Under the Stars of Paris

by Mary Burchell

  Most of them accepted her with casual friendliness, though in one or two cases with a slight reserve, due either to her being English or of amateur status—Anthea was not quite sure which. The weeping one made her position quite clear in the first five minutes by referring (in French, it was true, but with great distinctness) to “clumsy amateurs”.

  This Anthea discovered was Héloïse. And the furious tears, she learned to her astonishment, were due simply to the fact that she was not, after all, to have a new wedding dress created specially for her. The accident to Claudine had led her to believe that this honour might be hers, and now the “clumsy amateur” had spoilt it all, As Anthea was soon to find, a disappointment or slight of much smaller proportions than this was quite sufficient to reduce most of them to tears or a display of temperament.

  “Don’t be a child, Héloïse. You have the most dramatic model in the whole collection,” Madame Moisant told, her sharply. “And three, at least, of the best selling ones. The wedding dress will not be sold many times, whereas——”

  “As though money were everything, madame!” cried Héloïse, wrapping her dressing-gown around her with a gesture of scorn and rage. At which Madame Moisant uttered a cynical “Ha-ha!” and went about her own affairs.

  The show that evening was an exciting and even curiously moving occasion. Carrying their work stools, about two or three hundred sewing-girls crowded into the salon, along the corridor and out on to the landing. The mannequins, in high good humour, put on the show with as much care and finesse as if they had been displaying the models to the first buyers of Europe, and the applause—divided with the strictness of local loyalties—showed quite plainly which girls had been responsible for the production of each model.

  Anthea, as she emerged for the first time—in a little black suit with white broadtail collar and cuffs—was secretly shaking with nervousness. But from the group on her left came a concentrated and deeply satisfied, “Comme elle est jolie!” and she found herself being rapturously applauded by the girls who had made the suit.

  She wondered if clever Madame Moisant had arranged to have them placed just there. And sustained by the first uninhibited applause she had ever earned, she made the tour of the salon, corridor and landing in admirable style.

  The whole occasion was like a successful dress rehearsal of a play. And now, ahead of them all, loomed the ordeal of the opening “performance”. Everyone went home that weekend with the sole intention of relaxing and making ready for the great event. Only Monsieur Florian looked as though he could not relax until Tuesday was safely over.

  On Tuesday everyone indulged in a few “first-night” nerves. Everyone was either abnormally gushing or unpardonably nervy and rude. Héloïse stared so balefully at Anthea that, against her better judgment, Anthea ventured to speak.

  “I’m terribly sorry you were so disappointed over the wedding dress,” she said. “But I’m sure your turn will come another year, and none of us could wish poor Monsieur Florian the frightful strain of creating an entirely new design at this late hour. Incidentally—if it’s of any interest to you—I needed that job so desperately that I can hardly believe even now that I have it.”

  Héloïse flickered her long, curiously gold-tipped lashes, and then unexpectedly threw her arms round Anthea and kissed her emotionally.

  “You must forgive me,” she said. “I am wicked and jealous. But now I am sorry and we will be friends, is it not?”

  “Why, of course,” Anthea agreed, greatly relieved, and somehow contriving to hide the fact that she was also a good deal amused.

  But, as she moved away, Odette—the infinitely elegant, faintly tragic-looking girl who showed all the most sophisticated models—murmured,

  “Like hell you will be friends! Be careful. She is wicked and jealous, as she says—but not sorry.”

  Anthea was a good deal disturbed by this, but there was no time now to sort out the internal politics of the dressing-room. Already the invited guests were beginning to arrive, while the final masses of flowers—many of them ill-wishing tributes from rival designers—were being set in place.

  The mannequins were strictly confined to the dressing-room, where most of the models to be shown already hung in place, and presently Madame Moisant came in, with a typed list in her hand.

