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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/7118-8.txt b/7118-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ebe531b --- /dev/null +++ b/7118-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10267 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, What Maisie Knew, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: What Maisie Knew + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: March 12, 2003 [eBook #7118] +[Most recently updated: November 9, 2005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT MAISIE KNEW*** + + +E-text prepared by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA +and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. + + + +WHAT MAISIE KNEW + +by + +HENRY JAMES + + + + + + + +The litigation seemed interminable and had in fact been complicated; but +by the decision on the appeal the judgement of the divorce-court was +confirmed as to the assignment of the child. The father, who, though +bespattered from head to foot, had made good his case, was, in pursuance +of this triumph, appointed to keep her: it was not so much that the +mother's character had been more absolutely damaged as that the +brilliancy of a lady's complexion (and this lady's, in court, was +immensely remarked) might be more regarded as showing the spots. +Attached, however, to the second pronouncement was a condition that +detracted, for Beale Farange, from its sweetness--an order that he +should refund to his late wife the twenty-six hundred pounds put down +by her, as it was called, some three years before, in the interest of +the child's maintenance and precisely on a proved understanding that he +would take no proceedings: a sum of which he had had the administration +and of which he could render not the least account. The obligation thus +attributed to her adversary was no small balm to Ida's resentment; it +drew a part of the sting from her defeat and compelled Mr. Farange +perceptibly to lower his crest. He was unable to produce the money or to +raise it in any way; so that after a squabble scarcely less public and +scarcely more decent than the original shock of battle his only issue +from his predicament was a compromise proposed by his legal advisers and +finally accepted by hers. + +His debt was by this arrangement remitted to him and the little girl +disposed of in a manner worthy of the judgement-seat of Solomon. She was +divided in two and the portions tossed impartially to the disputants. +They would take her, in rotation, for six months at a time; she would +spend half the year with each. This was odd justice in the eyes of those +who still blinked in the fierce light projected from the tribunal--a +light in which neither parent figured in the least as a happy example to +youth and innocence. What was to have been expected on the evidence was +the nomination, _in loco parentis_, of some proper third person, some +respectable or at least some presentable friend. Apparently, however, +the circle of the Faranges had been scanned in vain for any such +ornament; so that the only solution finally meeting all the difficulties +was, save that of sending Maisie to a Home, the partition of the +tutelary office in the manner I have mentioned. There were more reasons +for her parents to agree to it than there had ever been for them to +agree to anything; and they now prepared with her help to enjoy the +distinction that waits upon vulgarity sufficiently attested. Their +rupture had resounded, and after being perfectly insignificant +together they would be decidedly striking apart. Had they not produced +an impression that warranted people in looking for appeals in the +newspapers for the rescue of the little one--reverberation, amid a +vociferous public, of the idea that some movement should be started or +some benevolent person should come forward? A good lady came indeed a +step or two: she was distantly related to Mrs. Farange, to whom she +proposed that, having children and nurseries wound up and going, she +should be allowed to take home the bone of contention and, by working it +into her system, relieve at least one of the parents. This would make +every time, for Maisie, after her inevitable six months with Beale, much +more of a change. + +"More of a change?" Ida cried. "Won't it be enough of a change for her +to come from that low brute to the person in the world who detests him +most?" + +"No, because you detest him so much that you'll always talk to her about +him. You'll keep him before her by perpetually abusing him." + +Mrs. Farange stared. "Pray, then, am I to do nothing to counteract his +villainous abuse of ME?" + +The good lady, for a moment, made no reply: her silence was a grim +judgement of the whole point of view. "Poor little monkey!" she at +last exclaimed; and the words were an epitaph for the tomb of Maisie's +childhood. She was abandoned to her fate. What was clear to any +spectator was that the only link binding her to either parent was this +lamentable fact of her being a ready vessel for bitterness, a deep +little porcelain cup in which biting acids could be mixed. They had +wanted her not for any good they could do her, but for the harm they +could, with her unconscious aid, do each other. She should serve +their anger and seal their revenge, for husband and wife had been +alike crippled by the heavy hand of justice, which in the last resort +met on neither side their indignant claim to get, as they called it, +everything. If each was only to get half this seemed to concede that +neither was so base as the other pretended, or, to put it differently, +offered them both as bad indeed, since they were only as good as each +other. The mother had wished to prevent the father from, as she said, +"so much as looking" at the child; the father's plea was that the +mother's lightest touch was "simply contamination." These were the +opposed principles in which Maisie was to be educated--she was to fit +them together as she might. Nothing could have been more touching at +first than her failure to suspect the ordeal that awaited her little +unspotted soul. There were persons horrified to think what those in +charge of it would combine to try to make of it: no one could conceive +in advance that they would be able to make nothing ill. + +This was a society in which for the most part people were occupied +only with chatter, but the disunited couple had at last grounds for +expecting a time of high activity. They girded their loins, they felt +as if the quarrel had only begun. They felt indeed more married than +ever, inasmuch as what marriage had mainly suggested to them was the +unbroken opportunity to quarrel. There had been "sides" before, and +there were sides as much as ever; for the sider too the prospect +opened out, taking the pleasant form of a superabundance of matter for +desultory conversation. The many friends of the Faranges drew together +to differ about them; contradiction grew young again over teacups +and cigars. Everybody was always assuring everybody of something +very shocking, and nobody would have been jolly if nobody had been +outrageous. The pair appeared to have a social attraction which failed +merely as regards each other: it was indeed a great deal to be able +to say for Ida that no one but Beale desired her blood, and for Beale +that if he should ever have his eyes scratched out it would be only by +his wife. It was generally felt, to begin with, that they were awfully +good-looking--they had really not been analysed to a deeper residuum. +They made up together for instance some twelve feet three of stature, +and nothing was more discussed than the apportionment of this +quantity. The sole flaw in Ida's beauty was a length and reach of +arm conducive perhaps to her having so often beaten her ex-husband +at billiards, a game in which she showed a superiority largely +accountable, as she maintained, for the resentment finding expression +in his physical violence. Billiards was her great accomplishment +and the distinction her name always first produced the mention of. +Notwithstanding some very long lines everything about her that might +have been large and that in many women profited by the licence was, +with a single exception, admired and cited for its smallness. The +exception was her eyes, which might have been of mere regulation size, +but which overstepped the modesty of nature; her mouth, on the other +hand, was barely perceptible, and odds were freely taken as to the +measurement of her waist. She was a person who, when she was out--and +she was always out--produced everywhere a sense of having been seen +often, the sense indeed of a kind of abuse of visibility, so that it +would have been, in the usual places rather vulgar to wonder at her. +Strangers only did that; but they, to the amusement of the familiar, +did it very much: it was an inevitable way of betraying an alien +habit. Like her husband she carried clothes, carried them as a train +carries passengers: people had been known to compare their taste and +dispute about the accommodation they gave these articles, though +inclining on the whole to the commendation of Ida as less overcrowded, +especially with jewellery and flowers. Beale Farange had natural +decorations, a kind of costume in his vast fair beard, burnished like +a gold breastplate, and in the eternal glitter of the teeth that his +long moustache had been trained not to hide and that gave him, in +every possible situation, the look of the joy of life. He had been +destined in his youth for diplomacy and momentarily attached, without +a salary, to a legation which enabled him often to say "In MY time in +the East": but contemporary history had somehow had no use for him, +had hurried past him and left him in perpetual Piccadilly. Every one +knew what he had--only twenty-five hundred. Poor Ida, who had run +through everything, had now nothing but her carriage and her paralysed +uncle. This old brute, as he was called, was supposed to have a lot +put away. The child was provided for, thanks to a crafty godmother, a +defunct aunt of Beale's, who had left her something in such a manner +that the parents could appropriate only the income. + + + + +I + + +The child was provided for, but the new arrangement was inevitably +confounding to a young intelligence intensely aware that something had +happened which must matter a good deal and looking anxiously out for +the effects of so great a cause. It was to be the fate of this patient +little girl to see much more than she at first understood, but also even +at first to understand much more than any little girl, however patient, +had perhaps ever understood before. Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or +a story could have been so in the thick of the fight. She was taken +into the confidence of passions on which she fixed just the stare she +might have had for images bounding across the wall in the slide of a +magic-lantern. Her little world was phantasmagoric--strange shadows +dancing on a sheet. It was as if the whole performance had been given +for her--a mite of a half-scared infant in a great dim theatre. She was +in short introduced to life with a liberality in which the selfishness +of others found its account, and there was nothing to avert the +sacrifice but the modesty of her youth. + +Her first term was with her father, who spared her only in not letting +her have the wild letters addressed to her by her mother: he confined +himself to holding them up at her and shaking them, while he showed his +teeth, and then amusing her by the way he chucked them, across the room, +bang into the fire. Even at that moment, however, she had a scared +anticipation of fatigue, a guilty sense of not rising to the occasion, +feeling the charm of the violence with which the stiff unopened +envelopes, whose big monograms--Ida bristled with monograms--she would +have liked to see, were made to whizz, like dangerous missiles, through +the air. The greatest effect of the great cause was her own greater +importance, chiefly revealed to her in the larger freedom with which +she was handled, pulled hither and thither and kissed, and the +proportionately greater niceness she was obliged to show. Her features +had somehow become prominent; they were so perpetually nipped by the +gentlemen who came to see her father and the smoke of whose cigarettes +went into her face. Some of these gentlemen made her strike matches and +light their cigarettes; others, holding her on knees violently jolted, +pinched the calves of her legs till she shrieked--her shriek was much +admired--and reproached them with being toothpicks. The word stuck in +her mind and contributed to her feeling from this time that she was +deficient in something that would meet the general desire. She found +out what it was: it was a congenital tendency to the production of a +substance to which Moddle, her nurse, gave a short ugly name, a name +painfully associated at dinner with the part of the joint that she +didn't like. She had left behind her the time when she had no desires +to meet, none at least save Moddle's, who, in Kensington Gardens, was +always on the bench when she came back to see if she had been playing +too far. Moddle's desire was merely that she shouldn't do that, and she +met it so easily that the only spots in that long brightness were the +moments of her wondering what would become of her if, on her rushing +back, there should be no Moddle on the bench. They still went to the +Gardens, but there was a difference even there; she was impelled +perpetually to look at the legs of other children and ask her nurse if +THEY were toothpicks. Moddle was terribly truthful; she always said: "Oh +my dear, you'll not find such another pair as your own." It seemed to +have to do with something else that Moddle often said: "You feel the +strain--that's where it is; and you'll feel it still worse, you know." + +Thus from the first Maisie not only felt it, but knew she felt it. A +part of it was the consequence of her father's telling her he felt it +too, and telling Moddle, in her presence, that she must make a point of +driving that home. She was familiar, at the age of six, with the fact +that everything had been changed on her account, everything ordered to +enable him to give himself up to her. She was to remember always the +words in which Moddle impressed upon her that he did so give himself: +"Your papa wishes you never to forget, you know, that he has been +dreadfully put about." If the skin on Moddle's face had to Maisie the +air of being unduly, almost painfully, stretched, it never presented +that appearance so much as when she uttered, as she often had occasion +to utter, such words. The child wondered if they didn't make it hurt +more than usual; but it was only after some time that she was able to +attach to the picture of her father's sufferings, and more particularly +to her nurse's manner about them, the meaning for which these things +had waited. By the time she had grown sharper, as the gentlemen who had +criticised her calves used to say, she found in her mind a collection of +images and echoes to which meanings were attachable--images and echoes +kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high drawers, +like games she wasn't yet big enough to play. The great strain meanwhile +was that of carrying by the right end the things her father said about +her mother--things mostly indeed that Moddle, on a glimpse of them, as +if they had been complicated toys or difficult books, took out of her +hands and put away in the closet. A wonderful assortment of objects of +this kind she was to discover there later, all tumbled up too with the +things, shuffled into the same receptacle, that her mother had said +about her father. + +She had the knowledge that on a certain occasion which every day brought +nearer her mother would be at the door to take her away, and this would +have darkened all the days if the ingenious Moddle hadn't written on a +paper in very big easy words ever so many pleasures that she would enjoy +at the other house. These promises ranged from "a mother's fond love" +to "a nice poached egg to your tea," and took by the way the prospect +of sitting up ever so late to see the lady in question dressed, in +silks and velvets and diamonds and pearls, to go out: so that it was a +real support to Maisie, at the supreme hour, to feel how, by Moddle's +direction, the paper was thrust away in her pocket and there clenched in +her fist. The supreme hour was to furnish her with a vivid reminiscence, +that of a strange outbreak in the drawing-room on the part of Moddle, +who, in reply to something her father had just said, cried aloud: "You +ought to be perfectly ashamed of yourself--you ought to blush, sir, for +the way you go on!" The carriage, with her mother in it, was at the +door; a gentleman who was there, who was always there, laughed out very +loud; her father, who had her in his arms, said to Moddle: "My dear +woman, I'll settle you presently!"--after which he repeated, showing +his teeth more than ever at Maisie while he hugged her, the words for +which her nurse had taken him up. Maisie was not at the moment so fully +conscious of them as of the wonder of Moddle's sudden disrespect and +crimson face; but she was able to produce them in the course of five +minutes when, in the carriage, her mother, all kisses, ribbons, eyes, +arms, strange sounds and sweet smells, said to her: "And did your +beastly papa, my precious angel, send any message to your own loving +mamma?" Then it was that she found the words spoken by her beastly papa +to be, after all, in her little bewildered ears, from which, at her +mother's appeal, they passed, in her clear shrill voice, straight to +her little innocent lips. "He said I was to tell you, from him," she +faithfully reported, "that you're a nasty horrid pig!" + + + + +II + + +In that lively sense of the immediate which is the very air of a child's +mind the past, on each occasion, became for her as indistinct as +the future: she surrendered herself to the actual with a good faith +that might have been touching to either parent. Crudely as they had +calculated they were at first justified by the event: she was the little +feathered shuttlecock they could fiercely keep flying between them. The +evil they had the gift of thinking or pretending to think of each other +they poured into her little gravely-gazing soul as into a boundless +receptacle, and each of them had doubtless the best conscience in the +world as to the duty of teaching her the stern truth that should be her +safeguard against the other. She was at the age for which all stories +are true and all conceptions are stories. The actual was the absolute, +the present alone was vivid. The objurgation for instance launched +in the carriage by her mother after she had at her father's bidding +punctually performed was a missive that dropped into her memory with the +dry rattle of a letter falling into a pillar-box. Like the letter it +was, as part of the contents of a well-stuffed post-bag, delivered in +due course at the right address. In the presence of these overflowings, +after they had continued for a couple of years, the associates of either +party sometimes felt that something should be done for what they called +"the real good, don't you know?" of the child. The only thing done, +however, in general, took place when it was sighingly remarked that she +fortunately wasn't all the year round where she happened to be at the +awkward moment, and that, furthermore, either from extreme cunning or +from extreme stupidity, she appeared not to take things in. + +The theory of her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents, +corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the complete +vision, private but final, of the strange office she filled. It was +literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths of her +nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves began to move their arms +and legs; old forms and phrases began to have a sense that frightened +her. She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy +rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of +concealment. She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious +spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, +and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. +Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be employed +no longer. She would forget everything, she would repeat nothing, and +when, as a tribute to the successful application of her system, she +began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a pleasure new and keen. +When therefore, as she grew older, her parents in turn announced before +her that she had grown shockingly dull, it was not from any real +contraction of her little stream of life. She spoiled their fun, but she +practically added to her own. She saw more and more; she saw too much. +It was Miss Overmore, her first governess, who on a momentous occasion +had sown the seeds of secrecy; sown them not by anything she said, but +by a mere roll of those fine eyes which Maisie already admired. Moddle +had become at this time, after alternations of residence of which the +child had no clear record, an image faintly embalmed in the remembrance +of hungry disappearances from the nursery and distressful lapses in the +alphabet, sad embarrassments, in particular, when invited to recognise +something her nurse described as "the important letter haitch." Miss +Overmore, however hungry, never disappeared: this marked her somehow as +of higher rank, and the character was confirmed by a prettiness that +Maisie supposed to be extraordinary. Mrs. Farange had described her as +almost too pretty, and some one had asked what that mattered so long as +Beale wasn't there. "Beale or no Beale," Maisie had heard her mother +reply, "I take her because she's a lady and yet awfully poor. Rather +nice people, but there are seven sisters at home. What do people mean?" + +Maisie didn't know what people meant, but she knew very soon all the +names of all the sisters; she could say them off better than she could +say the multiplication-table. She privately wondered moreover, though +she never asked, about the awful poverty, of which her companion also +never spoke. Food at any rate came up by mysterious laws; Miss Overmore +never, like Moddle, had on an apron, and when she ate she held her fork +with her little finger curled out. The child, who watched her at many +moments, watched her particularly at that one. "I think you're lovely," +she often said to her; even mamma, who was lovely too, had not such a +pretty way with the fork. Maisie associated this showier presence with +her now being "big," knowing of course that nursery-governesses were +only for little girls who were not, as she said, "really" little. She +vaguely knew, further, somehow, that the future was still bigger than +she, and that a part of what made it so was the number of governesses +lurking in it and ready to dart out. Everything that had happened +when she was really little was dormant, everything but the positive +certitude, bequeathed from afar by Moddle, that the natural way for a +child to have her parents was separate and successive, like her mutton +and her pudding or her bath and her nap. + +"DOES he know he lies?"--that was what she had vivaciously asked Miss +Overmore on the occasion which was so suddenly to lead to a change in +her life. + +"Does he know--" Miss Overmore stared; she had a stocking pulled over +her hand and was pricking at it with a needle which she poised in the +act. Her task was homely, but her movement, like all her movements, +graceful. + +"Why papa." + +"That he 'lies'?" + +"That's what mamma says I'm to tell him--'that he lies and he knows he +lies.'" Miss Overmore turned very red, though she laughed out till her +head fell back; then she pricked again at her muffled hand so hard +that Maisie wondered how she could bear it. "AM I to tell him?" the +child went on. It was then that her companion addressed her in the +unmistakeable language of a pair of eyes of deep dark grey. "I can't say +No," they replied as distinctly as possible; "I can't say No, because +I'm afraid of your mamma, don't you see? Yet how can I say Yes after +your papa has been so kind to me, talking to me so long the other day, +smiling and flashing his beautiful teeth at me the time we met him in +the Park, the time when, rejoicing at the sight of us, he left the +gentlemen he was with and turned and walked with us, stayed with us for +half an hour?" Somehow in the light of Miss Overmore's lovely eyes that +incident came back to Maisie with a charm it hadn't had at the time, and +this in spite of the fact that after it was over her governess had never +but once alluded to it. On their way home, when papa had quitted them, +she had expressed the hope that the child wouldn't mention it to mamma. +Maisie liked her so, and had so the charmed sense of being liked by her, +that she accepted this remark as settling the matter and wonderingly +conformed to it. The wonder now lived again, lived in the recollection +of what papa had said to Miss Overmore: "I've only to look at you to see +you're a person I can appeal to for help to save my daughter." Maisie's +ignorance of what she was to be saved from didn't diminish the pleasure +of the thought that Miss Overmore was saving her. It seemed to make them +cling together as in some wild game of "going round." + + + + +III + + +She was therefore all the more startled when her mother said to her in +connexion with something to be done before her next migration: "You +understand of course that she's not going with you." + +Maisie turned quite faint. "Oh I thought she was." + +"It doesn't in the least matter, you know, what you think," Mrs. Farange +loudly replied; "and you had better indeed for the future, miss, learn +to keep your thoughts to yourself." This was exactly what Maisie had +already learned, and the accomplishment was just the source of her +mother's irritation. It was of a horrid little critical system, a +tendency, in her silence, to judge her elders, that this lady suspected +her, liking as she did, for her own part, a child to be simple and +confiding. She liked also to hear the report of the whacks she +administered to Mr. Farange's character, to his pretensions to peace +of mind: the satisfaction of dealing them diminished when nothing came +back. The day was at hand, and she saw it, when she should feel more +delight in hurling Maisie at him than in snatching her away; so much so +that her conscience winced under the acuteness of a candid friend who +had remarked that the real end of all their tugging would be that each +parent would try to make the little girl a burden to the other--a sort +of game in which a fond mother clearly wouldn't show to advantage. The +prospect of not showing to advantage, a distinction in which she held +she had never failed, begot in Ida Farange an ill humour of which +several persons felt the effect. She determined that Beale at any rate +should feel it; she reflected afresh that in the study of how to be +odious to him she must never give way. Nothing could incommode him more +than not to get the good, for the child, of a nice female appendage who +had clearly taken a fancy to her. One of the things Ida said to the +appendage was that Beale's was a house in which no decent woman could +consent to be seen. It was Miss Overmore herself who explained to +Maisie that she had had a hope of being allowed to accompany her to her +father's, and that this hope had been dashed by the way her mother took +it. "She says that if I ever do such a thing as enter his service I must +never expect to show my face in this house again. So I've promised not +to attempt to go with you. If I wait patiently till you come back here +we shall certainly be together once more." + +Waiting patiently, and above all waiting till she should come back +there, seemed to Maisie a long way round--it reminded her of all the +things she had been told, first and last, that she should have if she'd +be good and that in spite of her goodness she had never had at all. +"Then who'll take care of me at papa's?" + +"Heaven only knows, my own precious!" Miss Overmore replied, tenderly +embracing her. There was indeed no doubt that she was dear to this +beautiful friend. What could have proved it better than the fact that +before a week was out, in spite of their distressing separation and her +mother's prohibition and Miss Overmore's scruples and Miss Overmore's +promise, the beautiful friend had turned up at her father's? The little +lady already engaged there to come by the hour, a fat dark little lady +with a foreign name and dirty fingers, who wore, throughout, a bonnet +that had at first given her a deceptive air, too soon dispelled, of +not staying long, besides asking her pupil questions that had nothing +to do with lessons, questions that Beale Farange himself, when two or +three were repeated to him, admitted to be awfully low--this strange +apparition faded before the bright creature who had braved everything +for Maisie's sake. The bright creature told her little charge frankly +what had happened--that she had really been unable to hold out. She had +broken her vow to Mrs. Farange; she had struggled for three days and +then had come straight to Maisie's papa and told him the simple truth. +She adored his daughter; she couldn't give her up; she'd make for her +any sacrifice. On this basis it had been arranged that she should stay; +her courage had been rewarded; she left Maisie in no doubt as to the +amount of courage she had required. Some of the things she said made +a particular impression on the child--her declaration for instance +that when her pupil should get older she'd understand better just how +"dreadfully bold" a young lady, to do exactly what she had done, had +to be. + +"Fortunately your papa appreciates it; he appreciates it IMMENSELY"-- +that was one of the things Miss Overmore also said, with a striking +insistence on the adverb. Maisie herself was no less impressed with +what this martyr had gone through, especially after hearing of the +terrible letter that had come from Mrs. Farange. Mamma had been so +angry that, in Miss Overmore's own words, she had loaded her with +insult--proof enough indeed that they must never look forward to being +together again under mamma's roof. Mamma's roof, however, had its turn, +this time, for the child, of appearing but remotely contingent, so that, +to reassure her, there was scarce a need of her companion's secret, +solemnly confided--the probability there would be no going back to mamma +at all. It was Miss Overmore's private conviction, and a part of the +same communication, that if Mr. Farange's daughter would only show a +really marked preference she would be backed up by "public opinion" in +holding on to him. Poor Maisie could scarcely grasp that incentive, but +she could surrender herself to the day. She had conceived her first +passion, and the object of it was her governess. It hadn't been put to +her, and she couldn't, or at any rate she didn't, put it to herself, +that she liked Miss Overmore better than she liked papa; but it would +have sustained her under such an imputation to feel herself able +to reply that papa too liked Miss Overmore exactly as much. He had +particularly told her so. Besides she could easily see it. + + + + +IV + + +All this led her on, but it brought on her fate as well, the day when +her mother would be at the door in the carriage in which Maisie now rode +on no occasions but these. There was no question at present of Miss +Overmore's going back with her: it was universally recognised that her +quarrel with Mrs. Farange was much too acute. The child felt it from +the first; there was no hugging nor exclaiming as that lady drove her +away--there was only a frightening silence, unenlivened even by the +invidious enquiries of former years, which culminated, according to its +stern nature, in a still more frightening old woman, a figure awaiting +her on the very doorstep. "You're to be under this lady's care," said +her mother. "Take her, Mrs. Wix," she added, addressing the figure +impatiently and giving the child a push from which Maisie gathered that +she wished to set Mrs. Wix an example of energy. Mrs. Wix took her and, +Maisie felt the next day, would never let her go. She had struck her at +first, just after Miss Overmore, as terrible; but something in her voice +at the end of an hour touched the little girl in a spot that had never +even yet been reached. Maisie knew later what it was, though doubtless +she couldn't have made a statement of it: these were things that a few +days' talk with Mrs. Wix quite lighted up. The principal one was a +matter Mrs. Wix herself always immediately mentioned: she had had a +little girl quite of her own, and the little girl had been killed on +the spot. She had had absolutely nothing else in all the world, and her +affliction had broken her heart. It was comfortably established between +them that Mrs. Wix's heart was broken. What Maisie felt was that she had +been, with passion and anguish, a mother, and that this was something +Miss Overmore was not, something (strangely, confusingly) that mamma was +even less. + +So it was that in the course of an extraordinarily short time she +found herself as deeply absorbed in the image of the little dead +Clara Matilda, who, on a crossing in the Harrow Road, had been knocked +down and crushed by the cruellest of hansoms, as she had ever found +herself in the family group made vivid by one of seven. "She's your +little dead sister," Mrs. Wix ended by saying, and Maisie, all in +a tremor of curiosity and compassion, addressed from that moment a +particular piety to the small accepted acquisition. Somehow she wasn't +a real sister, but that only made her the more romantic. It contributed +to this view of her that she was never to be spoken of in that character +to any one else--least of all to Mrs. Farange, who wouldn't care for +her nor recognise the relationship: it was to be just an unutterable and +inexhaustible little secret with Mrs. Wix. Maisie knew everything about +her that could be known, everything she had said or done in her little +mutilated life, exactly how lovely she was, exactly how her hair was +curled and her frocks were trimmed. Her hair came down far below her +waist--it was of the most wonderful golden brightness, just as Mrs. +Wix's own had been a long time before. Mrs. Wix's own was indeed very +remarkable still, and Maisie had felt at first that she should never get +on with it. It played a large part in the sad and strange appearance, +the appearance as of a kind of greasy greyness, which Mrs. Wix had +presented on the child's arrival. It had originally been yellow, but +time had turned that elegance to ashes, to a turbid sallow unvenerable +white. Still excessively abundant, it was dressed in a manner of which +the poor lady appeared not yet to have recognised the supersession, with +a glossy braid, like a large diadem, on the top of the head, and behind, +at the nape of the neck, a dingy rosette like a large button. She wore +glasses which, in humble reference to a divergent obliquity of vision, +she called her straighteners, and a little ugly snuff-coloured dress +trimmed with satin bands in the form of scallops and glazed with +antiquity. The straighteners, she explained to Maisie, were put on for +the sake of others, whom, as she believed, they helped to recognise the +bearing, otherwise doubtful, of her regard; the rest of the melancholy +garb could only have been put on for herself. With the added suggestion +of her goggles it reminded her pupil of the polished shell or corslet +of a horrid beetle. At first she had looked cross and almost cruel; but +this impression passed away with the child's increased perception of +her being in the eyes of the world a figure mainly to laugh at. She +was as droll as a charade or an animal toward the end of the "natural +history"--a person whom people, to make talk lively, described to each +other and imitated. Every one knew the straighteners; every one knew the +diadem and the button, the scallops and satin bands; every one, though +Maisie had never betrayed her, knew even Clara Matilda. + +It was on account of these things that mamma got her for such low pay, +really for nothing: so much, one day when Mrs. Wix had accompanied her +into the drawing-room and left her, the child heard one of the ladies +she found there--a lady with eyebrows arched like skipping-ropes and +thick black stitching, like ruled lines for musical notes on beautiful +white gloves--announce to another. She knew governesses were poor; Miss +Overmore was unmentionably and Mrs. Wix ever so publicly so. Neither +this, however, nor the old brown frock nor the diadem nor the button, +made a difference for Maisie in the charm put forth through everything, +the charm of Mrs. Wix's conveying that somehow, in her ugliness and her +poverty, she was peculiarly and soothingly safe; safer than any one +in the world, than papa, than mamma, than the lady with the arched +eyebrows; safer even, though so much less beautiful, than Miss Overmore, +on whose loveliness, as she supposed it, the little girl was faintly +conscious that one couldn't rest with quite the same tucked-in and +kissed-for-good-night feeling. Mrs. Wix was as safe as Clara Matilda, +who was in heaven and yet, embarrassingly, also in Kensal Green, where +they had been together to see her little huddled grave. It was from +something in Mrs. Wix's tone, which in spite of caricature remained +indescribable and inimitable, that Maisie, before her term with her +mother was over, drew this sense of a support, like a breast-high +banister in a place of "drops," that would never give way. If she knew +her instructress was poor and queer she also knew she was not nearly so +"qualified" as Miss Overmore, who could say lots of dates straight off +(letting you hold the book yourself), state the position of Malabar, play +six pieces without notes and, in a sketch, put in beautifully the trees +and houses and difficult parts. Maisie herself could play more pieces +than Mrs. Wix, who was moreover visibly ashamed of her houses and trees +and could only, with the help of a smutty forefinger, of doubtful +legitimacy in the field of art, do the smoke coming out of the chimneys. +They dealt, the governess and her pupil, in "subjects," but there were +many the governess put off from week to week and that they never got to +at all: she only used to say "We'll take that in its proper order." Her +order was a circle as vast as the untravelled globe. She had not the +spirit of adventure--the child could perfectly see how many subjects she +was afraid of. She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through +which indeed there curled the blue river of truth. She knew swarms of +stories, mostly those of the novels she had read; relating them with +a memory that never faltered and a wealth of detail that was Maisie's +delight. They were all about love and beauty and countesses and +wickedness. Her conversation was practically an endless narrative, +a great garden of romance, with sudden vistas into her own life and +gushing fountains of homeliness. These were the parts where they most +lingered; she made the child take with her again every step of her long, +lame course and think it beyond magic or monsters. Her pupil acquired a +vivid vision of every one who had ever, in her phrase, knocked against +her--some of them oh so hard!--every one literally but Mr. Wix, her +husband, as to whom nothing was mentioned save that he had been dead for +ages. He had been rather remarkably absent from his wife's career, and +Maisie was never taken to see his grave. + + + + +V + + +The second parting from Miss Overmore had been bad enough, but this +first parting from Mrs. Wix was much worse. The child had lately been to +the dentist's and had a term of comparison for the screwed-up intensity +of the scene. It was dreadfully silent, as it had been when her tooth +was taken out; Mrs. Wix had on that occasion grabbed her hand and they +had clung to each other with the frenzy of their determination not to +scream. Maisie, at the dentist's, had been heroically still, but just +when she felt most anguish had become aware of an audible shriek on the +part of her companion, a spasm of stifled sympathy. This was reproduced +by the only sound that broke their supreme embrace when, a month later, +the "arrangement," as her periodical uprootings were called, played the +part of the horrible forceps. Embedded in Mrs. Wix's nature as her tooth +had been socketed in her gum, the operation of extracting her would +really have been a case for chloroform. It was a hug that fortunately +left nothing to say, for the poor woman's want of words at such an +hour seemed to fall in with her want of everything. Maisie's alternate +parent, in the outermost vestibule--he liked the impertinence of +crossing as much as that of his late wife's threshold--stood over them +with his open watch and his still more open grin, while from the only +corner of an eye on which something of Mrs. Wix's didn't impinge the +child saw at the door a brougham in which Miss Overmore also waited. +She remembered the difference when, six months before, she had been +torn from the breast of that more spirited protectress. Miss Overmore, +then also in the vestibule, but of course in the other one, had been +thoroughly audible and voluble; her protest had rung out bravely and she +had declared that something--her pupil didn't know exactly what--was +a regular wicked shame. That had at the time dimly recalled to Maisie +the far-away moment of Moddle's great outbreak: there seemed always to +be "shames" connected in one way or another with her migrations. At +present, while Mrs. Wix's arms tightened and the smell of her hair was +strong, she further remembered how, in pacifying Miss Overmore, papa had +made use of the words "you dear old duck!"--an expression which, by its +oddity, had stuck fast in her young mind, having moreover a place well +prepared for it there by what she knew of the governess whom she now +always mentally characterised as the pretty one. She wondered whether +this affection would be as great as before: that would at all events be +the case with the prettiness Maisie could see in the face which showed +brightly at the window of the brougham. + +The brougham was a token of harmony, of the fine conditions papa would +this time offer: he had usually come for her in a hansom, with a +four-wheeler behind for the boxes. The four-wheeler with the boxes on it +was actually there, but mamma was the only lady with whom she had ever +been in a conveyance of the kind always of old spoken of by Moddle as a +private carriage. Papa's carriage was, now that he had one, still more +private, somehow, than mamma's; and when at last she found herself quite +on top, as she felt, of its inmates and gloriously rolling away, she +put to Miss Overmore, after another immense and talkative squeeze, a +question of which the motive was a desire for information as to the +continuity of a certain sentiment. "Did papa like you just the same +while I was gone?" she enquired--full of the sense of how markedly his +favour had been established in her presence. She had bethought herself +that this favour might, like her presence and as if depending on it, be +only intermittent and for the season. Papa, on whose knee she sat, burst +into one of those loud laughs of his that, however prepared she was, +seemed always, like some trick in a frightening game, to leap forth and +make her jump. Before Miss Overmore could speak he replied: "Why, you +little donkey, when you're away what have I left to do but just to love +her?" Miss Overmore hereupon immediately took her from him, and they had +a merry little scrimmage over her of which Maisie caught the surprised +perception in the white stare of an old lady who passed in a victoria. +Then her beautiful friend remarked to her very gravely: "I shall make +him understand that if he ever again says anything as horrid as that +to you I shall carry you straight off and we'll go and live somewhere +together and be good quiet little girls." The child couldn't quite make +out why her father's speech had been horrid, since it only expressed +that appreciation which their companion herself had of old described as +"immense." To enter more into the truth of the matter she appealed to +him again directly, asked if in all those months Miss Overmore hadn't +been with him just as she had been before and just as she would be now. +"Of course she has, old girl--where else could the poor dear be?" cried +Beale Farange, to the still greater scandal of their companion, who +protested that unless he straightway "took back" his nasty wicked fib +it would be, this time, not only him she would leave, but his child too +and his house and his tiresome trouble--all the impossible things he +had succeeded in putting on her. Beale, under this frolic menace, took +nothing back at all; he was indeed apparently on the point of repeating +his extravagance, but Miss Overmore instructed her little charge that +she was not to listen to his bad jokes: she was to understand that a +lady couldn't stay with a gentleman that way without some awfully proper +reason. + +Maisie looked from one of her companions to the other; this was the +freshest gayest start she had yet enjoyed, but she had a shy fear of not +exactly believing them. "Well, what reason IS proper?" she thoughtfully +demanded. + +"Oh a long-legged stick of a tomboy: there's none so good as that." Her +father enjoyed both her drollery and his own and tried again to get +possession of her--an effort deprecated by their comrade and leading +again to something of a public scuffle. Miss Overmore declared to the +child that she had been all the while with good friends; on which Beale +Farange went on: "She means good friends of mine, you know--tremendous +friends of mine. There has been no end of THEM about--that I WILL say +for her!" Maisie felt bewildered and was afterwards for some time +conscious of a vagueness, just slightly embarrassing, as to the subject +of so much amusement and as to where her governess had really been. +She didn't feel at all as if she had been seriously told, and no such +feeling was supplied by anything that occurred later. Her embarrassment, +of a precocious instinctive order, attached itself to the idea that +this was another of the matters it was not for her, as her mother used +to say, to go into. Therefore, under her father's roof during the time +that followed, she made no attempt to clear up her ambiguity by an +ingratiating way with housemaids; and it was an odd truth that the +ambiguity itself took nothing from the fresh pleasure promised her by +renewed contact with Miss Overmore. The confidence looked for by that +young lady was of the fine sort that explanation can't improve, and she +herself at any rate was a person superior to any confusion. For Maisie +moreover concealment had never necessarily seemed deception; she had +grown up among things as to which her foremost knowledge was that +she was never to ask about them. It was far from new to her that the +questions of the small are the peculiar diversion of the great: except +the affairs of her doll Lisette there had scarcely ever been anything at +her mother's that was explicable with a grave face. Nothing was so easy +to her as to send the ladies who gathered there off into shrieks, and +she might have practised upon them largely if she had been of a more +calculating turn. Everything had something behind it: life was like a +long, long corridor with rows of closed doors. She had learned that at +these doors it was wise not to knock--this seemed to produce from within +such sounds of derision. Little by little, however, she understood more, +for it befell that she was enlightened by Lisette's questions, which +reproduced the effect of her own upon those for whom she sat in the very +darkness of Lisette. Was she not herself convulsed by such innocence? In +the presence of it she often imitated the shrieking ladies. There were +at any rate things she really couldn't tell even a French doll. She +could only pass on her lessons and study to produce on Lisette the +impression of having mysteries in her life, wondering the while whether +she succeeded in the air of shading off, like her mother, into the +unknowable. When the reign of Miss Overmore followed that of Mrs. Wix +she took a fresh cue, emulating her governess and bridging over the +interval with the simple expectation of trust. Yes, there were matters +one couldn't "go into" with a pupil. There were for instance days when, +after prolonged absence, Lisette, watching her take off her things, +tried hard to discover where she had been. Well, she discovered a +little, but never discovered all. There was an occasion when, on her +being particularly indiscreet, Maisie replied to her--and precisely +about the motive of a disappearance--as she, Maisie, had once been +replied to by Mrs. Farange: "Find out for yourself!" She mimicked her +mother's sharpness, but she was rather ashamed afterwards, though as +to whether of the sharpness or of the mimicry was not quite clear. + + + + +VI + + +She became aware in time that this phase wouldn't have shone by +lessons, the care of her education being now only one of the many +duties devolving on Miss Overmore; a devolution as to which she was +present at various passages between that lady and her father--passages +significant, on either side, of dissent and even of displeasure. It was +gathered by the child on these occasions that there was something in the +situation for which her mother might "come down" on them all, though +indeed the remark, always dropped by her father, was greeted on his +companion's part with direct contradiction. Such scenes were usually +brought to a climax by Miss Overmore's demanding, with more asperity +than she applied to any other subject, in what position under the sun +such a person as Mrs. Farange would find herself for coming down. As the +months went on the little girl's interpretations thickened, and the more +effectually that this stretch was the longest she had known without a +break. She got used to the idea that her mother, for some reason, was +in no hurry to reinstate her: that idea was forcibly expressed by her +father whenever Miss Overmore, differing and decided, took him up on the +question, which he was always putting forward, of the urgency of sending +her to school. For a governess Miss Overmore differed surprisingly; far +more for instance than would have entered into the bowed head of Mrs. +Wix. She observed to Maisie many times that she was quite conscious of +not doing her justice, and that Mr. Farange equally measured and equally +lamented this deficiency. The reason of it was that she had mysterious +responsibilities that interfered--responsibilities, Miss Overmore +intimated, to Mr. Farange himself and to the friendly noisy little house +and those who came there. Mr. Farange's remedy for every inconvenience +was that the child should be put at school--there were such lots of +splendid schools, as everybody knew, at Brighton and all over the place. +That, however, Maisie learned, was just what would bring her mother +down: from the moment he should delegate to others the housing of his +little charge he hadn't a leg to stand on before the law. Didn't he keep +her away from her mother precisely because Mrs. Farange was one of these +others? + +There was also the solution of a second governess, a young person to +come in by the day and really do the work; but to this Miss Overmore +wouldn't for a moment listen, arguing against it with great public +relish and wanting to know from all comers--she put it even to Maisie +herself--they didn't see how frightfully it would give her away. "What +am I supposed to be at all, don't you see, if I'm not here to look +after her?" She was in a false position and so freely and loudly called +attention to it that it seemed to become almost a source of glory. The +way out of it of course was just to do her plain duty; but that was +unfortunately what, with his excessive, his exorbitant demands on her, +which every one indeed appeared quite to understand, he practically, he +selfishly prevented. Beale Farange, for Miss Overmore, was now never +anything but "he," and the house was as full as ever of lively gentlemen +with whom, under that designation, she chaffingly talked about him. +Maisie meanwhile, as a subject of familiar gossip on what was to be done +with her, was left so much to herself that she had hours of wistful +thought of the large loose discipline of Mrs. Wix; yet she none the less +held it under her father's roof a point of superiority that none of his +visitors were ladies. It added to this odd security that she had once +heard a gentleman say to him as if it were a great joke and in obvious +reference to Miss Overmore: "Hanged if she'll let another woman come +near you--hanged if she ever will. She'd let fly a stick at her as they +do at a strange cat!" Maisie greatly preferred gentlemen as inmates +in spite of their also having their way--louder but sooner over--of +laughing out at her. They pulled and pinched, they teased and tickled +her; some of them even, as they termed it, shied things at her, and all +of them thought it funny to call her by names having no resemblance to +her own. The ladies on the other hand addressed her as "You poor pet" +and scarcely touched her even to kiss her. But it was of the ladies she +was most afraid. + +She was now old enough to understand how disproportionate a stay she had +already made with her father; and also old enough to enter a little into +the ambiguity attending this excess, which oppressed her particularly +whenever the question had been touched upon in talk with her governess. +"Oh you needn't worry: she doesn't care!" Miss Overmore had often +said to her in reference to any fear that her mother might resent her +prolonged detention. "She has other people than poor little YOU to +think about, and has gone abroad with them; so you needn't be in the +least afraid she'll stickle this time for her rights." Maisie knew Mrs. +Farange had gone abroad, for she had had weeks and weeks before a letter +from her beginning "My precious pet" and taking leave of her for an +indeterminate time; but she had not seen in it a renunciation of hatred +or of the writer's policy of asserting herself, for the sharpest of all +her impressions had been that there was nothing her mother would ever +care so much about as to torment Mr. Farange. What at last, however, was +in this connexion bewildering and a little frightening was the dawn of a +suspicion that a better way had been found to torment Mr. Farange than +to deprive him of his periodical burden. This was the question that +worried our young lady and that Miss Overmore's confidences and the +frequent observations of her employer only rendered more mystifying. It +was a contradiction that if Ida had now a fancy for waiving the rights +she had originally been so hot about her late husband shouldn't jump at +the monopoly for which he had also in the first instance so fiercely +fought; but when Maisie, with a subtlety beyond her years, sounded this +new ground her main success was in hearing her mother more freshly +abused. Miss Overmore had up to now rarely deviated from a decent +reserve, but the day came when she expressed herself with a vividness +not inferior to Beale's own on the subject of the lady who had fled to +the Continent to wriggle out of her job. It would serve this lady right, +Maisie gathered, if that contract, in the shape of an overgrown and +underdressed daughter, should be shipped straight out to her and landed +at her feet in the midst of scandalous excesses. + +The picture of these pursuits was what Miss Overmore took refuge in when +the child tried timidly to ascertain if her father were disposed to feel +he had too much of her. She evaded the point and only kicked up all +round it the dust of Ida's heartlessness and folly, of which the supreme +proof, it appeared, was the fact that she was accompanied on her journey +by a gentleman whom, to be painfully plain on it, she had--well, "picked +up." The terms on which, unless they were married, ladies and gentlemen +might, as Miss Overmore expressed it, knock about together, were the +terms on which she and Mr. Farange had exposed themselves to possible +misconception. She had indeed, as has been noted, often explained this +before, often said to Maisie: "I don't know what in the world, darling, +your father and I should do without you, for you just make the +difference, as I've told you, of keeping us perfectly proper." The child +took in the office it was so endearingly presented to her that she +performed a comfort that helped her to a sense of security even in the +event of her mother's giving her up. Familiar as she had grown with the +fact of the great alternative to the proper, she felt in her governess +and her father a strong reason for not emulating that detachment. At the +same time she had heard somehow of little girls--of exalted rank, it was +true--whose education was carried on by instructors of the other sex, +and she knew that if she were at school at Brighton it would be thought +an advantage to her to be more or less in the hands of masters. She +turned these things over and remarked to Miss Overmore that if she +should go to her mother perhaps the gentleman might become her tutor. + +"The gentleman?" The proposition was complicated enough to make Miss +Overmore stare. + +"The one who's with mamma. Mightn't that make it right--as right as your +being my governess makes it for you to be with papa?" + +Miss Overmore considered; she coloured a little; then she embraced her +ingenious friend. "You're too sweet! I'm a REAL governess." + +"And couldn't he be a real tutor?" + +"Of course not. He's ignorant and bad." + +"Bad--?" Maisie echoed with wonder. + +Her companion gave a queer little laugh at her tone. "He's ever so much +younger--" But that was all. + +"Younger than you?" + +Miss Overmore laughed again; it was the first time Maisie had seen her +approach so nearly to a giggle. + +"Younger than--no matter whom. I don't know anything about him and don't +want to," she rather inconsequently added. "He's not my sort, and I'm +sure, my own darling, he's not yours." And she repeated the free caress +into which her colloquies with Maisie almost always broke and which made +the child feel that HER affection at least was a gage of safety. Parents +had come to seem vague, but governesses were evidently to be trusted. +Maisie's faith in Mrs. Wix for instance had suffered no lapse from the +fact that all communication with her had temporarily dropped. During the +first weeks of their separation Clara Matilda's mamma had repeatedly and +dolefully written to her, and Maisie had answered with an enthusiasm +controlled only by orthographical doubts; but the correspondence had +been duly submitted to Miss Overmore, with the final effect of its not +suiting her. It was this lady's view that Mr. Farange wouldn't care for +it at all, and she ended by confessing--since her pupil pushed her--that +she didn't care for it herself. She was furiously jealous, she said; and +that weakness was but a new proof of her disinterested affection. She +pronounced Mrs. Wix's effusions moreover illiterate and unprofitable; +she made no scruple of declaring it monstrous that a woman in her +senses should have placed the formation of her daughter's mind in such +ridiculous hands. Maisie was well aware that the proprietress of the old +brown dress and the old odd headgear was lower in the scale of "form" +than Miss Overmore; but it was now brought home to her with pain that +she was educationally quite out of the question. She was buried for the +time beneath a conclusive remark of her critic's: "She's really beyond a +joke!" This remark was made as that charming woman held in her hand the +last letter that Maisie was to receive from Mrs. Wix; it was fortified +by a decree proscribing the preposterous tie. "Must I then write and +tell her?" the child bewilderedly asked: she grew pale at the dreadful +things it appeared involved for her to say. "Don't dream of it, my +dear--I'll write: you may trust me!" cried Miss Overmore; who indeed +wrote to such purpose that a hush in which you could have heard a pin +drop descended upon poor Mrs. Wix. She gave for weeks and weeks no sign +whatever of life: it was as if she had been as effectually disposed of +by Miss Overmore's communication as her little girl, in the Harrow Road, +had been disposed of by the terrible hansom. Her very silence became +after this one of the largest elements of Maisie's consciousness; it +proved a warm and habitable air, into which the child penetrated further +than she dared ever to mention to her companions. Somewhere in the +depths of it the dim straighteners were fixed upon her; somewhere out of +the troubled little current Mrs. Wix intensely waited. + + + + +VII + + +It quite fell in with this intensity that one day, on returning from +a walk with the housemaid, Maisie should have found her in the hall, +seated on the stool usually occupied by the telegraph-boys who haunted +Beale Farange's door and kicked their heels while, in his room, answers +to their missives took form with the aid of smoke-puffs and growls. It +had seemed to her on their parting that Mrs. Wix had reached the last +limits of the squeeze, but she now felt those limits to be transcended +and that the duration of her visitor's hug was a direct reply to Miss +Overmore's veto. She understood in a flash how the visit had come to be +possible--that Mrs. Wix, watching her chance, must have slipped in under +protection of the fact that papa, always tormented in spite of arguments +with the idea of a school, had, for a three days' excursion to Brighton, +absolutely insisted on the attendance of her adversary. It was true that +when Maisie explained their absence and their important motive Mrs. Wix +wore an expression so peculiar that it could only have had its origin in +surprise. This contradiction indeed peeped out only to vanish, for at +the very moment that, in the spirit of it, she threw herself afresh upon +her young friend a hansom crested with neat luggage rattled up to the +door and Miss Overmore bounded out. The shock of her encounter with Mrs. +Wix was less violent than Maisie had feared on seeing her and didn't +at all interfere with the sociable tone in which, under her rival's +eyes, she explained to her little charge that she had returned, for a +particular reason, a day sooner than she first intended. She had left +papa--in such nice lodgings--at Brighton; but he would come back to +his dear little home on the morrow. As for Mrs. Wix, papa's companion +supplied Maisie in later converse with the right word for the attitude +of this personage: Mrs. Wix "stood up" to her in a manner that the child +herself felt at the time to be astonishing. This occurred indeed after +Miss Overmore had so far raised her interdict as to make a move to the +dining-room, where, in the absence of any suggestion of sitting down, +it was scarcely more than natural that even poor Mrs. Wix should stand +up. Maisie at once enquired if at Brighton, this time, anything had +come of the possibility of a school; to which, much to her surprise, +Miss Overmore, who had always grandly repudiated it, replied after an +instant, but quite as if Mrs. Wix were not there: + +"It may be, darling, that something WILL come. The objection, I must +tell you, has been quite removed." + +At this it was still more startling to hear Mrs. Wix speak out with +great firmness. "I don't think, if you'll allow me to say so, that +there's any arrangement by which the objection CAN be 'removed.' What +has brought me here to-day is that I've a message for Maisie from dear +Mrs. Farange." + +The child's heart gave a great thump. "Oh mamma's come back?" + +"Not yet, sweet love, but she's coming," said Mrs. Wix, "and she +has--most thoughtfully, you know--sent me on to prepare you." + +"To prepare her for what, pray?" asked Miss Overmore, whose first +smoothness began, with this news, to be ruffled. + +Mrs. Wix quietly applied her straighteners to Miss Overmore's flushed +beauty. "Well, miss, for a very important communication." + +"Can't dear Mrs. Farange, as you so oddly call her, make her +communications directly? Can't she take the trouble to write to her only +daughter?" the younger lady demanded. "Maisie herself will tell you that +it's months and months since she has had so much as a word from her." + +"Oh but I've written to mamma!" cried the child as if this would do +quite as well. + +"That makes her treatment of you all the greater scandal," the governess +in possession promptly declared. + +"Mrs. Farange is too well aware," said Mrs. Wix with sustained spirit, +"of what becomes of her letters in this house." + +Maisie's sense of fairness hereupon interposed for her visitor. "You +know, Miss Overmore, that papa doesn't like everything of mamma's." + +"No one likes, my dear, to be made the subject of such language as your +mother's letters contain. They were not fit for the innocent child to +see," Miss Overmore observed to Mrs. Wix. + +"Then I don't know what you complain of, and she's better without them. +It serves every purpose that I'm in Mrs. Farange's confidence." + +Miss Overmore gave a scornful laugh. "Then you must be mixed up with +some extraordinary proceedings!" + +"None so extraordinary," cried Mrs. Wix, turning very pale, "as to say +horrible things about the mother to the face of the helpless daughter!" + +"Things not a bit more horrible, I think," Miss Overmore returned, "than +those you, madam, appear to have come here to say about the father!" + +Mrs. Wix looked for a moment hard at Maisie, and then, turning again to +this witness, spoke with a trembling voice. "I came to say nothing about +him, and you must excuse Mrs. Farange and me if we're not so above all +reproach as the companion of his travels." + +The young woman thus described stared at the apparent breadth of the +description--she needed a moment to take it in. Maisie, however, gazing +solemnly from one of the disputants to the other, noted that her answer, +when it came, perched upon smiling lips. "It will do quite as well, +no doubt, if you come up to the requirements of the companion of Mrs. +Farange's!" + +Mrs. Wix broke into a queer laugh; it sounded to Maisie an unsuccessful +imitation of a neigh. "That's just what I'm here to make known--how +perfectly the poor lady comes up to them herself." She held up her head +at the child. "You must take your mamma's message, Maisie, and you must +feel that her wishing me to come to you with it this way is a great +proof of interest and affection. She sends you her particular love and +announces to you that she's engaged to be married to Sir Claude." + +"Sir Claude?" Maisie wonderingly echoed. But while Mrs. Wix explained +that this gentleman was a dear friend of Mrs. Farange's, who had been +of great assistance to her in getting to Florence and in making herself +comfortable there for the winter, she was not too violently shaken to +perceive her old friend's enjoyment of the effect of this news on Miss +Overmore. That young lady opened her eyes very wide; she immediately +remarked that Mrs. Farange's marriage would of course put an end to any +further pretension to take her daughter back. Mrs. Wix enquired with +astonishment why it should do anything of the sort, and Miss Overmore +gave as an instant reason that it was clearly but another dodge in a +system of dodges. She wanted to get out of the bargain: why else had she +now left Maisie on her father's hands weeks and weeks beyond the time +about which she had originally made such a fuss? It was vain for Mrs. +Wix to represent--as she speciously proceeded to do--that all this time +would be made up as soon as Mrs. Farange returned: she, Miss Overmore, +knew nothing, thank heaven, about her confederate, but was very sure +any person capable of forming that sort of relation with the lady in +Florence would easily agree to object to the presence in his house +of the fruit of a union that his dignity must ignore. It was a game +like another, and Mrs. Wix's visit was clearly the first move in it. +Maisie found in this exchange of asperities a fresh incitement to the +unformulated fatalism in which her sense of her own career had long +since taken refuge; and it was the beginning for her of a deeper +prevision that, in spite of Miss Overmore's brilliancy and Mrs. Wix's +passion, she should live to see a change in the nature of the struggle +she appeared to have come into the world to produce. It would still be +essentially a struggle, but its object would now be NOT to receive her. + +Mrs. Wix, after Miss Overmore's last demonstration, addressed herself +wholly to the little girl, and, drawing from the pocket of her dingy old +pelisse a small flat parcel, removed its envelope and wished to know +if THAT looked like a gentleman who wouldn't be nice to everybody--let +alone to a person he would be so sure to find so nice. Mrs. Farange, in +the candour of new-found happiness, had enclosed a "cabinet" photograph +of Sir Claude, and Maisie lost herself in admiration of the fair smooth +face, the regular features, the kind eyes, the amiable air, the general +glossiness and smartness of her prospective stepfather--only vaguely +puzzled to suppose herself now with two fathers at once. Her researches +had hitherto indicated that to incur a second parent of the same sex you +had usually to lose the first. "ISN'T he sympathetic?" asked Mrs. Wix, +who had clearly, on the strength of his charming portrait, made up her +mind that Sir Claude promised her a future. "You can see, I hope," she +added with much expression, "that HE'S a perfect gentleman!" Maisie had +never before heard the word "sympathetic" applied to anybody's face; she +heard it with pleasure and from that moment it agreeably remained with +her. She testified moreover to the force of her own perception in a +small soft sigh of response to the pleasant eyes that seemed to seek +her acquaintance, to speak to her directly. "He's quite lovely!" she +declared to Mrs. Wix. Then eagerly, irrepressibly, as she still held the +photograph and Sir Claude continued to fraternise, "Oh can't I keep it?" +she broke out. No sooner had she done so than she looked up from it at +Miss Overmore: this was with the sudden instinct of appealing to the +authority that had long ago impressed on her that she mustn't ask for +things. Miss Overmore, to her surprise, looked distant and rather odd, +hesitating and giving her time to turn again to Mrs. Wix. Then Maisie +saw that lady's long face lengthen; it was stricken and almost scared, +as if her young friend really expected more of her than she had to give. +The photograph was a possession that, direly denuded, she clung to, +and there was a momentary struggle between her fond clutch of it and +her capability of every sacrifice for her precarious pupil. With the +acuteness of her years, however, Maisie saw that her own avidity would +triumph, and she held out the picture to Miss Overmore as if she were +quite proud of her mother. "Isn't he just lovely?" she demanded while +poor Mrs. Wix hungrily wavered, her straighteners largely covering it +and her pelisse gathered about her with an intensity that strained its +ancient seams. + +"It was to ME, darling," the visitor said, "that your mamma so +generously sent it; but of course if it would give you particular +pleasure--" she faltered, only gasping her surrender. + +Miss Overmore continued extremely remote. "If the photograph's your +property, my dear, I shall be happy to oblige you by looking at it on +some future occasion. But you must excuse me if I decline to touch an +object belonging to Mrs. Wix." + +That lady had by this time grown very red. "You might as well see him +this way, miss," she retorted, "as you certainly never will, I believe, +in any other! Keep the pretty picture, by all means, my precious," she +went on: "Sir Claude will be happy himself, I dare say, to give me one +with a kind inscription." The pathetic quaver of this brave boast was +not lost on Maisie, who threw herself so gratefully on the speaker's +neck that, when they had concluded their embrace, the public tenderness +of which, she felt, made up for the sacrifice she imposed, their +companion had had time to lay a quick hand on Sir Claude and, with a +glance at him or not, whisk him effectually out of sight. Released from +the child's arms Mrs. Wix looked about for the picture; then she fixed +Miss Overmore with a hard dumb stare; and finally, with her eyes on +the little girl again, achieved the grimmest of smiles. "Well, nothing +matters, Maisie, because there's another thing your mamma wrote about. +She has made sure of me." Even after her loyal hug Maisie felt a bit of +a sneak as she glanced at Miss Overmore for permission to understand +this. But Mrs. Wix left them in no doubt of what it meant. "She has +definitely engaged me--for her return and for yours. Then you'll see +for yourself." Maisie, on the spot, quite believed she should; but +the prospect was suddenly thrown into confusion by an extraordinary +demonstration from Miss Overmore. + +"Mrs. Wix," said that young lady, "has some undiscoverable reason for +regarding your mother's hold on you as strengthened by the fact that +she's about to marry. I wonder then--on that system--what our visitor +will say to your father's." + +Miss Overmore's words were directed to her pupil, but her face, lighted +with an irony that made it prettier even than ever before, was presented +to the dingy figure that had stiffened itself for departure. The +child's discipline had been bewildering--had ranged freely between the +prescription that she was to answer when spoken to and the experience of +lively penalties on obeying that prescription. This time, nevertheless, +she felt emboldened for risks; above all as something portentous seemed +to have leaped into her sense of the relations of things. She looked at +Miss Overmore much as she had a way of looking at persons who treated +her to "grown up" jokes. "Do you mean papa's hold on me--do you mean +HE'S about to marry?" + +"Papa's not about to marry--papa IS married, my dear. Papa was married +the day before yesterday at Brighton." Miss Overmore glittered more +gaily; meanwhile it came over Maisie, and quite dazzlingly, that her +"smart" governess was a bride. "He's my husband, if you please, and I'm +his little wife. So NOW we'll see who's your little mother!" She caught +her pupil to her bosom in a manner that was not to be outdone by the +emissary of her predecessor, and a few moments later, when things had +lurched back into their places, that poor lady, quite defeated of the +last word, had soundlessly taken flight. + + + + +VIII + + +After Mrs. Wix's retreat Miss Overmore appeared to recognise that she +was not exactly in a position to denounce Ida Farange's second union; +but she drew from a table-drawer the photograph of Sir Claude and, +standing there before Maisie, studied it at some length. + +"Isn't he beautiful?" the child ingenuously asked. + +Her companion hesitated. "No--he's horrid," she, to Maisie's surprise, +sharply returned. But she debated another minute, after which she handed +back the picture. It appeared to Maisie herself to exhibit a fresh +attraction, and she was troubled, having never before had occasion to +differ from her lovely friend. So she only could ask what, such being +the case, she should do with it: should she put it quite away--where +it wouldn't be there to offend? On this Miss Overmore again cast +about; after which she said unexpectedly: "Put it on the schoolroom +mantelpiece." + +Maisie felt a fear. "Won't papa dislike to see it there?" + +"Very much indeed; but that won't matter NOW." Miss Overmore spoke with +peculiar significance and to her pupil's mystification. + +"On account of the marriage?" Maisie risked. + +Miss Overmore laughed, and Maisie could see that in spite of the +irritation produced by Mrs. Wix she was in high spirits. "Which marriage +do you mean?" + +With the question put to her it suddenly struck the child she didn't +know, so that she felt she looked foolish. So she took refuge in saying: +"Shall YOU be different--" This was a full implication that the bride of +Sir Claude would be. + +"As your father's wedded wife? Utterly!" Miss Overmore replied. And the +difference began of course in her being addressed, even by Maisie, from +that day and by her particular request, as Mrs. Beale. It was there +indeed principally that it ended, for except that the child could +reflect that she should presently have four parents in all, and also +that at the end of three months the staircase, for a little girl hanging +over banisters, sent up the deepening rustle of more elaborate advances, +everything made the same impression as before. Mrs. Beale had very +pretty frocks, but Miss Overmore's had been quite as good, and if papa +was much fonder of his second wife than he had been of his first Maisie +had foreseen that fondness, had followed its development almost as +closely as the person more directly involved. There was little indeed in +the commerce of her companions that her precocious experience couldn't +explain, for if they struck her as after all rather deficient in that +air of the honeymoon of which she had so often heard--in much detail, +for instance, from Mrs. Wix--it was natural to judge the circumstance +in the light of papa's proved disposition to contest the empire of the +matrimonial tie. His honeymoon, when he came back from Brighton--not +on the morrow of Mrs. Wix's visit, and not, oddly, till several days +later--his honeymoon was perhaps perceptibly tinged with the dawn of a +later stage of wedlock. There were things dislike of which, as the child +knew it, wouldn't matter to Mrs. Beale now, and their number increased +so that such a trifle as his hostility to the photograph of Sir Claude +quite dropped out of view. This pleasing object found a conspicuous +place in the schoolroom, which in truth Mr. Farange seldom entered and +in which silent admiration formed, during the time I speak of, almost +the sole scholastic exercise of Mrs. Beale's pupil. + +Maisie was not long in seeing just what her stepmother had meant by the +difference she should show in her new character. If she was her father's +wife she was not her own governess, and if her presence had had formerly +to be made regular by the theory of a humble function she was now on a +footing that dispensed with all theories and was inconsistent with all +servitude. That was what she had meant by the drop of the objection to +a school; her small companion was no longer required at home as--it was +Mrs. Beale's own amusing word--a little duenna. The argument against +a successor to Miss Overmore remained: it was composed frankly of the +fact, of which Mrs. Beale granted the full absurdity, that she was too +awfully fond of her stepdaughter to bring herself to see her in vulgar +and mercenary hands. The note of this particular danger emboldened +Maisie to put in a word for Mrs. Wix, the modest measure of whose +avidity she had taken from the first; but Mrs. Beale disposed afresh and +effectually of a candidate who would be sure to act in some horrible +and insidious way for Ida's interest and who moreover was personally +loathsome and as ignorant as a fish. She made also no more of a secret +of the awkward fact that a good school would be hideously expensive, and +of the further circumstance, which seemed to put an end to everything, +that when it came to the point papa, in spite of his previous clamour, +was really most nasty about paying. "Would you believe," Mrs. Beale +confidentially asked of her little charge, "that he says I'm a worse +expense than ever, and that a daughter and a wife together are really +more than he can afford?" It was thus that the splendid school at +Brighton lost itself in the haze of larger questions, though the fear +that it would provoke Ida to leap into the breach subsided with her +prolonged, her quite shameless non-appearance. Her daughter and her +successor were therefore left to gaze in united but helpless blankness +at all Maisie was not learning. + +This quantity was so great as to fill the child's days with a sense of +intermission to which even French Lisette gave no accent--with finished +games and unanswered questions and dreaded tests; with the habit, above +all, in her watch for a change, of hanging over banisters when the +door-bell sounded. This was the great refuge of her impatience, but +what she heard at such times was a clatter of gaiety downstairs; the +impression of which, from her earliest childhood, had built up in her +the belief that the grown-up time was the time of real amusement and +above all of real intimacy. Even Lisette, even Mrs. Wix had never, she +felt, in spite of hugs and tears, been so intimate with her as so many +persons at present were with Mrs. Beale and as so many others of old had +been with Mrs. Farange. The note of hilarity brought people together +still more than the note of melancholy, which was the one exclusively +sounded, for instance, by poor Mrs. Wix. Maisie in these days preferred +none the less that domestic revels should be wafted to her from a +distance: she felt sadly unsupported for facing the inquisition of the +drawing-room. That was a reason the more for making the most of Susan +Ash, who in her quality of under-housemaid moved at a very different +level and who, none the less, was much depended upon out of doors. She +was a guide to peregrinations that had little in common with those +intensely definite airings that had left with the child a vivid memory +of the regulated mind of Moddle. There had been under Moddle's system +no dawdles at shop-windows and no nudges, in Oxford Street, of "I SAY, +look at 'ER!" There had been an inexorable treatment of crossings and a +serene exemption from the fear that--especially at corners, of which she +was yet weakly fond--haunted the housemaid, the fear of being, as she +ominously said, "spoken to." The dangers of the town equally with its +diversions added to Maisie's sense of being untutored and unclaimed. + +The situation however, had taken a twist when, on another of her +returns, at Susan's side, extremely tired, from the pursuit of exercise +qualified by much hovering, she encountered another emotion. She on this +occasion learnt at the door that her instant attendance was requested +in the drawing-room. Crossing the threshold in a cloud of shame she +discerned through the blur Mrs. Beale seated there with a gentleman who +immediately drew the pain from her predicament by rising before her as +the original of the photograph of Sir Claude. She felt the moment she +looked at him that he was by far the most shining presence that had ever +made her gape, and her pleasure in seeing him, in knowing that he took +hold of her and kissed her, as quickly throbbed into a strange shy pride +in him, a perception of his making up for her fallen state, for Susan's +public nudges, which quite bruised her, and for all the lessons that, in +the dead schoolroom, where at times she was almost afraid to stay alone, +she was bored with not having. It was as if he had told her on the spot +that he belonged to her, so that she could already show him off and see +the effect he produced. No, nothing else that was most beautiful ever +belonging to her could kindle that particular joy--not Mrs. Beale at +that very moment, not papa when he was gay, nor mamma when she was +dressed, nor Lisette when she was new. The joy almost overflowed +in tears when he laid his hand on her and drew her to him, telling +her, with a smile of which the promise was as bright as that of a +Christmas-tree, that he knew her ever so well by her mother, but had +come to see her now so that he might know her for himself. She could +see that his view of this kind of knowledge was to make her come away +with him, and, further, that it was just what he was there for and had +already been some time: arranging it with Mrs. Beale and getting on with +that lady in a manner evidently not at all affected by her having on the +arrival of his portrait thought of him so ill. They had grown almost +intimate--or had the air of it--over their discussion; and it was still +further conveyed to Maisie that Mrs. Beale had made no secret, and would +make yet less of one, of all that it cost to let her go. "You seem so +tremendously eager," she said to the child, "that I hope you're at least +clear about Sir Claude's relation to you. It doesn't appear to occur to +him to give you the necessary reassurance." + +Maisie, a trifle mystified, turned quickly to her new friend. "Why it's +of course that you're MARRIED to her, isn't it?" + +Her anxious emphasis started them off, as she had learned to call it; +this was the echo she infallibly and now quite resignedly produced; +moreover Sir Claude's laughter was an indistinguishable part of the +sweetness of his being there. "We've been married, my dear child, three +months, and my interest in you is a consequence, don't you know? of my +great affection for your mother. In coming here it's of course for your +mother I'm acting." + +"Oh I know," Maisie said with all the candour of her competence. "She +can't come herself--except just to the door." Then as she thought +afresh: "Can't she come even to the door now?" + +"There you are!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed to Sir Claude. She spoke as if his +dilemma were ludicrous. + +His kind face, in a hesitation, seemed to recognise it; but he answered +the child with a frank smile. "No--not very well." + +"Because she has married you?" + +He promptly accepted this reason. "Well, that has a good deal to do with +it." + +He was so delightful to talk to that Maisie pursued the subject. "But +papa--HE has married Miss Overmore." + +"Ah you'll see that he won't come for you at your mother's," that lady +interposed. + +"Yes, but that won't be for a long time," Maisie hastened to respond. + +"We won't talk about it now--you've months and months to put in first." +And Sir Claude drew her closer. + +"Oh that's what makes it so hard to give her up!" Mrs. Beale made this +point with her arms out to her stepdaughter. Maisie, quitting Sir +Claude, went over to them and, clasped in a still tenderer embrace, felt +entrancingly the extension of the field of happiness. "I'LL come for +you," said her stepmother, "if Sir Claude keeps you too long: we must +make him quite understand that! Don't talk to me about her ladyship!" +she went on to their visitor so familiarly that it was almost as if they +must have met before. "I know her ladyship as if I had made her. They're +a pretty pair of parents!" cried Mrs. Beale. + +Maisie had so often heard them called so that the remark diverted her +but an instant from the agreeable wonder of this grand new form of +allusion to her mother; and that, in its turn, presently left her free +to catch at the pleasant possibility, in connexion with herself, of +a relation much happier as between Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude than as +between mamma and papa. Still the next thing that happened was that her +interest in such a relation brought to her lips a fresh question. + +"Have you seen papa?" she asked of Sir Claude. + +It was the signal for their going off again, as her small stoicism had +perfectly taken for granted that it would be. All that Mrs. Beale had +nevertheless to add was the vague apparent sarcasm: "Oh papa!" + +"I'm assured he's not at home," Sir Claude replied to the child; "but if +he had been I should have hoped for the pleasure of seeing him." + +"Won't he mind your coming?" Maisie asked as with need of the knowledge. + +"Oh you bad little girl!" Mrs. Beale humorously protested. + +The child could see that at this Sir Claude, though still moved to +mirth, coloured a little; but he spoke to her very kindly. "That's just +what I came to see, you know--whether your father WOULD mind. But Mrs. +Beale appears strongly of the opinion that he won't." + +This lady promptly justified that view to her stepdaughter. "It will be +very interesting, my dear, you know, to find out what it is to-day that +your father does mind. I'm sure _I_ don't know!"--and she seemed to +repeat, though with perceptible resignation, her plaint of a moment +before. "Your father, darling, is a very odd person indeed." She turned +with this, smiling, to Sir Claude. "But perhaps it's hardly civil for me +to say that of his not objecting to have YOU in the house. If you knew +some of the people he does have!" + +Maisie knew them all, and none indeed were to be compared to Sir Claude. +He laughed back at Mrs. Beale; he looked at such moments quite as Mrs. +Wix, in the long stories she told her pupil, always described the lovers +of her distressed beauties--"the perfect gentleman and strikingly +handsome." He got up, to the child's regret, as if he were going. "Oh I +dare say we should be all right!" + +Mrs. Beale once more gathered in her little charge, holding her close +and looking thoughtfully over her head at their visitor. "It's so +charming--for a man of your type--to have wanted her so much!" + +"What do you know about my type?" Sir Claude laughed. "Whatever it may +be I dare say it deceives you. The truth about me is simply that I'm the +most unappreciated of--what do you call the fellows?--'family-men.' Yes, +I'm a family-man; upon my honour I am!" + +"Then why on earth," cried Mrs. Beale, "didn't you marry a +family-woman?" + +Sir Claude looked at her hard. "YOU know who one marries, I think. +Besides, there ARE no family-women--hanged if there are! None of them +want any children--hanged if they do!" + +His account of the matter was most interesting, and Maisie, as if it +were of bad omen for her, stared at the picture in some dismay. At the +same time she felt, through encircling arms, her protectress hesitate. +"You do come out with things! But you mean her ladyship doesn't want +any--really?" + +"Won't hear of them--simply. But she can't help the one she HAS got." +And with this Sir Claude's eyes rested on the little girl in a way that +seemed to her to mask her mother's attitude with the consciousness of +his own. "She must make the best of her, don't you see? If only for the +look of the thing, don't you know? one wants one's wife to take the +proper line about her child." + +"Oh I know what one wants!" Mrs. Beale cried with a competence that +evidently impressed her interlocutor. + +"Well, if you keep HIM up--and I dare say you've had worry enough--why +shouldn't I keep Ida? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the +gander--or the other way round, don't you know? I mean to see the thing +through." + +Mrs. Beale, for a minute, still with her eyes on him as he leaned upon +the chimneypiece, appeared to turn this over. "You're just a wonder of +kindness--that's what you are!" she said at last. "A lady's expected +to have natural feelings. But YOUR horrible sex--! Isn't it a horrible +sex, little love?" she demanded with her cheek upon her stepdaughter's. + +"Oh I like gentlemen best," Maisie lucidly replied. + +The words were taken up merrily. "That's a good one for YOU!" Sir Claude +exclaimed to Mrs. Beale. + +"No," said that lady: "I've only to remember the women she sees at her +mother's." + +"Ah they're very nice now," Sir Claude returned. + +"What do you call 'nice'?" + +"Well, they're all right." + +"That doesn't answer me," said Mrs. Beale; "but I dare say you do take +care of them. That makes you more of an angel to want this job too." And +she playfully whacked her smaller companion. + +"I'm not an angel--I'm an old grandmother," Sir Claude declared. "I like +babies--I always did. If we go to smash I shall look for a place as +responsible nurse." + +Maisie, in her charmed mood, drank in an imputation on her years which +at another moment might have been bitter; but the charm was sensibly +interrupted by Mrs. Beale's screwing her round and gazing fondly into +her eyes, "You're willing to leave me, you wretch?" + +The little girl deliberated; even this consecrated tie had become as a +cord she must suddenly snap. But she snapped it very gently. "Isn't it +my turn for mamma?" + +"You're a horrible little hypocrite! The less, I think, now said about +'turns' the better," Mrs. Beale made answer. "_I_ know whose turn it is. +You've not such a passion for your mother!" + +"I say, I say: DO look out!" Sir Claude quite amiably protested. + +"There's nothing she hasn't heard. But it doesn't matter--it hasn't +spoiled her. If you knew what it costs me to part with you!" she pursued +to Maisie. + +Sir Claude watched her as she charmingly clung to the child. "I'm so +glad you really care for her. That's so much to the good." + +Mrs. Beale slowly got up, still with her hands on Maisie, but emitting a +soft exhalation. "Well, if you're glad, that may help us; for I assure +you that I shall never give up any rights in her that I may consider +I've acquired by my own sacrifices. I shall hold very fast to my +interest in her. What seems to have happened is that she has brought you +and me together." + +"She has brought you and me together," said Sir Claude. + +His cheerful echo prolonged the happy truth, and Maisie broke out almost +with enthusiasm: "I've brought you and her together!" + +Her companions of course laughed anew and Mrs. Beale gave her an +affectionate shake. "You little monster--take care what you do! But +that's what she does do," she continued to Sir Claude. "She did it to me +and Beale." + +"Well then," he said to Maisie, "you must try the trick at OUR place." +He held out his hand to her again. "Will you come now?" + +"Now--just as I am?" She turned with an immense appeal to her +stepmother, taking a leap over the mountain of "mending," the abyss of +packing that had loomed and yawned before her. "Oh MAY I?" + +Mrs. Beale addressed her assent to Sir Claude. "As well so as any other +way. I'll send on her things to-morrow." Then she gave a tug to the +child's coat, glancing at her up and down with some ruefulness. + +"She's not turned out as I should like--her mother will pull her to +pieces. But what's one to do--with nothing to do it on? And she's better +than when she came--you can tell her mother that. I'm sorry to have to +say it to you--but the poor child was a sight." + +"Oh I'll turn her out myself!" the visitor cordially said. + +"I shall like to see how!"--Mrs. Beale appeared much amused. "You must +bring her to show me--we can manage that. Good-bye, little fright!" And +her last word to Sir Claude was that she would keep him up to the mark. + + + + +IX + + +The idea of what she was to make up and the prodigious total it came +to were kept well before Maisie at her mother's. These things were the +constant occupation of Mrs. Wix, who arrived there by the back stairs, +but in tears of joy, the day after her own arrival. The process of +making up, as to which the good lady had an immense deal to say, took, +through its successive phases, so long that it heralded a term at least +equal to the child's last stretch with her father. This, however, was +a fuller and richer time: it bounded along to the tune of Mrs. Wix's +constant insistence on the energy they must both put forth. There was +a fine intensity in the way the child agreed with her that under Mrs. +Beale and Susan Ash she had learned nothing whatever; the wildness of +the rescued castaway was one of the forces that would henceforth make +for a career of conquest. The year therefore rounded itself as a +receptacle of retarded knowledge--a cup brimming over with the sense +that now at least she was learning. Mrs. Wix fed this sense from the +stores of her conversation and with the immense bustle of her reminder +that they must cull the fleeting hour. They were surrounded with +subjects they must take at a rush and perpetually getting into the +attitude of triumphant attack. They had certainly no idle hours, and the +child went to bed each night as tired as from a long day's play. This +had begun from the moment of their reunion, begun with all Mrs. Wix had +to tell her young friend of the reasons of her ladyship's extraordinary +behaviour at the very first. + +It took the form of her ladyship's refusal for three days to see her +little girl--three days during which Sir Claude made hasty merry dashes +into the schoolroom to smooth down the odd situation, to say "She'll +come round, you know; I assure you she'll come round," and a little +even to compensate Maisie for the indignity he had caused her to suffer. +There had never in the child's life been, in all ways, such a delightful +amount of reparation. It came out by his sociable admission that her +ladyship had not known of his visit to her late husband's house and +of his having made that person's daughter a pretext for striking up +an acquaintance with the dreadful creature installed there. Heaven +knew she wanted her child back and had made every plan of her own for +removing her; what she couldn't for the present at least forgive any +one concerned was such an officious underhand way of bringing about the +transfer. Maisie carried more of the weight of this resentment than even +Mrs. Wix's confidential ingenuity could lighten for her, especially as +Sir Claude himself was not at all ingenious, though indeed on the other +hand he was not at all crushed. He was amused and intermittent and at +moments most startling; he impressed on his young companion, with a +frankness that agitated her much more than he seemed to guess, that he +depended on her not letting her mother, when she should see her, get +anything out of her about anything Mrs. Beale might have said to him. He +came in and out; he professed, in joke, to take tremendous precautions; +he showed a positive disposition to romp. He chaffed Mrs. Wix till she +was purple with the pleasure of it, and reminded Maisie of the reticence +he expected of her till she set her teeth like an Indian captive. Her +lessons these first days and indeed for long after seemed to be all +about Sir Claude, and yet she never really mentioned to Mrs. Wix that +she was prepared, under his inspiring injunction, to be vainly tortured. +This lady, however, had formulated the position of things with an +acuteness that showed how little she needed to be coached. Her +explanation of everything that seemed not quite pleasant--and if her own +footing was perilous it met that danger as well--that her ladyship was +passionately in love. Maisie accepted this hint with infinite awe and +pressed upon it much when she was at last summoned into the presence of +her mother. + +There she encountered matters amid which it seemed really to help to +give her a clue--an almost terrifying strangeness, full, none the less, +after a little, of reverberations of Ida's old fierce and demonstrative +recoveries of possession. They had been some time in the house together, +and this demonstration came late. Preoccupied, however, as Maisie was +with the idea of the sentiment Sir Claude had inspired, and familiar, +in addition, by Mrs. Wix's anecdotes, with the ravages that in general +such a sentiment could produce, she was able to make allowances for her +ladyship's remarkable appearance, her violent splendour, the wonderful +colour of her lips and even the hard stare, the stare of some gorgeous +idol described in a story-book, that had come into her eyes in +consequence of a curious thickening of their already rich circumference. +Her professions and explanations were mixed with eager challenges and +sudden drops, in the midst of which Maisie recognised as a memory +of other years the rattle of her trinkets and the scratch of her +endearments, the odour of her clothes and the jumps of her conversation. +She had all her old clever way--Mrs. Wix said it was "aristocratic"--of +changing the subject as she might have slammed the door in your face. +The principal thing that was different was the tint of her golden hair, +which had changed to a coppery red and, with the head it profusely +covered, struck the child as now lifted still further aloft. This +picturesque parent showed literally a grander stature and a nobler +presence, things which, with some others that might have been +bewildering, were handsomely accounted for by the romantic state of her +affections. It was her affections, Maisie could easily see, that led Ida +to break out into questions as to what had passed at the other house +between that horrible woman and Sir Claude; but it was also just here +that the little girl was able to recall the effect with which in earlier +days she had practised the pacific art of stupidity. This art again came +to her aid: her mother, in getting rid of her after an interview in +which she had achieved a hollowness beyond her years, allowed her fully +to understand she had not grown a bit more amusing. + +She could bear that; she could bear anything that helped her to feel she +had done something for Sir Claude. If she hadn't told Mrs. Wix how Mrs. +Beale seemed to like him she certainly couldn't tell her ladyship. In +the way the past revived for her there was a queer confusion. It was +because mamma hated papa that she used to want to know bad things of +him; but if at present she wanted to know the same of Sir Claude it was +quite from the opposite motive. She was awestruck at the manner in which +a lady might be affected through the passion mentioned by Mrs. Wix; she +held her breath with the sense of picking her steps among the tremendous +things of life. What she did, however, now, after the interview with +her mother, impart to Mrs. Wix was that, in spite of her having had her +"good" effect, as she called it--the effect she studied, the effect of +harmless vacancy--her ladyship's last words had been that her ladyship's +duty by her would be thoroughly done. Over this announcement governess +and pupil looked at each other in silent profundity; but as the weeks +went by it had no consequences that interfered gravely with the breezy +gallop of making up. Her ladyship's duty took at times the form of not +seeing her child for days together, and Maisie led her life in great +prosperity between Mrs. Wix and kind Sir Claude. Mrs. Wix had a new +dress and, as she was the first to proclaim, a better position; so it +all struck Maisie as a crowded brilliant life, with, for the time, Mrs. +Beale and Susan Ash simply "left out" like children not invited to a +Christmas party. Mrs. Wix had a secret terror which, like most of her +secret feelings, she discussed with her little companion, in great +solemnity, by the hour: the possibility of her ladyship's coming down +on them, in her sudden highbred way, with a school. But she had also +a balm to this fear in a conviction of the strength of Sir Claude's +grasp of the situation. He was too pleased--didn't he constantly say +as much?--with the good impression made, in a wide circle, by Ida's +sacrifices; and he came into the schoolroom repeatedly to let them know +how beautifully he felt everything had gone off and everything would go +on. + +He disappeared at times for days, when his patient friends understood +that her ladyship would naturally absorb him; but he always came back +with the drollest stories of where he had been, a wonderful picture of +society, and even with pretty presents that showed how in absence he +thought of his home. Besides giving Mrs. Wix by his conversation a sense +that they almost themselves "went out," he gave her a five-pound note +and the history of France and an umbrella with a malachite knob, and to +Maisie both chocolate-creams and story-books, besides a lovely greatcoat +(which he took her out all alone to buy) and ever so many games +in boxes, with printed directions, and a bright red frame for the +protection of his famous photograph. The games were, as he said, to +while away the evening hour; and the evening hour indeed often passed +in futile attempts on Mrs. Wix's part to master what "it said" on the +papers. When he asked the pair how they liked the games they always +replied "Oh immensely!" but they had earnest discussions as to whether +they hadn't better appeal to him frankly for aid to understand them. +This was a course their delicacy shrank from; they couldn't have told +exactly why, but it was a part of their tenderness for him not to let +him think they had trouble. What dazzled most was his kindness to Mrs. +Wix, not only the five-pound note and the "not forgetting" her, but +the perfect consideration, as she called it with an air to which her +sounding of the words gave the only grandeur Maisie was to have seen her +wear save on a certain occasion hereafter to be described, an occasion +when the poor lady was grander than all of them put together. He shook +hands with her, he recognised her, as she said, and above all, more than +once, he took her, with his stepdaughter, to the pantomime and, in the +crowd, coming out, publicly gave her his arm. When he met them in sunny +Piccadilly he made merry and turned and walked with them, heroically +suppressing his consciousness of the stamp of his company, a heroism +that--needless for Mrs. Wix to sound THOSE words--her ladyship, though +a blood-relation, was little enough the woman to be capable of. Even to +the hard heart of childhood there was something tragic in such elation +at such humanities: it brought home to Maisie the way her humble +companion had sidled and ducked through life. But it settled the +question of the degree to which Sir Claude was a gentleman: he was +more of one than anybody else in the world--"I don't care," Mrs. Wix +repeatedly remarked, "whom you may meet in grand society, nor even to +whom you may be contracted in marriage." There were questions that +Maisie never asked; so her governess was spared the embarrassment of +telling her if he were more of a gentleman than papa. This was not +moreover from the want of opportunity, for there were no moments between +them at which the topic could be irrelevant, no subject they were going +into, not even the principal dates or the auxiliary verbs, in which it +was further off than the turn of the page. The answer on the winter +nights to the puzzle of cards and counters and little bewildering +pamphlets was just to draw up to the fire and talk about him; and if the +truth must be told this edifying interchange constituted for the time +the little girl's chief education. + +It must also be admitted that he took them far, further perhaps than +was always warranted by the old-fashioned conscience, the dingy +decencies, of Maisie's simple instructress. There were hours when Mrs. +Wix sighingly testified to the scruples she surmounted, seemed to ask +what other line one COULD take with a young person whose experience +had been, as it were, so peculiar. "It isn't as if you didn't already +know everything, is it, love?" and "I can't make you any worse than +you ARE, can I, darling?"--these were the terms in which the good lady +justified to herself and her pupil her pleasant conversational ease. +What the pupil already knew was indeed rather taken for granted than +expressed, but it performed the useful function of transcending all +textbooks and supplanting all studies. If the child couldn't be worse +it was a comfort even to herself that she was bad--a comfort offering +a broad firm support to the fundamental fact of the present crisis: +the fact that mamma was fearfully jealous. This was another side +of the circumstance of mamma's passion, and the deep couple in the +schoolroom were not long in working round to it. It brought them face +to face with the idea of the inconvenience suffered by any lady who +marries a gentleman producing on other ladies the charming effect of +Sir Claude. That such ladies wouldn't be able to help falling in love +with him was a reflexion naturally irritating to his wife. One day +when some accident, some crash of a banged door or some scurry of +a scared maid, had rendered this truth particularly vivid, Maisie, +receptive and profound, suddenly said to her companion: "And you, my +dear, are you in love with him too?" Even her profundity had left +a margin for a laugh; so she was a trifle startled by the solemn +promptitude with which Mrs. Wix plumped out: "Over head and ears. +I've NEVER since you ask me, been so far gone." + +This boldness had none the less no effect of deterrence for her when, a +few days later--it was because several had elapsed without a visit from +Sir Claude--her governess turned the tables. "May I ask you, miss, if +YOU are?" Mrs. Wix brought it out, she could see, with hesitation, but +clearly intending a joke. "Why RATHER!" the child made answer, as if in +surprise at not having long ago seemed sufficiently to commit herself; +on which her friend gave a sigh of apparent satisfaction. It might in +fact have expressed positive relief. Everything was as it should be. + +Yet it was not with them, they were very sure, that her ladyship was +furious, nor because she had forbidden it that there befell at last a +period--six months brought it round--when for days together he scarcely +came near them. He was "off," and Ida was "off," and they were sometimes +off together and sometimes apart; there were seasons when the simple +students had the house to themselves, when the very servants seemed +also to be "off" and dinner became a reckless forage in pantries and +sideboards. Mrs. Wix reminded her disciple on such occasions--hungry +moments often, when all the support of the reminder was required--that +the "real life" of their companions, the brilliant society in which it +was inevitable they should move and the complicated pleasures in which +it was almost presumptuous of the mind to follow them, must offer +features literally not to be imagined without being seen. At one +of these times Maisie found her opening it out that, though the +difficulties were many, it was Mrs. Beale who had now become the chief. +Then somehow it was brought fully to the child's knowledge that her +stepmother had been making attempts to see her, that her mother had +deeply resented it, that her stepfather had backed her stepmother up, +that the latter had pretended to be acting as the representative of her +father, and that her mother took the whole thing, in plain terms, very +hard. The situation was, as Mrs. Wix declared, an extraordinary muddle +to be sure. Her account of it brought back to Maisie the happy vision of +the way Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale had made acquaintance--an incident to +which, with her stepfather, though she had had little to say about it +to Mrs. Wix, she had during the first weeks of her stay at her mother's +found more than one opportunity to revert. As to what had taken place +the day Sir Claude came for her, she had been vaguely grateful to Mrs. +Wix for not attempting, as her mother had attempted, to put her through. +That was what Sir Claude had called the process when he warned her of +it, and again afterwards when he told her she was an awfully good "chap" +for having foiled it. Then it was that, well aware Mrs. Beale hadn't +in the least really given her up, she had asked him if he remained +in communication with her and if for the time everything must really +be held to be at an end between her stepmother and herself. This +conversation had occurred in consequence of his one day popping into the +schoolroom and finding Maisie alone. + + + + +X + + +He was smoking a cigarette and he stood before the fire and looked +at the meagre appointments of the room in a way that made her rather +ashamed of them. Then before (on the subject of Mrs. Beale) he let her +"draw" him--that was another of his words; it was astonishing how many +she gathered in--he remarked that really mamma kept them rather low on +the question of decorations. Mrs. Wix had put up a Japanese fan and two +rather grim texts; she had wished they were gayer, but they were all she +happened to have. Without Sir Claude's photograph, however, the place +would have been, as he said, as dull as a cold dinner. He had said +as well that there were all sorts of things they ought to have; yet +governess and pupil, it had to be admitted, were still divided between +discussing the places where any sort of thing would look best if any +sort of thing should ever come and acknowledging that mutability in the +child's career which was naturally unfavourable to accumulation. She +stayed long enough only to miss things, not half long enough to deserve +them. The way Sir Claude looked about the schoolroom had made her feel +with humility as if it were not very different from the shabby attic in +which she had visited Susan Ash. Then he had said in abrupt reference to +Mrs. Beale: "Do you think she really cares for you?" + +"Oh awfully!" Maisie had replied. + +"But, I mean, does she love you for yourself, as they call it, don't you +know? Is she as fond of you, now, as Mrs. Wix?" + +The child turned it over. "Oh I'm not every bit Mrs. Beale has!" + +Sir Claude seemed much amused at this. "No; you're not every bit she +has!" + +He laughed for some moments, but that was an old story to Maisie, who +was not too much disconcerted to go on: "But she'll never give me up." + +"Well, I won't either, old boy: so that's not so wonderful, and she's +not the only one. But if she's so fond of you, why doesn't she write to +you?" + +"Oh on account of mamma." This was rudimentary, and she was almost +surprised at the simplicity of Sir Claude's question. + +"I see--that's quite right," he answered. "She might get at you--there +are all sorts of ways. But of course there's Mrs. Wix." + +"There's Mrs. Wix," Maisie lucidly concurred. "Mrs. Wix can't abide +her." + +Sir Claude seemed interested. "Oh she can't abide her? Then what does +she say about her?" + +"Nothing at all--because she knows I shouldn't like it. Isn't it sweet +of her?" the child asked. + +"Certainly; rather nice. Mrs. Beale wouldn't hold her tongue for any +such thing as that, would she?" + +Maisie remembered how little she had done so; but she desired to protect +Mrs. Beale too. The only protection she could think of, however, was the +plea: "Oh at papa's, you know, they don't mind!" + +At this Sir Claude only smiled. "No, I dare say not. But here we mind, +don't we?--we take care what we say. I don't suppose it's a matter on +which I ought to prejudice you," he went on; "but I think we must on the +whole be rather nicer here than at your father's. However, I don't press +that; for it's the sort of question on which it's awfully awkward for +you to speak. Don't worry, at any rate: I assure you I'll back you up." +Then after a moment and while he smoked he reverted to Mrs. Beale and +the child's first enquiry. "I'm afraid we can't do much for her just +now. I haven't seen her since that day--upon my word I haven't seen +her." The next instant, with a laugh the least bit foolish, the young +man slightly coloured: he must have felt this profession of innocence to +be excessive as addressed to Maisie. It was inevitable to say to her, +however, that of course her mother loathed the lady of the other house. +He couldn't go there again with his wife's consent, and he wasn't the +man--he begged her to believe, falling once more, in spite of himself, +into the scruple of showing the child he didn't trip--to go there +without it. He was liable in talking with her to take the tone of her +being also a man of the world. He had gone to Mrs. Beale's to fetch +away Maisie, but that was altogether different. Now that she was in +her mother's house what pretext had he to give her mother for paying +calls on her father's wife? And of course Mrs. Beale couldn't come to +Ida's--Ida would tear her limb from limb. Maisie, with this talk of +pretexts, remembered how much Mrs. Beale had made of her being a good +one, and how, for such a function, it was her fate to be either much +depended on or much missed. Sir Claude moreover recognised on this +occasion that perhaps things would take a turn later on; and he wound +up by saying: "I'm sure she does sincerely care for you--how can she +possibly help it? She's very young and very pretty and very clever: I +think she's charming. But we must walk very straight. If you'll help me, +you know, I'll help YOU," he concluded in the pleasant fraternising, +equalising, not a bit patronising way which made the child ready to go +through anything for him and the beauty of which, as she dimly felt, was +that it was so much less a deceitful descent to her years than a real +indifference to them. + +It gave her moments of secret rapture--moments of believing she might +help him indeed. The only mystification in this was the imposing time of +life that her elders spoke of as youth. For Sir Claude then Mrs. Beale +was "young," just as for Mrs. Wix Sir Claude was: that was one of the +merits for which Mrs. Wix most commended him. What therefore was Maisie +herself, and, in another relation to the matter, what therefore was +mamma? It took her some time to puzzle out with the aid of an experiment +or two that it wouldn't do to talk about mamma's youth. She even went +so far one day, in the presence of that lady's thick colour and marked +lines, as to wonder if it would occur to any one but herself to do so. +Yet if she wasn't young then she was old; and this threw an odd light on +her having a husband of a different generation. Mr. Farange was still +older--that Maisie perfectly knew; and it brought her in due course +to the perception of how much more, since Mrs. Beale was younger than +Sir Claude, papa must be older than Mrs. Beale. Such discoveries were +disconcerting and even a trifle confounding: these persons, it appeared, +were not of the age they ought to be. This was somehow particularly +the case with mamma, and the fact made her reflect with some relief on +her not having gone with Mrs. Wix into the question of Sir Claude's +attachment to his wife. She was conscious that in confining their +attention to the state of her ladyship's own affections they had been +controlled--Mrs. Wix perhaps in especial--by delicacy and even by +embarrassment. The end of her colloquy with her stepfather in the +schoolroom was her saying: "Then if we're not to see Mrs. Beale at all +it isn't what she seemed to think when you came for me." + +He looked rather blank. "What did she seem to think?" + +"Why that I've brought you together." + +"She thought that?" Sir Claude asked. + +Maisie was surprised at his already forgetting it. "Just as I had +brought papa and her. Don't you remember she said so?" + +It came back to Sir Claude in a peal of laughter. "Oh yes--she said so!" + +"And YOU said so," Maisie lucidly pursued. + +He recovered, with increasing mirth, the whole occasion. "And YOU said +so!" he retorted as if they were playing a game. + +"Then were we all mistaken?" + +He considered a little. "No, on the whole not. I dare say it's just what +you HAVE done. We ARE together--it's really most odd. She's thinking of +us--of you and me--though we don't meet. And I've no doubt you'll find +it will be all right when you go back to her." + +"Am I going back to her?" Maisie brought out with a little gasp which +was like a sudden clutch of the happy present. + +It appeared to make Sir Claude grave a moment; it might have made him +feel the weight of the pledge his action had given. "Oh some day, I +suppose! We've plenty of time." + +"I've such a tremendous lot to make up," Maisie said with a sense of +great boldness. + +"Certainly, and you must make up every hour of it. Oh I'll SEE that you +do!" + +This was encouraging; and to show cheerfully that she was reassured she +replied: "That's what Mrs. Wix sees too." + +"Oh yes," said Sir Claude; "Mrs. Wix and I are shoulder to shoulder." + +Maisie took in a little this strong image; after which she exclaimed: +"Then I've done it also to you and her--I've brought YOU together!" + +"Blest if you haven't!" Sir Claude laughed. "And more, upon my word, +than any of the lot. Oh you've done for US! Now if you could--as I +suggested, you know, that day--only manage me and your mother!" + +The child wondered. "Bring you and HER together?" + +"You see we're not together--not a bit. But I oughtn't to tell you such +things; all the more that you won't really do it--not you. No, old +chap," the young man continued; "there you'll break down. But it won't +matter--we'll rub along. The great thing is that you and I are all +right." + +"WE'RE all right!" Maisie echoed devoutly. But the next moment, in the +light of what he had just said, she asked: "How shall I ever leave you?" +It was as if she must somehow take care of him. + +His smile did justice to her anxiety. "Oh well, you needn't! It won't +come to that." + +"Do you mean that when I do go you'll go with me?" + +Sir Claude cast about. "Not exactly 'with' you perhaps; but I shall +never be far off." + +"But how do you know where mamma may take you?" + +He laughed again. "I don't, I confess!" Then he had an idea, though +something too jocose. "That will be for you to see--that she shan't take +me too far." + +"How can I help it?" Maisie enquired in surprise. "Mamma doesn't care +for me," she said very simply. "Not really." Child as she was, her +little long history was in the words; and it was as impossible to +contradict her as if she had been venerable. + +Sir Claude's silence was an admission of this, and still more the tone +in which he presently replied: "That won't prevent her from--some time +or other--leaving me with you." + +"Then we'll live together?" she eagerly demanded. + +"I'm afraid," said Sir Claude, smiling, "that that will be Mrs. Beale's +real chance." + +Her eagerness just slightly dropped at this; she remembered Mrs. Wix's +pronouncement that it was all an extraordinary muddle. "To take me +again? Well, can't you come to see me there?" + +"Oh I dare say!" + +Though there were parts of childhood Maisie had lost she had all +childhood's preference for the particular promise. "Then you WILL +come--you'll come often, won't you?" she insisted; while at the moment +she spoke the door opened for the return of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude +hereupon, instead of replying, gave her a look which left her silent +and embarrassed. + +When he again found privacy convenient, however--which happened to be +long in coming--he took up their conversation very much where it had +dropped. "You see, my dear, if I shall be able to go to you at your +father's it yet isn't at all the same thing for Mrs. Beale to come to +you here." Maisie gave a thoughtful assent to this proposition, though +conscious she could scarcely herself say just where the difference would +lie. She felt how much her stepfather saved her, as he said with his +habitual amusement, the trouble of that. "I shall probably be able to go +to Mrs. Beale's without your mother's knowing it." + +Maisie stared with a certain thrill at the dramatic element in this. +"And she couldn't come here without mamma's--" She was unable to +articulate the word for what mamma would do. + +"My dear child, Mrs. Wix would tell of it." + +"But I thought," Maisie objected, "that Mrs. Wix and you--" + +"Are such brothers-in-arms?"--Sir Claude caught her up. "Oh yes, about +everything but Mrs. Beale. And if you should suggest," he went on, "that +we might somehow or other hide her peeping in from Mrs. Wix--" + +"Oh, I don't suggest THAT!" Maisie in turn cut him short. + +Sir Claude looked as if he could indeed quite see why. "No; it would +really be impossible." There came to her from this glance at what they +might hide the first small glimpse of something in him that she wouldn't +have expected. There had been times when she had had to make the best +of the impression that she was herself deceitful; yet she had never +concealed anything bigger than a thought. Of course she now concealed +this thought of how strange it would be to see HIM hide; and while she +was so actively engaged he continued: "Besides, you know, I'm not afraid +of your father." + +"And you are of my mother?" + +"Rather, old man!" Sir Claude returned. + + + + +XI + + +It must not be supposed that her ladyship's intermissions were not +qualified by demonstrations of another order--triumphal entries and +breathless pauses during which she seemed to take of everything in the +room, from the state of the ceiling to that of her daughter's boot-toes, +a survey that was rich in intentions. Sometimes she sat down and +sometimes she surged about, but her attitude wore equally in either +case the grand air of the practical. She found so much to deplore that +she left a great deal to expect, and bristled so with calculation that +she seemed to scatter remedies and pledges. Her visits were as good as +an outfit; her manner, as Mrs. Wix once said, as good as a pair of +curtains; but she was a person addicted to extremes--sometimes barely +speaking to her child and sometimes pressing this tender shoot to a +bosom cut, as Mrs. Wix had also observed, remarkably low. She was always +in a fearful hurry, and the lower the bosom was cut the more it was to +be gathered she was wanted elsewhere. She usually broke in alone, but +sometimes Sir Claude was with her, and during all the earlier period +there was nothing on which these appearances had had so delightful a +bearing as on the way her ladyship was, as Mrs. Wix expressed it, under +the spell. "But ISN'T she under it!" Maisie used in thoughtful but +familiar reference to exclaim after Sir Claude had swept mamma away in +peals of natural laughter. Not even in the old days of the convulsed +ladies had she heard mamma laugh so freely as in these moments of +conjugal surrender, to the gaiety of which even a little girl could see +she had at last a right--a little girl whose thoughtfulness was now all +happy selfish meditation on good omens and future fun. + +Unaccompanied, in subsequent hours, and with an effect of changing +to meet a change, Ida took a tone superficially disconcerting and +abrupt--the tone of having, at an immense cost, made over everything to +Sir Claude and wishing others to know that if everything wasn't right it +was because Sir Claude was so dreadfully vague. "He has made from the +first such a row about you," she said on one occasion to Maisie, "that +I've told him to do for you himself and try how he likes it--see? +I've washed my hands of you; I've made you over to him; and if you're +discontented it's on him, please, you'll come down. So don't haul poor +ME up--I assure you I've worries enough." One of these, visibly, was +that the spell rejoiced in by the schoolroom fire was already in danger +of breaking; another was that she was finally forced to make no secret +of her husband's unfitness for real responsibilities. The day came +indeed when her breathless auditors learnt from her in bewilderment that +what ailed him was that he was, alas, simply not serious. Maisie wept +on Mrs. Wix's bosom after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly; +considering moreover that her governess but half-patched it up in coming +out at various moments the next few days with the opinion that it was +proper to his "station" to be careless and free. That had been proper to +every one's station that she had yet encountered save poor Mrs. Wix's +own, and the particular merit of Sir Claude had seemed precisely that he +was different from every one. She talked with him, however, as time went +on, very freely about her mother; being with him, in this relation, +wholly without the fear that had kept her silent before her father--the +fear of bearing tales and making bad things worse. He appeared to accept +the idea that he had taken her over and made her, as he said, his +particular lark; he quite agreed also that he was an awful fraud and an +idle beast and a sorry dunce. And he never said a word to her against +her mother--he only remained dumb and discouraged in the face of her +ladyship's own overtopping earnestness. There were occasions when he +even spoke as if he had wrenched his little charge from the arms of a +parent who had fought for her tooth and nail. + +This was the very moral of a scene that flashed into vividness one day +when the four happened to meet without company in the drawing-room and +Maisie found herself clutched to her mother's breast and passionately +sobbed and shrieked over, made the subject of a demonstration evidently +sequent to some sharp passage just enacted. The connexion required that +while she almost cradled the child in her arms Ida should speak of her +as hideously, as fatally estranged, and should rail at Sir Claude as the +cruel author of the outrage. "He has taken you FROM me," she cried; "he +has set you AGAINST me, and you've been won away and your horrid little +mind has been poisoned! You've gone over to him, you've given yourself +up to side against me and hate me. You never open your mouth to me--you +know you don't; and you chatter to him like a dozen magpies. Don't lie +about it--I hear you all over the place. You hang about him in a way +that's barely decent--he can do what he likes with you. Well then, let +him, to his heart's content: he has been in such a hurry to take you +that we'll see if it suits him to keep you. I'm very good to break my +heart about it when you've no more feeling for me than a clammy little +fish!" She suddenly thrust the child away and, as a disgusted admission +of failure, sent her flying across the room into the arms of Mrs. Wix, +whom at this moment and even in the whirl of her transit Maisie saw, +very red, exchange a quick queer look with Sir Claude. + +The impression of the look remained with her, confronting her with such +a critical little view of her mother's explosion that she felt the less +ashamed of herself for incurring the reproach with which she had been +cast off. Her father had once called her a heartless little beast, +and now, though decidedly scared, she was as stiff and cold as if the +description had been just. She was not even frightened enough to cry, +which would have been a tribute to her mother's wrongs: she was only, +more than anything else, curious about the opinion mutely expressed by +their companions. Taking the earliest opportunity to question Mrs. Wix +on this subject she elicited the remarkable reply: "Well, my dear, it's +her ladyship's game, and we must just hold on like grim death." + +Maisie could interpret at her leisure these ominous words. Her +reflexions indeed at this moment thickened apace, and one of them made +her sure that her governess had conversations, private, earnest and not +infrequent, with her denounced stepfather. She perceived in the light +of a second episode that something beyond her knowledge had taken place +in the house. The things beyond her knowledge--numerous enough in +truth--had not hitherto, she believed, been the things that had been +nearest to her: she had even had in the past a small smug conviction +that in the domestic labyrinth she always kept the clue. This time too, +however, she at last found out--with the discreet aid, it had to be +confessed, of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude's own assistance was abruptly taken +from her, for his comment on her ladyship's game was to start on the +spot, quite alone, for Paris, evidently because he wished to show +a spirit when accused of bad behaviour. He might be fond of his +stepdaughter, Maisie felt, without wishing her to be after all thrust on +him in such a way; his absence therefore, it was clear, was a protest +against the thrusting. It was while this absence lasted that our young +lady finally discovered what had happened in the house to be that her +mother was no longer in love. + +The limit of a passion for Sir Claude had certainly been reached, she +judged, some time before the day on which her ladyship burst suddenly +into the schoolroom to introduce Mr. Perriam, who, as she announced +from the doorway to Maisie, wouldn't believe his ears that one had a +great hoyden of a daughter. Mr. Perriam was short and massive--Mrs. +Wix remarked afterwards that he was "too fat for the pace"; and it +would have been difficult to say of him whether his head were more +bald or his black moustache more bushy. He seemed also to have +moustaches over his eyes, which, however, by no means prevented these +polished little globes from rolling round the room as if they had been +billiard-balls impelled by Ida's celebrated stroke. Mr. Perriam wore +on the hand that pulled his moustache a diamond of dazzling lustre, in +consequence of which and of his general weight and mystery our young +lady observed on his departure that if he had only had a turban he +would have been quite her idea of a heathen Turk. + +"He's quite my idea," Mrs. Wix replied, "of a heathen Jew." + +"Well, I mean," said Maisie, "of a person who comes from the East." + +"That's where he MUST come from," her governess opined--"he comes from +the City." In a moment she added as if she knew all about him. "He's one +of those people who have lately broken out. He'll be immensely rich." + +"On the death of his papa?" the child interestedly enquired. + +"Dear no--nothing hereditary. I mean he has made a mass of money." + +"How much, do you think?" Maisie demanded. + +Mrs. Wix reflected and sketched it. "Oh many millions." + +"A hundred?" + +Mrs. Wix was not sure of the number, but there were enough of them to +have seemed to warm up for the time the penury of the schoolroom--to +linger there as an afterglow of the hot heavy light Mr. Perriam sensibly +shed. This was also, no doubt, on his part, an effect of that enjoyment +of life with which, among her elders, Maisie had been in contact from +her earliest years--the sign of happy maturity, the old familiar note of +overflowing cheer. "How d'ye do, ma'am? How d'ye do, little miss?"--he +laughed and nodded at the gaping figures. "She has brought me up for a +peep--it's true I wouldn't take you on trust. She's always talking about +you, but she'd never produce you; so to-day I challenged her on the +spot. Well, you ain't a myth, my dear--I back down on that," the visitor +went on to Maisie; "nor you either, miss, though you might be, to be +sure!" + +"I bored him with you, darling--I bore every one," Ida said, "and to +prove that you ARE a sweet thing, as well as a fearfully old one, I told +him he could judge for himself. So now he sees that you're a dreadful +bouncing business and that your poor old Mummy's at least sixty!"