02 Jo of the Chalet School (9 page)

‘Mr Denny,’ she said, ‘is spending the winter here for his health. He is a signing-master in England, and loves his work, so he came to see if I would allow him to take you. I have agreed, and he is coming this afternoon to have the first classes. You will be divided into three divisions as you are for lessons, and I hope you will show Mr Denny that you can sing, and also behave well.’

She fixed the middles with a stern eye as she spoke, and sundry people wriggled uncomfortably. Then grace was said, and they were dismissed to amuse themselves until a quarter to two.

At half-past two punctually Mr Denny came, and the whole school was assembled at the piano, Miss Bettany appeared, and following her was one of the weirdest creatures the girls had ever seen. He was tall and gaunt, with long brown hair falling wildly into his eyes and on to the wide collar of his shirt. His suit was of brown velveteen, and he wore an enormous brown bow at his open shirt-throat. There was something untamed about him, and his vivid pink-and-white skin added to his unusual looks.

‘These are my girls,’ said Miss Bettany with a very grave face. ‘Girls, this is Mr Denny. Please sing your best for him.’

Then she turned and left the room abruptly, and Mr Denny and the school faced each other. ‘Will you sit down?’ he said in a deep musical voice.

They sat down and waited to hear what he had to say. He put an arm on the music-stand that had been set on the dais for him, and surveyed them solemnly. ‘Years ago,’ he began, ‘in the time of the Greeks, music was considered to be one of the necessary foundations of a good education. Read Plato’s
Republic
, and you will see that it is so.’

The school gazed at him wide-eyed. To many of them Plato was a mere name, and the rest had never heard of him before. None of them felt inclined to take Mr Denny’s advice and read his
Republic
. The lecturer beamed at them, unwitting of this.

Then he went on. ‘Nowadays, music is
not
so regarded. In many schools it is taken as an “extra.” Music!

The gift of the gods to this earth!’

‘Quite mad!’ murmured Joey to her next-door neighbour, Simone. Then she stopped, for Mademoiselle was regarding her with a baleful glare.

‘Fortunately for you girls, your mistress knows better. A lover herself of good music – I do not speak of the appalling amount of syncopated trash that is no flooding the world! – she has resolved to see that your knowledge of the heavenly art shall be a full one. She is right – very right!’

‘More than he is!’ decided Grizel. ‘He looks absolutely touched!’

The lecturer was concluded his remarks. ‘I am here to act, not as a teacher – I, who am only a learner myself, would nor presume to that rank! No! But, as a
guide
, I will do my best for you. Will you all please stand and sing to me?’

The school rose to its feet, vaguely wondering what it was to sing. Mademoiselle promptly settled that question by playing the opening bars of ‘Where’er You Walk,’ which had been one of their last term’s songs. Those who knew it sang with all their might, and Mr Denny listened with a beaming face.

‘Excellent!’ he said, when it was over. ‘But now we will sing a song we cal
all
learn. Will you, little maiden, distribute these to your compeers?’

He held out a sheaf of songs to the Robin, who took them and then gazed wonderingly at him. She didn’t understand him in the least. Luckily, Joey held out her hand for a few and passed them along, so the school baby guessed what he wanted and gave out the rest in her usual composed little way.

The girls looked at their copies eagerly. They were a setting of Henry Maughan’s ‘Song of St Francis’ : There was a Knight of Bethlehem

Whose wealth was tears and sorrows;

His men-at-arms were little lambs,

His trumpeters were sparrows.

His castle was wooden Cross

One which he hung so high;

His Helmet was a crown of thorns

Whose crest did touch the sky.

It was new to all of them – even Joey had never seen it before. Mr Denny gave them a minute or two to look at it; then he tapped on the stand with his baton.

‘If Mademoiselle will be so kind as to give us the keynote, we will begin.’

Mademoiselle meekly sounded the note, and the school made an effort at humming the air. It was easy to read, and they did it well. Once they had got the notes, there were switched on to the words. Finally, Mr Denny made them sit down, and sang it to them himself in a sweet baritone, and with the utmost simplicity, as the music demanded.

When it was over, the master looked across at Gisela. ‘What do you think of the song?’ he demanded embarrassingly.

‘It is a beautiful son,’ said the head girl thoughtfully.

‘Why is it beautiful?’ he turned to Joey, who could think of nothing to say, and just gaped at him.

