Will You Surrender? Page 2

  He searched the library until he found what he needed. He tested the flexibility of it. He took it up.

  A fourth stone was shattering the peace and quiet—Gerry was in bad form today—and Damien, tightening his grasp on the switch, strode out of the door. He hoped in the time that it took him that the rascal had not wearied of his amusement and wandered off for fresh material. He did not fancy the idea of chasing a youngster across a cliff and delivering a lesson in public; and a physical lesson, and a salutary one, Damien was resolved it would be. There was only one medicine for these larrikins with destruction on their minds, and that was the corporal kind.

  Manning's luck was in—the lad's, he thought without any softening, right out. The offender, a cheeky, rather pert-featured boy who ought to have a hair-cut, was now coming bold as brass up the path. Damien stepped promptly behind a wide oleander and regarded him with disfavour. Shrunken jeans that made him fairly ache to cut the crop around the slim calves, a snubby, proud little face with a lock of acorn hair that kept falling over one eye in the untidy way some lads wore their hair these days—must make regular hair-cuts a firm rule from now on, he resolved—old sandshoes and a toe protruding from one.

  When the boy was parallel to the shrub, Damien stepped out. The utter surprise of the youngster gave him complete satisfaction.

  "I've been watching you, son," he said grimly. "I suppose you know you're out of bounds."

  The answer was much more treble than Damien had expected. The boy must have received a complete shock to respond in so high a tone.

  "I haven't done anything," he said.

  "You were spinning around the fence; using it as a bar."

  . . . And what business is it of yours, fumed Gerry inwardly. Aloud she said defiantly, "That would do no

  harm."

  "I am the judge of that, not you." Damien's brows had met now. Always a fair master, he had never countenanced defiance in any boy. He thought grimly: Someone before me has been pretty lax.

  "You were throwing stones," he accused aloud. "You might have broken a window." The long, lean fingers tightened on the crop.

  Geraldine was astounded. Who was this man? Why was he here? What right had he to accost her like this?

  To gain time for discovery she said deceptively, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have aimed at the flagpole. I'm not as good as I once was."

  "You're not." Damien's tone was even colder. The boy's prompt apology, far from sufficing him, had only enraged him further. To himself he was saying contemptuously, I despise cowards, and this boy is one. As soon as he sees trouble ahead he tries to back down. Well, it's too late. He's going to be taught a rare old lesson, one he won't forget. Out here? In there? That's the only question. He looked speculatively at the slight figure.

  "Ever been caned?"

  Gerry nodded ruefully. She was remembering an episode when she was eleven. She, and six of the fifth grade, had screamed frantically from the beach that Jones minor was drowning. It had seemed a grand joke at the time watching the staff—and Father—racing madly down the steep track, but it had not seemed so grand in Dad's study later. That was one occasion when she had been treated the same as the boys, and that was one occasion when she had looked out of the window and not known sea fever. Like the six, she had been too sore to care.

  "So," said Damien Manning. He regarded her objectively.

  "You're getting it," he warned frankly, drawing the crop in a leisurely fashion through his lean fingers. "I'd give it

  to the boys of my own house, so what's good for them is good for you as well."

  . . . The boys of your own house, puzzled Gerry. What boys? And what are you doing here?

  "The query is, where?" Manning resumed calmly, making an inquiring gesture around him, then nodding, also in inquiry, towards the home.

  Gerry's first flash of indignation was lost in a flash of cunning. She would make this interloper pay dearly for his outrageous trespass. She would go inside, see just how far he had proceeded with his unlawful entry, then announce who she was and send him packing. Perhaps he was a new junior master and did not realize he was in the wrong quarters, but that did not give him a right to adopt a proprietorial air.

  Aloud, she chose, deliberately hanging her head so that the loose forelock tumbled over and hid her watching eyes, "In there—sir." She added that "sir" to make it more convincing.

  Damien's lip curled in contempt but he nodded sober agreement. Like himself, the boy did not relish a public scene.