  “It is traditional that I announce the models on the opening day,” she explained good-humouredly, seeing Anthea look interested. “Also at the Press Show and when the first buyers come. I stand here”—she indicated a small, curtained space at the side of the stage—“and through here I can see the salon and the reaction of the audience. Do you want to have a look?”

  Obligingly, she stepped aside so that Anthea could peep through the small aperture arranged in the curtains.

  It was a fascinating spectacle—rows of chairs crowded either side of the raised platform, and everyone with an air of expectancy again reminiscent of the first night of an important play. Among the audience Anthea recognized several well-known figures in the theatrical and social world. And then, as her gaze travelled slowly back to those nearest her, she gave a slight gasp and felt the blood rush from her face to her suddenly thumping heart.

  For there, in the second row, waiting to enjoy the spectacle, sat Eve Armoor. On one side of her was the cousin Anthea had met in the Avenue Georges V. On the other, only a few feet away from Anthea, sat Michael, looking faintly bored.

  Chapter Two

  For a moment Anthea stood stock-still, her hand gripping a fold of the curtain. Then she said, in a small choked voice,

  “Madame, I am not well. I—I can’t go on.”

  It was the idiom of her world. The pleasant, easy, social world, where one could, if one simply must, escape from an unbearable situation with a conventional excuse.

  But it was not the idiom of Madame Moisant’s world.

  “Stop being a fool,” she said sharply. “This is no time to be ill. If you are not well, you will pretend that you are. You are just nervous. We all are. Me!—do you suppose I feel well at this moment? Monsieur Florian—how well do you suppose he feels, smiling there to his enemies as well as his friends, and knowing that half the flowers sent here today would more gladly have been sent for his funeral? You are perfectly well and you will behave not like an idiot. No hysterics, please, or I shall slap your face with my own hand. It is not a moment for cold water with so many models around,” she concluded with a dry laugh.

  During this speech—delivered rapidly, in Madame Moisant’s most energetic style—Anthea had been groping after her self-control. She had known from the first word that there was no escape. She was as securely caught in this nightmare as if she were dreaming the whole thing and could not wake up. Indeed, that was rather how it felt.

  Then, at the mention of Monsieur Florian, some sort of desperate, proud calm came to her, and the ghastly tightness in her chest relaxed so that she found she could breathe almost naturally again. He had trusted her. He had trusted her to wear the flower of his Collection—not to betray his secrets—not to let him down in any way. He had even said he was showing her a degree of trust he would not show his closest friends. And was she to walk out on him now—even if it were possible to do so—just because a man who thought her less than Eve Armoor was sitting the other side of that curtain?

  “It’s all right,” she whispered a little huskily to Madame Moisant. “It’s past. I—I just panicked for a moment, as you said.”

  “Good! All is well now.” And, with a sure instinct for the passing of a crisis, Madame Moisant turned from her as though she had ceased to exist, hissed for silence among the excited mannequins, imperiously beckoned to Odette, and then, taking up her position, spoke a few introductory words, first in French and then in English, which immediately silenced all chatter in the room beyond.

  “Numéro cinq. Numbaire fife,” announced Madame Moisant. Odette stepped nonchalantly out upon the small stage. The Show had begun.

  Anthea stood there in her black s
uit with the white broad-tail collar—the first model she was to display—counting off on her fingers those that went before her. It was confusing, because the numbers had no natural sequence. Only the gesture from Madame Moisant called each girl in turn to the narrow point of exit.

  But the moment was approaching. Now. Next—after Héloïse who was stepping forth so confidently in her insolent lacquer-red tailleur and drawing the first applause from the audience beyond that curtain.

  Madame Moisant, peering through the small aperture, smiled briefly and triumphantly. Then, as Héloïse gave her final twirl and departed along the corridor which also served as part of the salon on this crowded occasion, she announced firmly,

  “Numéro dix-huit. Numbaire eighteen.”

