Comes a Stranger (38 page)

She tried to console herself by thinking of alleviating circumstances. There were, for example, outstanding accounts amounting in all to a substantial figure. In her present depressed mood Olive was inclined to wonder if a pile of bad debts would not be a more accurate description. One never knew, though. Olive still remembered the shock they all sustained when, after three ‘R.D.' cheques in succession, Miss Lucille Dubane scored a win at a night club—the win being the son of a wealthy north-country manufacturer—and promptly paid up in full. Not only that but still, after the divorce, she remained a valued client, almost always paying cash since the alimony had been arranged on liberal terms.

But a business cannot live on one cash client alone. Things might improve, no doubt, for certainly last quarter had been specially bad and no one quite knew why, though Mademoiselle Valclos, Olive's head assistant, advanced the theory that the falling off was due to competition from gas masks, which seemed, she said thoughtfully, to be to-day your only wear. In the whole three past months there had been only two bright spots. Lady Alice Belchamber had paid her account, outstanding one hardly knew how long. At this moment, too, Lady Alice was in the shop, selecting a new hat for the forthcoming Royal garden party at Buckingham Palace, and that incidentally was one reason why Olive was here, busy with accounts, and not there, helping to effect a sale. For Lady Alice, formidable and well-known explorer and traveller, pioneer of Empire, authoress of several well-known books of travel, was a little apt to carry into her everyday transactions those methods by which she had bullied and browbeaten her way through the most remote districts of the darkest continents. The story went that she once had cowed with her riding whip a tribe of armed and furious reputed cannibals, and it was certain that in her flat hung a formidable knife with which she admitted having slain the Arab, who, armed with it, had penetrated her tent somewhere in the wilds of the near East. Olive had been only too glad to leave Lady Alice in the calm, competent, exquisitely manicured hands of Mlle Valclos, so confident of her ability to deal with any pioneer any Empire ever knew.

All the same Olive was not altogether sure that Mlle Valclos fully realized what it was she was taking on.

The one other bright spot in this last quarter had been the appearance in the shop of Flora Tamar, wife of Michael Tamar, of the Tamar Internal Combustion Engine Co., Ltd., though unlimited would have been a better description now that Mr. Tamar had patriotically placed all his resources at the disposal of the Government for their re-armament scheme at a mere trifling profit so inconsiderable he had never cared to disclose it, not even to the Government accountants themselves. A modest and becoming reticence. It was not, however, merely the wealth behind Flora Tamar that made her so desirable a client. She enjoyed the deserved reputation of being one of the most beautiful women in London, so that to provide her with hats was not only a privilege, it was more, it was an advertisement. A hat on Flora's head, indeed, was not merely a hat, it was Publicity, and of course publicity is how to-day prosperity is spelt. Nor was that all. Flora had ideas, had what Mlle Valclos called ‘a touch with a hat', and on Mademoiselle's lips those words meant much, meant all. Olive herself, though admittedly competent, had never earned such praise, knew, indeed, she did not merit it, and would look on humbly and in silence while Mrs. Tamar and Mlle Valclos argued together, as in the shades Michael Angelo and Raphael may be thought to discuss other points of form and colour. Even at this moment there reposed in the shop a new creation waiting the approval of Flora and owing its central novelty—and what a novelty!—entirely to Flora herself. Hers alone had been the original suggestion; though in its final form it owed, undoubtedly, much to the executive ability of Mlle Valclos. The result was one that Mademoiselle was gently sure would create a sensation, would send the name and fame of Olive's establishment rampaging through every smart drawing-room in London, would set New York agog, shake even the settled supremacy of Paris. Already Mademoiselle had allowed a few of the more favoured clients—those who were influential or who generally paid up—to peep at the completed masterpiece awaiting Flora's final approval.

