Henry Green - Concluding

"Yet what I feel is, it only seems like yesterday," Edge announced, with a wee inclination from the waist. "And Sebastian," she ordered, turned on him for the first time, "you are not to shrink now. Not sit out continually."

"He won't. I promise," Elizabeth shrieked.

"These special Occasions mean so much to the Girls," Baker added.

"Because, while we're here, and if you permit, of course, I have a small suggestion I might offer," Mr Rock said to Miss Edge.

"By all means," she agreed. "And let it be now rather than later. Otherwise we could seem to be sharing secrets, putting our heads together before the children, and that, even at our age, might seem curious," she added with a sort of sneer.

"You flatter an old man," he said.

"My dear Mr Rock," Miss Baker cried, delighted, unaware.

"It was only, ma'am, it came to me I could, perhaps, render a small service. But, naturally, this is a mere suggestion."

Edge felt the urge to consult her wristwatch, then restrained herself.

"I'm positive my colleague and I would be more than willing. ." she faintly encouraged him, all the less enthusiastic because of her pressing anxiety to get the Dance begun.

"I thought I might lecture, say once a week, to your older girls, ma'am," Mr Rock brought gravely out. His granddaughter and Sebastian were astonished, as also the two Principals.

Miss Edge could recollect little of the subject in which he had made his name great so very many years ago, but her first determined thought was, not suitable for younger Students, even nowadays.

"Well now," she said, as she believed cordial to the last. "This is generous indeed, is it not, Baker? You have quite taken away my breath."

"Why, Mr Rock," Miss Baker assented, wondering at last.

"We shall ponder this. Believe me I am truly Grateful," Edge went on, and experienced the most acute impatience. "Is that not so, Baker?" Then showed her hand. "Yet it just does occur to one. . Oh I know, living as you have the best part of a lifetime with your great Discovery, at this late hour it must seem plain as day. Yet I cannot but put the question, would it be quite right for our dear Girls?"

Mr Rock found himself literally choked by momentary rage. How could these two dastardly trollops for a moment imagine he would ever so demean his nature as to discuss the Great Theory before children? He felt it so much that he reeled, and bumped into Sebastian, who had taken shelter. He controlled himself.

"We are at cross purposes, ma'am," he said. "What I had intended," he went on, in the self-absorption of old age, and a pathetic kind of dignity which they took for mere insolence, "was this. In fact a brief weekly homily on the care of pigs."

"You did?" was all Edge could bring out for the moment, while Baker gasped. Elizabeth took her young man by the finger of a hand, but, from the misery of his embarrassment, Birt shook her off.

"By the time they're older, one or more might be encouraged to have a go at this filthy swine fever," Mr Rock surmised, at his most bland and serious.

"Not many of our Students enter the Veterinary Service," Miss Edge said, in a distant voice. She began to move off. "Baker," she commanded. "We must not keep the girls."

"Now run along, Sebastian," Baker urged. He did not have to be told twice.

"But of course," she went on coldly, to the Rocks, "how thoughtless. I think you had both better come this way, to our washroom. You'll find a mirror for yourself, dear."

"Do hurry, Baker," Miss Edge called.

So the old man came upon himself alone with his granddaughter in front of a white enamelled door.

He was silent for a minute. Then he said severely, "Barbarous of them to mix the sexes."

"You go first," Elizabeth commanded. As he fumbled with the handle she caught at his sleeve.

"Oh Gapa," she exclaimed, "you didn't… I mean, what an extraordinary idea… to keep the cottage for us all, wasn't it… oh, are you sweet."

"I'll leave your shoes inside," he answered, shutting her out.

When the music began a third time, eighteen children waiting in the corridor lifted heads from their confabulations but did not immediately move off towards the Hall because of two previous disappointments. Then the valse continued, on and on, and they could see couples circle into view, their short reflections upon the floor continually on the move behind swinging skirts over polished wax, backwards and forwards, in and out again as each pair swung round under chandeliers. And at the sight these others walked on the lighted scene, held white arms up to veined shoulders, in one another's arms moved off, turning to the beat with half shut eyes, entranced, in a soft ritual beneath azalea and rhododendron; one hundred and fifty pairs in white and while, equally oblivious, inside their long black dresses, Miss Baker and Miss Edge lovingly swayed in one another's bony grip, on the room's exact centre, to and fro, Edge's eyes tight closed, both in a culmination of the past twelve months, at spinsterish rest in movement, barely violable, alone.

Above, locked safe into a sick bay, curtains close drawn against the moon, Merode's infant breathing told she was asleep.

Still farther off, in their retiring room, unaware that the dance had opened, the staff sat to make scant conversation. They were embarrassed; and, out of sympathy, perhaps, for the lovesick Winstanley, had chosen to pretend, by ignoring him, that Birt, who seemed most ill at ease, was not present in fat flesh amongst them. All over the Institute hardly a word more was now spoken, not one down the Hall where Inglefield had taken up her stand to drive the deafening music. Then, suddenly at a doorway, there loomed unheralded the figures of Elizabeth and the old man. Both were dressed as black as those two Principals.

His great white head nodded to rapt, dancing students. "The first will have to be with me, then," he announced to the granddaughter loud under music, for Inglefield had turned the power full on and because, as he looked around, he had seen no sign of Sebastian. Then Moira whirled past, hair spread as if by drowning over Marion's round, boneless shoulder. He let his arms, which he had held out to Elizabeth, drop back as he followed the child with carefully expressionless, lensed eyes. And Liz gave a gasp of disenchantment as she bent to raise the old hands from his sides; after which they launched out together onto the turning, dazzled floor. But not for them, as with the others, in a smooth glide. Because Mr Rock went back to the days before his own youth, was a high stepper.

He stepped high, which is to say he woodenly, uproariously lifted knees as if to stamp while he held the granddaughter at arm's length, but did not cover much ground. Still the one man on that floor, they made a twice noticeable pair because they were alone in paying heed to where they went, in his case to avoid a fall when he might break a hip, certainly fatal for a man his age, and she for the boy who remained, at the moment, her one hope of continuing to live.

"They are here," Baker, who kept an eye half open, murmured to Miss Edge. The news came to this lady as though from a distance.

"Let all enjoy themselves. They must," she mumbled in return.

There was just one note might have jarred at the outset, though it passed unnoticed. Mrs Blain had, as was natural, been amongst the first starters. She'd grabbed hold of an orderly, and was saying while she blindly danced, "Oh, we're champion."

"You do waltz beautifully," her girl replied.

"Soft soap," the cook answered. "But I've one matter on my mind. Why my Mary's not here to enjoy things. I can't make out the reason she never phoned." Mrs Blain panted, because puffed.

"Perhaps she couldn't," the child lazily suggested.

"Oh, aren't we all dancing?" Mrs Blain enthused. "Just look at us," she said, from closed eyes. "I do wish she could be here, though. She might've given me a ring. Mind now, will you look how you go? This night's for all to enjoy, isn't it, bumpin' into people? Yes, I'd've liked to get a word. Illness in the family can be a terrible upset."