by Henry Green
‘But isn’t it strange about Mary, ma’am?’
Miss Edge barely heard.
‘Moira,’ she said. ‘You have younger eyes than I. Look over there and tell me what you see. Is that Mr Rock? And what has he got with him?’
The child collected her face into an expression which the old man, had he been present, would have found adorable in the effort to pierce the slanting sun, which turned her skin to coral, her red hair to live filaments.
‘Why how sweet,’ the child exclaimed. ‘Yes, it is him. He’s taking darling Daise for a run.’
The others came up, then, with bunches of red and white rhododendron.
‘But not loose, dear?’ Edge protested.
‘Oh, she’s absolutely safe, isn’t she?’ Moira appealed to her companions. ‘Why Mr Rock’s often let her out while we’ve been there, when she’s stayed so busy and well-behaved.’
At this moment there was the sound of a motor car engine. Coming or going? The Principal looked left, then right. Almost at once their little red State tourer came down the Drive, its cloud of dust not yet martialled but already falling in behind. Mrs Manley was seated in the back. She looked straight ahead. By some trick of the light, perhaps, her face was purple.
‘That’s Mrs Manley, isn’t it?’ Moira cannily enquired.
‘She’s been to see Merode,’ a child said.
‘I’ll bet she asked some posers,’ yet another suggested.
‘We’ll have to hasten if we’re ever to get through,’ Edge propounded, and saw, or thought she saw, that Mr Rock had stopped to look. Their car, so soon invisible to Edge, must have just been entering the Trees. For a cloud of dust now lay afar, at the Drive’s opening, and was a delicate pink.
The old man seemed to stand fast, the better to watch.
The decorations for Founder’s Day were already traditional, although the Institute had been open for only ten years. In consequence there was no need for Edge to give orders, her presence was designed to preclude innovation, such as the fir branches Marchbanks had so foolishly suggested. Hooks were fixed permanently in the walls at proper intervals, and the work of tying azalea and rhododendron to hang head downwards in separate, glistening great masses went on apace without Edge having to give a thought to the proceeding. Indeed, despite a renewed preoccupation with Mr Rock, she was already conscious of a glow within her at the prospect of so much that would inevitably please, and which was to be enjoyed and enjoyed; when the trees’ shadows crept at last over the mansion, and then there was moonlight; when Baker, with herself, in front of all the students dressed in their clear frocks, could sway out in one another’s arms at last to open everything to that thunder of the waltz.
She had dismissed from her mind each carking memory of the Manley creature. The die was cast. They were to go on with the Dance, any other course would be unthinkable. So she was happy in anticipation, culpably at rest. She could even forgive the sage his sow.
Accordingly she had, at first, no qualms when she heard a child back at the pyre exclaim, ‘Why, whatever’s this?’ And paid no heed to the giggles which followed. But when, in the girls’ chatter, she caught one say gleefully, ‘It’s the living spit of Mary,’ she did turn, then, with a sickening premonition of the worst, to have the quick comfort to realise they had found what was only a short, small object. Yet she moved down upon them at once. ‘What’s this?’ she demanded, horrified by the agitation in her voice. The students parted. And she saw, and it gave her such a frightful turn she straightaway fainted, a rabbity Rag Doll dressed gaily in miniature Institute pyjamas, painted with a grotesque caricature of Mary’s features on its own flat face, laid disgustingly on a bit of mackintosh, embowered by these blooms.
When Edge came to, she was laid out on her chaise longue in the Sanctum. Miss Baker ministered with smelling salts, while Marion stood at a cut glass bowl in which were cubes of ice. The late sun caught these with sufficient force to distress Edge, and she closed her eyes once more. The minutes passed.
‘It’s been so hot,’ Baker said finally, with vexed accents. Miss Edge looked at her, and again had to turn her face from the intolerable insistence of salts on top of light. She even squirmed in protest.
‘That’s right, dear,’ came Baker’s voice. ‘Now rest.’ Upon which, Edge raised a hand to her hair and looked about. She fastened on Marion.
‘What a remarkable thing,’ she said, not without effort.
