The Wedding Dress

by Mary Burchell

  “He is very charming,” Marcelle repeated earnestly.

  “Yes, I know.” She could well imagine that the tall, distinguished Paul would appeal to Marcelle. “But I wish he wouldn’t wait, just the same. Could you possibly—”

  “He is not the kind to be put off,” Marcelle declared, with considerable acumen. “I would not wish to try, Loraine. And now I must go.” Which she did, with all speed.

  There was nothing else for it. Loraine just had to continue with her duties for another half-hour, fretting all the time over the knowledge that she would have to appear both ungrateful and obstinate when she did finally join Paul.

  She was free at last, however, and resolutely telling herself that this time she must not be deflected from her purpose, she ran downstairs and through the gay boutique where Marcelle was painstakingly putting away stock.

  “He is still there,” she said over her shoulder, but whether in congratulation or warning, it was hard to say.

  “I don’t see him.” Loraine gave a quick glance through the boutique window, but there was no sign of Paul’s car anywhere.

  “There—in the big grey Daimler, right opposite the door.” Marcelle left her work and came to stand beside Loraine and point out the car.

  “That car? But Paul’s car is—Oh!”

  Suddenly the color flooded into Loraine’s face and her heart began to beat fast and unevenly. For the man who was waiting in the grey Daimler was not Paul. It was Philip.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “PHILIP!”

  Hardly waiting to call goodnight to Marcelle, Loraine wrenched open the door of the boutique and ran out to the waiting car.

  “Oh, Philip, how wonderful that you’ve come!” She bent down to greet him through the open window. “At least—” Suddenly she remembered that he might have come in a mood of grim inquiry rather than friendly reconciliation, and her smile faded anxiously—”at least, I hope it is.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be?” He smiled at her in the old way, as he opened the door, and she felt her heart warm almost physically, as though it literally basked in the rays of that glorious moment. “Come on—I’m taking you to supper, and I’m not even listening to any excuses.”

  “You won’t have to,” she informed him happily, as she slipped into the seat beside him. “Oh, Philip, what a lovely surprise!”

  “But I sent up word that I’d be waiting for you. Didn’t you get the message?” he inquired.

  “Yes. But you were just described as a very charming English monsieur. I thought—”

  “What did you think—with your long trail of admirers?” he wanted to know, but his tone was the half teasing, half affectionate one she loved.

  “I thought—it was Paul,” she explained apologetically.

  “I see.” But there was no suggestion in his voice that the mention of Paul awoke either fury or dismay. “I trust I’m not a disappointment.”

  “No,” she said simply. “I was so glad it was you that I even forgot you might still be angry with me.”

  “I was not angry with you at any time, Loraine,” he informed her. And she thought there was a slight emphasis on the ‘you ’, which suggested all sorts of interesting implications.

  “Not after that dreadful scene in the fitting-room, when Madame Moisant snatched me away before I could even explain my silly behavior?”

  “I don’t know quite what I felt then,” he admitted, frowning even now at the recollection. “I was so bewildered and appalled and—yes, I was angry, I suppose. But then one tends to be angry when anything hurts a great deal.”

  “Oh, Philip, I’m so sorry. Did the discovery of my connection with Paul really hurt you?”

  “No darling. Not that. It was the feeling of being in some horrible mystery. And I thought at first—Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought now, because it was idiotic of me ever to think of such a thing in connection with you,” he declared. “But there are still a great many questions I want to ask.”

  “I’ll answer them all—willingly,” she told him, with a great sigh of relief. “It will be wonderful not to have any secrets any more. I hope we’re going somewhere quiet, where we can talk for ages.”

  “Leave that to me,” he said—which she willingly did. And ten minutes later they were seated opposite each other at a corner table, in a quiet, unpretentious little restaurant, where the checked cloths and the thick china did nothing to detract from the delicious food.

  “Now,” he smiled at her as though the very sight of her made him contented, “the first question is why, for heaven’s sake, did you think it necessary to conceal the fact that you were Paul Cardine’s ward?”

  “I thought you might not want to see any more of me if you knew.”

  “But, you absurd child, there was no harm in being his ward.”

  “No. But there could have been a great deal of embarrassment—both for him and for you. It wasn’t that I thought you would blame me in any way. It was just that I thought you—you might decide it was all too difficult and that the best thing was to—drop me as gracefully as possible.”

  “You don’t think much of me as a friend, do you?” He smiled reproachfully at her.

  “I do, Philip, I do! But I couldn’t help seeing how awkward the whole thing could be. Equally, I decided not to tell Paul, in case he forbade me to see you any more.”

  “Would you have taken any notice, if he had done such a thing?” he asked curiously.

  “No. But it might have made things very awkward at home.”

  He laughed at that and said, “You’re a darling,” in the way he used to before Elinor had complicated the issue.

  “So you trod your tightrope between us, deceiving both of us?” He laughed again, but this time with a note of admiration in his voice.

