A Genius at the Chalet School (14 page)

   Va were feeling rather nervous, in any case. Last lesson, it had pleased Miss Derwent to set them an exercise in writing Alexandrine couplets which she had taken very thoroughly with them. They had mastered iambic pentameters fairly well, but most of them still felt shaky over Alexandrines. They had been told to choose their own subjects and most of them had played safe. Miss Derwent was confronted with set after set on Spring - Flowers - March - April - June - Christmas - and so on. When Bess Appleton laid before her ten lines on the subject of May, she exclaimed, "Is there any month you girls
have
left alone?"

   However, she let it go at that. Bess was a conscientious girl with little poetry in her and her effort was neither better nor worse than was to be expected from her. Miss Derwent pointed out three or four mistakes in scansion and a terrible false rhyme and awarded her a B- before she sent her back to her seat and the passage from Browning's
Andrea Del Sarto
which they were paraphrasing.

   Nina came next and she had actually found a fresh subject - Bach. Her musical training enabled her to feel the correct beat of words as a rule, but her rhyming was none too brilliant and over the last two lines, Miss Derwent suddenly developed a violent coughing fit. Apostrophizing the great composer and organist, Nina had produced:

"Thy singing organ stirs the world to wond'rings deep'ning

 With thrills like insects o'er my trembling spirits creeping."

   "How on earth can you make "deepening" and "creeping" rhyme?" Miss Derwent demanded as she slashed her red pencil through this remarkable effort.

   "I - I -" was all Nina could find to say.

   "And I don't like your simile at all! I know of nothing more irritating than having a fly crawling across one's hand or arm, for instance."

   Nina was silent. She knew very well that those last two lines were sheer nonsense, but she had been hard put to it to find anything to wind up.

   "And in any case, how could
insects
creep over your spirits?" wound up the mistress scathingly.

   Vi, sitting in the front row, the direct result of whispering during Miss Wilmot's previous lesson, might have been expected to behave herself; but this proved too much for her. With her eyes still on her paraphrasing, she muttered just aloud enough for her nextdoor neighbour to hear, "They could all right if it was meths, or spirits of wine - or whisky, say!"

   It was very unlucky that the neighbour was that inveterate giggler, Hilda Jukes. She had been going on blamelessly with her work when Vi spoke, and the unexpected comment set her off. She spluttered, only just smothering it a little with her hand. It was fortunate at the moment for the pair that Josette Russell had been called on to bring her attempt up and elected to stumble over the textbooks piled up at the side of her desk. The books came down with a crash, flying in all directions and the sudden noise set every nerve in Miss Derwent's mouth jumping.

   "Do be careful, Josette!" she said with unwonted asperity. "There can be no need for a girl of your age to be so clumsy. Pick up those books and put them somewhere safe and hurry up about it! I can't wait all day for you!"

   Josette did as she was told with a meekness belied by her blazing eyes, and in the general scrimmage, Hilda's explosion went unnoticed.

   Vi, rather alarmed at the result of her silly speech, nudged her, hissing. "Shut up, you ass!"

   But it was easier to say that than to get Hilda to comply. All the time she was struggling with her paraphrasing, she was sniggering to herself. She was still at it when Miss Derwent, somewhat mollified by Josette's lines which were quite good for a schoolgirl, summoned her in her turn, and Vi made things worse by grimacing a warning at her to pull herself together. Normally, Vi was one of the prettiest girls in the school, but when she took to making faces anyone would have awarded her the palm for being one of the ugliest. On this occasion, she pulled down the corners of her mouth, drew her brows together in a portentous frown and added a violent squint to crown the effort. Hilda, glancing back, got the full beauty of it and a loud titter fell across the comparative silence of the formroom.

   "
Hilda
! What is there to laugh at?" Miss Derwent demanded. She was patient enough as a rule, but between her aching tooth, those Alexandrines and Josette's carelessness, her stock had run out and the sight of Hilda Jukes literally writhing in an attack of the giggles ended it.

   Once Hilda was fairly started, it was no easy matter to stop her as Herr Laubach, the irritable art master, had once discovered! The sight of her shaking there, her face turning crimson as she tried in vain to control herself, set the others off, even Vi, who had sat rigid with horror for a moment. The room rang with their peals of laughter and when Hilda, horrified at what was happening, tried to stop her own giggles by thrusting her handkerchief in her mouth, it made them worse.

