The Passion and the Flower Read online

“Thank you, my Lord,” Lord Marston replied.

  *

  The Prince's open chaise drawn by two outstanding horses was waiting in the Embassy yard.

  An hour later the two friends drove off together after Lord Marston had left instructions for his valet to pack and follow him to the Prince's mansion.

  “Now, what shall we do tonight?” the Prince asked.

  “I will take you to see something new,” Lord Marston replied, “and that I think will interest you.”

  “What is that?”

  “I am not going to tell you, it shall be a surprise.”

  “Very well,” the Prince answered, “but I insist on a good dinner first.”

  “Magnys or Le Grand Véfour?” Lord Marston enquired.

  “Véfour,” the Prince responded promptly. “I want to eat and not be distracted by all the celebrated diners who will ornament Magnys.”

  Lord Marston smiled.

  “Very well, we will have their spécialité, which I know was one of your favourite dishes in the past.”

  He was thinking as he spoke of the fine Rhenish carp that had been declared by Alfred Delvau in Les Plaisirs de Paris, which had just been published, to be one of the great glories of the restaurant.

  Alfred Delvau was the same author who had written,

  “Pleasure is the mania of Paris, their malady and their weakness. They love violent emotions and entertainments which create noise, stir and excitement.”

  It was a description. Lord Marston thought, that might as well apply to the Prince.

  Nevertheless, after some weeks of attending nothing but Court and Embassy functions and playing the part of the perfect Diplomat, he now felt a quickening of his pulses.

  The two men were welcomed at Le Grand Véfour. The restaurant was in the Palais Royal, which during the reign of Louis XVI, the Duc d’Orleans had turned into a place of gambling and amusement and he became overnight one of the richest men in France.

  It was still the haunt of les cocottes, who had made it their special promenade and Le Grand Véfour was decorated in the same way as it had been immediately after the French Revolution.

  With its red plush sofas and its mirrors inset in painted wooden panels it was comfortable, intimate and appropriate for those who wished to concentrate on what they were eating.

  The Prince and Lord Marston ordered carefully and selectively.

  The Maitre d’hôtel suggested ‘a Russian bird’ and the Prince looked surprised until Lord Marston explained,

  “There is now a large trade between Paris and Russia in game. The birds are packed in oats, put in wicker baskets and arrive here in five days.”

  “Such is progress!” the Prince remarked ironically.

  “Alternatively you can have birds’ nests from China, ortolans from Italy or truffles from Périgord,” Lord Marston joked.

  “In France I expect snails,” the Prince said firmly and ordered them.

  Then, as they waited for their food to be brought to them, they sat back comfortably sipping champagne and talking endlessly.

  As so often when they were alone, they discussed subjects which would have surprised many of their friends, philosophy, literature, politics, arguing with each other and capping each other’s quotations, both of them being exceedingly erudite.

  When dinner was finished, the Prince’s mood changed with a swiftness that was characteristic of him.

  “Now, Hugo,” he asked. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Hold your breath,” Lord Marston replied. “To see Cinderella!”

  “Cinderella?” the Prince exclaimed.

  “At the Théâtre Impérial du Châtelet.”

  “I am too old for Fairytales!” the Prince exclaimed.

  “Not for this one,” his friend asserted firmly.

  “I warn you, I shall walk out if I am bored.”

  “I am prepared to bet quite a considerable sum that you will not be.”

  “Very well,” the Prince conceded in a resigned tone.

  They left Le Grand Véfour and walked a little way down a narrow pavement to where the Prince’s carriage was waiting.

  It was a closed barouche with two men on the box and very comfortable inside.

  There was a sable rug in case the evening grew cold, but for the moment the April air was warm and mellow.

  The two friends crossed their legs and puffed reflectively at their long cigars.

  They drove through the boulevards with their brightly lit cafés, the crowds perambulating up and down in the golden light from the gas lamps.

  Outside the theatre there was, although the performance had started over an hour before, a considerable crowd standing about blocking the doorways and quite a number still trying to buy seats.

  “Has Paris returned to its childhood?” the Prince asked ironically.

  “This is a fairy story with a difference,” Lord Marston explained. “It has five acts and thirty scenes.”

  The Prince groaned.

  “Lavish production is a feature of the contemporary theatre,” Lord Marston said in the tone of one giving a lecture. “You will see the Green Grotto, the Fiery Mountain, the Azure Lake, the Glow-worms’ Palace and the Golden Clouds.”

  Again the Prince groaned, but Lord Marston thought that he was nevertheless somewhat intrigued.

  They arrived during the first interval. There was a crowd of men in the auditorium attempting to find a drink and the clamour and the hum of voices was deafening.

  The lights were up in the house, tall jets of gas illuminated a great crystal pendant with a stream of yellow and rose, which was reflected from the arched dome to the pit in a deluge of light.

  The footlights threw a sharp flood of colour onto the purple draperies of the curtain and in the boxes men with opera glasses and women with lorgnettes were contemplating each other.

  Lord Marston had taken the precaution of engaging the largest and what was known as the ‘Royal Box’ for his friend.

