Carmella had an apartment on one of the quais, in a tall, narrow house that must once have been very dignified indeed. Now it was split up into a couple of maisonettes, and Carmella had the one that comprised the first and second floor. She had decorated the place herself, and although a little dark it was as exotic as she was. When the wall lights were switched on in the downstairs salon the luxury of the furnishings seemed to rush at one, and the two bedrooms were almost sensuously luxurious as well. Carmella’s had a champagne carpet and oyster satin draperies, and her bed had a kind of canopy above it composed of wine-dark velvet. Rose’s - or the room that was normally the guest-room - was in lavender pink and two tones of grey.
Carmella’s housekeeper, a typical sober Frenchwoman of the respectable working classes, brought them afternoon tea in the salon, and Carmella poured out. While she quickly disposed of some fingers of hot, buttered toast and a couple of cream-filled cakes, she outlined to Rose her plans for the next few days.
“If this wedding is to take place fairly soon we have a lot to do, and I shall expect you to co-operate with me very fully.” She smiled briefly at Rose. “I shall make all your appointments for you, and supervise all your fittings, and so forth, and things are bound to be a bit hectic until we’ve got on top of them. Hectic for me as well as you. But, whenever possible, you must rest ... Otherwise you will be exhausted before the wedding!” with a still briefer smile. “And I shall have concerns of my own to attend to at times, so naturally we won’t always be together.”
“You’re very kind to put yourself out on my account,” Rose said formally.
“Not at all. But Guy must understand that he can’t have you to himself all the time, or even a part of the time, until you are married. The opportunity to show you Paris will be his when you’re his wife, but until then you must both of you be patient,” with a dry curve to the full red lips. “If I’m to take you in hand I must be obeyed in minor matters as well as major ones, and tonight I suggest that you slip away early and get a good night’s rest before your first full day tomorrow.”
“Of course, if you - if you think I should,” Rose agreed quietly.
“I do. I’m taking you to see Monsieur Delavel at ten tomorrow morning, and it’s highly important that you should look your best. Guy won’t mind if you leave us immediately after dinner, and of course I will excuse you,” with a broader smile.
So, when Guy arrived that night, he was told by Carmella in a long dinner dress of white crepe that his fiancée was to retire early, and there was to be absolutely no dispute about it. Absolutely no dispute! She wagged a finger at him. The next day, perhaps, he should see her at lunch, but there could be nothing definite about it, and he must just learn to be patient. After all, he could look forward to a lifetime in Rose’s company, and a few days without her now need not mean very much.
Guy frowned and looked awkward, and objected on the grounds that Rose could do any shopping that was necessary once she was married. He had planned to show her Paris without any loss of time, but it appeared that he had also planned without his one-time love. She was able to remain perfectly charming to him, but she also remained adamant. Rose had to be prepared for marriage, and it was Carmella’s pleasant task to supervise the preparations! She would discharge that self-appointed task to the best of her ability, and by the time she was through they would both be ready to thank her. But in the meantime!...
She signalled to Rose when Marie had brought in the coffee after an exquisitely cooked and served dinner in the elegant Empire dining-room, and hastily swallowing a shell-like cup full of coffee Rose rose and said her goodnights rather awkwardly.
Guy looked at her and instantly protested, and then made a shrugging movement with his shoulders and let her go. His blue eyes were faintly whimsical as he accompanied Rose to the door, but, on the point of also accompanying her out into the tiny hall, he was somewhat peremptorily called back by Carmella.
“I have a pair of miniatures I want to show you, Guy. In fact, I’ve been longing to show them to you ... I’m quite certain one is of Marie Antoinette. Do come and tell me what you think!”
Guy lifted Rose’s hand to his lips and kissed it gently.
“Go to bed, Rose. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Will you?” she whispered, and her heavy brown eyes lightened a little. “I hope so!”
When he had closed the door he went back to the widow, and she smiled at him strangely.
“Poor Guy! Almost I could believe you’re lovesick after all these years! Or is it just that you believe you’re doing the right thing?”
The next day was the beginning of a strange period for Rose, and apart from sharing a luncheon table with her fiancée, and drinking an aperitif with him in the evenings, she saw little or nothing of Guy. Carmella Cavendish saw to that.
She drew up a time-table for her protégée that was certainly exhausting, and Rose rushed from one appointment to another with scarcely any time lag between. She seemed to spend her days in taxis, being whirled here and there, and sometimes Carmella accompanied her, and sometimes she was alone. But always Carmella stated very definitely over the telephone beforehand what it was that she wanted, or didn’t want done, for Rose, and since she had impeccable taste, and the will to see her favourite ideas carried out, there was never any argument over her instructions, or the slightest attempt to depart from them.
In London she had merely required alterations to existing models, but now things were being specially created for Rose. There were day dresses and evening dresses, trouser suits and coats. There were fabulous piles of underwear, hand-made shoes and hand-bags. Guy’s money paid for everything, of course, and as he had such a lot of it it simply didn’t matter about the size of the bill that was run up. Only Rose worried about it, and after a long day of standing for hours on end in an overheated salon with a perfect bevy of black-eyed vendeuses kneeling at her feet, and fluttering all about her, while a sharper-eyed woman issued the instructions, she sometimes wondered whether she oughtn’t to protest and make some effort, at least, to check the wild orgy of spending that Carmella Cavendish was indulging in on her behalf.
