01 The School at the Chalet (9 page)

Two days after the Prefects’ meeting, a long letter came from England from Mrs Dene. Mr Dene had been the senior curate of the Parish Church at home, but he had accepted a chaplaincy in the West Indies, and they were not anxious to take Rosalie there. Then Mrs Dene had thought of the Châlet School at Tiern See, and she wrote to ask if Rosalie might join them in September. If so, would Miss Bettany also have room for Rosalie’s cousin, Mary Burnett?

Miss Bettany wrote back saying that she would be pleased to have them both.

The same day, an Italian lady whose acquaintance she had made came to make inquiries with regard to her little daughter. Signora di Ricci was a charming person, and she was obviously very anxious that Vanna should come. Madge knew Vanna, and liked her; so, with Evadne Lannis, there were four more pupils for the Châlet School.

Sitting on her desk in the Middle schoolroom, Joey Bettany proclaimed the news of the coming of two more English girls in the autumn.

‘It’s topping to think Rosalie and Mary are coming! ‘ she said enthusiastically.

‘How old are they?’ asked Margia Stevens.

‘Rosalie’s about fourteen and Mary’s twelve,’ replied Joey.

‘Oh! One for the Seniors and one for us,’ observed Frieda Mensch, who was beginning to get over her shyness. ‘That will be jolly!’

‘Tophole!’ agreed Joey. ‘We are spreading, aren’t we? You’ll love Mary, Frieda. She’s such a dear, steady old thing! I’m glad she’s coming!’

Simone, who was, as usual, glued to her side, changed colour at this, but for once Joey took no notice.

Truth to tell, she was getting thoroughly tired of Simone’s jealousy and all-in-all friendship, and there had already been more than one scene, when Simone had accused Jo of hurting her on purpose, and not liking her any more. The last time, unsentimental Jo had very nearly declared that she didn’t; that she was fed-up with all these fusses! But Simone had melted into tears at the least harshness, and cried so piteously, that Joey hadn’t the heart to do it. Now, unheeding of the little French girl at her side, she went on enthusiastically: ‘Mary was a form below me at the High School, but they lived near us, and we used to play together. We were in the same net-ball team too.’

‘And the other girl-Rosalie; is she, too, pleasant? ‘ asked Frieda.

‘Oh, yes, quite jolly!’ replied Joey. ‘She’s awfully pretty too, and jolly clever as well! Oh, bother! There’s the five-to-nine bell, and I haven’t got my books out! Mind, Simone!’

She brushed past Simone as she jumped down, and dashed to her locker to collect her possessions. The French child looked at her with big, mournful eyes, but Joey took no notice. She was intent on finding her history, which seemed to have vanished. Just in time it turned up, and then they all had to go in to prayers and call-over.

At lessons that morning Simone seemed unusually stupid. All her arithmetic was wrongly worked; her dictation was full of mistakes; and she knew no one word about history, although, as Joey well knew, she had thoroughly prepared it on the previous evening. The lesson was an easy one too- the story of the Bartholomew Massacre. As question after question passed the little girl, and she either did not answer at all, or else talked utter rubbish, Miss Bettany’s brow grew blacker and blacker. She had just left the Seniors after a tussle with Grizel, who seemed to have taken leave of her senses lately, and she wondered whether that young lady’s spirit of lawlessness were infecting Simone. Finally, she closed her book with an angry snap.

‘Simone! Why have you not prepared your work? It is simply disgraceful that you should know so little of your own country’s history! I am surprised at you! You must do this lesson over again at half-past four, and please never give me such disgraceful work again!’

Simone said nothing. She felt utterly miserable and unhappy, and only longed to fly away somewhere where she could cry her heart out. The others were looking at her with startled faces. It was so unlike Simone to have to be spoken to like this. Meanwhile the bell rang, and, under their Head’s watchful eyes, they were forced to file out of the room in proper order. Nor were they able to speak until they had escaped with their glasses of lemonade into the open air.

Then Simone was discovered to have disappeared.

‘What on earth can be the matter with her?’ demanded Joey of a select group, composed of herself, Margia Stevens, Frieda Mensch, and Suzanne Mercier. ‘D’ you think she’s ill or anything?’

‘She was all right at first,’ replied Margia. ‘She was talking like anything at breakfast, and she ate heaps!’

‘But look here! She knew that history last night-I know she did! And she never gets returned work! Why, she’s top of the form every time!’ protested Joey, whose own work had, at any rate, the merit of not being monotonous, since it was either very good, or else so bad as to be beneath contempt.

