02 Jo of the Chalet School (8 page)

Gisela went off to the telephone, but presently returned, saying that nobody had seen Jo that day, and certainly none of them expected to see her.

Miss Bettany frowned as she turned away, after thanking the head girl. It was so totally unlike Jo to go off by herself in this fashion. She was a gregarious little soul, and was generally to be found with crowds.

Where she could be now was a mystery, and the girls, streaming back to their own quarters, were thoroughly curious. Some of them inclined to Simone’s suggestion that the Tzigane had carried her off; the others declared that she must have gone for a stroll somewhere.

‘But it isn’t the weather
for
strolls!’ Grizel pointed out with an eloquent wave of her hand towards the window. ‘The rain’s simply
emptying
down! Just look at it!’

‘Well, anyway, there’s no truth in that idiotic Tzigane idea!’ declared Juliet. ‘I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying anything about it, Simone! Madame’s worried enough without your suggesting such ghastly things!’

‘I d-didn’t!’ sobbed Simone in her own language. ‘I love Madame!’

‘It looks like it, I must say!’ retorted Juliet. ‘Well, Robin? What do
you
want?’

The Robin, who had been tugging at her sleeve, said, ‘I don” think you ought to speak so unkindly to Simone, Julie!’ (Her name for Juliet.) ‘I think also that Zoë is with Eigen.’

‘Eigen?’ The big girls crowded round her at once.

‘But why do you think that, Robin?’ asked Gisela.

‘Eigen isn’t here,’ returned the mite. ‘He was talking this morning with Zoë, and perhaps they went somewhere.’

‘Come and tell Madame,’ said Gisela. ‘She will like to know.’

Accordingly, as Madge Bettany was pacing up and down her study, trying to puzzle out where Joey could have gone, she heard a tap at her door, and then the head girl and the school baby entered.

‘Robin thinks Joey may be with Marie’s little brother Eigen, Madame,’ explained Gisela as she made her little regulation curtsy.

The Head stared at that. ‘Joey with Eigen! But why?’

‘She was talking with Eigen this morning, Madame,’ said the Robin in her pretty French.

Miss Bettany sat down and held out her hand. ‘Come here, Robin. Now, tell me just when you saw Joey and Eigen together, and where.’

The Robin leaned up against her knee, and looked up at her with confident brown eyes. ‘it was when we came from Le Petit Chalet, Madame. They were standing by the stationery cupboard, and Zoë’ -she still could not manage the English J -‘was looking very angry – but
very
angry, and she stamped her foot and said, “Oh – ze – brutal –
beasts
!”‘

The Robin repeated the English words with great care and a distinctness which would have been laughable under any other circumstances. But nobody felt very much like laughing just then. Miss Bettany looked at the baby with serious eyes, and the Robin gazed back just as seriously.

‘You’re sure that this is what she said?’ asked the young head-mistress.

The curly head was nodded emphatically. ‘But yes, Madame. I heard her.’

‘Gisela, would you ring for Marie?’ asked Miss Bettany.

Gisela rang, and presently Marie appeared. At first when she was questioned, she declared that she had no idea as to what the two missing children could have been talking about. She was very angry with Eigen, for he should have been in the kitchen, helping her, and she had seen nothing of him all the morning. Then, after a little more urging from her mistress, she suddenly remembered that the dog of a neighbour of theirs had had litter of pups, and she had heard that the little things were to be drowned that day.

‘If that is what Eigen was telling Joey,’ said Miss Bettany with great decision, ‘then that is where they are!

But she had no right to go off without telling me!’ Then a sudden though struck her. ‘Is it that beautiful St Bernard dog?’

‘Yes,
mein Fraulein
,’ replied Marie. ‘They are too poor to keep the pups, for they eat much ; and, indeed, they spoke of shooting Zita.’

‘Oh, what a shame!’ The Bettanys all adored animals, and the same spirit which must have sent Jo off in an attempt to save the puppies boiled up in her sister now. ‘Poor Zita! If they can’t afford to keep her, why don’t they sell her to someone who can?’

Marie stood respectfully silent. It was not for her to speak, but she thought that if Madame had seven children to clothe and feed, and a husband who could earn money only during the summer, since he was a cowherd, she would not have been so indignant over the proposed shooting of a mere big dog who ate far more than she ought to do Of course, if the pups had arrived during the tourist season, they would most likely have sold, in which case there would have been plenty to buy food for all. But Zita had not done what was expected of her, and so they must go. That was a matter of course.

