‘I don’t deny it.’ He was still smiling slightly. ‘That was how I intended it to be.’ With a decisive gesture he peeled off his Otello wig, and ran his hand through his own thick grey hair. ‘He hid any chagrin exceedingly well—I’ll give him that. But he knows now not to challenge me on my own ground, I think.’
‘Father’—she was suddenly overcome by angry indignation, and even the presence of the dresser did not deter her—‘you’re completely mistaken in what you think. You do Laurence the greatest injustice. If you’d let him speak——’
‘I have no wish to hear him speak,’ returned her father indifferently.
‘Well, I have!’ she retorted violently, her mingled love and anger suddenly sweeping her forward to an iron determination to have the matter out, once and for all. ‘I’m going to fetch him—now!’
‘Natalie——’ the authoritative note in his voice was as commanding as at any time during the performance, but for once it failed to have any effect upon her. Avoiding his detaining hand, she made for the door, almost pushing the surprised dresser out of her path. And a second later she was outside in the now crowded corridor.
‘No,’ she said mechanically to the many inquiries, ‘no, he isn’t ready yet. And nor is Mr Morven,’ she added for good measure, as she beat a peremptory little tattoo on the door of Laurence’s dressing-room.
‘Yes?’ he called out, and then he himself came to the door, and for a brief moment she saw Mrs Pallerton in the background.
‘Please come. My father wants you.’ She spoke without choosing her words and then saw from his set face that he was on the verge of saying that her father could wait. ‘I want you,’ she continued in a low voice. ‘It’s important—please.’ And, looking past him, she said, ‘And will you come too, Mrs Pallerton?’
They came then, both of them—puzzled, but sufficiently under the spell of her urgent tone to do just what she commanded. Like her, they put aside all queries and comments from the crowd and accompanied her into the principal dressing-room.
‘Please leave us alone for a minute or two.’ Natalie was just as commanding to the dresser, who immediately withdrew, leaving Natalie with three puzzled people—two of them rather wary and resentful.
After a moment Laurence, looking across the room with hard eyes at the man sitting by the dressing-table, said coldly but politely, ‘What was it you wanted to say to me?’
‘I?’ Lindley Harding stood up and immediately seemed to dominate the room. ‘Nothing, my dear fellow. And I have no more idea what Natalies wants than apparently you have yourself.’
‘It’s nothing my father needs to say,’ Natalie was trembling, but her voice was clear and steady. ‘It’s something he needs to hear. Laurence, will you please tell him—and me—just why you wanted to sing in this performance tonight?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ her father interrupted coldly.
‘No, it is not. It’s something which needs putting into words for all of us.’ That time her voice did tremble slightly. ‘Will you please say—please, Laurence. Just why did you immediately volunteer to sing Cassio tonight when you heard that my father was to sing Otello?’
‘I thought you knew. You wouldn’t let me enlarge on the subject at the wedding,’ he reminded her a little resentfully. ‘You implied——’
‘I think,’ said Natalie softly, ‘that I also had somehow got things wrong.’
‘Well——’ Laurence hesitated a moment longer, even staring down at the floor in a strangely boyish and awkward manner. Then he cleared his throat and said, ‘I guess it sounds naïve and corny, but I thought that if ever one day, I was good enough to sing Otello myself, I’d like to be able to say that I once played Cassio to the greatest Otello of them all.’
He stopped speaking and, except for a sharply indrawn breath from Mrs Pallerton, there was complete and utter silence. Then, as though that silence embarrassed him, Laurence glanced up and met the older man’s eyes.
‘Didn’t you guess that was what it was?’
‘No,’ said Lindley Harding slowly, ‘it never occurred to me. But then I am not, as I now see, such a generous man as you are.’
‘Oh——!’ breathed Natalie softly. And when her father put out his hand to her, she went to him immediately, and into the circle of his arm.
‘I must tell you—Laurence’—he had never addressed Laurence Morven by his first name before—‘that my daughter very much wanted to come and tell you how tremendously she—and I—admired your remarkable performance tonight. I rather meanly refused to let her go. I apologise now—and would like her to speak for both of us.’
He released Natalie and gave her a little push towards Laurence. She took a step forward—doubtfully yet hopefully—and then another one. Then he held out his arms to her, and she ran into them and was held and kissed. A long, hard kiss which seemed to dissolve all barriers and misunderstandings.
‘I think’—Lindley Harding smiled slightly at Mrs Pallerton, who was standing silently by—‘that Natalie has expressed herself very effectively without words.’ Then he passed his hands over his face and suddenly looked very tired.