   The noise attracted Miss Dene who was bringing round a notice to the forms. Under the impression that Va were left along and for once taking advantage of it, she swept into the room, exclaiming in thunderous tones, "Girls! What are you thinking of? Can't we trust Seniors like you to behave yourselves alone for a few minutes?" Then she saw Miss Derwent who had been hidden by the big standing blackboard and blushed.

   "I beg your pardon, Miss Derwent," she began rather nervously, for Miss Derwent's face was very black. She went no further, for she also saw Hilda and at once guessed partly what had happened. Dropping her slips on the table, she seized that unfortunate young woman by the shoulders and gave her a shake which made Hilda start and bite her tongue smartly. This certainly did put an end to her giggles. With tears of pain streaming down her cheeks, she stopped dead and Va suddenly woke up to the enormity of their behaviour and also stopped laughing.

   In the deadly silence which succeeded to the wild shrieks of the girls, Miss Dene once more apologised to the irate Miss Derwent whose mouth was compressed into a thin line and whose stormy eyes were quite enough to alarm the hardiest girl in the school.

   "I am so very sorry, Miss Derwent," she said earnestly. "If I had taken time to think I would have known that as this is Va is was only Hilda Jukes making an exhibition of herself."

   "My only wonder is that the entire staff hasn't been in to inquire what was wrong!" Miss Derwent snapped.

   Vi gulped and got herself to her feet. "Please, it was my fault - I mean it was my fault that Hilda giggled," she faltered.

   "What do you mean?" Miss Derwent demanded while Miss Dene hurriedly laid the Va notice on the table and fled with a murmur that might have been anything.

   "I - I said something to make her laugh," Vi owned, wondering what awful fate would overtake her if Miss Derwent should be moved to find out exactly what she had said.

   However, the mistress had had time to recover herself a little. She made no attempt to find out the sum total of Vi's sins. But she proceeded to rend that young person to such good purpose that by the time she had finished, Vi was thankful to sit down and hide her face over her exercise-paper, feeling as if she had been reduced to a status rather less than one of Nina's insects. As for the rest of Va, they promptly buried themselves in their work with a concentration that said as plainly as any words, "Please don't notice me - I'm not here!"

   Miss Derwent paid no attention to them. She held out her hand for Hilda's verses, saying coldly, "I will comment on these and then you had better go and make yourself fit to be seen. You are a disgrace to the form at the present moment."

   Her final comment, "Quite undistinguished, but as good as you usually do!" meant nothing to Hilda who took them back to her desk and then escaped thankfully to wash her tear-smeared face and tidy her hair. By the time she had finished, the bell had rung for Break and when she returned to the formroom, it was empty. Miss Derwent had had more than enough of Va that morning and dismissed them on the first stroke of the bell.

   Hilda hurriedly tidied her desk and then went to get her milk and biscuits from the Speisesaal where she found a repentant Vi waiting for her.

   "Oh, Hilda," she said humbly, "I'm most awfully sorry I made such an ass of myself and got you into trouble. Please forgive me, I never meant to do it."

   Poor Hilda sighed. "It wasn't your fault so awfully much. I
do
wish I could get over giggling at next to nothing! Two years ago, Herr Laubach flung me out of his art class for the same thing and wouldn't have me back for the rest of the term. And Peggy Bettany who was Head Girl that year caught me out and gave me a frightful rowing. She nearly took the skin off me! I did think that had cured me, but it hadn't."

   "But you've been a lot better since then," Vi said consolingly. "And anyway, it was my fault this time. I really am sorry, Hilda. I never meant to start you off like that!" She added ruefully, "I got all that was coming to me from Miss Derwent, anyhow. Thank goodness we don't have her for anything else to-day!"

   "Vi! Do you know where Nina Rutherford is?" demanded her sister Betsy coming in at that moment. "Go and find her and tell her she's wanted in the study, pronto! Hurry up with your elevenses, Hilda," she added as Vi fled. "You won't get any exercise outside if you don't; and Karen will be hopping mad, anyhow."

