01 The School at the Chalet (16 page)

‘Thanks awfully,’ said Jo, with her mouth full. ‘Ripping cake Marie makes, doesn’t she? Are we going for a trot?’

‘Just a short one. It’s a glorious morning -going to be boiling later.’

‘I’m glad. I love hot weather,’ replied Joey, as she crept downstairs after her sister.

‘Cold weather makes me curl up like a dead leaf; but this is gorgeous. The hotter the better, say I! And thim’s my sentiments!’

‘Be quiet! You’ll wake the whole house if you yell like that!’ returned Madge, the headmistress completely merged in the elder sister.

Joey gave a subdued giggle, but moderated her tones at once. Madge, glancing at her, felt a throb of joy.

The three months in a dry climate had already made a great difference to her. The cough had vanished, and the warm sun and clear mountain air had wiped out the unnatural pallor which her constant illnesses in England had produced. She was getting plumper, too, and her eyes were bright. Pretty she would never be, not even with the elusive prettiness of her elder sister, but she had lost her goblin-like appearance.

‘You look pounds better,’ decided Miss Bettany. ‘Tiern See suits you.’

‘Rather!’ agreed Jo. ‘Suits you too, old thing! You’re a bit more freckly, of course, but I’m not sure it isn’t an improvement.’

‘Freckly! You little horror!’ exclaimed her sister. ‘It’s a mercy the girls don’t hear you! And that reminds me, Joey, you really must try to remember not to use my Christian name before them. You did it again last night. Yes, I know it was because you were excited; but you mustn’t do it, even if you are thrilled about something.’

‘Awfully sorry,’ murmured Joey. Then she slipped her hand through Madge’s arm. ‘Madge, what was in the cablegram from India?’

‘Business,’ replied Madge briefly. She turned and looked at her small sister thoughtfully. She wasn’t very sure how much to tell Joey. She knew quite well that something, at any rate, must be told. The family baby had joined in all their councils ever since she could understand what they were talking about, and she knew Joey well enough to be sure that she would be intensely hurt if she were left out now. Jo was very clannish in feeling. What injured her brother or sister injured her. She would be wondering what had been in Captain Carrick’s letter, and the chances were that if she were not told she would guess. Madge decided that it was better to tell her the whole truth rather than leave things to her vivid imagination. Jo’s fancies sometimes took rather startling turns.

‘Jo,’ she said abruptly, ‘I’m going to trust you. I don’t want any of the others to know, but you’ve always shared with us, and I’m not going to leave you out now. That letter from Captain Carrick told me that he was leaving Juliet on our hands. He can’t afford to keep her, so he says, so he’s dropped her on to us. It’s very hard luck on her, poor kiddy, because she has no one for the present but us. He did suggest that we might send her to an institution if we didn’t want to keep her. But that’s impossible, of course.’

‘Oh, of course!’ agreed Joey, her impressionable little heart filling with pity for the girl who was looked on as a nuisance by her own parents. ‘Oh, Madge! Poor Juliet! I’ll be as decent to her as I can!’

‘Don’t let her know you know,’ warned the elder girl. ‘She would hate that. Just be nice to her as you are to Grizel, or Gisela, or Bernhilda. Remember, Jo, I’ve trusted you. Dick’s cable was warning me about the Carricks, but it’s too late now. The only thing we can do is to be as kind as we can to Juliet, and make the best of it.’

‘Rather!’ But Joey’s bright little face looked puzzled.

‘Well! What now?’ demanded Madge. ‘What are you thinking, Jo?’

‘I was thinking, it seems such a horrid thing to do, to desert your own child! Mother and father wouldn’t have done it.’

‘I should think not!’ Madge’s thoughts went back to the long-dead father and mother who had loved their children so tenderly. ‘I’ve never heard of any other parents doing it either. Don’t think about it more than you can help, Joey-Baba. Now tell me about yesterday.’

‘We’d a lovely time,’ responded Joey eagerly. ‘You’d have loved it at the Alte Post. And oh, the mountains! Madge, I love mountains!’

‘Well, you’ve certainly got plenty of them here,’ said her sister. ‘Go on. Tell me what you did. Oh, and about that Berlin woman! What did Grizel say? I imagine she was frightfully rude, though Herr Marani didn’t actually say so. But I know what she is by this time. Tell me all about it, Joey.’

Thus encouraged, Jo gave a fairly accurate account of their various encounters with Frau Berlin, leaving Madge divided between laughter at the humour of it all, and horror at Grizel’s behaviour.

