Just Gerry Part 1

Just Gerry.

by Christine Chaundler.

CHAPTER I

CUBICLE THIRTEEN

The new girl sat on the edge of her bed, and gazed round at the small domain which for the next three months would be the one spot in this strange new world of school that she could call her own.

It was really quite a nice cubicle, some eight feet wide by ten feet long--just large enough to contain a small white-counterpaned bed, a dressing-table and chest of drawers combined, a small washhand stand, a big wooden locker, and one chintz-covered arm-chair drawn up below the broad sill of the opened window. The cubicle walls were white, the furniture white-enamelled; while the curtain which cut the small compartment off from the rest of the dormitory, the toilet-cover on the dressing-table, and the covering of the arm-chair were all of a dainty cream-coloured chintz with a pretty pink rosebud pattern stencilled upon it. Everything was certainly very nice--much nicer than the new girl had expected--and she looked around with a certain amount of satisfaction. Perhaps after all school would not be the dreadful place she had imagined it would be. Here, at least, would be a place of refuge if the world outside should prove too hard and unfriendly.

Number Thirteen--the numbers were painted outside on the doorposts--was the only cubicle in the Pink Dormitory across which the shielding curtain was drawn. In all the other cubicles unpacking was taking place in full publicity. Rules were in abeyance on this the first day of term, and the dormitory hummed with the shrill chatter that was going on all around. The school was rea.s.sembling for the autumn term, and there were many accounts of holiday doings to be retailed, and much conjecturing going on respecting new girls, new mistresses, new prefects, and new rules. The school year at Wakehurst Priory began with the autumn term, and any changes in the staff or the school routine were usually made then.

Cubicle Number Twelve was as yet unoccupied, but when the bustle of unpacking was at its height, a newcomer burst into the dormitory and rushed helter-skelter down the long corridor, calling out cheerful greetings to various occupants of the cubicles as she pa.s.sed. Reaching Number Twelve, she tumbled her coat and hat and handbag unceremoniously on to the bed, and flung back the curtain of the next-door cubicle with a gay call of greeting.

"What on earth do you want to go pulling your curtains for, you old curmudgeon?" she cried impetuously, then stopped short in sudden surprise at the sight of the strange girl who was sitting on the bed.

"Who the d.i.c.kens are you?" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "And what in the world are you doing in Dorothy Pemberton's cubicle?"

The new girl gave a startled jump and rose to her feet. She was a tall, slight girl, some fifteen years old, taller by a couple of inches than her inquisitor, and apparently older. But in spite of her seniority she looked at the intruder in a frightened sort of way, and replied nervously to her questioning.

"I--I--don't know. They told me it was my cubicle," she answered, shrinking away from this alarming intruder.

"_Who_ told you?" demanded Phyllis Tressider, in such a truculent tone that the new girl retreated yet farther into her cubicle.

"The--the person who showed me here. She looked like a hospital nurse.

I--I suppose it was one of the mistresses."

"You suppose just wrong, then," replied Phyllis, more briefly than politely. "That was Sister. I suppose if she showed you here she meant you to stay. But it's a beastly nuisance, all the same! Dorothy Pemberton always has slept in this cubicle, and it's a sickening shame if she's got to be turned out by a rotten new kid."

The "new kid's" face flushed scarlet. She was beginning some murmured apology when the situation was relieved by the entrance of a girl of about seventeen or eighteen years of age, who was hailed rapturously by all the other occupants of the Pink Dormitory. This was Muriel Paget, head girl of Wakehurst Priory, prefect and monitress as well, and Phyllis left for the moment her inquisition of the occupant of Cubicle Thirteen, to join in the chorus of welcome.

"_Muriel_! How perfectly ripping! You _don't_ mean to say you are going to be our monitress this term? Oh, how quite too splendidly glorious! I say, _do_ let me fetch you your hot water in the mornings.

Do--do--there's a dear!"

"No--me--me!" interposed half a dozen voices. But Muriel held up her hand in laughing dismay.

"For goodness' sake, chuck it, you kids! _n.o.body_ is going to fetch my hot water for me. The maids can do it as they do everybody else's.

I'm not going to have any of that silly rot going on in the Pink Dorm, if _I'm_ to be monitress here. So I give you fair warning!"

"You _are_ going to be monitress, then? Oh, how perfectly scrumptious!" And Phyllis Tressider executed a dance of delight.

Muriel laughed again, pleased at her reception. She enjoyed popularity as well as most people, although she would allow no unhealthy sentiment to be lavished upon her. If people "adored" Muriel Paget, they had to do it from a distance, and not let the object of their worship know too much about it, either. Otherwise they ran a grave risk of "ructions"

with the head girl. And to be "told off" by Muriel was no joke, as many of the girls at Wakehurst Priory could testify.

The head girl walked along the corridor towards the monitress's cubicle, which was at the far end of the dormitory--a bigger and somewhat more elaborately furnished affair than any of the other cubicles. As she pa.s.sed by Number Thirteen, the curtains of which were still thrown back, the sight of the new girl and her rather frightened att.i.tude caught Muriel's eye, and she stopped good-naturedly to speak to her.

"Hullo! Somebody new in here? What's your name, kiddie?" she asked, ignoring the fact that she was only a couple of years or so older than the individual she was addressing.

"Geraldine Wilmott," replied the new girl shyly. Phyllis's unprovoked attack had unnerved her considerably, and she shrank away from the head girl's well-meant advances.

