The Passion and the Flower Read online

  “You must be hungry,” Miss Anderson said from the doorway. “Marie is bringing supper into the dining room.”

  Lokita turned round.

  “I am coming, Andy,” she replied, “but I am more thirsty than hungry.”

  As she moved across the room, she felt the Prince’s card and wondered what he had thought when he found his white orchids had been left in her dressing room and the butterfly, which he must have spent an enormous sum of money on, was waiting for him at the stage door.

  *

  The Prince in dressing room No. 29 looked at the flowers that filled it.

  He thought for one moment that his star-shaped orchids were not among them, until he saw the basket standing on the dressing table.

  He had realised at a glance that it was too late and Lokita, despite what the Stage Door Keeper had said, had gone.

  Through the half-open curtain he could see the white gown that she had worn on the stage hanging from a rail and beneath it the very small pair of silver sandals that she had worn on her feet.

  He had left his box the moment she had left the stage, but the crowds had prevented him from moving swiftly and he was sure now that he had only missed her by a few seconds.

  The Prince had been in a great many dressing rooms and it struck him that this one was somehow different from the others he had known.

  For a moment he could not think what it was since all dressing rooms looked much the same.

  Then he realised that the dressing table did not contain the usual mixed assortment of scent bottles, glass bottles of cosmetic oils, powders, rouge and greasepaint that he was all too familiar with.

  There were no cuttings from the newspapers stuck on the side of the mirror or on the wall.

  There were no good-luck charms, a hare’s foot, chicken bone, a blessed medallion or the dolls that many of the actresses adorned their dressing rooms and their beds with.

  There was indeed nothing personal, the Prince saw, except a plain brush and beside it a comb.

  He had been right, he thought, in thinking that Lokita used no cosmetics on her face, but he found it difficult to believe that any woman who was part of the theatre should have so few personal belongings.

  It was then, as he stood staring at the dressing table, that he looked at the basket of orchids that he had sent her.

  Even as Lokita had done, he thought the star-shaped blossoms he had chosen so carefully made every other flower in the place seem coarse and vulgar.

  As he looked closer in the basket where they were arranged, he realised that two things were missing. The white velvet box that he had placed there himself and his visiting card.

  “So she has taken it!”

  There was a smile of satisfaction on his lips as he turned and walked down the iron staircase and back to the Stage Door Keeper.

  “Mademoiselle Lokita was not there,” he said.

  “Non, monsieur, she left a few seconds after you went in search of her. You must have passed her in the corridor.”

  “Impossible!” the Prince replied.

  “Madame Anderson left this box for you, monsieur,” the Stage Door Keeper said, pushing it forward as he spoke. “She said I was to tell you that M’mselle Lokita considered it an insult.”

  The Prince stiffened and then he picked up the jewel box, put it in his pocket and without another word walked out onto the street.

  He had confidently expected that his gift, which, like the flowers that he had chosen with discrimination, would have been accepted as all his gifts had been in the past.

  He had wooed many actresses in his time, including several ballerinas of the Imperial Russian Ballet.

  Just one or two of them had played hard to get, but he had never met a woman who was not won over by diamonds if they were large and expensive enough.

  To his surprise the Prince found himself wondering as he drove away from the theatre if his tactics had been at fault.

  Lokita was obviously very different from any other actress, and perhaps in fact it had been an insult to offer anyone so exquisite and so ethereal a present that was material and mundane.

  ‘I should have been more subtle,’ he told himself.

  He was still frowning as he walked into the Café Anglais where he had arranged to meet Lord Marston.

  They had agreed that if, as the Prince confidently expected, Lokita came out to supper with him, he would make himself scarce, but now there was a smile of amusement on Lord Marston’s face as the Prince sat down at his table.”

  “I gather she refused to have supper with you?” he remarked.

  “She had left the theatre before I could reach her,” the Prince replied crossly.

  “Without thanking you for such an expensive bijou?”

  “It was returned by her duenna saying that Mademoiselle Lokita considered it an insult.”

  Lord Marston was obviously delighted.

  “I warned you not to treat her as if she was an ordinary chorus girl to be dazzled by the flutter of gems.”

  “You were right, Hugo,” the Prince nodded ruefully. “Now I shall have to start again.”

  “You might just as well acknowledge defeat, my dear fellow. Better men than you have knocked on that door without avail.”

  “Better men than me? Dammit! What do you mean by that?” the Prince asked truculently.

  Lord Marston laughed.

  “Ivan, that I should ever live to see the day when a woman you had set your heart on did not fall into your arms like an overripe peach!”

  “You wait!” the Prince asserted. “This is only the beginning. I shall succeed in the end and then you will hand over Kingfisher to me with a good grace.”

  “I will be riding him for a long time yet,” Lord Marston countered boastfully.

  “That remains to be seen,” the Prince replied. “What the hell are we going to do this evening then?”

  They visited two parties given by women who considered themselves to be members of La Garde, the top demi-mondaines who the gentlemen of Paris bowed to as to some heathen Goddess.