--and +her ladyship smiled at Mr. Perriam with the charm that her daughter had +heard imputed to her at papa's by the merry gentlemen who had so often +wished to get from him what they called a "rise." Her manner at that +instant gave the child a glimpse more vivid than any yet enjoyed of the +attraction that papa, in remarkable language, always denied she could +put forth. + +Mr. Perriam, however, clearly recognised it in the humour with which he +met her. "I never said you ain't wonderful--did I ever say it, hey?" and +he appealed with pleasant confidence to the testimony of the schoolroom, +about which itself also he evidently felt something might be expected of +him. "So this is their little place, hey? Charming, charming, charming!" +he repeated as he vaguely looked round. The interrupted students clung +together as if they had been personally exposed; but Ida relieved their +embarrassment by a hunch of her high shoulders. This time the smile she +addressed to Mr. Perriam had a beauty of sudden sadness. "What on earth +is a poor woman to do?" + +The visitor's grimace grew more marked as he continued to look, and +the conscious little schoolroom felt still more like a cage at a +menagerie. "Charming, charming, charming!" Mr. Perriam insisted; but +the parenthesis closed with a prompt click. "There you are!" said her +ladyship. "By-bye!" she sharply added. The next minute they were on the +stairs, and Mrs. Wix and her companion, at the open door and looking +mutely at each other, were reached by the sound of the large social +current that carried them back to their life. + +It was singular perhaps after this that Maisie never put a question +about Mr. Perriam, and it was still more singular that by the end of a +week she knew all she didn't ask. What she most particularly knew--and +the information came to her, unsought, straight from Mrs. Wix--was that +Sir Claude wouldn't at all care for the visits of a millionaire who was +in and out of the upper rooms. How little he would care was proved by +the fact that under the sense of them Mrs. Wix's discretion broke down +altogether; she was capable of a transfer of allegiance, capable, at the +altar of propriety, of a desperate sacrifice of her ladyship. As against +Mrs. Beale, she more than once intimated, she had been willing to do +the best for her, but as against Sir Claude she could do nothing for +her at all. It was extraordinary the number of things that, still +without a question, Maisie knew by the time her stepfather came back +from Paris--came bringing her a splendid apparatus for painting in +water-colours and bringing Mrs. Wix, by a lapse of memory that would +have been droll if it had not been a trifle disconcerting, a second and +even a more elegant umbrella. He had forgotten all about the first, +with which, buried in as many wrappers as a mummy of the Pharaohs, she +wouldn't for the world have done anything so profane as use it. Maisie +knew above all that though she was now, by what she called an informal +understanding, on Sir Claude's "side," she had yet not uttered a word +to him about Mr. Perriam. That gentleman became therefore a kind of +flourishing public secret, out of the depths of which governess and +pupil looked at each other portentously from the time their friend was +restored to them. He was restored in great abundance, and it was marked +that, though he appeared to have felt the need to take a stand against +the risk of being too roughly saddled with the offspring of others, he +at this period exposed himself more than ever before to the presumption +of having created expectations. + +If it had become now, for that matter, a question of sides, there was at +least a certain amount of evidence as to where they all were. Maisie of +course, in such a delicate position, was on nobody's; but Sir Claude had +all the air of being on hers. If therefore Mrs. Wix was on Sir Claude's, +her ladyship on Mr. Perriam's and Mr. Perriam presumably on her +ladyship's, this left only Mrs. Beale and Mr. Farange to account for. +Mrs. Beale clearly was, like Sir Claude, on Maisie's, and papa, it was +to be supposed, on Mrs. Beale's. Here indeed was a slight ambiguity, +as papa's being on Mrs. Beale's didn't somehow seem to place him quite +on his daughter's. It sounded, as this young lady thought it over, +very much like puss-in-the-corner, and she could only wonder if the +distribution of parties would lead to a rushing to and fro and a +changing of places. She was in the presence, she felt, of restless +change: wasn't it restless enough that her mother and her stepfather +should already be on different sides? That was the great thing that had +domestically happened. Mrs. Wix, besides, had turned another face: she +had never been exactly gay, but her gravity was now an attitude as +public as a posted placard. She seemed to sit in her new dress and brood +over her lost delicacy, which had become almost as doleful a memory as +that of poor Clara Matilda. "It IS hard for him," she often said to her +companion; and it was surprising how competent on this point Maisie +was conscious of being to agree with her. Hard as it was, however, Sir +Claude had never shown to greater advantage than in the gallant generous +sociable way he carried it off: a way that drew from Mrs. Wix a hundred +expressions of relief at his not having suffered it to embitter him. +It threw him more and more at last into the schoolroom, where he +had plainly begun to recognise that if he was to have the credit of +perverting the innocent child he might also at least have the amusement. +He never came into the place without telling its occupants that they +were the nicest people in the house--a remark which always led them to +say to each other "Mr. Perriam!" as loud as ever compressed lips and +enlarged eyes could make them articulate. He caused Maisie to remember +what she had said to Mrs. Beale about his having the nature of a good +nurse, and, rather more than she intended before Mrs. Wix, to bring the +whole thing out by once remarking to him that none of her good nurses +had smoked quite so much in the nursery. This had no more effect than +it was meant to on his cigarettes: he was always smoking, but always +declaring that it was death to him not to lead a domestic life. + +He led one after all in the schoolroom, and there were hours of late +evening, when she had gone to bed, that Maisie knew he sat there talking +with Mrs. Wix of how to meet his difficulties. His consideration for +this unfortunate woman even in the midst of them continued to show him +as the perfect gentleman and lifted the subject of his courtesy into an +upper air of beatitude in which her very pride had the hush of anxiety. +"He leans on me--he leans on me!" she only announced from time to time; +and she was more surprised than amused when, later on, she accidentally +found she had given her pupil the impression of a support literally +supplied by her person. This glimpse of a misconception led her to be +explicit--to put before the child, with an air of mourning indeed for +such a stoop to the common, that what they talked about in the small +hours, as they said, was the question of his taking right hold of life. +The life she wanted him to take right hold of was the public: "she" +being, I hasten to add, in this connexion, not the mistress of his fate, +but only Mrs. Wix herself. She had phrases about him that were full of +easy understanding, yet full of morality. "He's a wonderful nature, but +he can't live like the lilies. He's all right, you know, but he must +have a high interest." She had more than once remarked that his affairs +were sadly involved, but that they must get him--Maisie and she +together apparently--into Parliament. The child took it from her with a +flutter of importance that Parliament was his natural sphere, and she +was the less prepared to recognise a hindrance as she had never heard +of any affairs whatever that were not involved. She had in the old +days once been told by Mrs. Beale that her very own were, and with the +refreshment of knowing that she HAD affairs the information hadn't in +the least overwhelmed her. It was true and perhaps a little alarming +that she had never heard of any such matters since then. Full of +charm at any rate was the prospect of some day getting Sir Claude in; +especially after Mrs. Wix, as the fruit of more midnight colloquies, +once went so far as to observe that she really believed it was all +that was wanted to save him. This critic, with these words, struck her +disciple as cropping up, after the manner of mamma when mamma talked, +quite in a new place. The child stared as at the jump of a kangaroo. +"Save him from what?" + +Mrs. Wix debated, then covered a still greater distance. "Why just from +awful misery." + + + + +XII + + +She had not at the moment explained her ominous speech, but the light of +remarkable events soon enabled her companion to read it. It may indeed +be said that these days brought on a high quickening of Maisie's direct +perceptions, of her sense of freedom to make out things for herself. +This was helped by an emotion intrinsically far from sweet--the increase +of the alarm that had most haunted her meditations. She had no need to +be told, as on the morrow of the revelation of Sir Claude's danger she +was told by Mrs. Wix, that her mother wanted more and more to know why +the devil her father didn't send for her: she had too long expected +mamma's curiosity on this point to express itself sharply. Maisie could +meet such pressure so far as meeting it was to be in a position to +reply, in words directly inspired, that papa would be hanged before he'd +again be saddled with her. She therefore recognised the hour that in +troubled glimpses she had long foreseen, the hour when--the phrase for +it came back to her from Mrs. Beale--with two fathers, two mothers and +two homes, six protections in all, she shouldn't know "wherever" to +go. Such apprehension as she felt on this score was not diminished +by the fact that Mrs. Wix herself was suddenly white with terror: a +circumstance leading Maisie to the further knowledge that this lady +was still more scared on her own behalf than on that of her pupil. A +governess who had only one frock was not likely to have either two +fathers or two mothers: accordingly if even with these resources Maisie +was to be in the streets, where in the name of all that was dreadful +was poor Mrs. Wix to be? She had had, it appeared, a tremendous brush +with Ida, which had begun and ended with the request that she would be +pleased on the spot to "bundle." It had come suddenly but completely, +this signal of which she had gone in fear. The companions confessed to +each other the dread each had hidden the worst of, but Mrs. Wix was +better off than Maisie in having a plan of defence. She declined indeed +to communicate it till it was quite mature; but meanwhile, she hastened +to declare, her feet were firm in the schoolroom. They could only be +loosened by force: she would "leave" for the police perhaps, but she +wouldn't leave for mere outrage. That would be to play her ladyship's +game, and it would take another turn of the screw to make her desert her +darling. Her ladyship had come down with extraordinary violence: it had +been one of many symptoms of a situation strained--"between them all," +as Mrs. Wix said, "but especially between the two"--to the point of God +only knew what. + +Her description of the crisis made the child blanch. "Between which +two?--papa and mamma?" + +"Dear no. I mean between your mother and HIM." + +Maisie, in this, recognised an opportunity to be really deep. +"'Him'?--Mr. Perriam?" + +She fairly brought a blush to the scared face. "Well, my dear, I must +say what you DON'T know ain't worth mentioning. That it won't go on for +ever with Mr. Perriam--since I MUST meet you--you can suppose? But I +meant dear Sir Claude." + +Maisie stood corrected rather than abashed. "I see. But it's about Mr. +Perriam he's angry?" + +Mrs. Wix waited. "He says he's not." + +"Not angry? He has told you so?" + +Mrs. Wix looked at her hard. "Not about HIM!" + +"Then about some one else?" + +Mrs. Wix looked at her harder. "About some one else." + +"Lord Eric?" the child promptly brought forth. + +At this, of a sudden, her governess was more agitated. "Oh why, little +unfortunate, should we discuss their dreadful names?"--and she threw +herself for the millionth time on Maisie's neck. It took her pupil but +a moment to feel that she quivered with insecurity, and, the contact +of her terror aiding, the pair in another instant were sobbing in each +other's arms. Then it was that, completely relaxed, demoralised as she +had never been, Mrs. Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment +to gush. Her great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, +denounced her hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, +her lying and grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, ME!" the poor woman wailed, +"who've seen what I've seen and gone through everything only to cover +her up and ease her off and smooth her down? If I've been an 'ipocrite +it's the other way round: I've pretended, to him and to her, to myself +and to you and to every one, NOT to see! It serves me right to have held +my tongue before such horrors!" + +What horrors they were her companion forbore too closely to enquire, +showing even signs not a few of an ability to take them for granted. +That put the couple more than ever, in this troubled sea, in the same +boat, so that with the consciousness of ideas on the part of her fellow +mariner Maisie could sit close and wait. Sir Claude on the morrow came +in to tea, and then the ideas were produced. It was extraordinary how +the child's presence drew out their full strength. The principal one was +startling, but Maisie appreciated the courage with which her governess +handled it. It simply consisted of the proposal that whenever and +wherever they should seek refuge Sir Claude should consent to share +their asylum. On his protesting with all the warmth in nature against +this note of secession she asked what else in the world was left to them +if her ladyship should stop supplies. + +"Supplies be hanged, my dear woman!" said their delightful friend. +"Leave supplies to me--I'll take care of supplies." + +Mrs. Wix rose to it. "Well, it's exactly because I knew you'd be so glad +to do so that I put the question before you. There's a way to look after +us better than any other. The way's just to come along with us." + +It hung before Maisie, Mrs. Wix's way, like a glittering picture, and +she clasped her hands in ecstasy. "Come along, come along, come along!" + +Sir Claude looked from his stepdaughter back to her governess. "Do you +mean leave this house and take up my abode with you?" + +"It will be the right thing--if you feel as you've told me you feel." +Mrs. Wix, sustained and uplifted, was now as clear as a bell. + +Sir Claude had the air of trying to recall what he had told her; then +the light broke that was always breaking to make his face more pleasant. +"It's your happy thought that I shall take a house for you?" + +"For the wretched homeless child. Any roof--over OUR heads--will do for +us; but of course for you it will have to be something really nice." + +Sir Claude's eyes reverted to Maisie, rather hard, as she thought; and +there was a shade in his very smile that seemed to show her--though she +also felt it didn't show Mrs. Wix--that the accommodation prescribed +must loom to him pretty large. The next moment, however, he laughed +gaily enough. "My dear lady, you exaggerate tremendously MY poor little +needs." Mrs. Wix had once mentioned to her young friend that when Sir +Claude called her his dear lady he could do anything with her; and +Maisie felt a certain anxiety to see what he would do now. Well, he only +addressed her a remark of which the child herself was aware of feeling +the force. "Your plan appeals to me immensely; but of course--don't you +see--I shall have to consider the position I put myself in by leaving my +wife." + +"You'll also have to remember," Mrs. Wix replied, "that if you don't +look out your wife won't give you time to consider. Her ladyship will +leave YOU." + +"Ah my good friend, I do look out!" the young man returned while Maisie +helped herself afresh to bread and butter. "Of course if that happens I +shall have somehow to turn round; but I hope with all my heart it won't. +I beg your pardon," he continued to his stepdaughter, "for appearing to +discuss that sort of possibility under your sharp little nose. But the +fact is I FORGET half the time that Ida's your sainted mother." + +"So do I!" said Maisie, her mouth full of bread and butter and to put +him the more in the right. + +Her protectress, at this, was upon her again. "The little desolate +precious pet!" For the rest of the conversation she was enclosed in Mrs. +Wix's arms, and as they sat there interlocked Sir Claude, before them +with his tea-cup, looked down at them in deepening thought. Shrink +together as they might they couldn't help, Maisie felt, being a very +large lumpish image of what Mrs. Wix required of his slim fineness. +She knew moreover that this lady didn't make it better by adding in a +moment: "Of course we shouldn't dream of a whole house. Any sort of +little lodging, however humble, would be only too blest." + +"But it would have to be something that would hold us all," said Sir +Claude. + +"Oh yes," Mrs. Wix concurred; "the whole point's our being together. +While you're waiting, before you act, for her ladyship to take some +step, our position here will come to an impossible pass. You don't +know what I went through with her for you yesterday--and for our poor +darling; but it's not a thing I can promise you often to face again. She +cast me out in horrible language--she has instructed the servants not to +wait on me." + +"Oh the poor servants are all right!" Sir Claude eagerly cried. + +"They're certainly better than their mistress. It's too dreadful that I +should sit here and say of your wife, Sir Claude, and of Maisie's own +mother, that she's lower than a domestic; but my being betrayed into +such remarks is just a reason the more for our getting away. I shall +stay till I'm taken by the shoulders, but that may happen any day. What +also may perfectly happen, you must permit me to repeat, is that she'll +go off to get rid of us." + +"Oh if she'll only do that!" Sir Claude laughed. "That would be the very +making of us!" + +"Don't say it--don't say it!" Mrs. Wix pleaded. "Don't speak of anything +so fatal. You know what I mean. We must all cling to the right. You +mustn't be bad." + +Sir Claude set down his tea-cup; he had become more grave and he +pensively wiped his moustache. "Won't all the world say I'm awful if I +leave the house before--before she has bolted? They'll say it was my +doing so that made her bolt." + +Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no check +to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that--if you've done it for so high a +motive? Think of the beauty of it," the good lady pressed. + +"Of bolting with YOU?" Sir Claude ejaculated. + +She faintly smiled--she even faintly coloured. "So far from doing you +harm it will do you the highest good. Sir Claude, if you'll listen to +me, it will save you." + +"Save me from what?" + +Maisie, at this question, waited with renewed suspense for an answer +that would bring the thing to some finer point than their companion +had brought it to before. But there was on the contrary only more +mystification in Mrs. Wix's reply. "Ah from you know what!" + +"Do you mean from some other woman!" + +"Yes--from a real bad one." + +Sir Claude at least, the child could see, was not mystified; so little +indeed that a smile of intelligence broke afresh in his eyes. He turned +them in vague discomfort to Maisie, and then something in the way she +met them caused him to chuck her playfully under the chin. It was not +till after this that he good-naturedly met Mrs. Wix. "You think me much +worse than I am." + +"If that were true," she returned, "I wouldn't appeal to you. I do, Sir +Claude, in the name of all that's good in you--and oh so earnestly! We +can help each other. What you'll do for our young friend here I needn't +say. That isn't even what I want to speak of now. What I want to speak +of is what you'll GET--don't you see?--from such an opportunity to take +hold. Take hold of US--take hold of HER. Make her your duty--make her +your life: she'll repay you a thousand-fold!" + +It was to Mrs. Wix, during this appeal, that Maisie's contemplation +transferred itself: partly because, though her heart was in her throat +for trepidation, her delicacy deterred her from appearing herself to +press the question; partly from the coercion of seeing Mrs. Wix come out +as Mrs. Wix had never come before--not even on the day of her call at +Mrs. Beale's with the news of mamma's marriage. On that day Mrs. Beale +had surpassed her in dignity, but nobody could have surpassed her now. +There was in fact at this moment a fascination for her pupil in the hint +she seemed to give that she had still more of that surprise behind. So +the sharpened sense of spectatorship was the child's main support, the +long habit, from the first, of seeing herself in discussion and finding +in the fury of it--she had had a glimpse of the game of football--a sort +of compensation for the doom of a peculiar passivity. It gave her often +an odd air of being present at her history in as separate a manner as if +she could only get at experience by flattening her nose against a pane +of glass. Such she felt to be the application of her nose while she +waited for the effect of Mrs. Wix's eloquence. Sir Claude, however, +didn't keep her long in a position so ungraceful: he sat down and opened +his arms to her as he had done the day he came for her at her father's, +and while he held her there, looking at her kindly, but as if their +companion had brought the blood a good deal to his face, he said: + +"Dear Mrs. Wix is magnificent, but she's rather too grand about it. +I mean the situation isn't after all quite so desperate or quite so +simple. But I give you my word before her, and I give it to her before +you, that I'll never, never, forsake you. Do you hear that, old fellow, +and do you take it in? I'll stick to you through everything." + +Maisie did take it in--took it with a long tremor of all her little +being; and then as, to emphasise it, he drew her closer she buried her +head on his shoulder and cried without sound and without pain. While she +was so engaged she became aware that his own breast was agitated, and +gathered from it with rapture that his tears were as silently flowing. +Presently she heard a loud sob from Mrs. Wix--Mrs. Wix was the only one +who made a noise. + +She was to have made, for some time, none other but this, though +within a few days, in conversation with her pupil, she described her +intercourse with Ida as little better than the state of being battered. +There was as yet nevertheless no attempt to eject her by force, and she +recognised that Sir Claude, taking such a stand as never before, had +intervened with passion and with success. As Maisie remembered--and +remembered wholly without disdain--that he had told her he was afraid of +her ladyship, the little girl took this act of resolution as a proof of +what, in the spirit of the engagement sealed by all their tears, he was +really prepared to do. Mrs. Wix spoke to her of the pecuniary sacrifice +by which she herself purchased the scant security she enjoyed and which, +if it was a defence against the hand of violence, yet left her exposed +to incredible rudeness. Didn't her ladyship find every hour of the +day some artful means to humiliate and trample upon her? There was a +quarter's salary owing her--a great name, even Maisie could suspect, +for a small matter; she should never see it as long as she lived, but +keeping quiet about it put her ladyship, thank heaven, a little in one's +power. Now that he was doing so much else she could never have the +grossness to apply for it to Sir Claude. He had sent home for schoolroom +consumption a huge frosted cake, a wonderful delectable mountain with +geological strata of jam, which might, with economy, see them through +many days of their siege; but it was none the less known to Mrs. Wix +that his affairs were more and more involved, and her fellow partaker +looked back tenderly, in the light of these involutions, at the +expression of face with which he had greeted the proposal that he should +set up another establishment. Maisie felt that if their maintenance +should hang by a thread they must still demean themselves with the +highest delicacy. What he was doing was simply acting without delay, so +far as his embarrassments permitted, on the inspiration of his elder +friend. There was at this season a wonderful month of May--as soft as a +drop of the wind in a gale that had kept one awake--when he took out his +stepdaughter with a fresh alacrity and they rambled the great town in +search, as Mrs. Wix called it, of combined amusement and instruction. + +They rode on the top of 'buses; they visited outlying parks; they went +to cricket-matches where Maisie fell asleep; they tried a hundred places +for the best one to have tea. This was his direct way of rising to Mrs. +Wix's grand lesson--of making his little accepted charge his duty and +his life. They dropped, under incontrollable impulses, into shops that +they agreed were too big, to look at things that they agreed were too +small, and it was during these hours that Mrs. Wix, alone at home, but +a subject of regretful reference as they pulled off their gloves for +refreshment, subsequently described herself as least sheltered from the +blows her ladyship had achieved such ingenuity in dealing. She again +and again repeated that she wouldn't so much have minded having her +"attainments" held up to scorn and her knowledge of every subject +denied, hadn't she been branded as "low" in character and tone. There +was by this time no pretence on the part of any one of denying it to be +fortunate that her ladyship habitually left London every Saturday and +was more and more disposed to a return late in the week. It was almost +equally public that she regarded as a preposterous "pose," and indeed as +a direct insult to herself, her husband's attitude of staying behind to +look after a child for whom the most elaborate provision had been made. +If there was a type Ida despised, Sir Claude communicated to Maisie, it +was the man who pottered about town of a Sunday; and he also mentioned +how often she had declared to him that if he had a grain of spirit +he would be ashamed to accept a menial position about Mr. Farange's +daughter. It was her ladyship's contention that he was in craven fear +of his predecessor--otherwise he would recognise it as an obligation of +plain decency to protect his wife against the outrage of that person's +barefaced attempt to swindle her. The swindle was that Mr. Farange +put upon her the whole intolerable burden; "and even when I pay for +you myself," Sir Claude averred to his young friend, "she accuses me +the more of truckling and grovelling." It was Mrs. Wix's conviction, +they both knew, arrived at on independent grounds, that Ida's weekly +excursions were feelers for a more considerable absence. If she came +back later each week the week would be sure to arrive when she wouldn't +come back at all. This appearance had of course much to do with Mrs. +Wix's actual valour. Could they but hold out long enough the snug little +home with Sir Claude would find itself informally established. + + + + +XIII + + +This might moreover have been taken to be the sense of a remark made by +her stepfather as--one rainy day when the streets were all splash and +two umbrellas unsociable and the wanderers had sought shelter in the +National Gallery--Maisie sat beside him staring rather sightlessly at a +roomful of pictures which he had mystified her much by speaking of with +a bored sigh as a "silly superstition." They represented, with patches +of gold and cataracts of purple, with stiff saints and angular angels, +with ugly Madonnas and uglier babies, strange prayers and prostrations; +so that she at first took his words for a protest against devotional +idolatry--all the more that he had of late often come with her and +with Mrs. Wix to morning church, a place of worship of Mrs. Wix's own +choosing, where there was nothing of that sort; no haloes on heads, +but only, during long sermons, beguiling backs of bonnets, and where, +as her governess always afterwards observed, he gave the most earnest +attention. It presently appeared, however, that his reference was merely +to the affectation of admiring such ridiculous works--an admonition that +she received from him as submissively as she received everything. What +turn it gave to their talk needn't here be recorded: the transition to +the colourless schoolroom and lonely Mrs. Wix was doubtless an effect of +relaxed interest in what was before them. Maisie expressed in her own +way the truth that she never went home nowadays without expecting to +find the temple of her studies empty and the poor priestess cast out. +This conveyed a full appreciation of her peril, and it was in rejoinder +that Sir Claude uttered, acknowledging the source of that peril, the +reassurance at which I have glanced. "Don't be afraid, my dear: I've +squared her." It required indeed a supplement when he saw that it left +the child momentarily blank. "I mean that your mother lets me do what I +want so long as I let her do what SHE wants." + +"So you ARE doing what you want?" Maisie asked. + +"Rather, Miss Farange!" + +Miss Farange turned it over. "And she's doing the same?" + +"Up to the hilt!" + +Again she considered. "Then, please, what may it be?" + +"I wouldn't tell you for the whole world." + +She gazed at a gaunt Madonna; after which she broke into a slow smile. +"Well, I don't care, so long as you do let her." + +"Oh you monster!"--and Sir Claude's gay vehemence brought him to his +feet. + +Another day, in another place--a place in Baker Street where at a hungry +hour she had sat down with him to tea and buns--he brought out a question +disconnected from previous talk. "I say, you know, what do you suppose +your father WOULD do?" + +Maisie hadn't long to cast about or to question his pleasant eyes. "If +you were really to go with us? He'd make a great complaint." + +He seemed amused at the term she employed. "Oh I shouldn't mind a +'complaint'!" + +"He'd talk to every one about it," said Maisie. + +"Well, I shouldn't mind that either." + +"Of course not," the child hastened to respond. "You've told me you're +not afraid of him." + +"The question is are you?" said Sir Claude. + +Maisie candidly considered; then she spoke resolutely. "No, not of +papa." + +"But of somebody else?" + +"Certainly, of lots of people." + +"Of your mother first and foremost of course." + +"Dear, yes; more of mamma than of--than of--" + +"Than of what?" Sir Claude asked as she hesitated for a comparison. + +She thought over all objects of dread. "Than of a wild elephant!" she at +last declared. "And you are too," she reminded him as he laughed. + +"Oh yes, I am too." + +Again she meditated. "Why then did you marry her?" + +"Just because I WAS afraid." + +"Even when she loved you?" + +"That made her the more alarming." + +For Maisie herself, though her companion seemed to find it droll, this +opened up depths of gravity. "More alarming than she is now?" + +"Well, in a different way. Fear, unfortunately, is a very big thing, and +there's a great variety of kinds." + +She took this in with complete intelligence. "Then I think I've got them +all." + +"You?" her friend cried. "Nonsense! You're thoroughly 'game.'" + +"I'm awfully afraid of Mrs. Beale," Maisie objected. + +He raised his smooth brows. "That charming woman?" + +"Well," she answered, "you can't understand it because you're not in the +same state." + +She had been going on with a luminous "But" when, across the table, he +laid his hand on her arm. "I CAN understand it," he confessed. "I AM in +the same state." + +"Oh but she likes you so!" Maisie promptly pleaded. + +Sir Claude literally coloured. "That has something to do with it." + +Maisie wondered again. "Being liked with being afraid?" + +"Yes, when it amounts to adoration." + +"Then why aren't you afraid of ME?" + +"Because with you it amounts to that?" He had kept his hand on her arm. +"Well, what prevents is simply that you're the gentlest spirit on earth. +Besides--" he pursued; but he came to a pause. + +"Besides--?" + +"I SHOULD be in fear if you were older--there! See--you already make me +talk nonsense," the young man added. "The question's about your father. +Is he likewise afraid of Mrs. Beale?" + +"I think not. And yet he loves her," Maisie mused. + +"Oh no--he doesn't; not a bit!" After which, as his companion stared, +Sir Claude apparently felt that he must make this oddity fit with her +recollections. "There's nothing of that sort NOW." + +But Maisie only stared the more. "They've changed?" + +"Like your mother and me." + +She wondered how he knew. "Then you've seen Mrs. Beale again?" + +He demurred. "Oh no. She has written to me," he presently subjoined. +"SHE'S not afraid of your father either. No one at all is--really." +Then he went on while Maisie's little mind, with its filial spring +too relaxed from of old for a pang at this want of parental majesty, +speculated on the vague relation between Mrs. Beale's courage and the +question, for Mrs. Wix and herself, of a neat lodging with their friend. +"She wouldn't care a bit if Mr. Farange should make a row." + +"Do you mean about you and me and Mrs. Wix? Why should she care? It +wouldn't hurt HER." + +Sir Claude, with his legs out and his hand diving into his +trousers-pocket, threw back his head with a laugh just perceptibly +tempered, as she thought, by a sigh. "My dear stepchild, you're +delightful! Look here, we must pay. You've had five buns?" + +"How CAN you?" Maisie demanded, crimson under the eye of the young woman +who had stepped to their board. "I've had three." + +Shortly after this Mrs. Wix looked so ill that it was to be feared her +ladyship had treated her to some unexampled passage. Maisie asked if +anything worse than usual had occurred; whereupon the poor woman brought +out with infinite gloom: "He has been seeing Mrs. Beale." + +"Sir Claude?" The child remembered what he had said. "Oh no--not SEEING +her!" + +"I beg your pardon. I absolutely know it." Mrs. Wix was as positive as +she was dismal. + +Maisie nevertheless ventured to challenge her. "And how, please, do you +know it?" + +She faltered a moment. "From herself. I've been to see her." + +Then on Maisie's visible surprise: "I went yesterday while you were out +with him. He has seen her repeatedly." + +It was not wholly clear to Maisie why Mrs. Wix should be prostrate at +this discovery; but her general consciousness of the way things could be +both perpetrated and resented always eased off for her the strain of the +particular mystery. "There may be some mistake. He says he hasn't." + +Mrs. Wix turned paler, as if this were a still deeper ground for alarm. +"He says so?--he denies that he has seen her?" + +"He told me so three days ago. Perhaps she's mistaken," Maisie +suggested. + +"Do you mean perhaps she lies? She lies whenever it suits her, I'm very +sure. But I know when people lie--and that's what I've loved in you, +that YOU never do. Mrs. Beale didn't yesterday at any rate. He HAS seen +her." + +Maisie was silent a little. "He says not," she then repeated. +"Perhaps--perhaps--" Once more she paused. + +"Do you mean perhaps HE lies?" + +"Gracious goodness, no!" Maisie shouted. + +Mrs. Wix's bitterness, however, again overflowed. "He does, he does," +she cried, "and it's that that's just the worst of it! They'll take +you, they'll take you, and what in the world will then become of me?" +She threw herself afresh upon her pupil and wept over her with the +inevitable effect of causing the child's own tears to flow. But Maisie +couldn't have told you if she had been crying at the image of their +separation or at that of Sir Claude's untruth. As regards this deviation +it was agreed between them that they were not in a position to bring it +home to him. Mrs. Wix was in dread of doing anything to make him, as +she said, "worse"; and Maisie was sufficiently initiated to be able to +reflect that in speaking to her as he had done he had only wished to be +tender of Mrs. Beale. It fell in with all her inclinations to think of +him as tender, and she forbore to let him know that the two ladies had, +as SHE would never do, betrayed him. + +She had not long to keep her secret, for the next day, when she went +out with him, he suddenly said in reference to some errand he had first +proposed: "No, we won't do that--we'll do something else." On this, a +few steps from the door, he stopped a hansom and helped her in; then +following her he gave the driver over the top an address that she lost. +When he was seated beside her she asked him where they were going; to +which he replied "My dear child, you'll see." She saw while she watched +and wondered that they took the direction of the Regent's Park; but +she didn't know why he should make a mystery of that, and it was not +till they passed under a pretty arch and drew up at a white house +in a terrace from which the view, she thought, must be lovely that, +mystified, she clutched him and broke out: "I shall see papa?" + +He looked down at her with a kind smile. "No, probably not. I haven't +brought you for that." + +"Then whose house is it?" + +"It's your father's. They've moved here." + +She looked about: she had known Mr. Farange in four or five houses, and +there was nothing astonishing in this except that it was the nicest +place yet. "But I shall see Mrs. Beale?" + +"It's to see her that I brought you." + +She stared, very white, and, with her hand on his arm, though they had +stopped, kept him sitting in the cab. "To leave me, do you mean?" + +He could scarce bring it out. "It's not for me to say if you CAN stay. +We must look into it." + +"But if I do I shall see papa?" + +"Oh some time or other, no doubt." Then Sir Claude went on: "Have you +really so very great a dread of that?" + +Maisie glanced away over the apron of the cab--gazed a minute at the +green expanse of the Regent's Park and, at this moment colouring to the +roots of her hair, felt the full, hot rush of an emotion more mature +than any she had yet known. It consisted of an odd unexpected shame at +placing in an inferior light, to so perfect a gentleman and so charming +a person as Sir Claude, so very near a relative as Mr. Farange. She +remembered, however, her friend's telling her that no one was seriously +afraid of her father, and she turned round with a small toss of her +head. "Oh I dare say I can manage him!" + +Sir Claude smiled, but she noted that the violence with which she had +just changed colour had brought into his own face a slight compunctious +and embarrassed flush. It was as if he had caught his first glimpse of +her sense of responsibility. Neither of them made a movement to get out, +and after an instant he said to her: "Look here, if you say so we won't +after all go in." + +"Ah but I want to see Mrs. Beale!" the child gently wailed. + +"But what if she does decide to take you? Then, you know, you'll have to +remain." + +Maisie turned it over. "Straight on--and give you up?" + +"Well--I don't quite know about giving me up." + +"I mean as I gave up Mrs. Beale when I last went to mamma's. I couldn't +do without you here for anything like so long a time as that." It struck +her as a hundred years since she had seen Mrs. Beale, who was on the +other side of the door they were so near and whom she yet had not taken +the jump to clasp in her arms. + +"Oh I dare say you'll see more of me than you've seen of Mrs. Beale. +It isn't in ME to be so beautifully discreet," Sir Claude said. "But +all the same," he continued, "I leave the thing, now that we're here, +absolutely WITH you. You must settle it. We'll only go in if you say so. +If you don't say so we'll turn right round and drive away." + +"So in that case Mrs. Beale won't take me?" + +"Well--not by any act of ours." + +"And I shall be able to go on with mamma?" Maisie asked. + +"Oh I don't say that!" + +She considered. "But I thought you said you had squared her?" + +Sir Claude poked his stick at the splashboard of the cab. "Not, my dear +child, to the point she now requires." + +"Then if she turns me out and I don't come here--" + +Sir Claude promptly took her up. "What do I offer you, you naturally +enquire? My poor chick, that's just what I ask myself. I don't see it, +I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wix." + +His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wix saw. "You mean WE can't +make a little family?" + +"It's very base of me, no doubt, but I can't wholly chuck your mother." + +Maisie, at this, emitted a low but lengthened sigh, a slight sound of +reluctant assent which would certainly have been amusing to an auditor. +"Then there isn't anything else?" + +"I vow I don't quite see what there is." + +Maisie waited; her silence seemed to signify that she too had no +alternative to suggest. But she made another appeal. "If I come here +you'll come to see me?" + +"I won't lose sight of you." + +"But how often will you come?" As he hung fire she pressed him. "Often +and often?" + +Still he faltered. "My dear old woman--" he began. Then he paused again, +going on the next moment with a change of tone. "You're too funny! Yes +then," he said; "often and often." + +"All right!" Maisie jumped out. Mrs. Beale was at home, but not in the +drawing-room, and when the butler had gone for her the child suddenly +broke out: "But when I'm here what will Mrs. Wix do?" + +"Ah you should have thought of that sooner!" said her companion with the +first faint note of asperity she had ever heard him sound. + + + + +XIV + + +Mrs Beale fairly swooped upon her and the effect of the whole hour was +to show the child how much, how quite formidably indeed, after all, she +was loved. This was the more the case as her stepmother, so changed--in +the very manner of her mother--that she really struck her as a new +acquaintance, somehow recalled more familiarity than Maisie could feel. +A rich strong expressive affection in short pounced upon her in the +shape of a handsomer, ampler, older Mrs. Beale. It was like making a +fine friend, and they hadn't been a minute together before she felt +elated at the way she had met the choice imposed on her in the cab. +There was a whole future in the combination of Mrs. Beale's beauty and +Mrs. Beale's hug. She seemed to Maisie charming to behold, and also to +have no connexion at all with anybody who had once mended underclothing +and had meals in the nursery. The child knew one of her father's wives +was a woman of fashion, but she had always dimly made a distinction, not +applying that epithet without reserve to the other. Mrs. Beale had since +their separation acquired a conspicuous right to it, and Maisie's first +flush of response to her present delight coloured all her splendour with +meanings that this time were sweet. She had told Sir Claude she was +afraid of the lady in the Regent's Park; but she had confidence enough +to break on the spot, into the frankest appreciation. "Why, aren't you +beautiful? Isn't she beautiful, Sir Claude, ISN'T she?" + +"The handsomest woman in London, simply," Sir Claude gallantly replied. +"Just as sure as you're the best little girl!" + +Well, the handsomest woman in London gave herself up, with tender +lustrous looks and every demonstration of fondness, to a happiness at +last clutched again. There was almost as vivid a bloom in her maturity +as in mamma's, and it took her but a short time to give her little +friend an impression of positive power--an impression that seemed to +begin like a long bright day. This was a perception on Maisie's part +that neither mamma, nor Sir Claude, nor Mrs. Wix, with their immense and +so varied respective attractions, had exactly kindled, and that made an +immediate difference when the talk, as it promptly did, began to turn to +her father. Oh yes, Mr. Farange was a complication, but she saw now that +he wouldn't be one for his daughter. For Mrs. Beale certainly he was an +immense one--she speedily made known as much; but Mrs. Beale from this +moment presented herself to Maisie as a person to whom a great gift had +come. The great gift was just for handling complications. Maisie felt +how little she made of them when, after she had dropped to Sir Claude +some recall of a previous meeting, he made answer, with a sound of +consternation and yet an air of relief, that he had denied to their +companion their having, since the day he came for her, seen each other +till that moment. + +Mrs. Beale could but vaguely pity it. "Why did you do anything so +silly?" + +"To protect your reputation." + +"From Maisie?" Mrs. Beale was much amused. "My reputation with Maisie is +too good to suffer." + +"But you believed me, you rascal, didn't you?" Sir Claude asked of the +child. + +She looked at him; she smiled. "Her reputation did suffer. I discovered +you had been here." + +He was not too chagrined to laugh. "The way, my dear, you talk of that +sort of thing!" + +"How should she talk," Mrs. Beale wanted to know, "after all this +wretched time with her mother?" + +"It was not mamma who told me," Maisie explained. "It was only Mrs. +Wix." She was hesitating whether to bring out before Sir Claude the +source of Mrs. Wix's information; but Mrs. Beale, addressing the young +man, showed the vanity of scruples. + +"Do you know that preposterous person came to see me a day or two +ago?--when I told her I had seen you repeatedly." + +Sir Claude, for once in a way, was disconcerted. "The old cat! She never +told me. Then you thought I had lied?" he demanded of Maisie. + +She was flurried by the term with which he had qualified her gentle +friend, but she took the occasion for one to which she must in every +manner lend herself. "Oh I didn't mind! But Mrs. Wix did," she added +with an intention benevolent to her governess. + +Her intention was not very effective as regards Mrs. Beale. "Mrs. Wix is +too idiotic!" that lady declared. + +"But to you, of all people," Sir Claude asked, "what had she to say?" + +"Why that, like Mrs. Micawber--whom she must, I think, rather +resemble--she will never, never, never desert Miss Farange." + +"Oh I'll make that all right!" Sir Claude cheerfully returned. + +"I'm sure I hope so, my dear man," said Mrs. Beale, while Maisie +wondered just how he would proceed. Before she had time to ask Mrs. +Beale continued: "That's not all she came to do, if you please. But +you'll never guess the rest." + +"Shall _I_ guess it?" Maisie quavered. + +Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why you're just the person! It must be +quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mother's. Have you +never seen women there crying to her to 'spare' the men they love?" + +Maisie, wondering, tried to remember; but Sir Claude was freshly +diverted. "Oh they don't trouble about Ida! Mrs. Wix cried to you to +spare ME?" + +"She regularly went down on her knees to me." + +"The darling old dear!" the young man exclaimed. + +These words were a joy to Maisie--they made up for his previous +description of Mrs. Wix. "And WILL you spare him?" she asked of Mrs. +Beale. + +Her stepmother, seizing her and kissing her again, seemed charmed with +the tone of her question. "Not an inch of him! I'll pick him to the +bone!" + +"You mean that he'll really come often?" Maisie pressed. + +Mrs. Beale turned lovely eyes to Sir Claude. "That's not for me to +say--its for him." + +He said nothing at once, however; with his hands in his pockets +and vaguely humming a tune--even Maisie could see he was a little +nervous--he only walked to the window and looked out at the Regent's +Park. "Well, he has promised," Maisie said. "But how will papa like it?" + +"His being in and out? Ah that's a question that, to be frank with you, +my dear, hardly matters. In point of fact, however, Beale greatly enjoys +the idea that Sir Claude too, poor man, has been forced to quarrel with +your mother." + +Sir Claude turned round and spoke gravely and kindly. "Don't be afraid, +Maisie; you won't lose sight of me." + +"Thank you so much!" Maisie was radiant. "But what I meant--don't you +know?--was what papa would say to ME." + +"Oh I've been having that out with him," said Mrs. Beale. "He'll behave +well enough. You see the great difficulty is that, though he changes +every three days about everything else in the world, he has never +changed about your mother. It's a caution, the way he hates her." + +Sir Claude gave a short laugh. "It certainly can't beat the way she +still hates HIM!" + +"Well," Mrs. Beale went on obligingly, "nothing can take the place of +that feeling with either of them, and the best way they can think of to +show it is for each to leave you as long as possible on the hands of the +other. There's nothing, as you've seen for yourself, that makes either +so furious. It isn't, asking so little as you do, that you're much of +an expense or a trouble; it's only that you make each feel so well how +nasty the other wants to be. Therefore Beale goes on loathing your +mother too much to have any great fury left for any one else. Besides, +you know, I've squared him." + +"Oh Lord!" Sir Claude cried with a louder laugh and turning again to the +window. + +"_I_ know how!" Maisie was prompt to proclaim. "By letting him do what +he wants on condition that he lets you also do it." + +"You're too delicious, my own pet!"--she was involved in another hug. +"How in the world have I got on so long without you? I've not been +happy, love," said Mrs. Beale with her cheek to the child's. + +"Be happy now!"--she throbbed with shy tenderness. + +"I think I shall be. You'll save me." + +"As I'm saving Sir Claude?" the little girl asked eagerly. + +Mrs. Beale, a trifle at a loss, appealed to her visitor, "Is she +really?" + +He showed high amusement at Maisie's question. "It's dear Mrs. Wix's +idea. There may be something in it." + +"He makes me his duty--he makes me his life," Maisie set forth to her +stepmother. + +"Why that's what _I_ want to do!"--Mrs. Beale, so anticipated, turned +pink with astonishment. + +"Well, you can do it together. Then he'll HAVE to come!" + +Mrs. Beale by this time had her young friend fairly in her lap and she +smiled up at Sir Claude. "Shall we do it together?" + +His laughter had dropped, and for a moment he turned his handsome +serious face not to his hostess, but to his stepdaughter. "Well, it's +rather more decent than some things. Upon my soul, the way things are +going, it seems to me the only decency!" He had the air of arguing it +out to Maisie, of presenting it, through an impulse of conscience, as a +connexion in which they could honourably see her participate; though his +plea of mere "decency" might well have appeared to fall below her rosy +little vision. "If we're not good for YOU" he exclaimed, "I'll be hanged +if I know who we shall be good for!" + +Mrs. Beale showed the child an intenser light. "I dare say you WILL save +us--from one thing and another." + +"Oh I know what she'll save ME from!" Sir Claude roundly asserted. +"There'll be rows of course," he went on. + +Mrs. Beale quickly took him up. "Yes, but they'll be nothing--for you +at least--to the rows your wife makes as it is. I can bear what _I_ +suffer--I can't bear what you go through." + +"We're doing a good deal for you, you know, young woman," Sir Claude +went on to Maisie with the same gravity. + +She coloured with a sense of obligation and the eagerness of her desire +it should be remarked how little was lost on her. "Oh I know!" + +"Then you must keep us all right!" This time he laughed. + +"How you talk to her!" cried Mrs. Beale. + +"No worse than you!" he gaily answered. + +"Handsome is that handsome does!" she returned in the same spirit. "You +can take off your things," she went on, releasing Maisie. + +The child, on her feet, was all emotion. "Then I'm just to stop--this +way?" + +"It will do as well as any other. Sir Claude, to-morrow, will have your +things brought." + +"I'll bring them myself. Upon my word I'll see them packed!" Sir Claude +promised. "Come here and unbutton." + +He had beckoned his young companion to where he sat, and he helped +to disengage her from her coverings while Mrs. Beale, from a little +distance, smiled at the hand he displayed. "There's a stepfather for +you! I'm bound to say, you know, that he makes up for the want of other +people." + +"He makes up for the want of a nurse!" Sir Claude laughed. "Don't you +remember I told you so the very first time?" + +"Remember? It was exactly what made me think so well of you!" + +"Nothing would induce me," the young man said to Maisie, "to tell you +what made me think so well of HER." Having divested the child he kissed +her gently and gave her a little pat to make her stand off. The pat was +accompanied with a vague sigh in which his gravity of a moment before +came back. "All the same, if you hadn't had the fatal gift of beauty--" + +"Well, what?" Maisie asked, wondering why he paused. It was the first +time she had heard of her beauty. + +"Why, we shouldn't all be thinking so well of each other!" + +"He isn't speaking of personal loveliness--you've not THAT vulgar +beauty, my dear, at all," Mrs. Beale explained. "He's just talking of +plain dull charm of character." + +"Her character's the most extraordinary thing in all the world," Sir +Claude stated to Mrs. Beale. + +"Oh I know all about that sort of thing!"--she fairly bridled with the +knowledge. + +It gave Maisie somehow a sudden sense of responsibility from which she +sought refuge. "Well, you've got it too, 'that sort of thing'--you've +got the fatal gift: you both really have!" she broke out. + +"Beauty of character? My dear boy, we haven't a pennyworth!" Sir Claude +protested. + +"Speak for yourself, sir!" she leaped lightly from Mrs. Beale. "I'm good +and I'm clever. What more do you want? For you, I'll spare your blushes +and not be personal--I'll simply say that you're as handsome as you can +stick together." + +"You're both very lovely; you can't get out of it!"--Maisie felt the +need of carrying her point. "And it's beautiful to see you side by +side." + +Sir Claude had taken his hat and stick; he stood looking at her a +moment. "You're a comfort in trouble! But I must go home and pack you." + +"And when will you come back?--to-morrow, to-morrow?" + +"You see what we're in for!" he said to Mrs. Beale. + +"Well, I can bear it if you can." + +Their companion gazed from one of them to the other, thinking that +though she had been happy indeed between Sir Claude and Mrs. Wix she +should evidently be happier still between Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale. But +it was like being perched on a prancing horse, and she made a movement +to hold on to something. "Then, you know, shan't I bid goodbye to Mrs. +Wix?" + +"Oh I'll make it all right with her," said Sir Claude. + +Maisie considered. "And with mamma?" + +"Ah mamma!" he sadly laughed. + +Even for the child this was scarcely ambiguous; but Mrs. Beale +endeavoured to contribute to its clearness. "Your mother will crow, +she'll crow--" + +"Like the early bird!" said Sir Claude as she looked about for a +comparison. + +"She'll need no consolation," Mrs. Beale went on, "for having made your +father grandly blaspheme." + +Maisie stared. "Will he grandly blaspheme?" It was impressive, it might +have been out of the Bible, and her question produced a fresh play of +caresses, in which Sir Claude also engaged. She wondered meanwhile who, +if Mrs. Wix was disposed of, would represent in her life the element of +geography and anecdote; and she presently surmounted the delicacy she +felt about asking. "Won't there be any one to give me lessons?" + +Mrs. Beale was prepared with a reply that struck her as absolutely +magnificent. "You shall have such lessons as you've never had in all +your life. You shall go to courses." + +"Courses?" Maisie had never heard of such things. + +"At institutions--on subjects." + +Maisie continued to stare. "Subjects?" + +Mrs. Beale was really splendid. "All the most important ones. French +literature--and sacred history. You'll take part in classes--with +awfully smart children." + +"I'm going to look thoroughly into the whole thing, you know." And Sir +Claude, with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of assurance +accompanied by a friendly wink. + +But Mrs. Beale went much further. "My dear child, you shall attend +lectures." + +The horizon was suddenly vast and Maisie felt herself the smaller for +it. "All alone?" + +"Oh no; I'll attend them with you," said Sir Claude. "They'll teach me +a lot I don't know." + +"So they will me," Mrs. Beale gravely admitted. "We'll go with her +together--it will be charming. It's ages," she confessed to Maisie, +"since I've had any time for study. That's another sweet way in which +you'll be a motive to us. Oh won't the good she'll do us be immense?" +she broke out uncontrollably to Sir Claude. + +He weighed it; then he replied: "That's certainly our idea." + +Of this idea Maisie naturally had less of a grasp, but it inspired her +with almost equal enthusiasm. If in so bright a prospect there would be +nothing to long for it followed that she wouldn't long for Mrs. Wix; +but her consciousness of her assent to the absence of that fond figure +caused a pair of words that had often sounded in her ears to ring in +them again. It showed her in short what her father had always meant by +calling her mother a "low sneak" and her mother by calling her father +one. She wondered if she herself shouldn't be a low sneak in learning to +be so happy without Mrs. Wix. What would Mrs. Wix do?--where would Mrs. +Wix go? Before Maisie knew it, and at the door, as Sir Claude was off, +these anxieties, on her lips, grew articulate and her stepfather had +stopped long enough to answer them. "Oh I'll square her!" he cried; and +with this he departed. + +Face to face with Mrs. Beale, Maisie, giving a sigh of relief, looked +round at what seemed to her the dawn of a higher order. "Then EVERY +ONE will be squared!" she peacefully said. On which her stepmother +affectionately bent over her again. + + + + +XV + + +It was Susan Ash who came to her with the news: "He's downstairs, miss, +and he do look beautiful." + +In the schoolroom at her father's, which had pretty blue curtains, she +had been making out at the piano a lovely little thing, as Mrs. Beale +called it, a "Moonlight Berceuse" sent her through the post by Sir +Claude, who considered that her musical education had been deplorably +neglected and who, the last months at her mother's, had been on the +point of making arrangements for regular lessons. She knew from him +familiarly that the real thing, as he said, was shockingly dear and that +anything else was a waste of money, and she therefore rejoiced the more +at the sacrifice represented by this composition, of which the price, +five shillings, was marked on the cover and which was evidently the real +thing. She was already on her feet. "Mrs. Beale has sent up for me?" + +"Oh no--it's not that," said Susan Ash. "Mrs. Beale has been out this +hour." + +"Then papa!" + +"Dear no--not papa. You'll do, miss, all but them wandering 'airs," +Susan went on. "Your papa never came 'ome at all," she added. + +"Home from where?" Maisie responded a little absently and very +excitedly. She gave a wild manual brush to her locks. + +"Oh that, miss, I should be very sorry to tell you! I'd rather tuck away +that white thing behind--though I'm blest if it's my work." + +"Do then, please. I know where papa was," Maisie impatiently continued. + +"Well, in your place I wouldn't tell." + +"He was at the club--the Chrysanthemum. So!" + +"All night long? Why the flowers shut up at night, you know!" cried +Susan Ash. + +"Well, I don't care"--he child was at the door. "Sir Claude asked for me +ALONE?" + +"The same as if you was a duchess." + +Maisie was aware on her way downstairs that she was now quite as happy +as one, and also, a moment later, as she hung round his neck, that +even such a personage would scarce commit herself more grandly. There +was moreover a hint of the duchess in the infinite point with which, +as she felt, she exclaimed: "And this is what you call coming OFTEN?" + +Sir Claude met her delightfully and in the same fine spirit. "My dear +old man, don't make me a scene--I assure you it's what every woman I +look at does. Let us have some fun--it's a lovely day: clap on something +smart and come out with me; then we'll talk it over quietly." + +They were on their way five minutes later to Hyde Park, and nothing that +even in the good days at her mother's they had ever talked over had more +of the sweetness of tranquillity than his present prompt explanations. +He was at his best in such an office and with the exception of Mrs. Wix +the only person she had met in her life who ever explained. With him, +however, the act had an authority transcending the wisdom of woman. It +all came back--the plans that always failed, all the rewards and bribes +that she was perpetually paying for in advance and perpetually out of +pocket by afterwards--the whole great stress to be dealt with introduced +her on each occasion afresh to the question of money. Even she herself +almost knew how it would have expressed the strength of his empire to +say that to shuffle away her sense of being duped he had only, from +under his lovely moustache, to breathe upon it. It was somehow in the +nature of plans to be expensive and in the nature of the expensive to be +impossible. To be "involved" was of the essence of everybody's affairs, +and also at every particular moment to be more involved than usual. +This had been the case with Sir Claude's, with papa's, with mamma's, +with Mrs. Beale's and with Maisie's own at the particular moment, a +moment of several weeks, that had elapsed since our young lady had been +re-established at her father's. There wasn't "two-and-tuppence" for +anything or for any one, and that was why there had been no sequel to +the classes in French literature with all the smart little girls. It +was devilish awkward, didn't she see? to try, without even the limited +capital mentioned, to mix her up with a remote array that glittered +before her after this as the children of the rich. She was to feel +henceforth as if she were flattening her nose upon the hard window-pane +of the sweet-shop of knowledge. If the classes, however, that were +select, and accordingly the only ones, were impossibly dear, the +lectures at the institutions--at least at some of them--were directly +addressed to the intelligent poor, and it therefore had to be easier +still to produce on the spot the reason why she had been taken to none. +This reason, Sir Claude said, was that she happened to be just going to +be, though they had nothing to do with that in now directing their steps +to the banks of the Serpentine. Maisie's own park, in the north, had +been nearer at hand, but they rolled westward in a hansom because at the +end of the sweet June days this was the direction taken by every one +that any one looked at. They cultivated for an hour, on the Row and +by the Drive, this opportunity for each observer to amuse and for one +of them indeed, not a little hilariously, to mystify the other, and +before the hour was over Maisie had elicited, in reply to her sharpest +challenge, a further account of her friend's long absence. + +"Why I've broken my word to you so dreadfully--promising so solemnly and +then never coming? Well, my dear, that's a question that, not seeing me +day after day, you must very often have put to Mrs. Beale." + +"Oh yes," the child replied; "again and again." + +"And what has she told you?" + +"That you're as bad as you're beautiful." + +"Is that what she says?" + +"Those very words." + +"Ah the dear old soul!" Sir Claude was much diverted, and his loud, +clear laugh was all his explanation. Those were just the words Maisie +had last heard him use about Mrs. Wix. She clung to his hand, which was +encased in a pearl-grey glove ornamented with the thick black lines +that, at her mother's, always used to strike her as connected with the +way the bestitched fists of the long ladies carried, with the elbows +well out, their umbrellas upside down. The mere sense of his grasp in +her own covered the ground of loss just as much as the ground of gain. +His presence was like an object brought so close to her face that she +couldn't see round its edges. He himself, however, remained showman of +the spectacle even after they had passed out of the Park and begun, +under the charm of the spot and the season, to stroll in Kensington +Gardens. What they had left behind them was, as he said, only a pretty +bad circus, and, through prepossessing gates and over a bridge, they +had come in a quarter of an hour, as he also remarked, a hundred miles +from London. A great green glade was before them, and high old trees, +and under the shade of these, in the fresh turf, the crooked course +of a rural footpath. "It's the Forest of Arden," Sir Claude had just +delightfully observed, "and I'm the banished duke, and you're--what was +the young woman called?--the artless country wench. And there," he went +on, "is the other girl--what's her name, Rosalind?--and (don't you +know?) the fellow who was making up to her. Upon my word he IS making +up to her!" + +His allusion was to a couple who, side by side, at the end of the glade, +were moving in the same direction as themselves. These distant figures, +in their slow stroll (which kept them so close together that their +heads, drooping a little forward, almost touched), presented the back of +a lady who looked tall, who was evidently a very fine woman, and that +of a gentleman whose left hand appeared to be passed well into her arm +while his right, behind him, made jerky motions with the stick that it +grasped. Maisie's fancy responded for an instant to her friend's idea +that the sight was idyllic; then, stopping short, she brought out with +all her clearness: "Why mercy--if it isn't mamma!" + +Sir Claude paused with a stare. "Mamma? But mamma's at Brussels." + +Maisie, with her eyes on the lady, wondered. "At Brussels?" + +"She's gone to play a match." + +"At billiards? You didn't tell me." + +"Of course I didn't!" Sir Claude ejaculated. "There's plenty I don't +tell you. She went on Wednesday." + +The couple had added to their distance, but Maisie's eyes more than kept +pace with them. "Then she has come back." + +Sir Claude watched the lady. "It's much more likely she never went!" + +"It's mamma!" the child said with decision. + +They had stood still, but Sir Claude had made the most of his +opportunity, and it happened that just at this moment, at the end of the +vista, the others halted and, still showing only their backs, seemed to +stay talking. "Right you are, my duck!" he exclaimed at last. "It's my +own sweet wife!" + +He had spoken with a laugh, but he had changed colour, and Maisie +quickly looked away from him. "Then who is it with her?" + +"Blest if I know!" said Sir Claude. + +"Is it Mr. Perriam?" + +"Oh dear no--Perriam's smashed." + +"Smashed?" + +"Exposed--in the City. But there are quantities of others!" Sir Claude +smiled. + +Maisie appeared to count them; she studied the gentleman's back. "Then +is this Lord Eric?" + +For a moment her companion made no answer, and when she turned her eyes +again to him he was looking at her, she thought, rather queerly. "What +do you know about Lord Eric?" + +She tried innocently to be odd in return. "Oh I know more than you +think! Is it Lord Eric?" she repeated. + +"It maybe. Blest if I care!" + +Their friends had slightly separated and now, as Sir Claude spoke, +suddenly faced round, showing all the splendour of her ladyship and all +the mystery of her comrade. Maisie held her breath. "They're coming!" + +"Let them come." And Sir Claude, pulling out his cigarettes, began to +strike a light. + +"We shall meet them!" + +"No. They'll meet US." + +Maisie stood her ground. "They see us. Just look." + +Sir Claude threw away his match. "Come straight on." The others, in the +return, evidently startled, had half-paused again, keeping well apart. +"She's horribly surprised and wants to slope," he continued. "But it's +too late." + +Maisie advanced beside him, making out even across the interval that her +ladyship was ill at ease. "Then what will she do?" + +Sir Claude puffed his cigarette. "She's quickly thinking." He appeared +to enjoy it. + +Ida had wavered but an instant; her companion clearly gave her moral +support. Maisie thought he somehow looked brave, and he had no likeness +whatever to Mr. Perriam. His face, thin and rather sharp, was smooth, +and it was not till they came nearer that she saw he had a remarkably +fair little moustache. She could already see that his eyes were of the +lightest blue. He was far nicer than Mr. Perriam. Mamma looked terrible +from afar, but even under her guns the child's curiosity flickered and +she appealed again to Sir Claude. "Is it--IS it Lord Eric?" + +Sir Claude smoked composedly enough. "I think it's the Count." + +This was a happy solution--it fitted her idea of a count. But what idea, +as she now came grandly on, did mamma fit?--unless that of an actress, +in some tremendous situation, sweeping down to the footlights as if she +would jump them. Maisie felt really so frightened that before she knew +it she had passed her hand into Sir Claude's arm. Her pressure caused +him to stop, and at the sight of this the other couple came equally to +a stand and, beyond the diminished space, remained a moment more in +talk. This, however, was the matter of an instant; leaving the Count +apparently to come round more circuitously--an outflanking movement, if +Maisie had but known--her ladyship resumed the onset. "What WILL she do +now?" her daughter asked. + +Sir Claude was at present in a position to say: "Try to pretend it's +me." + +"You?" + +"Why that I'm up to something." + +In another minute poor Ida had justified this prediction, erect there +before them like a figure of justice in full dress. There were parts of +her face that grew whiter while Maisie looked, and other parts in which +this change seemed to make other colours reign with more intensity. +"What are you doing with my daughter?" she demanded of her husband; in +spite of the indignant tone of which Maisie had a greater sense than +ever in her life before of not being personally noticed. It seemed to +her Sir Claude also grew pale as an effect of the loud defiance with +which Ida twice repeated this question. He put her, instead of answering +it, an enquiry of his own: "Who the devil have you got hold of NOW?" +and at this her ladyship turned tremendously to the child, glaring at +her as at an equal plotter of sin. Maisie received in petrifaction the +full force of her mother's huge painted eyes--they were like Japanese +lanterns swung under festal arches. But life came back to her from a +tone suddenly and strangely softened. "Go straight to that gentleman, my +dear; I've asked him to take you a few minutes. He's charming--go. I've +something to say to THIS creature." + +Maisie felt Sir Claude immediately clutch her. "No, no--thank you: that +won't do. She's mine." + +"Yours?" It was confounding to Maisie to hear her speak quite as if she +had never heard of Sir Claude before. + +"Mine. You've given her up. You've not another word to say about her. I +have her from her father," said Sir Claude--a statement that startled +his companion, who could also measure its lively action on her mother. + +There was visibly, however, an influence that made Ida consider; she +glanced at the gentleman she had left, who, having strolled with his +hands in his pockets to some distance, stood there with unembarrassed +vagueness. She directed to him the face that was like an illuminated +garden, turnstile and all, for the frequentation of which he had his +season-ticket; then she looked again at Sir Claude. "I've given her +up to her father to KEEP--not to get rid of by sending about the town +either with you or with any one else. If she's not to mind me let HIM +come and tell me so. I decline to take it from another person, and I +like your pretending that with your humbug of 'interest' you've a leg to +stand on. I know your game and have something now to say to you about +it." + +Sir Claude gave a squeeze of the child's arm. "Didn't I tell you she'd +have, Miss Farange?" + +"You're uncommonly afraid to hear it," Ida went on; "but if you think +she'll protect you from it you're mightily mistaken." She gave him a +moment. "I'll give her the benefit as soon as look at you. Should you +like her to know, my dear?" Maisie had a sense of her launching the +question with effect; yet our young lady was also conscious of hoping +that Sir Claude would declare that preference. We have already learned +that she had come to like people's liking her to "know." Before he +could reply at all, none the less, her mother opened a pair of arms of +extraordinary elegance, and then she felt the loosening of his grasp. +"My own child," Ida murmured in a voice--a voice of sudden confused +tenderness--that it seemed to her she heard for the first time. She +wavered but an instant, thrilled with the first direct appeal, as +distinguished from the mere maternal pull, she had ever had from lips +that, even in the old vociferous years, had always been sharp. The next +moment she was on her mother's breast, where, amid a wilderness of +trinkets, she felt as if she had suddenly been thrust, with a smash of +glass, into a jeweller's shop-front, but only to be as suddenly ejected +with a push and the brisk injunction: "Now go to the Captain!" + +Maisie glanced at the gentleman submissively, but felt the want of more +introduction. "The Captain?" + +Sir Claude broke into a laugh. "I told her it was the Count." + +Ida stared; she rose so superior that she was colossal. "You're too +utterly loathsome," she then declared. "Be off!" she repeated to her +daughter. + +Maisie started, moved backward and, looking at Sir Claude, "Only for a +moment," she signed to him in her bewilderment. But he was too angry +to heed her--too angry with his wife; as she turned away she heard his +anger break out. "You damned old b----"--she couldn't quite hear all. +It was enough, it was too much: she fled before it, rushing even to a +stranger for the shock of such a change of tone. + + + + +XVI + + +As she met the Captain's light blue eyes the greatest marvel occurred; +she felt a sudden relief at finding them reply with anxiety to the +horror in her face. "What in the world has he done?" He put it all on +Sir Claude. + +"He has called her a damned old brute." She couldn't help bringing that +out. + +The Captain, at the same elevation as her ladyship, gaped wide; then of +course, like every one else, he was convulsed. But he instantly caught +himself up, echoing her bad words. "A damned old brute--your mother?" + +Maisie was already conscious of her second movement. "I think she tried +to make him angry." + +The Captain's stupefaction was fine. "Angry--SHE? Why she's an angel!" + +On the spot, as he said this, his face won her over; it was so bright +and kind, and his blue eyes had such a reflexion of some mysterious +grace that, for him at least, her mother had put forth. Her fund of +observation enabled her as she gazed up at him to place him: he was a +candid simple soldier; very grave--she came back to that--but not at +all terrible. At any rate he struck a note that was new to her and that +after a moment made her say: "Do you like her very much?" + +He smiled down at her, hesitating, looking pleasanter and pleasanter. +"Let me tell you about your mother." + +He put out a big military hand which she immediately took, and they +turned off together to where a couple of chairs had been placed under +one of the trees. "She told me to come to you," Maisie explained as they +went; and presently she was close to him in a chair, with the prettiest +of pictures--the sheen of the lake through other trees--before them, and +the sound of birds, the plash of boats, the play of children in the air. +The Captain, inclining his military person, sat sideways to be closer +and kinder, and as her hand was on the arm of her seat he put his own +down on it again to emphasise something he had to say that would be good +for her to hear. He had already told her how her mother, from the moment +of seeing her so unexpectedly with a person who was--well, not at all +the right person, had promptly asked him to take charge of her while she +herself tackled, as she said, the real culprit. He gave the child the +sense of doing for the time what he liked with her; ten minutes before +she had never seen him, but she could now sit there touching him, +touched and impressed by him and thinking it nice when a gentleman +was thin and brown--brown with a kind of clear depth that made his +straw-coloured moustache almost white and his eyes resemble little pale +flowers. The most extraordinary thing was the way she didn't appear just +then to mind Sir Claude's being tackled. The Captain wasn't a bit like +him, for it was an odd part of the pleasantness of mamma's friend that +it resided in a manner in this friend's having a face so informally put +together that the only kindness could be to call it funny. An odder part +still was that it finally made our young lady, to classify him further, +say to herself that, of all people in the world, he reminded her most +insidiously of Mrs. Wix. He had neither straighteners nor a diadem, nor, +at least in the same place as the other, a button; he was sun-burnt and +deep-voiced and smelt of cigars, yet he marvellously had more in common +with her old governess than with her young stepfather. What he had +to say to her that was good for her to hear was that her poor mother +(didn't she know?) was the best friend he had ever had in all his life. +And he added: "She has told me ever so much about you. I'm awfully glad +to know you." + +She had never, she thought, been so addressed as a young lady, not even +by Sir Claude the day, so long ago, that she found him with Mrs. Beale. +It struck her as the way that at balls, by delightful partners, young +ladies must be spoken to in the intervals of dances; and she tried to +think of something that would meet it at the same high point. But this +effort flurried her, and all she could produce was: "At first, you know, +I thought you were Lord Eric." + +The Captain looked vague. "Lord Eric?" + +"And then Sir Claude thought you were the Count." + +At this he laughed out. "Why he's only five foot high and as red as +a lobster!" Maisie laughed, with a certain elegance, in return--the +young lady at the ball certainly would--and was on the point, as +conscientiously, of pursuing the subject with an agreeable question. But +before she could speak her companion challenged her. "Who in the world's +Lord Eric?" + +"Don't you know him?" She judged her young lady would say that with +light surprise. + +"Do you mean a fat man with his mouth always open?" She had to +confess that their acquaintance was so limited that she could only +describe the bearer of the name as a friend of mamma's; but a light +suddenly came to the Captain, who quickly spoke as knowing her man. +"What-do-you-call-him's brother, the fellow that owned Bobolink?" Then, +with all his kindness, he contradicted her flat. "Oh dear no; your +mother never knew HIM." + +"But Mrs. Wix said so," the child risked. + +"Mrs. Wix?" + +"My old governess." + +This again seemed amusing to the Captain. "She mixed him up, your old +governess. He's an awful beast. Your mother never looked at him." + +He was as positive as he was friendly, but he dropped for a minute after +this into a silence that gave Maisie, confused but ingenious, a chance +to redeem the mistake of pretending to know too much by the humility of +inviting further correction. "And doesn't she know the Count?" + +"Oh I dare say! But he's another ass." After which abruptly, with a +different look, he put down again on the back of her own the hand he had +momentarily removed. Maisie even thought he coloured a little. "I want +tremendously to speak to you. You must never believe any harm of your +mother." + +"Oh I assure you I DON'T!" cried the child, blushing, herself, up to her +eyes in a sudden surge of deprecation of such a thought. + +The Captain, bending his head, raised her hand to his lips with a +benevolence that made her wish her glove had been nicer. "Of course you +don't when you know how fond she is of YOU." + +"She's fond of me?" Maisie panted. + +"Tremendously. But she thinks you don't like her. You MUST like her. She +has had too much to put up with." + +"Oh yes--I know!" She rejoiced that she had never denied it. + +"Of course I've no right to speak of her except as a particular friend," +the Captain went on. "But she's a splendid woman. She has never had any +sort of justice." + +"Hasn't she?"--his companion, to hear the words, felt a thrill +altogether new. + +"Perhaps I oughtn't to say it to you, but she has had everything to +suffer." + +"Oh yes--you can SAY it to me!" Maisie hastened to profess. + +The Captain was glad. "Well, you needn't tell. It's all for YOU--do you +see?" + +Serious and smiling she only wanted to take it from him. "It's between +you and me! Oh there are lots of things I've never told!" + +"Well, keep this with the rest. I assure you she has had the most +infernal time, no matter what any one says to the contrary. She's the +cleverest woman I ever saw in all my life. She's too charming." She had +been touched already by his tone, and now she leaned back in her chair +and felt something tremble within her. "She's tremendous fun--she can +do all sorts of things better than I've ever seen any one. She has the +pluck of fifty--and I know; I assure you I do. She has the nerve for a +tiger-shoot--by Jove I'd TAKE her! And she is awfully open and generous, +don't you know? there are women that are such horrid sneaks. She'll +go through anything for any one she likes." He appeared to watch for +a moment the effect on his companion of this emphasis; then he gave a +small sigh that mourned the limits of the speakable. But it was almost +with the note of a fresh challenge that he wound up: "Look here, she's +TRUE!" + +Maisie had so little desire to assert the contrary that she found +herself, in the intensity of her response, throbbing with a joy still +less utterable than the essence of the Captain's admiration. She was +fairly hushed with the sense that he spoke of her mother as she had +never heard any one speak. It came over her as she sat silent that, +after all, this admiration and this respect were quite new words, which +took a distinction from the fact that nothing in the least resembling +them in quality had on any occasion dropped from the lips of her father, +of Mrs. Beale, of Sir Claude or even of Mrs. Wix. What it appeared to +her to come to was that on the subject of her ladyship it was the first +real kindness she had heard, so that at the touch of it something +strange and deep and pitying surged up within her--a revelation that, +practically and so far as she knew, her mother, apart from this, +had only been disliked. Mrs. Wix's original account of Sir Claude's +affection seemed as empty now as the chorus in a children's game, and +the husband and wife, but a little way off at that moment, were face to +face in hatred and with the dreadful name he had called her still in the +air. What was it the Captain on the other hand had called her? Maisie +wanted to hear that again. The tears filled her eyes and rolled down +her cheeks, which burned under them with the rush of a consciousness +that for her too, five minutes before, the vivid towering beauty whose +assault she awaited had been, a moment long, an object of pure dread. +She became on the spot indifferent to her usual fear of showing what +in children was notoriously most offensive--presented to her companion, +soundlessly but hideously, her wet distorted face. She cried, with a +pang, straight AT him, cried as she had never cried at any one in all +her life. "Oh do you love her?" she brought out with a gulp that was +the effect of her trying not to make a noise. + +It was doubtless another consequence of the thick mist through which she +saw him that in reply to her question the Captain gave her such a queer +blurred look. He stammered, yet in his voice there was also the ring of +a great awkward insistence. "Of course I'm tremendously fond of her--I +like her better than any woman I ever saw. I don't mind in the least +telling you that," he went on, "and I should think myself a great beast +if I did." Then to show that his position was superlatively clear he +made her, with a kindness that even Sir Claude had never surpassed, +tremble again as she had trembled at his first outbreak. He called her +by her name, and her name drove it home. "My dear Maisie, your mother's +an angel!" + +It was an almost unbelievable balm--it soothed so her impression of +danger and pain. She sank back in her chair, she covered her face +with her hands. "Oh mother, mother, mother!" she sobbed. She had an +impression that the Captain, beside her, if more and more friendly, was +by no means unembarrassed; in a minute, however, when her eyes were +clearer, he was erect in front of her, very red and nervously looking +about him and whacking his leg with his stick. "Say you love her, Mr. +Captain; say it, say it!" she implored. + +Mr. Captain's blue eyes fixed themselves very hard. "Of course I love +her, damn it, you know!" + +At this she also jumped up; she had fished out somehow her +pocket-handkerchief. "So do I then. I do, I do, I do!" she passionately +asseverated. + +"Then will you come back to her?" + +Maisie, staring, stopped the tight little plug of her handkerchief on +the way to her eyes. "She won't have me." + +"Yes she will. She wants you." + +"Back at the house--with Sir Claude?" + +Again he hung fire. "No, not with him. In another place." + +They stood looking at each other with an intensity unusual as between a +Captain and a little girl. "She won't have me in any place." + +"Oh yes she will if _I_ ask her!" + +Maisie's intensity continued. "Shall you be there?" + +The Captain's, on the whole, did the same. "Oh yes--some day." + +"Then you don't mean now?" + +He broke into a quick smile. "Will you come now?--go with us for an +hour?" + +Maisie considered. "She wouldn't have me even now." She could see that +he had his idea, but that her tone impressed him. That disappointed her +a little, though in an instant he rang out again. + +"She will if I ask her," he repeated. "I'll ask her this minute." + +Maisie, turning at this, looked away to where her mother and her +stepfather had stopped. At first, among the trees, nobody was visible; +but the next moment she exclaimed with expression: "It's over--here he +comes!" + +The Captain watched the approach of her ladyship's husband, who lounged +composedly over the grass, making to Maisie with his closed fingers a +little movement in the air. "I've no desire to avoid him." + +"Well, you mustn't see him," said Maisie. + +"Oh he's in no hurry himself!" Sir Claude had stopped to light another +cigarette. + +She was vague as to the way it was proper he should feel; but she had a +sense that the Captain's remark was rather a free reflexion on it. "Oh +he doesn't care!" she replied. + +"Doesn't care for what?" + +"Doesn't care who you are. He told me so. Go and ask mamma," she added. + +"If you can come with us? Very good. You really want me not to wait for +him?" + +"PLEASE don't." But Sir Claude was not yet near, and the Captain had +with his left hand taken hold of her right, which he familiarly, +sociably swung a little. "Only first," she continued, "tell me this. Are +you going to LIVE with mamma?" + +The immemorial note of mirth broke out at her seriousness. "One of these +days." + +She wondered, wholly unperturbed by his laughter. "Then where will Sir +Claude be?" + +"He'll have left her of course." + +"Does he really intend to do that?" + +"You've every opportunity to ask him." + +Maisie shook her head with decision. "He won't do it. Not first." + +Her "first" made the Captain laugh out again. "Oh he'll be sure to be +nasty! But I've said too much to you." + +"Well, you know, I'll never tell," said Maisie. + +"No, it's all for yourself. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye." Maisie kept his hand long enough to add: "I like you too." +And then supremely: "You DO love her?" + +"My dear child--!" The Captain wanted words. + +"Then don't do it only for just a little." + +"A little?" + +"Like all the others." + +"All the others?"--he stood staring. + +She pulled away her hand. "Do it always!" She bounded to meet Sir +Claude, and as she left the Captain she heard him ring out with apparent +gaiety: + +"Oh I'm in for it!" + +As she joined Sir Claude she noted her mother in the distance move +slowly off, and, glancing again at the Captain, saw him, swinging his +stick, retreat in the same direction. + +She had never seen Sir Claude look as he looked just then; flushed yet +not excited--settled rather in an immoveable disgust and at once very +sick and very hard. His conversation with her mother had clearly drawn +blood, and the child's old horror came back to her, begetting the +instant moral contraction of the days when her parents had looked to +her to feed their love of battle. Her greatest fear for the moment, +however, was that her friend would see she had been crying. The next +she became aware that he had glanced at her, and it presently occurred +to her that he didn't even wish to be looked at. At this she quickly +removed her gaze, while he said rather curtly: "Well, who in the world +IS the fellow?" + +She felt herself flooded with prudence. "Oh _I_ haven't found out!" This +sounded as if she meant he ought to have done so himself; but she could +only face doggedly the ugliness of seeming disagreeable, as she used to +face it in the hours when her father, for her blankness, called her a +dirty little donkey, and her mother, for her falsity, pushed her out of +the room. + +"Then what have you been doing all this time?" + +"Oh I don't know!" It was of the essence of her method not to be silly +by halves. + +"Then didn't the beast say anything?" They had got down by the lake and +were walking fast. + +"Well, not very much." + +"He didn't speak of your mother?" + +"Oh yes, a little!" + +"Then what I ask you, please, is HOW?" She kept silence--so long that +he presently went on: "I say, you know--don't you hear me?" At this she +produced: "Well, I'm afraid I didn't attend to him very much." + +Sir Claude, smoking rather hard, made no immediate rejoinder; but +finally he exclaimed: "Then my dear--with such a chance--you were the +perfection of a dunce!" He was so irritated--or she took him to be--that +for the rest of the time they were in the Gardens he spoke no other +word; and she meanwhile subtly abstained from any attempt to pacify him. +That would only lead to more questions. At the gate of the Gardens he +hailed a four-wheeled cab and, in silence, without meeting her eyes, put +her into it, only saying "Give him THAT" as he tossed half a crown upon +the seat. Even when from outside he had closed the door and told the man +where to go he never took her departing look. Nothing of this kind had +ever yet happened to them, but it had no power to make her love him +less; so she could not only bear it, she felt as she drove away--she +could rejoice in it. It brought again the sweet sense of success that, +ages before, she had had at a crisis when, on the stairs, returning from +her father's, she had met a fierce question of her mother's with an +imbecility as deep and had in consequence been dashed by Mrs. Farange +almost to the bottom. + + + + +XVII + + +If for reasons of her own she could bear the sense of Sir Claude's +displeasure her young endurance might have been put to a serious test. +The days went by without his knocking at her father's door, and the +time would have turned sadly to waste if something hadn't conspicuously +happened to give it a new difference. What took place was a marked +change in the attitude of Mrs. Beale--a change that somehow, even +in his absence, seemed to bring Sir Claude again into the house. It +began practically with a conversation that occurred between them the +day Maisie, came home alone in the cab. Mrs. Beale had by that time +returned, and she was more successful than their friend in extracting +from our young lady an account of the extraordinary passage with the +Captain. She came back to it repeatedly, and on the very next day it +grew distinct to the child that she was already in full possession of +what at the same moment had been enacted between her ladyship and Sir +Claude. This was the real origin of her final perception that though he +didn't come to the house her stepmother had some rare secret for not +being quite without him. This led to some rare passages with Mrs. Beale, +the promptest of which had been--not on Maisie's part--a wonderful +outbreak of tears. Mrs. Beale was not, as she herself said, a crying +creature: she hadn't cried, to Maisie's knowledge, since the lowly +governess days, the grey dawn of their connexion. But she wept now with +passion, professing loudly that it did her good and saying remarkable +things to her charge, for whom the occasion was an equal benefit, an +addition to all the fine precautionary wisdom stored away. It somehow +hadn't violated that wisdom, Maisie felt, for her to have told Mrs. +Beale what she had not told Sir Claude, inasmuch as the greatest strain, +to her sense, was between Sir Claude and Sir Claude's wife, and his wife +was just what Mrs. Beale was unfortunately not. He sent his stepdaughter +three days after the incident in Kensington Gardens a message as frank +as it was tender, and that was how Mrs. Beale had had to bring out in +a manner that seemed half an appeal, half a defiance: "Well yes, hang +it--I DO see him!" + +How and when and where, however, were just what Maisie was not to +know--an exclusion moreover that she never questioned in the light of +a participation large enough to make him, while she shared the ample +void of Mrs. Beale's rather blank independence, shine in her yearning +eye like the single, the sovereign window-square of a great dim +disproportioned room. As far as her father was concerned such hours +had no interruption; and then it was clear between them that each +was thinking of the absent and thinking the other thought, so that he +was an object of conscious reference in everything they said or did. +The wretched truth, Mrs. Beale had to confess, was that she had hoped +against hope and that in the Regent's Park it was impossible Sir Claude +should really be in and out. Hadn't they at last to look the fact in the +face?--it was too disgustingly evident that no one after all had been +squared. Well, if no one had been squared it was because every one had +been vile. No one and every one were of course Beale and Ida, the extent +of whose power to be nasty was a thing that, to a little girl, Mrs. +Beale simply couldn't give chapter and verse for. Therefore it was that +to keep going at all, as she said, that lady had to make, as she also +said, another arrangement--the arrangement in which Maisie was included +only to the point of knowing it existed and wondering wistfully what it +was. Conspicuously at any rate it had a side that was responsible for +Mrs. Beale's sudden emotion and sudden confidence--a demonstration +this, however, of which the tearfulness was far from deterrent to our +heroine's thought of how happy she should be if she could only make an +arrangement for herself. Mrs. Beale's own operated, it appeared, with +regularity and frequency; for it was almost every day or two that she +was able to bring Maisie a message and to take one back. It had been +over the vision of what, as she called it, he did for her that she +broke down; and this vision was kept in a manner before Maisie by a +subsequent increase not only of the gaiety, but literally--it seemed not +presumptuous to perceive--of the actual virtue of her friend. The friend +was herself the first to proclaim it: he had pulled her up immensely--he +had quite pulled her round. She had charming tormenting words about him: +he was her good fairy, her hidden spring--above all he was just her +"higher" conscience. That was what had particularly come out with her +startling tears: he had made her, dear man, think ever so much better of +herself. It had been thus rather surprisingly revealed that she had been +in a way to think ill, and Maisie was glad to hear of the corrective at +the same time that she heard of the ailment. + +She presently found herself supposing, and in spite of her envy even +hoping, that whenever Mrs. Beale was out of the house Sir Claude had +in some manner the satisfaction of it. This was now of more frequent +occurrence than ever before--so much so that she would have thought of +her stepmother as almost extravagantly absent had it not been that, in +the first place, her father was a superior specimen of that habit: it +was the frequent remark of his present wife, as it had been, before the +tribunals of their country, a prominent plea of her predecessor, that +he scarce came home even to sleep. In the second place Mrs. Beale, when +she WAS on the spot, had now a beautiful air of longing to make up for +everything. The only shadow in such bright intervals was that, as Maisie +put it to herself, she could get nothing by questions. It was in the +nature of things to be none of a small child's business, even when a +small child had from the first been deluded into a fear that she might +be only too much initiated. Things then were in Maisie's experience so +true to their nature that questions were almost always improper; but +she learned on the other hand soon to recognise how at last, sometimes, +patient little silences and intelligent little looks could be rewarded +by delightful little glimpses. There had been years at Beale Farange's +when the monosyllable "he" meant always, meant almost violently, the +master; but all that was changed at a period at which Sir Claude's +merits were of themselves so much in the air that it scarce took even +two letters to name him. "He keeps me up splendidly--he does, my own +precious," Mrs. Beale would observe to her comrade; or else she would +say that the situation at the other establishment had reached a point +that could scarcely be believed--the point, monstrous as it sounded, +of his not having laid eyes upon her for twelve days. "She" of course +at Beale Farange's had never meant any one but Ida, and there was the +difference in this case that it now meant Ida with renewed intensity. +Mrs. Beale--it was striking--was in a position to animadvert more and +more upon her dreadfulness, the moral of all which appeared to be how +abominably yet blessedly little she had to do with her husband. This +flow of information came home to our two friends because, truly, Mrs. +Beale had not much more to do with her own; but that was one of the +reflexions that Maisie could make without allowing it to break the +spell of her present sympathy. How could such a spell be anything but +deep when Sir Claude's influence, operating from afar, at last really +determined the resumption of his stepdaughter's studies? Mrs. Beale +again took fire about them and was quite vivid for Maisie as to their +being the great matter to which the dear absent one kept her up. + +This was the second source--I have just alluded to the first--of the +child's consciousness of something that, very hopefully, she described +to herself as a new phase; and it also presented in the brightest light +the fresh enthusiasm with which Mrs. Beale always reappeared and which +really gave Maisie a happier sense than she had yet had of being very +dear at least to two persons. That she had small remembrance at present +of a third illustrates, I am afraid, a temporary oblivion of Mrs. Wix, +an accident to be explained only by a state of unnatural excitement. For +what was the form taken by Mrs. Beale's enthusiasm and acquiring relief +in the domestic conditions still left to her but the delightful form of +"reading" with her little charge on lines directly prescribed and in +works profusely supplied by Sir Claude? He had got hold of an awfully +good list--"mostly essays, don't you know?" Mrs. Beale had said; a word +always august to Maisie, but henceforth to be softened by hazy, in fact +by quite languorous edges. There was at any rate a week in which no less +than nine volumes arrived, and the impression was to be gathered from +Mrs. Beale that the obscure intercourse she enjoyed with Sir Claude not +only involved an account and a criticism of studies, but was organised +almost for the very purpose of report and consultation. It was for +Maisie's education in short that, as she often repeated, she closed her +door--closed it to the gentlemen who used to flock there in such numbers +and whom her husband's practical desertion of her would have made it a +course of the highest indelicacy to receive. Maisie was familiar from of +old with the principle at least of the care that a woman, as Mrs. Beale +phrased it, attractive and exposed must take of her "character," and was +duly impressed with the rigour of her stepmother's scruples. There was +literally no one of the other sex whom she seemed to feel at liberty to +see at home, and when the child risked an enquiry about the ladies who, +one by one, during her own previous period, had been made quite loudly +welcome, Mrs. Beale hastened to inform her that, one by one, they had, +the fiends, been found out, after all, to be awful. If she wished to +know more about them she was recommended to approach her father. + +Maisie had, however, at the very moment of this injunction much livelier +curiosities, for the dream of lectures at an institution had at last +become a reality, thanks to Sir Claude's now unbounded energy in +discovering what could be done. It stood out in this connexion that when +you came to look into things in a spirit of earnestness an immense deal +could be done for very little more than your fare in the Underground. +The institution--there was a splendid one in a part of the town but +little known to the child--became, in the glow of such a spirit, a +thrilling place, and the walk to it from the station through Glower +Street (a pronunciation for which Mrs. Beale once laughed at her little +friend) a pathway literally strewn with "subjects." Maisie imagined +herself to pluck them as she went, though they thickened in the great +grey rooms where the fountain of knowledge, in the form usually of a +high voice that she took at first to be angry, plashed in the stillness +of rows of faces thrust out like empty jugs. "It MUST do us good--it's +all so hideous," Mrs. Beale had immediately declared; manifesting a +purity of resolution that made these occasions quite the most harmonious +of all the many on which the pair had pulled together. Maisie certainly +had never, in such an association, felt so uplifted, and never above +all been so carried off her feet, as at the moments of Mrs. Beale's +breathlessly re-entering the house and fairly shrieking upstairs to +know if they should still be in time for a lecture. Her stepdaughter, +all ready from the earliest hours, almost leaped over the banister to +respond, and they dashed out together in quest of learning as hard as +they often dashed back to release Mrs. Beale for other preoccupations. +There had been in short no bustle like these particular spasms, once +they had broken out, since that last brief flurry when Mrs. Wix, blowing +as if she were grooming her, "made up" for everything previously lost at +her father's. + +These weeks as well were too few, but they were flooded with a new +emotion, part of which indeed came from the possibility that, through +the long telescope of Glower Street, or perhaps between the pillars of +the institution--which impressive objects were what Maisie thought most +made it one--they should some day spy Sir Claude. That was what Mrs. +Beale, under pressure, had said--doubtless a little impatiently: "Oh +yes, oh yes, some day!" His joining them was clearly far less of a +matter of course than was to have been gathered from his original +profession of desire to improve in their company his own mind; and +this sharpened our young lady's guess that since that occasion either +something destructive had happened or something desirable hadn't. Mrs. +Beale had thrown but a partial light in telling her how it had turned +out that nobody had been squared. Maisie wished at any rate that +somebody WOULD be squared. However, though in every approach to the +temple of knowledge she watched in vain for Sir Claude, there was +no doubt about the action of his loved image as an incentive and a +recompense. When the institution was most on pillars--or, as Mrs. Beale +put it, on stilts--when the subject was deepest and the lecture longest +and the listeners ugliest, then it was they both felt their patron in +the background would be most pleased with them. One day, abruptly, with +a glance at this background, Mrs. Beale said to her companion: "We'll +go to-night to the thingumbob at Earl's Court"; an announcement putting +forth its full lustre when she had made known that she referred to +the great Exhibition just opened in that quarter, a collection of +extraordinary foreign things in tremendous gardens, with illuminations, +bands, elephants, switchbacks and side-shows, as well as crowds of +people among whom they might possibly see some one they knew. Maisie +flew in the same bound at the neck of her friend and at the name of Sir +Claude, on which Mrs. Beale confessed that--well, yes, there was just a +chance that he would be able to meet them. He never of course, in his +terrible position, knew what might happen from hour to hour; but he +hoped to be free and he had given Mrs. Beale the tip. "Bring her there +on the quiet and I'll try to turn up"--this was clear enough on what +so many weeks of privation had made of his desire to see the child: it +even appeared to represent on his part a yearning as constant as her +own. That in turn was just puzzling enough to make Maisie express a +bewilderment. She couldn't see, if they were so intensely of the same +mind, why the theory on which she had come back to Mrs. Beale, the +general reunion, the delightful trio, should have broken down so in +fact. Mrs. Beale furthermore only gave her more to think about in saying +that their disappointment was the result of his having got into his head +a kind of idea. + +"What kind of idea?" + +"Oh goodness knows!" She spoke with an approach to asperity. "He's so +awfully delicate." + +"Delicate?"--that was ambiguous. + +"About what he does, don't you know?" said Mrs. Beale. She fumbled. +"Well, about what WE do." + +Maisie wondered. "You and me?" + +"Me and HIM, silly!" cried Mrs. Beale with, this time, a real giggle. + +"But you don't do any harm--YOU don't," said Maisie, wondering afresh +and intending her emphasis as a decorous allusion to her parents. + +"Of course we don't, you angel--that's just the ground _I_ take!" her +companion exultantly responded. "He says he doesn't want you mixed up." + +"Mixed up with what?" + +"That's exactly what _I_ want to know: mixed up with what, and how you +are any more mixed--?" Mrs. Beale paused without ending her question. +She ended after an instant in a different way. "All you can say is that +it's his fancy." + +The tone of this, in spite of its expressing a resignation, the fruit of +weariness, that dismissed the subject, conveyed so vividly how much such +a fancy was not Mrs. Beale's own that our young lady was led by the mere +fact of contact to arrive at a dim apprehension of the unuttered and the +unknown. The relation between her step-parents had then a mysterious +residuum; this was the first time she really had reflected that except +as regards herself it was not a relationship. To each other it was only +what they might have happened to make it, and she gathered that this, +in the event, had been something that led Sir Claude to keep away from +her. Didn't he fear she would be compromised? The perception of such a +scruple endeared him the more, and it flashed over her that she might +simplify everything by showing him how little she made of such a danger. +Hadn't she lived with her eyes on it from her third year? It was the +condition most frequently discussed at the Faranges', where the word was +always in the air and where at the age of five, amid rounds of applause, +she could gabble it off. She knew as well in short that a person could +be compromised as that a person could be slapped with a hair-brush or +left alone in the dark, and it was equally familiar to her that each of +these ordeals was in general held to have too little effect. But the +first thing was to make absolutely sure of Mrs. Beale. This was done by +saying to her thoughtfully: "Well, if you don't mind--and you really +don't, do you?" + +Mrs. Beale, with a dawn of amusement, considered. "Mixing you up? Not a +bit. For what does it mean?" + +"Whatever it means I don't in the least mind BEING mixed. Therefore if +you don't and I don't," Maisie concluded, "don't you think that when I +see him this evening I had better just tell him we don't and ask him why +in the world HE should?" + + + + +XVIII + + +The child, however, was not destined to enjoy much of Sir Claude at the +"thingumbob," which took for them a very different turn indeed. On the +spot Mrs. Beale, with hilarity, had urged her to the course proposed; +but later, at the Exhibition, she withdrew this allowance, mentioning as +a result of second thoughts that when a man was so sensitive anything at +all frisky usually made him worse. It would have been hard indeed for +Sir Claude to be "worse," Maisie felt, as, in the gardens and the crowd, +when the first dazzle had dropped, she looked for him in vain up and +down. They had all their time, the couple, for frugal wistful wandering: +they had partaken together at home of the light vague meal--Maisie's +name for it was a "jam-supper"--to which they were reduced when Mr. +Farange sought his pleasure abroad. It was abroad now entirely that Mr. +Farange pursued this ideal, and it was the actual impression of his +daughter, derived from his wife, that he had three days before joined a +friend's yacht at Cowes. + +The place was full of side-shows, to which Mrs. Beale could introduce +the little girl only, alas, by revealing to her so attractive, so +enthralling a name: the side-shows, each time, were sixpence apiece, +and the fond allegiance enjoyed by the elder of our pair had been +established from the earliest time in spite of a paucity of sixpences. +Small coin dropped from her as half-heartedly as answers from bad +children to lessons that had not been looked at. Maisie passed more +slowly the great painted posters, pressing with a linked arm closer +to her friend's pocket, where she hoped for the audible chink of a +shilling. But the upshot of this was but to deepen her yearning: if Sir +Claude would only at last come the shillings would begin to ring. The +companions paused, for want of one, before the Flowers of the Forest, a +large presentment of bright brown ladies--they were brown all over--in +a medium suggestive of tropical luxuriance, and there Maisie dolorously +expressed her belief that he would never come at all. Mrs. Beale +hereupon, though discernibly disappointed, reminded her that he had not +been promised as a certainty--a remark that caused the child to gaze at +the Flowers through a blur in which they became more magnificent, yet +oddly more confused, and by which moreover confusion was imparted to the +aspect of a gentleman who at that moment, in the company of a lady, came +out of the brilliant booth. The lady was so brown that Maisie at first +took her for one of the Flowers; but during the few seconds that this +required--a few seconds in which she had also desolately given up Sir +Claude--she heard Mrs. Beale's voice, behind her, gather both wonder and +pain into a single sharp little cry. + +"Of all the wickedness--BEALE!" + +He had already, without distinguishing them in the mass of strollers, +turned another way--it seemed at the brown lady's suggestion. Her course +was marked, over heads and shoulders, by an upright scarlet plume, as to +the ownership of which Maisie was instantly eager. "Who is she--who is +she?" + +But Mrs. Beale for a moment only looked after them. "The liar--the +liar!" + +Maisie considered. "Because he's not--where one thought?" That was also, +a month ago in Kensington Gardens, where her mother had not been. +"Perhaps he has come back," she was quick to contribute. + +"He never went--the hound!" + +That, according to Sir Claude, had been also what her mother had not +done, and Maisie could only have a sense of something that in a maturer +mind would be called the way history repeats itself. + +"Who IS she?" she asked again. + +Mrs. Beale, fixed to the spot, seemed lost in the vision of an +opportunity missed. "If he had only seen me!"--it came from between her +teeth. "She's a brand-new one. But he must have been with her since +Tuesday." + +Maisie took it in. "She's almost black," she then reported. + +"They're always hideous," said Mrs. Beale. + +This was a remark on which the child had again to reflect. "Oh not his +WIVES!" she remonstrantly exclaimed. The words at another moment would +probably have set her friend "off," but Mrs. Beale was now, in her +instant vigilance, too immensely "on." "Did you ever in your life see +such a feather?" Maisie presently continued. + +This decoration appeared to have paused at some distance, and in spite +of intervening groups they could both look at it. "Oh that's the way +they dress--the vulgarest of the vulgar!" + +"They're coming back--they'll see us!" Maisie the next moment cried; +and while her companion answered that this was exactly what she wanted +and the child returned "Here they are--here they are!" the unconscious +subjects of so much attention, with a change of mind about their +direction, quickly retraced their steps and precipitated themselves upon +their critics. Their unconsciousness gave Mrs. Beale time to leap, under +her breath, to a recognition which Maisie caught. + +"It must be Mrs. Cuddon!" + +Maisie looked at Mrs. Cuddon hard--her lips even echoed the name. What +followed was extraordinarily rapid--a minute of livelier battle than had +ever yet, in so short a span at least, been waged round our heroine. The +muffled shock--lest people should notice--was violent, and it was only +for her later thought that the steps fell into their order, the steps +through which, in a bewilderment not so much of sound as of silence, she +had come to find herself, too soon for comprehension and too strangely +for fear, at the door of the Exhibition with her father. He thrust her +into a hansom and got in after her, and then it was--as she drove along +with him--that she recovered a little what had happened. Face to face +with them in the gardens he had seen them, and there had been a moment +of checked concussion during which, in a glare of black eyes and a +toss of red plumage, Mrs. Cuddon had recognised them, ejaculated and +vanished. There had been another moment at which she became aware of Sir +Claude, also poised there in surprise, but out of her father's view, as +if he had been warned off at the very moment of reaching them. It fell +into its place with all the rest that she had heard Mrs. Beale say to +her father, but whether low or loud was now lost to her, something +about his having this time a new one; on which he had growled something +indistinct but apparently in the tone and of the sort that the child, +from her earliest years, had associated with hearing somebody retort +to somebody that somebody was "another." "Oh I stick to the old!" Mrs. +Beale had then quite loudly pronounced; and her accent, even as the cab +got away, was still in the air, Maisie's effective companion having +spoken no other word from the moment of whisking her off--none at least +save the indistinguishable address which, over the top of the hansom and +poised on the step, he had given the driver. Reconstructing these things +later Maisie theorised that she at this point would have put a question +to him had not the silence into which he charmed her or scared her--she +could scarcely tell which--come from his suddenly making her feel his +arm about her, feel, as he drew her close, that he was agitated in a way +he had never yet shown her. It struck her he trembled, trembled too much +to speak, and this had the effect of making her, with an emotion which, +though it had begun to throb in an instant, was by no means all dread, +conform to his portentous hush. The act of possession that his pressure +in a manner advertised came back to her after the longest of the long +intermissions that had ever let anything come back. They drove and +drove, and he kept her close; she stared straight before her, holding +her breath, watching one dark street succeed another and strangely +conscious that what it all meant was somehow that papa was less to be +left out of everything than she had supposed. It took her but a minute +to surrender to this discovery, which, in the form of his present +embrace, suggested a purpose in him prodigiously reaffirmed and with +that a confused confidence. She neither knew exactly what he had done +nor what he was doing; she could only, altogether impressed and rather +proud, vibrate with the sense that he had jumped up to do something and +that she had as quickly become a part of it. It was a part of it too +that here they were at a house that seemed not large, but in the fresh +white front of which the street-lamp showed a smartness of flower-boxes. +The child had been in thousands of stories--all Mrs. Wix's and her own, +to say nothing of the richest romances of French Elise--but she had +never been in such a story as this. By the time he had helped her out +of the cab, which drove away, and she heard in the door of the house +the prompt little click of his key, the Arabian Nights had quite closed +round her. + +From this minute that pitch of the wondrous was in everything, +particularly in such an instant "Open Sesame" and in the departure of +the cab, a rattling void filled with relinquished step-parents; it was, +with the vividness, the almost blinding whiteness of the light that +sprang responsive to papa's quick touch of a little brass knob on the +wall, in a place that, at the top of a short soft staircase, struck her +as the most beautiful she had ever seen in her life. The next thing she +perceived it to be was the drawing-room of a lady--of a lady, she could +see in a moment, and not of a gentleman, not even of one like papa +himself or even like Sir Claude--whose things were as much prettier than +mamma's as it had always had to be confessed that mamma's were prettier +than Mrs. Beale's. In the middle of the small bright room and the +presence of more curtains and cushions, more pictures and mirrors, more +palm-trees drooping over brocaded and gilded nooks, more little silver +boxes scattered over little crooked tables and little oval miniatures +hooked upon velvet screens than Mrs. Beale and her ladyship together +could, in an unnatural alliance, have dreamed of mustering, the child +became aware, with a sharp foretaste of compassion, of something that +was strangely like a relegation to obscurity of each of those women of +taste. It was a stranger operation still that her father should on the +spot be presented to her as quite advantageously and even grandly at +home in the dazzling scene and himself by so much the more separated +from scenes inferior to it. She spent with him in it, while explanations +continued to hang back, twenty minutes that, in their sudden drop of +danger, affected her, though there were neither buns nor ginger-beer, +like an extemporised expensive treat. + +"Is she very rich?" He had begun to strike her as almost embarrassed, so +shy that he might have found himself with a young lady with whom he had +little in common. She was literally moved by this apprehension to offer +him some tactful relief. + +Beale Farange stood and smiled at his young lady, his back to +the fanciful fireplace, his light overcoat--the very lightest in +London--wide open, and his wonderful lustrous beard completely +concealing the expanse of his shirt-front. It pleased her more than ever +to think that papa was handsome and, though as high aloft as mamma and +almost, in his specially florid evening-dress, as splendid, of a beauty +somehow less belligerent, less terrible. + +"The Countess? Why do you ask me that?" + +Maisie's eyes opened wider. "Is she a Countess?" + +He seemed to treat her wonder as a positive tribute. "Oh yes, my dear, +but it isn't an English title." + +Her manner appreciated this. "Is it a French one?" + +"No, nor French either. It's American." + +She conversed agreeably. "Ah then of course she must be rich." She took +in such a combination of nationality and rank. "I never saw anything so +lovely." + +"Did you have a sight of her?" Beale asked. + +"At the Exhibition?" Maisie smiled. "She was gone too quick." + +Her father laughed. "She did slope!" She had feared he would say +something about Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude, yet the way he spared them +made her rather uneasy too. All he risked was, the next minute, "She has +a horror of vulgar scenes." + +This was something she needn't take up; she could still continue bland. +"But where do you suppose she went?" + +"Oh I thought she'd have taken a cab and have been here by this time. +But she'll turn up all right." + +"I'm sure I HOPE she will," Maisie said; she spoke with an earnestness +begotten of the impression of all the beauty about them, to which, in +person, the Countess might make further contribution. "We came awfully +fast," she added. + +Her father again laughed loud. "Yes, my dear, I made you step out!" He +waited an instant, then pursued: "I want her to see you." + +Maisie, at this, rejoiced in the attention that, for their evening out, +Mrs. Beale, even to the extent of personally "doing up" her old hat, had +given her appearance. Meanwhile her father went on: "You'll like her +awfully." + +"Oh I'm sure I shall!" After which, either from the effect of having +said so much or from that of a sudden glimpse of the impossibility of +saying more, she felt an embarrassment and sought refuge in a minor +branch of the subject. "I thought she was Mrs. Cuddon." + +Beale's gaiety rather increased than diminished. "You mean my wife +did? My dear child, my wife's a damned fool!" He had the oddest air of +speaking of his wife as of a person whom she might scarcely have known, +so that the refuge of her scruple didn't prove particularly happy. Beale +on the other hand appeared after an instant himself to feel a scruple. +"What I mean is, to speak seriously, that she doesn't really know +anything about anything." He paused, following the child's charmed eyes +and tentative step or two as they brought her nearer to the pretty +things on one of the tables. "She thinks she has good things, don't you +know!" He quite jeered at Mrs. Beale's delusion. + +Maisie felt she must confess that it WAS one; everything she had missed +at the side-shows was made up to her by the Countess's luxuries. "Yes," +she considered; "she does think that." + +There was again a dryness in the way Beale replied that it didn't matter +what she thought; but there was an increasing sweetness for his daughter +in being with him so long without his doing anything worse. The whole +hour of course was to remain with her, for days and weeks, ineffaceably +illumined and confirmed; by the end of which she was able to read +into it a hundred things that had been at the moment mere miraculous +pleasantness. What they at the moment came to was simply that her +companion was still in a good deal of a flutter, yet wished not to show +it, and that just in proportion as he succeeded in this attempt he was +able to encourage her to regard him as kind. He moved about the room +after a little, showed her things, spoke to her as a person of taste, +told her the name, which she remembered, of the famous French lady +represented in one of the miniatures, and remarked, as if he had caught +her wistful over a trinket or a trailing stuff, that he made no doubt +the Countess, on coming in, would give her something jolly. He spied a +pink satin box with a looking-glass let into the cover, which he raised, +with a quick facetious flourish, to offer her the privilege of six rows +of chocolate bonbons, cutting out thereby Sir Claude, who had never +gone beyond four rows. "I can do what I like with these," he said, "for +I don't mind telling you I gave 'em to her myself." The Countess had +evidently appreciated the gift; there were numerous gaps, a ravage now +quite unchecked, in the array. Even while they waited together Maisie +had her sense, which was the mark of what their separation had become, +of her having grown for him, since the last time he had, as it were, +noticed her, and by increase of years and of inches if by nothing else, +much more of a little person to reckon with. Yes, this was a part of +the positive awkwardness that he carried off by being almost foolishly +tender. There was a passage during which, on a yellow silk sofa under +one of the palms, he had her on his knee, stroking her hair, playfully +holding her off while he showed his shining fangs and let her, with +a vague affectionate helpless pointless "Dear old girl, dear little +daughter," inhale the fragrance of his cherished beard. She must have +been sorry for him, she afterwards knew, so well could she privately +follow his difficulty in being specific to her about anything. She had +such possibilities of vibration, of response, that it needed nothing +more than this to make up to her in fact for omissions. The tears came +into her eyes again as they had done when in the Park that day the +Captain told her so "splendidly" that her mother was good. What was +this but splendid too--this still directer goodness of her father and +this unexampled shining solitude with him, out of which everything had +dropped but that he was papa and that he was magnificent? It didn't +spoil it that she finally felt he must have, as he became restless, some +purpose he didn't quite see his way to bring out, for in the freshness +of their recovered fellowship she would have lent herself gleefully to +his suggesting, or even to his pretending, that their relations were +easy and graceful. There was something in him that seemed, and quite +touchingly, to ask her to help him to pretend--pretend he knew enough +about her life and her education, her means of subsistence and her view +of himself, to give the questions he couldn't put her a natural domestic +tone. She would have pretended with ecstasy if he could only have given +her the cue. She waited for it while, between his big teeth, he breathed +the sighs she didn't know to be stupid. And as if, though he was so +stupid all through, he had let the friendly suffusion of her eyes yet +tell him she was ready for anything, he floundered about, wondering what +the devil he could lay hold of. + + + + +XIX + + +When he had lighted a cigarette and begun to smoke in her face it was as +if he had struck with the match the note of some queer clumsy ferment +of old professions, old scandals, old duties, a dim perception of what +he possessed in her and what, if everything had only--damn it!