A Genius at the Chalet School (2 page)

   Coming from the warmth of north Italy, Nina turned cold and shivery, despite the rugs he wrapped round her, and it is scarcely surprising that Lady Rutherford felt aghast when she saw the white-faced creature her husband nearly carried up the steps to the great door where she stood waiting to welcome them. As for the three Rutherford girls, seventeen-year-old Alix, and Anthea and Alison, the twins of sixteen, they didn't know what to make of her.
   After an evening in which they did their best to be friendly while she had lapsed back into unhappy reserve and silence, they met in the twins' bedroom out of which Alix's pretty room opened.
   "I'm awfully sorry for Nina," Alix said. "I can see she's awfully miserable, and it's been a ghastly day to come here for the first time of course; but I do hope Father doesn't mean to send her to Cecil's with us next term!"
   "You don't hope it more than we do!" Alison retorted, brushing hard at the thick red curls she had inherited from her father. "And another thing I hope is that Mother confiscates that awful black dress and the other black things she's wearing and puts her into something decent! She looks a complete freak as she is!"
   "Oh, Mother will see to that all right," Alix said serenely. "She told me before I came up that she must go through Nina's things and persuade her to leave off all that deadly mourning. After all, no one bothers much about it nowadays - and certainly not girls of Nina's age. Anyhow, for pity's sake, twins, be decent to her. Father says she's heartbroken over Cousin Alan's death and she really has no one else but us to look to. Don't rag her, whatever you do! I don't believe she'd understand it at all."
   "Probably not," Anthea agreed. "All right, Lal. We'll not tease. I should imagine," she went on thoughtfully, "that if she was roused sparks might fly."
   "Exactly! And, for everyone's sake, we don't want anything like that at present. Let her get accustomed to us." And Alix, who was a thoughtful girl, nodded at her sisters and said good-night and closed the communicating door.
   Meanwhile, Nina, in the pretty room at the end of the corridor which she had been told was hers for the future, tossed off her clothes, said her prayers hurriedly and then huddled under the bedclothes and cried till she could cry no more.

CHAPTER 3

"Nina, dear, do you know you've been at that piano for the last two hours?" Lady Rutherford shivered slightly as she spoke and Nina, looking up from the Bach fugue with which she had been wrestling, noticed it.
   "Are you cold, Cousin Yvonne? I suppose it
is
cold. I didn't notice it before."
   Lady Rutherford looked at her. "My dear girl, you look blue with cold! We must try to arrange something better than this for you. At present, come along into the morning-room. There's a good fire there and Alix has made cocoa. A hot drink will do you all the good in the world. Come along! Two hours at a time should be quite enough for anyone!" She shivered again and Nina reluctantly got up off the music-stool, closed her music, shut down the piano lids and followed her out of the room and along the winding passages to the little sitting-room which the Rutherfords mainly used.
   A glorious log fire was burning in the grate and, as she came near it, Nina realised for the first time how cold she really was. Her piano had arrived at Brettingham Park the day before and had been put into another small sitting-room together with an oilstove. The fuel shortage made it difficult to give her a fire and Lady Rutherford had hoped that this would be enough for the present. But the day had broken with a heavy January fog which seemed to seep through every crevice and chill the air everywhere. Clearly some other arrangement must be made. However, the first thing now was to see that she warmed up properly, and her cousin put her into a chair by the fire and insisted on her drinking the big cup of boiling hot cocoa Alix brought her.
   "I can't think how you can bear to do it, Nina," Alison said as she sipped her own cupful. "Two solid hours on end! Aren't you frozen to death?"
   "I never noticed it," Nina said simply.
   Alison stared and her twin said with a giggle, "Well, I'm glad
I
don't have to work like that! I should die of inanition in a week!"
   "It doesn't mean to you what it means to me," Nina replied shortly.
   "Well, at least you aren't going to starve any more," Lady Rutherford told her. "I'll see what we can do by to-morrow. In the meantime, Nina, no more practice to-day, please. We don't want you to celebrate coming to England by an attack of pneumonia! We must think of something to do this afternoon."
   Nina's face lengthened and she set down her half-empty cup. "Oh, Cousin Yvonne, I
must
practise! I'm getting all behind! Please don't stop me! I - I'll put on an extra woolly this afternoon and then I'll be warm enough."
   Lady Rutherford shook her head. "Not nearly warm enough! Drink up your cocoa while it's hot, dear. It'll do you more good than if it's lukewarm. Give her some more sugar, Anthea. Yes, dear; I mean it!"
   Nina had already learned that when her Cousin Yvonne spoke in that tone, she meant to be obeyed. She helped herself to the sugar and drained her cup, but she looked very woebegone. It seemed to her that no one here either knew or cared how she felt about her music. The chances are that she would have disobeyed Lady Rutherford, but when she went back, she found the door locked and the key gone. Nor could she get in at the window. That was latched and, in any case, it would have meant a climb. The house stood on a slope, the ground falling away to the back, and the room where her beloved Bechstein stood, was at the side and towards the back.
