Under the Stars of Paris

by Mary Burchell

  “I’ll remember,” Anthea said soberly. “I’ll be careful about Héloïse in future.”

  “Oh—Héloïse!” Madame Moisant laughed slightingly. “There will be no more trouble with her. What I wished to say is that you should be careful with all the people around you. You must not think so easily that because a person is kind—or generous”—Madame Moisant moved a few articles unnecessarily on her desk—“that person is a friend. I give you this warning because you are a good girl and I would not wish you to be made unhappy.”

  “Thank you, madame.” Anthea was touched and faintly puzzled, but she acknowledged the kind feeling behind all this with her sweetest smile.

  “Bon!” exclaimed Madame Moisant with an air of satisfaction. “Then we understand each other, hein?”

  “I am sure we do,” Anthea agreed, still smiling.

  Madame Moisant smiled graciously, and indicated that Anthea was now free to go.

  It was nearly six o’clock, and she remembered with a delighted skip of her heart that Roger would be waiting for her—under the impression that she would come forth crushed and miserable.

  Well, it would be fun to tell him all about it. It was fun to tell Roger anything. He found her so amusing and interesting that he always put her in a good frame of mind with herself. Than which there is no pleasanter feeling.

  Anthea had always wished to have a brother. Now, with Roger in the background, it was almost as though she had. Almost.

  He was waiting for her in the car, as usual, when she came out, and greeted her with an air of careless good humour which did not altogether hide a certain amount of anxiety.

  “Well,” he asked, almost before she had taken her seat beside him, “how did it go! You look very cheerful, so I take it you were not actually given the sack.”

  “Given the sack? I was given the frock,” retorted Anthea, laughing immoderately in her delighted relief and amusement. “Oh, Roger, what a day! Do you want to hear all about it?”

  “Why do you suppose I’m here?” he enquired, with an amused glance at her. “Go ahead. I was prepared to console you if necessary, but I’m just as pleased to stand on the sideline and cheer the victor.”

  She laughed again, and for a moment put her hand over his on the wheel.

  “Roger, you’re not like anyone else! Don’t think I ever take you for granted, will you?”

  “You can take me as you like, so long as you take me,” he retorted lightly. And at the moment it did not strike her that this was not a particularly brotherly way of putting things.

  Instead, she began to give him an account of the morning’s dramatic happenings—right down to the point where Florian decreed that the dress was to be hers. By the time she had finished the story they had reached their favourite little restaurant on the other bank of the river. Then, as they leaned their arms on the check-clothed table between them and drank red wine while they waited for their meal, Anthea added an amusing account of her interview with Madame Moisant.

  “So she thinks you’re a lamb among the wolves, does she?” Roger gave her an amused, indulgent glance.

  “Apparently,” said Anthea, breaking off pieces of crusty bread and eating them with enjoyment. “I don’t know quite why she thought it necessary to warn me so particularly, since she seems to think there’ll be no more trouble with Héloïse. But it was nice of her to bother.”

  “Very nice,” agreed Roger reflectively.

  “She said, at the end, that no doubt we understood each other now.”

  “And did you?” enquired Roger, again with that look of indulgent amusement.

  “I said I did,” Anthea admitted with a smile, “but I don’t know really what she was talking about—except in a general way. But then I suppose she meant it only generally, don’t you?”

  “No. I suppose,” Roger said slowly and in his most matter-of-fact way, “that, very tactfully and obliquely, she was warning you against Florian.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Against Florian?” Anthea looked extremely startled. “But why should Madame Moisant want to warn me against Florian, for heaven’s sake? He couldn’t have been kinder or more understanding over this ghastly business.”

  Roger was silent. And, after a moment, Anthea asked hesitatingly,

  “Do you—do you think she had reason to issue some warning against him?”

  “I don’t know, my dear.” Roger shrugged, still with that good-humoured air of not taking any of this very seriously. “I don’t know him. Dress designers are not exactly up my street. But he didn’t strike me last night as the sort of chap who went about giving away models, out of the goodness of his heart.”

  “Didn’t he?” She smiled faintly. “That’s just how he does strike me.”

  “Dear girl! It’s unusual in the dress trade. Or any other trade, come to that.”

  “But then Florian is an unusual person. I don’t mean that he’s crazily generous. I think he is often hard and a little cruel, and almost always a very good business man. But he has a romantic streak. Almost all great artists have—and he is that. I can imagine that he might, on a sudden generous impulse, quite enjoy giving away one of his models—out of the goodness of his heart and nothing else at all.”

  “Well—it’s a nice theory,” Roger conceded, with a grin, as their meal was set before them.

  “Roger, you’re not being very serious about this, are you?”

  “Is it a very serious matter?”

  “Well—yes. I think it is.”

  “But my dear, if you are forewarned—and you have been by both Madame Moisant and myself—I can’t think that you’re in very great danger.”