‘Grizel really is dreadful,’ she said at last. ‘I do hope you didn’t join in, Joey?’

‘Madge! Is it likely? I’ve got a little common sense! cried Joey, distinctly outraged.

‘I should hope so,’ returned her sister; ‘but one never knows. Now don’t get excited. I didn’t really suppose you did. Well, it’s time to go back now, so we’d better turn. Have you got any ideas for Thursday besides the Mondscheinspitze expedition? I’ve asked Frau Pfeifen to make some of the cakes for us, and I thought we’d get some tobacco. Herr Braun says the herdsmen always appreciate it, because, of course, they can’t get it up there.’

‘Oh, that reminds me, Herr Marani is going to ask his mother to make some cakes for us,’ said Jo. ‘Gisela says she makes gorgeous cakes-all honey and nuts! The kind that melt in your mouth. Oh, and, Madge, I nearly forgot! He told me to tell you that Frau von Eschenau is coming to see you. He thinks she wants Wanda and Marie to be boarders. Won’t it be topping if she does?’

‘No, really?’ said Madge with quick interest. ‘Are you sure, Joey?’

‘Well, that’s what he said,’ replied Jo. ‘I say, aren’t we growing?’

Madge laughed. ‘We are indeed! If we get any more boarders, I shall have to take another Châlet for us to live in, or have school in, or something. Here we are! Now, Joey, remember! Not a word of what I have told you to anyone else.’

‘Rather not! I say, Madge! You are a sport all right!’

‘Pooh! Nonsense! I couldn’t turn her out! Now run along and strip your bed while I go and see about breakfast.’

Joey trotted off, and Madge turned into the dining-room, where baskets piled high with brown rolls and glass dishes full of amber honey gave colour to the clothless table. The big, hand-made cups and plates, with their cheerful decoration of unknown flowers painted in vivid colours, which stood at each place had come from Tiern Kirche. The table looked un-English in the extreme, but very pleasant and inviting. Presently Marie came in bearing a huge earthenware jug in which steamed delicious coffee such as one rarely gets in England. She filled the cups by the simple method of dipping a mug into the boiling liquid and pouring its contents into each cup, while Madge arranged plates of the sugar oblongs, which were the joy of Joey, at convenient intervals down the long table. Her task completed, Marie carried the jug back to the kitchen, and then rang the bell which brought them all, fresh and summery in their white frocks, to the table.

Breakfast on Sunday was always a gay meal, for rules were then relaxed, and everyone chattered in her native language. Mademoiselle, Simone, and Joey were carrying on an animated conversation in French, while Grizel and Margia Stevens argued amiably in English about the probable ending of some book they were both reading, and Miss Maynard and Juliet were describing to the others the walk they had taken on the previous day. Juliet, it is true, had little to say, but Madge noted thankfully that she looked more natural than she had done last night. On the whole, the elder girl felt glad that she had taken her little sister into her confidence. It would make things easier, for she hated having any secrets from Jo. Besides, if anyone should be surprised when the next term found Juliet helping, Madge felt certain that her sister would put a stop to that by her own attitude in the matter.

After breakfast, the girls fled upstairs to make their beds, and the staff foregathered in the little sitting-room, where Madge told Miss Maynard that Juliet Carrick was to be a kind of student-teacher next term, as her people had lost money, and had left her at the Châlet School for the present. Miss Maynard was interested, but showed no curiosity. She was a nice but unimaginative girl, and she was quite accustomed to student-teachers, and thought nothing of the arrangement. When Miss Bettany suggested that perhaps she might like to go and write her letters, she went off cheerfully, putting Juliet and her affairs completely out of her mind.

Madge turned to Mademoiselle with a sigh of relief.

‘Thank goodness! I wasn’t sure whether she would want to ask questions, and it would have been awkward if she had. I’ve told Jo about it, Elise. If I hadn’t, she might have imagined things as being worse than they are. And it’s quite safe with her; she won’t talk.’

‘No, that is true,’ agreed Mademoiselle. ‘Have you seen Juliette yet?’

‘No; I’m going to see her presently and tell her what I’ve decided. Now I must hunt up my book’ She turned to the bookshelves as she spoke, hunting for
The Little Flowers of St. Francis
, which she was reading to the girls. Mademoiselle watched her with a sympathetic smile.

