"So is she," sniffed Cora with open dislike, "but I'll do what I can." She went indoors.
A girl sauntered out. Even in slacks and butcher boy sweater she was still soignée. She had ash-blonde curls, blue eyes and an appraising stare. She appraised Gerry. She appraised her lengthily, and Gerry became acutely aware of the faded cotton dirndl that was sufficient for her and Tom's rock-climbing, the sandshoes that gave a good grip, the rather rumpled acorn hair.
When Manning came out the girl still stood there. It did not make it easier for Gerry to blurt out her request.
"Take Tom down to Sydney! Why, Miss Prosset? Is he homesick?"
"Even if he was, he would not tell."
"You are amusing him sufficiently?"
A gust of temper blew through Gerry. "Why do you think I'm taking him out every day?" she said.
Her eyes said more. They scorned, upbraided, reproached him. Yet all. Manning rejoined was a lazy, "You must not let him become bored."
"I want to take him down to his mother."
"I'm afraid that is inadvisable."
"Why, Mr. Manning?"
"Mrs. Betts thinks it might be unsettling. Besides, there is her work---"
"If I had known he was to be cooped up here he could have gone home with Elliott."
"He could have applied for consideration to go home with Bethel, you mean. I believe you are exaggerating, as
usual, when you complain of 'cooping' the boy, Miss Prosset. I've seen the pair of you on the beach. You've enjoyed yourselves."
"So have you." Gerry spoke before she knew it.
The girl turned sharply. The man, whose lips had twisted up in a spontaneous grin, wiped off the smile and was suitably stern, instead.
"I don't like the idea of Thomas going down when his mother does not wish it."
"Of course she wishes it. Can't you know she is yearning for it as much as he is?"
A thoughtful pause from Manning, then, "I suppose, Miss Prosset, if I forbid it you will still do it, and I shall have the job of punishing young Tom."
"Not if it was my fault, surely."
"But punishing Tom would punish you, wouldn't it? Besides, you have a happy knack of evading your own punishment, so it would have to be Tom."
The girl was growing impatient.
"Damien, aren't you ever coming?"
"Presently, Cynthia, I won't be long."
He turned back.
"All right, Miss Prosset, you may go down in the morning. It's against Mrs. Betts's judgment, but three hearts, hers, Tom's, and yours, can't be wrong."
"Thank you," said Gerry, and she wheeled away from the headmaster. She felt the girl's stare once more as she made her way to the Meadow House, but it did not bother her.
It might be a blue, transparent, breathlessly lovely morning, but it was nothing to the news she carried for Tom, and she could look back on Harvest Home Island and no longer wish she was there.
She broke the good tidings. Together they consulted the time-tables, sent a wire.
"It will only be for a few hours," she reminded him "Yes, but I'll be seeing me Mum."
They rose early and hurried down to Breffny, they took a bus to Marlborough and the morning train south.
Here, Tom took over. He knew what tram, what stopping-place. He thought nothing of the twists of the tortuous little alleys. In no time he was clanging the knocker. In no time he was in the arms of his Mum.
They spent three happy hours together in the weather-stained, dingy little room. It was a poor holiday treat, considered Gerry, yet for Thomas Betts it was three hours of heaven. And it was that for his Mum.
". . . I didn't mean to have him . . . it was hard, but I thought it better . . . but now he's here I'm glad, Miss Prosset, oh, I'm glad he's come."
And how glad was Geraldine.
Later she was to clasp her hands in sheer thankfulness that at least they had that much time together, Mrs. Betts and Thomas.
She sat in the humble kitchen, the cheap clock ticking clumsily.
Tick, tick, tick, tick . . . Now there was only an hour left. And it was to be their final hour, though neither of them knew it.
It was to be the last hour with each other for Thomas and his Mum.
CHAPTER X
AS was always the case the old boys returned first, the new pre-prep boys the day after.
This time Geraldine did not go into Marlborough to greet them. As they were such little fellows their parents brought them themselves.
There was a great deal of howling from the future members of the new schoolhouse, a lot of swallowed sobs from the mums, a few sniffs from the dads.
Gerry thought it a shame to enrol such babies, but in many instances, she learned, the innovation was a godsend .. . people like Mrs. Smith with a sick mother to nurse, the Browns who had been transferred to a branch considered unsuitable to the health of children, Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds who were anticipating twins.
Childlike, the boys soon forgot their woes in the novelty of a new environment. They looked at each other with
fellow feeling. At least, their glances said, we are in the same boat.
The junior school flocked around them as they had around Thomas. Some of the new boys were bigger than Tom, some smaller. One, yelped Warren Phillips, must have just been hatched.
Gerry divided them back to their schools and directed Tom to help superintend the smallest ones. He did it sensibly and without undue authority. He had amazing character for such a small child. He would, she felt confident, make a fine man.
Their dormitory was on different lines from the others. Gerry was relieved to see that here Damien had permitted a softer touch. A mural of yellow ducks, blue walls, white furniture, cots with a step up to them for little, not always steady, legs.
