Marry a Stranger

by Susan Barrie

  The little shop in Bond Street was one of those tiny, tucked-away, unimposing-looking establishments, but inside it was a poem in orchid mauve and cool dove grey. There were orchid mauve velvet hangings and a grey carpet into which the feet sank as if they were sinking into sand, and a spiral gilt staircase curled upwards to the unseen workrooms above. Fragile gilt and satin-covered chairs were scattered about like toys on the carpet, and a great bowl of yellow roses stood on a little escritoire at which Miss Hunt sometimes sat and dealt with correspondence.

  Stacey was introduced to a young woman with magnificent red hair who answered to the name of Irmgard, who modelled for the Hunt establishment, and took over entire control when Miss Hunt was absent. She it was who set Stacey small tasks such as sorting a box of flower ornaments for the fussier type of evening gown, checking invoices and restoring some sort or order to a muddled filing system. She was also asked to type a few letters during the course of her first day, interview a customer when her employer and Irmgard were both occupied, and pack up a wonderful confection in satin and biscuit-colored lace which had been promised for unfailing despatch that evening.

  During her lunch break she was permitted to take a short stroll down Oxford Street, and at tea time she was regaled with a cup of straw-colored China tea and a fancy biscuit. Back at the flat that evening she was again invited to produce her own meal—this time out of even less tempting leftovers which were all that she could discover in the refrigerator—while Miss Hunt hurried to change her dress and keep an engagement for the evening.

  Altogether, the amount of conversation she had with her employer during the day was practically none at all, and by the time they had known one another for forty-eight hours she still did not know whether Dr. Guelder had accepted her abrupt departure from his flat as quite the sort of thing he would have expected from her. When she ventured to ring him again at his consulting rooms his secretary said he was at the hospital, and at his flat Mrs. Elbe still said he was out. So thinking it the best thing she wrote him a little note of thanks and explanation, to which he returned no answer—or she never received one.

  The days passed, a week passed, and her duties at the shop were still much the same. She grew rather tired of trying to fill in odd moments sorting lengths of ribbon and lace, and even welcomed being sent out on small, unimportant errands. For one thing, when released into the street, she was able to satisfy her craving for something more to eat than the few fingers of toast at breakfast time, the hurried cup of coffee and a roll at lunch time, and the scrambled egg or egg on toast which was the nearest she came to a solid meal in the evening, and a large proportion of her “pocket money” began to go on bars of chocolate and buns at a near-by confectioners. And since she was a girl who had lived all her life on wholesome country fare this resulted in a decidedly hungry gleam in her eyes and a quite noticeably reduced waistline.

  One day, after she had been with her a fortnight, Miss Hunt summoned her from the room behind the shop and requested her to display a model for a customer. The customer was a young girl of about her own age and figure, the daughter of an important client, and the dress was a filmy evening gown of palest pink tulle over rustling taffeta, with a corsage trimmed with tiny pink rose buds. For the first time in her life Stacey saw herself in a full-length mirror attired in a way she had often dreamed about, but never believed she would achieve, and the customer saw her as something almost too delicately beautiful to be true, with heavy violet eyes in a pale oval face from which every evidence of country tan and freckles had now fled, a fragile slenderness that was so very young it was almost pitiful, and a natural grace and poise which matched the gown.

  The customer was so delighted that she bought the frock without seeing another one tried on, and Vera Hunt was so pleased with Stacey that she actually offered her afterwards a word of praise.

  After that Stacey was often called upon to model dresses, and when Irmgard was away for a few days with influenza Stacey found herself with little time on her hands to sort lace and ribbon. She began, however, to feel the effects of the confinement and the standing and the long hours which sometimes spread themselves out until well past the official closing time. If a customer was difficult it might be eight o’clock before she arrived back at the flat, and an oppressive heat wave made the atmosphere sticky and clammy and enervating. She longed for a breath of country air, and she longed, too, for a little relaxation sometimes.

