A Genius at the Chalet School (16 page)

   "Haven't the least idea," Francie said without lifting her eyes from her book.

   "Oh, dear! I thought she might just be here, though most of the other prees are scattered about, helping. I wonder if she's gone to her dormy for anything?"

   "I wouldn't know so it's no use asking me," Francie mumbled. Then she intoned, "'Oberon, Oberon, rake away the gold. Rake the - the gold - ' No, that's not it! Oh, bother! I'll never learn the beastly thing!"

   "What is it?" Nina asked, her curiosity aroused. What on earth was Francie Wilford doing in the prefects' room, learning poetry when everyone else was hard at work for the Sale? "What is the poem? It sounds rather nice."

   "Well it isn't, then!" Francie snapped. "
Any
poem's beastly when it's a punishment lesson."

   "That's rot! Let me see it! I rather liked that line you repeated." Nina stretched out her hand and took the book and began to read it aloud. She read well, for her father had been very particular in training her and she had a real feeling for poetry. Despite herself, Francie began to take an interest. Nina read it through to the end. then she turned to the culprit with glowing face. "It's a
marvellous
poem! It
sings
as it goes! It's just asking to be set to music! Oh, I
must
have a shot at it sometime!" She handed the book back. "There you are; buck up and learn it! It should be easy. Who wrote it? Alfred Noyes? Well, he can write most musicful poetry. I
love
that!"

   She turned to the door and vanished in search of Katharine who eventually turned up in the handcrafts room where she had been helping two desperate people finish their raffia baskets. Meanwhile, Francie, roused quite out of her sullen mood by Nina's enthusiasm about the poem, applied herself to the Oberon verse and by the time Betsy returned, jubilant over a big box of contributions to the Sale from Winifred Embury, she had mastered that and the next verse and was well away with the one that followed.

   Betsy set down her big box and held out her hand for the book. "How far have you got?" she inquired as she took it.

   "I've just begun the verse beginning, 'Softly over Sherwood the south wind blows,'" Francie said, and the Head Girl gave her a quick look. The sullenness had left her voice and when she began to repeat the poem, she did it surprisingly well. The memory of Nina's rendering helped her, though she still did not see what the elder girl had meant by saying that it was "musicful".

   "That's quite good," Betsy said as Francie reached the first two lines of the last verse and then stumbled over the third. "Very well, we'll let that do."

  She handed back the book and Francie took it. But she seemed in no hurry to go.

   "You may go now," the Head Girl told her. "I said it would do."

   Francie wriggled violently and Betsy wondered what was coming. Then, with a very red face, the younger girl got out, "I'm - sorry!"

   Betsy's face lit up. All the severity left it and she was her puckish self again. "Good for you, Francie! That took some doing, I know. O.K. It's done with! After to-morrow morning we'll let it go. But do, for goodness' sake, hold on to yourself and don't cheek people or you may end up with a bad row. Now you'd better run along. The bell will be ringing Kaffee und Kuchen in a minute and your hair's positively
wild
!"

   Francie left the room and went down to the splashery to tidy up. When she had finished, she glanced through the poem again. Finally, as the bell rang, she shook her head in bewildered fashion. "I don't see what Nina was getting at. But she was right about one thing - it isn't rot; it's a jolly decent poem and I like it. I believe I'll finish learning it, anyhow. May as well, now I've done so much."

   She shoved the book into her locker in complete defiance of rules and scudded off down the passage, hungry for her Kaffee und Kuchen.

CHAPTER 16

   Nina slipped out by the side entrance of the school and ran down the path which led across the school's lawn, through the gate in the hedge and into the garden of Freudesheim. It was Saturday morning and most of the school was had at work, preparing Hall for the Sale on Monday.

   The men had been busy the night before, setting up the stalls and the section of merry-go-round which was to form the needlework stall. St. Mildred's had undertaken this and they had laid claim to the affair from the start. As they had made it themselves, the rest had agreed that it was their right to have it, though members of more than one House sighed after it.