‘Don’t give it another thought,’ Miss Baker ordered, bright as the day outside.
‘But did you see too, Marion?’ Edge enquired. The girl seemed so weighed down by guilt, almost as though she were in for another bout of crying. Her Principal noted this from a vast distance of lassitude, which allowed her to ask questions out of a calm, almost intellectual curiosity.
‘Yes, ma’am. Oh, I have it here.’
‘Plenty of time, Edge,’ Miss Baker warned. ‘Now, wouldn’t you like Dr Bodle?’
‘So foolish of me,’ Miss Edge lied to the child. ‘I thought it was a . . . a dead rabbit,’ she said in anticlimax, voicing the secret, known throughout the Institute, that she had a terror of rabbits dead. ‘And then I did realise, only too late, too late.’ A tear began to roll from each of her blue, old eyes. ‘I’ll never forgive myself,’ she ended, in a small voice and a hiccup.
‘Nonsense,’ Baker said, ‘It’s the heat. You’re overstrained.’
A silence followed, while Miss Edge pulled herself together.
‘But was there, really, a Doll?’ she asked. Her colleague turned away, anguished. Miss Edge did not notice.
‘Oh yes, ma’am. Someone in the kitchen said she’d lost hers.’
‘Someone said . . . ?’
‘Who was that then?’
‘I can’t remember exactly. But she did know Mary had lost it,’ Marion explained.
The older women could not disguise the fresh shock this was to them. Miss Edge sat bolt upright even.
‘Who?’ Baker gasped.
‘Mary, ma’am.’
‘No, but who informed you?’
There was another pause.
‘I can’t seem to remember, quite,’ the girl told Baker.
‘Well,’ Miss Edge said, better already now that she was following a cold scent. ‘Suppose you go up to Matron and inform her from me that you are to stay with her until you do?’
‘Oh but ma’am, and the dance?’
‘It will come back before then. Yes, run along, Marion.’
The moment the door was closed on the girl, Miss Edge burst out,
‘Were there Pins in? Had it a painted Heart?’
‘My dear,’ Baker expostulated. ‘This is practically no more than a golliwog.’
‘Oh my heart,’ Edge said. ‘How terrible.’
‘Now, I’m sure it isn’t what you think,’ the other tried to comfort her colleague. ‘This is all a mistake.’
‘I knew, right through lunch,’ Miss Edge insisted.
There came a knock on the door.
‘Come in,’ Edge cried, trembling, and sat up straight again.
‘I thought I ought to tell you, ma’am,’ Marion said, as she sidled in, ‘But I just remembered I heard Mary got a wire. She’s gone home.’
‘Gone home?’ the two Principals burst out. ‘When?’ Edge demanded.
‘Mrs Bain told us there was a wire to say the sister was sick,’ Marion announced in a shocked voice.
‘Did any telegrams come last night?’ Baker asked her colleague, because all communications to the students were read before being handed over.
‘You can go to Matron now, Marion,’ Edge ordered.
‘And remember, not a word about any of this to the others. You still have something to tell us, child.’
As soon as the girl was out of their room Miss Baker got on the telephone to Marchbanks. The reply was that nothing had come for Mary in the past week.
‘She could have stopped the postman,’ Baker suggested.
‘My dear,’ Edge said fain
tly, ‘I still cannot believe it, and now this terrible Doll in her image. At her age too.’
‘Then what d’you really think?’ Baker asked, her voice trembling.
‘The Lake,’ Miss Edge insinuated, almost hoarse.
‘Oh no, not that, dear.’
‘You see, Baker, I understand now why Rock should have been on his way down.’
‘Last night?’
‘No, just a moment ago, with his pig.’
‘With his pig!’
‘In South Eastern Europe, Hermione, they are used for tracking.’
‘But listen,’ Baker announced, ‘this is too mysterious. The child’s alone in the world, except for her parents living apart in Brazil. She has nobody to send wires.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I looked up the card this morning, don’t you remember?’
‘Then it must have been a man,’ Edge said, from the depths.
