THE GERMAN LESSON
Geraldine was not long in discovering that her gloomy forebodings were
amply justified. No sooner had morning school ended and the mistress
departed from the classroom, than Phyllis Tressider stalked up to her
desk and confronted her.
"You little sneak!" she said angrily. "Going and getting Jack into a
row like that! Don't you know that the first half-holiday in the term
is always given up to selecting the hockey team? Now Jack won't be
able to play, and it's ten chances to one she'll get left down in the
third eleven when she might have been chosen for second with any luck!"
Geraldine remembered then Jack's confidences respecting her prospects
for the second eleven, and her heart sank still lower.
"I--I'm most awfully sorry," she faltered miserably. Then she looked
round appealingly at Jack, who was putting her books away in stony
silence, disregarding the condolences of her form-mates on her hard lot.
"Jack, I'm awfully sorry--truly most awfully sorry," she said
pleadingly.
But Jack was feeling very sore about her lost hockey chances, and not
by any means in a mood for being sympathised with. The tearful note in
the new girl's voice only irritated her, and she said brusquely:
"Oh, all right--there's no need to be sorry. I suppose you couldn't
help it." But she said it in a tone that did not make Geraldine feel
much happier.
Phyllis gave an audible sniff of contempt.
"Couldn't help it, indeed!" she said ironically.
"Well, but truly, I don't see what else I could have done," said
Geraldine unhappily.
"Then you must be an idiot," said Dorothy Pemberton, joining in the
fray. "Nobody with any gumption would have let Miss Parrot catch them
sitting like that. And you _might_ have cleared away that piece of
paper."
"I--I'm awfully sorry," faltered Geraldine again.
"What's the use of being sorry?" cried Dorothy testily. "Being sorry
won't take away Jack's conduct mark or make Polly let her off detention
on Saturday. You're just a silly, clumsy idiot--if you didn't do it on
purpose--and I wish to goodness you'd never come into the Lower Fifth."
"Or to the Pink Dorm," put in Phyllis.
Geraldine cowered visibly under this attack.
"I keep telling you I'm sorry," she protested pathetically. "I never,
never meant to give Jack away. I wouldn't have breathed a word about
it if only she hadn't owned up like that."
"Just as though she _could_ have done anything else!" cried Phyllis
hotly. "We're not that sort in the Lower Fifth, Geraldine Wilmott,
whatever _you_ may be! Of course Jack couldn't go letting Pretty Polly
think that it was you who'd done that sketch--whatever a sneak like you
might have done!"
As Geraldine had not sneaked, this remark was unjust, to say the least
of it. But the new girl was too unhappy to protest any further. She
returned to the task of putting away her lesson books, and Dorothy and
Phyllis left the room arm in arm. Geraldine looked round forlornly at
Jack, after the two chums had departed, but Jack was absorbed in
conversation with Nita Fleming, and the two presently departed from the
classroom, leaving the new girl to her own devices. Geraldine shed a
few miserable tears when she was finally left alone in the empty
classroom, but she was not allowed much time to indulge her grief. A
bell rang loudly through the school buildings, and she had to mop up
the tears hastily and hurry out to discover what the next proceeding
might be.
Dinner was the next item on the programme, she found, and she joined in
the stream of girls who were hurrying into the dining-hall. Jack and
Nita were already in their places, and Geraldine made her way rather
shyly to the vacant place on Jack's left side.
"May I--am I to sit here again?" she asked timidly.
"If you want to," replied Jack briefly. And Geraldine, not knowing
where else to go, took up her position behind the vacant chair. As she
did so, Jack murmured a few words in Nita's ear, and the next instant
the two girls had exchanged places, so that Geraldine now found herself
standing next to Nita instead of next to Jack. The action cut the new
girl to the heart. Jack was so offended with her that she couldn't
even bear to sit next to her at meals apparently! If there had been
anywhere else to move to, Geraldine would certainly have moved, but
there seemed to be no vacant places anywhere near, and she was far too
shy to bring herself into prominence by going and hunting for one. So
she stayed where she was, and when grace had been said, sat down next
to Nita.