  As they entered it, young gentlemen standing in the stalls with low-cut waistcoats and gardenias in their buttonholes turned their opera glasses on them.

  There was a flutter of hands from many of the other boxes and the Prince bowed first to one and then to another of the ladies who recognised him.

  “You will be deluged with invitations tomorrow,” Lord Marston remarked.

  The Prince ran an appraising eye round the theatre.

  “I promise you, Hugo, I shall be very selective.”

  The interval bell was ringing and now the audience was returning to their seats.

  There was the usual confusion of people who had seated themselves being obliged to rise again and the Conductor of the orchestra took his place. The sound of conversation grew lower and quieter although occasionally broken by coarse voices.

  They had reached the part of the play, Lord Marston realised, where the scene was a Fiery Mountain.

  Gnomes were busy working under iridescent rocks bathed in a red light more vivid than rubies. Then the waves of the azure lake grew larger and the ruby fire from the mountain was extinguished by cool blue lights where half-naked nymphs were swimming.

  It was so fantastic that the whole audience burst into applause and for a moment even the Prince seemed impressed.

  After a chorus from the gnomes and a song from the Prince Charming who was looking for Cinderella, the scene dissolved into darkness and there was a ‘knockabout’ turn between two comedians whose broad innuendoes had the whole theatre in convulsions.

  The Prince’s attention was beginning to wane.

  He was looking at the occupants of the other boxes, doubtless, Lord Marston thought, considering if there was anyone present he would wish to renew an acquaintance with.

  Then, as the comedians went off, there was a sudden hush and the house was in darkness. The orchestra began very softly a classical tune that was different from anything they had heard previously.

  “This is what I brought you to see,” Lord Marston
pointed out.

  The Prince with a somewhat questioning expression on his face turned his head towards the stage.

  The curtains were drawn back and now, instead of the gaudy and flamboyant colours that had characterised the decor for all the other scenes, there were only curtains that seemed to melt into the shadows.

  Onto the stage came a dancer.

  She was not in the least like any dancer the Prince had ever seen before.

  Used to the Imperial Russian Ballet with their blocked ballet shoes, their short frilled tutus, their low-cut bodices and their accentuated make-up, he saw in this girl a complete contrast.

  She wore a Grecian robe of white silk and her hair was loose but caught at the back from her face in a style that was neither classical nor modern.

  She had sandals on her feet and no ornamentation of any sort, nor as far as the audience could see did she wear any cosmetics.

  She stood for a moment quite still in the centre of the stage and then she began to dance.

  It was a dance, at the same time a mime, that told a story that was simple and so brilliantly portrayed that no one could fail to understand it.

  She was a child, happy and carefree, thrilled with the flowers, the butterflies and the birds and, as her arms went out towards them, one could see almost the birds fluttering above her and the butterflies hovering over the flowers.

  It was a dance so exquisite in every movement and in every gesture that the audience seemed to hold its breath and there was not a sound in the whole auditorium.

  She was joy, she was youth, she believed that God was in His Heaven and all was right with the world.

  She was everything that anyone remembered of his or her childhood, she was innocence, she was beauty itself and it seemed as if she almost held both happiness and beauty in her arms.

  The curtain came down and for a moment there was that silence which every actor and actress knows marks the summit of real appreciation.

  Then the applause broke out thunderously seeming to shake the very theatre itself.

  “She is fantastic!” the Prince exclaimed. “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Lokita,” Lord Marston replied.

  The audience was silent again and the music had begun again, but now it was very different, sombre and throbbing with grief.

  The curtains were drawn back, the decor was unchanged and Lokita once again was standing in the centre of the stage.

  She wore a black cloak and there was a wreath of flowers in her hand.

  She just stood there and yet there was something in her pose that made a lump come into the throat of those who watched her.

  She moved forward, she laid the wreath on the grave of someone she had loved, she looked down at it and her heart was breaking.

  She had lost what was irreplaceable, she had lost a part of herself and it was almost as if she too lay in the grave and was no longer a part of the world that lived.

  She wept and the women in the audience wept with her, she reached out yearning arms as if to draw back to life the person who had left her. Then in despair she sank lower and lower, her misery overwhelming her to the point when she too longed to die.

  Then suddenly in the sound of the music there was a note of hope, a note that made her first raise her tear-stained face and then slowly, so slowly that it was almost an agony of apprehension to watch her, she rose to her feet.

  It was there above her, near her and enveloping her, the knowledge that there is no death but life.

  Gradually it percolated her mind, her spirit and her soul.

  Suddenly she was fully aware that it was the truth, there was no death! She had not lost the one she loved.

  Now there was light, there was faith! She flung off her cloak and she was dancing as she had before, dancing with happiness. And not alone.

  One could almost see the person beside her who she spoke to and then clung to. They were together and there was no longer grief and despair but joy and a rapture that was part of the Divine.

  The curtain fell and now there was a sigh that seemed to come between everybody’s lips, a sigh that human beings make after they have been transported into another world of wonder and delight.

  “Good God!”

  The exclamation came involuntarily from the Prince’s lips.

  Then like everyone else, he was clapping, his eyes on the curtain waiting for the dancer to reappear and take her bows.

