Under the Stars of Paris

by Mary Burchell

  Then Anthea was called to display the green lace, and for a while she saw no more of Héloïse.

  She emerged from the dressing-room with a certain degree of trepidation. It was, after all, possible that Eve had lingered to do some immediate ordering—and even remotely possible that Michael had stayed behind too, in the hope, or at least intention, of seeing herself.

  But there was no sign of either of them. Neither the person she most feared, nor the one she most hoped, to see. Anthea was merely called on to display the green dress for a curiously unsophisticated young débutante who nearly wept with excitement and delight at the thought of so beautiful a creation being hers.

  The last few hours flew past, Anthea being called on several times to show her models, and by the time six o’clock approached they were sufficiently tired and drained of excitement to welcome the hour of release. It was just at this point that Héloïse—who had been called for further photographing outside the building—came to Anthea and said, quite agreeably,

  “Your beau is waiting for you outside in his car.”

  “My——? Who did you say was waiting for me?”

  “The good-looking man in the second row who smiled at you,” explained Héloïse, who had apparently missed nothing either at the moment of one of her own exits, or else by looking through some vantage point from the dressing room.

  “Is that so?” Anthea tried to speak very calmly, but she knew she had gone pale.

  So he was waiting for her! Michael was waiting for her outside, just as though everything Were not over—and more than over—between them. For some reason or other, he felt he must see her—speak to her, if only once again. Wildest apprehension and joy and sheer devouring curiosity assailed her.

  But if only he waited long enough! If only she were not delayed beyond the limit of his patience and determination! Everything might well depend on that, and though his determination was great, she remembered, his patience was not.

  No one was speaking yet of leaving. Several of the mannequins seemed to have work—photographic work and further display—which would apparently take them on almost into the small hours of the morning. But they were ones like Odette, who were well-known personalities in their own right. For herself it was surely not unreasonable to hope that she might escape almost on time.

  And then rescue appeared in the shape of Madame Moisant.

  “There is no need for you to stay more,” she told Anthea. “Go home now and rest well. Tomorrow morning is the Press Show. For this we must be our best and our most gracious, for we hate and fear them more than all. Then in the afternoon come the international buyers. You have been a good girl and done very well. But don’t let a little success go to your head. It was the dress which made the sensation, not you.”

  “Of course,” Anthea agreed. She would have agreed to anything in her happiness over her release, and, in any case, she firmly believed that it was Monsieur Florian’s dress which had been the success. She only had had the good fortune to wear it.

  Losing no time, she slipped into her street clothes—which looked strangely undramatic after the creations she had been putting on and off all the afternoon—and prepared to go.

  At the very last moment Monsieur Florian himself came into the dressing-room and, for a dreadful moment, Anthea thought that his imperious “Mademoiselle Gabrielle” was going to spell fatal delay. However, it seemed that he only wished to add a few words to the very brief praise he had been able to give her at the end of the Show.

  “It went well, mademoiselle, and I have to thank you for your part in it,” he said, with that brilliant but fleeting smile of his. “But if you helped to make my Show, it is also true that my Show has helped to make you. Tomorrow we will have you photographed in the wedding dress, and if you photograph as well as you look in real life, you should have a career before you.”

  “Oh, Monsieur Florian, thank you!” She too smiled and then held out her hand to him. After a moment he took it and held it briefly in his thin, beautiful fingers.

  “The—man who mattered, was he impressed?” Monsieur Florian enquired, with a flash of sentimental curiosity rare in a Frenchman.

  “I don’t know, monsieur.” She glanced down for a moment, then her dark eyes flashed up again in an almost mischievous glance. “But he is waiting outside in his car now.”

  “Eh bien!” Monsieur Florian laughed heartily for once and lapsed into his own language. “I must not keep you, mademoiselle. It seems his second thoughts may not have served him so well. But be sure that your second thoughts are wise ones. Good luck!” And he left her for more important matters.

  She ran down the stairs, calling out “Good night” to one or two of the vendeuses as though she had been there for years, and then through the boutique, where someone sprayed her automatically with some delicious perfume reserved for this great day.

  Finally she was past even the grandly uniformed commissionaire and out into the sharp, clear, exhilarating cold of the late February evening. Ranged along the kerb were several imposing-looking cars, and for a moment her glance travelled over them in doubt.

  But her appearance must have been long awaited, for, even as she hesitated, the door of a black car close at hand swung open and she saw a tall figure move over from the driving seat as though he were about to get out.

  With a sensation of joy which no resentment nor disillusionment could dim, she ran across the pavement towards the car.

  Then she stopped short, feeling as though the ground had dropped away in front of her. For the man who got out of the car was not Michael at all. It was Eve Armoor’s cousin, whose very name escaped her in this moment of abysmal disappointment.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling down at her. “I was beginning to wonder if they kept you in all night after a jamboree of this sort. But I decided that if you ever did escape you’d probably be pretty fagged and hungry after all that standing around, and I thought maybe you might like me to take you some quiet place for dinner.”

  It was a second or two before his meaning penetrated, because suddenly all her thought processes had slowed down so that she could take in nothing but the fact that Michael had not been waiting for her, after all.

