"MADDY"
Remove II. B had French for first lesson next morning; Joey was
informed of the fact during getting-up-time next morning by an almost
aggressively friendly Sybil, Barbara, and Noreen.
"Who takes us?" Joey asked, a little nervously. French was by no means
her strong point.
"Maddy, of course--Mademoiselle de Lavernais."
"What's she like?"
Noreen screwed up her face. "Awfully old and dried up, and a sort of
front thing on her head in tight curls."
"Can't think why Miss Conyngham doesn't have somebody younger," Syb
chimed in. "No one else is really old at the Coll. I bet Maddy's sixty
if she's a day."
"More," Barbara suggested. "Look at her wrinkles. She ought to be
pensioned off or something; I should think she jolly well deserves
it--she's been here more than twenty years someone told me."
"Is she nice?" asked Joey, thinking anxiously of irregular verbs and
elusive idioms.
"Nice!--you wait till you go a howler in form!"
"Having me on?" demanded Joey, with instant suspicion.
"No, you stupid; can't you see when we're talking sense?" Noreen said.
"I ought to know; I'm always in her black books. She simply can't bear
me."
"Says Noreen doesn't think or something," Syb contributed.
"As if anyone could be bothered to think right through a stuffy French
conversation class."
"_What?_" shrieked Joey. "It isn't French conversation, is it?"
"Isn't it just?--Maddy says heaps of girls can write French decently,
but hardly anyone can speak it; so every Wednesday morning Remove II.
B has the treat--I don't think!--of conversing with her in French, and
you mayn't just say, '_Il pluit_,' or something like that, and then dry
up; you've got to converse, and she goes on till she drags it out of
you."
"Does everyone?" asked Joey, palpitating.
"She picks the girls. Pretty sure to go for you as you're new. She'll
want to know what your French is like."
"She won't take long to find out that it's utterly hopeless," Joey
remarked, hunting for her shoes, which had gone under the bed.
"I say! wouldn't it be rather a rag to put Jocelyn--Joey, I mean--up
to some perfectly awful French that would take half the lesson to
correct?" suggested Noreen, of the fertile brain. "Then _we'd_ get a
rest."
"Brainy plan," approved Barbara. "But would you mind, Joey? You can't
get into a row, you see, because she can't know if you really know any
French or not; she'll only just point out to you where you're wrong, in
the kind of tone which implies that they wouldn't keep idiots of your
kind in France at any price, and you'll have to say, '_Merci bien_,' or
is it '_Beaucoup_'?--I never can remember which--and '_Je comprends_',
or is it '_C'est comprenné_'?--one _does_ get out in the hols!--at
proper intervals, and look intelligent----"
"Never mind if it's a bit of a strain," Noreen contributed, and Joey,
having a shoe all ready in her hand, not unnaturally hurled it at the
speaker. Noreen dodged, and it got the window, and made a huge star.
"My Sunday hat and Dublin Castle!" Noreen exclaimed, craning round from
her seat on the bed to examine the mischief. "You've gone and done it
now, Joey--at least it was most my fault really. I'll tell Matron that."
"Rot! I threw the shoe," Joey said, rather dismayed. "I don't mind
about Matron; she can't do much worse than the ghastly stuff she's been
giving me--at least I hope she doesn't stop the beastly window out of
my pocket-money?"
"No; they don't do that sort of thing here," Noreen said. "They just
hold forth, and tell you carelessness is a sort of dishonesty and that
sort of thing. You'll have to say you're sorry."
"Well, I am."
"And Matron will point out you've behaved like a kindergarten kid, and
if she were Tiddles she wouldn't be surprised at your wanting to throw
your shoes about. Comprenny?"
"Righto--I shall stick it," Joey assured her.
"They don't nag here--much," added the experienced Noreen for her
comfort; "when you've been jawed or punished or both, it's over and
done with. What about the French? Think you could do anything?"
"I might try," Joey said, with caution.
"But there won't be time now to put her up to it all," objected
Barbara. "Why didn't we think of it earlier?"
"Why not let Joey, as she's new, try it on some other way?" put in
Noreen. "Ask Maddy something that means a long screed in answer. Oh
yes, I know she squashed me flat for doing it, but that was ages back,
and she knew me and my reputation. Now here's a nice, innocent, and
probably good, new girl."
"Don't call me names!" interrupted Joey.
"I said _probably_; well, try and turn Maddy on, in all innocence and
ignorance, my child, and the Form will love you for evermore. We are
always absolutely stuck for subjects the first French day of term."
The prayer-bell rang insistently. "What would she _like_ to talk about,
do you think?" asked Joey desperately, catching at Noreen's sleeve;
"the War?"
"Try the Franco-German affair; she was probably a blushing thing in a
crinoline about that time--she'll enjoy telling us about it if we can
only get her started."
