Dorothy Eden (34 page)

“Oh, no, no. But I have been promised two tickets for the ballet tomorrow night. You will come with me, won’t you, Papa?”

“Perhaps we would like to hear whom the donor is first,” Papa said.

“Yes, Daisy, didn’t you get the message to join us at tea?” Mamma asked. “Miss Smith assured us she had delivered it.”

“She did, yes. But I had met this Russian who is with the ballet—he was one of Florence’s guests at the shop this afternoon—and he didn’t care about tea among all the dowag—I mean, we thought we would prefer a simpler and quieter place. They’re very unpretentious people, the Russians. It was such fun talking to someone from such a different world. It was almost as if he had come from a star.”

“I didn’t regard Russia as remotely resembling a star,” Florence put in dryly. “I thought it cold and uncomfortable, and there were far too many serfs or peasants or whatever they called them. With rags and idiot faces. It’s obvious, Mamma, that Daisy is being romantic again.”

Daisy looked quickly from Mamma’s frowning face to Papa, her constant ally. To her surprise, however, he was not looking at all sympathetic, in fact he was disapproving. Had he forgotten about their light-hearted bet?

“Papa, don’t you remember our bet? I found a Russian who could speak English.”

“What’s his name?” Papa asked suspiciously.

“Sergei Pavel. He isn’t one of the dancers, he’s an interpreter, he’s going to be a professor.”

“You’ve found out a great deal about him very quickly.”

“But why not? I told him who I was and he told me who he was.”

“Daisy,” said Mamma, not unkindly, “for someone of your age and education, you are quite remarkably naïve. Now what you must do immediately after dinner is write a note to this young man telling him that you can’t accept his kind offer of tickets for the ballet. We’re all going on Saturday night, as you know. Once is quite sufficient. So do as I ask and Bates may take the Daimler to deliver your note personally. Now let us go into dinner. Florence must be worn out after her exciting day.”

Florence nudged Daisy in an unusual gesture of friendship. Perhaps her heady success today had thawed her long chilliness.

“You don’t tell everything in this house, idiot. Who’s going to understand?”

But didn’t they want to know more about Sergei, Daisy thought indignantly. Mamma had already dismissed him as just a Russian peasant, and Papa seemed so suspicious of her glow of happiness.

Well, in spite of their disapproval, she had every intention of meeting Sergei in the teashop tomorrow. This was the first really big happening in her life and she wasn’t going to let it just vanish. She would have to refuse the ballet tickets, but if Sergei wished it, she would see him whenever possible during his stay in London. If for no other reason than proving that she was grown-up and in charge of her own life.

So what in the first place had been an intriguing adventure and only half-serious, grew rapidly into something much more significant. Perhaps it would have, anyway. But there was something about secret meetings and limited time that hastened the process. Daisy found that she couldn’t sleep at night, she kept starting up half-trembling with unidentifiable emotion. Sergei’s voice and his deep throaty laugh kept echoing in her ears, and she could see his strange vividly alive face all the time.

It was no use calling her romantic or dreamy or impulsive or simply reckless. Something very deep and important was happening to her. Even if she were never to see Sergei again, life had changed irrevocably. She had discovered for the first time the irresistible impact a man could make on her senses.

Even the night that they all decorously attended the ballet, and Papa kept looking sideways at her on the little gilt chair in the box, as if she might vanish from sight, into the dark gloomy forest of Giselle, she only half saw the magic on the stage. She kept thinking how near Sergei was. He had said he would be behind the scenes. The sad swooning music ravished her, and every dancer, even the amazing Nijinsky like a smooth taut-muscled panther, seemed to have tilted Tartar eyes, and a long curling mouth that smiled secretly towards her.

She was possessed. She had never met a man like Sergei before. Indeed, she could scarcely remember the faces of any of her escorts of the previous summer. She certainly remembered nothing of any conversation.

Every word spoken between her and Sergei was vital and important, every glance he gave her burned into her heart. During the next two weeks they walked the whole of Kensington Gardens several times, they had tea with muffins, with crumpets, with cream buns, with hot toast and with bread and jam (a nursery tea which amused Sergei). Sergei had even daringly come to Hampstead Heath one day and she had pointed out the spot from which she had been stolen as a child. He had listened to her story in surprise and sympathy. But of course anyone would have wanted to steal her, he said flatteringly.