It was at this moment that certain sounds from without attracted Olive's attention. Voices seemed to be raised above those usual and expected cries of ecstasy the sight of the new hat was wont to evoke. Lady Alice's gruff tones were distinctly audible. Laying down the law as usual, Olive supposed. Odd, Olive reflected, since Lady Alice and Flora Tamar were known to be deadly enemies, that it was through Lady Alice that Mrs. Tamar had heard of them. A hat Mlle Valclos had designed for Lady Alice's harsh, immobile features had attracted Flora's attention at some fashionable affair they had both attended, and she had inquired where it had come from.

“To provide that grenadier of a woman,” Flora had said, “with a hat that is almost smart and yet doesn't look ridiculous on her—well, it's a feat. I must see what they can do for Me,” said Flora with an almost royal emphasis on the Me.

The result was the superb, distinctive creation now ready for inspection in a locked compartment on a shelf in the shop, for it was not intended that any but the specially favoured and entirely trustworthy should have a glimpse of the waiting wonder. Imagine if some clever copyist obtained a surreptitious glimpse and produced something of even a remote resemblance! A thought to make the blood run cold! And if no description is here attempted it is simply because no description could convey any idea of the delicacy of its lines, the exquisite sweep of its curves, the subtle harmony of its colouring, or make clear how exquisitely it expressed, confirmed, as it were, crowned, the beauty, the perfection of face and form and feature for which it was designed.

On another it might be, Mademoiselle admitted, a shade too much, a nuance too little. For Flora Tamar— and then Mademoiselle lapsed into that silence which is so far, far more eloquent than any mere form of words.

It was, she told Olive, as though perfect hat and perfect wearer had for once come together, as we are told time and the man do never, but, as in this event had done the woman and the hat!

Olive turned uneasily in her chair. Outside, in the shop, there roared the voice of Lady Alice, as no doubt it had roared when she met and faced and tamed that crowd of armed savages of whom the story told.

A door banged—banged so that the whole place shook. A bang of doom, in fact. The door communicating with the shop opened and Mademoiselle flew in. She collapsed into a chair. Olive had a glimpse of the pale, scared face of Jenny, the junior assistant. Even the errand boy himself, who had just come in, looked scared and disturbed— a thing Olive would never have thought possible. Mademoiselle gasped out,

“She's gone off with it.”

Simple words, perhaps, but charged with fate and fear. Olive clasped her hands. She did not understand but already she was shaken.

“She's gone off with it,” said Mademoiselle once again.

“Who? what?” said Olive.

“Lady Alice. The Hat. Mrs. Tamar's hat,” said Mademoiselle.

“Vicky,” said Olive. “Oh, Vicky.”

Mademoiselle's name out of business hours was Victoria Alexandria Bates, her father having been a loyal linen draper in Camden Town. In business she was Mademoiselle Valclos, usually addressed as Mademoiselle, but in moments of emotion, such as those caused by an unexpected ‘R.D.', or a sale of a last season's model at a this season's price, known to her employer as ‘Vicky'.

This was clearly a ‘Vicky' moment, though even yet Olive did not fully understand.

“Vicky!” said Olive once again. “You don't mean...?”

“Pinched it and bunked off,” said Vicky simply.

“Not,” said Olive, hardly daring to bring out the words, “not the Flora Tamar?”

Vicky did not answer. There was no need to. One might as well, in the middle of an earthquake, have asked, ‘Is it an earthquake?'

Olive said,

“Well!”

It wasn't ‘well' at all, anything but ‘well' indeed. But then words are poor inadequate things when the depths are really plumbed.

“Well,” said Olive once more, and this time the accent, if not the word, expressed something of the emotions seething within.

