CHAPTER XXIV
THE LOWER FIFTH MAKES AMENDS
Gerry was escorted in safety to the sickroom, where Sister's magical lotion eased the pain of her swollen nose and considerably improved her appearance. A strong dose of sal volatile brought back a little colour to her pale cheeks and a feeling of strength to her sadly wobbling legs. Then she was established upon a comfortable sofa in front of the sick-room fire and left to the enjoyment of a first-class sick-room tea—the sort kept for special convalescents, Sister informed her. As it consisted of hot buttered toast, superfinely thin bread and butter, apricot jam, shortbread biscuits, and sponge-cakes, Gerry agreed with her that it was certainly a great improvement upon ordinary schoolroom fare.
Downstairs in the dining-hall little else was discussed that tea-time but the subject of Gerry's pluck. A great change of feeling towards the Lower Fifth girl was taking place. Everybody realised that if it had not been for Gerry's presence of mind and extraordinary courage, many of the girls might have been bitten by poor Bruno. Whether the dog was really suffering from madness or only from some minor distemper remained to be proved. But those who had seen him that afternoon had little doubt upon the subject. He had been unaccountably moody and irritable for some days past—his surly behaviour in the gymnasium a couple of days previously had only been one incident out of many—and the way he had suddenly run amok when the headmistress was about to take him for a walk that afternoon pointed to the supposition that he was really suffering from rabies.
"Mad? In course he was mad! Think I don't know a mad dog when I see one?" said Bennett, when questioned upon the subject by Dorothy and Phyllis, as he was taking away the muddy boots from the lobby just before tea. "If it hadn't been for that there young lady, there'd have been some humans mad as well—and serve some of them right!" he added, with a sour glance. For although the servants did not know the full ins and outs of Gerry's ostracism, yet they were well aware that "little Miss Wilmott" had been having anything but a happy time during her first term at Wakehurst Priory.
But Wakehurst Priory had thoroughly repented of its ways now! Gerry was the heroine of the hour, and there was considerable danger of the school losing its head in the other direction and making a popular idol of her. Even Dorothy and Phyllis were penitent, and openly acknowledged their remorse in the Lower Fifth sitting-room after tea that evening. As it was a Saturday evening there was, of course, no school work to be prepared, and the form was at liberty to discuss to its heart's content the subject which was occupying its mind so entirely.
It was Hilda Burns who made the suggestion that appealed most strongly to the form.
"I think we ought to make her a public apology," she announced dramatically, "to let the whole school know what beasts we have been." And her idea was taken up with much acclamation by the other members of the Lower Fifth.
"Yes, let's!" said Dorothy eagerly. "Let's go now and ask Muriel to call a school meeting, and then we'll ask for Gerry to come down to it, and we'll all step out in turn and tell her how frightfully sorry we are for having been such rotters, and ask her to make it up!"
"Come on," said Phyllis. "We'll go to Muriel now." And the form trooped off to the head girl's study.
Muriel was having a private tea-party in her own room with Monica and Jack Pym. The latter had disappeared since the hockey match, although the other members of the Lower Fifth had been too excited to notice it before. Tea in their private studies was a privilege the Sixth Form girls were entitled to on Saturdays and other holidays if they liked; and to-day Muriel had asked Jack to join in the cosy little party. The head girl was not an unobservant individual, and she had noticed Jack's unhappy face and remorseful manner during that walk down from the hockey field. And after they had seen Gerry safely into Sister's care she had invited the younger girl to come and have tea with Monica and herself. The three had been having a very serious discussion respecting Gerry Wilmott and her troubles as they sat round the study fire.
"Good gracious! How many more of you are there?" exclaimed Muriel, as one by one the Lower Fifth squeezed themselves into the small room. "Is that all? Margaret Taylor, you're nearest; do you think you can manage to shut the door? Now, then, what have you all come about?"
Dorothy acted as spokeswoman.
"About Gerry Wilmott, please, Muriel," she began. "We've come to tell you what utter beasts and rotters we've been to her all the term——"
"I think I know something about that already," interrupted Muriel. "Jack's been telling me."
