The Passion and the Flower Read online

  As she cried in the darkness of the small bed in the tiny room that she occupied at the top of Madame Albertini’s house, Lokita prayed that one day she could see the Prince again, that one day it would be possible for her to belong to him physically as she did mentally and spiritually.

  She and Marie turned off the Boulevard de la Madeleine into a side street where Madame’s house was situated.

  A tall grey house with wooden shutters it was identical with all the others in the street.

  Lokita opened the door because Marie was carrying a full shopping basket and several parcels.

  Inside Marie turned towards the kitchen and Lokita ran up the stairs to a small room on the first floor to where they had carried Miss Anderson the night they had arrived.

  She heard voices before she opened the door and found as she expected that Madame Albertini was talking away in her vivacious but sometimes shrill voice while Andy lying back against her pillows listened to her.

  “Oh, there you are, Lokita,” Madame said as she came into the room. “I have just been telling Miss Anderson that despite the naughty way you behaved Le Théâtre Impérial du Châtelet is willing to have you in their next production.”

  “I cannot do anything until Andy is better,” Lokita answered.

  Her eyes met Madame’s as she spoke and knew she understood that it was not a question of when Andy would get better, but of when she would die.

  It was impossible to leave her until that happened.

  “That is what I thought you would say,” Madame answered briskly. “But there is no hurry. You can take your time. I can assure you that Le Théâtre Impérial is not the only one that wants you.”

  As if she was anxious to change the subject, Lokita held out the newspaper that she had in her hand.

  “Here is La Presse, which you asked me to buy,” she said to Madame.

  “Good girl! I am glad you remembered. I enjoy the gossip which no other paper provides so well.”

  Taking the paper she then added,

  “La Presse informed me yesterday that your admirer, the Prince, has returned to his château in the Champs-Élysées.”

  Lokita was very still. Then she looked apprehensively at Andy, but the sick woman did not seem to want to move.

  Her eyes were closed and her cheeks were almost as pale as the pillows she was lying against.

  Quickly, having no desire to discuss the Prince, Lokita said,

  “The news today is rather horrible. All the newsboys are calling out that the Grand Duke Frederick of Krasnick has been murdered by an anarchist.”

  Madame Albertini made a derisive sound.

  “These anarchists! They really are a perfect menace! One never knows which Monarch will be – ”

  She was interrupted by a voice from the bed.

  “Who did you say has been murdered, Lokita?”

  “The Grand Duke Frederick of Krasnick. He was driving – ”

  “Let me see,” Miss Anderson interrupted. “Give me the paper.”

  There was an urgent note in her voice and she held out her hand.

  In surprise Madame gave her the newspaper.

  The murder was splashed over the front page.

  “GRAND DUKE SHOT BY ANARCHIST

  Crowd tear assassin to pieces.”

  Miss Anderson stared at the newspaper for what seemed a long time and then she turned to Lokita,

  “Fetch Prince Ivan here immediately!’’

  “P-Prince – Ivan?” Lokita repeated, finding it hard to say the words.

  “You heard what I said. Go at once! Take Marie or Serge with you, but bring him back to me quickly. There is no time – to be lost!”

  As she finished speaking, she seemed to collapse against the pillows and Lokita said frantically,

  “Her drops, Madame! Quickly! Her drops!”

  Madame Albertini knew what to do and in a few seconds she was holding a spoon to Miss Anderson’s white lips.

  As she did so she said to Lokita,

  “Do as you are told, ma petite! Fetch the Prince. I know she has something to tell him.”

  Lokita had not taken off her bonnet since she had returned with Marie and now she ran down the stairs.

  Finding Serge in the hall she wasted no time in looking for anyone else.

  “Come with me, Serge,” she said.

  He obeyed her as he always did without question and a few minutes later they were driving down the Boulevard de la Madeleine towards the Champs-Élysées.

  *

  When Lokita had left the Prince saying that she must think, he had sank down in the armchair fighting his inclination to pull her into his arms and plead with her.

  He had intended never to reveal the truth, but everything that was sensitive and spiritual in his nature had responded to the inescapable feeling that Lokita had by her dance evoked the presence of his mother.

  He had felt her near him as he had felt her at other times since her death.

  Once when he had been in danger she had warned him. On another occasion when he had been about to commit an act that was not worthy of himself or his rank she had stopped him.

  Her influence had always been far greater than anyone realised except the Prince himself.

  The reason why he had never married, although she had wished him to do so, was that he had never found a woman with the deep intrinsic goodness and sensitivity of his own mother.

  It was, he told himself now, the urgings of his soul which had made him tell Lokita that he was deceiving her and prevented him from going on with the pretended marriage.

  ‘She loves me! I know she loves me,’ he told himself as he waited for her return to the room where he was sitting.

  He thought that he must let her think for herself and realise the power of their overwhelming love for each other.

  Then like him she would know that nothing else was of any consequence and the only thing that really mattered was that they should be together.

  On the mantelpiece the clock ticked the seconds by and the Prince sat immobile waiting and waiting.

