Will You Surrender? Page 9

  The headmaster stood stiff and non-committal. Now, he knew, was the moment to progress slowly, to step cautiously, if he was ever to achieve the right to Tom. "Hasn't he a father?" he asked, without expression.

  "Yes, but you wouldn't give Tom to him."

  "The boy is not an orphan. Nor yet is he a state ward. I can have nothing to do with it," said Damien.

  He was aware of their hostile glances as he got back into the car.

  He drove home to Galdang, not stopping at the house with the rowan tree. He knew what Geraldine would have to say, and he knew how he must answer.

  "What did she die of?" she asked that evening.

  "A tired heart, a tired body. She had driven herself too hard."

  There was silence awhile, Gerry staring out of his study window to the sea. She could hear the low murmur of waves dragging over the rocks at the north end. The house was quiet. Manning's guests had travelled down in the car with him and not returned. It seemed that the death of Mrs. Betts had brought the death of their summer. Even as she sat there Gerry could feel the warmth going out and the cold settling in.

  As though he sensed her chill, Damien switched on the lamp on the desk and instantly it soaked up the shadows and she felt warm again.

  "One thing," she said with more peace in her voice, "we know she would die happy."

  This is what he had anticipated, dreaded. He straightened his shoulders, then he asked, "Why do you say that?"

  "She knew we had him here. She knew Tom was up at Galdang."

  "But we cannot keep him. Of course you realize that."

  She turned sharply at once. The look in her eyes made the look that he had seen in the women's eyes in Sydney seem almost mild and benign in comparison.

  "What are you saying, Mr. Manning?" she choked.

  "That we cannot retain Thomas, Miss Prosset. It is beyond our power, it is not our privilege. He has a father, and it is to his father he belongs."'

  "A father—someone who left him because he did not want him, because he did not want the care that comes with a child?"

  "None the less, his parent. Thomas is not an orphan. You knew that when we brought him here."

  "His father will refuse the responsibility."

  "He cannot do so unless he forfeits his right to him." "Then he'll do that. He did it before."

  "In which case Tom still must go back, still must be handed over to the state, even though temporarily."

  Gerry looked at Damien.

  She said, aghast, "Have you any heart at all?"

  "Listen to me, Miss Prosset, if I keep Thomas Betts I am holding a child wrongly. Can't you see that?"

  "You mean you are saddling yourself with a responsibility that, like Tom's father, you are afraid to accept." "Miss Prosset, there are legal aspects—"

  "And there is another aspect, one you would never understand, Mr. Manning—there is the aspect of love."

  He was looking at her closely. "You think I am incapable of loving?"

  "I know it. It has just been proven. You speak of taking away Tom."

  He sat very still. All day he had been fighting this. The boy must be retained, his heart demanded that, but to retain him properly, irrevocably, he must be forfeited first, then legally won.

  He was tired, the journey had been tiring, the women had upset him—and now Geraldine must needs taunt him like this. His lips thinned. His words came thinly. "I am not speaking of taking away Tom, Miss Prosset, he is going away tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow—"

  "You might get his things together. There isn't much."

  She had risen. He had never thought to see such hating in anyone. He longed to cross to her, reason with her, tell her, reach her, but she was so caught up in Tom's pain he knew she would not understand.

  There were so many legal explanations to which she would not listen. To her blind reasoning there were only two isues: Tom went, Tom stayed. There was no middle course, no waiting period to make a boy's future certain. He could almost have shaken her to make her see it with him. The child had a parent. If that parent failed him, he became a state ward. Then, and then only, could Manning step in.

  He opened his mouth to explain—then closed it.

  Why raise her hopes when they might never come true? He himself was prepared to accept tedious discouragement, to face a long battle, but such acceptance was not in this girl's nature. She was too keyed-up, too volatile, she was a quicksilver thing.

  He knew she would jump instantly to the conclusion

  that it was all settled, that Tom naturally would stay on here. She would not linger over details, red tape, long-established regulations, as departments did.

