Under the Stars of Paris

by Mary Burchell

  “Oh, Monsieur Florian, I—I don’t know how to thank you,” Anthea stammered.

  “You have no need to thank me, mademoiselle,” he said icily. “It was a case of restoring my model rather than consoling my mannequin, I assure you.”

  Suddenly she knew what Odette had meant.

  “Please, please let me explain,” she began, as he turned to go. But he silenced her with a slight gesture of his hand.

  “I have no time for explanations now, mademoiselle,” he said with terrifying gentleness. “We have wasted enough of the evening as it is. But you will explain to me tomorrow morning—in full.”

  Then he handed the chambermaid her sewing materials, and with a slight bow to Roger, went out of the room, leaving them to follow at their own pace.

  The chambermaid absently held out her hand and Roger absently put something into it. Then, taking Anthea by the arm, he gently led her out along the heavily-carpeted corridor.

  “Well, it wasn’t so bad, was it?” he smiled down at her.

  Anthea could not answer. She wondered how he could have been so deaf to the overtones in Florian’s voice. Or was it just that, in her terror, she imagined things?

  “I must say he made a wonderful job of repairing the damage.” There was reluctant admiration in Roger’s tone that time.

  “Yes,” Anthea managed to say.

  “Do you have to worry any more?” he smiled down at her, a little teasing, but a little coaxing too. And suddenly she remembered that this was his great evening. He had planned for it, paid heavily, she had no doubt, for it, and now she would not—would not spoil it for him.

  Even if Florian sacked her tomorrow—which he undoubtedly would do—even if he pulverized her first with the weight of his cold anger, this was Roger’s evening, and she determined that he should enjoy it.

  She flashed a smile up at him.

  “No,” she declared, “I don’t have to worry any more, I—I can hardly get used to the idea! But Monsieur Florian has made the dress look wonderful again. And—and I don’t even have to think about how I shall tell him what happened. He—he knows.”

  “Sure. And he said you could explain to him in full tomorrow. I bet that other girl will get the sack.”

  “Which other girl?” enquired Anthea, who could think of only one girl getting the sack.

  “Why, the one who misled you into thinking it was all right to borrow the dress, of course.”

  “Héloïse? Oh no! No, really I can’t imagine that happening to Héloïse.”

  “Why not, for heaven’s sake? Is she his girl-friend?”

  “Of course not! But Héloïse is just not the sort to get the sack,” Anthea explained drily. Because she knew at last that, for all her air of big-eyed simplicity, Héloïse was simply the kind who saw to it that someone else got the sack. But never, never herself.

  “Well, if you think he’ll be indulgent all round, that’s all right,” Roger said comfortably. And Anthea forbore to say that that was not at all how she expected Monsieur Florian to be in the morning.

  Much later in the evening, she encountered Odette once more. And, after staring at her inexplicable young colleague for a moment, Odette halted her very distinguished-looking partner and, with a word of excuse, came over to Anthea.

  “I thought you were going home to change, Gabrielle,” she said in a severe tone. Then suddenly she looked at the dress as though she thought she were losing her mind.

  “What—what has happened?” she said, almost in a whisper. “It’s—different! You have—— No, you can’t have been so mad as to change a Florian model. Besides”—she put out her hand and touched the bodice with experienced fingers—“only one person can drape like that.”

  “Why, Odette, how clever of you!” Anthea smiled feebly. “You’re quite right. Monsieur Florian did it himself.”

  Odette swallowed.

  “I don’t understand,” she said helplessly.

  “Someone spilt wine on the dress as it was,” Roger began to explain cheerfully, but Odette uttered a little cry at this and actually turned pale.

  “Monsieur Florian saw,” explained Anthea, continuing the story doggedly, though she thought it sounded dreadfully improbable as she told it. “And he made me come with him—and he altered the dress, as you see, in not much more than ten minutes.”