  It was over an hour later, when he could stand the tension no longer, that he rose and walked in the hall before going upstairs to Lokita’s bedroom.

  He could not believe that her door would be locked against him and he was prepared now to go down on his knees if necessary to beg her to stay with him because he could not live without her.

  His foot was actually on the staircase when a footman on duty in the hall said,

  “Excuse me, Your Highness, but will the lady be returning?”

  The Prince turned round feeling as if the blood was draining away from his body.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  His tone of voice frightened the footman.

  “Perhaps it was impertinent of me to ask Your Highness, but the night porter is old and deaf and, if the lady was returning, I thought I would wait up for her.”

  “You are speaking of Miss Lawrence, the lady I dined with and who is staying here?”

  “Yes, Your Highness. She came out of the drawing room soon after dinner and asked me to call her a Hackney carriage.”

  “And you obtained one for her?”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  With an effort the Prince controlled his voice.

  “Where – did she tell it to – go?”

  “I didn’t hear, Your Highness. She spoke in a low voice to the coachman on the box while I was holding the door open.”

  The Prince felt as if he was turned to stone.

  Then, when he reached the drawing room having no memory of walking there, he realised that he had no idea where Lokita had gone.

  There had been no reason for Lord Marston to tell him her address. He had merely said that Miss Anderson had sent for him.

  When today he had gone as the Prince had planned to fetch Lokita to his house, he had not said where he was going.

  The Prince put his hand up to his forehead as if he would force his brain to wo
rk clearly.

  Lord Marston, of course, would know where Lokita was and he was quite certain that she had run like a child to the woman who had looked after her all her life and who was the only Guardian and protector she knew.

  The Prince was also unaware of Lord Marston’s whereabouts that evening.

  When everything had been arranged as the Prince had planned for his and Lokita’s false marriage, Lord Marston had said with a smile,

  “As soon as this ‘Ceremony’ is over, I will make myself scarce.”

  “Of course,” the Prince agreed. “When shall I see you again?”

  “Some time tomorrow morning,” Lord Marston replied casually. “There will be no need for you and Lokita to leave for Marston House until after luncheon. It will not take you more than two and a half hours to drive there.”

  If he had said anything more, the Prince had not heard it. He was concentrating with his whole being on Lokita and his love for her.

  Now despairingly he found it impossible to think where or with whom Lord Marston might be staying.

  If he had been in the same position, he was quite sure that there would have been a dozen women who would have welcomed him with open arms to their houses and to their beds. But as far as he was aware his friend was not involved in any particular liaison.

  There remained, of course, the possibility that Lord Marston had gone to one of his many Clubs.

  These the Prince knew well and, ordering a carriage, he drove from White’s to the St. James’s and from the St. James’s to the Cavalry Club, only to find that among the members in residence Lord Marston was not one.

  By this time it was long after midnight and frantic though he was, the Prince dared not rouse the few of Lord Marston’s relatives who he knew lived in London.

  He could only go back to the house and wait with impatience and apprehension until the dawn came and he knew that only a few hours must pass before Lord Marston came home.

  When Lord Marston returned at eleven o’clock in the morning, he drove the Prince straight to the house in Islington.

  “You are to stay in my chaise, Ivan,” he said firmly as they drew up in the square. “If you rush into the house and upset Miss Anderson so that she dies, Lokita will never forgive you.”

  “I will wait here,” the Prince agreed.

  Lord Marston had looked at his friend anxiously.

  He had known the Prince in many moods, but the one he was in now was new and it worried him.

  Stepping out of his chaise he walked to the boarding house only to learn from the landlord that Lokita, Miss Anderson and their two servants had left for Paris several hours earlier.

  It was difficult to break the news to the Prince and even more difficult to keep him from shooting himself as he wished to do.

  “I have lost her! I have lost her, Hugo!” he kept repeating over and over again, “and I cannot live without her!”

  It was his Russian temperament that made him take the blow more tragically and dramatically than any other man would have done.

  Lord Marston gave him hope.

  “If you are going to destroy yourself, Ivan,” he said, “wait until after we have solved the mystery of Lokita. We know that Miss Anderson holds the secret of who she is and we know too that she has committed her knowledge to paper.”

  He paused to say impassively,

  “Whether she tells us or whether we read what she has written is immaterial. What is important is that we should be in possession of the facts.”

  “Suppose they are of no help?”

  “I have a feeling they will be,” Lord Marston said quietly. “No one could meet Lokita without realising that she is a very unusual as well as a very beautiful woman. When the truth is known there may be a chance that you can marry her.”

  Lord Marston did not really believe this himself, but he had somehow to encourage the Prince and prevent him from putting a bullet through his head.

  “We must go to Paris at once!” the Prince announced.

  “I cannot leave until tomorrow,” Lord Marston objected, “because I have to see the Prime Minister this afternoon.”

  He thought that his friend might go without him, but the Prince waited and they set off the following day by the early train that Lokita and Miss Anderson had left London on the day before.

