Henry Green - Concluding

"Yes, ma'am. Oh, I have it here."

"Plenty of time, Edge," Miss Baker warned. "Now, wouldn't you like Dr Bodle?"

"So foolish of me," Miss Edge lied to the child. "I thought it was a… a dead rabbit," she said in anticlimax, voicing the secret, known throughout the Institute, that she had a terror of rabbits dead. "And then I did realise, only too late, too late." A tear began to roll from each of her blue, old eyes.

"I'll never forgive myself," she ended, in a small voice and a hiccup.

"Nonsense," Baker said, "It's the heat. You're overstrained."

A silence followed, while Miss Edge pulled herself together.

"But was there, really, a Doll?" she asked. Her colleague turned away, anguished. Miss Edge did not notice.

"Oh yes, ma'am. Someone in the kitchen said she'd lost hers."

"Someone said. .?"

"Who was that then?"

"I can't remember exactly. But she did know Mary had lost it," Marion explained.

The older women could not disguise the fresh shock this was to them. Miss Edge sat bolt upright even.

"Who?" Baker gasped.

"Mary, ma'am."

"No, but who informed you?"

There was another pause.

"I can't seem to remember, quite," the girl told Baker.

"Well," Miss Edge said, better already now that she was following a cold scent. "Suppose you go up to Matron and inform her from me that you are to stay with her until you do?"

"Oh but ma'am, and the dance?"

"It will come back before then. Yes, run along, Marion."

The moment the door was closed on the girl, Miss Edge burst out, "Were there Pins in? Had it a painted Heart?"

"My dear," Baker expostulated. "This is practically no more than a golliwog."

"Oh my heart," Edge said. "How terrible."

"Now, I'm sure it isn't what you think," the other tried to comfort her colleague. "This is all a mistake."

"I knew, right through lunch," Miss Edge insisted.

There came a knock on the door.

"Come in," Edge cried, trembling, and sat up straight again.

"I thought I ought to tell you, ma'am," Marion said, as she sidled in, "But I just remembered I heard Mary got a wire. She's gone home."

"Gone home?" the two Principals burst out.

"When?" Edge demanded.

"Mrs Blain told us there was a wire to say the sister was sick," Marion announced in a shocked voice.

"Did any telegrams come last night?" Baker asked her colleague, because all communications to the students were read before being handed over.

"You can go to Matron now, Marion," Edge ordered.

"And remember, not a word about any of this to the others. You still have something to tell us, child."

As soon as the girl was out of their room Miss Baker got on the telephone to Marchbanks. The reply was that nothing had come for Mary in the past week.

"She could have stopped the postman," Baker suggested.

"My dear," Edge said faintly, "I still cannot believe it, and now this terrible Doll in her image. At her age too."

"Then what d'you really think?" Baker asked, her voice trembling.

"The Lake," Miss Edge insinuated, almost hoarse.

"Oh no, not that, dear."

"You see, Baker, I understand now why Rock should have been on his way down."

"Last night?"

"No, just a moment ago, with his pig."

"With his pig!"

"In South Eastern Europe, Hermione, they are used for tracking."

"But listen," Baker announced, "this is too mysterious. The child's alone in the world, except for her parents living apart in Brazil. She has nobody to send wires."

"Are you sure?"

"I looked up the card this morning, don't you remember?"

"Then it must have been a man," Edge said, from the depths.

"No, I don't think so. I'll tell you why. They may simply have invented the whole tale."

"Oh, Baker, what is the matter with the Police that she cannot be found?"

"They have just made it all up," Baker insisted.

"We must cancel the Dance, there is nothing else for it," Miss Edge then said.

But her colleague was on the house telephone again. She found out the postman had not been yesterday, after the second delivery at lunch time.

"And she laid our tea, that was the last I saw of her, Edge. There was nothing, then, not in the way she looked."

"That is as may be," Miss Edge replied. Like a spoiled child, she put her face away from Baker along the back of the chaise longue.

"Of all our children she was the truthfullest, dear," Miss Baker continued. "They are good girls. It's some misunderstanding."

"I blame myself, now, that I went to London," Miss Edge announced, but in stronger tones.

"What else could we have done? We can't have a hue and cry, dear."

"You think not?" Edge asked coldly.

"Well, not yet, can we? We don't know much for sure."

"What did that ridiculous Manley woman say after she had seen Merode?" Edge demanded, at her driest.

"My dear, I so regret ever having called the creature over," Miss Baker protested. "How wise of the State to lay down that the girls must be held incommunicado after serious affairs like this, until they have written their own account."

Miss Edge listened in silence, thus forcing her question which was a reproof.

There was a pause.

"Still sleepwalking," Baker confessed at last.

"And Mary?" Edge insisted.

"Nothing to do with Merode, naturally," Miss Baker replied in a bitter voice. "I blame myself," she volunteered.

Her colleague did not help in any way. Still holding her face averted, she began a cold silence.

"But I do feel, dear," Baker tried once more, "that it would really be unwise for us to cancel our arrangements, at any rate before we learn the truth. It will go so much the harder with the child when she does turn up."

Edge sniffed.

"After all," Miss Baker went on, in a soft voice. "How does a dolly alter matters? We were going ahead before we came across that, weren't we? What d'you think?"

There was a longer pause. Then, from the same remote position, Miss Edge was so good as to say, "Let me see it once again."

When she had the thing in a hand, she did not raise her head but laid the Doll out along the chair back, on a level with her eyes. Its limbs were intolerably loose, as before rigor mortis. The flat, white, miniature, flannel face of Mary was, of course, unwinking, and Edge saw the eyes, the mouth and nose had been drawn with blood red lipstick. But her heart grew lighter as she began to believe it was not, after all, altogether like the child. Yet she held the thing elegantly over a cushion, with a kind of high bred weariness. At last she said, "You know this could be Merode, or even Marion."

"D'you think?" Baker asked, with hope.

"You understand they are too old, Hermione, for dolls?"

"But, Mabel, are they? We've known it here, you know."

"There is just this about the pyjamas," Edge went on. "Merode was found in hers, I recollect. It may only be a stupid prank."

"That is certainly an angle," Miss Baker said with rising spirits, as ever the optimist.

"I might confront the child," Edge suggested. She sat up, laid the Doll on her lap.

"Oh but Mabel, don't you consider you ought to rest? You must remember you've had a turn, quite apart from our directives."

"I feel somehow the whole future of this beautiful Place is at stake, dear," Miss Edge answered. "Of course, I would not say a word to the girl. I might just go into her room with it."

"But how d'you feel?"

"I am quite all right, thank you, Hermione."

"Then in that case," said Miss Baker, to whom it had become imperative to escape, "I was thinking I'd just run down by the Lake. It would ease my mind."

Edge made no reply. She picked up the Doll by its short neck, and left, staggering a little.

As Mr Rock drew near the water he was more than ever sure it had been a mistake to bring Daisy. She was not ringed, and, now that they had moved once more under the beeches, she kept turning last year's leaves with her snout, also the ground beneath, but so slowly and with such loud delight that they hardly progressed forward; and the ends of sticks of sunlight, pointed down from high trees, moved across his pig's flanks like pink and cream snails, then over his own face in little balls of warmth.