--been +totally different, she might still be able to give him. What she was +able to give him, however, as his blinking eyes seemed to make out +through the smoke, would be simply what he should be able to get from +her. To give something, to give here on the spot, was all her own +desire. Among the old things that came back was her little instinct of +keeping the peace; it made her wonder more sharply what particular thing +she could do or not do, what particular word she could speak or not +speak, what particular line she could take or not take, that might for +every one, even for the Countess, give a better turn to the crisis. She +was ready, in this interest, for an immense surrender, a surrender of +everything but Sir Claude, of everything but Mrs. Beale. The immensity +didn't include THEM; but if he had an idea at the back of his head +she had also one in a recess as deep, and for a time, while they sat +together, there was an extraordinary mute passage between her vision +of this vision of his, his vision of her vision, and her vision of his +vision of her vision. What there was no effective record of indeed +was the small strange pathos on the child's part of an innocence so +saturated with knowledge and so directed to diplomacy. What, further, +Beale finally laid hold of while he masked again with his fine presence +half the flounces of the fireplace was: "Do you know, my dear, I shall +soon be off to America?" It struck his daughter both as a short cut and +as the way he wouldn't have said it to his wife. But his wife figured +with a bright superficial assurance in her response. + +"Do you mean with Mrs. Beale?" + +Her father looked at her hard. "Don't be a little ass!" + +Her silence appeared to represent a concentrated effort not to be. "Then +with the Countess?" + +"With her or without her, my dear; that concerns only your poor daddy. +She has big interests over there, and she wants me to take a look at +them." + +Maisie threw herself into them. "Will that take very long?" + +"Yes; they're in such a muddle--it may take months. Now what I want to +hear, you know, is whether you'd like to come along?" + +Planted once more before him in the middle of the room she felt herself +turning white. "I?" she gasped, yet feeling as soon as she had spoken +that such a note of dismay was not altogether pretty. She felt it still +more while her father replied, with a shake of his legs, a toss of his +cigarette-ash and a fidgety look--he was for ever taking one--all the +length of his waistcoat and trousers, that she needn't be quite so +disgusted. It helped her in a few seconds to appear more as he would +like her that she saw, in the lovely light of the Countess's splendour, +exactly, however she appeared, the right answer to make. "Dear papa, +I'll go with you anywhere." + +He turned his back to her and stood with his nose at the glass of the +chimneypiece while he brushed specks of ash out of his beard. Then he +abruptly said: "Do you know anything about your brute of a mother?" + +It was just of her brute of a mother that the manner of the question in +a remarkable degree reminded her: it had the free flight of one of Ida's +fine bridgings of space. With the sense of this was kindled for Maisie +at the same time an inspiration. "Oh yes, I know everything!" and she +became so radiant that her father, seeing it in the mirror, turned back +to her and presently, on the sofa, had her at his knee again and was +again particularly affecting. Maisie's inspiration instructed her, +pressingly, that the more she should be able to say about mamma the +less she would be called upon to speak of her step-parents. She kept +hoping the Countess would come in before her power to protect them was +exhausted; and it was now, in closer quarters with her companion, that +the idea at the back of her head shifted its place to her lips. She told +him she had met her mother in the Park with a gentleman who, while Sir +Claude had strolled with her ladyship, had been kind and had sat and +talked to her; narrating the scene with a remembrance of her pledge of +secrecy to the Captain quite brushed away by the joy of seeing Beale +listen without profane interruption. It was almost an amazement, but it +was indeed all a joy, thus to be able to guess that papa was at last +quite tired of his anger--of his anger at any rate about mamma. He was +only bored with her now. That made it, however, the more imperative that +his spent displeasure shouldn't be blown out again. It charmed the child +to see how much she could interest him; and the charm remained even +when, after asking her a dozen questions, he observed musingly and a +little obscurely: "Yes, damned if she won't!" For in this too there was +a detachment, a wise weariness that made her feel safe. She had had +to mention Sir Claude, though she mentioned him as little as possible +and Beale only appeared to look quite over his head. It pieced itself +together for her that this was the mildness of general indifference, a +source of profit so great for herself personally that if the Countess +was the author of it she was prepared literally to hug the Countess. She +betrayed that eagerness by a restless question about her, to which her +father replied: "Oh she has a head on her shoulders. I'll back her to +get out of anything!" He looked at Maisie quite as if he could trace the +connexion between her enquiry and the impatience of her gratitude. "Do +you mean to say you'd really come with me?" + +She felt as if he were now looking at her very hard indeed, and also as +if she had grown ever so much older. "I'll do anything in the world you +ask me, papa." + +He gave again, with a laugh and with his legs apart, his proprietary +glance at his waistcoat and trousers. "That's a way, my dear, of saying +'No, thank you!' You know you don't want to go the least little mite. +You can't humbug ME!" Beale Farange laid down. "I don't want to bully +you--I never bullied you in my life; but I make you the offer, and it's +to take or to leave. Your mother will never again have any more to do +with you than if you were a kitchenmaid she had turned out for going +wrong. Therefore of course I'm your natural protector and you've a right +to get everything out of me you can. Now's your chance, you know--you +won't be half-clever if you don't. You can't say I don't put it before +you--you can't say I ain't kind to you or that I don't play fair. Mind +you never say that, you know--it WOULD bring me down on you. I know +what's proper. I'll take you again, just as I HAVE taken you again and +again. And I'm much obliged to you for making up such a face." + +She was conscious enough that her face indeed couldn't please him if it +showed any sign--just as she hoped it didn't--of her sharp impression of +what he now really wanted to do. Wasn't he trying to turn the tables on +her, embarrass her somehow into admitting that what would really suit +her little book would be, after doing so much for good manners, to leave +her wholly at liberty to arrange for herself? She began to be nervous +again: it rolled over her that this was their parting, their parting +for ever, and that he had brought her there for so many caresses only +because it was important such an occasion should look better for him +than any other. For her to spoil it by the note of discord would +certainly give him ground for complaint; and the child was momentarily +bewildered between her alternatives of agreeing with him about her +wanting to get rid of him and displeasing him by pretending to stick +to him. So she found for the moment no solution but to murmur very +helplessly: "Oh papa--oh papa!" + +"I know what you're up to--don't tell ME!" After which he came straight +over and, in the most inconsequent way in the world, clasped her in +his arms a moment and rubbed his beard against her cheek. Then she +understood as well as if he had spoken it that what he wanted, hang +it, was that she should let him off with all the honours--with all +the appearance of virtue and sacrifice on his side. It was exactly as +if he had broken out to her: "I say, you little booby, help me to be +irreproachable, to be noble, and yet to have none of the beastly bore of +it. There's only impropriety enough for one of us; so YOU must take it +all. REPUDIATE your dear old daddy--in the face, mind you, of his tender +supplications. He can't be rough with you--it isn't in his nature: +therefore you'll have successfully chucked him because he was too +generous to be as firm with you, poor man, as was, after all, his duty." +This was what he communicated in a series of tremendous pats on the +back; that portion of her person had never been so thumped since Moddle +thumped her when she choked. After a moment he gave her the further +impression of having become sure enough of her to be able very +gracefully to say out: "You know your mother loathes you, loathes you +simply. And I've been thinking over your precious man--the fellow you +told me about." + +"Well," Maisie replied with competence, "I'm sure of HIM." + +Her father was vague for an instant. "Do you mean sure of his liking +you?" + +"Oh no; of his liking HER!" + +Beale had a return of gaiety. "There's no accounting for tastes! It's +what they all say, you know." + +"I don't care--I'm sure of him!" Maisie repeated. + +"Sure, you mean, that she'll bolt?" + +Maisie knew all about bolting, but, decidedly, she WAS older, and there +was something in her that could wince at the way her father made the +ugly word--ugly enough at best--sound flat and low. It prompted her to +amend his allusion, which she did by saying: "I don't know what she'll +do. But she'll be happy." + +"Let us hope so," said Beale--almost as for edification. "The more happy +she is at any rate the less she'll want you about. That's why I press +you," he agreeably pursued, "to consider this handsome offer--I mean +seriously, you know--of your sole surviving parent." Their eyes, at +this, met again in a long and extraordinary communion which terminated +in his ejaculating: "Ah you little scoundrel!" She took it from him in +the manner it seemed to her he would like best and with a success that +encouraged him to go on: "You ARE a deep little devil!" Her silence, +ticking like a watch, acknowledged even this, in confirmation of which +he finally brought out: "You've settled it with the other pair!" + +"Well, what if I have?" She sounded to herself most bold. + +Her father, quite as in the old days, broke into a peal. "Why, don't you +know they're awful?" + +She grew bolder still. "I don't care--not a bit!" + +"But they're probably the worst people in the world and the very +greatest criminals," Beale pleasantly urged. "I'm not the man, my dear, +not to let you know it." + +"Well, it doesn't prevent them from loving me. They love me +tremendously." Maisie turned crimson to hear herself. + +Her companion fumbled; almost any one--let alone a daughter--would +have seen how conscientious he wanted to be. "I dare say. But do you +know why?" She braved his eyes and he added: "You're a jolly good +pretext." + +"For what?" Maisie asked. + +"Why, for their game. I needn't tell you what that is." + +The child reflected. "Well then that's all the more reason." + +"Reason for what, pray?" + +"For their being kind to me." + +"And for your keeping in with them?" Beale roared again; it was as if +his spirits rose and rose. "Do you realise, pray, that in saying that +you're a monster?" + +She turned it over. "A monster?" + +"They've MADE one of you. Upon my honour it's quite awful. It shows +the kind of people they are. Don't you understand," Beale pursued, +"that when they've made you as horrid as they can--as horrid as +themselves--they'll just simply chuck you?" + +She had at this a flicker of passion. "They WON'T chuck me!" + +"I beg your pardon," her father courteously insisted; "it's my duty to +put it before you. I shouldn't forgive myself if I didn't point out to +you that they'll cease to require you." He spoke as if with an appeal to +her intelligence that she must be ashamed not adequately to meet, and +this gave a real distinction to his superior delicacy. + +It cleared the case as he had wished. "Cease to require me because they +won't care?" She paused with that sketch of her idea. + +"OF COURSE Sir Claude won't care if his wife bolts. That's his game. It +will suit him down to the ground." + +This was a proposition Maisie could perfectly embrace, but it still left +a loophole for triumph. She turned it well over. "You mean if mamma +doesn't come back ever at all?" The composure with which her face was +presented to that prospect would have shown a spectator the long road +she had travelled. "Well, but that won't put Mrs. Beale--" + +"In the same comfortable position--?" Beale took her up with relish; he +had sprung to his feet again, shaking his legs and looking at his shoes. +"Right you are, darling! Something more will be wanted for Mrs. Beale." +He just paused, then he added: "But she may not have long to wait for +it." + +Maisie also for a minute looked at his shoes, though they were not the +pair she most admired, the laced yellow "uppers" and patent-leather +complement. At last, with a question, she raised her eyes. "Aren't you +coming back?" + +Once more he hung fire; after which he gave a small laugh that in the +oddest way in the world reminded her of the unique sounds she had +heard emitted by Mrs. Wix. "It may strike you as extraordinary that I +should make you such an admission; and in point of fact you're not to +understand that I do. But we'll put it that way to help your decision. +The point is that that's the way my wife will presently be sure to put +it. You'll hear her shrieking that she's deserted, so that she may just +pile up her wrongs. She'll be as free as she likes then--as free, you +see, as your mother's muff of a husband. They won't have anything more +to consider and they'll just put you into the street. Do I understand," +Beale enquired, "that, in the face of what I press on you, you still +prefer to take the risk of that?" It was the most wonderful appeal any +gentleman had ever addressed to his daughter, and it had placed Maisie +in the middle of the room again while her father moved slowly about her +with his hands in his pockets and something in his step that seemed, +more than anything else he had done, to show the habit of the place. +She turned her fevered little eyes over his friend's brightnesses, as +if, on her own side, to press for some help in a quandary unexampled. +As if also the pressure reached him he after an instant stopped short, +completing the prodigy of his attitude and the pride of his loyalty by +a supreme formulation of the general inducement. "You've an eye, love! +Yes, there's money. No end of money." + +This affected her at first in the manner of some great flashing dazzle +in one of the pantomimes to which Sir Claude had taken her: she saw +nothing in it but what it directly conveyed. "And shall I never, never +see you again--?" + +"If I do go to America?" Beale brought it out like a man. "Never, never, +never!" + +Hereupon, with the utmost absurdity, she broke down; everything gave +way, everything but the horror of hearing herself definitely utter such +an ugliness as the acceptance of that. So she only stiffened herself and +said: "Then I can't give you up." + +She held him some seconds looking at her, showing her a strained +grimace, a perfect parade of all his teeth, in which it seemed to her +she could read the disgust he didn't quite like to express at this +departure from the pliability she had practically promised. But before +she could attenuate in any way the crudity of her collapse he gave an +impatient jerk which took him to the window. She heard a vehicle stop; +Beale looked out; then he freshly faced her. He still said nothing, but +she knew the Countess had come back. There was a silence again between +them, but with a different shade of embarrassment from that of their +united arrival; and it was still without speaking that, abruptly +repeating one of the embraces of which he had already been so prodigal, +he whisked her back to the lemon sofa just before the door of the room +was thrown open. It was thus in renewed and intimate union with him that +she was presented to a person whom she instantly recognised as the brown +lady. + +The brown lady looked almost as astonished, though not quite as alarmed, +as when, at the Exhibition, she had gasped in the face of Mrs. Beale. +Maisie in truth almost gasped in her own; this was with the fuller +perception that she was brown indeed. She literally struck the child +more as an animal than as a "real" lady; she might have been a clever +frizzled poodle in a frill or a dreadful human monkey in a spangled +petticoat. She had a nose that was far too big and eyes that were far +too small and a moustache that was, well, not so happy a feature as Sir +Claude's. Beale jumped up to her; while, to the child's astonishment, +though as if in a quick intensity of thought, the Countess advanced as +gaily as if, for many a day, nothing awkward had happened for any one. +Maisie, in spite of a large acquaintance with the phenomenon, had +never seen it so promptly established that nothing awkward was to be +mentioned. The next minute the Countess had kissed her and exclaimed to +Beale with bright tender reproach: "Why, you never told me HALF! My dear +child," she cried, "it was awfully nice of you to come!" + +"But she hasn't come--she won't come!" Beale answered. "I've put it to +her how much you'd like it, but she declines to have anything to do with +us." + +The Countess stood smiling, and after an instant that was mainly taken +up with the shock of her weird aspect Maisie felt herself reminded +of another smile, which was not ugly, though also interested--the +kind light thrown, that day in the Park, from the clean fair face of +the Captain. Papa's Captain--yes--was the Countess; but she wasn't +nearly so nice as the other: it all came back, doubtless, to Maisie's +minor appreciation of ladies. "Shouldn't you like me," said this one +endearingly, "to take you to Spa?" + +"To Spa?" The child repeated the name to gain time, not to show how the +Countess brought back to her a dim remembrance of a strange woman with a +horrid face who once, years before, in an omnibus, bending to her from +an opposite seat, had suddenly produced an orange and murmured "Little +dearie, won't you have it?" She had felt then, for some reason, a small +silly terror, though afterwards conscious that her interlocutress, +unfortunately hideous, had particularly meant to be kind. This was also +what the Countess meant; yet the few words she had uttered and the smile +with which she had uttered them immediately cleared everything up. Oh +no, she wanted to go nowhere with HER, for her presence had already, in +a few seconds, dissipated the happy impression of the room and put an +end to the pleasure briefly taken in Beale's command of such elegance. +There was no command of elegance in his having exposed her to the +approach of the short fat wheedling whiskered person in whom she had now +to recognise the only figure wholly without attraction involved in any +of the intimate connexions her immediate circle had witnessed the growth +of. She was abashed meanwhile, however, at having appeared to weigh in +the balance the place to which she had been invited; and she added as +quickly as possible: "It isn't to America then?" The Countess, at this, +looked sharply at Beale, and Beale, airily enough, asked what the deuce +it mattered when she had already given him to understand she wanted to +have nothing to do with them. There followed between her companions a +passage of which the sense was drowned for her in the deepening inward +hum of her mere desire to get off; though she was able to guess later +on that her father must have put it to his friend that it was no use +talking, that she was an obstinate little pig and that, besides, she +was really old enough to choose for herself. It glimmered back to her +indeed that she must have failed quite dreadfully to seem ideally other +than rude, inasmuch as before she knew it she had visibly given the +impression that if they didn't allow her to go home she should cry. Oh +if there had ever been a thing to cry about it was being so consciously +and gawkily below the handsomest offers any one could ever have +received. The great pain of the thing was that she could see the +Countess liked her enough to wish to be liked in return, and it was from +the idea of a return she sought utterly to flee. It was the idea of a +return that after a confusion of loud words had broken out between the +others brought to her lips with the tremor preceding disaster: "Can't +I, please, be sent home in a cab?" Yes, the Countess wanted her and the +Countess was wounded and chilled, and she couldn't help it, and it was +all the more dreadful because it only made the Countess more coaxing and +more impossible. The only thing that sustained either of them perhaps +till the cab came--Maisie presently saw it would come--was its being +in the air somehow that Beale had done what he wanted. He went out to +look for a conveyance; the servants, he said, had gone to bed, but she +shouldn't be kept beyond her time. The Countess left the room with him, +and, alone in the possession of it, Maisie hoped she wouldn't come +back. It was all the effect of her face--the child simply couldn't look +at it and meet its expression halfway. All in a moment too that queer +expression had leaped into the lovely things--all in a moment she had +had to accept her father as liking some one whom she was sure neither +her mother, nor Mrs. Beale, nor Mrs. Wix, nor Sir Claude, nor the +Captain, nor even Mr. Perriam and Lord Eric could possibly have liked. +Three minutes later, downstairs, with the cab at the door, it was +perhaps as a final confession of not having much to boast of that, on +taking leave of her, he managed to press her to his bosom without her +seeing his face. For herself she was so eager to go that their parting +reminded her of nothing, not even of a single one of all the "nevers" +that above, as the penalty of not cleaving to him, he had attached to +the question of their meeting again. There was something in the Countess +that falsified everything, even the great interests in America and yet +more the first flush of that superiority to Mrs. Beale and to mamma +which had been expressed in Sèvres sets and silver boxes. These were +still there, but perhaps there were no great interests in America. +Mamma had known an American who was not a bit like this one. She was +not, however, of noble rank; her name was only Mrs. Tucker. Maisie's +detachment would none the less have been more complete if she had not +suddenly had to exclaim: "Oh dear, I haven't any money!" + +Her father's teeth, at this, were such a picture of appetite without +action as to be a match for any plea of poverty. "Make your stepmother +pay." + +"Stepmothers DON'T pay!" cried the Countess. "No stepmother ever paid +in her life!" The next moment they were in the street together, and the +next the child was in the cab, with the Countess, on the pavement, but +close to her, quickly taking money from a purse whisked out of a pocket. +Her father had vanished and there was even yet nothing in that to +reawaken the pang of loss. "Here's money," said the brown lady: "go!" +The sound was commanding: the cab rattled off. Maisie sat there with her +hand full of coin. All that for a cab? As they passed a street-lamp she +bent to see how much. What she saw was a cluster of sovereigns. There +MUST then have been great interests in America. It was still at any rate +the Arabian Nights. + + + + +XX + + +The money was far too much even for a fee in a fairy-tale, and in the +absence of Mrs. Beale, who, though the hour was now late, had not yet +returned to the Regent's Park, Susan Ash, in the hall, as loud as Maisie +was low and as bold as she was bland, produced, on the exhibition +offered under the dim vigil of the lamp that made the place a +contrast to the child's recent scene of light, the half-crown that an +unsophisticated cabman could pronounce to be the least he would take. It +was apparently long before Mrs. Beale would arrive, and in the interval +Maisie had been induced by the prompt Susan not only to go to bed like +a darling dear, but, in still richer expression of that character, to +devote to the repayment of obligations general as well as particular +one of the sovereigns in the ordered array that, on the dressing-table +upstairs, was naturally not less dazzling to a lone orphan of a +housemaid than to the subject of the manoeuvres of a quartette. This +subject went to sleep with her property gathered into a knotted +handkerchief, the largest that could be produced and lodged under her +pillow; but the explanations that on the morrow were inevitably more +complete with Mrs. Beale than they had been with her humble friend +found their climax in a surrender also more becomingly free. There were +explanations indeed that Mrs. Beale had to give as well as to ask, and +the most striking of these was to the effect that it was dreadful for +a little girl to take money from a woman who was simply the vilest of +their sex. The sovereigns were examined with some attention, the result +of which, however, was to make the author of that statement desire to +know what, if one really went into the matter, they could be called +but the wages of sin. Her companion went into it merely so far as the +question of what then they were to do with them; on which Mrs. Beale, +who had by this time put them into her pocket, replied with dignity +and with her hand on the place: "We're to send them back on the spot!" +Susan, the child soon afterwards learnt, had been invited to contribute +to this act of restitution her one appropriated coin; but a closer +clutch of the treasure showed in her private assurance to Maisie that +there was a limit to the way she could be "done." Maisie had been open +with Mrs. Beale about the whole of last night's transaction; but she +now found herself on the part of their indignant inferior a recipient +of remarks that were so many ringing tokens of that lady's own +suppressions. One of these bore upon the extraordinary hour--it was +three in the morning if she really wanted to know--at which Mrs. Beale +had re-entered the house; another, in accents as to which Maisie's +criticism was still intensely tacit, characterised her appeal as such +a "gime," such a "shime," as one had never had to put up with; a +third treated with some vigour the question of the enormous sums due +belowstairs, in every department, for gratuitous labour and wasted zeal. +Our young lady's consciousness was indeed mainly filled for several +days with the apprehension created by the too slow subsidence of her +attendant's sense of wrong. These days would become terrific like the +Revolutions she had learnt by heart in Histories if an outbreak in the +kitchen should crown them; and to promote that prospect she had through +Susan's eyes more than one glimpse of the way in which Revolutions are +prepared. To listen to Susan was to gather that the spark applied to +the inflammables and already causing them to crackle would prove to +have been the circumstance of one's being called a horrid low thief for +refusing to part with one's own. The redeeming point of this tension +was, on the fifth day, that it actually appeared to have had to do with +a breathless perception in our heroine's breast that scarcely more as +the centre of Sir Claude's than as that of Susan's energies she had soon +after breakfast been conveyed from London to Folkestone and established +at a lovely hotel. These agents, before her wondering eyes, had combined +to carry through the adventure and to give it the air of having owed +its success to the fact that Mrs. Beale had, as Susan said, but just +stepped out. When Sir Claude, watch in hand, had met this fact with the +exclamation "Then pack Miss Farange and come off with us!" there had +ensued on the stairs a series of gymnastics of a nature to bring Miss +Farange's heart into Miss Farange's mouth. She sat with Sir Claude in +a four-wheeler while he still held his watch; held it longer than any +doctor who had ever felt her pulse; long enough to give her a vision +of something like the ecstasy of neglecting such an opportunity to +show impatience. The ecstasy had begun in the schoolroom and over the +Berceuse, quite in the manner of the same foretaste on the day, a little +while back, when Susan had panted up and she herself, after the hint +about the duchess, had sailed down; for what harm then had there been in +drops and disappointments if she could still have, even only a moment, +the sensation of such a name "brought up"? It had remained with her that +her father had foretold her she would some day be in the street, but it +clearly wouldn't be this day, and she felt justified of the preference +betrayed to that parent as soon as her visitor had set Susan in motion +and laid his hand, while she waited with him, kindly on her own. This +was what the Captain, in Kensington Gardens, had done; her present +situation reminded her a little of that one and renewed the dim wonder +of the fashion after which, from the first, such pats and pulls had +struck her as the steps and signs of other people's business and even a +little as the wriggle or the overflow of their difficulties. What had +failed her and what had frightened her on the night of the Exhibition +lost themselves at present alike in the impression that any "surprise" +now about to burst from Sir Claude would be too big to burst all at +once. Any awe that might have sprung from his air of leaving out her +stepmother was corrected by the force of a general rule, the odd truth +that if Mrs. Beale now never came nor went without making her think of +him, it was never, to balance that, the main mark of his own renewed +reality to appear to be a reference to Mrs. Beale. To be with Sir Claude +was to think of Sir Claude, and that law governed Maisie's mind until, +through a sudden lurch of the cab, which had at last taken in Susan and +ever so many bundles and almost reached Charing Cross, it popped again +somehow into her dizzy head the long-lost image of Mrs. Wix. + +It was singular, but from this time she understood and she followed, +followed with the sense of an ample filling-out of any void created by +symptoms of avoidance and of flight. Her ecstasy was a thing that had +yet more of a face than of a back to turn, a pair of eyes still directed +to Mrs. Wix even after the slight surprise of their not finding her, as +the journey expanded, either at the London station or at the Folkestone +hotel. It took few hours to make the child feel that if she was in +neither of these places she was at least everywhere else. Maisie had +known all along a great deal, but never so much as she was to know from +this moment on and as she learned in particular during the couple of +days that she was to hang in the air, as it were, over the sea which +represented in breezy blueness and with a summer charm a crossing of +more spaces than the Channel. It was granted her at this time to arrive +at divinations so ample that I shall have no room for the goal if I +attempt to trace the stages; as to which therefore I must be content to +say that the fullest expression we may give to Sir Claude's conduct is +a poor and pale copy of the picture it presented to his young friend. +Abruptly, that morning, he had yielded to the action of the idea pumped +into him for weeks by Mrs. Wix on lines of approach that she had been +capable of the extraordinary art of preserving from entanglement in +the fine network of his relations with Mrs. Beale. The breath of her +sincerity, blowing without a break, had puffed him up to the flight +by which, in the degree I have indicated, Maisie too was carried off +her feet. This consisted neither in more nor in less than the brave +stroke of his getting off from Mrs. Beale as well as from his wife--of +making with the child straight for some such foreign land as would +give a support to Mrs. Wix's dream that she might still see his +errors renounced and his delinquencies redeemed. It would all be a +sacrifice--under eyes that would miss no faintest shade--to what even +the strange frequenters of her ladyship's earlier period used to call +the real good of the little unfortunate. Maisie's head held a suspicion +of much that, during the last long interval, had confusedly, but quite +candidly, come and gone in his own; a glimpse, almost awe-stricken in +its gratitude, of the miracle her old governess had wrought. That +functionary could not in this connexion have been more impressive, even +at second-hand, if she had been a prophetess with an open scroll or some +ardent abbess speaking with the lips of the Church. She had clung day +by day to their plastic associate, plying him with her deep, narrow +passion, doing her simple utmost to convert him, and so working on him +that he had at last really embraced his fine chance. That the chance was +not delusive was sufficiently guaranteed by the completeness with which +he could finally figure it out that, in case of his taking action, +neither Ida nor Beale, whose book, on each side, it would only too well +suit, would make any sort of row. + +It sounds, no doubt, too penetrating, but it was not all as an effect of +Sir Claude's betrayals that Maisie was able to piece together the beauty +of the special influence through which, for such stretches of time, +he had refined upon propriety by keeping, so far as possible, his +sentimental interests distinct. She had ever of course in her mind fewer +names than conceptions, but it was only with this drawback that she now +made out her companion's absences to have had for their ground that he +was the lover of her stepmother and that the lover of her stepmother +could scarce logically pretend to a superior right to look after her. +Maisie had by this time embraced the implication of a kind of natural +divergence between lovers and little girls. It was just this indeed +that could throw light on the probable contents of the pencilled note +deposited on the hall-table in the Regent's Park and which would greet +Mrs. Beale on her return. Maisie freely figured it as provisionally +jocular in tone, even though to herself on this occasion Sir Claude +turned a graver face than he had shown in any crisis but that of putting +her into the cab when she had been horrid to him after her parting with +the Captain. He might really be embarrassed, but he would be sure, to +her view, to have muffled in some bravado of pleasantry the disturbance +produced at her father's by the removal of a valued servant. Not that +there wasn't a great deal too that wouldn't be in the note--a great deal +for which a more comfortable place was Maisie's light little brain, +where it hummed away hour after hour and caused the first outlook at +Folkestone to swim in a softness of colour and sound. It became clear in +this medium that her stepfather had really now only to take into account +his entanglement with Mrs. Beale. Wasn't he at last disentangled from +every one and every thing else? The obstacle to the rupture pressed upon +him by Mrs. Wix in the interest of his virtue would be simply that he +was in love, or rather, to put it more precisely, that Mrs. Beale had +left him no doubt of the degree in which SHE was. She was so much so as +to have succeeded in making him accept for a time her infatuated grasp +of him and even to some extent the idea of what they yet might do +together with a little diplomacy and a good deal of patience. I may not +even answer for it that Maisie was not aware of how, in this, Mrs. Beale +failed to share his all but insurmountable distaste for their allowing +their little charge to breathe the air of their gross irregularity--his +contention, in a word, that they should either cease to be irregular +or cease to be parental. Their little charge, for herself, had long +ago adopted the view that even Mrs. Wix had at one time not thought +prohibitively coarse--the view that she was after all, AS a little +charge, morally at home in atmospheres it would be appalling to analyse. +If Mrs. Wix, however, ultimately appalled, had now set her heart on +strong measures, Maisie, as I have intimated, could also work round both +to the reasons for them and to the quite other reasons for that lady's +not, as yet at least, appearing in them at first-hand. + +Oh decidedly I shall never get you to believe the number of things she +saw and the number of secrets she discovered! Why in the world, for +instance, couldn't Sir Claude have kept it from her--except on the +hypothesis of his not caring to--that, when you came to look at it and +so far as it was a question of vested interests, he had quite as much +right in her as her stepmother, not to say a right that Mrs. Beale +was in no position to dispute? He failed at all events of any such +successful ambiguity as could keep her, when once they began to look +across at France, from regarding even what was least explained as most +in the spirit of their old happy times, their rambles and expeditions in +the easier better days of their first acquaintance. Never before had she +had so the sense of giving him a lead for the sort of treatment of what +was between them that would best carry it off, or of his being grateful +to her for meeting him so much in the right place. She met him literally +at the very point where Mrs. Beale was most to be reckoned with, the +point of the jealousy that was sharp in that lady and of the need of +their keeping it as long as possible obscure to her that poor Mrs. Wix +had still a hand. Yes, she met him too in the truth of the matter that, +as her stepmother had had no one else to be jealous of, she had made +up for so gross a privation by directing the sentiment to a moral +influence. Sir Claude appeared absolutely to convey in a wink that +a moral influence capable of pulling a string was after all a moral +influence exposed to the scratching out of its eyes; and that, this +being the case, there was somebody they couldn't afford to leave +unprotected before they should see a little better what Mrs. Beale was +likely to do. Maisie, true enough, had not to put it into words to +rejoin, in the coffee-room, at luncheon: "What CAN she do but come to +you if papa does take a step that will amount to legal desertion?" +Neither had he then, in answer, to articulate anything but the jollity +of their having found a table at a window from which, as they partook of +cold beef and apollinaris--for he hinted they would have to save lots +of money--they could let their eyes hover tenderly on the far-off white +cliffs that so often had signalled to the embarrassed English a promise +of safety. Maisie stared at them as if she might really make out after a +little a queer dear figure perched on them--a figure as to which she had +already the subtle sense that, wherever perched, it would be the very +oddest yet seen in France. But it was at least as exciting to feel where +Mrs. Wix wasn't as it would have been to know where she was, and if she +wasn't yet at Boulogne this only thickened the plot. + +If she was not to be seen that day, however, the evening was marked by +an apparition before which, none the less, overstrained suspense folded +on the spot its wings. Adjusting her respirations and attaching, under +dropped lashes, all her thoughts to a smartness of frock and frill for +which she could reflect that she had not appealed in vain to a loyalty +in Susan Ash triumphant over the nice things their feverish flight had +left behind, Maisie spent on a bench in the garden of the hotel the +half-hour before dinner, that mysterious ceremony of the _table d'hôte_ +for which she had prepared with a punctuality of flutter. Sir Claude, +beside her, was occupied with a cigarette and the afternoon papers; and +though the hotel was full the garden shewed the particular void that +ensues upon the sound of the dressing-bell. She had almost had time to +weary of the human scene; her own humanity at any rate, in the shape of +a smutch on her scanty skirt, had held her so long that as soon as she +raised her eyes they rested on a high fair drapery by which smutches +were put to shame and which had glided toward her over the grass without +her noting its rustle. She followed up its stiff sheen--up and up from +the ground, where it had stopped--till at the end of a considerable +journey her impression felt the shock of the fixed face which, +surmounting it, seemed to offer the climax of the dressed condition. +"Why mamma!" she cried the next instant--cried in a tone that, as +she sprang to her feet, brought Sir Claude to his own beside her and +gave her ladyship, a few yards off, the advantage of their momentary +confusion. Poor Maisie's was immense; her mother's drop had the effect +of one of the iron shutters that, in evening walks with Susan Ash, she +had seen suddenly, at the touch of a spring, rattle down over shining +shop-fronts. The light of foreign travel was darkened at a stroke; she +had a horrible sense that they were caught; and for the first time of +her life in Ida's presence she so far translated an impulse into an +invidious act as to clutch straight at the hand of her responsible +confederate. It didn't help her that he appeared at first equally hushed +with horror; a minute during which, in the empty garden, with its long +shadows on the lawn, its blue sea over the hedge and its startled peace +in the air, both her elders remained as stiff as tall tumblers filled to +the brim and held straight for fear of a spill. + +At last, in a tone that enriched the whole surprise by its unexpected +softness, her mother said to Sir Claude: "Do you mind at all my speaking +to her?" + +"Oh no; DO you?" His reply was so long in coming that Maisie was the +first to find the right note. + +He laughed as he seemed to take it from her, and she felt a sufficient +concession in his manner of addressing their visitor. "How in the world +did you know we were here?" + +His wife, at this, came the rest of the way and sat down on the bench +with a hand laid on her daughter, whom she gracefully drew to her and in +whom, at her touch, the fear just kindled gave a second jump, but now in +quite another direction. Sir Claude, on the further side, resumed his +seat and his newspapers, so that the three grouped themselves like a +family party; his connexion, in the oddest way in the world, almost +cynically and in a flash acknowledged, and the mother patting the child +into conformities unspeakable. Maisie could already feel how little it +was Sir Claude and she who were caught. She had the positive sense of +their catching their relative, catching her in the act of getting rid of +her burden with a finality that showed her as unprecedentedly relaxed. +Oh yes, the fear had dropped, and she had never been so irrevocably +parted with as in the pressure of possession now supremely exerted +by Ida's long-gloved and much-bangled arm. "I went to the Regent's +Park"--this was presently her ladyship's answer to Sir Claude. + +"Do you mean to-day?" + +"This morning, just after your own call there. That's how I found you +out; that's what has brought me." + +Sir Claude considered and Maisie waited. "Whom then did you see?" + +Ida gave a sound of indulgent mockery. "I like your scare. I know your +game. I didn't see the person I risked seeing, but I had been ready +to take my chance of her." She addressed herself to Maisie; she had +encircled her more closely. "I asked for YOU, my dear, but I saw no one +but a dirty parlourmaid. She was red in the face with the great things +that, as she told me, had just happened in the absence of her mistress; +and she luckily had the sense to have made out the place to which Sir +Claude had come to take you. If he hadn't given a false scent I should +find you here: that was the supposition on which I've proceeded." Ida +had never been so explicit about proceeding or supposing, and Maisie, +drinking this in, noted too how Sir Claude shared her fine impression of +it. "I wanted to see you," his wife continued, "and now you can judge of +the trouble I've taken. I had everything to do in town to-day, but I +managed to get off." + +Maisie and her companion, for a moment, did justice to this achievement; +but Maisie was the first to express it. "I'm glad you wanted to see me, +mamma." Then after a concentration more deep and with a plunge more +brave: "A little more and you'd have been too late." It stuck in her +throat, but she brought it out: "We're going to France." + +Ida was magnificent; Ida kissed her on the forehead. "That's just what I +thought likely; it made me decide to run down. I fancied that in spite +of your scramble you'd wait to cross, and it added to the reason I have +for seeing you." + +Maisie wondered intensely what the reason could be, but she knew ever so +much better than to ask. She was slightly surprised indeed to perceive +that Sir Claude didn't, and to hear him immediately enquire: "What in +the name of goodness can you have to say to her?" + +His tone was not exactly rude, but it was impatient enough to make his +wife's response a fresh specimen of the new softness. "That, my dear +man, is all my own business." + +"Do you mean," Sir Claude asked, "that you wish me to leave you with +her?" + +"Yes, if you'll be so good; that's the extraordinary request I take the +liberty of making." Her ladyship had dropped to a mildness of irony by +which, for a moment, poor Maisie was mystified and charmed, puzzled +with a glimpse of something that in all the years had at intervals +peeped out. Ida smiled at Sir Claude with the strange air she had on +such occasions of defying an interlocutor to keep it up as long; her +huge eyes, her red lips, the intense marks in her face formed an +_éclairage_ as distinct and public as a lamp set in a window. The +child seemed quite to see in it the very beacon that had lighted her +path; she suddenly found herself reflecting that it was no wonder the +gentlemen were guided. This must have been the way mamma had first +looked at Sir Claude; it brought back the lustre of the time they had +outlived. It must have been the way she looked also at Mr. Perriam and +Lord Eric; above all it contributed in Maisie's mind to a completer +view of that satisfied state of the Captain. Our young lady grasped +this idea with a quick lifting of the heart; there was a stillness +during which her mother flooded her with a wealth of support to the +Captain's striking tribute. This stillness remained long enough +unbroken to represent that Sir Claude too might but be gasping again +under the spell originally strong for him; so that Maisie quite hoped +he would at least say something to show a recognition of how charming +she could be. + +What he presently said was: "Are you putting up for the night?" + +His wife cast grandly about. "Not here--I've come from Dover." + +Over Maisie's head, at this, they still faced each other. "You spend the +night there?" + +"Yes, I brought some things. I went to the hotel and hastily arranged; +then I caught the train that whisked me on here. You see what a day I've +had of it." + +The statement may surprise, but these were really as obliging if not as +lucid words as, into her daughter's ears at least, Ida's lips had ever +dropped; and there was a quick desire in the daughter that for the hour +at any rate they should duly be welcomed as a ground of intercourse. +Certainly mamma had a charm which, when turned on, became a large +explanation; and the only danger now in an impulse to applaud it would +be that of appearing to signalise its rarity. Maisie, however, risked +the peril in the geniality of an admission that Ida had indeed had a +rush; and she invited Sir Claude to expose himself by agreeing with her +that the rush had been even worse than theirs. He appeared to meet this +appeal by saying with detachment enough: "You go back there to-night?" + +"Oh yes--there are plenty of trains." Again Sir Claude hesitated; it +would have been hard to say if the child, between them, more connected +or divided them. Then he brought out quietly: "It will be late for you +to knock about. I'll see you over." + +"You needn't trouble, thank you. I think you won't deny that I can help +myself and that it isn't the first time in my dreadful life that I've +somehow managed it." Save for this allusion to her dreadful life they +talked there, Maisie noted, as if they were only rather superficial +friends; a special effect that she had often wondered at before in the +midst of what she supposed to be intimacies. This effect was augmented +by the almost casual manner in which her ladyship went on: "I dare say +I shall go abroad." + +"From Dover do you mean, straight?" + +"How straight I can't say. I'm excessively ill." + +This for a minute struck Maisie as but a part of the conversation; +at the end of which time she became aware that it ought to strike +her--though it apparently didn't strike Sir Claude--as a part of +something graver. It helped her to twist nearer. "Ill, mamma--really +ill?" + +She regretted her "really" as soon as she had spoken it; but there +couldn't be a better proof of her mother's present polish than that Ida +showed no gleam of a temper to take it up. She had taken up at other +times much tinier things. She only pressed Maisie's head against her +bosom and said: "Shockingly, my dear. I must go to that new place." + +"What new place?" Sir Claude enquired. + +Ida thought, but couldn't recall it. "Oh 'Chose,' don't you know? +--where every one goes. I want some proper treatment. It's all I've ever +asked for on earth. But that's not what I came to say." + +Sir Claude, in silence, folded one by one his newspapers; then he rose +and stood whacking the palm of his hand with the bundle. "You'll stop +and dine with us?" + +"Dear no--I can't dine at this sort of hour. I ordered dinner at Dover." + +Her ladyship's tone in this one instance showed a certain superiority to +those conditions in which her daughter had artlessly found Folkestone a +paradise. It was yet not so crushing as to nip in the bud the eagerness +with which the latter broke out: "But won't you at least have a cup of +tea?" + +Ida kissed her again on the brow. "Thanks, love. I had tea before +coming." She raised her eyes to Sir Claude. "She IS sweet!" He made no +more answer than if he didn't agree; but Maisie was at ease about that +and was still taken up with the joy of this happier pitch of their talk, +which put more and more of a meaning into the Captain's version of her +ladyship and literally kindled a conjecture that such an admirer might, +over there at the other place, be waiting for her to dine. Was the same +conjecture in Sir Claude's mind? He partly puzzled her, if it had risen +there, by the slight perversity with which he returned to a question +that his wife evidently thought she had disposed of. + +He whacked his hand again with his paper. "I had really much better take +you." + +"And leave Maisie here alone?" + +Mamma so clearly didn't want it that Maisie leaped at the vision of a +Captain who had seen her on from Dover and who, while he waited to take +her back, would be hovering just at the same distance at which, in +Kensington Gardens, the companion of his walk had herself hovered. Of +course, however, instead of breathing any such guess she let Sir Claude +reply; all the more that his reply could contribute so much to her own +present grandeur. "She won't be alone when she has a maid in +attendance." + +Maisie had never before had so much of a retinue, and she waited also to +enjoy the action of it on her ladyship. "You mean the woman you brought +from town?" Ida considered. "The person at the house spoke of her in a +way that scarcely made her out company for my child." Her tone was that +her child had never wanted, in her hands, for prodigious company. But +she as distinctly continued to decline Sir Claude's. "Don't be an old +goose," she said charmingly. "Let us alone." + +In front of them on the grass he looked graver than Maisie at all now +thought the occasion warranted. "I don't see why you can't say it before +me." + +His wife smoothed one of her daughter's curls. "Say what, dear?" + +"Why what you came to say." + +At this Maisie at last interposed: she appealed to Sir Claude. "Do let +her say it to me." + +He looked hard for a moment at his little friend. "How do you know what +she may say?" + +"She must risk it," Ida remarked. + +"I only want to protect you," he continued to the child. + +"You want to protect yourself--that's what you mean," his wife replied. +"Don't be afraid. I won't touch you." + +"She won't touch you--she WON'T!" Maisie declared. She felt by this time +that she could really answer for it, and something of the emotion with +which she had listened to the Captain came back to her. It made her +so happy and so secure that she could positively patronise mamma. She +did so in the Captain's very language. "She's good, she's good!" she +proclaimed. + +"Oh Lord!"--Sir Claude, at this, let himself go. He appeared to have +emitted some sound of derision that was smothered, to Maisie's ears, by +her being again embraced by his wife. Ida released her and held her off +a little, looking at her with a very queer face. Then the child became +aware that their companion had left them and that from the face in +question a confirmatory remark had proceeded. + +"I AM good, love," said her ladyship. + + + + +XXI + + +A good deal of the rest of Ida's visit was devoted to explaining, as it +were, so extraordinary a statement. This explanation was more copious +than any she had yet indulged in, and as the summer twilight gathered +and she kept her child in the garden she was conciliatory to a degree +that let her need to arrange things a little perceptibly peep out. It +was not merely that she explained; she almost conversed; all that was +wanting was that she should have positively chattered a little less. It +was really the occasion of Maisie's life on which her mother was to have +most to say to her. That alone was an implication of generosity and +virtue, and no great stretch was required to make our young lady feel +that she should best meet her and soonest have it over by simply seeming +struck with the propriety of her contention. They sat together while +the parent's gloved hand sometimes rested sociably on the child's and +sometimes gave a corrective pull to a ribbon too meagre or a tress too +thick; and Maisie was conscious of the effort to keep out of her eyes +the wonder with which they were occasionally moved to blink. Oh there +would have been things to blink at if one had let one's self go; and +it was lucky they were alone together, without Sir Claude or Mrs. Wix +or even Mrs. Beale to catch an imprudent glance. Though profuse and +prolonged her ladyship was not exhaustively lucid, and her account of +her situation, so far as it could be called descriptive, was a muddle +of inconsequent things, bruised fruit of an occasion she had rather too +lightly affronted. None of them were really thought out and some were +even not wholly insincere. It was as if she had asked outright what +better proof could have been wanted of her goodness and her greatness +than just this marvellous consent to give up what she had so cherished. +It was as if she had said in so many words: "There have been things +between us--between Sir Claude and me--which I needn't go into, you +little nuisance, because you wouldn't understand them." It suited her +to convey that Maisie had been kept, so far as SHE was concerned or +could imagine, in a holy ignorance and that she must take for granted a +supreme simplicity. She turned this way and that in the predicament she +had sought and from which she could neither retreat with grace nor +emerge with credit: she draped herself in the tatters of her impudence, +postured to her utmost before the last little triangle of cracked glass +to which so many fractures had reduced the polished plate of filial +superstition. If neither Sir Claude nor Mrs. Wix was there this was +perhaps all the more a pity: the scene had a style of its own that would +have qualified it for presentation, especially at such a moment as that +of her letting it betray that she quite did think her wretched offspring +better placed with Sir Claude than in her own soiled hands. There was at +any rate nothing scant either in her admissions or her perversions, the +mixture of her fear of what Maisie might undiscoverably think and of the +support she at the same time gathered from a necessity of selfishness +and a habit of brutality. This habit flushed through the merit she now +made, in terms explicit, of not having come to Folkestone to kick up a +vulgar row. She had not come to box any ears or to bang any doors or +even to use any language: she had come at the worst to lose the thread +of her argument in an occasional dumb disgusted twitch of the toggery in +which Mrs. Beale's low domestic had had the impudence to serve up Miss +Farange. She checked all criticism, not committing herself even so far +as for those missing comforts of the schoolroom on which Mrs. Wix had +presumed. + +"I AM good--I'm crazily, I'm criminally good. But it won't do for YOU +any more, and if I've ceased to contend with him, and with you too, who +have made most of the trouble between us, it's for reasons that you'll +understand one of these days but too well--one of these days when I +hope you'll know what it is to have lost a mother. I'm awfully ill, but +you mustn't ask me anything about it. If I don't get off somewhere my +doctor won't answer for the consequences. He's stupefied at what I've +borne--he says it has been put on me because I was formed to suffer. I'm +thinking of South Africa, but that's none of your business. You must +take your choice--you can't ask me questions if you're so ready to +give me up. No, I won't tell you; you can find out for yourself. South +Africa's wonderful, they say, and if I do go it must be to give it a +fair trial. It must be either one thing or the other; if he takes you, +you know, he takes you. I've struck my last blow for you; I can follow +you no longer from pillar to post. I must live for myself at last, while +there's still a handful left of me. I'm very, very ill; I'm very, very +tired; I'm very, very determined. There you have it. Make the most of +it. Your frock's too filthy; but I came to sacrifice myself." Maisie +looked at the peccant places; there were moments when it was a relief to +her to drop her eyes even on anything so sordid. All her interviews, all +her ordeals with her mother had, as she had grown older, seemed to have, +before any other, the hard quality of duration; but longer than any, +strangely, were these minutes offered to her as so pacific and so +agreeably winding up the connexion. It was her anxiety that made them +long, her fear of some hitch, some check of the current, one of her +ladyship's famous quick jumps. She held her breath; she only wanted, +by playing into her visitor's hands, to see the thing through. But her +impatience itself made at instants the whole situation swim; there were +things Ida said that she perhaps didn't hear, and there were things +she heard that Ida perhaps didn't say. "You're all I have, and yet I'm +capable of this. Your father wishes you were dead--that, my dear, is +what your father wishes. You'll have to get used to it as I've done--I +mean to his wishing that I'M dead. At all events you see for yourself +how wonderful I am to Sir Claude. He wishes me dead quite as much; and +I'm sure that if making me scenes about YOU could have killed me--!" It +was the mark of Ida's eloquence that she started more hares than she +followed, and she gave but a glance in the direction of this one; going +on to say that the very proof of her treating her husband like an angel +was that he had just stolen off not to be fairly shamed. She spoke as +if he had retired on tiptoe, as he might have withdrawn from a place +of worship in which he was not fit to be present. "You'll never know +what I've been through about you--never, never, never. I spare you +everything, as I always have; though I dare say you know things that, +if I did (I mean if I knew them) would make me--well, no matter! You're +old enough at any rate to know there are a lot of things I don't say +that I easily might; though it would do me good, I assure you, to have +spoken my mind for once in my life. I don't speak of your father's +infamous wife: that may give you a notion of the way I'm letting you +off. When I say 'you' I mean your precious friends and backers. If you +don't do justice to my forbearing, out of delicacy, to mention, just as +a last word, about your stepfather, a little fact or two of a kind that +really I should only HAVE to mention to shine myself in comparison, and +after every calumny, like pure gold: if you don't do me THAT justice +you'll never do me justice at all!" + +Maisie's desire to show what justice she did her had by this time become +so intense as to have brought with it an inspiration. The great effect +of their encounter had been to confirm her sense of being launched with +Sir Claude, to make it rich and full beyond anything she had dreamed, +and everything now conspired to suggest that a single soft touch of her +small hand would complete the good work and set her ladyship so promptly +and majestically afloat as to leave the great seaway clear for the +morrow. This was the more the case as her hand had for some moments been +rendered free by a marked manoeuvre of both of her mother's. One of +these capricious members had fumbled with visible impatience in some +backward depth of drapery and had presently reappeared with a small +article in its grasp. The act had a significance for a little person +trained, in that relation, from an early age, to keep an eye on manual +motions, and its possible bearing was not darkened by the memory of the +handful of gold that Susan Ash would never, never believe Mrs. Beale had +sent back--"not she; she's too false and too greedy!"--to the munificent +Countess. To have guessed, none the less, that her ladyship's purse +might be the real figure of the object extracted from the rustling +covert at her rear--this suspicion gave on the spot to the child's eyes +a direction carefully distant. It added moreover to the optimism that +for an hour could ruffle the surface of her deep diplomacy, ruffle it +to the point of making her forget that she had never been safe unless +she had also been stupid. She in short forgot her habitual caution in +her impulse to adopt her ladyship's practical interests and show her +ladyship how perfectly she understood them. She saw without looking +that her mother pressed a little clasp; heard, without wanting to, +the sharp click that marked the closing portemonnaie from which +something had been taken. What this was she just didn't see; it was not +too substantial to be locked with ease in the fold of her ladyship's +fingers. Nothing was less new to Maisie than the art of not thinking +singly, so that at this instant she could both bring out what was on +her tongue's end and weigh, as to the object in her mother's palm, the +question of its being a sovereign against the question of its being a +shilling. No sooner had she begun to speak than she saw that within a +few seconds this question would have been settled: she had foolishly +checked the rising words of the little speech of presentation to which, +under the circumstances, even such a high pride as Ida's had had to give +some thought. She had checked it completely--that was the next thing she +felt: the note she sounded brought into her companion's eyes a look that +quickly enough seemed at variance with presentations. + +"That was what the Captain said to me that day, mamma. I think it would +have given you pleasure to hear the way he spoke of you." + +The pleasure, Maisie could now in consternation reflect, would have been +a long time coming if it had come no faster than the response evoked by +her allusion to it. Her mother gave her one of the looks that slammed +the door in her face; never in a career of unsuccessful experiments had +Maisie had to take such a stare. It reminded her of the way that once, +at one of the lectures in Glower Street, something in a big jar that, +amid an array of strange glasses and bad smells, had been promised as a +beautiful yellow was produced as a beautiful black. She had been sorry +on that occasion for the lecturer, but she was at this moment sorrier +for herself. Oh nothing had ever made for twinges like mamma's manner of +saying: "The Captain? What Captain?" + +"Why when we met you in the Gardens--the one who took me to sit with +him. That was exactly what HE said." + +Ida let it come on so far as to appear for an instant to pick up a lost +thread. "What on earth did he say?" + +Maisie faltered supremely, but supremely she brought it out. "What you +say, mamma--that you're so good." + +"What 'I' say?" Ida slowly rose, keeping her eyes on her child, and the +hand that had busied itself in her purse conformed at her side and amid +the folds of her dress to a certain stiffening of the arm. "I say you're +a precious idiot, and I won't have you put words into my mouth!" This +was much more peremptory than a mere contradiction. Maisie could only +feel on the spot that everything had broken short off and that their +communication had abruptly ceased. That was presently proved. "What +business have you to speak to me of him?" + +Her daughter turned scarlet. "I thought you liked him." + +"Him!--the biggest cad in London!" Her ladyship towered again, and in +the gathering dusk the whites of her eyes were huge. + +Maisie's own, however, could by this time pretty well match them; and +she had at least now, with the first flare of anger that had ever yet +lighted her face for a foe, the sense of looking up quite as hard as any +one could look down. "Well, he was kind about you then; he WAS, and it +made me like him. He said things--they were beautiful, they were, they +were!" She was almost capable of the violence of forcing this home, for +even in the midst of her surge of passion--of which in fact it was a +part--there rose in her a fear, a pain, a vision ominous, precocious, +of what it might mean for her mother's fate to have forfeited such a +loyalty as that. There was literally an instant in which Maisie fully +saw--saw madness and desolation, saw ruin and darkness and death. "I've +thought of him often since, and I hoped it was with him--with him--" +Here, in her emotion, it failed her, the breath of her filial hope. + +But Ida got it out of her. "You hoped, you little horror--?" + +"That it was he who's at Dover, that it was he who's to take you. I mean +to South Africa," Maisie said with another drop. + +Ida's stupefaction, on this, kept her silent unnaturally long, so long +that her daughter could not only wonder what was coming, but perfectly +measure the decline of every symptom of her liberality. She loomed there +in her grandeur, merely dark and dumb; her wrath was clearly still, as +it had always been, a thing of resource and variety. What Maisie least +expected of it was by this law what now occurred. It melted, in the +summer twilight, gradually into pity, and the pity after a little found +a cadence to which the renewed click of her purse gave an accent. +She had put back what she had taken out. "You're a dreadful dismal +deplorable little thing," she murmured. And with this she turned back +and rustled away over the lawn. + +After she had disappeared, Maisie dropped upon the bench again and for +some time, in the empty garden and the deeper dusk, sat and stared at +the image her flight had still left standing. It had ceased to be her +mother only, in the strangest way, that it might become her father, the +father of whose wish that she were dead the announcement still lingered +in the air. It was a presence with vague edges--it continued to front +her, to cover her. But what reality that she need reckon with did it +represent if Mr. Farange were, on his side, also going off--going off to +America with the Countess, or even only to Spa? That question had, from +the house, a sudden gay answer in the great roar of a gong, and at the +same moment she saw Sir Claude look out for her from the wide lighted +doorway. At this she went to him and he came forward and met her on the +lawn. For a minute she was with him there in silence as, just before, at +the last, she had been with her mother. + +"She's gone?" + +"She's gone." + +Nothing more, for the instant, passed between them but to move together +to the house, where, in the hall, he indulged in one of those sudden +pleasantries with which, to the delight of his stepdaughter, his native +animation overflowed. "Will Miss Farange do me the honour to accept my +arm?" + +There was nothing in all her days that Miss Farange had accepted with +such bliss, a bright rich element that floated them together to their +feast; before they reached which, however, she uttered, in the spirit +of a glad young lady taken in to her first dinner, a sociable word that +made him stop short. "She goes to South Africa." + +"To South Africa?" His face, for a moment, seemed to swing for a jump; +the next it took its spring into the extreme of hilarity. "Is that what +she said?" + +"Oh yes, I didn't MISTAKE!" Maisie took to herself THAT credit. "For the +climate." + +Sir Claude was now looking at a young woman with black hair, a red frock +and a tiny terrier tucked under her elbow. She swept past them on her +way to the dining-room, leaving an impression of a strong scent which +mingled, amid the clatter of the place, with the hot aroma of food. He +had become a little graver; he still stopped to talk. "I see--I see." +Other people brushed by; he was not too grave to notice them. "Did she +say anything else?" + +"Oh yes, a lot more." + +On this he met her eyes again with some intensity, but only repeating: +"I see--I see." + +Maisie had still her own vision, which she brought out. "I thought she +was going to give me something." + +"What kind of a thing?" + +"Some money that she took out of her purse and then put back." + +Sir Claude's amusement reappeared. "She thought better of it. Dear +thrifty soul! How much did she make by that manoeuvre?" + +Maisie considered. "I didn't see. It was very small." + +Sir Claude threw back his head. "Do you mean very little? Sixpence?" + +Maisie resented this almost as if, at dinner, she were already bandying +jokes with an agreeable neighbour. "It may have been a sovereign." + +"Or even," Sir Claude suggested, "a ten-pound note." She flushed at this +sudden picture of what she perhaps had lost, and he made it more vivid +by adding: "Rolled up in a tight little ball, you know--her way of +treating banknotes as if they were curl-papers!" Maisie's flush deepened +both with the immense plausibility of this and with a fresh wave of the +consciousness that was always there to remind her of his cleverness--the +consciousness of how immeasurably more after all he knew about mamma +than she. She had lived with her so many times without discovering the +material of her curl-papers or assisting at any other of her dealings +with banknotes. The tight little ball had at any rate rolled away from +her for ever--quite like one of the other balls that Ida's cue used to +send flying. Sir Claude gave her his arm again, and by the time she was +seated at table she had perfectly made up her mind as to the amount of +the sum she had forfeited. Everything about her, however--the crowded +room, the bedizened banquet, the savour of dishes, the drama of +figures--ministered to the joy of life. After dinner she smoked with her +friend--for that was exactly what she felt she did--on a porch, a kind +of terrace, where the red tips of cigars and the light dresses of ladies +made, under the happy stars, a poetry that was almost intoxicating. +They talked but little, and she was slightly surprised at his asking +for no more news of what her mother had said; but she had no need of +talk--there were a sense and a sound in everything to which words had +nothing to add. They smoked and smoked, and there was a sweetness in her +stepfather's silence. At last he said: "Let us take another turn--but +you must go to bed soon. Oh you know, we're going to have a system!" +Their turn was back into the garden, along the dusky paths from which +they could see the black masts and the red lights of boats and hear the +calls and cries that evidently had to do with happy foreign travel; and +their system was once more to get on beautifully in this further lounge +without a definite exchange. Yet he finally spoke--he broke out as he +tossed away the match from which he had taken a fresh light: "I must go +for a stroll. I'm in a fidget--I must walk it off." She fell in with +this as she fell in with everything; on which he went on: "You go up to +Miss Ash"--it was the name they had started; "you must see she's not in +mischief. Can you find your way alone?" + +"Oh yes; I've been up and down seven times." She positively enjoyed the +prospect of an eighth. + +Still they didn't separate; they stood smoking together under the stars. +Then at last Sir Claude produced it. "I'm free--I'm free." + +She looked up at him; it was the very spot on which a couple of hours +before she had looked up at her mother. "You're free--you're free." + +"To-morrow we go to France." He spoke as if he hadn't heard her; but it +didn't prevent her again concurring. + +"To-morrow we go to France." + +Again he appeared not to have heard her; and after a moment--it was an +effect evidently of the depth of his reflexions and the agitation of +his soul--he also spoke as if he had not spoken before. "I'm free--I'm +free!" + +She repeated her form of assent. "You're free--you're free." + +This time he did hear her; he fixed her through the darkness with a +grave face. But he said nothing more; he simply stooped a little and +drew her to him--simply held her a little and kissed her goodnight; +after which, having given her a silent push upstairs to Miss Ash, he +turned round again to the black masts and the red lights. Maisie mounted +as if France were at the top. + + + + +XXII + + +The next day it seemed to her indeed at the bottom--down too far, in +shuddering plunges, even to leave her a sense, on the Channel boat, of +the height at which Sir Claude remained and which had never in every way +been so great as when, much in the wet, though in the angle of a screen +of canvas, he sociably sat with his stepdaughter's head in his lap and +that of Mrs. Beale's housemaid fairly pillowed on his breast. Maisie was +surprised to learn as they drew into port that they had had a lovely +passage; but this emotion, at Boulogne, was speedily quenched in others, +above all in the great ecstasy of a larger impression of life. She was +"abroad" and she gave herself up to it, responded to it, in the bright +air, before the pink houses, among the bare-legged fishwives and the +red-legged soldiers, with the instant certitude of a vocation. Her +vocation was to see the world and to thrill with enjoyment of the +picture; she had grown older in five minutes and had by the time they +reached the hotel recognised in the institutions and manners of France a +multitude of affinities and messages. Literally in the course of an hour +she found her initiation; a consciousness much quickened by the superior +part that, as soon as they had gobbled down a French breakfast--which +was indeed a high note in the concert--she observed herself to play to +Susan Ash. Sir Claude, who had already bumped against people he knew and +who, as he said, had business and letters, sent them out together for a +walk, a walk in which the child was avenged, so far as poetic justice +required, not only for the loud giggles that in their London trudges +used to break from her attendant, but for all the years of her tendency +to produce socially that impression of an excess of the queer something +which had seemed to waver so widely between innocence and guilt. On the +spot, at Boulogne, though there might have been excess there was at +least no wavering; she recognised, she understood, she adored and took +possession; feeling herself attuned to everything and laying her hand, +right and left, on what had simply been waiting for her. She explained +to Susan, she laughed at Susan, she towered over Susan; and it was +somehow Susan's stupidity, of which she had never yet been so sure, +and Susan's bewilderment and ignorance and antagonism, that gave the +liveliest rebound to her immediate perceptions and adoptions. The place +and the people were all a picture together, a picture that, when they +went down to the wide sands, shimmered, in a thousand tints, with the +pretty organisation of the _plage_, with the gaiety of spectators and +bathers, with that of the language and the weather, and above all with +that of our young lady's unprecedented situation. For it appeared to her +that no one since the beginning of time could have had such an adventure +or, in an hour, so much experience; as a sequel to which she only +needed, in order to feel with conscious wonder how the past was changed, +to hear Susan, inscrutably aggravated, express a preference for the +Edgware Road. The past was so changed and the circle it had formed +already so overstepped that on that very afternoon, in the course of +another walk, she found herself enquiring of Sir Claude--without a +single scruple--if he were prepared as yet to name the moment at which +they should start for Paris. His answer, it must be said, gave her the +least little chill. + +"Oh Paris, my dear child--I don't quite know about Paris!" + +This required to be met, but it was much less to challenge him than for +the rich joy of her first discussion of the details of a tour that, +after looking at him a minute, she replied: "Well, isn't that the REAL +thing, the thing that when one does come abroad--?" + +He had turned grave again, and she merely threw that out: it was a way +of doing justice to the seriousness of their life. She couldn't moreover +be so much older since yesterday without reflecting that if by this time +she probed a little he would recognise that she had done enough for mere +patience. There was in fact something in his eyes that suddenly, to her +own, made her discretion shabby. Before she could remedy this he had +answered her last question, answered it in the way that, of all ways, +she had least expected. "The thing it doesn't do not to do? Certainly +Paris is charming. But, my dear fellow, Paris eats your head off. I mean +it's so beastly expensive." + +That note gave her a pang--it suddenly let in a harder light. Were they +poor then, that is was HE poor, really poor beyond the pleasantry of +apollinaris and cold beef? They had walked to the end of the long jetty +that enclosed the harbour and were looking out at the dangers they had +escaped, the grey horizon that was England, the tumbled surface of the +sea and the brown smacks that bobbed upon it. Why had he chosen an +embarrassed time to make this foreign dash? unless indeed it was just +the dash economic, of which she had often heard and on which, after +another look at the grey horizon and the bobbing boats, she was ready +to turn round with elation. She replied to him quite in his own manner: +"I see, I see." She smiled up at him. "Our affairs are involved." + +"That's it." He returned her smile. "Mine are not quite so bad as yours; +for yours are really, my dear man, in a state I can't see through at +all. But mine will do--for a mess." + +She thought this over. "But isn't France cheaper than England?" + +England, over there in the thickening gloom, looked just then remarkably +dear. "I dare say; some parts." + +"Then can't we live in those parts?" + +There was something that for an instant, in satisfaction of this, he had +the air of being about to say and yet not saying. What he presently said +was: "This very place is one of them." + +"Then we shall live here?" + +He didn't treat it quite so definitely as she liked. "Since we've come +to save money!" + +This made her press him more. "How long shall we stay?" + +"Oh three or four days." + +It took her breath away. "You can save money in that time?" + +He burst out laughing, starting to walk again and taking her under his +arm. He confessed to her on the way that she too had put a finger on +the weakest of all his weaknesses, the fact, of which he was perfectly +aware, that he probably might have lived within his means if he had +never done anything for thrift. "It's the happy thoughts that do it," he +said; "there's nothing so ruinous as putting in a cheap week." Maisie +heard afresh among the pleasant sounds of the closing day that steel +click of Ida's change of mind. She thought of the ten-pound note +it would have been delightful at this juncture to produce for her +companion's encouragement. But the idea was dissipated by his saying +irrelevantly, in presence of the next thing they stopped to admire: "We +shall stay till she arrives." + +She turned upon him. "Mrs. Beale?" + +"Mrs. Wix. I've had a wire," he went on. "She has seen your mother." + +"Seen mamma?" Maisie stared. "Where in the world?" + +"Apparently in London. They've been together." + +For an instant this looked ominous--a fear came into her eyes. "Then +she hasn't gone?" + +"Your mother?--to South Africa? I give it up, dear boy," Sir Claude +said; and she seemed literally to see him give it up as he stood +there and with a kind of absent gaze--absent, that is, from HER +affairs--followed the fine stride and shining limbs of a young fishwife +who had just waded out of the sea with her basketful of shrimps. His +thought came back to her sooner than his eyes. "But I dare say it's all +right. She wouldn't come if it wasn't, poor old thing: she knows rather +well what she's about." + +This was so reassuring that Maisie, after turning it over, could make it +fit into her dream. "Well, what IS she about?" + +He finally stopped looking at the fishwife--he met his companion's +enquiry. "Oh you know!" There was something in the way he said it that +made, between them, more of an equality than she had yet imagined; but +it had also more the effect of raising her up than of letting him down, +and what it did with her was shown by the sound of her assent. + +"Yes--I know!" What she knew, what she COULD know is by this time no +secret to us: it grew and grew at any rate, the rest of that day, in the +air of what he took for granted. It was better he should do that than +attempt to test her knowledge; but there at the worst was the gist of +the matter: it was open between them at last that their great change, +as, speaking as if it had already lasted weeks, Maisie called it, was +somehow built up round Mrs. Wix. Before she went to bed that night she +knew further that Sir Claude, since, as HE called it, they had been on +the rush, had received more telegrams than one. But they separated again +without speaking of Mrs. Beale. + +Oh what a crossing for the straighteners and the old brown dress--which +latter appurtenance the child saw thriftily revived for the possible +disasters of travel! The wind got up in the night and from her little +room at the inn Maisie could hear the noise of the sea. The next day it +was raining and everything different: this was the case even with Susan +Ash, who positively crowed over the bad weather, partly, it seemed, for +relish of the time their visitor would have in the boat, and partly to +point the moral of the folly of coming to such holes. In the wet, with +Sir Claude, Maisie went to the Folkestone packet, on the arrival of +which, with many signs of the fray, he made her wait under an umbrella +by the quay; whence almost ere the vessel touched, he was to be +descried, in quest of their friend, wriggling--that had been his +word--through the invalids massed upon the deck. It was long till +he reappeared--it was not indeed till every one had landed; when he +presented the object of his benevolence in a light that Maisie scarce +knew whether to suppose the depth of prostration or the flush of +triumph. The lady on his arm, still bent beneath her late ordeal, was +muffled in such draperies as had never before offered so much support +to so much woe. At the hotel, an hour later, this ambiguity dropped: +assisting Mrs. Wix in private to refresh and reinvest herself, Maisie +heard from her in detail how little she could have achieved if Sir +Claude hadn't put it in her power. It was a phrase that in her room she +repeated in connexions indescribable: he had put it in her power to have +"changes," as she said, of the most intimate order, adapted to climates +and occasions so various as to foreshadow in themselves the stages of +a vast itinerary. Cheap weeks would of course be in their place after +so much money spent on a governess; sums not grudged, however, by this +lady's pupil, even on her feeling her own appearance give rise, through +the straighteners, to an attention perceptibly mystified. Sir Claude in +truth had had less time to devote to it than to Mrs. Wix's; and moreover +she would rather be in her own shoes than in her friend's creaking new +ones in the event of an encounter with Mrs. Beale. Maisie was too lost +in the idea of Mrs. Beale's judgement of so much newness to pass any +judgement herself. Besides, after much luncheon and many endearments, +the question took quite another turn, to say nothing of the pleasure +of the child's quick view that there were other eyes than Susan Ash's +to open to what she could show. She couldn't show much, alas, till it +stopped raining, which it declined to do that day; but this had only the +effect of leaving more time for Mrs. Wix's own demonstration. It came +as they sat in the little white and gold salon which Maisie thought the +loveliest place she had ever seen except perhaps the apartment of the +Countess; it came while the hard summer storm lashed the windows and +blew in such a chill that Sir Claude, with his hands in his pockets and +cigarettes in his teeth, fidgeting, frowning, looking out and turning +back, ended by causing a smoky little fire to be made in the dressy +little chimney. It came in spite of something that could only be named +his air of wishing to put it off; an air that had served him--oh as all +his airs served him!--to the extent of his having for a couple of hours +confined the conversation to gratuitous jokes and generalities, kept it +on the level of the little empty coffee-cups and _petits verres_ (Mrs. +Wix had two of each!) that struck Maisie, through the fumes of the +French fire and the English tobacco, as a token more than ever that they +were launched. She felt now, in close quarters and as clearly as if Mrs. +Wix had told her, that what this lady had come over for was not merely +to be chaffed and to hear her pupil chaffed; not even to hear Sir +Claude, who knew French in perfection, imitate the strange sounds +emitted by the English folk at the hotel. It was perhaps half an effect +of her present renovations, as if her clothes had been somebody's else: +she had at any rate never produced such an impression of high colour, +of a redness associated in Maisie's mind at THAT pitch either with +measles or with "habits." Her heart was not at all in the gossip about +Boulogne; and if her complexion was partly the result of the déjeuner +and the _petits verres_ it was also the brave signal of what she was +there to say. Maisie knew when this did come how anxiously it had been +awaited by the youngest member of the party. "Her ladyship packed me +off--she almost put me into the cab!" That was what Mrs. Wix at last +brought out. + + + + +XXIII + + +Sir Claude was stationed at the window; he didn't so much as turn round, +and it was left to the youngest of the three to take up the remark. "Do +you mean you went to see her yesterday?" + +"She came to see ME. She knocked at my shabby door. She mounted my +squalid stair. She told me she had seen you at Folkestone." + +Maisie wondered. "She went back that evening?" + +"No; yesterday morning. She drove to me straight from the station. It +was most remarkable. If I had a job to get off she did nothing to make +it worse--she did a great deal to make it better." Mrs. Wix hung fire, +though the flame in her face burned brighter; then she became capable +of saying: "Her ladyship's kind! She did what I didn't expect." + +Maisie, on this, looked straight at her stepfather's back; it might well +have been for her at that hour a monument of her ladyship's kindness. It +remained, as such, monumentally still, and for a time that permitted the +child to ask of their companion: "Did she really help you?" + +"Most practically." Again Mrs. Wix paused; again she quite resounded. +"She gave me a ten-pound note." + +At that, still looking out, Sir Claude, at the window, laughed loud. "So +you see, Maisie, we've not quite lost it!" + +"Oh no," Maisie responded. "Isn't that too charming?" She smiled at Mrs. +Wix. "We know all about it." Then on her friend's showing such blankness +as was compatible with such a flush she pursued: "She does want me to +have you?" + +Mrs. Wix showed a final hesitation, which, however, while Sir Claude +drummed on the window-pane, she presently surmounted. It came to Maisie +that in spite of his drumming and of his not turning round he was really +so much interested as to leave himself in a manner in her hands; which +somehow suddenly seemed to her a greater proof than he could have given +by interfering. "She wants me to have YOU!" Mrs. Wix declared. + +Maisie answered this bang at Sir Claude. "Then that's nice for all of +us." + +Of course it was, his continued silence sufficiently admitted while +Mrs. Wix rose from her chair and, as if to take more of a stand, placed +herself, not without majesty, before the fire. The incongruity of her +smartness, the circumference of her stiff frock, presented her as really +more ready for Paris than any of them. She also gazed hard at Sir +Claude's back. "Your wife was different from anything she had ever shown +me. She recognises certain proprieties." + +"Which? Do you happen to remember?" Sir Claude asked. + +Mrs. Wix's reply was prompt. "The importance for Maisie of a +gentlewoman, of some one who's not--well, so bad! She objects to a mere +maid, and I don't in the least mind telling you what she wants me to +do." One thing was clear--Mrs. Wix was now bold enough for anything. +"She wants me to persuade you to get rid of the person from Mrs. +Beale's." + +Maisie waited for Sir Claude to pronounce on this; then she could only +understand that he on his side waited, and she felt particularly full of +common sense as she met her responsibility. "Oh I don't want Susan with +YOU!" she said to Mrs. Wix. + +Sir Claude, always from the window, approved. "That's quite simple. I'll +take her back." + +Mrs. Wix gave a positive jump; Maisie caught her look of alarm. "'Take' +her? You don't mean to go over on purpose?" + +Sir Claude said nothing for a moment; after which, "Why shouldn't I +leave you here?" he enquired. + +Maisie, at this, sprang up. "Oh do, oh do, oh do!" The next moment she +was interlaced with Mrs. Wix, and the two, on the hearth-rug, their eyes +in each other's eyes, considered the plan with intensity. Then Maisie +felt the difference of what they saw in it. + +"She can surely go back alone: why should you put yourself out?" Mrs. +Wix demanded. + +"Oh she's an idiot--she's incapable. If anything should happen to her +it would be awkward: it was I who brought her--without her asking. If I +turn her away I ought with my own hand to place her again exactly where +I found her." + +Mrs. Wix's face appealed to Maisie on such folly, and her manner, +as directed to their companion, had, to her pupil's surprise, an +unprecedented firmness. "Dear Sir Claude, I think you're perverse. Pay +her fare and give her a sovereign. She has had an experience that she +never dreamed of and that will be an advantage to her through life. +If she goes wrong on the way it will be simply because she wants to, +and, with her expenses and her remuneration--make it even what you +like!--you'll have treated her as handsomely as you always treat every +one." + +This was a new tone--as new as Mrs. Wix's cap; and it could strike a +young person with a sharpened sense for latent meanings as the upshot of +a relation that had taken on a new character. It brought out for Maisie +how much more even than she had guessed her friends were fighting side +by side. At the same time it needed so definite a justification that as +Sir Claude now at last did face them she at first supposed him merely +resentful of excessive familiarity. She was therefore yet more puzzled +to see him show his serene beauty untroubled, as well as an equal +interest in a matter quite distinct from any freedom but her ladyship's. +"Did my wife come alone?" He could ask even that good-humouredly. + +"When she called on me?" Mrs. Wix WAS red now: his good humour wouldn't +keep down her colour, which for a minute glowed there like her ugly +honesty. "No--there was some one in the cab." The only attenuation she +could think of was after a minute to add: "But they didn't come up." + +Sir Claude broke into a laugh--Maisie herself could guess what it was +at: while he now walked about, still laughing, and at the fireplace +gave a gay kick to a displaced log, she felt more vague about almost +everything than about the drollery of such a "they." She in fact could +scarce have told you if it was to deepen or to cover the joke that she +bethought herself to observe: "Perhaps it was her maid." + +Mrs. Wix gave her a look that at any rate deprecated the wrong tone. "It +was not her maid." + +"Do you mean there are this time two?" Sir Claude asked as if he hadn't +heard. + +"Two maids?" Maisie went on as if she might assume he had. + +The reproach of the straighteners darkened; but Sir Claude cut across it +with a sudden: "See here; what do you mean? And what do you suppose SHE +meant?" + +Mrs. Wix let him for a moment, in silence, understand that the answer +to his question, if he didn't take care, might give him more than he +wanted. It was as if, with this scruple, she measured and adjusted all +she gave him in at last saying: "What she meant was to make me know that +you're definitely free. To have that straight from her was a joy I of +course hadn't hoped for: it made the assurance, and my delight at it, a +thing I could really proceed upon. You already know now certainly I'd +have started even if she hadn't pressed me; you already know what, so +long, we've been looking for and what, as soon as she told me of her +step taken at Folkestone, I recognised with rapture that we HAVE. It's +your freedom that makes me right"--she fairly bristled with her logic. +"But I don't mind telling you that it's her action that makes me happy!" + +"Her action?" Sir Claude echoed. "Why, my dear woman, her action is just +a hideous crime. It happens to satisfy our sympathies in a way that's +quite delicious; but that doesn't in the least alter the fact that it's +the most abominable thing ever done. She has chucked our friend here +overboard not a bit less than if she had shoved her shrieking and +pleading, out of that window and down two floors to the paving-stones." + +Maisie surveyed serenely the parties to the discussion. "Oh your friend +here, dear Sir Claude, doesn't plead and shriek!" + +He looked at her a moment. "Never. Never. That's one, only one, but +charming so far as it goes, of about a hundred things we love her for." +Then he pursued to Mrs. Wix: "What I can't for the life of me make out +is what Ida is REALLY up to, what game she was playing in turning to you +with that cursed cheek after the beastly way she has used you. Where--to +explain her at all--does she fancy she can presently, when we least +expect it, take it out of us?" + +"She doesn't fancy anything, nor want anything out of any one. Her +cursed cheek, as you call it, is the best thing I've ever seen in her. +I don't care a fig for the beastly way she used me--I forgive it all a +thousand times over!" Mrs. Wix raised her voice as she had never raised +it; she quite triumphed in her lucidity. "I understand her, I almost +admire her!" she quavered. She spoke as if this might practically +suffice; yet in charity to fainter lights she threw out an explanation. +"As I've said, she was different; upon my word I wouldn't have known +her. She had a glimmering, she had an instinct; they brought her. It was +a kind of happy thought, and if you couldn't have supposed she would +ever have had such a thing, why of course I quite agree with you. But +she did have it! There!" + +Maisie could feel again how a certain rude rightness in this plea might +have been found exasperating; but as she had often watched Sir Claude in +apprehension of displeasures that didn't come, so now, instead of saying +"Oh hell!" as her father used, she observed him only to take refuge in a +question that at the worst was abrupt. + +"Who IS it this time, do you know?" + +Mrs. Wix tried blind dignity. "Who is what, Sir Claude?" + +"The man who stands the cabs. Who was in the one that waited at your +door?" + +At this challenge she faltered so long that her young friend's pitying +conscience gave her a hand. "It wasn't the Captain." + +This good intention, however, only converted the excellent woman's +scruple to a more ambiguous stare; besides of course making Sir Claude +go off. Mrs. Wix fairly appealed to him. "Must I really tell you?" + +His amusement continued. "Did she make you promise not to?" + +Mrs. Wix looked at him still harder. "I mean before Maisie." + +Sir Claude laughed again. "Why SHE can't hurt him!" + +Maisie felt herself, as it passed, brushed by the light humour of this. +"Yes, I can't hurt him." + +The straighteners again roofed her over; after which they seemed to +crack with the explosion of their wearer's honesty. Amid the flying +splinters Mrs. Wix produced a name. "Mr. Tischbein." + +There was for an instant a silence that, under Sir Claude's influence +and while he and Maisie looked at each other, suddenly pretended to be +that of gravity. "We don't know Mr. Tischbein, do we, dear?" + +Maisie gave the point all needful thought. "No, I can't place Mr. +Tischbein." + +It was a passage that worked visibly on their friend. "You must pardon +me, Sir Claude," she said with an austerity of which the note was real, +"if I thank God to your face that he has in his mercy--I mean his mercy +to our charge--allowed me to achieve this act." She gave out a long puff +of pain. "It was time!" Then as if still more to point the moral: "I +said just now I understood your wife. I said just now I admired her. I +stand to it: I did both of those things when I saw how even SHE, poor +thing, saw. If you want the dots on the i's you shall have them. What +she came to me for, in spite of everything, was that I'm just"--she +quavered it out--"well, just clean! What she saw for her daughter was +that there must at last be a DECENT person!" + +Maisie was quick enough to jump a little at the sound of this +implication that such a person was what Sir Claude was not; the +next instant, however, she more profoundly guessed against whom the +discrimination was made. She was therefore left the more surprised at +the complete candour with which he embraced the worst. "If she's bent on +decent persons why has she given her to ME? You don't call me a decent +person, and I'll do Ida the justice that SHE never did. I think I'm as +indecent as any one and that there's nothing in my behaviour that makes +my wife's surrender a bit less ignoble!" + +"Don't speak of your behaviour!" Mrs. Wix cried. "Don't say such +horrible things; they're false and they're wicked and I forbid you! It's +to KEEP you decent that I'm here and that I've done everything I have +done. It's to save you--I won't say from yourself, because in yourself +you're beautiful and good! It's to save you from the worst person of +all. I haven't, after all, come over to be afraid to speak of her! +That's the person in whose place her ladyship wants such a person as +even me; and if she thought herself, as she as good as told me, not fit +for Maisie's company, it's not, as you may well suppose, that she may +make room for Mrs. Beale!" + +Maisie watched his face as it took this outbreak, and the most she saw +in it was that it turned a little white. That indeed made him look, +as Susan Ash would have said, queer; and it was perhaps a part of the +queerness that he intensely smiled. "You're too hard on Mrs. Beale. She +has great merits of her own." + +Mrs. Wix, at this, instead of immediately replying, did what Sir Claude +had been doing before: she moved across to the window and stared a while +into the storm. There was for a minute, to Maisie's sense, a hush that +resounded with wind and rain. Sir Claude, in spite of these things, +glanced about for his hat; on which Maisie spied it first and, making +a dash for it, held it out to him. He took it with a gleam of a +"thank-you" in his face, and then something moved her still to hold the +other side of the brim; so that, united by their grasp of this object, +they stood some seconds looking many things at each other. By this time +Mrs. Wix had turned round. "Do you mean to tell me," she demanded, "that +you are going back?" + +"To Mrs. Beale?" Maisie surrendered his hat, and there was something +that touched her in the embarrassed, almost humiliated way their +companion's challenge made him turn it round and round. She had seen +people do that who, she was sure, did nothing else that Sir Claude did. +"I can't just say, my dear thing. We'll see about I--we'll talk of it +to-morrow. Meantime I must get some air." + +Mrs. Wix, with her back to the window, threw up her head to a height +that, still for a moment, had the effect of detaining him. "All the air +in France, Sir Claude, won't, I think, give you the courage to deny that +you're simply afraid of her!" + +Oh this time he did look queer; Maisie had no need of Susan's vocabulary +to note it! It would have come to her of itself as, with his hand on +the door, he turned his eyes from his stepdaughter to her governess and +then back again. Resting on Maisie's, though for ever so short a time, +there was something they gave up to her and tried to explain. His lips, +however, explained nothing; they only surrendered to Mrs. Wix. "Yes. I'm +simply afraid of her!" He opened the door and passed out. It brought +back to Maisie his confession of fear of her mother; it made her +stepmother then the second lady about whom he failed of the particular +virtue that was supposed most to mark a gentleman. In fact there were +three of them, if she counted in Mrs. Wix, before whom he had undeniably +quailed. Well, his want of valour was but a deeper appeal to her +tenderness. To thrill with response to it she had only to remember all +the ladies she herself had, as they called it, funked. + + + + +XXIV + + +It continued to rain so hard that our young lady's private dream of +explaining the Continent to their visitor had to contain a provision for +some adequate treatment of the weather. At the _table d'hôte_ that evening +she threw out a variety of lights: this was the second ceremony of the +sort she had sat through, and she would have neglected her privilege +and dishonoured her vocabulary--which indeed consisted mainly of the +names of dishes--if she had not been proportionately ready to dazzle +with interpretations. Preoccupied and overawed, Mrs. Wix was apparently +dim: she accepted her pupil's version of the mysteries of the menu in a +manner that might have struck the child as the depression of a credulity +conscious not so much of its needs as of its dimensions. Maisie was soon +enough--though it scarce happened before bedtime--confronted again with +the different sort of programme for which she reserved her criticism. +They remounted together to their sitting-room while Sir Claude, who said +he would join them later, remained below to smoke and to converse with +the old acquaintances that he met wherever he turned. He had proposed +his companions, for coffee, the enjoyment of the _salon de lecture_, +but Mrs. Wix had replied promptly and with something of an air that it +struck her their own apartments offered them every convenience. They +offered the good lady herself, Maisie could immediately observe, not +only that of this rather grand reference, which, already emulous, so +far as it went, of her pupil, she made as if she had spent her life in +salons; but that of a stiff French sofa where she could sit and stare at +the faint French lamp, in default of the French clock that had stopped, +as for some account of the time Sir Claude would so markedly interpose. +Her demeanour accused him so directly of hovering beyond her reach that +Maisie sought to divert her by a report of Susan's quaint attitude on +the matter of their conversation after lunch. Maisie had mentioned to +the young woman for sympathy's sake the plan for her relief, but her +disapproval of alien ways appeared, strange to say, only to prompt her +to hug her gloom; so that between Mrs. Wix's effect of displacing her +and the visible stiffening of her back the child had the sense of a +double office and enlarged play for pacific powers. + +These powers played to no great purpose, it was true, in keeping before +Mrs. Wix the vision of Sir Claude's perversity, which hung there in the +pauses of talk and which he himself, after unmistakeable delays, finally +made quite lurid by bursting in--it was near ten o'clock--with an object +held up in his hand. She knew before he spoke what it was; she knew at +least from the underlying sense of all that, since the hour spent after +the Exhibition with her father, had not sprung up to reinstate Mr. +Farange--she knew it meant a triumph for Mrs. Beale. The mere present +sight of Sir Claude's face caused her on the spot to drop straight +through her last impression of Mr. Farange a plummet that reached still +deeper down than the security of these days of flight. She had wrapped +that impression in silence--a silence that had parted with half its veil +to cover also, from the hour of Sir Claude's advent, the image of Mr. +Farange's wife. But if the object in Sir Claude's hand revealed itself +as a letter which he held up very high, so there was something in his +mere motion that laid Mrs. Beale again bare. "Here we are!" he cried +almost from the door, shaking his trophy at them and looking from one to +the other. Then he came straight to Mrs. Wix; he had pulled two papers +out of the envelope and glanced at them again to see which was which. He +thrust one out open to Mrs. Wix. "Read that." She looked at him hard, +as if in fear: it was impossible not to see he was excited. Then she +took the letter, but it was not her face that Maisie watched while she +read. Neither, for that matter, was it this countenance that Sir Claude +scanned: he stood before the fire and, more calmly, now that he had +acted, communed in silence with his stepdaughter. + +The silence was in truth quickly broken; Mrs. Wix rose to her feet with +the violence of the sound she emitted. The letter had dropped from her +and lay upon the floor; it had made her turn ghastly white and she was +speechless with the effect of it. "It's too abominable--it's too +unspeakable!" she then cried. + +"Isn't it a charming thing?" Sir Claude asked. "It has just arrived, +enclosed in a word of her own. She sends it on to me with the remark +that comment's superfluous. I really think it is. That's all you can +say." + +"She oughtn't to pass such a horror about," said Mrs. Wix. "She ought +to put it straight in the fire." + +"My dear woman, she's not such a fool! It's much too precious." He had +picked the letter up and he gave it again a glance of complacency which +produced a light in his face. "Such a document"--he considered, then +concluded with a slight drop--"such a document is, in fine, a basis!" + +"A basis for what?" + +"Well--for proceedings." + +"Hers?" Mrs. Wix's voice had become outright the voice of derision. "How +can SHE proceed?" + +Sir Claude turned it over. "How can she get rid of him? Well--she IS rid +of him." + +"Not legally." Mrs. Wix had never looked to her pupil so much as if she +knew what she was talking about. + +"I dare say," Sir Claude laughed; "but she's not a bit less deprived +than I!" + +"Of the power to get a divorce? It's just your want of the power that +makes the scandal of your connexion with her. Therefore it's just her +want of it that makes that of hers with you. That's all I contend!" Mrs. +Wix concluded with an unparalleled neigh of battle. Oh she did know what +she was talking about! + +Maisie had meanwhile appealed mutely to Sir Claude, who judged it easier +to meet what she didn't say than to meet what Mrs. Wix did. + +"It's a letter to Mrs. Beale from your father, my dear, written from +Spa and making the rupture between them perfectly irrevocable. It lets +her know, and not in pretty language, that, as we technically say, he +deserts her. It puts an end for ever to their relations." He ran his +eyes over it again, then appeared to make up his mind. "In fact it +concerns you, Maisie, so nearly and refers to you so particularly that +I really think you ought to see the terms in which this new situation +is created for you." And he held out the letter. + +Mrs. Wix, at this, pounced upon it; she had grabbed it too soon even +for Maisie to become aware of being rather afraid of it. Thrusting it +instantly behind her she positively glared at Sir Claude. "See it, +wretched man?--the innocent child SEE such a thing? I think you must be +mad, and she shall not have a glimpse of it while I'm here to prevent!" + +The breadth of her action had made Sir Claude turn red--he even looked a +little foolish. "You think it's too bad, eh? But it's precisely because +it's bad that it seemed to me it would have a lesson and a virtue for +her." + +Maisie could do a quick enough justice to his motive to be able clearly +to interpose. She fairly smiled at him. "I assure you I can quite +believe how bad it is!" She thought of something, kept it back a moment, +and then spoke. "I know what's in it!" + +He of course burst out laughing and, while Mrs. Wix groaned an "Oh +heavens!" replied: "You wouldn't say that, old boy, if you did! The +point I make is," he continued to Mrs. Wix with a blandness now +re-established--"the point I make is simply that it sets Mrs. Beale +free." + +She hung fire but an instant. "Free to live with YOU?" + +"Free not to live, not to pretend to live, with her husband." + +"Ah they're mighty different things!"--a truth as to which her +earnestness could now with a fine inconsequent look invite the +participation of the child. + +Before Maisie could commit herself, however, the ground was occupied by +Sir Claude, who, as he stood before their visitor with an expression +half rueful, half persuasive, rubbed his hand sharply up and down the +back of his head. "Then why the deuce do you grant so--do you, I may +even say, rejoice so--that by the desertion of my own precious partner +I'm free?" + +Mrs. Wix met this challenge first with silence, then with a +demonstration the most extraordinary, the most unexpected. Maisie could +scarcely believe her eyes as she saw the good lady, with whom she had +associated no faintest shade of any art of provocation, actually, after +an upward grimace, give Sir Claude a great giggling insinuating naughty +slap. "You wretch--you KNOW why!" And she turned away. The face that +with this movement she left him to present to Maisie was to abide with +his stepdaughter as the very image of stupefaction; but the pair lacked +time to communicate either amusement or alarm before their admonisher +was upon them again. She had begun in fact to show infinite variety and +she flashed about with a still quicker change of tone. "Have you brought +me that thing as a pretext for your going over?" + +Sir Claude braced himself. "I can't, after such news, in common decency +not go over. I mean, don't you know, in common courtesy and humanity. +My dear lady, you can't chuck a woman that way, especially taking the +moment when she has been most insulted and wronged. A fellow must behave +like a gentleman, damn it, dear good Mrs. Wix. We didn't come away, we +two, to hang right on, you know: it was only to try our paces and just +put in a few days that might prove to every one concerned that we're in +earnest. It's exactly because we're in earnest that, dash it, we needn't +be so awfully particular. I mean, don't you know, we needn't be so +awfully afraid." He showed a vivacity, an intensity of argument, and if +Maisie counted his words she was all the more ready to swallow after a +single swift gasp those that, the next thing, she became conscious he +paused for a reply to. "We didn't come, old girl, did we," he pleaded +straight, "to stop right away for ever and put it all in NOW?" + +Maisie had never doubted she could be heroic for him. "Oh no!" It was as +if she had been shocked at the bare thought. "We're just taking it as +we find it." She had a sudden inspiration, which she backed up with a +smile. "We're just seeing what we can afford." She had never yet in her +life made any claim for herself, but she hoped that this time, frankly, +what she was doing would somehow be counted to her. Indeed she felt Sir +Claude WAS counting it, though she was afraid to look at him--afraid she +should show him tears. She looked at Mrs. Wix; she reached her maximum. +"I don't think I ought to be bad to Mrs. Beale." + +She heard, on this, a deep sound, something inarticulate and sweet, +from Sir Claude; but tears were what Mrs. Wix didn't scruple to show. +"Do you think you ought to be bad to ME?" The question was the more +disconcerting that Mrs. Wix's emotion didn't deprive her of the +advantage of her effect. "If you see that woman again you're lost!" she +declared to their companion. + +Sir Claude looked at the moony globe of the lamp; he seemed to see +for an instant what seeing Mrs. Beale would consist of. It was also +apparently from this vision that he drew strength to return: "Her +situation, by what has happened, is completely changed; and it's no +use your trying to prove to me that I needn't take any account of +that." + +"If you see that woman you're lost!" Mrs. Wix with greater force +repeated. + +"Do you think she'll not let me come back to you? My dear lady, I leave +you here, you and Maisie, as a hostage to fortune, and I promise you by +all that's sacred that I shall be with you again at the very latest on +Saturday. I provide you with funds; I install you in these lovely rooms; +I arrange with the people here that you be treated with every attention +and supplied with every luxury. The weather, after this, will mend; it +will be sure to be exquisite. You'll both be as free as air and you can +roam all over the place and have tremendous larks. You shall have a +carriage to drive you; the whole house shall be at your call. You'll +have a magnificent position." He paused, he looked from one of his +companions to the other as to see the impression he had made. Whether or +no he judged it adequate he subjoined after a moment: "And you'll oblige +me above all by not making a fuss." + +Maisie could only answer for the impression on herself, though indeed +from the heart even of Mrs. Wix's rigour there floated to her sense a +faint fragrance of depraved concession. Maisie had her dumb word for the +show such a speech could make, for the irresistible charm it could take +from his dazzling sincerity; and before she could do anything but blink +at excess of light she heard this very word sound on Mrs. Wix's lips, +just as if the poor lady had guessed it and wished, snatching it from +her, to blight it like a crumpled flower. "You're dreadful, you're +terrible, for you know but too well that it's not a small thing to me +that you should address me in terms that are princely!" Princely was +what he stood there and looked and sounded; that was what Maisie for the +occasion found herself reduced to simple worship of him for being. Yet +strange to say too, as Mrs. Wix went on, an echo rang within her that +matched the echo she had herself just produced. "How much you must WANT +to see her to say such things as that and to be ready to do so much for +the poor little likes of Maisie and me! She has a hold on you, and you +know it, and you want to feel it again and--God knows, or at least _I_ +do, what's your motive and desire--enjoy it once more and give yourself +up to it! It doesn't matter if it's one day or three: enough is as good +as a feast and the lovely time you'll have with her is something you're +willing to pay for! I dare say you'd like me to believe that your pay is +to get her to give you up; but that's a matter on which I strongly urge +you not to put down your money in advance. Give HER up first. Then pay +her what you please!" + +Sir Claude took this to the end, though there were things in it that +made him colour, called into his face more of the apprehension than +Maisie had ever perceived there of a particular sort of shock. She had +an odd sense that it was the first time she had seen any one but Mrs. +Wix really and truly scandalised, and this fed her inference, which grew +and grew from moment to moment, that Mrs. Wix was proving more of a +force to reckon with than either of them had allowed so much room for. +It was true that, long before, she had obtained a "hold" of him, as +she called it, different in kind from that obtained by Mrs. Beale and +originally by her ladyship. But Maisie could quite feel with him now +that he had really not expected this advantage to be driven so home. Oh +they hadn't at all got to where Mrs. Wix would stop, for the next minute +she was driving harder than ever. It was the result of his saying with a +certain dryness, though so kindly that what most affected Maisie in it +was his patience: "My dear friend, it's simply a matter in which I must +judge for myself. You've judged FOR me, I know, a good deal, of late, in +a way that I appreciate, I assure you, down to the ground. But you can't +do it always; no one can do that for another, don't you see, in every +case. There are exceptions, particular cases that turn up and that are +awfully delicate. It would be too easy if I could shift it all off on +you: it would be allowing you to incur an amount of responsibility that +I should simply become quite ashamed of. You'll find, I'm sure, that +you'll have quite as much as you'll enjoy if you'll be so good as to +accept the situation as circumstances happen to make it for you and to +stay here with our friend, till I rejoin you, on the footing of as much +pleasantness and as much comfort--and I think I have a right to add, to +both of you, of as much faith in ME--as possible." + +Oh he was princely indeed: that came out more and more with every word +he said and with the particular way he said it, and Maisie could feel +his monitress stiffen almost with anguish against the increase of his +spell and then hurl herself as a desperate defence from it into the +quite confessed poorness of violence, of iteration. "You're afraid +of her--afraid, afraid, afraid! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" Mrs. Wix +wailed it with a high quaver, then broke down into a long shudder of +helplessness and woe. The next minute she had flung herself again on +the lean sofa and had burst into a passion of tears. + +Sir Claude stood and looked at her a moment; he shook his head slowly, +altogether tenderly. "I've already admitted it--I'm in mortal terror; +so we'll let that settle the question. I think you had best go to bed," +he added; "you've had a tremendous day and you must both be tired to +death. I shall not expect you to concern yourselves in the morning +with my movements. There's an early boat on; I shall have cleared out +before you're up; and I shall moreover have dealt directly and most +effectively, I assure you, with the haughty but not quite hopeless Miss +Ash." He turned to his stepdaughter as if at once to take leave of her +and give her a sign of how, through all tension and friction, they were +still united in such a way that she at least needn't worry. "Maisie +boy!"--he opened his arms to her. With her culpable lightness she flew +into them and, while he kissed her, chose the soft method of silence to +satisfy him, the silence that after battles of talk was the best balm +she could offer his wounds. They held each other long enough to reaffirm +intensely their vows; after which they were almost forced apart by Mrs. +Wix's jumping to her feet. + +Her jump, either with a quick return or with a final lapse of courage, +was also to supplication almost abject. "I beseech you not to take a +step so miserable and so fatal. I know her but too well, even if you +jeer at me for saying it; little as I've seen her I know her, I know +her. I know what she'll do--I see it as I stand here. Since you're +afraid of her it's the mercy of heaven. Don't, for God's sake, be afraid +to show it, to profit by it and to arrive at the very safety that it +gives you. I'M not afraid of her, I assure you; you must already have +seen for yourself that there's nothing I'm afraid of now. Let me go to +her--I'LL settle her and I'll take that woman back without a hair of +her touched. Let me put in the two or three days--let me wind up the +connexion. You stay here with Maisie, with the carriage and the larks +and the luxury; then I'll return to you and we'll go off together--we'll +live together without a cloud. Take me, take me," she went on and +on--the tide of her eloquence was high. "Here I am; I know what I am +and what I ain't; but I say boldly to the face of you both that I'll do +better for you, far, than ever she'll even try to. I say it to yours, +Sir Claude, even though I owe you the very dress on my back and the very +shoes on my feet. I owe you everything--that's just the reason; and to +pay it back, in profusion, what can that be but what I want? Here I am, +here I am!"--she spread herself into an exhibition that, combined with +her intensity and her decorations, appeared to suggest her for strange +offices and devotions, for ridiculous replacements and substitutions. +She manipulated her gown as she talked, she insisted on the items of +her debt. "I have nothing of my own, I know--no money, no clothes, no +appearance, no anything, nothing but my hold of this little one truth, +which is all in the world I can bribe you with: that the pair of you are +more to me than all besides, and that if you'll let me help you and save +you, make what you both want possible in the one way it CAN be, why, +I'll work myself to the bone in your service!" + +Sir Claude wavered there without an answer to this magnificent appeal; +he plainly cast about for one, and in no small agitation and pain. He +addressed himself in his quest, however, only to vague quarters until he +met again, as he so frequently and actively met it, the more than filial +gaze of his intelligent little charge. That gave him--poor plastic and +dependent male--his issue. If she was still a child she was yet of +the sex that could help him out. He signified as much by a renewed +invitation to an embrace. She freshly sprang to him and again they +inaudibly conversed. "Be nice to her, be nice to her," he at last +distinctly articulated; "be nice to her as you've not even been to ME!" +On which, without another look at Mrs. Wix, he somehow got out of the +room, leaving Maisie under the slight oppression of these words as well +as of the idea that he had unmistakeably once more dodged. + + + + +XXV + + +Every single thing he had prophesied came so true that it was after all +no more than fair to expect quite as much for what he had as good as +promised. His pledges they could verify to the letter, down to his very +guarantee that a way would be found with Miss Ash. Roused in the summer +dawn and vehemently squeezed by that interesting exile, Maisie fell back +upon her couch with a renewed appreciation of his policy, a memento of +which, when she rose later on to dress, glittered at her from the carpet +in the shape of a sixpence that had overflowed from Susan's pride of +possession. Sixpences really, for the forty-eight hours that followed, +seemed to abound in her life; she fancifully computed the number of them +represented by such a period of "larks." The number was not kept down, +she presently noticed, by any scheme of revenge for Sir Claude's flight +which should take on Mrs. Wix's part the form of a refusal to avail +herself of the facilities he had so bravely ordered. It was in fact +impossible to escape them; it was in the good lady's own phrase +ridiculous to go on foot when you had a carriage prancing at the door. +Everything about them pranced: the very waiters even as they presented +the dishes to which, from a similar sense of the absurdity of +perversity, Mrs. Wix helped herself with a freedom that spoke to Maisie +quite as much of her depletion as of her logic. Her appetite was a sign +to her companion of a great many things and testified no less on the +whole to her general than to her particular condition. She had arrears +of dinner to make up, and it was touching that in a dinnerless state +her moral passion should have burned so clear. She partook largely as +a refuge from depression, and yet the opportunity to partake was just +a mark of the sinister symptoms that depressed her. The affair was +in short a combat, in which the baser element triumphed, between her +refusal to be bought off and her consent to be clothed and fed. It was +not at any rate to be gainsaid that there was comfort for her in the +developments of France; comfort so great as to leave Maisie free to take +with her all the security for granted and brush all the danger aside. +That was the way to carry out in detail Sir Claude's injunction to be +"nice"; that was the way, as well, to look, with her, in a survey of the +pleasures of life abroad, straight over the head of any doubt. + +They shrank at last, all doubts, as the weather cleared up: it had an +immense effect on them and became quite as lovely as Sir Claude had +engaged. This seemed to have put him so into the secret of things, and +the joy of the world so waylaid the steps of his friends, that little by +little the spirit of hope filled the air and finally took possession of +the scene. To drive on the long cliff was splendid, but it was perhaps +better still to creep in the shade--for the sun was strong--along the +many-coloured and many-odoured port and through the streets in which, to +English eyes, everything that was the same was a mystery and everything +that was different a joke. Best of all was to continue the creep up the +long Grand' Rue to the gate of the _haute ville_ and, passing beneath +it, mount to the quaint and crooked rampart, with its rows of trees, +its quiet corners and friendly benches where brown old women in such +white-frilled caps and such long gold earrings sat and knitted or +snoozed, its little yellow-faced houses that looked like the homes of +misers or of priests and its dark château where small soldiers lounged +on the bridge that stretched across an empty moat and military washing +hung from the windows of towers. This was a part of the place that could +lead Maisie to enquire if it didn't just meet one's idea of the middle +ages; and since it was rather a satisfaction than a shock to perceive, +and not for the first time, the limits in Mrs. Wix's mind of the +historic imagination, that only added one more to the variety of kinds +of insight that she felt it her own present mission to show. They sat +together on the old grey bastion; they looked down on the little new +town which seemed to them quite as old, and across at the great dome and +the high gilt Virgin of the church that, as they gathered, was famous +and that pleased them by its unlikeness to any place in which they +had worshipped. They wandered in this temple afterwards and Mrs. Wix +confessed that for herself she had probably made a fatal mistake early +in life in not being a Catholic. Her confession in its turn caused +Maisie to wonder rather interestedly what degree of lateness it was +that shut the door against an escape from such an error. They went back +to the rampart on the second morning--the spot on which they appeared +to have come furthest in the journey that was to separate them from +everything objectionable in the past: it gave them afresh the impression +that had most to do with their having worked round to a confidence that +on Maisie's part was determined and that she could see to be on her +companion's desperate. She had had for many hours the sense of showing +Mrs. Wix so much that she was comparatively slow to become conscious +of being at the same time the subject of a like aim. The business went +the faster, however, from the moment she got her glimpse of it; it then +fell into its place in her general, her habitual view of the particular +phenomenon that, had she felt the need of words for it, she might have +called her personal relation to her knowledge. This relation had never +been so lively as during the time she waited with her old governess for +Sir Claude's reappearance, and what made it so was exactly that Mrs. Wix +struck her as having a new suspicion of it. Mrs. Wix had never yet had a +suspicion--this was certain--so calculated to throw her pupil, in spite +of the closer union of such adventurous hours, upon the deep defensive. +Her pupil made out indeed as many marvels as she had made out on the +rush to Folkestone; and if in Sir Claude's company on that occasion Mrs. +Wix was the constant implication, so in Mrs. Wix's, during these hours, +Sir Claude was--and most of all through long pauses--the perpetual, the +insurmountable theme. It all took them back to the first flush of his +marriage and to the place he held in the schoolroom at that crisis of +love and pain; only he had himself blown to a much bigger balloon the +large consciousness he then filled out. + +They went through it all again, and indeed while the interval dragged +by the very weight of its charm they went, in spite of defences and +suspicions, through everything. Their intensified clutch of the future +throbbed like a clock ticking seconds; but this was a timepiece that +inevitably, as well, at the best, rang occasionally a portentous hour. +Oh there were several of these, and two or three of the worst on the old +city-wall where everything else so made for peace. There was nothing +in the world Maisie more wanted than to be as nice to Mrs. Wix as Sir +Claude had desired; but it was exactly because this fell in with her +inveterate instinct of keeping the peace that the instinct itself +was quickened. From the moment it was quickened, however, it found +other work, and that was how, to begin with, she produced the very +complication she most sought to avert. What she had essentially done, +these days, had been to read the unspoken into the spoken; so that thus, +with accumulations, it had become more definite to her that the unspoken +was, unspeakably, the completeness of the sacrifice of Mrs. Beale. There +were times when every minute that Sir Claude stayed away was like a nail +in Mrs. Beale's coffin. That brought back to Maisie--it was a roundabout +way--the beauty and antiquity of her connexion with the flower of the +Overmores as well as that lady's own grace and charm, her peculiar +prettiness and cleverness and even her peculiar tribulations. A hundred +things hummed at the back of her head, but two of these were simple +enough. Mrs. Beale was by the way, after all, just her stepmother +and her relative. She was just--and partly for that very reason--Sir +Claude's greatest intimate ("lady-intimate" was Maisie's term) so that +what together they were on Mrs. Wix's prescription to give up and break +short off with was for one of them his particular favourite and for the +other her father's wife. Strangely, indescribably her perception of +reasons kept pace with her sense of trouble; but there was something in +her that, without a supreme effort not to be shabby, couldn't take the +reasons for granted. What it comes to perhaps for ourselves is that, +disinherited and denuded as we have seen her, there still lingered in +her life an echo of parental influence--she was still reminiscent of +one of the sacred lessons of home. It was the only one she retained, +but luckily she retained it with force. She enjoyed in a word an +ineffaceable view of the fact that there were things papa called mamma +and mamma called papa a low sneak for doing or for not doing. Now this +rich memory gave her a name that she dreaded to invite to the lips of +Mrs. Beale: she should personally wince so just to hear it. The very +sweetness of the foreign life she was steeped in added with each hour +of Sir Claude's absence to the possibility of such pangs. She watched +beside Mrs. Wix the great golden Madonna, and one of the ear-ringed old +women who had been sitting at the end of their bench got up and pottered +away. "Adieu mesdames!" said the old woman in a little cracked civil +voice--a demonstration by which our friends were so affected that they +bobbed up and almost curtseyed to her. They subsided again, and it was +shortly after, in a summer hum of French insects and a phase of almost +somnolent reverie, that Maisie most had the vision of what it was to +shut out from such a perspective so appealing a participant. It had not +yet appeared so vast as at that moment, this prospect of statues shining +in the blue and of courtesy in romantic forms. + +"Why after all should we have to choose between you? Why shouldn't we +be four?" she finally demanded. + +Mrs. Wix gave the jerk of a sleeper awakened or the start even of one +who hears a bullet whiz at the flag of truce. Her stupefaction at +such a breach of the peace delayed for a moment her answer. "Four +improprieties, do you mean? Because two of us happen to be decent +people! Do I gather you to wish that I should stay on with you even +if that woman IS capable--?" + +Maisie took her up before she could further phrase Mrs. Beale's +capability. "Stay on as MY companion--yes. Stay on as just what you +were at mamma's. Mrs. Beale WOULD let you!" the child said. + +Mrs. Wix had by this time fairly sprung to her arms. "And who, I'd like +to know, would let Mrs. Beale? Do you mean, little unfortunate, that YOU +would?" + +"Why not, if now she's free?" + +"Free? Are you imitating HIM? Well, if Sir Claude's old enough to know +better, upon my word I think it's right to treat you as if you also +were. You'll have to, at any rate--to know better--if that's the line +you're proposing to take." Mrs. Wix had never been so harsh; but on the +other hand Maisie could guess that she herself had never appeared so +wanton. What was underlying, however, rather overawed than angered her; +she felt she could still insist--not for contradiction, but for ultimate +calm. Her wantonness meanwhile continued to work upon her friend, who +caught again, on the rebound, the sound of deepest provocation. "Free, +free, free? If she's as free as YOU are, my dear, she's free enough, to +be sure!" + +"As I am?"--Maisie, after reflexion and despite whatever of portentous +this seemed to convey, risked a critical echo. + +"Well," said Mrs. Wix, "nobody, you know, is free to commit a crime." + +"A crime!" The word had come out in a way that made the child sound it +again. + +"You'd commit as great a one as their own--and so should I--if we were +to condone their immorality by our presence." + +Maisie waited a little; this seemed so fiercely conclusive. "Why is it +immorality?" she nevertheless presently enquired. + +Her companion now turned upon her with a reproach softer because it was +somehow deeper. "You're too unspeakable! Do you know what we're talking +about?" + +In the interest of ultimate calm Maisie felt that she must be above all +clear. "Certainly; about their taking advantage of their freedom." + +"Well, to do what?" + +"Why, to live with us." + +Mrs. Wix's laugh, at this, was literally wild. "'Us?' Thank you!" + +"Then to live with ME." + +The words made her friend jump. "You give me up? You break with me for +ever? You turn me into the street?" + +Maisie, though gasping a little, bore up under the rain of challenges. +"Those, it seems to me, are the things you do to ME." + +Mrs. Wix made little of her valour. "I can promise you that, whatever +I do, I shall never let you out of my sight! You ask me why it's +immorality when you've seen with your own eyes that Sir Claude has felt +it to be so to that dire extent that, rather than make you face the +shame of it, he has for months kept away from you altogether? Is it any +more difficult to see that the first time he tries to do his duty he +washes his hands of HER--takes you straight away from her?" + +Maisie turned this over, but more for apparent consideration than from +any impulse to yield too easily. "Yes, I see what you mean. But at +that time they weren't free." She felt Mrs. Wix rear up again at the +offensive word, but she succeeded in touching her with a remonstrant +hand. "I don't think you know how free they've become." + +"I know, I believe, at least as much as you do!" + +Maisie felt a delicacy but overcame it. "About the Countess?" + +"Your father's--temptress?" Mrs. Wix gave her a sidelong squint. +"Perfectly. She pays him!" + +"Oh DOES she?" At this the child's countenance fell: it seemed to give a +reason for papa's behaviour and place it in a more favourable light. She +wished to be just. "I don't say she's not generous. She was so to me." + +"How, to you?" + +"She gave me a lot of money." + +Mrs. Wix stared. "And pray what did you do with a lot of money?" + +"I gave it to Mrs. Beale." + +"And what did Mrs. Beale do with it?" + +"She sent it back." + +"To the Countess? Gammon!" said Mrs. Wix. She disposed of that plea as +effectually as Susan Ash. + +"Well, I don't care!" Maisie replied. "What I mean is that you don't +know about the rest." + +"The rest? What rest?" + +Maisie wondered how she could best put it. "Papa kept me there an hour." + +"I do know--Sir Claude told me. Mrs. Beale had told him." + +Maisie looked incredulity. "How could she--when I didn't speak of it?" + +Mrs. Wix was mystified. "Speak of what?" + +"Why, of her being so frightful." + +"The Countess? Of course she's frightful!" Mrs. Wix returned. After a +moment she added: "That's why she pays him." + +Maisie pondered. "It's the best thing about her then--if she gives him +as much as she gave ME!" + +"Well, it's not the best thing about HIM! Or rather perhaps it IS too!" +Mrs. Wix subjoined. + +"But she's awful--really and truly," Maisie went on. + +Mrs. Wix arrested her. "You needn't go into details!" It was visibly at +variance with this injunction that she yet enquired: "How does that make +it any better?" + +"Their living with me? Why for the Countess--and for her whiskers!--he +has put me off on them. I understood him," Maisie profoundly said. + +"I hope then he understood you. It's more than I do!" Mrs. Wix admitted. + +This was a real challenge to be plainer, and our young lady immediately +became so. "I mean it isn't a crime." + +"Why then did Sir Claude steal you away?" + +"He didn't steal--he only borrowed me. I knew it wasn't for long," +Maisie audaciously professed. + +"You must allow me to reply to that," cried Mrs. Wix, "that you knew +nothing of the sort, and that you rather basely failed to back me up +last night when you pretended so plump that you did! You hoped in fact, +exactly as much as I did and as in my senseless passion I even hope now, +that this may be the beginning of better things." + +Oh yes, Mrs. Wix was indeed, for the first time, sharp; so that there +at last stirred in our heroine the sense not so much of being proved +disingenuous as of being precisely accused of the meanness that had +brought everything down on her through her very desire to shake herself +clear of it. She suddenly felt herself swell with a passion of protest. +"I never, NEVER hoped I wasn't going again to see Mrs. Beale! I didn't, +I didn't, I didn't!" she repeated. Mrs. Wix bounced about with a force +of rejoinder of which she also felt that she must anticipate the +concussion and which, though the good lady was evidently charged to the +brim, hung fire long enough to give time for an aggravation. "She's +beautiful and I love her! I love her and she's beautiful!" + +"And I'm hideous and you hate ME?" Mrs. Wix fixed her a moment, then +caught herself up. "I won't embitter you by absolutely accusing you of +that; though, as for my being hideous, it's hardly the first time I've +been told so! I know it so well that even if I haven't whiskers--have +I?--I dare say there are other ways in which the Countess is a Venus to +me! My pretensions must therefore seem to you monstrous--which comes to +the same thing as your not liking me. But do you mean to go so far as to +tell me that you WANT to live with them in their sin?" + +"You know what I want, you know what I want!"--Maisie spoke with the +shudder of rising tears. + +"Yes, I do; you want me to be as bad as yourself! Well, I won't. There! +Mrs. Beale's as bad as your father!" Mrs. Wix went on. + +"She's not!--she's not!" her pupil almost shrieked in retort. + +"You mean because Sir Claude at least has beauty and wit and grace? But +he pays just as the Countess pays!" Mrs. Wix, who now rose as she spoke, +fairly revealed a latent cynicism. + +It raised Maisie also to her feet; her companion had walked off a few +steps and paused. The two looked at each other as they had never looked, +and Mrs. Wix seemed to flaunt there in her finery. "Then doesn't he pay +YOU too?" her unhappy charge demanded. + +At this she bounded in her place. "Oh you incredible little waif!" +She brought it out with a wail of violence; after which, with another +convulsion, she marched straight away. + +Maisie dropped back on the bench and burst into sobs. + + + + +XXVI + + +Nothing so dreadful of course could be final or even for many minutes +prolonged: they rushed together again too soon for either to feel that +either had kept it up, and though they went home in silence it was with +a vivid perception for Maisie that her companion's hand had closed upon +her. That hand had shown altogether, these twenty-four hours, a new +capacity for closing, and one of the truths the child could least resist +was that a certain greatness had now come to Mrs. Wix. The case was +indeed that the quality of her motive surpassed the sharpness of her +angles; both the combination and the singularity of which things, when +in the afternoon they used the carriage, Maisie could borrow from the +contemplative hush of their grandeur the freedom to feel to the utmost. +She still bore the mark of the tone in which her friend had thrown out +that threat of never losing sight of her. This friend had been converted +in short from feebleness to force; and it was the light of her new +authority that showed from how far she had come. The threat in question, +sharply exultant, might have produced defiance; but before anything so +ugly could happen another process had insidiously forestalled it. The +moment at which this process had begun to mature was that of Mrs. Wix's +breaking out with a dignity attuned to their own apartments and with an +advantage now measurably gained. They had ordered coffee after luncheon, +in the spirit of Sir Claude's provision, and it was served to them while +they awaited their equipage in the white and gold saloon. It was flanked +moreover with a couple of liqueurs, and Maisie felt that Sir Claude +could scarce have been taken more at his word had it been followed +by anecdotes and cigarettes. The influence of these luxuries was +at any rate in the air. It seemed to her while she tiptoed at the +chimney-glass, pulling on her gloves and with a motion of her head +shaking a feather into place, to have had something to do with Mrs. +Wix's suddenly saying: "Haven't you really and truly ANY moral sense?" + +Maisie was aware that her answer, though it brought her down to her +heels, was vague even to imbecility, and that this was the first time +she had appeared to practise with Mrs. Wix an intellectual inaptitude to +meet her--the infirmity to which she had owed so much success with papa +and mamma. The appearance did her injustice, for it was not less through +her candour than through her playfellow's pressure that after this the +idea of a moral sense mainly coloured their intercourse. She began, the +poor child, with scarcely knowing what it was; but it proved something +that, with scarce an outward sign save her surrender to the swing of the +carriage, she could, before they came back from their drive, strike up a +sort of acquaintance with. The beauty of the day only deepened, and the +splendour of the afternoon sea, and the haze of the far headlands, and +the taste of the sweet air. It was the coachman indeed who, smiling and +cracking his whip, turning in his place, pointing to invisible objects +and uttering unintelligible sounds--all, our tourists recognised, strict +features of a social order principally devoted to language: it was this +polite person, I say, who made their excursion fall so much short that +their return left them still a stretch of the long daylight and an hour +that, at his obliging suggestion, they spent on foot by the shining +sands. Maisie had seen the _plage_ the day before with Sir Claude, but +that was a reason the more for showing on the spot to Mrs. Wix that it +was, as she said, another of the places on her list and of the things of +which she knew the French name. The bathers, so late, were absent and +the tide was low; the sea-pools twinkled in the sunset and there were +dry places as well, where they could sit again and admire and expatiate: +a circumstance that, while they listened to the lap of the waves, gave +Mrs. Wix a fresh support for her challenge. "Have you absolutely none at +all?" + +She had no need now, as to the question itself at least, to be specific; +that on the other hand was the eventual result of their quiet conjoined +apprehension of the thing that--well, yes, since they must face +it--Maisie absolutely and appallingly had so little of. This marked more +particularly the moment of the child's perceiving that her friend had +risen to a level which might--till superseded at all events--pass almost +for sublime. Nothing more remarkable had taken place in the first heat +of her own departure, no act of perception less to be overtraced by our +rough method, than her vision, the rest of that Boulogne day, of the +manner in which she figured. I so despair of courting her noiseless +mental footsteps here that I must crudely give you my word for its being +from this time forward a picture literally present to her. Mrs. Wix +saw her as a little person knowing so extraordinarily much that, for +the account to be taken of it, what she still didn't know would be +ridiculous if it hadn't been embarrassing. Mrs. Wix was in truth more +than ever qualified to meet embarrassment; I am not sure that Maisie had +not even a dim discernment of the queer law of her own life that made +her educate to that sort of proficiency those elders with whom she was +concerned. She promoted, as it were, their development; nothing could +have been more marked for instance than her success in promoting Mrs. +Beale's. She judged that if her whole history, for Mrs. Wix, had been +the successive stages of her knowledge, so the very climax of the +concatenation would, in the same view, be the stage at which the +knowledge should overflow. As she was condemned to know more and more, +how could it logically stop before she should know Most? It came to her +in fact as they sat there on the sands that she was distinctly on the +road to know Everything. She had not had governesses for nothing: what +in the world had she ever done but learn and learn and learn? She looked +at the pink sky with a placid foreboding that she soon should have +learnt All. They lingered in the flushed air till at last it turned +to grey and she seemed fairly to receive new information from every +brush of the breeze. By the time they moved homeward it was as if this +inevitability had become for Mrs. Wix a long, tense cord, twitched by +a nervous hand, on which the valued pearls of intelligence were to be +neatly strung. + +In the evening upstairs they had another strange sensation, as to which +Maisie couldn't afterwards have told you whether it was bang in the +middle or quite at the beginning that her companion sounded with fresh +emphasis the note of the moral sense. What mattered was merely that she +did exclaim, and again, as at first appeared, most disconnectedly: "God +help me, it does seem to peep out!" Oh the queer confusions that had +wooed it at last to such peeping! None so queer, however, as the words +of woe, and it might verily be said of rage, in which the poor lady +bewailed the tragic end of her own rich ignorance. There was a point at +which she seized the child and hugged her as close as in the old days of +partings and returns; at which she was visibly at a loss how to make up +to such a victim for such contaminations: appealing, as to what she had +done and was doing, in bewilderment, in explanation, in supplication, +for reassurance, for pardon and even outright for pity. + +"I don't know what I've said to you, my own: I don't know what I'm +saying or what the turn you've given my life has rendered me, heaven +forgive me, capable of saying. Have I lost all delicacy, all decency, +all measure of how far and how bad? It seems to me mostly that I have, +though I'm the last of whom you would ever have thought it. I've just +done it for YOU, precious--not to lose you, which would have been worst +of all: so that I've had to pay with my own innocence, if you do laugh! +for clinging to you and keeping you. Don't let me pay for nothing; don't +let me have been thrust for nothing into such horrors and such shames. I +never knew anything about them and I never wanted to know! Now I know +too much, too much!" the poor woman lamented and groaned. "I know so +much that with hearing such talk I ask myself where I am; and with +uttering it too, which is worse, say to myself that I'm far, too far, +from where I started! I ask myself what I should have thought with my +lost one if I had heard myself cross the line. There are lines I've +crossed with YOU where I should have fancied I had come to a pretty +pass--" She gasped at the mere supposition. "I've gone from one thing to +another, and all for the real love of you; and now what would any one +say--I mean any one but THEM--if they were to hear the way I go on? I've +had to keep up with you, haven't I?--and therefore what could I do less +than look to you to keep up with ME? But it's not THEM that are the +worst--by which I mean to say it's not HIM: it's your dreadfully base +papa and the one person in the world whom he could have found, I do +believe--and she's not the Countess, duck--wickeder than himself. While +they were about it at any rate, since they WERE ruining you, they might +have done it so as to spare an honest woman. Then I shouldn't have had +to do whatever it is that's the worst: throw up at you the badness you +haven't taken in, or find my advantage in the vileness you HAVE! What I +did lose patience at this morning was at how it was that without your +seeming to condemn--for you didn't, you remember!--you yet did seem to +KNOW. Thank God, in his mercy, at last, IF you do!" + +The night, this time, was warm, and one of the windows stood open to the +small balcony over the rail of which, on coming back from dinner, Maisie +had hung a long time in the enjoyment of the chatter, the lights, the +life of the quay made brilliant by the season and the hour. Mrs. Wix's +requirements had drawn her in from this pasture and Mrs. Wix's embrace +had detained her even though midway in the outpouring her confusion +and sympathy had permitted, or rather had positively helped, her to +disengage herself. But the casement was still wide, the spectacle, the +pleasure were still there, and from her place in the room, which, with +its polished floor and its panels of elegance, was lighted from without +more than from within, the child could still take account of them. She +appeared to watch and listen; after which she answered Mrs. Wix with a +question. "If I do know--?" + +"If you do condemn." The correction was made with some austerity. + +It had the effect of causing Maisie to heave a vague sigh of oppression +and then after an instant and as if under cover of this ambiguity pass +out again upon the balcony. She hung again over the rail; she felt the +summer night; she dropped down into the manners of France. There was +a café below the hotel, before which, with little chairs and tables, +people sat on a space enclosed by plants in tubs; and the impression was +enriched by the flash of the white aprons of waiters and the music of a +man and a woman who, from beyond the precinct, sent up the strum of a +guitar and the drawl of a song about "amour." Maisie knew what "amour" +meant too, and wondered if Mrs. Wix did: Mrs. Wix remained within, as +still as a mouse and perhaps not reached by the performance. After +a while, but not till the musicians had ceased and begun to circulate +with a little plate, her pupil came back to her. "IS it a crime?" Maisie +then asked. + +Mrs. Wix was as prompt as if she had been crouching in a lair. "Branded +by the Bible." + +"Well, he won't commit a crime." + +Mrs. Wix looked at her gloomily. "He's committing one now." + +"Now?" + +"In being with her." + +Maisie had it on her tongue's end to return once more: "But now he's +free." She remembered, however, in time that one of the things she had +known for the last entire hour was that this made no difference. After +that, and as if to turn the right way, she was on the point of a blind +dash, a weak reversion to the reminder that it might make a difference, +might diminish the crime for Mrs. Beale; till such a reflexion was in +its order also quashed by the visibility in Mrs. Wix's face of the +collapse produced by her inference from her pupil's manner that after +all her pains her pupil didn't even yet adequately understand. Never so +much as when confronted had Maisie wanted to understand, and all her +thought for a minute centred in the effort to come out with something +which should be a disproof of her simplicity. "Just TRUST me, dear; +that's all!"