge on the subject when I meet—if I meet your fiancée?”

  “Certainly not! And of course you’ll be meeting Elinor—and quite soon. We’re going to see a lot of you in the next few weeks. Which reminds me”—he took out a pocket diary and flicked over the pages—“Mother suggested I should fix you up for dinner and a show some time early next week. How about Monday? I’ll bring Elinor along and you can meet each other.”

  Loraine said that would be lovely, and if she privately excluded the meeting with Elinor from that general expression of approval, he was not to know.

  When he parted from her again, outside the Florian boutique, he said:

  “It’s wonderful having you around again, little Loraine. We must do this often.”

  And, if she had little time during the afternoon to think in detail about her personal affairs, those last remarks of his remained with her, to warm and cheer a somewhat anxious heart.

  On the way home, however, as she walked through the early evening sunshine, she made a determined effort to review the rather tangled state of her personal relationships.

  At first she felt inclined to congratulate herself on the way she had extricated herself from a very awkward situation with Philip. It had been ridiculous of her to rush to Paul’s defence like that, inevitably disclosing the one connection it was vital to hide. But at least she had retrieved the position well. Or so it seemed to her.

  But then, as she looked farther ahead, she had to admit that she had put herself in a very false position. It was one thing to make little of her guardian’s part in her life. It was quite another to suppress the fact that he was the very man Philip was talking about. Particularly as Philip must inevitably find out the deception eventually.

  That was the really disturbing fact. However ingenious she might be, and however long she might hold off discovery of the real position, the time must eventually come when, unless he passed out of her life altogether, she occupied such an important place that he must know her home circumstances.

  “But anything may have happened by then,” Loraine assured herself. “It’s all a matter of timing. For him to know the real position now would drive a wedge of embarrassment and distrust between us. But if he and Elinor do not get married after all, and if he then turns to me instead, he won’t care whether I’m Paul’s ward or not. Still less will he mind that I concealed that embarrassing fact for the time being.”

  There were some powerful “ifs” about this line of reasoning, she knew. But, like most of us when we see a distant but infinitely desirable goal, she found little difficulty in gliding over the provisos and arriving at the satisfactory conclusion.

  When she reached home she found that her guardian had decided to give her an enjoyable last evening before his departure, and he took her for the promised dinner at Maxim’s.

  Loraine’s knowledge of Paris life was rapidly expanding, but it had not so far included anything like this, and she gazed round, wide-eyed, in a way which seemed both to please and amuse her guardian,

  “Why do you watch me in that amused way?” she asked once, as she caught his slightly smiling glance at her across the table.

  “I don’t know, Loraine—except that you’re a pleasure to watch, I suppose. And one doesn’t often have the experience of taking out anyone with your enormous capacity for enjoyment.”

  “Oh”—she frowned slightly—“you mean I’m frightfully young and naive, I suppose?”

  “You’re not frightfully anything,” he informed her drily. “But I’m not”—she glanced round and made a vague, comprehensive gesture—“elegant and sophisticated and poised, like most of the women here. I wish I were! It must be marvelous to look and feel as though you can deal with any situation.”

  “But for that, my dear, you would have to give up your priceless gift of youth—”

  “Oh, that!” she said, and she actually pouted slightly, for at the moment she felt a trifle too young.

  “And possibly the even more priceless gift I mentioned before. Your incredible capacity for enjoying yourself.”

  “Is that so important?” She looked at him curiously.

  “I’d say it’s the basis of your particular charm, Loraine,” he told her, so seriously that she had the strange impression he had been studying her a good deal during the weeks she had lived in his apartment. “Perhaps it’s the chief ingredient in almost any charm,” he added reflectively. “There’s something so warm and radiant about enjoyment, and so chilling and sterile about boredom or even humdrum acceptance. I never thought much about it before, but since you came the charm of sheer enjoyment has been quite a discovery for me.”

  She was so touched and surprised that she could only stare at him for a moment. And then, as she did so, she saw his expression change and harden as his glance came to rest on someone who was evidently approaching their table from behind her.