“She had heard about it,” Vicky explained with a kind of desperate calm. “She seems somehow to keep tabs on Mrs. Tamar and she asked if she might see the Tamar hat and so I let her. Then she asked if she might hold it and I let her”—at this point Vicky's voice rose almost to a wail of anguish—“and she said might she try it on, and she did. It looked silly on her. I knew it would, but we all kept straight faces. She said, ‘I'll keep it. How much is it?' I thought she was joking and I said Mrs. Tamar was paying us twenty guineas. She said she would give us twenty-five. I thought she was just trying to be funny—at least I tried to but I was beginning to feel funny myself—here.” Vicky indicated the exact spot. “I said it wasn't for sale, and she shouted that every hat in a hat shop was for sale or what was it there for? And then before I could say a word, before I could lift a finger, before I knew what she was up to, the cat—she, she bounced out.”

“With the—wearing the—Hat?” almost whispered Olive.

“Wearing the hat,” confirmed Vicky.

“Oh, Vicky,” said Olive.

“I flung her own after her,” said Vicky, “but what was the good of that? Only a gesture.”

Then she burst into tears. It was a dreadful thing to see the calm, confident superiority, so lofty, so assured, with which Vicky was accustomed to rule the shop and direct the sale, that gentle and aloof disdain by which the customer who had meant to ask for a guinea model was as it were impelled to consider only the three- and five- guinea variety, to see all that dissolve and melt away till nothing was left save a devastated young woman sitting and howling her heartiest.

“Oh, Vicky,” said Olive. “Oh, Vicky, please don't.”

“I couldn't help it, really I couldn't,” pleaded Vicky through her sobs. “I know I've let you down, but I just simply never dreamed of such a thing—she was out of the shop and in a taxi before any of us could lift a finger. If I had only known what she was up to,” said Vicky, showing menacing, crimsoned finger-nails, “I'd have had it off her, if I had had to scratch her eyes out and tear the clothes off her back to get it. And now it's gone.”

The sobs came again. Olive put an arm round her, and, after a moment's hesitation, kissed the tip of her nose as being the—comparatively—driest spot available.

“Might as well stop yelling,” Olive suggested,

Vicky's sobs diminished in violence.

“Whatever shall we do?" she asked. “Mrs. Tamar may be here for it any moment.”

Olive considered. She came to a decision.

“We'll have a cup of tea,” she said firmly.

Vicky got out her handkerchief and, as that was plainly quite inadequate, went to find a face towel. She looked at herself in the glass. She said simply,

“I must do me.”

She became busy with this operation. Olive filled the kettle and put it on the small electric stove they used. Vicky, intent before the mirror, said,

“Mrs. Tamar will never forgive us.”

“I expect we'll lose her,” agreed Olive. “It was for the Buckingham Palace garden party, wasn't it?"

“Yes,” said Vicky. She turned tragically, lip-stick and compact in hand. She said very slowly, “I thought perhaps even the Queen herself might have noticed that hat—I thought perhaps someday we might be asked to send hats to the Palace.” She sighed as the lost soul might sigh who sees the gates of paradise slowly closing. “And now—” She resumed her task. “Now most likely Lady Alice will wear it,” she said. “It'll look awful.”

“No good,” said Olive, making the tea and making it strong, “no good thinking about it.”

“It's not even,” said Vicky, “as if it were anything like Lady Alice's style. People will say we let our clients go out looking—sights. I might have found something to suit her—only nothing could except a gas mask,” added Vicky viciously. “Olive, why don't you sack me?”

“Well, that wouldn't get the hat back, would it?”asked Olive. “It's all rather awful, but I don't see how any one could possibly have helped it.”

“I might have grabbed her if I had been quicker,” sighed Vicky. “But she was out of the shop and in the taxi like lightning.”

“She's twice as big and strong as you are,” Olive pointed out. “Almost like a man.”

Jenny, the junior assistant, put a small, scared face in at the door and looked much relieved when she saw them drinking tea. She would hardly have been surprised to find them both unconscious on the floor. She said,

“Oh, please, Mr. Owen's here.”

Vicky jumped up. She spilt her tea in doing so but she didn't care. She cried,

“Oh, why ever didn't we think of him? He's a policeman and he can go and arrest her or something and make her give it back again.”