   As she realised this, anger grew in Nina. She felt that she must, she simply
must
be at work. She ran along to the drawing-room where they fifty-year old Broadwood which had been one of the wedding presents of Sir Guy's mother stood. But that room was even colder than the other and Lady Rutherford had foreseen that this might happen and locked that door, too. There was nothing left but the schoolroom and what Nina thought of the piano there would hardly bear repeating. It had withstood the thumping of the three Rutherford girls through the last seven years and more and thought it was kept tuned, it was tinny in tone and one or two of the notes were inclined to stick. Still, at this pitch, she felt that it would be better than nothing.
   Alas for Nina! When she reached the schoolroom, it was to find her younger cousins already there, playing Canasta. They had invited her to join them, but she had refused with a curtness that set their backs up and now they looked up at her entrance with most unwelcoming glances. As Anthea had said, if she felt as scornful as all that about cards, she needn't bother and neither need they.
   "Did you want anything, Nina?" Alix asked, politely.
   "Yes, I want to practise," Nina returned, flinging the words at her.
   "But Mother said you weren't to until to-morrow," Alison exclaimed.
   To judge from Nina's expression, that mattered less than nothing. "You none of you
understand
!" she cried. "I've done only two hours to-day and I must put in at least four! How can I get on if I don't?"
   "
One
day won't make all that difference," Alix told her. "You play marvellously now, anyhow. It won't hurt you to miss half your practice for once. Come along and join us and we'll teach you Canasta."
   "I can't play cards," Nina responded briefly.
   "We'll show you. Shove up, Anthea, and make room," Alix swept the cards already dealt into a pile and began to shuffle them together. "Come along, Nina. It's good fun and I know you'll enjoy it once you begin."
   But Nina was not card-minded. Her whole soul was filled with an overwhelming longing to feel the cold smoothness of the ivory keys under her finger-tips, and she was beginning to feel frantic because this longing was denied."
   "Oh, you don't
understand
!" she gasped. Then she swung round and fled for her own room where she flung herself on the bed and cried stormily.
   In the schoolroom, the three she had left eyed each other uncertainly for a moment. Then Alison spoke impatiently.
   "It's no use bothering. Deal the cards again, Alix. I suppose we must wash out what we'd gained and start over again. But I wish Father had never brought Nina back with him. Talk of a wild-cat! She looked as if she would fly at us the next moment!"
   Alix began to deal, but she did it slowly. "I don't like it," she said as she added the cards left over to the pack in the middle. "Nina looks awfully wretched and it
is
a beastly day. Father said she was frightfully upset about Cousin Alan and - oh, let's find her and see if we can think of something she
would
like to do."
   "She'll have gone to her own room to howl, I expect," Anthea replied sapiently. "Leave her alone, Alix. She'll hate it if you go barging in on her like that - I should myself, I know. Anyhow, Mother
said
she would try to arrange for that room to be better heated to-morrow. She'll just have to wait for it. But if being a musical genius means being an unbalanced as all that over it, then I'm thankful I'm not one! Your turn to begin, Alix."
   Alix was overruled, so no one went to Nina and she cried till she could cry no more and was shivering again, for though Sir Guy had had central heating put into the principal rooms and the hall before his marriage, there was none in the smaller bedrooms where the girls and the two boys who were the eldest of the family slept. Roger and Francis were both away from home at present, Roger with the Air Force and Francis in the Navy, and Nina had only seen their photographs.
   By the time four o'clock brought teatime, the young stranger was shaking with cold and misery and when Anthea, sent by her mother to call her cousin to tea, tapped at the door and came in, she was sufficiently alarmed to go flying back to the cosy morning-room to announce that Nina seemed to be ill.
   "How do you mean?" Lady Rutherford asked, getting to her feet.
   "Oh, she's all shivery and her teeth are chattering and she looks simply ghastly," Anthea said vaguely.
   "Where is she?"
   "In her bedroom, lying on the bed."
   "On - not
in
?" Lady Rutherford waited for no more, but went swiftly through the corridor and up the stairs to the pretty bedroom where she found Nina as Anthea had described her.
   Her first action was to switch on the little electric heater. Her next to hurry to the bathroom where she turned on a hot bath before she came back and made Nina undress and go and soak until she was warm again. By the time the girl had returned to her bedroom, it was comfortable and a couple of hot water bottles were in the bed with her nightdress wrapped round one of them. Lady Rutherford saw her into it and tucked her in before she departed to bring up hot tea and buttered toast, telling Alix to attend to her father and the other two until she could come back.
   By the time Nina had choked down the tea, she was warming up, but she could not touch the toast and her Cousin Yvonne did not try to force her. She set the cup aside, tucked the girl up once more with kindly words, and left her. A couple of dispirins in the tea would quiet her and relieve the headache which was the result of her passionate crying.
