Will You Surrender? Page 12

  "After all, I'm nearly eighteen," he choked, "and you're very little older. I mean—things like this can happen, do happen. Love happens, doesn't it? Oh, you know what I mean—"

  She looked into the pale, taut face and her heart softened.

  "I know what you think you mean, Elliott."

  "Don't say that."

  "I must say it, dear. I must say it for all the people in the world who have cared for each other, for all the lovers, Elliott—my parents—yours —"

  At her last word he turned away from her, his face crumpling childishly.

  She put her hand on his shoulder and turned him back. "Elliott, have you heard any more?"

  He did not speak at once but when he did his voice had the old flatness. "Not unless Dad still being there and Mother still here is any different—"

  "It's not. It's what you told me before."

  "Then it's the same news." Now his voice had risen. There was a note of hysteria in it. Geraldine started walking again. She wanted to give him time to compose himself.

  Presently he caught up with her and spoke in a quieter tone.

  "But people don't have to be like that, do they? Like—like my parents. Other boys' people are not. Neither were yours. We wouldn't be, Geraldine. I know it. Come with me this time and we'll never come back."

  She said lightly, deliberately lightly, "Last vac you invited Thomas."

  "That was different."

  "There was no difference, Elliott, there was a similarity. There was the same sense of wanting, the same need of love. But not the love you are thinking of, Elliott, but love the essence, the universal love, independent of sex, age and person."

  He said dully, "I don't understand you."

  She said quietly, "The need of love from people, Elliott, not just one individual, as you think."

  They walked on a while, then Bethel asked suspiciously, "How do you know all this?"

  "Because I felt the need, the same as you do now, when my mother died."

  He did not comment on that. Presently he asked in a low tone, "And the other—the personal love, have you felt that as well?"

  "No," said Gerry—but as she answered it she realized with a shock, because this was the first time she had known it, that that was untrue.

  For a moment she walked blankly. She knew the gulls must be screeching, the waves crashing and withdrawing, but she could not hear a sound.

  How could it be untrue, she was asking herself in agitation. How could one dislike a person yet at the same time —love him?

  She felt the presence of that love with a sudden sharp nearness. Like it or not, admit it or not, it was there.

  She had to turn quickly from the sea because the blankness had gone now. There was a queer drumming in her head and a sort of giddiness and a dazed feeling. In the middle of it the rocks below the cliff seemed to come alive and rush up to engulf her.

  She must have swayed a little, for she felt Elliott's arm awkwardly trying to steady her.

  "I'm a beast," he was saying contritely, "I should never have upset you like this. I have been slacking, Miss Prosset, and I admit it. Sometimes when I've looked ahead there has seemed nothing worthwhile at all. I won't go to Villa these hols. I'll go down to see Mother. Perhaps something will turn up even yet. One never knows . . . And I'll try for my finals. I promise. I really want to graduate. Probably I'll follow in Dad's business, copra and by-products, but a leaving certificate would not be amiss even then."

  "And physical education?" she breathed, hardly crediting

  that that sudden shock of her own discovery had brought on all this on Elliott's behalf.

  "I'll try," grimaced Elliott wryly, "though I still think this surf drill business the H.M. has introduced is a bore."

  "You wouldn't think that if it saved your life," said Gerry. She knew she was speaking unsteadily.

  All at once she was tired, every bit of her. It was a curious drugged feeling.

  She wondered that Elliott did not notice, and comment, but as often happens with youth his moment of perception had vanished. He was completely self-absorbed.

  In the distance a bell rang. They retraced their steps, Elliott more brightly than he had for many weeks, Gerry with an odd sense of helplessness.

  .. Was it because for the first time in her life her happiness and serenity were no longer imprisoned in the hollow of her own hand?

  CHAPTER XV

  THE boys had left for their vacation. A day after their departure Matron and Hilda also had gone. Following a conference with the Professor, Gerry had urged Cook to take a few days off. So the Prossets were all alone.

