Another Scandal in Bohemia (4 page)

“Walk,” he instructed, again in English. Irene paraded back and forth a few times before coming to a stop before this would-be Napoleon of costume.

“Her future Serene Highness of Monaco, Princess Alice,” he said in the same high, slightly strained voice, “speaks well of you, Madame Norton. I have no favorite clients, but some are more likable than others, and she is one of the most charming.”

Irene curtsied her silent thanks for the compliment to her friend. The motion made her gown hem pool on the carpet in liquid metal rivers of red and gold.

“Liberty of London,” he noted approvingly. “I have a great affection for the aesthetic dress, but most women are too timid to wear it. The Duchess Alice assures me that you are not timid, and I see that she is right.”

I didn’t miss the triumphant look Irene shot me from under her veiling eyelashes.

“What kind of gown do you require?” he demanded next.

“I require nothing.” Irene’s stage-supple voice had a husky tone all the more arresting. It commanded the attention as imperiously as a low, trembling chord on a cello.

Monsieur Worth (he was English in surname only now, I saw) nodded again, as if further pleased.

“What I desire is a gown of your own special design,” she said. “Perhaps an evening gown, since that is your specialty, and mine.”

Returning rustles announced the advent of the angelic model and the mysterious “Marie.” This personage, I am happy to report, was clad almost entirely in dignified black—a solid, maternal figure of sixty-some years.

Despite this, her hair was as dark as her dress and drawn tightly from a center part into a curled chignon at the back of her head. She possessed a Gallic nose (no doubt useful for endless sniffing of wine “bouquets”), long and strong. Her eyes and brows were almost black, and all of these sternly handsome features were inlaid into a placid moon of face that cast its own soft radiance no matter the hour.

“My wife,” the miserable martinet announced, enough proud fondness in his voice to redeem him somewhat in my eyes.

Irene’s curtsy was deeper and yet more playful this time. She reminded me of a school-girl on her best company manners. “All Paris knows of Madame Marie, who was the first and most fortunate woman to model a Worth creation.”

I had never heard of the woman, nor that she was the first of these scandalous walking fashion dolls.

“We were poor,” Madame Worth said with a nostalgic smile. “Almost thirty years ago, I took my courage in hand and approached the Austrian ambassador’s wife with some of my husband’s sketches. Princess von Metternich almost refused to see me—until her waiting woman persuaded her to glance at the designs. Yet I must admit”—she glanced at her husband—“that it took more courage to wear Charles’s early creations to the races at Longchamps when he dispensed with shrouding shawls and deep-brimmed bonnets. Had I not been a respectable married woman, I wonder what would have been said about such unprecedented exposure.”

“You
are
a wonder,” he replied, “and went among the great ladies on your own terms, just as I clothe them on mine. As for my early innovations, they are as nothing today.”

Madame Worth shrugged her broad shoulders, removed the abandoned compress from the sofa, shooed the spaniel and sat in its place. Here indeed was a formidable woman. I detected the power behind the throne, or, in this case, the pincushion and the poppycock.

“This is Madame Norton,” he went on, “that the Duchess Alice recommended. Would you walk again, my dear? For my wife.”

I noticed that his orders softened in the presence of that lady.

Irene obliged. Her theatrical training had made her docile in only one area: that of obeying a maestro, a stage director, or a composer like Antonin Dvořák—and perhaps a world- renowned composer of ladies’ toilettes like Worth.

He shook his head as she paraded, not in disapproval but in wonder. “I have not seen such fine carriage since yours,” he commented to his wife. He then waved Irene to a halt. “You are American, no?”

She nodded.

“Ah, my American clients. Such women, goddesses of liberty with three divine attributes: faith, figures, and francs. Between them and the Russian grand duchesses I am kept in seventh heaven... and caviar.”

“Thank you, Monsieur,” Irene said, “but I fear I somewhat lack the third element in your dressmaking equation.”