--she came out finally with that; and it was perhaps a good +sign of her action that with a long, impartial moan Mrs. Wix floated her +to bed. + +There was no letter the next morning from Sir Claude--which Mrs. Wix let +out that she deemed the worst of omens; yet it was just for the quieter +communion they so got with him that, when after the coffee and rolls +which made them more foreign than ever, it came to going forth for fresh +drafts upon his credit they wandered again up the hill to the rampart +instead of plunging into distraction with the crowd on the sands or into +the sea with the semi-nude bathers. They gazed once more at their gilded +Virgin; they sank once more upon their battered bench; they felt once +more their distance from the Regent's Park. At last Mrs. Wix became +definite about their friend's silence. "He IS afraid of her! She has +forbidden him to write." The fact of his fear Maisie already knew; but +her companion's mention of it had at this moment two unexpected results. +The first was her wondering in dumb remonstrance how Mrs. Wix, with +a devotion not after all inferior to her own, could put into such an +allusion such a grimness of derision; the second was that she found +herself suddenly drop into a deeper view of it. She too had been afraid, +as we have seen, of the people of whom Sir Claude was afraid, and by +that law she had had her due measure of latest apprehension of Mrs. +Beale. What occurred at present, however, was that, whereas this +sympathy appeared vain as for him, the ground of it loomed dimly as a +reason for selfish alarm. That uneasiness had not carried her far before +Mrs. Wix spoke again and with an abruptness so great as almost to seem +irrelevant. "Has it never occurred to you to be jealous of her?" + +It never had in the least; yet the words were scarce in the air before +Maisie had jumped at them. She held them well, she looked at them hard; +at last she brought out with an assurance which there was no one, alas, +but herself to admire: "Well, yes--since you ask me." She debated, then +continued: "Lots of times!" + +Mrs. Wix glared askance an instant; such approval as her look expressed +was not wholly unqualified. It expressed at any rate something that +presumably had to do with her saying once more: "Yes. He's afraid of +her." + +Maisie heard, and it had afresh its effect on her even through the +blur of the attention now required by the possibility of that idea of +jealousy--a possibility created only by her feeling she had thus found +the way to show she was not simple. It struck out of Mrs. Wix that +this lady still believed her moral sense to be interested and feigned; +so what could be such a gage of her sincerity as a peep of the most +restless of the passions? Such a revelation would baffle discouragement, +and discouragement was in fact so baffled that, helped in some degree +by the mere intensity of their need to hope, which also, according to +its nature, sprang from the dark portent of the absent letter, the real +pitch of their morning was reached by the note, not of mutual scrutiny, +but of unprecedented frankness. There were broodings indeed and +silences, and Maisie sank deeper into the vision that for her friend +she was, at the most, superficial, and that also, positively, she was +the more so the more she tried to appear complete. Was the sum of all +knowledge only to know how little in this presence one would ever reach +it? The answer to that question luckily lost itself in the brightness +suffusing the scene as soon as Maisie had thrown out in regard to Mrs. +Beale such a remark as she had never dreamed she should live to make. +"If I thought she was unkind to him--I don't know WHAT I should do!" + +Mrs. Wix dropped one of her squints; she even confirmed it by a wild +grunt. "I know what _I_ should!" + +Maisie at this felt that she lagged. "Well, I can think of ONE thing." + +Mrs. Wix more directly challenged her. "What is it then?" + +Maisie met her expression as if it were a game with forfeits for +winking. "I'd KILL her!" That at least, she hoped as she looked away, +would guarantee her moral sense. She looked away, but her companion said +nothing for so long that she at last turned her head again. Then she saw +the straighteners all blurred with tears which after a little seemed to +have sprung from her own eyes. There were tears in fact on both sides of +the spectacles, and they were even so thick that it was presently all +Maisie could do to make out through them that slowly, finally Mrs. Wix +put forth a hand. It was the material pressure that settled this and +even at the end of some minutes more things besides. It settled in its +own way one thing in particular, which, though often, between them, +heaven knew, hovered round and hung over, was yet to be established +without the shadow of an attenuating smile. Oh there was no gleam of +levity, as little of humour as of deprecation, in the long time they now +sat together or in the way in which at some unmeasured point of it Mrs. +Wix became distinct enough for her own dignity and yet not loud enough +for the snoozing old women. + +"I adore him. I adore him." + +Maisie took it well in; so well that in a moment more she would have +answered profoundly: "So do I." But before that moment passed something +took place that brought other words to her lips; nothing more, very +possibly, than the closer consciousness in her hand of the significance +of Mrs. Wix's. Their hands remained linked in unutterable sign of their +union, and what Maisie at last said was simply and serenely: "Oh I +know!" + +Their hands were so linked and their union was so confirmed that it took +the far deep note of a bell, borne to them on the summer air, to call +them back to a sense of hours and proprieties. They had touched bottom +and melted together, but they gave a start at last: the bell was the +voice of the inn and the inn was the image of luncheon. They should be +late for it; they got up, and their quickened step on the return had +something of the swing of confidence. When they reached the hotel the +_table d'hôte_ had begun; this was clear from the threshold, clear +from the absence in the hall and on the stairs of the "personnel," +as Mrs. Wix said--she had picked THAT up--all collected in the +dining-room. They mounted to their apartments for a brush before the +glass, and it was Maisie who, in passing and from a vain impulse, +threw open the white and gold door. She was thus first to utter the +sound that brought Mrs. Wix almost on top of her, as by the other +accident it would have brought her on top of Mrs. Wix. It had at any +rate the effect of leaving them bunched together in a strained stare +at their new situation. This situation had put on in a flash the +bright form of Mrs. Beale: she stood there in her hat and her jacket, +amid bags and shawls, smiling and holding out her arms. If she had +just arrived it was a different figure from either of the two that for +THEIR benefit, wan and tottering and none too soon to save life, the +Channel had recently disgorged. She was as lovely as the day that had +brought her over, as fresh as the luck and the health that attended +her: it came to Maisie on the spot that she was more beautiful than +she had ever been. All this was too quick to count, but there was +still time in it to give the child the sense of what had kindled the +light. That leaped out of the open arms, the open eyes, the open +mouth; it leaped out with Mrs. Beale's loud cry at her: "I'm free, +I'm free!" + + + + +XXVII + + +The greatest wonder of all was the way Mrs. Beale addressed her +announcement, so far as could be judged, equally to Mrs. Wix, who, as +if from sudden failure of strength, sank into a chair while Maisie +surrendered to the visitor's embrace. As soon as the child was liberated +she met with profundity Mrs. Wix's stupefaction and actually was able to +see that while in a manner sustaining the encounter her face yet seemed +with intensity to say: "Now, for God's sake, don't crow 'I told you +so!'" Maisie was somehow on the spot aware of an absence of disposition +to crow; it had taken her but an extra minute to arrive at such a quick +survey of the objects surrounding Mrs. Beale as showed that among them +was no appurtenance of Sir Claude's. She knew his dressing-bag now--oh +with the fondest knowledge!--and there was an instant during which its +not being there was a stroke of the worst news. She was yet to learn +what it could be to recognise in some lapse of a sequence the proof of +an extinction, and therefore remained unaware that this momentary pang +was a foretaste of the experience of death. It of course yielded in +a flash to Mrs. Beale's brightness, it gasped itself away in her own +instant appeal. "You've come alone?" + +"Without Sir Claude?" Strangely, Mrs. Beale looked even brighter. "Yes; +in the eagerness to get at you. You abominable little villain!"--and her +stepmother, laughing clear, administered to her cheek a pat that was +partly a pinch. "What were you up to and what did you take me for? But +I'm glad to be abroad, and after all it's you who have shown me the way. +I mightn't, without you, have been able to come--to come, that is, so +soon. Well, here I am at any rate and in a moment more I should have +begun to worry about you. This will do very well"--she was good-natured +about the place and even presently added that it was charming. Then with +a rosier glow she made again her great point: "I'm free, I'm free!" +Maisie made on her side her own: she carried back her gaze to Mrs. Wix, +whom amazement continued to hold; she drew afresh her old friend's +attention to the superior way she didn't take that up. What she did take +up the next minute was the question of Sir Claude. "Where is he? Won't +he come?" + +Mrs. Beale's consideration of this oscillated with a smile between the +two expectancies with which she was flanked: it was conspicuous, it +was extraordinary, her unblinking acceptance of Mrs. Wix, a miracle of +which Maisie had even now begun to read a reflexion in that lady's long +visage. "He'll come, but we must MAKE him!" she gaily brought forth. + +"Make him?" Maisie echoed. + +"We must give him time. We must play our cards." + +"But he promised us awfully," Maisie replied. + +"My dear child, he has promised ME awfully; I mean lots of things, and +not in every case kept his promise to the letter." Mrs. Beale's good +humour insisted on taking for granted Mrs. Wix's, to whom her attention +had suddenly grown prodigious. "I dare say he has done the same with +you, and not always come to time. But he makes it up in his own way--and +it isn't as if we didn't know exactly what he is. There's one thing he +is," she went on, "which makes everything else only a question, for us, +of tact." They scarce had time to wonder what this was before, as they +might have said, it flew straight into their face. "He's as free as I +am!" + +"Yes, I know," said Maisie; as if, however, independently weighing the +value of that. She really weighed also the oddity of her stepmother's +treating it as news to HER, who had been the first person literally to +whom Sir Claude had mentioned it. For a few seconds, as if with the +sound of it in her ears, she stood with him again, in memory and in the +twilight, in the hotel garden at Folkestone. + +Anything Mrs. Beale overlooked was, she indeed divined, but the effect +of an exaltation of high spirits, a tendency to soar that showed even +when she dropped--still quite impartially--almost to the confidential. +"Well, then--we've only to wait. He can't do without us long. I'm sure, +Mrs. Wix, he can't do without YOU! He's devoted to you; he has told me +so much about you. The extent I count on you, you know, count on you to +help me--" was an extent that even all her radiance couldn't express. +What it couldn't express quite as much as what it could made at any rate +every instant her presence and even her famous freedom loom larger; and +it was this mighty mass that once more led her companions, bewildered +and disjoined, to exchange with each other as through a thickening veil +confused and ineffectual signs. They clung together at least on the +common ground of unpreparedness, and Maisie watched without relief the +havoc of wonder in Mrs. Wix. It had reduced her to perfect impotence, +and, but that gloom was black upon her, she sat as if fascinated by Mrs. +Beale's high style. It had plunged her into a long deep hush; for what +had happened was the thing she had least allowed for and before which +the particular rigour she had worked up could only grow limp and sick. +Sir Claude was to have reappeared with his accomplice or without +her; never, never his accomplice without HIM. Mrs. Beale had gained +apparently by this time an advantage she could pursue: she looked at the +droll dumb figure with jesting reproach. "You really won't shake hands +with me? Never mind; you'll come round!" She put the matter to no test, +going on immediately and, instead of offering her hand, raising it, with +a pretty gesture that her bent head met, to a long black pin that played +a part in her back hair. "Are hats worn at luncheon? If you're as hungry +as I am we must go right down." + +Mrs. Wix stuck fast, but she met the question in a voice her pupil +scarce recognised. "I wear mine." + +Mrs. Beale, swallowing at one glance her brand-new bravery, which she +appeared at once to refer to its origin and to follow in its flights, +accepted this as conclusive. "Oh but I've not such a beauty!" Then she +turned rejoicingly to Maisie. "I've got a beauty for YOU my dear." + +"A beauty?" + +"A love of a hat--in my luggage. I remembered THAT"--she nodded at the +object on her stepdaughter's head--"and I've brought you one with a +peacock's breast. It's the most gorgeous blue!" + +It was too strange, this talking with her there already not about +Sir Claude but about peacocks--too strange for the child to have the +presence of mind to thank her. But the felicity in which she had arrived +was so proof against everything that Maisie felt more and more the depth +of the purpose that must underlie it. She had a vague sense of its being +abysmal, the spirit with which Mrs. Beale carried off the awkwardness, +in the white and gold salon, of such a want of breath and of welcome. +Mrs. Wix was more breathless than ever; the embarrassment of Mrs. +Beale's isolation was as nothing to the embarrassment of her grace. The +perception of this dilemma was the germ on the child's part of a new +question altogether. What if WITH this indulgence--? But the idea lost +itself in something too frightened for hope and too conjectured for +fear; and while everything went by leaps and bounds one of the waiters +stood at the door to remind them that the _table d'hôte_ was half over. + +"Had you come up to wash hands?" Mrs. Beale hereupon asked them. "Go and +do it quickly and I'll be with you: they've put my boxes in that nice +room--it was Sir Claude's. Trust him," she laughed, "to have a nice +one!" The door of a neighbouring room stood open, and now from the +threshold, addressing herself again to Mrs. Wix, she launched a note +that gave the very key of what, as she would have said, she was up to. +"Dear lady, please attend to my daughter." + +She was up to a change of deportment so complete that it represented--oh +for offices still honourably subordinate if not too explicitly +menial--an absolute coercion, an interested clutch of the old woman's +respectability. There was response, to Maisie's view, I may say at once, +in the jump of that respectability to its feet: it was itself capable of +one of the leaps, one of the bounds just mentioned, and it carried its +charge, with this momentum and while Mrs. Beale popped into Sir Claude's +chamber, straight away to where, at the end of the passage, pupil and +governess were quartered. The greatest stride of all, for that matter, +was that within a few seconds the pupil had, in another relation, been +converted into a daughter. Maisie's eyes were still following it when, +after the rush, with the door almost slammed and no thought of soap and +towels, the pair stood face to face. Mrs. Wix, in this position, was the +first to gasp a sound. "Can it ever be that SHE has one?" + +Maisie felt still more bewildered. "One what?" + +"Why moral sense." + +They spoke as if you might have two, but Mrs. Wix looked as if it were +not altogether a happy thought, and Maisie didn't see how even an +affirmative from her own lips would clear up what had become most of a +mystery. It was to this larger puzzle she sprang pretty straight. "IS +she my mother now?" + +It was a point as to which an horrific glimpse of the responsibility of +an opinion appeared to affect Mrs. Wix like a blow in the stomach. She +had evidently never thought of it; but she could think and rebound. "If +she is, he's equally your father." + +Maisie, however, thought further. "Then my father and my mother--!" + +But she had already faltered and Mrs. Wix had already glared back: +"Ought to live together? Don't begin it AGAIN!" She turned away with +a groan, to reach the washing-stand, and Maisie could by this time +recognise with a certain ease that that way verily madness did lie. Mrs. +Wix gave a great untidy splash, but the next instant had faced round. +"She has taken a new line." + +"She was nice to you," Maisie concurred. + +"What SHE thinks so--'go and dress the young lady!' But it's something!" +she panted. Then she thought out the rest. "If he won't have her, why +she'll have YOU. She'll be the one." + +"The one to keep me abroad?" + +"The one to give you a home." Mrs. Wix saw further; she mastered all the +portents. "Oh she's cruelly clever! It's not a moral sense." She reached +her climax: "It's a game!" + +"A game?" + +"Not to lose him. She has sacrificed him--to her duty." + +"Then won't he come?" Maisie pleaded. + +Mrs. Wix made no answer; her vision absorbed her. "He has fought. But +she has won." + +"Then won't he come?" the child repeated. + +Mrs. Wix made it out. "Yes, hang him!" She had never been so profane. + +For all Maisie minded! "Soon--to-morrow?" + +"Too soon--whenever. Indecently soon." + +"But then we SHALL be together!" the child went on. It made Mrs. Wix +look at her as if in exasperation; but nothing had time to come before +she precipitated: "Together with YOU!" The air of criticism continued, +but took voice only in her companion's bidding her wash herself and come +down. The silence of quick ablutions fell upon them, presently broken, +however, by one of Maisie's sudden reversions. "Mercy, isn't she +handsome?" + +Mrs. Wix had finished; she waited. "She'll attract attention." They +were rapid, and it would have been noticed that the shock the beauty +had given them acted, incongruously, as a positive spur to their +preparations for rejoining her. She had none the less, when they +returned to the sitting-room, already descended; the open door of her +room showed it empty and the chambermaid explained. Here again they were +delayed by another sharp thought of Mrs. Wix's. "But what will she live +on meanwhile?" + +Maisie stopped short. "Till Sir Claude comes?" + +It was nothing to the violence with which her friend had been arrested. +"Who'll pay the bills?" + +Maisie thought. "Can't SHE?" + +"She? She hasn't a penny." + +The child wondered. "But didn't papa--?" + +"Leave her a fortune?" Mrs. Wix would have appeared to speak of papa as +dead had she not immediately added: "Why he lives on other women!" + +Oh yes, Maisie remembered. "Then can't he send--" She faltered again; +even to herself it sounded queer. + +"Some of their money to his wife?" Mrs. Wix pave a laugh still stranger +than the weird suggestion. "I dare say she'd take it!" + +They hurried on again; yet again, on the stairs, Maisie pulled up. +"Well, if she had stopped in England--!" she threw out. + +Mrs. Wix considered. "And he had come over instead?" + +"Yes, as we expected." Maisie launched her speculation. "What then would +she have lived on?" + +Mrs. Wix hung fire but an instant. "On other men!" And she marched +downstairs. + + + + +XXVIII + + +Mrs. Beale, at table between the pair, plainly attracted the attention +Mrs. Wix had foretold. No other lady present was nearly so handsome, +nor did the beauty of any other accommodate itself with such art to the +homage it produced. She talked mainly to her other neighbour, and that +left Maisie leisure both to note the manner in which eyes were riveted +and nudges interchanged, and to lose herself in the meanings that, dimly +as yet and disconnectedly, but with a vividness that fed apprehension, +she could begin to read into her stepmother's independent move. Mrs. Wix +had helped her by talking of a game; it was a connexion in which the +move could put on a strategic air. Her notions of diplomacy were thin, +but it was a kind of cold diplomatic shoulder and an elbow of more than +usual point that, temporarily at least, were presented to her by the +averted inclination of Mrs. Beale's head. There was a phrase familiar to +Maisie, so often was it used by this lady to express the idea of one's +getting what one wanted: one got it--Mrs. Beale always said SHE at all +events always got it or proposed to get it--by "making love." She was +at present making love, singular as it appeared, to Mrs. Wix, and her +young friend's mind had never moved in such freedom as on thus finding +itself face to face with the question of what she wanted to get. This +period of the _omelette aux rognons_ and the poulet sauté, while her sole +surviving parent, her fourth, fairly chattered to her governess, left +Maisie rather wondering if her governess would hold out. It was strange, +but she became on the spot quite as interested in Mrs. Wix's moral +sense as Mrs. Wix could possibly be in hers: it had risen before her so +pressingly that this was something new for Mrs. Wix to resist. Resisting +Mrs. Beale herself promised at such a rate to become a very different +business from resisting Sir Claude's view of her. More might come of +what had happened--whatever it was--than Maisie felt she could have +expected. She put it together with a suspicion that, had she ever in +her life had a sovereign changed, would have resembled an impression, +baffled by the want of arithmetic, that her change was wrong: she groped +about in it that she was perhaps playing the passive part in a case of +violent substitution. A victim was what she should surely be if the +issue between her step-parents had been settled by Mrs. Beale's saying: +"Well, if she can live with but one of us alone, with which in the world +should it be but me?" That answer was far from what, for days, she had +nursed herself in, and the desolation of it was deepened by the absence +of anything from Sir Claude to show he had not had to take it as +triumphant. Had not Mrs. Beale, upstairs, as good as given out that +she had quitted him with the snap of a tension, left him, dropped him +in London, after some struggle as a sequel to which her own advent +represented that she had practically sacrificed him? Maisie assisted in +fancy at the probable episode in the Regent's Park, finding elements +almost of terror in the suggestion that Sir Claude had not had fair +play. They drew something, as she sat there, even from the pride of an +association with such beauty as Mrs. Beale's; and the child quite forgot +that, though the sacrifice of Mrs. Beale herself was a solution she had +not invented, she would probably have seen Sir Claude embark upon it +without a direct remonstrance. + +What her stepmother had clearly now promised herself to wring from Mrs. +Wix was an assent to the great modification, the change, as smart as a +juggler's trick, in the interest of which nothing so much mattered as +the new convenience of Mrs. Beale. Maisie could positively seize the +moral that her elbow seemed to point in ribs thinly defended--the moral +of its not mattering a straw which of the step-parents was the guardian. +The essence of the question was that a girl wasn't a boy: if Maisie had +been a mere rough trousered thing, destined at the best probably to grow +up a scamp, Sir Claude would have been welcome. As the case stood he had +simply tumbled out of it, and Mrs. Wix would henceforth find herself in +the employ of the right person. These arguments had really fallen into +their place, for our young friend, at the very touch of that tone in +which she had heard her new title declared. She was still, as a result +of so many parents, a daughter to somebody even after papa and mamma +were to all intents dead. If her father's wife and her mother's husband, +by the operation of a natural or, for all she knew, a legal rule, were +in the shoes of their defunct partners, then Mrs. Beale's partner was +exactly as defunct as Sir Claude's and her shoes the very pair to which, +in "Farange _v._ Farange and Others," the divorce court had given +priority. The subject of that celebrated settlement saw the rest of +her day really filled out with the pomp of all that Mrs. Beale assumed. +The assumption rounded itself there between this lady's entertainers, +flourished in a way that left them, in their bottomless element, scarce +a free pair of eyes to exchange signals. It struck Maisie even a little +that there was a rope or two Mrs. Wix might have thrown out if she +would, a rocket or two she might have sent up. They had at any rate +never been so long together without communion or telegraphy, and their +companion kept them apart by simply keeping them with her. From this +situation they saw the grandeur of their intenser relation to her pass +and pass like an endless procession. It was a day of lively movement +and of talk on Mrs. Beale's part so brilliant and overflowing as to +represent music and banners. She took them out with her promptly to walk +and to drive, and even--towards night--sketched a plan for carrying them +to the Etablissement, where, for only a franc apiece, they should listen +to a concert of celebrities. It reminded Maisie, the plan, of the +side-shows at Earl's Court, and the franc sounded brighter than the +shillings which had at that time failed; yet this too, like the other, +was a frustrated hope: the francs failed like the shillings and the +side-shows had set an example to the concert. The Etablissement in short +melted away, and it was little wonder that a lady who from the moment of +her arrival had been so gallantly in the breach should confess herself +it last done up. Maisie could appreciate her fatigue; the day had not +passed without such an observer's discovering that she was excited and +even mentally comparing her state to that of the breakers after a gale. +It had blown hard in London, and she would take time to go down. It was +of the condition known to the child by report as that of talking against +time that her emphasis, her spirit, her humour, which had never dropped, +now gave the impression. + +She too was delighted with foreign manners; but her daughter's +opportunities of explaining them to her were unexpectedly forestalled +by her own tone of large acquaintance with them. One of the things that +nipped in the bud all response to her volubility was Maisie's surprised +retreat before the fact that Continental life was what she had been +almost brought up on. It was Mrs. Beale, disconcertingly, who began to +explain it to her friends; it was she who, wherever they turned, was the +interpreter, the historian and the guide. She was full of reference to +her early travels--at the age of eighteen: she had at that period made, +with a distinguished Dutch family, a stay on the Lake of Geneva. Maisie +had in the old days been regaled with anecdotes of these adventures, +but they had with time become phantasmal, and the heroine's quite showy +exemption from bewilderment at Boulogne, her acuteness on some of the +very subjects on which Maisie had been acute to Mrs. Wix, were a high +note of the majesty, of the variety of advantage, with which she had +alighted. It was all a part of the wind in her sails and of the weight +with which her daughter was now to feel her hand. The effect of it on +Maisie was to add already the burden of time to her separation from Sir +Claude. This might, to her sense, have lasted for days; it was as if, +with their main agitation transferred thus to France and with neither +mamma now nor Mrs. Beale nor Mrs. Wix nor herself at his side, he must +be fearfully alone in England. Hour after hour she felt as if she were +waiting; yet she couldn't have said exactly for what. There were moments +when Mrs. Beale's flow of talk was a mere rattle to smother a knock. +At no part of the crisis had the rattle so public a purpose as when, +instead of letting Maisie go with Mrs. Wix to prepare for dinner, she +pushed her--with a push at last incontestably maternal--straight into +the room inherited from Sir Claude. She titivated her little charge with +her own brisk hands; then she brought out: "I'm going to divorce your +father." + +This was so different from anything Maisie had expected that it took +some time to reach her mind. She was aware meanwhile that she probably +looked rather wan. "To marry Sir Claude?" + +Mrs. Beale rewarded her with a kiss. "It's sweet to hear you put it so." + +This was a tribute, but it left Maisie balancing for an objection. "How +CAN you when he's married?" + +"He isn't--practically. He's free, you know." + +"Free to marry?" + +"Free, first, to divorce his own fiend." + +The benefit that, these last days, she had felt she owed a certain +person left Maisie a moment so ill-prepared for recognising this lurid +label that she hesitated long enough to risk: "Mamma?" + +"She isn't your mamma any longer," Mrs. Beale returned. "Sir Claude has +paid her money to cease to be." Then as if remembering how little, to +the child, a pecuniary transaction must represent: "She lets him off +supporting her if he'll let her off supporting you." + +Mrs. Beale appeared, however, to have done injustice to her daughter's +financial grasp. "And support me himself?" Maisie asked. + +"Take the whole bother and burden of you and never let her hear of you +again. It's a regular signed contract." + +"Why that's lovely of her!" Maisie cried. + +"It's not so lovely, my dear, but that he'll get his divorce." + +Maisie was briefly silent; after which, "No--he won't get it," she said. +Then she added still more boldly: "And you won't get yours." + +Mrs. Beale, who was at the dressing-glass, turned round with amusement +and surprise. "How do you know that?" + +"Oh I know!" cried Maisie. + +"From Mrs. Wix?" + +Maisie debated, then after an instant took her cue from Mrs. Beale's +absence of anger, which struck her the more as she had felt how much of +her courage she needed. "From Mrs. Wix," she admitted. + +Mrs. Beale, at the glass again, made play with a powder-puff. "My own +sweet, she's mistaken!" was all she said. + +There was a certain force in the very amenity of this, but our young +lady reflected long enough to remember that it was not the answer Sir +Claude himself had made. The recollection nevertheless failed to prevent +her saying: "Do you mean then that he won't come till he has got it?" + +Mrs. Beale gave a last touch; she was ready; she stood there in all her +elegance. "I mean, my dear, that it's because he HASN'T got it that I +left him." + +This opened a view that stretched further than Maisie could reach. She +turned away from it, but she spoke before they went out again. "Do you +like Mrs. Wix now?" + +"Why, my chick, I was just going to ask you if you think she has come at +all to like poor bad me!" + +Maisie thought, at this hint; but unsuccessfully. "I haven't the least +idea. But I'll find out." + +"Do!" said Mrs. Beale, rustling out with her in a scented air and as if +it would be a very particular favour. + +The child tried promptly at bed-time, relieved now of the fear that +their visitor would wish to separate her for the night from her +attendant. "Have you held out?" she began as soon as the two doors at +the end of the passage were again closed on them. + +Mrs. Wix looked hard at the flame of the candle. "Held out--?" + +"Why, she has been making love to you. Has she won you over?" + +Mrs. Wix transferred her intensity to her pupil's face. "Over to what?" + +"To HER keeping me instead." + +"Instead of Sir Claude?" Mrs. Wix was distinctly gaining time. + +"Yes; who else? since it's not instead of you." + +Mrs. Wix coloured at this lucidity. "Yes, that IS what she means." + +"Well, do you like it?" Maisie asked. + +She actually had to wait, for oh her friend was embarrassed! "My +opposition to the connexion--theirs--would then naturally to some extent +fall. She has treated me to-day as if I weren't after all quite such a +worm; not that I don't know very well where she got the pattern of her +politeness. But of course," Mrs. Wix hastened to add, "I shouldn't like +her as THE one nearly so well as him." + +"'Nearly so well!'" Maisie echoed. "I should hope indeed not." She spoke +with a firmness under which she was herself the first to quiver. "I +thought you 'adored' him." + +"I do," Mrs. Wix sturdily allowed. + +"Then have you suddenly begun to adore her too?" + +Mrs. Wix, instead of directly answering, only blinked in support of her +sturdiness. "My dear, in what a tone you ask that! You're coming out." + +"Why shouldn't I? YOU'VE come out. Mrs. Beale has come out. We each have +our turn!" And Maisie threw off the most extraordinary little laugh that +had ever passed her young lips. + +There passed Mrs. Wix's indeed the next moment a sound that more than +matched it. "You're most remarkable!" she neighed. + +Her pupil, though wholly without aspirations to pertness, barely +faltered. "I think you've done a great deal to make me so." + +"Very true, I have." She dropped to humility, as if she recalled her so +recent self-arraignment. + +"Would you accept her then? That's what I ask," said Maisie. + +"As a substitute?" Mrs. Wix turned it over; she met again the child's +eyes. "She has literally almost fawned upon me." + +"She hasn't fawned upon HIM. She hasn't even been kind to him." + +Mrs. Wix looked as if she had now an advantage. "Then do you propose to +'kill' her?" + +"You don't answer my question," Maisie persisted. "I want to know if you +accept her." + +Mrs. Wix continued to hedge. "I want to know if YOU do!" + +Everything in the child's person, at this, announced that it was easy to +know. "Not for a moment." + +"Not the two now?" Mrs. Wix had caught on; she flushed with it. "Only +him alone?" + +"Him alone or nobody." + +"Not even ME?" cried Mrs. Wix. + +Maisie looked at her a moment, then began to undress. "Oh you're +nobody!" + + + + +XXIX + + +Her sleep was drawn out, she instantly recognised lateness in the way +her eyes opened to Mrs. Wix, erect, completely dressed, more dressed +than ever, and gazing at her from the centre of the room. The next thing +she was sitting straight up, wide awake with the fear of the hours of +"abroad" that she might have lost. Mrs. Wix looked as if the day had +already made itself felt, and the process of catching up with it began +for Maisie in hearing her distinctly say: "My poor dear, he has come!" + +"Sir Claude?" Maisie, clearing the little bed-rug with the width of her +spring, felt the polished floor under her bare feet. + +"He crossed in the night; he got in early." Mrs. Wix's head jerked +stiffly backward. "He's there." + +"And you've seen him?" + +"No. He's there--he's there," Mrs. Wix repeated. Her voice came out with +a queer extinction that was not a voluntary drop, and she trembled so +that it added to their common emotion. Visibly pale, they gazed at each +other. + +"Isn't it too BEAUTIFUL?" Maisie panted back at her; a challenge with an +answer to which, however, she was not ready at once. The term Maisie had +used was a flash of diplomacy--to prevent at any rate Mrs. Wix's using +another. To that degree it was successful; there was only an appeal, +strange and mute, in the white old face, which produced the effect of +a want of decision greater than could by any stretch of optimism have +been associated with her attitude toward what had happened. For Maisie +herself indeed what had happened was oddly, as she could feel, less of a +simple rapture than any arrival or return of the same supreme friend had +ever been before. What had become overnight, what had become while she +slept, of the comfortable faculty of gladness? She tried to wake it up a +little wider by talking, by rejoicing, by plunging into water and into +clothes, and she made out that it was ten o'clock, but also that Mrs. +Wix had not yet breakfasted. The day before, at nine, they had had +together a _café complet_ in their sitting-room. Mrs. Wix on her side +had evidently also a refuge to seek. She sought it in checking the +precipitation of some of her pupil's present steps, in recalling to her +with an approach to sternness that of such preliminaries those embodied +in a thorough use of soap should be the most thorough, and in throwing +even a certain reprobation on the idea of hurrying into clothes for +the sake of a mere stepfather. She took her in hand with a silent +insistence; she reduced the process to sequences more definite than any +it had known since the days of Moddle. Whatever it might be that had +now, with a difference, begun to belong to Sir Claude's presence was +still after all compatible, for our young lady, with the instinct of +dressing to see him with almost untidy haste. Mrs. Wix meanwhile luckily +was not wholly directed to repression. "He's there--he's there!" she +had said over several times. It was her answer to every invitation +to mention how long she had been up and her motive for respecting so +rigidly the slumber of her companion. It formed for some minutes her +only account of the whereabouts of the others and her reason for not +having yet seen them, as well as of the possibility of their presently +being found in the salon. + +"He's there--he's there!" she declared once more as she made, on the +child, with an almost invidious tug, a strained undergarment "meet." + +"Do you mean he's in the salon?" Maisie asked again. + +"He's WITH her," Mrs. Wix desolately said. "He's with her," she +reiterated. + +"Do you mean in her own room?" Maisie continued. + +She waited an instant. "God knows!" + +Maisie wondered a little why, or how, God should know; this, however, +delayed but an instant her bringing out: "Well, won't she go back?" + +"Go back? Never!" + +"She'll stay all the same?" + +"All the more." + +"Then won't Sir Claude go?" Maisie asked. + +"Go back--if SHE doesn't?" Mrs. Wix appeared to give this question the +benefit of a minute's thought. "Why should he have come--only to go +back?" + +Maisie produced an ingenious solution. "To MAKE her go. To take her." + +Mrs. Wix met it without a concession. "If he can make her go so easily, +why should he have let her come?" + +Maisie considered. "Oh just to see ME. She has a right." + +"Yes--she has a right." + +"She's my mother!" Maisie tentatively tittered. + +"Yes--she's your mother." + +"Besides," Maisie went on, "he didn't let her come. He doesn't like her +coming, and if he doesn't like it--" + +Mrs. Wix took her up. "He must lump it--that's what he must do! Your +mother was right about him--I mean your real one. He has no strength. +No--none at all." She seemed more profoundly to muse. "He might have +had some even with HER--I mean with her ladyship. He's just a poor sunk +slave," she asserted with sudden energy. + +Maisie wondered again. "A slave?" + +"To his passions." + +She continued to wonder and even to be impressed; after which she went +on: "But how do you know he'll stay?" + +"Because he likes us!"--and Mrs. Wix, with her emphasis of the word, +whirled her charge round again to deal with posterior hooks. She had +positively never shaken her so. + +It was as if she quite shook something out of her. "But how will that +help him if we--in spite of his liking!--don't stay?" + +"Do you mean if we go off and leave him with her?--" Mrs. Wix put the +question to the back of her pupil's head. "It WON'T help him. It will be +his ruin. He'll have got nothing. He'll have lost everything. It will be +his utter destruction, for he's certain after a while to loathe her." + +"Then when he loathes her"--it was astonishing how she caught the +idea--"he'll just come right after us!" Maisie announced. + +"Never." + +"Never?" + +"She'll keep him. She'll hold him for ever." + +Maisie doubted. "When he 'loathes' her?" + +"That won't matter. She won't loathe HIM. People don't!" Mrs. Wix +brought up. + +"Some do. Mamma does," Maisie contended. + +"Mamma does NOT!" It was startling--her friend contradicted her flat. +"She loves him--she adores him. A woman knows." Mrs. Wix spoke not only +as if Maisie were not a woman, but as if she would never be one. "_I_ +know!" she cried. + +"Then why on earth has she left him?" + +Mrs. Wix hesitated. "He hates HER. Don't stoop so--lift up your hair. +You know how I'm affected toward him," she added with dignity; "but +you must also know that I see clear." + +Maisie all this time was trying hard to do likewise. "Then if she has +left him for that why shouldn't Mrs. Beale leave him?" + +"Because she's not such a fool!" + +"Not such a fool as mamma?" + +"Precisely--if you WILL have it. Does it look like her leaving him?" +Mrs. Wix enquired. She brooded again; then she went on with more +intensity: "Do you want to know really and truly why? So that she may +be his wretchedness and his punishment." + +"His punishment?"--this was more than as yet Maisie could quite accept. +"For what?" + +"For everything. That's what will happen: he'll be tied to her for ever. +She won't mind in the least his hating her, and she won't hate him back. +She'll only hate US." + +"Us?" the child faintly echoed. + +"She'll hate YOU." + +"Me? Why, I brought them together!" Maisie resentfully cried. + +"You brought them together." There was a completeness in Mrs. Wix's +assent. "Yes; it was a pretty job. Sit down." She began to brush her +pupil's hair and, as she took up the mass of it with some force of +hand, went on with a sharp recall: "Your mother adored him at first--it +might have lasted. But he began too soon with Mrs. Beale. As you say," +she pursued with a brisk application of the brush, "you brought them +together." + +"I brought them together"--Maisie was ready to reaffirm it. She felt +none the less for a moment at the bottom of a hole; then she seemed to +see a way out. "But I didn't bring mamma together--" She just faltered. + +"With all those gentlemen?"--Mrs. Wix pulled her up. "No; it isn't quite +so bad as that." + +"I only said to the Captain"--Maisie had the quick memory of it--"that +I hoped he at least (he was awfully nice!) would love her and keep her." + +"And even that wasn't much harm," threw in Mrs. Wix. + +"It wasn't much good," Maisie was obliged to recognise. "She can't bear +him--not even a mite. She told me at Folkestone." + +Mrs. Wix suppressed a gasp; then after a bridling instant during +which she might have appeared to deflect with difficulty from her odd +consideration of Ida's wrongs: "He was a nice sort of person for her to +talk to you about!" + +"Oh I LIKE him!" Maisie promptly rejoined; and at this, with an +inarticulate sound and an inconsequence still more marked, her companion +bent over and dealt her on the cheek a rapid peck which had the apparent +intention of a kiss. + +"Well, if her ladyship doesn't agree with you, what does it only prove?" +Mrs. Wix demanded in conclusion. "It proves that she's fond of Sir +Claude!" + +Maisie, in the light of some of the evidence, reflected on that till her +hair was finished, but when she at last started up she gave a sign of no +very close embrace of it. She grasped at this moment Mrs. Wix's arm. "He +must have got his divorce!" + +"Since day before yesterday? Don't talk trash." + +This was spoken with an impatience which left the child nothing to +reply; whereupon she sought her defence in a completely different +relation to the fact. "Well, I knew he would come!" + +"So did I; but not in twenty-four hours. I gave him a few days!" Mrs. +Wix wailed. + +Maisie, whom she had now released, looked at her with interest. "How +many did SHE give him?" + +Mrs. Wix faced her a moment; then as if with a bewildered sniff: "You +had better ask her!" But she had no sooner uttered the words than she +caught herself up. "Lord o' mercy, how we talk!" + +Maisie felt that however they talked she must see him, but she said +nothing more for a time, a time during which she conscientiously +finished dressing and Mrs. Wix also kept silence. It was as if they each +had almost too much to think of, and even as if the child had the sense +that her friend was watching her and seeing if she herself were watched. +At last Mrs. Wix turned to the window and stood--sightlessly, as Maisie +could guess--looking away. Then our young lady, before the glass, gave +the supreme shake. "Well, I'm ready. And now to SEE him!" + +Mrs. Wix turned round, but as if without having heard her. "It's +tremendously grave." There were slow still tears behind the +straighteners. + +"It is--it is." Maisie spoke as if she were now dressed quite up to the +occasion; as if indeed with the last touch she had put on the +judgement-cap. "I must see him immediately." + +"How can you see him if he doesn't send for you?" + +"Why can't I go and find him?" + +"Because you don't know where he is." + +"Can't I just look in the salon?" That still seemed simple to Maisie. + +Mrs. Wix, however, instantly cut it off. "I wouldn't have you look in +the salon for all the world!" Then she explained a little: "The salon +isn't ours now." + +"Ours?" + +"Yours and mine. It's theirs." + +"Theirs?" Maisie, with her stare, continued to echo. "You mean they want +to keep us out?" + +Mrs. Wix faltered; she sank into a chair and, as Maisie had often enough +seen her do before, covered her face with her hands. "They ought to, at +least. The situation's too monstrous!" + +Maisie stood there a moment--she looked about the room. "I'll go to +him--I'll find him." + +"_I_ won't! I won't go NEAR them!" cried Mrs. Wix. + +"Then I'll see him alone." The child spied what she had been looking +for--she possessed herself of her hat. "Perhaps I'll take him out!" And +with decision she quitted the room. + +When she entered the salon it was empty, but at the sound of the opened +door some one stirred on the balcony, and Sir Claude, stepping straight +in, stood before her. He was in light fresh clothes and wore a straw hat +with a bright ribbon; these things, besides striking her in themselves +as the very promise of the grandest of grand tours, gave him a certain +radiance and, as it were, a tropical ease; but such an effect only +marked rather more his having stopped short and, for a longer minute +than had ever at such a juncture elapsed, not opened his arms to her. +His pause made her pause and enabled her to reflect that he must have +been up some time, for there were no traces of breakfast; and that +though it was so late he had rather markedly not caused her to be called +to him. Had Mrs. Wix been right about their forfeiture of the salon? Was +it all his now, all his and Mrs. Beale's? Such an idea, at the rate her +small thoughts throbbed, could only remind her of the way in which what +had been hers hitherto was what was exactly most Mrs. Beale's and his. +It was strange to be standing there and greeting him across a gulf, +for he had by this time spoken, smiled and said: "My dear child, my +dear child!" but without coming any nearer. In a flash she saw he was +different--more so than he knew or designed. The next minute indeed it +was as if he caught an impression from her face: this made him hold out +his hand. Then they met, he kissed her, he laughed, she thought he even +blushed: something of his affection rang out as usual. "Here I am, you +see, again--as I promised you." + +It was not as he had promised them--he had not promised them Mrs. Beale; +but Maisie said nothing about that. What she said was simply: "I knew +you had come. Mrs. Wix told me." + +"Oh yes. And where is she?" + +"In her room. She got me up--she dressed me." + +Sir Claude looked at her up and down; a sweetness of mockery that she +particularly loved came out in his face whenever he did that, and it +was not wanting now. He raised his eyebrows and his arms to play at +admiration; he was evidently after all disposed to be gay. "Got you +up?--I should think so! She has dressed you most beautifully. Isn't she +coming?" + +Maisie wondered if she had better tell. "She said not." + +"Doesn't she want to see a poor devil?" + +She looked about under the vibration of the way he described himself, +and her eyes rested on the door of the room he had previously occupied. +"Is Mrs. Beale in there?" + +Sir Claude looked blankly at the same object. "I haven't the least +idea!" + +"You haven't seen her?" + +"Not the tip of her nose." + +Maisie thought: there settled on her, in the light of his beautiful +smiling eyes, the faintest purest coldest conviction that he wasn't +telling the truth. "She hasn't welcomed you?" + +"Not by a single sign." + +"Then where is she?" + +Sir Claude laughed; he seemed both amused and surprised at the point +she made of it. "I give it up!" + +"Doesn't she know you've come?" + +He laughed again. "Perhaps she doesn't care!" + +Maisie, with an inspiration, pounced on his arm. "Has she GONE?" + +He met her eyes and then she could see that his own were really much +graver than his manner. "Gone?" She had flown to the door, but before +she could raise her hand to knock he was beside her and had caught it. +"Let her be. I don't care about her. I want to see YOU." + +"Then she HASN'T gone?" + +Maisie fell back with him. He still looked as if it were a joke, but the +more she saw of him the more she could make out that he was troubled. +"It wouldn't be like her!" + +She stood wondering at him. "Did you want her to come?" + +"How can you suppose--?" He put it to her candidly. "We had an immense +row over it." + +"Do you mean you've quarrelled?" + +Sir Claude was at a loss. "What has she told you?" + +"That I'm hers as much as yours. That she represents papa." + +His gaze struck away through the open window and up to the sky; she +could hear him rattle in his trousers-pockets his money or his keys. +"Yes--that's what she keeps saying." It gave him for a moment an air +that was almost helpless. + +"You say you don't care about her," Maisie went on. "DO you mean you've +quarrelled?" + +"We do nothing in life but quarrel." + +He rose before her, as he said this, so soft and fair, so rich, in spite +of what might worry him, in restored familiarities, that it gave a +bright blur to the meaning--to what would otherwise perhaps have been +the palpable promise--of the words. + +"Oh YOUR quarrels!" she exclaimed with discouragement. + +"I assure you hers are quite fearful!" + +"I don't speak of hers. I speak of yours." + +"Ah don't do it till I've had my coffee! You're growing up clever," he +added. Then he said: "I suppose you've breakfasted?" + +"Oh no--I've had nothing." + +"Nothing in your room?"--he was all compunction. "My dear old +man!--we'll breakfast then together." He had one of his happy thoughts. +"I say--we'll go out." + +"That was just what I hoped. I've brought my hat." + +"You ARE clever! We'll go to a café." Maisie was already at the door; he +glanced round the room. "A moment--my stick." But there appeared to be +no stick. "No matter; I left it--oh!" He remembered with an odd drop and +came out. + +"You left it in London?" she asked as they went downstairs. + +"Yes--in London: fancy!" + +"You were in such a hurry to come," Maisie explained. + +He had his arm round her. "That must have been the reason." + +Halfway down he stopped short again, slapping his leg. "And poor Mrs. +Wix?" + +Maisie's face just showed a shadow. "Do you want her to come?" + +"Dear no--I want to see you alone." + +"That's the way I want to see YOU!" she replied. "Like before." + +"Like before!" he gaily echoed. "But I mean has she had her coffee?" + +"No, nothing." + +"Then I'll send it up to her. Madame!" He had already, at the foot of +the stair, called out to the stout _patronne_, a lady who turned to +him from the bustling, breezy hall a countenance covered with fresh +matutinal powder and a bosom as capacious as the velvet shelf of a +chimneypiece, over which her round white face, framed in its golden +frizzle, might have figured as a showy clock. He ordered, with +particular recommendations, Mrs. Wix's repast, and it was a charm to +hear his easy brilliant French: even his companion's ignorance could +measure the perfection of it. The _patronne_, rubbing her hands and +breaking in with high swift notes as into a florid duet, went with him +to the street, and while they talked a moment longer Maisie remembered +what Mrs. Wix had said about every one's liking him. It came out enough +through the morning powder, it came out enough in the heaving bosom, how +the landlady liked him. He had evidently ordered something lovely for +Mrs. Wix. _"Et bien soigné, n'est-ce-pas?"_ + +_"Soyez tranquille"_--the patronne beamed upon him. _"Et pour Madame?"_ + +_"Madame?"_ he echoed--it just pulled him up a little. + +_"Rien encore?"_ + +"_Rien encore._ Come, Maisie." She hurried along with him, but on the way +to the café he said nothing. + + + + +XXX + + +After they were seated there it was different: the place was not below +the hotel, but further along the quay; with wide, clear windows and a +floor sprinkled with bran in a manner that gave it for Maisie something +of the added charm of a circus. They had pretty much to themselves the +painted spaces and the red plush benches; these were shared by a few +scattered gentlemen who picked teeth, with facial contortions, behind +little bare tables, and by an old personage in particular, a very old +personage with a red ribbon in his buttonhole, whose manner of soaking +buttered rolls in coffee and then disposing of them in the little that +was left of the interval between his nose and chin might at a less +anxious hour have cast upon Maisie an almost envious spell. They too +had their _café au lait_ and their buttered rolls, determined by Sir +Claude's asking her if she could with that light aid wait till the hour +of déjeuner. His allusion to this meal gave her, in the shaded sprinkled +coolness, the scene, as she vaguely felt, of a sort of ordered mirrored +licence, the haunt of those--the irregular, like herself--who went to +bed or who rose too late, something to think over while she watched +the white-aproned waiter perform as nimbly with plates and saucers as +a certain conjurer her friend had in London taken her to a music-hall +to see. Sir Claude had presently begun to talk again, to tell her how +London had looked and how long he had felt himself, on either side, to +have been absent; all about Susan Ash too and the amusement as well as +the difficulty he had had with her; then all about his return journey +and the Channel in the night and the crowd of people coming over and +the way there were always too many one knew. He spoke of other matters +beside, especially of what she must tell him of the occupations, while +he was away, of Mrs. Wix and her pupil. Hadn't they had the good time he +had promised?--had he exaggerated a bit the arrangements made for their +pleasure? Maisie had something--not all there was--to say of his success +and of their gratitude: she had a complication of thought that grew +every minute, grew with the consciousness that she had never seen him in +this particular state in which he had been given back. + +Mrs. Wix had once said--it was once or fifty times; once was enough for +Maisie, but more was not too much--that he was wonderfully various. +Well, he was certainly so, to the child's mind, on the present occasion: +he was much more various than he was anything else. Besides, the fact +that they were together in a shop, at a nice little intimate table as +they had so often been in London, only made greater the difference of +what they were together about. This difference was in his face, in his +voice, in every look he gave her and every movement he made. They were +not the looks and the movements he really wanted to show, and she could +feel as well that they were not those she herself wanted. She had +seen him nervous, she had seen every one she had come in contact with +nervous, but she had never seen him so nervous as this. Little by little +it gave her a settled terror, a terror that partook of the coldness she +had felt just before, at the hotel, to find herself, on his answer about +Mrs. Beale, disbelieve him. She seemed to see at present, to touch +across the table, as if by laying her hand on it, what he had meant when +he confessed on those several occasions to fear. Why was such a man so +often afraid? It must have begun to come to her now that there was one +thing just such a man above all could be afraid of. He could be afraid +of himself. His fear at all events was there; his fear was sweet to her, +beautiful and tender to her, was having coffee and buttered rolls and +talk and laughter that were no talk and laughter at all with her; his +fear was in his jesting postponing perverting voice; it was just in +this make-believe way he had brought her out to imitate the old London +playtimes, to imitate indeed a relation that had wholly changed, a +relation that she had with her very eyes seen in the act of change when, +the day before in the salon, Mrs. Beale rose suddenly before her. She +rose before her, for that matter, now, and even while their refreshment +delayed Maisie arrived at the straight question for which, on their +entrance, his first word had given opportunity. "Are we going to have +déjeuner with Mrs. Beale?" + +His reply was anything but straight. "You and I?" + +Maisie sat back in her chair. "Mrs. Wix and me." + +Sir Claude also shifted. "That's an enquiry, my dear child, that Mrs. +Beale herself must answer." Yes, he had shifted; but abruptly, after a +moment during which something seemed to hang there between them and, as +it heavily swayed, just fan them with the air of its motion, she felt +that the whole thing was upon them. "Do you mind," he broke out, "my +asking you what Mrs. Wix has said to you?" + +"Said to me?" + +"This day or two--while I was away." + +"Do you mean about you and Mrs. Beale?" + +Sir Claude, resting on his elbows, fixed his eyes a moment on the white +marble beneath them. "No; I think we had a good deal of that--didn't +we?--before I left you. It seems to me we had it pretty well all out. I +mean about yourself, about your--don't you know?--associating with us, +as I might say, and staying on with us. While you were alone with our +friend what did she say?" + +Maisie felt the weight of the question; it kept her silent for a space +during which she looked at Sir Claude, whose eyes remained bent. +"Nothing," she returned at last. + +He showed incredulity. "Nothing?" + +"Nothing," Maisie repeated; on which an interruption descended in the +form of a tray bearing the preparations for their breakfast. These +preparations were as amusing as everything else; the waiter poured their +coffee from a vessel like a watering-pot and then made it froth with the +curved stream of hot milk that dropped from the height of his raised +arm; but the two looked across at each other through the whole play of +French pleasantness with a gravity that had now ceased to dissemble. +Sir Claude sent the waiter off again for something and then took up her +answer. "Hasn't she tried to affect you?" + +Face to face with him thus it seemed to Maisie that she had tried so +little as to be scarce worth mentioning; again therefore an instant she +shut herself up. Presently she found her middle course. "Mrs. Beale +likes her now; and there's one thing I've found out--a great thing. +Mrs. Wix enjoys her being so kind. She was tremendously kind all day +yesterday." + +"I see. And what did she do?" Sir Claude asked. + +Maisie was now busy with her breakfast, and her companion attacked his +own; so that it was all, in form at least, even more than their old +sociability. "Everything she could think of. She was as nice to her as +you are," the child said. "She talked to her all day." + +"And what did she say to her?" + +"Oh I don't know." Maisie was a little bewildered with his pressing her +so for knowledge; it didn't fit into the degree of intimacy with Mrs. +Beale that Mrs. Wix had so denounced and that, according to that lady, +had now brought him back in bondage. Wasn't he more aware than his +stepdaughter of what would be done by the person to whom he was bound? +In a moment, however, she added: "She made love to her." + +Sir Claude looked at her harder, and it was clearly something in her +tone that made him quickly say: "You don't mind my asking you, do you?" + +"Not at all; only I should think you'd know better than I." + +"What Mrs. Beale did yesterday?" + +She thought he coloured a trifle; but almost simultaneously with that +impression she found herself answering: "Yes--if you have seen her." + +He broke into the loudest of laughs. "Why, my dear boy, I told you just +now I've absolutely not. I say, don't you believe me?" + +There was something she was already so afraid of that it covered up +other fears. "Didn't you come back to see her?" she enquired in a +moment. "Didn't you come back because you always want to so much?" + +He received her enquiry as he had received her doubt--with an +extraordinary absence of resentment. "I can imagine of course why you +think that. But it doesn't explain my doing what I have. It was, as I +said to you just now at the inn, really and truly you I wanted to see." + +She felt an instant as she used to feel when, in the back garden at her +mother's, she took from him the highest push of a swing--high, high, +high--that he had had put there for her pleasure and that had finally +broken down under the weight and the extravagant patronage of the cook. +"Well, that's beautiful. But to see me, you mean, and go away again?" + +"My going away again is just the point. I can't tell yet--it all +depends." + +"On Mrs. Beale?" Maisie asked. "SHE won't go away." He finished emptying +his coffee-cup and then, when he had put it down, leaned back in his +chair, where she could see that he smiled on her. This only added to her +idea that he was in trouble, that he was turning somehow in his pain and +trying different things. He continued to smile and she went on: "Don't +you know that?" + +"Yes, I may as well confess to you that as much as that I do know. SHE +won't go away. She'll stay." + +"She'll stay. She'll stay," Maisie repeated. + +"Just so. Won't you have some more coffee?" + +"Yes, please." + +"And another buttered roll?" + +"Yes, please." + +He signed to the hovering waiter, who arrived with the shining spout of +plenty in either hand and with the friendliest interest in mademoiselle. +_"Les tartines sont là."_ Their cups were replenished and, while he +watched almost musingly the bubbles in the fragrant mixture, "Just +so--just so," Sir Claude said again and again. "It's awfully awkward!" +he exclaimed when the waiter had gone. + +"That she won't go?" + +"Well--everything! Well, well, well!" But he pulled himself together; +he began again to eat. "I came back to ask you something. That's what +I came back for." + +"I know what you want to ask me," Maisie said. + +"Are you very sure?" + +"I'm ALMOST very." + +"Well then risk it. You mustn't make ME risk everything." + +She was struck with the force of this. "You want to know if I should be +happy with THEM." + +"With those two ladies only? No, no, old man: _vous n'y êtes pas_. So +now--there!" Sir Claude laughed. + +"Well then what is it?" + +The next minute, instead of telling her what it was, he laid his hand +across the table on her own and held her as if under the prompting of a +thought. "Mrs. Wix would stay with HER?" + +"Without you? Oh yes--now." + +"On account, as you just intimated, of Mrs. Beale's changed manner?" + +Maisie, with her sense of responsibility, weighed both Mrs. Beale's +changed manner and Mrs. Wix's human weakness. "I think she talked her +round." + +Sir Claude thought a moment. "Ah poor dear!" + +"Do you mean Mrs. Beale?" + +"Oh no--Mrs. Wix." + +"She likes being talked round--treated like any one else. Oh she likes +great politeness," Maisie expatiated. "It affects her very much." + +Sir Claude, to her surprise, demurred a little to this. "Very much--up +to a certain point." + +"Oh up to any point!" Maisie returned with emphasis. + +"Well, haven't I been polite to her?" + +"Lovely--and she perfectly worships you." + +"Then, my dear child, why can't she let me alone?"--this time Sir +Claude unmistakeably blushed. Before Maisie, however, could answer his +question, which would indeed have taken her long, he went on in another +tone: "Mrs. Beale thinks she has probably quite broken her down. But she +hasn't." + +Though he spoke as if he were sure, Maisie was strong in the impression +she had just uttered and that she now again produced. "She has talked +her round." + +"Ah yes; round to herself, but not round to me." + +Oh she couldn't bear to hear him say that! "To you? Don't you really +believe how she loves you?" + +Sir Claude examined his belief. "Of course I know she's wonderful." + +"She's just every bit as fond of you as _I_ am," said Maisie. "She told +me so yesterday." + +"Ah then," he promptly exclaimed, "she HAS tried to affect you! I don't +love HER, don't you see? I do her perfect justice," he pursued, "but I +mean I don't love her as I do you, and I'm sure you wouldn't seriously +expect it. She's not my daughter--come, old chap! She's not even my +mother, though I dare say it would have been better for me if she had +been. I'll do for her what I'd do for my mother, but I won't do more." +His real excitement broke out in a need to explain and justify himself, +though he kept trying to correct and conceal it with laughs and +mouthfuls and other vain familiarities. Suddenly he broke off, wiping +his moustache with sharp pulls and coming back to Mrs. Beale. "Did she +try to talk YOU over?" + +"No--to me she said very little. Very little indeed," Maisie continued. + +Sir Claude seemed struck with this. "She was only sweet to Mrs. Wix?" + +"As sweet as sugar!" cried Maisie. + +He looked amused at her comparison, but he didn't contest it; he uttered +on the contrary, in an assenting way, a little inarticulate sound. "I +know what she CAN be. But much good may it have done her! Mrs. Wix won't +COME 'round.' That's what makes it so fearfully awkward." + +Maisie knew it was fearfully awkward; she had known this now, she felt, +for some time, and there was something else it more pressingly concerned +her to learn. "What is it you meant you came over to ask me?" + +"Well," said Sir Claude, "I was just going to say. Let me tell you it +will surprise you." She had finished breakfast now and she sat back in +her chair again: she waited in silence to hear. He had pushed the things +before him a little way and had his elbows on the table. This time, she +was convinced, she knew what was coming, and once more, for the crash, +as with Mrs. Wix lately in her room, she held her breath and drew +together her eyelids. He was going to say she must give him up. He +looked hard at her again; then he made his effort. "Should you see your +way to let her go?" + +She was bewildered. "To let who--?" + +"Mrs. Wix simply. I put it at the worst. Should you see your way to +sacrifice her? Of course I know what I'm asking." + +Maisie's eyes opened wide again; this was so different from what she had +expected. "And stay with you alone?" + +He gave another push to his coffee-cup. "With me and Mrs. Beale. Of +course it would be rather rum; but everything in our whole story is +rather rum, you know. What's more unusual than for any one to be given +up, like you, by her parents?" + +"Oh nothing is more unusual than THAT!" Maisie concurred, relieved at +the contact of a proposition as to which concurrence could have +lucidity. + +"Of course it would be quite unconventional," Sir Claude went on--"I +mean the little household we three should make together; but things have +got beyond that, don't you see? They got beyond that long ago. We shall +stay abroad at any rate--it's ever so much easier and it's our affair +and nobody else's: it's no one's business but ours on all the blessed +earth. I don't say that for Mrs. Wix, poor dear--I do her absolute +justice. I respect her; I see what she means; she has done me a lot of +good. But there are the facts. There they are, simply. And here am I, +and here are you. And she won't come round. She's right from her point +of view. I'm talking to you in the most extraordinary way--I'm always +talking to you in the most extraordinary way, ain't I? One would think +you were about sixty and that I--I don't know what any one would think +_I_ am. Unless a beastly cad!" he suggested. "I've been awfully worried, +and this's what it has come to. You've done us the most tremendous good, +and you'll do it still and always, don't you see? We can't let you +go--you're everything. There are the facts as I say. She IS your mother +now, Mrs. Beale, by what has happened, and I, in the same way, I'm your +father. No one can contradict that, and we can't get out of it. My idea +would be a nice little place--somewhere in the South--where she and you +would be together and as good as any one else. And I should be as good +too, don't you see? for I shouldn't live with you, but I should be close +to you--just round the corner, and it would be just the same. My idea +would be that it should all be perfectly open and frank. _Honi soit qui +mal y pense_, don't you know? You're the best thing--you and what we can +do for you--that either of us has ever known," he came back to that. +"When I say to her 'Give her up, come,' she lets me have it bang in the +face: 'Give her up yourself!' It's the same old vicious circle--and when +I say vicious I don't mean a pun, a what-d'-ye-call-'em. Mrs. Wix is the +obstacle; I mean, you know, if she has affected you. She has affected +ME, and yet here I am. I never was in such a tight place: please believe +it's only that that makes me put it to you as I do. My dear child, isn't +that--to put it so--just the way out of it? That came to me yesterday, +in London, after Mrs. Beale had gone: I had the most infernal atrocious +day. 'Go straight over and put it to her: let her choose, freely, her +own self.' So I do, old girl--I put it to you. CAN you choose freely?" + +This long address, slowly and brokenly uttered, with fidgets and +falterings, with lapses and recoveries, with a mottled face and +embarrassed but supplicating eyes, reached the child from a quarter +so close that after the shock of the first sharpness she could see +intensely its direction and follow it from point to point; all the more +that it came back to the point at which it had started. There was a word +that had hummed all through it. "Do you call it a 'sacrifice'?" + +"Of Mrs. Wix? I'll call it whatever YOU call it. I won't funk it--I +haven't, have I? I'll face it in all its baseness. Does it strike you it +IS base for me to get you well away from her, to smuggle you off here +into a corner and bribe you with sophistries and buttered rolls to +betray her?" + +"To betray her?" + +"Well--to part with her." + +Maisie let the question wait; the concrete image it presented was the +most vivid side of it. "If I part with her where will she go?" + +"Back to London." + +"But I mean what will she do?" + +"Oh as for that I won't pretend I know. I don't. We all have our +difficulties." + +That, to Maisie, was at this moment more striking than it had ever been. +"Then who'll teach me?" + +Sir Claude laughed out. "What Mrs. Wix teaches?" + +She smiled dimly; she saw what he meant. "It isn't so very very much." + +"It's so very very little," he returned, "that that's a thing we've +positively to consider. We probably shouldn't give you another +governess. To begin with we shouldn't be able to get one--not of the +only kind that would do. It wouldn't do--the kind that WOULD do," he +queerly enough explained. "I mean they wouldn't stay--heigh-ho! We'd +do you ourselves. Particularly me. You see I CAN now; I haven't got to +mind--what I used to. I won't fight shy as I did--she can show out WITH +me. Our relation, all round, is more regular." + +It seemed wonderfully regular, the way he put it; yet none the less, +while she looked at it as judiciously as she could, the picture it made +persisted somehow in being a combination quite distinct--an old woman +and a little girl seated in deep silence on a battered old bench by the +rampart of the _haute ville_. It was just at that hour yesterday; they +were hand in hand; they had melted together. "I don't think you yet +understand how she clings to you," Maisie said at last. + +"I do--I do. But for all that--" And he gave, turning in his conscious +exposure, an oppressed impatient sigh; the sigh, even his companion +could recognise, of the man naturally accustomed to that argument, the +man who wanted thoroughly to be reasonable, but who, if really he had to +mind so many things, would be always impossibly hampered. What it came +to indeed was that he understood quite perfectly. If Mrs. Wix clung it +was all the more reason for shaking Mrs. Wix off. + +This vision of what she had brought him to occupied our young lady +while, to ask what he owed, he called the waiter and put down a gold +piece that the man carried off for change. Sir Claude looked after him, +then went on: "How could a woman have less to reproach a fellow with? I +mean as regards herself." + +Maisie entertained the question. "Yes. How COULD she have less? So why +are you so sure she'll go?" + +"Surely you heard why--you heard her come out three nights ago? How can +she do anything but go--after what she then said? I've done what she +warned me of--she was absolutely right. So here we are. Her liking Mrs. +Beale, as you call it now, is a motive sufficient, with other things, +to make her, for your sake, stay on without me; it's not a motive +sufficient to make her, even for yours, stay on WITH me--swallow, don't +you see? what she can't swallow. And when you say she's as fond of me as +you are I think I can, if that's the case, challenge you a little on it. +Would YOU, only with those two, stay on without me?" + +The waiter came back with the change, and that gave her, under this +appeal, a moment's respite. But when he had retreated again with the +"tip" gathered in with graceful thanks on a subtle hint from Sir +Claude's forefinger, the latter, while pocketing the money, followed +the appeal up. "Would you let her make you live with Mrs. Beale?" + +"Without you? Never," Maisie then answered. "Never," she said again. + +It made him quite triumph, and she was indeed herself shaken by the mere +sound of it. "So you see you're not, like her," he exclaimed, "so ready +to give me away!" Then he came back to his original question. "CAN you +choose? I mean can you settle it by a word yourself? Will you stay on +with us without her?" Now in truth she felt the coldness of her terror, +and it seemed to her that suddenly she knew, as she knew it about Sir +Claude, what she was afraid of. She was afraid of herself. She looked at +him in such a way that it brought, she could see, wonder into his face, +a wonder held in check, however, by his frank pretension to play fair +with her, not to use advantages, not to hurry nor hustle her--only to +put her chance clearly and kindly before her. "May I think?" she finally +asked. + +"Certainly, certainly. But how long?" + +"Oh only a little while," she said meekly. + +He had for a moment the air of wishing to look at it as if it were the +most cheerful prospect in the world. "But what shall we do while you're +thinking?" He spoke as if thought were compatible with almost any +distraction. + +There was but one thing Maisie wished to do, and after an instant she +expressed it. "Have we got to go back to the hotel?" + +"Do you want to?" + +"Oh no." + +"There's not the least necessity for it." He bent his eyes on his watch; +his face was now very grave. "We can do anything else in the world." He +looked at her again almost as if he were on the point of saying that +they might for instance start off for Paris. But even while she wondered +if that were not coming he had a sudden drop. "We can take a walk." + +She was all ready, but he sat there as if he had still something more to +say. This too, however, didn't come; so she herself spoke. "I think I +should like to see Mrs. Wix first." + +"Before you decide? All right--all right." He had put on his hat, but +he had still to light a cigarette. He smoked a minute, with his head +thrown back, looking at the ceiling; then he said: "There's one thing +to remember--I've a right to impress it on you: we stand absolutely in +the place of your parents. It's their defection, their extraordinary +baseness, that has made our responsibility. Never was a young person +more directly committed and confided." He appeared to say this over, at +the ceiling, through his smoke, a little for his own illumination. It +carried him after a pause somewhat further. "Though I admit it was to +each of us separately." + +He gave her so at that moment and in that attitude the sense of wanting, +as it were, to be on her side--on the side of what would be in every way +most right and wise and charming for her--that she felt a sudden desire +to prove herself not less delicate and magnanimous, not less solicitous +for his own interests. What were these but that of the "regularity" +he had just before spoken of? "It WAS to each of you separately," she +accordingly with much earnestness remarked. "But don't you remember? I +brought you together." + +He jumped up with a delighted laugh. "Remember? Rather! You brought us +together, you brought us together. Come!" + + + + +XXXI + + +She remained out with him for a time of which she could take no measure +save that it was too short for what she wished to make of it--an +interval, a barrier indefinite, insurmountable. They walked about, they +dawdled, they looked in shop-windows; they did all the old things +exactly as if to try to get back all the old safety, to get something +out of them that they had always got before. This had come before, +whatever it was, without their trying, and nothing came now but the +intenser consciousness of their quest and their subterfuge. The +strangest thing of all was what had really happened to the old safety. +What had really happened was that Sir Claude was "free" and that Mrs. +Beale was "free," and yet that the new medium was somehow still more +oppressive than the old. She could feel that Sir Claude concurred with +her in the sense that the oppression would be worst at the inn, where, +till something should be settled, they would feel the want of +something--of what could they call it but a footing? The question of the +settlement loomed larger to her now: it depended, she had learned, so +completely on herself. Her choice, as her friend had called it, was +there before her like an impossible sum on a slate, a sum that in spite +of her plea for consideration she simply got off from doing while she +walked about with him. She must see Mrs. Wix before she could do her +sum; therefore the longer before she saw her the more distant would be +the ordeal. She met at present no demand whatever of her obligation; she +simply plunged, to avoid it, deeper into the company of Sir Claude. She +saw nothing that she had seen hitherto--no touch in the foreign picture +that had at first been always before her. The only touch was that of Sir +Claude's hand, and to feel her own in it was her mute resistance to +time. She went about as sightlessly as if he had been leading her +blindfold. If they were afraid of themselves it was themselves they +would find at the inn. She was certain now that what awaited them there +would be to lunch with Mrs. Beale. All her instinct was to avoid that, +to draw out their walk, to find pretexts, to take him down upon the +beach, to take him to the end of the pier. He said no other word to her +about what they had talked of at breakfast, and she had a dim vision of +how his way of not letting her see him definitely wait for anything from +her would make any one who should know of it, would make Mrs. Wix for +instance, think him more than ever a gentleman. It was true that once or +twice, on the jetty, on the sands, he looked at her for a minute with +eyes that seemed to propose to her to come straight off with him to +Paris. That, however, was not to give her a nudge about her +responsibility. He evidently wanted to procrastinate quite as much as +she did; he was not a bit more in a hurry to get back to the others. +Maisie herself at this moment could be secretly merciless to Mrs. Wix-- +to the extent at any rate of not caring if her continued disappearance +did make that lady begin to worry about what had become of her, even +begin to wonder perhaps if the truants hadn't found their remedy. Her +want of mercy to Mrs. Beale indeed was at least as great; for Mrs. +Beale's worry and wonder would be as much greater as the object at which +they were directed. When at last Sir Claude, at the far end of the +_plage_, which they had already, in the many-coloured crowd, once +traversed, suddenly, with a look at his watch, remarked that it was +time, not to get back to the _table d'hôte_, but to get over to the +station and meet the Paris papers--when he did this she found herself +thinking quite with intensity what Mrs. Beale and Mrs. Wix WOULD say. On +the way over to the station she had even a mental picture of the +stepfather and the pupil established in a little place in the South +while the governess and the stepmother, in a little place in the North, +remained linked by a community of blankness and by the endless series of +remarks it would give birth to. The Paris papers had come in and her +companion, with a strange extravagance, purchased no fewer than eleven: +it took up time while they hovered at the bookstall on the restless +platform, where the little volumes in a row were all yellow and pink and +one of her favourite old women in one of her favourite old caps +absolutely wheedled him into the purchase of three. They had thus so +much to carry home that it would have seemed simpler, with such a +provision for a nice straight journey through France, just to "nip," as +she phrased it to herself, into the coupé of the train that, a little +further along, stood waiting to start. She asked Sir Claude where it was +going. + +"To Paris. Fancy!" + +She could fancy well enough. They stood there and smiled, he with all +the newspapers under his arm and she with the three books, one yellow +and two pink. He had told her the pink were for herself and the yellow +one for Mrs. Beale, implying in an interesting way that these were the +natural divisions in France of literature for the young and for the old. +She knew how prepared they looked to pass into the train, and she +presently brought out to her companion: "I wish we could go. Won't you +take me?" + +He continued to smile. "Would you really come?" + +"Oh yes, oh yes. Try." + +"Do you want me to take our tickets?" + +"Yes, take them." + +"Without any luggage?" + +She showed their two armfuls, smiling at him as he smiled at her, but so +conscious of being more frightened than she had ever been in her life +that she seemed to see her whiteness as in a glass. Then she knew that +what she saw was Sir Claude's whiteness: he was as frightened as +herself. "Haven't we got plenty of luggage?" she asked. "Take the +tickets--haven't you time? When does the train go?" + +Sir Claude turned to a porter. "When does the train go?" + +The man looked up at the station-clock. "In two minutes. _Monsieur est +placé?_" + +_"Pas encore."_ + +_"Et vos billets?--vous n'avez que le temps."_ Then after a look at +Maisie, _"Monsieur veut-il que je les prenne?"_ the man said. + +Sir Claude turned back to her. _"Veux-tu lieu qu'il en prenne?"_ + +It was the most extraordinary thing in the world: in the intensity of +her excitement she not only by illumination understood all their French, +but fell into it with an active perfection. She addressed herself +straight to the porter. _"Prenny, prenny. Oh prenny!"_ + +_"Ah si mademoiselle le veut--!"_ He waited there for the money. + +But Sir Claude only stared--stared at her with his white face. "You HAVE +chosen then? You'll let her go?" + +Maisie carried her eyes wistfully to the train, where, amid cries of +_"En voiture, en voiture!"_ heads were at windows and doors banging +loud. The porter was pressing. _"Ah vous n'avez plus le temps!"_ + +"It's going--it's going!" cried Maisie. + +They watched it move, they watched it start; then the man went his way +with a shrug. "It's gone!" Sir Claude said. + +Maisie crept some distance up the platform; she stood there with her +back to her companion, following it with her eyes, keeping down tears, +nursing her pink and yellow books. She had had a real fright but had +fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in her fall her fear too +had been dashed down and broken. It was gone. She looked round at last, +from where she had paused, at Sir Claude's, and then saw that his +wasn't. It sat there with him on the bench to which, against the wall of +the station, he had retreated, and where, leaning back and, as she +thought, rather queer, he still waited. She came down to him and he +continued to offer his ineffectual intention of pleasantry. "Yes, I've +chosen," she said to him. "I'll let her go if you--if you--" + +She faltered; he quickly took her up. "If I, if I--" + +"If you'll give up Mrs. Beale." + +"Oh!" he exclaimed; on which she saw how much, how hopelessly he was +afraid. She had supposed at the café that it was of his rebellion, of +his gathering motive; but how could that be when his temptations--that +temptation for example of the train they had just lost--were after all +so slight? Mrs. Wix was right. He was afraid of his weakness--of his +weakness. + +She couldn't have told you afterwards how they got back to the inn: she +could only have told you that even from this point they had not gone +straight, but once more had wandered and loitered and, in the course of +it, had found themselves on the edge of the quay where--still apparently +with half an hour to spare--the boat prepared for Folkestone was drawn +up. Here they hovered as they had done at the station; here they +exchanged silences again, but only exchanged silences. There were +punctual people on the deck, choosing places, taking the best; some of +them already contented, all established and shawled, facing to England +and attended by the steward, who, confined on such a day to the lighter +offices, tucked up the ladies' feet or opened bottles with a pop. They +looked down at these things without a word; they even picked out a good +place for two that was left in the lee of a lifeboat; and if they +lingered rather stupidly, neither deciding to go aboard nor deciding to +come away, it was Sir Claude quite as much as she who wouldn't move. It +was Sir Claude who cultivated the supreme stillness by which she knew +best what he meant. He simply meant that he knew all she herself meant. +But there was no pretence of pleasantry now: their faces were grave and +tired. When at last they lounged off it was as if his fear, his fear of +his weakness, leaned upon her heavily as they followed the harbour. In +the hall of the hotel as they passed in she saw a battered old box that +she recognised, an ancient receptacle with dangling labels that she knew +and a big painted W, lately done over and intensely personal, that +seemed to stare at her with a recognition and even with some suspicion +of its own. Sir Claude caught it too, and there was agitation for both +of them in the sight of this object on the move. Was Mrs. Wix going and +was the responsibility of giving her up lifted, at a touch, from her +pupil? Her pupil and her pupil's companion, transfixed a moment, held, +in the presence of the omen, communication more intense than in the +presence either of the Paris train or of the Channel steamer; then, and +still without a word, they went straight upstairs. There, however, on +the landing, out of sight of the people below, they collapsed so that +they had to sink down together for support: they simply seated +themselves on the uppermost step while Sir Claude grasped the hand of +his stepdaughter with a pressure that at another moment would probably +have made her squeal. Their books and papers were all scattered. "She +thinks you've given her up!" + +"Then I must see her--I must see her," Maisie said. + +"To bid her good-bye?" + +"I must see her--I must see her," the child only repeated. + +They sat a minute longer, Sir Claude, with his tight grip of her hand +and looking away from her, looking straight down the staircase to where, +round the turn, electric bells rattled and the pleasant sea-draught +blew. At last, loosening his grasp, he slowly got up while she did the +same. They went together along the lobby, but before they reached the +salon he stopped again. "If I give up Mrs. Beale--?" + +"I'll go straight out with you again and not come back till she has +gone." + +He seemed to wonder. "Till Mrs. Beale--?" He had made it sound like a +bad joke. + +"I mean till Mrs. Wix leaves--in that boat." + +Sir Claude looked almost foolish. "Is she going in that boat?" + +"I suppose so. I won't even bid her good-bye," Maisie continued. "I'll +stay out till the boat has gone. I'll go up to the old rampart." + +"The old rampart?" + +"I'll sit on that old bench where you see the gold Virgin." + +"The gold Virgin?" he vaguely echoed. But it brought his eyes back to +her as if after an instant he could see the place and the thing she +named--could see her sitting there alone. "While I break with Mrs. +Beale?" + +"While you break with Mrs. Beale." + +He gave a long deep smothered sigh. "I must see her first." + +"You won't do as I do? Go out and wait?" + +"Wait?"--once more he appeared at a loss. + +"Till they both have gone," Maisie said. + +"Giving US up?" + +"Giving US up." + +Oh with what a face for an instant he wondered if that could be! But his +wonder the next moment only made him go to the door and, with his hand +on the knob, stand as if listening for voices. Maisie listened, but she +heard none. All she heard presently was Sir Claude's saying with +speculation quite choked off, but so as not to be heard in the salon: +"Mrs. Beale will never go." On this he pushed open the door and she went +in with him. The salon was empty, but as an effect of their entrance the +lady he had just mentioned appeared at the door of the bedroom. "Is she +going?" he then demanded. + +Mrs. Beale came forward, closing her door behind her. "I've had the most +extraordinary scene with her. She told me yesterday she'd stay." + +"And my arrival has altered it?" + +"Oh we took that into account!" Mrs. Beale was flushed, which was never +quite becoming to her, and her face visibly testified to the encounter +to which she alluded. Evidently, however, she had not been worsted, and +she held up her head and smiled and rubbed her hands as if in sudden +emulation of the _patronne_. "She promised she'd stay even if you should +come." + +"Then why has she changed?" + +"Because she's a hound. The reason she herself gives is that you've been +out too long." + +Sir Claude stared. "What has that to do with it?" + +"You've been out an age," Mrs. Beale continued; "I myself couldn't +imagine what had become of you. The whole morning," she exclaimed, "and +luncheon long since over!" + +Sir Claude appeared indifferent to that. "Did Mrs. Wix go down with +you?" he only asked. + +"Not she; she never budged!"--and Mrs. Beale's flush, to Maisie's +vision, deepened. "She moped there--she didn't so much as come out to +me; and when I sent to invite her she simply declined to appear. She +said she wanted nothing, and I went down alone. But when I came up, +fortunately a little primed"--and Mrs. Beale smiled a fine smile of +battle--"she WAS in the field!" + +"And you had a big row?" + +"We had a big row"--she assented with a frankness as large. "And while +you left me to that sort of thing I should like to know where you were!" +She paused for a reply, but Sir Claude merely looked at Maisie; a +movement that promptly quickened her challenge. "Where the mischief have +you been?" + +"You seem to take it as hard as Mrs. Wix," Sir Claude returned. + +"I take it as I choose to take it, and you don't answer my question." + +He looked again at Maisie--as if for an aid to this effort; whereupon +she smiled at her stepmother and offered: "We've been everywhere." + +Mrs. Beale, however, made her no response, thereby adding to a surprise +of which our young lady had already felt the light brush. She had +received neither a greeting nor a glance, but perhaps this was not more +remarkable than the omission, in respect to Sir Claude, parted with in +London two days before, of any sign of a sense of their reunion. Most +remarkable of all was Mrs. Beale's announcement of the pledge given by +Mrs. Wix and not hitherto revealed to her pupil. Instead of heeding this +witness she went on with acerbity: "It might surely have occurred to you +that something would come up." + +Sir Claude looked at his watch. "I had no idea it was so late, nor that +we had been out so long. We weren't hungry. It passed like a flash. What +HAS come up?" + +"Oh that she's disgusted," said Mrs. Beale. + +"With whom then?" + +"With Maisie." Even now she never looked at the child, who stood there +equally associated and disconnected. "For having no moral sense." + +"How SHOULD she have?" Sir Claude tried again to shine a little at the +companion of his walk. "How at any rate is it proved by her going out +with me?" + +"Don't ask ME; ask that woman. She drivels when she doesn't rage," Mrs. +Beale declared. + +"And she leaves the child?" + +"She leaves the child," said Mrs. Beale with great emphasis and looking +more than ever over Maisie's head. + +In this position suddenly a change came into her face, caused, as the +others could the next thing see, by the reappearance of Mrs. Wix in the +doorway which, on coming in at Sir Claude's heels, Maisie had left +gaping. "I DON'T leave the child--I don't, I don't!" she thundered from +the threshold, advancing upon the opposed three but addressing herself +directly to Maisie. She was girded--positively harnessed--for departure, +arrayed as she had been arrayed on her advent and armed with a small fat +rusty reticule which, almost in the manner of a battle-axe, she +brandished in support of her words. She had clearly come straight from +her room, where Maisie in an instant guessed she had directed the +removal of her minor effects. "I don't leave you till I've given you +another chance. Will you come WITH me?" + +Maisie turned to Sir Claude, who struck her as having been removed to a +distance of about a mile. To Mrs. Beale she turned no more than Mrs. +Beale had turned: she felt as if already their difference had been +disclosed. What had come out about that in the scene between the two +women? Enough came out now, at all events, as she put it practically to +her stepfather. "Will YOU come? Won't you?" she enquired as if she had +not already seen that she should have to give him up. It was the last +flare of her dream. By this time she was afraid of nothing. + +"I should think you'd be too proud to ask!" Mrs. Wix interposed. Mrs. +Wix was herself conspicuously too proud. + +But at the child's words Mrs. Beale had fairly bounded. "Come away from +ME, Maisie?" It was a wail of dismay and reproach, in which her +stepdaughter was astonished to read that she had had no hostile +consciousness and that if she had been so actively grand it was not from +suspicion, but from strange entanglements of modesty. + +Sir Claude presented to Mrs. Beale an expression positively sick. "Don't +put it to her THAT way!" There had indeed been something in Mrs. Beale's +tone, and for a moment our young lady was reminded of the old days in +which so many of her friends had been "compromised." + +This friend blushed; she was before Mrs. Wix, and though she bridled she +took the hint. "No--it isn't the way." Then she showed she knew the way. +"Don't be a still bigger fool, dear, but go straight to your room and +wait there till I can come to you." + +Maisie made no motion to obey, but Mrs. Wix raised a hand that +forestalled every evasion. "Don't move till you've heard me. I'M going, +but I must first understand. Have you lost it again?" + +Maisie surveyed--for the idea of a describable loss--the immensity of +space. Then she replied lamely enough: "I feel as if I had lost +everything." + +Mrs. Wix looked dark. "Do you mean to say you HAVE lost what we found +together with so much difficulty two days ago?" As her pupil failed of +response she continued: "Do you mean to say you've already forgotten +what we found together?" + +Maisie dimly remembered. "My moral sense?" + +"Your moral sense. HAVEN'T I, after all, brought it out?" She spoke as +she had never spoken even in the schoolroom and with the book in her +hand. + +It brought back to the child's recollection how she sometimes couldn't +repeat on Friday the sentence that had been glib on Wednesday, and she +dealt all feebly and ruefully with the present tough passage. Sir Claude +and Mrs. Beale stood there like visitors at an "exam." She had indeed an +instant a whiff of the faint flower that Mrs. Wix pretended to have +plucked and now with such a peremptory hand thrust at her nose. Then it +left her, and, as if she were sinking with a slip from a foothold, her +arms made a short jerk. What this jerk represented was the spasm within +her of something still deeper than a moral sense. She looked at her +examiner; she looked at the visitors; she felt the rising of the tears +she had kept down at the station. They had nothing--no, distinctly +nothing--to do with her moral sense. The only thing was the old flat +shameful schoolroom plea. "I don't know--I don't know." + +"Then you've lost it." Mrs. Wix seemed to close the book as she fixed +the straighteners on Sir Claude. "You've nipped it in the bud. You've +killed it when it had begun to live." + +She was a newer Mrs. Wix than ever, a Mrs. Wix high and great; but Sir +Claude was not after all to be treated as a little boy with a missed +lesson. "I've not killed anything," he said; "on the contrary I think +I've produced life. I don't know what to call it--I haven't even known +how decently to deal with it, to approach it; but, whatever it is, it's +the most beautiful thing I've ever met--it's exquisite, it's sacred." He +had his hands in his pockets and, though a trace of the sickness he had +just shown perhaps lingered there, his face bent itself with +extraordinary gentleness on both the friends he was about to lose. "Do +you know what I came back for?" he asked of the elder. + +"I think I do!" cried Mrs. Wix, surprisingly un-mollified and with the +heat of her late engagement with Mrs. Beale still on her brow. That +lady, as if a little besprinkled by such turns of the tide, uttered a +loud inarticulate protest and, averting herself, stood a moment at the +window. + +"I came back with a proposal," said Sir Claude. + +"To me?" Mrs. Wix asked. + +"To Maisie. That she should give you up." + +"And does she?" + +Sir Claude wavered. "Tell her!" he then exclaimed to the child, also +turning away as if to give her the chance. But Mrs. Wix and her pupil +stood confronted in silence, Maisie whiter than ever--more awkward, +more rigid and yet more dumb. They looked at each other hard, and as +nothing came from them Sir Claude faced about again. "You won't tell +her?--you can't?" Still she said nothing; whereupon, addressing Mrs. +Wix, he broke into a kind of ecstasy. "She refused--she refused!" + +Maisie, at this, found her voice. "I didn't refuse. I didn't," she +repeated. + +It brought Mrs. Beale straight back to her. "You accepted, angel--you +accepted!" She threw herself upon the child and, before Maisie could +resist, had sunk with her upon the sofa, possessed of her, encircling +her. "You've given her up already, you've given her up for ever, and +you're ours and ours only now, and the sooner she's off the better!" + +Maisie had shut her eyes, but at a word of Sir Claude's they opened. +"Let her go!" he said to Mrs. Beale. + +"Never, never, never!" cried Mrs. Beale. Maisie felt herself more +compressed. + +"Let her go!" Sir Claude more intensely repeated. He was looking at Mrs. +Beale and there was something in his voice. Maisie knew from a loosening +of arms that she had become conscious of what it was; she slowly rose +from the sofa, and the child stood there again dropped and divided. +"You're free--you're free," Sir Claude went on; at which Maisie's back +became aware of a push that vented resentment and that placed her again +in the centre of the room, the cynosure of every eye and not knowing +which way to turn. + +She turned with an effort to Mrs. Wix. "I didn't refuse to give you up. +I said I would if HE'D give up--" + +"Give up Mrs. Beale?" burst from Mrs. Wix. + +"Give up Mrs. Beale. What do you call that but exquisite?" Sir Claude +demanded of all of them, the lady mentioned included; speaking with a +relish as intense now as if some lovely work of art or of nature had +suddenly been set down among them. He was rapidly recovering himself on +this basis of fine appreciation. "She made her condition--with such a +sense of what it should be! She made the only right one." + +"The only right one?"--Mrs. Beale returned to the charge. She had taken +a moment before a snub from him, but she was not to be snubbed on this. +"How can you talk such rubbish and how can you back her up in such +impertinence? What in the world have you done to her to make her think +of such stuff?" She stood there in righteous wrath; she flashed her eyes +round the circle. Maisie took them full in her own, knowing that here at +last was the moment she had had most to reckon with. But as regards her +stepdaughter Mrs. Beale subdued herself to a question deeply mild. "HAVE +you made, my own love, any such condition as that?" + +Somehow, now that it was there, the great moment was not so bad. What +helped the child was that she knew what she wanted. All her learning and +learning had made her at last learn that; so that if she waited an +instant to reply it was only from the desire to be nice. Bewilderment +had simply gone or at any rate was going fast. Finally she answered. +"Will you give HIM up? Will you?" + +"Ah leave her alone--leave her, leave her!" Sir Claude in sudden +supplication murmured to Mrs. Beale. + +Mrs. Wix at the same instant found another apostrophe. "Isn't it enough +for you, madam, to have brought her to discussing your relations?" + +Mrs. Beale left Sir Claude unheeded, but Mrs. Wix could make her flame. +"My relations? What do you know, you hideous creature, about my +relations, and what business on earth have you to speak of them? Leave +the room this instant, you horrible old woman!" + +"I think you had better go--you must really catch your boat," Sir Claude +said distressfully to Mrs. Wix. He was out of it now, or wanted to be; +he knew the worst and had accepted it: what now concerned him was to +prevent, to dissipate vulgarities. "Won't you go--won't you just get off +quickly?" + +"With the child as quickly as you like. Not without her." Mrs. Wix was +adamant. + +"Then why did you lie to me, you fiend?" Mrs. Beale almost yelled. "Why +did you tell me an hour ago that you had given her up?" + +"Because I despaired of her--because I thought she had left me." Mrs. +Wix turned to Maisie. "You were WITH them--in their connexion. But now +your eyes are open, and I take you!" + +"No you don't!" and Mrs. Beale made, with a great fierce jump, a wild +snatch at her stepdaughter. She caught her by the arm and, completing an +instinctive movement, whirled her round in a further leap to the door, +which had been closed by Sir Claude the instant their voices had risen. +She fell back against it and, even while denouncing and waving off Mrs. +Wix, kept it closed in an incoherence of passion. "You don't take her, +but you bundle yourself: she stays with her own people and she's rid of +you! I never heard anything so monstrous!" Sir Claude had rescued Maisie +and kept hold of her; he held her in front of him, resting his hands +very lightly on her shoulders and facing the loud adversaries. Mrs. +Beale's flush had dropped; she had turned pale with a splendid wrath. +She kept protesting and dismissing Mrs. Wix; she glued her back to the +door to prevent Maisie's flight; she drove out Mrs. Wix by the window or +the chimney. "You're a nice one--'discussing relations'--with your talk +of our 'connexion' and your insults! What in the world's our connexion +but the love of the child who's our duty and our life and who holds us +together as closely as she originally brought us?" + +"I know, I know!" Maisie said with a burst of eagerness. "I did bring +you." + +The strangest of laughs escaped from Sir Claude. "You did bring us--you +did!" His hands went up and down gently on her shoulders. + +Mrs. Wix so dominated the situation that she had something sharp for +every one. "There you have it, you see!" she pregnantly remarked to her +pupil. + +"WILL you give him up?" Maisie persisted to Mrs. Beale. + +"To YOU, you abominable little horror?" that lady indignantly enquired, +"and to this raving old demon who has filled your dreadful little mind +with her wickedness? Have you been a hideous little hypocrite all these +years that I've slaved to make you love me and deludedly believed you +did?" + +"I love Sir Claude--I love HIM," Maisie replied with an awkward sense +that she appeared to offer it as something that would do as well. Sir +Claude had continued to pat her, and it was really an answer to his +pats. + +"She hates you--she hates you," he observed with the oddest quietness to +Mrs. Beale. + +His quietness made her blaze. "And you back her up in it and give me up +to outrage?" + +"No; I only insist that she's free--she's free." + +Mrs. Beale stared--Mrs. Beale glared. "Free to starve with this pauper +lunatic?" + +"I'll do more for her than YOU ever did!" Mrs. Wix retorted. "I'll work +my fingers to the bone." + +Maisie, with Sir Claude's hands still on her shoulders, felt, just as +she felt the fine surrender in them, that over her head he looked in a +certain way at Mrs. Wix. "You needn't do that," she heard him say. "She +has means." + +"Means?--Maisie?" Mrs. Beale shrieked. "Means that her vile father has +stolen!" + +"I'll get them back--I'll get them back. I'll look into it." He smiled +and nodded at Mrs. Wix. + +This had a fearful effect on his other friend. "Haven't I looked into +it, I should like to know, and haven't I found an abyss? It's too +inconceivable--your cruelty to me!" she wildly broke out. She had hot +tears in her eyes. + +He spoke to her very kindly, almost coaxingly. "We'll look into it +again; we'll look into it together. It IS an abyss, but he CAN be +made--or Ida can. Think of the money they're getting now!" he laughed. +"It's all right, it's all right," he continued. "It wouldn't do--it +wouldn't do. We CAN'T work her in. It's perfectly true--she's unique. +We're not good enough--oh no!" and, quite exuberantly, he laughed again. + +"Not good enough, and that beast IS?" Mrs. Beale shouted. + +At this for a moment there was a hush in the room, and in the midst of +it Sir Claude replied to the question by moving with Maisie to Mrs. Wix. +The next thing the child knew she was at that lady's side with an arm +firmly grasped. Mrs. Beale still guarded the door. "Let them pass," said +Sir Claude at last. + +She remained there, however; Maisie saw the pair look at each other. +Then she saw Mrs. Beale turn to her. "I'm your mother now, Maisie. And +he's your father." + +"That's just where it is!" sighed Mrs. Wix with an effect of irony +positively detached and philosophic. + +Mrs. Beale continued to address her young friend, and her effort to be +reasonable and tender was in its way remarkable. "We're representative, +you know, of Mr. Farange and his former wife. This person represents +mere illiterate presumption. We take our stand on the law." + +"Oh the law, the law!" Mrs. Wix superbly jeered. "You had better indeed +let the law have a look at you!" + +"Let them pass--let them pass!" Sir Claude pressed his friend hard--he +pleaded. + +But she fastened herself still to Maisie. "DO you hate me, dearest?" + +Maisie looked at her with new eyes, but answered as she had answered +before. "Will you give him up?" + +Mrs. Beale's rejoinder hung fire, but when it came it was noble. "You +shouldn't talk to me of such things!" She was shocked, she was +scandalised to tears. + +For Mrs. Wix, however, it was her discrimination that was indelicate. +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she roundly cried. + +Sir Claude made a supreme appeal. "Will you be so good as to allow these +horrors to terminate?" + +Mrs. Beale fixed her eyes on him, and again Maisie watched them. "You +should do him justice," Mrs. Wix went on to Mrs. Beale. "We've always +been devoted to him, Maisie and I--and he has shown how much he likes +us. He would like to please her; he would like even, I think, to please +me. But he hasn't given you up." + +They stood confronted, the step-parents, still under Maisie's +observation. That observation had never sunk so deep as at this +particular moment. "Yes, my dear, I haven't given you up," Sir Claude +said to Mrs. Beale at last, "and if you'd like me to treat our friends +here as solemn witnesses I don't mind giving you my word for it that I +never never will. There!" he dauntlessly exclaimed. + +"He can't!" Mrs. Wix tragically commented. + +Mrs. Beale, erect and alive in her defeat, jerked her handsome face +about. "He can't!" she literally mocked. + +"He can't, he can't, he can't!"--Sir Claude's gay emphasis wonderfully +carried it off. + +Mrs. Beale took it all in, yet she held her ground; on which Maisie +addressed Mrs. Wix. "Shan't we lose the boat?" + +"Yes, we shall lose the boat," Mrs. Wix remarked to Sir Claude. + +Mrs. Beale meanwhile faced full at Maisie. "I don't know what to make of +you!" she launched. + +"Good-bye," said Maisie to Sir Claude. + +"Good-bye, Maisie," Sir Claude answered. + +Mrs. Beale came away from the door. "Goodbye!" she hurled at Maisie; +then passed straight across the room and disappeared in the adjoining +one. + +Sir Claude had reached the other door and opened it. Mrs. Wix was +already out. On the threshold Maisie paused; she put out her hand to her +stepfather. He took it and held it a moment, and their eyes met as the +eyes of those who have done for each other what they can. "Good-bye," he +repeated. + +"Good-bye." And Maisie followed Mrs. Wix. + +They caught the steamer, which was just putting off, and, hustled across +the gulf, found themselves on the deck so breathless and so scared that +they gave up half the voyage to letting their emotion sink. It sank +slowly and imperfectly; but at last, in mid-channel, surrounded by the +quiet sea, Mrs. Wix had courage to revert. "I didn't look back, did +you?" + +"Yes. He wasn't there," said Maisie. + +"Not on the balcony?" + +Maisie waited a moment; then "He wasn't there" she simply said again. + +Mrs. Wix also was silent a while. "He went to HER," she finally +observed. + +"Oh I know!" the child replied. + +Mrs. Wix gave a sidelong look. She still had room for wonder at what +Maisie knew. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT MAISIE KNEW*** + + +******* This file should be named 7118-8.txt or 7118-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/7/1/1/7118 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p class="noindent">Title: What Maisie Knew</p> +<p class="noindent">Author: Henry James</p> +<p class="noindent">Release Date: March 12, 2003 [eBook #7118]<br /> +[Most recently updated and HTML version added: November 9, 2005]</p> +<p class="noindent">Language: English</p> +<p class="noindent">Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p class="noindent">***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT MAISIE KNEW***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA<br /> + and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.<br /> + <br /> + HTML version prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h1>WHAT MAISIE KNEW</h1> + +<h4>by</h4> + +<h2>Henry James</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="narrow" /> +<p> </p> +<h3>CONTENTS</h3> +<p> </p> +<div class="center"> +<table cellpadding="2"> +<tr><td><a href="#0" >Introduction</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#1" >Chapter I</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#2" >Chapter II</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#3" >Chapter III</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#4" >Chapter IV</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#5" >Chapter V</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#6" >Chapter VI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#7" >Chapter VII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#8" >Chapter VIII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#9" >Chapter IX</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#10" >Chapter X</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#11" >Chapter XI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#12" >Chapter XII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#13" >Chapter XIII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#14" >Chapter XIV</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#15" >Chapter XV</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#16" >Chapter XVI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#17" >Chapter XVII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#18" >Chapter XVIII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#19" >Chapter XIX</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#20" >Chapter XX</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#21" >Chapter XXI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#22" >Chapter XXII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#23" >Chapter XXIII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#24" >Chapter XXIV</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#25" >Chapter XXV</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#26" >Chapter XXVI</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#27" >Chapter XXVII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#28" >Chapter XXVIII</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#29" >Chapter XXIX</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#30" >Chapter XXX</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#31" >Chapter XXXI</a></td></tr> +</table> +</div> +<p> </p> +<hr class="narrow" /> + +<p> <a name="0"></a></p> +<p> </p> + + +<p>The litigation seemed interminable and had in fact been +complicated; but by the decision on the appeal the judgement of +the divorce-court was confirmed as to the assignment of the child. +The father, who, though bespattered from head to foot, had made +good his case, was, in pursuance of this triumph, appointed to +keep her: it was not so much that the mother's character had been +more absolutely damaged as that the brilliancy of a lady's +complexion (and this lady's, in court, was immensely remarked) +might be more regarded as showing the spots. Attached, however, to +the second pronouncement was a condition that detracted, for Beale +Farange, from its sweetness—an order that he should refund to his +late wife the twenty-six hundred pounds put down by her, as it was +called, some three years before, in the interest of the child's +maintenance and precisely on a proved understanding that he would +take no proceedings: a sum of which he had had the administration +and of which he could render not the least account. The obligation +thus attributed to her adversary was no small balm to Ida's +resentment; it drew a part of the sting from her defeat and +compelled Mr. Farange perceptibly to lower his crest. He was +unable to produce the money or to raise it in any way; so that +after a squabble scarcely less public and scarcely more decent +than the original shock of battle his only issue from his +predicament was a compromise proposed by his legal advisers and +finally accepted by hers.</p> + +<p>His debt was by this arrangement remitted to him and the little +girl disposed of in a manner worthy of the judgement-seat of +Solomon. She was divided in two and the portions tossed +impartially to the disputants. They would take her, in rotation, +for six months at a time; she would spend half the year with each. +This was odd justice in the eyes of those who still blinked in the +fierce light projected from the tribunal—a light in which neither +parent figured in the least as a happy example to youth and +innocence. What was to have been expected on the evidence was the +nomination, <i>in loco parentis</i>, of some proper third person, +some respectable or at least some presentable friend. Apparently, +however, the circle of the Faranges had been scanned in vain for +any such ornament; so that the only solution finally meeting all +the difficulties was, save that of sending Maisie to a Home, the +partition of the tutelary office in the manner I have mentioned. +There were more reasons for her parents to agree to it than there +had ever been for them to agree to anything; and they now prepared +with her help to enjoy the distinction that waits upon vulgarity +sufficiently attested. Their rupture had resounded, and after +being perfectly insignificant together they would be decidedly +striking apart. Had they not produced an impression that warranted +people in looking for appeals in the newspapers for the rescue of +the little one—reverberation, amid a vociferous public, of the +idea that some movement should be started or some benevolent +person should come forward? A good lady came indeed a step or two: +she was distantly related to Mrs. Farange, to whom she proposed +that, having children and nurseries wound up and going, she should +be allowed to take home the bone of contention and, by working it +into her system, relieve at least one of the parents. This would +make every time, for Maisie, after her inevitable six months with +Beale, much more of a change.</p> + +<p>"More of a change?" Ida cried. "Won't it be enough of a change for +her to come from that low brute to the person in the world who +detests him most?"</p> + +<p>"No, because you detest him so much that you'll always talk to her +about him. You'll keep him before her by perpetually abusing him."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Farange stared. "Pray, then, am I to do nothing to counteract +his villainous abuse of <i>me</i>?"</p> + +<p>The good lady, for a moment, made no reply: her silence was a grim +judgement of the whole point of view. "Poor little monkey!" she at +last exclaimed; and the words were an epitaph for the tomb of +Maisie's childhood. She was abandoned to her fate. What was clear +to any spectator was that the only link binding her to either +parent was this lamentable fact of her being a ready vessel for +bitterness, a deep little porcelain cup in which biting acids +could be mixed. They had wanted her not for any good they could do +her, but for the harm they could, with her unconscious aid, do +each other. She should serve their anger and seal their revenge, +for husband and wife had been alike crippled by the heavy hand of +justice, which in the last resort met on neither side their +indignant claim to get, as they called it, everything. If each was +only to get half this seemed to concede that neither was so base +as the other pretended, or, to put it differently, offered them +both as bad indeed, since they were only as good as each other. +The mother had wished to prevent the father from, as she said, "so +much as looking" at the child; the father's plea was that the +mother's lightest touch was "simply contamination." These were the +opposed principles in which Maisie was to be educated—she was to +fit them together as she might. Nothing could have been more +touching at first than her failure to suspect the ordeal that +awaited her little unspotted soul. There were persons horrified to +think what those in charge of it would combine to try to make of +it: no one could conceive in advance that they would be able to +make nothing ill.</p> + +<p>This was a society in which for the most part people were +occupied only with chatter, but the disunited couple had +at last grounds for expecting a time of high activity. They +girded their loins, they felt as if the quarrel had only begun. +They felt indeed more married than ever, inasmuch as what marriage +had mainly suggested to them was the unbroken opportunity to +quarrel. There had been "sides" before, and there were sides as +much as ever; for the sider too the prospect opened out, taking +the pleasant form of a superabundance of matter for desultory +conversation. The many friends of the Faranges drew together to +differ about them; contradiction grew young again over teacups and +cigars. Everybody was always assuring everybody of something very +shocking, and nobody would have been jolly if nobody had been +outrageous. The pair appeared to have a social attraction which +failed merely as regards each other: it was indeed a great deal to +be able to say for Ida that no one but Beale desired her blood, +and for Beale that if he should ever have his eyes scratched out +it would be only by his wife. It was generally felt, to begin +with, that they were awfully good-looking—they had really not +been analysed to a deeper residuum. They made up together for +instance some twelve feet three of stature, and nothing was more +discussed than the apportionment of this quantity. The sole flaw +in Ida's beauty was a length and reach of arm conducive perhaps to +her having so often beaten her ex-husband at billiards, a game in +which she showed a superiority largely accountable, as she +maintained, for the resentment finding expression in his physical +violence. Billiards was her great accomplishment and the +distinction her name always first produced the mention of. +Notwithstanding some very long lines everything about her that +might have been large and that in many women profited by the +licence was, with a single exception, admired and cited for its +smallness. The exception was her eyes, which might have been of +mere regulation size, but which overstepped the modesty of nature; +her mouth, on the other hand, was barely perceptible, and odds +were freely taken as to the measurement of her waist. She was a +person who, when she was out—and she was always out—produced +everywhere a sense of having been seen often, the sense indeed of +a kind of abuse of visibility, so that it would have been, in the +usual places rather vulgar to wonder at her. Strangers only did +that; but they, to the amusement of the familiar, did it very +much: it was an inevitable way of betraying an alien habit. Like +her husband she carried clothes, carried them as a train carries +passengers: people had been known to compare their taste and +dispute about the accommodation they gave these articles, though +inclining on the whole to the commendation of Ida as less +overcrowded, especially with jewellery and flowers. Beale Farange +had natural decorations, a kind of costume in his vast fair beard, +burnished like a gold breastplate, and in the eternal glitter of +the teeth that his long moustache had been trained not to hide and +that gave him, in every possible situation, the look of the joy of +life. He had been destined in his youth for diplomacy and +momentarily attached, without a salary, to a legation which +enabled him often to say "In <i>my</i> time in the East": but +contemporary history had somehow had no use for him, had hurried +past him and left him in perpetual Piccadilly. Every one knew what +he had—only twenty-five hundred. Poor Ida, who had run through +everything, had now nothing but her carriage and her paralysed +uncle. This old brute, as he was called, was supposed to have a lot +put away. The child was provided for, thanks to a crafty +godmother, a defunct aunt of Beale's, who had left her something +in such a manner that the parents could appropriate only the +income.</p> + + +<p> <a name="1"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>I<br /> </h3> + + +<p>The child was provided for, but the new arrangement was inevitably +confounding to a young intelligence intensely aware that something +had happened which must matter a good deal and looking anxiously +out for the effects of so great a cause. It was to be the fate of +this patient little girl to see much more than she at first +understood, but also even at first to understand much more than +any little girl, however patient, had perhaps ever understood +before. Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or a story could have been +so in the thick of the fight. She was taken into the confidence of +passions on which she fixed just the stare she might have had for +images bounding across the wall in the slide of a magic-lantern. +Her little world was phantasmagoric—strange shadows dancing on a +sheet. It was as if the whole performance had been given for +her—a mite of a half-scared infant in a great dim theatre. She +was in short introduced to life with a liberality in which the +selfishness of others found its account, and there was nothing to +avert the sacrifice but the modesty of her youth.</p> + +<p>Her first term was with her father, who spared her only in not +letting her have the wild letters addressed to her by her mother: +he confined himself to holding them up at her and shaking them, +while he showed his teeth, and then amusing her by the way he +chucked them, across the room, bang into the fire. Even at that +moment, however, she had a scared anticipation of fatigue, a +guilty sense of not rising to the occasion, feeling the charm of +the violence with which the stiff unopened envelopes, whose big +monograms—Ida bristled with monograms—she would have liked to +see, were made to whizz, like dangerous missiles, through the air. +The greatest effect of the great cause was her own greater +importance, chiefly revealed to her in the larger freedom with +which she was handled, pulled hither and thither and kissed, and +the proportionately greater niceness she was obliged to show. Her +features had somehow become prominent; they were so perpetually +nipped by the gentlemen who came to see her father and the smoke +of whose cigarettes went into her face. Some of these gentlemen +made her strike matches and light their cigarettes; others, +holding her on knees violently jolted, pinched the calves of her +legs till she shrieked—her shriek was much admired—and +reproached them with being toothpicks. The word stuck in her mind +and contributed to her feeling from this time that she was +deficient in something that would meet the general desire. She +found out what it was: it was a congenital tendency to the +production of a substance to which Moddle, her nurse, gave a short +ugly name, a name painfully associated at dinner with the part of +the joint that she didn't like. She had left behind her the time +when she had no desires to meet, none at least save Moddle's, who, +in Kensington Gardens, was always on the bench when she came back +to see if she had been playing too far. Moddle's desire was merely +that she shouldn't do that, and she met it so easily that the only +spots in that long brightness were the moments of her wondering +what would become of her if, on her rushing back, there should be +no Moddle on the bench. They still went to the Gardens, but there +was a difference even there; she was impelled perpetually to look +at the legs of other children and ask her nurse if <i>they</i> were +toothpicks. Moddle was terribly truthful; she always said: "Oh my +dear, you'll not find such another pair as your own." It seemed to +have to do with something else that Moddle often said: "You feel +the strain—that's where it is; and you'll feel it still worse, +you know."</p> + +<p>Thus from the first Maisie not only felt it, but knew she felt it. +A part of it was the consequence of her father's telling her he +felt it too, and telling Moddle, in her presence, that she must +make a point of driving that home. She was familiar, at the age of +six, with the fact that everything had been changed on her +account, everything ordered to enable him to give himself up to +her. She was to remember always the words in which Moddle +impressed upon her that he did so give himself: "Your papa wishes +you never to forget, you know, that he has been dreadfully put +about." If the skin on Moddle's face had to Maisie the air of +being unduly, almost painfully, stretched, it never presented that +appearance so much as when she uttered, as she often had occasion +to utter, such words. The child wondered if they didn't make it +hurt more than usual; but it was only after some time that she was +able to attach to the picture of her father's sufferings, and more +particularly to her nurse's manner about them, the meaning for +which these things had waited. By the time she had grown sharper, +as the gentlemen who had criticised her calves used to say, she +found in her mind a collection of images and echoes to which +meanings were attachable—images and echoes kept for her in the +childish dusk, the dim closet, the high drawers, like games she +wasn't yet big enough to play. The great strain meanwhile was that +of carrying by the right end the things her father said about her +mother—things mostly indeed that Moddle, on a glimpse of them, as +if they had been complicated toys or difficult books, took out of +her hands and put away in the closet. A wonderful assortment of +objects of this kind she was to discover there later, all tumbled +up too with the things, shuffled into the same receptacle, that +her mother had said about her father.</p> + +<p>She had the knowledge that on a certain occasion which every day +brought nearer her mother would be at the door to take her away, +and this would have darkened all the days if the ingenious Moddle +hadn't written on a paper in very big easy words ever so many +pleasures that she would enjoy at the other house. These promises +ranged from "a mother's fond love" to "a nice poached egg to your +tea," and took by the way the prospect of sitting up ever so late +to see the lady in question dressed, in silks and velvets and +diamonds and pearls, to go out: so that it was a real support to +Maisie, at the supreme hour, to feel how, by Moddle's direction, +the paper was thrust away in her pocket and there clenched in her +fist. The supreme hour was to furnish her with a vivid +reminiscence, that of a strange outbreak in the drawing-room on +the part of Moddle, who, in reply to something her father had just +said, cried aloud: "You ought to be perfectly ashamed of +yourself—you ought to blush, sir, for the way you go on!" The +carriage, with her mother in it, was at the door; a gentleman who +was there, who was always there, laughed out very loud; her +father, who had her in his arms, said to Moddle: "My dear woman, +I'll settle you presently!"—after which he repeated, showing his +teeth more than ever at Maisie while he hugged her, the words for +which her nurse had taken him up. Maisie was not at the moment so +fully conscious of them as of the wonder of Moddle's sudden +disrespect and crimson face; but she was able to produce them in +the course of five minutes when, in the carriage, her mother, all +kisses, ribbons, eyes, arms, strange sounds and sweet smells, said +to her: "And did your beastly papa, my precious angel, send any +message to your own loving mamma?" Then it was that she found the +words spoken by her beastly papa to be, after all, in her little +bewildered ears, from which, at her mother's appeal, they passed, +in her clear shrill voice, straight to her little innocent lips. +"He said I was to tell you, from him," she faithfully reported, +"that you're a nasty horrid pig!"</p> + + +<p> <a name="2"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>II<br /> </h3> + + +<p>In that lively sense of the immediate which is the very air of a +child's mind the past, on each occasion, became for her as +indistinct as the future: she surrendered herself to the actual +with a good faith that might have been touching to either parent. +Crudely as they had calculated they were at first justified by the +event: she was the little feathered shuttlecock they could +fiercely keep flying between them. The evil they had the gift of +thinking or pretending to think of each other they poured into her +little gravely-gazing soul as into a boundless receptacle, and +each of them had doubtless the best conscience in the world as to +the duty of teaching her the stern truth that should be her +safeguard against the other. She was at the age for which all +stories are true and all conceptions are stories. The actual was +the absolute, the present alone was vivid. The objurgation for +instance launched in the carriage by her mother after she had at +her father's bidding punctually performed was a missive that +dropped into her memory with the dry rattle of a letter falling +into a pillar-box. Like the letter it was, as part of the contents +of a well-stuffed post-bag, delivered in due course at the right +address. In the presence of these overflowings, after they had +continued for a couple of years, the associates of either party +sometimes felt that something should be done for what they called +"the real good, don't you know?" of the child. The only thing +done, however, in general, took place when it was sighingly +remarked that she fortunately wasn't all the year round where she +happened to be at the awkward moment, and that, furthermore, +either from extreme cunning or from extreme stupidity, she +appeared not to take things in.</p> + +<p>The theory of her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents, +corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the +complete vision, private but final, of the strange office she +filled. It was literally a moral revolution and accomplished in +the depths of her nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves +began to move their arms and legs; old forms and phrases began to +have a sense that frightened her. She had a new feeling, the +feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea +of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment. She puzzled +out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she +had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that +everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. +Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be +employed no longer. She would forget everything, she would repeat +nothing, and when, as a tribute to the successful application of +her system, she began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a +pleasure new and keen. When therefore, as she grew older, her +parents in turn announced before her that she had grown shockingly +dull, it was not from any real contraction of her little stream of +life. She spoiled their fun, but she practically added to her own. +She saw more and more; she saw too much. It was Miss Overmore, her +first governess, who on a momentous occasion had sown the seeds of +secrecy; sown them not by anything she said, but by a mere roll of +those fine eyes which Maisie already admired. Moddle had become at +this time, after alternations of residence of which the child had +no clear record, an image faintly embalmed in the remembrance of +hungry disappearances from the nursery and distressful lapses in +the alphabet, sad embarrassments, in particular, when invited to +recognise something her nurse described as "the important letter +haitch." Miss Overmore, however hungry, never disappeared: this +marked her somehow as of higher rank, and the character was +confirmed by a prettiness that Maisie supposed to be +extraordinary. Mrs. Farange had described her as almost too +pretty, and some one had asked what that mattered so long as Beale +wasn't there. "Beale or no Beale," Maisie had heard her mother +reply, "I take her because she's a lady and yet awfully poor. +Rather nice people, but there are seven sisters at home. What do +people mean?"</p> + +<p>Maisie didn't know what people meant, but she knew very soon all +the names of all the sisters; she could say them off better than +she could say the multiplication-table. She privately wondered +moreover, though she never asked, about the awful poverty, of +which her companion also never spoke. Food at any rate came up by +mysterious laws; Miss Overmore never, like Moddle, had on an +apron, and when she ate she held her fork with her little finger +curled out. The child, who watched her at many moments, watched +her particularly at that one. "I think you're lovely," she often +said to her; even mamma, who was lovely too, had not such a pretty +way with the fork. Maisie associated this showier presence with +her now being "big," knowing of course that nursery-governesses +were only for little girls who were not, as she said, "really" +little. She vaguely knew, further, somehow, that the future was +still bigger than she, and that a part of what made it so was the +number of governesses lurking in it and ready to dart out. +Everything that had happened when she was really little was +dormant, everything but the positive certitude, bequeathed from +afar by Moddle, that the natural way for a child to have her +parents was separate and successive, like her mutton and her +pudding or her bath and her nap.</p> + +<p>"<i>Does</i> he know he lies?"—that was what she had vivaciously +asked Miss Overmore on the occasion which was so suddenly to lead +to a change in her life.</p> + +<p>"Does he know—" Miss Overmore stared; she had a stocking pulled +over her hand and was pricking at it with a needle which she +poised in the act. Her task was homely, but her movement, like all +her movements, graceful.</p> + +<p>"Why papa."</p> + +<p>"That he 'lies'?"</p> + +<p>"That's what mamma says I'm to tell him—'that he lies and he +knows he lies.'" Miss Overmore turned very red, though she laughed +out till her head fell back; then she pricked again at her muffled +hand so hard that Maisie wondered how she could bear it. "<i>Am</i> +I to tell him?" the child went on. It was then that her companion +addressed her in the unmistakeable language of a pair of eyes of +deep dark grey. "I can't say No," they replied as distinctly as +possible; "I can't say No, because I'm afraid of your mamma, don't +you see? Yet how can I say Yes after your papa has been so kind to +me, talking to me so long the other day, smiling and flashing his +beautiful teeth at me the time we met him in the Park, the time +when, rejoicing at the sight of us, he left the gentlemen he was +with and turned and walked with us, stayed with us for half an +hour?" Somehow in the light of Miss Overmore's lovely eyes that +incident came back to Maisie with a charm it hadn't had at the +time, and this in spite of the fact that after it was over her +governess had never but once alluded to it. On their way home, +when papa had quitted them, she had expressed the hope that the +child wouldn't mention it to mamma. Maisie liked her so, and had +so the charmed sense of being liked by her, that she accepted this +remark as settling the matter and wonderingly conformed to it. The +wonder now lived again, lived in the recollection of what papa had +said to Miss Overmore: "I've only to look at you to see you're a +person I can appeal to for help to save my daughter." Maisie's +ignorance of what she was to be saved from didn't diminish the +pleasure of the thought that Miss Overmore was saving her. It +seemed to make them cling together as in some wild game of "going +round."</p> + + +<p> <a name="3"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>III<br /> </h3> + + +<p>She was therefore all the more startled when her mother said to +her in connexion with something to be done before her next +migration: "You understand of course that she's not going with +you."</p> + +<p>Maisie turned quite faint. "Oh I thought she was."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't in the least matter, you know, what you think," Mrs. +Farange loudly replied; "and you had better indeed for the future, +miss, learn to keep your thoughts to yourself." This was exactly +what Maisie had already learned, and the accomplishment was just +the source of her mother's irritation. It was of a horrid little +critical system, a tendency, in her silence, to judge her elders, +that this lady suspected her, liking as she did, for her own part, +a child to be simple and confiding. She liked also to hear the +report of the whacks she administered to Mr. Farange's character, +to his pretensions to peace of mind: the satisfaction of dealing +them diminished when nothing came back. The day was at hand, and +she saw it, when she should feel more delight in hurling Maisie at +him than in snatching her away; so much so that her conscience +winced under the acuteness of a candid friend who had remarked +that the real end of all their tugging would be that each parent +would try to make the little girl a burden to the other—a sort of +game in which a fond mother clearly wouldn't show to advantage. +The prospect of not showing to advantage, a distinction in which +she held she had never failed, begot in Ida Farange an ill humour +of which several persons felt the effect. She determined that +Beale at any rate should feel it; she reflected afresh that in the +study of how to be odious to him she must never give way. Nothing +could incommode him more than not to get the good, for the child, +of a nice female appendage who had clearly taken a fancy to her. +One of the things Ida said to the appendage was that Beale's was a +house in which no decent woman could consent to be seen. It was +Miss Overmore herself who explained to Maisie that she had had a +hope of being allowed to accompany her to her father's, and that +this hope had been dashed by the way her mother took it. "She says +that if I ever do such a thing as enter his service I must never +expect to show my face in this house again. So I've promised not +to attempt to go with you. If I wait patiently till you come back +here we shall certainly be together once more."