The Passion and the Flower Page 5

  “I cannot tell you that,” her father replied. “You must trust me, Lokita, as you always have.”

  “Of course I trust you. Papa, but it is very puzzling. Why did I not know about Mama? And why can I not live with you as other children live with their fathers?”

  “One day perhaps I will be able to explain all these things, but for the moment it is impossible. You have to believe me, my dearest daughter, that it is impossible.”

  “What was my mother like?” Lokita asked.

  “Do you not remember her when you went to Odessa?”

  “Was that my Mama? She was very beautiful.”

  “The most beautiful woman in the world,” her father said.

  There was a throb in his voice that told Lokita how much he was suffering.

  She knew that there was no point in asking innumerable questions that he could not answer. So instead she first held him close and kissed him.

  Then because she knew that it would please him she danced for him.

  Madame Albertini had been employed to teach her ballroom dancing on her father's insistence that she should have all the graces and talents of other girls of her age and it was she who had found that Lokita had an aptitude for mime.

  Madame Albertini had trained as a ballet dancer, but quite early in her career she had slipped on stage, broken her leg and could no longer continue to dance.

  Because she was so expert in ballet she had taken a few pupils among the aristocratic French families and had found that one way of helping them to move gracefully was to teach them to express their feelings by gesture.

  Many of the French debutantes, who would have been gawky and ungainly, acquired a new grace under Madame’s tuition. And her fame spread.

  In Lokita she had found a pupil so outstandingly responsive, so fantastic in her ability to express what she was thinking, that Madame went into eulogies of delight after every lesson.

  “It’s a crying shame that she has no one to see her perform,” she said over and over again to Miss Anderson.

  She could not understand the repressed manner that her enthusiasm was received in.

  “The Princess Matilda invites artistes of all sorts to her soirées,” Madame said. “One of Musset’s proverbes was acted in her Salon and La Revanche de Scapin by Theodore de Banville was performed to an audience that included the Emperor and Empress.”

  She looked at Miss Anderson and said persuasively,

  “If I was to drop one word to the Princess, she would invite Lokita not only as a performer but also as one of her guests.”

  “No!” Miss Anderson said firmly. “As you well know, madame, when you came here to teach Lokita you promised that you would never mention the child’s existence outside the four walls of this house.”

  “I know! I know!” Madame agreed, “but she is so talented. It is a crime that she should hide such a vibrant light under such a very small bushel.”

  Madame had laughed at her own joke, but Miss Anderson had not joined in.

  When the crisis came, when Miss Anderson learnt from the Solicitors that enquiries were being made about the money Lokita had been left by her father, she had turned to Madame for help.

  “Are you really telling me that this child, who has been brought up in luxury, is now completely penniless?” Madame asked.

  “I have a little saved,” Miss Anderson said. “A very little. We could, of course, sell this house, but where could we go? As it belongs to Lokita we pay no rent and it would therefore be cheaper to stay here.”

  “Far cheaper!” Madame agreed firmly. “Rents are soaring in Paris. Baron Haussmann has pulled down half the cheaper houses and erected civic halls in their place.”

  It was a popular grievance and Miss Anderson did not wish to be drawn into an argument over it.

  “I was wondering if it would be possible, madame, for Lokita to help you with your pupils and perhaps earn a little money in that way?”

  “A waste of time and talent!” Madame said. “She should perform on the stage.”

  “Impossible!” Miss Anderson answered. “Absolutely impossible!”

  She was still saying the same thing after forty-eight hours of endless arguments, but finally because things were desperate she capitulated.

  “But why can I not receive the money that Papa left me?” Lokita asked when it was explained to her.

  “Because your father’s sister, your aunt, is a nosy inquisitive woman,” Miss Anderson replied. “Your father was always afraid of her finding out that you existed.”

  “But why should she not do so?” Lokita asked.

  She knew the answer before Andy replied,

  “There are reasons, very good reasons, why your existence must be kept a secret.”

  “Now that – Papa is dead will you not tell me – what they are?” she asked.

  “You will know one day,” Miss Anderson promised, “but not yet. It is impossible!”

  Lokita had grown to hate that word.

  It was ‘impossible’ for her to do this, ‘impossible’ for her to do that, ‘impossible’ to make friends, ‘impossible’ now to discuss Prince Ivan Volkonski, let alone accept his flowers and his present.

  But, despite the number of times Andy had said ‘impossible’, she had been allowed to earn what seemed to her really enormous sums of money in the Theatre Impérial du Châtelet.

  It was, of course, Madame Albertini who had brought the Proprietor and the Stage Manager to see her dance.

  Lokita had been perceptive enough when the two gentlemen arrived at the tiny house in the Bois de Boulogne to realise that they were extremely sceptical of what they would find.

  She could almost see the words ‘amateur’ and ‘impossible’ forming on their lips.

  In their frock coats, holding their canes and their high-crowned hats, they had sat down on the sofa in the small Salon and Madame had gone to the piano.

