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 classrooms, 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 class. She had been very well-grounded by her governesses, and although, of course, she was handicapped a little by not knowing the class 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 analyses you did for me last term, so that she may see how I want your preparation done?"
"Yes, Miss Latham," replied Margaret, a rather nondescript individual who occupied the desk next to the one that had been allotted to Geraldine; and the mistress, gathering together her papers, prepared to leave the room.
"It is a little early yet for your next class," she observed, as she rose from her seat. "But I have to see Miss Oakley before going on to the Middle Fifth, so I cannot give you quite your full time this morning. Who is head of this form? You, Hilda? Very well, then, see that nobody talks until Miss Parrot comes to you. You can be looking up some of those dates I want you to learn while you are waiting." And the mistress departed from the Lower Fifth classroom, leaving an apparently studious and orderly form behind her.
For a few minutes strict silence prevailed in the classroom. But after a while the silence was broken by subdued titterings from the back row, and Hilda Burns, the head of the form, turned sharply round to discover that Phyllis Tressider and Dorothy Pemberton were leaning over Jack Pym's desk. Jack was drawing busily.
"I say, do be quiet. Didn't you hear what Miss Latham said?" remonstrated Hilda, rather half-heartedly it must be confessed. The three girls in question did not take much notice of her appeal, and after a moment or two she made it again.
Dorothy turned to her with a delighted grin.
"We're not talking—we're only laughing. Hilda, do come and look! Jack's doing caricatures of the mistresses. Aren't they ripping?"
Several of the girls gathered round Jack's desk, Hilda herself amongst them.
"Oh, I say, how topping! Do do one of Pretty Polly and give it to me!"
"All right, I will presently. Wait till she comes in and then I'll try and do her. I have to see the person I'm caricaturing or else I can't get them properly. I did that one of Miss Latham during the history lesson just now. She never twigged."
"I don't wonder," declared Phyllis admiringly. "I didn't either. I thought you were just making notes. But when did you learn to do it, Jack? Of course I know you always were good at drawing, but I hadn't the slightest idea that you could do such ripping caricatures."
"I didn't know it myself," replied Jack, still busily working with her pencil. "But when we were at the seaside this year we came across a man who did them for the papers. At least I came across him. He saved my shoes and stockings from being washed away by the tide while I was paddling one morning. And then we all chummed up with him and he showed us some of his sketches, and we all started trying to do the people we saw on the beach, and he said mine were quite decent for a kid. There you are, Dorothy, there's your beloved Miss Latham. Who is it you want, Hilda? Pretty Polly? All right, I'll do her if I get the chance."
"Do one for me, Jack, there's a darling," cried a girl sitting close to Geraldine, and then the whole form began clamouring for drawings of their most beloved, or most hated, mistresses. Hilda felt it incumbent upon her to raise her voice again in protest at last.
"I say, do be quiet! Miss Parrot will be along directly. There'll be an awful bust-up if she catches us talking like this."
But her remonstrance did not have much effect, except that it rather served to increase the confusion. For Phyllis Tressider, crumpling up a sheet of paper into a ball, flung it at her with an injunction to "Shut up, dear old thing!" and the rest of the form promptly followed her example. In a few seconds the head of the Lower Fifth was almost snowed under with missiles of various sorts.
"I say—stop it!" she gasped, dodging an exercise book, only to receive a piece of india-rubber full in the eye. Then, as a quick step sounded in the passage outside, she sat up straight in her desk in an attitude of sudden attention.
"Cave—Miss Parrot!" she whispered hoarsely. In a moment the Lower Fifth was sitting rigidly at attention again, every sign of the late battle cleared out of sight as though by a miracle. Only Geraldine, new to scenes like this, not realising what this sudden transformation might mean, was still sitting twisted round in her desk in the position from which she had been watching the uproar in interested amusement.
She soon realised what the sudden change meant though, when Miss Parrot, the form-mistress of the Lower Fifth, known throughout the school as "Pretty Polly" from her name and her supposed resemblance to the bird in question, came briskly into the room. The mistress's quick ears had caught the sound of the conflict from afar, and she at once pounced upon Geraldine's unconventional attitude as being the only sign of disorder her sharp eyes could perceive.