</p> + +<p>Waiting patiently, and above all waiting till she should come back +there, seemed to Maisie a long way round—it reminded her of all +the things she had been told, first and last, that she should have +if she'd be good and that in spite of her goodness she had never +had at all. "Then who'll take care of me at papa's?"</p> + +<p>"Heaven only knows, my own precious!" Miss Overmore replied, +tenderly embracing her. There was indeed no doubt that she was +dear to this beautiful friend. What could have proved it better +than the fact that before a week was out, in spite of their +distressing separation and her mother's prohibition and Miss +Overmore's scruples and Miss Overmore's promise, the beautiful +friend had turned up at her father's? The little lady already +engaged there to come by the hour, a fat dark little lady with a +foreign name and dirty fingers, who wore, throughout, a bonnet +that had at first given her a deceptive air, too soon dispelled, +of not staying long, besides asking her pupil questions that had +nothing to do with lessons, questions that Beale Farange himself, +when two or three were repeated to him, admitted to be awfully +low—this strange apparition faded before the bright creature who +had braved everything for Maisie's sake. The bright creature told +her little charge frankly what had happened—that she had really +been unable to hold out. She had broken her vow to Mrs. Farange; +she had struggled for three days and then had come straight to +Maisie's papa and told him the simple truth. She adored his +daughter; she couldn't give her up; she'd make for her any +sacrifice. On this basis it had been arranged that she should +stay; her courage had been rewarded; she left Maisie in no doubt +as to the amount of courage she had required. Some of the things +she said made a particular impression on the child—her +declaration for instance that when her pupil should get older +she'd understand better just how "dreadfully bold" a young lady, +to do exactly what she had done, had to be.</p> + +<p>"Fortunately your papa appreciates it; he appreciates it +<i>immensely</i>"—that was one of the things Miss Overmore also +said, with a striking insistence on the adverb. Maisie herself was +no less impressed with what this martyr had gone through, especially +after hearing of the terrible letter that had come from Mrs. +Farange. Mamma had been so angry that, in Miss Overmore's own +words, she had loaded her with insult—proof enough indeed that +they must never look forward to being together again under mamma's +roof. Mamma's roof, however, had its turn, this time, for the +child, of appearing but remotely contingent, so that, to reassure +her, there was scarce a need of her companion's secret, solemnly +confided—the probability there would be no going back to mamma at +all. It was Miss Overmore's private conviction, and a part of the +same communication, that if Mr. Farange's daughter would only show +a really marked preference she would be backed up by "public +opinion" in holding on to him. Poor Maisie could scarcely grasp +that incentive, but she could surrender herself to the day. She +had conceived her first passion, and the object of it was her +governess. It hadn't been put to her, and she couldn't, or at any +rate she didn't, put it to herself, that she liked Miss Overmore +better than she liked papa; but it would have sustained her under +such an imputation to feel herself able to reply that papa too +liked Miss Overmore exactly as much. He had particularly told her +so. Besides she could easily see it.</p> + + +<p> <a name="4"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>IV<br /> </h3> + + +<p>All this led her on, but it brought on her fate as well, the day +when her mother would be at the door in the carriage in which +Maisie now rode on no occasions but these. There was no question +at present of Miss Overmore's going back with her: it was +universally recognised that her quarrel with Mrs. Farange was much +too acute. The child felt it from the first; there was no hugging +nor exclaiming as that lady drove her away—there was only a +frightening silence, unenlivened even by the invidious enquiries +of former years, which culminated, according to its stern nature, +in a still more frightening old woman, a figure awaiting her on +the very doorstep. "You're to be under this lady's care," said her +mother. "Take her, Mrs. Wix," she added, addressing the figure +impatiently and giving the child a push from which Maisie gathered +that she wished to set Mrs. Wix an example of energy. Mrs. Wix +took her and, Maisie felt the next day, would never let her go. +She had struck her at first, just after Miss Overmore, as +terrible; but something in her voice at the end of an hour touched +the little girl in a spot that had never even yet been reached. +Maisie knew later what it was, though doubtless she couldn't have +made a statement of it: these were things that a few days' talk +with Mrs. Wix quite lighted up. The principal one was a matter +Mrs. Wix herself always immediately mentioned: she had had a +little girl quite of her own, and the little girl had been killed +on the spot. She had had absolutely nothing else in all the world, +and her affliction had broken her heart. It was comfortably +established between them that Mrs. Wix's heart was broken. What +Maisie felt was that she had been, with passion and anguish, a +mother, and that this was something Miss Overmore was not, +something (strangely, confusingly) that mamma was even less.</p> + +<p>So it was that in the course of an extraordinarily short time she +found herself as deeply absorbed in the image of the little dead +Clara Matilda, who, on a crossing in the Harrow Road, had been +knocked down and crushed by the cruellest of hansoms, as she had ever +found herself in the family group made vivid by one of seven. "She's +your little dead sister," Mrs. Wix ended by saying, and Maisie, all +in a tremor of curiosity and compassion, addressed from that moment a +particular piety to the small accepted acquisition. Somehow she +wasn't a real sister, but that only made her the more romantic. It +contributed to this view of her that she was never to be spoken of in +that character to any one else—least of all to Mrs. Farange, who +wouldn't care for her nor recognise the relationship: it was to be +just an unutterable and inexhaustible little secret with Mrs. Wix. +Maisie knew everything about her that could be known, everything she +had said or done in her little mutilated life, exactly how lovely she +was, exactly how her hair was curled and her frocks were trimmed. Her +hair came down far below her waist—it was of the most wonderful +golden brightness, just as Mrs. Wix's own had been a long time +before. Mrs. Wix's own was indeed very remarkable still, and Maisie +had felt at first that she should never get on with it. It played a +large part in the sad and strange appearance, the appearance as of a +kind of greasy greyness, which Mrs. Wix had presented on the child's +arrival. It had originally been yellow, but time had turned that +elegance to ashes, to a turbid sallow unvenerable white. Still +excessively abundant, it was dressed in a manner of which the poor +lady appeared not yet to have recognised the supersession, with a +glossy braid, like a large diadem, on the top of the head, and +behind, at the nape of the neck, a dingy rosette like a large button. +She wore glasses which, in humble reference to a divergent obliquity +of vision, she called her straighteners, and a little ugly +snuff-coloured dress trimmed with satin bands in the form of scallops +and glazed with antiquity. The straighteners, she explained to Maisie, +were put on for the sake of others, whom, as she believed, they +helped to recognise the bearing, otherwise doubtful, of her regard; +the rest of the melancholy garb could only have been put on for +herself. With the added suggestion of her goggles it reminded her +pupil of the polished shell or corslet of a horrid beetle. At first +she had looked cross and almost cruel; but this impression passed +away with the child's increased perception of her being in the eyes +of the world a figure mainly to laugh at. She was as droll as a +charade or an animal toward the end of the "natural history"—a +person whom people, to make talk lively, described to each other and +imitated. Every one knew the straighteners; every one knew the diadem +and the button, the scallops and satin bands; every one, though +Maisie had never betrayed her, knew even Clara Matilda.</p> + +<p>It was on account of these things that mamma got her for such low +pay, really for nothing: so much, one day when Mrs. Wix had +accompanied her into the drawing-room and left her, the child +heard one of the ladies she found there—a lady with eyebrows +arched like skipping-ropes and thick black stitching, like ruled +lines for musical notes on beautiful white gloves—announce to +another. She knew governesses were poor; Miss Overmore was +unmentionably and Mrs. Wix ever so publicly so. Neither this, +however, nor the old brown frock nor the diadem nor the button, +made a difference for Maisie in the charm put forth through +everything, the charm of Mrs. Wix's conveying that somehow, in her +ugliness and her poverty, she was peculiarly and soothingly safe; +safer than any one in the world, than papa, than mamma, than the +lady with the arched eyebrows; safer even, though so much less +beautiful, than Miss Overmore, on whose loveliness, as she +supposed it, the little girl was faintly conscious that one +couldn't rest with quite the same tucked-in and +kissed-for-good-night feeling. Mrs. Wix was as safe as Clara +Matilda, who was in heaven and yet, embarrassingly, also in Kensal +Green, where they had been together to see her little huddled +grave. It was from something in Mrs. Wix's tone, which in spite of +caricature remained indescribable and inimitable, that Maisie, +before her term with her mother was over, drew this sense of a +support, like a breast-high banister in a place of "drops," that +would never give way. If she knew her instructress was poor and +queer she also knew she was not nearly so "qualified" as Miss +Overmore, who could say lots of dates straight off (letting you +hold the book yourself), state the position of Malabar, play six +pieces without notes and, in a sketch, put in beautifully the +trees and houses and difficult parts. Maisie herself could play +more pieces than Mrs. Wix, who was moreover visibly ashamed of her +houses and trees and could only, with the help of a smutty +forefinger, of doubtful legitimacy in the field of art, do the +smoke coming out of the chimneys. They dealt, the governess and +her pupil, in "subjects," but there were many the governess put +off from week to week and that they never got to at all: she only +used to say "We'll take that in its proper order." Her order was a +circle as vast as the untravelled globe. She had not the spirit of +adventure—the child could perfectly see how many subjects she was +afraid of. She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through +which indeed there curled the blue river of truth. She knew swarms +of stories, mostly those of the novels she had read; relating them +with a memory that never faltered and a wealth of detail that was +Maisie's delight. They were all about love and beauty and +countesses and wickedness. Her conversation was practically an +endless narrative, a great garden of romance, with sudden vistas +into her own life and gushing fountains of homeliness. These were +the parts where they most lingered; she made the child take with +her again every step of her long, lame course and think it beyond +magic or monsters. Her pupil acquired a vivid vision of every one +who had ever, in her phrase, knocked against her—some of them oh +so hard!—every one literally but Mr. Wix, her husband, as to whom +nothing was mentioned save that he had been dead for ages. He had +been rather remarkably absent from his wife's career, and Maisie +was never taken to see his grave.</p> + + +<p> <a name="5"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>V<br /> </h3> + + +<p>The second parting from Miss Overmore had been bad enough, but +this first parting from Mrs. Wix was much worse. The child had +lately been to the dentist's and had a term of comparison for the +screwed-up intensity of the scene. It was dreadfully silent, as it +had been when her tooth was taken out; Mrs. Wix had on that +occasion grabbed her hand and they had clung to each other with +the frenzy of their determination not to scream. Maisie, at the +dentist's, had been heroically still, but just when she felt most +anguish had become aware of an audible shriek on the part of her +companion, a spasm of stifled sympathy. This was reproduced by the +only sound that broke their supreme embrace when, a month later, +the "arrangement," as her periodical uprootings were called, +played the part of the horrible forceps. Embedded in Mrs. Wix's +nature as her tooth had been socketed in her gum, the operation of +extracting her would really have been a case for chloroform. It +was a hug that fortunately left nothing to say, for the poor +woman's want of words at such an hour seemed to fall in with her +want of everything. Maisie's alternate parent, in the outermost +vestibule—he liked the impertinence of crossing as much as that +of his late wife's threshold—stood over them with his open watch +and his still more open grin, while from the only corner of an eye +on which something of Mrs. Wix's didn't impinge the child saw at +the door a brougham in which Miss Overmore also waited. She +remembered the difference when, six months before, she had been +torn from the breast of that more spirited protectress. Miss +Overmore, then also in the vestibule, but of course in the other +one, had been thoroughly audible and voluble; her protest had rung +out bravely and she had declared that something—her pupil didn't +know exactly what—was a regular wicked shame. That had at the +time dimly recalled to Maisie the far-away moment of Moddle's +great outbreak: there seemed always to be "shames" connected in +one way or another with her migrations. At present, while Mrs. +Wix's arms tightened and the smell of her hair was strong, she +further remembered how, in pacifying Miss Overmore, papa had made +use of the words "you dear old duck!"—an expression which, by its +oddity, had stuck fast in her young mind, having moreover a place +well prepared for it there by what she knew of the governess whom +she now always mentally characterised as the pretty one. She +wondered whether this affection would be as great as before: that +would at all events be the case with the prettiness Maisie could +see in the face which showed brightly at the window of the +brougham.</p> + +<p>The brougham was a token of harmony, of the fine conditions papa +would this time offer: he had usually come for her in a hansom, +with a four-wheeler behind for the boxes. The four-wheeler with +the boxes on it was actually there, but mamma was the only lady +with whom she had ever been in a conveyance of the kind always of +old spoken of by Moddle as a private carriage. Papa's carriage +was, now that he had one, still more private, somehow, than +mamma's; and when at last she found herself quite on top, as she +felt, of its inmates and gloriously rolling away, she put to Miss +Overmore, after another immense and talkative squeeze, a question +of which the motive was a desire for information as to the +continuity of a certain sentiment. "Did papa like you just the +same while I was gone?" she enquired—full of the sense of how +markedly his favour had been established in her presence. She had +bethought herself that this favour might, like her presence and as +if depending on it, be only intermittent and for the season. Papa, +on whose knee she sat, burst into one of those loud laughs of his +that, however prepared she was, seemed always, like some trick in +a frightening game, to leap forth and make her jump. Before Miss +Overmore could speak he replied: "Why, you little donkey, when +you're away what have I left to do but just to love her?" Miss +Overmore hereupon immediately took her from him, and they had a +merry little scrimmage over her of which Maisie caught the +surprised perception in the white stare of an old lady who passed +in a victoria. Then her beautiful friend remarked to her very +gravely: "I shall make him understand that if he ever again says +anything as horrid as that to you I shall carry you straight off +and we'll go and live somewhere together and be good quiet little +girls." The child couldn't quite make out why her father's speech +had been horrid, since it only expressed that appreciation which +their companion herself had of old described as "immense." To +enter more into the truth of the matter she appealed to him again +directly, asked if in all those months Miss Overmore hadn't been +with him just as she had been before and just as she would be now. +"Of course she has, old girl—where else could the poor dear be?" +cried Beale Farange, to the still greater scandal of their +companion, who protested that unless he straightway "took back" +his nasty wicked fib it would be, this time, not only him she +would leave, but his child too and his house and his tiresome +trouble—all the impossible things he had succeeded in putting on +her. Beale, under this frolic menace, took nothing back at all; he +was indeed apparently on the point of repeating his extravagance, +but Miss Overmore instructed her little charge that she was not to +listen to his bad jokes: she was to understand that a lady +couldn't stay with a gentleman that way without some awfully +proper reason.</p> + +<p>Maisie looked from one of her companions to the other; this was +the freshest gayest start she had yet enjoyed, but she had a shy +fear of not exactly believing them. "Well, what reason <i>is</i> +proper?" she thoughtfully demanded.</p> + +<p>"Oh a long-legged stick of a tomboy: there's none so good as +that." Her father enjoyed both her drollery and his own and tried +again to get possession of her—an effort deprecated by their +comrade and leading again to something of a public scuffle. Miss +Overmore declared to the child that she had been all the while +with good friends; on which Beale Farange went on: "She means good +friends of mine, you know—tremendous friends of mine. There has +been no end of <i>them</i> about—that I <i>will</i> say for her!" +Maisie felt bewildered and was afterwards for some time conscious +of a vagueness, just slightly embarrassing, as to the subject of so +much amusement and as to where her governess had really been. She +didn't feel at all as if she had been seriously told, and no such +feeling was supplied by anything that occurred later. Her +embarrassment, of a precocious instinctive order, attached itself +to the idea that this was another of the matters it was not for +her, as her mother used to say, to go into. Therefore, under her +father's roof during the time that followed, she made no attempt +to clear up her ambiguity by an ingratiating way with housemaids; +and it was an odd truth that the ambiguity itself took nothing +from the fresh pleasure promised her by renewed contact with Miss +Overmore. The confidence looked for by that young lady was of the +fine sort that explanation can't improve, and she herself at any +rate was a person superior to any confusion. For Maisie moreover +concealment had never necessarily seemed deception; she had grown +up among things as to which her foremost knowledge was that she +was never to ask about them. It was far from new to her that the +questions of the small are the peculiar diversion of the great: +except the affairs of her doll Lisette there had scarcely ever +been anything at her mother's that was explicable with a grave +face. Nothing was so easy to her as to send the ladies who +gathered there off into shrieks, and she might have practised upon +them largely if she had been of a more calculating turn. +Everything had something behind it: life was like a long, long +corridor with rows of closed doors. She had learned that at these +doors it was wise not to knock—this seemed to produce from within +such sounds of derision. Little by little, however, she understood +more, for it befell that she was enlightened by Lisette's +questions, which reproduced the effect of her own upon those for +whom she sat in the very darkness of Lisette. Was she not herself +convulsed by such innocence? In the presence of it she often +imitated the shrieking ladies. There were at any rate things she +really couldn't tell even a French doll. She could only pass on +her lessons and study to produce on Lisette the impression of +having mysteries in her life, wondering the while whether she +succeeded in the air of shading off, like her mother, into the +unknowable. When the reign of Miss Overmore followed that of Mrs. +Wix she took a fresh cue, emulating her governess and bridging +over the interval with the simple expectation of trust. Yes, there +were matters one couldn't "go into" with a pupil. There were for +instance days when, after prolonged absence, Lisette, watching her +take off her things, tried hard to discover where she had been. +Well, she discovered a little, but never discovered all. There was +an occasion when, on her being particularly indiscreet, Maisie +replied to her—and precisely about the motive of a +disappearance—as she, Maisie, had once been replied to by Mrs. +Farange: "Find out for yourself!" She mimicked her mother's +sharpness, but she was rather ashamed afterwards, though as to +whether of the sharpness or of the mimicry was not quite clear.</p> + + +<p> <a name="6"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>VI<br /> </h3> + + +<p>She became aware in time that this phase wouldn't have shone by +lessons, the care of her education being now only one of the many +duties devolving on Miss Overmore; a devolution as to which she +was present at various passages between that lady and her +father—passages significant, on either side, of dissent and even +of displeasure. It was gathered by the child on these occasions +that there was something in the situation for which her mother +might "come down" on them all, though indeed the remark, always +dropped by her father, was greeted on his companion's part with +direct contradiction. Such scenes were usually brought to a climax +by Miss Overmore's demanding, with more asperity than she applied +to any other subject, in what position under the sun such a person +as Mrs. Farange would find herself for coming down. As the months +went on the little girl's interpretations thickened, and the more +effectually that this stretch was the longest she had known +without a break. She got used to the idea that her mother, for +some reason, was in no hurry to reinstate her: that idea was +forcibly expressed by her father whenever Miss Overmore, differing +and decided, took him up on the question, which he was always +putting forward, of the urgency of sending her to school. For a +governess Miss Overmore differed surprisingly; far more for +instance than would have entered into the bowed head of Mrs. Wix. +She observed to Maisie many times that she was quite conscious of +not doing her justice, and that Mr. Farange equally measured and +equally lamented this deficiency. The reason of it was that she +had mysterious responsibilities that interfered—responsibilities, +Miss Overmore intimated, to Mr. Farange himself and to the +friendly noisy little house and those who came there. Mr. +Farange's remedy for every inconvenience was that the child should +be put at school—there were such lots of splendid schools, as +everybody knew, at Brighton and all over the place. That, however, +Maisie learned, was just what would bring her mother down: from +the moment he should delegate to others the housing of his little +charge he hadn't a leg to stand on before the law. Didn't he keep +her away from her mother precisely because Mrs. Farange was one of +these others?</p> + +<p>There was also the solution of a second governess, a young person +to come in by the day and really do the work; but to this Miss +Overmore wouldn't for a moment listen, arguing against it with +great public relish and wanting to know from all comers—she put +it even to Maisie herself—they didn't see how frightfully it +would give her away. "What am I supposed to be at all, don't you +see, if I'm not here to look after her?" She was in a false +position and so freely and loudly called attention to it that it +seemed to become almost a source of glory. The way out of it of +course was just to do her plain duty; but that was unfortunately +what, with his excessive, his exorbitant demands on her, which +every one indeed appeared quite to understand, he practically, he +selfishly prevented. Beale Farange, for Miss Overmore, was now +never anything but "he," and the house was as full as ever of +lively gentlemen with whom, under that designation, she chaffingly +talked about him. Maisie meanwhile, as a subject of familiar +gossip on what was to be done with her, was left so much to +herself that she had hours of wistful thought of the large loose +discipline of Mrs. Wix; yet she none the less held it under her +father's roof a point of superiority that none of his visitors +were ladies. It added to this odd security that she had once heard +a gentleman say to him as if it were a great joke and in obvious +reference to Miss Overmore: "Hanged if she'll let another woman +come near you—hanged if she ever will. She'd let fly a stick at +her as they do at a strange cat!" Maisie greatly preferred +gentlemen as inmates in spite of their also having their +way—louder but sooner over—of laughing out at her. They pulled +and pinched, they teased and tickled her; some of them even, as +they termed it, shied things at her, and all of them thought it +funny to call her by names having no resemblance to her own. The +ladies on the other hand addressed her as "You poor pet" and +scarcely touched her even to kiss her. But it was of the ladies +she was most afraid.</p> + +<p>She was now old enough to understand how disproportionate a stay +she had already made with her father; and also old enough to enter +a little into the ambiguity attending this excess, which oppressed +her particularly whenever the question had been touched upon in +talk with her governess. "Oh you needn't worry: she doesn't care!" +Miss Overmore had often said to her in reference to any fear that +her mother might resent her prolonged detention. "She has other +people than poor little <i>you</i> to think about, and has gone +abroad with them; so you needn't be in the least afraid she'll +stickle this time for her rights." Maisie knew Mrs. Farange had gone +abroad, for she had had weeks and weeks before a letter from her +beginning "My precious pet" and taking leave of her for an +indeterminate time; but she had not seen in it a renunciation of +hatred or of the writer's policy of asserting herself, for the +sharpest of all her impressions had been that there was nothing +her mother would ever care so much about as to torment Mr. +Farange. What at last, however, was in this connexion bewildering +and a little frightening was the dawn of a suspicion that a better +way had been found to torment Mr. Farange than to deprive him of +his periodical burden. This was the question that worried our +young lady and that Miss Overmore's confidences and the frequent +observations of her employer only rendered more mystifying. It was +a contradiction that if Ida had now a fancy for waiving the rights +she had originally been so hot about her late husband shouldn't +jump at the monopoly for which he had also in the first instance +so fiercely fought; but when Maisie, with a subtlety beyond her +years, sounded this new ground her main success was in hearing her +mother more freshly abused. Miss Overmore had up to now rarely +deviated from a decent reserve, but the day came when she +expressed herself with a vividness not inferior to Beale's own on +the subject of the lady who had fled to the Continent to wriggle +out of her job. It would serve this lady right, Maisie gathered, +if that contract, in the shape of an overgrown and underdressed +daughter, should be shipped straight out to her and landed at her +feet in the midst of scandalous excesses.</p> + +<p>The picture of these pursuits was what Miss Overmore took refuge +in when the child tried timidly to ascertain if her father were +disposed to feel he had too much of her. She evaded the point and +only kicked up all round it the dust of Ida's heartlessness and +folly, of which the supreme proof, it appeared, was the fact that +she was accompanied on her journey by a gentleman whom, to be +painfully plain on it, she had—well, "picked up." The terms on +which, unless they were married, ladies and gentlemen might, as +Miss Overmore expressed it, knock about together, were the terms +on which she and Mr. Farange had exposed themselves to possible +misconception. She had indeed, as has been noted, often explained +this before, often said to Maisie: "I don't know what in the +world, darling, your father and I should do without you, for you +just make the difference, as I've told you, of keeping us +perfectly proper." The child took in the office it was so +endearingly presented to her that she performed a comfort that +helped her to a sense of security even in the event of her +mother's giving her up. Familiar as she had grown with the fact of +the great alternative to the proper, she felt in her governess and +her father a strong reason for not emulating that detachment. At +the same time she had heard somehow of little girls—of exalted +rank, it was true—whose education was carried on by instructors +of the other sex, and she knew that if she were at school at +Brighton it would be thought an advantage to her to be more or +less in the hands of masters. She turned these things over and +remarked to Miss Overmore that if she should go to her mother +perhaps the gentleman might become her tutor.</p> + +<p>"The gentleman?" The proposition was complicated enough to make +Miss Overmore stare.</p> + +<p>"The one who's with mamma. Mightn't that make it right—as right +as your being my governess makes it for you to be with papa?"</p> + +<p>Miss Overmore considered; she coloured a little; then she embraced +her ingenious friend. "You're too sweet! I'm a <i>real</i> +governess."</p> + +<p>"And couldn't he be a real tutor?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not. He's ignorant and bad."</p> + +<p>"Bad—?" Maisie echoed with wonder.</p> + +<p>Her companion gave a queer little laugh at her tone. "He's ever +so much younger—" But that was all.</p> + +<p>"Younger than you?"</p> + +<p>Miss Overmore laughed again; it was the first time Maisie had seen +her approach so nearly to a giggle.</p> + +<p>"Younger than—no matter whom. I don't know anything about him and +don't want to," she rather inconsequently added. "He's not my +sort, and I'm sure, my own darling, he's not yours." And she +repeated the free caress into which her colloquies with Maisie +almost always broke and which made the child feel that <i>her</i> +affection at least was a gage of safety. Parents had come to seem +vague, but governesses were evidently to be trusted. Maisie's +faith in Mrs. Wix for instance had suffered no lapse from the fact +that all communication with her had temporarily dropped. During +the first weeks of their separation Clara Matilda's mamma had +repeatedly and dolefully written to her, and Maisie had answered +with an enthusiasm controlled only by orthographical doubts; but +the correspondence had been duly submitted to Miss Overmore, with +the final effect of its not suiting her. It was this lady's view +that Mr. Farange wouldn't care for it at all, and she ended by +confessing—since her pupil pushed her—that she didn't care for +it herself. She was furiously jealous, she said; and that weakness +was but a new proof of her disinterested affection. She pronounced +Mrs. Wix's effusions moreover illiterate and unprofitable; she +made no scruple of declaring it monstrous that a woman in her +senses should have placed the formation of her daughter's mind in +such ridiculous hands. Maisie was well aware that the proprietress +of the old brown dress and the old odd headgear was lower in the +scale of "form" than Miss Overmore; but it was now brought home to +her with pain that she was educationally quite out of the +question. She was buried for the time beneath a conclusive remark +of her critic's: "She's really beyond a joke!" This remark was +made as that charming woman held in her hand the last letter that +Maisie was to receive from Mrs. Wix; it was fortified by a decree +proscribing the preposterous tie. "Must I then write and tell +her?" the child bewilderedly asked: she grew pale at the dreadful +things it appeared involved for her to say. "Don't dream of it, my +dear—I'll write: you may trust me!" cried Miss Overmore; who +indeed wrote to such purpose that a hush in which you could have +heard a pin drop descended upon poor Mrs. Wix. She gave for weeks +and weeks no sign whatever of life: it was as if she had been as +effectually disposed of by Miss Overmore's communication as her +little girl, in the Harrow Road, had been disposed of by the +terrible hansom. Her very silence became after this one of the +largest elements of Maisie's consciousness; it proved a warm and +habitable air, into which the child penetrated further than she +dared ever to mention to her companions. Somewhere in the depths +of it the dim straighteners were fixed upon her; somewhere out of +the troubled little current Mrs. Wix intensely waited.</p> + + +<p> <a name="7"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>VII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>It quite fell in with this intensity that one day, on returning +from a walk with the housemaid, Maisie should have found her in +the hall, seated on the stool usually occupied by the +telegraph-boys who haunted Beale Farange's door and kicked their +heels while, in his room, answers to their missives took form with +the aid of smoke-puffs and growls. It had seemed to her on their +parting that Mrs. Wix had reached the last limits of the squeeze, +but she now felt those limits to be transcended and that the +duration of her visitor's hug was a direct reply to Miss +Overmore's veto. She understood in a flash how the visit had come +to be possible—that Mrs. Wix, watching her chance, must have +slipped in under protection of the fact that papa, always +tormented in spite of arguments with the idea of a school, had, +for a three days' excursion to Brighton, absolutely insisted on +the attendance of her adversary. It was true that when Maisie +explained their absence and their important motive Mrs. Wix wore +an expression so peculiar that it could only have had its origin +in surprise. This contradiction indeed peeped out only to vanish, +for at the very moment that, in the spirit of it, she threw +herself afresh upon her young friend a hansom crested with neat +luggage rattled up to the door and Miss Overmore bounded out. The +shock of her encounter with Mrs. Wix was less violent than Maisie +had feared on seeing her and didn't at all interfere with the +sociable tone in which, under her rival's eyes, she explained to +her little charge that she had returned, for a particular reason, +a day sooner than she first intended. She had left papa—in such +nice lodgings—at Brighton; but he would come back to his dear +little home on the morrow. As for Mrs. Wix, papa's companion +supplied Maisie in later converse with the right word for the +attitude of this personage: Mrs. Wix "stood up" to her in a manner +that the child herself felt at the time to be astonishing. This +occurred indeed after Miss Overmore had so far raised her +interdict as to make a move to the dining-room, where, in the +absence of any suggestion of sitting down, it was scarcely more +than natural that even poor Mrs. Wix should stand up. Maisie at +once enquired if at Brighton, this time, anything had come of the +possibility of a school; to which, much to her surprise, Miss +Overmore, who had always grandly repudiated it, replied after an +instant, but quite as if Mrs. Wix were not there:</p> + +<p>"It may be, darling, that something <i>will</i> come. The +objection, I must tell you, has been quite removed."</p> + +<p>At this it was still more startling to hear Mrs. Wix speak out +with great firmness. "I don't think, if you'll allow me to say so, +that there's any arrangement by which the objection <i>can</i> be +'removed.' What has brought me here to-day is that I've a message +for Maisie from dear Mrs. Farange."</p> + +<p>The child's heart gave a great thump. "Oh mamma's come back?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet, sweet love, but she's coming," said Mrs. Wix, "and she +has—most thoughtfully, you know—sent me on to prepare you."</p> + +<p>"To prepare her for what, pray?" asked Miss Overmore, whose first +smoothness began, with this news, to be ruffled.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix quietly applied her straighteners to Miss Overmore's +flushed beauty. "Well, miss, for a very important communication."</p> + +<p>"Can't dear Mrs. Farange, as you so oddly call her, make her +communications directly? Can't she take the trouble to write to +her only daughter?" the younger lady demanded. "Maisie herself +will tell you that it's months and months since she has had so +much as a word from her."</p> + +<p>"Oh but I've written to mamma!" cried the child as if this would +do quite as well.</p> + +<p>"That makes her treatment of you all the greater scandal," the +governess in possession promptly declared.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Farange is too well aware," said Mrs. Wix with sustained +spirit, "of what becomes of her letters in this house."</p> + +<p>Maisie's sense of fairness hereupon interposed for her visitor. +"You know, Miss Overmore, that papa doesn't like everything of +mamma's."</p> + +<p>"No one likes, my dear, to be made the subject of such language as +your mother's letters contain. They were not fit for the innocent +child to see," Miss Overmore observed to Mrs. Wix.</p> + +<p>"Then I don't know what you complain of, and she's better without +them. It serves every purpose that I'm in Mrs. Farange's +confidence."</p> + +<p>Miss Overmore gave a scornful laugh. "Then you must be mixed up +with some extraordinary proceedings!"</p> + +<p>"None so extraordinary," cried Mrs. Wix, turning very pale, "as to +say horrible things about the mother to the face of the helpless +daughter!"</p> + +<p>"Things not a bit more horrible, I think," Miss Overmore returned, +"than those you, madam, appear to have come here to say about the +father!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix looked for a moment hard at Maisie, and then, turning +again to this witness, spoke with a trembling voice. "I came to +say nothing about him, and you must excuse Mrs. Farange and me if +we're not so above all reproach as the companion of his travels."</p> + +<p>The young woman thus described stared at the apparent breadth of +the description—she needed a moment to take it in. Maisie, +however, gazing solemnly from one of the disputants to the other, +noted that her answer, when it came, perched upon smiling lips. +"It will do quite as well, no doubt, if you come up to the +requirements of the companion of Mrs. Farange's!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix broke into a queer laugh; it sounded to Maisie an +unsuccessful imitation of a neigh. "That's just what I'm here to +make known—how perfectly the poor lady comes up to them herself." +She held up her head at the child. "You must take your mamma's +message, Maisie, and you must feel that her wishing me to come to +you with it this way is a great proof of interest and affection. +She sends you her particular love and announces to you that she's +engaged to be married to Sir Claude."</p> + +<p>"Sir Claude?" Maisie wonderingly echoed. But while Mrs. Wix +explained that this gentleman was a dear friend of Mrs. Farange's, +who had been of great assistance to her in getting to Florence and +in making herself comfortable there for the winter, she was not +too violently shaken to perceive her old friend's enjoyment of the +effect of this news on Miss Overmore. That young lady opened her +eyes very wide; she immediately remarked that Mrs. Farange's +marriage would of course put an end to any further pretension to +take her daughter back. Mrs. Wix enquired with astonishment why it +should do anything of the sort, and Miss Overmore gave as an +instant reason that it was clearly but another dodge in a system +of dodges. She wanted to get out of the bargain: why else had she +now left Maisie on her father's hands weeks and weeks beyond the +time about which she had originally made such a fuss? It was vain +for Mrs. Wix to represent—as she speciously proceeded to do—that +all this time would be made up as soon as Mrs. Farange returned: +she, Miss Overmore, knew nothing, thank heaven, about her +confederate, but was very sure any person capable of forming that +sort of relation with the lady in Florence would easily agree to +object to the presence in his house of the fruit of a union that +his dignity must ignore. It was a game like another, and Mrs. +Wix's visit was clearly the first move in it. Maisie found in this +exchange of asperities a fresh incitement to the unformulated +fatalism in which her sense of her own career had long since taken +refuge; and it was the beginning for her of a deeper prevision +that, in spite of Miss Overmore's brilliancy and Mrs. Wix's +passion, she should live to see a change in the nature of the +struggle she appeared to have come into the world to produce. It +would still be essentially a struggle, but its object would now be +<i>not</i> to receive her.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix, after Miss Overmore's last demonstration, addressed +herself wholly to the little girl, and, drawing from the pocket of +her dingy old pelisse a small flat parcel, removed its envelope +and wished to know if <i>that</i> looked like a gentleman who wouldn't +be nice to everybody—let alone to a person he would be so sure to +find so nice. Mrs. Farange, in the candour of new-found happiness, +had enclosed a "cabinet" photograph of Sir Claude, and Maisie lost +herself in admiration of the fair smooth face, the regular +features, the kind eyes, the amiable air, the general glossiness +and smartness of her prospective stepfather—only vaguely puzzled +to suppose herself now with two fathers at once. Her researches +had hitherto indicated that to incur a second parent of the same +sex you had usually to lose the first. "<i>Isn't</i> he sympathetic?" +asked Mrs. Wix, who had clearly, on the strength of his charming +portrait, made up her mind that Sir Claude promised her a future. +"You can see, I hope," she added with much expression, "that +<i>he's</i> a perfect gentleman!" Maisie had never before heard the +word "sympathetic" applied to anybody's face; she heard it with +pleasure and from that moment it agreeably remained with her. She +testified moreover to the force of her own perception in a small +soft sigh of response to the pleasant eyes that seemed to seek her +acquaintance, to speak to her directly. "He's quite lovely!" she +declared to Mrs. Wix. Then eagerly, irrepressibly, as she still +held the photograph and Sir Claude continued to fraternise, "Oh +can't I keep it?" she broke out. No sooner had she done so than +she looked up from it at Miss Overmore: this was with the sudden +instinct of appealing to the authority that had long ago impressed +on her that she mustn't ask for things. Miss Overmore, to her +surprise, looked distant and rather odd, hesitating and giving her +time to turn again to Mrs. Wix. Then Maisie saw that lady's long +face lengthen; it was stricken and almost scared, as if her young +friend really expected more of her than she had to give. The +photograph was a possession that, direly denuded, she clung to, +and there was a momentary struggle between her fond clutch of it +and her capability of every sacrifice for her precarious pupil. +With the acuteness of her years, however, Maisie saw that her own +avidity would triumph, and she held out the picture to Miss +Overmore as if she were quite proud of her mother. "Isn't he just +lovely?" she demanded while poor Mrs. Wix hungrily wavered, her +straighteners largely covering it and her pelisse gathered about +her with an intensity that strained its ancient seams.</p> + +<p>"It was to <i>me</i>, darling," the visitor said, "that your mamma +so generously sent it; but of course if it would give you particular +pleasure—" she faltered, only gasping her surrender.</p> + +<p>Miss Overmore continued extremely remote. "If the photograph's +your property, my dear, I shall be happy to oblige you by looking +at it on some future occasion. But you must excuse me if I decline +to touch an object belonging to Mrs. Wix."</p> + +<p>That lady had by this time grown very red. "You might as well see +him this way, miss," she retorted, "as you certainly never will, I +believe, in any other! Keep the pretty picture, by all means, my +precious," she went on: "Sir Claude will be happy himself, I dare +say, to give me one with a kind inscription." The pathetic quaver +of this brave boast was not lost on Maisie, who threw herself so +gratefully on the speaker's neck that, when they had concluded +their embrace, the public tenderness of which, she felt, made up +for the sacrifice she imposed, their companion had had time to lay +a quick hand on Sir Claude and, with a glance at him or not, whisk +him effectually out of sight. Released from the child's arms Mrs. +Wix looked about for the picture; then she fixed Miss Overmore +with a hard dumb stare; and finally, with her eyes on the little +girl again, achieved the grimmest of smiles. "Well, nothing +matters, Maisie, because there's another thing your mamma wrote +about. She has made sure of me." Even after her loyal hug Maisie +felt a bit of a sneak as she glanced at Miss Overmore for +permission to understand this. But Mrs. Wix left them in no doubt +of what it meant. "She has definitely engaged me—for her return +and for yours. Then you'll see for yourself." Maisie, on the spot, +quite believed she should; but the prospect was suddenly thrown +into confusion by an extraordinary demonstration from Miss +Overmore.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Wix," said that young lady, "has some undiscoverable reason +for regarding your mother's hold on you as strengthened by the +fact that she's about to marry. I wonder then—on that +system—what our visitor will say to your father's."</p> + +<p>Miss Overmore's words were directed to her pupil, but her face, +lighted with an irony that made it prettier even than ever before, +was presented to the dingy figure that had stiffened itself for +departure. The child's discipline had been bewildering—had ranged +freely between the prescription that she was to answer when spoken +to and the experience of lively penalties on obeying that +prescription. This time, nevertheless, she felt emboldened for +risks; above all as something portentous seemed to have leaped +into her sense of the relations of things. She looked at Miss +Overmore much as she had a way of looking at persons who treated +her to "grown up" jokes. "Do you mean papa's hold on me—do you +mean <i>he's</i> about to marry?"</p> + +<p>"Papa's not about to marry—papa <i>is</i> married, my dear. Papa +was married the day before yesterday at Brighton." Miss Overmore +glittered more gaily; meanwhile it came over Maisie, and quite +dazzlingly, that her "smart" governess was a bride. "He's my +husband, if you please, and I'm his little wife. So <i>now</i> +we'll see who's your little mother!" She caught her pupil to her +bosom in a manner that was not to be outdone by the emissary of her +predecessor, and a few moments later, when things had lurched back +into their places, that poor lady, quite defeated of the last +word, had soundlessly taken flight.</p> + + +<p> <a name="8"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>VIII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>After Mrs. Wix's retreat Miss Overmore appeared to recognise that +she was not exactly in a position to denounce Ida Farange's second +union; but she drew from a table-drawer the photograph of Sir +Claude and, standing there before Maisie, studied it at some +length.</p> + +<p>"Isn't he beautiful?" the child ingenuously asked.</p> + +<p>Her companion hesitated. "No—he's horrid," she, to Maisie's +surprise, sharply returned. But she debated another minute, after +which she handed back the picture. It appeared to Maisie herself +to exhibit a fresh attraction, and she was troubled, having never +before had occasion to differ from her lovely friend. So she only +could ask what, such being the case, she should do with it: should +she put it quite away—where it wouldn't be there to offend? On +this Miss Overmore again cast about; after which she said +unexpectedly: "Put it on the schoolroom mantelpiece."</p> + +<p>Maisie felt a fear. "Won't papa dislike to see it there?"</p> + +<p>"Very much indeed; but that won't matter <i>now</i>." Miss +Overmore spoke with peculiar significance and to her pupil's +mystification.</p> + +<p>"On account of the marriage?" Maisie risked.</p> + +<p>Miss Overmore laughed, and Maisie could see that in spite of the +irritation produced by Mrs. Wix she was in high spirits. "Which +marriage do you mean?"</p> + +<p>With the question put to her it suddenly struck the child she +didn't know, so that she felt she looked foolish. So she took +refuge in saying: "Shall <i>you</i> be different—" This was a +full implication that the bride of Sir Claude would be.</p> + +<p>"As your father's wedded wife? Utterly!" Miss Overmore replied. +And the difference began of course in her being addressed, even by +Maisie, from that day and by her particular request, as Mrs. +Beale. It was there indeed principally that it ended, for except +that the child could reflect that she should presently have four +parents in all, and also that at the end of three months the +staircase, for a little girl hanging over banisters, sent up the +deepening rustle of more elaborate advances, everything made the +same impression as before. Mrs. Beale had very pretty frocks, but +Miss Overmore's had been quite as good, and if papa was much +fonder of his second wife than he had been of his first Maisie had +foreseen that fondness, had followed its development almost as +closely as the person more directly involved. There was little +indeed in the commerce of her companions that her precocious +experience couldn't explain, for if they struck her as after all +rather deficient in that air of the honeymoon of which she had so +often heard—in much detail, for instance, from Mrs. Wix—it was +natural to judge the circumstance in the light of papa's proved +disposition to contest the empire of the matrimonial tie. His +honeymoon, when he came back from Brighton—not on the morrow of +Mrs. Wix's visit, and not, oddly, till several days later—his +honeymoon was perhaps perceptibly tinged with the dawn of a later +stage of wedlock. There were things dislike of which, as the child +knew it, wouldn't matter to Mrs. Beale now, and their number +increased so that such a trifle as his hostility to the photograph +of Sir Claude quite dropped out of view. This pleasing object +found a conspicuous place in the schoolroom, which in truth Mr. +Farange seldom entered and in which silent admiration formed, +during the time I speak of, almost the sole scholastic exercise of +Mrs. Beale's pupil.</p> + +<p>Maisie was not long in seeing just what her stepmother had meant +by the difference she should show in her new character. If she was +her father's wife she was not her own governess, and if her +presence had had formerly to be made regular by the theory of a +humble function she was now on a footing that dispensed with all +theories and was inconsistent with all servitude. That was what +she had meant by the drop of the objection to a school; her small +companion was no longer required at home as—it was Mrs. Beale's +own amusing word—a little duenna. The argument against a +successor to Miss Overmore remained: it was composed frankly of +the fact, of which Mrs. Beale granted the full absurdity, that she +was too awfully fond of her stepdaughter to bring herself to see +her in vulgar and mercenary hands. The note of this particular +danger emboldened Maisie to put in a word for Mrs. Wix, the modest +measure of whose avidity she had taken from the first; but Mrs. +Beale disposed afresh and effectually of a candidate who would be +sure to act in some horrible and insidious way for Ida's interest +and who moreover was personally loathsome and as ignorant as a +fish. She made also no more of a secret of the awkward fact that a +good school would be hideously expensive, and of the further +circumstance, which seemed to put an end to everything, that when +it came to the point papa, in spite of his previous clamour, was +really most nasty about paying. "Would you believe," Mrs. Beale +confidentially asked of her little charge, "that he says I'm a +worse expense than ever, and that a daughter and a wife together +are really more than he can afford?" It was thus that the splendid +school at Brighton lost itself in the haze of larger questions, +though the fear that it would provoke Ida to leap into the breach +subsided with her prolonged, her quite shameless non-appearance. +Her daughter and her successor were therefore left to gaze in +united but helpless blankness at all Maisie was not learning.</p> + +<p>This quantity was so great as to fill the child's days with a +sense of intermission to which even French Lisette gave no +accent—with finished games and unanswered questions and dreaded +tests; with the habit, above all, in her watch for a change, of +hanging over banisters when the door-bell sounded. This was the +great refuge of her impatience, but what she heard at such times +was a clatter of gaiety downstairs; the impression of which, from +her earliest childhood, had built up in her the belief that the +grown-up time was the time of real amusement and above all of real +intimacy. Even Lisette, even Mrs. Wix had never, she felt, in +spite of hugs and tears, been so intimate with her as so many +persons at present were with Mrs. Beale and as so many others of +old had been with Mrs. Farange. The note of hilarity brought +people together still more than the note of melancholy, which was +the one exclusively sounded, for instance, by poor Mrs. Wix. +Maisie in these days preferred none the less that domestic revels +should be wafted to her from a distance: she felt sadly +unsupported for facing the inquisition of the drawing-room. That +was a reason the more for making the most of Susan Ash, who in her +quality of under-housemaid moved at a very different level and +who, none the less, was much depended upon out of doors. She was a +guide to peregrinations that had little in common with those +intensely definite airings that had left with the child a vivid +memory of the regulated mind of Moddle. There had been under +Moddle's system no dawdles at shop-windows and no nudges, in +Oxford Street, of "I <i>say</i>, look at <i>'er</i>!" There had +been an inexorable treatment of crossings and a serene exemption +from the fear that—especially at corners, of which she was yet +weakly fond—haunted the housemaid, the fear of being, as she +ominously said, "spoken to." The dangers of the town equally with +its diversions added to Maisie's sense of being untutored and +unclaimed.</p> + +<p>The situation however, had taken a twist when, on another of her +returns, at Susan's side, extremely tired, from the pursuit of +exercise qualified by much hovering, she encountered another +emotion. She on this occasion learnt at the door that her instant +attendance was requested in the drawing-room. Crossing the +threshold in a cloud of shame she discerned through the blur Mrs. +Beale seated there with a gentleman who immediately drew the pain +from her predicament by rising before her as the original of the +photograph of Sir Claude. She felt the moment she looked at him +that he was by far the most shining presence that had ever made +her gape, and her pleasure in seeing him, in knowing that he took +hold of her and kissed her, as quickly throbbed into a strange shy +pride in him, a perception of his making up for her fallen state, +for Susan's public nudges, which quite bruised her, and for all +the lessons that, in the dead schoolroom, where at times she was +almost afraid to stay alone, she was bored with not having. It was +as if he had told her on the spot that he belonged to her, so that +she could already show him off and see the effect he produced. No, +nothing else that was most beautiful ever belonging to her could +kindle that particular joy—not Mrs. Beale at that very moment, +not papa when he was gay, nor mamma when she was dressed, nor +Lisette when she was new. The joy almost overflowed in tears when +he laid his hand on her and drew her to him, telling her, with a +smile of which the promise was as bright as that of a +Christmas-tree, that he knew her ever so well by her mother, but +had come to see her now so that he might know her for himself. She +could see that his view of this kind of knowledge was to make her +come away with him, and, further, that it was just what he was +there for and had already been some time: arranging it with Mrs. +Beale and getting on with that lady in a manner evidently not at +all affected by her having on the arrival of his portrait thought +of him so ill. They had grown almost intimate—or had the air of +it—over their discussion; and it was still further conveyed to +Maisie that Mrs. Beale had made no secret, and would make yet less +of one, of all that it cost to let her go. "You seem so +tremendously eager," she said to the child, "that I hope you're at +least clear about Sir Claude's relation to you. It doesn't appear +to occur to him to give you the necessary reassurance."</p> + +<p>Maisie, a trifle mystified, turned quickly to her new friend. "Why +it's of course that you're <i>married</i> to her, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Her anxious emphasis started them off, as she had learned to call +it; this was the echo she infallibly and now quite resignedly +produced; moreover Sir Claude's laughter was an indistinguishable +part of the sweetness of his being there. "We've been married, my +dear child, three months, and my interest in you is a consequence, +don't you know? of my great affection for your mother. In coming +here it's of course for your mother I'm acting."</p> + +<p>"Oh I know," Maisie said with all the candour of her competence. +"She can't come herself—except just to the door." Then as she +thought afresh: "Can't she come even to the door now?"</p> + +<p>"There you are!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed to Sir Claude. She spoke as +if his dilemma were ludicrous.</p> + +<p>His kind face, in a hesitation, seemed to recognise it; but he +answered the child with a frank smile. "No—not very well."</p> + +<p>"Because she has married you?"</p> + +<p>He promptly accepted this reason. "Well, that has a good deal to +do with it."</p> + +<p>He was so delightful to talk to that Maisie pursued the subject. +"But papa—<i>he</i> has married Miss Overmore."</p> + +<p>"Ah you'll see that he won't come for you at your mother's," that +lady interposed.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but that won't be for a long time," Maisie hastened to +respond.</p> + +<p>"We won't talk about it now—you've months and months to put in +first." And Sir Claude drew her closer.</p> + +<p>"Oh that's what makes it so hard to give her up!" Mrs. Beale made +this point with her arms out to her stepdaughter. Maisie, quitting +Sir Claude, went over to them and, clasped in a still tenderer +embrace, felt entrancingly the extension of the field of +happiness. "<i>I'll</i> come for you," said her stepmother, "if Sir +Claude keeps you too long: we must make him quite understand that! +Don't talk to me about her ladyship!" she went on to their visitor +so familiarly that it was almost as if they must have met before. +"I know her ladyship as if I had made her. They're a pretty pair +of parents!" cried Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>Maisie had so often heard them called so that the remark diverted +her but an instant from the agreeable wonder of this grand new +form of allusion to her mother; and that, in its turn, presently +left her free to catch at the pleasant possibility, in connexion +with herself, of a relation much happier as between Mrs. Beale and +Sir Claude than as between mamma and papa. Still the next thing +that happened was that her interest in such a relation brought to +her lips a fresh question.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen papa?" she asked of Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>It was the signal for their going off again, as her small stoicism +had perfectly taken for granted that it would be. All that Mrs. +Beale had nevertheless to add was the vague apparent sarcasm: "Oh +papa!"</p> + +<p>"I'm assured he's not at home," Sir Claude replied to the child; +"but if he had been I should have hoped for the pleasure of seeing +him."</p> + +<p>"Won't he mind your coming?" Maisie asked as with need of the +knowledge.</p> + +<p>"Oh you bad little girl!" Mrs. Beale humorously protested.</p> + +<p>The child could see that at this Sir Claude, though still moved to +mirth, coloured a little; but he spoke to her very kindly. "That's +just what I came to see, you know—whether your father <i>would</i> +mind. But Mrs. Beale appears strongly of the opinion that he +won't."</p> + +<p>This lady promptly justified that view to her stepdaughter. "It +will be very interesting, my dear, you know, to find out what it +is to-day that your father does mind. I'm sure <i>I</i> don't +know!"—and she seemed to repeat, though with perceptible +resignation, her plaint of a moment before. "Your father, darling, +is a very odd person indeed." She turned with this, smiling, to +Sir Claude. "But perhaps it's hardly civil for me to say that of +his not objecting to have <i>you</i> in the house. If you knew +some of the people he does have!"</p> + +<p>Maisie knew them all, and none indeed were to be compared to Sir +Claude. He laughed back at Mrs. Beale; he looked at such moments +quite as Mrs. Wix, in the long stories she told her pupil, always +described the lovers of her distressed beauties—"the perfect +gentleman and strikingly handsome." He got up, to the child's +regret, as if he were going. "Oh I dare say we should be all +right!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale once more gathered in her little charge, holding her +close and looking thoughtfully over her head at their visitor. +"It's so charming—for a man of your type—to have wanted her so +much!"</p> + +<p>"What do you know about my type?" Sir Claude laughed. "Whatever it +may be I dare say it deceives you. The truth about me is simply +that I'm the most unappreciated of—what do you call the +fellows?—'family-men.' Yes, I'm a family-man; upon my honour I +am!"</p> + +<p>"Then why on earth," cried Mrs. Beale, "didn't you marry a +family-woman?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude looked at her hard. "<i>You</i> know who one marries, +I think. Besides, there <i>are</i> no family-women—hanged if there +are! None of them want any children—hanged if they do!"</p> + +<p>His account of the matter was most interesting, and Maisie, as if +it were of bad omen for her, stared at the picture in some dismay. +At the same time she felt, through encircling arms, her +protectress hesitate. "You do come out with things! But you mean +her ladyship doesn't want any—really?"</p> + +<p>"Won't hear of them—simply. But she can't help the one she +<i>has</i> got." And with this Sir Claude's eyes rested on the +little girl in a way that seemed to her to mask her mother's +attitude with the consciousness of his own. "She must make the best +of her, don't you see? If only for the look of the thing, don't you +know? one wants one's wife to take the proper line about her +child."</p> + +<p>"Oh I know what one wants!" Mrs. Beale cried with a competence +that evidently impressed her interlocutor.</p> + +<p>"Well, if you keep <i>him</i> up—and I dare say you've had +worry enough—why shouldn't I keep Ida? What's sauce for the goose +is sauce for the gander—or the other way round, don't you know? I +mean to see the thing through."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale, for a minute, still with her eyes on him as he leaned +upon the chimneypiece, appeared to turn this over. "You're just a +wonder of kindness—that's what you are!" she said at last. "A +lady's expected to have natural feelings. But <i>your</i> horrible +sex—! Isn't it a horrible sex, little love?" she demanded with her +cheek upon her stepdaughter's.</p> + +<p>"Oh I like gentlemen best," Maisie lucidly replied.</p> + +<p>The words were taken up merrily. "That's a good one for +<i>you</i>!" Sir Claude exclaimed to Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>"No," said that lady: "I've only to remember the women she sees at +her mother's."</p> + +<p>"Ah they're very nice now," Sir Claude returned.</p> + +<p>"What do you call 'nice'?"</p> + +<p>"Well, they're all right."</p> + +<p>"That doesn't answer me," said Mrs. Beale; "but I dare say you do +take care of them. That makes you more of an angel to want this +job too." And she playfully whacked her smaller companion.</p> + +<p>"I'm not an angel—I'm an old grandmother," Sir Claude declared. +"I like babies—I always did. If we go to smash I shall look for a +place as responsible nurse."</p> + +<p>Maisie, in her charmed mood, drank in an imputation on her years +which at another moment might have been bitter; but the charm was +sensibly interrupted by Mrs. Beale's screwing her round and gazing +fondly into her eyes, "You're willing to leave me, you wretch?"</p> + +<p>The little girl deliberated; even this consecrated tie had become +as a cord she must suddenly snap. But she snapped it very gently. +"Isn't it my turn for mamma?"</p> + +<p>"You're a horrible little hypocrite! The less, I think, now said +about 'turns' the better," Mrs. Beale made answer. "<i>I</i> know +whose turn it is. You've not such a passion for your mother!"</p> + +<p>"I say, I say: <i>do</i> look out!" Sir Claude quite amiably +protested.</p> + +<p>"There's nothing she hasn't heard. But it doesn't +matter—it hasn't spoiled her. If you knew what it costs me to part +with you!" she pursued to Maisie.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude watched her as she charmingly clung to the child. "I'm +so glad you really care for her. That's so much to the good."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale slowly got up, still with her hands on Maisie, but +emitting a soft exhalation. "Well, if you're glad, that may help +us; for I assure you that I shall never give up any rights in her +that I may consider I've acquired by my own sacrifices. I shall +hold very fast to my interest in her. What seems to have happened +is that she has brought you and me together."</p> + +<p>"She has brought you and me together," said Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>His cheerful echo prolonged the happy truth, and Maisie broke out +almost with enthusiasm: "I've brought you and her together!"</p> + +<p>Her companions of course laughed anew and Mrs. Beale gave her an +affectionate shake. "You little monster—take care what you do! +But that's what she does do," she continued to Sir Claude. "She +did it to me and Beale."</p> + +<p>"Well then," he said to Maisie, "you must try the trick at +<i>our</i> place." He held out his hand to her again. "Will you +come now?"</p> + +<p>"Now—just as I am?" She turned with an immense appeal to her +stepmother, taking a leap over the mountain of "mending," the +abyss of packing that had loomed and yawned before her. "Oh +<i>may</i> I?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale addressed her assent to Sir Claude. "As well so as any +other way. I'll send on her things to-morrow." Then she gave a tug +to the child's coat, glancing at her up and down with some +ruefulness.</p> + +<p>"She's not turned out as I should like—her mother will pull her +to pieces. But what's one to do—with nothing to do it on? And +she's better than when she came—you can tell her mother that. I'm +sorry to have to say it to you—but the poor child was a sight."</p> + +<p>"Oh I'll turn her out myself!" the visitor cordially said.</p> + +<p>"I shall like to see how!"—Mrs. Beale appeared much amused. "You +must bring her to show me—we can manage that. Good-bye, little +fright!" And her last word to Sir Claude was that she would keep +him up to the mark.</p> + + +<p> <a name="9"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>IX<br /> </h3> + + +<p>The idea of what she was to make up and the prodigious total it +came to were kept well before Maisie at her mother's. These things +were the constant occupation of Mrs. Wix, who arrived there by the +back stairs, but in tears of joy, the day after her own arrival. +The process of making up, as to which the good lady had an immense +deal to say, took, through its successive phases, so long that it +heralded a term at least equal to the child's last stretch with +her father. This, however, was a fuller and richer time: it +bounded along to the tune of Mrs. Wix's constant insistence on the +energy they must both put forth. There was a fine intensity in the +way the child agreed with her that under Mrs. Beale and Susan Ash +she had learned nothing whatever; the wildness of the rescued +castaway was one of the forces that would henceforth make for a +career of conquest. The year therefore rounded itself as a +receptacle of retarded knowledge—a cup brimming over with the +sense that now at least she was learning. Mrs. Wix fed this sense +from the stores of her conversation and with the immense bustle of +her reminder that they must cull the fleeting hour. They were +surrounded with subjects they must take at a rush and perpetually +getting into the attitude of triumphant attack. They had certainly +no idle hours, and the child went to bed each night as tired as +from a long day's play. This had begun from the moment of their +reunion, begun with all Mrs. Wix had to tell her young friend of +the reasons of her ladyship's extraordinary behaviour at the very +first.</p> + +<p>It took the form of her ladyship's refusal for three days to see +her little girl—three days during which Sir Claude made hasty +merry dashes into the schoolroom to smooth down the odd situation, +to say "She'll come round, you know; I assure you she'll come +round," and a little even to compensate Maisie for the indignity +he had caused her to suffer. There had never in the child's life +been, in all ways, such a delightful amount of reparation. It came +out by his sociable admission that her ladyship had not known of +his visit to her late husband's house and of his having made that +person's daughter a pretext for striking up an acquaintance with +the dreadful creature installed there. Heaven knew she wanted her +child back and had made every plan of her own for removing her; +what she couldn't for the present at least forgive any one +concerned was such an officious underhand way of bringing about +the transfer. Maisie carried more of the weight of this resentment +than even Mrs. Wix's confidential ingenuity could lighten for her, +especially as Sir Claude himself was not at all ingenious, though +indeed on the other hand he was not at all crushed. He was amused +and intermittent and at moments most startling; he impressed on +his young companion, with a frankness that agitated her much more +than he seemed to guess, that he depended on her not letting her +mother, when she should see her, get anything out of her about +anything Mrs. Beale might have said to him. He came in and out; he +professed, in joke, to take tremendous precautions; he showed a +positive disposition to romp. He chaffed Mrs. Wix till she was +purple with the pleasure of it, and reminded Maisie of the +reticence he expected of her till she set her teeth like an Indian +captive. Her lessons these first days and indeed for long after +seemed to be all about Sir Claude, and yet she never really +mentioned to Mrs. Wix that she was prepared, under his inspiring +injunction, to be vainly tortured. This lady, however, had +formulated the position of things with an acuteness that showed +how little she needed to be coached. Her explanation of everything +that seemed not quite pleasant—and if her own footing was +perilous it met that danger as well—that her ladyship was +passionately in love. Maisie accepted this hint with infinite awe +and pressed upon it much when she was at last summoned into the +presence of her mother.</p> + +<p>There she encountered matters amid which it seemed really to help +to give her a clue—an almost terrifying strangeness, full, none +the less, after a little, of reverberations of Ida's old fierce +and demonstrative recoveries of possession. They had been some +time in the house together, and this demonstration came late. +Preoccupied, however, as Maisie was with the idea of the sentiment +Sir Claude had inspired, and familiar, in addition, by Mrs. Wix's +anecdotes, with the ravages that in general such a sentiment could +produce, she was able to make allowances for her ladyship's +remarkable appearance, her violent splendour, the wonderful colour +of her lips and even the hard stare, the stare of some gorgeous +idol described in a story-book, that had come into her eyes in +consequence of a curious thickening of their already rich +circumference. Her professions and explanations were mixed with +eager challenges and sudden drops, in the midst of which Maisie +recognised as a memory of other years the rattle of her trinkets +and the scratch of her endearments, the odour of her clothes and +the jumps of her conversation. She had all her old clever +way—Mrs. Wix said it was "aristocratic"—of changing the subject +as she might have slammed the door in your face. The principal +thing that was different was the tint of her golden hair, which +had changed to a coppery red and, with the head it profusely +covered, struck the child as now lifted still further aloft. This +picturesque parent showed literally a grander stature and a nobler +presence, things which, with some others that might have been +bewildering, were handsomely accounted for by the romantic state +of her affections. It was her affections, Maisie could easily see, +that led Ida to break out into questions as to what had passed at +the other house between that horrible woman and Sir Claude; but it +was also just here that the little girl was able to recall the +effect with which in earlier days she had practised the pacific +art of stupidity. This art again came to her aid: her mother, in +getting rid of her after an interview in which she had achieved a +hollowness beyond her years, allowed her fully to understand she +had not grown a bit more amusing.</p> + +<p>She could bear that; she could bear anything that helped her to +feel she had done something for Sir Claude. If she hadn't told +Mrs. Wix how Mrs. Beale seemed to like him she certainly couldn't +tell her ladyship. In the way the past revived for her there was a +queer confusion. It was because mamma hated papa that she used to +want to know bad things of him; but if at present she wanted to +know the same of Sir Claude it was quite from the opposite motive. +She was awestruck at the manner in which a lady might be affected +through the passion mentioned by Mrs. Wix; she held her breath +with the sense of picking her steps among the tremendous things of +life. What she did, however, now, after the interview with her +mother, impart to Mrs. Wix was that, in spite of her having had +her "good" effect, as she called it—the effect she studied, the +effect of harmless vacancy—her ladyship's last words had been +that her ladyship's duty by her would be thoroughly done. Over +this announcement governess and pupil looked at each other in +silent profundity; but as the weeks went by it had no consequences +that interfered gravely with the breezy gallop of making up. Her +ladyship's duty took at times the form of not seeing her child for +days together, and Maisie led her life in great prosperity between +Mrs. Wix and kind Sir Claude. Mrs. Wix had a new dress and, as she +was the first to proclaim, a better position; so it all struck +Maisie as a crowded brilliant life, with, for the time, Mrs. Beale +and Susan Ash simply "left out" like children not invited to a +Christmas party. Mrs. Wix had a secret terror which, like most of +her secret feelings, she discussed with her little companion, in +great solemnity, by the hour: the possibility of her ladyship's +coming down on them, in her sudden highbred way, with a school. +But she had also a balm to this fear in a conviction of the +strength of Sir Claude's grasp of the situation. He was too +pleased—didn't he constantly say as much?—with the good +impression made, in a wide circle, by Ida's sacrifices; and he +came into the schoolroom repeatedly to let them know how +beautifully he felt everything had gone off and everything would +go on.</p> + +<p>He disappeared at times for days, when his patient friends +understood that her ladyship would naturally absorb him; but he +always came back with the drollest stories of where he had been, a +wonderful picture of society, and even with pretty presents that +showed how in absence he thought of his home. Besides giving Mrs. +Wix by his conversation a sense that they almost themselves "went +out," he gave her a five-pound note and the history of France and +an umbrella with a malachite knob, and to Maisie both +chocolate-creams and story-books, besides a lovely greatcoat +(which he took her out all alone to buy) and ever so many games in +boxes, with printed directions, and a bright red frame for the +protection of his famous photograph. The games were, as he said, +to while away the evening hour; and the evening hour indeed often +passed in futile attempts on Mrs. Wix's part to master what "it +said" on the papers. When he asked the pair how they liked the +games they always replied "Oh immensely!" but they had earnest +discussions as to whether they hadn't better appeal to him frankly +for aid to understand them. This was a course their delicacy +shrank from; they couldn't have told exactly why, but it was a +part of their tenderness for him not to let him think they had +trouble. What dazzled most was his kindness to Mrs. Wix, not only +the five-pound note and the "not forgetting" her, but the perfect +consideration, as she called it with an air to which her sounding +of the words gave the only grandeur Maisie was to have seen her +wear save on a certain occasion hereafter to be described, an +occasion when the poor lady was grander than all of them put +together. He shook hands with her, he recognised her, as she said, +and above all, more than once, he took her, with his stepdaughter, +to the pantomime and, in the crowd, coming out, publicly gave her +his arm. When he met them in sunny Piccadilly he made merry and +turned and walked with them, heroically suppressing his +consciousness of the stamp of his company, a heroism +that—needless for Mrs. Wix to sound <i>those</i> words—her +ladyship, though a blood-relation, was little enough the woman +to be capable of. Even to the hard heart of childhood there was +something tragic in such elation at such humanities: it brought +home to Maisie the way her humble companion had sidled and +ducked through life. But it settled the question of the degree +to which Sir Claude was a gentleman: he was more of one than +anybody else in the world—"I don't care," Mrs. Wix +repeatedly remarked, "whom you may meet in +grand society, nor even to whom you may be contracted in +marriage." There were questions that Maisie never asked; so her +governess was spared the embarrassment of telling her if he were +more of a gentleman than papa. This was not moreover from the want +of opportunity, for there were no moments between them at which +the topic could be irrelevant, no subject they were going into, +not even the principal dates or the auxiliary verbs, in which it +was further off than the turn of the page. The answer on the +winter nights to the puzzle of cards and counters and little +bewildering pamphlets was just to draw up to the fire and talk +about him; and if the truth must be told this edifying interchange +constituted for the time the little girl's chief education.</p> + +<p>It must also be admitted that he took them far, further perhaps +than was always warranted by the old-fashioned conscience, the dingy +decencies, of Maisie's simple instructress. There were hours when +Mrs. Wix sighingly testified to the scruples she surmounted, +seemed to ask what other line one <i>could</i> take with a young +person whose experience had been, as it were, so peculiar. "It isn't +as if you didn't already know everything, is it, love?" and "I can't +make you any worse than you <i>are</i>, can I, darling?"—these were +the terms in which the good lady justified to herself and her pupil +her pleasant conversational ease. What the pupil already knew was +indeed rather taken for granted than expressed, but it performed +the useful function of transcending all textbooks and supplanting +all studies. If the child couldn't be worse it was a comfort even +to herself that she was bad—a comfort offering a broad firm +support to the fundamental fact of the present crisis: the fact +that mamma was fearfully jealous. This was another side of the +circumstance of mamma's passion, and the deep couple in the +schoolroom were not long in working round to it. It brought them +face to face with the idea of the inconvenience suffered by any +lady who marries a gentleman producing on other ladies the +charming effect of Sir Claude. That such ladies wouldn't be able +to help falling in love with him was a reflexion naturally +irritating to his wife. One day when some accident, some crash of +a banged door or some scurry of a scared maid, had rendered this +truth particularly vivid, Maisie, receptive and profound, suddenly +said to her companion: "And you, my dear, are you in love with him +too?" Even her profundity had left a margin for a laugh; so she +was a trifle startled by the solemn promptitude with which Mrs. +Wix plumped out: "Over head and ears. I've <i>never</i> since you +ask me, been so far gone."</p> + +<p>This boldness had none the less no effect of deterrence for her +when, a few days later—it was because several had elapsed without +a visit from Sir Claude—her governess turned the tables. "May I +ask you, miss, if <i>you</i> are?" Mrs. Wix brought it out, she +could see, with hesitation, but clearly intending a joke. "Why +<i>rather</i>!" the child made answer, as if in surprise +at not having long ago seemed sufficiently to commit +herself; on which her friend gave a sigh of apparent +satisfaction. It might in fact have expressed positive +relief. Everything was as it should be.</p> + +<p>Yet it was not with them, they were very sure, that her ladyship +was furious, nor because she had forbidden it that there befell at +last a period—six months brought it round—when for days together +he scarcely came near them. He was "off," and Ida was "off," and +they were sometimes off together and sometimes apart; there were +seasons when the simple students had the house to themselves, when +the very servants seemed also to be "off" and dinner became a +reckless forage in pantries and sideboards. Mrs. Wix reminded her +disciple on such occasions—hungry moments often, when all the +support of the reminder was required—that the "real life" of +their companions, the brilliant society in which it was inevitable +they should move and the complicated pleasures in which it was +almost presumptuous of the mind to follow them, must offer +features literally not to be imagined without being seen. At one +of these times Maisie found her opening it out that, though the +difficulties were many, it was Mrs. Beale who had now become the +chief. Then somehow it was brought fully to the child's knowledge +that her stepmother had been making attempts to see her, that her +mother had deeply resented it, that her stepfather had backed her +stepmother up, that the latter had pretended to be acting as the +representative of her father, and that her mother took the whole +thing, in plain terms, very hard. The situation was, as Mrs. Wix +declared, an extraordinary muddle to be sure. Her account of it +brought back to Maisie the happy vision of the way Sir Claude and +Mrs. Beale had made acquaintance—an incident to which, with her +stepfather, though she had had little to say about it to Mrs. Wix, +she had during the first weeks of her stay at her mother's found +more than one opportunity to revert. As to what had taken place +the day Sir Claude came for her, she had been vaguely grateful to +Mrs. Wix for not attempting, as her mother had attempted, to put +her through. That was what Sir Claude had called the process when +he warned her of it, and again afterwards when he told her she was +an awfully good "chap" for having foiled it. Then it was that, +well aware Mrs. Beale hadn't in the least really given her up, she +had asked him if he remained in communication with her and if for +the time everything must really be held to be at an end between +her stepmother and herself. This conversation had occurred in +consequence of his one day popping into the schoolroom and finding +Maisie alone.</p> + + +<p> <a name="10"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>X<br /> </h3> + + +<p>He was smoking a cigarette and he stood before the fire and looked +at the meagre appointments of the room in a way that made her +rather ashamed of them. Then before (on the subject of Mrs. Beale) +he let her "draw" him—that was another of his words; it was +astonishing how many she gathered in—he remarked that really +mamma kept them rather low on the question of decorations. Mrs. +Wix had put up a Japanese fan and two rather grim texts; she had +wished they were gayer, but they were all she happened to have. +Without Sir Claude's photograph, however, the place would have +been, as he said, as dull as a cold dinner. He had said as well +that there were all sorts of things they ought to have; yet +governess and pupil, it had to be admitted, were still divided +between discussing the places where any sort of thing would look +best if any sort of thing should ever come and acknowledging that +mutability in the child's career which was naturally unfavourable +to accumulation. She stayed long enough only to miss things, not +half long enough to deserve them. The way Sir Claude looked about +the schoolroom had made her feel with humility as if it were not +very different from the shabby attic in which she had visited +Susan Ash. Then he had said in abrupt reference to Mrs. Beale: "Do +you think she really cares for you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh awfully!" Maisie had replied.</p> + +<p>"But, I mean, does she love you for yourself, as they call it, +don't you know? Is she as fond of you, now, as Mrs. Wix?"</p> + +<p>The child turned it over. "Oh I'm not every bit Mrs. Beale has!"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude seemed much amused at this. "No; you're not every bit +she has!"</p> + +<p>He laughed for some moments, but that was an old story to Maisie, +who was not too much disconcerted to go on: "But she'll never give +me up."</p> + +<p>"Well, I won't either, old boy: so that's not so wonderful, and +she's not the only one. But if she's so fond of you, why doesn't +she write to you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh on account of mamma." This was rudimentary, and she was almost +surprised at the simplicity of Sir Claude's question.</p> + +<p>"I see—that's quite right," he answered. "She might get at +you—there are all sorts of ways. But of course there's Mrs. Wix."</p> + +<p>"There's Mrs. Wix," Maisie lucidly concurred. "Mrs. Wix can't +abide her."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude seemed interested. "Oh she can't abide her? Then what +does she say about her?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing at all—because she knows I shouldn't like it. Isn't it +sweet of her?" the child asked.</p> + +<p>"Certainly; rather nice. Mrs. Beale wouldn't hold her tongue for +any such thing as that, would she?"</p> + +<p>Maisie remembered how little she had done so; but she desired to +protect Mrs. Beale too. The only protection she could think of, +however, was the plea: "Oh at papa's, you know, they don't mind!"</p> + +<p>At this Sir Claude only smiled. "No, I dare say not. But here we +mind, don't we?—we take care what we say. I don't suppose it's a +matter on which I ought to prejudice you," he went on; "but I +think we must on the whole be rather nicer here than at your +father's. However, I don't press that; for it's the sort of +question on which it's awfully awkward for you to speak. Don't +worry, at any rate: I assure you I'll back you up." Then after a +moment and while he smoked he reverted to Mrs. Beale and the +child's first enquiry. "I'm afraid we can't do much for her just +now. I haven't seen her since that day—upon my word I haven't +seen her." The next instant, with a laugh the least bit foolish, +the young man slightly coloured: he must have felt this profession +of innocence to be excessive as addressed to Maisie. It was +inevitable to say to her, however, that of course her mother +loathed the lady of the other house. He couldn't go there again +with his wife's consent, and he wasn't the man—he begged her to +believe, falling once more, in spite of himself, into the scruple +of showing the child he didn't trip—to go there without it. He +was liable in talking with her to take the tone of her being also +a man of the world. He had gone to Mrs. Beale's to fetch away +Maisie, but that was altogether different. Now that she was in her +mother's house what pretext had he to give her mother for paying +calls on her father's wife? And of course Mrs. Beale couldn't come +to Ida's—Ida would tear her limb from limb. Maisie, with this +talk of pretexts, remembered how much Mrs. Beale had made of her +being a good one, and how, for such a function, it was her fate +to be either much depended on or much missed. Sir Claude moreover +recognised on this occasion that perhaps things would take a turn +later on; and he wound up by saying: "I'm sure she does sincerely +care for you—how can she possibly help it? She's very young and +very pretty and very clever: I think she's charming. But we must +walk very straight. If you'll help me, you know, I'll help +<i>you</i>," he concluded in the pleasant fraternising, +equalising, not a bit patronising way which made the child ready +to go through anything for him and the beauty of which, as she +dimly felt, was that it was so much less a deceitful descent to +her years than a real indifference to them.</p> + +<p>It gave her moments of secret rapture—moments of believing she +might help him indeed. The only mystification in this was the +imposing time of life that her elders spoke of as youth. For Sir +Claude then Mrs. Beale was "young," just as for Mrs. Wix Sir +Claude was: that was one of the merits for which Mrs. Wix most +commended him. What therefore was Maisie herself, and, in another +relation to the matter, what therefore was mamma? It took her some +time to puzzle out with the aid of an experiment or two that it +wouldn't do to talk about mamma's youth. She even went so far one +day, in the presence of that lady's thick colour and marked lines, +as to wonder if it would occur to any one but herself to do so. +Yet if she wasn't young then she was old; and this threw an odd +light on her having a husband of a different generation. Mr. +Farange was still older—that Maisie perfectly knew; and it +brought her in due course to the perception of how much more, +since Mrs. Beale was younger than Sir Claude, papa must be older +than Mrs. Beale. Such discoveries were disconcerting and even a +trifle confounding: these persons, it appeared, were not of the +age they ought to be. This was somehow particularly the case with +mamma, and the fact made her reflect with some relief on her not +having gone with Mrs. Wix into the question of Sir Claude's +attachment to his wife. She was conscious that in confining their +attention to the state of her ladyship's own affections they had +been controlled—Mrs. Wix perhaps in especial—by delicacy and +even by embarrassment. The end of her colloquy with her stepfather +in the schoolroom was her saying: "Then if we're not to see Mrs. +Beale at all it isn't what she seemed to think when you came for +me."</p> + +<p>He looked rather blank. "What did she seem to think?"</p> + +<p>"Why that I've brought you together."</p> + +<p>"She thought that?" Sir Claude asked.</p> + +<p>Maisie was surprised at his already forgetting it. "Just as I had +brought papa and her. Don't you remember she said so?"</p> + +<p>It came back to Sir Claude in a peal of laughter. "Oh yes—she +said so!"</p> + +<p>"And <i>you</i> said so," Maisie lucidly pursued.</p> + +<p>He recovered, with increasing mirth, the whole occasion. "And +<i>you</i> said so!" he retorted as if they were playing a game.</p> + +<p>"Then were we all mistaken?"</p> + +<p>He considered a little. "No, on the whole not. I dare say it's +just what you <i>have</i> done. We <i>are</i> together—it's really +most odd. She's thinking of us—of you and me—though we don't +meet. And I've no doubt you'll find it will be all right when you +go back to her."</p> + +<p>"Am I going back to her?" Maisie brought out with a little gasp +which was like a sudden clutch of the happy present.</p> + +<p>It appeared to make Sir Claude grave a moment; it might have made +him feel the weight of the pledge his action had given. "Oh some +day, I suppose! We've plenty of time."</p> + +<p>"I've such a tremendous lot to make up," Maisie said with a sense +of great boldness.</p> + +<p>"Certainly, and you must make up every hour of it. Oh I'll +<i>see</i> that you do!"</p> + +<p>This was encouraging; and to show cheerfully that she was +reassured she replied: "That's what Mrs. Wix sees too."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," said Sir Claude; "Mrs. Wix and I are shoulder to +shoulder."</p> + +<p>Maisie took in a little this strong image; after which she +exclaimed: "Then I've done it also to you and her—I've brought +<i>you</i> together!"</p> + +<p>"Blest if you haven't!" Sir Claude laughed. "And more, upon my +word, than any of the lot. Oh you've done for <i>us</i>! Now if you +could—as I suggested, you know, that day—only manage me and your +mother!"</p> + +<p>The child wondered. "Bring you and <i>her</i> together?"</p> + +<p>"You see we're not together—not a bit. But I oughtn't to tell you +such things; all the more that you won't really do it—not you. +No, old chap," the young man continued; "there you'll break down. +But it won't matter—we'll rub along. The great thing is that you +and I are all right."</p> + +<p>"<i>We're</i> all right!" Maisie echoed devoutly. But the next +moment, in the light of what he had just said, she asked: "How +shall I ever leave you?" It was as if she must somehow take care +of him.</p> + +<p>His smile did justice to her anxiety. "Oh well, you needn't! It +won't come to that."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that when I do go you'll go with me?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude cast about. "Not exactly 'with' you perhaps; but I +shall never be far off."</p> + +<p>"But how do you know where mamma may take you?"</p> + +<p>He laughed again. "I don't, I confess!" Then he had an idea, +though something too jocose. "That will be for you to see—that +she shan't take me too far."</p> + +<p>"How can I help it?" Maisie enquired in surprise. "Mamma doesn't +care for me," she said very simply. "Not really." Child as she +was, her little long history was in the words; and it was as +impossible to contradict her as if she had been venerable.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude's silence was an admission of this, and still more the +tone in which he presently replied: "That won't prevent her +from—some time or other—leaving me with you."</p> + +<p>"Then we'll live together?" she eagerly demanded.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid," said Sir Claude, smiling, "that that will be Mrs. +Beale's real chance."</p> + +<p>Her eagerness just slightly dropped at this; she remembered Mrs. +Wix's pronouncement that it was all an extraordinary muddle. "To +take me again? Well, can't you come to see me there?"</p> + +<p>"Oh I dare say!"</p> + +<p>Though there were parts of childhood Maisie had lost she had all +childhood's preference for the particular promise. "Then you +<i>will</i> come—you'll come often, won't you?" she insisted; while +at the moment she spoke the door opened for the return of Mrs. Wix. +Sir Claude hereupon, instead of replying, gave her a look which left +her silent and embarrassed.</p> + +<p>When he again found privacy convenient, however—which happened to +be long in coming—he took up their conversation very much where +it had dropped. "You see, my dear, if I shall be able to go to you +at your father's it yet isn't at all the same thing for Mrs. Beale +to come to you here." Maisie gave a thoughtful assent to this +proposition, though conscious she could scarcely herself say just +where the difference would lie. She felt how much her stepfather +saved her, as he said with his habitual amusement, the trouble of +that. "I shall probably be able to go to Mrs. Beale's without your +mother's knowing it."</p> + +<p>Maisie stared with a certain thrill at the dramatic element in +this. "And she couldn't come here without mamma's—" She was +unable to articulate the word for what mamma would do.</p> + +<p>"My dear child, Mrs. Wix would tell of it."</p> + +<p>"But I thought," Maisie objected, "that Mrs. Wix and you—"</p> + +<p>"Are such brothers-in-arms?"—Sir Claude caught her up. "Oh yes, +about everything but Mrs. Beale. And if you should suggest," he +went on, "that we might somehow or other hide her peeping in from +Mrs. Wix—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't suggest <i>that</i>!" Maisie in turn cut him +short.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude looked as if he could indeed quite see why. "No; it +would really be impossible." There came to her from this glance at +what they might hide the first small glimpse of something in him +that she wouldn't have expected. There had been times when she had +had to make the best of the impression that she was herself +deceitful; yet she had never concealed anything bigger than a +thought. Of course she now concealed this thought of how strange +it would be to see <i>him</i> hide; and while she was so actively +engaged he continued: "Besides, you know, I'm not afraid of your +father."</p> + +<p>"And you are of my mother?"</p> + +<p>"Rather, old man!" Sir Claude returned.</p> + + +<p> <a name="11"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XI<br /> </h3> + + +<p>It must not be supposed that her ladyship's intermissions were not +qualified by demonstrations of another order—triumphal entries +and breathless pauses during which she seemed to take of +everything in the room, from the state of the ceiling to that of +her daughter's boot-toes, a survey that was rich in intentions. +Sometimes she sat down and sometimes she surged about, but her +attitude wore equally in either case the grand air of the +practical. She found so much to deplore that she left a great deal +to expect, and bristled so with calculation that she seemed to +scatter remedies and pledges. Her visits were as good as an +outfit; her manner, as Mrs. Wix once said, as good as a pair of +curtains; but she was a person addicted to extremes—sometimes +barely speaking to her child and sometimes pressing this tender +shoot to a bosom cut, as Mrs. Wix had also observed, remarkably +low. She was always in a fearful hurry, and the lower the bosom +was cut the more it was to be gathered she was wanted elsewhere. +She usually broke in alone, but sometimes Sir Claude was with her, +and during all the earlier period there was nothing on which these +appearances had had so delightful a bearing as on the way her +ladyship was, as Mrs. Wix expressed it, under the spell. "But +<i>isn't</i> she under it!" Maisie used in thoughtful but familiar +reference to exclaim after Sir Claude had swept mamma away in +peals of natural laughter. Not even in the old days of the +convulsed ladies had she heard mamma laugh so freely as in these +moments of conjugal surrender, to the gaiety of which even a +little girl could see she had at last a right—a little girl whose +thoughtfulness was now all happy selfish meditation on good omens +and future fun.</p> + +<p>Unaccompanied, in subsequent hours, and with an effect of changing +to meet a change, Ida took a tone superficially disconcerting and +abrupt—the tone of having, at an immense cost, made over +everything to Sir Claude and wishing others to know that if +everything wasn't right it was because Sir Claude was so +dreadfully vague. "He has made from the first such a row about +you," she said on one occasion to Maisie, "that I've told him to +do for you himself and try how he likes it—see? I've washed my +hands of you; I've made you over to him; and if you're +discontented it's on him, please, you'll come down. So don't haul +poor <i>me</i> up—I assure you I've worries enough." One of these, +visibly, was that the spell rejoiced in by the schoolroom fire was +already in danger of breaking; another was that she was finally +forced to make no secret of her husband's unfitness for real +responsibilities. The day came indeed when her breathless auditors +learnt from her in bewilderment that what ailed him was that he +was, alas, simply not serious. Maisie wept on Mrs. Wix's bosom +after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly; considering +moreover that her governess but half-patched it up in coming out +at various moments the next few days with the opinion that it was +proper to his "station" to be careless and free. That had been +proper to every one's station that she had yet encountered save +poor Mrs. Wix's own, and the particular merit of Sir Claude had +seemed precisely that he was different from every one. She talked +with him, however, as time went on, very freely about her mother; +being with him, in this relation, wholly without the fear that had +kept her silent before her father—the fear of bearing tales and +making bad things worse. He appeared to accept the idea that he +had taken her over and made her, as he said, his particular lark; +he quite agreed also that he was an awful fraud and an idle beast +and a sorry dunce. And he never said a word to her against her +mother—he only remained dumb and discouraged in the face of her +ladyship's own overtopping earnestness. There were occasions when +he even spoke as if he had wrenched his little charge from the +arms of a parent who had fought for her tooth and nail.</p> + +<p>This was the very moral of a scene that flashed into vividness one +day when the four happened to meet without company in the +drawing-room and Maisie found herself clutched to her mother's +breast and passionately sobbed and shrieked over, made the subject +of a demonstration evidently sequent to some sharp passage just +enacted. The connexion required that while she almost cradled the +child in her arms Ida should speak of her as hideously, as fatally +estranged, and should rail at Sir Claude as the cruel author of +the outrage. "He has taken you <i>from</i> me," she cried; "he has +set you <i>against</i> me, and you've been won away and your horrid +little mind has been poisoned! You've gone over to him, you've given +yourself up to side against me and hate me. You never open your +mouth to me—you know you don't; and you chatter to him like a +dozen magpies. Don't lie about it—I hear you all over the place. +You hang about him in a way that's barely decent—he can do what +he likes with you. Well then, let him, to his heart's content: he +has been in such a hurry to take you that we'll see if it suits +him to keep you. I'm very good to break my heart about it when +you've no more feeling for me than a clammy little fish!" She +suddenly thrust the child away and, as a disgusted admission of +failure, sent her flying across the room into the arms of Mrs. +Wix, whom at this moment and even in the whirl of her transit +Maisie saw, very red, exchange a quick queer look with Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>The impression of the look remained with her, confronting her with +such a critical little view of her mother's explosion that she +felt the less ashamed of herself for incurring the reproach with +which she had been cast off. Her father had once called her a +heartless little beast, and now, though decidedly scared, she was +as stiff and cold as if the description had been just. She was not +even frightened enough to cry, which would have been a tribute to +her mother's wrongs: she was only, more than anything else, +curious about the opinion mutely expressed by their companions. +Taking the earliest opportunity to question Mrs. Wix on this +subject she elicited the remarkable reply: "Well, my dear, it's +her ladyship's game, and we must just hold on like grim death."</p> + +<p>Maisie could interpret at her leisure these ominous words. Her +reflexions indeed at this moment thickened apace, and one of them +made her sure that her governess had conversations, private, +earnest and not infrequent, with her denounced stepfather. She +perceived in the light of a second episode that something beyond +her knowledge had taken place in the house. The things beyond her +knowledge—numerous enough in truth—had not hitherto, she +believed, been the things that had been nearest to her: she had +even had in the past a small smug conviction that in the domestic +labyrinth she always kept the clue. This time too, however, she at +last found out—with the discreet aid, it had to be confessed, of +Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude's own assistance was abruptly taken from her, +for his comment on her ladyship's game was to start on the spot, +quite alone, for Paris, evidently because he wished to show a +spirit when accused of bad behaviour. He might be fond of his +stepdaughter, Maisie felt, without wishing her to be after all +thrust on him in such a way; his absence therefore, it was clear, +was a protest against the thrusting. It was while this absence +lasted that our young lady finally discovered what had happened in +the house to be that her mother was no longer in love.</p> + +<p>The limit of a passion for Sir Claude had certainly been reached, +she judged, some time before the day on which her ladyship burst +suddenly into the schoolroom to introduce Mr. Perriam, who, as she +announced from the doorway to Maisie, wouldn't believe his ears that +one had a great hoyden of a daughter. Mr. Perriam was short and +massive—Mrs. Wix remarked afterwards that he was "too fat for the +pace"; and it would have been difficult to say of him whether his +head were more bald or his black moustache more bushy. He seemed also +to have moustaches over his eyes, which, however, by no means +prevented these polished little globes from rolling round the room as +if they had been billiard-balls impelled by Ida's celebrated stroke. +Mr. Perriam wore on the hand that pulled his moustache a diamond of +dazzling lustre, in consequence of which and of his general weight +and mystery our young lady observed on his departure that if he had +only had a turban he would have been quite her idea of a heathen +Turk.</p> + +<p>"He's quite my idea," Mrs. Wix replied, "of a heathen Jew."</p> + +<p>"Well, I mean," said Maisie, "of a person who comes from the +East."</p> + +<p>"That's where he <i>must</i> come from," her governess opined—"he +comes from the City." In a moment she added as if she knew all about +him. "He's one of those people who have lately broken out. He'll be +immensely rich."</p> + +<p>"On the death of his papa?" the child interestedly enquired.</p> + +<p>"Dear no—nothing hereditary. I mean he has made a mass of money."</p> + +<p>"How much, do you think?" Maisie demanded.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix reflected and sketched it. "Oh many millions."</p> + +<p>"A hundred?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix was not sure of the number, but there were enough of them +to have seemed to warm up for the time the penury of the +schoolroom—to linger there as an afterglow of the hot heavy light +Mr. Perriam sensibly shed. This was also, no doubt, on his part, +an effect of that enjoyment of life with which, among her elders, +Maisie had been in contact from her earliest years—the sign of +happy maturity, the old familiar note of overflowing cheer. "How +d'ye do, ma'am? How d'ye do, little miss?"—he laughed and nodded +at the gaping figures. "She has brought me up for a peep—it's +true I wouldn't take you on trust. She's always talking about you, +but she'd never produce you; so to-day I challenged her on the +spot. Well, you ain't a myth, my dear—I back down on that," the +visitor went on to Maisie; "nor you either, miss, though you might +be, to be sure!"</p> + +<p>"I bored him with you, darling—I bore every one," Ida said, "and +to prove that you <i>are</i> a sweet thing, as well as a fearfully +old one, I told him he could judge for himself. So now he sees that +you're a dreadful bouncing business and that your poor old Mummy's +at least sixty!"—and her ladyship smiled at Mr. Perriam with the +charm that her daughter had heard imputed to her at papa's by the +merry gentlemen who had so often wished to get from him what they +called a "rise." Her manner at that instant gave the child a +glimpse more vivid than any yet enjoyed of the attraction that +papa, in remarkable language, always denied she could put forth.</p> + +<p>Mr. Perriam, however, clearly recognised it in the humour with +which he met her. "I never said you ain't wonderful—did I ever +say it, hey?" and he appealed with pleasant confidence to the +testimony of the schoolroom, about which itself also he evidently +felt something might be expected of him. "So this is their little +place, hey? Charming, charming, charming!" he repeated as he +vaguely looked round. The interrupted students clung together as +if they had been personally exposed; but Ida relieved their +embarrassment by a hunch of her high shoulders. This time the +smile she addressed to Mr. Perriam had a beauty of sudden sadness. +"What on earth is a poor woman to do?"</p> + +<p>The visitor's grimace grew more marked as he continued to look, +and the conscious little schoolroom felt still more like a cage at +a menagerie. "Charming, charming, charming!" Mr. Perriam insisted; +but the parenthesis closed with a prompt click. "There you are!" +said her ladyship. "By-bye!" she sharply added. The next minute +they were on the stairs, and Mrs. Wix and her companion, at the +open door and looking mutely at each other, were reached by the +sound of the large social current that carried them back to their +life.</p> + +<p>It was singular perhaps after this that Maisie never put a +question about Mr. Perriam, and it was still more singular that by +the end of a week she knew all she didn't ask. What she most +particularly knew—and the information came to her, unsought, +straight from Mrs. Wix—was that Sir Claude wouldn't at all care +for the visits of a millionaire who was in and out of the upper +rooms. How little he would care was proved by the fact that under +the sense of them Mrs. Wix's discretion broke down altogether; she +was capable of a transfer of allegiance, capable, at the altar of +propriety, of a desperate sacrifice of her ladyship. As against +Mrs. Beale, she more than once intimated, she had been willing to +do the best for her, but as against Sir Claude she could do +nothing for her at all. It was extraordinary the number of things +that, still without a question, Maisie knew by the time her +stepfather came back from Paris—came bringing her a splendid +apparatus for painting in water-colours and bringing Mrs. Wix, by +a lapse of memory that would have been droll if it had not been a +trifle disconcerting, a second and even a more elegant umbrella. +He had forgotten all about the first, with which, buried in as +many wrappers as a mummy of the Pharaohs, she wouldn't for the +world have done anything so profane as use it. Maisie knew above +all that though she was now, by what she called an informal +understanding, on Sir Claude's "side," she had yet not uttered a +word to him about Mr. Perriam. That gentleman became therefore a +kind of flourishing public secret, out of the depths of which +governess and pupil looked at each other portentously from the +time their friend was restored to them. He was restored in great +abundance, and it was marked that, though he appeared to have felt +the need to take a stand against the risk of being too roughly +saddled with the offspring of others, he at this period exposed +himself more than ever before to the presumption of having created +expectations.</p> + +<p>If it had become now, for that matter, a question of sides, there +was at least a certain amount of evidence as to where they all +were. Maisie of course, in such a delicate position, was on +nobody's; but Sir Claude had all the air of being on hers. If +therefore Mrs. Wix was on Sir Claude's, her ladyship on Mr. +Perriam's and Mr. Perriam presumably on her ladyship's, this left +only Mrs. Beale and Mr. Farange to account for. Mrs. Beale clearly +was, like Sir Claude, on Maisie's, and papa, it was to be +supposed, on Mrs. Beale's. Here indeed was a slight ambiguity, as +papa's being on Mrs. Beale's didn't somehow seem to place him +quite on his daughter's. It sounded, as this young lady thought it +over, very much like puss-in-the-corner, and she could only wonder +if the distribution of parties would lead to a rushing to and fro +and a changing of places. She was in the presence, she felt, of +restless change: wasn't it restless enough that her mother and her +stepfather should already be on different sides? That was the +great thing that had domestically happened. Mrs. Wix, besides, had +turned another face: she had never been exactly gay, but her +gravity was now an attitude as public as a posted placard. She +seemed to sit in her new dress and brood over her lost delicacy, +which had become almost as doleful a memory as that of poor Clara +Matilda. "It <i>is</i> hard for him," she often said to her +companion; and it was surprising how competent on this point Maisie +was conscious of being to agree with her. Hard as it was, however, +Sir Claude had never shown to greater advantage than in the gallant +generous sociable way he carried it off: a way that drew from Mrs. +Wix a hundred expressions of relief at his not having suffered it +to embitter him. It threw him more and more at last into the +schoolroom, where he had plainly begun to recognise that if he was +to have the credit of perverting the innocent child he might also +at least have the amusement. He never came into the place without +telling its occupants that they were the nicest people in the +house—a remark which always led them to say to each other "Mr. +Perriam!" as loud as ever compressed lips and enlarged eyes could +make them articulate. He caused Maisie to remember what she had +said to Mrs. Beale about his having the nature of a good nurse, +and, rather more than she intended before Mrs. Wix, to bring the +whole thing out by once remarking to him that none of her good +nurses had smoked quite so much in the nursery. This had no more +effect than it was meant to on his cigarettes: he was always +smoking, but always declaring that it was death to him not to lead +a domestic life.</p> + +<p>He led one after all in the schoolroom, and there were hours of +late evening, when she had gone to bed, that Maisie knew he sat +there talking with Mrs. Wix of how to meet his difficulties. His +consideration for this unfortunate woman even in the midst of them +continued to show him as the perfect gentleman and lifted the +subject of his courtesy into an upper air of beatitude in which +her very pride had the hush of anxiety. "He leans on me—he leans +on me!" she only announced from time to time; and she was more +surprised than amused when, later on, she accidentally found she +had given her pupil the impression of a support literally supplied +by her person. This glimpse of a misconception led her to be +explicit—to put before the child, with an air of mourning indeed +for such a stoop to the common, that what they talked about in the +small hours, as they said, was the question of his taking right +hold of life. The life she wanted him to take right hold of was +the public: "she" being, I hasten to add, in this connexion, not +the mistress of his fate, but only Mrs. Wix herself. She had +phrases about him that were full of easy understanding, yet full +of morality. "He's a wonderful nature, but he can't live like the +lilies. He's all right, you know, but he must have a high +interest." She had more than once remarked that his affairs were +sadly involved, but that they must get him—Maisie and she +together apparently—into Parliament. The child took it from her +with a flutter of importance that Parliament was his natural +sphere, and she was the less prepared to recognise a hindrance as +she had never heard of any affairs whatever that were not +involved. She had in the old days once been told by Mrs. Beale +that her very own were, and with the refreshment of knowing that +she <i>had</i> affairs the information hadn't in the least +overwhelmed her. It was true and perhaps a little alarming that she +had never heard of any such matters since then. Full of charm at any +rate was the prospect of some day getting Sir Claude in; especially +after Mrs. Wix, as the fruit of more midnight colloquies, once went +so far as to observe that she really believed it was all that was +wanted to save him. This critic, with these words, struck her +disciple as cropping up, after the manner of mamma when mamma talked, +quite in a new place. The child stared as at the jump of a kangaroo. +"Save him from what?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix debated, then covered a still greater distance. "Why just +from awful misery."</p> + + +<p> <a name="12"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>She had not at the moment explained her ominous speech, but the +light of remarkable events soon enabled her companion to read it. +It may indeed be said that these days brought on a high quickening +of Maisie's direct perceptions, of her sense of freedom to make +out things for herself. This was helped by an emotion +intrinsically far from sweet—the increase of the alarm that had +most haunted her meditations. She had no need to be told, as on +the morrow of the revelation of Sir Claude's danger she was told +by Mrs. Wix, that her mother wanted more and more to know why the +devil her father didn't send for her: she had too long expected +mamma's curiosity on this point to express itself sharply. Maisie +could meet such pressure so far as meeting it was to be in a +position to reply, in words directly inspired, that papa would be +hanged before he'd again be saddled with her. She therefore +recognised the hour that in troubled glimpses she had long +foreseen, the hour when—the phrase for it came back to her from +Mrs. Beale—with two fathers, two mothers and two homes, six +protections in all, she shouldn't know "wherever" to go. Such +apprehension as she felt on this score was not diminished by the +fact that Mrs. Wix herself was suddenly white with terror: a +circumstance leading Maisie to the further knowledge that this +lady was still more scared on her own behalf than on that of her +pupil. A governess who had only one frock was not likely to have +either two fathers or two mothers: accordingly if even with these +resources Maisie was to be in the streets, where in the name of +all that was dreadful was poor Mrs. Wix to be? She had had, it +appeared, a tremendous brush with Ida, which had begun and ended +with the request that she would be pleased on the spot to +"bundle." It had come suddenly but completely, this signal of +which she had gone in fear. The companions confessed to each other +the dread each had hidden the worst of, but Mrs. Wix was better +off than Maisie in having a plan of defence. She declined indeed +to communicate it till it was quite mature; but meanwhile, she +hastened to declare, her feet were firm in the schoolroom. They +could only be loosened by force: she would "leave" for the police +perhaps, but she wouldn't leave for mere outrage. That would be to +play her ladyship's game, and it would take another turn of the +screw to make her desert her darling. Her ladyship had come down +with extraordinary violence: it had been one of many symptoms of a +situation strained—"between them all," as Mrs. Wix said, "but +especially between the two"—to the point of God only knew what.</p> + +<p>Her description of the crisis made the child blanch. "Between +which two?—papa and mamma?"</p> + +<p>"Dear no. I mean between your mother and <i>him</i>."</p> + +<p>Maisie, in this, recognised an opportunity to be really deep. +"'Him'?—Mr. Perriam?"</p> + +<p>She fairly brought a blush to the scared face. "Well, my dear, I +must say what you <i>don't</i> know ain't worth mentioning. That it +won't go on for ever with Mr. Perriam—since I <i>must</i> meet +you—you can suppose? But I meant dear Sir Claude."</p> + +<p>Maisie stood corrected rather than abashed. "I see. But it's about +Mr. Perriam he's angry?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix waited. "He says he's not."</p> + +<p>"Not angry? He has told you so?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix looked at her hard. "Not about <i>him</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Then about some one else?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix looked at her harder. "About some one else."</p> + +<p>"Lord Eric?" the child promptly brought forth.</p> + +<p>At this, of a sudden, her governess was more agitated. "Oh why, +little unfortunate, should we discuss their dreadful names?"—and +she threw herself for the millionth time on Maisie's neck. It took +her pupil but a moment to feel that she quivered with insecurity, +and, the contact of her terror aiding, the pair in another instant +were sobbing in each other's arms. Then it was that, completely +relaxed, demoralised as she had never been, Mrs. Wix suffered her +wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her great bitterness +was that Ida had called her false, denounced her hypocrisy and +duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, her lying and +grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, <i>me</i>!" the poor woman wailed, +"who've seen what I've seen and gone through everything only to +cover her up and ease her off and smooth her down? If I've been an +'ipocrite it's the other way round: I've pretended, to him and to +her, to myself and to you and to every one, <i>not</i> to see! It +serves me right to have held my tongue before such horrors!"</p> + +<p>What horrors they were her companion forbore too closely to +enquire, showing even signs not a few of an ability to take them +for granted. That put the couple more than ever, in this troubled +sea, in the same boat, so that with the consciousness of ideas on +the part of her fellow mariner Maisie could sit close and wait. +Sir Claude on the morrow came in to tea, and then the ideas were +produced. It was extraordinary how the child's presence drew out +their full strength. The principal one was startling, but Maisie +appreciated the courage with which her governess handled it. It +simply consisted of the proposal that whenever and wherever they +should seek refuge Sir Claude should consent to share their +asylum. On his protesting with all the warmth in nature against +this note of secession she asked what else in the world was left +to them if her ladyship should stop supplies.</p> + +<p>"Supplies be hanged, my dear woman!" said their delightful friend. +"Leave supplies to me—I'll take care of supplies."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix rose to it. "Well, it's exactly because I knew you'd be +so glad to do so that I put the question before you. There's a way +to look after us better than any other. The way's just to come +along with us."</p> + +<p>It hung before Maisie, Mrs. Wix's way, like a glittering picture, +and she clasped her hands in ecstasy. "Come along, come along, +come along!"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude looked from his stepdaughter back to her governess. "Do +you mean leave this house and take up my abode with you?"</p> + +<p>"It will be the right thing—if you feel as you've told me you +feel." Mrs. Wix, sustained and uplifted, was now as clear as a +bell.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude had the air of trying to recall what he had told her; +then the light broke that was always breaking to make his face +more pleasant. "It's your happy thought that I shall take a house +for you?"</p> + +<p>"For the wretched homeless child. Any roof—over <i>our</i> +heads—will do for us; but of course for you it will have to be +something really nice."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude's eyes reverted to Maisie, rather hard, as she thought; +and there was a shade in his very smile that seemed to show +her—though she also felt it didn't show Mrs. Wix—that the +accommodation prescribed must loom to him pretty large. The next +moment, however, he laughed gaily enough. "My dear lady, you +exaggerate tremendously <i>my</i> poor little needs." Mrs. Wix had +once mentioned to her young friend that when Sir Claude called her +his dear lady he could do anything with her; and Maisie felt a +certain anxiety to see what he would do now. Well, he only addressed +her a remark of which the child herself was aware of feeling the +force. "Your plan appeals to me immensely; but of course—don't you +see—I shall have to consider the position I put myself in by leaving +my wife."</p> + +<p>"You'll also have to remember," Mrs. Wix replied, "that if you +don't look out your wife won't give you time to consider. Her +ladyship will leave <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"Ah my good friend, I do look out!" the young man returned while +Maisie helped herself afresh to bread and butter. "Of course if +that happens I shall have somehow to turn round; but I hope with +all my heart it won't. I beg your pardon," he continued to his +stepdaughter, "for appearing to discuss that sort of possibility +under your sharp little nose. But the fact is I <i>forget</i> half +the time that Ida's your sainted mother."</p> + +<p>"So do I!" said Maisie, her mouth full of bread and butter and to +put him the more in the right.</p> + +<p>Her protectress, at this, was upon her again. "The little desolate +precious pet!" For the rest of the conversation she was enclosed +in Mrs. Wix's arms, and as they sat there interlocked Sir Claude, +before them with his tea-cup, looked down at them in deepening +thought. Shrink together as they might they couldn't help, Maisie +felt, being a very large lumpish image of what Mrs. Wix required +of his slim fineness. She knew moreover that this lady didn't make +it better by adding in a moment: "Of course we shouldn't dream of +a whole house. Any sort of little lodging, however humble, would +be only too blest."</p> + +<p>"But it would have to be something that would hold us all," said +Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," Mrs. Wix concurred; "the whole point's our being +together. While you're waiting, before you act, for her ladyship +to take some step, our position here will come to an impossible +pass. You don't know what I went through with her for you +yesterday—and for our poor darling; but it's not a thing I can +promise you often to face again. She cast me out in horrible +language—she has instructed the servants not to wait on me."</p> + +<p>"Oh the poor servants are all right!" Sir Claude eagerly cried.</p> + +<p>"They're certainly better than their mistress. It's too dreadful +that I should sit here and say of your wife, Sir Claude, and of +Maisie's own mother, that she's lower than a domestic; but my +being betrayed into such remarks is just a reason the more for our +getting away. I shall stay till I'm taken by the shoulders, but +that may happen any day. What also may perfectly happen, you must +permit me to repeat, is that she'll go off to get rid of us."</p> + +<p>"Oh if she'll only do that!" Sir Claude laughed. "That would be +the very making of us!"</p> + +<p>"Don't say it—don't say it!" Mrs. Wix pleaded. "Don't speak of +anything so fatal. You know what I mean. We must all cling to the +right. You mustn't be bad."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude set down his tea-cup; he had become more grave and he +pensively wiped his moustache. "Won't all the world say I'm awful +if I leave the house before—before she has bolted? They'll say it +was my doing so that made her bolt."</p> + +<p>Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no +check to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that—if you've done it for +so high a motive? Think of the beauty of it," the good lady +pressed.</p> + +<p>"Of bolting with <i>you</i>?" Sir Claude ejaculated.</p> + +<p>She faintly smiled—she even faintly coloured. "So far from doing +you harm it will do you the highest good. Sir Claude, if you'll +listen to me, it will save you."</p> + +<p>"Save me from what?"</p> + +<p>Maisie, at this question, waited with renewed suspense for an +answer that would bring the thing to some finer point than their +companion had brought it to before. But there was on the contrary +only more mystification in Mrs. Wix's reply. "Ah from you know +what!"</p> + +<p>"Do you mean from some other woman!"</p> + +<p>"Yes—from a real bad one."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude at least, the child could see, was not mystified; so +little indeed that a smile of intelligence broke afresh in his +eyes. He turned them in vague discomfort to Maisie, and then +something in the way she met them caused him to chuck her +playfully under the chin. It was not till after this that he +good-naturedly met Mrs. Wix. "You think me much worse than I am."</p> + +<p>"If that were true," she returned, "I wouldn't appeal to you. I +do, Sir Claude, in the name of all that's good in you—and oh so +earnestly! We can help each other. What you'll do for our young +friend here I needn't say. That isn't even what I want to speak of +now. What I want to speak of is what you'll <i>get</i>—don't you +see?—from such an opportunity to take hold. Take hold of +<i>us</i>—take hold of <i>her</i>. Make her your duty—make her your +life: she'll repay you a thousand-fold!"</p> + +<p>It was to Mrs. Wix, during this appeal, that Maisie's +contemplation transferred itself: partly because, though her heart +was in her throat for trepidation, her delicacy deterred her from +appearing herself to press the question; partly from the coercion +of seeing Mrs. Wix come out as Mrs. Wix had never come before—not +even on the day of her call at Mrs. Beale's with the news of +mamma's marriage. On that day Mrs. Beale had surpassed her in +dignity, but nobody could have surpassed her now. There was in +fact at this moment a fascination for her pupil in the hint she +seemed to give that she had still more of that surprise behind. So +the sharpened sense of spectatorship was the child's main support, +the long habit, from the first, of seeing herself in discussion +and finding in the fury of it—she had had a glimpse of the game +of football—a sort of compensation for the doom of a peculiar +passivity. It gave her often an odd air of being present at her +history in as separate a manner as if she could only get at +experience by flattening her nose against a pane of glass. Such +she felt to be the application of her nose while she waited for +the effect of Mrs. Wix's eloquence. Sir Claude, however, didn't +keep her long in a position so ungraceful: he sat down and opened +his arms to her as he had done the day he came for her at her +father's, and while he held her there, looking at her kindly, but +as if their companion had brought the blood a good deal to his +face, he said:</p> + +<p>"Dear Mrs. Wix is magnificent, but she's rather too grand about +it. I mean the situation isn't after all quite so desperate or +quite so simple. But I give you my word before her, and I give it +to her before you, that I'll never, never, forsake you. Do you +hear that, old fellow, and do you take it in? I'll stick to you +through everything."</p> + +<p>Maisie did take it in—took it with a long tremor of all her +little being; and then as, to emphasise it, he drew her closer she +buried her head on his shoulder and cried without sound and +without pain. While she was so engaged she became aware that his +own breast was agitated, and gathered from it with rapture that +his tears were as silently flowing. Presently she heard a loud sob +from Mrs. Wix—Mrs. Wix was the only one who made a noise.</p> + +<p>She was to have made, for some time, none other but this, though +within a few days, in conversation with her pupil, she described +her intercourse with Ida as little better than the state of being +battered. There was as yet nevertheless no attempt to eject her by +force, and she recognised that Sir Claude, taking such a stand as +never before, had intervened with passion and with success. As +Maisie remembered—and remembered wholly without disdain—that he +had told her he was afraid of her ladyship, the little girl took +this act of resolution as a proof of what, in the spirit of the +engagement sealed by all their tears, he was really prepared to +do. Mrs. Wix spoke to her of the pecuniary sacrifice by which she +herself purchased the scant security she enjoyed and which, if it +was a defence against the hand of violence, yet left her exposed +to incredible rudeness. Didn't her ladyship find every hour of the +day some artful means to humiliate and trample upon her? There was +a quarter's salary owing her—a great name, even Maisie could +suspect, for a small matter; she should never see it as long as +she lived, but keeping quiet about it put her ladyship, thank +heaven, a little in one's power. Now that he was doing so much +else she could never have the grossness to apply for it to Sir +Claude. He had sent home for schoolroom consumption a huge frosted +cake, a wonderful delectable mountain with geological strata of +jam, which might, with economy, see them through many days of +their siege; but it was none the less known to Mrs. Wix that his +affairs were more and more involved, and her fellow partaker +looked back tenderly, in the light of these involutions, at the +expression of face with which he had greeted the proposal that he +should set up another establishment. Maisie felt that if their +maintenance should hang by a thread they must still demean +themselves with the highest delicacy. What he was doing was simply +acting without delay, so far as his embarrassments permitted, on +the inspiration of his elder friend. There was at this season a +wonderful month of May—as soft as a drop of the wind in a gale +that had kept one awake—when he took out his stepdaughter with a +fresh alacrity and they rambled the great town in search, as Mrs. +Wix called it, of combined amusement and instruction.</p> + +<p>They rode on the top of 'buses; they visited outlying parks; they +went to cricket-matches where Maisie fell asleep; they tried a +hundred places for the best one to have tea. This was his direct +way of rising to Mrs. Wix's grand lesson—of making his little +accepted charge his duty and his life. They dropped, under +incontrollable impulses, into shops that they agreed were too big, +to look at things that they agreed were too small, and it was +during these hours that Mrs. Wix, alone at home, but a subject of +regretful reference as they pulled off their gloves for +refreshment, subsequently described herself as least sheltered +from the blows her ladyship had achieved such ingenuity in +dealing. She again and again repeated that she wouldn't so much +have minded having her "attainments" held up to scorn and her +knowledge of every subject denied, hadn't she been branded as +"low" in character and tone. There was by this time no pretence on +the part of any one of denying it to be fortunate that her +ladyship habitually left London every Saturday and was more and +more disposed to a return late in the week. It was almost equally +public that she regarded as a preposterous "pose," and indeed as a +direct insult to herself, her husband's attitude of staying behind +to look after a child for whom the most elaborate provision had +been made. If there was a type Ida despised, Sir Claude +communicated to Maisie, it was the man who pottered about town of +a Sunday; and he also mentioned how often she had declared to him +that if he had a grain of spirit he would be ashamed to accept a +menial position about Mr. Farange's daughter. It was her +ladyship's contention that he was in craven fear of his +predecessor—otherwise he would recognise it as an obligation of +plain decency to protect his wife against the outrage of that +person's barefaced attempt to swindle her. The swindle was that +Mr. Farange put upon her the whole intolerable burden; "and even +when I pay for you myself," Sir Claude averred to his young +friend, "she accuses me the more of truckling and grovelling." It +was Mrs. Wix's conviction, they both knew, arrived at on +independent grounds, that Ida's weekly excursions were feelers for +a more considerable absence. If she came back later each week the +week would be sure to arrive when she wouldn't come back at all. +This appearance had of course much to do with Mrs. Wix's actual +valour. Could they but hold out long enough the snug little home +with Sir Claude would find itself informally established.