"She's got Dorothy Pemberton's cubicle--isn't it a shame?" said Phyllis, scowling darkly at Geraldine. "Dorothy's had that cubicle next to mine for years and years. It's too bad that we should be separated now, all because of a new kid."

"Jolly good thing you are to be separated, I think, if I'm to be your dormitory monitress," replied the head girl, with a smile that took the sting out of her words. "One of you alone is bad enough--but you two together are the limit! If Sister has really put you into different dormitories at last, she has my heartfelt grat.i.tude!"

"They're not so far removed after all, worse luck," remarked the occupant of Number Fourteen, who was just finishing putting away her belongings in a neatly arranged drawer. "Dorothy's got Number Twenty-Nine, the next cubicle to yours, Muriel. She's in the same dormitory still."

"Why, Monica, old thing--how are you? I never saw you hidden away in there. Finished your unpacking? Then come along and talk to me while I do mine." And the head girl slipped her arm round Monica Deane and led her away. These two were great friends, out-of-school companions as well as form-mates, although pretty, vivacious Muriel Paget, brilliant at games and gymnastics as well as at lessons, was a great contrast to Monica, who, although studious enough, was painstaking and plodding rather than brilliant; and although keen and reliable at all sorts of games, would never make much of a mark at them.

Phyllis Tressider remained staring rather sulkily at the new owner of Number Thirteen, who, deprived of the comforting protection of the head girl, was growing momentarily more and more nervous under the hostile scrutiny. However, there came another interruption almost immediately, this time in the person of an astonishingly pretty person who flung herself effusively into Phyllis's arms, to be greeted with a delighted:

"Hullo, Dorothy, old dear! I am glad to see you again!"

For a few moments Phyllis's attention was diverted from the new girl.

But she was soon recalled to a remembrance of her grievance by Dorothy's exclamation of surprise at seeing the occupant of her one-time domain.

"Hullo! What's up? Aren't I to be in Number Thirteen this term?"

"No. Isn't it a shame?" responded Phyllis, her disgust returning.

"You're ever so far away--in Number Twenty-Nine, Monica says. This wretched new kid has got your cubicle. I _do_ think it's mean of Sister to go turning you out!"

Dorothy's face fell considerably.

"Oh, I say, that's too bad! Why, I've been in Number Thirteen for ages and ages. Can't we get the new kid to change? Sister would never remember. Here, I say, you, what's your name?" addressing the shy and miserable occupant of Number Thirteen.

The new girl flushed hotly with embarra.s.sment at this brusque mode of address. But she answered the question politely enough. Indeed, she was far too scared to do anything else--to her, discretion, in this case at least, appeared to be decidedly the better part of valour.

"Geraldine Wilmott," she said, under her breath.

"Well, look here, Geraldine Wilmott, this is my cubie. You won't mind changing into Number Twenty-Nine instead, will you? Phyllis Tressider and I have always slept in next-door cubicles ever since we first came to school."

"And that's the very reason you are to be separated now," said a voice behind them, and turning round in dismay the two friends saw the redoubtable Sister herself regarding them with a grimly humorous smile.

"It's just because you and Phyllis always have been together that you're being moved. There were complaints enough of you last term, and if I'd had my way you'd have been in different dormitories altogether.

But Miss Oakley said to give you one more chance, so I'm trying what the effect of putting you at opposite ends of the dormitory may be.

You just leave Geraldine Wilmott alone, and get to work and unpack your boxes. And mind you put the things away tidily--I shall be coming round to inspect the drawers after tea." And Sister moved on down the dormitory, leaving two very disconsolate damsels behind her.

"Bother!" said Dorothy crossly. "I suppose there's no help for it, now. I shall have to go to Number Twenty-Nine." And with a scowl at the innocently offending new girl, she marched off to inspect her new cubicle with an aggrieved air.

Left to herself, Geraldine pulled her curtain again, and curled herself up rather forlornly upon the bed. In spite of the brave resolutions she had made when she left home that morning not to cry or show her home-sickness, no matter how lonely or miserable she might be, the tears were very near her eyes at that moment. And a devastating feeling of shyness and fearfulness, which was the bugbear of her existence, descended upon her mind.

For of all the shy, nervous, frightened girls of fifteen that ever were, Geraldine Wilmott was surely the most shy and nervous and frightened! It was not her own fault. She had always been a delicate, highly-strung child, while a severe illness when she was seven years old had not improved matters. And then, three years ago, during the War, she had been in an air-raid, and the sights and sounds she had seen and heard that night had left an indelible impression upon her nervous system. She was fully aware of her own failings--almost morbidly so--and she did her best to struggle against the fears that so constantly beset her. But it was uphill work, and even the three years of peace and quiet in the country house her parents had taken, after the doctor had said that a country life was imperative for the little girl, if her nerves were to be saved, had not altogether accomplished a cure.

And now at last the doctor had prescribed boarding-school as a remedy for the nervousness.

"I really think it is worth giving it a trial, Mrs. Wilmott," he had said. "There is nothing wrong with the child's health. It is purely mental, and I believe that the society of other girls will do more for her now than all the care and anxiety you lavish upon her at home.

Send her to a first-cla.s.s school, a really big one. Don't make arrangements for any special privileges--just let her mingle with the other girls as though she were a perfectly normal child. She will never get the better of this nervousness while you spoil and pamper her at home."

"Really, I don't think I've spoilt her," began Mrs. Wilmott in some distress, but the specialist interrupted her.