  Miss Hunt went out every night to dinner parties, theatres, supper parties, but Stacey stayed in the flat, mending her own and her employer’s stockings, rinsing out their underwear and afterwards ironing it, doing little jobs about the flat which the daily woman overlooked. Sometimes when she went to bed at last she was so tired that she could not sleep, and it was as much as she could do to rouse up in the mornings to be on time for the shop.

  One day at lunch time the telephone rang, and she answered it because there was no one else there to do so. Her heart gave a kind of queer little jolt when she heard Martin Guelder’s voice, asking for Miss Hunt.

  “I’m sorry, but she’s out,” she said, hoping her voice sounded quite normal. (Why was it, she wondered, that the sound of his voice after all this time made her feel suddenly strange, as if she had been running upstairs and was breathless?) “But I can give her a message if you care to leave one.”

  He was silent for a moment, and then he said: “Is that by any chance Miss Brent?”

  “Yes,” Stacey answered.

  Another pause, and then: “How are you getting on, Miss Brent?” he asked.

  “Oh, very well,” she assured him, still a trifle breathlessly, “thank you!”

  “Good!” he exclaimed.

  Just the one word, sounding very detached and impersonal, and not really even a little bit interested. And then, after a moment: “Tell Miss Hunt I’ll ring her again—this afternoon if I can manage it.”

  When he had hung up, and she still sat with the receiver partly lifted to her ear, Stacey wondered why she seemed to be trembling a little, as if with excitement, and why her hands were damp inside the palms. Maybe it was because there was a storm brewing, or because lately she had eaten rather less than usual on account of the heat—but certainly she was not quite herself.

  When she told Miss Hunt that he had rung, her employer’s face, usually a beautiful mask, quite lighted up.

  “Did he really?” she said. “I’ll be in this afternoon. Let me know as soon as his call comes in.” And when it did come, and she took her seat before the instrument in her tiny private office, Stacey could not help overhearing her opening greeting before she had time to close the door of the office and leave her to continue the rest of the conversation without any danger of interruption.

  “Martin, darling! How lovely! Yes; of course I’m delighted to hear your voice!”

  Two days later the weather reached a still higher pitch of sultriness, and Stacey felt as if all her strength had been drained away from her. She dragged herself to the shop over pavements which seemed to bum her feet, and in a fevered way she thought of cool green Herefordshire lanes, and meadows sloping to the river. Like an automaton she went about her duties, standing until lunch time in a dress of sea-green lace, while dressmakers knelt at her feet with mouths full of pins, and lifted and lowered the hemline, and then lifted it all over again when she thought they were nearly finished.

  She looked so white and exhausted by the time she was due to lunch that even Vera Hunt looked at her a little askance, and suggested she should get out into the air during the midday break. But Stacey preferred to sit in a corner of the office while the others were out and pretend to nibble at a sandwich she had brought with her, and drink glass after glass of flat-tasting London water. At least the water revived her. The sandwich merely revolted her.

  In the afternoon she was required to model again, and this time it was for a customer who kept her parading one dress after the other until just on closing time. In the end the customer decided
upon a sophisticated dinner dress of clinging black velvet with long, tight sleeves, and although it was far too old a style for Stacey, against it her colorless skin looked peculiarly flawless, and the feathery ends of her soft dark curls matched the sheen of the sombre velvet.

  The customer was completely satisfied, having come to a decision—although black velvet would do little for her florid skin, and her much more solid type of build—one or two slight alterations were suggested and agreed upon, and the customer departed in her opulent car. Miss Hunt, having looked at the clock and realized that she would be late for a rather special dinner date, hastened to draw down the blinds and turn the key in the door, and was about to dart into her office to change her own dress for the evening when a car drew up outside. A door slammed, quick steps crossed the pavement, and then a hand rapped imperatively on the glass panel of the shop door.

  “Oh, dear!” said Miss Hunt. “What a nuisance! See who it is, Miss Brent.”

