Under the Stars of Paris

by Mary Burchell

  Anthea took the creaking lift to the fifth floor and then ascended the final flight of steps to the humble, remote level which the lift refused to serve. As in so many continental apartment houses, these top rooms were really intended for the maids who worked in the households below. But few households in this type of house could indulge in such luxuries now, so one could sometimes rent from the householder concerned one of these rooms.

  For a fairly modest monthly sum, Anthea had a small, not unattractive room with a sloping ceiling and a window which looked out over the roofs of Paris to the great circular dome of the Invalides, that noble structure where Napoleon, who menaced Europe, and Foch, who a hundred years later did much to save Europe, sleep side by side.

  She slept herself that night, dreamlessly and well, in spite of the fact that two ghosts from the past had risen to confront her at the moment when she would have said she could least cope with them.

  The next morning she was up in good time and walked to work, in cold but brilliant sunshine, along the Avenue Bosquet, across the Pont de l’Alma and up the Avenue Georges V. Everything to her looked bright and gay. The buildings, the Shining windows, the pale, clear sky, the enchanting articles arranged seductively in shop windows—even the faces of the people she passed. But perhaps that was just because of her new and hopeful mood.

  As she arrived at the entrance to Florian’s the great designer was himself alighting from his car, and at the doorway he came up with her.

  “Monsieur Florian! Monsieur Florian!” a voice cried urgently behind them, and instinctively they both turned. As they did so, a man standing a few feet away from them clicked a camera triumphantly, cried fervently, “Merci, monsieur!” and, leaping into a car which was standing at the kerb with its motor running, was driven off at great speed.

  For a moment Florian scowled. Then he shrugged and said,

  “Good morning, mademoiselle. I hope no one who sees that photograph thinks I designed the coat you are wearing.”

  “It’s rather a nice coat,” Anthea replied with spirit.

  “But I do not design ‘rather nice coats’,” Florian replied with a dry smile, and entered the portals he had made famous.

  Amused rather than chagrined, Anthea followed him, and immediately found herself caught up in the fresh fever of Press Day.

  “Does the strain never relax?” she found time to ask Odette, in the intervals of making-up for the morning show.

  “The strain? What strain?” enquired Odette. “I thought you went home soon after six last night.”

  “Oh, I did! But I felt a rag after the high-pressure atmosphere of the afternoon,” Anthea confessed. “And now it seems to be much the same tempo this morning.”

  Odette laughed good-naturedly.

  “I went home at two-thirty this morning,” she replied carelessly. “You will get used to it, petite.”

  “But what were you doing at that hour?”

  “Modelling for a big charity function which started at midnight. The fee was excellent—not to be refused,” said Odette, who was, like most Frenchwomen, an admirable business woman.

  “But on the very night after the opening show?”

  “This was what made me ‘news’,” Odette explained. “They like to say that Odette, the chief mannequin of Florian”—she had the good sense to lower her voice for this provocative phrase—“came almost straight from the opening show, etcetera, etcetera. It is good advertisement.”

  “I suppose it would be,” Anthea agreed. “Didn’t Monsieur Florian object?”

  “Why should he? From the other side, it is good publicity for him,” Odette pointed out.

  “But wasn’t he afraid you would be half dead this morning?” Anthea wanted to know.

  “On the contrary, he probably never thought of that,” Odette replied with a shrug. “Only if I dropped dead and diverted attention from his models would he be concerned. So long as I am half dead only and do not parade the fact he would not care.”

  “Oh, but”—Anthea looked doubtful at this—“he’s not so heartless as that, surely. In many ways, he is very kind.” She thought of his quick understanding over Michael’s presence yesterday.

  “In many ways he is also a monster,” replied Odette without heat.

  “I—is he?” Anthea was a good deal taken aback.

  “Of course. But if one designs like Florian one is entitled to be,” Odette declared philosophically.

  For Anthea this was a novel view of one’s daily life and one’s employer, even allowing for a certain degree of picturesque language on Odette’s part. But there was no time to pursue the matter just then. The hands of the clock were nearing eleven. Madame Moisant was entering the dressing-room with her list and her air of purpose.

  The Show was about to begin once more.

  To Anthea there was no Press representative in Europe—indeed, in the whole world—who could inspire her with the terrors which she had felt the previous day over the presence of two mere members of the public. In consequence, she went through the Show this time calmly, smilingly and with a good deal of natural enjoyment.

  There was less applause this morning, she noticed. A much more realistic, even blasé approach to the whole thing. The Press, it appeared, either was—or wished to appear—hard-boiled, and only what might be called the “dramatic” designs which might conceivably become “news” drew their grudging applause.

  Among these, however, were the ostrich frond dress and the wedding dress. In fact, when the Show was over, Anthea was called out almost immediately to be not only photographed but interviewed. And, for the first time in her life, she found that she herself was news.

  Before she was delivered over to the handful of questioners, Florian himself drew her aside abruptly and said,

  “Nothing about either your real identity or your love affairs, mind. It’s best to keep a slight aura of mystery.”