  It was quite obvious to Lord Marston that his friend was bored and they went instead to one of the Maisons de Plaisir where the Madame greeted them effusively and the most alluring and expressive cocottes were paraded for their inspection.

  The Prince clearly was becoming more and more bored and finally they drove home to his house in the Champs-Élysées.

  “It is quite early for you,” Lord Marston commented, “in fact it is only three o’clock.”

  “I am not going to bed.”

  Lord Marston looked surprised.

  “Then what are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I am going riding?” the Prince replied.

  Ten minutes later he was trotting up the Champs-Élysées to put his horse into a wild gallop once he had reached the Bois de Boulogne.

  Lord Marston did not accompany him.

  He knew only too well that when his friend was either upset or thinking out some outrageous plan, the only way he could find relief from his own emotions was to ride.

  ‘He will feel better in the morning,’ Lord Marston said to himself and retired to bed.

  *

  He was awakened by the Prince coming into his bedroom soon after dawn and he was still in his riding clothes.

  He did not look tired, but somehow intensely alive and elated, as if he had solved a problem and was thereby exhilarated.

  “Go away, Ivan!” Lord Marston protested. “You look disgustingly fit and I hate being woken up so early.”

  “You are getting old and staid, Hugo,” the Prince replied. “I will leave you to your slumbers, but there is one question I wish to ask you.”

  “What is that?” Lord Marston asked drowsily.

  “Our wager,” the Prince said. “Does it count if Lokita acquiesces in my demands unwillingly?”

  Lord Marston sat up in bed.

  “Ivan, what are you planning? I don’t like the sound of it.”
r />   “I asked you a question and I want an answer.”

  “Did you say – unwillingly?” Lord Marston enquired. “What can you mean by that? You can hardly handcuff the girl and drag her out to supper with you.”

  He looked at the Prince as he spoke and saw a sudden glitter in his eyes.

  “Whatever you are thinking of doing, forget it,” he said sharply. “And if you are thinking about our wager, no! She has supper with you or any other meal you like, because she has accepted you as a companion.”

  “That is all I wanted to know,” the Prince answered.

  He walked towards the door, but Lord Marston, now fully awake, put out his hands as if to stop him.

  “Ivan, behave yourself!” he commanded. “You are in Paris now and you cannot exercise your barbaric Russian ideas in a civilised community without evoking very unpleasant repercussions.”

  “Who said I intended to be barbaric?” the Prince asked.

  There was something ingenuous about his voice that did not deceive his friend.

  “I don’t know what you are planning,” Lord Marston said, “but I bet one hundred thousand francs that it is the sort of thing that will involve you, and me, in a lot of trouble. Do try to remember, Ivan, that I am here as a representative of the British Government!”

  “You can always return to the Embassy,” the Prince suggested mockingly.

  “And leave you to your own nefarious devices?” Lord Marston questioned. “I shall do nothing of the sort! I shall try to be a restraining influence on you.”

  “An aim that you have always failed in ever since we have known each other,” the Prince remarked.

  Lord Marston had to admit that this was all too true, but he said earnestly,

  “Be careful, Ivan, that you do not go too far. You say yourself that St. Petersburg is barred to you at the moment. That leaves only Paris and London and, if you do anything really outrageous, you will be turned out of those Capitals as well.”

  The Prince did not reply and Lord Marston looked at him apprehensively.

  “Apart from anything else,” he said in a different tone, “I thought last night, when Lokita was dancing, that it would be a pity if she was spoilt by you or anyone else. She is unique, perfect and untouched, like a flower.”

  “I have to meet her,” the Prince said.

  “But why?” Lord Marston enquired. “There are millions of other women in the world.”

  The Prince walked across the room to open a window further than it was already.

  “Have you ever felt, Hugo, that you were being carried along by Fate?”

  “Are you really asking me such a question?” his friend queried. “I have heard you often enough saying that you don’t believe in Fate, Karma or anything but a man’s own will and determination.”

  “I have always believed myself to be my own Master,” the Prince agreed, looking out of the window, “I used to tell myself I had the power to make my life what I wanted it to be. Whatever I might do I was in control and there was no question of my being manipulated by anyone else, whether human or superhuman.”

  “And now?” Lord Marston questioned.

  “I feel as if I am being swept away on a tidal wave and I know that I have to meet Lokita and that it was Fate that made you take me to the theatre.”

  “Nonsense!” Lord Marston said firmly. “You are only feeling like this because the girl has refused to have supper with you. Perhaps she will relent if you ask her often enough. In the meantime I am not going to cart you about sullen and uncooperative as you were yesterday evening.”

  “Who is she? How can I find her? Where does she live?” the Prince asked fiercely.

  “I daresay if you set your mind to it you will discover all these things,” Lord Marston replied. “In the meantime, as it is only five in the morning, do you mind going to bed and letting me go back to sleep?”

  “The trouble with you, Hugo is that you cannot raise your eyes to the stars because your feet are so firmly planted on the ground beneath them.”