  The house was full of echoes. At times like this, thought Geraldine, though a hundred souls lived here it seemed there never really had been anyone at all.

  She remarked on it to her father, but he disagreed.

  "I see faces peeping round every corner, I hear steps on the stairs."

  He seemed very peaceful lately, thought his daughter, very happy. Were those faces the faces of a hundred Helens? The steps on the stairs hers?

  Gerry did not feel peaceful and happy herself, she felt crumpled, and a little prideless. The after-shock of her disquieting discovery that day on the cliff with Elliott had had its effect.

  Try as she might she could no longer get the proper

  current of her life. Sometimes it seemed that she had broken from a safe mooring and now she was loose and adrift.

  One morning doing her simple marketing for herself and her father down in Breffny she met Colonel Hastings. He greeted her with his usual gallantry, then kissed her hand in farewell.

  "I did not realize you were leaving for your tour abroad so soon, Colonel."

  "Blue Peter next Thursday. My fair tenants will move in soon afterwards, You knew, of course, that Miss Trenning and her aunt were renting Plimsoll?"

  Gerry murmured that she had heard. She did not add that she had forgotten. She tried to dispel a strong feeling of resentment that soon the headmaster's guests would be residents here.

  The Colonel was giving her a brief travelogue. "Sorrento, Capri, Pisa, Montreux, Paris and then on to—"

  With an effort she listened to him She had been as far away in her mind as those places he had recited. ". . . And not one aspect as lovely as Breffny, and, in particular, your own Plimsoll," she reproached. The Colonel's house was noted for its outlook.

  The old soldier shrugged in reply. "Breffny, yes, but at Galdang House, Miss Trenning told me this morning, the view is much more extensive than at Plimsoll." The Colonel sounded a trifle piqued.

  Gerry's mouth tightened a little. So they had arrived already. She had not known this. Rather unreasonably she told herself that they might have waited till they could move straight into the Colonel's house.

  Still, it was no business of hers. Wishing the traveller bon voyage! she climbed the hill back to Galdang. She rimmed the fence as far as she could so as to be out of sight of the master building. She had walked twice as far as she should by the time she reached the Meadow House.

  If it had proved the usual spring she could have spent it in the garden with Saxby; down in the gully hunting for billy buttons in the tussocky places of grass.

  But it was not the usual spring, it was unseasonably warm. It was quite as hot as summer. The only attraction the garden offered was to lie on a deck-chair, the only lure

  of the valley to find a tall gum casting a scattering of shade.

  "I should have thought you would be down on the beach, Gerry," commented the Professor one torrid morning. The only trouble with the younger Geraldine, he recalled, had been to get her away from the surf.

  She did not reply, pretending concern for the toast that showed visible signs of burning. She had wanted to go all the week but she had been afraid they would be there.

  It became hotter during the morning. Climbing the rise soon after lunch, she saw that the sea was fairly dancing with the heat. Entranced with the shimmer of it she climbed higher still an
d looked down. On the long stretching coastline she could see no one either walking or bathing. If she went now she would have it all to herself.

  It did not take long to climb into her old green swimsuit, to jam on a faded sailhat and take up a towel.

  To her surprise and pleasure the Professor emerged with his fishing gear. "The book can wait," he smiled. "I'm told the bream are on."

  They went down to the sea, the father, the daughter, silver head, acorn head, veined white hand and firm brown one linked companionably together.

  "I'm glad you've surrendered," the Professor smiled, making the descent carefully and taking deep, measured breaths.

  Surrendered . .. For a moment Gerry glanced up to Galdang, remembering Barbary and the old rhyme.

  "If the weather says summer it's no use following the almanac and insisting we're only into the greening," he went on whimsically. "You're needing fresh air, Geraldine. I've thought of asking you to come fishing with me quite a few times."

  "That's sweet of you, darling."