Madge, looking up, guessed what was passing through the girl’s mind. ‘Are they very poor, Marie?’ she asked gently.

‘They can live,
mein Fraulein
,’ replied Marie dryly.

A wild shriek of ‘Joey! Joey!’ broke across the conversation, and Madge, running to the window, beheld her small sister and Eigen racing madly along. Eigen looked much as usual, but Joey was a sight to behold.

She was soaking, and her hair was on end. Her face was splashed with mud; her gym tunic was torn, so that a great triangular piece hung down in front. She was crying, too – an unusual thing for her; and in her arms was a soft little roly-poly ball, which she cuddled to her.

Leaving the people in the study to do as they chose, Madge fled to the door, and caught the child in her arms. ‘Joey! How could you?’ she cried reproachfully.

‘Oh, Madge! Oh, Madge!’ sobbed Joey exhaustedly; ‘I could only save him! The rest were all drowned!

Oh, Madge! Such little
young
things! But I pulled him out and saved him! And, oh! the poor old mother!

If you’d seen her eyes! Oh, I
can
keep him, can’t I?’ She thrust the little wet bundle against her sister.

‘He’s such a baby!’

‘Hush, Joey! Don’t cry so, darling! Yes; of course you shall keep him! Eigen! Go and change at once, and tell Marie to give you some hot coffee! -Come, Joey! Come and have a bath!’

They all flew round. An hour later, Joey, cleansed and in her right mind, with her new possession cuddled up to her, told her story to an attentive audience.

Eigen had told her about the two-week-old pups, and their destiny, and she had torn off with him as soon as prayers were over. They had arrived too late to do anything but save this last pup, even though they had scrambled over rocks and through thorns to do it. Joey, clutching the poor baby-thing to her, had harangued the man fiercely in a mixture of French, German and English, which luckily he had not understood. She had cried all the way home over the memory of poor Zita’s frantic grief; and Eigen had cried too – mainly out of sympathy, Madge suspected.

‘I can keep him, can’t I?’ wound up Joey passionately.

‘Yes; you may keep him,’ said her sister. ‘He must go back to his mother for a few weeks, and I will pay for him, so that they can keep her. I’m going now, to see about it. If things are very bad, Zita had better come here for the present. We can feed her better than they can, I imagine, and that will be my birthday present to you, Joey. Until I come back, you can give him some warm milk and water with a very little sugar in it.’

She set off, and on reaching the little hut found that things were as Marie had said. The people had enough to do to feed themselves, and there was no margin for keeping such a huge animal as Zita. The herdsman at once fell in with her suggestion that he poor brute should go to the chalet for the winter. He also agreed to accept some money for the pup, and his wife wept for joy when the kroner notes were laid on the table. The money would make all the difference to them. Then Zita was unchained and handed over to her temporary owner, and Madge arrived back at the Chalet with her.

The joy of the poor mother over her restored baby made Joey cry again. Zita washed her puppy thoroughly, and then lay down with him snuggled up to her, thumping the floor ecstatically with her big tail, and looking her gratitude out of her pathetic eyes. She had reached a dog-paradise. For the first time in months she had had a good meal. She was in a warm place, with plenty of fresh, sweet hay for her bed, and she had got back one of the babies they had taken away from her. What more could a sensible dog ask?

‘I shall call him Rufus,’ said Joey, as she reluctantly shut the door of the shed where they were, and went in to
Kaffee
. ‘I love him, and it’s the nicest birthday present I ever had!’

‘Then I hope you are going to reform, and not give us any more frights by going off without telling anyone where you are going!’ said her sister severely.

‘Oh, you needn’t ever worry about me again! As soon as Rufus can come with me, I shall take him
everywhere
!’ declared Joey. ‘Then I shall be quite safe, ‘cos St Bernards are such faithful animals. Look at the one in “Excelsior”!’