He had talked a great deal about Russia, the great snowbound winters when the wolves howled on the steppes, but in St Petersburg the sleighs glided along icy roads, carrying the rich fur-wrapped guests to glittering parties at the Winter Palace. In the summer the parties were at the summer palace, the beautiful Tsarskoe Selo where there was the little Chinese theatre and the ballet was performed. The Tsar and the beautiful Tsarina (who wore dresses stitched all over with jewels) were ballet-lovers. A new dancer, Anna Pavlova was exquisite. Sergei, sitting on the Heath beside Daisy, took her foot in his hand, and said that she had a long high-arched instep just like Pavlova’s.

He bent his head and kissed her ankle, and she had to snatch her foot away to conceal her sudden violent trembling. She couldn’t understand why she trembled so much nowadays. She was in love, of course. And the days were running out, and she could never let him go.

Supposing he didn’t ask her to go with him!

Then she would simply propose herself.

“I will arrive in St Petersburg for Christmas,” she would say. And Saint Nicolas could fill her stocking with Russian presents.

They laughed so much and Sergei said that although she looked like a princess she could never be one, she was far too indecorous.

“You sound just like all my governesses!”

“But they punished you, I expect. I am awarding you the Order of St Nicolas for gaiety.”

Then he kissed her, for the first time, very seriously, under a tree beside the Serpentine, in the hot white summer light, and two elderly gentlemen stared, and muttered. Daisy winked at them over Sergei’s shoulder.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She had stopped laughing and seemed to be crying. “I think I love you, Sir Gay.”

He kissed her again, his long sweet mouth possessing hers.

“I love you, too. Will you come back to St Petersburg with me?”

“Of course. I was going to invite myself if you didn’t ask.”

“As my wife, of course.”

“I know that’s what you meant.”

“What will your parents say?”

“Well. I’ll just have to find out. But don’t worry, Papa never refuses me anything in the end.”

He did. He did. And it was terrible and unbelievable. He had sat hunched and tragic in his fur-trimmed dressing-gown (he had been in bed for several days with a troublesome cough) and had said that under no circumstances would he consent to Daisy’s marriage to this unknown foreigner.

He had used words like impetuous, childish, bizarre, which had cut her to the quick. But what had hurt even more was that he had needed no prompting from Mamma for the attitude he had taken. One might have expected Mamma to oppose Daisy’s plans. She had so little romance in her nature, and so little understanding of her youngest daughter. And at this time she was entirely engrossed with Papa, as was always the case when he was ill.

Edwin had once said that if one of them were drowning Mamma would never have time to save them if she were distracted by Papa’s cough.

So Daisy could not be sure that her news had really penetrated Mamma’s consciousness.

It had Papa’s, however, all too disastrously, and he was adamant. He simply closed the subject. It was finished. It was not to be mentioned again. She was a minor by law, and she would obey her parents.

Daisy flew into Sergei’s arms, in the park that afternoon, and sobbed her disappointment.

“Papa won’t allow us to marry. He won’t even meet you. He acts as if you don’t exist. I never thought he would be so cruel.”

“He loves you, I suppose.”

“Selfishly! If he really loved me he couldn’t do this to me. He would want my happiness. All he cares about is not losing me. If you lived in England he might be kinder, but Russia is so far away, so foreign.”

“And I am a foreigner. I always heard that the English don’t trust foreigners. Besides, I am sure your father would expect his beautiful daughter to marry one of the landed gentry you talk about. Not the sort of man I am.”

“He hasn’t even met you to judge!”

Sergei stroked her hair. His bony hand was so gentle, his solemn face concerned only with her feelings, not with his own bitter disappointment. No one except Papa (and now not even Papa) had cared about her feelings like Sergei did. That alone would have made her give him her loyalty forever.

“So what we will have to do, my darling,” he made the English endearment sound quaint and sweet, “is wait until you are old enough to marry without your parents’ consent.”

