Women have Hearts

Chapter One ~ 1899-2

“How do you know he is like that?” Kelda asked.

“I saw him five years ago,” Yvette answered, “and some of my other relatives have seen him since and they say that he has grown even worse than he was then.”

Kelda could think of no reply to this and after a moment Yvette went on,

“There is some mystery about him which makes them always stop talking when I come into the room, but I have often heard my cousins say laughingly that I have too much money and might become cynical like Uncle Maximus.”

“He is rich then,” Kelda said. “Perhaps he wants to leave you all his money.”

“I don’t want his money,” Yvette retorted. “I have plenty of my own. Papa and Mama left me everything they had. I may not spend it until I am twenty-one and that is more than three years ahead! Three years when I shall have to live with Uncle Maximus and ask him for every penny I require.”

She burst into such a huge flood of tears that Kelda could only put her arms round her and hold her close.

“It may not be as bad as you think,” she said soothingly, “and it will be interesting for you to see Senegal.”

She remembered her father talking to her about West Africa and claiming that he would like to go there for a visit.

Kelda had been with him once to Algeria, but that had been a long time ago and it was difficult to remember very much about it except that it had been full of sunshine and she and her father and mother had found a great deal that amused them.

They had stayed for a short time in Algiers and found the City fascinating.

“I will look up the geography books about Senegal,” she said, “and tell you all about it. Where does your uncle live?”

“I don’t care where he lives,” Yvette said petulantly. “It will be beastly, like him, and I shall loathe every moment of it!”

“It might be better than you think,” Kelda suggested. “Tell me where he lives.”

“You can see the address for yourself,” Yvette replied and flung the letter she held in her hand onto the floor.

Kelda bent down and picked it up.

She realised that both the envelope and the writing paper were of the thickest and most expensive quality and both bore an impressive crest.

She did not like to make Yvette think that she was prying by reading the letter, but as she looked at the address, noting that it was in Dakar, her eye also caught the first line on the writing paper written in a strong upright hand.

“My dear niece – ” she read.

It struck her as being an unnecessarily formal manner of addressing Yvette, but aloud she said,

“I am sure there will be much in the books about Dakar and I am certain that it is under French administration. So there will be French people living there and you will not feel as lonely as you anticipate.”

“I want to stay in France,” Yvette insisted. “I want to be in Paris where I can dance and go to all the lovely balls that are to be given for me when I leave the school at Christmas.”

Kelda had thought it likely that, as Yvette would be eighteen at the beginning of next year, she would leave Miss Gladwin’s either at Christmas or at Easter.

Because she was fond of the French girl, she had known that she would miss her and at the moment there was no other pupil to take her place in her affections.

“I just don’t know what I shall do without you,” she observed with a deep sigh.

“If I asked if I could stay here for another six months,” Yvette said suddenly, “do you think they would let me?”

Kelda looked down at the letter she still held in her hand.

Somehow she did not know exactly why, but she felt as if there were vibrations of power coming from it and an unmistakable aura of authority.

“I think, if your Guardian says you are to leave, then you will have to do so,” she said quietly.

Yvette sprang to her feet.

“Why should I live with someone I hate? Why should he order me about, not even asking me if there is anything else I would prefer to do?”

She paused for a moment before she added angrily,

“I presume you know the answer to that. I would rather live in a garret in Paris than in a Palace in Dakar!”

“Is that what he owns?” Kelda asked curiously.

“I imagine that is what it will be,” Yvette replied. “As he is so rich and so pompous, he obviously lords it over the wretched natives.”

Kelda put the letter down on the table, resisting an impulse to ask Yvette if she could read it.

‘There is really nothing I can do to help her,’ she thought sadly.

She was just about to say how sorry she was when there was a knock on the door which made both the girls start.

“Who is it?” Yvette enquired.

“Madam wants to see you in her study, m’mselle,” one of the maids replied.

She went away without waiting for an answer and they heard her heavy footsteps going down the passage.

Yvette looked at Kelda.

“The dragon will have received a letter as well and I bet she is drooling over it because Uncle Maximus has a title!”

Mrs. Gladwin was a snob who fawned on the parents whose names appeared in Debrett’s Peerage and it was a joke that never ceased to amuse her pupils.

Yvette was not smiling now.

Instead she carried on,

“You can be sure that the dragon will make me do exactly what Uncle Maximus wants.”

“You had better go down the stairs and find out what she has to say,” Kelda said, “but you should wash your face first.”