  Dad never took her fishing. Fishing was a serious, silent pastime. At the most one only flung an essential word. Gerry was prone to chatter. She was likely to burst into song. Knowing how her father had always felt about her accompanying him to his favourite bream hole, she stopped abruptly and standing on tiptoe pressed her young pink lips to his old head.

  "I thought you needed it, Geraldine," he repeated, ab-

  surdly touched by her gesture. "I extend the invitation now. I'd like you to come fishing with me."

  "Soothing syrup," she laughed. "No, thanks, Dad, I'll find my own balm in the surf."

  He nodded approval. "Yes, go swimming, child. There's nothing as good as God's fresh air, as God's green water." He paused. He had been about to add that you could not put such adjectives before Galdang's bricks and mortar, but he thought better of it. Instead, he shifted the weight of his gear.

  "It's not too heavy, Dad?" She must have been watching him.

  "It's a feather." As soon as she was out of sight, he planned, he would stop for a breather. His heart seemed to have moved right up from his chest.

  When they reached the bottom they parted. He made for the northern rocks. Under the biggest rock of all was the hole.

  Gerry went down to the southern end. Between the sand-dune and the bluff was the best surfing stretch in all Australia, she thought extravagantly, two hundred yards of wild gold beach with even-breaking rollers coming in with rhythmical regularity. No wonder Elliott was piqued because he had to bathe between green and scarlet flags. It was all safe swimming along this particular shelf, in which case the entire section should have been free, not, as the new Head decreed, only one end.

  Pulling off the sailhat and throwing down the towel, she remembered wryly that she, too, had had to comply with regulations. She recalled the day when Damien Manning had informed her of the new rule; she recalled Ian MacPhail later issuing an apologetic but none the less definite order.

  Today, however, there were no young life-guards to direct her, no flags to mark where she could swim. Not bothering to proceed any further she raced straight into the swirling water, finding instantly and deliciously, as she had always found in the sea, that nothing mattered as much as one had imagined it mattered, that only those solid, smooth green waters lifting you, whirling you, catching you up in never-ending pattern were of any import at all.

  Gerry loved surfing and she was adept at it.

  She dived straight into the swell, came up on the other side and trod water until the right shoot came--a wave with a slight curl of froth, a good foundation and enough volume behind it to carry you up in a rush of seething foam high on the beach.

  It was an exhilarating sensation and one of which she never wearied. She did it again, and again. As she trod water and selected her shoots she noticed that the other end of the beach was now occupied.

  She screwed up her eyes against the glare but she knew who it would be without peering. Breffny people had their own surfing area. It would be Galdang's house guests.

  She noted with a certain satisfaction that the visitors were sunbathers, not swimmers. I don't expect they know how to surf, she thought with contempt. By "they" she meant Manning.

  Presently she picked out a figure coming down the yellow sands and waving his towel. It was Dennis Farwell. She saw his easy smile and curly fair hair.

  She waved him to join her, but he shook his head and beckoned. After a while she capitulated and came slowly in, pulling at the brief legs of her faded old suit, adjusting a strap, wishing she looked smarter. Even from here the black sheath worn by Cynthia Trenning had a distinct air.

  She threw herself down on the sand, but Dennis did not join her. He looked rather uncomfortable and she wondered why.

  She soon knew. He told her briefly and without adornment.

  "Head's sent me to tell you that you have to bathe at the other end."

  "What?" She was so incensed she almost shouted it at him

  He repeated his words, finishing, "I'm sorry, Gerry, that's what he said."

  "But there are no flags."

  "No, it's holidays. Besides, the season hasn't begun."

  "All the more reason the beach should be free, the entirety of it." She threw out her arms in graphic explanation.

  "According to Manning," said Farwell without enthusiasm, "none of it is free. Has he ever informed you that the original Galdang grant included foreshores?"

  "He has." Gerry sat sullenly awhile. "But there are no boys to impress unfavourably if I swim elsewhere," she grumbled at length. "Honestly, Den, this is a bit thick."

