Will You Surrender? Page 3

  Leaving the window, she came to the Professor's side. "You knew all along?"

  Again he said "Yes."

  "Why didn't you tell me, darling?"

  He shrugged humorously at that. As one of his impertinent young scholars might have retorted, he flung, "Fat chance."

  She did not smile back. She always did, but this time she couldn't. She said, "Why? Why, Dad?"

  "You never gave me an opportunity, Geraldine."

  She stirred impatiently. "Not that, Father. I mean, why has all this happened? Why aren't you to become the—the Head?"

  He pretended concern over a pile of freshly-laundered singlets.

  "I don't know," he said obscurely. "Perhaps I haven't given satisfaction. You always told me I had a predilection for mixing cargoes with logarithms. Perhaps it was that. Perhaps someone besides the boys heard 'Onyx and turtle

  fins, cinnamon and joss sticks' and deemed it would be unbecoming to a head."

  "Father, be serious."

  He turned abruptly, urgently.

  "No, Geraldine, let us not be that."

  Something in his voice caught her attention. She looked at him sharply. "Dad, you—it's not your health, is it?"

  He answered her quickly—too quickly, but she did not notice it.

  "Of course not, baby. I said 'let us not be serious' because I hate post-mortems. I am not to be the new headmaster. Can't we leave it at that?"

  She knew that she should. She knew that all this must be hurtful to him, but she could not put aside her own pain.

  "Why? Why?" she fretted. "I can't understand it." "Then don't, Gerry. Accept it as I have."

  "You have?" She stared at him aghast. "You can't mean, Dad, that you'd stay on after that."

  "Of course I'll stay on. What an idea!" He laughed indulgenty.

  She looked at him incredulously. She felt incredulous—incredulous that her own father could betray such lack of pride.

  Before she could tumble out the hot words that had rushed to her lips he spoke quietly and calmly.

  "Geraldine, it is a poor love that loves only bricks and mortar. My love for this place flows too deep for me to abandon it simply because I am not to be its master."

  "Galdang has abandoned you, Dad."

  "I don't think so. For some wise reason I am not to become the skipper, but that does not give me cause to leave the ship. Besides, Gerry, I don't want to leave. I'm an old man now, too old to start again."

  "Who spoke about starting again? You could retire. We could find a nice, snug apartment as the Fergusons have and be perfectly happy."

  "Could we? Could you?" He glanced to the window, to the blue shout of surprise that was the Pacific Ocean. "Could you?" he asked.

  She did not answer him.

  . Presently she said in a tight little voice, "Who—who is the next principal, Father?"

  "Fellow of the name of Manning, Damien Manning. I have not met him but his qualifications are unimpeachable. He is English." He told Geraldine the name of Manning's last school.

  Her lips were set mutinously. "Why should a Britisher be chosen?"

  "You're a Britisher yourself."

  "Why should an Englishman take the precedence at an Australian school?"

  "That's prejudice, Gerry. I thought better of you than that."

  "Circumstances—unfair circumstances breed prejudice, Dad."

  He opened his mouth to shame that prejudice, but realized he could not argue unless he told her what he did not want to tell. He shut his mouth again.

  "What—what is he like, this Manning?" she breathed unevenly.

  He would be old, of course. He'd have to be old to have had the headmastership of an English school as large and established as that.

  But even as she asked she knew she could not bear her father to tell her. She could not let him announce that he was not elderly, because that would make it possible for the new principal to be—that man.

  She began talking quickly, at a tangent, and suddenly her eyes fell on the neat piles of underwear and she remembered how she had taken for granted that he was packing for his move up to the master house.

  "Dad, why have you taken those things from your wardrobe?'

  "To move them, Gerry."

  "Then—then it's all been a joke after all?" Her eyes were pathetically appealing. "You are being head?"

  "No, darling."

  "But you just said 'to move them'."

  He nodded, paused, then nodded again to make it sink

  in.

  "Where?" She barely whispered it.

  He answered gently, "Back to the Meadow House."