“That may not be fatal, my dear,” Madame Worth put in quickly. “My husband is aware that the times change as we near the twentieth century. We have seen royal houses fall, empires dissolve, and aristocrats flee. Commerce remains. I have long passed the time when I could introduce my husband’s more daring inventions. He seeks a substitute.”

“But—” Irene appeared bemused. “The mannequins below. I recognized a duplicate of Alice, of Maria Feodorovna, the Empress of Russia. You shrewdly employ living dressmaker’s dummies, ‘doubles’ of your most famous patrons, Monsieur, but I do not resemble anyone famous.”

“Exactly!” The silly man clapped his hands again, his ludicrous beret trembling like a blancmange. He glanced at his stolid wife. “I believe that we have found here our own Madame X, our
mannequin de ville
.”

She nodded at this mysterious statement, and even Irene allowed herself to look a trifle blank.

“But first I must see more!” he declared. “You must repair below and allow yourself to be laced into a more fitted gown. Aesthetic dress is all very well for effect, but most of my clients prefer to exhibit their small waists. I trust that you are as accomplished, Madame.”

“The cruel schoolmistress Corsetry has long since made hourglasses of us all,” Irene answered, unruffled.

“True!” Marie Worth’s hands patted her broad midsection with a laugh. “One of the comforts of old age is... comfort.”

“I will do as you suggest,” Irene said, turning to leave. I started to follow her.

“Wait!” came Worth’s command.

We stopped as one and looked back. The odious man- milliner was glaring at me through narrowed eyes. “This other lady. Is she to be clothed as well?”

I froze in blind umbrage, as speechless as a rabbit. “Miss Huxleigh,” Irene answered swiftly on my behalf, “is too sensible to follow fashion. She is Shropshire born.”

“Ah.” Monsieur Worth nodded soberly under his frivolous beret. “I myself was a Lincolnshire lad until I went to London at twelve to make my fortune.” He frowned at me. “It is for the best. Even I could not do much for her.” A plump hand waved us on.

So I was allowed to escape that interview unmolested.

Chapter Three

A
G
OOD
D
RESSING-
D
OWN

We were
escorted below by the waiting mannequin through the crowded salon and ensconced in one of several dressing rooms. These private chambers were paneled and gilded as lavishly as the main salon, with hooks for gowns ringing the perimeter.

“A shame to drive so much hardware into such splendid woodwork,” I commented after our guide left us.

“Forget the woodwork!” Irene’s voice was hushed as in a church, but her excitement was hardly religious. “Do you realize what good fortune I may have? Maison Worth is seeking a discreet but public mannequin for its most forward designs. ‘A model of the city.’ I may possibly acquire more gowns than I can afford for a discounted price!”

“I should think that Monsieur Worth would pay
you
for acting as his experiment, if so.”

“You do not seem to comprehend the honor. His wife was key in his early career; he apparently hunts a modern substitute, and I am a candidate.”

“Honor, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.”

Irene sighed hugely. Her cheeks were fervid and her eyes glowed as if glossed by fever. “This is a fabulous piece of luck, Nell! Monsieur Worth is not merely considering another in-house mannequin, but an... ambassadress of dress, as it were, someone who will move in the larger society and command attention for his gowns.”

“I should think he had achieved all the attention necessary and indeed healthy by now, Irene.”

“A genius like Worth never stops innovating; that is his genius.”

“He has made a lot of money from vain and foolish women. That is his true genius, and you will be both of those if you allow yourself to become a fashion advertisement.”

“Wait until you see a Worth gown in detail. Even a Shropshire lass will be impressed.”

At that moment a knock tapped lightly at our door. Our vendeuse swept in. Armfuls of violet velvet sparkled with an entire firmament of ornament: jet-spangled black lace splashed with silver, peacock blue, and green beadwork.

Irene’s sigh escaped with the ecstatic control of an aria: a long sustained exhalation of utter bliss.