‘You are very tender of Juliette’s feelings,
chérie
. I can but trust that she will repay all your kindness to her! She has not proved an attractive member of the school so far. Have you forgotten the affair of the cinema proprietors?’

Madge shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t forgotten. But I’m sure Juliet will do her best now, poor child. Ah, here it is! After all, Elise, I’m not so sure that I blame her as much as I did. She has led such an impossible sort of life, you know.’

There was a moment’s silence, then Mademoiselle turned to the door with a little nod. ‘Perhaps you are right; we shall see! You are not wanting me this morning? Then I will ask Herr Braun to row me across to Buchau for High Mass.’

‘Yes, do,’ replied her friend absently. ‘Elise, why are those children so excited? Look at them!’

Mademoiselle looked out of the open window, to behold Margia, Amy, and Simone racing across the grass with eager faces. At the same moment music was wafted to them on the warm summer air.

‘A band! A band!’ cried Margia, who had shot ahead of the others. ‘Oh, Madame, a band-all violins and flutes and things!’

‘Well, but why get excited about that? ‘ asked Madge. ‘We’ve had bands here before-there was one last Sunday.’

‘Oh, but not like this! Big, very dark men, with flashing eyes!’

‘They wear hankies round their heads,’ put in Amy, who had come up, panting, together with Simone.

‘Very bright hankies -all blue, and red, and yellow, and green! And huge silver rings in their ears!’

‘The Tzigane!’ exclaimed Madge, her eyes brightening. ‘Why, what fun! I wondered if there would be any of them round here this year. They’re gipsies, children, and their music is often very wonderful. We must go and listen to them this afternoon. I wonder where they will be playing?’

‘Gipsies? The people who make gipsy tunes like in Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies?’ queried Margia, who was intensely musical, and meant to be a pianiste some day.

‘Yes, just exactly those tunes. You’ll love them, Margia. They aren’t a bit like other music, but something wild and untamed like the gipsies themselves. I do hope they’ve a good band! If so, we shall have a treat this afternoon.’

At this point the others came to join them, ready for the reading, and as they made their way slowly through the flower-sprinkled grass to the shade of the pines, Madge told them how,, in Hungary, the gipsy bands went about playing at the different inns in the villages, spending two or even three nights in the same place, but never longer. She told them, too, of the old superstition that the gipsies were cursed with wandering because one of their race had once denied rest and shelter to our Lord. The girls were delighted, and seeing this, she repeated the old legend of the attempt to steal the nails which pierced Christ’s hands. ‘It was a gipsy who did it-or tried to do it,’ she said. ‘Partly, he wanted the iron; but partly, also, he had pity on Christ. For that pity so the gipsies say, thieving is not counted by God as a sin in them, and they think nothing of it. They are a strange people. They are to be found in most parts of the world, and the Romany tongue is practically the same the whole world over. A gipsy from India would talk with a gipsy from our New Forest, and each would be able to understand what the other said. A true gipsy can never be happy within four walls. It is misery to them to be imprisoned in any way. They are very revengeful, too, and never forget a wrong. But then, it is said, they never forget a kindness either.’

By this time they had reached their favourite spot, so they settled down, and, putting the Tzigane out of her mind for the time being, Madge read aloud to them about the gentle ‘Brother to all things.’

When the reading was over she got up, closed the book, and strolled away, leaving the girls to chatter eagerly about the visitors. Every now and then bursts of music, sometimes gay and swinging, sometimes sad and wistful, but always with a peculiar haunting wildness in it, came across the meadow to them as they sat talking together, or wandered about among the dark pine trees at the edge of the forest. Joey, who had read
The Romany Rye
and
Lavengro
, told them all she knew, and the fascinating subject had still not been exhausted when the ‘tinkle-tinkle’ of Marie’s bell summoned them back to dinner. When the meal was over, they were wildly anxious to go to the Kron Prinz Karl at once, but Madge insisted on an hour’s rest first.

‘And no talking,’ she added. ‘Run along, all of you, at once.’

When they had gone, she turned to the other two mistresses with a smile.

‘Don’t they think me unkind!’ she said gaily.

‘It’s extraordinary, though,’ replied Miss Maynard. ‘Gipsies seem to have a fascination for nearly everyone. As you know, we live near the New Forest, and when I was a little child we were always meeting them or coming on their encampments. I used to know a little of their language, for we always made friends with them, my brothers and I. It is so pretty to hear as some of them say it; it runs along like a purling brook.’