‘No, I don’t think so. I’ll tell you why. They may simply have invented the whole tale.’
‘Oh, Baker, what is the matter with the Police that she cannot be found?’
‘They have just made it all up,’ Baker insisted.
‘We must cancel the Dance, there is nothing else for it,’ Miss Edge then said.
But her colleague was on the house telephone again. She found out the postman had not been yesterday, after the second delivery at lunch time.
‘And she laid our tea, that was the last I saw of her, Edge. There was nothing, then, not in the way she looked.’
‘That is as may be,’ Miss Edge replied. Like a spoiled child, she put her face away from Baker along the back of the chaise longue.
‘Of all our children she was the truthfullest, dear,’ Miss Baker continued. ‘They are good girls. It’s some misunderstanding.’
‘I blame myself, now, that I went to London,’ Miss Edge announced, but in stronger tones.
‘What else could we have done? We can’t have a hue and cry, dear.’
‘You think not?’ Edge asked coldly.
‘Well, not yet, can we? We don’t know much for sure.’
‘What did that ridiculous Manley woman say after she had seen Merode?’ Edge demanded, at her driest.
‘My dear, I so regret ever having called the creature over,’ Miss Baker protested. ‘How wise of the State to lay down that the girls must be held incommunicado after serious affairs like this, until they have written their own account.’
Miss Edge listened in silence, thus forcing her question which was a reproof.
There was a pause.
‘Still sleepwalking,’ Baker confessed at last.
‘And Mary?’ Edge insisted.
‘Nothing to do with Merode, naturally,’ Miss Baker replied in a bitter voice. ‘I blame myself,’ she volunteered.
Her colleague did not help in any way. Still holding her face averted, she began a cold silence.
‘But I do feel, dear,’ Baker tried once more, ‘that it would really be unwise for us to cancel our arrangements, at any rate before we learn the truth. It will go so much the harder with the child when she does turn up.’
Edge sniffed.
‘After all,’ Miss Baker went on, in a soft voice. ‘How does a dolly alter matters? We were going ahead before we came across that, weren’t we? What d’you think?’
There was a longer pause. Then, from the same remote position, Miss Edge was so good as to say,
‘Let me see it once again.’
When she had the thing in a hand, she did not raise her head but laid the Doll out along the chair back, on a level with her eyes. Its limbs were intolerably loose, as before rigor mortis. The flat, white, miniature, flannel face of Mary was, of course, unwinking, and Edge saw the eyes, the mouth and nose had been drawn with blood red lipstick. But her heart grew lighter as she began to believe it was not, after all, altogether like the child. Yet she held the thing elegantly over a cushion, with a kind of high bred weariness. At last she said,
‘You know this could be Merode, or even Marion.’
‘D’you think?’ Baker asked, with hope.
‘You understand they are too old, Hermione, for dolls?’
‘But, Mabel, are they? We’ve known it here, you know.’
‘There is just this about the pyjamas,’ Edge went on. ‘Merode was found in hers, I recollect. It may only be a stupid prank.’
‘That is certainly an angle,’ Miss Baker said with rising spirits, as ever the optimist.
‘I might confront the child,’ Edge suggested. She sat up, laid the Doll on her lap.
‘Oh but Mabel, don’t you consider you ought to rest? You must remember you’ve had a turn, quite apart from our directives.’
‘I feel somehow the whole future of this beautiful Place is at stake, dear,’ Miss Edge answered. ‘Of course, I would not say a word to the girl. I might just go into her room with it.’
‘But how d’you feel?’
‘I am quite all right, thank you, Hermione.’
‘Then in that case,’ said Miss Baker, to whom it had become imperative to escape, ‘I was thinking I’d just run down by the Lake. It would ease my mind.’
Edge made no reply. She picked up the Doll by its short neck, and left, staggering a little.
As Mr Rock drew near the water he was more than ever sure it had been a mistake to bring Daisy. She was not ringed, and, now that they had moved once more under the beeches, she kept turning last year’s leaves with her snout, also the ground beneath, but so slowly and with such loud delight that they hardly progressed forward; and the ends of sticks of sunlight, pointed down from high trees, moved across his pig’s flanks like pink and cream snails, then over his own face in little balls of warmth.