“Another eighteen months!” Daisy moaned.

“And then I will come for you and make you my wife.”

“Sergei, you’re too sensible.”

“What else is there to be?”

Daisy pressed her cheek against his mournfully.

“I will write to you and you will write to me every day,” Sergei said.

Letters. Once Florence had lived in that dreamworld of closely-written script, page after page.

“I hate writing letters,” said Daisy.

“Not to me.”

“Sergei, I do truly and absolutely love you and I won’t stop.”

“I, too.”

“So why do we have to part? I can’t bear it.”

He crushed her to him. She knew he couldn’t bear it either. His whole body trembled. But he was older than her, more practical, more disciplined, for presently he controlled his trembling.

“Really, the time will go. We will be watching the ballet in the Hermitage theatre in the winter next year.”

Daisy blinked at her tears.

“Is the Hermitage far enough to go by sleigh?”

“If it were only ten steps and you wanted a sleigh, it would be far enough.”

A flicker of eagerness possessed her. Perhaps it would be possible to wait and have none of this delicate starry happiness spoiled. She said, with all her heart in the words,
Sir Gay…
”

Papa had gone back to bed with a temperature.

“I’m afraid you upset him,” Mamma said reproachfully. “He asked that you go and see him as soon as you came in. Where have you been?”

One could not say Mamma was either kind or unkind. She was in some neutral state where Daisy’s behaviour only upset her if it were going to have an adverse effect on Papa’s health.

“I’ve been seeing Sergei, of course.”

If only Mamma would open her arms wide and let her run into them and be comforted.

“Saying goodbye, I hope,” said Mamma calmly.

“Yes.”

“I’m glad. Do go and tell Papa. It will do him more good than any medicine.”

Was her happiness to be sacrificed to a sick old man? Daisy wondered rebelliously.

Even though Papa did hold both her hands lovingly, and remarked tenderly on the traces of tears he could see on her cheeks, she still could not give him her whole-hearted affection. He thought the problem was over. With the ballet gone, stopping for a brief season in Paris, and then on its way back to Moscow, Daisy would soon forget her very young first attack of love and madness.

Her misery grew as he said confidently, “As soon as I am well enough let us go on a jaunt somewhere. I wonder where you would like. Somewhere beautiful and gay. Venice, perhaps.”

“No, thank you, Papa.”

“Oh, come now, I won’t have you sitting at home brooding. A change of scene is the infallible remedy for a broken heart.”

“How can you say that, Papa, when you don’t know what a broken heart is. You and Mamma were able to marry.”

To her utter dismay Papa’s eyes suddenly filled and overflowed with tears. He couldn’t speak for a moment. When he did he said, “You’re too young to assume such things.” He licked his lips and made a poor attempt at his whimsical smile. “Although I believe, clinically speaking, hearts do not break. Run along now, you might tell your mother I would like one of her hot toddies.”

“You’re not going down to dinner, Miss Daisy? Are you poorly?”

That was Miss Finch, anxious, meek, as narrow as a crack in the wall, as she stood in the doorway of Daisy’s bedroom.

“I’m not hungry, that’s all.”

“A little light supper on a tray, then? I’ll bring it up myself.”

“Don’t fuss, Finchie, please. I’m not Grandmamma. I can survive without my dinner.”

“You’re upset, Miss Daisy.”

So the servants knew already. Of course they would. They knew everything.

“Yes, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

“There have been several gentlemen callers for you, Miss Daisy. They have been most anxious to know where you have disappeared to lately.”

I have been journeying on another star, Daisy thought, and suddenly the misery of loss sweeping over her was appalling.

“I just would be grateful if
you
would disappear,” she managed to say, and Miss Finch had no alternative but to obey. “Tell everyone I want to be alone,” she called after her.

If Miss Finch conveyed this message to Florence, Florence was not deterred by it. She knocked peremptorily on the door and came in without permission.

“Are you going to do what I did?” she asked. “Let him get away?”

Daisy stared in surprise at the cool pale blue eyes, the unemotional face.

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly that. When I was your age I let Desmond Fielding go away, believing implicitly that a year or two would make no difference. Young girls are too romantic.”