  “I didn’t like deceiving either of you,” she said quickly, as she had to Paul. But, unlike her guardian, he grinned sceptically and said:

  “I bet you did! Girls always love a bit of mystery.”

  “I hated it!” she told him almost passionately. “And, in the end, I don’t think it served me particularly well, for I had to make excuses not to see you, for fear you should find out.”

  “How did you think I might find out, Loraine?”

  “The way you did in the end. By Elinor connecting Paul’s telephone number with me.”

  He looked at her curiously and said, “How long had Elinor known about the telephone number?”

  “I—don’t know.” She dropped her eyes, for, once more, she felt she could not be the one to expose Elinor’s shabby behavior. “You’d better ask her about that, Philip,”

  “I can’t very well.”

  “You mean it’s—difficult to discuss the whole thing with her?”

  “No. I mean it’s virtually impossible to discuss anything with her,” Philip said calmly, “since we broke off our engagement this afternoon.”

  O-oh!’ She glanced up quickly and then down again. And, because convention has a curious compulsion upon all of us, she added, “I’m sorry,” and then—“Was it about this unhappy business?”

  “Not entirely. I don’t think we were very well suited anyway, Loraine.”

  “Perhaps—not.” She glanced up again, and it struck her, for the first time, that under all that charm and ease of manner, Philip could be curiously hard.

  It was not that he looked angry. He merely looked coldly indifferent, as though he had closed a book which had failed to interest him after all.

  There was quite a long silence. Then she said, with a rather nervous little laugh:

  “I find it hard to believe that everything has changed so much since Madame Moisant hurried me from the scene. I imagined I should find the greatest difficulty in explaining my motives—my behavior—to you. I left you looking angry and stunned, and, hardly more than twenty-four hours later, you arrive outside the salon, smiling and full of understanding. Almost as though someone had forestalled me, and told the tale better than I could tell i
t myself.”

  “Someone did forestall you, Loraine.” He smiled slightly. “And—yes, made a very good job of telling the story, I suppose.”

  “Someone?” She opened her eyes wide in astonishment. “Someone told you the real position? But—how could anyone? Do you mean,” her admiration for Mrs. Otway’s shrewdness suddenly bounded up, “do you mean that your mother worked it out and convinced you that—”

  “No, Not my mother, dear. Your guardian.”

  “Paul? You can’t mean it! But he hates—” She put her hands to her lips.

  “Yes, I suppose he does hate me,” agreed Philip, with an air of smiling reflection. “He certainly gave no impression of appreciating my special charm .But we were extremely polite and civilized to each other and—”

  “How did you meet?” she interrupted incredulously.

  “We didn’t meet—if you mean a chance meeting. He rang me up and asked if he could come and see me this morning.”

  “He—did that?” she said softly. “It must have been a real sacrifice of pride.”

  “How about my pride?” inquired Philip amusedly.

  “You aren’t proud—in the way Paul is. And, anyway, you weren’t the injured party,” Loraine retorted, and not until she saw Philip make a slight face did she realize how determinedly she was identifying herself with her guardian. “But it was nice of you to see him,” she added quickly.

  “I thought so too,” Philip agreed carelessly, and she found herself wondering if he had adopted that smiling, half mocking air towards Paul. Her guardian would have loathed it, she supposed.

  “So Paul made it his business to tell you the true situation.” Again she spoke half to herself and, putting her elbows on the table, she cupped her chin in her hands and stared thoughtfully at Philip. “You see now why I defended him, that time you told me he was a tough nut.”

  “I see that you might have felt some sort of family loyalty, as it were,” he conceded with a smile. “I still see no reason to query the general estimate. He’s not a soft character.”

  “Not soft! Of course not. But he’s kind and imaginative and—and sensitive.”

  “I feel bound to say he didn’t strike me that way,” Philip said drily.

  “But don’t you see that it was sensitive of him to realize my distress—and both kind and imaginative to go and put things right on my behalf?” she said earnestly.

  “I see that you like to explain his action that way,” Philip told her indulgently. “For my part, I’m more inclined to think he had other motives. Human perhaps, but not quite so pure and sensitive.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She was indignant, because she felt that that undercurrent of mockery in Philip’s voice was intended for Paul, towards whom she felt very tender and grateful at this moment.

  “Don’t you, my sweet? That’s because you’re a nice, kind unsuspicious girl,” he told her teasingly. “But I—being a worldly, rather cynical sort of chap—can’t help thinking that probably your guardian saw a priceless opportunity to make trouble between me and Elinor. And if that was his idea”—Philip shrugged—“he succeeded.”

  “He wouldn’t think along those lines at all!” Loraine declared angrily. “And anyway—”

  She stopped, for suddenly it occurred to her how little she really knew of her guardian and his personal affairs. She did remember his saying, when he first referred to the crisis of his broken engagement, that he took a lot of convincing that he was beaten. Had he been waiting all this time, ready to seize the first advantage offered—still refusing to believe that he had lost Elinor irretrievably?

