Just Gerry Part 3

The Chapel at Wakehurst was part of the original Priory buildings, and such restoration as was necessary had been done with due regard to the beauty of the old architecture. Geraldine gazed round with admiration as Jack held the door open for her to look in.

"We always have prayers in here," said Jack, closing the door quietly.

Then as the two girls walked away, she added: "We have prayers twice a day, you know--to say nothing of Sundays! On Sundays one of the curates from St. Peter's comes up to the school to take the Early Service and Matins, and those who want to, go down to St. Peter's on Sunday evenings. Sunday evenings aren't compulsory though, so long as you've attended both morning services, and there's not a huge rush for them as a rule. Goodness knows we get enough church all through the week, without having it three times on Sundays as well!" wound up the graceless Jack.

"Once we always used to have to put our hats on every time we went into Chapel," she went on. "But Miss Oakley isn't so frightfully keen on old St. Paul's ideas about women as the last Head used to be, and she's abolished it for weekdays. Sundays, of course, you have to wear your hat, but not for everyday. It used to waste no end of time, putting them on and taking them off twice a day; and Miss Oakley said she thought it would be much more reverent really if we didn't always have to scramble and rush about with them just before and after service."

"Is Miss Oakley nice?" asked Geraldine.

"Nice? Rather! She's absolutely tiptop! The best Head we've ever had or are likely to have. You can't take liberties with her, though, and she doesn't half know how to jaw you if you're sent up to her. We are all frightfully keen on her here, but we're all half-scared of her too.

At least, I know I am! This is the Great Hall, where we have mark-readings and a.s.semblies and special meetings and things. Come on--you don't want to go in there now. You'll see quite enough of it later on. I want to show you the gym."

The gymnasium was a recent addition to the school, and quite a modern building. It was fitted up with all kinds of marvellous and intricate apparatus, and Jack proceeded to expand upon these with great gusto.

But, much to her disappointment, she found that Geraldine was not nearly so interested as she might have been.

"Aren't you keen on gym, either?" she asked in surprise; and Geraldine shook her head.

"I've never done any at all," she answered. "I--I don't much think I shall like it. Swinging and climbing always make me feel so giddy."

"Well, you are a rum bird!" commented Jack. "No hockey, no gym--is there _anything_ you can do, I wonder?" And she looked so concerned at the new girl's lack of accomplishments that Geraldine felt very humbled and apologetic.

"I'll have to try and learn," she said meekly, and Jack's face cleared.

"Oh yes, I expect you'll soon pick it up. Well, I think I've shown you pretty nearly everything. Let's go back to the sitting-room, shall we?

It must be nearly supper-time now. I'm jolly hungry, aren't you?

We'll cut across the mistresses' quarters to get there. We're not supposed to go that way as a rule, but it's ever so much shorter, and as to-day's the first day of term, I don't expect anyone will say very much, even if we are caught."

She opened a green baize door which led into a short pa.s.sage, closed at the other end by another door--"to keep out the row," Jack explained, as she held it open to let Geraldine through. The second door opened into a square hall, carpeted with rich Oriental rugs, and lighted dimly by a shaded lamp at the far end. A number of other doors opened into the hall.

"The mistresses' sitting-rooms," said Jack, with a wave of her hand towards them.

As she spoke she stumbled over a big black curly-haired retriever dog, who lay stretched out on a rug, almost hidden in the dim light. She pitched forward on her hands and knees over his slumbering form, and Geraldine stopped short with a startled exclamation, as the dog rose lazily to his feet.

Jack laughed merrily as she picked herself up from the floor.

"Bruno! You old wretch, tripping me up like that!" she said, stooping to caress the big fellow. "Why, Geraldine, what on earth's the matter?

He won't hurt you," as, looking up, she caught sight of her companion's frightened face.

"Are you--are you sure he won't?" Geraldine asked fearfully.

"Of course he won't! Why, Bruno's the best-tempered dog that ever was; aren't you, Bruno, boy? Look, he wants to make friends with you--he's putting up his paw to shake hands. Don't you like dogs?"

"N--not very much," said the new girl. "Not dogs I don't know. I like some dogs, though. I've got a darling little fox-terrier of my very own at home."

"Bruno belongs to Miss Oakley, but he's often about in the school, and he's a perfect pet," said Jack. "Do shake hands with him! He wants you to so much."

With an effort Geraldine conquered her nervousness sufficiently to take the friendly paw the dog was still holding out to her. And when once the introduction had been effected she lost her fear of him. Bruno, certainly, appeared good-tempered enough, and he seemed to take a fancy to the new girl. He followed the two girls back to the Lower Fifth sitting-room, and once there he sat down as close to Geraldine as he could get. It was quite difficult to persuade him to go back to his proper quarters when at length the supper bell rang.

"Very forgiving of him, considering how rude you were to him to begin with," laughed Jack, when at last they had succeeded in making the big fellow go back to the mistresses' part of the buildings.

Jack stuck to the new girl for the rest of that evening, much to Geraldine's grat.i.tude. She even went so far as to accompany her to the door of the Pink Dormitory when the time came to go to bed, although her own dormitory, the Green Dormitory, was in quite a different part of the house.

"I couldn't do it another night because Alice Metcalfe, my dormitory monitress, is frightfully strict. But she isn't back yet--not coming till to-morrow, so I may as well make hay while the sun shines.

Besides, it's first night, and n.o.body takes very much account of rules the first night," Jack remarked, still chattering gaily in the new girl's ear. In all her school career, Jack Pym had never before come across such a splendid listener as Geraldine Wilmott, and she was forming all sorts of plans in her own mind as to her future relationship with the new girl.

