Tender Is The Tyrant

by Violet Winspear

Her heart gave a tiny jolt. The card was unsigned, but she guessed at once that the sender of the bouquet and the note was Michael Lonza.

  Michael, in whom was mingled all the fire and spirit of the dance. To whom love was an ecstasy of the body alone.

  She touched the sprigs of myrtle and its scent wafted her to an island in the sun; she heard again the whisper of the sea, and Maxim’s voice echoing in the cave where he had talked about the woman he loved. Nowhere else but in that pagan place would he have talked of the love that had no beginning, no end, and which might never be fulfilled.

  She found a vase in a cupboard and filled it with water. As she arranged Michael’s flowers on her dressing-table, she could hear the orchestra tuning up. There was a sound of voices, a patter of feet going towards the wings, and she guessed that the corps de ballet were assembling for the curtain-raiser.

  Her heart began to beat unevenly. In less than half an hour she would be making for the stage, but right now she must keep occupied. She lacquered her dark hair into place, ready for the crest of leaves and flowers, and made sure the ribbons of her new slippers were sewn on correctly. The slippers were like a supple second skin on her feet, and she was tying the ribbons when the dresser came hurrying in to help her into her costume.

  Few alterations had been necessary, and it had been skilfully cleaned and ironed to bring out the colours of the bodice embroidery and to restore the flounce to the skirt of net over silk. The lace on the little apron had turned to the colour of ivory.

  At last the costume and headdress were adjusted to the dresser’s satisfaction, and she stood back to admire the English ballerina. She clasped her hands against her motherly bosom, and though her Venetian eyes were warm, they were also concerned. Lauri caught the meaning of what she was saying, that the English signor in a looked charming but so pale. Was she all right? Not sick, or faint?

  Lauri was afraid. She was in costume, and in sheer terror of what lay ahead of her. She wasn’t only dancing a major role for the first time in her life, but she was replacing an established dancer.

  She thought fearfully of what Andreya had said about the scorn of an audience ... the scorn that was almost as terrible as the panic of one. Her legs went weak, but she couldn’t sit down for fear of crushing her costume. Her heart hammered, right in her throat, as footsteps sounded on the floor of the passage outside. Knuckles rapped her door.

  ‘The Direttore!’ The dresser turned eagerly to the door and opened it.

  Maxim came in, tall, dark and distinguished in his evening suit. ‘Ah, you are dressed.’ There was a curious sternness about him as he came over to her and made her pirouette before him for his inspection. He turned at last to the dresser and complimented her on a job well done. She looked pleased, and after wishing the English signorina a big success, she left them alone in the dressing-room with its musky scent of greasepaint, and sweeter scent of flowers. Maxim took note of those on the dressing-table. ‘Who are they from?’ he asked.

  Lauri told him, and touched the myrtle, almost unaware.

  ‘It is the customary thing to do, to send flowers,’ Maxim said, in that curiously stern voice. ‘I thought I would bring mine.’

  She looked at him with bewildered eyes, for the only flower about him was the small red carnation in his buttonhole. A faint smile came into his eyes as he put a hand into his pocket and withdrew a flat leather case, he sprang the catch and revealed on a bed of satin a brooch in the form of a flower spray. The flowers were glimmering pearl daisies on stems of gold, with leaves of delicate green enamel. It was simple, but so exquisitely wrought that Lauri knew it must be an antique and worth a lot of money.

  ‘You won’t be able to wear it to dance in,’ said Maxim. ‘We don’t want Lonza wounding himself on it. Wear it later for the first-night party.’

  ‘It’s beautiful, signor.’ Lauri touched a finger to the tiny carved leaves. ‘I shall be pleased to wear it.’

  ‘And to keep it, I hope,’

  ‘To—keep it?’ Her great eyes, outlined by stage make-up, met his in confusion. ‘Oh, I don’t think I could do that.’

  ‘Why not?’ He asked the question in a quite pleasant, impersonally interested tone of voice. Not at all the tone of voice of a man offering a girl a priceless brooch.

  ‘Because it’s valuable,’ she replied. ‘If it was pretty but worthless—well, that would be a different matter entirely.’