  “Me?—in danger? I wasn’t thinking of me,” Anthea stated rather indignantly. “I was thinking of Florian—and not wanting to do him an injustice.—Oh, no, it’s not even that! I don’t want to have to find him an amorous schemer, who only gave me that dress because he thought it was a good move. I want to think of him as the great man with a romantic flash of generosity who——”

  “Yes, I do see what Madame Moisant means,” Roger said, handing her the salt. “Go on with your dinner, my little sheep among the wolves. Your Florian is a great artist, as you say. He is also a very good business man, as you say. The two together can produce some very fine and very reprehensible things. But most of all they will produce some unpredictable things. That being so, it is best for you not to suppose that you can interpret his actions in romantic terms. He may be one of the wolves—I don’t know. But one thing is certain,” Roger finished with a grin. “Florian is not to be counted among the sheep.”

  Anthea smiled reluctantly.

  “I suppose you’re right. But this is the last moment I should be prepared to think badly of him.”

  “Hence Madame Moisant’s very timely warning,” declared Roger. But he did not pursue the matter beyond that point, and Anthea could not help thinking how pleasant it was to have him keep everything on an amusing and good-humoured level. Michael would have made terribly heavy weather of this interview.

  And, thinking of Michael in this mood, she suddenly found she could speak of him quite naturally, where previously she could not have brought herself to ask even the simplest question about him.

  “Roger, did Michael and Eve stay on in Paris? I’ve never—asked you about them.”

  “And I’ve never told you about them, because I didn’t know if talking of them would hurt.”

  “It’s all right—now.”

  “Is it, my dear?” He glanced at her with that quizzical but curiously reassuring smile. “Well, they stayed about a week after you saw them at the opening of the Collection. Then they both went back to London. But”—he hesitated a moment—“I had a letter from my aunt this morning—Eve’s mother, you know—and she said Eve was returning at the beginning of next week, for dress fittings or something of the sort.”

  “I see. Will she be—coming to Florian’s?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. She went around to m
ost of the dress shows, but what arrangements she made I just don’t know, Anthea.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Anthea said quickly. But of course it did.

  “I’ll have to act as escort to her during the time she is here,” Roger said rather stolidly. “I’m the only member of the family here, and my ties with that branch of the family used to be strong when we were all much younger. My aunt would think it odd if——”

  “Roger dear, are you thinking it necessary to make excuses to me?” Anthea smiled at him. “It isn’t in the least! Of course you must take your cousin around. Why ever not?”

  “It seems disloyal,” he said quite simply. And suddenly she could have hugged him for such uncomplicated thinking so unashamedly expressed.

  “It isn’t disloyal,” she said gently. “But thank you for thinking that way. Will she be here long?”

  “Some days, I suppose. Perhaps a week.”

  “Then during that time please feel that she has first call on your time, and if we don’t manage to get together I shall quite understand.”

  “We shall manage to get together,” he assured her, and she felt a warm sensation of contentment steal over her.

  The next day she awaited her summons to Florian with considerable interest. But when she was finally sent for, late in the afternoon, he had little to say to her, and that little was said in Mademoiselle Charlotte’s presence, since that lady attended in person to see what was to be done later in her workroom.

  Anthea had rather supposed that she would find an opportunity to tell him of his mistake about Roger and Michael. But any private conversation was impossible with Mademoiselle Charlotte’s bright, beady eyes upon them and her thin ears almost quivering with the desire to hear something scandalous, or at least enjoyably questionable.

  He might have been working on a stuffed dummy for all he noticed the girl who was eventually to own this wonderful creation, and for Mademoiselle Charlotte it must have been a disappointing session.

  Curiously enough—so contrary is human nature—it was faintly disappointing to Anthea too, though why she could not have said.

  Roger was out of Paris for the weekend and Anthea spent a delightful, lazy Saturday on her own. Sitting at the open window of her attic room, with the soft spring air of Paris stirring her hair and caressing her cheek, she wrote a long letter to her father, telling him in a lively, carefree way about her life at Florian’s.

  “It’s to be hoped Millicent won’t think from this that I can get Florian to dress her free,” Anthea thought with grim amusement. But Millicent—and even her father—seemed faintly unreal people at this moment. Only Paris and Roger and the life at Florian’s seemed intensely real.

  Possibly because writing to her father had put her in the mood for it, on Sunday she looked up some friends from the old days who had a country villa just outside Paris.

  They were delighted when she telephoned, and insisted on her coming out there to lunch.

  “It’s such ages since we’ve heard anything of you, darling,” declared Laura, the second girl in the family, who had answered the telephone. “What are you doing these days?”

  “I’m modelling at Florian’s.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Modelling at Florian’s,” repeated Anthea, aware of an intense pride and delight in her job.

  “But, my dear, how thrilling! Do you mean you wear glamorous clothes all day long?—and see famous customers? And is he as fascinating as people always say he is?”

  Anthea laughed.

  “I do wear glamorous clothes, but not all day long, and all the customers aren’t famous. And I don’t know how fascinating people say Florian is,” she answered precisely.

  “Don’t be so aggravating!” was the delighted reply. “Just come out right away, and be prepared to tell us everything. Florian! Imagine! He’s one of the three men I’ve always wanted to meet, the other two being Laurence Olivier and the Duke of Edinburgh. Now hurry.”

