"Why? Has he told you, Mirabel?"
"Anyone knows just by looking in his sweet old face."
"At least be sure of this. If they are to get married Edgey will slide all three out one way or another."
"But why on earth?"
"Jealousy."
"Oh no. You can't be so absurd."
"Can't I? But it's right enough, mark my words. She won't have anyone wed just under her nose. And if the old man is broken hearted it will be that silly Elizabeth's fault. Honestly I've got now so that I loathe my own cloth, I hate all women."
"Not if we have the pigs, Edge won't. Why, there's no-one else but Mr Rock."
"You're dappy where he's concerned, Moira. He's too aged to look after a fly even."
"How can you say that, when he's made such a success of Daisy and Ted?"
"What about Adams?"
"You don't include the granddaughter, I notice. No, he's nursing the viper in that woman, all right."
"You're all of you crazy," Moira said.
At this precise moment, and out of sight of these girls, Miss Inglefield, without warning, started the gramophone just once more to see if it would work. The loud speaker was full on so they could even hear the conductor, dead these many years, tap his stick at a desk some thirty summers back, and the music, with a roll of drums, swayed, swelled into a waltz. The girls, each one, gave a small sigh, moved, as one, each to her long promised partner, took her by the hand; they held hands as women but in couples, what had been formless became a group, by music, merged to a line of white in pairs, white faces, to the flowers and lighted ballroom, each pair of lips open to the spiralling dance. Then it stopped sharp into silence when, satisfied out of sight round the corner, Miss Inglefield lifted the needle. At once these students broke away disappointed, years younger once again.
"False alarm," someone commented severely.
A single pigeon, black in thickening sky, flew swift and on past the Park.
It was dusk.
Light from wide open windows increased by strides, primrose yellow over a dark that bled from blue.
With a swoop an owl came down across and hooted while Mr Rock and his granddaughter crept up the last stone flight when, unheralded, unannounced, and they could not see inside for the windows were yet too high above their heads, the gramophone crashed out once more, so loud now the old man halted entranced by the first bars of another great valse of drums and strings which, a second time however, was no sooner begun than cut off again by Inglefield.
"False alarm," Mr Rock said in a loud voice, and was about to elaborate with an attack on Edge for not keeping the instrument in proper order, when he was silenced, made mute, because, through his deafness, he had caught the last echoes of this music sent back by the beeches, where each starling's agate eye lay folded safe beneath a wing.
"We've started well," he then contented himself by suggesting.
"He said we'd meet out here," Elizabeth remarked. "To unlock us the side door."
"Better not," Mr Rock answered. "I'll ring the bell at the main entrance and be decently announced, or not attend at all," he said.
"Now Gapa," she wailed. "Who promised he'd be good?"
They slowly advanced across the last Terrace.
"Liz," he said, "in this world one should do a thing right, or leave it. If I'm to help as you've asked, you must give me credit for being able to see into their minds. I tell you they are dazzled by the position they hold here. We have to make our impression."
"Yes, Gapa," she agreed, not to upset him.
"They behave like the Begums of British India in my young days," he continued. "Besides there is no-one need creep like a thief, particularly in our circumstances."
"Very good, Gapa. But will they let me see myself in a mirror, if only for a moment, then?"
"I'll be bound they gaze at their reflections on the glass at all hours," he replied. He was invigorated at the prospect of a strange, difficult night ahead.
"You will speak all right?"
"You can be quite sure I'll get you your chance to prink."
"Oh, you know I didn't mean that. About Seb and me, I was trying to tell?" she asked.
"If their Byzantine obliqueness will allow, I might," he answered gaily, when a man hailed low and soft.
"Liz," he called.
"There he is, oh at last," she exclaimed.
"Birt, can that be you?" the old man cautiously raised his voice. "And if so, don't skulk."
A dark, short figure rose, almost from under their feet.
"This is not Guy Fawkes night, after all," the sage commented.
"Sorry, sir, but you know the way things are," Sebastian excused himself, adopting the hearty voice of a junior who was there to report present.
"Have they found my other child, then?" Mr Rock asked.
"Good Lord sir, not yet," Birt replied, still the shy, deprecating junior.
"Then you may lead us to the front entrance, for my granddaughter and I to be announced like civilized beings," he said.
The younger man was struck silent at this effrontery. He felt that Mr Rock should on no account so flaunt himself.
"It's this way, Gapa," Elizabeth prompted, resigned to disaster.
They turned, and at once became aware of the new powered moon, infinitely more than electric light which, up till then, had seemed, by a soft reflection from whence it cut into the Terrace, pallidly to surprise by stealth these mansion walls. For their moon was still enormous up above on a couch of velvet, blatant, a huge female disc of chalk on deep blue with holes around that, winking, squandered in the void a small light as of latrines. The moon was now all powerful, it covered everything with salt, and bewigged distant trees; it coldly nicked the dark to an instantaneous view of what this held, it stunned the eye by stone, was all-powerful, and made each of these three related people into someone alien, glistening, frozen eyed, alone.
"I'll leave you now," Sebastian said, as if to announce the moon had found him out.
"Thank you, I don't fancy that," Mr Rock objected. "They shall not come upon us unawares in this light." He also had on his mind the winking pairs of silvered eyelashes, still unseen, there might be watching from out black caverns of unlit, shadowed upstair casements.
"Oh, is this wise?" Elizabeth half wailed.
"He's to escort us in good order," the old man explained of Sebastian who had no torch.
"Well sir, I'd really rather not," Sebastian attempted to insist.
"Nonsense. Never try to duck when you're in the open."
Thus it was they came, one hydra-headed body to the enormous, overhanging portals, and Mr Rock pressed the bell which, by the moon, shone like a pearl on a vast hunk of frozen milk. To do so he had to enter and be lost, as if by magic, in a cube of impenetrable shade.
Elizabeth almost cried out after him, until his dead hand came forth to stab the bell a second time.
"Did it ring before?" he asked, out of his deafness.
"The girls are off duty," Sebastian said. "Tonight."
"Then we'll stay on notwithstanding, till we are made welcome," the old man answered, sure of himself, from the dark.
Steps made themselves heard within, at the advance. And, with a fearful creak, the great door was opened. Miss Baker stood silhouetted. It was Elizabeth she saw first, and she mistook the girl.
"Mary," she cried, in a small voice. But she did not take long to come back to earth.
"Oh do enter in," Miss Baker said, bright as the light behind, to three silent people.
Mr Rock took time to dry his gum boots after which, through what to them was blinding electric, copper illumination they followed Baker, without another word, the short distance down this corridor on into the sanctum.
Each of these two Principals thought the other had invited Mr Rock and his granddaughter, yet, while Baker did the honours, and Edge rose to greet them with the words, "How kind to have troubled," this lady had twin notions at one and the same time; that Sebastian, since he was a member of the staff, had no business unsummoned in the Sanctum; and also that, on no account, must this sudden rush of guests mar Baker's and her own triumphal entry, by which the Dance was ever opened. Thus she observed, while shaking hands, "You are rather late, you know." And added, "which is naughty," as she received Mr Rock, letting the smile die when she came to face Sebastian.