01 The School at the Chalet (21 page)

Mademoiselle nodded her head slowly. ‘It has gone well,
ma chérie
,’ she said gravely.

‘The girls are so keen on being really English,’ went on the young headmistress. ‘Even the Juniors are infected with the desire. The other day I heard Suzanne Mercier and Berta Hamel discussing some prank or other, and Suzanne asked very seriously, “Are you sure it’s English?” Berta wasn’t certain, so they went off to discuss it with Joey.’

‘Has it occurred yet?’ asked Mademoiselle with a smile.

‘I haven’t heard anything, so I don’t suppose it has.’

‘I wonder what it is?’ ruminated the elder woman. ‘They think of things so extraordinary, these little ones.

I am sure Simone would never have thought of cutting off her hair a year ago.’

‘It’s far better for her,’ said Madge decidedly. ‘She really had too much. She’s much better in every way, I think; and she’s losing that tragic look she used to have, and she does things-well-off her own bat!’

‘My dear!’ Mademoiselle was genuinely horrified at the slang, but Madge only laughed.

‘Awful, isn’t it?’ she said gaily. ‘Mercifully none of the girls heard me. Do remember, Elise, that I’ve not been a Head for three months yet! You must allow me a little slang just very occasionally.’

Mademoiselle joined in her laughter, which was cut short by a piercing shriek.

‘Mercy!’ gasped Madge. ‘What on earth has happened?’

She fled to the door, tore it open, and ran down the stairs, to meet a scared and horrified Bette and Bernhilda, who both exclaimed, ‘Oh, Madame! Come quickly! Come at once!’

‘What is it? An accident?’ she gasped with whitening face.

‘No-no! It is much worse! It is witchcraft!’ wailed Bette.

‘Witchcraft! Nonsense! There is no such thing as witchcraft!’ she said sharply, nevertheless following them along the narrow passage to the little boarded-off compartment where the ‘splasheries’ were. Arrived there, she gasped at what she saw. Then, realising what had happened, she burst into laughter. Each of the two basins was full to the brim of sparkling, sizzling bubbles! Even as they looked, the foaming began to subside, and in another minute or two the bowls held only ordinary water-or what looked like ordinary water.

‘Oh, Madame, what is it?’ sobbed Bette in German. ‘I did nothing! I only poured in the water, and Bernhilda also, and it foamed up at once! Oh, is it witchcraft?’

A sudden gurgle outside the window, followed by a ‘Hush!’ drew the Head’s attention for a second, but she took no further notice.

‘Oh, Bette! You silly child!’ she said rather impatiently. ‘Of course it isn’t! Haven’t I told you there is no such thing as witchcraft? All that has happened is that those young monkeys have powdered the bowls with sherbet or salts or some fizzy stuff! Of course it bubbled up when you poured the water in! But that’s all it is!’

Had she been able to see through the bushes which grew against the side of the house, she would have seen four faces grow rather blank at her omniscience.

‘I say!’ murmured Joey. ‘I forgot they would probably fetch my sister, and it’s a trick my brother told us of. He did it at his school.’

‘Will she be angry?’ asked Berta, a trifle apprehensively.

Joey considered, her head on one side. ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ she said finally. ‘There’s nothing wrong in it-it’s only a lark, and it doesn’t hurt anyone. That idiot, Bette! Fancy believing in witchcraft at her age!’

‘But lots of them do,’ argued Simone, with somewhat incautious loudness. ‘You remember, Joey, you told us of the little boy who made the “horns” at you!’

‘Shut up, idiot!’ hissed Joey. ‘D’you want them to come and catch us? Come along! We’d better clear out now!’ And they promptly vacated their position and decamped to the ferry-landing.

Meanwhile, Madge was busy soothing the injured feelings of the Seniors. Bette was furiously angry at having been so taken in, and even Bernhilda the gentle was inclined to be indignant.

‘It is an impertinence,’ she said in her soft, careful English. ‘Is it not, Madame?’

Madge nodded. ‘Oh, yes! But it is the kind of thing that often happens with Juniors, and I advise you to take no notice this time. If they do it again, of course, the Prefects should take it up. It’s not bad mischief.

You people must learn to distinguish between bad mischief and nonsense like this.’

With this she left them, to go and relate the occurrence to their compeers, while she herself chuckled over it with Mademoiselle and Miss Maynard, who had just come in.

‘It’s healthy mischief anyhow,’ she said, ‘so I sha’n't interfere. There’s
Mittagessen
.’

