“Now, dear Lisa, if you will make sure that all the gowns are still in order as they are in my stock book,” said Magda, “it will be truly kind. Miss Cartright comes to me in half an hour or so and we will decide on the sale prices. Then this afternoon or tomorrow you will finish writing out the tickets for them and everything will be ready. Good. I hear that Mrs. Bruce Pogue is to give a grande fête on New Year’s Eve—poor thing, she does not realise it will clash with mine, I have skimmed already the cream—it will surprise me to death if a number of ladies do not come in here today or tomorrow looking desperate to obtain a frock for the occasion. They will ask me if they can have them at the sale prices, and I will tell them, ‘Ah no, madame, I regret that is not possible, I am so sorry.’ They will pay up, not to look cheap. Vraiment on s’amuse ici. Now here is the stock book, take it and do what you can, ma chérie.”
Lisa re-entered the scented fairyland of the Model Gown, noticing that a number of its denizens had been spirited away to the outside world since her last reconnaissance. Tara had gone; so had Minuit. Feeling almost ill with dread, she let her eye run down the list to discover as quickly as she could the fate of Lisette and, hardly daring, bade her eye then travel to the last column. The space was blank; the frock was still unsold, still here, on its hanger, waiting. Of course it was not, it could not be, waiting for her, but it remained in some frail sense hers for so long as it lived here in its mahogany cabinet at Goode’s. She must now make quite sure that it really was here still.
She searched along the rail and found it easily—its white flounces stuck out gaily beyond the more sober margins of its neighbours, and she gently made a space in front of it the better to gaze upon it. Its loveliness increased with each viewing: it was, after all, a work of art. She stood still, absorbed in its contemplation.
Suddenly she became aware of a presence behind her and, turning quickly, almost guiltily, she beheld Magda, smiling broadly.
“Ah, Lisa,” exclaimed she, “I am afraid you have fallen in love—I should have foreseen the danger! Yes, it is a nice little frock, even adorable, truly—I do not know why we have not sold it. Of course it is very tiny, much too small for most of our customers as well as being of course much too young for them, although they do not care about that—Mrs. Martin Wallruss has wanted it, can you imagine!—but I have saved it from such a fate more than once. Eh bien, it will have to go on sale, perhaps some girl with a lot of sense who has saved her dress allowance will come and rescue it. How is it? Let me see, a hundred and fifty guineas—not so expensive, I suppose it will go on sale at seventy-five, these white dresses get so grubby, it will have to be half price. But don’t let me keep you, continue your chore.”
And she sailed away, to all appearances unaware of the havoc her words had wreaked.
Seventy-five guineas! Lisa had not until then realised that in some corner of her mind she had begun to dream of possessing the frock, had even speculated that its sale price might just equate with her total earnings at Goode’s, all, excepting what she had spent on Christmas presents, saved up in her Post Office money box. Now she watched Lisette vanishing into the wardrobe of a girl with a sensibly disposed dress allowance; now she fairly lost it; now she saw wrenched from her so-tentative hand her heart’s desire; it was a moment of absolute desolation. Her spirits suddenly leaden, she continued with her task.
Ladies’ Cocktail too was busy with preparations for the sales during this interregnum between Christmas and New Year and Lisa was occupied with much checking and sorting. The last-minute arrangements would be accomplished after the store closed on New Year’s Eve: some of the staff would stay behind for the purpose, and then the sales would begin as soon as the doors opened on the second of January, and if you thought Christmas was a bunfight, Miss Jacobs told her, you wait until you see the sales! At lunchtime Lisa was more than happy to make her escape from Goode’s; she sat by the Archibald Fountain and stared at the passers-by, troubled by an inchoate feeling of discontent and uncertainty which was not, she truly believed, the result merely of renewed anxiety about her examination results and their consequences, coupled with the unattainableness of Lisette: the worst of it was that she had forgotten her book; she had nothing to read.