  “Do not be nervous, chérie,” she had said in a low voice to Lokita, who was wearing the simple white gown that she wore for her lessons.

  She was determined not to be nervous because she knew that this was a test of her ability. She also had the inescapable feeling within herself that her father would not wish her to give anything but her very best.

  She thought first of Madame, who had taken so much trouble not only in persuading the gentlemen to come and see her but also in overcoming Miss Anderson’s objections.

  Then, when she began to think of her father, it was easy.

  She danced for him as she had danced when he visited her, feeling that the music told her what to do and feeling she expressed what was not only in her mind and her heart but also in her soul.

  She danced, forgetting everything but what she was trying to say without words.

  Only as she finished and there was a stunned silence did she realise that she had been an unqualified success.

  Riding now along the Bois de Boulogne, Lokita suddenly had a strange thought.

  In a way it was so revolutionary that she surprised herself.

  She thought that she would like to dance alone for Prince Ivan and see the appreciation in his dark eyes.

  She had known that he would be in the audience last night before he came round to the stage door. That he would be one of the hundreds of other people who had applauded her so wildly and shouted for her to take a bow, which was one of the things Andy had forbidden and that had been written into her contract.

  That was very different from dancing as she danced for her father, feeling his sympathy and understanding reaching out to her.

  Then she could tell him of her happiness, her joys and her anxieties when he had been unable to visit her for a long time.

  When she had finished dancing, she would run to him and put her arms round his neck and he would hold her very close and kiss her before he spoke.

  Lokita felt herself blushing.

  ‘Of course, I would not do that to the Prince,’ she told herself. ‘But still I would like to d
ance for him alone.’

  Chapter Three

  Lokita and Serge galloped in an unfashionable part of the Bois de Boulogne where there were few social figures to be seen driving.

  It was the Emperor who had decided to turn the Bois de Boulogne into an English Park and a number of the French thought that he had ruined what previously had been a wild Paradise.

  Now, as someone had said ‘even the ducks are mechanical and the trees look as if they were painted on a canvas for the Théâtre Impérial des Variétés’.”

  But there were still parts of it where neither the Emperor nor Monsieur Varé, his landscape gardener, had encroached and this was where Lokita rode.

  With her cheeks bright with colour after the exercise she reined in her horse under the shady branches of a tree and, as Serge drew alongside her, she said in what was a deliberately casual voice,

  “When you were in Russia, Serge, did you ever hear the name Volkonski?”

  “But of course, my Knyieza, Serge answered, “it is the name of a noble and famous family.”

  When they were alone, Serge always called Lokita Knyieza, which meant Princess.

  She remembered him often saying to her when she was very small,

  “Let me take you for a ride on my shoulders, my little Knyieza,” and he would lift her up while she laughed with delight at being so high off the ground.

  It annoyed Miss Anderson now that he did not address her as mademoiselle.

  “We are in France, Serge,” she would say severely, “and you should speak of Mademoiselle Lokita.”

  Serge would bow his head as if obedient to the command, but when he and Lokita were alone he reverted to the name he always thought of her.

  “Tell me about the Volkonskis,” she asked now.

  “It is a long time ago since I heard of them, Knyieza,” he replied, “but I remember they were very rich, very powerful and related to the Holy Father.”

  “To Czar Nicholas?” Lokita questioned, knowing that Serge was speaking of Nicholas I who had been the Czar when he was in Russia.

  As she expected, Serge’s eyes clouded as they always did when he spoke of Nicholas I, who Lokita knew from her history books had at the time been the most alarming Sovereign in Europe.

  On his succession to the Throne he had lost no time in turning his vast Empire into a Barracks. To him Sovereignty was merely an extension of Army discipline.

  Once Lokita, intrigued by what she had read, had asked her father about Czar Nicholas.

  There had been a pause before he answered and then he said in a voice that she could hardly recognised,

  “His ice-cold gaze struck terror into the hearts of his Courtiers and everyone in St. Petersburg.”

  “Was he cruel. Papa?”

  “Unbelievably so,” her father replied. “He banished Prince Yussupov to the Caucasus because he was having a love affair his mother did not approve of and one of his most alarming actions was his habit of declaring people insane if he did not agree with them.”

  “He must have been horrible. Papa!” Lokita exclaimed.

  “He was hated by every Russian, man, woman and child,” her father answered in a hard voice. “The world is a better place now.”

  He spoke with such violence that Lokita knew that even to mention Czar Nicholas affected him personally. So she asked him no more questions, but she read all she could find about him.

  He had, she learnt, thought nothing of employing thousands of workmen to transform gardens into Oriental Palaces or ballrooms into gardens complete with rockeries and fountains.

  The supper table at the Winter Palace could seat a thousand people and, although the temperature outside was far below freezing point, the galleries bloomed with so many exotic flowers that the guests had the illusion of a summer’s day.

  Yet the poverty and squalor amongst the peasants was unbelievable. Even some of the officials, whom he dressed in uniform, had their feet tied up with rags.

