03 The Princess of the Chalet School (16 page)

‘Well!’ he snarled, as his spy came in sight. ‘You’ve been long enough! What had the brat to say for herself?’

‘They have had a telegram, Highness,’ replied Ternikai. ‘It seems that his Royal Highness the Crown Prince is better, and is likely to recover soon.’

There was a silence. Prince Cosimo was digesting this unwelcome piece of news. Nothing would have pleased him better than to hear that his cousin was dying. He was not anxious to kidnap Elisaveta. He detested all children; and apart from that, he knew that the people of Belsornia would be up in arms if anything happened to her. If Prince Carol were to die, there would be no need to worry about the child. He was the next heir to the throne, and, in self-defence, the King would be obliged to have in at the court, and treat him as the future monarch of the realm.

At length the Prince lifted his eyes from the ground to his servant’s face. ‘It there a good change of getting her?’ he asked.

‘Do you mean to-day, Highness?’

‘No blockhead! I mean at any time.’

Ternikai considered. ‘I do not know definitely, Highness. I should think it might be quite possible. At least I have established it in her Highness’s mind that I am her secret bodyguard. To get her away ought to be easy.’

‘That is as well. Once let her be safely in my hands, and I can make what terms I choose with my dear cousin and his father. You must manage it, Ternikai.’

Maurús Ternikai listened to this in silence. If he had followed his own wishes, he would have told the Prince to do his own dirty work. As it was, he did not dare. There was a little matter of secret papers stolen from the Record’s Office and sold to his country’s enemies which Prince Cosimo knew. The blame of the loss of those papers had fallen on the shoulders of a man long since dead, but it would not be hard for the Prince to get his henchman convicted of the deed; and then, even if he escaped the penalty for his treachery to Belsornia, the dead man’s relatives would pursue him with a blood-feud, and his life would not be safe anywhere.

He bowed in silent agreement with his master’s orders, and when the Prince got up to go he followed him in the same silence. They went back along the path to their hotel, passing the Chalet party on their way.

Prince Cosimo looked at the merry group with a sneer. He wondered what would happen when the Princess was discovered to be missing.

In their private sitting-room at the hotel he ordered wine, and then sat down to discuss plans with Ternikai.

It was long before they could hit on anything that would enable them to get away with the child and be in safe hiding with her before her loss was discovered.

For a long time they say, Ternikai suggesting plans, which the Prince turned over in his mind and rejected, always in the most unpleasant manner. Finally, he rose. ‘You are a fool, Ternikai! I wish I had chosen any one else to aid me in this matter! Had I known what a dolt, what a thickhead you were, I should have chosen better. Think, man! And think to the point! For your own sake you had best serve me well –
as you know
!’

Ternikai swallowed the insults with as good a grace as might be, and set his brains to work once more.

This time he succeeded in evolving a scheme which his royal master was graciously pleased to approve.

They sat for long working out all the details, but at last it seemed that everything was perfectly planned.

‘It will do,’ said the Prince. ‘It cannot go wrong, and I shall be able to make my own terms. You shall not lose, my dear fellow, by helping me. That I promise you. When I have settled things to my satisfaction I will reward you. All must go well with this, and we shall succeed admirably.’

Probably he would have been right, only there was one factor which he had not taken into account. That was Joey Bettany. As he barely knew of her existence, he was scarcely to blame for that. Still, if he had realized what she was he might have reconsidered his plans again.

The day after the picnic was one of flatness. Neither Elisaveta nor Joey had thought of mentioning anything to Miss Bettany about Signor Maurús Ternikai. Joey, knowing of her sister’s intentions, had taken it for granted that he had every right to be where he was; and Elisaveta, well-schooled in the care that is taken of royalty, even of royalty which had no chance of ascending a throne, also accepted his presence as something quite normal. The Robin was told that it was a private matter between the Princess, her father, and ‘Tante Marguerite,’ and that she must say nothing about it to anybody. She had the vaguest ideas on the subject of royalty, and bracketed Elisaveta in her own mind with the princesses of the fairy tales she loved.

So no one knew anything about the meeting, which would have relieved the mind of Prince Cosimo, who was rather afraid that the children would talk, and so force him to alter his plans somewhat. As nothing might have been more likely, he was in a state of irritable ill-temper, which made Signor Ternikai wish him out of the way.