  So, amused and not unflattered by the sensation her announcement had caused, Anthea made her way out of Paris to the country, which was just beginning to break out into the first beauty of spring.

  She was received affectionately and with intense curiosity, not only by Laura Daviot and her family, but by the one or two guests who had also dropped in. Everyone wanted to hear what it was like to work at Florian’s, what was really the new line for the season, and, above all, what she knew of the famous designer himself.

  “I’ve heard he is always courteous, even when he’s being perfectly beastly,” Laura said, rolling her fine eyes upwards. “Is that true, Anthea?”

  “He practically never raises his voice, if that’s what you mean,” Anthea replied carefully.

  “Even when he’s being beastly?” Laura insisted.

  Anthea thought of him sitting at his desk telephoning, while she waited in anguish for him to deal with her. But then she also thought of him patting her cheek sharply and saying that the green lace dress should be hers.

  “I don’t think he’s ever beastly,” she said loyally, if not quite truthfully.

  “There you are, you see! She’s fascinated by him,” declared Laura mischievously. “They say people always are. She can’t see a fault in him.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Anthea retorted. “But he’s a good and very just employer.”

  “Oh, my dear, how dull! You only have to add that he is industrious and honest and you’ve destroyed the whole Florian illusion!”

  “He’s not dull,” Anthea stated positively.

  “I should think not, indeed.” That was one of the visitors, a sophisticated-looking girl who had not joined in the general laughter over Laura’s nonsense. “Is it true that he had a long affair with Peroni, the opera singer?”

  “I haven’t the least idea,” Anthea said, immediately acquiring an unreasonable distaste for this questioner. “I’m not in his private confidence.”

  “But there must be heaps of gossip about the place,” Laura protested. “Surely you’d hear something. Do you have to be so discreet?”

  “I heard nothing about Florian and any opera singer at any time,” Anthea insisted drily.

  “Well, it might have been before you went there,” the other girl said carelessly. “He’s supposed to have someone else now, isn’t he? Some mystery girl or other. There was a photograph of them going in somewhere together, with a very surreptitious air, about a month ago. They said she was his new inspiration or something.”

  Anthea felt herself flushing, but whether with anger or embarrassment she was not quite sure.

  “That was no mystery girl. That was myself,” she said curtly. “And I never inspired him to anything yet.”

  Everyone laughed, and Laura asked, with obviously uncontrollable curiosity,

  “But where were you going, together?”

  “Into the salon, of course. Don’t be silly,” retorted Anthea. “I suppose the other stories about him have just about as much foundation in fact.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” the sophisticated-looking girl insisted, and Anthea actually found herself wishing she had not come.

  Florian’s private life had nothing whatever to do with her, of course. She was not even called upon to defend him, just because he was her employer. But—although it had been fun at first telling them about her life and making them all amused and curious—now, she found, she wanted to change the subject.

  With some difficulty, she contrived to do this. And—though she hardly admitted to herself that the move was dictated by any feeling of unease—early in the afternoon she insisted that she had to go back to Paris.

  “Not anything to do with your work on Sunday, surely?” Laura said.

  “In this case, no,” Anthea agreed. “Though some of the girls do photographic modelling then. At the height of the Season there’s little other time.”

  “It all sounds rather like penal servitude in mink, to me,” Laura declared. “But I suppose the life has gre
at compensations.”

  Anthea supposed so too. But she was not sure that she and Laura were thinking of the same compensations.

  Back in Paris, she felt her spirits revive and her heart begin to rejoice. Even with most of the shops shut, and the weekday bustle and vivacity muted, how beautiful the place was! And, in some small way, Anthea thought, she belonged to it all.

  This was her bit of Paris. Here she belonged.

  The news that Eve Armoor would be returning to Paris had given Anthea an unpleasant jolt when Roger first told her, but she had thrust it resolutely to the back of her mind. She was therefore singularly unprepared when, two days later, Madame Moisant sent for her to display the wedding dress to a customer and, on coming into the mirrored fitting-room, she found that the customer was Eve.

  “Hello, Anthea.” Eve smiled at her brittlely. “Miss Marlowe and I have known each other a long time,” she explained aside to Madame Moisant.

  “Miss Marlowe?” Madame Moisant looked as though she considered any Miss Marlowe an entirely hypothetical person. “Ah, you mean Mademoiselle Gabrielle. Is that so?”

  “Oh—you’re Mademoiselle Gabrielle here, are you? How quaint,” Eve said, with a laugh. Then, practically ignoring Anthea, she turned once more to the Directrice.

  “I loved this dress when I saw it at the Opening,” she explained. “But my fiancé was not so keen as I. However, I feel that Monsieur Florian is definitely the man I want to design my wedding dress. I thought if he——”

  “Shall I see if Monsieur Florian is available, madame?” Madame Moisant said, and sent a junior vendeuse running to find the great man himself.

  Anthea stood there rather still, trying to look exactly as she would look if any other customer were discussing wedding dresses. If she could manage not to show any of the reactions which Eve wanted her to show, then the victory was hers. But it was so hard that she knew every muscle and nerve was tensed.

  Then Florian came in, and in some unaccountable way Anthea felt the tension relax slightly.