Margia answered for her. ‘It is beautiful because the words are simple, and so it the music.’

‘Right!’ he said promptly. ‘We will now sing it again, and then we will turn our attention to another kind of song. Attend, little maidens!’

They sang it straight through once more, and he nodded his satisfaction.

‘That went well. Now if the tiny maiden’ – he indicated the Robin again – ‘will bring the first song, we will ask this next little elf to distribute these!’

He waved a second bunch of papers at Amy Stevens, and presently the girls found themselves looking at another song they did not know at all – one entitled ‘Brittany.’

Once again they were given the keynote, and then had to read the melody. This was more difficult than the last, though, again, it was perfectly simple. The girls liked it. These two songs, both by the same composer

– an Englishman who, they learned later, had fallen in the war – were totally unlike anything they had ever done. They wound up with another song of very much the same type, ‘A Page’s Road Song,’ and then the first lesson was over.

‘We will have three divisions next lesson,’ explained Mr Denny, tossing back his long hair out of his eyes.

‘The elder maidens will sing first; then, we will have the little lasses; and, finally, our small elves. I wish you adieu until then.’

He bowed deeply to Mademoiselle, smiled at the girls, and strode out, leaving a gasping class behind him.

Miss Maynard appeared almost at once.

‘Be quick and tidy up the room, girls,’ she said. ‘Then go and get ready for a walk. No talking until you are outside!’

That last command was a rather necessary one. The girls were bursting to discuss their new master, and, as he was only in the study across the passage, he would probably have heard every word that they said. So they cleared the room, and scrambled into their coats and hats without a word; but, once they were safely round the lake, the comments came thick and furious.

‘What a weird soul!’ exclaimed Grizel.

‘He is – unusual,’ said Gisela hesitatingly. ‘I liked the songs.’

‘Yes, so did I. Thank goodness he kept off folk-songs!’

Joey as too far behind to hear this comment, which was, perhaps, just as well. She and Simone were chattering in French about Mr Denny. Simone considered that he looked ‘romantic.’

‘He looked at ass!’ returned Joey briskly. ‘I loathe men who have their hair bobbed! And why couldn’t’

he war a decent collar and tie like other folks?’ which put a complete stopper on the one thing Madge had feared when she had finally agreed to letting him have the singing.

It was Margia who sealed it. ‘Who was that Greek man he talked about who said music was education?’

she inquired when they had broken ranks.

‘Plato,’ replied the omniscient Jo. ‘Why?’

‘It would be a jolly good name for
him
! Don’t you think so?’

‘Fine! We’ll call him that!’

And ‘Plato’ he remained from then onwards.

As the Head said when she came to hear of it, ‘It would be rather difficult to be sentimental over
Plato
!’

‘I’m fed up!’ observed Evadne one day, shortly after Mr Denny had made his debut at the Chalet School.

‘I think Gisela is right-down mean!’

‘Why?’ demanded Margia, who was sitting on the top of her desk, swinging her legs. ‘What’s she done to you?’

‘Fined me!’

‘Oh! Why? Was it slang?’

‘You know real well it was! I think she’s a – a rubber-necked four-flusher!’

‘Those prefects are getting very trying about slang,’ said Joey Bettany thoughtfully. ‘I think it’s about time we choked them off a bit! Bette actually fined me for saying something was awfully decent!’

‘Juliet’s just as bad as the rest,’ put in Rosalie Dene. ‘I’m sure Madame never meant we were to stop saying “jolly” and “decent.” Why,
Shakespeare
used them – “jolly,” at any rate!’

A gleam lit up Joey’s eyes. ‘What is it, Joey?’ asked Simone, who noticed it.

‘An idea,’ replied her friend laconically.

‘What
sort
of an idea? Something to down the prefects?’

‘Goodness Margia! What English! If Gisela heard you now, she
would
have a fit.’

‘Oh, let her! Tell us your idea, Joey! Go on!’

‘Can’t! ‘Tisn’t ready yet! I’ll tell you when it is!’ And Jo slipped off to visit Zita and Rufus, who by this time was beginning to stagger about on four unsteady legs, while his proud mother looked on.

After
Kaffee
that afternoon she condescended to reveal her idea to the others, and they listened with breathless interest.

‘Won’t it mean an awful lot of work?’ said Margia doubtfully.