  He went out of the room and slammed the door.

  Lord Marston laughed and, snuggling down in bed, closed his eyes.

  It was good for Ivan, he told himself, not to get exactly what he wanted the moment he wanted it. He had been too spoilt all his life and this was a lesson that was long overdue.

  As he fell asleep, Lord Marston was thinking how envious his friends would be when they saw Suliman.

  *

  Riding in the Bois de Boulogne the following morning with Serge beside her Lokita found herself thinking about the Prince and feeling sure that he was an exceptional rider.

  She had often read how magnificently the Russians, like the Hungarians, rode and about the wildness of their horses and their great endurance.

  It was when she was alone with Serge that she could talk of Russia and not feel the constraint that Andy always put on the subject.

  Serge, who came from South Russia, had been in her service ever since she could remember. He was her bodyguard, her protector and she knew that her father had trusted him implicitly.

  He was a tall gaunt man with high cheekbones and at any time, were it necessary, he would have died for Lokita as he would have done for her father.

  But even Serge, Lokita thought as they rode among the trees, had secrets that he would not reveal to her.

  They were secrets, she knew, imposed on him by Andy and because she was sensitive she would not embarrass the Russian by asking him things that he had been told not to repeat to her.

  But it was, she thought, all so puzzling.

  Why must she lead such a strange lonely life with only three people who she could talk to without constraint?

  With her many instructors and Tutors it was different.

  She could understand that she must keep them at arm’s length and that she must not allow them to encroach on her private life, even though she was aware that many of them were curious.

  “You have the brain of a man, m’mselle,” her elderly Teacher of literature had said to her. “What do you intend to do with so much learning?”

  “To do with it?” Lokita asked.

  “Talents should be used, my dear young lady,” he had replied. “Perhaps you should write a book or converse with the great brains that are to be found in Paris at this moment.”

  He considered a moment before he went on,

  “How I would like you to meet some of the celebrated figures in contemporary art and literature like Arsène Houssaye, Dumas, Gustave Flaubert or even George Sand.”

  “I would like to meet them too,” Lokita replied. “You have made so many of their creations live for me by the way you have explained them.”

  “You should start a Salon of your own, m’mselle,” her tutor said, but Lokita shook her head.

  That conversation had taken place two months ago before necessity had obliged her to earn money by dancing.

  It was impossible to forget Miss Anderson’s face when she had come into the room holding a letter in her hand.

  “What is it, Andy?” Lokita had asked.

  “A letter from your father’s Solicitors.”

  At the mention of her father’s name the tears had come into Lokita’s beautiful eyes.

  It was only six weeks since they had learnt that he had died in London and she thought then that the light had gone out of her life and that she would never be happy again.

  She loved him so deeply, the handsome brilliant man, who was forced by circumstances, which neither he nor anyone else would explain to her, to visit her only occasionally.

  It was all something to do with her mother, Lokita knew, and yet what it was or why there had to be so much secrecy she had no idea.

  She only knew that to speak of her mother would bring an inexpressible sadness to her father’s face and so, because she loved him, in their precious times together she talked about other things.

  She could remember her mother, but her image grew more shadowy as the years
passed by.

  ‘I was seven when I saw her last,’ Lokita thought, ‘and that was only for a day.’

  Her father’s yacht that Lokita had enjoyed every moment of the voyage through the Black Sea in had anchored in the harbour at Odessa late one evening and, when it was dark, he had gone ashore.

  He had not returned that night, but the following morning he had said,

  “Lokita, I am taking you to meet a very great friend of mine. She is a very beautiful lady and a friend of your Mama’s.”

  Lokita had not been particularly interested. It was more exciting to be on the yacht, but her father had taken her ashore to a villa standing in a magnificent garden and there under the trees a lady was waiting for them.

  Lokita thought many years later that the reason why they had met in the garden was so that nothing they said could be overheard.

  She was at the time, however, bewildered because the lady at the sight of her burst into tears. Then going down on her knees and holding her close she had kissed her over and over again.

  “My sweet! My darling! My beloved little Lokita!” she had repeated through her tears.

  It was seven years later before Lokita was to realise that the lady who had wept over her was in fact her mother.

  Her father had come to see her in Paris in the little house he had bought for her near the Bois de Boulogne and, when he arrived, Lokita realised immediately that something had happened.

  “What is it, Papa?” she asked him.

  “I have just received some very sad news,” her father answered.

  He spoke dully and there was so much pain in his voice that Lokita instinctively put her arms round him.

  Always when he came to see her he had been so happy that it seemed to radiate from him and she had found herself laughing with happiness too.

  But this was different.

  “What is it, Papa?”

  “Your mother is ­– dead!” her father replied with difficulty.

  “Dead?” Lokita repeated. “But I did not – know that she was – alive.”

  “She has been alive all these years,” her father replied, “but it was impossible for her to see you again. We thought it was kinder for you to believe that she had died.”

  “Why was it impossible?” Lokita asked.