  She found she disliked the idea intensely, and she felt annoyed with Philip—as far as she could feel annoyed with him, that was to say—when he went on reflectively: “He always took the break with Elinor very badly. I suppose he’s been waiting for a chance like this, and suddenly saw the possibility of driving a wedge between us if he could make me see her as intriguing against me and my friends.”

  “If he saw her as clearly as that, I don’t know why he should hope to get her back himself,” said Loraine shortly.

  “Dear child! A man in love doesn’t mind much if his girl plays a dirty trick on someone else,” Philip assured her lightly.

  “And you think that Paul is—is a man in love?”

  “I have no doubt of it. I see no other reason why he should have done what he did.”

  “You don’t think it a sufficient reason that he should worry about my peace of mind and want to put things right for me?”

  “I don’t think Paul Cardine ticks that way,” Philip said, with a smiling shake of his head. “Besides, he said something about an ulterior motive—”

  “What ulterior motive?” she asked quickly.

  “I didn’t pay much attention, really,” Philip confessed. “Only, when I thanked him—rather coldly and correctly, of course—for taking the trouble to clarify the situation, he said in that slightly offensive way of his that I needn’t think it was for the sake of my blue eyes and that he had his own ulterior motive. Something of the sort.”

  “Oh,” said Loraine very soberly. “Oh—I see. Do you think that he and Elinor will now—will now—”

  “Loraine dear, don’t ask me to speculate on Elinor’s future,” he begged, with a slight grimace. “Still less on the future of Paul Cardine. I’m bound to say that the thought of both of them leaves me strangely cold just now.”

  “Oh, yes—I do understand!” She reached out her hand and lightly covered his as it lay on the table. “Forgive me for being so tactless. You can’t be feeling very happy tonight, however much you may tell yourself that your engagement was a mistake.”

  “Funny you should say that.” He turned his hand slowly and clasped hers. “As a matter of fact, I was just thinking how oddly happy I do feel, and that it was not quite decent of me to be so contented, in the circumstances.” She laughed softly at that and allowed her hand to remain in his for some seconds before she drew it gently away.

  “Philip dear, I ought to be going. It’s been wonderful to have this long talk with you, and I’ve enjoyed my delicious supper all the more for being with you. But life is very hectic just now at Florian’s—and I shall feel dead tomorrow unless I get a good night’s sleep.”

  Unlike her guardian, he tried to persuade her to stay up a little longer. But she not only knew her own physical limitations—she sensed unerringly that the moment had come when he should be left to some quiet reflection. She had no wish to rush him from one emotional crisis to another, with the possibility of his wondering subsequently if he had acted too much on impulse.

  And so she insisted on their going. He yielded with a good grace in the end, and drove her home. But he kissed her with less than his customary lightness when he bade her goodnight.

  “When do I see you again?” he asked, holding her hand tightly so that she could not escape.

  “Soon, soon—” she promised blithely. “I’ll ring you up when life is less demanding. Or you can ring me—now.”

  “At Paul Cardine’s number?” He laughed and made a face. But he let her go then, and she ran into the house, laughed a little to herself at the entrancing way of life had changed since she had left the place that morning.

  When she entered the flat she saw immediately that there was a light in the drawing-room and she guessed that Paul was, if not waiting for her, at least mildly curious about what she had been doing.

  It was difficult not to feel a trifle self-conscious as she went in, but she managed to say quite casually:

  “Hallo—so you’re still up?”

  “It’s not late for guardians,” he told her a little disagreeably. “Only for overworked wards. Where have you been all this time?”

  “I went out to supper—with Philip.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “No.”

  She came and stood beside his chair. But he flicked over the pages of his book and gave the impres
sion of paying scant attention to her—an attitude which both amused and annoyed her.

  She could not have said, quite what moved her to do so but, without saying anything, she bent down and kissed his cheek.

  Immediately he stopped turning the pages of his book and asked drily, “What’s that for?”

  “You know perfectly well! And there’s no need to be ashamed of your good deeds.”

  He laughed then and turned his head to look at her. But he said, “I’m not aware of having performed any specially good deeds today.”

  “Didn’t you go to Philip—which you must have absolutely hated doing—and straighten out my affairs for me?”

  “Part of my duties as a guardian,” he told her. “You were too much occupied to attend to the matter yourself. But I wouldn’t have anyone—not even a smug ass like Philip Otway—thinking you were living here in some sort of questionable relationship with me.”

  “You do have a graceful way of putting things, don’t you?” she said crossly, because she resented his description of Philip, even while she knew it was unreasonable of her to expect either man to do the other justice.

  “I expect I’m in a bad temper,” he replied, with an extraordinarily disarming smile. “I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She rubbed her hand up and down his arm in a reassuring little gesture. “Shall I tell you something that will put you in a good temper?”

  “If you like.” He smiled at her indulgently.

  “Well—” she was slightly scared now she had come to the moment and she could find no very delicate way of conveying the information—“Philip and Elinor have broken off their engagement.”

  This time, she noticed, not only his hand but every bit of him seemed to become absolutely still. Then he said:

  “You think that’s something to put me in a good temper?”