She had blushed. "I can scarcely do that now. You see" —turning her glance sensitively away—"a first salary cheque has arrived."
"Certainly. You're on the staff. I told you."
"But I can't take money for nothing."
"You're revising, aren't you? Looking up new methods? Working out time-tables? Making wall charts?" As he spoke he had taken up a weather picture she had just completed. The days were empty circles waiting to be filled in according to how Nature treated them, blue for a balmy day, yellow for a hot, grey for overcast weather, black when it rained.
There were many similar charts, all the product of Gerry's quick imagination and instinctive knowledge of children.
He put the charts down in silent satisfaction, but Geraldine, waiting for the spoken word, felt her cheeks grow hot. Perhaps they were not good, she had no pretensions as an artist, but at least they were clear and a child would understand.
She gathered the charts hastily. "I don't like charity, Mr. Manning," she said.
"I was not aware I was giving it. Very well, then, we shall find you a task. You can help with the enrolling next week, go into Marlborough, travel out with the pupils, interview new parents and discover their offspring's bent."
Gerry had always done this, but she did not tell him. Mrs. Ferguson had frankly disliked her role of wife of the H.M. and been glad for Gerry, to take over. Now it appeared she was to continue with the task.
The old-termers, as usual, were to arrive a day before
the new boys. On Tuesday morning Gerry was up early to catch the bus into town.
The Northern Mail came steaming into Marlborough Station. One moment the country platform was empty and then it was filled with boys.
All sorts of boys, dark, fair, red-haired, sandy. Tall boys, small boys, the traditional Billy Bunters long associated with midnight hampers, the thin agile monkeyish variety whom one moment you had beside you and the next you had not. Mark Berry was of the last variety. Three times Gerry lost him, and on the third occasion she did more than any punishment could have done, she took his hand.
"Aw, gee, Miss Prosset."
"It's your own fault, Mark. If I didn't keep hold of you, you'd be stored on the city-bound train along with the down-luggage."
"Would I? Fins!" Mark looked thoughtful and Gerry tightened her hand.
Among the familiar red and green hatbands was one plain grey one, and its owner was taller than the rest.
"Neville," she called, and the lean young sports master shouldered through the boys and came up to her.
"Good to see you again, Geraldine," he grinned.
They shouted to each other above the babble of young voices. Gerry gathered that Neville had known the Prossets' new turn of events but, like the rest of the informed, had not spoken of them. "I had troubles of my own," he said.
"What sort?"
"Ferguson used to leave the P.T. programme entirely to me."
"Why not? It's your territory."
Neville shrugged good-humouredly. "This new bloke's different. He wants to know everything. I had to demonstrate practically every reason why I had graduated at phys. ed."
"And the result?"
"An altered course, Gerry—well, slightly altered. The school by the sea must live up to its name. More emphasis on swimming instead of footer. Some talk about a lifesaving team. Resuscitation certificates for all but the smallest pupils."
"They will be my pupils," interrupted Gerry. She told Neville how she was to become a teacher.
"Fellow staff," he beamed, and shot out his hand.
Gerry took it with a murmured, "United we stand, divided we—" then divided herself hurriedly from Neville in search of Mark, who had taken the opportunity of the hand-shaking to disappear again from sight.
Being a perceptive person she looked first and successfully in the waiting down-train on the companion station. Among the city-bound luggage she found young Berry, and hauled him out.
"Aw, gee, Miss Prosset," he complained as once more he was compelled to take her hand.
When she got back Neville Carter had gone to check up on the omnibuses that would take the boys to Breffny Inlet and thence to Galdang. Someone else was waiting for her, though. A tall, fair, sensitive-looking boy.
"Elliott—" Gerry said.