  “You say”—Odette looked at Anthea as though she were not quite sure whether to call her a liar to her face or salute her as one who had emerged from the jaws of death unharmed—“you say Monsieur Florian knows what has happened?”

  “Yes, yes, Odette. It’s all right, really.” Anthea glanced quickly at Roger who was smiling unconcernedly at her side. “But it was all done so quickly. There will of course have to be some explanations tomorrow.”

  “That I can well imagine,” agreed Odette feelingly.

  “But tonight—I’m just enjoying myself. Monsieur Florian said I was to,” she added, extending the meaning of certain phrases rather unpardonably.

  “So?” said Odette, and turned away, evidently under the impression that neither truth nor sense could be expected from any prolonging of the conversation.

  “She seemed to take a rather serious view of it all.” Roger looked after her thoughtfully. “Look here, Anthea, if there’s going to be any real trouble over this business, you’d better let me——”

  “No, no, Roger! There’s no need for you to get involved,” exclaimed Anthea, determined not to cause him any more anxiety or trouble. “Odette is always a bit of a tragedy queen. It’s part of her stock-in-trade. You don’t need to worry. I expect there’ll be a few sharp words over the explanations tomorrow, but nothing that could justify any intervention from outside.”

  “Are you sure?” He was not entirely satisfied, she could see.

  “Yes, of course. Perfectly sure,” she lied desperately.

  He said no more just then, and she thought he was satisfied. But when, much later, he had driven her home, under a night sky that was already paling into early dawn, he stopped her, just as she would have said good night and got out of the car.

  “I’ll call for you tomorrow—or, rather, this evening. I want to know that you got on all right over this dress business.”

  “Oh, Roger!” She nearly put her head down on his shoulder and wept, but she controlled herself in time.

  “You—you don’t really need to, you know. But—if you want to——”

  “I want to,” he stated pleasantly and finally.

  “Then—then I won’t pretend I shan’t be glad to think of that when I go in to make my explanations in the morning,” she admitted with a faint smile.

  Then she thanked him a little huskily, said good night once more, and ran into the house, hoping he would take her haste for anxiety over the lateness of the hour and not the need to struggle again with tears that were near the surface.

  Trembling with fatigue, she carefully took off the green lace dress, trying conscientiously not to disturb the lightly secured work which Florian had done actually on her. She wondered what he would do about the dress now. Would he let it be worn as it was until a duplicate of the original model could be made, or would he withdraw it altogether from the Collection for a while?

  It was a purely academic query, she assured herself, because she would not be wearing it in any form. Not after what had happened this evening.

  Tired though she was, she could not sleep even when she was in bed. She lay there, watching the pale square of her window and wondering what was to become of her.

  It was the “lowest” of all the twenty-four hours, and Anthea saw herself once more penniless and workless in Paris. But, strangely enough, even this vision did not wring her heart so truly as the thought that Florian’s would know her no more.

  She knew now—amazedly—that she had come to love the place with something like passion. Not only for the glamour—of which there was very much less than most outsiders supposed—but because of the wonderful, thrilling sense of e
xcitement and achievement. For good or ill, for now and always, she felt, she was part of Florian’s. Even when she was dismissed and cast off with contumely, she would still feel miserably that she was part of Florian’s. But for ever exiled and repudiated.

  Anthea sobbed a little to herself at last. Then she slept fitfully. But only fitfully, since she must not add to her terrible list of offences the final one of being late that morning.

  When she woke, it was with a sense of disaster that set her heart thumping, and made her throat feel dry. But, since she was essentially courageous, she got up, dressed with meticulous neatness, and drank some hot coffee, though she could not face the thought of food.

  Then, carrying the beautiful striped box, which contained the evidence of her crime, she set out for Florian’s—possibly, she supposed, for the last time.

  It required all the courage she had to enter the familiar portals and mount the long staircase to the dressing-room. She felt as though everyone who saw her and called out a greeting must wonder why she was carrying a dress-box, and suspect what it contained.