  Dennis privately agreed with her. He was not in the best of moods. So far his own vacation had gone rather badly. Previously he had found that Cynthia was alternatively blow-hot, blow-cold towards him. It was trying, but the blow-hot phases had been well worth while. For the week she had been here this time, however, she had continually shown the cooler temperature. In fact, thought Dennis ruefully, it might be torrid weather but he felt distinctly frost-bitten.

  Geraldine was openly seething with indignation. Dennis sympathized with her, but he wanted to get back to Cynthia for all that.

  "Come and surf up the other end, Gerry."

  "I won't. I'll never surf again. It's not fair."

  "It isn't, but that's how things are. Don't deprive yourself by being pigheaded."

  "He's the pigheaded one, and I won't go in. Besides"—Gerry flushed with embarrassment—"I'm not dressed for company surfing." She glanced down at her rather battered swimsuit.

  Dennis looked down, too. He saw a slim brown girl who looked little older, he thought quite fondly, than one of the youngsters. He felt an angry irritation against Manning that he had sent him down like this. Even to an outsider the Head's treatment of Gerry was, to use her own indignant words, "a bit thick". He felt an irritation, too, a jealous one this ·time, that Cynthia, breathlessly lovely in a black sheath, was lying indolently beside Manning, while he, Farwell, was sent like a messenger boy to the other end of the beach.

  "Look here, Gerry," he said impetuously, "if you race straight in no one will notice what your togs are like. There's none of them can surf as you can. Show them how it's done."

  She looked at him quickly and knew tacitly of whom he was speaking. It was Damien Manning, of course.

  Farwell did mean Manning. He liked and respected Manning—but suddenly he wanted to see this girl run out and dive through· that crashing surf in her easy expert manner. He wanted Manning to see it, for once to feel

  bettered. He thought with anticipation—and with Cynthia, too, in mind—"It would do the Head good to be bettered." "Go on, show them," he urged.

  Gerry's acorn eyes had lit up in latent understanding. "Is—he good?"

  "I shouldn't think so. I've never seen him in yet. Besides, why should he be? There's little opportunity in England."

  "No," said Gerry, "there isn't." She took a deep breath.

  He helped her to her
feet and carried her towel and sailhat. Without speaking they retraced Dennis's steps. As soon as they were parallel to the sunbathers Gerry turned her back to land and advanced into the surf. Dennis had a quick and satisfactory glimpse of gold-tan limbs cleaving green water, gold-tan arms rising rhythmically as she progressed further and further from the shore. She must be intending taking a very long shoot, he thought, as with outward nonchalance and inward glee he rejoined the group.

  As he lowered himself beside Cynthia he saw that Damien Manning had removed his dark glasses and was now looking out to the water. His eyes, he noticed, were focused on the lone swimmer

  Unnecessarily Farwell remarked, "I gave her your message. She's bathing where you ordered."

  In reply Manning flung, "She's out too far, the little fool."

  "She's competent."

  "She's a young idiot."

  Still Geraldine swam on.

  "Is she showing off or is she an uttter oaf?" demanded Manning angrily.

  No one answered, and Geraldine went still further. "She'll be in trouble in a minute."

  Dennis said, "I doubt it. She's capable."

  "Capability has nothing to do with foolhardiness." The reply came tersely. The man got abruptly up and started running to the surf.

  As he dived in there was a silence. Even Dennis did not speak. What had seemed like a lesson to Manning had now become, in some way, a kind of duel for both of them, the girl, the man, and one of them must lose, and one win.

  Gerry glanced over her shoulder and saw Damien Manning coming through the sea with a measured strength she had not anticipated. It made her angry and unreasonable. Although she was out much further now than she had ever been before, she struck out further still.

  "Come back!" He called it imperiously.

  "Why, does the water as well as the beach belong to the squire of Galdang?" she flung in reply.

  "Come back, you colossal fool, you're a long way past your depth."

  "I can swim."

  "The wind is changing. There'll be a big sea quite soon." "I can cope."