He stepped forward eagerly, his eyes never leaving her face. This was Elliott's senior year. He was nearly eighteen. She had not known him from a child as she had known most of the older students. He came from one of the Pacific Islands, and because of the travelling had not been enrolled until he was well advanced. She liked Elliott Bethel, though she found she could not feel as easy with him as she could with his contemporaries. Probably that was because she had never run bare-legged beside him, scampered over rocks, joined in crab hunts.
All the same he was a nice boy and she was fond of him, and though she knew with a nervous certainty that before he left he would undoubtedly propose to her and when she refused be heartrendingly bereft, her heart opened up when he spoke feelingly—and a little bitterly—on losing her father as his teacher. "I need him, Miss Geraldine," he said.
The blue eyes, almost lilac-blue like the horizon at Galdang, decided Gerry, looked unwaveringly into hers. She thought of the Professor gazing into that horizon at an emerging ship and saying, "Bringing onyx and turtle fins, cinnamon and joss sticks," and being rewarded by eyes like these.
"Thank you, Elliott," she smiled.
Elliott would have said more, or if he had not said it he would have lingered still gazing, but Neville had organized transport and begun seating the boys.
Gerry found herself in a top deck with fifty juniors. "Did you know we shall be in your house?" she tom them.
"Why, isn't Prossy—beg pardon, Miss Gerry—isn't Sir being Head?"
"No," said Geraldine, "he is writing a book instead." They were impressed, but more interested in Mr. Ferguson's successor.
"Who is he?"
"A Mr. Manning, boys."
"An all-right cove?"
". . . Yes," Gerry said.
The next day she did the whole business all over again, but this time it was more arduous. There was no Mark Berry, admittedly, but there were words of encouragement to be given to new pupils, histories of allergies, weak chests and little idiosyncrasies to listen to from the anxious lips of fond parents.
When they reached Galdang, Damien Manning was there to help her. Together they suggested academic courses for some, commercial for others, prevailed upon the boys who as yet admitted no preference to wait until a path was indicated. Damien assured the parents that it always was.
Afternoon tea was a matter of a biscuit half-eaten and a brew long gone cold as yet another mother appealed to Gerry or Damien.
At last they departed, and their half-tearful, half-eager sons were shepherded away by the different house matrons to be allotted their beds.
"Come, Miss Prosset," said Manning, and again she felt that authoritative arm on hers as he guided her into his office.
There was a silver tray on the table, and on it was a silver tea service and a dainty offering—cucumber sandwiches, seed cake, tea, by the tantalizing aroma, of a special blend.
"Perhaps you'd prefer something more filling?" he asked unblinkingly. "Toasted muffins? Strawberry jam?"
Gerry returned uncomfortably, "I've already taken tea with the parents of the boys."
"One sip, two bites of biscuit. Sit down, Miss Prosset. If you feel the way I do, you're ready for this."
She was ready. She drank it gratefully. "It's nice not to look interested," she admitted. "It's nice not to smile."
Damien did not pretend to misunderstand her. "That's parents for you," he said.
"I like parents."
"I do myself—if only their sons were boys."
"Aren't they?"
"They are delicate souls. They have eggshell personalities. They are angels from heaven, they are the gossamer of which dreams are made—now they are go
ing away from home. Of course it's losing them that makes mothers like that, or perhaps the heady intoxication of being without the little devils for a few months, but oh, if only one offspring was an ordinary, uninhibited, un-allergic, insensitive little boy."
"They all are," submitted Gerry, "and you'd be the same yourself if you were saying goodbye for the first time to a son."
"Probably I'll never do that," said Manning, passing his cup for a second issue.
"No son?" She poured and passed the cup back.
"No need to send him away," he corrected, "he can have his schooling at home at Galdang."
There was an easy confidence about him, as though he knew he would stay on and marry and have that son.
She wondered if he was engaged to be married. Her experience of school boards had been that they preferred their headmasters to be married and to be fathers. Mr. Ferguson was the only one she could recall who had been childless, yet he, at least, had been wed.
The unfairness of a bachelor holding the position that should have been the Professor's struck her afresh.