  He placed his hand authoritatively on the lad's shoulder. The shoulder was slender, perhaps too slender under the plaid shirt. A spare sort of youngster, he thought idly. Could do with some building-up exercises at the gym to develop his muscles.

  They passed through the door, that long-beloved door with the chipped figure of some forgotten saint with arms outstretched in benediction. It reminded Gerry of pictures she had seen in a book in the school library called Moorish Influence in Architecture, and Moorish influence, of course, brought up Barbary again—and this loved and lovable place.

  "Will you surrender, will you surrender," she crooned, not knowing she crooned it aloud.

  "What's that you're saying?"

  "An old rhyme, 'Will you surrender the town of Barbary?' Do you know it?"

  "Yes." He answered it shortly, still waiting.

  "I used to chant it as a child." The eyes, the exact shade of the acorn hair, he noticed indifferently, were suddenly dreamy.

  "I used to pretend this was a citadel I must conquer."

  Crossing to the window, Gerry looked out on the stretching miles of coast with its gentle slope of sand dune, its vast contentment of smoothly rolling sea, and finished proudly:

  "And I did."

  "You what?" The boy was going too far altogether, even in imagination, fumed Manning. In another moment he would claim the place as his own.

  Gerry did.

  She had not intended to announce it yet, but the man's sharp inquiry had cut through the air as his switch might have cut.

  Rudely aroused from her dreams of Barbary, she turned.

  "I should say my father conquered it." Her chin was

  tilted haughtily. "My father, in case you did not know, is

  Professor Prosset."

  "I did not know." He was looking at her keenly, the switch still in his hands. The eyes had become speculative and narrowed.

  It came suddenly, unmistakably and forcibly to Gerry that the switch was not held there merely for ornament, that he still had a certain intention, whether she was the child of Professor Prosset or not.

  "My father is the headmaster of Galdang Academy," she called rather urgently, seeing him approach rather too near for her liking, "and I am a girl."

  "A girl—" He echoed it in disbelief, and looked closer at her.

  Now that he really regarded her and did not cast his eyes as a whole over the figure, he saw the slight but unmistakable shape beneath the plaid shirt.

  He stood inexplicably angry, curiously thwarted, for the youngster had annoyed him considerably. He had desired very much to teach the larrikin a rare lesson.

  His dark eyes flicked, then narrowed again, this time to icy slits.

  There was nothing to prevent him, he was thinking, even now.

  Admittedly one did not thrash delinquent daughters of the staff, but one could still spank them. Spank them so that they remembered it well.

  He threw down the switch and approached purposefully,

  and but for the tell-tale look on his face Gerry would have been across his knee in an instant. It was a look you could not mistake, however. It was too anticipatory. Geraldine backed quickly, urgently, shouting, "I'm nineteen. Nineteen, do you hear?"

  She was compelled to shout it a second time before Damien took a grip of himself. He had thought she was fourteen—fifteen at the most.

  "Nineteen?" he echoed.

  "Nearly twenty. Twenty next birthday."

  "Presumably, if you are ninetee
n now." His voice held doubt.

  "I am," she said.

  "Why are you trespassing here?"

  "Trespassing!" She nearly choked. "You mean why are you in someone else's house?"

  "Is it someone else's?"

  "Yes. It is mine—ours."

  "Of course." His tone was expressionless, unrevealing. "You are the headmaster's daughter."

  "I am." A pause, a contemptuous pause. "And you?"

  "I," stated Damien Manning, "am in rather a curious position, young madam. I have no daughter, and yet I am the headmaster myself."

  "What?"

  The question was so shrill, so shocked, that for a brief moment Damien was sorry he had broken the news in such an abrupt manner.

  "I think," he said almost gently, "you had better go home."

  But Geraldine had not heard him She stood gazing up at him with angry, disbelieving, bewildered eyes.