   "And now," Lady Rutherford said when she finally saw down to her own tea, "I want to know what started all this? Alix, you tell please."
   "I think it was partly she wanted to practise and couldn't," Alix said thoughtfully. "We were playing Canasta in the schoolroom and she came there and we asked her to play but she wouldn't."
   "Then she said we didn't understand," the younger twin put in, "and simply
hurtled
out of the room. Alix wanted to go after her but we said it wasn't any use."
   "You speak for yourself, John! You never said a word from first to last," Anthea rebuked her. "It was me that said she was probably howling her head off and she'd hate it if Alix went in and dug her out as she wanted to. Mother," she turned to her mother, "can't you fix up some way to hot that room enough to let her practise? It's the only thing she seems to want to do and it's ghastly having her hanging about looking miserable or furious all the time."
   Lady Rutherford eyes her prettiest daughter thoughtfully. "How much of this is for Nina, Anthea, and how much for your own comfort?"
   "Six and two threes," Anthea acknowledged, unashamed. "Honestly, Mother, it's spoiling the hols for us. I'm sorry enough for her because she's lost her father, but she really does seem crackers at times."
   "I like music," Alix put in, "but I'm not as crazy on it as all that."
   "You're not a genius, my good child," Sir Guy said, stirring his tea.
   "Alix plays jolly well - everyone says so," Anthea said resentfully. "Miss Carins thinks her the pick of the lot at school. I don't see that Nina is so awfully much better."
   "Oh, that's rot!" said Alix herself. "I can't touch her at music. I haven't anything like the - the execution she has. And I can't play so that it makes you all weepified as she did the other night in the drawing-room when she played that elegy thing. If Nina joins us at Cecil's, I'm quite prepared for Miss Carins falling all over her and forgetting all about me."
   "Yes -
is
she coming to Cecil's?" Alison asked her father.
   He shook his head. "She is not. I don't think she'd fit in and be happy there -"
   "Oh, but that's rubbish!" Anthea exclaimed. "It's a smashing school and all of us have been frightfully happy there. Why on earth shouldn't Nina?"
   "Well, for one thing, she wouldn't get all of the music she wants. Reverend Mother is excellent, but I met her in Newcastle yesterday and had a talk with her and she told me that she made it a rule to allow no girl to give more than two hours a day to music as a good solid education must come before all accomplishments."
   "Yes," Alix said thoughtfully. "But then, isn't it
more
than just an accomplishment with Nina? It seems almost as if it were
part
of her - like a hand or an eye."
   "Where
is
she going?" Alison demanded.
   "You'll hear that as soon as I've told
her
," her father told her. "She ought to hear first. But I'll tell you this much. She's going to a school where they allow for girls who are more than usually talented in any of the arts. They've had two or three near-geniuses before this and they seem to know how to tackle them. I'm sending Nina there and I must say I devoutly hope she'll settle down and be happy.
I
don't know how to handle her; that's certain!"
   "Is it anywhere near at hand" Anthea asked in more subdued tones than usual. Her conscience was accusing her of jealousy and unkindness where her cousin was concerned and she didn't like it.
   "Not in this country at all."
   "Abroad? In France, then?" Alison exclaimed; but Sir Guy refused to tell them any more and insisted on the subject being dropped.
   Nina was kept in bed for the rest of the day and was very glad to be there. When she woke up from the sleep the dispirin had given, she felt weak and tired though her head was better. Her Cousin Yvonne knew that part of the trouble was the shock of her father's death and felt that rest and quietness might do more for her than even her beloved piano. So next day, she kept Nina to her room and forbade the other girls to go near her. She told the girl that she was making arrangements to have the room heated adequately so that she might practise four hours a day when she was released and Nina was satisfied with that. On the Sunday she came back into the family life again and on the Monday, when she went to seek her piano, she found that the fireplace, which had been boarded up, had been opened and a big wood fire, lit before breakfast, made the room cosy and comfortable. Coal and coke were a tremendous difficulty, but there was plenty of old wood in the park and the main difficulty would be for Nina to remember to keep her fire going properly.
   "Now," Lady Rutherford said as the girl exclaimed delightedly, "this fire will be lit every day and you may have your hour hours practice on one condition."
   "Yes, Cousin Yvonne?" But Nina spoke absently. Her whole being was thrilled with the knowledge that she could practise to her heart's content now.
   Lady Rutherford looked at her absorbed face and guessed that she had only half-heard. "Nina!" she said sharply. "Pay attention to me for a minute, please."
   Nina woke up and knew that she had been rude. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I didn't mean to be rude. What is it, Cousin Yvonne?"
   "It's this. You can practise for four hours every day now, but it must be no more. And you may do it only on the understanding that you remember to keep the fire going as long as we have this bitter weather." She glanced out of the window at the mixture of rain and sleet which a north wind was dashing against the panes.