Read Online Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York by Paul Gallico - Free Book Online

know? How ever could you guess?’
    Her own dark unhappy eyes suddenly became caught up in the small vivid blue ones of Mrs Harris which were revealing the first glint of tears. Woman looked into woman, and what Mme Colbert saw filled her first with horror and then a sudden rush of compassion and understanding.
    The horror was directed at herself, at her own coldness and lack of sympathy. In one moment it seemed this odd little woman facing her had held a mirror up and let her see herself as she had become through self-indulgence and yielding to her personal difficulties. She thought with shame how she had behaved towards M. Fauvel, and with even more contrition her feckless scolding of the sales girls and even Natasha, the model, who was one of her pets.
    But above all she was appalled at the realisation that she had let herself be so encrusted, so hardened by the thoughts with which she lived daily that she had become both blind and deaf to human needs and cries emanating from the human heart. Wherever she came from, whatever her walk in life, the person opposite her was a woman, with all of a woman’s desires, and as the scales fell thus from her own eyes, she whispered: ‘My dear, you’ve set your heart on a Dior dress.’
    Mrs Harris would not have been a veteran member in good-standing of her profession had she forborne to reply: ‘Well, now, ’ow did you know?’
    Mme Colbert ignored the sarcasm. She was looking now at the pile of money and shaking her head in amazement. ‘But however did you— ?’
    ‘Scrimped and syved,’ said Mrs Harris. ‘It’s took me three years. But if you wants somefink bad enough, there’s always ways. Mind you, you’ve got to ’ave a bit o’ luck as well. Now tyke me, after I won a hundred pounds on a football poolI said to meself, “That’s a sign, Ada ’Arris,” so I started syving and ’ere I am.’
    Mme Colbert had a flash of intuition as to what ‘Syving’ meant to such a person and a wave of admiration for the courage and gallantry of the woman passed through her. Perhaps if she herself had shown more of this kind of courage and tenacity, instead of taking out her frustration on innocent and helpless sales girls, she might have been able to accomplish something for her husband. She passed her hand over her brow again and came to a quick decision. ‘What is your name, my dear?’ When Mrs Harris told her she filled it in quickly on an engraved card that said that Monsieur Christian Dior, no less, would be honoured by her presence at the showing of his collection that afternoon. ‘Come back at three,’ she said and handed it to Mrs Harris. ‘There really is no room, but I will make a place for you on the stairs from where you will be able to see the collection.’
    All rancour and sarcasm vanished from the voice of Mrs Harris as she gazed in ecstasy at her admission to Paradise. ‘Now, that’s kind of you, love,’ she said. ‘It looks like me luck is ’olding out.’
    A curious feeling of peace pervaded Mme Colbert and a strange smile illuminated her countenance as she said: ‘Who can say, perhaps you will be lucky for me too.’

A T five minutes to three that afternoon three people whose lives were to become strangely entangled, found themselves within a whisper of one another by the grand staircase in the House of Dior, now crowded with visitors, clients, sales girls, staff, and members of the press, all milling about.
    The first of these was M. André Fauvel, the young chief accountant. He was well set up and handsome in a blond way, in spite of a scar upon his cheek honourably acquired, and the source of a military medal won during his army service in Algeria.
    It was sometimes necessary for him to descend from the chilling regions of his account books on the fourth floor to the warmth of the atmosphere of perfumes, silks, and satins, and the females they encased, on the first floor. He welcomed these occasions and even sought excuses for them in the