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."
"I hardly think it is," this vague girl told her, after they had danced some more.
"There, you're only dizzy, a bit. What do you know?" Mrs Blain demanded.
"I don't fancy she's home," the child softly insisted.
"Then where is she?" Mrs Blain cried out, and opened green eyes rather wild. It seemed they danced like a whirling funnel.
"She's gone, you'll discover."
"Nowhere to be come upon?" the cook wailed, and pushed that spiralling orderly away at arm's length until, she felt, the girl revolved about her like a wisp of kitchen paper. "Lost?" she yelled, but it was drowned by music. "What's this? So that was it, then? Oh, you wicked things."
"Not to do with me, Mrs Blain," the orderly gently protested, given over to her shivering, glazed senses.
"Wicked deceivers," the woman said, in a calmer voice. "I'll have my enquiries to make on that, all right."
"We think it's pretty rotten of her to want to spoil this heaven evening."
"Well then," the cook said, quietened at once, and folded the child to an enormous bosom. Upon which both gave their two selves over, entire. As they saw themselves from shut eyes, they endlessly danced on, like horns of paper, across warm, rustling fields of autumn fallen leaves.
Quite soon, girls began to cut in. While Inglefield kept the instrument hard at it, the original partners began to break up, to step back over the wax mirror floor out of one another's arms, moving sideways by such as would not be parted yet, each to tap a second favourite on a bare, quiet shoulder. Then the girl so chosen would give a little start, open those great shut eyes, much greater than jewels as she circled and, circling yet, would dip into these fresh limbs which moved already in the dance, disengaging thus to leave her first choice to slip sideways in turn past established, whirling partners until she found another who was loved and yet alone.
Less satisfactory was the crush of fortune hunting children, with more fabulous gems for eyes, round Baker and Miss Edge, both of whom affected to ignore their riches as, oblivious yet well aware, they danced out together the dull year that was done. One after the other they would be tapped on a hard, black garmented back. But, as was traditional on these occasions, they lingered in one another's orbit, until at last Edge had had enough. When that moment came she simply opened eyes, from which long years had filched the brilliants, said "Why Moira," in simulated wonder, and so chose this child who, of all the suitors, was the first she saw in her hurried tiredness.
"Oh, ma'am," the girl said, delighted, while they drifted off on music, Moira leading.
"Isn't it wonderful?" the child asked, when she proudly noted the Principal had once more closed her eyes.
"I could go on for ever," she murmured further, when there was no response.
Then, as was usual at these Dances, but which came, as it always did, in all parts of the room at one and the same time because it occurred to almost everyone at once, there was mooted the project of a gift to their Principals.
"Why don't we get up a sub for Edgey and Bakers?"
"I think we ought to do something for both. They're sweet."
"This is too marvellous. We must manage a present in return."
"Ma'am," said Moira to the dreaming guv'nor like a black ostrich feather in her arms. "You're wonderful. So good."
The music was a torrent, to spread out, to be lost in the great space of this mansion, to die when it reached the staff room to a double beat, the water wheel turned by a rustling rush of leaf thick water. It was so dispersed and Winstanley, seated alongside Sebastian, could, for the conversation of her fellow teachers, hear no breath, neither the whispering in the joists from a distant slither of three hundred pairs of shoes, nor the cold hum of violins in sharp, moonstruck window glass. She did not know until Sebastian, who could not tell why, other than that he was restless, got up to open a door, when at once she realised the house had come to life, and recognised the reason. He would never listen for me, she accused Elizabeth.
It came to all the staff along the outside passage, first as a sort of jest, a whispered doublemeaning almost, then as a dance master's tap in time with music. After which, at any rate for the women, a far rustling of violins once recognised called as air, beaten through stretched feathers, might have spoken to the old man's goose, that long migratory flight unseen. So they rose, as Ted had never yet, and, with a burst of nasal conversation, made haste toward their obligations in the excitement of a year's end; not without a sense of dread in every breast which, in Sebastian's case was even more, for him it was the violin conjured, sibilant, thin storm of unease about a halting heart.
While they hurried closer the whole edifice began to turn, even wooden pins which held the panelling noiselessly revolved to the greater, ever greater sound. Thus they almost ran to their appointment, so giddy they were fit to tumble down; but, once in the room, paired off quietly, decently as best they might.
Sebastian stood against a wall, Winstanley could only take on Marchbanks, and Dakers was left with the last woman he would have picked.
"He's here," Miss Rock said to her grandfather, but he did not catch on.
"Care? Of course I care," he replied, in the deepest voice. Yet she took her hand out of his, was slipping from his arms.