  ‘It would indeed,’ he agreed. ‘I would never offer you anything that was worthless, and I don’t thank you for offering me such an excuse for not accepting it. You will accept it because I want you to, and because there is no one else it would suit quite so well.’

  ‘What about Venetia?’ The words were out before Lauri could stop them. She blushed vividly as his dark eyes narrowed and flashed with a kind of leashed fire over her triangular face with its emphasized features. Her face, her slim bare neck, her shoulders partly revealed by the peasant blouse, caught the fire of his raking glance.

  ‘What about Venetia?’ The question winged back at her, barbed and dangerous.

  ‘If the brooch is a—a family one, ought you to give it away—to anyone else?’ Lauri drew away from him as she spoke, a slim, bare-shouldered figure whose heart was knocking against the silk of the blouse she wore.

  He drew near as she backed away, tall, black-browed, with a mouth in which restraint was at war with strong emotions. He slid the brooch case back into his pocket, and just as quickly took her by the shoulders. His hands were warm against her skin.

  ‘Now is not the time for us to discuss love, or its demands and its dues,’ he said quietly. ‘In a few short minutes you will be due on stage. How do you feel, child?’

  ‘Frightened,’ she said, and at once his hands tightened, as though as he was trying with his touch to imbue her with his own strength and confidence. ‘When you go out on that stage you will be taking with you the hopes of your aunt who could not be with, you, the good wishes of everyone in the company, and my belief in you as a dancer,’ he said firmly. ‘When you go out on that stage, you will be Giselle, not Lauri Garner. You will forget your audience, you will forget the theatre, you will remember only that you are a girl to whom nothing matters but the love you feel and want to express.’

  ‘Laurina,’ now he took her face into his hands and tilted it towards him ... he used Venetia’s name for her almost caressingly, ‘you must not be afraid of anything. I shall be only a few feet away from you all the time ... you trust me, don’t you? You know I would never ask you to do anything which I did not feel was in your heart, waiting to be given? Giselle is in you, waiting to be given to all those who love ballet.’

  ‘All those who love ballet,’ she echoed. She thought of Aunt Pat, who would be thinking of her through every movement of the ballet ... who would be so proud if at the end of it she had danced a little magic into the hearts of those who had watched hen

  She looked into Maxim’s eyes, and a smile came stealing to her lips. ‘I am glad you will be watching me from the wings, signor,’ she said. ‘I do trust you.’

  ‘Yes, trust me,’ he spoke deeply, almost urgently. ‘Whatever I do, I have your best interests at heart.’

  He stood back then and took one more considering look at her in the costume which had belonged to his grandmother. ‘Come,’ he took her by the hand, ‘it is time for you to take your place for the opening scene.’ She walked with him towards the sound of the music. Her heart was throbbing. She was hot and chill with the strange unreality of these moments.

  Maxim would never know that at the last moment, when the music paused for her to run forward out of Giselle’s cottage, she wanted instead to run into his arms and be locked there for ever. Even as this revelation came to her, she was out on the stage of the Fenice and gazing into a reddish-darkness hung with shadowy outlines and jewel-toned exit lights.

  There was an intense silence, and then a thrill of music rising from the pit below her poised feet. The music touched the tips of h
er toes, and then her limbs reacted as though from the left of her someone pulled a string.

  A heart-string, for as she briefly turned her head she saw Maxim, tall and dark in the wings. He smiled in his grave, dark-eyed way, and Lauri knew from the depths of her being that she had to give him all that he wanted from her ... the ballerina, not the woman.

  The excitement throughout the theatre was electrical when the curtain came down on the first half of the ballet. Giselle, .mad with love, had killed herself on Albrecht’s sword. When the curtain rose again she would be one of the Wilis, maidens who live on in the spirit because they have died unfulfilled by love.

  Michael caught Lauri to him in the passage to the dressing-rooms. ‘You darling!’ He kissed her exultantly. ‘Nijinka, you have never danced as you are dancing tonight. My sweet witch, are you in love ... are you in love with me?’

  ‘Michael, you fool...’ she broke away from him, half laughing, half crying with nervous tension and excitement. ‘I must go and change—’

  ‘Lauri, you were marvellous. All those people love you as much as I do.’