The vendeuse smiled as she hung this theatrical curtain of a gown on a gilt hook. “I will let Madame’s maid assist her,” she said, preparing to withdraw.

I remained mystified, but Irene merely reached up to unpin her bonnet. “Huxleigh will consider it an honor to fit a Worth gown,” she murmured wickedly.

No sighs for me. I gasped my indignation, but it was too late. The vendeuse had bowed herself and her full skirts out of the chamber and shut the door.

“Irene! I am not your personal maid. How could you let her think so?”

“You do aid me now and again with my corsetry, when Godfrey is not available, as I aid you in turn.”

“Yes. But—”

Irene ignored my sputterings. Instead she was circling the dress—yes, like a hunter circuitously approaching a rare and dangerous beast. She avoided coming too near too soon, only to draw out the moment of capture.

I shook my head, took her bonnet and laid it on a small table, then marched right up to the garment in question.

“Silk velvet,” I pronounced from my ancient few days in Whiteley’s drapery department. “Probably French,” I added, crushingly.

“Lyons silk,” Irene speculated dreamily. “Worth has made the Lyons looms and their products famous.”

“This is most oddly constructed,” I said, ignoring her indrawn breath as I reached to examine the gown. “Many panels make up the skirt, but the bodice, the corsage, is all of one piece.”

“Cut on the bias,” Irene explained, as though discussing a work of art. “Worth is noted for it.”

“No doubt to save fabric.”

“And he is famed for asymmetry in decoration. He does not wish a dress to be predictable, to be anticipated. A woman wearing a Worth is a living sculpture, imbued with the capacity to surprise from every angle.”

“Oh, really, Irene! Will you stop mooning over this overdone piece of dress-making? I will at least help you to disrobe.”

I did indeed play lady’s maid, for Irene was so enraptured by the sight of the gown that she stood as leaden-armed as a sleepy schoolgirl while I worked. Fortunately, the shapeless Liberty silk gown was child’s play to unfasten. I soon had it hung on an opposite hook and turned to regard its monstrous replacement. This gown’s drama, sheer yardage and glittering trellis of ornament made it a kind of feminine suit of armor, and a far more rambunctious garment to don or discard than the Liberty.

Irene remained frozen in dreamy contemplation of the violet gown, looking quite charming in her silk-and-cotton combinations, lace-trimmed at shoulder and knee, and very like an abbreviated bathing costume, in that her pale silk stockings were her only covering from knee to slipper.

“You are wearing no petticoats!” I observed.

She answered me without taking her eyes from the gown. “That is the entire idea of aesthetic dress: to dispense with excess yardage and poundage. The silk must fall unimpeded.”

“But—” I began, for I had never left home without a petticoat, and usually several, under the most casual of day dresses.

Irene frowned as if hearing a sour note. She waved me silent with the same imperious gesture that Monsieur Worth had used, save that hers indicated mental abstraction rather than arrogance.

“Shhh.
I hear something,” she whispered.

Of course she heard something. The women in the salon, in the other dressing rooms, were chattering like chickens. We had simply ignored them as we would an out-of-tune chorus at the opera.

Now Irene did not ignore those nearby voices. Now she cocked her head to listen.

I couldn’t help following her lead, though I abhor eavesdropping. The first familiar word I heard struck my composure with ice-water shock.

“Or course he is divinely handsome,” a languid, violalike voice was pronouncing in oddly accented French. “If I deigned to take a lover of no consequence, I would ensure that his personal attractions made up for his lack of social ones.”

“But to wed such a man, Serafina!” another voice broke in, merry as a flute. “A mere barrister. To end all opportunity of marrying well! Or at least of mistressing well.”

“And have you seen her jewels?” a deeper, crueler bassoon voice intoned. “No, of course not. She has none, save for a few sorry trinkets.”

“Still,” the more charitable flute trilled, “she has powerful friends.”