  Gabrielle—she was Gabrielle at this moment, not Anthea—stepped out into the ring of light. She smiled faintly at everyone and at no one, as she had been taught to do, and walked “at a reasonable pace” up the long platform, passing within a few feet of Michael and Eve, affecting not to hear the slight gasp from one—or was it both?—of them.

  At the end, she turned, with that particular swinging motion which “spread” the line of her skirt without destroying it, and started her journey back. It was more difficult this time not to see them. They were within her natural range of vision for a much longer time. But, somehow, she looked past Michael—she looked past Eve—and then her distant gaze faltered. She could not quite manage to look past the cousin. Their eyes met. There was the faintest smile of recognition.

  Then she was past, had executed her final swing round, and was out and along the corridor where no ghosts from the past awaited her.

  The worst moment was over, she told herself. She had administered—and withstood—the first shock. Anything which followed was merely repetition. And repetition tended to dull, rather than intensify, any emotion.

  Until, of course, one came to the high point of the afternoon. The moment when she should step forth in the wedding dress.

  She must not think about it beforehand—must not linger on the horrible, ironic fact that she would be parading before Michael in a wedding gown—without the wedding. There were other dresses to show first, and she must remain calm and smiling and mistress of the occasion.

  As the afternoon went on, the applause grew more frequent and more prolonged. The subtle wind of success began to blow once more through the salon of Florian. The “dead” two months before the launching of the Show were at an end. Incredibly crowded and exciting weeks lay ahead.

  Tension among the mannequins was relaxing, though the watchfulness of Madame Moisant remained the same. Smiles came more easily now, and all the hurried, eager comments in the dressing-room were happy ones. Everyone was in a superbly well-wishing mood all at once, and rivalries and slights were forgotten.

  Most of the girls had begun to pick out their favoured customers in the audience by now, and they allowed themselves a personal smile as they passed—and many comments backstage. Since this seemed to be the natural order of things, Anthea—now incredibly calm and mistress of herself—actually contrived to give Michael a smile when she came out wearing her fourth model. Why not? To use the familiar and horribly incongruous phrase, they had “parted friends”, had they not?

  He seemed to think so too, for he smiled in return, quite coolly, and inclined that handsome head of his. After all, it was not the fault of either of them that Eve had chosen to come here to buy some of her trousseau. Perhaps, even, it was the wedding gown in which she was interested!

  At this thought, Anthea had difficulty in choking back a bitter, hysterical little laugh, and, realizing suddenly the danger of indulging in any personal thoughts at this moment, she deliberately made her mind blank and became Gabrielle once more.

  It was very near the end now. Héloïse, in the fabulous dress of ostrich fronds, was making the rounds to the sound of unbroken applause. It seemed, that the pitch of delighted excitement could hardly mount higher. Surely even the wedding gown could not compete with this sensation.

  And then Monsieur Florian himself had come in and across to Anthea, already being arrayed in the cloudy miracle of the final model.

  The other mannequins, who had crowded round in voluble admiration, scattered before the chef, so that Anthea and Monsieur Florian were left isolated, but, even so, he spoke in English, to make their conversation even more private.

  “I want you,” he said, “to look just as you did the afternoon I tried you out. Not too radiant—a little tremulous too, as though tears are not so far off. Think that the man you wish to marry is really there before you and——”

  “He is,” Anthea said baldly, before she could stop herself.

  “Eh?” For a moment the Frenchman looked startled.

  “I mean”—she suddenly could not keep any of it back—“he is sitting out there now, with the girl he preferred to me.” Then, seeing the dismay in the watchful eyes which never left her face, she went on, “It’s all right. I’ll manage. It’s nobody’s fault. Just the way life sometimes is. I won’t—let you down.”

  And, greatly to his credit, at the height of his Show, Monsieur Florian spared a thought for feelings other than his own.

  “Pauvre petite,” he said, in that low-pitched, curiously compelling voice of his. “Be brave for five minutes longer. Forget any man who can be so stupid, and look as you will look one day for his lucky successor.”