</p> + + +<p> <a name="13"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XIII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>This might moreover have been taken to be the sense of a remark +made by her stepfather as—one rainy day when the streets were all +splash and two umbrellas unsociable and the wanderers had sought +shelter in the National Gallery—Maisie sat beside him staring +rather sightlessly at a roomful of pictures which he had mystified +her much by speaking of with a bored sigh as a "silly +superstition." They represented, with patches of gold and +cataracts of purple, with stiff saints and angular angels, with +ugly Madonnas and uglier babies, strange prayers and prostrations; +so that she at first took his words for a protest against +devotional idolatry—all the more that he had of late often come +with her and with Mrs. Wix to morning church, a place of worship +of Mrs. Wix's own choosing, where there was nothing of that sort; +no haloes on heads, but only, during long sermons, beguiling backs +of bonnets, and where, as her governess always afterwards +observed, he gave the most earnest attention. It presently +appeared, however, that his reference was merely to the +affectation of admiring such ridiculous works—an admonition that +she received from him as submissively as she received everything. +What turn it gave to their talk needn't here be recorded: the +transition to the colourless schoolroom and lonely Mrs. Wix was +doubtless an effect of relaxed interest in what was before them. +Maisie expressed in her own way the truth that she never went home +nowadays without expecting to find the temple of her studies empty +and the poor priestess cast out. This conveyed a full appreciation +of her peril, and it was in rejoinder that Sir Claude uttered, +acknowledging the source of that peril, the reassurance at which I +have glanced. "Don't be afraid, my dear: I've squared her." It +required indeed a supplement when he saw that it left the child +momentarily blank. "I mean that your mother lets me do what I want +so long as I let her do what <i>she</i> wants."</p> + +<p>"So you <i>are</i> doing what you want?" Maisie asked.</p> + +<p>"Rather, Miss Farange!"</p> + +<p>Miss Farange turned it over. "And she's doing the same?"</p> + +<p>"Up to the hilt!"</p> + +<p>Again she considered. "Then, please, what may it be?"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't tell you for the whole world."</p> + +<p>She gazed at a gaunt Madonna; after which she broke into a slow +smile. "Well, I don't care, so long as you do let her."</p> + +<p>"Oh you monster!"—and Sir Claude's gay vehemence brought him to +his feet.</p> + +<p>Another day, in another place—a place in Baker Street where at a +hungry hour she had sat down with him to tea and buns—he brought +out a question disconnected from previous talk. "I say, you know, +what do you suppose your father <i>would</i> do?"</p> + +<p>Maisie hadn't long to cast about or to question his pleasant eyes. +"If you were really to go with us? He'd make a great complaint."</p> + +<p>He seemed amused at the term she employed. "Oh I shouldn't mind a +'complaint'!"</p> + +<p>"He'd talk to every one about it," said Maisie.</p> + +<p>"Well, I shouldn't mind that either."</p> + +<p>"Of course not," the child hastened to respond. "You've told me +you're not afraid of him."</p> + +<p>"The question is are you?" said Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>Maisie candidly considered; then she spoke resolutely. "No, not of +papa."</p> + +<p>"But of somebody else?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly, of lots of people."</p> + +<p>"Of your mother first and foremost of course."</p> + +<p>"Dear, yes; more of mamma than of—than of—"</p> + +<p>"Than of what?" Sir Claude asked as she hesitated for a +comparison.</p> + +<p>She thought over all objects of dread. "Than of a wild elephant!" +she at last declared. "And you are too," she reminded him as he +laughed.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, I am too."</p> + +<p>Again she meditated. "Why then did you marry her?"</p> + +<p>"Just because I <i>was</i> afraid."</p> + +<p>"Even when she loved you?"</p> + +<p>"That made her the more alarming."</p> + +<p>For Maisie herself, though her companion seemed to find it droll, +this opened up depths of gravity. "More alarming than she is now?"</p> + +<p>"Well, in a different way. Fear, unfortunately, is a very big +thing, and there's a great variety of kinds."</p> + +<p>She took this in with complete intelligence. "Then I think I've +got them all."</p> + +<p>"You?" her friend cried. "Nonsense! You're thoroughly 'game.'"</p> + +<p>"I'm awfully afraid of Mrs. Beale," Maisie objected.</p> + +<p>He raised his smooth brows. "That charming woman?"</p> + +<p>"Well," she answered, "you can't understand it because you're not +in the same state."</p> + +<p>She had been going on with a luminous "But" when, across the +table, he laid his hand on her arm. "I <i>can</i> understand it," +he confessed. "I <i>am</i> in the same state."</p> + +<p>"Oh but she likes you so!" Maisie promptly pleaded.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude literally coloured. "That has something to do with it."</p> + +<p>Maisie wondered again. "Being liked with being afraid?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, when it amounts to adoration."</p> + +<p>"Then why aren't you afraid of <i>me</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Because with you it amounts to that?" He had kept his hand on her +arm. "Well, what prevents is simply that you're the gentlest +spirit on earth. Besides—" he pursued; but he came to a pause.</p> + +<p>"Besides—?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>should</i> be in fear if you were older—there! See—you +already make me talk nonsense," the young man added. "The question's +about your father. Is he likewise afraid of Mrs. Beale?"</p> + +<p>"I think not. And yet he loves her," Maisie mused.</p> + +<p>"Oh no—he doesn't; not a bit!" After which, as his companion +stared, Sir Claude apparently felt that he must make this oddity +fit with her recollections. "There's nothing of that sort +<i>now</i>."</p> + +<p>But Maisie only stared the more. "They've changed?"</p> + +<p>"Like your mother and me."</p> + +<p>She wondered how he knew. "Then you've seen Mrs. Beale +again?"</p> + +<p>He demurred. "Oh no. She has written to me," he presently +subjoined. "<i>She's</i> not afraid of your father either. No one at +all is—really." Then he went on while Maisie's little mind, with its +filial spring too relaxed from of old for a pang at this want of +parental majesty, speculated on the vague relation between Mrs. +Beale's courage and the question, for Mrs. Wix and herself, of a neat +lodging with their friend. "She wouldn't care a bit if Mr. Farange +should make a row."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean about you and me and Mrs. Wix? Why should she care? +It wouldn't hurt <i>her</i>."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude, with his legs out and his hand diving into his +trousers-pocket, threw back his head with a laugh just perceptibly +tempered, as she thought, by a sigh. "My dear stepchild, you're +delightful! Look here, we must pay. You've had five buns?"</p> + +<p>"How <i>can</i> you?" Maisie demanded, crimson under the eye of +the young woman who had stepped to their board. "I've had three."</p> + +<p>Shortly after this Mrs. Wix looked so ill that it was to be feared +her ladyship had treated her to some unexampled passage. Maisie +asked if anything worse than usual had occurred; whereupon the +poor woman brought out with infinite gloom: "He has been seeing +Mrs. Beale."</p> + +<p>"Sir Claude?" The child remembered what he had said. "Oh no—not +<i>seeing</i> her!"</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon. I absolutely know it." Mrs. Wix was as +positive as she was dismal.</p> + +<p>Maisie nevertheless ventured to challenge her. "And how, please, +do you know it?"</p> + +<p>She faltered a moment. "From herself. I've been to see her."</p> + +<p>Then on Maisie's visible surprise: "I went yesterday while you +were out with him. He has seen her repeatedly."</p> + +<p>It was not wholly clear to Maisie why Mrs. Wix should be prostrate +at this discovery; but her general consciousness of the way things +could be both perpetrated and resented always eased off for her +the strain of the particular mystery. "There may be some mistake. +He says he hasn't."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix turned paler, as if this were a still deeper ground for +alarm. "He says so?—he denies that he has seen her?"</p> + +<p>"He told me so three days ago. Perhaps she's mistaken," Maisie +suggested.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean perhaps she lies? She lies whenever it suits her, I'm +very sure. But I know when people lie—and that's what I've loved +in you, that <i>you</i> never do. Mrs. Beale didn't yesterday at any +rate. He <i>has</i> seen her."</p> + +<p>Maisie was silent a little. "He says not," she then repeated. +"Perhaps—perhaps—" Once more she paused.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean perhaps <i>he</i> lies?"</p> + +<p>"Gracious goodness, no!" Maisie shouted.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix's bitterness, however, again overflowed. "He does, he +does," she cried, "and it's that that's just the worst of it! +They'll take you, they'll take you, and what in the world will +then become of me?" She threw herself afresh upon her pupil and +wept over her with the inevitable effect of causing the child's +own tears to flow. But Maisie couldn't have told you if she had +been crying at the image of their separation or at that of Sir +Claude's untruth. As regards this deviation it was agreed between +them that they were not in a position to bring it home to him. +Mrs. Wix was in dread of doing anything to make him, as she said, +"worse"; and Maisie was sufficiently initiated to be able to +reflect that in speaking to her as he had done he had only wished +to be tender of Mrs. Beale. It fell in with all her inclinations +to think of him as tender, and she forbore to let him know that +the two ladies had, as <i>she</i> would never do, betrayed him.</p> + +<p>She had not long to keep her secret, for the next day, when she +went out with him, he suddenly said in reference to some errand he +had first proposed: "No, we won't do that—we'll do something else." +On this, a few steps from the door, he stopped a hansom and helped +her in; then following her he gave the driver over the top an +address that she lost. When he was seated beside her she asked him +where they were going; to which he replied "My dear child, you'll +see." She saw while she watched and wondered that they took the +direction of the Regent's Park; but she didn't know why he should +make a mystery of that, and it was not till they passed under a +pretty arch and drew up at a white house in a terrace from which +the view, she thought, must be lovely that, mystified, she +clutched him and broke out: "I shall see papa?"</p> + +<p>He looked down at her with a kind smile. "No, probably not. I +haven't brought you for that."</p> + +<p>"Then whose house is it?"</p> + +<p>"It's your father's. They've moved here."</p> + +<p>She looked about: she had known Mr. Farange in four or five +houses, and there was nothing astonishing in this except that it +was the nicest place yet. "But I shall see Mrs. Beale?"</p> + +<p>"It's to see her that I brought you."</p> + +<p>She stared, very white, and, with her hand on his arm, though they +had stopped, kept him sitting in the cab. "To leave me, do you +mean?"</p> + +<p>He could scarce bring it out. "It's not for me to say if you +<i>can</i> stay. We must look into it."</p> + +<p>"But if I do I shall see papa?"</p> + +<p>"Oh some time or other, no doubt." Then Sir Claude went on: "Have +you really so very great a dread of that?"</p> + +<p>Maisie glanced away over the apron of the cab—gazed a minute at +the green expanse of the Regent's Park and, at this moment +colouring to the roots of her hair, felt the full, hot rush of an +emotion more mature than any she had yet known. It consisted of an +odd unexpected shame at placing in an inferior light, to so +perfect a gentleman and so charming a person as Sir Claude, so +very near a relative as Mr. Farange. She remembered, however, her +friend's telling her that no one was seriously afraid of her +father, and she turned round with a small toss of her head. "Oh I +dare say I can manage him!"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude smiled, but she noted that the violence with which she +had just changed colour had brought into his own face a slight +compunctious and embarrassed flush. It was as if he had caught his +first glimpse of her sense of responsibility. Neither of them made +a movement to get out, and after an instant he said to her: "Look +here, if you say so we won't after all go in."</p> + +<p>"Ah but I want to see Mrs. Beale!" the child gently wailed.</p> + +<p>"But what if she does decide to take you? Then, you know, you'll +have to remain."</p> + +<p>Maisie turned it over. "Straight on—and give you up?"</p> + +<p>"Well—I don't quite know about giving me up."</p> + +<p>"I mean as I gave up Mrs. Beale when I last went to mamma's. I +couldn't do without you here for anything like so long a time as +that." It struck her as a hundred years since she had seen Mrs. +Beale, who was on the other side of the door they were so near and +whom she yet had not taken the jump to clasp in her arms.</p> + +<p>"Oh I dare say you'll see more of me than you've seen of Mrs. +Beale. It isn't in <i>me</i> to be so beautifully discreet," Sir +Claude said. "But all the same," he continued, "I leave the thing, +now that we're here, absolutely <i>with</i> you. You must settle it. +We'll only go in if you say so. If you don't say so we'll turn right +round and drive away."</p> + +<p>"So in that case Mrs. Beale won't take me?"</p> + +<p>"Well—not by any act of ours."</p> + +<p>"And I shall be able to go on with mamma?" Maisie asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh I don't say that!"</p> + +<p>She considered. "But I thought you said you had squared her?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude poked his stick at the splashboard of the cab. "Not, my +dear child, to the point she now requires."</p> + +<p>"Then if she turns me out and I don't come here—"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude promptly took her up. "What do I offer you, you +naturally enquire? My poor chick, that's just what I ask myself. I +don't see it, I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wix."</p> + +<p>His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wix saw. "You mean +<i>we</i> can't make a little family?"</p> + +<p>"It's very base of me, no doubt, but I can't wholly chuck your +mother."</p> + +<p>Maisie, at this, emitted a low but lengthened sigh, a slight sound +of reluctant assent which would certainly have been amusing to an +auditor. "Then there isn't anything else?"</p> + +<p>"I vow I don't quite see what there is."</p> + +<p>Maisie waited; her silence seemed to signify that she too had no +alternative to suggest. But she made another appeal. "If I come +here you'll come to see me?"</p> + +<p>"I won't lose sight of you."</p> + +<p>"But how often will you come?" As he hung fire she pressed him. +"Often and often?"</p> + +<p>Still he faltered. "My dear old woman—" he began. Then he paused +again, going on the next moment with a change of tone. "You're too +funny! Yes then," he said; "often and often."</p> + +<p>"All right!" Maisie jumped out. Mrs. Beale was at home, but not in +the drawing-room, and when the butler had gone for her the child +suddenly broke out: "But when I'm here what will Mrs. Wix do?"</p> + +<p>"Ah you should have thought of that sooner!" said her companion +with the first faint note of asperity she had ever heard him +sound.</p> + + +<p> <a name="14"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XIV<br /> </h3> + + +<p>Mrs Beale fairly swooped upon her and the effect of the whole hour +was to show the child how much, how quite formidably indeed, after +all, she was loved. This was the more the case as her stepmother, +so changed—in the very manner of her mother—that she really +struck her as a new acquaintance, somehow recalled more +familiarity than Maisie could feel. A rich strong expressive +affection in short pounced upon her in the shape of a handsomer, +ampler, older Mrs. Beale. It was like making a fine friend, and +they hadn't been a minute together before she felt elated at the +way she had met the choice imposed on her in the cab. There was a +whole future in the combination of Mrs. Beale's beauty and Mrs. +Beale's hug. She seemed to Maisie charming to behold, and also to +have no connexion at all with anybody who had once mended +underclothing and had meals in the nursery. The child knew one of +her father's wives was a woman of fashion, but she had always +dimly made a distinction, not applying that epithet without +reserve to the other. Mrs. Beale had since their separation +acquired a conspicuous right to it, and Maisie's first flush of +response to her present delight coloured all her splendour with +meanings that this time were sweet. She had told Sir Claude she +was afraid of the lady in the Regent's Park; but she had +confidence enough to break on the spot, into the frankest +appreciation. "Why, aren't you beautiful? Isn't she beautiful, Sir +Claude, <i>isn't</i> she?"</p> + +<p>"The handsomest woman in London, simply," Sir Claude gallantly +replied. "Just as sure as you're the best little girl!"</p> + +<p>Well, the handsomest woman in London gave herself up, with tender +lustrous looks and every demonstration of fondness, to a happiness +at last clutched again. There was almost as vivid a bloom in her +maturity as in mamma's, and it took her but a short time to give +her little friend an impression of positive power—an impression +that seemed to begin like a long bright day. This was a perception +on Maisie's part that neither mamma, nor Sir Claude, nor Mrs. Wix, +with their immense and so varied respective attractions, had +exactly kindled, and that made an immediate difference when the +talk, as it promptly did, began to turn to her father. Oh yes, Mr. +Farange was a complication, but she saw now that he wouldn't be +one for his daughter. For Mrs. Beale certainly he was an immense +one—she speedily made known as much; but Mrs. Beale from this +moment presented herself to Maisie as a person to whom a great +gift had come. The great gift was just for handling complications. +Maisie felt how little she made of them when, after she had +dropped to Sir Claude some recall of a previous meeting, he made +answer, with a sound of consternation and yet an air of relief, +that he had denied to their companion their having, since the day +he came for her, seen each other till that moment.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale could but vaguely pity it. "Why did you do anything so +silly?"</p> + +<p>"To protect your reputation."</p> + +<p>"From Maisie?" Mrs. Beale was much amused. "My reputation with +Maisie is too good to suffer."</p> + +<p>"But you believed me, you rascal, didn't you?" Sir Claude asked of +the child.</p> + +<p>She looked at him; she smiled. "Her reputation did suffer. I +discovered you had been here."</p> + +<p>He was not too chagrined to laugh. "The way, my dear, you talk of +that sort of thing!"</p> + +<p>"How should she talk," Mrs. Beale wanted to know, "after all this +wretched time with her mother?"</p> + +<p>"It was not mamma who told me," Maisie explained. "It was only +Mrs. Wix." She was hesitating whether to bring out before Sir +Claude the source of Mrs. Wix's information; but Mrs. Beale, +addressing the young man, showed the vanity of scruples.</p> + +<p>"Do you know that preposterous person came to see me a day or two +ago?—when I told her I had seen you repeatedly."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude, for once in a way, was disconcerted. "The old cat! She +never told me. Then you thought I had lied?" he demanded of +Maisie.</p> + +<p>She was flurried by the term with which he had qualified her +gentle friend, but she took the occasion for one to which she must +in every manner lend herself. "Oh I didn't mind! But Mrs. Wix +did," she added with an intention benevolent to her governess.</p> + +<p>Her intention was not very effective as regards Mrs. Beale. "Mrs. +Wix is too idiotic!" that lady declared.</p> + +<p>"But to you, of all people," Sir Claude asked, "what had she to +say?"</p> + +<p>"Why that, like Mrs. Micawber—whom she must, I think, rather +resemble—she will never, never, never desert Miss Farange."</p> + +<p>"Oh I'll make that all right!" Sir Claude cheerfully returned.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure I hope so, my dear man," said Mrs. Beale, while Maisie +wondered just how he would proceed. Before she had time to ask +Mrs. Beale continued: "That's not all she came to do, if you +please. But you'll never guess the rest."</p> + +<p>"Shall <i>I</i> guess it?" Maisie quavered.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why you're just the person! It must +be quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mother's. +Have you never seen women there crying to her to 'spare' the men +they love?"</p> + +<p>Maisie, wondering, tried to remember; but Sir Claude was freshly +diverted. "Oh they don't trouble about Ida! Mrs. Wix cried to you +to spare <i>me</i>?"</p> + +<p>"She regularly went down on her knees to me."</p> + +<p>"The darling old dear!" the young man exclaimed.</p> + +<p>These words were a joy to Maisie—they made up for his previous +description of Mrs. Wix. "And <i>will</i> you spare him?" she asked +of Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>Her stepmother, seizing her and kissing her again, seemed charmed +with the tone of her question. "Not an inch of him! I'll pick him +to the bone!"</p> + +<p>"You mean that he'll really come often?" Maisie pressed.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale turned lovely eyes to Sir Claude. "That's not for me to +say—its for him."</p> + +<p>He said nothing at once, however; with his hands in his pockets +and vaguely humming a tune—even Maisie could see he was a little +nervous—he only walked to the window and looked out at the +Regent's Park. "Well, he has promised," Maisie said. "But how will +papa like it?"</p> + +<p>"His being in and out? Ah that's a question that, to be frank with +you, my dear, hardly matters. In point of fact, however, Beale +greatly enjoys the idea that Sir Claude too, poor man, has been +forced to quarrel with your mother."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude turned round and spoke gravely and kindly. "Don't be +afraid, Maisie; you won't lose sight of me."</p> + +<p>"Thank you so much!" Maisie was radiant. "But what I meant—don't +you know?—was what papa would say to <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>"Oh I've been having that out with him," said Mrs. Beale. "He'll +behave well enough. You see the great difficulty is that, though +he changes every three days about everything else in the world, he +has never changed about your mother. It's a caution, the way he +hates her."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude gave a short laugh. "It certainly can't beat the way +she still hates <i>him</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Well," Mrs. Beale went on obligingly, "nothing can take the place +of that feeling with either of them, and the best way they can +think of to show it is for each to leave you as long as possible +on the hands of the other. There's nothing, as you've seen for +yourself, that makes either so furious. It isn't, asking so little +as you do, that you're much of an expense or a trouble; it's only +that you make each feel so well how nasty the other wants to be. +Therefore Beale goes on loathing your mother too much to have any +great fury left for any one else. Besides, you know, I've squared +him."</p> + +<p>"Oh Lord!" Sir Claude cried with a louder laugh and turning again +to the window.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> know how!" Maisie was prompt to proclaim. "By letting +him do what he wants on condition that he lets you also do it."</p> + +<p>"You're too delicious, my own pet!"—she was involved in another +hug. "How in the world have I got on so long without you? I've not +been happy, love," said Mrs. Beale with her cheek to the child's.</p> + +<p>"Be happy now!"—she throbbed with shy tenderness.</p> + +<p>"I think I shall be. You'll save me."</p> + +<p>"As I'm saving Sir Claude?" the little girl asked eagerly.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale, a trifle at a loss, appealed to her visitor, "Is she +really?"</p> + +<p>He showed high amusement at Maisie's question. "It's dear Mrs. +Wix's idea. There may be something in it."</p> + +<p>"He makes me his duty—he makes me his life," Maisie set forth to +her stepmother.</p> + +<p>"Why that's what <i>I</i> want to do!"—Mrs. Beale, so +anticipated, turned pink with astonishment.</p> + +<p>"Well, you can do it together. Then he'll <i>have</i> to +come!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale by this time had her young friend fairly in her lap and +she smiled up at Sir Claude. "Shall we do it together?"</p> + +<p>His laughter had dropped, and for a moment he turned his handsome +serious face not to his hostess, but to his stepdaughter. "Well, +it's rather more decent than some things. Upon my soul, the way +things are going, it seems to me the only decency!" He had the air +of arguing it out to Maisie, of presenting it, through an impulse +of conscience, as a connexion in which they could honourably see +her participate; though his plea of mere "decency" might well have +appeared to fall below her rosy little vision. "If we're not good +for <i>you</i>" he exclaimed, "I'll be hanged if I know who we shall +be good for!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale showed the child an intenser light. "I dare say you +<i>will</i> save us—from one thing and another."</p> + +<p>"Oh I know what she'll save <i>me</i> from!" Sir Claude roundly +asserted. "There'll be rows of course," he went on.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale quickly took him up. "Yes, but they'll be nothing—for +you at least—to the rows your wife makes as it is. I can bear +what <i>I</i> suffer—I can't bear what you go through."</p> + +<p>"We're doing a good deal for you, you know, young woman," Sir +Claude went on to Maisie with the same gravity.</p> + +<p>She coloured with a sense of obligation and the eagerness of her +desire it should be remarked how little was lost on her. "Oh I +know!"</p> + +<p>"Then you must keep us all right!" This time he laughed.</p> + +<p>"How you talk to her!" cried Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>"No worse than you!" he gaily answered.</p> + +<p>"Handsome is that handsome does!" she returned in the same spirit. +"You can take off your things," she went on, releasing Maisie.</p> + +<p>The child, on her feet, was all emotion. "Then I'm just to +stop—this way?"</p> + +<p>"It will do as well as any other. Sir Claude, to-morrow, will have +your things brought."</p> + +<p>"I'll bring them myself. Upon my word I'll see them packed!" Sir +Claude promised. "Come here and unbutton."</p> + +<p>He had beckoned his young companion to where he sat, and he helped +to disengage her from her coverings while Mrs. Beale, from a +little distance, smiled at the hand he displayed. "There's a +stepfather for you! I'm bound to say, you know, that he makes up +for the want of other people."</p> + +<p>"He makes up for the want of a nurse!" Sir Claude laughed. "Don't +you remember I told you so the very first time?"</p> + +<p>"Remember? It was exactly what made me think so well of you!"</p> + +<p>"Nothing would induce me," the young man said to Maisie, "to tell +you what made me think so well of <i>her</i>." Having divested the +child he kissed her gently and gave her a little pat to make her +stand off. The pat was accompanied with a vague sigh in which his +gravity of a moment before came back. "All the same, if you hadn't +had the fatal gift of beauty—"</p> + +<p>"Well, what?" Maisie asked, wondering why he paused. It was the +first time she had heard of her beauty.</p> + +<p>"Why, we shouldn't all be thinking so well of each other!"</p> + +<p>"He isn't speaking of personal loveliness—you've not <i>that</i> +vulgar beauty, my dear, at all," Mrs. Beale explained. "He's just +talking of plain dull charm of character."</p> + +<p>"Her character's the most extraordinary thing in all the world," +Sir Claude stated to Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>"Oh I know all about that sort of thing!"—she fairly bridled with +the knowledge.</p> + +<p>It gave Maisie somehow a sudden sense of responsibility from which +she sought refuge. "Well, you've got it too, 'that sort of +thing'—you've got the fatal gift: you both really have!" she +broke out.</p> + +<p>"Beauty of character? My dear boy, we haven't a pennyworth!" Sir +Claude protested.</p> + +<p>"Speak for yourself, sir!" she leaped lightly from Mrs. Beale. +"I'm good and I'm clever. What more do you want? For you, I'll +spare your blushes and not be personal—I'll simply say that +you're as handsome as you can stick together."</p> + +<p>"You're both very lovely; you can't get out of it!"—Maisie felt +the need of carrying her point. "And it's beautiful to see you +side by side."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude had taken his hat and stick; he stood looking at her a +moment. "You're a comfort in trouble! But I must go home and pack +you."</p> + +<p>"And when will you come back?—to-morrow, to-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"You see what we're in for!" he said to Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>"Well, I can bear it if you can."</p> + +<p>Their companion gazed from one of them to the other, thinking that +though she had been happy indeed between Sir Claude and Mrs. Wix +she should evidently be happier still between Sir Claude and Mrs. +Beale. But it was like being perched on a prancing horse, and she +made a movement to hold on to something. "Then, you know, shan't I +bid goodbye to Mrs. Wix?"</p> + +<p>"Oh I'll make it all right with her," said Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>Maisie considered. "And with mamma?"</p> + +<p>"Ah mamma!" he sadly laughed.</p> + +<p>Even for the child this was scarcely ambiguous; but Mrs. Beale +endeavoured to contribute to its clearness. "Your mother will +crow, she'll crow—"</p> + +<p>"Like the early bird!" said Sir Claude as she looked about for a +comparison.</p> + +<p>"She'll need no consolation," Mrs. Beale went on, "for having made +your father grandly blaspheme."</p> + +<p>Maisie stared. "Will he grandly blaspheme?" It was impressive, it +might have been out of the Bible, and her question produced a +fresh play of caresses, in which Sir Claude also engaged. She +wondered meanwhile who, if Mrs. Wix was disposed of, would +represent in her life the element of geography and anecdote; and +she presently surmounted the delicacy she felt about asking. +"Won't there be any one to give me lessons?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale was prepared with a reply that struck her as absolutely +magnificent. "You shall have such lessons as you've never had in +all your life. You shall go to courses."</p> + +<p>"Courses?" Maisie had never heard of such things.</p> + +<p>"At institutions—on subjects."</p> + +<p>Maisie continued to stare. "Subjects?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale was really splendid. "All the most important ones. +French literature—and sacred history. You'll take part in +classes—with awfully smart children."</p> + +<p>"I'm going to look thoroughly into the whole thing, you know." And +Sir Claude, with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of +assurance accompanied by a friendly wink.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Beale went much further. "My dear child, you shall attend +lectures."</p> + +<p>The horizon was suddenly vast and Maisie felt herself the smaller +for it. "All alone?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no; I'll attend them with you," said Sir Claude. "They'll +teach me a lot I don't know."</p> + +<p>"So they will me," Mrs. Beale gravely admitted. "We'll go with her +together—it will be charming. It's ages," she confessed to +Maisie, "since I've had any time for study. That's another sweet +way in which you'll be a motive to us. Oh won't the good she'll do +us be immense?" she broke out uncontrollably to Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>He weighed it; then he replied: "That's certainly our idea."</p> + +<p>Of this idea Maisie naturally had less of a grasp, but it inspired +her with almost equal enthusiasm. If in so bright a prospect there +would be nothing to long for it followed that she wouldn't long +for Mrs. Wix; but her consciousness of her assent to the absence +of that fond figure caused a pair of words that had often sounded +in her ears to ring in them again. It showed her in short what her +father had always meant by calling her mother a "low sneak" and +her mother by calling her father one. She wondered if she herself +shouldn't be a low sneak in learning to be so happy without Mrs. +Wix. What would Mrs. Wix do?—where would Mrs. Wix go? Before +Maisie knew it, and at the door, as Sir Claude was off, these +anxieties, on her lips, grew articulate and her stepfather had +stopped long enough to answer them. "Oh I'll square her!" he +cried; and with this he departed.</p> + +<p>Face to face with Mrs. Beale, Maisie, giving a sigh of relief, +looked round at what seemed to her the dawn of a higher order. +"Then <i>every one</i> will be squared!" she peacefully said. On +which her stepmother affectionately bent over her again.</p> + + +<p> <a name="15"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XV<br /> </h3> + + +<p>It was Susan Ash who came to her with the news: "He's downstairs, +miss, and he do look beautiful."</p> + +<p>In the schoolroom at her father's, which had pretty blue curtains, +she had been making out at the piano a lovely little thing, as +Mrs. Beale called it, a "Moonlight Berceuse" sent her through the +post by Sir Claude, who considered that her musical education had +been deplorably neglected and who, the last months at her +mother's, had been on the point of making arrangements for regular +lessons. She knew from him familiarly that the real thing, as he +said, was shockingly dear and that anything else was a waste of +money, and she therefore rejoiced the more at the sacrifice +represented by this composition, of which the price, five +shillings, was marked on the cover and which was evidently the +real thing. She was already on her feet. "Mrs. Beale has sent up +for me?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no—it's not that," said Susan Ash. "Mrs. Beale has been out +this hour."</p> + +<p>"Then papa!"</p> + +<p>"Dear no—not papa. You'll do, miss, all but them wandering +'airs," Susan went on. "Your papa never came 'ome at all," she +added.</p> + +<p>"Home from where?" Maisie responded a little absently and very +excitedly. She gave a wild manual brush to her locks.</p> + +<p>"Oh that, miss, I should be very sorry to tell you! I'd rather +tuck away that white thing behind—though I'm blest if it's my +work."</p> + +<p>"Do then, please. I know where papa was," Maisie impatiently +continued.</p> + +<p>"Well, in your place I wouldn't tell."</p> + +<p>"He was at the club—the Chrysanthemum. So!"</p> + +<p>"All night long? Why the flowers shut up at night, you know!" +cried Susan Ash.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't care"—he child was at the door. "Sir Claude asked +for me <i>alone</i>?"</p> + +<p>"The same as if you was a duchess."</p> + +<p>Maisie was aware on her way downstairs that she was now quite as +happy as one, and also, a moment later, as she hung round his neck, +that even such a personage would scarce commit herself more grandly. +There was moreover a hint of the duchess in the infinite point with +which, as she felt, she exclaimed: "And this is what you call coming +<i>often</i>?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude met her delightfully and in the same fine spirit. "My +dear old man, don't make me a scene—I assure you it's what every +woman I look at does. Let us have some fun—it's a lovely day: +clap on something smart and come out with me; then we'll talk it +over quietly."</p> + +<p>They were on their way five minutes later to Hyde Park, and +nothing that even in the good days at her mother's they had ever +talked over had more of the sweetness of tranquillity than his +present prompt explanations. He was at his best in such an office +and with the exception of Mrs. Wix the only person she had met in +her life who ever explained. With him, however, the act had an +authority transcending the wisdom of woman. It all came back—the +plans that always failed, all the rewards and bribes that she was +perpetually paying for in advance and perpetually out of pocket by +afterwards—the whole great stress to be dealt with introduced her +on each occasion afresh to the question of money. Even she herself +almost knew how it would have expressed the strength of his empire +to say that to shuffle away her sense of being duped he had only, +from under his lovely moustache, to breathe upon it. It was +somehow in the nature of plans to be expensive and in the nature +of the expensive to be impossible. To be "involved" was of the +essence of everybody's affairs, and also at every particular +moment to be more involved than usual. This had been the case with +Sir Claude's, with papa's, with mamma's, with Mrs. Beale's and +with Maisie's own at the particular moment, a moment of several +weeks, that had elapsed since our young lady had been +re-established at her father's. There wasn't "two-and-tuppence" +for anything or for any one, and that was why there had been no +sequel to the classes in French literature with all the smart +little girls. It was devilish awkward, didn't she see? to try, +without even the limited capital mentioned, to mix her up with a +remote array that glittered before her after this as the children +of the rich. She was to feel henceforth as if she were flattening +her nose upon the hard window-pane of the sweet-shop of knowledge. +If the classes, however, that were select, and accordingly the +only ones, were impossibly dear, the lectures at the +institutions—at least at some of them—were directly addressed to +the intelligent poor, and it therefore had to be easier still to +produce on the spot the reason why she had been taken to none. +This reason, Sir Claude said, was that she happened to be just +going to be, though they had nothing to do with that in now +directing their steps to the banks of the Serpentine. Maisie's own +park, in the north, had been nearer at hand, but they rolled +westward in a hansom because at the end of the sweet June days +this was the direction taken by every one that any one looked at. +They cultivated for an hour, on the Row and by the Drive, this +opportunity for each observer to amuse and for one of them indeed, +not a little hilariously, to mystify the other, and before the +hour was over Maisie had elicited, in reply to her sharpest +challenge, a further account of her friend's long absence.</p> + +<p>"Why I've broken my word to you so dreadfully—promising so +solemnly and then never coming? Well, my dear, that's a question +that, not seeing me day after day, you must very often have put to +Mrs. Beale."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," the child replied; "again and again."</p> + +<p>"And what has she told you?"</p> + +<p>"That you're as bad as you're beautiful."</p> + +<p>"Is that what she says?"</p> + +<p>"Those very words."</p> + +<p>"Ah the dear old soul!" Sir Claude was much diverted, and his +loud, clear laugh was all his explanation. Those were just the +words Maisie had last heard him use about Mrs. Wix. She clung to +his hand, which was encased in a pearl-grey glove ornamented with +the thick black lines that, at her mother's, always used to strike +her as connected with the way the bestitched fists of the long +ladies carried, with the elbows well out, their umbrellas upside +down. The mere sense of his grasp in her own covered the ground of +loss just as much as the ground of gain. His presence was like an +object brought so close to her face that she couldn't see round +its edges. He himself, however, remained showman of the spectacle +even after they had passed out of the Park and begun, under the +charm of the spot and the season, to stroll in Kensington Gardens. +What they had left behind them was, as he said, only a pretty bad +circus, and, through prepossessing gates and over a bridge, they +had come in a quarter of an hour, as he also remarked, a hundred +miles from London. A great green glade was before them, and high +old trees, and under the shade of these, in the fresh turf, the +crooked course of a rural footpath. "It's the Forest of Arden," +Sir Claude had just delightfully observed, "and I'm the banished +duke, and you're—what was the young woman called?—the artless +country wench. And there," he went on, "is the other girl—what's +her name, Rosalind?—and (don't you know?) the fellow who was +making up to her. Upon my word he <i>is</i> making up to her!"</p> + +<p>His allusion was to a couple who, side by side, at the end of the +glade, were moving in the same direction as themselves. These +distant figures, in their slow stroll (which kept them so close +together that their heads, drooping a little forward, almost +touched), presented the back of a lady who looked tall, who was +evidently a very fine woman, and that of a gentleman whose left +hand appeared to be passed well into her arm while his right, +behind him, made jerky motions with the stick that it grasped. +Maisie's fancy responded for an instant to her friend's idea that +the sight was idyllic; then, stopping short, she brought out with +all her clearness: "Why mercy—if it isn't mamma!"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude paused with a stare. "Mamma? But mamma's at Brussels."</p> + +<p>Maisie, with her eyes on the lady, wondered. "At Brussels?"</p> + +<p>"She's gone to play a match."</p> + +<p>"At billiards? You didn't tell me."</p> + +<p>"Of course I didn't!" Sir Claude ejaculated. "There's plenty I +don't tell you. She went on Wednesday."</p> + +<p>The couple had added to their distance, but Maisie's eyes more +than kept pace with them. "Then she has come back."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude watched the lady. "It's much more likely she never +went!"</p> + +<p>"It's mamma!" the child said with decision.</p> + +<p>They had stood still, but Sir Claude had made the most of his +opportunity, and it happened that just at this moment, at the end +of the vista, the others halted and, still showing only their +backs, seemed to stay talking. "Right you are, my duck!" he +exclaimed at last. "It's my own sweet wife!"</p> + +<p>He had spoken with a laugh, but he had changed colour, and Maisie +quickly looked away from him. "Then who is it with her?"</p> + +<p>"Blest if I know!" said Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>"Is it Mr. Perriam?"</p> + +<p>"Oh dear no—Perriam's smashed."</p> + +<p>"Smashed?"</p> + +<p>"Exposed—in the City. But there are quantities of others!" Sir +Claude smiled.</p> + +<p>Maisie appeared to count them; she studied the gentleman's back. +"Then is this Lord Eric?"</p> + +<p>For a moment her companion made no answer, and when she turned her +eyes again to him he was looking at her, she thought, rather +queerly. "What do you know about Lord Eric?"</p> + +<p>She tried innocently to be odd in return. "Oh I know more than you +think! Is it Lord Eric?" she repeated.</p> + +<p>"It maybe. Blest if I care!"</p> + +<p>Their friends had slightly separated and now, as Sir Claude spoke, +suddenly faced round, showing all the splendour of her ladyship +and all the mystery of her comrade. Maisie held her breath. +"They're coming!"</p> + +<p>"Let them come." And Sir Claude, pulling out his cigarettes, began +to strike a light.</p> + +<p>"We shall meet them!"</p> + +<p>"No. They'll meet <i>us</i>."</p> + +<p>Maisie stood her ground. "They see us. Just look."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude threw away his match. "Come straight on." The others, +in the return, evidently startled, had half-paused again, keeping +well apart. "She's horribly surprised and wants to slope," he +continued. "But it's too late."</p> + +<p>Maisie advanced beside him, making out even across the interval +that her ladyship was ill at ease. "Then what will she do?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude puffed his cigarette. "She's quickly thinking." He +appeared to enjoy it.</p> + +<p>Ida had wavered but an instant; her companion clearly gave her +moral support. Maisie thought he somehow looked brave, and he had +no likeness whatever to Mr. Perriam. His face, thin and rather +sharp, was smooth, and it was not till they came nearer that she +saw he had a remarkably fair little moustache. She could already +see that his eyes were of the lightest blue. He was far nicer than +Mr. Perriam. Mamma looked terrible from afar, but even under her +guns the child's curiosity flickered and she appealed again to Sir +Claude. "Is it—<i>is</i> it Lord Eric?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude smoked composedly enough. "I think it's the Count."</p> + +<p>This was a happy solution—it fitted her idea of a count. But what +idea, as she now came grandly on, did mamma fit?—unless that of +an actress, in some tremendous situation, sweeping down to the +footlights as if she would jump them. Maisie felt really so +frightened that before she knew it she had passed her hand into +Sir Claude's arm. Her pressure caused him to stop, and at the +sight of this the other couple came equally to a stand and, beyond +the diminished space, remained a moment more in talk. This, +however, was the matter of an instant; leaving the Count +apparently to come round more circuitously—an outflanking +movement, if Maisie had but known—her ladyship resumed the onset. +"What <i>will</i> she do now?" her daughter asked.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude was at present in a position to say: "Try to pretend +it's me."</p> + +<p>"You?"</p> + +<p>"Why that I'm up to something."</p> + +<p>In another minute poor Ida had justified this prediction, erect +there before them like a figure of justice in full dress. There +were parts of her face that grew whiter while Maisie looked, and +other parts in which this change seemed to make other colours +reign with more intensity. "What are you doing with my daughter?" +she demanded of her husband; in spite of the indignant tone of +which Maisie had a greater sense than ever in her life before of +not being personally noticed. It seemed to her Sir Claude also +grew pale as an effect of the loud defiance with which Ida twice +repeated this question. He put her, instead of answering it, an +enquiry of his own: "Who the devil have you got hold of <i>now</i>?" +and at this her ladyship turned tremendously to the child, glaring at +her as at an equal plotter of sin. Maisie received in petrifaction +the full force of her mother's huge painted eyes—they were like +Japanese lanterns swung under festal arches. But life came back to +her from a tone suddenly and strangely softened. "Go straight to +that gentleman, my dear; I've asked him to take you a few minutes. +He's charming—go. I've something to say to <i>this</i> +creature."</p> + +<p>Maisie felt Sir Claude immediately clutch her. "No, no—thank you: +that won't do. She's mine."</p> + +<p>"Yours?" It was confounding to Maisie to hear her speak quite as +if she had never heard of Sir Claude before.</p> + +<p>"Mine. You've given her up. You've not another word to say about +her. I have her from her father," said Sir Claude—a statement +that startled his companion, who could also measure its lively +action on her mother.</p> + +<p>There was visibly, however, an influence that made Ida consider; +she glanced at the gentleman she had left, who, having strolled +with his hands in his pockets to some distance, stood there with +unembarrassed vagueness. She directed to him the face that was +like an illuminated garden, turnstile and all, for the +frequentation of which he had his season-ticket; then she looked +again at Sir Claude. "I've given her up to her father to +<i>keep</i>—not to get rid of by sending about the town either +with you or with any one else. If she's not to mind me let +<i>him</i> come and tell me so. I decline to take it from another +person, and I like your pretending that with your humbug of +'interest' you've a leg to stand on. I know your game and have +something now to say to you about it."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude gave a squeeze of the child's arm. "Didn't I tell you +she'd have, Miss Farange?"</p> + +<p>"You're uncommonly afraid to hear it," Ida went on; "but if you +think she'll protect you from it you're mightily mistaken." She +gave him a moment. "I'll give her the benefit as soon as look at +you. Should you like her to know, my dear?" Maisie had a sense of +her launching the question with effect; yet our young lady was +also conscious of hoping that Sir Claude would declare that +preference. We have already learned that she had come to like +people's liking her to "know." Before he could reply at all, none +the less, her mother opened a pair of arms of extraordinary +elegance, and then she felt the loosening of his grasp. "My own +child," Ida murmured in a voice—a voice of sudden confused +tenderness—that it seemed to her she heard for the first time. +She wavered but an instant, thrilled with the first direct appeal, +as distinguished from the mere maternal pull, she had ever had +from lips that, even in the old vociferous years, had always been +sharp. The next moment she was on her mother's breast, where, amid +a wilderness of trinkets, she felt as if she had suddenly been +thrust, with a smash of glass, into a jeweller's shop-front, but +only to be as suddenly ejected with a push and the brisk +injunction: "Now go to the Captain!"</p> + +<p>Maisie glanced at the gentleman submissively, but felt the want of +more introduction. "The Captain?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude broke into a laugh. "I told her it was the Count."</p> + +<p>Ida stared; she rose so superior that she was colossal. "You're +too utterly loathsome," she then declared. "Be off!" she repeated +to her daughter.</p> + +<p>Maisie started, moved backward and, looking at Sir Claude, "Only +for a moment," she signed to him in her bewilderment. But he was +too angry to heed her—too angry with his wife; as she turned away +she heard his anger break out. "You damned old +b––––"—she couldn't quite hear all. It +was enough, it was too much: she fled before it, rushing even to +a stranger for the shock of such a change of tone.</p> + + +<p> <a name="16"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XVI<br /> </h3> + + +<p>As she met the Captain's light blue eyes the greatest marvel +occurred; she felt a sudden relief at finding them reply with +anxiety to the horror in her face. "What in the world has he +done?" He put it all on Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>"He has called her a damned old brute." She couldn't help bringing +that out.</p> + +<p>The Captain, at the same elevation as her ladyship, gaped wide; +then of course, like every one else, he was convulsed. But he +instantly caught himself up, echoing her bad words. "A damned old +brute—your mother?"</p> + +<p>Maisie was already conscious of her second movement. "I think she +tried to make him angry."</p> + +<p>The Captain's stupefaction was fine. "Angry—<i>she</i>? Why +she's an angel!"</p> + +<p>On the spot, as he said this, his face won her over; it was so +bright and kind, and his blue eyes had such a reflexion of some +mysterious grace that, for him at least, her mother had put forth. +Her fund of observation enabled her as she gazed up at him to +place him: he was a candid simple soldier; very grave—she came +back to that—but not at all terrible. At any rate he struck a +note that was new to her and that after a moment made her say: "Do +you like her very much?"</p> + +<p>He smiled down at her, hesitating, looking pleasanter and +pleasanter. "Let me tell you about your mother."</p> + +<p>He put out a big military hand which she immediately took, and +they turned off together to where a couple of chairs had been +placed under one of the trees. "She told me to come to you," +Maisie explained as they went; and presently she was close to him +in a chair, with the prettiest of pictures—the sheen of the lake +through other trees—before them, and the sound of birds, the +plash of boats, the play of children in the air. The Captain, +inclining his military person, sat sideways to be closer and +kinder, and as her hand was on the arm of her seat he put his own +down on it again to emphasise something he had to say that would +be good for her to hear. He had already told her how her mother, +from the moment of seeing her so unexpectedly with a person who +was—well, not at all the right person, had promptly asked him to +take charge of her while she herself tackled, as she said, the +real culprit. He gave the child the sense of doing for the time +what he liked with her; ten minutes before she had never seen him, +but she could now sit there touching him, touched and impressed by +him and thinking it nice when a gentleman was thin and +brown—brown with a kind of clear depth that made his +straw-coloured moustache almost white and his eyes resemble little +pale flowers. The most extraordinary thing was the way she didn't +appear just then to mind Sir Claude's being tackled. The Captain +wasn't a bit like him, for it was an odd part of the pleasantness +of mamma's friend that it resided in a manner in this friend's +having a face so informally put together that the only kindness +could be to call it funny. An odder part still was that it finally +made our young lady, to classify him further, say to herself that, +of all people in the world, he reminded her most insidiously of +Mrs. Wix. He had neither straighteners nor a diadem, nor, at least +in the same place as the other, a button; he was sun-burnt and +deep-voiced and smelt of cigars, yet he marvellously had more in +common with her old governess than with her young stepfather. What +he had to say to her that was good for her to hear was that her +poor mother (didn't she know?) was the best friend he had ever had +in all his life. And he added: "She has told me ever so much about +you. I'm awfully glad to know you."</p> + +<p>She had never, she thought, been so addressed as a young lady, not +even by Sir Claude the day, so long ago, that she found him with +Mrs. Beale. It struck her as the way that at balls, by delightful +partners, young ladies must be spoken to in the intervals of +dances; and she tried to think of something that would meet it at +the same high point. But this effort flurried her, and all she +could produce was: "At first, you know, I thought you were Lord +Eric."</p> + +<p>The Captain looked vague. "Lord Eric?"</p> + +<p>"And then Sir Claude thought you were the Count."</p> + +<p>At this he laughed out. "Why he's only five foot high and as red +as a lobster!" Maisie laughed, with a certain elegance, in +return—the young lady at the ball certainly would—and was on the +point, as conscientiously, of pursuing the subject with an +agreeable question. But before she could speak her companion +challenged her. "Who in the world's Lord Eric?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you know him?" She judged her young lady would say that +with light surprise.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean a fat man with his mouth always open?" She had to +confess that their acquaintance was so limited that she could only +describe the bearer of the name as a friend of mamma's; but a +light suddenly came to the Captain, who quickly spoke as knowing +her man. "What-do-you-call-him's brother, the fellow that owned +Bobolink?" Then, with all his kindness, he contradicted her flat. +"Oh dear no; your mother never knew <i>him</i>."</p> + +<p>"But Mrs. Wix said so," the child risked.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Wix?"</p> + +<p>"My old governess."</p> + +<p>This again seemed amusing to the Captain. "She mixed him up, your +old governess. He's an awful beast. Your mother never looked at +him."</p> + +<p>He was as positive as he was friendly, but he dropped for a minute +after this into a silence that gave Maisie, confused but +ingenious, a chance to redeem the mistake of pretending to know +too much by the humility of inviting further correction. "And +doesn't she know the Count?"</p> + +<p>"Oh I dare say! But he's another ass." After which abruptly, with +a different look, he put down again on the back of her own the +hand he had momentarily removed. Maisie even thought he coloured a +little. "I want tremendously to speak to you. You must never +believe any harm of your mother."</p> + +<p>"Oh I assure you I <i>don't</i>!" cried the child, blushing, +herself, up to her eyes in a sudden surge of deprecation of such +a thought.</p> + +<p>The Captain, bending his head, raised her hand to his lips with a +benevolence that made her wish her glove had been nicer. "Of +course you don't when you know how fond she is of <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"She's fond of me?" Maisie panted.</p> + +<p>"Tremendously. But she thinks you don't like her. You <i>must</i> +like her. She has had too much to put up with."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes—I know!" She rejoiced that she had never denied it.</p> + +<p>"Of course I've no right to speak of her except as a particular +friend," the Captain went on. "But she's a splendid woman. She has +never had any sort of justice."</p> + +<p>"Hasn't she?"—his companion, to hear the words, felt a thrill +altogether new.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I oughtn't to say it to you, but she has had everything +to suffer."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes—you can <i>say</i> it to me!" Maisie hastened to +profess.</p> + +<p>The Captain was glad. "Well, you needn't tell. It's all for +<i>you</i>—do you see?"</p> + +<p>Serious and smiling she only wanted to take it from him. "It's +between you and me! Oh there are lots of things I've never told!"</p> + +<p>"Well, keep this with the rest. I assure you she has had the most +infernal time, no matter what any one says to the contrary. She's +the cleverest woman I ever saw in all my life. She's too +charming." She had been touched already by his tone, and now she +leaned back in her chair and felt something tremble within her. +"She's tremendous fun—she can do all sorts of things better than +I've ever seen any one. She has the pluck of fifty—and I know; I +assure you I do. She has the nerve for a tiger-shoot—by Jove I'd +<i>take</i> her! And she is awfully open and generous, don't you +know? there are women that are such horrid sneaks. She'll go through +anything for any one she likes." He appeared to watch for a moment +the effect on his companion of this emphasis; then he gave a small +sigh that mourned the limits of the speakable. But it was almost +with the note of a fresh challenge that he wound up: "Look here, +she's <i>true</i>!"</p> + +<p>Maisie had so little desire to assert the contrary that she found +herself, in the intensity of her response, throbbing with a joy +still less utterable than the essence of the Captain's admiration. +She was fairly hushed with the sense that he spoke of her mother +as she had never heard any one speak. It came over her as she sat +silent that, after all, this admiration and this respect were +quite new words, which took a distinction from the fact that +nothing in the least resembling them in quality had on any +occasion dropped from the lips of her father, of Mrs. Beale, of +Sir Claude or even of Mrs. Wix. What it appeared to her to come to +was that on the subject of her ladyship it was the first real +kindness she had heard, so that at the touch of it something +strange and deep and pitying surged up within her—a revelation +that, practically and so far as she knew, her mother, apart from +this, had only been disliked. Mrs. Wix's original account of Sir +Claude's affection seemed as empty now as the chorus in a +children's game, and the husband and wife, but a little way off at +that moment, were face to face in hatred and with the dreadful +name he had called her still in the air. What was it the Captain +on the other hand had called her? Maisie wanted to hear that +again. The tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, which +burned under them with the rush of a consciousness that for her +too, five minutes before, the vivid towering beauty whose assault +she awaited had been, a moment long, an object of pure dread. She +became on the spot indifferent to her usual fear of showing what +in children was notoriously most offensive—presented to her +companion, soundlessly but hideously, her wet distorted face. She +cried, with a pang, straight <i>at</i> him, cried as she had never +cried at any one in all her life. "Oh do you love her?" she +brought out with a gulp that was the effect of her trying not to +make a noise.</p> + +<p>It was doubtless another consequence of the thick mist through +which she saw him that in reply to her question the Captain gave +her such a queer blurred look. He stammered, yet in his voice +there was also the ring of a great awkward insistence. "Of course +I'm tremendously fond of her—I like her better than any woman I +ever saw. I don't mind in the least telling you that," he went on, +"and I should think myself a great beast if I did." Then to show +that his position was superlatively clear he made her, with a +kindness that even Sir Claude had never surpassed, tremble again +as she had trembled at his first outbreak. He called her by her +name, and her name drove it home. "My dear Maisie, your mother's +an angel!"</p> + +<p>It was an almost unbelievable balm—it soothed so her impression +of danger and pain. She sank back in her chair, she covered her +face with her hands. "Oh mother, mother, mother!" she sobbed. She +had an impression that the Captain, beside her, if more and more +friendly, was by no means unembarrassed; in a minute, however, +when her eyes were clearer, he was erect in front of her, very red +and nervously looking about him and whacking his leg with his +stick. "Say you love her, Mr. Captain; say it, say it!" she +implored.</p> + +<p>Mr. Captain's blue eyes fixed themselves very hard. "Of course I +love her, damn it, you know!"</p> + +<p>At this she also jumped up; she had fished out somehow her +pocket-handkerchief. "So do I then. I do, I do, I do!" she +passionately asseverated.</p> + +<p>"Then will you come back to her?"</p> + +<p>Maisie, staring, stopped the tight little plug of her handkerchief +on the way to her eyes. "She won't have me."</p> + +<p>"Yes she will. She wants you."</p> + +<p>"Back at the house—with Sir Claude?"</p> + +<p>Again he hung fire. "No, not with him. In another place."</p> + +<p>They stood looking at each other with an intensity unusual as +between a Captain and a little girl. "She won't have me in any +place."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes she will if <i>I</i> ask her!"</p> + +<p>Maisie's intensity continued. "Shall you be there?"</p> + +<p>The Captain's, on the whole, did the same. "Oh yes—some day."</p> + +<p>"Then you don't mean now?"</p> + +<p>He broke into a quick smile. "Will you come now?—go with us for +an hour?"</p> + +<p>Maisie considered. "She wouldn't have me even now." She could see +that he had his idea, but that her tone impressed him. That +disappointed her a little, though in an instant he rang out again.</p> + +<p>"She will if I ask her," he repeated. "I'll ask her this minute."</p> + +<p>Maisie, turning at this, looked away to where her mother and her +stepfather had stopped. At first, among the trees, nobody was +visible; but the next moment she exclaimed with expression: "It's +over—here he comes!"</p> + +<p>The Captain watched the approach of her ladyship's husband, who +lounged composedly over the grass, making to Maisie with his +closed fingers a little movement in the air. "I've no desire to +avoid him."</p> + +<p>"Well, you mustn't see him," said Maisie.</p> + +<p>"Oh he's in no hurry himself!" Sir Claude had stopped to light +another cigarette.</p> + +<p>She was vague as to the way it was proper he should feel; but she +had a sense that the Captain's remark was rather a free reflexion +on it. "Oh he doesn't care!" she replied.</p> + +<p>"Doesn't care for what?"</p> + +<p>"Doesn't care who you are. He told me so. Go and ask mamma," she +added.</p> + +<p>"If you can come with us? Very good. You really want me not to +wait for him?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Please</i> don't." But Sir Claude was not yet near, and the +Captain had with his left hand taken hold of her right, which he +familiarly, sociably swung a little. "Only first," she continued, +"tell me this. Are you going to <i>live</i> with mamma?"</p> + +<p>The immemorial note of mirth broke out at her seriousness. "One of +these days."</p> + +<p>She wondered, wholly unperturbed by his laughter. "Then where will +Sir Claude be?"</p> + +<p>"He'll have left her of course."</p> + +<p>"Does he really intend to do that?"</p> + +<p>"You've every opportunity to ask him."</p> + +<p>Maisie shook her head with decision. "He won't do it. Not first."</p> + +<p>Her "first" made the Captain laugh out again. "Oh he'll be sure to +be nasty! But I've said too much to you."</p> + +<p>"Well, you know, I'll never tell," said Maisie.</p> + +<p>"No, it's all for yourself. Good-bye."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye." Maisie kept his hand long enough to add: "I like you +too." And then supremely: "You <i>do</i> love her?"</p> + +<p>"My dear child—!" The Captain wanted words.</p> + +<p>"Then don't do it only for just a little."</p> + +<p>"A little?"</p> + +<p>"Like all the others."</p> + +<p>"All the others?"—he stood staring.</p> + +<p>She pulled away her hand. "Do it always!" She bounded to meet Sir +Claude, and as she left the Captain she heard him ring out with +apparent gaiety:</p> + +<p>"Oh I'm in for it!"</p> + +<p>As she joined Sir Claude she noted her mother in the distance move +slowly off, and, glancing again at the Captain, saw him, swinging +his stick, retreat in the same direction.</p> + +<p>She had never seen Sir Claude look as he looked just then; flushed +yet not excited—settled rather in an immoveable disgust and at once +very sick and very hard. His conversation with her mother had clearly +drawn blood, and the child's old horror came back to her, begetting +the instant moral contraction of the days when her parents had looked +to her to feed their love of battle. Her greatest fear for the +moment, however, was that her friend would see she had been crying. +The next she became aware that he had glanced at her, and it +presently occurred to her that he didn't even wish to be looked at. +At this she quickly removed her gaze, while he said rather curtly: +"Well, who in the world <i>is</i> the fellow?"</p> + +<p>She felt herself flooded with prudence. "Oh <i>I</i> haven't +found out!" This sounded as if she meant he ought to have done so +himself; but she could only face doggedly the ugliness of seeming +disagreeable, as she used to face it in the hours when her father, +for her blankness, called her a dirty little donkey, and her +mother, for her falsity, pushed her out of the room.</p> + +<p>"Then what have you been doing all this time?"</p> + +<p>"Oh I don't know!" It was of the essence of her method not to be +silly by halves.</p> + +<p>"Then didn't the beast say anything?" They had got down by the +lake and were walking fast.</p> + +<p>"Well, not very much."</p> + +<p>"He didn't speak of your mother?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, a little!"</p> + +<p>"Then what I ask you, please, is <i>how</i>?" She kept +silence—so long that he presently went on: "I say, you know—don't +you hear me?" At this she produced: "Well, I'm afraid I didn't attend +to him very much."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude, smoking rather hard, made no immediate rejoinder; but +finally he exclaimed: "Then my dear—with such a chance—you were +the perfection of a dunce!" He was so irritated—or she took him +to be—that for the rest of the time they were in the Gardens he +spoke no other word; and she meanwhile subtly abstained from any +attempt to pacify him. That would only lead to more questions. At +the gate of the Gardens he hailed a four-wheeled cab and, in +silence, without meeting her eyes, put her into it, only saying +"Give him <i>that</i>" as he tossed half a crown upon the seat. Even +when from outside he had closed the door and told the man where to +go he never took her departing look. Nothing of this kind had ever +yet happened to them, but it had no power to make her love him +less; so she could not only bear it, she felt as she drove +away—she could rejoice in it. It brought again the sweet sense of +success that, ages before, she had had at a crisis when, on the +stairs, returning from her father's, she had met a fierce question +of her mother's with an imbecility as deep and had in consequence +been dashed by Mrs. Farange almost to the bottom.</p> + + +<p> <a name="17"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XVII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>If for reasons of her own she could bear the sense of Sir Claude's +displeasure her young endurance might have been put to a serious +test. The days went by without his knocking at her father's door, +and the time would have turned sadly to waste if something hadn't +conspicuously happened to give it a new difference. What took +place was a marked change in the attitude of Mrs. Beale—a change +that somehow, even in his absence, seemed to bring Sir Claude +again into the house. It began practically with a conversation +that occurred between them the day Maisie, came home alone in the +cab. Mrs. Beale had by that time returned, and she was more +successful than their friend in extracting from our young lady an +account of the extraordinary passage with the Captain. She came +back to it repeatedly, and on the very next day it grew distinct +to the child that she was already in full possession of what at +the same moment had been enacted between her ladyship and Sir +Claude. This was the real origin of her final perception that +though he didn't come to the house her stepmother had some rare +secret for not being quite without him. This led to some rare +passages with Mrs. Beale, the promptest of which had been—not on +Maisie's part—a wonderful outbreak of tears. Mrs. Beale was not, +as she herself said, a crying creature: she hadn't cried, to +Maisie's knowledge, since the lowly governess days, the grey dawn +of their connexion. But she wept now with passion, professing +loudly that it did her good and saying remarkable things to her +charge, for whom the occasion was an equal benefit, an addition to +all the fine precautionary wisdom stored away. It somehow hadn't +violated that wisdom, Maisie felt, for her to have told Mrs. Beale +what she had not told Sir Claude, inasmuch as the greatest strain, +to her sense, was between Sir Claude and Sir Claude's wife, and +his wife was just what Mrs. Beale was unfortunately not. He sent +his stepdaughter three days after the incident in Kensington +Gardens a message as frank as it was tender, and that was how Mrs. +Beale had had to bring out in a manner that seemed half an appeal, +half a defiance: "Well yes, hang it—I <i>do</i> see him!"</p> + +<p>How and when and where, however, were just what Maisie was not to +know—an exclusion moreover that she never questioned in the light of +a participation large enough to make him, while she shared the ample +void of Mrs. Beale's rather blank independence, shine in her yearning +eye like the single, the sovereign window-square of a great dim +disproportioned room. As far as her father was concerned such hours +had no interruption; and then it was clear between them that each was +thinking of the absent and thinking the other thought, so that he was +an object of conscious reference in everything they said or did. The +wretched truth, Mrs. Beale had to confess, was that she had hoped +against hope and that in the Regent's Park it was impossible Sir +Claude should really be in and out. Hadn't they at last to look the +fact in the face?—it was too disgustingly evident that no one after +all had been squared. Well, if no one had been squared it was because +every one had been vile. No one and every one were of course Beale +and Ida, the extent of whose power to be nasty was a thing that, to a +little girl, Mrs. Beale simply couldn't give chapter and verse for. +Therefore it was that to keep going at all, as she said, that lady +had to make, as she also said, another arrangement—the arrangement +in which Maisie was included only to the point of knowing it existed +and wondering wistfully what it was. Conspicuously at any rate it +had a side that was responsible for Mrs. Beale's sudden emotion and +sudden confidence—a demonstration this, however, of which the +tearfulness was far from deterrent to our heroine's thought of how +happy she should be if she could only make an arrangement for +herself. Mrs. Beale's own operated, it appeared, with regularity +and frequency; for it was almost every day or two that she was +able to bring Maisie a message and to take one back. It had been +over the vision of what, as she called it, he did for her that she +broke down; and this vision was kept in a manner before Maisie by +a subsequent increase not only of the gaiety, but literally—it +seemed not presumptuous to perceive—of the actual virtue of her +friend. The friend was herself the first to proclaim it: he had +pulled her up immensely—he had quite pulled her round. She had +charming tormenting words about him: he was her good fairy, her +hidden spring—above all he was just her "higher" conscience. That +was what had particularly come out with her startling tears: he +had made her, dear man, think ever so much better of herself. It +had been thus rather surprisingly revealed that she had been in a +way to think ill, and Maisie was glad to hear of the corrective at +the same time that she heard of the ailment.</p> + +<p>She presently found herself supposing, and in spite of her envy +even hoping, that whenever Mrs. Beale was out of the house Sir +Claude had in some manner the satisfaction of it. This was now of +more frequent occurrence than ever before—so much so that she +would have thought of her stepmother as almost extravagantly +absent had it not been that, in the first place, her father was a +superior specimen of that habit: it was the frequent remark of his +present wife, as it had been, before the tribunals of their +country, a prominent plea of her predecessor, that he scarce came +home even to sleep. In the second place Mrs. Beale, when she +<i>was</i> on the spot, had now a beautiful air of longing to make up +for everything. The only shadow in such bright intervals was that, +as Maisie put it to herself, she could get nothing by questions. It +was in the nature of things to be none of a small child's +business, even when a small child had from the first been deluded +into a fear that she might be only too much initiated. Things then +were in Maisie's experience so true to their nature that questions +were almost always improper; but she learned on the other hand +soon to recognise how at last, sometimes, patient little silences +and intelligent little looks could be rewarded by delightful +little glimpses. There had been years at Beale Farange's when the +monosyllable "he" meant always, meant almost violently, the +master; but all that was changed at a period at which Sir Claude's +merits were of themselves so much in the air that it scarce took +even two letters to name him. "He keeps me up splendidly—he does, +my own precious," Mrs. Beale would observe to her comrade; or else +she would say that the situation at the other establishment had +reached a point that could scarcely be believed—the point, +monstrous as it sounded, of his not having laid eyes upon her for +twelve days. "She" of course at Beale Farange's had never meant +any one but Ida, and there was the difference in this case that it +now meant Ida with renewed intensity. Mrs. Beale—it was +striking—was in a position to animadvert more and more upon her +dreadfulness, the moral of all which appeared to be how abominably +yet blessedly little she had to do with her husband. This flow of +information came home to our two friends because, truly, Mrs. +Beale had not much more to do with her own; but that was one of +the reflexions that Maisie could make without allowing it to break +the spell of her present sympathy. How could such a spell be +anything but deep when Sir Claude's influence, operating from +afar, at last really determined the resumption of his +stepdaughter's studies? Mrs. Beale again took fire about them and +was quite vivid for Maisie as to their being the great matter to +which the dear absent one kept her up.</p> + +<p>This was the second source—I have just alluded to the first—of +the child's consciousness of something that, very hopefully, she +described to herself as a new phase; and it also presented in the +brightest light the fresh enthusiasm with which Mrs. Beale always +reappeared and which really gave Maisie a happier sense than she +had yet had of being very dear at least to two persons. That she +had small remembrance at present of a third illustrates, I am +afraid, a temporary oblivion of Mrs. Wix, an accident to be +explained only by a state of unnatural excitement. For what was +the form taken by Mrs. Beale's enthusiasm and acquiring relief in +the domestic conditions still left to her but the delightful form +of "reading" with her little charge on lines directly prescribed +and in works profusely supplied by Sir Claude? He had got hold of +an awfully good list—"mostly essays, don't you know?" Mrs. Beale +had said; a word always august to Maisie, but henceforth to be +softened by hazy, in fact by quite languorous edges. There was at +any rate a week in which no less than nine volumes arrived, and +the impression was to be gathered from Mrs. Beale that the obscure +intercourse she enjoyed with Sir Claude not only involved an +account and a criticism of studies, but was organised almost for +the very purpose of report and consultation. It was for Maisie's +education in short that, as she often repeated, she closed her +door—closed it to the gentlemen who used to flock there in such +numbers and whom her husband's practical desertion of her would +have made it a course of the highest indelicacy to receive. Maisie +was familiar from of old with the principle at least of the care +that a woman, as Mrs. Beale phrased it, attractive and exposed +must take of her "character," and was duly impressed with the +rigour of her stepmother's scruples. There was literally no one of +the other sex whom she seemed to feel at liberty to see at home, +and when the child risked an enquiry about the ladies who, one by +one, during her own previous period, had been made quite loudly +welcome, Mrs. Beale hastened to inform her that, one by one, they +had, the fiends, been found out, after all, to be awful. If she +wished to know more about them she was recommended to approach her +father.</p> + +<p>Maisie had, however, at the very moment of this injunction much +livelier curiosities, for the dream of lectures at an institution +had at last become a reality, thanks to Sir Claude's now unbounded +energy in discovering what could be done. It stood out in this +connexion that when you came to look into things in a spirit of +earnestness an immense deal could be done for very little more +than your fare in the Underground. The institution—there was a +splendid one in a part of the town but little known to the +child—became, in the glow of such a spirit, a thrilling place, +and the walk to it from the station through Glower Street (a +pronunciation for which Mrs. Beale once laughed at her little +friend) a pathway literally strewn with "subjects." Maisie +imagined herself to pluck them as she went, though they thickened +in the great grey rooms where the fountain of knowledge, in the +form usually of a high voice that she took at first to be angry, +plashed in the stillness of rows of faces thrust out like empty +jugs. "It <i>must</i> do us good—it's all so hideous," Mrs. Beale +had immediately declared; manifesting a purity of resolution that +made these occasions quite the most harmonious of all the many on +which the pair had pulled together. Maisie certainly had never, in +such an association, felt so uplifted, and never above all been so +carried off her feet, as at the moments of Mrs. Beale's +breathlessly re-entering the house and fairly shrieking upstairs +to know if they should still be in time for a lecture. Her +stepdaughter, all ready from the earliest hours, almost leaped +over the banister to respond, and they dashed out together in +quest of learning as hard as they often dashed back to release +Mrs. Beale for other preoccupations. There had been in short no +bustle like these particular spasms, once they had broken out, +since that last brief flurry when Mrs. Wix, blowing as if she were +grooming her, "made up" for everything previously lost at her +father's.</p> + +<p>These weeks as well were too few, but they were flooded with a new +emotion, part of which indeed came from the possibility that, +through the long telescope of Glower Street, or perhaps between +the pillars of the institution—which impressive objects were what +Maisie thought most made it one—they should some day spy Sir +Claude. That was what Mrs. Beale, under pressure, had +said—doubtless a little impatiently: "Oh yes, oh yes, some day!" +His joining them was clearly far less of a matter of course than +was to have been gathered from his original profession of desire +to improve in their company his own mind; and this sharpened our +young lady's guess that since that occasion either something +destructive had happened or something desirable hadn't. Mrs. Beale +had thrown but a partial light in telling her how it had turned +out that nobody had been squared. Maisie wished at any rate that +somebody <i>would</i> be squared. However, though in every approach +to the temple of knowledge she watched in vain for Sir Claude, there +was no doubt about the action of his loved image as an incentive +and a recompense. When the institution was most on pillars—or, as +Mrs. Beale put it, on stilts—when the subject was deepest and the +lecture longest and the listeners ugliest, then it was they both +felt their patron in the background would be most pleased with +them. One day, abruptly, with a glance at this background, Mrs. +Beale said to her companion: "We'll go to-night to the thingumbob +at Earl's Court"; an announcement putting forth its full lustre +when she had made known that she referred to the great Exhibition +just opened in that quarter, a collection of extraordinary foreign +things in tremendous gardens, with illuminations, bands, +elephants, switchbacks and side-shows, as well as crowds of people +among whom they might possibly see some one they knew. Maisie flew +in the same bound at the neck of her friend and at the name of Sir +Claude, on which Mrs. Beale confessed that—well, yes, there was +just a chance that he would be able to meet them. He never of +course, in his terrible position, knew what might happen from hour +to hour; but he hoped to be free and he had given Mrs. Beale the +tip. "Bring her there on the quiet and I'll try to turn up"—this +was clear enough on what so many weeks of privation had made of +his desire to see the child: it even appeared to represent on his +part a yearning as constant as her own. That in turn was just +puzzling enough to make Maisie express a bewilderment. She +couldn't see, if they were so intensely of the same mind, why the +theory on which she had come back to Mrs. Beale, the general +reunion, the delightful trio, should have broken down so in fact. +Mrs. Beale furthermore only gave her more to think about in saying +that their disappointment was the result of his having got into +his head a kind of idea.</p> + +<p>"What kind of idea?"</p> + +<p>"Oh goodness knows!" She spoke with an approach to asperity. "He's +so awfully delicate."</p> + +<p>"Delicate?"—that was ambiguous.</p> + +<p>"About what he does, don't you know?" said Mrs. Beale. She +fumbled. "Well, about what <i>we</i> do."</p> + +<p>Maisie wondered. "You and me?"</p> + +<p>"Me and <i>him</i>, silly!" cried Mrs. Beale with, this time, a +real giggle.</p> + +<p>"But you don't do any harm—<i>you</i> don't," said Maisie, +wondering afresh and intending her emphasis as a decorous allusion +to her parents.</p> + +<p>"Of course we don't, you angel—that's just the ground <i>I</i> +take!" her companion exultantly responded. "He says he doesn't want +you mixed up."</p> + +<p>"Mixed up with what?"</p> + +<p>"That's exactly what <i>I</i> want to know: mixed up with what, +and how you are any more mixed—?" Mrs. Beale paused without ending +her question. She ended after an instant in a different way. "All +you can say is that it's his fancy."</p> + +<p>The tone of this, in spite of its expressing a resignation, the +fruit of weariness, that dismissed the subject, conveyed so +vividly how much such a fancy was not Mrs. Beale's own that our +young lady was led by the mere fact of contact to arrive at a dim +apprehension of the unuttered and the unknown. The relation +between her step-parents had then a mysterious residuum; this was +the first time she really had reflected that except as regards +herself it was not a relationship. To each other it was only what +they might have happened to make it, and she gathered that this, +in the event, had been something that led Sir Claude to keep away +from her. Didn't he fear she would be compromised? The perception +of such a scruple endeared him the more, and it flashed over her +that she might simplify everything by showing him how little she +made of such a danger. Hadn't she lived with her eyes on it from +her third year? It was the condition most frequently discussed at +the Faranges', where the word was always in the air and where at +the age of five, amid rounds of applause, she could gabble it off. +She knew as well in short that a person could be compromised as +that a person could be slapped with a hair-brush or left alone in +the dark, and it was equally familiar to her that each of these +ordeals was in general held to have too little effect. But the +first thing was to make absolutely sure of Mrs. Beale. This was +done by saying to her thoughtfully: "Well, if you don't mind—and +you really don't, do you?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale, with a dawn of amusement, considered. "Mixing you up? +Not a bit. For what does it mean?"</p> + +<p>"Whatever it means I don't in the least mind <i>being</i> mixed. +Therefore if you don't and I don't," Maisie concluded, "don't you +think that when I see him this evening I had better just tell him +we don't and ask him why in the world <i>he</i> should?"</p> + + +<p> <a name="18"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XVIII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>The child, however, was not destined to enjoy much of Sir Claude +at the "thingumbob," which took for them a very different turn +indeed. On the spot Mrs. Beale, with hilarity, had urged her to +the course proposed; but later, at the Exhibition, she withdrew +this allowance, mentioning as a result of second thoughts that +when a man was so sensitive anything at all frisky usually made +him worse. It would have been hard indeed for Sir Claude to be +"worse," Maisie felt, as, in the gardens and the crowd, when the +first dazzle had dropped, she looked for him in vain up and down. +They had all their time, the couple, for frugal wistful wandering: +they had partaken together at home of the light vague +meal—Maisie's name for it was a "jam-supper"—to which they were +reduced when Mr. Farange sought his pleasure abroad. It was abroad +now entirely that Mr. Farange pursued this ideal, and it was the +actual impression of his daughter, derived from his wife, that he +had three days before joined a friend's yacht at Cowes.</p> + +<p>The place was full of side-shows, to which Mrs. Beale could +introduce the little girl only, alas, by revealing to her so +attractive, so enthralling a name: the side-shows, each time, were +sixpence apiece, and the fond allegiance enjoyed by the elder of our +pair had been established from the earliest time in spite of a +paucity of sixpences. Small coin dropped from her as half-heartedly +as answers from bad children to lessons that had not been looked at. +Maisie passed more slowly the great painted posters, pressing with a +linked arm closer to her friend's pocket, where she hoped for the +audible chink of a shilling. But the upshot of this was but to deepen +her yearning: if Sir Claude would only at last come the shillings +would begin to ring. The companions paused, for want of one, before +the Flowers of the Forest, a large presentment of bright brown +ladies—they were brown all over—in a medium suggestive of tropical +luxuriance, and there Maisie dolorously expressed her belief that he +would never come at all. Mrs. Beale hereupon, though discernibly +disappointed, reminded her that he had not been promised as a +certainty—a remark that caused the child to gaze at the Flowers +through a blur in which they became more magnificent, yet oddly more +confused, and by which moreover confusion was imparted to the aspect +of a gentleman who at that moment, in the company of a lady, came out +of the brilliant booth. The lady was so brown that Maisie at first +took her for one of the Flowers; but during the few seconds that this +required—a few seconds in which she had also desolately given up Sir +Claude—she heard Mrs. Beale's voice, behind her, gather both wonder +and pain into a single sharp little cry.</p> + +<p>"Of all the wickedness—<i>Beale!</i>"</p> + +<p>He had already, without distinguishing them in the mass of +strollers, turned another way—it seemed at the brown lady's +suggestion. Her course was marked, over heads and shoulders, by an +upright scarlet plume, as to the ownership of which Maisie was +instantly eager. "Who is she—who is she?"</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Beale for a moment only looked after them. "The liar—the +liar!"</p> + +<p>Maisie considered. "Because he's not—where one thought?" That was +also, a month ago in Kensington Gardens, where her mother had not +been. "Perhaps he has come back," she was quick to contribute.</p> + +<p>"He never went—the hound!"</p> + +<p>That, according to Sir Claude, had been also what her mother had +not done, and Maisie could only have a sense of something that in +a maturer mind would be called the way history repeats itself.</p> + +<p>"Who <i>is</i> she?" she asked again.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale, fixed to the spot, seemed lost in the vision of an +opportunity missed. "If he had only seen me!"—it came from +between her teeth. "She's a brand-new one. But he must have been +with her since Tuesday."</p> + +<p>Maisie took it in. "She's almost black," she then reported.</p> + +<p>"They're always hideous," said Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>This was a remark on which the child had again to reflect. "Oh not +his <i>wives</i>!" she remonstrantly exclaimed. The words at another +moment would probably have set her friend "off," but Mrs. Beale was +now, in her instant vigilance, too immensely "on." "Did you ever in +your life see such a feather?" Maisie presently continued.</p> + +<p>This decoration appeared to have paused at some distance, and in +spite of intervening groups they could both look at it. "Oh that's +the way they dress—the vulgarest of the vulgar!"</p> + +<p>"They're coming back—they'll see us!" Maisie the next moment +cried; and while her companion answered that this was exactly what +she wanted and the child returned "Here they are—here they are!" +the unconscious subjects of so much attention, with a change of +mind about their direction, quickly retraced their steps and +precipitated themselves upon their critics. Their unconsciousness +gave Mrs. Beale time to leap, under her breath, to a recognition +which Maisie caught.</p> + +<p>"It must be Mrs. Cuddon!"</p> + +<p>Maisie looked at Mrs. Cuddon hard—her lips even echoed the name. +What followed was extraordinarily rapid—a minute of livelier +battle than had ever yet, in so short a span at least, been waged +round our heroine. The muffled shock—lest people should +notice—was violent, and it was only for her later thought that +the steps fell into their order, the steps through which, in a +bewilderment not so much of sound as of silence, she had come to +find herself, too soon for comprehension and too strangely for +fear, at the door of the Exhibition with her father. He thrust her +into a hansom and got in after her, and then it was—as she drove +along with him—that she recovered a little what had happened. +Face to face with them in the gardens he had seen them, and there +had been a moment of checked concussion during which, in a glare +of black eyes and a toss of red plumage, Mrs. Cuddon had +recognised them, ejaculated and vanished. There had been another +moment at which she became aware of Sir Claude, also poised there +in surprise, but out of her father's view, as if he had been +warned off at the very moment of reaching them. It fell into its +place with all the rest that she had heard Mrs. Beale say to her +father, but whether low or loud was now lost to her, something +about his having this time a new one; on which he had growled +something indistinct but apparently in the tone and of the sort +that the child, from her earliest years, had associated with +hearing somebody retort to somebody that somebody was "another." +"Oh I stick to the old!" Mrs. Beale had then quite loudly +pronounced; and her accent, even as the cab got away, was still in +the air, Maisie's effective companion having spoken no other word +from the moment of whisking her off—none at least save the +indistinguishable address which, over the top of the hansom and +poised on the step, he had given the driver. Reconstructing these +things later Maisie theorised that she at this point would have +put a question to him had not the silence into which he charmed +her or scared her—she could scarcely tell which—come from his +suddenly making her feel his arm about her, feel, as he drew her +close, that he was agitated in a way he had never yet shown her. +It struck her he trembled, trembled too much to speak, and this +had the effect of making her, with an emotion which, though it had +begun to throb in an instant, was by no means all dread, conform +to his portentous hush. The act of possession that his pressure in +a manner advertised came back to her after the longest of the long +intermissions that had ever let anything come back. They drove and +drove, and he kept her close; she stared straight before her, +holding her breath, watching one dark street succeed another and +strangely conscious that what it all meant was somehow that papa +was less to be left out of everything than she had supposed. It +took her but a minute to surrender to this discovery, which, in +the form of his present embrace, suggested a purpose in him +prodigiously reaffirmed and with that a confused confidence. She +neither knew exactly what he had done nor what he was doing; she +could only, altogether impressed and rather proud, vibrate with +the sense that he had jumped up to do something and that she had +as quickly become a part of it. It was a part of it too that here +they were at a house that seemed not large, but in the fresh white +front of which the street-lamp showed a smartness of flower-boxes. +The child had been in thousands of stories—all Mrs. Wix's and her +own, to say nothing of the richest romances of French Elise—but +she had never been in such a story as this. By the time he had +helped her out of the cab, which drove away, and she heard in the +door of the house the prompt little click of his key, the Arabian +Nights had quite closed round her.</p> + +<p>From this minute that pitch of the wondrous was in everything, +particularly in such an instant "Open Sesame" and in the departure +of the cab, a rattling void filled with relinquished step-parents; +it was, with the vividness, the almost blinding whiteness of the +light that sprang responsive to papa's quick touch of a little +brass knob on the wall, in a place that, at the top of a short +soft staircase, struck her as the most beautiful she had ever seen +in her life. The next thing she perceived it to be was the +drawing-room of a lady—of a lady, she could see in a moment, and +not of a gentleman, not even of one like papa himself or even like +Sir Claude—whose things were as much prettier than mamma's as it +had always had to be confessed that mamma's were prettier than +Mrs. Beale's. In the middle of the small bright room and the +presence of more curtains and cushions, more pictures and mirrors, +more palm-trees drooping over brocaded and gilded nooks, more +little silver boxes scattered over little crooked tables and +little oval miniatures hooked upon velvet screens than Mrs. Beale +and her ladyship together could, in an unnatural alliance, have +dreamed of mustering, the child became aware, with a sharp +foretaste of compassion, of something that was strangely like a +relegation to obscurity of each of those women of taste. It was a +stranger operation still that her father should on the spot be +presented to her as quite advantageously and even grandly at home +in the dazzling scene and himself by so much the more separated +from scenes inferior to it. She spent with him in it, while +explanations continued to hang back, twenty minutes that, in their +sudden drop of danger, affected her, though there were neither +buns nor ginger-beer, like an extemporised expensive treat.</p> + +<p>"Is she very rich?" He had begun to strike her as almost +embarrassed, so shy that he might have found himself with a young +lady with whom he had little in common. She was literally moved by +this apprehension to offer him some tactful relief.</p> + +<p>Beale Farange stood and smiled at his young lady, his back to the +fanciful fireplace, his light overcoat—the very lightest in +London—wide open, and his wonderful lustrous beard completely +concealing the expanse of his shirt-front. It pleased her more +than ever to think that papa was handsome and, though as high +aloft as mamma and almost, in his specially florid evening-dress, +as splendid, of a beauty somehow less belligerent, less terrible.</p> + +<p>"The Countess? Why do you ask me that?"</p> + +<p>Maisie's eyes opened wider. "Is she a Countess?"</p> + +<p>He seemed to treat her wonder as a positive tribute. "Oh yes, my +dear, but it isn't an English title."</p> + +<p>Her manner appreciated this. "Is it a French one?"</p> + +<p>"No, nor French either. It's American."</p> + +<p>She conversed agreeably. "Ah then of course she must be rich." She +took in such a combination of nationality and rank. "I never saw +anything so lovely."</p> + +<p>"Did you have a sight of her?" Beale asked.</p> + +<p>"At the Exhibition?" Maisie smiled. "She was gone too quick."</p> + +<p>Her father laughed. "She did slope!" She had feared he would say +something about Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude, yet the way he spared +them made her rather uneasy too. All he risked was, the next +minute, "She has a horror of vulgar scenes."</p> + +<p>This was something she needn't take up; she could still continue +bland. "But where do you suppose she went?"</p> + +<p>"Oh I thought she'd have taken a cab and have been here by this +time. But she'll turn up all right."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure I <i>hope</i> she will," Maisie said; she spoke with +an earnestness begotten of the impression of all the beauty about +them, to which, in person, the Countess might make further +contribution. "We came awfully fast," she added.</p> + +<p>Her father again laughed loud. "Yes, my dear, I made you step +out!" He waited an instant, then pursued: "I want her to see you."</p> + +<p>Maisie, at this, rejoiced in the attention that, for their evening +out, Mrs. Beale, even to the extent of personally "doing up" her +old hat, had given her appearance. Meanwhile her father went on: +"You'll like her awfully."</p> + +<p>"Oh I'm sure I shall!" After which, either from the effect of +having said so much or from that of a sudden glimpse of the +impossibility of saying more, she felt an embarrassment and sought +refuge in a minor branch of the subject. "I thought she was Mrs. +Cuddon."</p> + +<p>Beale's gaiety rather increased than diminished. "You mean my wife +did? My dear child, my wife's a damned fool!" He had the oddest +air of speaking of his wife as of a person whom she might scarcely +have known, so that the refuge of her scruple didn't prove +particularly happy. Beale on the other hand appeared after an +instant himself to feel a scruple. "What I mean is, to speak +seriously, that she doesn't really know anything about anything." +He paused, following the child's charmed eyes and tentative step +or two as they brought her nearer to the pretty things on one of +the tables. "She thinks she has good things, don't you know!" He +quite jeered at Mrs. Beale's delusion.</p> + +<p>Maisie felt she must confess that it <i>was</i> one; everything +she had missed at the side-shows was made up to her by the Countess's +luxuries. "Yes," she considered; "she does think that."</p> + +<p>There was again a dryness in the way Beale replied that it didn't +matter what she thought; but there was an increasing sweetness for +his daughter in being with him so long without his doing anything +worse. The whole hour of course was to remain with her, for days +and weeks, ineffaceably illumined and confirmed; by the end of +which she was able to read into it a hundred things that had been +at the moment mere miraculous pleasantness. What they at the +moment came to was simply that her companion was still in a good +deal of a flutter, yet wished not to show it, and that just in +proportion as he succeeded in this attempt he was able to +encourage her to regard him as kind. He moved about the room after +a little, showed her things, spoke to her as a person of taste, +told her the name, which she remembered, of the famous French lady +represented in one of the miniatures, and remarked, as if he had +caught her wistful over a trinket or a trailing stuff, that he +made no doubt the Countess, on coming in, would give her something +jolly. He spied a pink satin box with a looking-glass let into the +cover, which he raised, with a quick facetious flourish, to offer +her the privilege of six rows of chocolate bonbons, cutting out +thereby Sir Claude, who had never gone beyond four rows. "I can do +what I like with these," he said, "for I don't mind telling you I +gave 'em to her myself." The Countess had evidently appreciated +the gift; there were numerous gaps, a ravage now quite unchecked, +in the array. Even while they waited together Maisie had her +sense, which was the mark of what their separation had become, of +her having grown for him, since the last time he had, as it were, +noticed her, and by increase of years and of inches if by nothing +else, much more of a little person to reckon with. Yes, this was a +part of the positive awkwardness that he carried off by being +almost foolishly tender. There was a passage during which, on a +yellow silk sofa under one of the palms, he had her on his knee, +stroking her hair, playfully holding her off while he showed his +shining fangs and let her, with a vague affectionate helpless +pointless "Dear old girl, dear little daughter," inhale the +fragrance of his cherished beard. She must have been sorry for +him, she afterwards knew, so well could she privately follow his +difficulty in being specific to her about anything. She had such +possibilities of vibration, of response, that it needed nothing +more than this to make up to her in fact for omissions. The tears +came into her eyes again as they had done when in the Park that +day the Captain told her so "splendidly" that her mother was good. +What was this but splendid too—this still directer goodness of +her father and this unexampled shining solitude with him, out of +which everything had dropped but that he was papa and that he was +magnificent? It didn't spoil it that she finally felt he must +have, as he became restless, some purpose he didn't quite see his +way to bring out, for in the freshness of their recovered +fellowship she would have lent herself gleefully to his +suggesting, or even to his pretending, that their relations were +easy and graceful. There was something in him that seemed, and +quite touchingly, to ask her to help him to pretend—pretend he +knew enough about her life and her education, her means of +subsistence and her view of himself, to give the questions he +couldn't put her a natural domestic tone. She would have pretended +with ecstasy if he could only have given her the cue. She waited +for it while, between his big teeth, he breathed the sighs she +didn't know to be stupid. And as if, though he was so stupid all +through, he had let the friendly suffusion of her eyes yet tell +him she was ready for anything, he floundered about, wondering +what the devil he could lay hold of.</p> + + +<p> <a name="19"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XIX<br /> </h3> + + +<p>When he had lighted a cigarette and begun to smoke in her face it +was as if he had struck with the match the note of some queer +clumsy ferment of old professions, old scandals, old duties, a dim +perception of what he possessed in her and what, if everything had +only—damn it!—been totally different, she might still be able to +give him. What she was able to give him, however, as his blinking +eyes seemed to make out through the smoke, would be simply what he +should be able to get from her. To give something, to give here on +the spot, was all her own desire. Among the old things that came +back was her little instinct of keeping the peace; it made her +wonder more sharply what particular thing she could do or not do, +what particular word she could speak or not speak, what particular +line she could take or not take, that might for every one, even +for the Countess, give a better turn to the crisis. She was ready, +in this interest, for an immense surrender, a surrender of +everything but Sir Claude, of everything but Mrs. Beale. The +immensity didn't include <i>them</i>; but if he had an idea at the +back of his head she had also one in a recess as deep, and for a +time, while they sat together, there was an extraordinary mute +passage between her vision of this vision of his, his vision of her +vision, and her vision of his vision of her vision. What there was +no effective record of indeed was the small strange pathos on the +child's part of an innocence so saturated with knowledge and so +directed to diplomacy. What, further, Beale finally laid hold of +while he masked again with his fine presence half the flounces of +the fireplace was: "Do you know, my dear, I shall soon be off to +America?" It struck his daughter both as a short cut and as the +way he wouldn't have said it to his wife. But his wife figured +with a bright superficial assurance in her response.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean with Mrs. Beale?"</p> + +<p>Her father looked at her hard. "Don't be a little ass!"</p> + +<p>Her silence appeared to represent a concentrated effort not to be. +"Then with the Countess?"</p> + +<p>"With her or without her, my dear; that concerns only your poor +daddy. She has big interests over there, and she wants me to take +a look at them."</p> + +<p>Maisie threw herself into them. "Will that take very long?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; they're in such a muddle—it may take months. Now what I +want to hear, you know, is whether you'd like to come along?"</p> + +<p>Planted once more before him in the middle of the room she felt +herself turning white. "I?" she gasped, yet feeling as soon as she +had spoken that such a note of dismay was not altogether pretty. +She felt it still more while her father replied, with a shake of +his legs, a toss of his cigarette-ash and a fidgety look—he was +for ever taking one—all the length of his waistcoat and trousers, +that she needn't be quite so disgusted. It helped her in a few +seconds to appear more as he would like her that she saw, in the +lovely light of the Countess's splendour, exactly, however she +appeared, the right answer to make. "Dear papa, I'll go with you +anywhere."</p> + +<p>He turned his back to her and stood with his nose at the glass of +the chimneypiece while he brushed specks of ash out of his beard. +Then he abruptly said: "Do you know anything about your brute of a +mother?"</p> + +<p>It was just of her brute of a mother that the manner of the +question in a remarkable degree reminded her: it had the free +flight of one of Ida's fine bridgings of space. With the sense of +this was kindled for Maisie at the same time an inspiration. "Oh +yes, I know everything!" and she became so radiant that her +father, seeing it in the mirror, turned back to her and presently, +on the sofa, had her at his knee again and was again particularly +affecting. Maisie's inspiration instructed her, pressingly, that +the more she should be able to say about mamma the less she would +be called upon to speak of her step-parents. She kept hoping the +Countess would come in before her power to protect them was +exhausted; and it was now, in closer quarters with her companion, +that the idea at the back of her head shifted its place to her +lips. She told him she had met her mother in the Park with a +gentleman who, while Sir Claude had strolled with her ladyship, +had been kind and had sat and talked to her; narrating the scene +with a remembrance of her pledge of secrecy to the Captain quite +brushed away by the joy of seeing Beale listen without profane +interruption. It was almost an amazement, but it was indeed all a +joy, thus to be able to guess that papa was at last quite tired of +his anger—of his anger at any rate about mamma. He was only bored +with her now. That made it, however, the more imperative that his +spent displeasure shouldn't be blown out again. It charmed the +child to see how much she could interest him; and the charm +remained even when, after asking her a dozen questions, he +observed musingly and a little obscurely: "Yes, damned if she +won't!" For in this too there was a detachment, a wise weariness +that made her feel safe. She had had to mention Sir Claude, though +she mentioned him as little as possible and Beale only appeared to +look quite over his head. It pieced itself together for her that +this was the mildness of general indifference, a source of profit +so great for herself personally that if the Countess was the +author of it she was prepared literally to hug the Countess. She +betrayed that eagerness by a restless question about her, to which +her father replied: "Oh she has a head on her shoulders. I'll back +her to get out of anything!" He looked at Maisie quite as if he +could trace the connexion between her enquiry and the impatience +of her gratitude. "Do you mean to say you'd really come with +me?"</p> + +<p>She felt as if he were now looking at her very hard indeed, and +also as if she had grown ever so much older. "I'll do anything in +the world you ask me, papa."</p> + +<p>He gave again, with a laugh and with his legs apart, his +proprietary glance at his waistcoat and trousers. "That's a way, +my dear, of saying 'No, thank you!' You know you don't want to go +the least little mite. You can't humbug <i>me</i>!" Beale Farange +laid down. "I don't want to bully you—I never bullied you in my +life; but I make you the offer, and it's to take or to leave. Your +mother will never again have any more to do with you than if you +were a kitchenmaid she had turned out for going wrong. Therefore +of course I'm your natural protector and you've a right to get +everything out of me you can. Now's your chance, you know—you +won't be half-clever if you don't. You can't say I don't put it +before you—you can't say I ain't kind to you or that I don't play +fair. Mind you never say that, you know—it <i>would</i> bring me +down on you. I know what's proper. I'll take you again, just as I +<i>have</i> taken you again and again. And I'm much obliged to +you for making up such a face."</p> + +<p>She was conscious enough that her face indeed couldn't please him +if it showed any sign—just as she hoped it didn't—of her sharp +impression of what he now really wanted to do. Wasn't he trying to +turn the tables on her, embarrass her somehow into admitting that +what would really suit her little book would be, after doing so +much for good manners, to leave her wholly at liberty to arrange +for herself? She began to be nervous again: it rolled over her +that this was their parting, their parting for ever, and that he +had brought her there for so many caresses only because it was +important such an occasion should look better for him than any +other. For her to spoil it by the note of discord would certainly +give him ground for complaint; and the child was momentarily +bewildered between her alternatives of agreeing with him about her +wanting to get rid of him and displeasing him by pretending to +stick to him. So she found for the moment no solution but to +murmur very helplessly: "Oh papa—oh papa!"</p> + +<p>"I know what you're up to—don't tell <i>me</i>!" After which +he came straight over and, in the most inconsequent way in the +world, clasped her in his arms a moment and rubbed his beard against +her cheek. Then she understood as well as if he had spoken it that +what he wanted, hang it, was that she should let him off with all the +honours—with all the appearance of virtue and sacrifice on his side. +It was exactly as if he had broken out to her: "I say, you little +booby, help me to be irreproachable, to be noble, and yet to have +none of the beastly bore of it. There's only impropriety enough for +one of us; so <i>you</i> must take it all. <i>Repudiate</i> your dear +old daddy—in the face, mind you, of his tender supplications. He +can't be rough with you—it isn't in his nature: therefore you'll +have successfully chucked him because he was too generous to be as +firm with you, poor man, as was, after all, his duty." This was what +he communicated in a series of tremendous pats on the back; that +portion of her person had never been so thumped since Moddle thumped +her when she choked. After a moment he gave her the further +impression of having become sure enough of her to be able very +gracefully to say out: "You know your mother loathes you, loathes you +simply. And I've been thinking over your precious man—the fellow you +told me about."</p> + +<p>"Well," Maisie replied with competence, "I'm sure of +<i>him</i>."</p> + +<p>Her father was vague for an instant. "Do you mean sure of his +liking you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no; of his liking <i>her</i>!"</p> + +<p>Beale had a return of gaiety. "There's no accounting for tastes! +It's what they all say, you know."</p> + +<p>"I don't care—I'm sure of him!" Maisie repeated.</p> + +<p>"Sure, you mean, that she'll bolt?"</p> + +<p>Maisie knew all about bolting, but, decidedly, she <i>was</i> +older, and there was something in her that could wince at the way her +father made the ugly word—ugly enough at best—sound flat and low. +It prompted her to amend his allusion, which she did by saying: "I +don't know what she'll do. But she'll be happy."</p> + +<p>"Let us hope so," said Beale—almost as for edification. "The more +happy she is at any rate the less she'll want you about. That's +why I press you," he agreeably pursued, "to consider this handsome +offer—I mean seriously, you know—of your sole surviving parent." +Their eyes, at this, met again in a long and extraordinary +communion which terminated in his ejaculating: "Ah you little +scoundrel!" She took it from him in the manner it seemed to her he +would like best and with a success that encouraged him to go on: +"You <i>are</i> a deep little devil!" Her silence, ticking like a +watch, acknowledged even this, in confirmation of which he finally +brought out: "You've settled it with the other pair!"</p> + +<p>"Well, what if I have?" She sounded to herself most bold.</p> + +<p>Her father, quite as in the old days, broke into a peal. "Why, +don't you know they're awful?"</p> + +<p>She grew bolder still. "I don't care—not a bit!"</p> + +<p>"But they're probably the worst people in the world and the very +greatest criminals," Beale pleasantly urged. "I'm not the man, my +dear, not to let you know it."</p> + +<p>"Well, it doesn't prevent them from loving me. They love me +tremendously." Maisie turned crimson to hear herself.</p> + +<p>Her companion fumbled; almost any one—let alone a daughter—would +have seen how conscientious he wanted to be. "I dare say. But do +you know why?" She braved his eyes and he added: "You're a jolly +good pretext."</p> + +<p>"For what?" Maisie asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, for their game. I needn't tell you what that is."</p> + +<p>The child reflected. "Well then that's all the more reason."</p> + +<p>"Reason for what, pray?"</p> + +<p>"For their being kind to me."</p> + +<p>"And for your keeping in with them?" Beale roared again; it was as +if his spirits rose and rose. "Do you realise, pray, that in +saying that you're a monster?"</p> + +<p>She turned it over. "A monster?"</p> + +<p>"They've <i>made</i> one of you. Upon my honour it's quite awful. +It shows the kind of people they are. Don't you understand," Beale +pursued, "that when they've made you as horrid as they can—as horrid +as themselves—they'll just simply chuck you?"</p> + +<p>She had at this a flicker of passion. "They <i>won't</i> chuck +me!"</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," her father courteously insisted; "it's my +duty to put it before you. I shouldn't forgive myself if I didn't +point out to you that they'll cease to require you." He spoke as +if with an appeal to her intelligence that she must be ashamed not +adequately to meet, and this gave a real distinction to his +superior delicacy.</p> + +<p>It cleared the case as he had wished. "Cease to require me because +they won't care?" She paused with that sketch of her idea.</p> + +<p>"<i>Of course</i> Sir Claude won't care if his wife bolts. That's +his game. It will suit him down to the ground."</p> + +<p>This was a proposition Maisie could perfectly embrace, but it +still left a loophole for triumph. She turned it well over. "You +mean if mamma doesn't come back ever at all?" The composure with +which her face was presented to that prospect would have shown a +spectator the long road she had travelled. "Well, but that won't +put Mrs. Beale—"</p> + +<p>"In the same comfortable position—?" Beale took her up with +relish; he had sprung to his feet again, shaking his legs and +looking at his shoes. "Right you are, darling! Something more will +be wanted for Mrs. Beale." He just paused, then he added: "But she +may not have long to wait for it."</p> + +<p>Maisie also for a minute looked at his shoes, though they were not +the pair she most admired, the laced yellow "uppers" and +patent-leather complement. At last, with a question, she raised +her eyes. "Aren't you coming back?"</p> + +<p>Once more he hung fire; after which he gave a small laugh that in +the oddest way in the world reminded her of the unique sounds she +had heard emitted by Mrs. Wix. "It may strike you as extraordinary +that I should make you such an admission; and in point of fact +you're not to understand that I do. But we'll put it that way to +help your decision. The point is that that's the way my wife will +presently be sure to put it. You'll hear her shrieking that she's +deserted, so that she may just pile up her wrongs. She'll be as +free as she likes then—as free, you see, as your mother's muff of +a husband. They won't have anything more to consider and they'll +just put you into the street. Do I understand," Beale enquired, +"that, in the face of what I press on you, you still prefer to +take the risk of that?" It was the most wonderful appeal any +gentleman had ever addressed to his daughter, and it had placed +Maisie in the middle of the room again while her father moved +slowly about her with his hands in his pockets and something in +his step that seemed, more than anything else he had done, to show +the habit of the place. She turned her fevered little eyes over +his friend's brightnesses, as if, on her own side, to press for +some help in a quandary unexampled. As if also the pressure +reached him he after an instant stopped short, completing the +prodigy of his attitude and the pride of his loyalty by a supreme +formulation of the general inducement. "You've an eye, love! Yes, +there's money. No end of money."</p> + +<p>This affected her at first in the manner of some great flashing +dazzle in one of the pantomimes to which Sir Claude had taken her: +she saw nothing in it but what it directly conveyed. "And shall I +never, never see you again—?"</p> + +<p>"If I do go to America?" Beale brought it out like a man. "Never, +never, never!"</p> + +<p>Hereupon, with the utmost absurdity, she broke down; everything +gave way, everything but the horror of hearing herself definitely +utter such an ugliness as the acceptance of that. So she only +stiffened herself and said: "Then I can't give you up."</p> + +<p>She held him some seconds looking at her, showing her a strained +grimace, a perfect parade of all his teeth, in which it seemed to +her she could read the disgust he didn't quite like to express at +this departure from the pliability she had practically promised. +But before she could attenuate in any way the crudity of her +collapse he gave an impatient jerk which took him to the window. +She heard a vehicle stop; Beale looked out; then he freshly faced +her. He still said nothing, but she knew the Countess had come +back. There was a silence again between them, but with a different +shade of embarrassment from that of their united arrival; and it +was still without speaking that, abruptly repeating one of the +embraces of which he had already been so prodigal, he whisked her +back to the lemon sofa just before the door of the room was thrown +open. It was thus in renewed and intimate union with him that she +was presented to a person whom she instantly recognised as the +brown lady.</p> + +<p>The brown lady looked almost as astonished, though not quite as +alarmed, as when, at the Exhibition, she had gasped in the face of +Mrs. Beale. Maisie in truth almost gasped in her own; this was +with the fuller perception that she was brown indeed. She +literally struck the child more as an animal than as a "real" +lady; she might have been a clever frizzled poodle in a frill or a +dreadful human monkey in a spangled petticoat. She had a nose that +was far too big and eyes that were far too small and a moustache +that was, well, not so happy a feature as Sir Claude's. Beale +jumped up to her; while, to the child's astonishment, though as if +in a quick intensity of thought, the Countess advanced as gaily as +if, for many a day, nothing awkward had happened for any one. +Maisie, in spite of a large acquaintance with the phenomenon, had +never seen it so promptly established that nothing awkward was to +be mentioned. The next minute the Countess had kissed her and +exclaimed to Beale with bright tender reproach: "Why, you never +told me <i>half</i>! My dear child," she cried, "it was awfully +nice of you to come!"</p> + +<p>"But she hasn't come—she won't come!" Beale answered. "I've put +it to her how much you'd like it, but she declines to have +anything to do with us."</p> + +<p>The Countess stood smiling, and after an instant that was mainly +taken up with the shock of her weird aspect Maisie felt herself +reminded of another smile, which was not ugly, though also +interested—the kind light thrown, that day in the Park, from the +clean fair face of the Captain. Papa's Captain—yes—was the +Countess; but she wasn't nearly so nice as the other: it all came +back, doubtless, to Maisie's minor appreciation of ladies. +"Shouldn't you like me," said this one endearingly, "to take you +to Spa?"</p> + +<p>"To Spa?" The child repeated the name to gain time, not to show +how the Countess brought back to her a dim remembrance of a +strange woman with a horrid face who once, years before, in an +omnibus, bending to her from an opposite seat, had suddenly +produced an orange and murmured "Little dearie, won't you have +it?" She had felt then, for some reason, a small silly terror, +though afterwards conscious that her interlocutress, unfortunately +hideous, had particularly meant to be kind. This was also what the +Countess meant; yet the few words she had uttered and the smile +with which she had uttered them immediately cleared everything up. +Oh no, she wanted to go nowhere with <i>her</i>, for her presence +had already, in a few seconds, dissipated the happy impression of +the room and put an end to the pleasure briefly taken in Beale's +command of such elegance. There was no command of elegance in his +having exposed her to the approach of the short fat wheedling +whiskered person in whom she had now to recognise the only figure +wholly without attraction involved in any of the intimate +connexions her immediate circle had witnessed the growth of. She +was abashed meanwhile, however, at having appeared to weigh in the +balance the place to which she had been invited; and she added as +quickly as possible: "It isn't to America then?" The Countess, at +this, looked sharply at Beale, and Beale, airily enough, asked +what the deuce it mattered when she had already given him to +understand she wanted to have nothing to do with them. There +followed between her companions a passage of which the sense was +drowned for her in the deepening inward hum of her mere desire to +get off; though she was able to guess later on that her father +must have put it to his friend that it was no use talking, that +she was an obstinate little pig and that, besides, she was really +old enough to choose for herself. It glimmered back to her indeed +that she must have failed quite dreadfully to seem ideally other +than rude, inasmuch as before she knew it she had visibly given +the impression that if they didn't allow her to go home she should +cry. Oh if there had ever been a thing to cry about it was being +so consciously and gawkily below the handsomest offers any one +could ever have received. The great pain of the thing was that she +could see the Countess liked her enough to wish to be liked in +return, and it was from the idea of a return she sought utterly to +flee. It was the idea of a return that after a confusion of loud +words had broken out between the others brought to her lips with +the tremor preceding disaster: "Can't I, please, be sent home in a +cab?" Yes, the Countess wanted her and the Countess was wounded +and chilled, and she couldn't help it, and it was all the more +dreadful because it only made the Countess more coaxing and more +impossible. The only thing that sustained either of them perhaps +till the cab came—Maisie presently saw it would come—was its +being in the air somehow that Beale had done what he wanted. He +went out to look for a conveyance; the servants, he said, had gone +to bed, but she shouldn't be kept beyond her time. The Countess +left the room with him, and, alone in the possession of it, Maisie +hoped she wouldn't come back. It was all the effect of her +face—the child simply couldn't look at it and meet its expression +halfway. All in a moment too that queer expression had leaped into +the lovely things—all in a moment she had had to accept her +father as liking some one whom she was sure neither her mother, +nor Mrs. Beale, nor Mrs. Wix, nor Sir Claude, nor the Captain, nor +even Mr. Perriam and Lord Eric could possibly have liked. Three +minutes later, downstairs, with the cab at the door, it was +perhaps as a final confession of not having much to boast of that, +on taking leave of her, he managed to press her to his bosom +without her seeing his face. For herself she was so eager to go +that their parting reminded her of nothing, not even of a single +one of all the "nevers" that above, as the penalty of not cleaving +to him, he had attached to the question of their meeting again. +There was something in the Countess that falsified everything, +even the great interests in America and yet more the first flush +of that superiority to Mrs. Beale and to mamma which had been +expressed in Sèvres sets and silver boxes. These were still +there, but perhaps there were no great interests in America. Mamma +had known an American who was not a bit like this one. She was not, +however, of noble rank; her name was only Mrs. Tucker. Maisie's +detachment would none the less have been more complete if she had not +suddenly had to exclaim: "Oh dear, I haven't any money!"</p> + +<p>Her father's teeth, at this, were such a picture of appetite +without action as to be a match for any plea of poverty. "Make +your stepmother pay."</p> + +<p>"Stepmothers <i>don't</i> pay!" cried the Countess. "No +stepmother ever paid in her life!" The next moment they were in the +street together, and the next the child was in the cab, with the +Countess, on the pavement, but close to her, quickly taking money +from a purse whisked out of a pocket. Her father had vanished and +there was even yet nothing in that to reawaken the pang of loss. +"Here's money," said the brown lady: "go!" The sound was +commanding: the cab rattled off. Maisie sat there with her hand +full of coin. All that for a cab? As they passed a street-lamp she +bent to see how much. What she saw was a cluster of sovereigns. +There <i>must</i> then have been great interests in America. It was +still at any rate the Arabian Nights.</p> + + +<p> <a name="20"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XX<br /> </h3> + + +<p>The money was far too much even for a fee in a fairy-tale, and in +the absence of Mrs. Beale, who, though the hour was now late, had +not yet returned to the Regent's Park, Susan Ash, in the hall, as +loud as Maisie was low and as bold as she was bland, produced, on +the exhibition offered under the dim vigil of the lamp that made +the place a contrast to the child's recent scene of light, the +half-crown that an unsophisticated cabman could pronounce to be +the least he would take. It was apparently long before Mrs. Beale +would arrive, and in the interval Maisie had been induced by the +prompt Susan not only to go to bed like a darling dear, but, in +still richer expression of that character, to devote to the +repayment of obligations general as well as particular one of the +sovereigns in the ordered array that, on the dressing-table +upstairs, was naturally not less dazzling to a lone orphan of a +housemaid than to the subject of the manœuvres of a quartette. +This subject went to sleep with her property gathered into a +knotted handkerchief, the largest that could be produced and +lodged under her pillow; but the explanations that on the morrow +were inevitably more complete with Mrs. Beale than they had been +with her humble friend found their climax in a surrender also more +becomingly free. There were explanations indeed that Mrs. Beale +had to give as well as to ask, and the most striking of these was +to the effect that it was dreadful for a little girl to take money +from a woman who was simply the vilest of their sex. The +sovereigns were examined with some attention, the result of which, +however, was to make the author of that statement desire to know +what, if one really went into the matter, they could be called but +the wages of sin. Her companion went into it merely so far as the +question of what then they were to do with them; on which Mrs. +Beale, who had by this time put them into her pocket, replied with +dignity and with her hand on the place: "We're to send them back +on the spot!" Susan, the child soon afterwards learnt, had been +invited to contribute to this act of restitution her one +appropriated coin; but a closer clutch of the treasure showed in +her private assurance to Maisie that there was a limit to the way +she could be "done." Maisie had been open with Mrs. Beale about +the whole of last night's transaction; but she now found herself +on the part of their indignant inferior a recipient of remarks +that were so many ringing tokens of that lady's own suppressions. +One of these bore upon the extraordinary hour—it was three in the +morning if she really wanted to know—at which Mrs. Beale had +re-entered the house; another, in accents as to which Maisie's +criticism was still intensely tacit, characterised her appeal as +such a "gime," such a "shime," as one had never had to put up +with; a third treated with some vigour the question of the +enormous sums due belowstairs, in every department, for gratuitous +labour and wasted zeal. Our young lady's consciousness was indeed +mainly filled for several days with the apprehension created by +the too slow subsidence of her attendant's sense of wrong. These +days would become terrific like the Revolutions she had learnt by +heart in Histories if an outbreak in the kitchen should crown +them; and to promote that prospect she had through Susan's eyes +more than one glimpse of the way in which Revolutions are +prepared. To listen to Susan was to gather that the spark applied +to the inflammables and already causing them to crackle would +prove to have been the circumstance of one's being called a horrid +low thief for refusing to part with one's own. The redeeming point +of this tension was, on the fifth day, that it actually appeared +to have had to do with a breathless perception in our heroine's +breast that scarcely more as the centre of Sir Claude's than as +that of Susan's energies she had soon after breakfast been +conveyed from London to Folkestone and established at a lovely +hotel. These agents, before her wondering eyes, had combined to +carry through the adventure and to give it the air of having owed +its success to the fact that Mrs. Beale had, as Susan said, but +just stepped out. When Sir Claude, watch in hand, had met this +fact with the exclamation "Then pack Miss Farange and come off +with us!" there had ensued on the stairs a series of gymnastics of +a nature to bring Miss Farange's heart into Miss Farange's mouth. +She sat with Sir Claude in a four-wheeler while he still held his +watch; held it longer than any doctor who had ever felt her pulse; +long enough to give her a vision of something like the ecstasy of +neglecting such an opportunity to show impatience. The ecstasy had +begun in the schoolroom and over the Berceuse, quite in the manner +of the same foretaste on the day, a little while back, when Susan +had panted up and she herself, after the hint about the duchess, +had sailed down; for what harm then had there been in drops and +disappointments if she could still have, even only a moment, the +sensation of such a name "brought up"? It had remained with her +that her father had foretold her she would some day be in the +street, but it clearly wouldn't be this day, and she felt +justified of the preference betrayed to that parent as soon as her +visitor had set Susan in motion and laid his hand, while she +waited with him, kindly on her own. This was what the Captain, in +Kensington Gardens, had done; her present situation reminded her a +little of that one and renewed the dim wonder of the fashion after +which, from the first, such pats and pulls had struck her as the +steps and signs of other people's business and even a little as +the wriggle or the overflow of their difficulties. What had failed +her and what had frightened her on the night of the Exhibition +lost themselves at present alike in the impression that any +"surprise" now about to burst from Sir Claude would be too big to +burst all at once. Any awe that might have sprung from his air of +leaving out her stepmother was corrected by the force of a general +rule, the odd truth that if Mrs. Beale now never came nor went +without making her think of him, it was never, to balance that, +the main mark of his own renewed reality to appear to be a +reference to Mrs. Beale. To be with Sir Claude was to think of Sir +Claude, and that law governed Maisie's mind until, through a +sudden lurch of the cab, which had at last taken in Susan and ever +so many bundles and almost reached Charing Cross, it popped again +somehow into her dizzy head the long-lost image of Mrs. Wix.</p> + +<p>It was singular, but from this time she understood and she +followed, followed with the sense of an ample filling-out of any +void created by symptoms of avoidance and of flight. Her ecstasy +was a thing that had yet more of a face than of a back to turn, a +pair of eyes still directed to Mrs. Wix even after the slight +surprise of their not finding her, as the journey expanded, either +at the London station or at the Folkestone hotel. It took few +hours to make the child feel that if she was in neither of these +places she was at least everywhere else. Maisie had known all +along a great deal, but never so much as she was to know from this +moment on and as she learned in particular during the couple of +days that she was to hang in the air, as it were, over the sea +which represented in breezy blueness and with a summer charm a +crossing of more spaces than the Channel. It was granted her at +this time to arrive at divinations so ample that I shall have no +room for the goal if I attempt to trace the stages; as to which +therefore I must be content to say that the fullest expression we +may give to Sir Claude's conduct is a poor and pale copy of the +picture it presented to his young friend. Abruptly, that morning, +he had yielded to the action of the idea pumped into him for weeks +by Mrs. Wix on lines of approach that she had been capable of the +extraordinary art of preserving from entanglement in the fine +network of his relations with Mrs. Beale. The breath of her +sincerity, blowing without a break, had puffed him up to the +flight by which, in the degree I have indicated, Maisie too was +carried off her feet. This consisted neither in more nor in less +than the brave stroke of his getting off from Mrs. Beale as well +as from his wife—of making with the child straight for some such +foreign land as would give a support to Mrs. Wix's dream that she +might still see his errors renounced and his delinquencies +redeemed. It would all be a sacrifice—under eyes that would miss +no faintest shade—to what even the strange frequenters of her +ladyship's earlier period used to call the real good of the little +unfortunate. Maisie's head held a suspicion of much that, during +the last long interval, had confusedly, but quite candidly, come +and gone in his own; a glimpse, almost awe-stricken in its +gratitude, of the miracle her old governess had wrought. That +functionary could not in this connexion have been more impressive, +even at second-hand, if she had been a prophetess with an open +scroll or some ardent abbess speaking with the lips of the Church. +She had clung day by day to their plastic associate, plying him +with her deep, narrow passion, doing her simple utmost to convert +him, and so working on him that he had at last really embraced his +fine chance. That the chance was not delusive was sufficiently +guaranteed by the completeness with which he could finally figure +it out that, in case of his taking action, neither Ida nor Beale, +whose book, on each side, it would only too well suit, would make +any sort of row.