01 The School at the Chalet (27 page)

The girls came with grave faces, and kind messages and offers of help from their parents. The whole lakeside knew of poor Grizel’s escapade, and a good many people had since learned of the dreadful possible result for Joey, so there were many inquiries.

Amy Stevens’ first care was to grab Juliet and demand in an awestruck whisper, ‘How is Joey? Has she come awake yet?’

‘Not yet,’ said Juliet, who looked white and heavy-eyed. ‘Don’t ask Madame any questions, Amy, will you? She’s so fearfully worried.’

‘Course I sha’n't!’ returned Amy indignantly. ‘I say, isn’t the bell late?’

‘There won’t be any bell at all to-day,’ explained Juliet. ‘Just go straight in to prayers.’

‘Juliet, will you come here one minute?’ said Gisela. ‘We want to know about Joey and Grizel too. How are they both?’

Grizel is getting on fairly well,’ replied Juliet. ‘Joey hasn’t roused up yet. They can’t say till she does what will happen. The doctor expects it will be to-day, and he is staying. He was here all last night too.’

‘I love the Herr Doktor,’ said Gisela. ‘He is a great friend of Papa’s, and a very clever doctor. That is why Papa brought him.’

Prayers were very solemn that morning, and when they were over, there was a little stir among the girls.

Madge looked at them.

‘Joey is much the same,’ she said. ‘There is no change-yet.’

She left the actual schoolwork to Mademoiselle and Miss Maynard, flitting in and out at intervals.

The weary day wore on, and still there was no news from the room at the top of the house. The girls behaved like angels, as Miss Maynard said afterwards. There could be no music lessons, of course, and Mademoiselle had rung up Herr Anserl to tell him. The news brought him post-haste to the Châlet. Joey’s musical gifts were negligible, but she had won his heart by her deep interest in his book on
The Lives of
Famous Austrian Musicians
, which she had declared to be ‘jolly decent!’

He went away only after he had extracted a promise from Mademoiselle that she would ring him up the instant there was any news, and then went home, where he proceeded to make his housekeeper’s life a burden by wandering about the rooms and turning up in all sorts of places where he was not wanted.

The one bright spot during the day was the fact that Grizel, reassured by their repeated statements that Joey was asleep, and also by Madge’s obvious forgiveness, was improving rapidly, temperature going down, breathing easier.

At about three o’clock, as Madge was wearily trying to help Amy Stevens disentangle a glorious muddle of rivers and lakes in her map of Asia, word came down that the doctor would like to see her for a moment.

Literally flinging the map at the astonished Amy, she fled up the stairs to her bedroom. The doctor was standing by the bedside, one hand on Joey’s wrist. He looked up as her sister entered.

‘Ah, mein Fräulein, I have sent for you, for I think she is beginning to arouse. Please stand just there, where she can see you.’

Madge took up the position he pointed out, and stood, her eyes fixed on Joey’s face. There was no doubt that she was coming out of the stupor. Her lashes flickered more than once, her lips were parted. The only question was, Would she wake up the old Joey, or would it be to the babbling delirium of fever?

There was a silence in the room that could be felt. The only sound to be heard was the breathing of the four people-Frau Mensch was by the window-and the ticking of the doctor’s watch. Then, slowly, slowly, the long black lashes lifted, and Joey looked full at her sister.

‘Hullo!’ she murmured. ‘I’m awfully tired! Hai-yah!’ She finished with a little yawn, turned slightly, snuggling down into the pillow, and fell asleep.

‘Gott sei dankt!’ said the doctor quietly. ‘She will do now; there is no further danger. Hush,
mein Kind
,’

for Madge had begun to cry. ‘It is well now!’

‘I know,’ sobbed Madge. ‘But oh, Herr Doktor, the relief!’

He signed to Frau Mensch, who led her down to the study, and let her cry away the last of the awful weight that had been hanging over her. When, finally, the tears were all dried, she found a dainty meal of soup, roll, and grapes awaiting her, and when she had finished, Frau Mensch suggested bed.

‘I must tell the girls first,’ said Madge. ‘I will make myself tidy, and go and tell them.’

Ten minutes later Miss Bettany, who looked like herself once more, entered the room where they were all anxiously awaiting her news. She looked at them, but no words would come to her lips. It was Bernhilda the quiet who helped her out.

‘Ah, Madame,’ she said, ‘there is no need to say anything. Joey will get well.’

Madge found her voice. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is sleeping now, and all is safe once more.’