  It would not bother her that neither of them, herself, himself, was married. It would be no obstacle that unmarried people are not permitted to have a foster child. He took a resolute step forward, determined that she must know, but she spoke before he could, coldly, and with unmistakable loathing.

  "You're hard. You've always been hard. You were hard with my father. And now you are doing this to Tom."

  "I had nothing to do with your father. I told you that. He told you I believed you had accepted it, but I see I was wrong."

  "I shall never accept it. If I had resigned myself to it, it was only because I wanted to be fair, to give you the benefit. But one cannot be fair to a man who does not comprehend the meaning of fairness, one does not give the benefit of a doubt when one knows."

  "What do you know?" His voice was even colder than hers. It was so frigid that the chill of it struck inwards at Geraldine, yet she paid little heed. She answered him at once.

  "I know you have no emotion in you, no love, no heart at all. You are an automaton. You are a piece of machinery. You are simply something that is wound up to make it tick."

  His eyes were narrowed. She could sense his rising temper. But still she went on.

  "People, real people, cannot turn their back on a thing like love. Love is not just an issue, a phase in an existence, it is a part, a living part of yourself, and you do not let it go if you want to remain whole."

  He had control of his temper now. He said levelly, "Just as well, then, I am that automaton, that piece of machinery, otherwise I would be in remnants by now."

  "You are safe," she said, just as levelly. "Have no fear of that, Mr. Manning," and turning, she went out of the room.

  She crossed slowly to the Meadow House where the lights were just appearing. She thought in the practical manner that people often do in pain, "We must start having fires soon."

  She went up to the dormitory.

  There was not much to push into the new case with which she had helped Mrs. Betts that day she had gone with Manning to the house in the dingy suburb.

  She left out the grey suit that had taken a lot of saving to purchase. Tom must travel back in that.

  The shoes, the socks, the pint-sized handkerchiefs worked neatly "T. Betts"—the pyjamas bought a size too big to grow with Tom.

  No, thought Gerry dully, fastening the catches, the headmaster is right as he is always right, there is not much to pack.

  Overnight the weather changed from summer to winter. Gerry opened her eyes to a grey dawn, felt the sharp bite in the air and knew that the hot gold days that had extended into and eventually edged out autumn had gone.

  A westerly wind was rattling the window. Westerlies were Australia's lazy winds. They never went round but through you. She lay snug in her bed gloating at the warmth a drowsy minute, then she remembered everything —remembered practically, too, that winter meant in a boarding-school, warmer underwear, pullovers, blazers, and she threw back the sheets and got out.

  As she dressed she thought vaguely of Saxby and how he would be planning spring planting. Saxby was always a season ahead. Last week she had sympathized with him on the non-appearance of autumn and he had answered, "Long summer, short winter, you'll have your daffodils early, Miss Prosset," and had begun preparing the bed.

  She unlocked the trunk
-room and began going through the boys' winter cases. Perhaps it would have been better to have carried on as in the old days when winter woollies were issued to be worn without fail from a certain date. Yet thinking of last week, too hot even to linger on the beach, Gerry shook her head. Those rules were not made for this climate with its four seasons in so many days, she thought.

  As she took out the singlets, cardigans, thicker socks, she realized that the pain she had known last night had diminished.

  Perhaps it was the need to be busy that had brought the appeasement, but she felt a certain calm within her, a more reasonable approach to a situation—a new quiet confidence that everything would be all right in the end.

  It was in this spirit that she loaded the trolley and trundled the thicker underwear into the dormitories.

  "Winter came last night," she called to the sleepy boys, "so it's warm singlets from today on."

  They grumbled, as usual. Winter meant no swimming, it meant porridge. Gerry ignored the grumbling. Grumbling in a boys' school was, a matter of course.

  James Semple held out his singlet disdainfully. "This is not mine," he said.

  "Indeed it is, James. It's marked clearly J.S."