  Even before she saw him incline his head in a cold little gesture of greeting, Loraine guessed who it was, and in sudden panic she lowered her head and pretended to be absorbed in her meal.

  By the time she dared to look up again, Elinor Roye had passed and, with a sense of relief which almost hurt, Loraine saw that her companion was not Philip. So far as she could judge from the back view, she thought it was the elegant, elderly lady to whom Elinor had been speaking on the night of the Opera Gala.

  They went to a distant table, where Elinor sat with her back to the room, and slowly Loraine’s gaze returned to her guardian. There had been such a long pause that she simply had to say something, and what she said was:

  “Who was that?”

  “Someone I know.”

  “Do you know her—well?”

  “I used to think so, Loraine.” He gave a short laugh. “But now I’m not so sure. We were engaged until a few weeks ago.”

  “Oh—I’m terribly sorry. That was the personal crisis you said happened just about the time I arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you—dreadfully unhappy about it, Paul?”

  “No man likes to be jilted,” he said drily.

  “No, of course not. It’s an affront to one’s pride as well as one’s affections. But there are degrees of being miserable, aren’t there? I mean—hurt pride is something one gets over fairly soon, I imagine. Whereas crushed feelings take a lot longer.”

  To her surprise, he laughed quite heartily at that.

  “A very wholesome and Loraine-like analysis,” he declared mockingly. “But then you’re not proud, are you?”

  “No. I don’t think so. At least, not in a puffed-up, biblical way. I was glowing with pride when Florian said I would make a good mannequin, and I’m not going to pretend I don’t like the idea”—she dropped her tone to a discreet whisper—“of wearing the wedding dress in the new Collection. But that’s all.”

  “And suppose”—he studied her smilingly—“one of the others got the wedding dress, after all?”

  “Oh, I’d hate that,” admitted Loraine promptly, at which he laughed more than she had ever seen him laugh before, and declared that he was glad to see that she was charmingly human.

  Although they lingered enjoyably over their meal, they left the restaurant before there was any question of Elinor and her companion coming their way again, for which Loraine
was profoundly thankful. If, as Philip had arranged, they were to meet each other on the following Monday evening, it was vital that she should not be registered on Elinor’s memory as the girl who had been dining at Maxim’s with Paul Cardine.

  Next morning the goodbyes were said. She thought perhaps her guardian might kiss her, in view of their improved relations. But evidently the idea did not occur to him. He simply said:

  “I’ll drop you a line to let you know if I have to go on to Montreal. Otherwise—enjoy yourself. And if any crisis arises—which I don’t anticipate—you’d better consult Florian. He can deal with most things.”

  “Consult Florian?” Loraine was quite scandalized at the idea. “I don’t imagine he expects to be troubled with our unimportant private affairs. I couldn’t dream of speaking to him about a personal problem.”

  “On the contrary,” her guardian replied coolly. “He was rather flattered when I telephoned to him, explained the position and asked him to see you came to no harm.”

  “You—did that?” She was both shocked and intrigued. “When?”

  “Just after you left here yesterday morning.”

  “What on earth did he say?”

  “His exact wording was, “I am gratified, monsieur, that you should think me suitable for the task.” Which was, of course, his rather Gallic way of saying, 'Certainly, old chap. Depend on me’,” replied Paul, and his eyes twinkled unexpectedly.

  Loraine laughed, but reluctantly, and her guardian asked mildly:

  “Do you—object to the arrangement?”

  “No, of course not!” She was anxious he should have no inkling that she had been rejoicing in the thought of no supervision. “Only—Florian’s a bit interfering by nature, and a French guardian is a very different proposition from an English one.”

  “He hasn’t had all my guardianly duties delegated to him,” Paul assured her. “But he will be available if you need advice or support at any time.”

  “Well—thank you. It was kind of you to think of it,” Loraine said. Then she bade him a hasty goodbye, since it was getting late, and set off to work in a somewhat divided state of mind.