There were even moments when Daisy actually knelt, and all was still.
He would never get her home, he knew. She would have to be left to make her own way back at meal time, but there had been no other excuse to go down by the water, and someone had to after the poor girl, because those evil ninnies, whose absolute power so absolutely corrupted them, were too muddleheaded, or imperious, to see what must be done in merest human charity. Ted, his goose, covered a deal of ground each day, besides he had no call to look for her, and then pigs, as was well known, possessed a sense of smell which might come in handy amongst thick reeds. Imagine not organising a search as soon as they had learned, the fabulous Neroines, already tuning their fiddles before the rout, the fireman’s ball.
He wiped his forehead with the back of a hand, after which he polished the spectacles. He clucked at Daisy to encourage her, then found that he had come into full sunlight, and could see the lake at last.
On the side by which he was approaching, water was dammed well up above ground level, a white mirror almost to the level of his eyes, and out of which grew rushes, pink and green, with willows and other smaller gray bushes everlastingly leant over their several likenesses in a faint lakeside, sunlit smell of rotting, for perhaps all of three times seventy years.
He reminded himself that he should not come out from the shelter of the trees, must not be seen. Daisy would be his eyes.
At the scent of the lake she suddenly trotted forward, burst through a little undergrowth with a great amount of noise and, while he stepped back into concealing shade, she halted at the brink, nose up, ears folded forwards over violet eyes, and with deeply heaving flanks, by which Mr Rock assumed she must wish to challenge, or had sensed, someone on the further bank to whom, in her startled whiteness, she might seem his goose, he thought, if the person had not got his or her right spectacles.
All was still, not a bird moved, but the sun was already turning edges of green leaves red, and soon it would be time for russet pheasants roosting.
Meantime Miss Baker, going down to this lake another way, for all her fat moved silently to come upon the sergeant seated on a log in the traditional attitude, a high helmet on the ground at the side, mopping his brow with a red, bandanna handkerchief.
She was much settled at the sight of him, took it for proof that Edge, when that lady interviewed the man, had counselled his keeping an eye upon the place.
‘Why sergeant,’ she said, therefore, in an arch voice, ‘this is a pleasure I must say’s entirely unexpected.’
He jumped as though he had been shot.
‘Why Miss Baker, ma’am,’ he exclaimed. Getting up he replaced the helmet with a guilty movement.
‘It has been warm, certainly.’
‘It has that,’ the man replied.
‘Take a few steps with me,’ she invited. ‘And to what do we owe this pleasure?’ she asked, as he fell in at her side.
‘I was up at the house this noon, ma’am,’ he answered.
Baker did not know how much her colleague had given away, but she, like Miss Edge before her, would never be so injudicious as to disclose that what one of them did could be without the consent, and full agreement, of the other.
‘I don’t fancy there’s much in all this,’ she said about the disappearance. He kept in mind Miss Edge’s hint as to men of a certain age and replied,
‘I’m right glad to hear you say so, ma’am.’
‘Really?’ she asked. ‘You’ve some information that hasn’t yet reached us, perhaps?’ She was overconfident. She was so sure that all would yet be well.
‘Not us, we haven’t,’ he said. But he considered these two women were not being straight with the police. It was why he had returned to what he called ‘the scene.’ So he added, ‘Then you’ve a student still missing, ma’am?’
Baker did not realise that her colleague, when she talked with the sergeant, had, as usual, pursued a devious course.
‘Why yes,’ she answered. ‘Well, after all,’ she went on. ‘What does one mean when one says missing?’
This struck an answering note in the sergeant’s head. At the station much of their time was taken up with young women adrift, who, after fourteen days, returned brown and happy from a fortnight with a boy by the ocean.
‘You’ve got something there, ma’am,’ he agreed.
‘It’s a question of degree,’ she elaborated.
‘I wonder if I might put a question, ma’am?’ the policeman said, his doubts back again. ‘What does Miss Edge have in view?’