"Perhaps," she said acidly, "your son will be a daughter."
"In which case I certainly shall be saying goodbye then. I would not have my daughter educated among five hundred boys."
Although he said it lightly she took it as a personal barb.
"There were five hundred and fifteen, and I fail to see how it harmed me."
He laughed lazily at that, leaning over and taking a sandwich, eyeing her as the angry colour flooded her cheeks.
"You always jump to conclusions, don't you, Miss
Prosset? I did not mention your name. The fact that I
have fixed ideas on what I'd want for my daughter is, not
to indicate I find anything unwanted in my female staff."
She had risen to her feet. "Thank you for the tea."
He brushed the thanks aside, persisting, "After all, there is no connection at all, although you seem determined to find one."
She looked at him in inquiry, and he explained with a teasing sidelong glance, "There is no connection between you and my future daughter."
She found she could not meet the humour, accept the teasing. The inference that it had amused him to find in her quick rejoinder made her dislike him more than ever.
Words trembled on her lips. In another moment she would have called him "impudent" . . . "impertinent" .. . and had not the telephone interrupted them she might have left in the ignominious position of having spoken her mind to the Head.
As it was she went politely, docilely, on tiptoe, so as not to interrupt his conversation.
But the rebellion was as clear as if it had been spoken. It shone unmistakably, thought Manning, out of those acorn eyes with the warm gold flecks.
CHAPTER VII
SLOWLY the school settled down. Slowly the old hands stopped regretting their month of freedom from books. Slowly the new boys lost their scared, bewildered look.
It had been a rule of Mr. Ferguson's that there was to be no home leave and no visitors for the month following the beginning of a new term. Parents, he had found, had an unsettling effect on still not-quite-settled students. "Just as they are about to 'jell', they stir them up again," he had maintained, and he had been firm over that month of "staying put".
Gerry was not surprised when Manning upheld this rule. She could see its wisdom. But she was surprised when he
went even further and actually forbade her to gather to her the smaller, newer, lonelier ones for cheer-up sessions of buns and lemonade, a few forbidden sweets and a lot of unforbidden love.
Unforbidden? But those days were over. Mr. Manning, it appeared, did forbid love.
He startled her one morning as she came up the hill from Breffny Inlet. She remembered the last time he had stepped out on her like this. He had been waiting behind an oleander and he had a switch in his hand. Today he had no switch, but he wore the same thunderous look.
"Miss Prosset, are you not aware that the school is more or less undergoing a probationary period?"
"What do you mean, Mr. Manning?"
"Home leave is cancelled, no visitors are allowed."
"I had no intention of smuggling any of the boys out, or smuggling their parents in."
"But you had an intention of defeating the purpose of the rule." He looked at the bottles of lemonade in her basket, the big bag of buns. He must have been watching her walking up from Mr. Felix's store, she thought, and with difficulty she bit back an angry retort.
After a few moments, she said, too innocently, "I don't understand you, Mr. Manning."
"You understand perfectly—and so do I. I understand that you are deliberately undermining a first and valuable lesson, that lesson of remaining upright and unaided on one's own two feet.
"These boys are kept within bounds, almost in isolation, one might say, for a direct and distinct purpose—the purpose of acclimatizing and accustoming them. And they will do that far quicker and with fewer pangs, Miss Prosset, if you refrain from proffering your props and sops."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean your loving words and your sugar buns to defeat my purpose. What good is done towards making them self-reliant is undone by your mawkish petting and appetite-ruining sweetmeats. I forbid any more of it, and I had thought better of your good sense."
She was white with barely-concealed rage. She had walked the mile to the village with nothing but love in her heart. But love was a commodity that this man could not and never would understand. To him every emotion was
a piece of mechanism, a typewriter, perhaps, an adding machine preparing long statements of credits and debits, all operated in the knowledge that they must make sense, that they must add up.
She said stiffly, "I'm sorry."
