by Susan Barrie
When she entered the room where Mademoiselle, a neat, alert Frenchwoman, was seated behind Miss Dove’s handsome walnut desk, with a vase of pink roses from the garden placed close to her elbow, in order that she could inhale the scent, she realised at once that the temporary headmistress was not looking at her in quite the normal way.
She even rose and greeted her with an air of the utmost pleasure, and as the distance between them grew less and less Carole received the distinct impression that she was toying with the idea of popping round the desk and behaving with the utmost informality.
“My dear Carole,” she said, in her precise English, “I can’t tell you how happy I am because I have to congratulate you! It isn’t often that one of our girls—and you are one of our old pupils—becomes betrothed while still under our roof. But that is what you have done, and what Miss Dove will be delighted to know you have done. You have become engaged, as you say in England!”
Carole stood very still and stared at her.
“H-how did you get to know that, Mademoiselle?” she asked.
The other smiled at her, and it was a smile that reached from ear to ear.
“Mr. Pentallon telephoned! He telephoned to ask whether we would excuse you this morning, because he wishes to take you to a jewellers to buy you a ring for your finger. A betrothal ring!”
She clasped both her hands together and positively beamed at Carole.
“Oh,” the latter said. “Oh!”
“And after that he is taking you to lunch somewhere, so it is unlikely you will be back here to do any instructive work today. However, in the circumstances I have given Monsieur Pentallon my assurance that it is perfectly all RIGHT ... that we understand perfectly! And, indeed, wish you both much happiness!”
She came round the desk and put her hands out and clasped Carole’s shoulders. She looked at her with the utmost approval.
“You are very lucky, my dear,” she said. “Monsieur Pentallon is a very charming man ... très charmant! And he is rich. Indeed, you are very, very fortunate!”
CHAPTER FIVE
WITH an interesting audience of black-coated assistants—and one in a kind of morning-dress with a white flower in his buttonhole—beaming at her urbanely while a selection of varying types of rings was tried on her finger, Carole did not feel in the least fortunate.
She felt thoroughly ridiculous, and thoroughly self-conscious.
James Pentallon, beautifully turned out himself—and, incidentally, also with a flower in his buttonhole (a white gardenia)—urged her not to be in any haste, but to make absolutely certain the stone she finally selected was the one she really liked, and also that its setting was a setting she approved. For, if it was not, it could be altered. They could purchase a temporary ring for her to wear while the other was being adapted.
The gentleman in the morning-dress, who was also eager that she should make no mistake, agreed.
“Mademoiselle must be quite certain.” He twirled the waxed ends of his neat, greying moustache with plump white fingers, and regarded her with almost fatherly fondness ... and, of course, approval, since she was to marry Monsieur James Pentallon, who was a fairly regular customer. “Quite, quite certain,” he reiterated, “when the matter is so important!”
Carole looked helplessly up at James. He was watching her curiously. She was wearing one of his sister’s smart little outfits ... a cream wool dress with a cream straw hat that bent backwards from the face, and was rather like an old-fashioned sailor hat, except that it was made of the finest silk straw and had corded silk ribbons streaming behind it.
Carole’s bright curls looked enchanting nestling under the hat. Her eyes were a little shadowy, as if they reflected the uncertainty of her mind, but the gold tips to her eyelashes showed up becomingly in the sunlight that streamed across the plate glass of the counter on which the cases of rings were placed.
Carole looked from James’s face to the ring on her finger. It was an opal surrounded by a blaze of diamonds. If this had been a genuine engagement ring she was selecting she would have turned it down, despite its breathtaking beauty, because opals were notoriously unlucky, and a bride-to-be had the natural instinct to avoid misfortune if she could. But as it was not a genuine engagement ring, and there was no question of a serious engagement...
“Well?” James said, softly, watching her.
“I like this one,” she said.
“You’re not superstitious about opals?”
“I am. At least, I think I am—a little.”
“Do not be afraid, mademoiselle.” It was the frock-coated one who spoke reassuringly. “The opal is a stone that absorbs impressions, rather like a blotting-pad absorbs ink ... You understand?” He spread his hands. “But in the case of a stone that has not yet been worn by anyone that is something that does not have to be considered. Mademoiselle will be perfectly safe if she wishes for this ring and decides upon it.”
That settled it, so far as Carole was concerned. As they waited for a suitable velvet-lined case to be produced to contain it when it was not being actually worn on her finger James bent towards her and murmured in her ear:
“Let us hope that all the impressions your ring absorbs are happy ones. You yourself are happy about it?”
She met his dark blue eyes with her shadowy grey-green ones. “I would be if it were really mine.”
“It is yours,” he assured her. “No one will ever be allowed to take it from you.”
Outside in the summer sunshine, strolling idly down the Rue de Rivoli, he asked her whether there was anything special she would like to do before lunch.
“I suppose you know all the galleries and museums by heart, so it wouldn’t be much fun for you if I suggested the Louvre. And although we could walk in the Bois I think it would be more sense if we amply went and had our lunch. What do you say?”
