Women Have Hearts. Barbara Cartland

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Kelda remembered how pretty her mother had always looked, despite the fact that she could never afford anything expensive.

      “It is not only what you spend,” she had said once, “it is having good taste and knowing what suits one’s real self.”

      ‘Perhaps if I had the chance,’ Kelda thought, ‘I too would have good taste.’

      She had only to look in the mirror to realise that the grey gown that she wore, which was made of coarse cotton, was unbecoming and appeared, as indeed she was, poverty-stricken.

      It was, of course, chosen by Mrs. Gladwin, who ever since she had come to the Seminary had insisted on repeating the same grey garments she had worn in the orphanage rather than buying her dresses of a brighter and more cheerful colour.

      “Please, Madam,” she had asked a year ago, “as I am having a new gown, could it be in blue or green?”

      “I consider both those colours quite unsuitable for your position,” Mrs. Gladwin replied acidly. “What is more, they would show the dirt.”

      “I wash my gowns every week,” Kelda countered quickly.

      “I should have thought that was unnecessarily often,” Mrs. Gladwin replied, determined to find fault. “And the uniform I choose for you is what I permit you to wear and there will be no arguments about it.”

      She СКАЧАТЬ