‘You’d already cleared the way with any words that were necessary.’ Mrs Pallerton touched one of those expressive hands lightly. ‘The generosity was not all on Laurence’s side.’
He glanced at her and smiled again, a little wryly that time.
‘Should I stretch generosity even further, and let him take her out tonight?’ he said with a slight sigh.
‘It would be very kind and thoughtful,’ Mrs Pallerton told him. ‘Though I must add that the arrangement would leave me without an escort, since I was going to supper with Laurence. But if you liked to take me instead——?’
‘My dear, I should be charmed.’ He laughed, in a much more relaxed and natural manner. Then he turned to the other two—still in each other’s arms and oblivious of anything around them. ‘I regret to break up such a romantic scene,’ he said, ‘but there is an impatient public waiting outside.’
‘Oh!’ The two started apart and then stood there hand in hand, looking slightly dazed by their own happiness.
‘You and I are changing partners for this evening.’ Lindley Harding put a hand on Laurence’s shoulder. ‘Enid is kindly accompanying me to supper, and I think you and Natalie have a good deal to say to each other, so take her along with you.’
‘Oh, thank you!’ Still dazed, Laurence put up his hand over the one that rested on his shoulder. Then he looked down at Natalie and said, ‘Come, darling.’
She was so unutterably bemused and happy that she actually turned and went a few steps with him before she remembered. Then she left him and rushed back to her father.
‘Thank you, darling, darling Father!’ She reached up and kissed him once or twice in a quick, breathless way.
‘For what?’ He looked down at her with half amused tenderness. ‘For nearly losing you your Laurence?’
‘No. For—for giving me to him without rancour.’
They looked at each other fully for a moment—she pleading for the completeness of the surrender, he characteristically holding for a moment longer to his supremacy over her.
Then he took her face between his hands and kissed her.
‘Senza rancor,’ he said, and smiled, before he once more gently pushed her towards Laurence.
She went with Laurence after that. Through the impatient crowd once more, to wait only a very few minutes outside his dressing-room before he reemerged to receive congratulations and good wishes and dispense some graceful, pleasant acknowledgements. Then, hand in hand once more, they went down the stairs and finally out at the stage door.
Here there was an enormous crowd, who greeted Laurence with enthusiasm, while one or two people, recognising Natalie, asked ‘Is Mr Harding going to be long?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She smiled, because she felt she loved everyone and could smile at everyone that evening.
‘We hope not, anyway, because we our
selves are waiting to cheer him,’ asserted Laurence.
‘Are we?’ Natalie turned to him in laughing surprise.
‘But of course.’ Laurence stood there, smiling and handsome and gloriously sure of himself. ‘He’s earned everyone’s cheers tonight.’
‘Oh, darling Larry, thank you,’ she whispered, as they moved to one side and stood, like any two gallery fans, waiting for the great man to appear.
It was another ten minutes before he came, but she was not cold because Laurence’s arm was round her. And when she heard the excited murmur round the doorway, and saw the ripple of expectation moving through the crowd, she too pressed forward, for the first time in her life outside, and not inside, the magic circle which surrounded the extraordinary being who was her father.
‘He’ll be alone!’ was her immediate thought, and it brought an uncontrollable ache to her throat.
But he was not alone. Enid Pallerton was with him, standing a little behind him, and smiling as though she found the position of companion both moving and exciting.
There was a great cheer—led, Natalie realised suddenly, by Laurence. And then her father stood there, as so often before, signing programmes and autograph books and exchanging a few gracious words with his devoted public. It had always been one of his best rôles, she recalled with loving amusement.
‘When is your next Otello performance?’ someone asked boldly.
‘I couldn’t say.’ Smilingly he drew a firm line under his signature. ‘Perhaps this was the last one.’
‘Oh, no!’ There was a concerted shout of protest from the crowd.
‘Well, take heart.’ He looked amused. ‘Most of us have more than one farewell, remember. But’—suddenly he looked across to where his daughter stood with Laurence Morven, and Natalie realised that his quick glance had taken them in from the beginning—‘there’—he indicated Laurence with one of his most eloquent gestures—‘is your future Otello.’
There was laughter and some clapping for Laurence at that.
‘And when you stand round this stage-door to cheer him,’ Lindley Harding went on, ‘some of you will remember and say, “We heard him sing Cassio once. And the Otello wasn’t bad that night either!”’
And, taking Enid Pallerton by the arm, he went out to his waiting car.
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Elusive Harmony (The Warrender Saga Book 10) Page 15