"Geraldine Wilmott, what are you doing, sitting like that in class? Turn round properly at once. I heard a great deal of noise as I came along—has anything been happening?"
There was no answer to her question; and after surveying the virtuously innocent faces before her the mistress was about to let the matter drop—reflecting that after all it was the first day of term, when a little leniency might be advisable—when her attention was attracted by the sight of a screwed-up paper ball lying on the floor just in front of Geraldine's desk. All the other missiles had been dexterously cleared away; but Geraldine, not realising any necessity for doing so, had failed to remove the one sign of the battle that had fallen near her desk. Indeed, she had hardly noticed that any had fallen there. Miss Parrot was of a very orderly nature. In her classroom nothing was ever permitted to be out of place, and the sight of the ball of paper was too much for her to pass over.
"What is that untidy piece of paper doing there?" she demanded sharply. "Is it yours, Geraldine? Bring it here to me."
Thus directed, Geraldine rose from her desk, and picking up the ball of paper took it to the mistress. Having delivered it, she was about to return to her seat, but the mistress stayed her with uplifted hand.
"Wait," she said authoritatively. "I want to see what this is. Some of you have been up to mischief in my absence." And she slowly unrolled the ball of paper, finally disclosing a rough copy of the caricature of Miss Latham, which Jack had discarded for some reason, and which Phyllis, all unaware of what it was, had used as a missile.
Although it was unfinished, the sketch bore a sufficient likeness to the mistress for Miss Parrot to recognise the original. Her face grew stern as she held the paper out to the girl who was standing beside her desk.
"Is this your work?" she asked in a cold tone.
Geraldine glanced at the paper. Then she flushed suddenly crimson with nervous shyness, and stammered out in confusion:
"N—n—no, Miss Parrot."
The mistress looked at her suspiciously.
"Are you sure?" she said.
Geraldine's confusion grew still greater, and the mistress felt that her suspicions were justified. The girl's stammered denial did nothing to allay them, and her voice when she spoke again was very stern indeed.
"Geraldine, you are not telling me the truth. You do know something about this paper. I command you to tell me at once what it is you know."
"I—I can't tell you anything about it," said poor Geraldine, not knowing what to do or say. But this answer only served to anger Miss Parrot yet more.
"You will please oblige me by thinking about it until you can tell me something," she remarked icily. "Go and stand over there," pointing to a place facing the rest of the class, "until you can remember whether or not this paper belongs to you. If that does not assist your memory I shall be obliged to take you to Miss Oakley after class."
Geraldine made a movement towards the appointed spot, but before she could reach it, Jack Pym rose abruptly in her desk.
"Please, Miss Parrot, I can't see that paper but I don't think it's got anything to do with Geraldine. If it's a drawing, I expect it belongs to me."
Miss Parrot's eyebrows went up.
"Indeed! Wait a moment, Geraldine. Suppose you come here, Jack, and see if you can identify it."
Jack made her way rather sulkily to Miss Parrot's desk.
"Yes, it's mine," she said. "I did it for a joke."
"A joke in very questionable taste, I think," said the mistress severely. "I am afraid I shall have to discourage your sense of humour, Jack, since it hardly accords with my own. You will take a conduct mark, please, and forfeit next Saturday's half-holiday. And I hope this may be a lesson to you to refrain for the future from using your undoubted talent for drawing in making vulgar representations of those who are put in authority over you. You may go back to your seat. And, Geraldine, you may return to yours. I am very sorry that I misjudged you; but really, you looked so guilty that I could not help thinking that you had something to do with the matter. Now, please, we will begin the lesson. We have wasted far too much time already."
The Lower Fifth dutifully turned to its books and plunged at the mistress's bidding into the intricacies of decimal fractions. But although Geraldine acquitted herself fairly well over the lesson that followed, she was not happy. She was miserable at the part she had played in getting Jack into trouble, and she had been, also, acutely conscious of hostile glances from her companions as she made her way back to her seat. Although it was not altogether her fault, she was uncomfortably aware that the caricature episode had not by any means enhanced her popularity with the rest of her form.
School life promised to be rather a difficult affair altogether, Geraldine reflected with a sigh.