  And then, of course, the next thing was to get rid of it. There was no one else yet in the dressing-room. But she could no more leave one of the models lying about (even in its mutilated form) than she could leave a corpse unconcealed. The two things seemed rather similar in Anthea’s mind at the moment.

  So, finally, she went boldly upstairs to Mademoiselle Charlotte, still carrying the box.

  “I’ve brought back Number Forty-two, mademoiselle,” she said timidly.

  “Where?” enquired Mademoiselle Charlotte briefly.

  “Here—in this box.”

  “In a box! Madame Moisant had no right to put it in a box,” declared the angry Mademoiselle Charlotte, who carried on a long series of skirmishes about such matters with the Directrice, in order to prove her own importance.

  Anthea then remembered that Madame Moisant was supposed to have borrowed the dress, and she saw further and agitating complications ahead.

  Desperately she cut at least this Gordian knot.

  “Mademoiselle Charlotte,” she said, as calmly as she could, “there was some misunderstanding about this, which I can’t explain in detail. But Madame Moisant did not borrow this dress. I did.”

  “You did!” Mademoiselle Charlotte looked almost as though smoke might come out of the top of her head. “You borrowed a model from the new collection—for your own use? You stand there and tell me—quite calmly—that you practised a wicked trick on me and borrowed a dress from the Collection? You, who have not been here a month!”

  All the time she was speaking, she was ripping the cord from the box, raising the lid, casting aside clouds of tissue paper and, finally, lifting out the dress. At this point she uttered a loud scream.

  “It is not the right model!” she exclaimed, her voice running up the scale and cracking with emotion. “It has been changed.”

  “I know,” Anthea said wearily. “Monsieur Florian changed it himself last night when——”

  “Monsieur Florian—last night?” Mademoiselle Charlotte’s tone changed subtly to a note of astonishment, mingled with the caution of one who was not going to put her foot in it, however improbable the circumstances. “What—what were you and Monsieur Florian doing last night, pray?”

  The highly questionable wording and the sudden change of manner made Anthea want to laugh hysterically.

  “We were both at the Charity Ball—but separately,” she said curtly. “Someone spilt wine on my dress——”

  “Your dress!” Mademoiselle Charlotte seemed ready to laugh hysterically in her turn.

  “All right—this dress. Monsieur Florian saw what had happened and changed the dress into what you see now.”

  “Right there in the ballroom?” The Frenchwoman sounded incredulous, but as though all things were, of course, possible to Florian.

  “Certainly not! In a private room on——”

  “A private room, eh?” Madame Charlotte smiled sourly.

  “My partner was there too,” Anthea explained patiently, wondering what other misunderstandings and innuendoes she was going to have to struggle against. “As a matter of fact——”

  “I do not understand what you are talking about,” exclaimed Mademoiselle Charlotte, suddenly rejecting the whole story. “And, moreover, I do not believe a word you are saying.”

  “Well, I can’t help that,” Anthea retorted, with a little spurt of nervous temper. And she went downstairs once more, leaving Mademoiselle Charlotte to make what she liked of the whole affair.

  Several of the other girls had now arrived, and among them Héloïse. She looked fresh and smiling and was humming a tune to herself, as though she were without a care in the world or a shadow on her conscience.

  “Héloïse”—Anthea went over to her and spoke calmly and almost politely—“why did you pretend to me last night that Madame Moisant had given permission for me to borrow the green lace dress?”

  Héloïse stopped humming and turned astonished blue eyes on Anthea.

  “Madame Moisant?—green lace dress?—I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said blandly.

  Anthea gasped. In all her experience so far she had never met the cool, confident and out-and-out liar.

  “Héloïse,” she said, and her voice shook a little, “you know perfectly well that you sat in here last night, painting your toe-nails and telling me that we were sometimes allowed to borrow models. And you said you would ask Madame Moisant if I could borrow——”

  “I would ask Madame Moisant if you could borrow?” Héloïse laughed scornfully. “Why should I? I do not like you,” she stated, simply and with devastating truth this time. “Why should I do this for you?”