  "There must be another J.S."

  "But not from your case, James."

  "My underwear," said James stiffly, "is silk and wool. This is all wool. I don't wear all wool. I prickle."

  Geraldine took up the singlet. She knew James's persistence. She knew he would keep prickling. "I'll go and check," she said.

  She went back to the trunk-room and took out the case from the recess marked Semple.

  A shadow came across the doorway. It was a small shadow. Gerry turned. It was Tom.

  She went and pulled him gently in, then closed the door behind him On a second thought she pushed home the bolt.

  The little man stood fully dressed, straight and upright. He had put on his best grey suit by himself No worry here about wool that prickled, and suddenly tears were pricking at Gerry's lids.

  He looked at her gravely yet not so unhappily. "Don't be sad, Miss. Prosset," he said.

  The dark soft eyes, childish yet touchingly adult, beseeched, encouraged her. "Don't be sad about Mrs. Betts. You see, she told me this might happen. I think she was very tired, Mrs. Betts."

  There was an odd dignity about Thomas. In some curious way death had elevated him. Now "me Mum" was pridefully "Mrs. Betts".

  "She's happy now," he continued earnestly, "no work,

  no cleaning, no steps, he says. She always got tired on steps."

  "That's right," breathed Gerry a little unevenly, and then she asked curiously, "Tom, who says?"

  "Mr. Manning, Miss Prosset," Tom said readily, "Mr. Manning says."

  "You have been talking with the headmaster?"

  "Yes, Miss Prosset. He's taking me down after breakfast. Not for long, mind you. Just to get everything the shipshape way, he says."

  "Then—then you're coming back, Thomas?"

  "Of course, Miss Prosset. That's what she would have wanted, Mrs. Betts, he says."

  The door-handle shook and outside the trunk-room James Semple called in outrage, "Miss Prosset, have you found my underwear?"

  Inside the room neither of them paid any attention. Tom was relating more of what "he says".

  Another rattle of the door knob, and Gerry picked up a pile that looked reasonably like a Semple's. Now she knew why she had sensed the pain diminishing, felt the appeasement. It was because everything was going to be all right—in the end.

  Manning had been marking time, watching his opportunity, waiting. . . . But why hadn't he explained to her as he had to Tom?

  Why had he let her cry out her heart as she had?

  She knelt beside the boy and hugged him quickly. "Of course, darling, everything is going to be shipshape. It won't be long."

  "No, Miss Prosset, that's what he says."

  James took the underwear with a glare. "I've been standing here five and a half minutes."

  Gerry said not very helpfully, "Probably you'll contract a chill."

  James stared, amazed, then went back to the dormitory to put the singlet on.

  The car came for Tom after breakfast. As he did his rounds of goodbyes with the boys and Cook and Matron, Geraldine went round to the driver's seat.

  "You might have stopped me saying what I did," she said, hoping it sounded like an apology.

  When he did not comment she added, "You could have, too, Mr. Manning, if you had told me what you told Tom."

  "And what did I tell Tom?" His voice was discouraging, but she refused to be discouraged.

  "That he is coming back," she said.

  There was a moment's silence.

  "It could be that I was making it up for Tom."

  "But you weren't, were you? You won't give him up without a struggle? You said those things to me because you are cautious, you have to be sure—"

  "No," agreed Manning coolly, "I'll never give him up." "Then why, why didn't you stop me?"

  "You gave me no opportunity. Besides"—pausing briefly —"the results were enlightening. It was one way of seeing what was in your heart."

  She remembered her bitter words, her deliberate barbs, and asked slowly, "And you found out?"

  "I found out," he nodded. "Now, if you'll hurry-up Tom. . . ."

  They were gone, Thomas waving to the last bend, Manning sitting looking unapproachable, though Tom did not seem to find him unapproachable, Gerry thought.

  Her arm came slowly back to her side. She was thinking of the relief that must be Mrs. Betts's as she looked down and saw her place blessedly filled with another idol. Wherever Tom went in the next few weeks the people would hear a lot of "he says".