"I'll try," Joey said valiantly and breathlessly upon the stairs, and
she worried out the French for her request during breakfast.
Maddy met Remove II. B at nine o'clock precisely. Joey watched her
mount the daïs with a sinking heart. She was a little lady, who made
no pretence of being anything but elderly, with a dried-up skin that
pouched under her black eyes, and the rather dusty "front" upon which
the girls had commented did not match the hair at the back of her
small well-set head. She was shabbily dressed, and all the little
air of distinction with which she wore her clothes could not make
them becoming. Joey decided that she should not like Mademoiselle de
Lavernais.
Mademoiselle wasted no time in preliminaries. She said "Good-morning"
to her class in clear, ringing accents, and they responded very
properly. Then the real business began. In rapid French she mentioned
that she hoped to hear much interesting conversation from the Form this
morning, and--"Barbara, we should all like to learn your opinion on the
Channel Tunnel."
Barbara became pink. "Je crois--bien--que c'est une bonne chose pour
lesquels qui souffre de mal de mer," she blundered unhappily.
Mademoiselle threw up her hands in horror.
"Is it that I am taking the babies of the kindergarten?" she inquired.
"How often am I to tell you that you nefare, _nefare_ translate
literally from the English idiom to the French. Noreen, let me hear
you."
Noreen cast an agonised appeal on Joey. "What I think about the Channel
Tunnel, Mademoiselle?" she asked.
"En Français, si'l vous plaît, mon enfant."
Noreen stared wildly around her for inspiration. "Je pense--je
pense----"
"Continuez," said Mademoiselle inexorably.
"Je pense--que je n'ai pas des pensées sur le sujet--encore," poor
Noreen informed her miserably.
"Fourteen years old, and without a thought on a subject so concerning
the welfare of your great nation," Mademoiselle said, with slow scorn.
"It is a pity almost that you have a nation, Noreen. You should belong
to some miserable little German State, where la patrie is represented
by the gendarme with his big fist, and the tax-collector. Find another
subject that you can talk of--some of those that figure in the paper
during your silly season will suit you well, I make no doubt."
Noreen, scarlet about the ears, was obviously unable to find a subject
at all. Perhaps it was not wonderful! Joey, burning with resentment for
her friend, rushed into the breach.
"Il serait tres"--she tried to think of the word for improving,
but failing to see even a glimpse of it, unfortunately substituted
"_amusante_, si vous voulez dire á nous l'histoire d'une chose ou deux
que vous avez vue pendant la guerre de soixante-dix quand les allemands
et les français...."
Mademoiselle swung round upon the daïs and looked hard at Joey,
standing up in her place, rather frightened and very floundering about
the French, but sturdily determined to go through with the business she
had undertaken. Mademoiselle heard her out, with no comment bad or good
till she reached the word "français," then suddenly her heavy black
eyes gave a great flash.
"You are, I think, a new girl, and therefore scarcely know, perhaps,
how great an impertinence you commit," she said very quietly, but in a
voice that was more dreadful than if she had screamed. "But any girl
that is worthy of the name of English should understand that to ask a
Frenchwoman, who has seen and remembers, to _amuse_ her with stories of
the time when France was trodden in the dust by _swine_, is to make an
insult that can nefare be forgotten. Leave the classroom; I will not
teach such a girl. Sybil, impart to me your views on the best length
for summer holidays--perhaps that will not be beyond your range of
intellect."
Joey heard no more; somehow she reached the door and stumbled out,
feeling so indelibly disgraced that she had serious thoughts of taking
the next train home. Now she came to think about it, it _was_ a
hopeless thing that she had said; how would she have liked it if the
girls had asked her, Joey, to tell them a funny story about prisoners
of war in German hands. Of course they were the same Germans--at least
the fathers of the horrible Huns who had tortured the wounded and
prisoners, and hurt little children like Tiddles. And Joey had used
that word _amusante_, when Mademoiselle remembered things--perhaps as
bad as the things which Mums had never wished the children to read in
the newspapers.
"If I knew more French I shouldn't have put it so _horribly_," poor
Joey said to herself; but it didn't occur to her to blame Noreen and
Syb and Barbara who had suggested this unfortunate plan in the first
instance. She wandered up and down the passage in a kind of frenzy; she
would have to go home, but honour demanded one should first wipe the
floor with oneself before the outraged Maddy.
Joey thought no French lesson could ever have been half so long; she
couldn't go away from that rather dreary and viewless passage, because
she might miss Maddy when she came out. The temporary mistress who was
taking Miss Craigie's place would go to the classroom as soon as Maddy
had finished; that was all Joey knew.
At last there were steps along the passage, but it was the Senior
Prefect who came in sight. She had a little three-cornered note in her
hand, and was evidently in a hurry.