The meal was a very uncomfortable one for her. Jack and Nita evidently
considered that she had been very much to blame over the classroom
incident, and beyond seeing that she was supplied with table
necessaries, bread, and salt and water, they left her severely alone,
making no attempt to draw her into the conversation as they had done at
breakfast. And poor Geraldine ate her meal in silence, wishing that
Jack's unfortunate caricature had been at the bottom of the sea before
she had had anything to do with it.
It was really rather hard upon Geraldine to be blamed like this, for
she had never intended to get Jack into trouble, and, in their heart of
hearts, the whole of the Lower Fifth knew this. The whole episode
would probably have blown over in a day or so, if it had not been for
Dorothy and Phyllis. These two, although almost the youngest girls in
the Lower Fifth, possessed a great deal of influence in their form, and
unfortunately they seemed to have taken a violent dislike to the new
girl upon the first day of term. Anything that they could do to hurt
and annoy her, they did, and the rest of the form were either too weak
or too indifferent to interfere. Not that all the girls were actively
unkind to Geraldine--but the majority of them left her severely alone,
and the new girl, instead of making friends with her companions, grew
more and more lonely and isolated as the days passed by.
Her own manner helped very largely towards this isolation. She was so
shy and reserved herself that it was difficult for anyone to make
friends with her, and besides she was so absorbed with the longing to
make peace with Jack--who still remained coldly aloof--that she really
did not give anybody else a chance. She simply played into Dorothy's
and Phyllis's hands by her misery and shyness.
"She's so stuck up and superior--she doesn't _want_ to make friends,"
was Phyllis's frequent assertion. And the rest of the form, not being
possessed of any very great discernment, were quite content to accept
this version of the case and to leave Geraldine severely to herself.
But if she did not get on well in the social life of the school,
Geraldine was quite at home where lessons were concerned. She really
possessed abilities considerably above the average, and although she
was still new to the ways of the school, she acquitted herself so
creditably during her first week as to call forth the special
commendation of the form-mistress. It was after the German lesson one
morning that Miss Parrot gave expression to her pleasure at her new
pupil's accomplishments. Geraldine had distinguished herself during
the class, and when Miss Parrot, anxious to see how far her pupil's
knowledge of the language really went, had addressed some question to
her in German, Geraldine had answered it so fluently, and at such
length, in the German tongue, that the class gasped in astonishment.
"Very good, indeed, Geraldine!" said the mistress, and the lesson
ended, but not--so far as Geraldine was concerned--the episode. When
the new girl entered the Lower Fifth sitting-room after school that
morning for the few minutes' interval before the dinner-bell rang, she
was immediately accosted by several members of the form, Dorothy and
Phyllis amongst them, who demanded to know how and where she had
acquired such an intimate knowledge of German.
"I used to live in Germany when I was quite little," answered
Geraldine, becoming nervous and confused at once, as she always did
when she was questioned abruptly. "Didn't you hear me tell Miss Parrot
so, when she asked me how I knew so much?"
"She didn't ask you--you story!" cried Phyllis indignantly.
"Yes, she did--in German," said Geraldine, goaded for once into making
a mild retaliation upon her chief foe. "Do you mean to say you didn't
know enough German to understand that?"
"Well, perhaps we're not all quite as clever as you," retorted Phyllis
cuttingly--"riled," as she afterwards expressed it, by the "swanky air"
Geraldine put on. "But _I_ think it's rather suspicious your knowing
so much German, added to all your other sneaky ways."
"What do you mean?"
Geraldine swung round angrily upon the speaker, aroused for once from
her usual meekness. Phyllis was quick to see that she had succeeded in
annoying her opponent, but she was far too astute to give her any
advantage by making any definite accusation.
