02 Jo of the Chalet School (27 page)

‘Let me go, Joey! Yes; of course you must!’

Madge went off to send up Juliet with the other two, and to help Mademoiselle to calm the fears of the more excitable of the girls. One or two of them were completely hysterical, and it was to prevent the impressionable children from seeing this that she kept them away from the others. Vanna di Ricci and Luigia di Ferrara in particular were very bad. Both were highly-strung excitable girls, and they had completely lost control. As far as possible, they had been isolated from the others, and were in Miss Maynard’s little room with Bernhilda the placid, and Gisela, strong and calm, with them. The others were crowded into the big green dormitory and the little blue one, so that they were all on the top floor or the second one.

As the Head went upstairs to send Juliet with the other two down to her room, she was confronted by

‘Plato.’ ‘Pardon, Madame,’ he said with his old-world courtesy, ‘will you permit that I offer a suggestion?’

‘Yes, of course,’ replied Madge. ‘What is it?’

‘It is that our little damsels should sing,’ he replied. ‘Music acts as a soporific to disordered nerves; song is a drug to calm fears. Let us gather on the stairs, and all carol gaily.’

Some imp of perversity set the words of the old Sankey and Moody hymn, ‘Shall we gather at the river?’

running through Madge’s brain, and she nearly exploded in his face. However, she managed to choke it back, and agreed that his idea was a good one. She called the girls on to the stairs, leaving the hysterical ones alone, and then left them with the singing-master, who might have been taking an ordinary class, so serene was he.

‘We will begin our little musical festival with one of our best-known and most-beloved songs,’ he said when finally they were all settled. ‘Come, my pretty maids! “Summer Is Icumen In.” Here is the note! La-ah!’ So natural was his manner, than automatically they fell into their usual parts, and soon the lovely old round rang through the house and out over the water with a fine swing. He followed it up with ‘Jerusalem,’

‘Die Zwei Grenadier,’ and the old French nursery rhyme, ‘Monsieur de Cramoiseie.’ By the time the school had trolled out the last ‘Ho-ho! Monsieur de Cramoisie!’ even Vanna and Luigia had recovered their self-control and were able to creep shakily out to join the others in the roaring shanty, ‘Whip Jamboree.’

Then ‘Plato’ clapped his hands for silence, and sang himself in a sweet, mellow baritone, the ‘Shepherd’s Cradle Song.’ They had heard him sing it before, of course; but it had never sounded more lovely. Tears began to well from more than one pari of eyes at the tenderness of the last verse: He is the Lamb of God on high

Who for our sakes cam down to die.

Sleep, baby, sleep!

There was a little silence when it was finished. Then Miss Bettany came out of the blue dormitory. ‘The water is falling,’ she said quietly. ‘I think it would be as well for you all to go and lie down. The danger is past, we hope; and you are all very tired. But, before we go, let us thank God, Who has kept us safe in the midst of so many and great dangers.’ She dropped on her knees as she spoke, and the girls followed her example. There was no thought of differences of creed in that moment as the school followed her through the General Thanksgiving and the well-known ‘Our Father.’ The Fatherhood of God came very near many of the elder girls them.

They were all so worn-out with excitement and loss of sleep that even the discomfort of their usually close quarters could not worry them. When Madge went the round half-an-hour later, it was to find nearly everyone asleep already. Gisela was waking, and thrilled to the few words of thanks and praise her headmistress bestowed on her. But the only other girl awake was Joey, who was cuddling the Robin, so soundly asleep that she scarcely moved when Miss Bettany gently lifted her out of the other child’s arms and laid her down on the pillow.

‘I couldn’t help it Madge,’ said Joey. ‘She’s so wee-and I wanted something to hold;
badly
I did!’

‘I know!’ Madge sat down beside her. ‘It’s all right now, Joey.’ She took the hot sticky little paw Jo thrust at her in her cool grasp. ‘Go to sleep, Joey baba. All’s well now!’

‘You won’t leave us?’ pleaded Jo. ‘You’ll stay with us now?’

‘No. Don’t worry, darling; I won’t leave you.’

Joey’s eyes were growing heavy. Her long lashes fell on to her cheeks. ‘Madge, dearest,’ she murmured drowsily, ‘oh, I
do
so love you! I hope-I-hope-Dr Jem-’

There was no more. She was asleep.