She nodded.
“I’ll do whatever you think.”
A whimsical expression chased itself across his attractive mouth as he looked down at her and took her arm, drawing her close to him to prevent anyone jostling her on the pavement.
“You sound very resigned,” he said. “But you mustn’t be as resigned as all that. After all, it isn’t every day in the week that you select an engagement ring, is it?” and he held up his hand to stop a taxi.
Carole felt that she had to get the matter quite straight. As she sat beside him in the taxi, and all the brilliance and beauty and gaiety of Paris in summer floated, rather like a dream, past the windows of the cab, she said with a small, fierce intonation in her voice,
“You know very well that this is all a farce.”
“Very well,” he agreed, “it is a farce. But for this morning—at any rate, while we have lunch—shall we pretend that everything is perfectly natural and normal, and that there is nothing farce-like about our relationship? After all, you are a pretty girl—a very pretty girl!” He glanced at her sideways. “And I am a man with an instinctive appreciation for pretty girls ... you might call it a built-in appreciation.” His white-toothed grin was suddenly extremely attractive. “So couldn’t we pretend we’ve just met, and I’m showing you the sights of Paris, and it’s all very innocent and understandable?”
Her grey eyes regarded him dubiously. The bulge under her glove where his ring had been placed was the kind of thing she could not forget. But it was perfectly true she didn’t have to dwell on it ... not at the moment, anyway.
She smiled in a way he had not yet seen her smile, with a responsive humour and a slightly breathtaking charm that caused him to turn his head more sharply towards her, while that one sleek eyebrow of his tilted upwards.
“Very well,” she said, with a slight, eager catch in her voice like excitement. “If you think we really can pretend ... and if you think it will make it easier...?”
“I’m sure it will,” he replied promptly, and softly.
He reached out and took one of her hands, and gave it a squeeze.
“I’m de
lighted to know you, Carole,” he told her. “Delighted!”
She glanced at him wickedly.
“Oughtn’t it to be Miss Sterne if we’ve only just met?”
“Not on your life,” he answered. “Not with that ring on your finger! That gives us the right to get really well acquainted!”
They had lunch at one of the big hotels, and it was all very pleasant and normal. An exceptionally attractive girl with bright, honey-gold hair, charmingly dressed and almost completely at her ease, and a strikingly attractive man who was plainly thoroughly accustomed to squiring young girls—as well as, almost certainly, older and more sophisticated ones—was so unexceptional in that setting that scarcely anyone glanced at them, or raised an enquiring eyebrow, and the waiters obviously looked upon them as normal, everyday fare.
James glanced casually at the wine-list, and then ordered champagne, and Carole refused things like oysters and caviare and thoroughly enjoyed the beautifully cooked chicken that was brought to her, and the slice of rich gateau that concluded the meal. James polished off an enormous ice-cream accompanied by fresh fruit and admitted that ice-cream was a weakness of his; and after that they sipped coffee, and he drank a Napoleon brandy, while around them the place gradually filled up and a delicate babel of conversation got under way, but was prevented from becoming tiresome by the thickness of the carpets and the great swathes of satin drapery at the windows.
The conversation at Carole’s table was light, in fact it even sparkled. James insisted that she tell him something about herself and her past life, and she admitted that there was very little to tell because she had been in charge of an elderly relative from the moment her parents separated, and later re-married—although that second marriage hadn’t lasted very long because they perished in an earthquake that practically swallowed up their honeymoon island somewhere off the coast of Japan. When James looked shocked, and even horrified, Carole reassured him on one point, at least.
“I don’t remember my parents, and my old aunt was kind. She was a bit eccentric, but she was good to me. She placed me in boarding-school as soon as I was old enough, but I spent all my holidays with her. As for my parents...” She shrugged. “They would probably have been good to me, too, but when two people marry I don’t think they should ... well, go in for things like second honeymoons.”
She coloured delicately as she looked down at the bubbles in her champagne-glass.
“I mean they should stay married ... all the time!”
“You don’t believe in divorce? In marriages that have to be broken up because they should never have been contracted in the first place?”
She shook her head almost violently, so that the silk ribbons floating behind her waved a little madly.
“No. No, I don’t. I think people should—should think more before they marry.”
Both his brows ascended.
“Even if they know that they’re violently in love? And if two people are in love marriage is the only logical outcome, isn’t it?”
“If—if they’re really in love. But you can’t be sure in a hurry.”
“Oh!” He began to look really interested, and his eyes sparkled at the prospect of entertainment. “Out of what store of wisdom and knowledge do you speak, Carole, my most surprising one? Only yesterday you told me that you haven’t any boy friends. I’m beginning to suspect that that wasn’t altogether true!”
“Oh, but it was ... I mean, it is!” She coloured so deliciously that the sparkle in his eyes increased, and became an obvious sparkle of appreciation. “But you don’t have to have actual experience to form theories, and to be aware that there are some things that cannot be experimented with or treated lightly.”