Not, as she recognized - when the words of protest rose in her throat - that it would do any good, for Carmella was too used to handling money to have very much awe of it. Her husband had left her a very wealthy woman, and Guy was a recognized millionaire, so the idea of economy would probably have made her laugh.
What, she would have inquired, was money for? And when a man was taking a bride it was his duty to equip her if she couldn’t equip herself!
But Rose’s views were not in the least similar, and she disliked having money spent on her before she had any right to it. And the thought of her own poverty-stricken condition, by comparison with that of her future husband, provided its own constant doubts. In spite of the faint confidence she had begun to have in him since that night in Carmella’s cottage she couldn’t really understand why Guy was lifting her out of the common rut and placing her on his own level. Why he wanted her for a wife.
She saw so little of him now that this riotous whirl of spending had begun that she couldn’t even find the opportunity to protest about it to him. Carmella was always there, when they were together, and when they were not together she suspected that he acceded to the imperious demands of her hostess and escorted her wherever she wanted to go. While Rose was obeying instructions and snatching a brief rest on her bed in the afternoons - sometimes with a cool pack on her forehead to ease her aching head, her shoes kicked off to ease her throbbing feet - Carmella and Guy were frequently drinking tea, and discussing “plans”, in one of the more fashionable of the afternoon haunts of Paris, while a stringed orchestra dispensed soft dance music, and couples moved languidly on the polished floor. And while Rose was still under the drier at the hairdresser’s, or surrounded by yards of filmy fabric or silk jersey cloth or cashmere, they were sipping their first pre-dinner cocktail in Carmella’s elegant maisonette, or
in a well-known bar.
Even if he was looking forward to marrying Rose the task of escorting Carmella could not have been actively disagreeable to Guy, and when they did meet and he gave her rather a rueful smile, but uttered no actual protest, Rose’s heart plummeted into her stomach at the thought that he might have enjoyed it very much indeed.
Having seen the look on his face when Carmella came back into his life she couldn’t believe that he had got over her altogether. And having had an opportunity to observe them together at Tregony’s Choice - particularly during that first week when the widow came back without encumbrances - it seemed highly unlikely to Rose that he could have got over her.
He had been desperately in love ... agonizingly in love!
And now he was being sweet and charming to Rose, and very tender to her sometimes, and she didn’t understand it. She was afraid to understand it!
Only once did he put his foot down firmly and say that he wanted to show Rose the house in Paris that had belonged to his family for a great many years, and he didn’t invite Carmella to accompany them. But Carmella took it for granted that they would want her to visit the house with them, and when they drove into the forecourt in Guy’s silvery-grey car she was sitting beside him at the wheel as if it was her right, and Rose as usual had been delegated to the back seat.
And she was the first to enter the house, which was a fine example of a well-preserved family mansion filled with ugly Victorian furniture. But, as Carmella remarked with a wave of her hand, the furniture could go, and the whole place be given an entirely new aspect if Guy would say the word, and he and Rose proposed to live there at some time or other. It would make an excellent headquarters whenever they were on the Continent, and they could give wonderful parties in the great room that was more like a grand salon.
“Do you remember that you and I had plans for this place, Guy?” she said with a sudden softness in her voice, when they were all three standing in the middle of the vast gold carpet that covered the floor of the salon. She looked at him out of her dark, compelling eyes, and Rose could feel the memories come flocking back to him in the shadowy, silent room. “We were going to start a cult amongst all our wittiest and most entertaining friends, and invite them here to spectacular evenings at least once every week. No one was to be invited who was in the least dull or ordinary! ...” She looked sideways at Rose, and the latter moved awkwardly over to the window. There were to be musical evenings too, magnificent dinner parties, and a grand ball once a year. I was to have my dress copied from one of the portraits at Willowfield Hall...”
She had moved imperceptibly nearer to Guy, and her hand went out and touched his sleeve as if her intention was to rid it of a piece of fluff.
“Do you remember all those foolish dreams, Guy?” looking up soberly into his face. “And the conviction that we had that your grandmother would have approved of everything we did, because she was so gay and alive herself? ‘You must marry someone who can lift you to the heights,’ she wrote you once in a letter; ‘otherwise the marriage will be a failure.’ ” Her voice seemed to tremble for a moment, and then developed a break. “And I was the one who spoiled things, because I saw someone else...”
Guy moved as if the sudden tension she had created was too much for him, and if Rose hadn’t been staring out woodenly at the forecourt she would have realized he was looking for her.
“I’m sorry, Guy!” Carmella’s hand touched his sleeve appealingly, and this time there was appeal in the deep, dark eyes. “I know Rose is listening, and that I ought not to say this sort of thing here and now; but if I could undo the past I would, and everything would be very different! I made you unhappy, and I deserve to be punished. But if some sort of happiness is coming your way at last then I can bear the punishment.”
