Good or Bad

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1875-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1875Amalita opened the letter that had come from France.

She noticed that the envelope was not addressed in her father’s usual strong upright hand.

She thought just for a moment that it must have come from her stepmother.

Then she remembered that Yvette’s handwriting was very different and very French.

‘Who can it be from?’ she wondered.

Then she told herself that she had only to look inside to find the answer.

When she had read the letter through once, she went back to the beginning.

She stared at what was written in a such a way that would have told anyone watching that she had suffered a shock.

Finally Amalita went to sit on the window seat and gazed out into the garden.

It was nearly an hour later when the door opened and her sister Carolyn came in.

She was looking exceedingly lovely with her fair hair curled round her forehead and her face a little flushed.

Her blue eyes were the colour of the sky outside and she was so beautiful that she might have come from the sky itself.

“I have had a really marvellous ride, Amalita,” she said. “I went right up to the Beacon and there was not a soul in sight.”

Then, as her sister did not respond to her, she walked towards her, asking,

“What is the matter? What has happened?”

“I have just had – a letter from – France,” Amalita replied nervously. “Sit down, Carolyn.”

“From Papa?” Carolyn enquired. “So why should that upset you?”

She sat down because her sister had told her to and she chose a chair by the window and the sunshine turned her hair to quivering gold.

“This is a letter,” Amalita said very slowly, “from the Police in Nice.”

“The Police?” her sister exclaimed. “What can Papa have been up to?”

Amalita drew in her breath.

“Papa is – dead,” she told her, “and so is – Yvette.”

Her sister just stared at her.

After a moment she asked,

“Did you – did you say – dead?”

“Yes. According to this letter from the Police, Papa and Yvette went sailing, which, as you know, he always loved. A sudden storm got up and his yacht collided with a – cargo boat – and it sank. Their bodies were recovered, but they were already drowned.”

Amalita’s voice sounded so very strange, as if it was extremely difficult for her to utter the words.

Carolyn put her hands up to her eyes.

“Oh, poor Papa! How could he have gone so far away from us?”

“I find it just impossible to believe,” Amalita said, “You can read the letter for yourself. It is in French.”

“You know very well that my French is not as good as yours,” Carolyn objected. “Tell me what it says.”

“Just as I told you,” Amalita replied. “Papa and Yvette went sailing. They were both drowned and the Police said it took them some time to find out who Papa was and whom they could contact.”

She looked down at the letter again before she went on,

“In fact it was only when they found our letter to him that they were aware of his address.”

“So they wrote to you,” Carolyn said. “When did it all happen?”

“I can hardly believe it true, but it was nearly a month ago,” her sister answered.

“How can they have taken so long?” Carolyn asked.

For a moment Amalita did not reply.

Then after a moment she said,

“It seems terrible to think we were enjoying ourselves and not worrying a bit about Papa and all the time he was dead.”

There was another silence before Carolyn remarked,

“He did not – worry very much about – us after he – married Yvette.”

Now there was a distinct bitterness in her tone, which her sister did not miss.

She jumped up from the chair and moved to put her arms around Amalita.

“I know how upset you must be,” she said, “because you loved Papa and he meant so much to you. But you know, if you are truthful, that we had lost him after Mama died and he married that Frenchwoman.”

Amalita drew in a deep breath.

“You are right,” she agreed. “‘That Frenchwoman’ as you call her, changed him completely. I gather from this letter that he was not staying in Nice under his own name, which means that he did not wish to meet any of his old friends.”

“How could she have a hold over him so – quickly?” Carolyn asked in bewilderment.

Her sister did not reply.

Two years older than Carolyn, she was aware that Yvette, whom her father had met in Paris, had swept him off his feet.

He had gone to Paris because he was so desperately unhappy after his wife’s death and he found their home intolerable to live in.

“I see your mother in every room,” he had muttered to his older daughter. “I find myself calling for her as I come in through the front door and I just cannot sleep at night because she is not beside me.

Before he could say the next words, Amalita knew what they would be.

“I must go away,” Sir Frederick Maulpin said. “I must try and get control of myself, but I cannot stay here and go mad.”

There was an agony as he spoke that told his daughter he was speaking the truth.

“You are so right. Papa,” she said gently. “You should go away and I know when you come back that things will seem different.”

She helped him to pack up his boxes and Sir Frederick had left the next day.

He did not take his valet with him and Amalita knew that it was because he was trying hard to forget everything that his home had meant to him for twenty-one years.

Because she was older than her sister and so closer to their father, he had told her that he had been a somewhat raffish young man in his youth.

She guessed that he had had very many love affairs, enjoyed himself in London and travelled on the Continent whenever he felt like it.

He was indeed well off.

He could afford all the perquisites for the pleasure of a handsome, hearty young man who had nothing better to do than to enjoy himself.