"That's not enough; you must promise you will not do it again."
In a gust of temper she took out the buns and, walking to the edge of the cliff, hurled them over. The lemonade and sweetmeats followed suit.
"Are you satisfied, Mr. Manning?"
"I am satisfied that you are a bad-tempered, shockingly spoiled person."
"That is one thing the boys won't be, isn't it? There will be no spoiling for them."
"There will be tolerance, fair play, justice."
"Harshness, rigidity, lack of understanding as well." "When I want your opinion, Miss Prosset, I shall ask for it."
"When you want it, Mr. Manning, you will know where not to come."
Before he could pull her up for her rudeness she had fled along the track. She was breathless when she reached the Meadow House.
As she passed down the hall a figure stepped out. To her surprise she saw it was Elliott Bethel. "Why, Elliott," she said, "shouldn't you be at class?"
He hesitated, the lilac-blue eyes asking, appealing, adoring. Except for the colour, thought Gerry, they might have been the eyes of a small worshipping pup.
"I came over to see the Professor," the boy proffered. "I couldn't find him "
"He's in the study, Elliott, at work on his book. He only takes two periods now, from nine to eleven."
"Yes," said Elliott, but still he did not move.
"Would you like me to take you to him?"
"No, Miss Geraldine, it doesn't matter, really." "But you came to ask him something."
"Nothing so important. It was just—well, I can't seem to concentrate under Mr. Dawson as I did with Professor Prosset. He—he doesn't understand me. I can't absorb what he says."
"Mr. Dawson is a good teacher, Elliott."
"Oh, yes, I know that, but—"
They were getting nowhere—at least, Geraldine was getting nowhere. Elliott was getting nearer the kitchen, towards which Gerry had made a tentative move with the purpose of unpacking the few remaining things in her basket.
"Is there anything more, Elliott?"
"No—no, Miss Gerry."
"Then perhaps you'd better go back."
The boy paused, gave a half-hearted, "Yes,
perhaps I'd better," and retraced his steps slowly away from the Meadow House.
Gerry watched him, then marched along the corridor to the study.
"Will I be intruding, Father?"
"Come in, my pet."
She gave him a lurid account of Manning's intervention, with emphasis on his harshness and lack of understanding, his rigidity in his dealings with small boys who, everyone knew, should be handled with loving care.
He laughed at the buns and the lemonade, but his face, when he had finished laughing, was sober.
"He's right, you know, Gerry. I always thought you did the wrong thing, but if Ferguson didn't mind, who was I to say?"
"Who are you to say now?" she flung bitterly, "a part-time junior teacher."
"Geraldine!"
"I'm sorry, Dad, but I just can't stomach it. Not when the man over you is him."
"He's over you, too, remember."
"Yes." She went to stand at the window. The bluebells lit up the down-hill with a warm azure. There were cottony cowslips between them, shining like pale gold.
For some unexplained reason she did not tell her father about Elliott. Instead, she said, "Dad, how are your last term's students going?"
"Excellently, I should say—or they should do. Dawson's a fine man and a far better teacher than poor old Pross." "Dad!"
"I mean it, Gerry. He gets down to brass tacks, and that, like it or not, is what gets kids through examinations—mathematics variety, anyway. I expect you can let your
head go a little with history or free composition, but geometry and trig are precisely geometry and trig, and when old codgers go quoting Hovey's Sea Gypsy, go bringing onyx and turtle fins—"
"Cinnamon and joss sticks," giggled Gerry, despite herself.
"Into mathematics, it's time they were pensioned off." "I don't know whether you're right, Dad," said Gerry slowly.
"I know, Geraldine."
"But there's always the individual. Boys like—well, like Elliott Bethel, perhaps."
He looked at her shrewdly. "There's nothing extraordinary about Elliott, he'd just like there to be, that's all. He has an average brain and an average capacity and in a year he'll be over all this."
Will You Surrender? Page 5