As for the school, it tried to settle down once more, and pay some attention to its lessons. It was not conspicuously successful, and the staff had some reason to be annoyed when the day was over.

‘The work had been disgraceful!’ said Miss Maynard. ‘Those wretched children don’t deserve to have any treat! Just look at this!’

She held up Joey Bettany’s algebra book, with every sum she had done that morning scored through with crosses. Simultaneous equations were Joey’s bugbear, and her attempts at working out problems on them were remarkable for not even being sense.

‘Ghastly!’ agreed Miss Wilson. ‘But, after all, they’re not a scrap worse than Margia’s map of North America. She had put the Rockies, the Andes, the Blue Mountains, the Alleghanies,
and
Cotopaxi – standing by itself in the middle of Virginia! – all into it! Well, I
ask
you!’

Mademoiselle, who chanced to be in the staffroom, added to the tale of woe. ‘Evadne was doing translation this morning,’ she said plaintively in her own language. ‘Never shall I make her understand my beautiful tongue; but at least I might expect that she may translate, though with lack of freedom. What has she done?

Of the sentence,
“Il va se laver, en se tournant à la table, où on a placé la cuvette
,” she makes, “He goes to wash himself, turning into a table where the works have been put!” It is too much! I will not permit it, I. She must forfeit her playtime!’

The rest of the staff giggled. Evadne’s French was something of a legend among them. She hated the language, and rarely made any real effort to learn it. Joey’s craze for learning as many languages as she could filled her with amazement. However, Mademoiselle was grievously upset at this last effort, and the young lady had found herself condemned to correct every mistake in the translation she was supposed to have prepared a week ago, and write it out three times.

In the school-room she gave vent to her disgust at this. ‘It’s rotten luck!’ she said. ‘What do I want with French? Reckon I can get round the world without
her
all-fired flummery! The Tower of Babel was a real mean thing to do!’

‘If anyone hears you talking slang, you’ll get into trouble,’ Joey stated, driving her pen viciously into the inkwell on Elisaveta’s desk. ‘French isn’t one-half so piggish as algebra, anyway!’

‘They’re all vile,’ groaned Margia.

‘Oh, be quiet!’ snapped her friend, who had intended to spend her free time in writing a story, and resented Miss Maynard’s remarks on her mathematics. ‘Who could think of algebra with you nagging away all the time!’

The sheer injustice of this remark held Margia dumb for the moment, and Joey hunched her shoulders well over her book and scrawled some hieroglyphics supposed to represent
x
and
y
.

At this inauspicious moment Elisaveta appeared and demanded the use of her own desk to write a letter.

‘Get another!’ growled Jo, whose temper was not improved by the discovery that she had set the sum down all wrong and would have to begin it all over again.

‘Cross-patch!’ commented Margia amiably.

‘Cross-patch yourself!’ snarled Jo.

Simone added the finishing touches. ‘But you have ze little black dog on your shoulders, is it not, my Jo?’

she inquired.

That was
too
much. Glaring at her, Joey voiced the idea that it was better to be a cross-patch than a cry-baby; and anyway, it was no business of
hers
!

Simone, who hated to be at odds with her beloved Jo, turned pink, and her lip quivered ominously. ‘I – I am not a crrry-b-baby!’ she declared in a wobbly voice.

‘Yes, you are!’ Jo was in one of her worse moods and was ready to quarrel with her own shadow if nothing better appeared. ‘You are always on the howl! You ought to be in a kindergarten!’

‘Well, you are no better!’ said Frieda Mensch, so suddenly that everybody jumped. It was seldom that Frieda interfered with anyone. She was the very embodiment of her name, and had earned for herself the reputation of being the peace-maker in the middle school.

‘’Tisn’t
your
business, either!’ said Jo.

‘Yes, it is! You are being most unkind to Simone!’ declared Frieda. ‘
You
make her cry, Joey, and then you tease her! You are very horrid, and not a bit like a Guide!’

Jo rose with some dignity, collected her possessions, and marched off. This was more than she could stand.

The others looked rather scared. Joey rarely lost her temper. When she did the whole school knew about it.