  Men were whipped or sent to Siberia for the most trivial offence and, although the death penalty had been abolished, it was clearly understood that a man could be killed by the knout.

  Nicholas was certainly eccentric besides being cruel.

  He insisted that professors, students, engineers and members of the Civil Service should all wear uniform.

  Only the Army had the right to wear moustaches and all moustaches had to be black, dyed if necessary.

  The Czar with his secret police instigated a regime of terror.

  And yet, Lokita read, he was one of the most handsome-looking men in the whole country.

  The history books were often cold and dry and she liked to hear about Russia from Serge, even though he could tell her very little of what she wished to know.

  She thought over what he had said now about Prince Ivan Volkonski and almost as if she conjured him up out of her imagination she saw him riding towards her over the same open ground where she and Serge had just galloped.

  She recognised him immediately.

  No one else, she thought, wore his hat at exactly that angle on his head and no one else could look so magnificent on his black stallion that was as outstanding as his rider.

  The Prince drew nearer and now she could see those strange dark eyes that she had peeped at from the shadows in the theatre and the curve of his lips that made him look as if he was faintly mocking life.

  Lokita realised that both the Prince and his companion were excellent riders.

  But there was something in the way the Prince sat on a horse that gave her the impression of exhilaration and of a wildness that was very Slav.

  Now she could hear the thunder of the horses’ hoofs and they passed her so swiftly that it was as if a typhoon had swept over her.

  Then she could only stare at the Prince’s back as he and the man beside him galloped on and were finally lost to sight among the trees.

  “That was Prince Ivan Volkonski,” she said in a low voice.

  “He rides like a Russian,” Serge remarked and it was a compliment.

  They rode back to the little house where Miss Anderson was waiting for them, but Lokita did not relate whom they had seen during their ride.

  After a light meal Miss Anderson insisted on Lokita resting because she had a performance to give that evening. She lay in her small bedroom not sleeping but thinking of the Prince.

  She liked his name.

  ‘Ivan Volkonski,’ she murmured to herself and thought by comparison how dull her own name sounded.

  Lokita Lawrence.

  There was nothing very romantic about it and she knew, although no one had ever told her so, that Lawrence was not her real name nor that of her father.

  It had been obvious ever since she was old enough to think that the name did not come easily to Andy’s lips and, when she addressed her father by the name of ‘Lawrence’, there was always a little pause as if she forced herself to substitute one name for another.

  ‘But what is the use of asking questions?’ Lokita thought.

  She never received an answer to them and the mystery of who she was and where she came from seemed only to deepen as the years went by. Now it was worse than it had ever been.

  Who was this aunt whose enquiries had prevented her from taking the money that her father had left her?

  “I have made you safe for life, my darling,” he had said to her once. “Things may be difficult for you, but you will always have all you need.”

  Because she loved him Lokita had not said that what she wanted more than anything else was to live with him, have friends like other girls and eventually to marry someone she loved.

  Because it would have pained him to hear her speak in such a manner she bit back the words that had come to her lips and instead reassured him that she was happy, which indeed in many ways she was.

  She wanted to learn and she found the instruction given on all the many subjects that filled her days was interesting and what her Tutors did not teach her she learnt for herself f
rom books.

  She and Andy would visit the museums and the theatres, usually having seats at a matinée because Miss Anderson did not like going out at night.

  They would explore the outskirts of Paris and they would attend Services at various Churches including Notre Dame.

  “What religion am I?” Lokita had asked once and Andy had hesitated before she answered,

  “Your father is Church of England.”

  “And my mother?”

  Again there was a pause before almost reluctantly Andy said,

  “She was Russian Orthodox.”

  “That is why the only thing I have of hers is the ikon in my bedroom.”

  She had had it ever since childhood and it was a beautiful ikon, very old, set in a frame of diamonds, amethysts and pearls.

  Sometimes Lokita would touch it as if she thought that it could tell her about her mother.

  It was so hard to remember the lady who had held her in her arms and cried.

  Of one thing Lokita was absolutely sure, that everything that was Russian appealed to her.

  She was well aware also that it was the Russian part of her blood that Miss Anderson was afraid of.

  “Tell me about Mama,” she would plead.

  But Andy would shake her head and talk about her father and how kind and honourable he was.

  That also was cold comfort when she saw so little of him.

  Now for the first time, Lokita told herself, she was like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.

  She could hardly believe it possible that in the last month she had actually been allowed to dance on the stage.

  Granted even there she was made to behave in an extraordinary manner, speaking to no one in the theatre, taken to the wings by Andy and hurried away as soon as she had changed her clothes.

  Yet it was like coming out of prison, a prison that had been a very pleasant one, and yet the doors and windows had been barred.

  Lying on her bed with her eyes closed Lokita wondered what would have happened if she had gone out to supper with the Prince as he had invited her to do.

  She had read and re-read the sentence that he had written on the back of the card,

  “Have supper with me and you will make me the happiest man in the world.”