"Is Mademoiselle still with Remove II. B?" she asked briskly, and then
as Joey murmured "Yes," she looked at her.
"It's the scholarship kid, isn't it? But why aren't you in class?"
"I was turned out," Joey mentioned in a low voice.
"Then you must have been behaving like a young silly," Ingrid told her
crushingly; and then perhaps she saw the utter misery in Joey's face.
"But there's no need to be so tragic about it--do you suppose you're
the only girl who has ever been turned out of a classroom? Tell
Mademoiselle you're sorry and won't do it again--and don't do it again,
that's all!"
With which excellent advice the Senior Prefect knocked at the classroom
door, and went in with her note, leaving Joey outside to wonder
miserably if Ingrid would condescend to speak to her at all if she knew.
Ingrid came out, and passed Joey with a good-natured nod. A minute
later there were other steps in the passage, and the temporary
mathematical mistress, rather blown about from a long bicycle ride on
a windy day, hurried down towards the classroom, nervously afraid of
being late.
"Do you know whether Mademoiselle de Lavernais has come out yet?" she
asked.
"No, she hasn't."
"Are you waiting for my class? Are you in Remove II. B by the way?" the
mistress said.
Joey foresaw rocks and shoals. "I'm so new I don't know what I'm to
take and what I'm not," she temporised.
"Well, come in with me and we'll see. The other girls will know,"
suggested the mistress. She laid a friendly hand on Joey's shoulder.
Joey wriggled away, with a deplorable lack of manners, and bolted up
the passage, as far as the row of little music-rooms, with their double
doors. She couldn't let herself be dragged into a maths class without
at least trying to make Mademoiselle see that she had not meant to be
as horribly unfeeling as she had sounded.
A door opened and shut: steps--rather tired, halting steps--came
towards her. Joey screwed up her courage, and made a desperate plunge
in the direction of the small, black, shapeless figure advancing
towards her reading a note.
"Do you mind if I say it in English, because it is frightfully hard
to say what you want in French," she blurted out. "I know I was
unspeakable, but I didn't mean it truly, and I couldn't think of any
French word except _amusante_, truthfully--French _is_ such a slippy
language when you're trying to talk. I didn't mean the Franco-German
business could be funny--and my Father was killed in this war!"
Mademoiselle de Lavernais had stopped reading her note when Joey began
to speak, but she said nothing at all till Joey had finished. Her black
eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Joey's face, so fixedly that Joey
wondered vaguely through all her misery if she had an ink smudge there.
Mademoiselle suddenly laid a hand on her shoulder, and drew her into
one of the little music-rooms.
"For me perhaps also the words I used said what I did not altogether
mean," she said slowly, "though I have not your excuse, my child, of
finding your language 'slippy,' having been in this country since I
was more young than you. I think I was not just to say you were not
English, because you did not understand."
"Thank you awfully," Joey murmured.
"And your father has died for his country?" Mademoiselle went on. "Mine
died when I was more young than you, but that was of a broken heart."
"Because of the Germans winning?" Joey ventured.
"My home was in Alsace," said Mademoiselle. "You--how would you have
felt if the great Foch, the great Haig, and the great Americans had
_not_ conquered with the help of God, and your home had been handed
over to the Hun."
"I don't know," Joey said. It was unthinkable.
"You don't know; you are fortunate. I had to know. But that is over,
thank God; we have waited almost fifty years, but it is over."
Mademoiselle de Lavernais seemed to have forgotten her, Joey thought;
her dull black eyes had lit up--her plain, tired face was quite
transformed. Joey wondered whether she ought to slip out and go to
the maths mistress--another apology would certainly be needed there.
Fortunately, Mademoiselle came back to earth in a minute. "But what
do I talk of? We should both be at our classrooms, you, I fear, will
be in trouble in that you are late. My class will merely rejoice that
cross old Maddy has given them a little longer of liberty to chatter in
English. Should you not be at mathematics? Come with me."
She put her hand again on Joey's shoulder, and they went down the
passage to Classroom Remove II. B together. Mademoiselle knocked and
went in.
"Miss Musgrave, you will of your kindness, I hope, forgive the lateness
of this pupil, who was detained by me not by her fault," she said. "The
blame is all mine; I make you the apologies."
"Oh, of course; that is all right, Mademoiselle," Miss Musgrave said
nervously. "Take your place, please; what is your name?"
"Jocelyn."
"Take your place, Jocelyn."
Joey couldn't thank Mademoiselle in the middle of a class, but the look
she gave her was eloquent enough. Mademoiselle smiled back, before she
bowed to Miss Musgrave and departed to her own class.
Remove II. B discussed the extraordinary incident of that smile all
through the interval for milk and buns, three-quarters of an hour later.