  CHAPTER IV

  LACK of promotion had been a hard pill to take, but demotion, Gerry found, was almost impossible medicine.

  She stared at the Professor aghast—aghast more at the calm way he was accepting the news than at the news itself; almost, she thought, as though it wasn't demotion, as though being returned to the ragamuffins from the rascals —the Professor would have said to the lads from the young men—was not an insult at all.

  "I always loved the Meadow House," he was saying quietly, "it's smaller, cosier. It faces the west and there's nothing like a westering when you've reached my milestone."

  "Dad, don't run away from facts."

  "I'm not, Gerry. I'm speaking from my heart. It was to the Meadow House I first brought Helen and it's to the Meadow House my love belongs."

  She knew a quick stab of unreasonable jealousy. She always had believed that she had satisfied his love after Mummy had gone.

  Tartly, she parried, remembering what he had said to her, "What poor love is this that loves only bricks and mortar?"

  He laughed, caught out in his own words. But for all the laughter she could tell he was quite serious. He did not consider it a demotion to be returning to the house that faced the west.

  She went out puzzled, uneasy, feeling oddly futile, and it had not helped her when Matron and Clara and Millicent also showed the same resigned acceptance.

  "Isn't it outrageous, Matron?" she appealed. "He had a right to be head."

  "Wouldn't be a job I'd like. Too much responsibility." "Father could do it."

  "I've no doubt, but he's happy now, don't you think?"

  He was happy. That was apparent. When Clara and

  Millicent spoke almost in the same strain, Gerry could have stamped her foot.

  "It's an insult, Clara."

  "Meadow House is nice, Miss Geraldine. Catches the winter sun without the cold breeze. Professor can do with some pampering."

  "It's victimization, Millicent."

  "Mr. Prosset doesn't look much like a victim. He's contented, Miss Gerry, if you ask me."

  The only conclusion Geraldine could reach was that the staff had had a pre-knowledge of the way things were to be—the same as the Professor.

  She, and she alone, had not been told.

  She packed her things with a heavy heart. When it came to the curtains, she stuffed them in, not caring if she crushed them, not taking a second look.

  The bags were waiting in the passage when Quinn, the Meadow House janitor, came across in the college jeep. She watched him pile them in but refused to travel beside him. The Professor had no qualms, however. He got in and left without a backward look.

  She turned a moment to the house that once had seemed gay but now seemed disenchanted, like some seaside resort, she thought gloomily, when winter sets in.

  "I have been happy here," she admitted, and stood a moment wrapped in the pleasures of nine sweet years.

  And now what? The Meadow House with its consolation-prize comfort?

  Gathering her smaller belongings, tightening her lips, Gerry also left.

  The junior building was of dark red brick, and it had dull green shutters and a big veranda. Because of its sheltered position it had the best flowers. It was a little bit ugly yet comfortably ugly; it was snug, and that should suit the Professor.

  Gerry could recall how her mother ha
d had whatnots in the dark corners of the rooms filled with paper-weights garnered on holidays, little glass gimcracks and listening shells gathered from the beach. When you put those shells to your ear you could hear the rhythm of the sea, she re-

  membered—but up there in Galdang you would not have needed a listening shell, the song would come whistling with the breeze over the bluff. Oh, Barbary, so you have not surrendered, grieved her jealous heart.

  The Professor was standing taking out his memories as one would take books from a shelf.

  "Helen had all sorts of bric-a-brac because she said the mahogany"—he waved his hand to the solid old furniture —"was oppressive."

  "It is. Perhaps we could ask the new headmaster about it." Her voice was tinged with resentment.

  "It is in good order, Gerry. Why not some little figurines? Dresden ladies? Rabbits? Something like that?"

  She knew he was right. She knew the furniture was good. She knew armfuls of golden guineas from the garden would dispel the gloom of those dark corners, but she said, "I'll speak to the headmaster," and as she did she saw the headmaster as she wanted him to be, as he must be, not—and in her secret heart already she knew it—as he was.

