She detached herself and, not unnoticed, made her way to where the young man waited. As for Mr Rock, when he saw himself abandoned, he moved clumsily over to the dais. Moira steered past with Miss Edge, whose eyes were tight closed. The child's lips sent "Later," at him, and he read them. Then, when he reached the sort of throne he had picked out, he climbed up and sat himself heavily where none but the Principals had a right to be seated. He was proud.
It was such a grand sight Mr Rock was almost glad he had attended.
Miss Winstanley noticed Elizabeth make for Sebastian, and it turned her sick as she circled about Marchbanks.
"How are you, dear?" she asked the older woman, thinking of herself.
Miss Marchbanks danced with great concentration, and the little smile of a martyr.
"Thank you, my shoulders are broad enough," she replied.
"There is something presumptuous in all this," Winstanley said of the evening with what was, for her, an unusually sad voice. She was watching Elizabeth give herself over, dance as one with Sebastian, deep in his arms. They moved as though their limbs had mutual, secret knowledge, were long acquainted cheek to cheek; the front of their thighs kissed through clothes; an unconscious couple which fired burning arrows through gasping music at her.
"Our dear girls must have a marvellous time," Marchbanks volunteered, with conviction. "But if you spoke of Mr Rock, the uninvited guest, then you knew of this fresh honour, that he is to be elected? I expect he feels sure of himself now."
The repetition of the beat, and her lazy misery about Sebastian, began to make Winstanley drowse.
"How goes your head?" she asked again.
There was a silence between them. Then Marchbanks murmured, "I'm so used to my heads I don't notice."
"There's anaesthesia in a valse."
"But I do wonder time and again, dear," Miss Marchbanks dreamily answered. "Do we not meet this modern music the same way, in the old days, as they used to go to fairs? You will have read of it. People plunging into the hurly-burly to forget their miserable condition, their worries."
"Ah, they weren't fools, then, they seldom are," Winstanley said at random, and shut her eyes tight. Through a blinding headache Miss Marchbanks guided the younger woman, who still had hope.
"Darling," Elizabeth said to her young man, out of shut eyes also, "I spoke to him. He'll do it."
"Oh Liz," he answered, looking over his shoulder. "But you should neither of you have come."
She smiled the little smile of satisfaction.
"Aren't you glad we came?" she asked.
He did not answer. Still from her closed eyes she thought how the hand she had on his shoulder must seem to him like his heart's white flower.
"I'd have imagined you'd be glad," she said, still satisfied.
Moira had long been succeeded in Miss Edge's arms by other partners, but Mr Rock had forgotten the girl in his wait for the Principal to be vacant. He sat on alone, a monument, determined to buttonhole Edge the first moment he might. But she was too popular. Even when he saw Moira come crabwise through the serious, frantic dancers, he did not imagine she was after him. As he concentrated on the guv'nor, he did not notice the child again until she stood below his chair, to make the usual offer of herself, to present, as she always instinctively did, the endless prize of her fair person.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
"Hullo," he said. "I've danced enough."
"Mr Rock, d'you mean to say you've forgotten?" she protested. "I was to show you," she lied. "Now, don't you remember?"
He did not wish to appear confused in a crowd, or by this music.
"Where do we go, then? Lead away," he said, blithe, and got up with difficulty.
"Over here," she told him, took the little finger of his right hand.
Once they were outside, the passages seemed quite deserted, although there was one girl yawned alone in the pantry.
"Not many down yet, Moira," she greeted, unlocking a door which opened onto a steep flight of stairs that led to the depths. There was no hand rail, only a length of rope looped to some rusted stanchions. Mr Rock's courage failed.
"Have I to negotiate these?" he pleaded aghast, unwilling to admit his disabilities. "I don't think I can manage."
Meantime, the other girl bolted the door through which they had entered.
"Oh, but you must," Moira said, calm but firm.
"You might tell them to hurry my relief," the first child suggested.
"It's my eyes," Mr Rock confessed, and put a foot forward as though about to enter an ocean.
"Come on," Moira begged, started to descend in front, still holding his finger. "We don't want to get caught, do we?"
When he thought over the episode a day later, Mr Rock felt this last remark, with its suggestion of conspiracy, had been the prime factor, squalid as it was to have to admit it, which induced him to embark on the first venture.
"Wait," he said, abandoning himself to the descent. As soon as he was fairly engaged on these stone steps, the other child locked the door above, and, with it, shut away a last murmur of the dance. So they haltingly crept down into blinding silence, lighted by dirty bulbs festooned with cobwebs.
"Where are you taking me?" he demanded, and awkwardly pulled the rope.
"Wait. You'll find out," she answered.
Age made a man very dependent, he thought, for this was like the pretty child that led the blind. Indeed his eyes were adequate, even if thick lenses distorted edges of vision, but it was his feet were blind, which fumbled air. Then, with a great feeling of relief, he had arrived; he stood on a level cellar passage, but nevertheless, still groped forward, with the forefingers of his free hand brushing a wall, and picked up more cobwebs. He was on the way to wet wine and dry coke, he thought, for this was the region of bins and boilers, and also, presumably, of somewhat else.
Moira, in order not to dirty her frock, led the old man as if they had to pass through a tall bed of white and black nettles. She walked sideways, delicately, held his other hand high which seemed to protest in the traditional manner of the sightless.
"Isn't it awful?" she exclaimed.
"Now look, my dear," Mr Rock said, "All this is very flattering, I don't doubt, but we have to get back upstairs, some time. Surely we've done enough."
Then he saw the bare corridor turn to an upended empty crate and a green baize door.
"Stay two minutes," she said, going round one and through the other, to leave him alone.
"What foolishness is this?" he pettishly demanded aloud of his solitude, hard of hearing, yet with an idea he could catch whispers, even more the other side. Then she was back, and had closed the door. She looked sad, listened a moment. But she climbed onto the crate, so that the rajah's hoard of her eyes was on a level with the old man's spectacles.
"We're too soon," she said. "You mustn't look before they're ready. Come here," she demanded. He went up. She laid a cheek against him, and, before he knew what she was at, had rolled her face over until soft lips brushed his that were dry as an old bone.
"Stop it," he muttered, and stepped violently away until his back became covered with powdered whitewash. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, left a cobweb on the corner.
"You're mad, Moira. You did this for a bet," he said frightened.
"Yes," she lied. It was only part of the routine; also she had wanted to make up to him, of course, for the fruitless journey.
He hurriedly started off towards the stairs. Her eyes, as they turned to watch, hung out more diamonds.
"Come on at once, my poor girl," he ordered, and did not look for her. Mopping at his face with a handkerchief, as Dakers had at breakfast, he set the pace out of it. He trod high again, as though afraid of a wire that might trip him. She followed obediently, in immodest silence.