  Stacey, still in the black velvet gown, turned the key in the lock and flung open the door. She gave a little gasp of surprise as Martin Guelder stood looking down upon her.

  “Martin!” Vera Hunt cried, from the doorway of her office, looking positively delighted. “But how nice of you to come and collect me here! I thought we were to meet at the usual place.”

  “I came to the end of my appointments earlier than I expected today,” he admitted, “and I thought it would save you a taxi fare if I picked you up here.”

  But he was not looking at Vera as he spoke, although her eyes were all for him, and she had flushed up in a pleased fashion, like a very young girl. He was still gazing down from his superior height with a very curious expression on his face at Stacey, a study in sharply contrasting black and white, with purple smudges beneath her eyes, a trickle of perspiration running down from her hair, and lips that were absolutely colorless.

  “What in the world—!” he was beginning, when he saw that she had started to sway slightly, and although she had managed to get the door shut she was still clinging to the handle, while the discreetly shaded lights in the shop were whirling eccentrically round her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The window of the office, which looked out on to an enclosed courtyard, was open when Stacey came to herself, and she was lying on the little, orchid-mauve, corded silk-covered settee, and a breath of cool air was blowing round her. Dr. Guelder was seated on the foot of the settee, holding one of her wrists between his fingers, and she supposed that he was feeling her pulse, because he was looking at his wrist watch at the same time. Vera Hunt, a tightlipped expression on her face, was standing beside her escritoire and looking at him.

  “Have you any idea when she had anything to eat last?” he asked suddenly, lifting his gaze to Vera’s face. “Does she always have a proper luncheon, or merely one of those cup of tea and a bun affairs?”

  “I really couldn’t tell you,” Vera answered, trying not to sound as impatient as she felt, with the clock ticking away like mad on the mantelpiece and the skirt of the gown of drifting pearl-colored net she was to wear that evening requiring to be pressed before she put it on. “But I imagine she has a proper luncheon. If she doesn’t it’s entirely her own fault.”

  “You mean that you provide it? Or you stipulate that she should have a proper luncheon at your expense?”

  His grey eyes were so shrewd, and so quietly penetrating, that she felt herself coloring a little.

  “Well, not exactly that,” she admitted; “but she has her salary, and in addition I provide all her other meals, and she has a room at my flat. But I should say that all that is the matter with her is the heat. It’s been dreadfully close today, and it’s not surprising that she fainted.”

  “Not in the least surprising,” he agreed, looking almost distastefully at the black velvet dinner gown, with its skin-tight sleeves hugging the too thin arms of the girl lying limply on the settee, and the hollows in her exposed neck and shoulders, and the pulse beating in almost a frantic fashion at the base of her delicate, blue-veined throat. He seemed to remember that less than six weeks ago she had appeared before him in his consulting room looking tanned and splendidly fit, and although slight she had certainly not struck him as being in need of nourishment. She had looked what she was—a clear-eyed, clearheaded, healthy country girl. And in six weeks London had reduced her to a shadow of her former self—London and Vera Hunt’s exclusive little Bond Street shop! “In fact I think it’s rather amazing that you didn’t notice before this that she was responding very badly to being cooped up in a place like this!” With a wave of his hand he indicated the gilt chairs, the pale grey carpet, the orchid-mauve hangings. Vera’s shapely mouth dropped slightly open.

  “But surely you don’t think—?” she began, when he interrupted her curtly.

  “I think that she ought to be got home to bed as soon as possible, and in the meantime another sip of that brandy—”

  He held out his hand for the glass which Vera was holding; but as soon as it was approached near enough to her nose for her to get the strong smell of it Stacey struggled up on the settee, and waved the glass away.

  “Oh, no, thank you!—I’m much better now,” she assured him.

  “Are you?” He looked at her keenly. “You’ve certainly got a little more color in your cheeks.” Actually they were becoming flooded with color under the close gaze of his eyes, but his fingers shifted again to her pulse, and he retained it for nearly a minute in his hold before he let it go.