And there were rejoicings in the Châlet School that afternoon.

Chapter 25.

Frau Berlin Again.

Oh, I say! Isn’t this perfectly golloptious!’

‘Joey! What an appalling expression! Where on earth did you get it?’

‘What? “Golloptious”? I heard those schoolboys we ran into at Tiern See use it.’

‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t. It’s all very well for schoolboys, but it isn’t pretty for schoolgirls, so cut it out!’

Joey cocked her black head on one side consideringly. ‘Getting a bit old-maidish, aren’t you, old thing?’

she said. ‘Don’t do it, Madgie Machree!’

‘Joey, you little brute! I won’t be called such awful names! And you might show a little more respect for your headmistress. You get worse and worse every day!’

‘Poor old darling! Never mind! Wait till we get back to school again, and then you can be as crushing as you like. This is holiday-time, and there’s no one to hear us for once. I think it was topping of the Maranis to take Grizel and Juliet away for the week and let us be on our own for a bit. And this really is a gorgeous place! I never imagined anything like it!’

Madge nodded as she glanced up at the great peaks of the Rosengarten Gebirge which towered above them. Their own limestone crags in the North Tyrol were magnificent, but they were not to be compared with these. As far as they could see, lofty pinnacles of rose-hued rock lifted magnificent heads to the summer skies. To the eyes of the two standing on the balcony looking at them, it seemed as if some mighty sculptor had been at work, and had hewn out of the living rock weird and awful shapes. Here, an ogre’s castle frowned down at them; there, some terrible beast of prehistoric ages crouched, ready to spring; there, again, the huge turrets of a king’s palace, built in the morning of the world, still kept watch and ward over the flower-strewn valley beneath it. Every here and there, cataracts flung themselves downwards in silver ribbons which leaped from rock to rock, all hurrying to join the river which dashed past, making thunderous music as it went, for the two previous days had been very wet, and all the springs and mountain streams were flooded.

Neither Madge nor Jo had been in the South Tyrol before, though both knew the North Tyrol very well, and when Frau Marani had come with the suggestion that Grizel and Juliet should go to Vienna with them for a week while the two sisters had a little holiday to themselves, it had been Joey’s idea that they should come here.

‘We can’t go too far,’ she argued. ‘For one thing, we can’t afford it. We’ve never seen Meran, or Botzen, or Primeiro, or any of those other places, and the Mensches say the Dolomites are just gorgeous. It’s warm there, so it’ll suit us both, and it’s been rather chilly here lately. So let’s go there; shall us?’

Madge had laughed and agreed. There was nothing to keep them at Tiern See. Miss Maynard was spending the holiday with her family in the high Alps, and Mademoiselle had gone home to her beloved Paris, taking Simone and the two little Stevens with her. The Maranis’ kind invitation had settled Juliet and Grizel, and so, seven days previously, the two Bettanys had left Innsbrück ,
en route
for Botzen, by way of the magnificent Kuntersweg Gorge. Botzen they had loved, and Meran was a dream of delight. They had left the little Roman town only that morning to establish themselves in the tiny village of Paneirimo, in the Rosengarten Valley; and here, on the morrow, the other two girls would join them. Joey now turned and slipped an arm through her sister’s. ‘It’s been jolly on our own! Madge, when shall we be on our own again?’

Madge smiled down into her serious face. ‘Christmas,’ she replied. ‘Miss Maynard is going to take the others to Munich for Christmas, and you and I will be by ourselves.’

‘Topping! I love school all right, but it’s rather a bore sometimes to have to remember you’re Head, and I’ve got to be proper to you. Even to-morrow I shall have to be careful!’

‘Which reminds me,’ interrupted Madge, ‘I told them at the Châlet to forward letters here. You might run and see if there are any, Jo. I forgot to ask.’

‘Righto!’ And Joey dashed off, to return in a very few minutes waving a whole budget. ‘Here you are!

Dozens of them! At least there are ten-eight for you and two for me. This is from Simone, and this looks like Marie von Eschenau. Madge! You aren’t paying any attention! What on earth’s the matter? Who’s your letter from? Is there anything wrong? What is it?’

Madge pulled herself together with an effort and turned to her little sister. ‘It’s rather dreadful news in one way, Joey. There has been a terrible motor accident in Rome, and Captain and Mrs Carrick were in it.’

‘I say! That’s rather rotten!’ Joey looked serious. ‘Are they awfully hurt?’