  “Why—how kind of you,” she heard herself say, in a very creditable, conventional tone. “But I don’t think I——” She stopped, aware all at once that she was dog-tired and ravenous, and that, though the bottom had dropped out of her world all over again, the offer of a good meal was not to be despised in the lean week that would be hers until she earned her first pay packet.

  “Yes, I am hungry,” she asserted. “Hungry and flat out with weariness. If you’ll really be so sweet as to take me somewhere to eat, and not expect me to be wildly entertaining and scintillating, then I’ll remember you with gratitude for the rest of my days.”

  He laughed, taking the figure of speech for the light absurdity it was. But, in point of fact, as he handed her into the car and took his seat beside her, she did at least remember what his name was. Which was a help if she was to spend even part of the evening with him.

  He didn’t ask her where she wanted to go. He seemed to sense that she wanted no demands made upon her—not even that she should have to make so small a decision. But he drove off with an air of decision towards the left bank of the river, and it was some minutes before he spoke at all. Then he said, in a matter-of-fact tone,

  “It was quite a surprise, seeing you there this afternoon.”

  She laughed slightly, trying hard not to make it either hurt or bitter in tone.

  “It was quite a surprise seeing you,” she told him drily. “All of you.”

  “Yes—I’m sorry. I hadn’t the faintest idea you worked there, of course, or I’d never have arranged for them to come.”

  “Oh—it was your arrangement, was it?”

  “In a way—yes. They—my cousin is in Paris for a week or so to do some shopping——” He stopped, kicked himself, she rather thought, and began again. “Y
ou know how it is. All the girls think of Paris and dress shows as being synonymous.”

  “It’s quite all right,” she said wearily—almost gently. “I quite understand that she is here to buy her trousseau and probably her wedding dress. It gave her a real kick this afternoon to realize that she might wear in actual fact the wedding dress I was just showing as a model. Only Michael doesn’t want it that way, does he?”

  There was a short silence, then the man beside her said, “You’ve got it all taped so accurately that I don’t know it’s much good my adding anything. Except that she won’t have that particular dress, if it’s of any importance to you.”

  “Did Michael insist?”

  “Well, he was pretty emphatic. And I managed to make her see she’d be a damned fool if she tried to drive him.”

  “Thank you,” Anthea said. “It would have been—hard being the mannequin, in the circumstances.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he agreed drily. And then, again in that matter-of-fact tone, “You’re darned good at your job. Most of those girls just look like lovely dummies. But you’re real all the time.”

  She laughed at that, accountably flattered as well as pleased.

  “Tell me some more things like that,” she said almost gaily. “You’re talking to the most inexperienced mannequin in Paris. It’s the first show I’ve ever done.”

  “I don’t believe it!” He glanced at her, incredulous, amused and admiring.

  “It’s true.” She felt reckless, suddenly, and light-hearted—or was it light-headed? “I’ll tell you the whole story presently, when we’ve had some food.”

  “Agreed,” he said, and drew the car to a standstill just round the corner from a small, gay restaurant where one could look out across the water to the soaring lines of Notre-Dame.

  And until they had disposed of their reviving consommé, with thin crisp batons of bread to accompany it, and the succulent duckling piquantly and sharply dressed with sections of orange, he determinedly kept the conversation on light and impersonal subjects.

  Then, over coffee and the deliciously creamy dessert which Anthea shamelessly selected, in defiance of Madame Moisant’s precepts, he said,

  “Now tell me how you came to be a mannequin and the Success of the Show.”

  “I don’t know that I’d claim to be that, exactly,” Anthea murmured.

  “Of course you were!” Even your little feathered friend couldn’t compete, for all her hip-waggling.”

  “Oh——” Anthea had to laugh at this description of Héloïse. And she laughed again a good many times, she found, over the story of her incredible escapade. He laughed too, giving her the impression that she was being very witty and entertaining, though she had thought when she first came out that she would not be able to utter anything but strained platitudes.

  Presently she realized that he was not the only one who was enjoying himself. Whether it was the good food she had eaten, or the excellent red wine which had accompanied it, whether it was anything to do with finding herself financially in quiet waters after weeks of strain and anxiety, she could not have said. Perhaps it was something of all three. But the plain fact was that she was extracting a great deal of amusement and pleasure from this evening with Eve Armoor’s cousin.

  It was with a little sigh of regret that she finally said,

  “I’m afraid I should go now. We’re supposed to get all the rest we can for further endurance tests ahead.”

  He called for their bill immediately, without making any attempt to prolong the evening—a mark of real consideration which she counted to his credit. All he did say, to mark his keen enjoyment, was that he hoped she would agree to their doing this again.

  She hesitated just a second and he grinned at her and said,

  “I can’t help being Eve’s cousin, you know. You could take the view that compensations, rather than penalties, were called for.”

  She laughed a little reluctantly and bit her lip. But she ended by saying that she would be very happy to come out with him another time.

  He drove her home then, in spite of her protests that she could go by Métro if he would drop her at the nearest station. And, as they neared the long street of old-fashioned houses in which Anthea lived, he said,

  “I want to ask you something, but don’t be either hurt or insulted, will you?”