  Indignantly anxious as she was to assure him that she did not indulge in love affairs in the plural, Anthea had no time to linger and explain herself—even if Florian were interested, which was doubtful. She found herself surrounded and questioned and prompted, and it was all she could do to keep to the few simple, but sufficiently dramatic, facts of the real story.

  Presently Madame Moisant intervened, and then the photographers had their turn.

  After that, there was no time to do more than snatch a hasty sandwich before they were once more plunged into a repetition of the Show—this time for the international buyers.

  This time too the atmosphere was businesslike rather than social, but the applause was not for the dramatic news-worthy designs as during the morning. It was for the “saleable” designs.

  Fascinated, Anthea discovered that she was already beginning to distinguish the subtle differences in the various phases of this world. The buyers were not interested in her as news. Only in the fact that her black suit and the green lace dress would appeal to favoured customers in any exclusive store from Rio to Stockholm.

  A Swiss buyer—evidently a favourite of Madame Moisant—kept her some while after the Show was ended, and, when she finally returned to the dressing-room, she heard several of the mannequins speaking in raised tones, the clear voice of Héloïse dominating the babel with,

  “But of course she did it on purpose! Monsieur Florian would never arrange such a thing. She does not mind what she does to make publicity for herself! She must have waited for him—half an hour perhaps—with the photographer ready. It is shameless, I tell you! Shameless!”

  “My cue, I suppose,” Anthea told herself, with more calm philosophy than she felt, and she entered the dressing-room with resolution rather than eagerness.

  “What is it now, Héloïse?” she enquired, in so cool a tone that the chatter ceased abruptly. Then, as though bereft of words and letting actions speak for themselves, Héloïse silently thrust a newspaper under Anthea’s nose, with an air of ineffable accusation.

  Anthea, surprised, took the paper, glance
d at it and gasped. For splashed across the most prominent bit of the front page was a photograph of herself and Florian side by side at the entrance to the building, and above this ran the provocative enquiry, “Who is the Mystery Girl with Florian?”

  Undoubtedly it was excellent of them both. Even, she noticed with irrepressible amusement, of the coat which he had repudiated. Both were glancing over their shoulders with a faintly startled expression, and this gave them an air of not quite wishing to be seen together.

  Underneath the photograph was a solid block of letterpress, from which Anthea picked out some unfortunate phrases about her being Florian’s “inspiration”, “the unknown who saved the Show” and so on.

  She tossed the paper aside impatiently.

  “I can’t help it if some cheap paper chooses to make a sensational story out of it,” she said. “I don’t like it any more than you apparently do.”

  “Not like it! Can’t help it!” Héloïse gave a derisive laugh. “You did not perhaps have anything to do with seeing that the photographer was there at just this most fortunate moment?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Nor wait for the arrival of Monsieur Florian, so that you could——”

  “No, of course not,” Anthea said again. “It was the merest chance that we arrived at the same time. And I am not specially pleased, I tell you, to have my photograph splashed over the front page of a newspaper with that idiotic caption over the top.”

  Most of the other girls in the room laughed a little unbelievingly at this. But Héloïse was past dismissing anything with a laugh.

  “And I tell you,” she countered mockingly, “there is someone else who will not be specially pleased. You may think you were very clever to arrange this for yourself. But wait until Monsieur Florian sees it. He also does not like perhaps to be in a newspaper under this so idiotic caption. And when he hears that you arranged it——”

  “I did not arrange it,” Anthea reiterated patiently.

  But, before she could judge if her insistence had had any effect, the door opened once more and Odette came in, followed—Anthea saw, with a slight, uncomfortable tremor—by Florian himself.

  He was giving some instructions to Odette as he came, but under cover of his final words, Anthea heard Héloïse murmur triumphantly,

  “Now we shall see.”

  It was ridiculous to feel so apprehensive, but when she heard one of the other girls say in good-natured protest, “Oh, Héloïse, don’t make trouble,” she could not help wondering just how Florian would regard the whole incident.

  As he turned from Odette, Héloïse held out the paper to him with her sweetest smile.

  “Have you seen this, monsieur? Everyone—but everyone is talking about it.”

  Florian took the proffered sheet unhurriedly, and Anthea suddenly found her heart thumping.

  If only he would just laugh and toss it down contemptously! Treat the whole thing with the indifference it deserved!—But perhaps it was not a matter of indifference to a famous man to be presented to his public in that silly, slightly suggestive light.

  Florian did not toss the paper away. On the contrary he examined it with such thoroughness that Anthea felt apprehensively he must be weighing the effect of every unfortunate word and phrase.

  Then he looked up suddenly and said in that quiet but imperious way of his,

  “Gabrielle! Where is she?”

  Anthea came slowly forward.

  “Have you seen this?” he enquired, tapping the photograph with his beautiful, clever fingers.

  “Yes, monsieur.” She moistened her lips nervously. “But I was not——”

  “The coat photographs not badly after all, hein?” He went on studying the picture with interest. “If this line here were shortened—— Well”—at this point he did toss the sheet down as though it were of little importance—“in a photograph of this sort one does not see much.”