Just before the Pink Dormitory was reached, the lights in the corridor went out with a suddenness that was rather alarming because it was so very unexpected. As a matter of fact, two mischievous juniors had stayed behind and switched them off at the bottom of the stairs for a joke; but the majority of the girls did not guess this, and much laughing and confusion and screaming took place. Geraldine did not actually scream, but she was very near to losing her self-control, and her hand shot out and grasped the arm of the girl next to her with a tense grip which showed how very nearly her command of herself was gone.

The darkness only lasted for a moment. An irate senior hurried back to the switch-board and turned the lights on again, and the culprits decamped with all possible speed. Geraldine came to her senses again, and found to her horror that the girl whose arm she was clasping was not, as she had imagined, Jack Pym, but Phyllis Tressider, who was staring at her with undisguised amazement in her blue eyes. With a hasty apology the new girl loosened her grip of the other's arm, but that one moment of revelation had been enough for Phyllis.

"I say, did you see?" she said in a low voice to Dorothy Pemberton.

"That new girl's face--it was as white as white! If she'd seen a ghost she couldn't have looked more scared. What on earth was the matter with her, do you think?"

Dorothy nodded in a satisfied way.

"I saw," she said. "And she was scared too! Downright funky at finding herself in the dark for just those few minutes. Oh, well, if _that's_ the sort of girl she is, we shall soon know how to get even with her if she interferes with us. I say, old girl, we shall have to say good-night to each other here. Now we're so far away from one another it won't be safe for me to go to your cubicle or for you to come to mine--at any rate, not until we see what sort of a monitress Muriel is going to be. Oh, dear! It is sickening to think that we're separated, and that that wretched new kid is going to sleep in my cubie to-night!"

Meanwhile, the wretched new kid was saying good-night to her new-found friend, feeling far happier than she had dared to hope to feel on her first night at school, and quite unconscious of the fact that she had made such a revelation of her inner self to the two girls who were well on the way towards becoming her greatest enemies. With all her new thoughts and experiences filling her head, that little incident in the dark had almost vanished from her mind.

"See you in the morning, then," said Jack gaily, as she disappeared in the direction of her own dormitory. And Geraldine hastened to make her way to Cubicle Thirteen.

CHAPTER V

A CARICATURE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Geraldine was awakened next morning by the loud ringing of the getting-up bell, and she tumbled out of bed in a hurry, having been informed by Jack the previous evening that a bad mark was the result of a late appearance at breakfast. However, on this first morning, she was dressed in plenty of time, and even had to wait a few minutes before the second bell, which was the signal for the girls to leave their dormitories, rang through the school.

When she reached the dining-hall she found that the place she had occupied for her first two meals in the school was no longer vacant, it having been claimed by Vera Davies, the small girl who had been displaced by Monica the day before to make room for Geraldine. Vera was an ardent admirer of Monica Deane, Geraldine discovered later.

"I _always_ sit here," the little girl said in a vigorous whisper as Geraldine came up. "You must find a place somewhere else--there's loads of room."

Geraldine looked about her in rather a helpless way. Then she caught sight of Jack Pym making grimaces at her from the other side of the room, indicating by various gestures and contortions that Geraldine was to come to her table. Not sorry to escape from the small Vera's hostile glances, Geraldine quickly made her way thither and was deposited at an empty place next to Jack at the end of the long table.

Jack's immediate neighbour on her other side was Nita Fleming, another member of the Lower Fifth, who leant forward to smile amiably at Geraldine and was introduced at once by Jack.

"Nita's been longing to see you ever since I told her we'd got a new girl in the Lower Fifth," she remarked. "She's hoping that perhaps she won't be bottom of the form any longer, now you're here--aren't you, old thing?" with an affectionate tug at Nita's long, fair pigtail, a proceeding which led to instant retaliation by Nita upon Jack's short locks, and brought down upon the two the wrath of the prefect in charge of the table.

"Jack Pym and Nita Fleming--what are you doing? You're not to sit together, you two, if you're going to behave like this. Change places with that new girl next to you, Jack. Here, you," addressing Geraldine, "sit next to Nita Fleming, will you, and try and keep her and Jack in order if you can."

A mistress came in at this moment to say grace, and then the girls sat down to the meal. Geraldine took her place between Jack and Nita with the rueful reflection that she seemed fated to be the separator of friends at Wakehurst Priory. However, Jack and Nita appeared to bear her no malice, and bandied words with each other across her in the liveliest way, taking her into the conversation with the utmost affability. There was no such friendship between Jack and Nita as there was between Phyllis and Dorothy, Jack being very cosmopolitan in her friendships, and possessing as many different "partners" as there were walks in the week.

After breakfast the girls retired to their dormitories to make their beds and tidy their cubicles. Then came some half-hour or so of free time before the bell went for prayers. After prayers, the girls were marched to the Great Hall, where Miss Oakley, the headmistress, read out the form lists for the term, and made a few remarks appropriate for the occasion. And then the various forms departed to their respective cla.s.srooms, where the real business of the day began in earnest.

Although she had never been to school before, Geraldine found that she was not at all behind the rest of the cla.s.s. She had been very well-grounded by her governesses, and although, of course, she was handicapped a little by not knowing the cla.s.s methods, her general knowledge compared very favourably with the attainments of the rest of the form. Indeed, she won a word of approval from the Sixth Form's form-mistress, Miss Latham, at the conclusion of the lesson on English history.

"You have evidently had a very good grounding, Geraldine," the mistress said. "You appear to possess intelligence, too. If all your work is as good as your history, you ought to get on well in your form.

Margaret, since you are her neighbour, will you show Geraldine some of those historical a.n.a.lyses you did for me last term, so that she may see how I want your preparation done?"