‘Well, we’ll have to read it u a bit, of course,’ conceded Joey; ‘but it’s quite easy, really! Don’t do it if you’d rather not, though!’

‘Jo! Don’t be an ass! Of course I will! We
all
will!’

‘I shall find it very difficult!’ sighed Frieda Mensch. ‘Your English is so hard always!’

‘Not really you won’t, Frieda. We’ll practise it in the dormitory, and you’ll soon learn it!’

While this was going on, Miss Bettany had opened the fines box, and was frowning over the amount in it.

‘It’s really disgraceful!’ she said. ‘The number of fines the middles have is simply appalling! We must do something to stop this silly slang. Put it away with the rest, Gisela, please; and then we must think of some other punishment, I think.’

‘Perhaps if you were to speak to them, Madame,’ suggested Gisela. ‘It is Evadne who is worst. She speaks so much that seems ugly.’

‘All slang is ugly,’ said the Head absently. ‘Some is worse than the rest, of course. I’ve no wish for you all to talk like the heroines of goody-goody books, but at the same time there is a line to be drawn somewhere, and I draw it at expressions like “gumswizzled,” and “jim-dandy”!’

‘Yes,’ said Gisela. Then she added unexpectedly, ‘Madame, what is a rubber-neck?’

Miss Bettany gasped. ‘My dear Gisela!’

‘I heard one of the juniors talking – ah, no,
saying
it to another!’

The Head got to her feet. ‘I am going to put a stop to this, once for all! I will not have the babies using such expressions! Please go and assemble the seniors and the middles in the big school-room at once!’

Gisela fled; and ten minutes later the school was assembled, and waiting to know what it was Miss Bettany had to say to them. They hadn’t long to wait.

Three minutes after the last of the middles had been hauled away from her private affairs, and hunted into the big school-room, the Head appeared and read them all a lecture on the iniquities of slang that left them gasping and breathless.

‘I will not allow it!’ she wound up. ‘You can surely speak English without descending to these ugly, meaningless, slang phrases. At any rate, they are strictly forbidden! Please understand that I shall punish most severely any girl who is reported to me for using slang!’

Then she left them, and went over to Le Petit Chalet to impress on the juniors the evils of such expressions as ‘rubber-neck.’

The middles clustered together in a corner to discuss the affair, while the prefects went off to their own room, and the other seniors retreated to the little form-room. It had taken the younger members of what was unofficially known as ‘the big school’ nearly all the term to become a united body. The difference of their nationalities had had something to do with it; also their want of a common tongue. Many of the new girls found English terribly difficult, and Rosalie Dene and Evadne Lannis were still unable to carry on a conversation of any length in either French or German. Jo Bettany’s facility and fluency in all three tongues were the envy of others. She could even chatter in Italian now, for she had persuaded Vanna di Ricci and Bianca di Ferrara to talk to her whenever it was permissible. It was natural, therefore, that she should be the leader of the middles. Now they gathered round her to hear what she proposed doing.

‘We’ve got to speak good English,’ she said slowly. ‘Well, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t!

Shakespeare
spoke very good English. Of course, lots of it is rather out of date now, still we can’t go wrong if we copy him!’

The English girls saw the point of her remarks at once, and as soon as it had been carefully explained to the others they saw too.

‘But, Joey, how shall we do it?’ asked Simone. ‘I only know so little of Shakespeare.’

‘We’ll read all we can,’ said Joey. ‘Whenever we get a chance, we’ll talk to each other; but mind, no one’s to say a word till I tell you. We don’t want to let the others know before we’re ready. I want it to burst on them like – like – a hurricane, sort of!’

For the rest of that week the middles were surprisingly quiet and studious for them. Gisela, under the impression that this was the result of the Head’s lecture, was quite jubilant about it. There were very few fines, and all seemed to be going well. Saturday was a wild stormy day, with a tearing gale form the north-west, and a heavy grey sky. Bernhilda, the weather-wise, declared that if the wind shifted to the north the snow would come. It was later this year than it had been last, and when it came it would probably be a regular blizzard. The wind was blowing too heavily for anyone to go out; and mistresses and prefects prepared for a strenuous day. They need not have worried. Every one of the eleven people who were responsible for most of the mischief going on the school read nearly the whole day, and Sunday was the same. The great surprise was to begin on Monday, and everyone wanted to know as much Shakespearian English as possible before then.