CHAPTER IV
AN INCIDENT IN THE DARK
"That's the dining-hall, as you know," said Jack, as she guided Geraldine past the big room in which tea had taken place. "This passage leads out to the Chapel. Like to see it? Come along, then, and I'll take you to have a look."
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 assemblies 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 passage, 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 gratitude. 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 nobody 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.