  She glanced back and caught the gleam in his eyes. She fled precipitately to her dressing-room, aware that her quickened senses had charged their scenes d’amour with a certain reality. Dear heaven! She leaned back against the door of her dressing-room and caught her breath. She felt a terrible, strangling ache for Maxim. It daggered through her body into her bones, a painful moment of aliveness.

  In his Venetian tower she had loved him and not known. On the island where Venetia was staying she had learned of the love in which she could have no share.

  She drew away from the door as someone tried the handle. Her dresser came hurrying in, all smiles. Everyone was talking about the ballet. The Direttore was surrounded by people, and she had not liked to hand to him what he had pulled out of his pocket with the handkerchief to mop his brow.

  Lauri stared at the small oblong envelope. ‘I’ll give it to him,’ she said, and held out her hand for it. Automatically she glanced at the name and address on the front of the envelope.

  Her name!

  The dresser was bustling about laying out the filmy Wili costume and the small coronet of flowers ... she turned at a heart-wrenching sound from Lauri, and saw that she was reading what had been in the envelope.

  ‘Signorina,’ the dresser came hurrying over to Lauri in quick concern, ‘you are not feeling so good?’

  Lauri was stunned, shocked, filled with a silent crying out against what the telegram held. Aunt Pat had been taken into hospital last night ... and Maxim had withheld the news from her because tonight all her thought and feeling must be given to his precious ballet.

  She refolded the telegram, and like a creature in a trance let herself be dressed for the final act of the ballet that meant more to Maxim than anything else. Outside in the passage there was a rustling of satin slippers and chiffon skirts as the corps de ballet hurried towards the wings. When she joined them, their white ranks parted to let her through to where Maxim stood. There was something so deeply hurt about her that no one spoke as she handed Maxim a small oblong envelope.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ His eyes held a queer dark blaze as he gazed down at Lauri.

  ‘It fell out of your pocket and my dresser picked it up.’ Her voice was as cold as her eyes. ‘My name was on the envelope, so I read what was inside.’

  ‘My dear—’

  ‘No,’ she threw out a hand, indicating the stage, the sets, the groups of dancers, ‘all this is what is dear to you. You live for it, and the illness of other people must not be allowed to interfere with it. I think I hate you Maxim. Tonight I should have been on my way home to Aunt Pat, not dancing!’

  ‘I knew you would feel that way.’ He drew her firmly into the green room at the side of the stage and closed the door. He stood with his back to it, and he seemed to Lauri to have a look of utter determination as she swept her eyes over him.

  ‘Don’t try to understand my motives,’ he said, ‘just believe that I was doing what I thought was best for you.’

  ‘For the ballet!’ she cried back. ‘For the launching of your second Travilla—and you’ve succeeded, haven’t you, Maxim? Everyone out there is saying all the things you wanted them to say.’

  ‘You have succeeded as well,’ he cut in. ‘Don’t you realize that?’

  ‘I never wanted fame, bright lights, the roar of the crowd,’ she said, scorn dying away and leaving her tired,

  ‘I was not referring to any of that,’ he said quietly. ‘Each time you danced, Lauri, a pair of ghosts danced at your heels. Their fingers reached out of flames and caught at your feet—but tonight you broke free of your ghosts and forgot your fears. Don’t you realize that in doing that you have proved to a brave and selfless woman that she did the right thing in letting you leave her to come here ... and dance?’

  ‘You persuaded her that it was the right thing for her to do,’ Lauri threw back at him. ‘I think you knew all the time that she was ill—far more ill than she let on to me.’

  ‘Yes, I knew,’ he admitted. ‘She told me of her own fears, and her doctor’s, but she wanted you to have the chance to become a great dancer. She believed it was in you to dance as you have danced tonight. Are you now going to let her down and prove that you grew up for one hour only?’

  ‘No, signor.’ Lauri looked at him and saw again a stranger to whom she could never get close. ‘And now I think you had better let me go. I am sure you wouldn’t like it if I missed my cue.’