“Let her see it as it is,” Yvette replied. “I shall try and persuade her to write to my French relatives and protest at my being sent off to some outlandish place, although I doubt if she will do so.”

“I think it very unlikely,” Kelda agreed, “and even if they do protest, they will not have any authority under the Law.”

“Uncle Maximus has not taken any interest in me until now,” Yvette wailed. “He has not written to me at Christmas or even sent me a card. Why should he want me to live with him? Why this sudden interest?”

“It does seem strange,” Kelda agreed. “Perhaps he feels lonely.”

“Lonely? Uncle Maximus? According to Cousin Jacques, recluse though he may be, he always has a mistress.”

Kelda looked shocked.

“I cannot believe your cousin told you that!”

“Not exactly,” Yvette admitted, “but he visited Uncle Maximus when he was on his way to Cape Town and he told his brother when he did not know that I was listening, that when he called on him, he had a glimpse of a beautiful woman.

“‘Mind you.’ he added, ‘I have a suspicion that she was a métise.”

Yvette wrinkled her brow.

“What is a métise? I asked Aunt Jeanne-Marie, but she would not tell me.”

Kelda knew it meant the offspring of a white Company employee and a local woman, but she was not going to explain that to Yvette.

Instead she replied,

“I will look it up in the dictionary and let you know.”

“I have done that already, but it was not there, unless I had the spelling wrong.”

“You must hurry to Madam,” Kelda insisted. “You know how cross she gets if one keeps her waiting.”

“Why should I care if I am leaving?” Yvette retorted.

Kelda was tidying her hair and then she found her another handkerchief.

“I will wash these,” she said, picking up the two tearstained ones. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Nothing, nothing unless you can cast a spell on Uncle Maximus so he will fall dead!”

She walked across the room and, as she reached the door, she stopped.

“That is quite an idea. I believe there is lots of Black Magic in Africa. I shall try to find a witch doctor as soon as I get there and see if he can dispose of my uncle for me!”

Kelda gave a little cry of horror.

“That is a wicked thing to say! I know you will do nothing of the sort.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Yvette answered sharply and flounced down the passage.

Kelda sighed and began automatically to tidy the room. She was sorry for Yvette. At the same time she wished that she had the opportunity of travelling to Senegal or anywhere else in the world as she had done so often when her father had been alive.

She knew now that the one thing that had been harder to bear than anything else was the feeling of being so restricted and restrained first by the drab dark walls of the orphanage and then by the Seminary.

When her father and mother were alive, they had never stayed for long in any one place.

Even if her father had not been sent on an important expedition, he had travelled about England giving lectures at Universities and Kelda could remember twice going to Edinburgh.

Their journeys had seldom been very comfortable, but it had been an excitement to be on the move.

More than anything else it had been a thrill to be in a foreign country, to ride on the back of a camel or a stubborn mule or to sail in a small boat with a large sail up a river to places that could not be reached by any other means.

‘Oh, Papa, I miss you,’ Kelda said beneath her breath.

She knew that the eight years since he had died had been a nightmare from which she half-believed she might still awake.

To look back made her remember that, while Yvette was not yet eighteen and was going out into the world for the first time, she would be twenty-one in July.

And Kelda supposed that her life would never alter from what it was at the moment.

She often wondered to herself, if she left the Seminary, if she would be able to find other employment of a more congenial nature.

Although she had often considered it, she thought it was unlikely and in a way she clung to Mrs. Gladwin because with her she was with girls who came from cultured families.

It was not that they or Mrs. Gladwin considered her to be their equal. She continually reminded her that she came from an orphanage and was nothing but a ‘charity child’.

At first Kelda had resented it, feeling that she must reply that her father was a gentleman and her mother a lady, even if they had very little money.

Then she decided that such retorts only made the situation more difficult than it was at the moment.

Mrs. Gladwin liked humiliating her because unlike the servants she could not leave nor would she answer back as the Governesses could do.

She therefore taught herself to always control her feelings, to try not to listen when Mrs. Gladwin found fault incessantly and expected her to be eternally grateful for having a roof over her head and food to eat.

She was certainly paid little enough for her services a quarter of what any of the servants received but she knew that if she was dissatisfied there was nothing she could do about it.

Even these meagre wages were overdue and, because Kelda loathed having to ask for what she was owed and being told once again how grateful she should be for being where she was, she had not even mentioned the fact to her employer.

She crossed the room to shut the wardrobe door and, as she did so, looking at the gowns hanging inside it, many of which Yvette had only worn two or three times.