"You understand our Tamashas are traditional," the lady condescended. "They run themselves. All Baker and I must do, is to watch that there are no departures."
Departures? Escapes? Was this a reference to poor Mary, he wondered?
"Ah, the sudden, the unexpected," he tested her.
The sudden, she asked herself? Could he be aiming at that unfortunate child? The whole trouble really was, too many knew about Merode and Mary.
"The odious deviations from what is usual," she corrected, dashing him a glance. "One of the things we should provide here is memories, which is why I strive for the repetitive. It is a minor function, of course, in a great Place like this, but we must send them out so they can look back on the small pleasures shared. I dare say there are several reunion parties to celebrate Founder's Day in many a State Recreation Room this selfsame moment. You know, it is not long since that Baker and I were privileged by the State to create the Institute out of a void. Believe me, Mr Rock, it was a vacuum indeed when we first came. But already our old girls would be distressed to hear of change in any shape."
"It is a sadness in old age," he agreed. "One's contemporaries die. One can no longer share one's youth."
"Ah, you have lived the lonely life," she said.
Now what could she mean? He wondered. He waited.
"But there have been compensations, surely?" she continued. "Of course, no-one can speak for another, life has at least taught me that, I hope. Yet to remain on in this beautiful Place, as a reward for great work well done, must be a remarkable privilege I cannot help feeling."
"One has a pride in achievement," he answered, to show that he, at any rate, need not be modest. "Still, old age is a lonely condition, as you'll find in due course, Miss Edge."
What could the wily old man be hinting, she impatiently asked under her breath?
"Yet you do have company," she insisted.
He reminded himself to be careful. Doubtless she intended a sly reference to his habit of speech with certain students when they strolled down to the cottage.
"Not the life shared, memories in common," he brought out, conscious of his deep, pathetic tones.
"But your granddaughter?"
"She's only here when ill."
"I have noticed, Mr Rock, how much improved she seems in herself."
Now, what was she after? Was this to be the clean sweep, to rid herself of Elizabeth and him at the single, Machiavellian stroke.
"I wish I could think so, ma'am," he said, with anxious care.
"Just look at Moira," Miss Edge then changed the subject without warning. The old man wildly raised his head, in guilt. "Really she stares out of those great eyes of hers as though she were going to be ill."
He said not a word. Did these two blockheaded Principals never have any idea of the strains and stresses, he wondered? And what was all this about sickness? He kept his face a blank for the child's sake.
"Yes, I'm sure she's ever so much better."
"Moira, ma'am?"
"No, your granddaughter Elizabeth, naturally. Tell me, what are your plans for her?" This was to come out into the open with a vengeance, he thought.
"It is in the hands of the doctor, of course," he replied, with a sidelong glance.
"Sick notes seem quite to govern all our decisions these days," Miss Edge agreed, to abandon the subject. She fell silent, the better to watch her girls at rest.
This silence made the old man increasingly nervous.
Then, with no further word exchanged, the Principal made a sign to Inglefield, who at once restarted the gramophone.
The crowd of girls in white poured back. Even before they were in one another's arms they twirled in doorways.
This music was heavy, stupendous for Mr Rock.
"May I have my honour now, ma'am?" he enquired.
"How kind," she answered. "But I wonder if I might rest a little."
"I never knew you had trouble with your eyes, ma'am," he said. 'How blind', was what he had heard.
"Kind," Miss Edge shouted, with a brilliant, fixed smile at her circling throng of children. It will be such a tiresome bore if I have to try to make him hear above this perfectly heavenly valse, she thought.
"You did not catch what I said. Only Tired, want to Rest a minute," she explained in a great voice.
Why must Moira watch him like it, as if he had done her injury, he asked himself? The foolish little intriguer. She was perilous. Because Edge who had noticed already, might end by getting it into her narrow skull.
Then, at that precise moment, Elizabeth came just below, dancing, as he thought, in a manner which could not be permissible in any era, so as to flaunt the fact of Sebastian no doubt. He assumed an idiot look of pride, in the way he could the swill man's cry, and turned towards Miss Edge to note her reaction. He saw she had not bothered to see them, which was a relief, though at the same time he resented the culpable blindness. Perhaps she is really having trouble with her eyes, as I with my ears, he wondered.
Edge may have sensed he watched, because she swung her head round with a dry smile.
"The dears," she said. "They must and shall enjoy themselves."
Now the music was in full flood he could not be sure of what he heard. When he thought he caught what had been said, he was often wrong; and the few times he was confident he had the sense, he still knew he hardly ever did have it when, as now, under a difficulty. So he assumed she was speaking of Liz.
"Thanks to you, the time of her life," he assured Miss Edge.
Why cannot the sad man realise I will not be bothered tonight with individuals, she asked herself?
"There must not be a child who does not take a happy memory of this away in her, for the rest of her days," she answered.
"And so they ought," he agreed stoutly, leaving the Principal in ignorance as to whether he had heard.
Another silence fell between them. But there was a deal he had to tell her yet. He was determined to have it out. Accordingly he tried to bring the conversation back somewhere near the more immediate topics.
"Is this correct, what I hear about pigsties, like mushrooms after rain, over the magnificent grounds?" he asked.
"Why, whoever gave you that idea, Mr Rock?"
"A flat idea? I don't quite follow, ma'am."
Really, the man was intolerable. It was indeed time for him to go where he could be properly looked after with his deafness and everything, she thought.
"I never question a decision of my Superiors," she reproved. "No, I asked how you had learned?" She yelled this at an ear. He took it in.
"Amazing the way things get about a community such as ours, ma'am," he replied. She wondered at his effrontery, that he should claim kinship with their Work. "No," he went on, "of course I have given a hand with the swill in the past, and now, I suppose, you will want all of it for yourselves? But to tell you the truth, ma'am, time has lain a bit heavy on my hands. In fact I don't know that I've been pulling my weight. It is a privilege to lead my existence," he said with an irony just sufficiently controlled to escape her notice.
"What I had wondered, since you don't seem to be too keen that I should give them a few plain talks on pigs, was whether I could not, after all, work up a little course of lectures on what I may have done. Something along the lines of the joy, and reward, of achievement," he ended in great bitterness, effectively disguised behind a mandarin smile.
Of all bores, Miss Edge moaned to herself, the persistent ones are worst. He could not have appreciated then, what she had told him on this very subject in the Sanctum.