Part 8 (1/2)
CHAPTER IX
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE HEAD GIRL
And it stuck! From that day forward Geraldine was invariably known throughout the school as ”German Gerry.” ”Gerry” alone the girl would not have minded so much. As a shortening for Geraldine, it compared quite favourably with most nicknames. But with the prefix of ”German”
the t.i.tle became abhorrent to the unfortunate new girl, a fact which was very soon discovered by the Lower Fifth. And although Geraldine, or Gerry, as she now became, except to the mistresses and one or two of the older girls, did her best to disguise how much she minded, yet she could not help wincing sometimes when the objectionable name was uttered.
Once she tried the effect of a mild remonstrance.
”I wish you wouldn't call me that,” she said one evening during preparation, when Phyllis Tressider addressed her by the t.i.tle with a request for the loan of a book. ”I'm _not_ German--and I _do_ so hate being called it!”
There was dead silence in the cla.s.sroom. The Lower Fifth had been expecting Gerry to remonstrate for some time past, and her failure to do so had been put down as another sign of her weak spirit. The Lower Fifth was quite unable to comprehend the mentality of a girl who, from a sheer nervous dread of ”rows,” would submit to almost any treatment rather than protest. The form waited now with some interest to see how the situation would develop, leaving Phyllis to deal with it as she thought fit.
Phyllis thought fit to say nothing for the moment. And after a brief pause, Gerry spoke again.
”I'm _not_ German, you know,” she said pleadingly. ”Not the very least little bit.”
”Aren't you?” said Phyllis politely, but with the utmost indifference in her tone. ”I say, has anybody done this beastly number eleven sum yet? Is 33 the right answer?”
”I'm not German, Phyllis! Truly I'm not!” repeated poor Gerry, her eyes filling with tears.
”Oh, aren't you?” said Phyllis again. ”Of course if you _tell_ us so----” with an ironic emphasis on the ”tell.” Then she broke off with an air of having done with the subject for ever. ”But I'm really not interested, one way or the other,” she concluded. ”I say, Dorothy, you might tell me what your answer is to number eleven?”
”Then, _please_, don't call me that any longer,” pleaded Gerry; but Phyllis ignored her altogether and turned to Jack Pym, who sat on one side of her.
”Extraordinary the number of Germans who're getting naturalised these days,” she remarked conversationally. ”Shows what a fat lot of patriotism they've got, doesn't it? As soon as their country's down and out they all desert her and refuse to acknowledge her any longer.
Oh, well--I suppose it's all one can expect from a lot of German Gerries!”
”Oh, shut up, for goodness' sake, and let me get on with my prep!”
growled Jack, planting her elbows firmly on her desk and bending over her papers. Jack had caught sight of tears in Gerry's eyes, and the sight had disconcerted her strangely. After all, Gerry was almost a new girl. It had really been quite an accident that she had got her into trouble on that first day of term; and even though she did speak German so well it need not necessarily mean that she had German tendencies. Did not Miss Parrot speak it equally fluently? n.o.body would ever dream of accusing Miss Parrot of having German sympathies.
Gerry really was having rather a rotten time of it, and it was a shame that Dorothy and Phyllis should be always at her like that. But unfortunately Jack was not strong enough in character to stand up on behalf of the new girl. She was always far too easily swayed by popular opinion, and since popular opinion appeared to be dead against Gerry, Jack dared not show her any sympathy. So she stifled her feelings of compunction and returned to work, endeavouring to banish all thought of Gerry Wilmott from her mind.
After this one attempt, Gerry abandoned all efforts to rid herself of the objectionable nickname. It never occurred to her to take the form into her confidence respecting the reason for her nerves. Indeed, she did not connect them herself with the air-raid night. Also, in the present state of affairs, there was really no one in whom she could confide, and in any case she would have found it difficult to speak of that terrible evening. She became more and more solitary, hardly attempting to speak to her companions, and a more miserable and lonelier girl than the one who inhabited Cubicle Thirteen, in the Pink Dormitory at Wakehurst Priory, it would have been hard to find. It really seemed as though some of the ill-luck proverbially attaching to the mystic number was hanging over her head. Lessons were almost her only solace. Having no other interest in life, Gerry set to work to excel in cla.s.s, and did so well that she very soon rose to the top of the form, a place which had been divided pretty evenly hitherto between Hilda Burns and Dorothy Pemberton. The new girl's success in form work aroused more jealousy on Dorothy's part, and on Phyllis's, too.
Phyllis's champions.h.i.+p of her chum did not need much spurring, more especially when it concerned Gerry Wilmott.
But success in lessons cannot make up for unpopularity away from them.
To a girl at boarding-school the social life is by far the most important part as a rule, much more important than the hours pa.s.sed in the cla.s.sroom. And Gerry, who was no exception to the general run of girls in this respect, found her position in form a very poor consolation indeed for all the other troubles that she had to bear.
Unfortunately, too, she was a hopeless duffer at games, never having played any before coming to school. Hockey was the princ.i.p.al pastime during the two winter terms at Wakehurst, and practice two or three times a week was compulsory for all except for a few girls who were exempt on account of some physical defect. Gerry, who, although delicate, had nothing really organically wrong with her, was obliged to take her turn with the rest; but she disliked the muddy pastime immensely, and took no interest in trying to improve her play. She was put down in the very lowest team of all, along with quite small children and a few other beginners like herself; and although the prefect who took charge of the hockey practice tried occasionally to ”buck up” the slack girl from the Lower Fifth, she, herself, was not very interested in the game and met with no success.
Just before half-term, a series of dormitory matches was arranged by the head girl, who was captain of the first team and immensely keen on the game. Muriel was naturally anxious that her own dormitory should distinguish itself, and she selected her team with great care and much anxious thought. Several of the matches had been played, and so far the Pink Dormitory had been victorious against all the opponents they had met. Now they were down to play against the Green Dormitory, a very powerful rival, which also possessed, so far, an unbroken record.
It was pretty certain that the Dormitory Hockey Cup, which was the prize of these inter-school matches, would go to one or the other of these two teams, and excitement in the school ran high as the day approached on which the final match was to be played.
There were thirty inhabitants of the Pink Dormitory, so it ought to have been possible to have chosen eleven players from amongst them without having to fall back upon one who had only begun to play that term, and who hated hockey into the bargain. Nevertheless, by a series of unlucky accidents, the number of possible players was gradually reduced, until on the very morning of the day fixed for the match against the Green Dormitory, Muriel found herself confronted with the problem of choosing between Geraldine Wilmott and a small girl from the Middle Third for her eleventh player. In her perplexity she consulted Monica, who, although she was not in the first school eleven, was quite a useful player and Muriel's princ.i.p.al reliance in the Pink team.
”There's literally no one else,” the head girl said in despair.
”Gladys and Bee are away for the week-end. Dora Wainscott's got a gathered hand, so she's out of the question; Ena Philpotts mayn't play at all this term; Sister's taking Pam to the dentist's this afternoon; and Ursula Hanson is going out with her aunt. All the others are either down with 'flu or just recovering from it, and Sister won't let any of them play until they've been up a week. That only leaves us Marjorie Brown or this new girl--Geraldine what's-her-name. 'German Gerry' the girls call her, don't they? Have you seen her play--have you any idea what she's like?”