Women have Hearts

Chapter One ~ 1899-1

Chapter One ~ 1899Walking along the corridor, Kelda heard the sound of someone crying.

She paused, listened and realised that it came from the room of Yvette de Villon.

She stood still, controlling an impulse to knock on the door and ask what the matter was.

She well knew that it was not her job to interfere in any way with the older girls. Mrs. Gladwin had made that very clear when she had promoted her from being little more than servant doing all the odd jobs that nobody else would do to the position of Assistant Mistress.

“As you play the piano so well,” she had said in the hard voice in which she spoke to her inferiors, “you will supervise the practising of the younger girls and you will also sit in the classroom when they are doing their homework. That will relieve the proper Mistresses.”

She paused as if she was thinking what else she could pile on Kelda’s shoulders and then added,

“Of course, your duties as regards the laundry, the sewing and mending will continue as before but you can look on this as a promotion and you should be suitably grateful.”

“Thank you, madam,” Kelda said automatically.

Mrs. Gladwin’s eyes rested on her critically.

“I consider that gown to be too tight in the bodice. It is almost indecent.”

“I am afraid I have grown out of it,” Kelda replied apologetically.

“Then let it out!”

“I have done that already, madam.”

“Excuses, always excuses to spend money,” Mrs. Gladwin exclaimed. “You may go.”

Kelda had left the Headmistress’s study feeling vibrations of disapproval following her and it was with a sigh of relief that she reached the passage outside.

She realised that Mrs. Gladwin disliked her, although she found her useful and she had wondered why until one of the older girls enlightened her,

“Keep out of the dragon’s way, Kelda.” she had warned. “She is on the warpath and you know that she takes it out on you because you are so pretty.”

Kelda had been too surprised to reply, but that evening when she had at last been able to retire to the garret bedroom where she slept, she had looked into the small discoloured mirror that hung on the wall over the ancient chest of drawers.

‘Am I really pretty?’ she asked herself and knew that it really was the truth.

She had come to Mrs. Gladwin’s Seminary for Young Ladies when she was fifteen from the orphanage where she had lived for three years after her father and mother had been killed in an earthquake in Turkey.

Philip Lawrence had been an archaeologist and the National Geographical Society had sent him on a journey of exploration to Turkey. It was a considerable concession that they had allowed him because he had insisted on taking his wife with him.

There had been no question of the Society paying for anyone else, but somehow Philip Lawrence had scraped together the money to take his only child along as well.

It was nothing new for Kelda to accompany her father and mother on their travels and she had loved every moment of it.

When her father and mother had been killed, she had always bitterly regretted that on that particular day she had not been with them.

She had been very tired after a long expedition that they had just taken and they had left her behind in the cheap boarding house where they had stayed the night since she was still asleep when they departed they had not woken her.

Often she would cry not only because she had lost them but also because she had not said ‘goodbye’ to the two people she loved most and who comprised her whole world.

After that she had never really been able to find out who had decided that she should go to an orphanage on the outskirts of London.

She supposed that it was one of the Missionaries who had taken charge of her, but she had been suffering from shock and nothing had seemed real until she found herself a ‘charity child’ with some fifty orphans of varying ages, many of them having been in the orphanage since the moment they were born.

They had accepted it philosophically because they had never known anything else, but to Kelda who had been brought up with love and understanding, knowing the companionship of her dear father and the gentle sweetness of her mother and it had been like being plunged into the deepest hell with no chance of escape.

For three years she had suffered the almost intolerable humiliation of finding herself a nonentity, of being ordered about as if she had no feelings, of enduring bad food and little of it and having to sleep with a dozen other children in a ward where they shivered miserably in the winter and panted with heat in the summer.

It had been an inexpressible relief when at fifteen she was told that she must start to earn her own living and was sent to Mrs. Gladwin’s Seminary.

Here at least she heard cultured voices and ate what seemed good food even though the pupils often complained about it.

What was more important to Kelda than anything else was that she was now able to pick up her education once again from where, on entering the orphanage, she had been obliged to relinquish it.

Most of the children in the orphanage could neither read nor write and, while a voluntary teacher came in for three hours a day to teach them, there was no provision made for those who were more advanced or, like Kelda, extremely intelligent.

At the Seminary it was easy for her to take a lesson book up to her bedroom at night and, although she was often too tired to absorb all she wished, over the years she had gradually become almost as knowledgeable as her father would have wanted her to be.

The Mistresses were constantly changing, but one or two were kind enough to lend her books of their own and sometimes even to explain to her problems she did not understand.

There was a French mistress, an elderly woman who she carried secret cups of coffee to after she had retired to bed, until she reciprocated by talking to her in French.

“You have a natural Parisian accent, my child,” she said, “but you must practise your verbs. The English are always very lazy over their verbs.”

Kelda already spoke a certain amount of French, but she had been determined that she would be as fluent as her mother had been.