  "MISS PROSSET!" It was James again, and he was scratching.

  Geraldine bore him off to the trunk-room to make sure this time for himself.

  CHAPTER XII

  THE morning suggestion that this at last might be winter

  proved definite by lunch-time. Instead of cold salad Cook

  provided a beef stew. There was boiled syrup duff instead

  of jelly to follow. Gerry thought musingly, "We all con-

  sider the seasons differently: with Neville it's football, with Saxby it's bulbs for spring flowering, with Cook it's soup and stew."

  After lessons she lit a fire in the study. Then she sat beside it, the Professor on the other side, and they talked.

  She recounted everything—how Manning had spoken to her, what she had flung in answer. Finally, how she was sorry for what she had said.

  "But why did he let me jump to conclusions, Father? Why didn't he tell me the things he told to Tom?"

  "I've no doubt," reminded the Professor drily, "you gave him little opportunity. You're dry tinder, Geraldine, waiting for a match. I'm afraid you'll never learn."

  "I should have been given red hair," nodded Gerry ruefully, "and instead I'm a dull mouse." As she said it she remembered someone calling her hair polished acorn, and she flushed.

  The Professor was watching her a little troublously. "You must not build on this, Geraldine," he advised. "You must not take the acquisition of Thomas for granted."

  "Tom is building, he is taking it for granted."

  "The very young have need to. Their horizons naturally are limited. Maturity should be more far-seeing than that."

  "Yes," agreed Gerry, "it should be." She paused, then added thoughtfully, "And I should be mature now, shouldn't I, Dad?"

  "Nineteen," he twinkled, "is not such a great age, yet it is time one grew up."

  They sat a while watching the burning driftwood.

  "If maturity, if growing up means waiting, accepting,

  always self-controlling, I'm afraid I want no part of it." "You're impulsive, Gerry, but you'll learn in time. Age

  is the one thing you can be sure you'll grow into." "It sounds frightening."

  "It's not." For a moment the Professor was silent. Then he said quietly, rem
iniscently, "Not if you do it with the right one."

  He so seldom spoke of Helen that Gerry looked at him quickly. Faintly, distantly, she recalled him telling her that day soon after they had moved to the Cliff House that her mother had gone away; that she was not coming back. She remembered the crumpling of his face, and Mrs. Fer-

  guson taking over, but he had not spoken again of it after that.

  Dear Dad, had the years been dreary without her? Had that lilac horizon when he had interrupted Archimedes to recite "Onyx and turtle fins, cinnamon and joss sticks" mirrored a loved face as well as a homing ship?

  And had it been true that he wanted to return to the Meadow House?

  Again Gerry stared into the glowing wood.

  There was a lot she would have liked to ask him, and perhaps in this moment of quiet acceptance he might have told her, only just then Matron came in.

  "A fire? You lucky people!"

  There was nothing to do but invite her to join them. She accepted with alacrity and drew up a chair.

  "We'll have to replenish the medicine chest," she said busily. "This snap will bring its share of chills "

  "Any already?"

  "Phillips looks likely and Sanderson is sniffing." Gerry asked, "What about James Semple?"

  Matron herself sniffed

  "Semple is complaining of his mattress. Says it must be stuffed with pippy shells. Suggests we transfer to rubber, breathing rubber."

  "But no chill?"

  "Not yet."

  Gerry sighed. "That, at least, is something. There was trouble this morning over his change of singlet. There was a delay while I was talking to Tom."

  "Ah, Tom—" said Matron, and her face softened. "I wonder where is Tom?"

  This was what Gerry had been wondering, had been leading up to with her talk with the Professor. Where do they take children who have only a father who has never supported them? What happens? Then when and if it happens, is it for long?

  Questions had been quivering on her lips, but now that Matron had joined them she could not ask them. Was it because they entailed Manning, and that for some curious reason she could not discuss him here?