  Their first call on the morning after their arrival in Paris was the house near the Bois de Boulogne.

  The door was opened by the same old caretaker, but he had no idea that the ladies had come back to Paris and said that if they had they had not been in touch with him.

  “What shall we do now? What the Hell shall we do?” the Prince asked as they drove away.

  “We will go to the theatre and see if they have any knowledge of her,” Lord Marston suggested not very hopefully.

  “Do that now!”

  “At this hour?” Lord Marston queried. “You know as well as I do, Ivan, there will be no one there, not even the cleaners.”

  The Prince bit his lip.

  There were dark lines under his eyes that told Lord Marston he had not slept since Lokita had left him.

  They drove around the Bois de Boulogne, the Prince looking amongst the trees and along the paths hoping, Lord Marston knew, that by some miracle he would see Lokita riding towards him.

  “I am getting hungry,” Lord Marston said at length, “I am going to take you home, Ivan.”

  “I could not eat a thing!” the Prince answered.

  “But I could,” Lord Marston stipulated firmly, “and if you waste away from starvation you will be of no help to anyone, least of all to Lokita should she happen to need you.”

  “She does need me! I know she needs me!” the Prince said fiercely. “It is only that damned dragon who is keeping her from me.”

  Lord Marston remembered that when he had last seen Miss Anderson she had not looked in the least like the dragon she was reputed to be.

  Yet once again she had summoned up the power and the strength, which surprised him, to spirit Lokita away to some secret place where they could not find her.

  They drove down the Champs-Élysées and footmen wearing the Prince’s colourful livery opened the gold-tipped gates of the château.

  Outside the front door Lord Marston drew the horses to a standstill saying as he did so,

  “I must say, Ivan, it’s a great pleasure to drive your horses!”

  The Prince was too sunk in gloom to reply.

  He merely followed Lord Marston up the steps towards the front door. As they reached the top of them, they heard a carriage coming into the drive behind them.

  It was an open fiacre and, as the aged horse came to a stop behind the Prince’s chaise, Lord Marston gave a sudden exclamation.

  He had seen Lokita, but the Prince had seen her first.

  In a second he had changed from a lethargic unhappy man into one pulsating with excitement and with his eyes alight he ran down the steps towards her.

  “Lokita!”

  Her name throbbed on his lips and, as she looked at him, her lips moved too, but no sound came from them.

  The Prince put out his hands and her fingers were in his.

  He crushed them painfully as if he had to reassure himself that she was real.

  As he drew her from the fiacre, she said,

  “I have come to fetch – you. Andy has asked for – you. She wishes to see you immediately!”

  “To see me?” the Prince repeated.

  The words were almost automatic for his eyes were on Lokita’s face and he was staring at her with such an expression of love and yearning that it made her tremble.

  “Please – come,” she asked softly.

  “Of course,” the Prince answered.

  His chaise was still waiting outside the front door and having heard what passed between them Lord Marston climbed into the driving seat and picked up the reins.

  “Where are we to go?” he queried.

  Lokita told him as if it was difficult to r
emember anything but that the Prince was beside her.

  As they drove into the Champs-Élysées, Lokita sitting beside the two men, the Prince put his arm around her shoulders.

  “How could you crucify me in such a way?” he quizzed her.

  “Forgive – me,” she pleaded. “I went to Andy to – ask her advice and she – insisted on coming immediately to Paris.”

  “I felt it must be something like that,” the Prince said. “I could not believe that you had stopped loving me.”

  “You know I love you! It was agony – an agony I cannot describe – to leave you as I did.”

  They looked at each other and both their faces were drawn and lined with what they had suffered and yet the love in their eyes illuminated them with a radiance that was blinding.

  Lord Marston drove them swiftly and without speaking until they reached the street off the Boulevard de la Madeleine.

  The groom travelling in the seat at the back of the chaise ran to the horses’ heads.

  Lokita led the Prince and Lord Marston into the tall grey house and up the stairs.

  Only as they reached Miss Anderson’s room did Lord Marston say,

  “Perhaps she will not wish to see me.”

  “I want you to be there,” the Prince replied. “I want you to hear what she has to say.”

  Lokita opened the door and went into the room.

  “I have found Prince Ivan, Andy,” she said, “And Lord Marston is here too.”

  As she spoke, she saw that Madame Albertini was giving Miss Anderson some more of her drops in a spoon.

  One look at her face told Lokita that she was anxious.

  “Come in,” Miss Anderson called and now her voice was firm.

  Madame Albertini moved away and Lokita ran and knelt down beside the bed.

  “The Prince is here, Andy,” she said. “But if you are not strong enough to speak to His Highness – he will wait.”

  “I have to speak – and now!” Miss Anderson replied.

  As if they knew what she wanted, the two men each pulled a chair nearer to the bed and Madame Albertini left the room.

  The Prince was beside Lokita as she knelt on the floor and Lord Marston sat on the opposite side of the bed.

  “I have so much to tell you,” Miss Anderson began, “and very little time to say it in.”