“Carmella!” he gasped, and tried to remove her hand from his sleeve. “Not here ... now!”
“But I mean it! ... I do, I do! ” she cried, and she was suddenly very white, and a tear was hanging on the end of her thick black lashes. “It’s coming here to this house that has brought it all back, and I feel I must make you understand something of what I feel! You mustn’t continue to think of me as a woman who let you down, because I’d never let you down again!” She heard Rose, over by one of the big windows, moving as if she was preparing to flee the room, and she snatched her handkerchief out of her bag and mopped at the tears that were now streaming down her cheeks with a wisp of lace and cambric. “No, don’t go, Rose!” she implored. “This is all perfectly all right for your ears, because it’s genuine, and I realize that Guy has to marry and settle down and have a family - one child, at least, to whom he and leave all he possesses! - and I’m sure you’ll make him a very nice wife, and are quite a wise choice. But the past is like an unforgettable perfume ... You know what I mean!” Rose was so shocked by this outburst that she hardly knew how to reply.
“No, I don’t think I do,” she answered quietly.
“Of course she doesn’t!” Guy exclaimed, looking almost as pale and disturbed as Carmella herself. “The past is nothing to do with Rose, and I think we’d better go. Rose, we’ll come here another day.”
But Carmella wouldn’t have that.
“I shall feel I’ve spoiled things for you if you don’t see all over the house while we’re here,” she declared pitifully, still dabbing carefully at her mascara to prevent it from running. “The upstairs rooms have such a lot of possibilities, and there is a nursery suite that could be quite enchanting...” She smiled mistily into her handbag mirror, and then even more mistily at Rose. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss that!”
“I’d prefer to miss it today,” Rose answered, an unusual stubbornness coming to her aid and lending her a sort of dignity. And in addition she felt a trifle sick, for Guy was plainly avoiding her eyes, and there was no doubt about it he was profoundly upset. “There’s plenty of time to look at the nursery.”
“Oh, dear!” Carmella exclaimed, burying her nose in amongst the lace and the Dior perfume that she had extracted from her handbag. “I do seem to have upset things today! But I didn’t mean to do so.”
Guy led the way, without uttering another word, out of the house; and as if to display a suitable penitence Carmella prepared to establish herself on the back seat of the car for the homeward journey, but Rose slipped into it first and announced curtly that she preferred the back of the car.
Guy didn’t even look over his shoulder as she settled down quietly in her corner.
That night they dined quietly in the maisonette, and Rose had so little to say that Carmella looked at her thoughtfully once or twice under her heavy eyelids.
Although for once they were all three going on to a theatre, (a special treat allowed by Carmella!) Rose had selected something barely noticeable from her rapidly expanding wardrobe, and although it was a beautifully cut cloudy chiffon dress, and heightened the quality of her complexion, it did mournful things to the big brown eyes that caused Guy also to watch her while the meal was in progress.
And although there was nothing exactly mournful about his expression, there was nothing happy about it, either. Rose thought she knew the reason.
While they were drinking their coffee in the salon, the telephone rang in the hall. Rose was summoned to answer the call, and although surprised that it should be for her she went at once.
“It’s very likely Monsieur Delavel, or Madame Bertholde about the trimming for the white jersey,” Carmella said casually as she went out. “I told her that sequins are too much, and those flower sprays on the bodice must be outlined in something more unusual. But if it’s the lilac suit she’s anxious about...”
But it was not the lilac suit, and as Rose returned to the others, she was conscious of a sensation like relief, for at last she would ask someone who was competent to give it for advice, and that someone would be with her the following day. And although he was coming to attend her wedding - invited, apparently, by Carmella! - there would be no wedding if
... if...
She felt weak as she approached the closed door of the salon, the sensation that within a short time she might have burned her boats and turned her back on any possibility of happiness weighing her down and dragging at her footsteps as if it was something tangible. For, if the advice was what she expected it would be, then ... after tonight there would be no more vendeuses kneeling at her feet, no more consultations with Monsieur Delavel and Madame Bertholde, no more advice from beauticians and hairdressers and manicurists. No more of Guy’s money scattered broadcast to buy her a trousseau ... Instead...
But she felt herself shrinking from the very thought of the future if, after tonight, there was to be no more Guy!
As she slowly pushed open the door she had the conviction that, in any case, there would be no more Guy after tonight. The afternoon had made it distressingly plain that she had been toying with a dream, chasing after a moonbeam that was not intended for her, and it was high time she came down to earth and recognized her place in the scheme of things.
Her very lowly place, in Mr. Mancroft’s office ... If he would have her back!
Carmella and Guy were in love. They had been in love six years ago and, despite disillusion, he had remained in love. Carmella had married someone else, but now both of them were unhappy, and Guy didn’t find it easy to forgive. He had, however, to marry someone. He wanted an heir. And Rose would make him “a nice wife”! A much more bearable and malleable wife than Carol-Ann Vaizey would have turned out to be. And, in any case, he was fond of Rose...
Escape to Happiness Page 13