‘She may have a headache,’ suggested Suzanne, as she nibbled daintily at her biscuit. ‘Sometimes they begin suddenly.’

‘I’ve never heard of Simone having headaches,’ said Joey doubtfully.

‘Let’s try and find her,’ proposed Margia. ‘If she isn’t well, Miss Bettany ought to know. She might be going to have measles or anything.’

At that moment the bell for the end of break went, so they had to return to their form-room and French composition. Simone did not put in an appearance; but then, as Joey said afterwards, they all thought that she must be poorly and have gone to tell the Head, who had sent her to bed. Mademoiselle herself did not miss the child. Simone was always so very quiet and inconspicuous, and naturally, she did not require nearly as much attention as the others. The last lesson was geometry with Miss Maynard, and as the little French girl’s arithmetic was appallingly backward, it had been decided that, for the present, she should concentrate on that. When, however, she did not put in an appearance at Mittagessen, Miss Bettany promptly inquired where she was.

‘In bed, I think,’ replied Joey with equal promptness.

The Head’s black brows were drawn together in a frown of perplexity.

‘Bed? But why? Who sent her? Isn’t she well? Mademoiselle–’

‘I know nothing,’ replied Mademoiselle. ‘I have not seen her since this morning.’

‘Nor I,’ replied Miss Maynard. ‘She came to my arithmetic lesson, of course, but she doesn’t take geometry, and I haven’t seen her since before recreation.’

Miss Bettany got up, looking disturbed. ‘Joey, why do you think she has gone to bed? Did she tell you she felt poorly?’

‘Oh, no,’ replied Joey. ‘Only, she got all her work wrong, and it isn’t like her, so we thought she must be ill.’

‘Run upstairs and see if she is there.’ Joey vanished, to come back a few minutes later looking flushed and startled.

‘She isn’t there, Madge,’ she said, using the forbidden Christian name in her earnestness. ‘There’s no one there. But in her cubicle I found-this! ‘And she held up a long, thick plait of black hair.

A gasp sounded through the room. Madge, Mademoiselle, and Miss Maynard stood as if they were transfixed to the spot, while Joey Bettany stood holding that awful relic of Simone before their eyes.

Amy Stevens broke the silence by a whimper. ‘Oh, is Simone killed dead? Has someone chopped off her head?’ she wailed. As if someone had released a spring which was holding her, Mademoiselle leaped forward and snatched the plait from the trembling Joey.

‘And where, then, is Simone?’ she shrieked in her native tongue. ‘What has become of her?’

‘Nothing very terrible can have happened, Mademoiselle,’ said Madge, coming forward hastily. ‘She must have done it for a joke or for mischief, and now is probably ashamed to show herself!’ She turned to the girls with anger in her face. ‘Girls, do any of you know anything about this?’ She was looking hard at Grizel and Juliet as she spoke, but it was quite obvious that they knew no more about it than anyone else. They all looked dumbfounded.

Mademoiselle turned on Joey. ‘Josephine, you are the friend of Simone! Why has she done this thing?’

Joey shook her head helplessly. ‘I don’t know, Mademoiselle-honest Injun, I don’t! I’d have stopped her if I’d known.’

Things certainly seemed at a deadlock. Amy had stopped crying, mainly because no one was taking any notice of her, and the rest just sat in stricken silence.

‘Well,’ said Miss Bettany at length, ‘we had better try to find her. Miss Maynard, will you take the table while Mademoiselle and I go to search? Yes, Joey, what is it?’

‘Oh, please, may I come too?’ asked Joey breathlessly. ‘I’ve just remembered where she might be-in the pines. I can find it in a second.’

‘Very well,’ said her sister. ‘Mademoiselle and I will go through the house, and you can try this hidey-hole you say she has in the pine-woods. Put your hat on, though-the sun is very hot to-day.’

Joey only waited long enough to snatch her hat from its peg in the cloakroom before dashing off to the pine-covered slopes at full speed. As she ran, her brain busied itself with the question of why Simone should have cut her hair, of which, as a matter of plain fact, she had been rather vain. No good reason came to her as she clambered over the roots of the pine trees, occasionally sliding a little on the slippery earth. It was very still in the woods, for there was no breeze to stir through the pine-needles, and the very birds seemed to have hushed their hymns of praise.