  "I'm not leaving this room until I get to the bottom of all this," she said stormily. "Explain yourself. Explain your trespass. Not that it will make any difference. You may take it from me that you are as good as dismissed already. What were you, anyway? What position were you signed up to fill?" There was an emphasis on the past tense. "Junior teacher? Supervisor of the small boys' prep?"

  "I told you, I am the headmaster." There was emphasis, in his turn, on the present tense. "I think"—after a pause —"that you had better go home, Miss Prosset."

  "You think!" The retort was full of deliberate scorn. The consideration was wiped at once from Damien Manning. His next words were frankly warning.

  "You're leaving this house, and within three seconds. Counting from now, Miss Prosset. One—"

  "How dare you!"

  "Two."

  "You're trespassing unlawfully. I'll have my father look into this."

  "Three."

  He had crossed firmly to her side, and, taking her by the collar of her plaid shirt, was hustling her towards the steps.

  If she had gone quietly he might have treated her more gently, but, incensed, Gerry fought every inch of the way.

  All that she had absorbed in her distinctly boyish upbringing came to her help, though little it availed her with him.

  She kicked, scratched and fought. If ever pedagogue Damien Manning had felt like inflicting corporal punishment, he felt like inflicting it now.

  His hands were tied, however. One could not physically discipline an almost grown woman.

  He had heard about this young female. The retiring headmaster and his wife had spoken lovingly and at length of Geraldine Prosset. He had been told her story, her rather odd education. A precocious young madam, he had decided, and now that he had encountered her he knew that his impression had been true.

  Another kick against his shins almost brought the tears to his eyes.

  Opening the door, he impelled Gerry rapidly through.

  The push sent her stumbling forward, losing her balance, leaving her sitting abruptly, humiliatingly, probably painfully, back on the narrow seat of her faded jeans.

  Manning waited long enough to assure himself she was not hurt, then slammed the door. He felt his anger quickly dissolving into satisfaction at the vision of that sprawled figure. It had been completely agreeable, he thought with impish satisfaction, that last salutary shove.

  Gerry sat quite still, then cautiously she investigated. No bones broken, only a sore spot. . .

  She got up slowly, stiffly, frozenly.

  The saint still looked down, his arms outstretched.

  CHAPTER III

  WHENEVER she had been sick, sore, confused, bewildered or in the need to untangle things, Gerry had fled to the beach.

  Usually she scrambled over the rocks to the half-moon at the northern end, for this was out of bounds to the Galdang boys, and one could hide behind a dune and fret or ponder to one's heart's content safe in the knowledge that here would be no young and prying eyes.

  The school was now on vac, however, which meant that today the entire beach was hers. Galdang was several miles from the village of Breffny Inlet, and since Breffny had its own stretch of surf there was little fear of any of the locals disturbing Gerry as she staged her own private, and quite considerable, storm.

  And a storm it was. The pig! The beast! The impudent impostor! How had he dared to push her out like that! To send her tumbling down in such a humbling, undignified way! To stand regarding her with a hateful smile and then calmly close the door!

  Her door! Father's door! Their door! Angrily, Gerry escaped a wave that was swooping turbulently up the sloping sand to swirl round her bare legs. At that moment her heart felt as turbulent as the sea itself.

  "I'm nearly twenty," she shouted to a screaming gull, "and he—well, he almost—" With a rush, the flag-bright colour suffused Gerry's gold-tan cheeks. She was remembering that look in the man's eyes after he had put down the switch, that anticipatory look. She was remembering his forward step.

  "He would have, too," she said.

  She jumped agilely between the giant king crabs that only ventured out when small marauding boys were not present.

  As she leapt something fell out of her pocket. She bent to retrieve it. A tape measure. She had gone up to Galdang to measure the windows, the windows of the gracious house

  of which she would soon be the mistress—not a humiliated girl having to talk very fast and to the point to prevent an embarrassing and no doubt painful spanking.