</p> + +<p>It sounds, no doubt, too penetrating, but it was not all as an +effect of Sir Claude's betrayals that Maisie was able to piece +together the beauty of the special influence through which, for +such stretches of time, he had refined upon propriety by keeping, +so far as possible, his sentimental interests distinct. She had +ever of course in her mind fewer names than conceptions, but it +was only with this drawback that she now made out her companion's +absences to have had for their ground that he was the lover of her +stepmother and that the lover of her stepmother could scarce +logically pretend to a superior right to look after her. Maisie +had by this time embraced the implication of a kind of natural +divergence between lovers and little girls. It was just this +indeed that could throw light on the probable contents of the +pencilled note deposited on the hall-table in the Regent's Park +and which would greet Mrs. Beale on her return. Maisie freely +figured it as provisionally jocular in tone, even though to +herself on this occasion Sir Claude turned a graver face than he +had shown in any crisis but that of putting her into the cab when +she had been horrid to him after her parting with the Captain. He +might really be embarrassed, but he would be sure, to her view, to +have muffled in some bravado of pleasantry the disturbance +produced at her father's by the removal of a valued servant. Not +that there wasn't a great deal too that wouldn't be in the note—a +great deal for which a more comfortable place was Maisie's light +little brain, where it hummed away hour after hour and caused the +first outlook at Folkestone to swim in a softness of colour and +sound. It became clear in this medium that her stepfather had +really now only to take into account his entanglement with Mrs. +Beale. Wasn't he at last disentangled from every one and every +thing else? The obstacle to the rupture pressed upon him by Mrs. +Wix in the interest of his virtue would be simply that he was in +love, or rather, to put it more precisely, that Mrs. Beale had +left him no doubt of the degree in which <i>she</i> was. She was +so much so as to have succeeded in making him accept for a time her +infatuated grasp of him and even to some extent the idea of what +they yet might do together with a little diplomacy and a good deal +of patience. I may not even answer for it that Maisie was not +aware of how, in this, Mrs. Beale failed to share his all but +insurmountable distaste for their allowing their little charge to +breathe the air of their gross irregularity—his contention, in a +word, that they should either cease to be irregular or cease to be +parental. Their little charge, for herself, had long ago adopted +the view that even Mrs. Wix had at one time not thought +prohibitively coarse—the view that she was after all, <i>as</i> a +little charge, morally at home in atmospheres it would be appalling +to analyse. If Mrs. Wix, however, ultimately appalled, had now set +her heart on strong measures, Maisie, as I have intimated, could +also work round both to the reasons for them and to the quite +other reasons for that lady's not, as yet at least, appearing in +them at first-hand.</p> + +<p>Oh decidedly I shall never get you to believe the number of things +she saw and the number of secrets she discovered! Why in the +world, for instance, couldn't Sir Claude have kept it from +her—except on the hypothesis of his not caring to—that, when you +came to look at it and so far as it was a question of vested +interests, he had quite as much right in her as her stepmother, +not to say a right that Mrs. Beale was in no position to dispute? +He failed at all events of any such successful ambiguity as could +keep her, when once they began to look across at France, from +regarding even what was least explained as most in the spirit of +their old happy times, their rambles and expeditions in the easier +better days of their first acquaintance. Never before had she had +so the sense of giving him a lead for the sort of treatment of +what was between them that would best carry it off, or of his +being grateful to her for meeting him so much in the right place. +She met him literally at the very point where Mrs. Beale was most +to be reckoned with, the point of the jealousy that was sharp in +that lady and of the need of their keeping it as long as possible +obscure to her that poor Mrs. Wix had still a hand. Yes, she met +him too in the truth of the matter that, as her stepmother had had +no one else to be jealous of, she had made up for so gross a +privation by directing the sentiment to a moral influence. Sir +Claude appeared absolutely to convey in a wink that a moral +influence capable of pulling a string was after all a moral +influence exposed to the scratching out of its eyes; and that, +this being the case, there was somebody they couldn't afford to +leave unprotected before they should see a little better what Mrs. +Beale was likely to do. Maisie, true enough, had not to put it +into words to rejoin, in the coffee-room, at luncheon: "What +<i>can</i> she do but come to you if papa does take a step +that will amount to legal desertion?" Neither had he then, +in answer, to articulate anything but the jollity of their +having found a table at a window from which, as they partook +of cold beef and apollinaris—for he hinted they would have +to save lots of money—they could let their eyes hover +tenderly on the far-off white cliffs that so often had +signalled to the embarrassed English a promise of safety. Maisie +stared at them as if she might really make out after a little a +queer dear figure perched on them—a figure as to which she had +already the subtle sense that, wherever perched, it would be the +very oddest yet seen in France. But it was at least as exciting to +feel where Mrs. Wix wasn't as it would have been to know where she +was, and if she wasn't yet at Boulogne this only thickened the +plot.</p> + +<p>If she was not to be seen that day, however, the evening was +marked by an apparition before which, none the less, overstrained +suspense folded on the spot its wings. Adjusting her respirations +and attaching, under dropped lashes, all her thoughts to a +smartness of frock and frill for which she could reflect that she +had not appealed in vain to a loyalty in Susan Ash triumphant over +the nice things their feverish flight had left behind, Maisie +spent on a bench in the garden of the hotel the half-hour before +dinner, that mysterious ceremony of the <i>table d'hôte</i> +for which she had prepared with a punctuality of flutter. Sir Claude, +beside her, was occupied with a cigarette and the afternoon papers; +and though the hotel was full the garden shewed the particular void +that ensues upon the sound of the dressing-bell. She had almost +had time to weary of the human scene; her own humanity at any +rate, in the shape of a smutch on her scanty skirt, had held her +so long that as soon as she raised her eyes they rested on a high +fair drapery by which smutches were put to shame and which had +glided toward her over the grass without her noting its rustle. +She followed up its stiff sheen—up and up from the ground, where +it had stopped—till at the end of a considerable journey her +impression felt the shock of the fixed face which, surmounting it, +seemed to offer the climax of the dressed condition. "Why mamma!" +she cried the next instant—cried in a tone that, as she sprang to +her feet, brought Sir Claude to his own beside her and gave her +ladyship, a few yards off, the advantage of their momentary +confusion. Poor Maisie's was immense; her mother's drop had the +effect of one of the iron shutters that, in evening walks with +Susan Ash, she had seen suddenly, at the touch of a spring, rattle +down over shining shop-fronts. The light of foreign travel was +darkened at a stroke; she had a horrible sense that they were +caught; and for the first time of her life in Ida's presence she +so far translated an impulse into an invidious act as to clutch +straight at the hand of her responsible confederate. It didn't +help her that he appeared at first equally hushed with horror; a +minute during which, in the empty garden, with its long shadows on +the lawn, its blue sea over the hedge and its startled peace in +the air, both her elders remained as stiff as tall tumblers filled +to the brim and held straight for fear of a spill.</p> + +<p>At last, in a tone that enriched the whole surprise by its +unexpected softness, her mother said to Sir Claude: "Do you mind +at all my speaking to her?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no; <i>do</i> you?" His reply was so long in coming that +Maisie was the first to find the right note.</p> + +<p>He laughed as he seemed to take it from her, and she felt a +sufficient concession in his manner of addressing their visitor. +"How in the world did you know we were here?"</p> + +<p>His wife, at this, came the rest of the way and sat down on the +bench with a hand laid on her daughter, whom she gracefully drew +to her and in whom, at her touch, the fear just kindled gave a +second jump, but now in quite another direction. Sir Claude, on +the further side, resumed his seat and his newspapers, so that the +three grouped themselves like a family party; his connexion, in +the oddest way in the world, almost cynically and in a flash +acknowledged, and the mother patting the child into conformities +unspeakable. Maisie could already feel how little it was Sir +Claude and she who were caught. She had the positive sense of +their catching their relative, catching her in the act of getting +rid of her burden with a finality that showed her as +unprecedentedly relaxed. Oh yes, the fear had dropped, and she had +never been so irrevocably parted with as in the pressure of +possession now supremely exerted by Ida's long-gloved and +much-bangled arm. "I went to the Regent's Park"—this was +presently her ladyship's answer to Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to-day?"</p> + +<p>"This morning, just after your own call there. That's how I found +you out; that's what has brought me."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude considered and Maisie waited. "Whom then did you see?"</p> + +<p>Ida gave a sound of indulgent mockery. "I like your scare. I know +your game. I didn't see the person I risked seeing, but I had been +ready to take my chance of her." She addressed herself to Maisie; +she had encircled her more closely. "I asked for <i>you</i>, my +dear, but I saw no one but a dirty parlourmaid. She was red in the +face with the great things that, as she told me, had just happened in +the absence of her mistress; and she luckily had the sense to have +made out the place to which Sir Claude had come to take you. If he +hadn't given a false scent I should find you here: that was the +supposition on which I've proceeded." Ida had never been so explicit +about proceeding or supposing, and Maisie, drinking this in, noted +too how Sir Claude shared her fine impression of it. "I wanted to see +you," his wife continued, "and now you can judge of the trouble I've +taken. I had everything to do in town to-day, but I managed to get +off."</p> + +<p>Maisie and her companion, for a moment, did justice to this +achievement; but Maisie was the first to express it. "I'm glad you +wanted to see me, mamma." Then after a concentration more deep and +with a plunge more brave: "A little more and you'd have been too +late." It stuck in her throat, but she brought it out: "We're +going to France."</p> + +<p>Ida was magnificent; Ida kissed her on the forehead. "That's just +what I thought likely; it made me decide to run down. I fancied +that in spite of your scramble you'd wait to cross, and it added +to the reason I have for seeing you."</p> + +<p>Maisie wondered intensely what the reason could be, but she knew +ever so much better than to ask. She was slightly surprised indeed +to perceive that Sir Claude didn't, and to hear him immediately +enquire: "What in the name of goodness can you have to say to +her?"</p> + +<p>His tone was not exactly rude, but it was impatient enough to make +his wife's response a fresh specimen of the new softness. "That, +my dear man, is all my own business."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean," Sir Claude asked, "that you wish me to leave you +with her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, if you'll be so good; that's the extraordinary request I +take the liberty of making." Her ladyship had dropped to a +mildness of irony by which, for a moment, poor Maisie was +mystified and charmed, puzzled with a glimpse of something that in +all the years had at intervals peeped out. Ida smiled at Sir +Claude with the strange air she had on such occasions of defying +an interlocutor to keep it up as long; her huge eyes, her red +lips, the intense marks in her face formed an <i>éclairage</i> +as distinct and public as a lamp set in a window. The child seemed +quite to see in it the very beacon that had lighted her path; she +suddenly found herself reflecting that it was no wonder the +gentlemen were guided. This must have been the way mamma had first +looked at Sir Claude; it brought back the lustre of the time they +had outlived. It must have been the way she looked also at Mr. +Perriam and Lord Eric; above all it contributed in Maisie's mind +to a completer view of that satisfied state of the Captain. Our +young lady grasped this idea with a quick lifting of the heart; +there was a stillness during which her mother flooded her with a +wealth of support to the Captain's striking tribute. This +stillness remained long enough unbroken to represent that Sir +Claude too might but be gasping again under the spell originally +strong for him; so that Maisie quite hoped he would at least say +something to show a recognition of how charming she could be.</p> + +<p>What he presently said was: "Are you putting up for the night?"</p> + +<p>His wife cast grandly about. "Not here—I've come from Dover."</p> + +<p>Over Maisie's head, at this, they still faced each other. "You +spend the night there?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I brought some things. I went to the hotel and hastily +arranged; then I caught the train that whisked me on here. You see +what a day I've had of it."</p> + +<p>The statement may surprise, but these were really as obliging if +not as lucid words as, into her daughter's ears at least, Ida's +lips had ever dropped; and there was a quick desire in the +daughter that for the hour at any rate they should duly be +welcomed as a ground of intercourse. Certainly mamma had a charm +which, when turned on, became a large explanation; and the only +danger now in an impulse to applaud it would be that of appearing +to signalise its rarity. Maisie, however, risked the peril in the +geniality of an admission that Ida had indeed had a rush; and she +invited Sir Claude to expose himself by agreeing with her that the +rush had been even worse than theirs. He appeared to meet this +appeal by saying with detachment enough: "You go back there +to-night?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes—there are plenty of trains." Again Sir Claude hesitated; +it would have been hard to say if the child, between them, more +connected or divided them. Then he brought out quietly: "It will +be late for you to knock about. I'll see you over."</p> + +<p>"You needn't trouble, thank you. I think you won't deny that I can +help myself and that it isn't the first time in my dreadful life +that I've somehow managed it." Save for this allusion to her +dreadful life they talked there, Maisie noted, as if they were +only rather superficial friends; a special effect that she had +often wondered at before in the midst of what she supposed to be +intimacies. This effect was augmented by the almost casual manner +in which her ladyship went on: "I dare say I shall go abroad."</p> + +<p>"From Dover do you mean, straight?"</p> + +<p>"How straight I can't say. I'm excessively ill."</p> + +<p>This for a minute struck Maisie as but a part of the conversation; +at the end of which time she became aware that it ought to strike +her—though it apparently didn't strike Sir Claude—as a part of +something graver. It helped her to twist nearer. "Ill, mamma—really +ill?"</p> + +<p>She regretted her "really" as soon as she had spoken it; but there +couldn't be a better proof of her mother's present polish than +that Ida showed no gleam of a temper to take it up. She had taken +up at other times much tinier things. She only pressed Maisie's +head against her bosom and said: "Shockingly, my dear. I must go +to that new place."</p> + +<p>"What new place?" Sir Claude enquired.</p> + +<p>Ida thought, but couldn't recall it. "Oh 'Chose,' don't you +know?—where every one goes. I want some proper treatment. It's +all I've ever asked for on earth. But that's not what I came to +say."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude, in silence, folded one by one his newspapers; then he +rose and stood whacking the palm of his hand with the bundle. +"You'll stop and dine with us?"</p> + +<p>"Dear no—I can't dine at this sort of hour. I ordered dinner at +Dover."</p> + +<p>Her ladyship's tone in this one instance showed a certain +superiority to those conditions in which her daughter had +artlessly found Folkestone a paradise. It was yet not so crushing +as to nip in the bud the eagerness with which the latter broke +out: "But won't you at least have a cup of tea?"</p> + +<p>Ida kissed her again on the brow. "Thanks, love. I had tea before +coming." She raised her eyes to Sir Claude. "She <i>is</i> sweet!" +He made no more answer than if he didn't agree; but Maisie was at +ease about that and was still taken up with the joy of this +happier pitch of their talk, which put more and more of a meaning +into the Captain's version of her ladyship and literally kindled a +conjecture that such an admirer might, over there at the other +place, be waiting for her to dine. Was the same conjecture in Sir +Claude's mind? He partly puzzled her, if it had risen there, by +the slight perversity with which he returned to a question that +his wife evidently thought she had disposed of.</p> + +<p>He whacked his hand again with his paper. "I had really much +better take you."</p> + +<p>"And leave Maisie here alone?"</p> + +<p>Mamma so clearly didn't want it that Maisie leaped at the vision +of a Captain who had seen her on from Dover and who, while he +waited to take her back, would be hovering just at the same +distance at which, in Kensington Gardens, the companion of his +walk had herself hovered. Of course, however, instead of breathing +any such guess she let Sir Claude reply; all the more that his +reply could contribute so much to her own present grandeur. "She +won't be alone when she has a maid in attendance."</p> + +<p>Maisie had never before had so much of a retinue, and she waited +also to enjoy the action of it on her ladyship. "You mean the +woman you brought from town?" Ida considered. "The person at the +house spoke of her in a way that scarcely made her out company for +my child." Her tone was that her child had never wanted, in her +hands, for prodigious company. But she as distinctly continued to +decline Sir Claude's. "Don't be an old goose," she said +charmingly. "Let us alone."</p> + +<p>In front of them on the grass he looked graver than Maisie at all +now thought the occasion warranted. "I don't see why you can't say +it before me."</p> + +<p>His wife smoothed one of her daughter's curls. "Say what, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Why what you came to say."</p> + +<p>At this Maisie at last interposed: she appealed to Sir Claude. "Do +let her say it to me."</p> + +<p>He looked hard for a moment at his little friend. "How do you know +what she may say?"</p> + +<p>"She must risk it," Ida remarked.</p> + +<p>"I only want to protect you," he continued to the child.</p> + +<p>"You want to protect yourself—that's what you mean," his wife +replied. "Don't be afraid. I won't touch you."</p> + +<p>"She won't touch you—she <i>won't</i>!" Maisie declared. She +felt by this time that she could really answer for it, and something +of the emotion with which she had listened to the Captain came back +to her. It made her so happy and so secure that she could +positively patronise mamma. She did so in the Captain's very +language. "She's good, she's good!" she proclaimed.</p> + +<p>"Oh Lord!"—Sir Claude, at this, let himself go. He appeared to +have emitted some sound of derision that was smothered, to +Maisie's ears, by her being again embraced by his wife. Ida +released her and held her off a little, looking at her with a very +queer face. Then the child became aware that their companion had +left them and that from the face in question a confirmatory remark +had proceeded.</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> good, love," said her ladyship.</p> + + +<p> <a name="21"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXI<br /> </h3> + + +<p>A good deal of the rest of Ida's visit was devoted to explaining, +as it were, so extraordinary a statement. This explanation was +more copious than any she had yet indulged in, and as the summer +twilight gathered and she kept her child in the garden she was +conciliatory to a degree that let her need to arrange things a +little perceptibly peep out. It was not merely that she explained; +she almost conversed; all that was wanting was that she should +have positively chattered a little less. It was really the +occasion of Maisie's life on which her mother was to have most to +say to her. That alone was an implication of generosity and +virtue, and no great stretch was required to make our young lady +feel that she should best meet her and soonest have it over by +simply seeming struck with the propriety of her contention. They +sat together while the parent's gloved hand sometimes rested +sociably on the child's and sometimes gave a corrective pull to a +ribbon too meagre or a tress too thick; and Maisie was conscious +of the effort to keep out of her eyes the wonder with which they +were occasionally moved to blink. Oh there would have been things +to blink at if one had let one's self go; and it was lucky they +were alone together, without Sir Claude or Mrs. Wix or even Mrs. +Beale to catch an imprudent glance. Though profuse and prolonged +her ladyship was not exhaustively lucid, and her account of her +situation, so far as it could be called descriptive, was a muddle +of inconsequent things, bruised fruit of an occasion she had +rather too lightly affronted. None of them were really thought out +and some were even not wholly insincere. It was as if she had +asked outright what better proof could have been wanted of her +goodness and her greatness than just this marvellous consent to +give up what she had so cherished. It was as if she had said in so +many words: "There have been things between us—between Sir Claude +and me—which I needn't go into, you little nuisance, because you +wouldn't understand them." It suited her to convey that Maisie had +been kept, so far as <i>she</i> was concerned or could imagine, in +a holy ignorance and that she must take for granted a supreme +simplicity. She turned this way and that in the predicament she +had sought and from which she could neither retreat with grace nor +emerge with credit: she draped herself in the tatters of her +impudence, postured to her utmost before the last little triangle of +cracked glass to which so many fractures had reduced the polished +plate of filial superstition. If neither Sir Claude nor Mrs. Wix was +there this was perhaps all the more a pity: the scene had a style of +its own that would have qualified it for presentation, especially at +such a moment as that of her letting it betray that she quite did +think her wretched offspring better placed with Sir Claude than in +her own soiled hands. There was at any rate nothing scant either in +her admissions or her perversions, the mixture of her fear of what +Maisie might undiscoverably think and of the support she at the same +time gathered from a necessity of selfishness and a habit of +brutality. This habit flushed through the merit she now made, in +terms explicit, of not having come to Folkestone to kick up a vulgar +row. She had not come to box any ears or to bang any doors or even to +use any language: she had come at the worst to lose the thread of her +argument in an occasional dumb disgusted twitch of the toggery in +which Mrs. Beale's low domestic had had the impudence to serve up +Miss Farange. She checked all criticism, not committing herself even +so far as for those missing comforts of the schoolroom on which Mrs. +Wix had presumed.</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> good—I'm crazily, I'm criminally good. But it won't +do for <i>you</i> any more, and if I've ceased to contend with him, +and with you too, who have made most of the trouble between us, it's +for reasons that you'll understand one of these days but too +well—one of these days when I hope you'll know what it is to have +lost a mother. I'm awfully ill, but you mustn't ask me anything about +it. If I don't get off somewhere my doctor won't answer for the +consequences. He's stupefied at what I've borne—he says it has +been put on me because I was formed to suffer. I'm thinking of +South Africa, but that's none of your business. You must take your +choice—you can't ask me questions if you're so ready to give me +up. No, I won't tell you; you can find out for yourself. South +Africa's wonderful, they say, and if I do go it must be to give it +a fair trial. It must be either one thing or the other; if he +takes you, you know, he takes you. I've struck my last blow for +you; I can follow you no longer from pillar to post. I must live +for myself at last, while there's still a handful left of me. I'm +very, very ill; I'm very, very tired; I'm very, very determined. +There you have it. Make the most of it. Your frock's too filthy; +but I came to sacrifice myself." Maisie looked at the peccant +places; there were moments when it was a relief to her to drop her +eyes even on anything so sordid. All her interviews, all her +ordeals with her mother had, as she had grown older, seemed to +have, before any other, the hard quality of duration; but longer +than any, strangely, were these minutes offered to her as so +pacific and so agreeably winding up the connexion. It was her +anxiety that made them long, her fear of some hitch, some check of +the current, one of her ladyship's famous quick jumps. She held +her breath; she only wanted, by playing into her visitor's hands, +to see the thing through. But her impatience itself made at +instants the whole situation swim; there were things Ida said that +she perhaps didn't hear, and there were things she heard that Ida +perhaps didn't say. "You're all I have, and yet I'm capable of +this. Your father wishes you were dead—that, my dear, is what +your father wishes. You'll have to get used to it as I've done—I +mean to his wishing that <i>I'm</i> dead. At all events you see for +yourself how wonderful I am to Sir Claude. He wishes me dead quite +as much; and I'm sure that if making me scenes about <i>you</i> +could have killed me—!" It was the mark of Ida's eloquence that she +started more hares than she followed, and she gave but a glance in +the direction of this one; going on to say that the very proof of +her treating her husband like an angel was that he had just stolen +off not to be fairly shamed. She spoke as if he had retired on +tiptoe, as he might have withdrawn from a place of worship in +which he was not fit to be present. "You'll never know what I've +been through about you—never, never, never. I spare you +everything, as I always have; though I dare say you know things +that, if I did (I mean if I knew them) would make me—well, no +matter! You're old enough at any rate to know there are a lot of +things I don't say that I easily might; though it would do me +good, I assure you, to have spoken my mind for once in my life. I +don't speak of your father's infamous wife: that may give you a +notion of the way I'm letting you off. When I say 'you' I mean +your precious friends and backers. If you don't do justice to my +forbearing, out of delicacy, to mention, just as a last word, +about your stepfather, a little fact or two of a kind that really +I should only <i>have</i> to mention to shine myself in comparison, +and after every calumny, like pure gold: if you don't do me +<i>that</i> justice you'll never do me justice at all!"</p> + +<p>Maisie's desire to show what justice she did her had by this time +become so intense as to have brought with it an inspiration. The +great effect of their encounter had been to confirm her sense of +being launched with Sir Claude, to make it rich and full beyond +anything she had dreamed, and everything now conspired to suggest +that a single soft touch of her small hand would complete the good +work and set her ladyship so promptly and majestically afloat as +to leave the great seaway clear for the morrow. This was the more +the case as her hand had for some moments been rendered free by a +marked manœuvre of both of her mother's. One of these capricious +members had fumbled with visible impatience in some backward depth +of drapery and had presently reappeared with a small article in +its grasp. The act had a significance for a little person trained, +in that relation, from an early age, to keep an eye on manual +motions, and its possible bearing was not darkened by the memory +of the handful of gold that Susan Ash would never, never believe +Mrs. Beale had sent back—"not she; she's too false and too +greedy!"—to the munificent Countess. To have guessed, none the +less, that her ladyship's purse might be the real figure of the +object extracted from the rustling covert at her rear—this +suspicion gave on the spot to the child's eyes a direction +carefully distant. It added moreover to the optimism that for an +hour could ruffle the surface of her deep diplomacy, ruffle it to +the point of making her forget that she had never been safe unless +she had also been stupid. She in short forgot her habitual caution +in her impulse to adopt her ladyship's practical interests and +show her ladyship how perfectly she understood them. She saw +without looking that her mother pressed a little clasp; heard, +without wanting to, the sharp click that marked the closing +portemonnaie from which something had been taken. What +this was she just didn't see; it was not too substantial to be +locked with ease in the fold of her ladyship's fingers. Nothing +was less new to Maisie than the art of not thinking singly, so +that at this instant she could both bring out what was on her +tongue's end and weigh, as to the object in her mother's palm, the +question of its being a sovereign against the question of its +being a shilling. No sooner had she begun to speak than she saw +that within a few seconds this question would have been settled: +she had foolishly checked the rising words of the little speech of +presentation to which, under the circumstances, even such a high +pride as Ida's had had to give some thought. She had checked it +completely—that was the next thing she felt: the note she sounded +brought into her companion's eyes a look that quickly enough +seemed at variance with presentations.</p> + +<p>"That was what the Captain said to me that day, mamma. I think it +would have given you pleasure to hear the way he spoke of you."</p> + +<p>The pleasure, Maisie could now in consternation reflect, would +have been a long time coming if it had come no faster than the +response evoked by her allusion to it. Her mother gave her one of +the looks that slammed the door in her face; never in a career of +unsuccessful experiments had Maisie had to take such a stare. It +reminded her of the way that once, at one of the lectures in +Glower Street, something in a big jar that, amid an array of +strange glasses and bad smells, had been promised as a beautiful +yellow was produced as a beautiful black. She had been sorry on +that occasion for the lecturer, but she was at this moment sorrier +for herself. Oh nothing had ever made for twinges like mamma's +manner of saying: "The Captain? What Captain?"</p> + +<p>"Why when we met you in the Gardens—the one who took me to sit +with him. That was exactly what <i>he</i> said."</p> + +<p>Ida let it come on so far as to appear for an instant to pick up a +lost thread. "What on earth did he say?"</p> + +<p>Maisie faltered supremely, but supremely she brought it out. "What +you say, mamma—that you're so good."</p> + +<p>"What 'I' say?" Ida slowly rose, keeping her eyes on her child, +and the hand that had busied itself in her purse conformed at her +side and amid the folds of her dress to a certain stiffening of +the arm. "I say you're a precious idiot, and I won't have you put +words into my mouth!" This was much more peremptory than a mere +contradiction. Maisie could only feel on the spot that everything +had broken short off and that their communication had abruptly +ceased. That was presently proved. "What business have you to +speak to me of him?"</p> + +<p>Her daughter turned scarlet. "I thought you liked him."</p> + +<p>"Him!—the biggest cad in London!" Her ladyship towered again, and +in the gathering dusk the whites of her eyes were huge.</p> + +<p>Maisie's own, however, could by this time pretty well match them; +and she had at least now, with the first flare of anger that had +ever yet lighted her face for a foe, the sense of looking up quite +as hard as any one could look down. "Well, he was kind about you +then; he <i>was</i>, and it made me like him. He said things—they +were beautiful, they were, they were!" She was almost capable of the +violence of forcing this home, for even in the midst of her surge +of passion—of which in fact it was a part—there rose in her a +fear, a pain, a vision ominous, precocious, of what it might mean +for her mother's fate to have forfeited such a loyalty as that. +There was literally an instant in which Maisie fully saw—saw +madness and desolation, saw ruin and darkness and death. "I've +thought of him often since, and I hoped it was with him—with +him—" Here, in her emotion, it failed her, the breath of her +filial hope.</p> + +<p>But Ida got it out of her. "You hoped, you little horror—?"</p> + +<p>"That it was he who's at Dover, that it was he who's to take you. +I mean to South Africa," Maisie said with another drop.</p> + +<p>Ida's stupefaction, on this, kept her silent unnaturally long, so +long that her daughter could not only wonder what was coming, but +perfectly measure the decline of every symptom of her liberality. +She loomed there in her grandeur, merely dark and dumb; her wrath +was clearly still, as it had always been, a thing of resource and +variety. What Maisie least expected of it was by this law what now +occurred. It melted, in the summer twilight, gradually into pity, +and the pity after a little found a cadence to which the renewed +click of her purse gave an accent. She had put back what she had +taken out. "You're a dreadful dismal deplorable little thing," she +murmured. And with this she turned back and rustled away over the +lawn.</p> + +<p>After she had disappeared, Maisie dropped upon the bench again and +for some time, in the empty garden and the deeper dusk, sat and +stared at the image her flight had still left standing. It had +ceased to be her mother only, in the strangest way, that it might +become her father, the father of whose wish that she were dead the +announcement still lingered in the air. It was a presence with +vague edges—it continued to front her, to cover her. But what +reality that she need reckon with did it represent if Mr. Farange +were, on his side, also going off—going off to America with the +Countess, or even only to Spa? That question had, from the house, +a sudden gay answer in the great roar of a gong, and at the same +moment she saw Sir Claude look out for her from the wide lighted +doorway. At this she went to him and he came forward and met her +on the lawn. For a minute she was with him there in silence as, +just before, at the last, she had been with her mother.</p> + +<p>"She's gone?"</p> + +<p>"She's gone."</p> + +<p>Nothing more, for the instant, passed between them but to move +together to the house, where, in the hall, he indulged in one of +those sudden pleasantries with which, to the delight of his +stepdaughter, his native animation overflowed. "Will Miss Farange +do me the honour to accept my arm?"</p> + +<p>There was nothing in all her days that Miss Farange had accepted +with such bliss, a bright rich element that floated them together +to their feast; before they reached which, however, she uttered, +in the spirit of a glad young lady taken in to her first dinner, a +sociable word that made him stop short. "She goes to South +Africa."</p> + +<p>"To South Africa?" His face, for a moment, seemed to swing for a +jump; the next it took its spring into the extreme of hilarity. +"Is that what she said?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, I didn't <i>mistake</i>!" Maisie took to herself +<i>that</i> credit. "For the climate."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude was now looking at a young woman with black hair, a red +frock and a tiny terrier tucked under her elbow. She swept past +them on her way to the dining-room, leaving an impression of a +strong scent which mingled, amid the clatter of the place, with +the hot aroma of food. He had become a little graver; he still +stopped to talk. "I see—I see." Other people brushed by; he was +not too grave to notice them. "Did she say anything else?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, a lot more."</p> + +<p>On this he met her eyes again with some intensity, but only +repeating: "I see—I see."</p> + +<p>Maisie had still her own vision, which she brought out. "I thought +she was going to give me something."</p> + +<p>"What kind of a thing?"</p> + +<p>"Some money that she took out of her purse and then put back."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude's amusement reappeared. "She thought better of it. Dear +thrifty soul! How much did she make by that manœuvre?"</p> + +<p>Maisie considered. "I didn't see. It was very small."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude threw back his head. "Do you mean very little? +Sixpence?"</p> + +<p>Maisie resented this almost as if, at dinner, she were already +bandying jokes with an agreeable neighbour. "It may have been a +sovereign."</p> + +<p>"Or even," Sir Claude suggested, "a ten-pound note." She flushed +at this sudden picture of what she perhaps had lost, and he made +it more vivid by adding: "Rolled up in a tight little ball, you +know—her way of treating banknotes as if they were curl-papers!" +Maisie's flush deepened both with the immense plausibility of this +and with a fresh wave of the consciousness that was always there +to remind her of his cleverness—the consciousness of how +immeasurably more after all he knew about mamma than she. She had +lived with her so many times without discovering the material of +her curl-papers or assisting at any other of her dealings with +banknotes. The tight little ball had at any rate rolled away from +her for ever—quite like one of the other balls that Ida's cue +used to send flying. Sir Claude gave her his arm again, and by the +time she was seated at table she had perfectly made up her mind as +to the amount of the sum she had forfeited. Everything about her, +however—the crowded room, the bedizened banquet, the savour of +dishes, the drama of figures—ministered to the joy of life. After +dinner she smoked with her friend—for that was exactly what she +felt she did—on a porch, a kind of terrace, where the red tips of +cigars and the light dresses of ladies made, under the happy +stars, a poetry that was almost intoxicating. They talked but +little, and she was slightly surprised at his asking for no more +news of what her mother had said; but she had no need of +talk—there were a sense and a sound in everything to which words +had nothing to add. They smoked and smoked, and there was a +sweetness in her stepfather's silence. At last he said: "Let us +take another turn—but you must go to bed soon. Oh you know, we're +going to have a system!" Their turn was back into the garden, +along the dusky paths from which they could see the black masts +and the red lights of boats and hear the calls and cries that +evidently had to do with happy foreign travel; and their system +was once more to get on beautifully in this further lounge without +a definite exchange. Yet he finally spoke—he broke out as he +tossed away the match from which he had taken a fresh light: "I +must go for a stroll. I'm in a fidget—I must walk it off." She +fell in with this as she fell in with everything; on which he went +on: "You go up to Miss Ash"—it was the name they had started; +"you must see she's not in mischief. Can you find your way alone?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes; I've been up and down seven times." She positively +enjoyed the prospect of an eighth.</p> + +<p>Still they didn't separate; they stood smoking together under the +stars. Then at last Sir Claude produced it. "I'm free—I'm free."</p> + +<p>She looked up at him; it was the very spot on which a couple of +hours before she had looked up at her mother. "You're free—you're +free."</p> + +<p>"To-morrow we go to France." He spoke as if he hadn't heard her; +but it didn't prevent her again concurring.</p> + +<p>"To-morrow we go to France."</p> + +<p>Again he appeared not to have heard her; and after a moment—it +was an effect evidently of the depth of his reflexions and the +agitation of his soul—he also spoke as if he had not spoken +before. "I'm free—I'm free!"</p> + +<p>She repeated her form of assent. "You're free—you're free."</p> + +<p>This time he did hear her; he fixed her through the darkness with +a grave face. But he said nothing more; he simply stooped a little +and drew her to him—simply held her a little and kissed her +goodnight; after which, having given her a silent push upstairs to +Miss Ash, he turned round again to the black masts and the red +lights. Maisie mounted as if France were at the top.</p> + + +<p> <a name="22"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>The next day it seemed to her indeed at the bottom—down too far, +in shuddering plunges, even to leave her a sense, on the Channel +boat, of the height at which Sir Claude remained and which had +never in every way been so great as when, much in the wet, though +in the angle of a screen of canvas, he sociably sat with his +stepdaughter's head in his lap and that of Mrs. Beale's housemaid +fairly pillowed on his breast. Maisie was surprised to learn as +they drew into port that they had had a lovely passage; but this +emotion, at Boulogne, was speedily quenched in others, above all +in the great ecstasy of a larger impression of life. She was +"abroad" and she gave herself up to it, responded to it, in the +bright air, before the pink houses, among the bare-legged +fishwives and the red-legged soldiers, with the instant certitude +of a vocation. Her vocation was to see the world and to thrill +with enjoyment of the picture; she had grown older in five minutes +and had by the time they reached the hotel recognised in the +institutions and manners of France a multitude of affinities and +messages. Literally in the course of an hour she found her +initiation; a consciousness much quickened by the superior part +that, as soon as they had gobbled down a French breakfast—which +was indeed a high note in the concert—she observed herself to +play to Susan Ash. Sir Claude, who had already bumped against +people he knew and who, as he said, had business and letters, sent +them out together for a walk, a walk in which the child was +avenged, so far as poetic justice required, not only for the loud +giggles that in their London trudges used to break from her +attendant, but for all the years of her tendency to produce +socially that impression of an excess of the queer something which +had seemed to waver so widely between innocence and guilt. On the +spot, at Boulogne, though there might have been excess there was +at least no wavering; she recognised, she understood, she adored +and took possession; feeling herself attuned to everything and +laying her hand, right and left, on what had simply been waiting +for her. She explained to Susan, she laughed at Susan, she towered +over Susan; and it was somehow Susan's stupidity, of which she had +never yet been so sure, and Susan's bewilderment and ignorance and +antagonism, that gave the liveliest rebound to her immediate +perceptions and adoptions. The place and the people were all a +picture together, a picture that, when they went down to the wide +sands, shimmered, in a thousand tints, with the pretty +organisation of the <i>plage</i>, with the gaiety of spectators +and bathers, with that of the language and the weather, and above +all with that of our young lady's unprecedented situation. For it +appeared to her that no one since the beginning of time could have +had such an adventure or, in an hour, so much experience; as a +sequel to which she only needed, in order to feel with conscious +wonder how the past was changed, to hear Susan, inscrutably +aggravated, express a preference for the Edgware Road. The past +was so changed and the circle it had formed already so overstepped +that on that very afternoon, in the course of another walk, she +found herself enquiring of Sir Claude—without a single +scruple—if he were prepared as yet to name the moment at which +they should start for Paris. His answer, it must be said, gave her +the least little chill.</p> + +<p>"Oh Paris, my dear child—I don't quite know about Paris!"</p> + +<p>This required to be met, but it was much less to challenge him +than for the rich joy of her first discussion of the details of a +tour that, after looking at him a minute, she replied: "Well, +isn't that the <i>real</i> thing, the thing that when one does +come abroad—?"</p> + +<p>He had turned grave again, and she merely threw that out: it +was a way of doing justice to the seriousness of their life. She +couldn't moreover be so much older since yesterday without +reflecting that if by this time she probed a little he would +recognise that she had done enough for mere patience. There was in +fact something in his eyes that suddenly, to her own, made her +discretion shabby. Before she could remedy this he had answered +her last question, answered it in the way that, of all ways, she +had least expected. "The thing it doesn't do not to do? Certainly +Paris is charming. But, my dear fellow, Paris eats your head off. +I mean it's so beastly expensive."</p> + +<p>That note gave her a pang—it suddenly let in a harder light. Were +they poor then, that is was <i>he</i> poor, really poor beyond the +pleasantry of apollinaris and cold beef? They had walked to the +end of the long jetty that enclosed the harbour and were looking +out at the dangers they had escaped, the grey horizon that was +England, the tumbled surface of the sea and the brown smacks that +bobbed upon it. Why had he chosen an embarrassed time to make this +foreign dash? unless indeed it was just the dash economic, of +which she had often heard and on which, after another look at the +grey horizon and the bobbing boats, she was ready to turn round +with elation. She replied to him quite in his own manner: "I see, +I see." She smiled up at him. "Our affairs are involved."</p> + +<p>"That's it." He returned her smile. "Mine are not quite so bad as +yours; for yours are really, my dear man, in a state I can't see +through at all. But mine will do—for a mess."</p> + +<p>She thought this over. "But isn't France cheaper than England?"</p> + +<p>England, over there in the thickening gloom, looked just then +remarkably dear. "I dare say; some parts."</p> + +<p>"Then can't we live in those parts?"</p> + +<p>There was something that for an instant, in satisfaction of this, +he had the air of being about to say and yet not saying. What he +presently said was: "This very place is one of them."</p> + +<p>"Then we shall live here?"</p> + +<p>He didn't treat it quite so definitely as she liked. "Since we've +come to save money!"</p> + +<p>This made her press him more. "How long shall we stay?"</p> + +<p>"Oh three or four days."</p> + +<p>It took her breath away. "You can save money in that time?"</p> + +<p>He burst out laughing, starting to walk again and taking her under +his arm. He confessed to her on the way that she too had put a +finger on the weakest of all his weaknesses, the fact, of which he +was perfectly aware, that he probably might have lived within his +means if he had never done anything for thrift. "It's the happy +thoughts that do it," he said; "there's nothing so ruinous as +putting in a cheap week." Maisie heard afresh among the pleasant +sounds of the closing day that steel click of Ida's change of +mind. She thought of the ten-pound note it would have been +delightful at this juncture to produce for her companion's +encouragement. But the idea was dissipated by his saying +irrelevantly, in presence of the next thing they stopped to +admire: "We shall stay till she arrives."</p> + +<p>She turned upon him. "Mrs. Beale?"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Wix. I've had a wire," he went on. "She has seen your +mother."</p> + +<p>"Seen mamma?" Maisie stared. "Where in the world?"</p> + +<p>"Apparently in London. They've been together."</p> + +<p>For an instant this looked ominous—a fear came into her +eyes. "Then she hasn't gone?"</p> + +<p>"Your mother?—to South Africa? I give it up, dear boy," Sir +Claude said; and she seemed literally to see him give it up as he +stood there and with a kind of absent gaze—absent, that is, from +<i>her</i> affairs—followed the fine stride and shining limbs of a +young fishwife who had just waded out of the sea with her basketful +of shrimps. His thought came back to her sooner than his eyes. "But +I dare say it's all right. She wouldn't come if it wasn't, poor old +thing: she knows rather well what she's about."</p> + +<p>This was so reassuring that Maisie, after turning it over, could +make it fit into her dream. "Well, what <i>is</i> she about?"</p> + +<p>He finally stopped looking at the fishwife—he met his companion's +enquiry. "Oh you know!" There was something in the way he said it +that made, between them, more of an equality than she had yet +imagined; but it had also more the effect of raising her up than +of letting him down, and what it did with her was shown by the +sound of her assent.</p> + +<p>"Yes—I know!" What she knew, what she <i>could</i> know is by +this time no secret to us: it grew and grew at any rate, the rest of +that day, in the air of what he took for granted. It was better he +should do that than attempt to test her knowledge; but there at +the worst was the gist of the matter: it was open between them at +last that their great change, as, speaking as if it had already +lasted weeks, Maisie called it, was somehow built up round Mrs. +Wix. Before she went to bed that night she knew further that Sir +Claude, since, as <i>he</i> called it, they had been on the rush, +had received more telegrams than one. But they separated again +without speaking of Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>Oh what a crossing for the straighteners and the old brown +dress—which latter appurtenance the child saw thriftily revived +for the possible disasters of travel! The wind got up in the night +and from her little room at the inn Maisie could hear the noise of +the sea. The next day it was raining and everything different: +this was the case even with Susan Ash, who positively crowed over +the bad weather, partly, it seemed, for relish of the time their +visitor would have in the boat, and partly to point the moral of +the folly of coming to such holes. In the wet, with Sir Claude, +Maisie went to the Folkestone packet, on the arrival of which, +with many signs of the fray, he made her wait under an umbrella by +the quay; whence almost ere the vessel touched, he was to be +descried, in quest of their friend, wriggling—that had been his +word—through the invalids massed upon the deck. It was long till +he reappeared—it was not indeed till every one had landed; when +he presented the object of his benevolence in a light that Maisie +scarce knew whether to suppose the depth of prostration or the +flush of triumph. The lady on his arm, still bent beneath her late +ordeal, was muffled in such draperies as had never before offered +so much support to so much woe. At the hotel, an hour later, this +ambiguity dropped: assisting Mrs. Wix in private to refresh and +reinvest herself, Maisie heard from her in detail how little she +could have achieved if Sir Claude hadn't put it in her power. It +was a phrase that in her room she repeated in connexions +indescribable: he had put it in her power to have "changes," as +she said, of the most intimate order, adapted to climates and +occasions so various as to foreshadow in themselves the stages of +a vast itinerary. Cheap weeks would of course be in their place +after so much money spent on a governess; sums not grudged, +however, by this lady's pupil, even on her feeling her own +appearance give rise, through the straighteners, to an attention +perceptibly mystified. Sir Claude in truth had had less time to +devote to it than to Mrs. Wix's; and moreover she would rather be +in her own shoes than in her friend's creaking new ones in the +event of an encounter with Mrs. Beale. Maisie was too lost in the +idea of Mrs. Beale's judgement of so much newness to pass any +judgement herself. Besides, after much luncheon and many +endearments, the question took quite another turn, to say nothing +of the pleasure of the child's quick view that there were other +eyes than Susan Ash's to open to what she could show. She couldn't +show much, alas, till it stopped raining, which it declined to do +that day; but this had only the effect of leaving more time for +Mrs. Wix's own demonstration. It came as they sat in the little +white and gold salon which Maisie thought the loveliest place she +had ever seen except perhaps the apartment of the Countess; it +came while the hard summer storm lashed the windows and blew in +such a chill that Sir Claude, with his hands in his pockets and +cigarettes in his teeth, fidgeting, frowning, looking out and +turning back, ended by causing a smoky little fire to be made in +the dressy little chimney. It came in spite of something that +could only be named his air of wishing to put it off; an air that +had served him—oh as all his airs served him!—to the extent of +his having for a couple of hours confined the conversation to +gratuitous jokes and generalities, kept it on the level of the +little empty coffee-cups and <i>petits verres</i> (Mrs. Wix had +two of each!) that struck Maisie, through the fumes of the French +fire and the English tobacco, as a token more than ever that they +were launched. She felt now, in close quarters and as clearly as +if Mrs. Wix had told her, that what this lady had come over for +was not merely to be chaffed and to hear her pupil chaffed; not +even to hear Sir Claude, who knew French in perfection, imitate +the strange sounds emitted by the English folk at the hotel. It +was perhaps half an effect of her present renovations, as if her +clothes had been somebody's else: she had at any rate never +produced such an impression of high colour, of a redness +associated in Maisie's mind at <i>that</i> pitch either with +measles or with "habits." Her heart was not at all in the gossip +about Boulogne; and if her complexion was partly the result of +the déjeuner and the <i>petits verres</i> it was also the +brave signal of what she was there to say. Maisie knew when this did +come how anxiously it had been awaited by the youngest member of the +party. "Her ladyship packed me off—she almost put me into the cab!" +That was what Mrs. Wix at last brought out.</p> + + +<p> <a name="23"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXIII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>Sir Claude was stationed at the window; he didn't so much as turn +round, and it was left to the youngest of the three to take up the +remark. "Do you mean you went to see her yesterday?"</p> + +<p>"She came to see <i>me</i>. She knocked at my shabby door. She +mounted my squalid stair. She told me she had seen you at +Folkestone."</p> + +<p>Maisie wondered. "She went back that evening?"</p> + +<p>"No; yesterday morning. She drove to me straight from the station. +It was most remarkable. If I had a job to get off she did nothing +to make it worse—she did a great deal to make it better." Mrs. +Wix hung fire, though the flame in her face burned brighter; then +she became capable of saying: "Her ladyship's kind! She did what I +didn't expect."</p> + +<p>Maisie, on this, looked straight at her stepfather's back; it +might well have been for her at that hour a monument of her +ladyship's kindness. It remained, as such, monumentally still, and +for a time that permitted the child to ask of their companion: +"Did she really help you?"</p> + +<p>"Most practically." Again Mrs. Wix paused; again she quite +resounded. "She gave me a ten-pound note."</p> + +<p>At that, still looking out, Sir Claude, at the window, laughed +loud. "So you see, Maisie, we've not quite lost it!"</p> + +<p>"Oh no," Maisie responded. "Isn't that too charming?" She smiled +at Mrs. Wix. "We know all about it." Then on her friend's showing +such blankness as was compatible with such a flush she pursued: +"She does want me to have you?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix showed a final hesitation, which, however, while Sir +Claude drummed on the window-pane, she presently surmounted. It +came to Maisie that in spite of his drumming and of his not +turning round he was really so much interested as to leave himself +in a manner in her hands; which somehow suddenly seemed to her a +greater proof than he could have given by interfering. "She wants +me to have <i>you</i>!" Mrs. Wix declared.</p> + +<p>Maisie answered this bang at Sir Claude. "Then that's nice for all +of us."</p> + +<p>Of course it was, his continued silence sufficiently admitted +while Mrs. Wix rose from her chair and, as if to take more of a +stand, placed herself, not without majesty, before the fire. The +incongruity of her smartness, the circumference of her stiff +frock, presented her as really more ready for Paris than any of +them. She also gazed hard at Sir Claude's back. "Your wife was +different from anything she had ever shown me. She recognises +certain proprieties."</p> + +<p>"Which? Do you happen to remember?" Sir Claude asked.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix's reply was prompt. "The importance for Maisie of a +gentlewoman, of some one who's not—well, so bad! She objects to +a mere maid, and I don't in the least mind telling you what she +wants me to do." One thing was clear—Mrs. Wix was now bold enough +for anything. "She wants me to persuade you to get rid of the +person from Mrs. Beale's."</p> + +<p>Maisie waited for Sir Claude to pronounce on this; then she +could only understand that he on his side waited, and she felt +particularly full of common sense as she met her responsibility. +"Oh I don't want Susan with <i>you</i>!" she said to Mrs. Wix.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude, always from the window, approved. "That's quite +simple. I'll take her back."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix gave a positive jump; Maisie caught her look of alarm. +"'Take' her? You don't mean to go over on purpose?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude said nothing for a moment; after which, "Why shouldn't +I leave you here?" he enquired.</p> + +<p>Maisie, at this, sprang up. "Oh do, oh do, oh do!" The next moment +she was interlaced with Mrs. Wix, and the two, on the hearth-rug, +their eyes in each other's eyes, considered the plan with +intensity. Then Maisie felt the difference of what they saw in it.</p> + +<p>"She can surely go back alone: why should you put yourself out?" +Mrs. Wix demanded.</p> + +<p>"Oh she's an idiot—she's incapable. If anything should happen to +her it would be awkward: it was I who brought her—without her +asking. If I turn her away I ought with my own hand to place her +again exactly where I found her."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix's face appealed to Maisie on such folly, and her manner, +as directed to their companion, had, to her pupil's surprise, an +unprecedented firmness. "Dear Sir Claude, I think you're perverse. +Pay her fare and give her a sovereign. She has had an experience +that she never dreamed of and that will be an advantage to her +through life. If she goes wrong on the way it will be simply +because she wants to, and, with her expenses and her +remuneration—make it even what you like!—you'll have treated her +as handsomely as you always treat every one."</p> + +<p>This was a new tone—as new as Mrs. Wix's cap; and it could strike +a young person with a sharpened sense for latent meanings as the +upshot of a relation that had taken on a new character. It brought +out for Maisie how much more even than she had guessed her friends +were fighting side by side. At the same time it needed so definite +a justification that as Sir Claude now at last did face them she +at first supposed him merely resentful of excessive familiarity. +She was therefore yet more puzzled to see him show his serene +beauty untroubled, as well as an equal interest in a matter quite +distinct from any freedom but her ladyship's. "Did my wife come +alone?" He could ask even that good-humouredly.</p> + +<p>"When she called on me?" Mrs. Wix <i>was</i> red now: his good +humour wouldn't keep down her colour, which for a minute glowed +there like her ugly honesty. "No—there was some one in the cab." +The only attenuation she could think of was after a minute to add: +"But they didn't come up."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude broke into a laugh—Maisie herself could guess what it +was at: while he now walked about, still laughing, and at the +fireplace gave a gay kick to a displaced log, she felt more vague +about almost everything than about the drollery of such a "they." +She in fact could scarce have told you if it was to deepen or to +cover the joke that she bethought herself to observe: "Perhaps it +was her maid."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix gave her a look that at any rate deprecated the wrong +tone. "It was not her maid."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean there are this time two?" Sir Claude asked as if he +hadn't heard.</p> + +<p>"Two maids?" Maisie went on as if she might assume he had.</p> + +<p>The reproach of the straighteners darkened; but Sir Claude cut +across it with a sudden: "See here; what do you mean? And what do +you suppose <i>she</i> meant?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix let him for a moment, in silence, understand that the +answer to his question, if he didn't take care, might give him +more than he wanted. It was as if, with this scruple, she measured +and adjusted all she gave him in at last saying: "What she meant +was to make me know that you're definitely free. To have that +straight from her was a joy I of course hadn't hoped for: it made +the assurance, and my delight at it, a thing I could really +proceed upon. You already know now certainly I'd have started even +if she hadn't pressed me; you already know what, so long, we've +been looking for and what, as soon as she told me of her step +taken at Folkestone, I recognised with rapture that we <i>have</i>. +It's your freedom that makes me right"—she fairly bristled with +her logic. "But I don't mind telling you that it's her action that +makes me happy!"</p> + +<p>"Her action?" Sir Claude echoed. "Why, my dear woman, her action +is just a hideous crime. It happens to satisfy our sympathies in a +way that's quite delicious; but that doesn't in the least alter +the fact that it's the most abominable thing ever done. She has +chucked our friend here overboard not a bit less than if she had +shoved her shrieking and pleading, out of that window and down two +floors to the paving-stones."</p> + +<p>Maisie surveyed serenely the parties to the discussion. "Oh your +friend here, dear Sir Claude, doesn't plead and shriek!"</p> + +<p>He looked at her a moment. "Never. Never. That's one, only one, +but charming so far as it goes, of about a hundred things we love +her for." Then he pursued to Mrs. Wix: "What I can't for the life +of me make out is what Ida is <i>really</i> up to, what game she was +playing in turning to you with that cursed cheek after the beastly +way she has used you. Where—to explain her at all—does she fancy +she can presently, when we least expect it, take it out of us?"</p> + +<p>"She doesn't fancy anything, nor want anything out of any one. Her +cursed cheek, as you call it, is the best thing I've ever seen in +her. I don't care a fig for the beastly way she used me—I forgive +it all a thousand times over!" Mrs. Wix raised her voice as she +had never raised it; she quite triumphed in her lucidity. "I +understand her, I almost admire her!" she quavered. She spoke as +if this might practically suffice; yet in charity to fainter +lights she threw out an explanation. "As I've said, she was +different; upon my word I wouldn't have known her. She had a +glimmering, she had an instinct; they brought her. It was a kind +of happy thought, and if you couldn't have supposed she would ever +have had such a thing, why of course I quite agree with you. But +she did have it! There!"</p> + +<p>Maisie could feel again how a certain rude rightness in this plea +might have been found exasperating; but as she had often watched +Sir Claude in apprehension of displeasures that didn't come, so +now, instead of saying "Oh hell!" as her father used, she observed +him only to take refuge in a question that at the worst was +abrupt.</p> + +<p>"Who <i>is</i> it this time, do you know?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix tried blind dignity. "Who is what, Sir Claude?"</p> + +<p>"The man who stands the cabs. Who was in the one that waited at +your door?"</p> + +<p>At this challenge she faltered so long that her young friend's +pitying conscience gave her a hand. "It wasn't the Captain."</p> + +<p>This good intention, however, only converted the excellent woman's +scruple to a more ambiguous stare; besides of course making Sir +Claude go off. Mrs. Wix fairly appealed to him. "Must I really +tell you?"</p> + +<p>His amusement continued. "Did she make you promise not to?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix looked at him still harder. "I mean before Maisie."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude laughed again. "Why <i>she</i> can't hurt him!"</p> + +<p>Maisie felt herself, as it passed, brushed by the light humour of +this. "Yes, I can't hurt him."</p> + +<p>The straighteners again roofed her over; after which they seemed +to crack with the explosion of their wearer's honesty. Amid the +flying splinters Mrs. Wix produced a name. "Mr. Tischbein."</p> + +<p>There was for an instant a silence that, under Sir Claude's +influence and while he and Maisie looked at each other, suddenly +pretended to be that of gravity. "We don't know Mr. Tischbein, do +we, dear?"</p> + +<p>Maisie gave the point all needful thought. "No, I can't place Mr. +Tischbein."</p> + +<p>It was a passage that worked visibly on their friend. "You must +pardon me, Sir Claude," she said with an austerity of which the +note was real, "if I thank God to your face that he has in his +mercy—I mean his mercy to our charge—allowed me to achieve this +act." She gave out a long puff of pain. "It was time!" Then as if +still more to point the moral: "I said just now I understood your +wife. I said just now I admired her. I stand to it: I did both of +those things when I saw how even <i>she</i>, poor thing, saw. If +you want the dots on the i's you shall have them. What she came +to me for, in spite of everything, was that I'm just"—she +quavered it out—"well, just clean! What she saw for her daughter +was that there must at last be a <i>decent</i> person!"</p> + +<p>Maisie was quick enough to jump a little at the sound of this +implication that such a person was what Sir Claude was not; the +next instant, however, she more profoundly guessed against whom +the discrimination was made. She was therefore left the more +surprised at the complete candour with which he embraced the +worst. "If she's bent on decent persons why has she given her to +<i>me</i>? You don't call me a decent person, and I'll do Ida the +justice that <i>she</i> never did. I think I'm as indecent as any +one and that there's nothing in my behaviour that makes my wife's +surrender a bit less ignoble!"</p> + +<p>"Don't speak of your behaviour!" Mrs. Wix cried. "Don't say such +horrible things; they're false and they're wicked and I forbid +you! It's to <i>keep</i> you decent that I'm here and that I've +done everything I have done. It's to save you—I won't say from +yourself, because in yourself you're beautiful and good! It's to +save you from the worst person of all. I haven't, after all, come +over to be afraid to speak of her! That's the person in whose +place her ladyship wants such a person as even me; and if she +thought herself, as she as good as told me, not fit for Maisie's +company, it's not, as you may well suppose, that she may make room +for Mrs. Beale!"</p> + +<p>Maisie watched his face as it took this outbreak, and the most she +saw in it was that it turned a little white. That indeed made him +look, as Susan Ash would have said, queer; and it was perhaps a +part of the queerness that he intensely smiled. "You're too hard +on Mrs. Beale. She has great merits of her own."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix, at this, instead of immediately replying, did what Sir +Claude had been doing before: she moved across to the window and +stared a while into the storm. There was for a minute, to Maisie's +sense, a hush that resounded with wind and rain. Sir Claude, in +spite of these things, glanced about for his hat; on which Maisie +spied it first and, making a dash for it, held it out to him. He +took it with a gleam of a "thank-you" in his face, and then +something moved her still to hold the other side of the brim; so +that, united by their grasp of this object, they stood some +seconds looking many things at each other. By this time Mrs. Wix +had turned round. "Do you mean to tell me," she demanded, "that +you are going back?"</p> + +<p>"To Mrs. Beale?" Maisie surrendered his hat, and there was +something that touched her in the embarrassed, almost humiliated +way their companion's challenge made him turn it round and round. +She had seen people do that who, she was sure, did nothing else +that Sir Claude did. "I can't just say, my dear thing. We'll see +about I—we'll talk of it to-morrow. Meantime I must get some +air."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix, with her back to the window, threw up her head to a +height that, still for a moment, had the effect of detaining him. +"All the air in France, Sir Claude, won't, I think, give you the +courage to deny that you're simply afraid of her!"</p> + +<p>Oh this time he did look queer; Maisie had no need of Susan's +vocabulary to note it! It would have come to her of itself as, +with his hand on the door, he turned his eyes from his +stepdaughter to her governess and then back again. Resting on +Maisie's, though for ever so short a time, there was something +they gave up to her and tried to explain. His lips, however, +explained nothing; they only surrendered to Mrs. Wix. "Yes. I'm +simply afraid of her!" He opened the door and passed out. It +brought back to Maisie his confession of fear of her mother; it +made her stepmother then the second lady about whom he failed of +the particular virtue that was supposed most to mark a gentleman. +In fact there were three of them, if she counted in Mrs. Wix, +before whom he had undeniably quailed. Well, his want of valour +was but a deeper appeal to her tenderness. To thrill with response +to it she had only to remember all the ladies she herself had, as +they called it, funked.</p> + + +<p> <a name="24"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXIV<br /> </h3> + + +<p>It continued to rain so hard that our young lady's private dream +of explaining the Continent to their visitor had to contain a +provision for some adequate treatment of the weather. At the +<i>table d'hôte</i> that evening she threw out a variety of +lights: this was the second ceremony of the sort she had sat through, +and she would have neglected her privilege and dishonoured her +vocabulary—which indeed consisted mainly of the names of dishes—if +she had not been proportionately ready to dazzle with +interpretations. Preoccupied and overawed, Mrs. Wix was apparently +dim: she accepted her pupil's version of the mysteries of the menu in +a manner that might have struck the child as the depression of a +credulity conscious not so much of its needs as of its dimensions. +Maisie was soon enough—though it scarce happened before +bedtime—confronted again with the different sort of programme for +which she reserved her criticism. They remounted together to their +sitting-room while Sir Claude, who said he would join them later, +remained below to smoke and to converse with the old acquaintances +that he met wherever he turned. He had proposed his companions, for +coffee, the enjoyment of the <i>salon de lecture</i>, but Mrs. Wix +had replied promptly and with something of an air that it struck her +their own apartments offered them every convenience. They offered the +good lady herself, Maisie could immediately observe, not only that of +this rather grand reference, which, already emulous, so far as it +went, of her pupil, she made as if she had spent her life in salons; +but that of a stiff French sofa where she could sit and stare at the +faint French lamp, in default of the French clock that had stopped, +as for some account of the time Sir Claude would so markedly +interpose. Her demeanour accused him so directly of hovering beyond +her reach that Maisie sought to divert her by a report of Susan's +quaint attitude on the matter of their conversation after lunch. +Maisie had mentioned to the young woman for sympathy's sake the plan +for her relief, but her disapproval of alien ways appeared, strange +to say, only to prompt her to hug her gloom; so that between Mrs. +Wix's effect of displacing her and the visible stiffening of her back +the child had the sense of a double office and enlarged play for +pacific powers.</p> + +<p>These powers played to no great purpose, it was true, in keeping +before Mrs. Wix the vision of Sir Claude's perversity, which hung +there in the pauses of talk and which he himself, after +unmistakeable delays, finally made quite lurid by bursting in—it +was near ten o'clock—with an object held up in his hand. She knew +before he spoke what it was; she knew at least from the underlying +sense of all that, since the hour spent after the Exhibition with +her father, had not sprung up to reinstate Mr. Farange—she knew +it meant a triumph for Mrs. Beale. The mere present sight of Sir +Claude's face caused her on the spot to drop straight through her +last impression of Mr. Farange a plummet that reached still deeper +down than the security of these days of flight. She had wrapped +that impression in silence—a silence that had parted with half +its veil to cover also, from the hour of Sir Claude's advent, the +image of Mr. Farange's wife. But if the object in Sir Claude's +hand revealed itself as a letter which he held up very high, so +there was something in his mere motion that laid Mrs. Beale again +bare. "Here we are!" he cried almost from the door, shaking his +trophy at them and looking from one to the other. Then he came +straight to Mrs. Wix; he had pulled two papers out of the envelope +and glanced at them again to see which was which. He thrust one +out open to Mrs. Wix. "Read that." She looked at him hard, as if +in fear: it was impossible not to see he was excited. Then she +took the letter, but it was not her face that Maisie watched while +she read. Neither, for that matter, was it this countenance that +Sir Claude scanned: he stood before the fire and, more calmly, now +that he had acted, communed in silence with his stepdaughter.</p> + +<p>The silence was in truth quickly broken; Mrs. Wix rose to her feet +with the violence of the sound she emitted. The letter had dropped +from her and lay upon the floor; it had made her turn ghastly +white and she was speechless with the effect of it. "It's too +abominable—it's too unspeakable!" she then cried.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it a charming thing?" Sir Claude asked. "It has just +arrived, enclosed in a word of her own. She sends it on to me with +the remark that comment's superfluous. I really think it is. +That's all you can say."</p> + +<p>"She oughtn't to pass such a horror about," said Mrs. Wix. "She +ought to put it straight in the fire."</p> + +<p>"My dear woman, she's not such a fool! It's much too precious." He +had picked the letter up and he gave it again a glance of +complacency which produced a light in his face. "Such a +document"—he considered, then concluded with a slight drop—"such a +document is, in fine, a basis!"</p> + +<p>"A basis for what?"</p> + +<p>"Well—for proceedings."</p> + +<p>"Hers?" Mrs. Wix's voice had become outright the voice of +derision. "How can <i>she</i> proceed?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude turned it over. "How can she get rid of him? Well—she +<i>is</i> rid of him."</p> + +<p>"Not legally." Mrs. Wix had never looked to her pupil so much as +if she knew what she was talking about.</p> + +<p>"I dare say," Sir Claude laughed; "but she's not a bit less +deprived than I!"</p> + +<p>"Of the power to get a divorce? It's just your want of the power +that makes the scandal of your connexion with her. Therefore it's +just her want of it that makes that of hers with you. That's all I +contend!" Mrs. Wix concluded with an unparalleled neigh of battle. +Oh she did know what she was talking about!</p> + +<p>Maisie had meanwhile appealed mutely to Sir Claude, who judged it +easier to meet what she didn't say than to meet what Mrs. Wix did.</p> + +<p>"It's a letter to Mrs. Beale from your father, my dear, written +from Spa and making the rupture between them perfectly +irrevocable. It lets her know, and not in pretty language, that, +as we technically say, he deserts her. It puts an end for ever to +their relations." He ran his eyes over it again, then appeared to +make up his mind. "In fact it concerns you, Maisie, so nearly and +refers to you so particularly that I really think you ought to see +the terms in which this new situation is created for you." And he +held out the letter.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix, at this, pounced upon it; she had grabbed it too soon +even for Maisie to become aware of being rather afraid of it. +Thrusting it instantly behind her she positively glared at Sir +Claude. "See it, wretched man?—the innocent child <i>see</i> such +a thing? I think you must be mad, and she shall not have a glimpse +of it while I'm here to prevent!"</p> + +<p>The breadth of her action had made Sir Claude turn red—he even +looked a little foolish. "You think it's too bad, eh? But it's +precisely because it's bad that it seemed to me it would have a +lesson and a virtue for her."</p> + +<p>Maisie could do a quick enough justice to his motive to be able +clearly to interpose. She fairly smiled at him. "I assure you I +can quite believe how bad it is!" She thought of something, kept +it back a moment, and then spoke. "I know what's in it!"</p> + +<p>He of course burst out laughing and, while Mrs. Wix groaned an "Oh +heavens!" replied: "You wouldn't say that, old boy, if you did! +The point I make is," he continued to Mrs. Wix with a blandness +now re-established—"the point I make is simply that it sets Mrs. +Beale free."</p> + +<p>She hung fire but an instant. "Free to live with <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Free not to live, not to pretend to live, with her husband."</p> + +<p>"Ah they're mighty different things!"—a truth as to which her +earnestness could now with a fine inconsequent look invite the +participation of the child.</p> + +<p>Before Maisie could commit herself, however, the ground was +occupied by Sir Claude, who, as he stood before their visitor with +an expression half rueful, half persuasive, rubbed his hand +sharply up and down the back of his head. "Then why the deuce do +you grant so—do you, I may even say, rejoice so—that by the +desertion of my own precious partner I'm free?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix met this challenge first with silence, then with a +demonstration the most extraordinary, the most unexpected. Maisie +could scarcely believe her eyes as she saw the good lady, with +whom she had associated no faintest shade of any art of +provocation, actually, after an upward grimace, give Sir Claude a +great giggling insinuating naughty slap. "You wretch—you +<i>know</i> why!" And she turned away. The face that with this +movement she left him to present to Maisie was to abide with his +stepdaughter as the very image of stupefaction; but the pair lacked +time to communicate either amusement or alarm before their admonisher +was upon them again. She had begun in fact to show infinite variety +and she flashed about with a still quicker change of tone. "Have you +brought me that thing as a pretext for your going over?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude braced himself. "I can't, after such news, in common +decency not go over. I mean, don't you know, in common courtesy +and humanity. My dear lady, you can't chuck a woman that way, +especially taking the moment when she has been most insulted and +wronged. A fellow must behave like a gentleman, damn it, dear good +Mrs. Wix. We didn't come away, we two, to hang right on, you know: +it was only to try our paces and just put in a few days that might +prove to every one concerned that we're in earnest. It's exactly +because we're in earnest that, dash it, we needn't be so awfully +particular. I mean, don't you know, we needn't be so awfully +afraid." He showed a vivacity, an intensity of argument, and if +Maisie counted his words she was all the more ready to swallow +after a single swift gasp those that, the next thing, she became +conscious he paused for a reply to. "We didn't come, old girl, did +we," he pleaded straight, "to stop right away for ever and put it +all in <i>now</i>?"</p> + +<p>Maisie had never doubted she could be heroic for him. "Oh no!" It +was as if she had been shocked at the bare thought. "We're just +taking it as we find it." She had a sudden inspiration, which she +backed up with a smile. "We're just seeing what we can afford." +She had never yet in her life made any claim for herself, but she +hoped that this time, frankly, what she was doing would somehow be +counted to her. Indeed she felt Sir Claude <i>was</i> counting it, +though she was afraid to look at him—afraid she should show him +tears. She looked at Mrs. Wix; she reached her maximum. "I don't +think I ought to be bad to Mrs. Beale."</p> + +<p>She heard, on this, a deep sound, something inarticulate and +sweet, from Sir Claude; but tears were what Mrs. Wix didn't +scruple to show. "Do you think you ought to be bad to <i>me</i>?" The +question was the more disconcerting that Mrs. Wix's emotion didn't +deprive her of the advantage of her effect. "If you see that woman +again you're lost!" she declared to their companion.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude looked at the moony globe of the lamp; he seemed to see +for an instant what seeing Mrs. Beale would consist of. It was also +apparently from this vision that he drew strength to return: "Her +situation, by what has happened, is completely changed; and it's no +use your trying to prove to me that I needn't take any account of +that."</p> + +<p>"If you see that woman you're lost!" Mrs. Wix with greater force +repeated.</p> + +<p>"Do you think she'll not let me come back to you? My dear lady, I +leave you here, you and Maisie, as a hostage to fortune, and I +promise you by all that's sacred that I shall be with you again at +the very latest on Saturday. I provide you with funds; I install +you in these lovely rooms; I arrange with the people here that you +be treated with every attention and supplied with every luxury. +The weather, after this, will mend; it will be sure to be +exquisite. You'll both be as free as air and you can roam all over +the place and have tremendous larks. You shall have a carriage to +drive you; the whole house shall be at your call. You'll have a +magnificent position." He paused, he looked from one of his +companions to the other as to see the impression he had made. +Whether or no he judged it adequate he subjoined after a moment: +"And you'll oblige me above all by not making a fuss."</p> + +<p>Maisie could only answer for the impression on herself, though +indeed from the heart even of Mrs. Wix's rigour there floated to +her sense a faint fragrance of depraved concession. Maisie had her +dumb word for the show such a speech could make, for the +irresistible charm it could take from his dazzling sincerity; and +before she could do anything but blink at excess of light she +heard this very word sound on Mrs. Wix's lips, just as if the poor +lady had guessed it and wished, snatching it from her, to blight +it like a crumpled flower. "You're dreadful, you're terrible, for +you know but too well that it's not a small thing to me that you +should address me in terms that are princely!" Princely was what +he stood there and looked and sounded; that was what Maisie for +the occasion found herself reduced to simple worship of him for +being. Yet strange to say too, as Mrs. Wix went on, an echo rang +within her that matched the echo she had herself just produced. +"How much you must <i>want</i> to see her to say such things as that +and to be ready to do so much for the poor little likes of Maisie and +me! She has a hold on you, and you know it, and you want to feel +it again and—God knows, or at least <i>I</i> do, what's your motive +and desire—enjoy it once more and give yourself up to it! It +doesn't matter if it's one day or three: enough is as good as a +feast and the lovely time you'll have with her is something you're +willing to pay for! I dare say you'd like me to believe that your +pay is to get her to give you up; but that's a matter on which I +strongly urge you not to put down your money in advance. Give +<i>her</i> up first. Then pay her what you please!"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude took this to the end, though there were things in it +that made him colour, called into his face more of the +apprehension than Maisie had ever perceived there of a particular +sort of shock. She had an odd sense that it was the first time she +had seen any one but Mrs. Wix really and truly scandalised, and +this fed her inference, which grew and grew from moment to moment, +that Mrs. Wix was proving more of a force to reckon with than +either of them had allowed so much room for. It was true that, +long before, she had obtained a "hold" of him, as she called it, +different in kind from that obtained by Mrs. Beale and originally +by her ladyship. But Maisie could quite feel with him now that he +had really not expected this advantage to be driven so home. Oh +they hadn't at all got to where Mrs. Wix would stop, for the next +minute she was driving harder than ever. It was the result of his +saying with a certain dryness, though so kindly that what most +affected Maisie in it was his patience: "My dear friend, it's +simply a matter in which I must judge for myself. You've judged +<i>for</i> me, I know, a good deal, of late, in a way that I +appreciate, I assure you, down to the ground. But you can't do it +always; no one can do that for another, don't you see, in every case. +There are exceptions, particular cases that turn up and that are +awfully delicate. It would be too easy if I could shift it all off on +you: it would be allowing you to incur an amount of responsibility +that I should simply become quite ashamed of. You'll find, I'm sure, +that you'll have quite as much as you'll enjoy if you'll be so good +as to accept the situation as circumstances happen to make it for you +and to stay here with our friend, till I rejoin you, on the footing +of as much pleasantness and as much comfort—and I think I have a +right to add, to both of you, of as much faith in <i>me</i>—as +possible."</p> + +<p>Oh he was princely indeed: that came out more and more with every +word he said and with the particular way he said it, and Maisie +could feel his monitress stiffen almost with anguish against the +increase of his spell and then hurl herself as a desperate defence +from it into the quite confessed poorness of violence, of +iteration. "You're afraid of her—afraid, afraid, afraid! Oh dear, +oh dear, oh dear!" Mrs. Wix wailed it with a high quaver, then +broke down into a long shudder of helplessness and woe. The next +minute she had flung herself again on the lean sofa and had burst +into a passion of tears.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude stood and looked at her a moment; he shook his head +slowly, altogether tenderly. "I've already admitted it—I'm in +mortal terror; so we'll let that settle the question. I think you +had best go to bed," he added; "you've had a tremendous day and +you must both be tired to death. I shall not expect you to concern +yourselves in the morning with my movements. There's an early boat +on; I shall have cleared out before you're up; and I shall +moreover have dealt directly and most effectively, I assure you, +with the haughty but not quite hopeless Miss Ash." He turned to +his stepdaughter as if at once to take leave of her and give her a +sign of how, through all tension and friction, they were still +united in such a way that she at least needn't worry. "Maisie +boy!"—he opened his arms to her. With her culpable lightness she +flew into them and, while he kissed her, chose the soft method of +silence to satisfy him, the silence that after battles of talk was +the best balm she could offer his wounds. They held each other +long enough to reaffirm intensely their vows; after which they +were almost forced apart by Mrs. Wix's jumping to her feet.</p> + +<p>Her jump, either with a quick return or with a final lapse of +courage, was also to supplication almost abject. "I beseech you +not to take a step so miserable and so fatal. I know her but too +well, even if you jeer at me for saying it; little as I've seen +her I know her, I know her. I know what she'll do—I see it as I +stand here. Since you're afraid of her it's the mercy of heaven. +Don't, for God's sake, be afraid to show it, to profit by it and +to arrive at the very safety that it gives you. <i>I'm</i> not +afraid of her, I assure you; you must already have seen for yourself +that there's nothing I'm afraid of now. Let me go to her—<i>I'll</i> +settle her and I'll take that woman back without a hair of her +touched. Let me put in the two or three days—let me wind up the +connexion. You stay here with Maisie, with the carriage and the +larks and the luxury; then I'll return to you and we'll go off +together—we'll live together without a cloud. Take me, take me," +she went on and on—the tide of her eloquence was high. "Here I am; +I know what I am and what I ain't; but I say boldly to the face of +you both that I'll do better for you, far, than ever she'll even +try to. I say it to yours, Sir Claude, even though I owe you the +very dress on my back and the very shoes on my feet. I owe you +everything—that's just the reason; and to pay it back, in +profusion, what can that be but what I want? Here I am, here I +am!"—she spread herself into an exhibition that, combined with +her intensity and her decorations, appeared to suggest her for +strange offices and devotions, for ridiculous replacements and +substitutions. She manipulated her gown as she talked, she +insisted on the items of her debt. "I have nothing of my own, I +know—no money, no clothes, no appearance, no anything, nothing +but my hold of this little one truth, which is all in the world I +can bribe you with: that the pair of you are more to me than all +besides, and that if you'll let me help you and save you, make +what you both want possible in the one way it <i>can</i> be, why, +I'll work myself to the bone in your service!"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude wavered there without an answer to this magnificent +appeal; he plainly cast about for one, and in no small agitation +and pain. He addressed himself in his quest, however, only to +vague quarters until he met again, as he so frequently and +actively met it, the more than filial gaze of his intelligent +little charge. That gave him—poor plastic and dependent male—his +issue. If she was still a child she was yet of the sex that could +help him out. He signified as much by a renewed invitation to an +embrace. She freshly sprang to him and again they inaudibly +conversed. "Be nice to her, be nice to her," he at last distinctly +articulated; "be nice to her as you've not even been to <i>me</i>!" +On which, without another look at Mrs. Wix, he somehow got out of the +room, leaving Maisie under the slight oppression of these words as +well as of the idea that he had unmistakeably once more dodged.</p> + + +<p> <a name="25"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXV<br /> </h3> + + +<p>Every single thing he had prophesied came so true that it was +after all no more than fair to expect quite as much for what he +had as good as promised. His pledges they could verify to the +letter, down to his very guarantee that a way would be found with +Miss Ash. Roused in the summer dawn and vehemently squeezed by +that interesting exile, Maisie fell back upon her couch with a +renewed appreciation of his policy, a memento of which, when she +rose later on to dress, glittered at her from the carpet in the +shape of a sixpence that had overflowed from Susan's pride of +possession. Sixpences really, for the forty-eight hours that +followed, seemed to abound in her life; she fancifully computed +the number of them represented by such a period of "larks." The +number was not kept down, she presently noticed, by any scheme of +revenge for Sir Claude's flight which should take on Mrs. Wix's +part the form of a refusal to avail herself of the facilities he +had so bravely ordered. It was in fact impossible to escape them; +it was in the good lady's own phrase ridiculous to go on foot when +you had a carriage prancing at the door. Everything about them +pranced: the very waiters even as they presented the dishes to +which, from a similar sense of the absurdity of perversity, Mrs. +Wix helped herself with a freedom that spoke to Maisie quite as +much of her depletion as of her logic. Her appetite was a sign to +her companion of a great many things and testified no less on the +whole to her general than to her particular condition. She had +arrears of dinner to make up, and it was touching that in a +dinnerless state her moral passion should have burned so clear. +She partook largely as a refuge from depression, and yet the +opportunity to partake was just a mark of the sinister symptoms +that depressed her. The affair was in short a combat, in which the +baser element triumphed, between her refusal to be bought off and +her consent to be clothed and fed. It was not at any rate to be +gainsaid that there was comfort for her in the developments of +France; comfort so great as to leave Maisie free to take with her +all the security for granted and brush all the danger aside. That +was the way to carry out in detail Sir Claude's injunction to be +"nice"; that was the way, as well, to look, with her, in a survey +of the pleasures of life abroad, straight over the head of any +doubt.</p> + +<p>They shrank at last, all doubts, as the weather cleared up: it had +an immense effect on them and became quite as lovely as Sir Claude +had engaged. This seemed to have put him so into the secret of +things, and the joy of the world so waylaid the steps of his +friends, that little by little the spirit of hope filled the air +and finally took possession of the scene. To drive on the long +cliff was splendid, but it was perhaps better still to creep in +the shade—for the sun was strong—along the many-coloured and +many-odoured port and through the streets in which, to English +eyes, everything that was the same was a mystery and everything +that was different a joke. Best of all was to continue the creep +up the long Grand' Rue to the gate of the <i>haute ville</i> and, +passing beneath it, mount to the quaint and crooked rampart, with its +rows of trees, its quiet corners and friendly benches where brown old +women in such white-frilled caps and such long gold earrings sat and +knitted or snoozed, its little yellow-faced houses that looked like +the homes of misers or of priests and its dark château where +small soldiers lounged on the bridge that stretched across an empty +moat and military washing hung from the windows of towers. This was a +part of the place that could lead Maisie to enquire if it didn't just +meet one's idea of the middle ages; and since it was rather a +satisfaction than a shock to perceive, and not for the first time, +the limits in Mrs. Wix's mind of the historic imagination, that only +added one more to the variety of kinds of insight that she felt it +her own present mission to show. They sat together on the old grey +bastion; they looked down on the little new town which seemed to them +quite as old, and across at the great dome and the high gilt Virgin +of the church that, as they gathered, was famous and that pleased +them by its unlikeness to any place in which they had worshipped. +They wandered in this temple afterwards and Mrs. Wix confessed that +for herself she had probably made a fatal mistake early in life in +not being a Catholic. Her confession in its turn caused Maisie to +wonder rather interestedly what degree of lateness it was that shut +the door against an escape from such an error. They went back to the +rampart on the second morning—the spot on which they appeared to +have come furthest in the journey that was to separate them from +everything objectionable in the past: it gave them afresh the +impression that had most to do with their having worked round to a +confidence that on Maisie's part was determined and that she could +see to be on her companion's desperate. She had had for many hours +the sense of showing Mrs. Wix so much that she was comparatively +slow to become conscious of being at the same time the subject of +a like aim. The business went the faster, however, from the moment +she got her glimpse of it; it then fell into its place in her +general, her habitual view of the particular phenomenon that, had +she felt the need of words for it, she might have called her +personal relation to her knowledge. This relation had never been +so lively as during the time she waited with her old governess for +Sir Claude's reappearance, and what made it so was exactly that +Mrs. Wix struck her as having a new suspicion of it. Mrs. Wix had +never yet had a suspicion—this was certain—so calculated to +throw her pupil, in spite of the closer union of such adventurous +hours, upon the deep defensive. Her pupil made out indeed as many +marvels as she had made out on the rush to Folkestone; and if in +Sir Claude's company on that occasion Mrs. Wix was the constant +implication, so in Mrs. Wix's, during these hours, Sir Claude +was—and most of all through long pauses—the perpetual, the +insurmountable theme. It all took them back to the first flush of +his marriage and to the place he held in the schoolroom at that +crisis of love and pain; only he had himself blown to a much +bigger balloon the large consciousness he then filled out.</p> + +<p>They went through it all again, and indeed while the interval +dragged by the very weight of its charm they went, in spite of +defences and suspicions, through everything. Their intensified +clutch of the future throbbed like a clock ticking seconds; but +this was a timepiece that inevitably, as well, at the best, rang +occasionally a portentous hour. Oh there were several of these, +and two or three of the worst on the old city-wall where +everything else so made for peace. There was nothing in the world +Maisie more wanted than to be as nice to Mrs. Wix as Sir Claude +had desired; but it was exactly because this fell in with her +inveterate instinct of keeping the peace that the instinct itself +was quickened. From the moment it was quickened, however, it found +other work, and that was how, to begin with, she produced the very +complication she most sought to avert. What she had essentially +done, these days, had been to read the unspoken into the spoken; +so that thus, with accumulations, it had become more definite to +her that the unspoken was, unspeakably, the completeness of the +sacrifice of Mrs. Beale. There were times when every minute that +Sir Claude stayed away was like a nail in Mrs. Beale's coffin. +That brought back to Maisie—it was a roundabout way—the beauty +and antiquity of her connexion with the flower of the Overmores as +well as that lady's own grace and charm, her peculiar prettiness +and cleverness and even her peculiar tribulations. A hundred +things hummed at the back of her head, but two of these were +simple enough. Mrs. Beale was by the way, after all, just her +stepmother and her relative. She was just—and partly for that +very reason—Sir Claude's greatest intimate ("lady-intimate" was +Maisie's term) so that what together they were on Mrs. Wix's +prescription to give up and break short off with was for one of +them his particular favourite and for the other her father's wife. +Strangely, indescribably her perception of reasons kept pace with +her sense of trouble; but there was something in her that, without +a supreme effort not to be shabby, couldn't take the reasons for +granted. What it comes to perhaps for ourselves is that, +disinherited and denuded as we have seen her, there still lingered +in her life an echo of parental influence—she was still +reminiscent of one of the sacred lessons of home. It was the only +one she retained, but luckily she retained it with force. She +enjoyed in a word an ineffaceable view of the fact that there were +things papa called mamma and mamma called papa a low sneak for +doing or for not doing. Now this rich memory gave her a name that +she dreaded to invite to the lips of Mrs. Beale: she should +personally wince so just to hear it. The very sweetness of the +foreign life she was steeped in added with each hour of Sir +Claude's absence to the possibility of such pangs. She watched +beside Mrs. Wix the great golden Madonna, and one of the +ear-ringed old women who had been sitting at the end of their +bench got up and pottered away. "Adieu mesdames!" said the old +woman in a little cracked civil voice—a demonstration by which +our friends were so affected that they bobbed up and almost +curtseyed to her. They subsided again, and it was shortly after, +in a summer hum of French insects and a phase of almost somnolent +reverie, that Maisie most had the vision of what it was to shut +out from such a perspective so appealing a participant. It had not +yet appeared so vast as at that moment, this prospect of statues +shining in the blue and of courtesy in romantic forms.</p> + +<p>"Why after all should we have to choose between you? Why shouldn't +we be four?" she finally demanded.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix gave the jerk of a sleeper awakened or the start even of +one who hears a bullet whiz at the flag of truce. Her stupefaction +at such a breach of the peace delayed for a moment her answer. +"Four improprieties, do you mean? Because two of us happen to be +decent people! Do I gather you to wish that I should stay on with +you even if that woman <i>is</i> capable—?"</p> + +<p>Maisie took her up before she could further phrase Mrs. Beale's +capability. "Stay on as <i>my</i> companion—yes. Stay on as just +what you were at mamma's. Mrs. Beale <i>would</i> let you!" the +child said.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix had by this time fairly sprung to her arms. "And who, I'd +like to know, would let Mrs. Beale? Do you mean, little +unfortunate, that <i>you</i> would?"</p> + +<p>"Why not, if now she's free?"</p> + +<p>"Free? Are you imitating <i>him</i>? Well, if Sir Claude's old +enough to know better, upon my word I think it's right to treat you +as if you also were. You'll have to, at any rate—to know better—if +that's the line you're proposing to take." Mrs. Wix had never been +so harsh; but on the other hand Maisie could guess that she +herself had never appeared so wanton. What was underlying, +however, rather overawed than angered her; she felt she could +still insist—not for contradiction, but for ultimate calm. Her +wantonness meanwhile continued to work upon her friend, who caught +again, on the rebound, the sound of deepest provocation. "Free, +free, free? If she's as free as <i>you</i> are, my dear, she's free +enough, to be sure!"</p> + +<p>"As I am?"—Maisie, after reflexion and despite whatever of +portentous this seemed to convey, risked a critical echo.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mrs. Wix, "nobody, you know, is free to commit a +crime."</p> + +<p>"A crime!" The word had come out in a way that made the child +sound it again.</p> + +<p>"You'd commit as great a one as their own—and so should I—if we +were to condone their immorality by our presence."</p> + +<p>Maisie waited a little; this seemed so fiercely conclusive. "Why +is it immorality?" she nevertheless presently enquired.</p> + +<p>Her companion now turned upon her with a reproach softer because +it was somehow deeper. "You're too unspeakable! Do you know what +we're talking about?"</p> + +<p>In the interest of ultimate calm Maisie felt that she must be +above all clear. "Certainly; about their taking advantage of their +freedom."</p> + +<p>"Well, to do what?"</p> + +<p>"Why, to live with us."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix's laugh, at this, was literally wild. "'Us?' Thank +you!"</p> + +<p>"Then to live with <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>The words made her friend jump. "You give me up? You break with me +for ever? You turn me into the street?"</p> + +<p>Maisie, though gasping a little, bore up under the rain of +challenges. "Those, it seems to me, are the things you do to +<i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix made little of her valour. "I can promise you that, +whatever I do, I shall never let you out of my sight! You ask me +why it's immorality when you've seen with your own eyes that Sir +Claude has felt it to be so to that dire extent that, rather than +make you face the shame of it, he has for months kept away from +you altogether? Is it any more difficult to see that the first +time he tries to do his duty he washes his hands of +<i>her</i>—takes you straight away from her?"</p> + +<p>Maisie turned this over, but more for apparent consideration than +from any impulse to yield too easily. "Yes, I see what you mean. +But at that time they weren't free." She felt Mrs. Wix rear up +again at the offensive word, but she succeeded in touching her +with a remonstrant hand. "I don't think you know how free they've +become."</p> + +<p>"I know, I believe, at least as much as you do!"</p> + +<p>Maisie felt a delicacy but overcame it. "About the Countess?"</p> + +<p>"Your father's—temptress?" Mrs. Wix gave her a sidelong squint. +"Perfectly. She pays him!"</p> + +<p>"Oh <i>does</i> she?" At this the child's countenance fell: it +seemed to give a reason for papa's behaviour and place it in a more +favourable light. She wished to be just. "I don't say she's not +generous. She was so to me."</p> + +<p>"How, to you?"</p> + +<p>"She gave me a lot of money."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix stared. "And pray what did you do with a lot of money?"</p> + +<p>"I gave it to Mrs. Beale."</p> + +<p>"And what did Mrs. Beale do with it?"</p> + +<p>"She sent it back."</p> + +<p>"To the Countess? Gammon!" said Mrs. Wix. She disposed of that +plea as effectually as Susan Ash.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't care!" Maisie replied. "What I mean is that you +don't know about the rest."</p> + +<p>"The rest? What rest?"</p> + +<p>Maisie wondered how she could best put it. "Papa kept me there an +hour."</p> + +<p>"I do know—Sir Claude told me. Mrs. Beale had told him."</p> + +<p>Maisie looked incredulity. "How could she—when I didn't speak of +it?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix was mystified. "Speak of what?"</p> + +<p>"Why, of her being so frightful."</p> + +<p>"The Countess? Of course she's frightful!" Mrs. Wix returned. +After a moment she added: "That's why she pays him."</p> + +<p>Maisie pondered. "It's the best thing about her then—if she gives +him as much as she gave <i>me</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Well, it's not the best thing about <i>him</i>! Or rather +perhaps it <i>is</i> too!" Mrs. Wix subjoined.</p> + +<p>"But she's awful—really and truly," Maisie went on.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix arrested her. "You needn't go into details!" It was +visibly at variance with this injunction that she yet enquired: +"How does that make it any better?"</p> + +<p>"Their living with me? Why for the Countess—and for her +whiskers!—he has put me off on them. I understood him," Maisie +profoundly said.</p> + +<p>"I hope then he understood you. It's more than I do!" Mrs. Wix +admitted.</p> + +<p>This was a real challenge to be plainer, and our young lady +immediately became so. "I mean it isn't a crime."</p> + +<p>"Why then did Sir Claude steal you away?"</p> + +<p>"He didn't steal—he only borrowed me. I knew it wasn't for long," +Maisie audaciously professed.</p> + +<p>"You must allow me to reply to that," cried Mrs. Wix, "that you +knew nothing of the sort, and that you rather basely failed to +back me up last night when you pretended so plump that you did! +You hoped in fact, exactly as much as I did and as in my senseless +passion I even hope now, that this may be the beginning of better +things."</p> + +<p>Oh yes, Mrs. Wix was indeed, for the first time, sharp; so that +there at last stirred in our heroine the sense not so much of +being proved disingenuous as of being precisely accused of the +meanness that had brought everything down on her through her very +desire to shake herself clear of it. She suddenly felt herself +swell with a passion of protest. "I never, <i>never</i> hoped I +wasn't going again to see Mrs. Beale! I didn't, I didn't, I didn't!" +she repeated. Mrs. Wix bounced about with a force of rejoinder of +which she also felt that she must anticipate the concussion and +which, though the good lady was evidently charged to the brim, +hung fire long enough to give time for an aggravation. "She's +beautiful and I love her! I love her and she's beautiful!"</p> + +<p>"And I'm hideous and you hate <i>me</i>?" Mrs. Wix fixed her a +moment, then caught herself up. "I won't embitter you by absolutely +accusing you of that; though, as for my being hideous, it's hardly +the first time I've been told so! I know it so well that even if I +haven't whiskers—have I?—I dare say there are other ways in +which the Countess is a Venus to me! My pretensions must therefore +seem to you monstrous—which comes to the same thing as your not +liking me. But do you mean to go so far as to tell me that you +<i>want</i> to live with them in their sin?"</p> + +<p>"You know what I want, you know what I want!"—Maisie spoke with +the shudder of rising tears.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do; you want me to be as bad as yourself! Well, I won't. +There! Mrs. Beale's as bad as your father!" Mrs. Wix went on.</p> + +<p>"She's not!—she's not!" her pupil almost shrieked in retort.</p> + +<p>"You mean because Sir Claude at least has beauty and wit and +grace? But he pays just as the Countess pays!" Mrs. Wix, who now +rose as she spoke, fairly revealed a latent cynicism.</p> + +<p>It raised Maisie also to her feet; her companion had walked off a +few steps and paused. The two looked at each other as they had +never looked, and Mrs. Wix seemed to flaunt there in her finery. +"Then doesn't he pay <i>you</i> too?" her unhappy charge +demanded.</p> + +<p>At this she bounded in her place. "Oh you incredible little waif!" +She brought it out with a wail of violence; after which, with +another convulsion, she marched straight away.</p> + +<p>Maisie dropped back on the bench and burst into sobs.</p> + + +<p> <a name="26"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXVI<br /> </h3> + + +<p>Nothing so dreadful of course could be final or even for many +minutes prolonged: they rushed together again too soon for either +to feel that either had kept it up, and though they went home in +silence it was with a vivid perception for Maisie that her +companion's hand had closed upon her. That hand had shown +altogether, these twenty-four hours, a new capacity for closing, +and one of the truths the child could least resist was that a +certain greatness had now come to Mrs. Wix. The case was indeed +that the quality of her motive surpassed the sharpness of her +angles; both the combination and the singularity of which things, +when in the afternoon they used the carriage, Maisie could borrow +from the contemplative hush of their grandeur the freedom to feel +to the utmost. She still bore the mark of the tone in which her +friend had thrown out that threat of never losing sight of her. +This friend had been converted in short from feebleness to force; +and it was the light of her new authority that showed from how far +she had come. The threat in question, sharply exultant, might have +produced defiance; but before anything so ugly could happen +another process had insidiously forestalled it. The moment at +which this process had begun to mature was that of Mrs. Wix's +breaking out with a dignity attuned to their own apartments and +with an advantage now measurably gained. They had ordered coffee +after luncheon, in the spirit of Sir Claude's provision, and it +was served to them while they awaited their equipage in the white +and gold saloon. It was flanked moreover with a couple of +liqueurs, and Maisie felt that Sir Claude could scarce have been +taken more at his word had it been followed by anecdotes and +cigarettes. The influence of these luxuries was at any rate in the +air. It seemed to her while she tiptoed at the chimney-glass, +pulling on her gloves and with a motion of her head shaking a +feather into place, to have had something to do with Mrs. Wix's +suddenly saying: "Haven't you really and truly <i>any</i> moral +sense?"</p> + +<p>Maisie was aware that her answer, though it brought her down to +her heels, was vague even to imbecility, and that this was the +first time she had appeared to practise with Mrs. Wix an +intellectual inaptitude to meet her—the infirmity to which she +had owed so much success with papa and mamma. The appearance did +her injustice, for it was not less through her candour than +through her playfellow's pressure that after this the idea of a +moral sense mainly coloured their intercourse. She began, the poor +child, with scarcely knowing what it was; but it proved something +that, with scarce an outward sign save her surrender to the swing +of the carriage, she could, before they came back from their +drive, strike up a sort of acquaintance with. The beauty of the +day only deepened, and the splendour of the afternoon sea, and the +haze of the far headlands, and the taste of the sweet air. It was +the coachman indeed who, smiling and cracking his whip, turning in +his place, pointing to invisible objects and uttering +unintelligible sounds—all, our tourists recognised, strict +features of a social order principally devoted to language: it was +this polite person, I say, who made their excursion fall so much +short that their return left them still a stretch of the long +daylight and an hour that, at his obliging suggestion, they spent +on foot by the shining sands. Maisie had seen the <i>plage</i> the +day before with Sir Claude, but that was a reason the more for +showing on the spot to Mrs. Wix that it was, as she said, another +of the places on her list and of the things of which she knew the +French name. The bathers, so late, were absent and the tide was +low; the sea-pools twinkled in the sunset and there were dry +places as well, where they could sit again and admire and +expatiate: a circumstance that, while they listened to the lap of +the waves, gave Mrs. Wix a fresh support for her challenge. "Have +you absolutely none at all?"</p> + +<p>She had no need now, as to the question itself at least, to be +specific; that on the other hand was the eventual result of their +quiet conjoined apprehension of the thing that—well, yes, since +they must face it—Maisie absolutely and appallingly had so little +of. This marked more particularly the moment of the child's +perceiving that her friend had risen to a level which might—till +superseded at all events—pass almost for sublime. Nothing more +remarkable had taken place in the first heat of her own departure, +no act of perception less to be overtraced by our rough method, +than her vision, the rest of that Boulogne day, of the manner in +which she figured. I so despair of courting her noiseless mental +footsteps here that I must crudely give you my word for its being +from this time forward a picture literally present to her. Mrs. +Wix saw her as a little person knowing so extraordinarily much +that, for the account to be taken of it, what she still didn't +know would be ridiculous if it hadn't been embarrassing. Mrs. Wix +was in truth more than ever qualified to meet embarrassment; I am +not sure that Maisie had not even a dim discernment of the queer +law of her own life that made her educate to that sort of +proficiency those elders with whom she was concerned. She +promoted, as it were, their development; nothing could have been +more marked for instance than her success in promoting Mrs. +Beale's. She judged that if her whole history, for Mrs. Wix, had +been the successive stages of her knowledge, so the very climax of +the concatenation would, in the same view, be the stage at which +the knowledge should overflow. As she was condemned to know more +and more, how could it logically stop before she should know Most? +It came to her in fact as they sat there on the sands that she was +distinctly on the road to know Everything. She had not had +governesses for nothing: what in the world had she ever done but +learn and learn and learn? She looked at the pink sky with a +placid foreboding that she soon should have learnt All. They +lingered in the flushed air till at last it turned to grey and she +seemed fairly to receive new information from every brush of the +breeze. By the time they moved homeward it was as if this +inevitability had become for Mrs. Wix a long, tense cord, twitched +by a nervous hand, on which the valued pearls of intelligence were +to be neatly strung.</p> + +<p>In the evening upstairs they had another strange sensation, as to +which Maisie couldn't afterwards have told you whether it was bang +in the middle or quite at the beginning that her companion sounded +with fresh emphasis the note of the moral sense. What mattered was +merely that she did exclaim, and again, as at first appeared, most +disconnectedly: "God help me, it does seem to peep out!" Oh the +queer confusions that had wooed it at last to such peeping! None +so queer, however, as the words of woe, and it might verily be +said of rage, in which the poor lady bewailed the tragic end of +her own rich ignorance. There was a point at which she seized the +child and hugged her as close as in the old days of partings and +returns; at which she was visibly at a loss how to make up to such +a victim for such contaminations: appealing, as to what she had +done and was doing, in bewilderment, in explanation, in +supplication, for reassurance, for pardon and even outright for +pity.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what I've said to you, my own: I don't know what I'm +saying or what the turn you've given my life has rendered me, +heaven forgive me, capable of saying. Have I lost all delicacy, +all decency, all measure of how far and how bad? It seems to me +mostly that I have, though I'm the last of whom you would ever +have thought it. I've just done it for <i>you</i>, precious—not to +lose you, which would have been worst of all: so that I've had to +pay with my own innocence, if you do laugh! for clinging to you and +keeping you. Don't let me pay for nothing; don't let me have been +thrust for nothing into such horrors and such shames. I never knew +anything about them and I never wanted to know! Now I know too +much, too much!" the poor woman lamented and groaned. "I know so +much that with hearing such talk I ask myself where I am; and with +uttering it too, which is worse, say to myself that I'm far, too +far, from where I started! I ask myself what I should have thought +with my lost one if I had heard myself cross the line. There are +lines I've crossed with <i>you</i> where I should have fancied I had +come to a pretty pass—" She gasped at the mere supposition. "I've +gone from one thing to another, and all for the real love of you; +and now what would any one say—I mean any one but <i>them</i>—if +they were to hear the way I go on? I've had to keep up with you, +haven't I?—and therefore what could I do less than look to you to +keep up with <i>me</i>? But it's not <i>them</i> that are the +worst—by which I mean to say it's not <i>him</i>: it's your +dreadfully base papa and the one person in the world whom he could +have found, I do believe—and she's not the Countess, +duck—wickeder than himself. While they were about it at any rate, +since they <i>were</i> ruining you, they might have done it so as +to spare an honest woman. Then I shouldn't have +had to do whatever it is that's the worst: throw up at you the +badness you haven't taken in, or find my advantage in the vileness +you <i>have</i>! What I did lose patience at this morning was at +how it was that without your seeming to condemn—for you didn't, +you remember!—you yet did seem to <i>know</i>. Thank God, in his +mercy, at last, <i>if</i> you do!"</p> + +<p>The night, this time, was warm, and one of the windows stood open +to the small balcony over the rail of which, on coming back from +dinner, Maisie had hung a long time in the enjoyment of the +chatter, the lights, the life of the quay made brilliant by the +season and the hour. Mrs. Wix's requirements had drawn her in from +this pasture and Mrs. Wix's embrace had detained her even though +midway in the outpouring her confusion and sympathy had permitted, +or rather had positively helped, her to disengage herself. But the +casement was still wide, the spectacle, the pleasure were still +there, and from her place in the room, which, with its polished +floor and its panels of elegance, was lighted from without more +than from within, the child could still take account of them. She +appeared to watch and listen; after which she answered Mrs. Wix +with a question. "If I do know—?"</p> + +<p>"If you do condemn." The correction was made with some austerity.</p> + +<p>It had the effect of causing Maisie to heave a vague sigh of +oppression and then after an instant and as if under cover of this +ambiguity pass out again upon the balcony. She hung again over the +rail; she felt the summer night; she dropped down into the manners +of France. There was a café below the hotel, before which, +with little chairs and tables, people sat on a space enclosed by +plants in tubs; and the impression was enriched by the flash of the +white aprons of waiters and the music of a man and a woman who, from +beyond the precinct, sent up the strum of a guitar and the drawl +of a song about "amour." Maisie knew what "amour" meant too, and +wondered if Mrs. Wix did: Mrs. Wix remained within, as still as a +mouse and perhaps not reached by the performance. After a while, +but not till the musicians had ceased and begun to circulate with +a little plate, her pupil came back to her. "<i>Is</i> it a crime?" +Maisie then asked.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix was as prompt as if she had been crouching in a lair. +"Branded by the Bible."</p> + +<p>"Well, he won't commit a crime."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix looked at her gloomily. "He's committing one now."</p> + +<p>"Now?"</p> + +<p>"In being with her."</p> + +<p>Maisie had it on her tongue's end to return once more: "But now +he's free." She remembered, however, in time that one of the +things she had known for the last entire hour was that this made +no difference. After that, and as if to turn the right way, she +was on the point of a blind dash, a weak reversion to the reminder +that it might make a difference, might diminish the crime for Mrs. +Beale; till such a reflexion was in its order also quashed by the +visibility in Mrs. Wix's face of the collapse produced by her +inference from her pupil's manner that after all her pains her +pupil didn't even yet adequately understand. Never so much as when +confronted had Maisie wanted to understand, and all her thought +for a minute centred in the effort to come out with something +which should be a disproof of her simplicity. "Just <i>trust</i> +me, dear; that's all!"—she came out finally with that; and it was +perhaps a good sign of her action that with a long, impartial moan +Mrs. Wix floated her to bed.</p> + +<p>There was no letter the next morning from Sir Claude—which Mrs. +Wix let out that she deemed the worst of omens; yet it was just +for the quieter communion they so got with him that, when after +the coffee and rolls which made them more foreign than ever, it +came to going forth for fresh drafts upon his credit they wandered +again up the hill to the rampart instead of plunging into +distraction with the crowd on the sands or into the sea with the +semi-nude bathers. They gazed once more at their gilded Virgin; +they sank once more upon their battered bench; they felt once more +their distance from the Regent's Park. At last Mrs. Wix became +definite about their friend's silence. "He <i>is</i> afraid of her! +She has forbidden him to write." The fact of his fear Maisie +already knew; but her companion's mention of it had at this moment +two unexpected results. The first was her wondering in dumb +remonstrance how Mrs. Wix, with a devotion not after all inferior +to her own, could put into such an allusion such a grimness of +derision; the second was that she found herself suddenly drop into +a deeper view of it. She too had been afraid, as we have seen, of +the people of whom Sir Claude was afraid, and by that law she had +had her due measure of latest apprehension of Mrs. Beale. What +occurred at present, however, was that, whereas this sympathy +appeared vain as for him, the ground of it loomed dimly as a +reason for selfish alarm. That uneasiness had not carried her far +before Mrs. Wix spoke again and with an abruptness so great as +almost to seem irrelevant. "Has it never occurred to you to be +jealous of her?"</p> + +<p>It never had in the least; yet the words were scarce in the air +before Maisie had jumped at them. She held them well, she looked +at them hard; at last she brought out with an assurance which +there was no one, alas, but herself to admire: "Well, yes—since +you ask me." She debated, then continued: "Lots of times!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix glared askance an instant; such approval as her look +expressed was not wholly unqualified. It expressed at any rate +something that presumably had to do with her saying once more: +"Yes. He's afraid of her."</p> + +<p>Maisie heard, and it had afresh its effect on her even through the +blur of the attention now required by the possibility of that idea +of jealousy—a possibility created only by her feeling she had +thus found the way to show she was not simple. It struck out of +Mrs. Wix that this lady still believed her moral sense to be +interested and feigned; so what could be such a gage of her +sincerity as a peep of the most restless of the passions? Such a +revelation would baffle discouragement, and discouragement was in +fact so baffled that, helped in some degree by the mere intensity +of their need to hope, which also, according to its nature, sprang +from the dark portent of the absent letter, the real pitch of +their morning was reached by the note, not of mutual scrutiny, but +of unprecedented frankness. There were broodings indeed and +silences, and Maisie sank deeper into the vision that for her +friend she was, at the most, superficial, and that also, +positively, she was the more so the more she tried to appear +complete. Was the sum of all knowledge only to know how little in +this presence one would ever reach it? The answer to that question +luckily lost itself in the brightness suffusing the scene as soon +as Maisie had thrown out in regard to Mrs. Beale such a remark as +she had never dreamed she should live to make. "If I thought she +was unkind to him—I don't know <i>what</i> I should do!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix dropped one of her squints; she even confirmed it by a +wild grunt. "I know what <i>I</i> should!"</p> + +<p>Maisie at this felt that she lagged. "Well, I can think of +<i>one</i> thing."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix more directly challenged her. "What is it then?"</p> + +<p>Maisie met her expression as if it were a game with forfeits for +winking. "I'd <i>kill</i> her!" That at least, she hoped as she +looked away, would guarantee her moral sense. She looked away, but +her companion said nothing for so long that she at last turned her +head again. Then she saw the straighteners all blurred with tears +which after a little seemed to have sprung from her own eyes. +There were tears in fact on both sides of the spectacles, and they +were even so thick that it was presently all Maisie could do to +make out through them that slowly, finally Mrs. Wix put forth a +hand. It was the material pressure that settled this and even at +the end of some minutes more things besides. It settled in its own +way one thing in particular, which, though often, between them, +heaven knew, hovered round and hung over, was yet to be +established without the shadow of an attenuating smile. Oh there +was no gleam of levity, as little of humour as of deprecation, in +the long time they now sat together or in the way in which at some +unmeasured point of it Mrs. Wix became distinct enough for her own +dignity and yet not loud enough for the snoozing old women.</p> + +<p>"I adore him. I adore him."</p> + +<p>Maisie took it well in; so well that in a moment more she would +have answered profoundly: "So do I." But before that moment passed +something took place that brought other words to her lips; nothing +more, very possibly, than the closer consciousness in her hand of +the significance of Mrs. Wix's. Their hands remained linked in +unutterable sign of their union, and what Maisie at last said was +simply and serenely: "Oh I know!"</p> + +<p>Their hands were so linked and their union was so confirmed that +it took the far deep note of a bell, borne to them on the summer +air, to call them back to a sense of hours and proprieties. They +had touched bottom and melted together, but they gave a start at +last: the bell was the voice of the inn and the inn was the image +of luncheon. They should be late for it; they got up, and their +quickened step on the return had something of the swing of +confidence. When they reached the hotel the <i>table d'hôte</i> +had begun; this was clear from the threshold, clear from the absence +in the hall and on the stairs of the "personnel," as Mrs. Wix +said—she had picked <i>that</i> up—all collected in the +dining-room. They mounted to their apartments for a brush before +the glass, and it was Maisie who, in passing and from a vain +impulse, threw open the white and gold door. She was thus first +to utter the sound that brought Mrs. Wix almost on top of her, as +by the other accident it would have brought her on top of Mrs. Wix. +It had at any rate the effect of leaving them bunched together in +a strained stare at their new situation. This situation had put on +in a flash the bright form of Mrs. Beale: she stood there in her +hat and her jacket, amid bags and shawls, smiling and holding out +her arms. If she had just arrived it was a different figure from +either of the two that for <i>their</i> benefit, wan and tottering +and none too soon to save life, the Channel had recently disgorged. +She was as lovely as the day that had brought her over, as fresh +as the luck and the health that attended her: it came to Maisie on +the spot that she was more beautiful than she had ever been. All +this was too quick to count, but there was still time in it to +give the child the sense of what had kindled the light. That +leaped out of the open arms, the open eyes, the open mouth; it +leaped out with Mrs. Beale's loud cry at her: "I'm free, I'm +free!"</p> + + +<p> <a name="27"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXVII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>The greatest wonder of all was the way Mrs. Beale addressed her +announcement, so far as could be judged, equally to Mrs. Wix, who, +as if from sudden failure of strength, sank into a chair while +Maisie surrendered to the visitor's embrace. As soon as the child +was liberated she met with profundity Mrs. Wix's stupefaction and +actually was able to see that while in a manner sustaining the +encounter her face yet seemed with intensity to say: "Now, for +God's sake, don't crow 'I told you so!'" Maisie was somehow on the +spot aware of an absence of disposition to crow; it had taken her +but an extra minute to arrive at such a quick survey of the +objects surrounding Mrs. Beale as showed that among them was no +appurtenance of Sir Claude's. She knew his dressing-bag now—oh +with the fondest knowledge!—and there was an instant during which +its not being there was a stroke of the worst news. She was yet to +learn what it could be to recognise in some lapse of a sequence +the proof of an extinction, and therefore remained unaware that +this momentary pang was a foretaste of the experience of death. It +of course yielded in a flash to Mrs. Beale's brightness, it gasped +itself away in her own instant appeal. "You've come alone?"</p> + +<p>"Without Sir Claude?" Strangely, Mrs. Beale looked even brighter. +"Yes; in the eagerness to get at you. You abominable little +villain!"—and her stepmother, laughing clear, administered to her +cheek a pat that was partly a pinch. "What were you up to and what +did you take me for? But I'm glad to be abroad, and after all it's +you who have shown me the way. I mightn't, without you, have been +able to come—to come, that is, so soon. Well, here I am at any +rate and in a moment more I should have begun to worry about you. +This will do very well"—she was good-natured about the place and +even presently added that it was charming. Then with a rosier glow +she made again her great point: "I'm free, I'm free!" Maisie made +on her side her own: she carried back her gaze to Mrs. Wix, whom +amazement continued to hold; she drew afresh her old friend's +attention to the superior way she didn't take that up. What she +did take up the next minute was the question of Sir Claude. "Where +is he? Won't he come?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale's consideration of this oscillated with a smile between +the two expectancies with which she was flanked: it was +conspicuous, it was extraordinary, her unblinking acceptance of +Mrs. Wix, a miracle of which Maisie had even now begun to read a +reflexion in that lady's long visage. "He'll come, but we must +<i>make</i> him!" she gaily brought forth.</p> + +<p>"Make him?" Maisie echoed.</p> + +<p>"We must give him time. We must play our cards."</p> + +<p>"But he promised us awfully," Maisie replied.</p> + +<p>"My dear child, he has promised <i>me</i> awfully; I mean lots +of things, and not in every case kept his promise to the letter." +Mrs. Beale's good humour insisted on taking for granted Mrs. Wix's, +to whom her attention had suddenly grown prodigious. "I dare say +he has done the same with you, and not always come to time. But +he makes it up in his own way—and it isn't as if we didn't know +exactly what he is. There's one thing he is," she went on, "which +makes everything else only a question, for us, of tact." They +scarce had time to wonder what this was before, as they might have +said, it flew straight into their face. "He's as free as I am!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know," said Maisie; as if, however, independently weighing +the value of that. She really weighed also the oddity of her +stepmother's treating it as news to <i>her</i>, who had been the +first person literally to whom Sir Claude had mentioned it. For a +few seconds, as if with the sound of it in her ears, she stood with +him again, in memory and in the twilight, in the hotel garden at +Folkestone.