‘That’s
your
fault!’ said Margia. ‘Oh, Simone, dry up! You’re a perpetual waterspout! It’s your own fault this time if Joey was mad with you. You had no right to say what you did to her!’

Simone wailed loudly at this, so they marched her out of the room and into the garden, where she could weep without bringing some one in authority down on them. As it was, Juliet came on the scene just as Margia and Marie von Eschenau had deposited her on a seat with the injunction to ‘mop up.’

Juliet was in no very sweet temper herself, and Simone always cried very easily. The head-girl surveyed her with a bleak expression, and proceeded to make short work of her. ‘Crying
again
, Simone?’ she said.

‘You’ll turn into a fountain some day if you’re not careful. Really, you might be a baby in the kindergarten.

In fact, most of them seem to have more sense of what is expected from a school-girl than you have. Dry your eyes and stop being so silly this instant.’

‘I am u-unh-h-happy!’ sobbed Simone.

‘Well, I can’t help that. There’s no need to be a baby about it, even if you are unhappy,’ Juliet told her bracingly.

Simone choked down her sobs and shook herself free from the other two, convinced that no girl had ever been so cruelly treated as she was. ‘I w-will g-go away,’ she choked; and went off in the direction of the pine-woods.

When she had gone Juliet settled the other two. ‘I won’t have bullying,’ she said; ‘You are to leave that child alone – do you hear? And I am surprised at you both!’ Then she turned on her heel and left them.

All things considered, it was as well when bedtime came and the middles were packed off. There was a thunderous silence in their dormitories which was not usual, and when Joey banged down the window to its fullest extent before she got into bed Elisaveta thudded into her nest as if she meant to go through the mattress. Bianca gave vent to a series of indescribable sniffs – she had quarreled with Jo over a tennis-court that evening – before
she
settled down. Then there was a deep stillness.

It had been oppressively hot all day, which probably helped to account for the attack of bad temper which had assailed them all, and it was hotter now. Joey, always sensitive to atmospheric changes, moved restlessly. She turned on her side and looked out of the window. There had been very little sunlight throughout the day, and now the sky was overcast with clouds of a heavy coppery hue. It was very still, even the trees were silent. There was no mistaking it; an outsize in thunderstorms was coming.

Elisaveta felt it also, and forgot that she was annoyed with anyone. ‘Jo,’ she whispered. ‘Jo! Is it thunder?’

‘Yes,’ said Joey curtly. She was still feeling cross, and was by no means inclined to make friends yet.

Elisaveta slipped out of bed and pulled aside the curtain that divided her cubicle from Jo’s. ‘Can I come in here?’ she asked in scared tones. ‘I – I am afraid of thunder.’

‘Come if you like,’ said Joey ungraciously. ‘You’ll get into a row if you’re caught – that’s all.’

Elisaveta came and sat down on her bed. ‘I don’t mind a row,’ she replied. ‘I’d rather have one than stay there alone.

A voice from the other side of the dormitory spoke plaintively. ‘May I also come, Joey? I, too, dislike thunder.’

‘All right.’ Joey was gradually recovering herself, but she was not quite right yet.

Bianca came and squatted at the foot of the much-tried bed. ‘Isn’t it horrible?’ she shuddered. ‘It is going to be a bad storm.’

A low growl sounded at that moment, and the three shivered involuntarily. They were all highly-strung children, and there was something almost ominous in that distant roll.

‘It’s a long way away,’ said Joey in hushed tones.

The sound of footsteps outside told them that Mademoiselle, Miss Durrant, and Miss Wilson were going over to their own quarters at Le Petit Chalet. There came another growl, nearer this time. The storm was traveling fast. Elisaveta stretched out her hand and grasped Joey’s, and Jo pulled her closer.

‘Shall we go into my cubicle?’ asked Bianca in quavering tones.

‘N-no,’ said Jo slowly. ‘It’s just as safe here, really, and I’d rather stay where I can see what’s going on. –

What do you think, Elisaveta?’

Elisaveta agreed with her. In any case the thin cubicle curtains would be little protection from the horrors of the lightning.

There came the sound of steps running upstairs. The seniors were going to bed. There was no likelihood of their being allowed to sit up for a mere thunderstorm.