This abrupt announcement rather upset Dorothy's elaborate explanation. It is disconcerting when you have buoyed yourself up to confession to find that someone else has done all the confessing for you. At any other time the Lower Fifth would have been seriously annoyed with Jack for having thus forestalled the dramatic little scene it had planned with the head girl. But to-night the whole form was so genuinely upset and penitent about its treatment of Gerry Wilmott that—although they did not know quite what to say for a moment or two—they bore no grudge against the informer.
"There's something Miss Oakley wants me to tell you about Gerry," went on Muriel, surveying the discomfited faces before her. "It's not to go any further, though. Only Gerry's own form are to know about it, and Miss Oakley trusts to your honour never to mention it to Gerry herself unless she confides in you of her own free will. I didn't know it until to-day, when Miss Oakley sent for me to go to her after we'd taken Gerry to the sick-room. If I had known it, I should have behaved very differently towards her myself! It seems that she was in a bad air-raid three years ago, when she was almost a kid. The house she was in was wrecked and a nurse she was awfully fond of was killed in front of her eyes, while she herself was pinned down underneath some wreckage for hours and hours before they could get her out. She wasn't hurt, but it upset her nerves completely. And it's mostly that that has made her so shy and nervous and funky of things. Her people sent her here to see what school would do for her. Nothing was said about her awful experience, because she can't bear to talk about it, for one thing, and for another the doctors didn't want her to be treated any differently from the other girls. And they thought she would have been if people knew. But Miss Oakley says I'm to tell you now, so that you may treat Gerry with more consideration in the future."
There was a dead silence in the room. If anything had been wanting to complete the Lower Fifth's humiliation it was this! The one excuse the form had had for its conduct had been Gerry's cowardice, and it put the finishing touch to its repentance to discover that even this was not entirely her own fault. The Lower Fifth's remorse, which had been acute enough before, was almost unbearable now!
"Well," said Muriel at length, as the silence still continued—"well? What are you going to do about it?"
"We thought that—that perhaps we'd better make Gerry a public apology," faltered Dorothy, her usual sang-froid deserting her for once under Muriel's coldly critical eye. "We thought if you would call a meeting of the whole school that we'd ask Gerry to come down, and then we'd tell her how frightfully sorry we are about having been so mean, and each of us would apologise to her in front of everybody."
"And jolly pleasant that would be for poor Gerry!" said Muriel. "Do you think she wants a public apology! To be made to feel an utter ass in front of the whole school just to ease your rotten little consciences! We'll give her a public ovation if you like, but not a public apology—at least, not one anything in the least like the scheme you've planned. If you want to make amends, I think it would be much more to the purpose if you went and told Miss Burton the truth about that strike of yours, and how it was Gerry who broke it down by her plucky action in refusing to go on with it."
The Lower Fifth gasped a little. Jack had certainly confessed with a vengeance! Somehow it had never before struck the Lower Fifth that Gerry's action on that particular occasion had been plucky.
"But of course, when you come to think about it in the right light, it was plucky of her," Hilda Burns said afterwards, when the matter came up for discussion in the Lower Fifth sitting-room. "It must have needed quite a lot of courage for Gerry to say what she did that evening."
"Yes. It was moral courage," said Jack. "She wanted most awfully badly to stick in with us and be friendly. But she just felt she had to stay out because she felt so sorry for Miss Burton, although she knew how beastly we should all be to her."
But that was afterwards. At the moment the Lower Fifth was scarcely able to view the courage of Gerry Wilmott in any light at all; it was so flabbergasted at having its past delinquencies cast up at it in this manner, and so dismayed at Muriel's suggestion that it should go and acquaint Miss Burton with the full details of the matter.
There was a moment's hesitation, then suddenly Dorothy Pemberton made a movement of acquiescence.
"All right, we will!" she announced. Then, turning round to the rest of the form, she asked briefly:
"Are you all game?"
"Yes," came unanimously from the ranks of the Lower Fifth.
Muriel Paget rose to her feet and faced her visitors with a pleased smile.
"Good kids!" she said approvingly. "Cut along at once and get it over. And then come back to me afterwards, and we'll see if we can't arrange some sort of public reception to show Gerry that we're sorry for all the things she's had to put up with this term. I think you'll find Miss Burton in her study if you go now."
Then the Lower Fifth, subdued, but resolute in its determination, filed out in a body and wended its way towards Miss Burton's room.