"Mean? Oh, nothing!" she replied airily. "Only, of course, if you
_did_ happen to be German, or partly German, it would account for a
good deal, you see." And she slipped her hand inside Dorothy's arm and
drew her chum away.
Geraldine sprang forward to intercept her as she made towards the
doorway.
"If you're implying that I'm German--" she began. But Phyllis
interrupted her.
"I'm not implying anything!" she said. "If your guilty conscience
makes you imagine things--well, that's not _my_ fault, is it? Come on,
Dorothy, there's the dinner bell." And she made haste to escape from
the sitting-room before Geraldine could pin her down to anything more
than a vague aspersion.
"But, of course, she _is_ German," she argued that afternoon to a
select gathering of the Lower Fifth. "Everything points to it. She
said she lived in Germany when she was little. I expect her mother was
a German, if the truth were only known. And then her
_sneakiness_--that's German, if you like!"
"I don't see that she is so very sneaky," protested Jack, who was
still, in spite of her disappointment over the hockey team and her
general acquiescence in the form's treatment of Geraldine, somewhat
prepossessed in favour of the new girl, to whom she had taken an
immense liking on the first evening of the term. "It really wasn't her
fault that I made that caricature. And though, of course, she might
have hidden the paper out of the way when she heard Miss Parrot coming,
yet she was only a new girl--and perhaps she _really_ didn't know."
"Oh, of course--if you're going to take her part----" said Phyllis in
such a deprecating tone that Jack made haste to capitulate.
"I wasn't taking her part exactly. I was only pointing out that it
seemed a little hard on her to be blamed for that caricature affair."
"And what about you?" demanded Phyllis. "Wasn't it hard on _you_ to
have to miss the hockey trial and still be down in B.1 when you might
have been in the second eleven? You can sympathise with the new girl
if you like. For my part, I think she got off very lightly. Why, most
schools would have sent her to Coventry for doing a thing like
that--especially when they found out that she was a German!"
"But even if she is a German--and I must say she doesn't look a bit
like one; Germans are usually so big and fair and fat, and Geraldine's
dark and thin--but even if she is, the war's over now, so I don't see
that there's any actual harm in that," remarked Hilda Burns.
"I don't agree with you," said Phyllis darkly. "There _mayn't_ be any
harm in it, of course--I don't say that there is. But all the same it
isn't nice to think that one is actually at the same school with a
German girl--even though the war is over!"
"But _why_? They're not our enemies any longer," said Jack.
Phyllis regarded her scornfully.
"No, of course not! They're our dearest friends now, I suppose! I
suppose you've forgotten all about the Patriotic League we made when
the war was on, when we were Upper Third, Jack Pym?"
Jack wriggled a little uneasily.
"Well, yes, I _had_ forgotten a bit," she admitted. "But now that the
war's over we don't need that any longer."
"Have you forgotten Rule Six?" Phyllis went on steadily. "'That this
League vows and declares that it will for the future have no dealings
with any person or persons of German nationality, either in peace or
war.' Do you remember that?"
"Y--yes--I remember that," agreed Jack reluctantly.
"And how we all took a solemn oath that we would keep the rules, or
else count ourselves traitors to our King and Country?" pursued Phyllis
inexorably.
"Yes, I remember," said Jack.
"Well, there you are, then!" declared Phyllis triumphantly. "You
_can't_ go and make friends with Geraldine Wilmott, because you're a
member of the Patriotic League. We won't send her to Coventry or do
anything of that sort, because, of course, we haven't got any real
_proof_ that she's a German. But I vote we all steer as clear of her
as possible for the future, and take jolly good care she doesn't get to
know any of our private plans or secrets. She's just as likely as not
to go telling them all to the mistresses if she gets to know them. You
can't trust a person who's got German blood!"
And in this decision the Lower Fifth acquiesced, although it was really
hardly possible for them to steer more clear of the new girl than they
had done during the past week.