"That's only jealousy."
"I still maintain it would be very dangerous for him to go on as if everything was just plain sailing."
"Oh, if you're going to lose your nerve now, my dear, what on earth, I mean can you imagine, of all the beastly things to happen ... oh what will become of you and me?"
"There," he said, genuinely disturbed, "I've upset you and that was the last I intended, the very last," he added. But she was not done yet.
"And what's all this to do with Miss Baker and Miss Edge?" she demanded, recollecting the way he had opened the conversation. She caught him out. He could not even remember how he had brought these ladies in. So he kissed her.
Miss Marchbanks, with Mr Rock's Persian on her lap, sat waiting in the sanctum for one of the senior students, Moira. Extremely shortsighted, she had taken off her spectacles and put these on Miss Edge's desk as though, in the crisis, at a time when she had been left in charge, she wished to look inwards, to draw on hid reserves, and thus to meet the drain on her resolution which this absence of the two girls had opened like an ulcer high under the ribs, where it fluttered, a blood stained dove with tearing claws.
So that when Moira entered, and did not shut the door but stood leant against it, half in, half out of the room, dressed in a pink overall (this colour being her badge of responsibility over others), her bare legs a gold haze to Miss Marchbanks' weak eyes, her figure, as the older woman thought, a rounded mass softly merged into the exaggeration of a grown woman's, her neck and face the colour of ripening apricots from sun with strong eyes that were an alive blue, shapeless to Miss Marchbanks' dull poached eggs of vision, but a child so alive, at some trick of summer light outside, that the older woman marvelled again how it could ever be that the State should send these girls, who were really women, to be treated like children; she marvelled as Moira stood respectfully flaunting maturity, even her short, curly hair strong about the face with the youth of her body, that the State (which had just raised the age of consent by two whole years) should lay down how this woman was to be treated as unfunctional, like a child that could scarcely blow its own nose.
"About the decorations, Moira," she began, dismissing certain uncertainties with a sigh, only to find she was unsure even of what she was about to say. "A thought came to me," she said, then forced herself on, "a thought for the alcove. Fir trees, Moira," she improvised. "And you know all that salt they delivered by mistake, well we could lay that for snow on the branches. It's what they used to do in films. So cool for dancing. Because it will be hot today, I think."
"That would be lovely," the girl agreed with a low, lazy voice, the opposite to her looks.
"Then you do think so, Moira?"
"Oh, I wish you had the arrangements for everything, Miss Marchbanks. Only Miss Edge said it must be rhododendrons and azaleas. She wants huge swags, she said. What are swags, Miss Marchbanks?"
"Great masses, child." Marchbanks for some reason began to feel reassured. "Loot, you see," she went on. "Well, that's that then. So you'd better take forty seniors to make a start."
"We have. And we won't cut the flowers, ever, not where they can see."
"It was just a thought," the older woman said. "Fir trees and waltzes. The snow for all of your white frocks as you go round.
Rather a pity, don't you think? But come in or out child, do. Don't stand there neither one thing nor the other." The girl laughed comfortably.
"You sent for me," she said.
"We're so busy. We've been started ages. But please come and look, oh please. We want your advice particularly." At this she shut the door, came up to the desk. They're incalculable, Marchbanks told herself. And up to yesterday I was so confident I knew their ways. Then her heart missed a beat as she wondered whether the child could be hinting.
"It's the fireplace," Moira said. "Very big." She stood close and absolutely still, to give the older woman, whose body age had withered, a full, wonderful, firm round smile.
"Well, we don't want to root up a whole rhododendron bush, and put that in," the woman gently said.
Then the girl leaned right over, stroked that white cat. She smelled warm to the older lady.
"Why it's Alice, Mr Rock's," she said.
"Every morning," Marchbanks agreed. "Every single day You couldn't do without, could you?" she said to the puss, which Moira could now at last hear purr, which she could tell was in a cat's swoon.
"Isn't it awful," the girl casually said.
"What d'you mean, dear?"
"Why, about Mary and Merode."
Marchbanks swallowed a gulp of the morning.