He had a stable full of fine horses and he hunted with two of the best packs in the County of Leicestershire.

He had two or three horses that had won several minor races.

He played polo and belonged to two of the smartest Gentleman’s Clubs in St. James’s, White’s and Boodles.

Amalita knew without his telling her that he had been on the lists as a most eligible bachelor of every important hostess in London.

When he went to stay in France or any other country in Europe, he was able to stay at the British Embassy.

He was the guest of noble families in many countries he visited.

He was the eighth Baronet and the family was known as one of the oldest and most respected in England.

Queen Victoria frequently invited him to luncheon and dinner parties at Windsor Castle.

Then, so unexpectedly that it surprised even him, he fell head-over-heels in love.

Amalita knew only too well that her mother had been overwhelmingly beautiful, but not of great social standing.

Her father was a gentleman and a Country Squire.

He had, however, never aspired to shine brightly in the smartest Society in which he moved.

Having lost his heart, his character and his personality changed.

He bought a pretty black and white Medieval house in Worcestershire with a large estate and settled down there with the woman he loved.

He forgot the friends who had been so close to him in London.

The only disappointment in all the years that followed was that he did not have a son.

His first-born was a daughter who resembled him.

He christened her “Amalita” because he thought that she looked like a Greek Goddess.

She was quite different from her mother in that she had dark hair with strange lights in it and her eyes were the green-grey of the sea.

“She is just so lovely,” Sir Frederick declared, “that I really believe, my darling, that she is a gift from God.”

Their second daughter, Carolyn, who was born two years later, closely resembled Elizabeth Maulpin.

She also had a very sweet and gentle character, which made everyone she met love her as they loved her mother.

Amalita could be fiery and forceful, so like her father. She also had his imagination and his acute intelligence.

It amazed him, having all these fine attributes, that he should be content with one woman in the country.

In some extraordinary way it was as if they were the complete complement of each other.

It was her father who had told Amalita about what the Greeks believed in.

When man was first created, he was alone in the world and wanted a companion. So the Gods cut him in half.

Always for the rest of his existence he looked for the woman who was the other half of himself so that he would become whole again.

That was certainly what her father and mother were, Amalita felt and she could never recall them quarrelling or even arguing with each other.

Arguing was what she enjoyed when she grew older and her father found it most amusing that she had the same sharp brain that he had.

She also had an intuition that made them duel often with each other in words.

“When you do marry, my darling,” he had said to her once, “I hope you will find a man who will not only adore you but also stimulate your mind in the same way that you stimulate mine.”

Just a year ago, however, disaster had struck them.

It was an extremely cold winter.

However strong the fires blazed away in the house and timber was cut up to provide warmth, Elizabeth Maulpin succumbed to the freezing atmosphere and retired to bed.

It was unlike her not to be at her husband’s side.

Sir Frederick, for the very first time, seemed to be at a loose end.

So it was Amalita who had ridden out with him at the strangest hours just because he could not think of anything else to do.

“Mama will soon be better, Papa,” she would say to cheer him up.

Lying in the comfortable bed with its silk curtains and gold corola above it, Elizabeth Maulpin seemed to shrink away day by day.

Finally one sunny morning when her husband woke, he found her dead beside him.

His two daughters found it as difficult to believe as he did.

He was at once in such a frantic state of despair that they spent every moment of their time trying to comfort him.

“We must not leave him alone,” Amalita had said to Carolyn.

They took it in turns always to be at his side.

When the funeral was over and he could no longer see the wife he had adored, he announced that he must go away.

“I shall go to Paris,” he replied when Amalita asked him where he would go.

He had been away for many months.

Although the girls wrote long letters to him almost daily, they received only a few scanty replies from him.

Then, after a long empty interval, a letter arrived just as they were returning from riding.

“A letter from Papa!” Amalita exclaimed as she came into the hall. “Thank Goodness. I was just wondering what could have happened to him.”

“Maybe he is coming back home at last,” Carolyn said cheerfully.

Amalita opened the letter and began to read what her father had written.

“Read me the letter to me,” Carolyn begged, coming up beside her.

As Amalita was silent, Carolyn took the letter from her and read it.

Then she exclaimed,

“I don’t believe it! How could Papa be in love with anyone so – soon after Mama – ?”

Her voice broke and she burst into tears.

“Papa has – forgotten – Mama,” she sobbed.

Amalita put her arms around her.

“He could never forget Mama” she said. “It is just that he cannot bear to be alone.”

Her father returned a month later.

He brought with him his new wife, and the two girls stared at her feeling that they must be dreaming.

Yvette was in every way a complete contrast to their mother.

For one thing she was French.

Although Amalita did not say so, she was sure that she was a Bourgeoise.

She was certainly not an aristocrat by any means.

She did have, however, all the enticement, allure and charm for which Frenchwomen are renowned.