"Miss Prosset, you're out too far for safety. Turn back, please." This last politeness cost Damien a considerable effort. He was too worried now, though, to think of cost.
For reply she deliberately struck out further still.
For a moment he trod water while he cupped his hands together to shout to her.
"You've proved whatever you set out to prove, now come ashore."
"In my own good time. What's wrong with you, anyway? You don't have to wait. I don't need you."
"I can't leave you out here like this and you know it."
"Then come and get me." Her challenging laughter rang out across the heaving water. He saw the taunting glint in her eyes, the contemptuous sweep of her salt-drenched lashes. Deliberately and thoroughly he swore.
It was at that instant that Gerry saw it, and her heart went sick—that long dark shape cutting through the channel between where she trod water while she shouted out her retorts, and the beach. She saw the dorsal fin surface as it sped past, she saw it submerge, surface again, then turn in her direction. She let out a piercing scream.
There was everything in that scream. Manning did not need to shout any question.
"Hang on," he shouted back. "Don't lose your nerve." "Shark," she yelled. "Keep back, keep back, I tell you!" "I'm coming. Try and hang on."
As he swam towards her he shouted more instructions.
"Get under the surface. There's less chance of attack."
"I can't—I can't." The bravado was vanished now. There
was finality in her voice. There was utter terror.
"Then surface and kick and splash as much as you can.
Make a hell of a whirlpool; scream your hardest—and Gerry, Gerry, hang on."
Geraldine went down twice before she could bring herself to obey him. In some vague fashion she had the idea that if she did nothing, that if she kept quiet, it—the thing would pass out to sea.
"Splash, kick, yell," shouted Damien. "Do what I tell you, Geraldine!"
There was such savage authority in his voice that she did it mechanically and at once. Then panic seized her and she did it violently, using every scrap of strength left in her tired body.
He was almost beside her now. She tried to call to him to come no further, that it was no use the two of them going, but all she could do was blubber with fear, and though she was aware it was the wrong thing to do, in her hysteria she fairly flung herself on him, clinging to him as she would to a raft.
He let her hang on for the briefest of moments to catch her breath, then he moved her away, supporting her chin. When she made to cling to him again he slapped her quickly and sharply across the cheek.
"Pull yourself together if you want to come out of this," he said brutally. "There's a long shoot coming. Catch it. You caught them easily enough before."
"I can't."
"Catch it, I say."
"I can't—I can't—"
Again he slapped the pale blur of face. He put everything into the blow this time, then he lifted her up with him as far as he could and caught the oncoming wave and the two of them swept further towards the shore.
As they bore violently downwards Damien knew the sickening sensation of a long dim shape almost brushing past him as the shark, disliking the waves, dived through to calmer, deeper water. It looked like a White Pointer. It could have been thirteen feet.
They surfaced, the man's arm still around the girl. She emerged looking like a half-drowned puppy. Again they caught a shoot, and this time it brought them to shoulder depth and they began to walk towards the beach.
Manning, anyway, walked. Gerry was dragged. There was no gentleness in the way the man towed and hauled her shorewards. He knew there was still no time to be lost. Sharks had been known to strike nearer to the sands than this.
Now they were waist-deep and Dennis Farwell was coming out to them. Gerry was a dead weight on Manning. All the fight had gone out of her.
"Stand on your feet," he ordered, almost exhausted himself.
"I can't." She was shivering still with fright. The acorn eyes were bloodshot. The hair streaked unflatteringly around her small face. She was quite colourless.
"Stand up," he repeated, feeling his own strength sapping away.
She started to cry, and although it was not hysterical crying that required a corporal remedy as before, he slapped her again. It stopped the tears. She looked at him with some of her old anger.
"That was unnecessary. You wanted to do it." Her hand had gone up to the stinging cheek.
He looked back with an equal anger. "Yes, I wanted to do it and I'd like to do it again. You are an infuriating little beast." He pulled his supporting hand away from her so smartly that she lost balance and went under the water once more.
Dennis Farwell, leaping forward, caught her up and helped her ashore. It took a long while because now she was quite depleted. By the time they had reached the dry sand Damien had been wrapped in a towel by an attentive Cynthia. He looked searchingly at, then turned cold eyes from the girl.
"You'd better get her home, Farwell."
"It's a fair step," demurred Dennis, glancing at Geraldine. "Besides, they're all away at the Meadow House. There's only her father there." He looked suggestively to the closer master building.
"She'd be better in her own home." Manning's bottom lip protruded obstinately. One would have gathered, thought Farwell, who had guessed a little of the situation between the pair, that Gerry had staged this shark alarm just to gain entrance to the place.
Surprisingly, Cynthia intervened. She had been quick to notice Damien's reaction when Gerry had first entered the water. It had not pleased her.
Now, however, the girl looked a positive freak. A bedraggled kitten would have appeared infinitely more attractive. It might be wise, she thought with inward amusement, not to remove this girl from Damien's sight just yet. Possibly, too, Damien was sensitive to kindness in others. He might be pleased to see it in Cynthia. Lately, Cynthia had come to realize she would need every wile with this man.