"Now don't be so silly," she said, in a bright voice. "But I do wish you'd each of you come to see me before you decide on some of your little foolishnesses." She looked in a dazzled way at the large, brilliant, smooth face bent over the cat. She began to drum the fingers of her left hand on Edge's table.
"What mightn't Alice be able to tell?" the child remarked.
"Now Moira, you know as well as I, they've simply gone off somewhere and the car's broken down most probably," Marchbanks said. "Besides we rely on you senior girls, you realise, before the bird is flown, so to speak, you know."
The younger woman did not reply. She went on stroking puss, which had opened huge blue eyes.
"Of course Miss Edge will be very cross with them when they get back properly ashamed of themselves," Marchbanks continued. "But I'll have a word with Miss Baker first. Why child, you don't know anything, do you?" she asked, with an uneasiness as shrill as Sebastian's in her voice.
"Oh Miss Marchbanks, we always tell you all," the girl replied.
"Then what did you mean about Mr Rock's cat?" the older woman said, and put on her spectacles.
"She might have seen them when she was coming over," Moira explained. Now that she could watch the girl in detail Miss Marchbanks no longer approved, and was even half irritated with the creature's blankness. You could admire children when you were not in a position properly to focus them, she thought, because, soon as you had your glasses on, they were merely fat, or null, unless of course they were babies.
"You've a smut on your nose, child," she said.
"Oh have I? Thank you," the girl said, rubbing with a hand.
"Well I must get along at once or we'll never get finished," she excused herself. "I know they'll be disappointed over the fir trees," she said, and backed away with a look of complicity about her nose. "It would have been too lovely. But some people, I mean . . . well . . . you know," she finished on an adorable smile of pure respect, then was gone.
There was a knock at the door. Upon being bidden to do so, Winstanley entered.
"Why come in, my dear, sit down," Miss Marchbanks said, and took the spectacles off again.
"I wouldn't have bothered you, ma'am, today of all days, but I wanted to know if there was any sort of help at all I could give."
"My dear," Marchbanks said. "And less of this ma'am to me. I hold the position only for twelve hours, if I last those," she said. "No, I've just had Moira along, to find whether I could arrive at anything."
"Why Moira particularly?"
"It was just a thought. Such a pretty child."
"I suppose I mustn't ask, but. . . ?"
"Not a word," this lady answered. "We're as we were except that I'm very kindly left in charge, and no-one's to know lest it gets out. But I'm to use my discretion continuously, thank you."
"I wouldn't put up with it, "Winstanley said.
How can the lovesick make such sweeping statements, March-banks wondered.
"Especially with the Inspector of Police," she went on without a sign of what she thought. "He's to come over because I'm not to tell him on the telephone. 'We must be discreet'," she quoted with irony. "I mustn't say to his face."
"But I know both girls well," Winstanley protested. "I can't imagine ..."
"My dear," Marchbanks said, "what do either of us know?"
"Yes, quite. But. . ."
"My dear," Marchbanks interrupted a second time, "you're well out of this."
"You don't mean . . ."
"What I suggested was they should have fir trees in the alcove for the ball," Miss Marchbanks said, and put the spectacles on again. Her tired eyes were sharpened by lenses to a very light brown. Winstanley scanned anxiously for a hint of the inner meaning, but without result. "Adams is round here now," the older woman continued, "and it wouldn't have taken him a whole morning to saw half a dozen over in the new plantation. But, so it seems, we are to continue with our traditional decorations," she ended, with a gesture of dismissal. "My dear, thanks all the same," she said.
"Oh I know what I meant to ask," Winstanley said, as she gave in, and went to the door. "Some of us, the staff naturally, thought we might have a swim in the lake this afternoon since it's a holiday. You'd have no objection? We'd keep to the end away from the weeds, of course."
You think Sebastian will like you in your bathing dress? was what Marchbanks did not ask.
"I shouldn't, not just today," she said with a look of resignation that silenced the agitated query with which Winstanley was about to take her up. The older woman sighed once the door was closed, and she was alone again. Who could say what might be in that water?