  He stood aside from the door and opened it for her. As she walked past him her ballerina dress was filmy and pale about her slim, withdrawn figure. ‘I shall fly home tomorrow to my aunt,’ she said. ‘She needs me.

  ‘Very well.’ He inclined his head, and his eyes were inscrutable as she ran in her satin slippers to take her place among the Wilis—the maidens unfulfilled by love.

  There was not a murmur, not a movement in all that packed theatre. Each pair of eyes was fixed upon the thin young dancer with the great honey-coloured eyes and wounded mouth. She was so without defence, blown about the stage by the cross-currents of love, betrayal, the whims and cruelties of other people—people she had trusted.

  She soared alone, and then in the arms of her partner ... heart, limbs and spirit took wing and the elusive essence of romance was alive again for every woman in the audience; every man who yearned to believe again in innocence.

  Moments during that pas de deux were sensitive almost beyond endurance, and somewhere in the auditorium a woman gave a compulsive sob. To love as that girl was loving Albrecht! His lean, dark face in her hands, her eyes tortured because their love must be for ever unfulfilled.

  Lauri’s anguish at heart was in her dancing. And Michael a witness to that scene in the wings between her and Maxim, was tender and strong with her ... the little Nijinka who was not for him.

  Came inevitably the moment of farewell between Giselle and Albrecht, and as he collapsed to his knees, and buried his face in the lilies on her tomb, a murmur as of a coming storm began to arise from the auditorium. It pulsed in the air. There was a moment like that of a stopped heart, and then a convulsive catching of breath as the applause broke out like thunder,

  ‘Bravo ... Bravissimi!’

  It roared, and the two slim figures were bowed down by its force ... there was a wetness on Lauri’s cheeks ... tears were raining down her face.

  Flowers beat at them. The crowd was cheering. Someone tall, dark, and gravely smiling was standing in the wings, applauding.

  Lonza turned and looked at his partner, then he took both her hands and carried them close to his lips. ‘Nijinka,’ he murmured. He was choked, he could say no more, and the storm seemed to grow louder as he kissed her hands.

  ‘Bravo ... Bravissimi!’

  Maxim’s triumph was achieved. The air was filled with it, the scent of crushed flowers, and those spilling from Lauri’s arms. The cluster of dancers were breathless with excitement, a
nd when at last the curtains closed they surrounded Lauri and after much kissing and embracing Lauri was like a crushed flower herself.

  ‘To your dressing-rooms!’ Bruno was among them, scattering them like so many white doves. ‘Be off with you! I am sure our little Lauri would like to be alone to rest after her wonderful performance.’

  ‘Thank you, Bruno—’ then beyond his shoulder she saw Maxim approaching, and clutching her flowers she fled to her dressing-room. It was quiet there, but she had no intention of remaining. With fingers that shook she untied the ribbons of her battered slippers and withdrew her feet from them. She gave each aching foot a rub, then slipped into outdoor shoes. She snatched up a towel and wiped the make-up from her face ... she was buttoning her coat over her ballet dress as she made her way swiftly and silently out of a side door of the theatre.

  A fairly thick mist was wafting up out of the water and half shrouding the city. Walking through it added to Lauri’s sense of being adrift between triumph and despair.

  She merged into the shadows, her hands plunged into her pockets, her eyes tearless now in tired hollows. ‘I think I hate you ... hate you.’ The words echoed in her mind. ‘Ballet is what is dear to you, you live for it.’

  She came to a bridge and walked wearily across to the middle of it. There was a hollow lap of water against stone, and slow curls of mist rose about her and touched her cheeks like cold fingers. She shivered, and though she knew it was foolhardy to stand here in the misty cold after dancing in a warm theatre, she couldn’t make the effort to go back.

  Overhead the moon lost and found itself among the clouds. A gondola cut through the misty water and swept past the old palaces, and warehouses. Past the stone angels that never slept, and the satyrs that kept watch through the night. The water murmured in the wake of the black boat, and from a waterfront cafe drifted the sound of a Venetian song.

  ‘Come tomorrow, come quickly.’ The music seemed to set itself to the refrain in Lauri’s mind. Let me hurry home to tell Aunt Pat that all I ever wanted was love. That to be a great dancer was the dream of others, not my dream.