Henry Green - Concluding

With a languorous gesture, Edge took one more anaesthetising puff.

"I would really appreciate your advice on Sebastian," she said, in the laziest voice he had heard her use.

"You would?" he countered. He almost surrendered then.

"My dear sir," she murmured. "Need we be too formal the one night of our Founder's Day Ball? I don't really fancy so, do you?"

There was a pause. The old man struggled with a lump in his throat. Then he let go, gave way.

"She's all I have," he said, given over to self pity.

"She loves you," Miss Edge dispassionately stated.

Mr Rock swallowed twice.

"But I can't care for him, ma'am," he admitted, still as if in spite of himself.

"Nor me," the lady answered readily. They looked at each other with great understanding.

"I can't stomach parlour tricks," the old man elaborated, stronger.

"So curiously unwise," Edge agreed. "A word which is out of fashion nowadays," she added. "The girls don't seem to know the meaning, but there, I bless them," she ended.

"Liz has been ill…" Mr Rock began, mistaking the object, prepared to take offence at once.

"Why I declare, after all," she soothed him. "I spoke of the man, the tutor, the untutored tutor, please. I trust you would not think. ."

"My deafness," he explained, to cover the slip.

"D'you ever have treatment?"

"What's the good. I am too old."

"Never that, good heavens no," she countered, through a film of weakness.

"Well, there you are. I have to lump it," he said, and smiled.

"You of all men," she murmured.

"I've been most fortunate in my life," he admitted, weak as water yet again. All this sympathy was so unexpected.

"Look, come in, please. I can't tell what we are standing here for, could you?" she invited. "As a matter of fact, if you will keep our little secret, we've some sherry in the cupboard, Hermione and I."

He suddenly wondered if she could be drunk. He was not to connect the cigarette with her mood, because he had never previously seen the lady smoke. Yet it seemed he should be on guard. Nevertheless this was now a remarkable opportunity, he had to admit. He made up his mind.

"And I, for my part," he said, for better or worse weakly entering the Sanctum, "would appreciate if I could have two words with you? A domestic matter."

"My dear Mr Rock I make it my rule never to interfere." This was on the assumption that he could only be referring to Elizabeth.

"To do with your students, ma'am," he announced.

"Ah yes."

"They talk so."

"They do indeed," she languidly assented.

"There must be limits, after all," Mr Rock argued. She slumped quickly down, in an elegant attitude, to hold her cigarette like a wand.

"Where would you draw them?" she asked, at ease.

"Where would I draw the line?" he echoed, but without conviction. Then he pulled himself together. "Yet there must be human decency," he said in a firmer voice. "The give and take of a civilized community," he said. "Justice," he ended.

"Of course," she admitted. "Naturally, of course." This time with her first trace of malice which, however, was lost on him.

"Yes," he said, in a muddled way of the girls below. "I mean, they can go too far, can't they?" He was desperate.

"Yes?" she enquired.

There was a pause. Came again the lump in his throat. Once more he surrendered.

"I love her. She's all I have," he said. He could have sobbed.

Edge was so distant, so absent that she had forgotten Mary and Merode. What she could do, and did without the slightest sense of shock, was to ask herself if he had meant Moira all along.

"My dear," she murmured. "As time goes on one clings to what one has."

"She's all I have," he repeated, still about his granddaughter, secure in self pity.

"But is it wise, or fair, to foul the nest you have built?" she archly enquired.

"In what way?" he demanded, at a loss.

"Weren't you complaining of the child's behaviour?"

"Never," he protested, of his granddaughter.

She remembered she had not brought out the sherry, but let this go. She was too tired.

"Believe me, I think sometimes you are inclined to misjudge us, Mr Rock," she said. "We have eyes in our grey heads. And we prize your friendship for the child," she lied, a white lie.

"I don't follow," he said.

"Why, Moira of course," she patiently explained.

"We are at cross purposes, ma'am," he concluded with pride, suddenly and finally disgusted. Then he noticed that she had finished the cigarette. He offered another from his case, as a matter of course. She knew it to be madness, but how was she to refuse? So she lit up, as though this were the last action she would have strength for in life.

"We are just two old women trying our best, but we do have eyes in our heads," she repeated, obstinately gentle, unaware of the effect she had produced.

"Well, I don't think this Birt is up to any good here, either," the old man said, angry and tart. He had gone back to the doorway, so as to make good his escape, if need be, at a moment's notice.

"Where are you? I can't tell," she demanded.

And only an hour since, she would insist she had no trouble at all with her eyes, joyfully he reminded himself.

"Are you sure you feel all right?" he asked, after he had narrowly regarded her. He almost hoped she would fall sideways, flat on an ear.

"I'll let you into a little secret," she said. "It's these smokes. My one small indulgence. They make me rather giddy. But it's true I had a nasty turn this afternoon."

"How was that, ma'am?"

"Where on earth have you got to, man?"

"Here," he replied, and came forward a second time, betrayed by curiosity, only to sit, without thinking, in her own place, behind the great desk of office.

She did not notice.

There was a pause.

"You had a fainting spell?" he hazarded. He had long since learned all about it. He thought, perhaps she drinks all day.

"Oh, I've forgotten. Don't bother me," she said.

"Was it about this sorry disappearance, ma'am?" he persisted.

"Whose? Why, we've got to the bottom of Mary and Merode," she lied. "That did not take long. Absolutely nothing in their storm in a little teacup."

"Thank God," he said, anxious, of course, to learn about Mary.

"Why?" she dreamily wanted to know. "Can these children truly mean much to you?"

"Whatever occurs round this Great Place affects us all," he covered himself.

"Just one or two small points still to clear up," she emended, for, truth to say, she was superstitiously ashamed. "Believe me, Mr Rock, but now and again, at the end of a long day, I do get sick and tired of these girls. At their age they are terribly full of themselves, terribly."

Edge was being so revealing that Mr Rock once more decided he could not lose a minute of her present mood.

"Have you ever considered the fellow Adams?" he enquired.

"I had to see him this forenoon. Yes?"

"I thought he was hardly himself when we last met." Like someone else I could mention, he added under his breath.

"I couldn't get sense out of him at all. But I meet so many, so many," she said. "There was a Mrs Manley," she added.

"It seemed as though he had something on his mind."

"Yes?" she airily replied.

"A widower who lives alone in his cottage," Mr Rock suggested.

There was a pause.

"Why, so he does," she said. Mr Rock could see the gray light begin to dawn within the woman.

"It had just occurred to me, that's all," he said.

"And so he does," she repeated, but not with quite the conviction for which he listened in her voice.

A silence fell.

"Then tell me," she demanded, back to her more usual tones. "We do so value your counsel." And how often have you asked it, he commented to himself? "What would you propose?" she insinuated.