  “Oh”—she winced apprehensively—“nothing about Michael, please!”

  “Good lord, of course not! What sort of interfering ass do you think I am? No—the fact is that, though you told me a most gay and entertaining story of how you came to be acting as a mannequin in Florian’s salon, I’m somehow left with the impression that you must be darned short of money until your first week’s or month’s salary comes in. Are you, Anthea? And will you let me—in the most respectable and Diplomatic Service manner possible—make good that shortage?”

  “Oh—Roger——” She hadn’t really meant them to be on Christian names terms quite so quickly, but it was difficult to be formal with anyone so completely tactful and understanding. “It’s terribly nice of you”—she actually patted his arm—“and if I were absolutely desperate I would let you. But I’m paid at the end of the week, and provided I’m very, very careful——”

  “But do you have to be very, very careful, now an alternative is offered?” he wanted to know.

  “I’d rather, if I can manage it.”

  “But if you can’t, will you tell me? I don’t like the idea of your starving in a Paris attic, like some operatic heroine.” In spite of his laughing words, his tone was serious.

  “All right. I promise that, if I can’t manage to eat reasonably well without help, I’ll let you lend me some,” she said sincerely. “And whether I have to accept the offer or not, I’ll never, never forget that you made it, Roger, and in such nice terms.”

  “My dear girl, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just a matter of common sense and book-keeping.”

  She laughed softly.

  “Oh, no. It’s of a piece with everything else you’ve done and said. I simply can’t imagine why you’ve gone out of your way to be so kind to a virtual stranger.”

  “No?” He gave her an odd, smiling little glance, and then suddenly he looked rather grim and somehow older than she had supposed him to be. “You can set it down to the account of ‘fellow-feeling’, Anthea. I too was turned down flat by the girl I was crazy about. I know pretty accurately what you’ve been feeling the last few months.”

  Chapter Three

  Anthea looked at Roger Senloe, and for the first time she saw him as a person. Not just Eve Armoor’s cousin. Not just the man who had providentially taken her out and distracted her thoughts on this most difficult evening. But as someone in his own right. Someone who also had suffered a searing experience—and come out of it a slightly cynical but curiously likeable person.

  She saw, as though these details appeared for the first time, that his eyes, besides being light and bright, were penetrating, that his features were strongly marked and significant, and that his expression was that of a man who knew what he wanted and nearly always got it.

  Not quite always. Some girl—the girl—had turned him down, and in circumstances that had hurt enough to give him an uncanny insight into her own experience.

  “I’m so very sorry,” she said quietly. “Was it—a long time ago?”

  “Not long enough,” he told her with a slight grimace.

  He had stopped the car now before her house, but she still sat there, staring thoughtfully ahead, as though she saw more than the quiet, empty street.

  “It’s the way it keeps on coming back that makes it so difficult, isn’t it?” she said slowly. “You think you have yourself in hand, and that it will really be better soon, and then something happens which puts you back just where you were, and you have to start being heroic all over again. Only suddenly you know you’re not even being heroic. Just foolish and rather pitiable. And then that hurts most of all.”r />
  “Poor child,” he said, but it sounded more bracing, somehow, than Monsieur Florian’s “pauvre petite.” “You’ve had a worse packet than I. At least I had my work and no anxiety about being able to stand on my own feet in that sense.”

  She glanced up then, the wistfulness of her smile suddenly banished—or almost so—in a flash of roguishness.

  “I can stand on my own feet too, after today,” she told him. “That’s why I’d rather not take anything if I can help it. Somehow, as Gabrielle I can face the world. Even—even Michael and Eve. I’ve proved it. Haven’t I?—haven’t I?” And suddenly her voice broke a little because of the rush of almost childish panic and the frantic necessity for reassurance.

  “You did about the bravest thing I’ve ever seen this afternoon,” Roger Senloe told her, and his matter-of-fact tone steadied her as nothing else could have done. “You’ll probably never again have to do anything so hard. Remember that.”

  “Oh, I can’t tell you what you do to my morale when you say something like that!” She managed to smile almost brilliantly again.

  “And I can’t tell you what it does to my morale to take out the most sensational mannequin in Paris,” he retorted lightly.

  “That’s not very accurate, you know,” she protested with a laugh.

  “It’s going to be,” he assured her. “And before you get dated up by all the other fellows is it a bargain that we go out together sometimes, for the benefit of our respective morales? After all, neither of us will ever have to pretend with the other. We know we’re a bit disillusioned and a bit cowardly about certain patches in our past. It gives us a sort of mutual understanding.”

  She laughed a little, but the odd idea appealed to her. Like that other crazy idea which had landed her eventually in Florian’s.

  “All right,” she said. “It’s a bargain—for the future. But now it is really good night—and a thousand thanks.”

  He told her where she could get in touch with him if she needed to do so, and then waited while she took out her key and opened the great heavy door of the house where she lived. Then, with a final wave, he drove off, leaving her to step into the large, gloomy hall of a house which had once known magnificence, but so long ago that there were hardly any traces of it left.