  The indignity of the episode struck her afresh. Without realizing it she placed an apprehensive palm on the spot on which she had fallen after he had pushed her out of the door. She kicked punitively but missed an encroaching crab.

  At length her temper spent itself enough for her to look round.

  She had walked a long way. She was almost up to the gap in the bordering sand-hills and that meant she should turn and go back.

  She did, and in a calmer spirit than she had come, but now there was apprehension, not rage, in her thoughts, and subtleties and half-doubts came racing upon her like the waves racing up the beach.

  Why had he been there? Who was he?

  People did not just spring up from places. They arrived. They were sent.

  Who had sent him?

  What was he doing at the master house?

  As far as she could see along the wide stretch of beach there was no one but herself. Suddenly she flung herself down against the slope of a sand dune and listened, but without her usual satisfaction, to the roll of the surf. Its rhythmical pattern of crash, swirl and withdrawal had always contented her. Now she frowned.

  She was groping back in her mind and retrieving little memories she had not known were there.

  Mrs. Ferguson's evasive procrastinations every time she had started asking questions on the management of the big house.

  Clara's eyes significantly meeting Millicent's when she had gaily told them that most certainly they must be promoted, along with the Prossets, to the headquarters on the summit of the bluff.

  Dad. . . .

  Dad trying to reach her sometimes . . . trying to say something . . . his hunched shoulders . . . his slow gait this morning, and all the time she had thought that it was because of his new status.

  Oh, Dad .

  With a little choked sob, Gerry jumped to her feet and ran the rest of the way over the sand and up the track to the Cliff House.

  She was breathless when she reached the top.

  The Professor was not in the library as he always was. Frowning, Gerry ran from room to room.

  It was in his bedroom that at last she found him, not on his bed as for an anxious moment she believed he might be, but calmly folding his clothes in neat piles, apparently preparing for a move.

  The obvious inference was that it was the move she had expected. So those retrieved memories were only imagination after all, she thought, mentally hugging herself. Mrs. F. had not been evasive. Clara and Millicent had not exchanged glances. Dad had never been downcast.

  And that ma
n, triumphed Gerry finally, was a trespasser. She ran forward, relief and tears in her voice as she acclaimed, "Hail, the conquering hero comes."

  Arnold Prosset put down a pile of underwear and suffered her impetuous kisses. She had always been headstrong, he thought ruefully, impulsive and stubborn and warmhearted and lovable.

  He loved her dearly and he hated having to disillusion her now. Still, it must be done. He had tried insinuations, implications, but they had been to no avail. He must tell her at once.

  "Geraldine, stop being absurd. I am no hero." "You are to me, Mr. Headmaster Prosset."

  "I am not the headmaster."

  "Then Principal—School Executive—whatever you like to call it."

  "Not that, either. Gerry, don't make it hard."

  The buttered buns that Gerry had served for elevenses before she sent the Professor up to the assembly room were gathering in a tight knot in her stomach. She felt the coffee that had accompanied the buns circling sickeningly around.

  "Oh, Dad—" she said.

  He put his arms around her and for a moment she stood within the comforting circle—yet was uncomforted.

  Drawing away, she went to stand at the window that now that she had looked out of the windows of the master house seemed to offer so much less.

  Even if it had offered the entire coast she would not have seen it. Her eyes were blurred with tears.

  "It can't be true, Dad."

  "It is, Geraldine."

  "The headmastership has always gone on seniority. I remember when I was ten and Mr. Marles retired and Mr. Ferguson moved up to the Advanced School and became Head. That was when we came to the Senior House from the Junior House—"

  Mr. Prosset was thinking: And that was when Helen died. If Gerry had had a mother, all this might have been so much easier. The child has the wrong sense of values. What, after all, is a house?

  Aloud, he reminded after she had repeated the angry, emphatic promotion by seniority, "There can always be a first deviation, my dear."

  A pause, then:

  "Yes."

  The tears were easing now but she did not look out at the sea. Instead, as though she could not bear the sight of it, she turned her back.