There was a general laugh at this characteristic remark, and then they settled down to coffee and cakes.

the new singing-master

Having distinguished herself by scaring everybody and rescuing Rufus from a water grave, and Zita from an untimely end, Joey ‘lay low’ for a while. As a matter of fact, nobody did anything specially striking for the next week or two; little things such as Amy Stevens tilting her chair over backwards during
Mittagessen
, or Grizel Cochrane handing in her diary instead of her composition-book, not being sufficiently important to count. True, Grizel was fearfully teased over her exploit, that was to be expected. This jogged along very comfortably and quietly, till one break, when Margia Stevens, who had been having a music-lesson with Herr Anserl, the master who came up twice a week from Spärtz, rushed into the little form-room where the middles were, obviously bursting with news.

‘Well, what is it?’ demanded Joey. ‘Buck up and tell us before you explode!’

‘Don’t be so horrid mean, Joey Bettany!’ cried Margia. Then, forgetting Jo’s sins in her excitement, she turned to the others. ‘Guess what!’

‘What is it to do with?’ asked Rosalie Dene ungrammatically.

‘Oh, school, of course! Fearfully thrilling! Go on! Give you three guesses!’

‘We’re going to the theatre at Innsbruck!’ suggested Joey.

‘No!’

‘Madame has arranged for a dance on Saturday,’ volunteered Frieda Mensch.

‘No – no! Nothing like that! You’ve only one more guess!’

‘Someone has given us more new books for ze librairie!’ This was Simone’s idea.

‘No! Not that at all!’

‘Then what is it, please?’ asked Paula von Rothenfels.

Margia drew a deep breath. We’re to have a singing-master! He’s an Englishman, and – Oh bother!

There’s the bell for silence!’

The others echoed her exclamation, but, as they had had a long lecture – much-needed – on the necessity of keeping the few rules of the school only that morning, they dared not speak after the silence-bell had gone; so they were obliged to possess their souls in patience. In the meantime, Mademoiselle and Miss Maynard couldn’t imagine what had happened to make them so stupid this morning. Even Jo usually a bright and shining light of the French Literature class, appeared to know nothing at all of the seventeenth century, and, when asked to name the author of
Le Cid
, replied dreamily, ‘The new man!’ adding to her sins by speaking in English.

No wonder Mademoiselle was angry; and Joey, after listening to a sever lecture on the necessity of paying attention in class, found herself condemned to copy out certain pages of
Duruy’s Petite Histoire de France
.

This brought her to her senses, and she managed to get through the remainder of morning without much trouble.

When finally the bell rang and Mademoiselle had left the room, they all thronged round Margia demanding to know all details of the new singing-master. Margia was only too pleased to gratify them.

‘I don’t know
much
,’ she said, ‘but he’s come to live at the villa Adalbert for the winter. His sister is with him, and he’s very good, and awfully keen. He wants to teach singing here because he likes to have something to do; so he came and asked Madame if he might.’

‘I wonder why he has come?’ said Simone thoughtfully. ‘He is ill, perhaps?’

But Margia didn’t know, and was unable to satisfy her curiosity.

‘I wonder what kind of songs he teaches,’ said Joey.

‘Let’s hope it’s not those awful folk-songs you’re for ever shrieking!’ observed Margia with point.

While they were dressing that morning, Joey had sung, ‘Some like coffee, some like tea!’ over and over again, till the others had all flung their pillow into her cubicle, and a pillow-fight had begun which had brought Miss Maynard down on them. What had made it worse was the fact that it was the one morning in the week when Juliet had early practice, and so they had been alone, and therefore on their honour, as Miss Bettany had pointed out in her subsequent interview with them.

‘I hope it isn’t beastly tuneless things like the rubbish you play!’ retaliated Joey.

‘Jo Bettany!’ said Gisela’s horrified voice. ‘You must pay a slang fine.’

Jo grumbled under her breath; but after all, as the others assured her when Gisela had gone, she had simply
asked
for it. ‘Topping’ and ‘ripping’ and kindred expressions were banned to them, but most people were a little lenient about their use; but nobody showed any lenience over such words as ‘beastly’ and she knew it.

The crusade against unpleasant slang was being carried on thoroughly, and already the girls were improving in that direction. As a rule, Joey was not so bad as Grizel and Evadne and one or two of the others, for her wide reading of the classics had helped her there. However, occasionally she fell as she had done to-day.

Luckily for everyone, the bell rang for
Mittagessen
at this point, and they all had to stop talking until they were seated at the table. When the meal was over, and before she said grace, Miss Bettany informed the school of the new arrangements she had made for their singing-classes.