   By the time Nina had decided to call it a day, Hall was rapidly becoming a very charming miniature Fair. The stage cottages had been set up at one side and decorated with sprays and streamers of the artificial roses used in
Beauty and the Beast
. Here, St. Clare's were holding the toy stall, having "bagged" it with loud shrieks. Ste Thérèse, who were responsible for produce, had demanded the school's swingboats which had been brought out of their winter retirement in a shed and made beautiful with strips of crepe paper twisted round the rather shabby supports, while the roses from the "bushes" adorned the boats.

   In the centre of the floor, they had set up the maypole which had its own stand. The long streamers of pink, blue, mauve and yellow ribbons had been spread out and tied to the tops of standing fences and here Nina had been in much demand, for she had a quick eye and, thanks to her, the colours alternated the whole way round in their correct order. Here, St. Agnes's were having a cakes and sweets stall, with bags of sweets attached to the ribbons and shelves clipped on to the bars of the fences to hold the cakes.

   Above the maypole stood the Wishing Well which had been made for the Fairy Tale Sale in Tirol and still went on, a hardy evergreen, to quote Miss Wilmot. There were no roses left to decorate it, but the Juniors were pacified by long trails of evergreens and clumps of stiff white paper lilies set round it at intervals.

   St. Hilda were running a competitions' booth in the opposite corner to the merry-go-round and everyone with any artistic capability had been set to painting pictures of wild animals to represent a menagerie. These had been pasted on to canvas and made a long, narrow room in which two trestle tables had been set up, while a large bucket adorned one end.

   All in all, the girls had shown real ingenuity and when they were dressed in the costumes they had decided on, it would make a very gay show.

   "I've slogged all the morning at it," Nina said to herself as she crossed the garden at Freudesheim, making for the french windows of the Saal which opened on to the flower garden Joey had established at the side of the house. "I'm playing in the concert and I simply
must
put in some practice! I can't play Chopin's
Tarantella
just out of the blue, so to speak!"

   She walked into the Saal and there found Joey's friend and help, Beth Chester. All the Chester girls were good-looking, but Beth bore away the palm. Nina, with her passionate love of beauty in every form, always felt a certain satisfaction in gazing at Beth's fresh loveliness of chestnut hair, violet eyes, perfect features and complexion and a certain grace and dignity of movement that added to her attractions. This morning, she heaved a sigh of pleasure, for Beth seemed lovelier than usual.

   "She has a sort of - of
shining
look," Nina said to herself.

   "Hello!" Beth exclaimed. "Come to practise? I thought you'd all be up to the eyes in the Old English Fair. We're expecting something marvellous, you know. This is something quite fresh and I take my hat off to the genius who thought it up."

   "The rest are, but I've
got
to practise," Nina explained. "I
have
 been helping all the morning up to Break and I'm helping again to-night when we fill the stalls, but I do want to polish up the
Tarantella
 a little more." Then she added anxiously, "It's all right, isn't it? Mrs. Maynard did say I might use her piano when I could have the one in Hall."

   "Oh, quite all right now," Beth replied. "We're expecting her home to-day, but I don't suppose she'll be coming till this afternoon. They want the room, you see, and she and Cecily are amazingly fit and she'll go to bed when she comes, so they're bringing her."

   "But whatever will she do with the hols next week?" Nina cried, forgetting her music for once. "All the kids will be home and you go back with Barbara and Nancy for Easter, so how will she manage?"

   "I'm not going back for Easter this time," Beth said shortly. "Is it likely? I'm staying for another three weeks, so you needn't worry about Joey."

   "Jolly decent of you," Nina said. "And when you
do
 have your hols, everyone will be back at school. I hope they'll be awfully good ones," she added. Then she stared with a complete lack of manners, for Beth's face went pinker and pinker till even her neck and pretty ears were glowing.

   "Oh, bother you, Nina Rutherford!" she exclaimed at this point. "Go and get on with your practice and leave me and my affairs alone!" And she dashed out of the room. "Well!" Nina gasped, staring at the door which had slammed behind her. "What on earth's wrong with
her
?"