  It was a week before she was forced to accept the truth. In the distance she had seen the man she had met at Galdang proper, tall, dark-haired, easy of gait in his English tweeds. She had refused to admit his position. Against her own inner acknowledgment she obstinately thought of him as a new senior class assistant or perhaps a new junior master, even someone to help with the preps.

  Then one night her father said in a pleased voice, "I met Manning today. He's a fine fellow, Geraldine. We had a long talk."

  She longed to call, "Is he tall and dark and young for a H.M.? Is he—that man?" Aloud, she said coldly, "Oh." "He's coming over for tea tomorrow."

  "Dad, is that necessary?"

  "It is polite." There was a note of warning in Professor Prosset's voice.

  "I suppose next you'll be ordering cucumber sandwiches, seed cake and the special China Blend." That, in the Fergusons' days, had been the accepted afternoon tea. No one had deviated because everyone approved.

  "I wish," said the Professor promptly, "I could order a smiling face."

  Gerry shook her head. "Impossible, darling, I hate the man already."

  "Before you have met him?"

  "I have met him—I mean I have met him in my thoughts." Gerry followed up her hasty correction with a succinct, "And we didn't like each other, Dad."

  The Professor chuckled. Growing serious again, he corrected, "You'll like Damien Manning, my dear, have no doubt about that."

  "Is he—short and plump and—and oldish?"

  "He is just the opposite," smiled the Professor, "and he's coming tomorrow at four."

  As the bell clanged the next day, Gerry put a match to the cocoa and switched on the toaster and inserted the muffins

  She had had to travel into Marlborough for the muffins. Breffny could have supplied crumpets, but, as Mr. Felix said, "Muffins were another kidney altogether." Mr. Felix had lots of phrases like this. "Only an Englishman would ask for muffins, Miss Geraldine. Crumpets we always stock but muffins are—"

  "Another kidney," nodded Gerry. She added, "These are for an Englishman."

  "Won't he find them hot?" ventured Mr. Felix, who hated losing a sale.

  "That's how they should be served, shouldn't they?" asked Gerry blandly.

  Mr. Felix looked at her but saw only an earnest face beneath soft, straight, acorn-brown hair.

  "I meant too hot for the present weather," he said.

  Now, as she turned the muffins and lowered the flame under the cocoa, Gerry sopped her hot brow with a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne.

  It was a simmering, shimmery day. The sky was like blue enamel. Earlier, the Professor had remarked that the thermometer had reached .

  She turned everything low, took off her apron and went into the sitting-room.

  The Professor had found Damien Manning a seagrass chair for cooler comfort. He himself sat on the beloved old leather that he had brought from the Cliff House. There was a cushion at the window-box for Gerry, and the window was flung open to catch the maximum breeze.

  As she entered Manning rose. Although she had really known all along it was the man whom she had met that day, right up till this moment Gerry had tried to believe differently.

  Now, with her hand in his and raising unwilling eyes, she met defeat.

  "My daughter, Geraldine, Mr. Manning."

  "How do you do, Mr. Manning." She waited for his sarcastic, "But surely we have met."

  It did not come. He said perfunctorily, "How do you do, Miss Prosset." He indicated his own chair, then when she passed him to the window-seat, returned to the cool cane depths.

  The Professor and Manning continued the topic they had been discussing when she entered. It was a new subject to be included in next year's curriculum, and after it they argued the syllabus, physical education, the merits of new against old languages, the value of intelligence tests—all subjects, thought Gerry impatiently, that were dusty with chalk She watched the clock eagerly. In ten minutes she would wheel in the tea. Only it wouldn't be tea. It would be thick hot cocoa, and instead of the cucumber sandwiches and seed cake there would be toasted muffins and jam

  "Gerry," reproached her father, and she realized that Manning had spoken to her.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I remarked upon the fact, Miss Prosset, that you held a teaching certificate."

  "Yes," Gerry said.

  "But have not taught?"

  "That is true."

  "A pity."