  “Do you feel strong enough to get that dress off, and get into your own clothes? Or I could put you in my car and drive you home as you are—”

  “Oh, but I haven’t pressed your skirt!” Stacey suddenly recollected, looking with concerned eyes at Miss Hunt. “And you want to wear it this evening! I must do that before I go—”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Dr. Guelder told her firmly, and Vera Hunt tried to sound as if she meant it when she assured Stacey that she was quite capable of pressing the skirt herself, but the velvet dress must be removed with care as it was already sold. She looked a little impatiently at Martin Guelder as she suggested that if he would remove himself from the office she would help Miss Brent off with the dinner dress, and as soon as he had withdrawn into the shop proper she began to urge exaggerated care while she peeled the clinging black velvet skilfully over Stacey’s head, and then shook it out and hung it up on a hanger in a showcase, where it was to spend the night before the dressmakers got busy on it in the morning.

  Stacey heaved a sigh of relief when the dress was removed, but she felt far from like herself as she stood pulling on her own simple grey dress, with the white collar and cuffs—a form of uniform which Miss Hunt had insisted upon, and in which she clothed all her servitors at the shop. Stacey fumbled in her handbag for her comb and her powder compact, and while she did so Miss Hunt, without making any more enquiries as to how she felt, went into the shop to join Dr. Guelder. Stacey heard her apologizing for not being ready and waiting for him when he called to collect her.

  “I’m afraid now we’re going to be late,” she said.

  “We shall be later still by the time I’ve driven Miss Brent back to your flat,” he answered. “And as a matter of fact I was just thinking that unless you’ve someone at the flat we can leave her with—someone to keep an eye on her for tonight, at least—I don’t really think I ought to insist on your company for this evening. We can do the things we were going to do tonight another night—”

  “But that’s absurd!” she answered sharply. “Miss Brent is not ill.”

  “She’s not ill, I agree. But she fainted.”

  “Lots of people faint—especially in hot weather. And if you’re anxious we can get my Mrs. Matthews to sit with her. She’s got a husband and a family, but she’d do it to oblige me, I know.”

  He did not sound impressed by this suggestion.

  “I haven’t met your Mrs. Matthews, and a girl of Miss Brent’s age—and as fit as she
was six weeks ago!—ought not to faint because of a sudden heat wave, and to remain unconscious for as lengthy a period as she did. I’d rather you remained with her—”

  But Stacey could feel the resentment rising like a flood in her employer, and if he could not detect it she could certainly detect the rasp in her voice which meant that her disappointment at the thought of a ruined evening was barely permitting her to keep her anger in check. Stacey stepped forward hastily from the office with the intention of saving the situation for Vera if she could. And although she still looked rather pale, and the purple smudges were still beneath her eyes, she was obviously much restored—no doubt the brandy she had swallowed without realizing that it was brandy had helped her considerably—and she said hurriedly, but with insistence: “Oh, but it isn’t at all necessary, I assure you! I really am quite myself again, and there’s no need at all for Miss Hunt to spoil her evening on my account. Really, Dr. Guelder, I shall be quite all right—and I’m so sorry to have been a nuisance.”

  He looked at her with a curious, reflective look in his eyes.

  “Of course she’ll be all right!” Miss Hunt exclaimed, and added, as if slightly conscience-stricken: “But I shall insist on Mrs. Matthews staying with you just the same.”

  “There won’t be any need for you to do that,” Martin Guelder told her quietly. “I will drive Miss Brent to my own flat, and Mrs. Elbe can look after her.”

  Vera Hunt’s expression became quite a study when he had uttered these words. She bit her lip—hard, as Stacey could see, probably to prevent herself from saying something she might afterwards regret, and her normally cold blue eyes flashed sparks. A heightened color rose up in her cheeks, and even stained the long white column of her throat.