  “You mean you deny the whole thing?” Anthea’s voice was suddenly grim as she realized what she was up against.

  “I do not deny anything. I simply say you are telling silly lies which I do not understand,” Héloïse assured her pleasantly. And, still humming to herself, she turned back to the mirror and began to make up skilfully.

  Anthea stood there for a moment, silent and still. She should, she supposed, have been ready for something like this. Obviously Héloïse would have had no intention of allowing her real guilt to be pinned upon her. But this!—This absolutely blank denial of everything was shattering in its completeness.

  She glanced round for Odette, who might at least say something in support, of her. But Odette had not yet arrived—and, in any case, could not substantiate Anthea’s story further than to say that, when seen in the dress, she had spoken of Héloïse’s assurance that she might borrow it.

  The situation could hardly have been worse. But, whatever one’s personal misery, the work of the day had begun. Anthea too took her seat before the mirror, and absently passed a comb through her hair. As she did so, she saw in the reflection of the glass that the door had opened and Madame Moisant had come into the room.

  She bit her lip. First with nervousness, and then with the sudden idea that she just might possibly enlist Madame Moisant’s aid.

  It was a forlorn hope, really, born of desperation. But the fact was that the Directrice was not so wildly unreasonable as some of the people round her. Besides, she had been responsible for bringing Anthea here and, in that sense, regarded her in something of the light of a protégée.

  If she could be made to believe the truth——

  Anthea turned impulsively towards her. But as she did so, the door opened again, and one of the secretaries put in her head and said,

  “Mademoiselle Gabrielle in Monsieur Florian’s office, please!”

  Chapter Six

  The blow had fallen!

  Somehow, Anthea had not expected it quite so soon. Monsieur Florian usually did not put in an appearance until rather later in the morning, and she had imagined herself with another hour of grace—or dreadful anticipation—as one cared to look at it.

  But, in spite of his late night, he had evidently made
a point of arriving early. And it seemed that her melancholy affairs took precedence over everything else.

  “Hurry!” Madame Moisant said, as Anthea seemed for a moment unable to move. “One does not keep Monsieur Florian waiting.”

  There was the faintest edge to her voice and Anthea saw she was not too pleased. She preferred any contact between Florian and the mannequins to be made through herself.

  In spite of Madame Moisant’s admonition to hurry, Anthea went up to Héloïse and said quietly,

  “I warn you that I shall not attempt to shield you. I can only hope to clear myself if I tell Monsieur Florian exactly what happened.”

  Héloïse merely glanced at her and shrugged, as though to say she neither followed, nor wished to follow, what Anthea was talking about. It was so perfectly done, and left such an impression of blank ignorance, that, as she went from the room, Anthea thought, with a sense of added chill,

  “If it comes to her word against mine, who would believe that she is lying?”

  Monsieur Florian’s office was on the next floor, and Anthea found she was completely breathless when she reached the top of the stairs. Not because of the steepness of the ascent, but because her frightened breathing had become a series of short, shallow gasps.

  She stood for a moment outside his door, resisting the terrible panic-stricken impulse to turn and run from the place. Then, calling on all her powers of resolution, she knocked.

  “Come in!”

  He spoke in English, showing that he guessed who was there, and, with a confused sort of prayer in her heart, Anthea opened the door and went in.

  Florian was sitting at a big, highly polished desk, which gave him an air of formality and remoteness that was unfamiliar. As she entered, he picked up the telephone, asked the switchboard girl for a number, and silently indicated a chair to Anthea while he waited for his connection.

  Then, with a refinement of cruelty which made her remember what Odette had said of him, he conducted a conversation of several minutes with one of the big silk manufacturers, exactly as though the unhappy girl before him were not there.