"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.
"I'm only an old fellow who's well passed his bedtime," Mr Rock countered. He had gone far enough. Yet he found that, if one tried, one could forgive this woman, and he wanted to bring the conversation back to himself.
"Oh, I'm tired too, deathly so," she idly agreed.
"I'm older than you. I'm older," he repeated.
She let this pass.
"I'm not much longer for this world," he said, on his dignity.
"Don't talk like that, Mr Rock, please. Tonight of all nights."
He sat, looking straight ahead.
"They will fiddle faddle so about themselves," Miss Edge went on, about the children. "It makes for such a deal of bother. I get no help from Baker, none at all," she ended.
He said no word.
"Strictly in confidence we are not certain of much about Mary yet," she went on, again in a most languid voice. "But we shall be tomorrow. I've had experience. Believe me. They will worry over trifles, but it all comes out in the wash, in the end."
He stayed silent. Contemplating his own death with disinterest, he did not catch what she said.
For her part, she felt so queer she hardly knew what she was doing, but found herself, somehow, committed to the following, as though on top of a hill in a dream on a bicycle with no brakes.
"Mr Rock," she began, then experienced a last titter, or wobble, before it was too late. She threw the cigarette away which had been burning her forefingers. She missed the fireplace. Falling on a State Kidderminster rug it began to glow, unnoticed. "Mr Rock," she said, a second time. For she knew now she could not go back. "You really should have someone to take good care of you. Marry again," she said.
At this she giggled, once. What a desperate expedient to gain possession of a cottage, she laughed to herself, almost completely out of control. She must be mad. But then, oh well, what harm was there? Things would all come out in the wash, be utterly forgotten come daylight.
"Why yes, yes," he said from the vast distance of his final, cold preoccupation, not having taken in the drift.
She dreamily excused herself to herself by thinking that, of course, he would not listen any more than he did now, which was not at all. This only proved, so she thought, that the kindest was to pack him off forthwith to an Academy of Science.
"I don't believe you bother with me," she rallied.
"How is that, then?" he asked, coming back to earth.
"I said, you must marry again." She spoke out with a slow simper which allowed of no misinterpretation. This, he at last saw, was an offer, and unconditional at that. He took it in his stride as entirely understandable; unthinkable of course, but not, in her pitiable circumstances, in the least surprising. He proudly ignored it.
At the same time he wished to let her down lightly, the safer course. He cast about him how to encompass this. And almost at once proceeded to discuss his health.
"I've been quite well the last few years. But there's none can dodge Father Time. Yet I sleep remarkably sound. I take care, naturally. Regular exercise every day, fetching Daisy's swill and so forth. No, it's just anno Domini."
She despised him for not, as she thought, having heard. Or had he? "What age are you really then?" she asked.
"Seventy-six next month."
"You don't look it," she lied. For she considered he looked more. Too old, too old, she admitted, in another part of her head. But now it was up to him, she knew.
"Not bad for an old fellow," he said, pleased. Oh, she must have lost her sanity just then, she thought, realising he did not intend to take her up. She would never, as long as she lived, ever indulge in so many cigarettes again. But was that, could it be, a smell of burning? And what had he meant, when all was said, discussing his health as he had?
"I keep a deal healthier, even, than she does," he remarked of Elizabeth.
"The child looks ever so much better," Edge agreed, dreamily, but with anguish. She still thought he referred to Moira. In a dazed state, she began to imagine larger and longer flames, as that smell came through.
"I am tired. I should go home," he said.
"In that case, goodnight," Edge answered from her deep chair, coldly, more of an enemy than ever. She had finally decided there would be nothing. "Look after yourself," she added with tired venom, while he dragged his body out of the Principal's rightful place, to take leave. She did not, of course, get to her feet when the old man came over. He, for his part, ignored the taste of burning. "Goodbye," she ended, gave him a slack hand. He turned his back to leave.
"Gracious," she remarked, as though to make conversation, having seen the cigarette at last. "Quite a blaze," she said, rose up in no haste, and stamped it well out.
Either he did not catch that, or could not be bothered, but he just stepped outside, closing the door behind him.
In the passage he gave one short, sharp laugh.
She heard.
Elizabeth, her thoughts on Sebastian, waited for Mr Rock outside the Principal's lavatory under a lighted bulb. She was watching a moth dab its own shadow up above. "It kisses," she said inside her.
When the grandfather came along, he remarked, "There you are, my child." Mr Rock's calling her his own as much as the old man allowed himself to show of how surprised and touched he felt that, after all, she should have spared time off to see him home. She gave no answer. She continued to watch the moth while he went past. She was concentrating on Sebastian.