Overhead, through the dark branches, she got glimpses of a sky, blue as lapis lazuli, unflecked by a single cloud. But although she worshipped beauty, Joey had no time to spare for the wonderful tranquillity of this summer noon. She was intent on finding her friend. She reached the hollow between the big roots, where she had found Simone before, but it was empty. There was no sign at all of the little French girl, and Joey’s heart stood still for a moment. She had been so sure she would find Simone there. As she stood, wondering whatever she should do now, a little sob caught her ear. At once she swung round, and scrambled over the sticks and dead pine-needles in its direction. There, in a little heap, lay Simone, crying as even Joey had never seen her cry before. The ends of her hair where she had sawn off her plait stood up like little drakes’

tails, an effect which would have made her friend giggle helplessly at any other time. Now, however, she only tumbled down beside her, flinging an arm round her, and hauling her up on to her knee. ‘ Simone! Oh, Simone! What is the matter with you?’

‘Go away!’ sobbed Simone, in her own language. ‘Go away, Joey!’

‘No fear!’ replied Joey. ‘I’m not going till you’re ready to come with me. And anyhow, I want to know why you’ve chopped your wig like that. You once told me you wouldn’t have your hair bobbed for anything.

Why on earth did you do it?’

‘I-I thought you would like it!’ Simone choked out. ‘You have often laughed at me because my hair was long, and I thought if I cut it short you would love me, and not leave me when those new English girls come next term!’

‘Well!’ Joey sat back and gasped. ‘Of all the mad ideas!’ she said, when she had got her breath back. ‘I don’t care whether you wear your hair cropped like a convict or trailing round your feet like Lady Godiva!

Really, Simone, you are a perfect idiot! And why did you rush off here like that? I nearly had a fit when I went to find you in your cubicle and found only your pigtail!’

‘I look so terrible!’ sobbed Simone. ‘And then I thought of what Cousine Elise would say, and how Miss Bettany would be angry, and you and all the other girls would laugh, and so I ran away.’

‘Well, now you’re coming back,’ said Joey firmly. ‘I don’t know what Madge will say to you, or Mademoiselle! But you can’t stay here for ever, and I want my dinner-I came out in the middle of it! As for laughing at you, I sha’n't; and I don’t much suppose the others will either. Now do stop howling and come on!’

At first Simone refused to budge, but finally Joey succeeded in getting her to come back with her, and they reached the Châlet, both of them feeling hot and tired. After one glance at the French child’s face, Miss Bettany packed her off to bed without one word of scolding; and when she had finally dragged the whole ridiculous story out of her sister, she sent that young lady up to her cubicle with strict injunctions to go to sleep. Then she betook herself to Mademoiselle and unfolded the tale to her.

‘In a way, it’s just as well,’ she said, ‘for all that mass of hair was far too much for her in hot weather; but of course she had no business to cut it herself like that. You had better take her over to the Kron Prinz tomorrow and let the hairdresser there trim it. Now I must go to my class.’

The next day Simone was taken to have her hair properly cut, and, much to her relief, the other girls said very little about the whole affair, although her cousin scolded her roundly. Besides that, she had to write a letter home to tell them what she had done, and Maman’s grieved reply was very hard to bear. Altogether, Simone deeply regretted the fact that she had ever touched her hair-the more so, since Joey Bettany, instead of being impressed by what she had done, characterised the whole thing as ‘idiotic nonsense!’

Chapter 10.

The Cinema Actresses.

It was a mercy, as Madge Bettany said, that for the next week or two everything went quite ordinarily.

Grizel and Juliet gave the Prefects no further trouble; Simone ceased, for the moment, to behave in a sentimental way; Amy Stevens gave up crying on the smallest provocation; and there was peace in the Châlet School. The only event of any note was an accident Bernhilda had with the red ink.

All the stationery was in one cupboard, the key of which Miss Maynard kept. Bernhilda had been appointed Stationery Prefect, and she went every Friday and gave out the new stationery as it was required.

It was not a very heavy task as yet, since everyone had started with new books at the beginning of the term.

Scribblers and little notebooks and pen-nibs were what were mainly required, with a very occasional exercise-book, and Grizel Cochrane, in her capacity as ink monitress, came on Mondays for the week’s supply.

On the Monday following Simone’s exploit, Grizel came as usual with her ink-can. She found Bernhilda, who took her duties very seriously, engaged in tidying the top shelf of the cupboard. The Prefect, sitting on the top of the step-ladder, looked down at her Junior.