  “You will not see her again,” Lord Marston said quietly.

  The Prince looked at him in surprise.

  “She does not take curtain calls? Why ever not?”

  “I don’t know. The audience break their hands and crash their voices, but she pays no attention.”

  The Prince was astonished. He had never heard of any dancer, a singer or an actress who did not enjoy the heady quantity of applause.

  Then, as the curtains drew back to reveal another flamboyant, colourful décor, he said,

  “I must meet her. Let’s go round backstage.”

  “It’s quite useless. She will see no one.”

  “Rubbish!” the Prince replied. “She will see me. Call a servant.”

  As he spoke, he drew a card from his pocket and wrote a sentence on the back of it.

  Lord Marston watched him with an amused smile and then beckoned to one of the attendants.

  The Prince held out the card to him.

  “Take this to Mademoiselle Lokita,” he said, “and bring me back an answer.”

  He gave the man a louis as he spoke, but the attendant shook his head.

  “C’est impossible, monsieur!”

  “Nothing is impossible,” the Prince replied. “I wish the Mademoiselle to have supper with me. As you will see by my card, I am Prince Ivan Volkonski.”

  “I am sorry, Monsieur le Prince, but M’mselle Lokita will have supper with no one.”

  He glanced towards the stage.

  “In fact, monsieur, by this time she will have left the theatre.”

  “Left the theatre?” the Prince asked sharply. “She does not appear in the finale?”

  “Non, monsieur, M’mselle Lokita speaks to no one. As soon as her performance is finished, she departs.”

  The Prince waved the man away and turned to Lord Marston,

  “Is he speaking the truth?”

  “So I have been told,” Lord Marston replied. “Lokita is a sensation. She has been written up in all the newspapers, but she refuses to give interviews and it is known that she is never seen in public.”

  “She is fantastic! Stupendous!” the Prince almost shouted. “I thought I was an expert on dancing, but this is different from anything I have ever seen before.”

  “That is what I thought you would say,” Lord Marston smiled. “The rest of the show is banal. Shall we leave?”

  “No, dammit! I have no intention of leaving,” the Prince declared. “We will go behind and I will find out if you are telling me the truth.”

  “Very well,” Lord Marston agreed, “but I can assure you that you are wasting your time."

  The Prince did not listen to him, but led the way from the box and round to the stage door with the air of a man who is very familiar with theatres.

  Behind the scenes there was the usual confusion of ropes and canvas, of scene shifters swearing at those who got in their way and actors hurrying to go back to their dressing rooms.

  There were flowers being brought in from the street in baskets or arranged in bouquets ornamented with long streamers of satin ribbons.

  As they passed these, Lord Marston saw that a great number of them were for Lokita.

  On the thick, overheated atmosphere there was a strong smell, characteristic of every theatre backstage, the stink of gas, of the glue used on the canvas of the scenery, of the filth of dark corners, the sharp tang of toilet waters and the scent of soap from the dressing rooms.

  As the two men walked along a narrow passage, there was the noise of washing basins, the laughter of women calli
ng to each other, the racket of doors continually banging, which seemed to mingle with a dozen different perfumes.

  The Prince had found the stage door keeper in his box and was asking him the way to Lokita’s dressing room.

  “You can go there if it pleases you, monsieur,” the man was saying, brought into a good humour by the number of louis that the Prince had pressed into his palm, “but M’mselle’s not there.”

  “Where is she?” the Prince asked almost fiercely.

  “She’s left! M’mselle Lokita always leaves the theatre, monsieur, as soon as her act is over.”

  “Why does she do that?”

  The man shrugged his shoulders.

  “How should I know? M’mselle does not confide in me!”

  “There is a gentleman who waits for her, perhaps? Who escorts her when she leaves?”

  The stage door keeper shook his head.

  “Non, M’mselle Lokita leaves only with Madame who is always in attendance on her.”

  “What is Madame’s name?”

  The man thought for a moment and then mispronouncing it he said,

  “An-der-son.”

  “That is English!” the Prince exclaimed, “Is it not, Hugo?”

  “It sounds like it,” Lord Marston agreed.

  “Now listen to me,” the Prince said, “I wish to meet Mademoiselle Lokita. If I leave a note here tomorrow will you see that she receives it?”

  “I can give it to Madame Anderson,” the man said doubtfully.

  “It will be for Mademoiselle Lokita!”

  Again the man shrugged his shoulders.

  “It is Madame Anderson who sees to everything. As I said, monsieur, the little one does not speak. She just goes to her dressing room in silence. In silence she walks onto the stage, in silence she leaves.”

  “I don’t believe it!” the Prince said in an exasperated tone as he and Lord Marston drove away.

  “That is what quite a number of people have said already,” Lord Marston replied, “But you had to find out for yourself.”

  “I have to meet her!”

  “I doubt if it will be possible, but you can but try. Anyway you have to admit that she is unique.”

  “Of course she is! Unique, original, sensational! But where does that get me?”

  Lord Marston laughed.

  “Exactly where you are now. Frustrated and at the same time you must admit, Ivan, vastly intrigued!”