At
Mittagessen
the four Juniors kept giggling together, and many were the meaning glances shot at Bette, who held her head very high, and was remarkably chilly in her behaviour to them. Bernhilda had cooled down, and was able to laugh at the affair, but Bette was half Italian, and her indignation still ran hot. Gisela and the others had enjoyed the joke, even while they admitted that it was ‘an impertinence,’ and, as the Head Girl said, it was better than the defiance of Grizel and Juliet of the previous week.

For the rest of the day, however, she kept a sharp look-out on them; but their conduct was most exemplary, and the daygirls went off, satisfied that it was only a sudden spurt and there would be no more of it.

There were three bedtimes during the week at the Châlet. Amy and Margia Stevens, and the two little Merciers, who were boarders till the end of term, as their parents had been obliged to go to Paris owing to the sudden illness of Madame Mercier’s mother, went at seven, Joey and Simone at eight, and Juliet and Grizel at nine. On Saturdays and Sundays they all went at the same time-half-past eight on Saturdays and eight on Sundays. When seven o’clock came that evening, the four Juniors trotted off quite happily. Miss Maynard went up to brush hair at half-past seven, and see that they were all safely in bed. She found them, as she afterwards said, ‘rather gigglesome,’ but as the story of the powdered basins-they had used sherbet, as Madge had surmised-had gone round the school by that time, she set it down to that. At eight o’clock punctually Joey and Simone said good-night and retired in their turn. It was Mademoiselle’s duty to go up half an hour later to see that .they were all right. Juliet and Grizel were considered old enough to be responsible for themselves.

When half-past eight came, Mademoiselle was in the middle of writing a letter, so Miss Maynard good-naturedly offered to run up for her. The Frenchwoman accepted the offer, and the mathematics mistress ascended the stairs lightly. She expected to find the two in bed, ready to bid her ‘good-night,’ so she was considerably startled to find Joey in her dressing-gown, grimly unpicking the top of her pyjama legs, while Simone was wrestling with a sleeve of her nightdress.

‘Girls!’ exclaimed the mistress. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

‘All our night garments are sewn up,’ said Simone mournfully.

‘Some joke!’ remarked Joey. ‘Look, Miss Maynard! Stitched top and bottom of legs and sleeves, and the top of my trousers too!’

Miss Maynard’s eyes twinkled, and she bit her lips. ‘H’m! So the biters were bitten,’ she said softly. ‘Well, I will give you five minutes longer. Be quick!’

She knew better than to look through the other curtains to see if the Juniors were asleep. Certain little rustles and snorts made it quite evident that they were not. She took no notice of the suspicious sounds, but simply waited by the window until the other two were safely in bed, and then withdrew, remarking that she hoped they would all- with an emphasis on the ‘all’-get off to sleep quickly.

‘Pigs!’ remarked Joey, as soon as she was well out of the way. ‘Little horrors!’

Four separate giggles answered her, but no one spoke. She gave a snort and turned over, burying herself beneath the sheets. Simone had done the same.

‘An’ the worst of it is that it completely put the lid on our stunt!’ she groaned next morning when she and Simone had finished telling the other four what they thought of them. ‘We’d intended ragging the Senior cubicles, but I thought we’d better get ready for bed first, and then we found what you’d done! An’ Maynie came up before we were half ready.’

‘Well, why didn’t you tell us?’ demanded Margia. ‘Then we’d have helped, and left you till to-night!’

‘Well! Of all the cool cheek!’ gasped Joey. ‘Margia, you’re the limit!’

‘It’s your own fault!’ retorted Margia. ‘You said we hadn’t had any rags yet, and it would be a pity to finish the term without.’

‘Yes; but I never meant you to rag us! An’ that reminds me. Is the piano done?’

‘Uh-huh! Amy did it when she had finished her practice.’

‘Good enoughsky! No one saw you, did they, Amy?’

Little Amy shook her head till all her curls danced. ‘No one! It will be fun!’

‘Well, it’s Grizel’s practice first! Won’t she be mad?’

‘Hopping mad,’ agreed Margia. ‘ There’s the bell! Come on!’

The conspirators scurried in to lessons, and only saved themselves from complete disgrace by the most valiant efforts. Amy, her mind wandering to the latest joke, when asked to explain what a delta was, said dreamily, ‘It’s another name for the keyboard of the piano- the white keys!’

Miss Bettany dropped the blackboard chalk in her surprise. ‘Amy!’

‘I beg your pardon, Madame,’ she faltered. ‘I-I–’ She stopped, unable to go on.