   She failed to solve the problem, so she took Beth's advice and sat down at the piano. A few scales and arpeggii to loosen her fingers; then she started on the
Tarantella
 and was lost to the world.

   Meantime, Beth went up to her own room where she cooled off her cheeks at the open window before turning to her work basket and the bag of mending. She sat down with a frock of Felicity's and began to mend a three-cornered rent with meticulous care though her mind was far away.

   As for Nina, having settled in to her work, she thought of nothing else. She would, of course, play from memory on the Monday, but there were two or three cadenzas that were not clear enough for her liking and she set to work on them, reading the music first to fix them more securely in her memory, then playing them, at first, slowly, then faster, until they were right up to time and rippling from her fingers with perfect evenness, every note receiving its proper value.

   This took half an hour. Then she closed the music and proceeded to play the whole thing right through, listening to herself as she had been taught, with an ear alert for any slips. Twice more she played it. Then she decided that she had done enough work on it for the moment and might enjoy it. She played it through once more with a look of relaxation and Beth, recovered from her blushes, heard her and dropped her work to listen with delight.

   "How marvellously Nina plays!" she thought. "She ought to do something jolly good when her training's finished. Those runs are just like running water."

   Nina finished and then drifted into Débussy's
Reflets Dans L'Eau
 which she played with a sensitiveness which spoke well for her understanding of the music. When it ended, there was a pause. Then she broke into a simple little air. She played jerkily, pausing now and then, making slight alterations and then going on. The air itself remained the same, but the harmonies were changed again and again.

   "What on earth is she playing at?" Beth wondered as she finished her darn and broke off the thread. "There, Felicity Josephine! That's your frock mended and I hope you'll manage to keep from ripping it like that again!"

   She ran her needle into her needlebook, shook out the frock and folded it and then went to the night nursery to put it away. That done, she ran up to the playroom where Mike was enjoying himself with an elementary Meccano set, made sure that he was all right, and went down again to her own room. The twins were out with the young girl known to the family as "The Coadjutor", but Mike had cut his knee in a fall the day before and his father had advised a day or two's rest from walks.

   Beth sat down by the window again and began to write a letter home. She was aware that Nina was still wrestling with whatever it was she was busy with.

   "Queer, she seems to be making such a mull of it!" she muttered to herself. "I'd have said it was easy enough."

   Meanwhile, Nina was hard at work. It was a gay little thing, written in six-eight time, with something of the gentle swing of a cradle in the rhythm. It showed very definitely the influence of Débussy and Ravel in the harmonization, but the air owed nothing to anyone later than Mozart. It had a good deal of tunefulness and gaiety. In fact, it was neither more nor less than a full-blown composition of her own, intended as a welcome to Joey's youngest daughter. Nina had often composed before for her own amusement and she was fond of improvising. This was by far the most ambitious thing she had ever attempted. She had scribbled it out in the rough and now she was engaged on polishing it. Presently, she decided that the first phrase was more or less right, seized her fountain pen, tore out the rough and began to jot it down in its raw form.

   She was so absorbed in what she was doing, that she never heard the sudden stir and bustle outside, nor Beth's light steps flying down the stairs. She finished what she was doing and then set the manuscript book back on the desk and played the passage with eager affection. Yes, she had more or less got what she wanted, though it still needed more polishing.

   Then the door of the Saal opened and there entered first, Beth with a beshawled bundle in her arms; then Dr. Maynard with an arm around his wife whose face was alight with laughter; lastly a nurse from the Sanatorium who had come to establish Joey in her home once more.

   Nina was still considering her composition. She knew that it was immature and that no publisher would have looked at it for a moment. But she did feel that it was a foreshadowing of what she might do later on when she had worked hard at her theory of music and learned the lessons life teaches. She could see that, though she had no idea what it was all there, however childishly set down. And it is no wonder that when she heard the noise behind her, she turned with a dazed face. It was fully a minute before she took in what was happening. Then she sprang to her feet.