‘Mrs Carrick was killed at once,’ said Madge, ‘and Captain Carrick died two days ago. He has left me Juliet to bring up, as they have no relations.’

‘I say! Poor old Ju! What beastly luck for her! And yet, I don’t know!’

‘Read your own letters, Joey, and don’t say anything about it yet. I’m going to our bedroom, so I’ll be there when you want me!’ And Madge gathered up her letters and vanished.

Joey sat looking after her. ‘Coo!’ But it’s a horrid thing to have happened! I’m frantically sorry for Juliet!’

She was silent for a minute, then she turned to her own letters. ‘Let’s see what Simone’s got to say!’ and she was soon buried fathoms deep in Simone’s epistle.

Meanwhile, Madge Bettany sat in their bedroom re-reading the letter written by a doctor of the hospital where Captain Carrick had died. After describing generally his injuries, the writer had continued: ‘Captain Carrick told me that his daughter was with you, and that you would be her guardian. He made a will before he died, leaving all he possessed, including some very valuable jewellery belonging to his wife and a sum of one hundred thousand lire, in trust to you for the girl. He asked me to say he hoped you had forgiven the trick he played on you, and would undertake the trust. The money, I gathered, he had won at the tables at Monte Carlo. He died three hours after he had made the will.’

The letter concluded with a request to know how the jewels and money were to be sent, and a suggestion that Madge should come to Rome to fetch them, when ‘my wife will be delighted to welcome you to our home as our guest.’

When she had finished re-reading this startling communication, Madge sat thinking hard. In one way, this event settled the Juliet difficulty, but it by no means completely solved it. She had not much knowledge of what the lira was doing at the moment, but she decided that the hundred thousand would probably resolve itself into about a thousand pounds in English currency. ‘And that,’ she thought, ‘won’t be very much for her. Of course there’s the jewellery.’ Pondering over the problem seemed to bring her no nearer its solution, so she shelved the matter for the moment and turned her attention to her other letters. One was from Mrs Dene, who had written to make final arrangements for Rosalie, who was coming to the Châlet School next term. Another came from Mrs Stevens, thanking her for her care of Margia and Amy, and enclosing a very welcome cheque for the next term’s fees. The third she took up was on very expensive paper, in a most illiterate hand, and bore the postmark of Bradford, which puzzled her extremely.

‘Bradford!’ she said aloud. ‘Who on earth do I know in Bradford?’

‘Open the letter, old thing, then you’ll find out!’ observed Joey’s voice from the doorway.

Madge literally jumped. Joey happened to be wearing plimsolls, and her steps had been quite noiseless.

‘Sorry!’ she observed, as she dropped down beside her sister. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I’d finished my letters, so I thought I’d come to see what you were doing. I say! If Captain Carrick has left Juliet to you, how does he imagine you’re going to manage for money?’

‘There’s money for her,’ returned Madge. ‘You needn’t worry, Joey. But I’m rather afraid we shall have to go back to Tiern See to-morrow. They want me to go to Rome to see about Juliet’s affairs.’

‘Rome? Oh, Madge, take me! Do! I’ve never seen Rome yet!’

‘Don’t be silly, Joey! Where do you think the money is coming from for the fares?’

‘Oh, goodness! I never thought of that! Jo looked conscience-stricken for a moment. Then she turned the subject. ‘Let’s see who your Bradford pal is.’

Madge opened the letter and glanced at the beginning. ‘Honoured and respected Madam.’ ‘Good heavens!

Who on earth can it be from?’ She turned to the end, but found no enlightenment there. The signature, finished off with a flourish, was ‘James H. Kettlewell.”

‘James H. Kettlewell! Never heard of him!’ began Joey.

‘No; and yet it’s vaguely familiar.’ Madge thought hard for a minute. ‘Joey! I’ve got it! Do you remember the man in the Paris train who gave us gooseberries? His name was Kettlewell, and he told us he lived at Bradford!’

‘So he did! Whatever can he be writing about? Buck up and see!’

‘He said he’d try to get me some pupils. It’s probably that,’ said her sister.

‘Can I look over?’

‘Yes, if you want to. Or I’ll read it aloud; shall I? You read far more quickly than I do.’

‘Righto! Fire ahead! I’m all ears!’

‘Ahem! “Honoured and respected Madam,” ‘ began Madge, ‘ “I take my pen in hand to inscribe this present epistle to you.” ‘

‘Coo! What elegant English!’ commented Joey.