  "I have not found it so. Teaching would have taken me from Galdang and I—" She stopped herself. She had been going to say ". . . and I did not want to go." But he knew that already. He knew it—and she flushed—only too well.

  He was looking at her unwaveringly. Somewhere back in the dark eyes there was an amused quirk.

  "If you could have stayed at Galdang," he pursued, "would the profession have had appeal then?"

  Gerry had risen. "You must excuse me," she said, looking at the clock.

  "Geraldine, Mr. Manning asked you a question." Manning gave a gesture to her father. "Later," Gerry believed he said.

  As she loaded the tea-waggon she puzzled over that "later", but it was all forgotten as she wheeled in the repast.

  Triumphantly, she whipped the covers off the muffins, adroitly she poured the cocoa into the heated cups and passed them.

  "Sugar?" she smiled. Then she asked, "Would you like extra butter, or jam?"

  Without a flicker Manning said, "Jam."

  There they sat in the hottest afternoon that summer, sipping cocoa, eating the toasted buns.

  The Professor was dumbfounded. Damien Manning was contemplative. Gerry sat back and smiled.

  At last Mr. Prosset recovered himself. With a mumbled "Be back, Manning," he hurried out, obviously in search of something long and cold and bitter. He called in censure to Geraldine, "Get out the lager set."

  When he had gone the man said clearly, "I'm afraid you forgot one thing, Miss Prosset."

  She was still smiling blandly as she queried, "Yes?" "The cream, madam, though I must admit you manage a grin quite successfully without it."

  He looked at her lengthily, then stated:

  "You have long claws for a small cat."

  CHAPTER V

  IT was a week before Gerry saw Manning again.

  After he had taken his farewells, not mentioning that mysterious "later"—what had it been? she wondered—the Professor had turned on his daughter.

  "Geraldine, I could have birched you with pleasure. What on earth got into you, you difficult daughter?"

  "Darling, wasn't I the thoughtful hostess? The typical Englishman, Daddy, could I have served anything more apt?"

  Mr. Prosset stood looking at her helplessly. "You've got it all so wrong, Geraldine."

  "Got what w
rong?"

  "This position we're in. It's not as you think."

  "Then what is it?"

  Again—as before—he opened his mouth, then shut it. "Damien Manning is a good man," he said instead. "He pushed you out, Dad."

  "No, my darling."

  "I say he did. Perhaps the Board had something to do with it, but the fact remains that the H.M. went to—to that man."

  "Perhaps neither had anything to do with it." "Someone must have," she said.

  Prosset went to stand at the window. Can I tell her, he asked himself, and immediately he answered "No."

  She was too young, too impulsive, too vulnerable, too highly-strung, too much of her was quicksilver. He had no doubt that she had a tissue-paper heart, one that would tear too easily. She had always suffered with love.

  She watched him tenderly. "I'm sorry for your feeling of shamed hospitality, but for myself, no, Professor. Never mind, I'll behave better when the boys get back."

  "Yes, when the boys get back," repeated Prosset, and the little line on his forehead became a frown. That was what Manning had wanted to discuss with Geraldine. That was what she had delayed with her impudent serving of hot muffins and jam.

  "Oh, Gerry, Gerry," he said.

  It was down on the beach that Geraldine encountered Damien and learned what she had deferred that afternoon when she had served that impossible repast.

  It was an encounter. If she had known he was there she would not have gone.

  It was her habit to surf every day, and the fact that today the seas were higher than usual did not deter her. She was an experienced swimmer and was just taking a long shoot when she saw him emerge from the rocks at the north end.

  He put up his hand and at first she thought it was an

  acknowledgment. Then she saw he was beckoning her, so turning her back she took another shoot.

  But one cannot surf indefinitely. Unwillingly, at last, and tugging at the brief legs of her old green swimsuit, she came out to the sand.

  "Didn't you see me calling you in?" he asked irritably. "You should have whistled," she suggested. "Whistle, my lad, isn't it? Then I might have come."