"Adams," she began, when in his turn the man entered. He interrupted her at once. While attending outside for the day's orders, Mr Rock's hints had preyed on his mind. He was beside himself.
"It wouldn't be about my cottage, now would it, ma'am?" he demanded. "There's no question, is there? For I've a nephew over to me directly, with the girl he married in church. Can't find a place of their own anyhow. It's cruel this housing shortage, miss, I mean ma'am."
"Why of course not, Adams. Whoever gave you that impression?"
"You know the ways things are with a place this size. Nothing but rumours and buzzes about your ears the whole day, ma'am. Till a man can't tell what to believe, and that's the truth."
"But I only wanted to ask your advice, Adams."
"How would that be?" he enquired, putting on his dullest expression.
"You've heard of our two silly students? You must have."
"Me? I wouldn't know the first thing, miss."
"Well, there's two of them gone, Adams, absolutely without trace. Of course, only temporarily. But can you imagine such
deceit?"
There was a pause. Adams might, or might not, have been amazed. Then he said, in a voice of doom, "I pity those two lasses."
"Oh, you know, I don't think there's any necessity to be tragic," Miss Marchbanks said. "I'm sure not, indeed. I only wanted to ask if you had noticed anything."
"Me, miss? What should I see of them?"
"Why possibly they may have fallen into the habit of meeting strangers from outside in the grounds, perhaps?"
"There's been none like that, miss, or I'd have reported it, and double quick to be sure."
"I know you should. That's why I was so determined to ask. Then you haven't come across them?"
"I can't tell one of your learners from t'other, miss," Adams said. "I've no call."
"Exactly," Marchbanks agreed, to humour him. "But you haven't noticed anything unusual?"
"If I was in your place," the man replied, "I'd speak over the telephone with the station."
"Yes, I've done so, Adams."
"They can't have passed that way, then. And the coach halt?"
"Of course," she patiently said. "You don't imagine we've been seated idly by," she said, going over in her mind again the guarded, embarrassed enquiries she had made.
"Well, it's got me beat," he said.
"You see, I just wondered if you might have marked down some little detail, all over the woods in your day's work, and trained to be observant."
"I don't know about trained to be observant, miss?"
"Why yes, naturally, in the course of your duties. Foresters always are," she said, to flatter him.
"It's not me you should enquire of," he said, at last. "Some of the creatures will for ever hang around Mr Rock's place, any day of the week you care to name."
"I know," she said to encourage the man. "He has those animals," and remembered the cat on her Jap, the goose, and the pig, all white.
"Well, to my way of thought, Mr Rock's your money, miss, if you'll excuse me now, because if you've nothing special today I should get on with our logs for the firewood."
"There's just one matter, Adams," she said, and ordered fir branches to be brought up, in case room could be found. Then she dismissed him. At the door, however, he turned back. "It's the overstrain, there you are," he announced. "They overtax their strength," he said, and went.
* * *
A great beech had fallen a night or two earlier, in full leaf, lay now with its green leaves turned to pale gold, as though by the sea. It had brought more vast limbs down along with it, so, in the bright morning, at the thickest of the wood, colourless sky was suddenly opened to Elizabeth and Sebastian above a cliff of green. The wreckage beneath standing beeches was lit at this place by a glare of sunlight concerted on flat, dying leaves which hung on to life by what was broken off, the small branches joining those larger that met the arms, which in their turn grew from the fallen column of the beech, all now an expiring gold of faded green. A world through which the young man and his girl had been meandering, in dreaming shade through which sticks of sunlight slanted to spill upon the ground, had at this point been struck to a blaze, and where their way had been dim, on a sea bed past grave trunks, was now this dying, brilliant mass which lay exposed, a hidden world of spiders working on its gold, the webs these made a field of wheels and spokes of wet silver. The sudden sunlight on Elizabeth and Sebastian as, arms about one another's waists, they halted to wonder and surmise, was a load, a great cloak to clothe them, like a depth of warm water that turned the man's brown city outfit to a drowned man's clothes, the sun was so heavy, so encompassing betimes.