As for Madge, she literally bolted into bed and lay awake for ages, thinking and day-dreaming before she, too, dropped off, to dream no more.

joey’s bath

For long hours the Chalet School lay sleeping. They were all worn out with excitement and want of sleep during the early hours of the night, and most of the other inhabitants of the valley were up and out and hard at work before one of the girls stirred.

Joey was the first to open her eyes. For a moment she wondered where the yellow cubicle curtains had vanished, and why the Robin was snuggled down beside her. Then she remembered. With a low exclamation she scrambled out of bed and ran to the window, which stood wide to the sun and the breezes, and poked out a ruffled head. It was a curious scene of desolation which lay before her eyes. The ground immediately round the Chalet was clear of water; but there was a thick layer of grey mud all over it. In the dip beyond there was a small pond, and the Kronprinz Karl was still surrounded, while the lake was tossing madly under the whip of the north-west wind upon its swollen waters. All around, wherever the ground was low, water was standing, and bushes and trees rose from lakes and pools all over. A haystack which had been swept down by the flood was entangled in some wild barberry bushes; and as for the six-foot fence, ti was a thing of the past. Here and there a stake rose forlornly from the ground; but the withes were scattered all over, and it was quite obvious that the work must be done over again.

Jo had just taken this all in, when a little stir from the couch brought her in, and she turned round to fin that her sister was looking at her with startled eyes. ‘Hello!’ she said gaily. ‘It’s gone down.’

‘What has? Where?’ asked Madge foggily, for she was only half awake.

‘The water, silly! Mean to say you’ve forgotten about it? You can’t be well!’

Madge sat up, fully awake by now. ‘No; I haven’t forgotten, of course. Only I was so sleepy. Gone down, has it? That’s a blessing!’

‘Not everywhere,’ said Jo, who was hanging out of the window once more. ‘The hollow is swimming still, and it’s all round the Kronprinz Karl, ‘but we’re clear. There’s oceans of mud everywhere, though.’

Madge threw back the bed-clothes, and got out of bed. ‘Let me see, Joey. What a mess! I wonder what the downstairs rooms are like.’

‘Awful, I should think. Are we going to get up now?’

‘Yes. It must be fearfully late! Just look at the sun! I wonder Marie isn’t about. Where are the dogs?’

‘Outside, I suppose,’ replied Jo, who was sitting on the floor, pulling on her stockings. I say, what an adventure we’ve had!’

‘More of an adventure than I like, thank you!’ retorted Madge. ‘I hope to goodness we’re going to have a little peace after this. We’ve done nothing but have excitements ever since we came to Austria. I don’t want any more adventures for a long time to come!’

Jo considered her sister with her head on one side. Her remark appeared to have nothing to do with the subject. ‘I wonder when Dr Jem will get up from Innsbruck,’ she observed.

Madge turned to the mirror, and began to brush her pretty hair with much vigour, and without saying one word.

‘He’s sure to dash up when he hears,’ pursued Jo pensively, ‘regarding a big hold in the heel of her stocking. ‘I say, Madge, what can I do about
that
?’

‘Change your stockings,’ said her sister, turning round with a very flushed face. ‘And do talk quietly, Joey! You’ll wake up the Robin, and I want her to have her sleep out, but she won’t if you go on yelling at the top of your voice like that.’

Jo moderated her voice, but she was far too excited to stop talking. Madge was dressed and downstairs before she had begun to brush the thick mop of her hair; and sundry sounds told that the other members of the Chalet School were waking up.

The damage done
in
the school was not very extensive. The rooms were muddy, of course, and far too damp to be used for two or three days. One of two books which had been overlooked in the hurried clearing-up of the night before could never be the same again; and one or two of the chairs stood in need of repair.

Miss Bettany, wearing her thickest boots and a very short skirt, collected all this information, and then turned to the rest of the staff who were standing beside her, similarly attired. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘This is the twelfth of March, and we break up on April the second-that’s exactly three weeks. Shall I break up now, and bring the girls back earlier? Or shall we just carry on as best we can until the proper date?’