  She laughed at that. She actually found herself laughing. And, just for a moment, she saw the clouds of her wretchedness part and beyond them was the bright gleam of a yet unknown radiance. It was sheer imagination, of course, but such are the flashes of imagination which carry us through the worst crisis.

  In a hush that could be felt, Madame Moisant made her final announcement, and Anthea stepped out on to the stage—a girl going to meet her future, a bride going to meet her bridegroom, and around her the touching, lovely aura of all youth going with mingled hope and fear to meet the unknown.

  For a moment the almost breathless hush held. Then, as she seemed almost to float forward in the cloud of beauty that was Florian’s inspiration, the whole place broke into clapping and—incredibly—cheering. She was aware that people had actually risen to their feet, that exclamations were breaking out on every side. But there were only two voices she distinguished as she slowly made her way back.

  “That’s the dress I want!” she heard Eve Armoor say, on a note of steel-like determination. And Michael’s voice, harsh suddenly, as Anthea had never heard it before, said curtly, “You can’t possibly. Anything but that!”

  Oh, sweet, sweet moment of triumph! Not only for the cheers and praise on every hand. But because she still had the power to move Michael to the depths. Move him to such an extent that he curtly refused his Eve something, because it was too closely and intimately associated with herself.

  None of the rest of her triumphal progress surpassed that one giddy moment, but she completed the full round at that slow, floating pace, and returned to the dressing-room to receive Monsieur Florian’s curt “Bravo! It was well done,” before he went out to acknowledge the congratulations of his departing guests, or linger sociably with those who wanted to hear and see more.

  Madame Moisant accorded her a nod of extreme approval. Though her comment reflected more credit on herself than on Anthea.

  “I knew I could not be mistaken,” she said complacently. “It was a good choice, though you are but amateur. In this way the Show was saved.” And she hurried away to speak to the most favoured clients of all.

  Relieved of the weight and responsibility of the wedding dress, Anthea felt suddenly tired after all the strain. She stretched her arms above her head, in a luxurious moment of respite, and looked around.

  Odette was slipping into one of the suits which was obviously to be a best-seller of the show. Héloïse, very tiresomely, was sitting sulking once more in a corner. All the other girls were busy in other parts of the building.

  “Oh dear,” w
hispered Anthea to Odette. “What’s the matter with her now?”

  Odette glanced over indifferently.

  “The applause,” she explained succinctly.

  “But she had loads of applause!” Anthea exclaimed, bewildered. “I thought they would never stop, when she showed the ostrich feather dress.”

  “But you had more,” Odette replied simply. “They cheered the wedding gown.’

  “And—and does it matter so much?”

  “Et comment!” explained Odette with a laugh. “Me, I am the only generous-minded one here,” she went on with frank self-appraisal. “I can bear to have others applauded. It is strange, but this is the way I am built.” And she gave Anthea the tragic smile which covered a singularly contented disposition and drifted away.

  Anthea was just trying to decide whether or not to try some overture towards Héloïse when Madame Moisant came in and applied her own particular brand of spur.

  “Come, stupid one!” she exclaimed cheerfully to the scowling, lovely Héloïse. “Come out of your corner and your sulks. You are to be photographed in Number Sixty-two—the lacquer-red tailleur. Fortunate girl! You are the first to be photographed. But hurry, hurry! It is for En Avant, and one does not keep them waiting.”

  The effect on Héloïse was magical. She was smiling long before Madame Moisant had finished, and was already getting ready to insinuate herself into Number Sixty-two.

  “To be chosen for photographing—that is the most subtle compliment of all,” she informed Anthea.

  “I’m sure it is,” Anthea said, wondering if she were now supposed to dissolve into tears of chagrin. “I hope it’s a colour photograph. Your skin looks marvellous against that red.”

  “True,” the other girl agreed, giving Anthea a very odd glance, as though she were trying to decide what ulterior meaning lay behind those flattering words.