“Don’t you?” His sleek dark head was a little on one side, and the corners of his mouth were curving upwards.
“Of course not. It’s like knowing when you’re young that there are some things you’re not going to like when you can have them.”
“Such as?”
“An unlimited supply of sweets, or even too much freedom. If people leave you alone it means they don’t really care very much about you.”
“Dear me,” he commented, “we really have a little philosopher here.”
She smiled with a hint of reserve.
“That’s not philosophy, it’s a yardstick, a measuring-line. Or perhaps I should say a guide-line.”
“And already it’s worked with you?”
At this she dimpled suddenly, and sent him a slightly mischievous look from under her gold-tipped eyelashes.
“You’ve just reminded me that I’ve had very little experience yet ... of anything!” she added.
He leaned his elbows on the table and his shapely brown chin on his hands, and regarded her with a touch of solemnity.
“Wait until you have had experience,” he recommended, “and then I don’t think we shall hear very much about the yardstick. All’s fair in love and war, you know, and when you’re in love you throw everything overboard. You’ll find that out for yourself.”
“As you’ve found it out?” peeping at him as he lighted a cigarette, passed it to her, and then lighted one for himself. She felt an extraordinary sensation as the cigarette that had touched his lips touched hers, and for a moment was aware of a strange, spreading sort of confusion.
“Ah, now that is something I must decline to admit or deny,” he replied, waving away the cloud of smoke that had settled between them, and regarding her with amused eyes over the glowing tip of his own cigarette. “But the male sex normally finds these things out early, you know, and I’m a pretty average sort of a male.” She couldn’t agree with him, but she didn’t say so. “And also, I’m many years older than you are. I’m thirty-four, and you’re only twenty-one. You must allow me a great deal of experience that can’t possibly have come your way yet. In fact, I expect you’d consider me rather shockingly experienced.”
“Would I?” Her confusion having subsided, she studied him openly and rather earnestly for several seconds. She noticed the lines at the corners of his intensely blue eyes—some of them were laughter lines, but not all of them. And there were lines at the corners of his mouth. In repose his was a face that was often cynical, frequently bored, and a trifle jaded. She was fully prepared to believe that he had lived his life to the full up to date, but judging by that jaded look he had not derived the very maximum amount of satisfaction from everything that he had done, and that life as a rich man and one of Fortune’s favourites had brought him.
And, although thirty-four, he was not married. He had said most emphatically the day before that he did not intend to marry ... and it was because he was in danger of being married that she was wearing his ring on her finger.
She looked down at it, suddenly and thoughtfully, and touched it.
“Well?” he said, with a change of tone—even a little sharply, as if he was wondering what she was really thinking, and because, despite all his experience, he could not read the thoughts that dwelt behind her smooth face.
“You reminded me of something I said yesterday,” she said, speaking slowly. “And I’d like to remind you of something...”
“Well?”
“You said you didn’t intend to get married ... not ever, apparently. Isn’t that the sort of statement people make as a kind of protection?”
“Perhaps.” But he was smiling grimly. “However, I don’t intend to marry.”
“You sound very sure of yourself.”
“I am,” with a slight hardening of the muscles at the corners of his mouth.
“But apparently you can’t quite trust yourself.” She touched the ring on her finger. “Or you wouldn’t have bought me this!”
For a moment or two she thought she had genuinely annoyed him—as well as, she felt sure, considerably surprised him. And then he laughed shortly, grudgingly, and on a note of unwilling admiration.
“For a young lady of twenty-one, without anything in the nature of experience, you have an unhappy
knack of making someone far older feel a trifle foolish,” he remarked. “However, I’m not going to feel foolish for long. I’m going to continue the process of getting to know you, and to that end I think we ought to make up our minds what we’re going to do this afternoon. I can’t just drive you back to the school and let you get on with your job ... this is a day for celebration! And we’re going to celebrate!”
“What?” she enquired, with a tiny smile.
“Getting to know one another.”
He led her out of the restaurant, and before reentering his car they made up their minds what they would do. She would pretend the utmost ignorance of Paris and he would show her what there was to be seen ... Notre Dame, Montmartre, Sacre-Coeur, the Tuileries Gardens, the Élysée Palace. And tomorrow, if they could persuade Mademoiselle to do without her, he would show her Versailles and Fontainebleau. They would behave like a couple of tourists in the process of finding out as much about each other as it was necessary to know if they were to put up a convincing front at the one or two highly essential functions they must attend together in their capacity of a newly engaged pair—one of whom was of supreme interest to the feminine element of smart Parisian society—before the bubble was pricked and the mock engagement discreetly ended.
And as Miss Dove’s girls dispersed to their homes for the summer vacation at the end of the following week that would be the time to end it.
In the meantime, there was much to be discovered, much to be perfected ... much, Carole was beginning dimly to suspect, to be regretted later on.
But for the time being that didn’t seem to matter. Or it had ceased to matter ever since her slim finger had started to be weighed down by the opal ring, which, if the jeweller was correct, was already beginning to absorb impressions that might affect another wearer later on.