‘Oh, carry on, I should think,’ said Miss Maynard. ‘For to-day, of course, we can’t do much. The rooms must be cleared and dried first. But it’s Thursday, luckily. I should let the juniors have lessons in one of the big dormitories, and the middles in the other. Small children are a nuisance at times like this if they’re allowed to run loose; and they’ll be better for regular work. But the seniors might help to sweep the mud out of doors. Then Marie and Eigen can scrub the floors and get the stoves on. Set all the doors and windows open, and I should imagine the place will be comparatively dry by to-morrow. Then, if we can manage again to-morrow, we shall have the week-end, and everything ought to be all right again by that time. If you can start Marie straight away after breakfast, I’ll clear away the breakfast things and wash up. I don’t teach the first period, luckily!’

‘Then,’ added Mademoiselle, ‘I will attend to the cooking during the next period. I could not scrub a floor, I! But I can cook!’

‘I’ll clean furniture when I’m free,’ decided Miss Durrant. ‘I’m a dab at cleaning windows, too,’ she added, laughing.

‘And I’ll do odd jobs,’ agreed the Head. ‘Well, at
this
rate, I see no reason for breaking up early. I must wire the parents that we are all quite safe, and then, I think, we might get to work.’

The staff were very pleased with their arrangements, but the girls were
not
. They had looked forward to a thrilling time of spring-cleaning, and the news that the younger ones, at any rate, would have lessons as usual completely upset their calculations.

‘Oh dear!’ lamented Jo. ‘And I’d planned to help scrub the floors! I’ve never done it, and I’ve always thought I’d like to!’

‘Well, I wanted to clean windows,’ sighed Grizel. ‘I do love seeing them come bright and shiny when you polish!’

‘They’d be nice windows when you’d finished with them!’ jeered Margia, who always carried on a minor feud with Grizel. Both had hasty tempers, and found it difficult to brook restraints, and both possessed

‘managing’ dispositions.

‘They’d be considerably better than they would be if
you
did them!’ retorted Grizel.

‘Oh,
stop
squabbling, you two!’ commanded Joey. ‘You’re worse than the cats of Kilkenny!’

‘I have never heard of these cats,’ observed Frieda, just in time to prevent the pair from turning on Joey and rending her. ‘Are they, then, famous?’

‘Oh, rather! They fought till there wasn’t’ anything of them left,’ explained Jo. ‘They were
Irish
cats, you see! I’ll tell you the whole story later on,’ she added hastily, to prevent further questioning.

Meals and lessons were a good deal of a scramble that day. The seniors and the mistresses worked hard to get the place into something like order. Eigen and Marie produced brooms, and the seniors swept the grey mud out of doors, where the sun and the strong wind were already drying up the sodden earth as quickly as possible. Herr Pfeifen, the father of the two servants, came along to see if his children were quite safe, and to let them know that all was well at Wald Villa, their home. It stood at the other side of the valley, well up the mountain slope, and the waters had never reached them. He exclaimed in horror at the sight of the Chalet, and insisted on lending a hand, with the result that soon Marie was hard at work, scrubbing the floors, while Eigen lit huge fires in all the stoves, and stoked them assiduously. Shortly after noon, Herr Braun came round from the Kronprinz Karl, to see how it fared with the school. The hotel was much worse off, for, standing at a lower level, and almost on the bank of the river, it had received the first fury of the torrent, and the wooden verandah had been badly smashed, while the water had covered the first two floors.

‘And I have just had all painted and polished!’ he groaned. ‘Now it will all be to do over again, and the season is at hand!’

‘Perhaps it will scrub clean,’ said Madge comfortingly. ‘How is Frau Braun?’

‘She is working hard,’ he replied. ‘Ah, well! The good God sent the flood, and doubtless He had some great purpose behind it. We can only bow to His Will!’ With which truly pious remark he said good-bye, and left them.

By the evening the Chalet was clean once more, and it was drying rapidly. Miss Bettany looked round, pleased with the result of her labours. ‘To-morrow we must attend to Le Petit Chalet,’ she said. ‘It is smaller than this, of course; but, unfortunately, it lies in the hollow, and the flood washed higher. I see the water is draining away from the dips, so I suppose it will be clear by Monday. The Seespitz path is fairly dry now, and I am going for a walk up there. If anyone likes to get into thick shoes, and coat and tammy, she can come with me.’

There was a shout of joy, for the girls had been indoors all day, and were longing to get outside. The next moment the air was full of confused shouts and exclamations as they all fled to get ready. Ten minutes later, the whole thirty odd of them were walking demurely down to the path which had been cleared of mud earlier in the day, and the four mistresses came behind them.