For all their fellow feeling Matron reported that some were fretting. If Manning had relaxed sufficiently to dispense with regimentation in their sleeping quarters, surely he would permit, before the stipulated month was up, some lemonade and love. After all, thought Gerry, they were only little chaps.
She would have acted on her own account, but she had learned by compulsion first to defer to Manning. That, anyway, was what she told herself as she climbed up to the master building. She would not have admitted that it was more curiosity that had brought her there.
She wanted to see if it was true that Galdang still had its guests.
It had.
The two ladies were sitting on the terrace. The older one smiled at Geraldine; as before, the younger one appraised her with a cool stare.
When Damien came Gerry asked, "May I speak to you?"
She was remembering the ordeal last time with the girl Cynthia listening to every word. She was determined not to speak before her this time, not on the subject of little boys who could do with a cuddle and a pet.
Manning led her indoors and waved her to a seat.
"I haven't had much opportunity to talk to you, Miss Prosset"—did his eyes flicker towards the patio and were they a trifle irritated, Gerry wondered?
She must have imagined it. His voice, as he continued, was courteous and level.
"My house guests are still here, as you see. The weather is so perfect they are going to avail themselves of the very last drop of summer."
"It will be a long summer," said Geraldine, then realized, flushing, that he could think she meant that he would have his guests a long time yet.
If he did think this, he did not comment.
Instead, he asked, "How did you get on that day with Thomas Betts?"
"Very smoothly. We caught all the connections." "Smoothly emotionally as well?"
Gerry said, "Yes."
She sat very still a moment, caught up in a memory, not in Manning's study any longer but in a weather-stained dingy little room with a clumsy ticking clock.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, had said the clock. . . . One hour left, she remembered thinking—and all at once she was shivering.
"Are you cold?" asked Damien.
&n
bsp; "No," Gerry said.
But she was. There was a chill finger and it was touching her. It was touching her now, it was touching her heart.
"Are you all right, Miss Prosset?" Manning's voice was sharp. He had half risen.
"Of course—I was daydreaming—"
"It wasn't a pleasant daydream," he said.
With an effort she came to the subject that had brought her here.
To her relief he did not probe as usual. He gave her full permission to go ahead. "Love them by all means. Five o'clock needs loving."
"I'll do what I can."
"Which should be considerable," smiled Manning. "According to the authority who is Thomas you are more a mother than a Miss French."
For a moment there was a poignant silence. It was that silence she had known that day in the new pre-prep, that day when she had stood on the chair and the headmaster had stood in the middle of the room and Thomas had said what he said. Again she felt it, the simple two-ness of
them, and around them and all over the world nothing and nobody else.
Then she was aware of the cold finger again, chilling her, touching her heart. "According to Thomas . . ." Damien had remarked.
She rose abruptly, almost rudely.
He noticed the rudeness and tightened his lips. He, too, had felt the breathless silence, had sensed the magic of it. But this girl wanted no part of enchantment, it appeared. Not with him.
Gerry went back and petted and comforted. The pre-prep commenced the next day and from the beginning was a gratifying success.
Of course the weather was in their favour. They had little need of the counting boards and moulding outfits that always run second place to slippery slides and swings. Those indoor pastimes could wait for the day circles that would be filled in with grey and black, thought Gerry. These blue and gold days were more conducive to outdoor pastimes, and what small boy could ask more than a benign sky with a kindly sun to smile down on his seesawing, a gentle breeze to cool him off when the strenuous monkey puzzles brought out young male sweat.
Only Neville had any complaint about the weather. "Footer commences on Tuesday," he told Geraldine. "Imagine it on a day like this."
"Can't you postpone it?"
"It's down on the schedule. We're to meet Marlborough Grammar in a fortnight, so we'll have to start training."
Because sport was regarded seriously at Galdang, Gerry was surprised on Tuesday to meet Elliott Bethel sauntering down the beach track, book under his arm.
She had taken her children crab-watching as a part of their nature study, and now they climbed past her back to the school as she stood a moment talking to the senior lad.
"Not training, Elliott?"
"No, it's too disgustingly hot for that."
"You should be used to hot weather on the Island." "We don't play footer in it."
"What do you do?"
"Lounge about—swim—"
"But, Elliott, you haven't swum either this season. You never joined the lifesaving, did anything like that—"
She was surprised at herself. All along she had opposed Manning and his schemes, yet here she was reproaching a boy because he would not join in.
Why was it, she wondered. Was it because deep within her she was beginning, though reluctantly, to see the wisdom of the new head?
"One day, Elliott," she said gently, "you might have need of that knowledge, you might be the means, if you knew how to go about it, of saving someone's life."
Elliott said, "I think it's silly. Everyone cluttered up in one end of the beach. I tell you, Miss Gerry, it was good to get back to Villamarine. Miles of sand and only yourself."
Gerry looked at him closely. This time Damien Manning was not entirely right, she thought. The boy was posing, but not all of it was a pose. There was a sadness tugging at the corner of his young mouth, and it was not contrived, it was there.
"I wish Tom could have come with me," said Elliott. "Tom did a better thing, he saw his mother."