She therefore waited on the Mademoiselle assiduously and was rewarded eventually by being told,

“Anyone who did not look at you would think that you were French. If they heard you speaking in the dark, they might easily be deceived.”

It was a nice compliment that Kelda, who had never received any before, treasured in her heart.

It had been a special delight to her when two years ago Yvette de Villon had come to the school.

She was French and she came, Kelda discovered, from a family that was well-known and respected in France.

Kelda was not supposed to make friends with any of the girls, but only to wait on them by pressing their gowns and mending anything that was beyond their own capabilities.

Kelda had managed by sheer persistence to ingratiate herself with the pretty French girl until Yvette confided in her and talked to her as an equal.

Even so she was afraid to presume too much on their association and she thought now that Yvette, who was often unpredictable, might resent it if she intruded on her grief.

What, Kelda asked herself, could have made Yvette cry?

She was not like some of the other girls who wept if one of the Teachers was angry with them or who when they first arrived were desperately homesick.

Yvette was proud and in consequence had no particular ‘bosom friend’ in the school to whom she could turn in times of trouble, real or imaginary.

Her weeping, however, sounded so desperate that Kelda could bear it no longer.

She knocked gently on the door and after a moment’s silence Yvette’s voice, quavering and hesitating, asked,

“W-who – is it?”

Kelda then turned the handle and, because she did not wish to be overheard, replied in a whisper,

“It is me, Kelda.”

“Come in.”

Kelda slipped into the room.

It was very small, as were all the rooms in the Seminary, but it had a personal look about it because Yvette had so many pretty things of her own in it.

There was an expensive lace cover in the narrow bedstead and a frilly satin cushion on the only chair. The wardrobe door was open and Kelda could see a good profusion of gowns in bright colours all of which had come from expensive Paris dressmakers.

But the face that was turned up towards Kelda was very different from Yvette’s usually attractive one.

Her eyes were swollen, her small nose was red and tears were running down her cheeks.

“What is the matter?”

Kelda saw as she spoke that Yvette held a crumpled letter in one hand and the other one clutched a handkerchief sodden with tears.

“Has something happened to someone you love,” Kelda asked.

It was what she always suspected whenever she found that anybody was deeply unhappy, remembering how she had felt herself when her father and mother had died so suddenly and there had been nobody she could turn to for comfort.

“No – it is not – that,” Yvette stammered.

Kelda knelt down beside her.

“Tell me what has upset you,” she said. “Perhaps I can be of help.”

“Nobody can – help,” Yvette replied, her voice breaking.

“Please, tell me,” Kelda begged.

“I have had a letter, a letter ‒ from my uncle.”

“And it has upset you?”

“I hate him! I have always hated him and now I have to go and live with him.”

Kelda remembered that like herself Yvette was an orphan. Nevertheless she had a great number of relations in France. Every holiday when she returned to Paris she had stayed with aunts and uncles who had impressive-sounding titles and romantic Châteaux on the Loire and Villas in the South.

Yvette returned to the school with stories of the exciting times she had had, how many parties she had attended and it seemed very strange now that she should be thrown into such despondency.

Aloud Kelda said,

“I did not know that you hated any of your relatives. Which uncle are you to stay with?”

“My English uncle,” Yvette answered. “He is horrible and if I live with him I shall never see France again – and all my friends.”

She burst into tears once again and Kelda rose to fetch her a fresh handkerchief from the chest of drawers.

She put it into Yvette’s hand and then, as the French girl mopped her eyes, she said,

“I had no idea that you had an English uncle. You have never spoken about him.”

“Why should I – tell you? I hate him, but my aunt married him.”

“And he lives in England?” Kelda asked. “Well, that will not be too bad. After all you have many friends who are English here at the school.”

“He does not live in England,” Yvette replied, “but in Senegal.”

It took Kelda a second or two to remember where Senegal was and then she thought that she must be mistaken.

“You cannot mean Senegal in West Africa?”

Yvette nodded.

“My uncle lives there because he dislikes Society. He is a recluse – an eccentric. Why should I have to live with someone like that?”

Her voice sounded desperate.

“Is there any – reason why you should – obey him?” Kelda asked her hesitatingly.

“Mama and Papa made him my Guardian a long time before they died,” Yvette replied.

She paused for a moment to mop her eyes before she went on,

“Aunt Ginette was alive then and, as she was Mama’s younger sister, I suppose that they thought that, if anything should happen to them, Aunt Ginette would take Mama’s place. But she is dead and that leaves Uncle Maximus whom I have always hated and who I am sure hates me.”

“If that is true, why would he want you to go and live with him?” Kelda then asked her practically.

“I expect he wants to imprison me in Africa where I can never see anybody I am fond of and have no parties or enjoy anything that will amuse me and I will then just become old and embittered as he is.”