"Nonsense, Damien," she protested, "she must come up to Galdang, of course." She herself insisted on wrapping around the towel.
It was the first time that Geraldine had climbed to her Barbary and not rejoiced with every step. It was the first time she felt she could not wait for the towering surprise that was Galdang House itself.
Now, however, her only concern was to get there without being violently ill. She had swallowed a great deal of water and it kept regurgitating in her throat until she felt she could not hold it back a second longer.
Dennis was all kindly attention, but his kindness took the courteous form of helping her over rough patches, soothing her, patting her hand, asking if she wanted to rest.
She was too scared to answer him, frightened that once she opened her mouth she would be violently and quite disgustingly sick over everything.
"I can't last any longer," she thought in panic—and then someone else was beside her, someone was ordering, "Go ahead, Farwell, and alert the house to be ready," and she was being shoved into the bushes and supported while she retched and retched again and brought up everything that had miserably threatened her every step of the ascent.
The rest of the party was gone. Dennis had raced ahead. The aunt had followed busily. Cynthia had averted her eyes in distaste, and fled.
Damien still stood holding Gerry while nausea followed nausea, leaving her at length exhausted, depleted, too weak to care any more.
He spread her on the ground as one might a rag doll, then he went and soaked his towel in the small spring that flowed from the meadow gully down the cliff to the shore. He came back and without a word cleaned up her face and hands.
It came reluctantly but forcibly to Damien as he did so that it was not an unpleasant task. The small face emerged pale and with a scattering of gold freckles, yet clear and soft and rather endearingly childish. The eyes, losing some of the bloodshot look, were brown-gold acorns again, the lashes, sti
ll stuck together with salt, long and sooty.
There was no challenge in her now. She was as compliant as a young baby.
Still wordlessly, with an almost angry tenderness, Damien Manning picked her up and carried her over the cliff, along the path and into the house.
CHAPTER XVI
GERRY had a pillow behind her back, a pillow beneath her knees and a fluffy pink cape that Cynthia had insisted on lending her draped around her shoulders.
There had been a motive in Cynthia's kindness. As she had tied on the frilly concoction she had been scarcely able to hide her triumphant smiles. Pink was certainly not Miss Prosset's colour, and now, with her oyster-grey complexion in unflattering comparison, any thought that Damien might have had on the subject of the kindergarten teacher must be vanished for all time. The girl, thought Cynthia, finding it in her even to be sorry for Geraldine, looked a horror.
It was fortunate for Cynthia's peace of mind that this was the picture she took down to Sydney with her. There were several things she had decided she must have that the Colonel's house lacked. She had hoped Damien would take her, but when Dennis had offered instead she had accepted him quite graciously. No fears, she thought, with Damien with a girl who looked like that.
Why did she want Damien? Frankly, Cynthia could not have answered. Was it because that right from the beginning he had shown clearly that he had no intention of playing back? The unattainable had always attracted Cynthia. There had been so little that had been unattainable
in her indulgent, pampered life. Damien was so different from Dennis, now sitting beside her in the Sydney-bound car. Dennis was a dear, but he was far too easy, and Cynthia pouted.
Three hours had now elapsed since Cynthia's departing "morning-after" inspection of the patient. Gerry's acorn hair had since been freed of its rumples and lay straight and soft as silk on the pillows, the thrill of lying in a bed in the master house had widened and sparkled the matching eyes and given an excited flush as pink as the borrowed jacket.
A very pretty girl—that was what Aunt Isabel thought as she sat at the bedside with her embroidery. She smiled to herself that Cynthia's deliberately unflattering colour had turned the other way about. She knew her niece; she knew, too, who or what was good for her. Damien and Galdang, she thought wisely, were not good. Cynthia needed someone at the bottom of the ladder, someone not established, someone for her to climb beside to the top. That Dennis Farwell, for instance— She chose a thread of yellow silk.
She was suddenly aware that Geraldine was looking at her. She had believed she was asleep. She smiled at the girl.
"How do you feel?"
"Good—especially now it has gone."
"It" had been the shark. It had awakened Gerry last night and she had screamed. Damien had been first into the bedroom, the first to hold her firmly upright in the narrow crib and to soothe her with quiet but authoritative words.
"It's not there," he had persisted as she had pointed to a shadow in the corner. Against Aunt Isabel's judgment he had flooded the room with light and walked to the dreaded corner to prove his case.
Only when the sobs had ceased had he let Cynthia's aunt have her way with muted lamp, hot milk and sedatives. It appeared now that he had done the right thing. The girl was composed and she said the shark had gone.
"How long have I been here?"
"We put you straight to bed yesterday afternoon, and now it's the day after and nearly ten o'clock." "Father—"
"Has been told, of course. The Professor thinks you should remain here."
"Remain " Gerry's voice was a little blank.
"Well," reminded Aunt Isabel humorously, "I have been told it's what you always coveted."
Gerry longed to ask her how she knew, but she said instead, "I suppose you think I'm foolish coveting a thing like that."
"Frankly, I do—a pile of bricks and mortar."
"Now you sound just like the Professor."
"Does he talk in the same strain?"