   Hilda choked down the last of her milk, wiped the creamy moustache off her upper lip and went out to join the others, wondering to herself what Nina, of all people, had been doing to be summoned to the study in that peremptory way. No one could tell her, however, and the form went over to the laboratories for a chemistry lesson for the rest of the morning, those not taking science having extra French with Mdlle and German Dictat with Frau Mieders. Nina came to none of these, but had the time for practice, so there was no hope of questioning her before Mittagessen. And when they took their seats in the Speisesaal, hers remained empty.

   No one could understand it, for they all knew that the Rutherfords were not expected at Interlaken before Saturday, if then. They had to possess their souls in patience until Nina herself turned up for Abendessen, looking very excited and bright-eyed. And even then they had no chance to ask her about it, for it pleased Carola Johnstone, the prefect on their table that week, to initiate a conversation about next term's tennis!

  Once they were in their own commonroom, however, and free from all prefects and mistresses, Mary-Lou and Co. brought their work for the Sale and surrounded her, demanding to be told what had happened.

   Nina looked at them happily. "Oh, you'll never guess! Do you remember the fat lady on the steamer going to Geneva? She got off at Nyon and she had two small boys with her."

   "Robin and Paul," Mary-Lou nodded, "I remember. But what on earth has she to do with
you
?"

   "Everything!" Nina replied dramatically. "Her husband was my mother's cousin - they were brought up together. Only after she died, Dad took me and we wandered around the world and so we lost touch with him. Well, he, Mother's cousin, I mean, married this lady who was an Old Girl or something of the school, only then, she says, she was as slim as I am!"

   "She's altered!" Hilary said. "What's her name, Nina?"

   "Cousin Winifred. That's what she's told me to call her. Mrs. Embury, really. he is my cousin Martin. Well, she has a sister who's Matron of a big hospital near Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Alix was there for a few weeks. When she - Alix, I mean - had to come out here, the Matron wrote to Cousin Winifred to ask her if the Rutherfords could break the journey for a night or two at her house in Montreux. She said of course they could. Then she met the staff on the steamer as we all saw, and knew them though they didn't recognize her!" Nina stopped to laugh.

   "I don't blame them," Barbara remarked. "If she really was as thin as you when she was at school, I don't see how they could be expected to!"

   "They didn't; but she reminded them and she told them about Cousin Guy and Cousin Yvonne and Alix and Miss Annersley or someone said I was here. She would have come to speak to me at once, but we'd reached Nyon then and you know what a short time the steamer waits anywhere. She had to go, but she said she'd get in touch again. Well, she and Cousin Martin came to-day to get in touch. That's why the Head sent for me. They wanted to take me back to Montreux with them for the rest of the term. Of course, the Head wouldn't allow it; but she let me go with them to Interlaken. I've had a gorgeous time. Cousin Martin loves music himself and he plays the 'cello. I'm to go to them for the whole of the Easter Holidays and meet all their boys - they have seven! - and as long as I'm here, I'm to look on their house as home. Cousin Martin  says he'll talk it all over with Cousin Guy and come to some arrangement. Oh, and
she's
coming up for the Sale on Monday and she's sending us some things for our stall. Isn't it marvellous? I thought I didn't have a soul in the world but the people at Brettingham Park and though they're very kind, they don't understand about my music. Cousin Martin does and it's such a help!"

   "I think it's wonderful!" Mary-Lou said quickly. "We're all awfully glad for you, Nina."

   "I'm awfully glad for myself," Nina said, laughing happily. "I'm not alone any more!"

CHAPTER 15

   "Now just listen to me, you three! This is Friday and Fridays are French days as you know as well as I do!
But
you've been reported to me by your form prefect for continually speaking English." Betsy Lucy looked severely at her audience and they wriggled uncomfortably. It was bad enough to know that they were due to be fined - and the Sale only three days ahead! - without the Head Girl lecturing them into the bargain.

   Emerence Hope spoke up - it
would
be Emerence! to quote Betsy later on - and her manner was pert, to say the least of it. "We know it all right. The trouble is we so often forget."

   Heartened by this, Connie Winter and Francie Wilford added their mite towards the Head Girl's stupefaction at Middles daring to speak like that to a prefect.