"My mother was not home," said Elliott flatly, "only my dad. She doesn't like it at Villamarine. Says it's too quiet." He paused, then, almost without expression, "She's in Sydney, and he's up there."
Gerry could think of nothing to reply, then suddenly, urgently, Elliott was saying, "But you wouldn't think it quiet, would you, Gerry—I mean Miss Gerry? You would like it up there."
Gerry pretended concern for her class.
"Where are the children? Oh, they've reached the top."
"If—when you come, I'll show you the coral, pink, cream and yellow. Some of it grows like castles, and striped fish dart in and out."
"I'll have to go, Elliott. I'm on duty. And Elliott—" "Yes, Miss Gerry?"
Geraldine paused, trying desperately to think of something. At last she said weakly, "Next time I'm sure your mother will be there."
She was breathless when she reached the boys—breathless and oddly unhappy.
I must not brood on Elliott, she thought, I have enough with Tom.
It was curious, she found, how that cold finger still per-
sisted. She had never been psychic, never felt the possession of an extra sense.
And yet, at different times, perhaps, all people might be aware of it. Her mother must have known it when she was reluctant, ten years ago, to leave the Meadow House. Had she sensed even then that it was for ever? Had she felt a cold finger on her heart as Gerry, herself, felt for Tom?
Although she would not have admitted it, Geraldine had begun to guard Thomas. She watched him on the swings, she called him back when he was too near the cliff. Was that a chill he was getting? Was he paler than usual?
"I'm foolish," she told herself, but it was of no use. She kept remembering a dingy little room and a clock ticking out the hour. She kept remembering that last time they had been together, Thomas and Mrs. Betts.
And that night she understood why, she saw the completed pattern.
What use had it been to guard Thomas when the thread to be cut was—someone else's?
She and the Professor were sitting in the study when the telephone pealed.
Gerry took it up and answered.
"The Meadow House speaking."
"Is that Geraldine?"
After a brief moment Gerry said "Yes."
She knew the voice. Manning's voice was unmistakable. Yet he never called her anything but Miss Prosset.
"Yes? Yes, Mr. Manning?" she said.
"Can you come over?"
That was unusual for him. Once he had pulled her up severely for walking alone in the dark.
"I don't want to come there," he resumed. "I want to say—what I must say away from the small dormitory." "You mean—away from Thomas?"
A pause at the other end, probably a surprised pause, then—"Yes."
She did not speak any more. She did not tell him she would be over. She put down the receiver, got up, put on the verandah light, and went down the steps.
She felt more than saw the Professor standing silently at the verandah rail watching her. She climbed the track to the bluff house.
Damien was waiting in the hall. Silently, she followed him.
He said curiously, "You sensed this, didn't you? That's why you left here the other day so suddenly, and I thought—I thought—" Had she looked up she would have surprised the sudden tenderness in him as he remembered a moment they had shared together, that later he had believed she did not want to share any more.
But she did not look up. Her mind was on something else.
"It isn't Thomas," she said piteously, "so it must be—" He put aside his other thoughts, he took up a slip of paper.
"This is the wire. There's not much in it. Whoever sent it counted the words."
She accepted it dully. She read it. It was addressed "Headmaster" and it asked the headmaster to break something to Tom.
"But she wasn't even ill," said Gerry. "She was working."
"She was ill," said Damien, "and she was working." He paused, then finished,
"And now she is dead." Gerry felt something wet on her cheeks and realized she
was crying.
"I don't know what we'll say to him," she blurted, "I don't know how we'll say it."
Then she asked, "Must we say it?"
He nodded.
"But not now—not this evening—"
He answered quietly, "Yes."
He was guiding her from the study, down the hall, out of the master house.
Together they crossed the lawn; vaguely she noticed that the first stars were pricking. How could stars prick so brightly when the world felt like this? Together they came to the junior building. Together they climbed the stairs and paused at the smaller dormitory door.
There was somebody at the door, at the other side of it. It opened before they could open it . . . Do children, too, have that other sense?
Damien said, "Still awake, Thomas?"
Tom said, "Yes."
He didn't cry so much, but then he had never been a crying fellow.
It was Geraldine who cried, silently, heartbrokenly, feeling the death of all mothers in the world in this death of only one.
What was Thomas thinking? What was he feeling? You don't carry someone with you wherever you go, then lose them and not know amputation. Yet he was too little a boy to be torn apart like this.
Damien gave him a sedative, then carried him into Gerry's room.
They sat beside him till he slept. It was a peaceful sleep. He even smiled in it.
"You could almost think," breathed Geraldine, "he was talking to his Mum."
CHAPTER XI
DAMIEN went down to Sydney the next morning to find out details.
They were pitifully few, pitifully simple.
"She never fed herself as she should. Never had the time. All the money and time went for Tom." That was the landlady.
"She took on this extra job," proffered a neighbour. "I always say you can do so much but no more."
"Just died," sighed the woman on the floor above the Betts'. "She was so quiet I've hardly noticed her gone."
The three of them looked at Manning. "What will happen to her son?"
Will You Surrender? Page 8