‘I see,’ said Madge dryly. ‘Will you kindly pay attention to the lesson? What is a delta?’

Amy managed to stumble through a fairly accurate if somewhat lengthy explanation. ‘It’s all the stuff brought down by the river and left in a heap at the bottom-I mean the end-in a funny shape, sort of three-cornered, you know.’

Joey and Simone, doing algebra, came off little better. Joey’s simple equations were a hopeless muddle, while Simone’s had neither beginning nor ending.

Frieda, Anita, and Sophie stared at them in amazement, while Miss Maynard scolded them sharply for carelessness and inattention.

Much they cared, however! They were only longing for two o’clock and the beginning of practice-time.

They had not dared to meddle with the music-room piano, for this was one of the days on which Herr Anserl came up from Spärtz to give music lessons. He was a magnificent teacher, and a musician to his finger-tips, but he was terribly short-tempered, and any pranks would have sent him storming off to Miss Bettany. His pupils all regarded his lessons with a mixture of terror and amusement. He told Grizel that she had the fingers of a machine, and the soul of one too, which offended her dreadfully, but she dared not show it. Joey he raved at for her lack of a sense of time, while Juliet’s stumbling performances brought German phrases and epithets rumbling from his very boots. On the other hand, he had once told Margia Stevens that if she worked hard and thoroughly for the next six years, she might make a performer who would not disgrace him. Margia was the only one of the younger girls to go to him, the others being taken by Mademoiselle.

Simone learnt the violin, and so did Gisela Marani and Gertrud Steinbrücke, so they three went down to Spärtz on one afternoon in the week for their lesson.

After
Mittagessen
, they were allowed to do as they liked until two o’clock, when preparation and practice were the order of the afternoon. The schoolroom piano stood in the Senior classroom, and while the Juniors did prep, under Miss Maynard, the Seniors had an English literature lesson with Miss Bettany, and Grizel practised under Mademoiselle’s eye, so that she should work as accurately as possible. The partition between the preparation-room and the Senior room was of light matchboarding only; the windows were wide open, and it was possible to hear everything that went on in the next room. The Juniors listened eagerly. They heard Grizel settle herself down and touch the notes tentatively before she began. Then Joey stood up.

‘Please, Miss Maynard, may I take my French to Mademoiselle?’ she said. ‘I don’t quite understand her corrections.’

‘Yes, Joey, if you must,’ said Miss Maynard, glancing up from her work.

Joey escaped, and hastened into the other room. It was no part of their plan to let Mademoiselle find out what they had done. She would probably be angry, and report them to the Head, and they did not want that.

‘Eh bien, Joey, what is it?’ asked Mademoiselle, as she made her appearance.

‘It’s this exercise, Mademoiselle,’ replied Joey meekly. ‘I don’t quite see where I’ve gone wrong. Should I have used the subjunctive mood?’

Unsuspectingly, Mademoiselle took the book from her and looked it over.

‘Yes, my child, it is here,’ she said. ‘If you use “
est-ce que
,” you must follow it with the
subjonctif
, which you have not done. Grizel! What, then, are you doing?’

She might well ask! Grizel was supposed to be practising modulatory exercises, but even they were no excuse for the hideous noise she was producing.

‘I-it’s the keys, Mademoiselle,’ said Grizel. ‘They are so slippery.’

‘Slippery? Bah! It is your own abominable carelessness! Begin again, and with more care, I pray you!’

Hunching her shoulders and compressing her lips, Grizel started again, with much the same results. For once, it was a cool day, and chilly fingers combined with slippery keys proved too much for her. Suddenly it dawned on her to look at her finger-tips. They were powdered with white! In a flash she realised what had happened : the Juniors had covered the keys with French chalk! Nearly choking with anger, Grizel took out her handkerchief and dusted the keyboard as unobtrusively as she could. Furious though she was, she could not give them away to Mademoiselle, who was busy instructing an extraordinarily stupid Jo.

As for Jo herself, it was all she could do to keep a straight face. She was unable to see Grizel’s expression, but a back can be very expressive at times, and Grizel’s looked as if she had swallowed a poker whole.

When, presently, she had apparently listened to all Mademoiselle’s explanations, and was dismissed, the Middle girl literally fled out of the room, and, collapsing at the foot of the stairs, rocked backwards and forwards with laughter. The sound of footsteps overhead made her pull herself together with a mighty effort, and getting up, she went back to the prep.-room, where, for all the amount of work she did, she might just as well not have been.