  Anthea controlled a great desire to laugh and laugh hysterically. But Héloïse exclaimed eagerly,

  “It was not so much the photograph as the story underneath that interested people, monsieur.”

  “Is there a story?” he asked indifferently.

  “But of course, monsieur! That is the point. All about the unknown who is such an inspiration to you. And then your arriving together in the morning, and about Mademoiselle Gabrielle being a ‘mystery girl’, as one says,” exclaimed Héloïse, whom Anthea could cheerfully have murdered at this moment.

  But Florian remained quite unmoved by all this, without even the curiosity to pick up the paper once again and see for himself what was written there. He merely smiled at Anthea, that faintly strained and yet boyish smile, and said,

  “Take no notice of Héloïse’s stories, petite. No one will take you for my mistress in that coat.”

  Then he went off, leaving Anthea divided between amusement, relief and a sort of chagrin which she could not quite explain to herself. While Héloïse, her big blue eyes dark with annoyance, muttered,

  “There are times when Monsieur Florian is almost stupid.”

  “He is not the only one,” Odette observed good-humouredly. Whereat the others laughed, and, to the best of Anthea’s belief, the incident was closed. For if Florian himself had not objected to the photograph, who else should?

  This evening she had to work later than the regular hour of departure, but it was all so interesting and every new phase was so fresh to her that, except for the weariness of standing so much, she found this no hardship. Then, just as she was at last getting ready to leave, one of the young assistant vendeuses came to say that she was wanted on the telephone.

  “Are you sure?” So few people knew her yet in her new identity that she felt there must have been a mistake.

  The little vendeuse, however, was quite sure. And, suddenly remembering Roger, Anthea went to take the call, with a lightening of her heart out of all proportion to the event.

  It was not Roger’s voice which answered her, however. It was Michael’s and what he said was,

  “Is that you, Anthea?—It is?—Look here, I must see you—urgently.”

  She was astounded that she could remain cool and collected. Only yesterday she had been wildly excited at the idea that he might be waiting outside for her. But this—this had come too suddenly, without preparation or time for conjecture. The very unexpectedness of it robbed it of its emotional urge.

  She heard herself say gently—almost politely,

  “But, Michael, I don’t think there can be anything urgent between you and me. Are you quite sure that you think it a good idea for us to meet now?”

  “Of course I am. Or I shouldn’t have telephoned. When can I see you? Tonight? How long do you have to stay at that—dress-house?”

  “I was just leaving,” she told him.

  “Then will you wait ten minutes and let me fetch you?”

  She didn’t answer that at once. She wanted madly to see him, of course, Now that the first moment of shock was past, something of yesterday’s eagerness was returning. But also—which was subtly different from yesterday—there was another impulse struggling in her against acceptance, but whether it was a sense of self-protection or just plain common sense she could not have said.

  “Are you still there?” he asked urgently.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, will you wait for me, Anthea? I won’t be long, I promise you.”

  “Very well,” she said slowly. “I’ll wait.”

  He rang off quickly—perhaps before she could change her mind—and she was left standing there with the receiver in her hand, telling herself she was a fool, and that she should never have undertaken to wait for Michael again, however superficially it was meant.

  She idled away a few minutes upstairs, then went down to the boutique where, through the window, she could have a view of the street outside.

  Mademoiselle Armande, who was in charge of the boutique, gave her a friendly smile and asked how the buyers’ show ha
d gone.

  “Very well, I think,” Anthea said. “Though I don’t really know enough to judge much yet. But Monsieur Florian seemed satisfied.”

  “So?” Mademoiselle Armande gave her a frankly interested glance. “Did he tell you so?”

  “Dear me, no!” Anthea laughed. “He doesn’t make any confidences to me. But Madame Moisant had a very satisfied air when she came out of his office just now. And he has been in a very good temper all the afternoon. Though perhaps he is usually that,” she added.

  This made Mademoiselle Armande laugh in her turn.

  “You wait!” she said. “Monsieur Florian can say more in two quiet sentences than most men in half an hour of angry repetition.”

  “Then I hope he will never be angry with me,” Anthea said rather soberly.

  The other woman shrugged philosophically.

  “If you give him no reason he will not be angry. He is logical, Monsieur Florian, I will say that for him.” Then she gave Anthea that frankly interested glance once more and said casually, “It was a good photograph of you and him together this morning.”

  “All the same, I wish it had not been taken,” retorted Anthea crisply. “Some employers would have been very much annoyed.”

  “And Monsieur Florian was not?”

  “He didn’t appear to be.”

  “Ah!” said Mademoiselle Armande, with the eloquence which only a Frenchwoman can put into that one syllable.

  But before Anthea could ask her just what she meant by that, there was the sound of a motor horn outside and, glancing out of the window, she saw Michael draw up his car at the kerb.

  “I must go! Someone is waiting for me,” Anthea exclaimed. “Good night, mademoiselle.” And she went quickly out of the building.

  Michael opened the door of the car as he saw her coming, and in some odd way she felt as though time had slipped. This should have been yesterday! She had run eagerly to meet him then—and it had been Roger instead.