"Yes—only he says even more."
"Then your father must be a sensible man."
Gerry sighed, unconvinced. Through the window she could see the blue explosion of the sea and it brought back all the old Galdang longing.
Obsession, Father had said, merely an undisciplined state of mind.
She repeated it again, then again, drowsily. "Obsession, Barbary is my obsession.. .."
When Aunt Isabel looked up a second time she had tumbled once more over the edge of sleep.
Damien put down the tea tray carefully. "Wake up," he said, "You've been dead too long." He sat on an edge of the bed. It was a narrow bed and he could feel her slight body under the rugs shrinking away from him Silly little snail, he thought.
Aloud, he asked, "Am I crushing you? There's not much room."
"It's all right."
He regarded her quizzically. He was thinking how different she looked from the kid he had carried up the cliff yesterday. The dirty oyster hue had gone. The eyes were clear. The drowned puppy had turned into a lovely girl... a desirable girl, and suddenly, abruptly, Damien got up.
Gerry did not want him to go—not just yet. She knew she owed him an apology, but how did one apologize to someone over whom one had been quite disgustingly sick?
Her first words, as usual, were characteristic. "Did I mess you up, Mr. Manning?" she asked.
He wiped off the beginning of an undignified grin. "A little, perhaps. It washed off."
"Oh. I'm glad."
A little silence, and then, awkwardly, clumsily: "I want to say I'm sorry."
"You just said you were glad."
"That was because everything washed off. This is because I was so stupid yesterday." Despite herself Gerry shuddered.
He understood at once. "Is it gone?" He glanced towards the dreaded corner.
She smiled and nodded confidently, "Gone."
"No inhibitions?"
"None."
"You're not going to become nervous?"
"I don't believe so. After all, I asked for something like that, didn't I? I was a horribly long way out."
"Horribly." He spoke feelingly.
She looked away from him and through the window. Her fingers fiddled with the counterpane fringe.
"I really did it because I didn't believe you could surf," she confessed.
"And you wanted to show me up?"
"Yes."
"What made you take me for a greenhorn?"
"Being English. There's little opportunity in England."
"There is less opportunity than here, but I know many
Englishmen who could put Australians to shame on a
beach."
"I suppose so," she accepted meekly, "but it was just what I thought."
He eyed her consideringly. "I suppose that conclusion of yours included all varieties of sea sport," he stated. "Would it surprise you as much, for instance, if I could row as well as swim? If I was capable of rowing you out to Harvest Home Island?"
"Who says you are rowing me out to Harvest Home?" "I said."
"I'm not going."
He nodded, calmly. "I see. You are frightened then. The thing hasn't gone at all."
"It has. I'm not afraid." She spoke in agitation.
"You are. You're afraid of it." He glanced towards the corner.
"I'm not. I—I just don't want to go with you." why?''
"We are enemies."
"A point, Miss Prosset—but we needn't be enemies there. We can regard it as neutral territory."
"You can regard it as you like. I am not going."
He did not seem concerned. He said casually, "A pity, because I wanted to see it very much, and, according to your father, you want to see it as well."
"You've been talking to Dad—"
Manning nodded, half-smiling.
Earlier, he had found the old teacher packing his gear down at the bream hole. The fish, the Professor informed him, had been on again.
A south wind was exploding
whitecaps against the rock in atoms of fine spray as Damien had examined the catch. "Not bad," he said.
How mysterious were the ways of the ocean, he thought as he waited. It made of this scholar a student as well as an angler. The Professor was studying the channel, giving his attention to the tern. Now he was pulling up his last line.
"Tide's out, and that's the lowest ebb in oceanic activity. Look at those gulls on the rocks. They're no fools."
"You love fishing, don't you?"
"Why not, Headmaster? I believe it is the only sport that puts everyone on equal terms. The tides that rise after a stop-work whistle are the same as those that rise in leisure hours. Gear is the only advantage, and I've seen my Geraldine catch a good whiting with a piece of cotton and a pin."
At the mention of Geraldine, Damien had pounced, "Equal—or unequal? Could you be thinking, when you mention equality, in the same way as your daughter always thinks of Galdang versus Meadow House?"
The Professor had smiled tolerantly, "As far as I'm concerned there never has been any versus."
Damien had felt ashamed of his outburst. "I know it, sir. I wish it was the same with her."
"She'll learn." The Professor had paused, then added quietly, "I can't think I'll be too long now, Manning.
Heart isn't treating me too well. So you see she'll learn in time."
Damien stared at the water. "You still believe not telling her is the best way?"
"I can't tell her—not Geraldine." The Professor packed in his catch. "Have you fetched her home yet?" he asked.
"Aunt Isabel advised a longer stay. That's what I've come about. I want to take her out this afternoon. I'd like to row over to Harvest Home Island."
"She'd like that, too. She's never been there."
Damien nodded. "I had another idea about it, too, Professor. You see, we had a little trouble with her last night. There was a shark in the corner of her room."
The Professor said grimly, "If 'I had been as close as that to mutilation, Headmaster, there would have been four sharks, one to each corner."
Will You Surrender? Page 13