</p> + +<p>Anything Mrs. Beale overlooked was, she indeed divined, but the +effect of an exaltation of high spirits, a tendency to soar that +showed even when she dropped—still quite impartially—almost to +the confidential. "Well, then—we've only to wait. He can't do +without us long. I'm sure, Mrs. Wix, he can't do without +<i>you</i>! He's devoted to you; he has told me so much about you. +The extent I count on you, you know, count on you to help me—" +was an extent that even all her radiance couldn't express. What it +couldn't express quite as much as what it could made at any rate +every instant her presence and even her famous freedom loom +larger; and it was this mighty mass that once more led her +companions, bewildered and disjoined, to exchange with each other +as through a thickening veil confused and ineffectual signs. They +clung together at least on the common ground of unpreparedness, +and Maisie watched without relief the havoc of wonder in Mrs. Wix. +It had reduced her to perfect impotence, and, but that gloom was +black upon her, she sat as if fascinated by Mrs. Beale's high +style. It had plunged her into a long deep hush; for what had +happened was the thing she had least allowed for and before which +the particular rigour she had worked up could only grow limp and +sick. Sir Claude was to have reappeared with his accomplice or +without her; never, never his accomplice without <i>him</i>. Mrs. +Beale had gained apparently by this time an advantage she could +pursue: she looked at the droll dumb figure with jesting +reproach. "You really won't shake hands with me? Never mind; +you'll come round!" She put the matter to no test, going on +immediately and, instead of offering her hand, raising it, with +a pretty gesture that her bent head met, to a long black pin that +played a part in her back hair. "Are hats worn at luncheon? If +you're as hungry as I am we must go right down."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix stuck fast, but she met the question in a voice her +pupil scarce recognised. "I wear mine."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale, swallowing at one glance her brand-new bravery, +which she appeared at once to refer to its origin and to follow +in its flights, accepted this as conclusive. "Oh but I've not +such a beauty!" Then she turned rejoicingly to Maisie. "I've +got a beauty for <i>you</i> my dear."</p> + +<p>"A beauty?"</p> + +<p>"A love of a hat—in my luggage. I remembered <i>that</i>"—she +nodded at the object on her stepdaughter's head—"and I've brought +you one with a peacock's breast. It's the most gorgeous blue!"</p> + +<p>It was too strange, this talking with her there already not about +Sir Claude but about peacocks—too strange for the child to have +the presence of mind to thank her. But the felicity in which she +had arrived was so proof against everything that Maisie felt more +and more the depth of the purpose that must underlie it. She had a +vague sense of its being abysmal, the spirit with which Mrs. Beale +carried off the awkwardness, in the white and gold salon, of such +a want of breath and of welcome. Mrs. Wix was more breathless than +ever; the embarrassment of Mrs. Beale's isolation was as nothing +to the embarrassment of her grace. The perception of this dilemma +was the germ on the child's part of a new question altogether. +What if <i>with</i> this indulgence—? But the idea lost itself in +something too frightened for hope and too conjectured for fear; +and while everything went by leaps and bounds one of the waiters +stood at the door to remind them that the <i>table d'hôte</i> +was half over.</p> + +<p>"Had you come up to wash hands?" Mrs. Beale hereupon asked them. +"Go and do it quickly and I'll be with you: they've put my boxes +in that nice room—it was Sir Claude's. Trust him," she laughed, +"to have a nice one!" The door of a neighbouring room stood open, +and now from the threshold, addressing herself again to Mrs. Wix, +she launched a note that gave the very key of what, as she would +have said, she was up to. "Dear lady, please attend to my +daughter."</p> + +<p>She was up to a change of deportment so complete that it +represented—oh for offices still honourably subordinate if not +too explicitly menial—an absolute coercion, an interested clutch +of the old woman's respectability. There was response, to Maisie's +view, I may say at once, in the jump of that respectability to its +feet: it was itself capable of one of the leaps, one of the bounds +just mentioned, and it carried its charge, with this momentum and +while Mrs. Beale popped into Sir Claude's chamber, straight away +to where, at the end of the passage, pupil and governess were +quartered. The greatest stride of all, for that matter, was that +within a few seconds the pupil had, in another relation, been +converted into a daughter. Maisie's eyes were still following it +when, after the rush, with the door almost slammed and no thought +of soap and towels, the pair stood face to face. Mrs. Wix, in this +position, was the first to gasp a sound. "Can it ever be that +<i>she</i> has one?"</p> + +<p>Maisie felt still more bewildered. "One what?"</p> + +<p>"Why moral sense."</p> + +<p>They spoke as if you might have two, but Mrs. Wix looked as if it +were not altogether a happy thought, and Maisie didn't see how +even an affirmative from her own lips would clear up what had +become most of a mystery. It was to this larger puzzle she sprang +pretty straight. "<i>Is</i> she my mother now?"</p> + +<p>It was a point as to which an horrific glimpse of the +responsibility of an opinion appeared to affect Mrs. Wix like a +blow in the stomach. She had evidently never thought of it; but +she could think and rebound. "If she is, he's equally your +father."</p> + +<p>Maisie, however, thought further. "Then my father and my +mother—!"</p> + +<p>But she had already faltered and Mrs. Wix had already glared back: +"Ought to live together? Don't begin it <i>again</i>!" She turned +away with a groan, to reach the washing-stand, and Maisie could by +this time recognise with a certain ease that that way verily madness +did lie. Mrs. Wix gave a great untidy splash, but the next instant +had faced round. "She has taken a new line."</p> + +<p>"She was nice to you," Maisie concurred.</p> + +<p>"What <i>she</i> thinks so—'go and dress the young lady!' +But it's something!" she panted. Then she thought out the +rest. "If he won't have her, why she'll have <i>you</i>. +She'll be the one."</p> + +<p>"The one to keep me abroad?"</p> + +<p>"The one to give you a home." Mrs. Wix saw further; she mastered +all the portents. "Oh she's cruelly clever! It's not a moral +sense." She reached her climax: "It's a game!"</p> + +<p>"A game?"</p> + +<p>"Not to lose him. She has sacrificed him—to her duty."</p> + +<p>"Then won't he come?" Maisie pleaded.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix made no answer; her vision absorbed her. "He has fought. +But she has won."</p> + +<p>"Then won't he come?" the child repeated.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix made it out. "Yes, hang him!" She had never been so +profane.</p> + +<p>For all Maisie minded! "Soon—to-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"Too soon—whenever. Indecently soon."</p> + +<p>"But then we <i>shall</i> be together!" the child went on. +It made Mrs. Wix look at her as if in exasperation; but nothing +had time to come before she precipitated: "Together with +<i>you</i>!" The air of criticism continued, but took voice only +in her companion's bidding her wash herself and come down. The +silence of quick ablutions fell upon them, presently broken, +however, by one of Maisie's sudden reversions. "Mercy, isn't +she handsome?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix had finished; she waited. "She'll attract attention." +They were rapid, and it would have been noticed that the shock the +beauty had given them acted, incongruously, as a positive spur to +their preparations for rejoining her. She had none the less, when +they returned to the sitting-room, already descended; the open +door of her room showed it empty and the chambermaid explained. +Here again they were delayed by another sharp thought of Mrs. +Wix's. "But what will she live on meanwhile?"</p> + +<p>Maisie stopped short. "Till Sir Claude comes?"</p> + +<p>It was nothing to the violence with which her friend had been +arrested. "Who'll pay the bills?"</p> + +<p>Maisie thought. "Can't <i>she</i>?"</p> + +<p>"She? She hasn't a penny."</p> + +<p>The child wondered. "But didn't papa—?"</p> + +<p>"Leave her a fortune?" Mrs. Wix would have appeared to speak of +papa as dead had she not immediately added: "Why he lives on other +women!"</p> + +<p>Oh yes, Maisie remembered. "Then can't he send—" She faltered +again; even to herself it sounded queer.</p> + +<p>"Some of their money to his wife?" Mrs. Wix pave a laugh still +stranger than the weird suggestion. "I dare say she'd take it!"</p> + +<p>They hurried on again; yet again, on the stairs, Maisie pulled up. +"Well, if she had stopped in England—!" she threw out.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix considered. "And he had come over instead?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, as we expected." Maisie launched her speculation. "What then +would she have lived on?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix hung fire but an instant. "On other men!" And she marched +downstairs.</p> + + +<p> <a name="28"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXVIII<br /> </h3> + + +<p>Mrs. Beale, at table between the pair, plainly attracted the +attention Mrs. Wix had foretold. No other lady present was nearly +so handsome, nor did the beauty of any other accommodate itself +with such art to the homage it produced. She talked mainly to her +other neighbour, and that left Maisie leisure both to note the +manner in which eyes were riveted and nudges interchanged, and to +lose herself in the meanings that, dimly as yet and +disconnectedly, but with a vividness that fed apprehension, she +could begin to read into her stepmother's independent move. Mrs. +Wix had helped her by talking of a game; it was a connexion in +which the move could put on a strategic air. Her notions of +diplomacy were thin, but it was a kind of cold diplomatic shoulder +and an elbow of more than usual point that, temporarily at least, +were presented to her by the averted inclination of Mrs. Beale's +head. There was a phrase familiar to Maisie, so often was it used +by this lady to express the idea of one's getting what one wanted: +one got it—Mrs. Beale always said <i>she</i> at all events always +got it or proposed to get it—by "making love." She was at present +making love, singular as it appeared, to Mrs. Wix, and her young +friend's mind had never moved in such freedom as on thus finding +itself face to face with the question of what she wanted to get. +This period of the <i>omelette aux rognons</i> and the <i>poulet +sauté</i>, while her sole surviving parent, her fourth, +fairly chattered to her governess, left Maisie rather wondering if +her governess would hold out. It was strange, but she became on +the spot quite as interested in Mrs. Wix's moral sense as Mrs. Wix +could possibly be in hers: it had risen before her so pressingly +that this was something new for Mrs. Wix to resist. Resisting Mrs. +Beale herself promised at such a rate to become a very different +business from resisting Sir Claude's view of her. More might come +of what had happened—whatever it was—than Maisie felt she could +have expected. She put it together with a suspicion that, had she +ever in her life had a sovereign changed, would have resembled an +impression, baffled by the want of arithmetic, that her change was +wrong: she groped about in it that she was perhaps playing the +passive part in a case of violent substitution. A victim was what +she should surely be if the issue between her step-parents had +been settled by Mrs. Beale's saying: "Well, if she can live with +but one of us alone, with which in the world should it be but me?" +That answer was far from what, for days, she had nursed herself +in, and the desolation of it was deepened by the absence of +anything from Sir Claude to show he had not had to take it as +triumphant. Had not Mrs. Beale, upstairs, as good as given out +that she had quitted him with the snap of a tension, left him, +dropped him in London, after some struggle as a sequel to which +her own advent represented that she had practically sacrificed +him? Maisie assisted in fancy at the probable episode in the +Regent's Park, finding elements almost of terror in the suggestion +that Sir Claude had not had fair play. They drew something, as she +sat there, even from the pride of an association with such beauty +as Mrs. Beale's; and the child quite forgot that, though the +sacrifice of Mrs. Beale herself was a solution she had not +invented, she would probably have seen Sir Claude embark upon it +without a direct remonstrance.</p> + +<p>What her stepmother had clearly now promised herself +to wring from Mrs. Wix was an assent to the great +modification, the change, as smart as a juggler's trick, in the +interest of which nothing so much mattered as the new convenience +of Mrs. Beale. Maisie could positively seize the moral that her +elbow seemed to point in ribs thinly defended—the moral of its +not mattering a straw which of the step-parents was the guardian. +The essence of the question was that a girl wasn't a boy: if +Maisie had been a mere rough trousered thing, destined at the best +probably to grow up a scamp, Sir Claude would have been welcome. +As the case stood he had simply tumbled out of it, and Mrs. Wix +would henceforth find herself in the employ of the right person. +These arguments had really fallen into their place, for our young +friend, at the very touch of that tone in which she had heard her +new title declared. She was still, as a result of so many parents, +a daughter to somebody even after papa and mamma were to all +intents dead. If her father's wife and her mother's husband, by +the operation of a natural or, for all she knew, a legal rule, +were in the shoes of their defunct partners, then Mrs. Beale's +partner was exactly as defunct as Sir Claude's and her shoes the +very pair to which, in "Farange <i>v.</i> Farange and Others," the +divorce court had given priority. The subject of that celebrated +settlement saw the rest of her day really filled out with the pomp +of all that Mrs. Beale assumed. The assumption rounded itself +there between this lady's entertainers, flourished in a way that +left them, in their bottomless element, scarce a free pair of eyes +to exchange signals. It struck Maisie even a little that there was +a rope or two Mrs. Wix might have thrown out if she would, a +rocket or two she might have sent up. They had at any rate never +been so long together without communion or telegraphy, and their +companion kept them apart by simply keeping them with her. From +this situation they saw the grandeur of their intenser relation to +her pass and pass like an endless procession. It was a day of +lively movement and of talk on Mrs. Beale's part so brilliant and +overflowing as to represent music and banners. She took them out +with her promptly to walk and to drive, and even—towards +night—sketched a plan for carrying them to the Etablissement, +where, for only a franc apiece, they should listen to a concert of +celebrities. It reminded Maisie, the plan, of the side-shows at +Earl's Court, and the franc sounded brighter than the shillings +which had at that time failed; yet this too, like the other, was a +frustrated hope: the francs failed like the shillings and the +side-shows had set an example to the concert. The Etablissement in +short melted away, and it was little wonder that a lady who from +the moment of her arrival had been so gallantly in the breach +should confess herself it last done up. Maisie could appreciate +her fatigue; the day had not passed without such an observer's +discovering that she was excited and even mentally comparing her +state to that of the breakers after a gale. It had blown hard in +London, and she would take time to go down. It was of the +condition known to the child by report as that of talking against +time that her emphasis, her spirit, her humour, which had never +dropped, now gave the impression.</p> + +<p>She too was delighted with foreign manners; but her daughter's +opportunities of explaining them to her were unexpectedly +forestalled by her own tone of large acquaintance with them. One +of the things that nipped in the bud all response to her +volubility was Maisie's surprised retreat before the fact that +Continental life was what she had been almost brought up on. It +was Mrs. Beale, disconcertingly, who began to explain it to her +friends; it was she who, wherever they turned, was the +interpreter, the historian and the guide. She was full of +reference to her early travels—at the age of eighteen: she had at +that period made, with a distinguished Dutch family, a stay on the +Lake of Geneva. Maisie had in the old days been regaled with +anecdotes of these adventures, but they had with time become +phantasmal, and the heroine's quite showy exemption from +bewilderment at Boulogne, her acuteness on some of the very +subjects on which Maisie had been acute to Mrs. Wix, were a high +note of the majesty, of the variety of advantage, with which she +had alighted. It was all a part of the wind in her sails and of +the weight with which her daughter was now to feel her hand. The +effect of it on Maisie was to add already the burden of time to +her separation from Sir Claude. This might, to her sense, have +lasted for days; it was as if, with their main agitation +transferred thus to France and with neither mamma now nor Mrs. +Beale nor Mrs. Wix nor herself at his side, he must be fearfully +alone in England. Hour after hour she felt as if she were waiting; +yet she couldn't have said exactly for what. There were moments +when Mrs. Beale's flow of talk was a mere rattle to smother a +knock. At no part of the crisis had the rattle so public a purpose +as when, instead of letting Maisie go with Mrs. Wix to prepare for +dinner, she pushed her—with a push at last incontestably +maternal—straight into the room inherited from Sir Claude. She +titivated her little charge with her own brisk hands; then she +brought out: "I'm going to divorce your father."</p> + +<p>This was so different from anything Maisie had expected that it +took some time to reach her mind. She was aware meanwhile that she +probably looked rather wan. "To marry Sir Claude?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale rewarded her with a kiss. "It's sweet to hear you put +it so."</p> + +<p>This was a tribute, but it left Maisie balancing for an objection. +"How <i>can</i> you when he's married?"</p> + +<p>"He isn't—practically. He's free, you know."</p> + +<p>"Free to marry?"</p> + +<p>"Free, first, to divorce his own fiend."</p> + +<p>The benefit that, these last days, she had felt she owed a certain +person left Maisie a moment so ill-prepared for recognising this +lurid label that she hesitated long enough to risk: "Mamma?"</p> + +<p>"She isn't your mamma any longer," Mrs. Beale returned. "Sir +Claude has paid her money to cease to be." Then as if remembering +how little, to the child, a pecuniary transaction must represent: +"She lets him off supporting her if he'll let her off supporting +you."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale appeared, however, to have done injustice to her +daughter's financial grasp. "And support me himself?" Maisie +asked.</p> + +<p>"Take the whole bother and burden of you and never let her hear of +you again. It's a regular signed contract."</p> + +<p>"Why that's lovely of her!" Maisie cried.</p> + +<p>"It's not so lovely, my dear, but that he'll get his divorce."</p> + +<p>Maisie was briefly silent; after which, "No—he won't get it," she +said. Then she added still more boldly: "And you won't get yours."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale, who was at the dressing-glass, turned round with +amusement and surprise. "How do you know that?"</p> + +<p>"Oh I know!" cried Maisie.</p> + +<p>"From Mrs. Wix?"</p> + +<p>Maisie debated, then after an instant took her cue from Mrs. +Beale's absence of anger, which struck her the more as she had +felt how much of her courage she needed. "From Mrs. Wix," she +admitted.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale, at the glass again, made play with a powder-puff. "My +own sweet, she's mistaken!" was all she said.</p> + +<p>There was a certain force in the very amenity of this, but our +young lady reflected long enough to remember that it was not the +answer Sir Claude himself had made. The recollection nevertheless +failed to prevent her saying: "Do you mean then that he won't come +till he has got it?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale gave a last touch; she was ready; she stood there in +all her elegance. "I mean, my dear, that it's because he +<i>hasn't</i> got it that I left him."</p> + +<p>This opened a view that stretched further than Maisie could reach. +She turned away from it, but she spoke before they went out again. +"Do you like Mrs. Wix now?"</p> + +<p>"Why, my chick, I was just going to ask you if you think she has +come at all to like poor bad me!"</p> + +<p>Maisie thought, at this hint; but unsuccessfully. "I haven't the +least idea. But I'll find out."</p> + +<p>"Do!" said Mrs. Beale, rustling out with her in a scented air and +as if it would be a very particular favour.</p> + +<p>The child tried promptly at bed-time, relieved now of the fear +that their visitor would wish to separate her for the night from +her attendant. "Have you held out?" she began as soon as the two +doors at the end of the passage were again closed on them.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix looked hard at the flame of the candle. "Held out—?"</p> + +<p>"Why, she has been making love to you. Has she won you over?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix transferred her intensity to her pupil's face. "Over to +what?"</p> + +<p>"To <i>her</i> keeping me instead."</p> + +<p>"Instead of Sir Claude?" Mrs. Wix was distinctly gaining time.</p> + +<p>"Yes; who else? since it's not instead of you."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix coloured at this lucidity. "Yes, that <i>is</i> what +she means."</p> + +<p>"Well, do you like it?" Maisie asked.</p> + +<p>She actually had to wait, for oh her friend was embarrassed! "My +opposition to the connexion—theirs—would then naturally to some +extent fall. She has treated me to-day as if I weren't after all +quite such a worm; not that I don't know very well where she got +the pattern of her politeness. But of course," Mrs. Wix hastened +to add, "I shouldn't like her as <i>the</i> one nearly so well +as him."</p> + +<p>"'Nearly so well!'" Maisie echoed. "I should hope indeed not." +She spoke with a firmness under which she was herself the first to +quiver. "I thought you 'adored' him."</p> + +<p>"I do," Mrs. Wix sturdily allowed.</p> + +<p>"Then have you suddenly begun to adore her too?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix, instead of directly answering, only blinked in support +of her sturdiness. "My dear, in what a tone you ask that! You're +coming out."</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't I? <i>You've</i> come out. Mrs. Beale has come +out. We each have our turn!" And Maisie threw off the most +extraordinary little laugh that had ever passed her young +lips.</p> + +<p>There passed Mrs. Wix's indeed the next moment a sound that more +than matched it. "You're most remarkable!" she neighed.</p> + +<p>Her pupil, though wholly without aspirations to pertness, barely +faltered. "I think you've done a great deal to make me so."</p> + +<p>"Very true, I have." She dropped to humility, as if she recalled +her so recent self-arraignment.</p> + +<p>"Would you accept her then? That's what I ask," said Maisie.</p> + +<p>"As a substitute?" Mrs. Wix turned it over; she met again the +child's eyes. "She has literally almost fawned upon me."</p> + +<p>"She hasn't fawned upon <i>him</i>. She hasn't even been kind +to him."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix looked as if she had now an advantage. "Then do you +propose to 'kill' her?"</p> + +<p>"You don't answer my question," Maisie persisted. "I want to know +if you accept her."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix continued to hedge. "I want to know if <i>you</i> +do!"</p> + +<p>Everything in the child's person, at this, announced that it was +easy to know. "Not for a moment."</p> + +<p>"Not the two now?" Mrs. Wix had caught on; she flushed with it. +"Only him alone?"</p> + +<p>"Him alone or nobody."</p> + +<p>"Not even <i>me</i>?" cried Mrs. Wix.</p> + +<p>Maisie looked at her a moment, then began to undress. "Oh you're +nobody!"</p> + + +<p> <a name="29"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXIX<br /> </h3> + + +<p>Her sleep was drawn out, she instantly recognised lateness in the +way her eyes opened to Mrs. Wix, erect, completely dressed, more +dressed than ever, and gazing at her from the centre of the room. +The next thing she was sitting straight up, wide awake with the +fear of the hours of "abroad" that she might have lost. Mrs. Wix +looked as if the day had already made itself felt, and the process +of catching up with it began for Maisie in hearing her distinctly +say: "My poor dear, he has come!"</p> + +<p>"Sir Claude?" Maisie, clearing the little bed-rug with the width +of her spring, felt the polished floor under her bare feet.</p> + +<p>"He crossed in the night; he got in early." Mrs. Wix's head jerked +stiffly backward. "He's there."</p> + +<p>"And you've seen him?"</p> + +<p>"No. He's there—he's there," Mrs. Wix repeated. Her voice came +out with a queer extinction that was not a voluntary drop, and she +trembled so that it added to their common emotion. Visibly pale, +they gazed at each other.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it too <i>beautiful</i>?" Maisie panted back at her; a +challenge with an answer to which, however, she was not ready at +once. The term Maisie had used was a flash of diplomacy—to prevent +at any rate Mrs. Wix's using another. To that degree it was +successful; there was only an appeal, strange and mute, in the +white old face, which produced the effect of a want of decision +greater than could by any stretch of optimism have been associated +with her attitude toward what had happened. For Maisie herself +indeed what had happened was oddly, as she could feel, less of +a simple rapture than any arrival or return of the same supreme +friend had ever been before. What had become overnight, what had +become while she slept, of the comfortable faculty of gladness? +She tried to wake it up a little wider by talking, by rejoicing, +by plunging into water and into clothes, and she made out that it +was ten o'clock, but also that Mrs. Wix had not yet breakfasted. +The day before, at nine, they had had together a <i>café +complet</i> in their sitting-room. Mrs. Wix on her side had +evidently also a refuge to seek. She sought it in checking the +precipitation of some of her pupil's present steps, in recalling +to her with an approach to sternness that of such preliminaries +those embodied in a thorough use of soap should be the most +thorough, and in throwing even a certain reprobation on the idea +of hurrying into clothes for the sake of a mere stepfather. She +took her in hand with a silent insistence; she reduced the process +to sequences more definite than any it had known since the days of +Moddle. Whatever it might be that had now, with a difference, +begun to belong to Sir Claude's presence was still after all +compatible, for our young lady, with the instinct of dressing to +see him with almost untidy haste. Mrs. Wix meanwhile luckily was +not wholly directed to repression. "He's there—he's there!" she +had said over several times. It was her answer to every invitation +to mention how long she had been up and her motive for respecting +so rigidly the slumber of her companion. It formed for some +minutes her only account of the whereabouts of the others and her +reason for not having yet seen them, as well as of the possibility +of their presently being found in the salon.</p> + +<p>"He's there—he's there!" she declared once more as she made, on +the child, with an almost invidious tug, a strained undergarment +"meet."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean he's in the salon?" Maisie asked again.</p> + +<p>"He's <i>with</i> her," Mrs. Wix desolately said. "He's with +her," she reiterated.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean in her own room?" Maisie continued.</p> + +<p>She waited an instant. "God knows!"</p> + +<p>Maisie wondered a little why, or how, God should know; this, +however, delayed but an instant her bringing out: "Well, won't she +go back?"</p> + +<p>"Go back? Never!"</p> + +<p>"She'll stay all the same?"</p> + +<p>"All the more."</p> + +<p>"Then won't Sir Claude go?" Maisie asked.</p> + +<p>"Go back—if <i>she</i> doesn't?" Mrs. Wix appeared to give +this question the benefit of a minute's thought. "Why should he +have come—only to go back?"</p> + +<p>Maisie produced an ingenious solution. "To <i>make</i> her go. +To take her."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix met it without a concession. "If he can make her go so +easily, why should he have let her come?"</p> + +<p>Maisie considered. "Oh just to see <i>me</i>. She has a +right."</p> + +<p>"Yes—she has a right."</p> + +<p>"She's my mother!" Maisie tentatively tittered.</p> + +<p>"Yes—she's your mother."</p> + +<p>"Besides," Maisie went on, "he didn't let her come. He doesn't +like her coming, and if he doesn't like it—"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix took her up. "He must lump it—that's what he must do! +Your mother was right about him—I mean your real one. He has no +strength. No—none at all." She seemed more profoundly to muse. +"He might have had some even with <i>her</i>—I mean with her +ladyship. He's just a poor sunk slave," she asserted with sudden +energy.</p> + +<p>Maisie wondered again. "A slave?"</p> + +<p>"To his passions."</p> + +<p>She continued to wonder and even to be impressed; after which she +went on: "But how do you know he'll stay?"</p> + +<p>"Because he likes us!"—and Mrs. Wix, with her emphasis of the +word, whirled her charge round again to deal with posterior hooks. +She had positively never shaken her so.</p> + +<p>It was as if she quite shook something out of her. "But how will +that help him if we—in spite of his liking!—don't stay?"</p> + +<p>"Do you mean if we go off and leave him with her?—" Mrs. Wix put +the question to the back of her pupil's head. "It <i>won't</i> help +him. It will be his ruin. He'll have got nothing. He'll have lost +everything. It will be his utter destruction, for he's certain +after a while to loathe her."</p> + +<p>"Then when he loathes her"—it was astonishing how she caught the +idea—"he'll just come right after us!" Maisie announced.</p> + +<p>"Never."</p> + +<p>"Never?"</p> + +<p>"She'll keep him. She'll hold him for ever."</p> + +<p>Maisie doubted. "When he 'loathes' her?"</p> + +<p>"That won't matter. She won't loathe <i>him</i>. People don't!" +Mrs. Wix brought up.</p> + +<p>"Some do. Mamma does," Maisie contended.</p> + +<p>"Mamma does <i>not</i>!" It was startling—her friend +contradicted her flat. "She loves him—she adores him. A woman +knows." Mrs. Wix spoke not only as if Maisie were not a woman, +but as if she would never be one. "<i>I</i> know!" she +cried.</p> + +<p>"Then why on earth has she left him?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix hesitated. "He hates <i>her</i>. Don't stoop so—lift +up your hair. You know how I'm affected toward him," she added with +dignity; "but you must also know that I see clear."</p> + +<p>Maisie all this time was trying hard to do likewise. "Then if she +has left him for that why shouldn't Mrs. Beale leave him?"</p> + +<p>"Because she's not such a fool!"</p> + +<p>"Not such a fool as mamma?"</p> + +<p>"Precisely—if you <i>will</i> have it. Does it look like her +leaving him?" Mrs. Wix enquired. She brooded again; then she went +on with more intensity: "Do you want to know really and truly why? +So that she may be his wretchedness and his punishment."</p> + +<p>"His punishment?"—this was more than as yet Maisie could quite +accept. "For what?"</p> + +<p>"For everything. That's what will happen: he'll be tied to her for +ever. She won't mind in the least his hating her, and she won't +hate him back. She'll only hate <i>us</i>."</p> + +<p>"Us?" the child faintly echoed.</p> + +<p>"She'll hate <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"Me? Why, I brought them together!" Maisie resentfully cried.</p> + +<p>"You brought them together." There was a completeness in Mrs. +Wix's assent. "Yes; it was a pretty job. Sit down." She began to +brush her pupil's hair and, as she took up the mass of it with +some force of hand, went on with a sharp recall: "Your mother +adored him at first—it might have lasted. But he began too soon +with Mrs. Beale. As you say," she pursued with a brisk application +of the brush, "you brought them together."</p> + +<p>"I brought them together"—Maisie was ready to reaffirm it. She +felt none the less for a moment at the bottom of a hole; then she +seemed to see a way out. "But I didn't bring mamma together—" She +just faltered.</p> + +<p>"With all those gentlemen?"—Mrs. Wix pulled her up. "No; it isn't +quite so bad as that."</p> + +<p>"I only said to the Captain"—Maisie had the quick memory of +it—"that I hoped he at least (he was awfully nice!) would love +her and keep her."</p> + +<p>"And even that wasn't much harm," threw in Mrs. Wix.</p> + +<p>"It wasn't much good," Maisie was obliged to recognise. "She can't +bear him—not even a mite. She told me at Folkestone."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix suppressed a gasp; then after a bridling instant during +which she might have appeared to deflect with difficulty from her +odd consideration of Ida's wrongs: "He was a nice sort of person +for her to talk to you about!"</p> + +<p>"Oh I <i>like</i> him!" Maisie promptly rejoined; and at this, +with an inarticulate sound and an inconsequence still more marked, +her companion bent over and dealt her on the cheek a rapid peck +which had the apparent intention of a kiss.</p> + +<p>"Well, if her ladyship doesn't agree with you, what does it only +prove?" Mrs. Wix demanded in conclusion. "It proves that she's +fond of Sir Claude!"</p> + +<p>Maisie, in the light of some of the evidence, reflected on that +till her hair was finished, but when she at last started up she +gave a sign of no very close embrace of it. She grasped at this +moment Mrs. Wix's arm. "He must have got his divorce!"</p> + +<p>"Since day before yesterday? Don't talk trash."</p> + +<p>This was spoken with an impatience which left the child nothing to +reply; whereupon she sought her defence in a completely different +relation to the fact. "Well, I knew he would come!"</p> + +<p>"So did I; but not in twenty-four hours. I gave him a few days!" +Mrs. Wix wailed.</p> + +<p>Maisie, whom she had now released, looked at her with interest. +"How many did <i>she</i> give him?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix faced her a moment; then as if with a bewildered sniff: +"You had better ask her!" But she had no sooner uttered the words +than she caught herself up. "Lord o' mercy, how we talk!"</p> + +<p>Maisie felt that however they talked she must see him, but she +said nothing more for a time, a time during which she +conscientiously finished dressing and Mrs. Wix also kept silence. +It was as if they each had almost too much to think of, and even +as if the child had the sense that her friend was watching her and +seeing if she herself were watched. At last Mrs. Wix turned to the +window and stood—sightlessly, as Maisie could guess—looking +away. Then our young lady, before the glass, gave the supreme +shake. "Well, I'm ready. And now to <i>see</i> him!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix turned round, but as if without having heard her. "It's +tremendously grave." There were slow still tears behind the +straighteners.</p> + +<p>"It is—it is." Maisie spoke as if she were now dressed quite up +to the occasion; as if indeed with the last touch she had put on +the judgement-cap. "I must see him immediately."</p> + +<p>"How can you see him if he doesn't send for you?"</p> + +<p>"Why can't I go and find him?"</p> + +<p>"Because you don't know where he is."</p> + +<p>"Can't I just look in the salon?" That still seemed simple to +Maisie.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix, however, instantly cut it off. "I wouldn't have you look +in the salon for all the world!" Then she explained a little: "The +salon isn't ours now."</p> + +<p>"Ours?"</p> + +<p>"Yours and mine. It's theirs."</p> + +<p>"Theirs?" Maisie, with her stare, continued to echo. "You mean +they want to keep us out?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix faltered; she sank into a chair and, as Maisie had often +enough seen her do before, covered her face with her hands. "They +ought to, at least. The situation's too monstrous!"</p> + +<p>Maisie stood there a moment—she looked about the room. "I'll go +to him—I'll find him."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> won't! I won't go <i>near</i> them!" cried Mrs. +Wix.</p> + +<p>"Then I'll see him alone." The child spied what she had been +looking for—she possessed herself of her hat. "Perhaps I'll take +him out!" And with decision she quitted the room.</p> + +<p>When she entered the salon it was empty, but at the sound of the +opened door some one stirred on the balcony, and Sir Claude, +stepping straight in, stood before her. He was in light fresh +clothes and wore a straw hat with a bright ribbon; these things, +besides striking her in themselves as the very promise of the +grandest of grand tours, gave him a certain radiance and, as it +were, a tropical ease; but such an effect only marked rather more +his having stopped short and, for a longer minute than had ever at +such a juncture elapsed, not opened his arms to her. His pause +made her pause and enabled her to reflect that he must have been +up some time, for there were no traces of breakfast; and that +though it was so late he had rather markedly not caused her to be +called to him. Had Mrs. Wix been right about their forfeiture of +the salon? Was it all his now, all his and Mrs. Beale's? Such an +idea, at the rate her small thoughts throbbed, could only remind +her of the way in which what had been hers hitherto was what was +exactly most Mrs. Beale's and his. It was strange to be standing +there and greeting him across a gulf, for he had by this time +spoken, smiled and said: "My dear child, my dear child!" but +without coming any nearer. In a flash she saw he was +different—more so than he knew or designed. The next minute +indeed it was as if he caught an impression from her face: this +made him hold out his hand. Then they met, he kissed her, he +laughed, she thought he even blushed: something of his affection +rang out as usual. "Here I am, you see, again—as I promised you."</p> + +<p>It was not as he had promised them—he had not promised them Mrs. +Beale; but Maisie said nothing about that. What she said was +simply: "I knew you had come. Mrs. Wix told me."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes. And where is she?"</p> + +<p>"In her room. She got me up—she dressed me."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude looked at her up and down; a sweetness of mockery that +she particularly loved came out in his face whenever he did that, +and it was not wanting now. He raised his eyebrows and his arms to +play at admiration; he was evidently after all disposed to be gay. +"Got you up?—I should think so! She has dressed you most +beautifully. Isn't she coming?"</p> + +<p>Maisie wondered if she had better tell. "She said not."</p> + +<p>"Doesn't she want to see a poor devil?"</p> + +<p>She looked about under the vibration of the way he described +himself, and her eyes rested on the door of the room he had +previously occupied. "Is Mrs. Beale in there?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude looked blankly at the same object. "I haven't the least +idea!"</p> + +<p>"You haven't seen her?"</p> + +<p>"Not the tip of her nose."</p> + +<p>Maisie thought: there settled on her, in the light of his +beautiful smiling eyes, the faintest purest coldest conviction +that he wasn't telling the truth. "She hasn't welcomed you?"</p> + +<p>"Not by a single sign."</p> + +<p>"Then where is she?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude laughed; he seemed both amused and surprised at the +point she made of it. "I give it up!"</p> + +<p>"Doesn't she know you've come?"</p> + +<p>He laughed again. "Perhaps she doesn't care!"</p> + +<p>Maisie, with an inspiration, pounced on his arm. "Has she +<i>gone</i>?"</p> + +<p>He met her eyes and then she could see that his own were really +much graver than his manner. "Gone?" She had flown to the door, +but before she could raise her hand to knock he was beside her and +had caught it. "Let her be. I don't care about her. I want to see +<i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"Then she <i>hasn't</i> gone?"</p> + +<p>Maisie fell back with him. He still looked as if it were a joke, +but the more she saw of him the more she could make out that he +was troubled. "It wouldn't be like her!"</p> + +<p>She stood wondering at him. "Did you want her to come?"</p> + +<p>"How can you suppose—?" He put it to her candidly. "We had an +immense row over it."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean you've quarrelled?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude was at a loss. "What has she told you?"</p> + +<p>"That I'm hers as much as yours. That she represents papa."</p> + +<p>His gaze struck away through the open window and up to the sky; +she could hear him rattle in his trousers-pockets his money or his +keys. "Yes—that's what she keeps saying." It gave him for a +moment an air that was almost helpless.</p> + +<p>"You say you don't care about her," Maisie went on. "<i>Do</i> +you mean you've quarrelled?"</p> + +<p>"We do nothing in life but quarrel."</p> + +<p>He rose before her, as he said this, so soft and fair, so rich, in +spite of what might worry him, in restored familiarities, that it +gave a bright blur to the meaning—to what would otherwise perhaps +have been the palpable promise—of the words.</p> + +<p>"Oh <i>your</i> quarrels!" she exclaimed with discouragement.</p> + +<p>"I assure you hers are quite fearful!"</p> + +<p>"I don't speak of hers. I speak of yours."</p> + +<p>"Ah don't do it till I've had my coffee! You're growing up +clever," he added. Then he said: "I suppose you've breakfasted?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no—I've had nothing."</p> + +<p>"Nothing in your room?"—he was all compunction. "My dear old +man!—we'll breakfast then together." He had one of his happy +thoughts. "I say—we'll go out."</p> + +<p>"That was just what I hoped. I've brought my hat."</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> clever! We'll go to a café." Maisie was +already at the door; he glanced round the room. "A +moment—my stick." But there +appeared to be no stick. "No matter; I left it—oh!" He remembered +with an odd drop and came out.</p> + +<p>"You left it in London?" she asked as they went downstairs.</p> + +<p>"Yes—in London: fancy!"</p> + +<p>"You were in such a hurry to come," Maisie explained.</p> + +<p>He had his arm round her. "That must have been the reason."</p> + +<p>Halfway down he stopped short again, slapping his leg. "And poor +Mrs. Wix?"</p> + +<p>Maisie's face just showed a shadow. "Do you want her to come?"</p> + +<p>"Dear no—I want to see you alone."</p> + +<p>"That's the way I want to see <i>you</i>!" she replied. "Like +before."</p> + +<p>"Like before!" he gaily echoed. "But I mean has she had her +coffee?"</p> + +<p>"No, nothing."</p> + +<p>"Then I'll send it up to her. Madame!" He had already, at the +foot of the stair, called out to the stout <i>patronne</i>, a +lady who turned to him from the bustling, breezy hall a +countenance covered with fresh matutinal powder and a bosom as +capacious as the velvet shelf of a chimneypiece, over which her +round white face, framed in its golden frizzle, might have +figured as a showy clock. He ordered, with particular +recommendations, Mrs. Wix's repast, and it was a charm to hear +his easy brilliant French: even his companion's ignorance could +measure the perfection of it. The <i>patronne</i>, rubbing her +hands and breaking in with high swift notes as into a florid duet, +went with him to the street, and while they talked a moment +longer Maisie remembered what Mrs. Wix had said +about every one's liking him. It came out enough through the +morning powder, it came out enough in the heaving bosom, how the +landlady liked him. He had evidently ordered something lovely for +Mrs. Wix. <i>"Et bien soigné, n'est-ce-pas?"</i></p> + +<p><i>"Soyez tranquille"</i>—the patronne beamed upon him. +<i>"Et pour Madame?"</i></p> + +<p><i>"Madame?"</i> he echoed—it just pulled him up a +little.</p> + +<p><i>"Rien encore?"</i></p> + +<p>"<i>Rien encore.</i> Come, Maisie." She hurried along with +him, but on the way to the café he said nothing.</p> + + +<p> <a name="30"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXX<br /> </h3> + + +<p>After they were seated there it was different: the place was not +below the hotel, but further along the quay; with wide, clear +windows and a floor sprinkled with bran in a manner that gave it +for Maisie something of the added charm of a circus. They had +pretty much to themselves the painted spaces and the red plush +benches; these were shared by a few scattered gentlemen who picked +teeth, with facial contortions, behind little bare tables, and by +an old personage in particular, a very old personage with a red +ribbon in his buttonhole, whose manner of soaking buttered rolls +in coffee and then disposing of them in the little that was left +of the interval between his nose and chin might at a less anxious +hour have cast upon Maisie an almost envious spell. They too had +their <i>café au lait</i> and their buttered rolls, +determined by Sir Claude's asking her if she could with that +light aid wait till the hour of déjeuner. His allusion +to this meal gave her, in the shaded sprinkled coolness, the +scene, as she vaguely felt, of a sort of ordered mirrored +licence, the haunt of those—the +irregular, like herself—who went to bed or who rose too late, +something to think over while she watched the white-aproned waiter +perform as nimbly with plates and saucers as a certain conjurer +her friend had in London taken her to a music-hall to see. Sir +Claude had presently begun to talk again, to tell her how London +had looked and how long he had felt himself, on either side, to +have been absent; all about Susan Ash too and the amusement as +well as the difficulty he had had with her; then all about his +return journey and the Channel in the night and the crowd of +people coming over and the way there were always too many one +knew. He spoke of other matters beside, especially of what she +must tell him of the occupations, while he was away, of Mrs. Wix +and her pupil. Hadn't they had the good time he had promised?—had +he exaggerated a bit the arrangements made for their pleasure? +Maisie had something—not all there was—to say of his success and +of their gratitude: she had a complication of thought that grew +every minute, grew with the consciousness that she had never seen +him in this particular state in which he had been given back.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix had once said—it was once or fifty times; once was +enough for Maisie, but more was not too much—that he was +wonderfully various. Well, he was certainly so, to the child's +mind, on the present occasion: he was much more various than he +was anything else. Besides, the fact that they were together in a +shop, at a nice little intimate table as they had so often been in +London, only made greater the difference of what they were +together about. This difference was in his face, in his voice, in +every look he gave her and every movement he made. They were not +the looks and the movements he really wanted to show, and she +could feel as well that they were not those she herself wanted. +She had seen him nervous, she had seen every one she had come in +contact with nervous, but she had never seen him so nervous as +this. Little by little it gave her a settled terror, a terror that +partook of the coldness she had felt just before, at the hotel, to +find herself, on his answer about Mrs. Beale, disbelieve him. She +seemed to see at present, to touch across the table, as if by +laying her hand on it, what he had meant when he confessed on +those several occasions to fear. Why was such a man so often +afraid? It must have begun to come to her now that there was one +thing just such a man above all could be afraid of. He could be +afraid of himself. His fear at all events was there; his fear was +sweet to her, beautiful and tender to her, was having coffee and +buttered rolls and talk and laughter that were no talk and +laughter at all with her; his fear was in his jesting postponing +perverting voice; it was just in this make-believe way he had +brought her out to imitate the old London playtimes, to imitate +indeed a relation that had wholly changed, a relation that she had +with her very eyes seen in the act of change when, the day before +in the salon, Mrs. Beale rose suddenly before her. She rose before +her, for that matter, now, and even while their refreshment +delayed Maisie arrived at the straight question for which, on +their entrance, his first word had given opportunity. "Are we +going to have déjeuner with Mrs. Beale?"</p> + +<p>His reply was anything but straight. "You and I?"</p> + +<p>Maisie sat back in her chair. "Mrs. Wix and me."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude also shifted. "That's an enquiry, my dear child, that +Mrs. Beale herself must answer." Yes, he had shifted; but +abruptly, after a moment during which something seemed to hang +there between them and, as it heavily swayed, just fan them with +the air of its motion, she felt that the whole thing was upon +them. "Do you mind," he broke out, "my asking you what Mrs. Wix +has said to you?"</p> + +<p>"Said to me?"</p> + +<p>"This day or two—while I was away."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean about you and Mrs. Beale?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude, resting on his elbows, fixed his eyes a moment on the +white marble beneath them. "No; I think we had a good deal of +that—didn't we?—before I left you. It seems to me we had it +pretty well all out. I mean about yourself, about your—don't you +know?—associating with us, as I might say, and staying on with +us. While you were alone with our friend what did she say?"</p> + +<p>Maisie felt the weight of the question; it kept her silent for a +space during which she looked at Sir Claude, whose eyes remained +bent. "Nothing," she returned at last.</p> + +<p>He showed incredulity. "Nothing?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," Maisie repeated; on which an interruption descended in +the form of a tray bearing the preparations for their breakfast. +These preparations were as amusing as everything else; the waiter +poured their coffee from a vessel like a watering-pot and then +made it froth with the curved stream of hot milk that dropped from +the height of his raised arm; but the two looked across at each +other through the whole play of French pleasantness with a gravity +that had now ceased to dissemble. Sir Claude sent the waiter off +again for something and then took up her answer. "Hasn't she tried +to affect you?"</p> + +<p>Face to face with him thus it seemed to Maisie that she had tried +so little as to be scarce worth mentioning; again therefore an +instant she shut herself up. Presently she found her middle +course. "Mrs. Beale likes her now; and there's one thing I've +found out—a great thing. Mrs. Wix enjoys her being so kind. She +was tremendously kind all day yesterday."</p> + +<p>"I see. And what did she do?" Sir Claude asked.</p> + +<p>Maisie was now busy with her breakfast, and her companion attacked +his own; so that it was all, in form at least, even more than +their old sociability. "Everything she could think of. She was as +nice to her as you are," the child said. "She talked to her all +day."</p> + +<p>"And what did she say to her?"</p> + +<p>"Oh I don't know." Maisie was a little bewildered with his +pressing her so for knowledge; it didn't fit into the degree of +intimacy with Mrs. Beale that Mrs. Wix had so denounced and that, +according to that lady, had now brought him back in bondage. +Wasn't he more aware than his stepdaughter of what would be done +by the person to whom he was bound? In a moment, however, she +added: "She made love to her."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude looked at her harder, and it was clearly something in +her tone that made him quickly say: "You don't mind my asking you, +do you?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all; only I should think you'd know better than I."</p> + +<p>"What Mrs. Beale did yesterday?"</p> + +<p>She thought he coloured a trifle; but almost simultaneously +with that impression she found herself answering: "Yes—if you +have seen her."</p> + +<p>He broke into the loudest of laughs. "Why, my dear boy, I told you +just now I've absolutely not. I say, don't you believe me?"</p> + +<p>There was something she was already so afraid of that it covered +up other fears. "Didn't you come back to see her?" she enquired in +a moment. "Didn't you come back because you always want to so +much?"</p> + +<p>He received her enquiry as he had received her doubt—with an +extraordinary absence of resentment. "I can imagine of course why +you think that. But it doesn't explain my doing what I have. It +was, as I said to you just now at the inn, really and truly you I +wanted to see."</p> + +<p>She felt an instant as she used to feel when, in the back garden +at her mother's, she took from him the highest push of a +swing—high, high, high—that he had had put there for her +pleasure and that had finally broken down under the weight and the +extravagant patronage of the cook. "Well, that's beautiful. But to +see me, you mean, and go away again?"</p> + +<p>"My going away again is just the point. I can't tell yet—it all +depends."</p> + +<p>"On Mrs. Beale?" Maisie asked. "<i>She</i> won't go away." He +finished emptying his coffee-cup and then, when he had put it down, +leaned back in his chair, where she could see that he smiled on +her. This only added to her idea that he was in trouble, that he +was turning somehow in his pain and trying different things. He +continued to smile and she went on: "Don't you know that?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I may as well confess to you that as much as that I do know. +<i>She</i> won't go away. She'll stay."</p> + +<p>"She'll stay. She'll stay," Maisie repeated.</p> + +<p>"Just so. Won't you have some more coffee?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, please."</p> + +<p>"And another buttered roll?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, please."</p> + +<p>He signed to the hovering waiter, who arrived with the shining +spout of plenty in either hand and with the friendliest interest +in mademoiselle. <i>"Les tartines sont là."</i> Their cups +were replenished and, while he watched almost musingly the bubbles +in the fragrant mixture, "Just so—just so," Sir Claude said again +and again. "It's awfully awkward!" he exclaimed when the waiter +had gone.</p> + +<p>"That she won't go?"</p> + +<p>"Well—everything! Well, well, well!" But he pulled himself +together; he began again to eat. "I came back to ask you +something. That's what I came back for."</p> + +<p>"I know what you want to ask me," Maisie said.</p> + +<p>"Are you very sure?"</p> + +<p>"I'm <i>almost</i> very."</p> + +<p>"Well then risk it. You mustn't make <i>me</i> risk +everything."</p> + +<p>She was struck with the force of this. "You want to know if I +should be happy with <i>them</i>."</p> + +<p>"With those two ladies only? No, no, old man: <i>vous n'y +êtes pas</i>. So now—there!" Sir Claude laughed.</p> + +<p>"Well then what is it?"</p> + +<p>The next minute, instead of telling her what it was, he laid his +hand across the table on her own and held her as if under the +prompting of a thought. "Mrs. Wix would stay with <i>her</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Without you? Oh yes—now."</p> + +<p>"On account, as you just intimated, of Mrs. Beale's changed +manner?"</p> + +<p>Maisie, with her sense of responsibility, weighed both Mrs. +Beale's changed manner and Mrs. Wix's human weakness. "I think she +talked her round."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude thought a moment. "Ah poor dear!"</p> + +<p>"Do you mean Mrs. Beale?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no—Mrs. Wix."</p> + +<p>"She likes being talked round—treated like any one else. Oh she +likes great politeness," Maisie expatiated. "It affects her very +much."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude, to her surprise, demurred a little to this. "Very +much—up to a certain point."</p> + +<p>"Oh up to any point!" Maisie returned with emphasis.</p> + +<p>"Well, haven't I been polite to her?"</p> + +<p>"Lovely—and she perfectly worships you."</p> + +<p>"Then, my dear child, why can't she let me alone?"—this time Sir +Claude unmistakeably blushed. Before Maisie, however, could answer +his question, which would indeed have taken her long, he went on +in another tone: "Mrs. Beale thinks she has probably quite broken +her down. But she hasn't."</p> + +<p>Though he spoke as if he were sure, Maisie was strong in the +impression she had just uttered and that she now again produced. +"She has talked her round."</p> + +<p>"Ah yes; round to herself, but not round to me."</p> + +<p>Oh she couldn't bear to hear him say that! "To you? Don't you +really believe how she loves you?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude examined his belief. "Of course I know she's +wonderful."</p> + +<p>"She's just every bit as fond of you as <i>I</i> am," said +Maisie. "She told me so yesterday."</p> + +<p>"Ah then," he promptly exclaimed, "she <i>has</i> tried to +affect you! I don't love <i>her</i>, don't you see? I do her +perfect justice," he pursued, "but I mean I don't love her as I +do you, and I'm sure you wouldn't seriously expect it. She's not +my daughter—come, old chap! She's not even my mother, +though I dare say it would have +been better for me if she had been. I'll do for her what I'd do +for my mother, but I won't do more." His real excitement broke out +in a need to explain and justify himself, though he kept trying to +correct and conceal it with laughs and mouthfuls and other vain +familiarities. Suddenly he broke off, wiping his moustache with +sharp pulls and coming back to Mrs. Beale. "Did she try to talk +<i>you</i> over?"</p> + +<p>"No—to me she said very little. Very little indeed," Maisie +continued.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude seemed struck with this. "She was only sweet to Mrs. +Wix?"</p> + +<p>"As sweet as sugar!" cried Maisie.</p> + +<p>He looked amused at her comparison, but he didn't contest it; he +uttered on the contrary, in an assenting way, a little +inarticulate sound. "I know what she <i>can</i> be. But much good +may it have done her! Mrs. Wix won't <i>come</i> 'round.' That's +what makes it so fearfully awkward."</p> + +<p>Maisie knew it was fearfully awkward; she had known this now, she +felt, for some time, and there was something else it more +pressingly concerned her to learn. "What is it you meant you came +over to ask me?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Sir Claude, "I was just going to say. Let me tell you +it will surprise you." She had finished breakfast now and she sat +back in her chair again: she waited in silence to hear. He had +pushed the things before him a little way and had his elbows on +the table. This time, she was convinced, she knew what was coming, +and once more, for the crash, as with Mrs. Wix lately in her room, +she held her breath and drew together her eyelids. He was going to +say she must give him up. He looked hard at her again; then he +made his effort. "Should you see your way to let her go?"</p> + +<p>She was bewildered. "To let who—?"</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Wix simply. I put it at the worst. Should you see your way +to sacrifice her? Of course I know what I'm asking."</p> + +<p>Maisie's eyes opened wide again; this was so different from what +she had expected. "And stay with you alone?"</p> + +<p>He gave another push to his coffee-cup. "With me and Mrs. Beale. +Of course it would be rather rum; but everything in our whole +story is rather rum, you know. What's more unusual than for any +one to be given up, like you, by her parents?"</p> + +<p>"Oh nothing is more unusual than <i>that</i>!" Maisie concurred, +relieved at the contact of a proposition as to which concurrence +could have lucidity.</p> + +<p>"Of course it would be quite unconventional," Sir Claude went +on—"I mean the little household we three should make together; +but things have got beyond that, don't you see? They got beyond +that long ago. We shall stay abroad at any rate—it's ever so much +easier and it's our affair and nobody else's: it's no one's +business but ours on all the blessed earth. I don't say that for +Mrs. Wix, poor dear—I do her absolute justice. I respect her; I +see what she means; she has done me a lot of good. But there are +the facts. There they are, simply. And here am I, and here are +you. And she won't come round. She's right from her point of view. +I'm talking to you in the most extraordinary way—I'm always +talking to you in the most extraordinary way, ain't I? One would +think you were about sixty and that I—I don't know what any one +would think <i>I</i> am. Unless a beastly cad!" he suggested. "I've +been awfully worried, and this's what it has come to. You've done +us the most tremendous good, and you'll do it still and always, +don't you see? We can't let you go—you're everything. There are +the facts as I say. She <i>is</i> your mother now, Mrs. Beale, by +what has happened, and I, in the same way, I'm your father. No +one can contradict that, and we can't get out of it. My idea +would be a nice little place—somewhere in the South—where +she and you would be together and as good as any one else. +And I should be as good too, don't you see? for I shouldn't +live with you, but I should be close to you—just round +the corner, and it would be just the same. My idea would +be that it should all be perfectly open and frank. +<i>Honi soit qui mal y pense</i>, don't you know? You're the best +thing—you and what we can do for you—that either of us has ever +known," he came back to that. "When I say to her 'Give her up, +come,' she lets me have it bang in the face: 'Give her up +yourself!' It's the same old vicious circle—and when I say +vicious I don't mean a pun, a what-d'-ye-call-'em. Mrs. Wix is the +obstacle; I mean, you know, if she has affected you. She has +affected <i>me</i>, and yet here I am. I never was in such a tight +place: please believe it's only that that makes me put it to you +as I do. My dear child, isn't that—to put it so—just the way out +of it? That came to me yesterday, in London, after Mrs. Beale had +gone: I had the most infernal atrocious day. 'Go straight over and +put it to her: let her choose, freely, her own self.' So I do, old +girl—I put it to you. <i>Can</i> you choose freely?"</p> + +<p>This long address, slowly and brokenly uttered, with fidgets and +falterings, with lapses and recoveries, with a mottled face and +embarrassed but supplicating eyes, reached the child from a +quarter so close that after the shock of the first sharpness she +could see intensely its direction and follow it from point to +point; all the more that it came back to the point at which it had +started. There was a word that had hummed all through it. "Do you +call it a 'sacrifice'?"</p> + +<p>"Of Mrs. Wix? I'll call it whatever <i>you</i> call it. I won't +funk it—I haven't, have I? I'll face it in all its baseness. Does +it strike you it <i>is</i> base for me to get you well away from +her, to smuggle you off here into a corner and bribe you with +sophistries and buttered rolls to betray her?"</p> + +<p>"To betray her?"</p> + +<p>"Well—to part with her."</p> + +<p>Maisie let the question wait; the concrete image it presented was +the most vivid side of it. "If I part with her where will she go?"</p> + +<p>"Back to London."</p> + +<p>"But I mean what will she do?"</p> + +<p>"Oh as for that I won't pretend I know. I don't. We all have our +difficulties."</p> + +<p>That, to Maisie, was at this moment more striking than it had ever +been. "Then who'll teach me?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude laughed out. "What Mrs. Wix teaches?"</p> + +<p>She smiled dimly; she saw what he meant. "It isn't so very very +much."</p> + +<p>"It's so very very little," he returned, "that that's a thing +we've positively to consider. We probably shouldn't give you +another governess. To begin with we shouldn't be able to get +one—not of the only kind that would do. It wouldn't do—the kind +that <i>would</i> do," he queerly enough explained. "I mean they +wouldn't stay—heigh-ho! We'd do you ourselves. Particularly +me. You see I <i>can</i> now; I haven't got to mind—what I +used to. I won't fight shy as I did—she can show out <i>with</i> +me. Our relation, all round, is more regular."</p> + +<p>It seemed wonderfully regular, the way he put it; yet none the +less, while she looked at it as judiciously as she could, the +picture it made persisted somehow in being a combination quite +distinct—an old woman and a little girl seated in deep silence on +a battered old bench by the rampart of the <i>haute ville</i>. It +was just at that hour yesterday; they were hand in hand; they had +melted together. "I don't think you yet understand how she clings +to you," Maisie said at last.</p> + +<p>"I do—I do. But for all that—" And he gave, turning in his +conscious exposure, an oppressed impatient sigh; the sigh, even +his companion could recognise, of the man naturally accustomed to +that argument, the man who wanted thoroughly to be reasonable, but +who, if really he had to mind so many things, would be always +impossibly hampered. What it came to indeed was that he understood +quite perfectly. If Mrs. Wix clung it was all the more reason for +shaking Mrs. Wix off.</p> + +<p>This vision of what she had brought him to occupied our young lady +while, to ask what he owed, he called the waiter and put down a +gold piece that the man carried off for change. Sir Claude looked +after him, then went on: "How could a woman have less to reproach +a fellow with? I mean as regards herself."</p> + +<p>Maisie entertained the question. "Yes. How <i>could</i> she +have less? So why are you so sure she'll go?"</p> + +<p>"Surely you heard why—you heard her come out three nights ago? +How can she do anything but go—after what she then said? I've +done what she warned me of—she was absolutely right. So here we +are. Her liking Mrs. Beale, as you call it now, is a motive +sufficient, with other things, to make her, for your sake, stay on +without me; it's not a motive sufficient to make her, even for +yours, stay on <i>with</i> me—swallow, don't you see? what she +can't swallow. And when you say she's as fond of me as you are I +think I can, if that's the case, challenge you a little on it. +Would <i>you</i>, only with those two, stay on without me?"</p> + +<p>The waiter came back with the change, and that gave her, under +this appeal, a moment's respite. But when he had retreated again +with the "tip" gathered in with graceful thanks on a subtle hint +from Sir Claude's forefinger, the latter, while pocketing the +money, followed the appeal up. "Would you let her make you live +with Mrs. Beale?"</p> + +<p>"Without you? Never," Maisie then answered. "Never," she said +again.</p> + +<p>It made him quite triumph, and she was indeed herself shaken by +the mere sound of it. "So you see you're not, like her," he +exclaimed, "so ready to give me away!" Then he came back to his +original question. "<i>Can</i> you choose? I mean can you settle +it by a word yourself? Will you stay on with us without her?" +Now in truth she felt the coldness of her terror, and it seemed +to her that suddenly she knew, as she knew it about Sir Claude, +what she was afraid of. She was afraid of herself. She looked +at him in such a way that it brought, she could see, wonder +into his face, a wonder held in check, however, by his frank +pretension to play fair with her, not to use advantages, not +to hurry nor hustle her—only to put her chance clearly and +kindly before her. "May I think?" she finally asked.</p> + +<p>"Certainly, certainly. But how long?"</p> + +<p>"Oh only a little while," she said meekly.</p> + +<p>He had for a moment the air of wishing to look at it +as if it were the most cheerful prospect in the world. +"But what shall we do while you're thinking?" He spoke +as if thought were compatible with almost any distraction.</p> + +<p>There was but one thing Maisie wished to do, and after an instant +she expressed it. "Have we got to go back to the hotel?"</p> + +<p>"Do you want to?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no."</p> + +<p>"There's not the least necessity for it." He bent his eyes on his +watch; his face was now very grave. "We can do anything else in +the world." He looked at her again almost as if he were on the +point of saying that they might for instance start off for Paris. +But even while she wondered if that were not coming he had a +sudden drop. "We can take a walk."</p> + +<p>She was all ready, but he sat there as if he had still something +more to say. This too, however, didn't come; so she herself spoke. +"I think I should like to see Mrs. Wix first."</p> + +<p>"Before you decide? All right—all right." He had put on his hat, +but he had still to light a cigarette. He smoked a minute, with +his head thrown back, looking at the ceiling; then he said: +"There's one thing to remember—I've a right to impress it on you: +we stand absolutely in the place of your parents. It's their +defection, their extraordinary baseness, that has made our +responsibility. Never was a young person more directly committed +and confided." He appeared to say this over, at the ceiling, +through his smoke, a little for his own illumination. It carried +him after a pause somewhat further. "Though I admit it was to each +of us separately."</p> + +<p>He gave her so at that moment and in that attitude the sense of +wanting, as it were, to be on her side—on the side of what would +be in every way most right and wise and charming for her—that she +felt a sudden desire to prove herself not less delicate and +magnanimous, not less solicitous for his own interests. What were +these but that of the "regularity" he had just before spoken of? +"It <i>was</i> to each of you separately," she accordingly with +much earnestness remarked. "But don't you remember? I brought you +together."</p> + +<p>He jumped up with a delighted laugh. "Remember? Rather! You +brought us together, you brought us together. Come!"</p> + + +<p> <a name="31"></a></p> +<p> </p> +<h3>XXXI<br /> </h3> + + +<p>She remained out with him for a time of which she could take no +measure save that it was too short for what she wished to make of +it—an interval, a barrier indefinite, insurmountable. They walked +about, they dawdled, they looked in shop-windows; they did all the +old things exactly as if to try to get back all the old safety, to +get something out of them that they had always got before. This +had come before, whatever it was, without their trying, and +nothing came now but the intenser consciousness of their quest and +their subterfuge. The strangest thing of all was what had really +happened to the old safety. What had really happened was that Sir +Claude was "free" and that Mrs. Beale was "free," and yet that the +new medium was somehow still more oppressive than the old. She +could feel that Sir Claude concurred with her in the sense that +the oppression would be worst at the inn, where, till something +should be settled, they would feel the want of something—of what +could they call it but a footing? The question of the settlement +loomed larger to her now: it depended, she had learned, so +completely on herself. Her choice, as her friend had called it, +was there before her like an impossible sum on a slate, a sum that +in spite of her plea for consideration she simply got off from +doing while she walked about with him. She must see Mrs. Wix +before she could do her sum; therefore the longer before she saw +her the more distant would be the ordeal. She met at present no +demand whatever of her obligation; she simply plunged, to avoid +it, deeper into the company of Sir Claude. She saw nothing that +she had seen hitherto—no touch in the foreign picture that had at +first been always before her. The only touch was that of Sir +Claude's hand, and to feel her own in it was her mute resistance +to time. She went about as sightlessly as if he had been leading +her blindfold. If they were afraid of themselves it was themselves +they would find at the inn. She was certain now that what awaited +them there would be to lunch with Mrs. Beale. All her instinct was +to avoid that, to draw out their walk, to find pretexts, to take +him down upon the beach, to take him to the end of the pier. He +said no other word to her about what they had talked of at +breakfast, and she had a dim vision of how his way of not letting +her see him definitely wait for anything from her would make any +one who should know of it, would make Mrs. Wix for instance, think +him more than ever a gentleman. It was true that once or twice, on +the jetty, on the sands, he looked at her for a minute with eyes +that seemed to propose to her to come straight off with him to +Paris. That, however, was not to give her a nudge about her +responsibility. He evidently wanted to procrastinate quite as much +as she did; he was not a bit more in a hurry to get back to the +others. Maisie herself at this moment could be secretly merciless +to Mrs. Wix—to the extent at any rate of not caring if her +continued disappearance did make that lady begin to worry about +what had become of her, even begin to wonder perhaps if the +truants hadn't found their remedy. Her want of mercy to Mrs. Beale +indeed was at least as great; for Mrs. Beale's worry and wonder +would be as much greater as the object at which they were directed. +When at last Sir Claude, at the far end of the <i>plage</i>, +which they had already, in the many-coloured crowd, once +traversed, suddenly, with a look at his watch, remarked that it +was time, not to get back to the <i>table d'hôte</i>, but to +get over to the station and meet the Paris papers—when he did this +she found herself thinking quite with intensity what Mrs. Beale and +Mrs. Wix <i>would</i> say. On the way over to the station she had +even a mental picture of the stepfather and the pupil established +in a little place in the South while the governess and the +stepmother, in a little place in the North, remained linked by a +community of blankness and by the endless series of remarks it +would give birth to. The Paris papers had come in and her +companion, with a strange extravagance, purchased no fewer than +eleven: it took up time while they hovered at the bookstall +on the restless platform, where the little volumes in a row +were all yellow and pink and one of her favourite old women +in one of her favourite old caps absolutely wheedled him into +the purchase of three. They had thus so much to carry home that +it would have seemed simpler, with such a provision for a nice +straight journey through France, just to "nip," as she phrased +it to herself, into the coupé of the train that, a +little further along, stood waiting to start. She asked Sir +Claude where it was going.</p> + +<p>"To Paris. Fancy!"</p> + +<p>She could fancy well enough. They stood there and smiled, he with +all the newspapers under his arm and she with the three books, one +yellow and two pink. He had told her the pink were for herself and +the yellow one for Mrs. Beale, implying in an interesting way that +these were the natural divisions in France of literature for the +young and for the old. She knew how prepared they looked to pass +into the train, and she presently brought out to her companion: "I +wish we could go. Won't you take me?"</p> + +<p>He continued to smile. "Would you really come?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, oh yes. Try."</p> + +<p>"Do you want me to take our tickets?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, take them."</p> + +<p>"Without any luggage?"</p> + +<p>She showed their two armfuls, smiling at him as he smiled at her, +but so conscious of being more frightened than she had ever been +in her life that she seemed to see her whiteness as in a glass. +Then she knew that what she saw was Sir Claude's whiteness: he was +as frightened as herself. "Haven't we got plenty of luggage?" she +asked. "Take the tickets—haven't you time? When does the train +go?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude turned to a porter. "When does the train go?"</p> + +<p>The man looked up at the station-clock. "In two minutes. +<i>Monsieur est placé?</i>"</p> + +<p><i>"Pas encore."</i></p> + +<p><i>"Et vos billets?—vous n'avez que le temps."</i> Then after +a look at Maisie, <i>"Monsieur veut-il que je les prenne?"</i> +the man said.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude turned back to her. <i>"Veux-tu lieu qu'il en +prenne?"</i></p> + +<p>It was the most extraordinary thing in the world: in the intensity +of her excitement she not only by illumination understood all +their French, but fell into it with an active perfection. She +addressed herself straight to the porter. <i>"Prenny, prenny. Oh +prenny!"</i></p> + +<p><i>"Ah si mademoiselle le veut—!"</i> He waited there for the +money.</p> + +<p>But Sir Claude only stared—stared at her with his white face. +"You <i>have</i> chosen then? You'll let her go?"</p> + +<p>Maisie carried her eyes wistfully to the train, where, amid cries +of <i>"En voiture, en voiture!"</i> heads were at windows and doors +banging loud. The porter was pressing. <i>"Ah vous n'avez plus le +temps!"</i></p> + +<p>"It's going—it's going!" cried Maisie.</p> + +<p>They watched it move, they watched it start; then the man went his +way with a shrug. "It's gone!" Sir Claude said.</p> + +<p>Maisie crept some distance up the platform; she stood there with +her back to her companion, following it with her eyes, keeping +down tears, nursing her pink and yellow books. She had had a real +fright but had fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in her +fall her fear too had been dashed down and broken. It was gone. +She looked round at last, from where she had paused, at Sir +Claude's, and then saw that his wasn't. It sat there with him on +the bench to which, against the wall of the station, he had +retreated, and where, leaning back and, as she thought, rather +queer, he still waited. She came down to him and he continued to +offer his ineffectual intention of pleasantry. "Yes, I've chosen," +she said to him. "I'll let her go if you—if you—"</p> + +<p>She faltered; he quickly took her up. "If I, if I—"</p> + +<p>"If you'll give up Mrs. Beale."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" he exclaimed; on which she saw how much, how hopelessly he +was afraid. She had supposed at the café that it was of his +rebellion, of his gathering motive; but how could that be when his +temptations—that temptation for example of the train they had +just lost—were after all so slight? Mrs. Wix was right. He was +afraid of his weakness—of his weakness.</p> + +<p>She couldn't have told you afterwards how they got back to the +inn: she could only have told you that even from this point they +had not gone straight, but once more had wandered and loitered +and, in the course of it, had found themselves on the edge of the +quay where—still apparently with half an hour to spare—the boat +prepared for Folkestone was drawn up. Here they hovered as they +had done at the station; here they exchanged silences again, but +only exchanged silences. There were punctual people on the deck, +choosing places, taking the best; some of them already contented, +all established and shawled, facing to England and attended by the +steward, who, confined on such a day to the lighter offices, +tucked up the ladies' feet or opened bottles with a pop. They +looked down at these things without a word; they even picked out a +good place for two that was left in the lee of a lifeboat; and if +they lingered rather stupidly, neither deciding to go aboard nor +deciding to come away, it was Sir Claude quite as much as she who +wouldn't move. It was Sir Claude who cultivated the supreme +stillness by which she knew best what he meant. He simply meant +that he knew all she herself meant. But there was no pretence of +pleasantry now: their faces were grave and tired. When at last +they lounged off it was as if his fear, his fear of his weakness, +leaned upon her heavily as they followed the harbour. In the hall +of the hotel as they passed in she saw a battered old box that she +recognised, an ancient receptacle with dangling labels that she +knew and a big painted W, lately done over and intensely personal, +that seemed to stare at her with a recognition and even with some +suspicion of its own. Sir Claude caught it too, and there was +agitation for both of them in the sight of this object on the +move. Was Mrs. Wix going and was the responsibility of giving her +up lifted, at a touch, from her pupil? Her pupil and her pupil's +companion, transfixed a moment, held, in the presence of the omen, +communication more intense than in the presence either of the +Paris train or of the Channel steamer; then, and still without a +word, they went straight upstairs. There, however, on the landing, +out of sight of the people below, they collapsed so that they had +to sink down together for support: they simply seated themselves +on the uppermost step while Sir Claude grasped the hand of his +stepdaughter with a pressure that at another moment would probably +have made her squeal. Their books and papers were all scattered. +"She thinks you've given her up!"</p> + +<p>"Then I must see her—I must see her," Maisie said.</p> + +<p>"To bid her good-bye?"</p> + +<p>"I must see her—I must see her," the child only repeated.</p> + +<p>They sat a minute longer, Sir Claude, with his tight grip of +her hand and looking away from her, looking straight down the +staircase to where, round the turn, electric bells rattled and +the pleasant sea-draught blew. At last, loosening his grasp, he +slowly got up while she did the same. They went together along +the lobby, but before they reached the salon he stopped again. +"If I give up Mrs. Beale—?"</p> + +<p>"I'll go straight out with you again and not come back till she +has gone."</p> + +<p>He seemed to wonder. "Till Mrs. Beale—?" He had made it sound +like a bad joke.</p> + +<p>"I mean till Mrs. Wix leaves—in that boat."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude looked almost foolish. "Is she going in that boat?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose so. I won't even bid her good-bye," Maisie continued. +"I'll stay out till the boat has gone. I'll go up to the old +rampart."</p> + +<p>"The old rampart?"</p> + +<p>"I'll sit on that old bench where you see the gold Virgin."</p> + +<p>"The gold Virgin?" he vaguely echoed. But it brought his eyes back +to her as if after an instant he could see the place and the thing +she named—could see her sitting there alone. "While I break with +Mrs. Beale?"</p> + +<p>"While you break with Mrs. Beale."</p> + +<p>He gave a long deep smothered sigh. "I must see her first."</p> + +<p>"You won't do as I do? Go out and wait?"</p> + +<p>"Wait?"—once more he appeared at a loss.</p> + +<p>"Till they both have gone," Maisie said.</p> + +<p>"Giving <i>us</i> up?"</p> + +<p>"Giving <i>us</i> up."</p> + +<p>Oh with what a face for an instant he wondered if that could be! +But his wonder the next moment only made him go to the door and, +with his hand on the knob, stand as if listening for voices. +Maisie listened, but she heard none. All she heard presently was +Sir Claude's saying with speculation quite choked off, but so as +not to be heard in the salon: "Mrs. Beale will never go." On this +he pushed open the door and she went in with him. The salon was +empty, but as an effect of their entrance the lady he had just +mentioned appeared at the door of the bedroom. "Is she going?" he +then demanded.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale came forward, closing her door behind her. "I've had +the most extraordinary scene with her. She told me yesterday she'd +stay."</p> + +<p>"And my arrival has altered it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh we took that into account!" Mrs. Beale was flushed, which was +never quite becoming to her, and her face visibly testified to the +encounter to which she alluded. Evidently, however, she had not +been worsted, and she held up her head and smiled and rubbed her +hands as if in sudden emulation of the <i>patronne</i>. "She +promised she'd stay even if you should come."</p> + +<p>"Then why has she changed?"</p> + +<p>"Because she's a hound. The reason she herself gives is that +you've been out too long."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude stared. "What has that to do with it?"</p> + +<p>"You've been out an age," Mrs. Beale continued; "I myself couldn't +imagine what had become of you. The whole morning," she exclaimed, +"and luncheon long since over!"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude appeared indifferent to that. "Did Mrs. Wix go down +with you?" he only asked.</p> + +<p>"Not she; she never budged!"—and Mrs. Beale's flush, to Maisie's +vision, deepened. "She moped there—she didn't so much as come out +to me; and when I sent to invite her she simply declined to +appear. She said she wanted nothing, and I went down alone. But +when I came up, fortunately a little primed"—and Mrs. Beale +smiled a fine smile of battle—"she <i>was</i> in the field!"</p> + +<p>"And you had a big row?"</p> + +<p>"We had a big row"—she assented with a frankness as large. "And +while you left me to that sort of thing I should like to know +where you were!" She paused for a reply, but Sir Claude merely +looked at Maisie; a movement that promptly quickened her +challenge. "Where the mischief have you been?"</p> + +<p>"You seem to take it as hard as Mrs. Wix," Sir Claude returned.</p> + +<p>"I take it as I choose to take it, and you don't answer my +question."</p> + +<p>He looked again at Maisie—as if for an aid to this effort; +whereupon she smiled at her stepmother and offered: "We've been +everywhere."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale, however, made her no response, thereby adding to a +surprise of which our young lady had already felt the light brush. +She had received neither a greeting nor a glance, but perhaps this +was not more remarkable than the omission, in respect to Sir +Claude, parted with in London two days before, of any sign of a +sense of their reunion. Most remarkable of all was Mrs. Beale's +announcement of the pledge given by Mrs. Wix and not hitherto +revealed to her pupil. Instead of heeding this witness she went on +with acerbity: "It might surely have occurred to you that +something would come up."</p> + +<p>Sir Claude looked at his watch. "I had no idea it was so late, nor +that we had been out so long. We weren't hungry. It passed like a +flash. What <i>has</i> come up?"</p> + +<p>"Oh that she's disgusted," said Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>"With whom then?"</p> + +<p>"With Maisie." Even now she never looked at the child, who stood +there equally associated and disconnected. "For having no moral +sense."</p> + +<p>"How <i>should</i> she have?" Sir Claude tried again to shine a +little at the companion of his walk. "How at any rate is it proved +by her going out with me?"</p> + +<p>"Don't ask <i>me</i>; ask that woman. She drivels when she +doesn't rage," Mrs. Beale declared.</p> + +<p>"And she leaves the child?"</p> + +<p>"She leaves the child," said Mrs. Beale with great emphasis and +looking more than ever over Maisie's head.</p> + +<p>In this position suddenly a change came into her face, caused, as +the others could the next thing see, by the reappearance of Mrs. +Wix in the doorway which, on coming in at Sir Claude's heels, +Maisie had left gaping. "I <i>don't</i> leave the child—I don't, +I don't!" she thundered from the threshold, advancing upon the +opposed three but addressing herself directly to Maisie. She was +girded—positively harnessed—for departure, arrayed as she had +been arrayed on her advent and armed with a small fat rusty +reticule which, almost in the manner of a battle-axe, she +brandished in support of her words. She had clearly come straight +from her room, where Maisie in an instant guessed she had directed +the removal of her minor effects. "I don't leave you till I've +given you another chance. Will you come <i>with</i> me?"</p> + +<p>Maisie turned to Sir Claude, who struck her as having been removed +to a distance of about a mile. To Mrs. Beale she turned no more +than Mrs. Beale had turned: she felt as if already their +difference had been disclosed. What had come out about that in the +scene between the two women? Enough came out now, at all events, +as she put it practically to her stepfather. "Will <i>you</i> come? +Won't you?" she enquired as if she had not already seen that she +should have to give him up. It was the last flare of her dream. By +this time she was afraid of nothing.</p> + +<p>"I should think you'd be too proud to ask!" Mrs. Wix interposed. +Mrs. Wix was herself conspicuously too proud.</p> + +<p>But at the child's words Mrs. Beale had fairly bounded. "Come away +from <i>me</i>, Maisie?" It was a wail of dismay and reproach, in +which her stepdaughter was astonished to read that she had had no +hostile consciousness and that if she had been so actively grand +it was not from suspicion, but from strange entanglements of +modesty.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude presented to Mrs. Beale an expression positively sick. +"Don't put it to her <i>that</i> way!" There had indeed been +something in Mrs. Beale's tone, and for a moment our young lady +was reminded of the old days in which so many of her friends had +been "compromised."</p> + +<p>This friend blushed; she was before Mrs. Wix, and though she +bridled she took the hint. "No—it isn't the way." Then she showed +she knew the way. "Don't be a still bigger fool, dear, but go +straight to your room and wait there till I can come to you."</p> + +<p>Maisie made no motion to obey, but Mrs. Wix raised a hand that +forestalled every evasion. "Don't move till you've heard me. +<i>I'm</i> going, but I must first understand. Have you lost it +again?"</p> + +<p>Maisie surveyed—for the idea of a describable loss—the immensity +of space. Then she replied lamely enough: "I feel as if I had lost +everything."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix looked dark. "Do you mean to say you <i>have</i> lost +what we found together with so much difficulty two days ago?" As +her pupil failed of response she continued: "Do you mean to say +you've already forgotten what we found together?"</p> + +<p>Maisie dimly remembered. "My moral sense?"</p> + +<p>"Your moral sense. <i>Haven't</i> I, after all, brought it out?" +She spoke as she had never spoken even in the schoolroom and with +the book in her hand.</p> + +<p>It brought back to the child's recollection how she sometimes +couldn't repeat on Friday the sentence that had been glib on +Wednesday, and she dealt all feebly and ruefully with the present +tough passage. Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale stood there like visitors +at an "exam." She had indeed an instant a whiff of the faint +flower that Mrs. Wix pretended to have plucked and now with such a +peremptory hand thrust at her nose. Then it left her, and, as if +she were sinking with a slip from a foothold, her arms made a +short jerk. What this jerk represented was the spasm within her of +something still deeper than a moral sense. She looked at her +examiner; she looked at the visitors; she felt the rising of the +tears she had kept down at the station. They had nothing—no, +distinctly nothing—to do with her moral sense. The only thing was +the old flat shameful schoolroom plea. "I don't know—I don't +know."</p> + +<p>"Then you've lost it." Mrs. Wix seemed to close the book as she +fixed the straighteners on Sir Claude. "You've nipped it in the +bud. You've killed it when it had begun to live."</p> + +<p>She was a newer Mrs. Wix than ever, a Mrs. Wix high and great; but +Sir Claude was not after all to be treated as a little boy with a +missed lesson. "I've not killed anything," he said; "on the +contrary I think I've produced life. I don't know what to call +it—I haven't even known how decently to deal with it, to approach +it; but, whatever it is, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever +met—it's exquisite, it's sacred." He had his hands in his pockets +and, though a trace of the sickness he had just shown perhaps +lingered there, his face bent itself with extraordinary gentleness +on both the friends he was about to lose. "Do you know what I came +back for?" he asked of the elder.</p> + +<p>"I think I do!" cried Mrs. Wix, surprisingly un-mollified and with +the heat of her late engagement with Mrs. Beale still on her brow. +That lady, as if a little besprinkled by such turns of the tide, +uttered a loud inarticulate protest and, averting herself, stood a +moment at the window.</p> + +<p>"I came back with a proposal," said Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>"To me?" Mrs. Wix asked.</p> + +<p>"To Maisie. That she should give you up."</p> + +<p>"And does she?"</p> + +<p>Sir Claude wavered. "Tell her!" he then exclaimed to the child, +also turning away as if to give her the chance. But Mrs. Wix and +her pupil stood confronted in silence, Maisie whiter than +ever—more awkward, more rigid and yet more dumb. They looked at +each other hard, and as nothing came from them Sir Claude faced +about again. "You won't tell her?—you can't?" Still she said +nothing; whereupon, addressing Mrs. Wix, he broke into a kind of +ecstasy. "She refused—she refused!"</p> + +<p>Maisie, at this, found her voice. "I didn't refuse. I didn't," she +repeated.</p> + +<p>It brought Mrs. Beale straight back to her. "You accepted, +angel—you accepted!" She threw herself upon the child and, before +Maisie could resist, had sunk with her upon the sofa, possessed of +her, encircling her. "You've given her up already, you've given +her up for ever, and you're ours and ours only now, and the sooner +she's off the better!"</p> + +<p>Maisie had shut her eyes, but at a word of Sir Claude's they +opened. "Let her go!" he said to Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>"Never, never, never!" cried Mrs. Beale. Maisie felt herself more +compressed.</p> + +<p>"Let her go!" Sir Claude more intensely repeated. He was looking +at Mrs. Beale and there was something in his voice. Maisie knew +from a loosening of arms that she had become conscious of what it +was; she slowly rose from the sofa, and the child stood there +again dropped and divided. "You're free—you're free," Sir Claude +went on; at which Maisie's back became aware of a push that vented +resentment and that placed her again in the centre of the room, +the cynosure of every eye and not knowing which way to turn.</p> + +<p>She turned with an effort to Mrs. Wix. "I didn't refuse to give +you up. I said I would if <i>he'd</i> give up—"</p> + +<p>"Give up Mrs. Beale?" burst from Mrs. Wix.</p> + +<p>"Give up Mrs. Beale. What do you call that but exquisite?" Sir +Claude demanded of all of them, the lady mentioned included; +speaking with a relish as intense now as if some lovely work of +art or of nature had suddenly been set down among them. He was +rapidly recovering himself on this basis of fine appreciation. +"She made her condition—with such a sense of what it should be! +She made the only right one."</p> + +<p>"The only right one?"—Mrs. Beale returned to the charge. She had +taken a moment before a snub from him, but she was not to be +snubbed on this. "How can you talk such rubbish and how can you +back her up in such impertinence? What in the world have you done +to her to make her think of such stuff?" She stood there in +righteous wrath; she flashed her eyes round the circle. Maisie +took them full in her own, knowing that here at last was the +moment she had had most to reckon with. But as regards her +stepdaughter Mrs. Beale subdued herself to a question deeply mild. +"<i>Have</i> you made, my own love, any such condition as +that?"</p> + +<p>Somehow, now that it was there, the great moment was not so bad. +What helped the child was that she knew what she wanted. All her +learning and learning had made her at last learn that; so that if +she waited an instant to reply it was only from the desire to be +nice. Bewilderment had simply gone or at any rate was going fast. +Finally she answered. "Will you give <i>him</i> up? Will you?"</p> + +<p>"Ah leave her alone—leave her, leave her!" Sir Claude in sudden +supplication murmured to Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix at the same instant found another apostrophe. "Isn't it +enough for you, madam, to have brought her to discussing your +relations?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale left Sir Claude unheeded, but Mrs. Wix could make her +flame. "My relations? What do you know, you hideous creature, +about my relations, and what business on earth have you to speak +of them? Leave the room this instant, you horrible old woman!"</p> + +<p>"I think you had better go—you must really catch your boat," Sir +Claude said distressfully to Mrs. Wix. He was out of it now, or +wanted to be; he knew the worst and had accepted it: what now +concerned him was to prevent, to dissipate vulgarities. "Won't you +go—won't you just get off quickly?"</p> + +<p>"With the child as quickly as you like. Not without her." Mrs. Wix +was adamant.</p> + +<p>"Then why did you lie to me, you fiend?" Mrs. Beale almost yelled. +"Why did you tell me an hour ago that you had given her up?"</p> + +<p>"Because I despaired of her—because I thought she had left me." +Mrs. Wix turned to Maisie. "You were <i>with</i> them—in their +connexion. But now your eyes are open, and I take you!"</p> + +<p>"No you don't!" and Mrs. Beale made, with a great fierce jump, a +wild snatch at her stepdaughter. She caught her by the arm and, +completing an instinctive movement, whirled her round in a further +leap to the door, which had been closed by Sir Claude the instant +their voices had risen. She fell back against it and, even while +denouncing and waving off Mrs. Wix, kept it closed in an +incoherence of passion. "You don't take her, but you bundle +yourself: she stays with her own people and she's rid of you! I +never heard anything so monstrous!" Sir Claude had rescued Maisie +and kept hold of her; he held her in front of him, resting his +hands very lightly on her shoulders and facing the loud +adversaries. Mrs. Beale's flush had dropped; she had turned pale +with a splendid wrath. She kept protesting and dismissing Mrs. +Wix; she glued her back to the door to prevent Maisie's flight; +she drove out Mrs. Wix by the window or the chimney. "You're a +nice one—'discussing relations'—with your talk of our +'connexion' and your insults! What in the world's our connexion +but the love of the child who's our duty and our life and who +holds us together as closely as she originally brought us?"</p> + +<p>"I know, I know!" Maisie said with a burst of eagerness. "I did +bring you."</p> + +<p>The strangest of laughs escaped from Sir Claude. "You did bring +us—you did!" His hands went up and down gently on her shoulders.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix so dominated the situation that she had something sharp +for every one. "There you have it, you see!" she pregnantly +remarked to her pupil.</p> + +<p>"<i>Will</i> you give him up?" Maisie persisted to Mrs. +Beale.</p> + +<p>"To <i>you</i>, you abominable little horror?" that lady +indignantly enquired, "and to this raving old demon who has filled +your dreadful little mind with her wickedness? Have you been a +hideous little hypocrite all these years that I've slaved to make +you love me and deludedly believed you did?"</p> + +<p>"I love Sir Claude—I love <i>him</i>," Maisie replied with an +awkward sense that she appeared to offer it as something that +would do as well. Sir Claude had continued to pat her, and it was +really an answer to his pats.</p> + +<p>"She hates you—she hates you," he observed with the oddest +quietness to Mrs. Beale.</p> + +<p>His quietness made her blaze. "And you back her up in it and give +me up to outrage?"</p> + +<p>"No; I only insist that she's free—she's free."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale stared—Mrs. Beale glared. "Free to starve with this +pauper lunatic?"</p> + +<p>"I'll do more for her than <i>you</i> ever did!" Mrs. Wix +retorted. "I'll work my fingers to the bone."</p> + +<p>Maisie, with Sir Claude's hands still on her shoulders, felt, just +as she felt the fine surrender in them, that over her head he +looked in a certain way at Mrs. Wix. "You needn't do that," she +heard him say. "She has means."</p> + +<p>"Means?—Maisie?" Mrs. Beale shrieked. "Means that her vile father +has stolen!"</p> + +<p>"I'll get them back—I'll get them back. I'll look into it." He +smiled and nodded at Mrs. Wix.</p> + +<p>This had a fearful effect on his other friend. "Haven't I looked +into it, I should like to know, and haven't I found an abyss? It's +too inconceivable—your cruelty to me!" she wildly broke out. She +had hot tears in her eyes.</p> + +<p>He spoke to her very kindly, almost coaxingly. "We'll look into +it again; we'll look into it together. It <i>is</i> an abyss, but +he <i>can</i> be made—or Ida can. Think of the money they're +getting now!" he laughed. "It's all right, it's all right," he +continued. "It wouldn't do—it wouldn't do. We <i>can't</i> work +her in. It's perfectly true—she's unique. We're not good +enough—oh no!" and, quite exuberantly, he laughed again.</p> + +<p>"Not good enough, and that beast <i>is</i>?" Mrs. Beale +shouted.</p> + +<p>At this for a moment there was a hush in the room, and in the +midst of it Sir Claude replied to the question by moving with +Maisie to Mrs. Wix. The next thing the child knew she was at that +lady's side with an arm firmly grasped. Mrs. Beale still guarded +the door. "Let them pass," said Sir Claude at last.</p> + +<p>She remained there, however; Maisie saw the pair look at each +other. Then she saw Mrs. Beale turn to her. "I'm your mother now, +Maisie. And he's your father."</p> + +<p>"That's just where it is!" sighed Mrs. Wix with an effect of irony +positively detached and philosophic.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale continued to address her young friend, and her effort +to be reasonable and tender was in its way remarkable. "We're +representative, you know, of Mr. Farange and his former wife. This +person represents mere illiterate presumption. We take our stand +on the law."</p> + +<p>"Oh the law, the law!" Mrs. Wix superbly jeered. "You had better +indeed let the law have a look at you!"</p> + +<p>"Let them pass—let them pass!" Sir Claude pressed his friend +hard—he pleaded.</p> + +<p>But she fastened herself still to Maisie. "<i>Do</i> you hate me, +dearest?"</p> + +<p>Maisie looked at her with new eyes, but answered as she had +answered before. "Will you give him up?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale's rejoinder hung fire, but when it came it was noble. +"You shouldn't talk to me of such things!" She was shocked, she +was scandalised to tears.</p> + +<p>For Mrs. Wix, however, it was her discrimination that was +indelicate. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she roundly +cried.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude made a supreme appeal. "Will you be so good as to allow +these horrors to terminate?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale fixed her eyes on him, and again Maisie watched them. +"You should do him justice," Mrs. Wix went on to Mrs. Beale. +"We've always been devoted to him, Maisie and I—and he has shown +how much he likes us. He would like to please her; he would like +even, I think, to please me. But he hasn't given you up."</p> + +<p>They stood confronted, the step-parents, still under Maisie's +observation. That observation had never sunk so deep as at this +particular moment. "Yes, my dear, I haven't given you up," Sir +Claude said to Mrs. Beale at last, "and if you'd like me to treat +our friends here as solemn witnesses I don't mind giving you my +word for it that I never never will. There!" he dauntlessly +exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"He can't!" Mrs. Wix tragically commented.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale, erect and alive in her defeat, jerked her handsome +face about. "He can't!" she literally mocked.</p> + +<p>"He can't, he can't, he can't!"—Sir Claude's gay emphasis +wonderfully carried it off.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale took it all in, yet she held her ground; on which +Maisie addressed Mrs. Wix. "Shan't we lose the boat?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, we shall lose the boat," Mrs. Wix remarked to Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale meanwhile faced full at Maisie. "I don't know what to +make of you!" she launched.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," said Maisie to Sir Claude.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, Maisie," Sir Claude answered.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Beale came away from the door. "Goodbye!" she hurled at +Maisie; then passed straight across the room and disappeared in +the adjoining one.</p> + +<p>Sir Claude had reached the other door and opened it. Mrs. Wix was +already out. On the threshold Maisie paused; she put out her hand +to her stepfather. He took it and held it a moment, and their eyes +met as the eyes of those who have done for each other what they +can. "Good-bye," he repeated.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye." And Maisie followed Mrs. Wix.</p> + +<p>They caught the steamer, which was just putting off, and, hustled +across the gulf, found themselves on the deck so breathless and so +scared that they gave up half the voyage to letting their emotion +sink. It sank slowly and imperfectly; but at last, in mid-channel, +surrounded by the quiet sea, Mrs. Wix had courage to revert. "I +didn't look back, did you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He wasn't there," said Maisie.</p> + +<p>"Not on the balcony?"</p> + +<p>Maisie waited a moment; then "He wasn't there" she simply said +again.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix also was silent a while. "He went to <i>her</i>," +she finally observed.</p> + +<p>"Oh I know!" the child replied.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wix gave a sidelong look. She still had room for wonder at +what Maisie knew. </p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT MAISIE KNEW***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 7118-h.txt or 7118-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/7/1/1/7118">https://www.gutenberg.org/7/1/1/7118</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: What Maisie Knew + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: March 12, 2003 [eBook #7118] +[Most recently updated: November 9, 2005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT MAISIE KNEW*** + + +E-text prepared by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA +and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. + + + +WHAT MAISIE KNEW + +by + +HENRY JAMES + + + + + + + +The litigation seemed interminable and had in fact been complicated; but +by the decision on the appeal the judgement of the divorce-court was +confirmed as to the assignment of the child. The father, who, though +bespattered from head to foot, had made good his case, was, in pursuance +of this triumph, appointed to keep her: it was not so much that the +mother's character had been more absolutely damaged as that the +brilliancy of a lady's complexion (and this lady's, in court, was +immensely remarked) might be more regarded as showing the spots. +Attached, however, to the second pronouncement was a condition that +detracted, for Beale Farange, from its sweetness--an order that he +should refund to his late wife the twenty-six hundred pounds put down +by her, as it was called, some three years before, in the interest of +the child's maintenance and precisely on a proved understanding that he +would take no proceedings: a sum of which he had had the administration +and of which he could render not the least account. The obligation thus +attributed to her adversary was no small balm to Ida's resentment; it +drew a part of the sting from her defeat and compelled Mr. Farange +perceptibly to lower his crest. He was unable to produce the money or to +raise it in any way; so that after a squabble scarcely less public and +scarcely more decent than the original shock of battle his only issue +from his predicament was a compromise proposed by his legal advisers and +finally accepted by hers. + +His debt was by this arrangement remitted to him and the little girl +disposed of in a manner worthy of the judgement-seat of Solomon. She was +divided in two and the portions tossed impartially to the disputants. +They would take her, in rotation, for six months at a time; she would +spend half the year with each. This was odd justice in the eyes of those +who still blinked in the fierce light projected from the tribunal--a +light in which neither parent figured in the least as a happy example to +youth and innocence. What was to have been expected on the evidence was +the nomination, _in loco parentis_, of some proper third person, some +respectable or at least some presentable friend. Apparently, however, +the circle of the Faranges had been scanned in vain for any such +ornament; so that the only solution finally meeting all the difficulties +was, save that of sending Maisie to a Home, the partition of the +tutelary office in the manner I have mentioned. There were more reasons +for her parents to agree to it than there had ever been for them to +agree to anything; and they now prepared with her help to enjoy the +distinction that waits upon vulgarity sufficiently attested. Their +rupture had resounded, and after being perfectly insignificant +together they would be decidedly striking apart. Had they not produced +an impression that warranted people in looking for appeals in the +newspapers for the rescue of the little one--reverberation, amid a +vociferous public, of the idea that some movement should be started or +some benevolent person should come forward? A good lady came indeed a +step or two: she was distantly related to Mrs. Farange, to whom she +proposed that, having children and nurseries wound up and going, she +should be allowed to take home the bone of contention and, by working it +into her system, relieve at least one of the parents. This would make +every time, for Maisie, after her inevitable six months with Beale, much +more of a change. + +"More of a change?" Ida cried. "Won't it be enough of a change for her +to come from that low brute to the person in the world who detests him +most?" + +"No, because you detest him so much that you'll always talk to her about +him. You'll keep him before her by perpetually abusing him." + +Mrs. Farange stared. "Pray, then, am I to do nothing to counteract his +villainous abuse of ME?" + +The good lady, for a moment, made no reply: her silence was a grim +judgement of the whole point of view. "Poor little monkey!" she at +last exclaimed; and the words were an epitaph for the tomb of Maisie's +childhood. She was abandoned to her fate. What was clear to any +spectator was that the only link binding her to either parent was this +lamentable fact of her being a ready vessel for bitterness, a deep +little porcelain cup in which biting acids could be mixed. They had +wanted her not for any good they could do her, but for the harm they +could, with her unconscious aid, do each other. She should serve +their anger and seal their revenge, for husband and wife had been +alike crippled by the heavy hand of justice, which in the last resort +met on neither side their indignant claim to get, as they called it, +everything. If each was only to get half this seemed to concede that +neither was so base as the other pretended, or, to put it differently, +offered them both as bad indeed, since they were only as good as each +other. The mother had wished to prevent the father from, as she said, +"so much as looking" at the child; the father's plea was that the +mother's lightest touch was "simply contamination." These were the +opposed principles in which Maisie was to be educated--she was to fit +them together as she might. Nothing could have been more touching at +first than her failure to suspect the ordeal that awaited her little +unspotted soul. There were persons horrified to think what those in +charge of it would combine to try to make of it: no one could conceive +in advance that they would be able to make nothing ill. + +This was a society in which for the most part people were occupied +only with chatter, but the disunited couple had at last grounds for +expecting a time of high activity. They girded their loins, they felt +as if the quarrel had only begun. They felt indeed more married than +ever, inasmuch as what marriage had mainly suggested to them was the +unbroken opportunity to quarrel. There had been "sides" before, and +there were sides as much as ever; for the sider too the prospect +opened out, taking the pleasant form of a superabundance of matter for +desultory conversation. The many friends of the Faranges drew together +to differ about them; contradiction grew young again over teacups +and cigars. Everybody was always assuring everybody of something +very shocking, and nobody would have been jolly if nobody had been +outrageous. The pair appeared to have a social attraction which failed +merely as regards each other: it was indeed a great deal to be able +to say for Ida that no one but Beale desired her blood, and for Beale +that if he should ever have his eyes scratched out it would be only by +his wife. It was generally felt, to begin with, that they were awfully +good-looking--they had really not been analysed to a deeper residuum. +They made up together for instance some twelve feet three of stature, +and nothing was more discussed than the apportionment of this +quantity. The sole flaw in Ida's beauty was a length and reach of +arm conducive perhaps to her having so often beaten her ex-husband +at billiards, a game in which she showed a superiority largely +accountable, as she maintained, for the resentment finding expression +in his physical violence. Billiards was her great accomplishment +and the distinction her name always first produced the mention of. +Notwithstanding some very long lines everything about her that might +have been large and that in many women profited by the licence was, +with a single exception, admired and cited for its smallness. The +exception was her eyes, which might have been of mere regulation size, +but which overstepped the modesty of nature; her mouth, on the other +hand, was barely perceptible, and odds were freely taken as to the +measurement of her waist. She was a person who, when she was out--and +she was always out--produced everywhere a sense of having been seen +often, the sense indeed of a kind of abuse of visibility, so that it +would have been, in the usual places rather vulgar to wonder at her. +Strangers only did that; but they, to the amusement of the familiar, +did it very much: it was an inevitable way of betraying an alien +habit. Like her husband she carried clothes, carried them as a train +carries passengers: people had been known to compare their taste and +dispute about the accommodation they gave these articles, though +inclining on the whole to the commendation of Ida as less overcrowded, +especially with jewellery and flowers. Beale Farange had natural +decorations, a kind of costume in his vast fair beard, burnished like +a gold breastplate, and in the eternal glitter of the teeth that his +long moustache had been trained not to hide and that gave him, in +every possible situation, the look of the joy of life. He had been +destined in his youth for diplomacy and momentarily attached, without +a salary, to a legation which enabled him often to say "In MY time in +the East": but contemporary history had somehow had no use for him, +had hurried past him and left him in perpetual Piccadilly. Every one +knew what he had--only twenty-five hundred. Poor Ida, who had run +through everything, had now nothing but her carriage and her paralysed +uncle. This old brute, as he was called, was supposed to have a lot +put away. The child was provided for, thanks to a crafty godmother, a +defunct aunt of Beale's, who had left her something in such a manner +that the parents could appropriate only the income. + + + + +I + + +The child was provided for, but the new arrangement was inevitably +confounding to a young intelligence intensely aware that something had +happened which must matter a good deal and looking anxiously out for +the effects of so great a cause. It was to be the fate of this patient +little girl to see much more than she at first understood, but also even +at first to understand much more than any little girl, however patient, +had perhaps ever understood before. Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or +a story could have been so in the thick of the fight. She was taken +into the confidence of passions on which she fixed just the stare she +might have had for images bounding across the wall in the slide of a +magic-lantern. Her little world was phantasmagoric--strange shadows +dancing on a sheet. It was as if the whole performance had been given +for her--a mite of a half-scared infant in a great dim theatre. She was +in short introduced to life with a liberality in which the selfishness +of others found its account, and there was nothing to avert the +sacrifice but the modesty of her youth. + +Her first term was with her father, who spared her only in not letting +her have the wild letters addressed to her by her mother: he confined +himself to holding them up at her and shaking them, while he showed his +teeth, and then amusing her by the way he chucked them, across the room, +bang into the fire. Even at that moment, however, she had a scared +anticipation of fatigue, a guilty sense of not rising to the occasion, +feeling the charm of the violence with which the stiff unopened +envelopes, whose big monograms--Ida bristled with monograms--she would +have liked to see, were made to whizz, like dangerous missiles, through +the air. The greatest effect of the great cause was her own greater +importance, chiefly revealed to her in the larger freedom with which +she was handled, pulled hither and thither and kissed, and the +proportionately greater niceness she was obliged to show. Her features +had somehow become prominent; they were so perpetually nipped by the +gentlemen who came to see her father and the smoke of whose cigarettes +went into her face. Some of these gentlemen made her strike matches and +light their cigarettes; others, holding her on knees violently jolted, +pinched the calves of her legs till she shrieked--her shriek was much +admired--and reproached them with being toothpicks. The word stuck in +her mind and contributed to her feeling from this time that she was +deficient in something that would meet the general desire. She found +out what it was: it was a congenital tendency to the production of a +substance to which Moddle, her nurse, gave a short ugly name, a name +painfully associated at dinner with the part of the joint that she +didn't like. She had left behind her the time when she had no desires +to meet, none at least save Moddle's, who, in Kensington Gardens, was +always on the bench when she came back to see if she had been playing +too far. Moddle's desire was merely that she shouldn't do that, and she +met it so easily that the only spots in that long brightness were the +moments of her wondering what would become of her if, on her rushing +back, there should be no Moddle on the bench. They still went to the +Gardens, but there was a difference even there; she was impelled +perpetually to look at the legs of other children and ask her nurse if +THEY were toothpicks. Moddle was terribly truthful; she always said: "Oh +my dear, you'll not find such another pair as your own." It seemed to +have to do with something else that Moddle often said: "You feel the +strain--that's where it is; and you'll feel it still worse, you know." + +Thus from the first Maisie not only felt it, but knew she felt it. A +part of it was the consequence of her father's telling her he felt it +too, and telling Moddle, in her presence, that she must make a point of +driving that home. She was familiar, at the age of six, with the fact +that everything had been changed on her account, everything ordered to +enable him to give himself up to her. She was to remember always the +words in which Moddle impressed upon her that he did so give himself: +"Your papa wishes you never to forget, you know, that he has been +dreadfully put about." If the skin on Moddle's face had to Maisie the +air of being unduly, almost painfully, stretched, it never presented +that appearance so much as when she uttered, as she often had occasion +to utter, such words. The child wondered if they didn't make it hurt +more than usual; but it was only after some time that she was able to +attach to the picture of her father's sufferings, and more particularly +to her nurse's manner about them, the meaning for which these things +had waited. By the time she had grown sharper, as the gentlemen who had +criticised her calves used to say, she found in her mind a collection of +images and echoes to which meanings were attachable--images and echoes +kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high drawers, +like games she wasn't yet big enough to play. The great strain meanwhile +was that of carrying by the right end the things her father said about +her mother--things mostly indeed that Moddle, on a glimpse of them, as +if they had been complicated toys or difficult books, took out of her +hands and put away in the closet. A wonderful assortment of objects of +this kind she was to discover there later, all tumbled up too with the +things, shuffled into the same receptacle, that her mother had said +about her father. + +She had the knowledge that on a certain occasion which every day brought +nearer her mother would be at the door to take her away, and this would +have darkened all the days if the ingenious Moddle hadn't written on a +paper in very big easy words ever so many pleasures that she would enjoy +at the other house. These promises ranged from "a mother's fond love" +to "a nice poached egg to your tea," and took by the way the prospect +of sitting up ever so late to see the lady in question dressed, in +silks and velvets and diamonds and pearls, to go out: so that it was a +real support to Maisie, at the supreme hour, to feel how, by Moddle's +direction, the paper was thrust away in her pocket and there clenched in +her fist. The supreme hour was to furnish her with a vivid reminiscence, +that of a strange outbreak in the drawing-room on the part of Moddle, +who, in reply to something her father had just said, cried aloud: "You +ought to be perfectly ashamed of yourself--you ought to blush, sir, for +the way you go on!" The carriage, with her mother in it, was at the +door; a gentleman who was there, who was always there, laughed out very +loud; her father, who had her in his arms, said to Moddle: "My dear +woman, I'll settle you presently!"--after which he repeated, showing +his teeth more than ever at Maisie while he hugged her, the words for +which her nurse had taken him up. Maisie was not at the moment so fully +conscious of them as of the wonder of Moddle's sudden disrespect and +crimson face; but she was able to produce them in the course of five +minutes when, in the carriage, her mother, all kisses, ribbons, eyes, +arms, strange sounds and sweet smells, said to her: "And did your +beastly papa, my precious angel, send any message to your own loving +mamma?" Then it was that she found the words spoken by her beastly papa +to be, after all, in her little bewildered ears, from which, at her +mother's appeal, they passed, in her clear shrill voice, straight to +her little innocent lips. "He said I was to tell you, from him," she +faithfully reported, "that you're a nasty horrid pig!" + + + + +II + + +In that lively sense of the immediate which is the very air of a child's +mind the past, on each occasion, became for her as indistinct as +the future: she surrendered herself to the actual with a good faith +that might have been touching to either parent. Crudely as they had +calculated they were at first justified by the event: she was the little +feathered shuttlecock they could fiercely keep flying between them. The +evil they had the gift of thinking or pretending to think of each other +they poured into her little gravely-gazing soul as into a boundless +receptacle, and each of them had doubtless the best conscience in the +world as to the duty of teaching her the stern truth that should be her +safeguard against the other. She was at the age for which all stories +are true and all conceptions are stories. The actual was the absolute, +the present alone was vivid. The objurgation for instance launched +in the carriage by her mother after she had at her father's bidding +punctually performed was a missive that dropped into her memory with the +dry rattle of a letter falling into a pillar-box. Like the letter it +was, as part of the contents of a well-stuffed post-bag, delivered in +due course at the right address. In the presence of these overflowings, +after they had continued for a couple of years, the associates of either +party sometimes felt that something should be done for what they called +"the real good, don't you know?" of the child. The only thing done, +however, in general, took place when it was sighingly remarked that she +fortunately wasn't all the year round where she happened to be at the +awkward moment, and that, furthermore, either from extreme cunning or +from extreme stupidity, she appeared not to take things in. + +The theory of her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents, +corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the complete +vision, private but final, of the strange office she filled. It was +literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths of her +nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves began to move their arms +and legs; old forms and phrases began to have a sense that frightened +her. She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy +rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of +concealment. She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious +spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, +and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. +Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be employed +no longer. She would forget everything, she would repeat nothing, and +when, as a tribute to the successful application of her system, she +began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a pleasure new and keen. +When therefore, as she grew older, her parents in turn announced before +her that she had grown shockingly dull, it was not from any real +contraction of her little stream of life. She spoiled their fun, but she +practically added to her own. She saw more and more; she saw too much. +It was Miss Overmore, her first governess, who on a momentous occasion +had sown the seeds of secrecy; sown them not by anything she said, but +by a mere roll of those fine eyes which Maisie already admired. Moddle +had become at this time, after alternations of residence of which the +child had no clear record, an image faintly embalmed in the remembrance +of hungry disappearances from the nursery and distressful lapses in the +alphabet, sad embarrassments, in particular, when invited to recognise +something her nurse described as "the important letter haitch." Miss +Overmore, however hungry, never disappeared: this marked her somehow as +of higher rank, and the character was confirmed by a prettiness that +Maisie supposed to be extraordinary. Mrs. Farange had described her as +almost too pretty, and some one had asked what that mattered so long as +Beale wasn't there. "Beale or no Beale," Maisie had heard her mother +reply, "I take her because she's a lady and yet awfully poor. Rather +nice people, but there are seven sisters at home. What do people mean?" + +Maisie didn't know what people meant, but she knew very soon all the +names of all the sisters; she could say them off better than she could +say the multiplication-table. She privately wondered moreover, though +she never asked, about the awful poverty, of which her companion also +never spoke. Food at any rate came up by mysterious laws; Miss Overmore +never, like Moddle, had on an apron, and when she ate she held her fork +with her little finger curled out. The child, who watched her at many +moments, watched her particularly at that one. "I think you're lovely," +she often said to her; even mamma, who was lovely too, had not such a +pretty way with the fork. Maisie associated this showier presence with +her now being "big," knowing of course that nursery-governesses were +only for little girls who were not, as she said, "really" little. She +vaguely knew, further, somehow, that the future was still bigger than +she, and that a part of what made it so was the number of governesses +lurking in it and ready to dart out. Everything that had happened +when she was really little was dormant, everything but the positive +certitude, bequeathed from afar by Moddle, that the natural way for a +child to have her parents was separate and successive, like her mutton +and her pudding or her bath and her nap. + +"DOES he know he lies?"--that was what she had vivaciously asked Miss +Overmore on the occasion which was so suddenly to lead to a change in +her life. + +"Does he know--" Miss Overmore stared; she had a stocking pulled over +her hand and was pricking at it with a needle which she poised in the +act. Her task was homely, but her movement, like all her movements, +graceful. + +"Why papa." + +"That he 'lies'?" + +"That's what mamma says I'm to tell him--'that he lies and he knows he +lies.'" Miss Overmore turned very red, though she laughed out till her +head fell back; then she pricked again at her muffled hand so hard +that Maisie wondered how she could bear it. "AM I to tell him?" the +child went on. It was then that her companion addressed her in the +unmistakeable language of a pair of eyes of deep dark grey. "I can't say +No," they replied as distinctly as possible; "I can't say No, because +I'm afraid of your mamma, don't you see? Yet how can I say Yes after +your papa has been so kind to me, talking to me so long the other day, +smiling and flashing his beautiful teeth at me the time we met him in +the Park, the time when, rejoicing at the sight of us, he left the +gentlemen he was with and turned and walked with us, stayed with us for +half an hour?" Somehow in the light of Miss Overmore's lovely eyes that +incident came back to Maisie with a charm it hadn't had at the time, and +this in spite of the fact that after it was over her governess had never +but once alluded to it. On their way home, when papa had quitted them, +she had expressed the hope that the child wouldn't mention it to mamma. +Maisie liked her so, and had so the charmed sense of being liked by her, +that she accepted this remark as settling the matter and wonderingly +conformed to it. The wonder now lived again, lived in the recollection +of what papa had said to Miss Overmore: "I've only to look at you to see +you're a person I can appeal to for help to save my daughter." Maisie's +ignorance of what she was to be saved from didn't diminish the pleasure +of the thought that Miss Overmore was saving her. It seemed to make them +cling together as in some wild game of "going round." + + + + +III + + +She was therefore all the more startled when her mother said to her in +connexion with something to be done before her next migration: "You +understand of course that she's not going with you." + +Maisie turned quite faint. "Oh I thought she was." + +"It doesn't in the least matter, you know, what you think," Mrs. Farange +loudly replied; "and you had better indeed for the future, miss, learn +to keep your thoughts to yourself." This was exactly what Maisie had +already learned, and the accomplishment was just the source of her +mother's irritation. It was of a horrid little critical system, a +tendency, in her silence, to judge her elders, that this lady suspected +her, liking as she did, for her own part, a child to be simple and +confiding. She liked also to hear the report of the whacks she +administered to Mr. Farange's character, to his pretensions to peace +of mind: the satisfaction of dealing them diminished when nothing came +back. The day was at hand, and she saw it, when she should feel more +delight in hurling Maisie at him than in snatching her away; so much so +that her conscience winced under the acuteness of a candid friend who +had remarked that the real end of all their tugging would be that each +parent would try to make the little girl a burden to the other--a sort +of game in which a fond mother clearly wouldn't show to advantage. The +prospect of not showing to advantage, a distinction in which she held +she had never failed, begot in Ida Farange an ill humour of which +several persons felt the effect. She determined that Beale at any rate +should feel it; she reflected afresh that in the study of how to be +odious to him she must never give way. Nothing could incommode him more +than not to get the good, for the child, of a nice female appendage who +had clearly taken a fancy to her. One of the things Ida said to the +appendage was that Beale's was a house in which no decent woman could +consent to be seen. It was Miss Overmore herself who explained to +Maisie that she had had a hope of being allowed to accompany her to her +father's, and that this hope had been dashed by the way her mother took +it. "She says that if I ever do such a thing as enter his service I must +never expect to show my face in this house again. So I've promised not +to attempt to go with you. If I wait patiently till you come back here +we shall certainly be together once more." + +Waiting patiently, and above all waiting till she should come back +there, seemed to Maisie a long way round--it reminded her of all the +things she had been told, first and last, that she should have if she'd +be good and that in spite of her goodness she had never had at all. +"Then who'll take care of me at papa's?" + +"Heaven only knows, my own precious!" Miss Overmore replied, tenderly +embracing her. There was indeed no doubt that she was dear to this +beautiful friend. What could have proved it better than the fact that +before a week was out, in spite of their distressing separation and her +mother's prohibition and Miss Overmore's scruples and Miss Overmore's +promise, the beautiful friend had turned up at her father's? The little +lady already engaged there to come by the hour, a fat dark little lady +with a foreign name and dirty fingers, who wore, throughout, a bonnet +that had at first given her a deceptive air, too soon dispelled, of +not staying long, besides asking her pupil questions that had nothing +to do with lessons, questions that Beale Farange himself, when two or +three were repeated to him, admitted to be awfully low--this strange +apparition faded before the bright creature who had braved everything +for Maisie's sake. The bright creature told her little charge frankly +what had happened--that she had really been unable to hold out. She had +broken her vow to Mrs. Farange; she had struggled for three days and +then had come straight to Maisie's papa and told him the simple truth. +She adored his daughter; she couldn't give her up; she'd make for her +any sacrifice. On this basis it had been arranged that she should stay; +her courage had been rewarded; she left Maisie in no doubt as to the +amount of courage she had required. Some of the things she said made +a particular impression on the child--her declaration for instance +that when her pupil should get older she'd understand better just how +"dreadfully bold" a young lady, to do exactly what she had done, had +to be. + +"Fortunately your papa appreciates it; he appreciates it IMMENSELY"-- +that was one of the things Miss Overmore also said, with a striking +insistence on the adverb. Maisie herself was no less impressed with +what this martyr had gone through, especially after hearing of the +terrible letter that had come from Mrs. Farange. Mamma had been so +angry that, in Miss Overmore's own words, she had loaded her with +insult--proof enough indeed that they must never look forward to being +together again under mamma's roof. Mamma's roof, however, had its turn, +this time, for the child, of appearing but remotely contingent, so that, +to reassure her, there was scarce a need of her companion's secret, +solemnly confided--the probability there would be no going back to mamma +at all. It was Miss Overmore's private conviction, and a part of the +same communication, that if Mr. Farange's daughter would only show a +really marked preference she would be backed up by "public opinion" in +holding on to him. Poor Maisie could scarcely grasp that incentive, but +she could surrender herself to the day. She had conceived her first +passion, and the object of it was her governess. It hadn't been put to +her, and she couldn't, or at any rate she didn't, put it to herself, +that she liked Miss Overmore better than she liked papa; but it would +have sustained her under such an imputation to feel herself able +to reply that papa too liked Miss Overmore exactly as much. He had +particularly told her so. Besides she could easily see it. + + + + +IV + + +All this led her on, but it brought on her fate as well, the day when +her mother would be at the door in the carriage in which Maisie now rode +on no occasions but these. There was no question at present of Miss +Overmore's going back with her: it was universally recognised that her +quarrel with Mrs. Farange was much too acute. The child felt it from +the first; there was no hugging nor exclaiming as that lady drove her +away--there was only a frightening silence, unenlivened even by the +invidious enquiries of former years, which culminated, according to its +stern nature, in a still more frightening old woman, a figure awaiting +her on the very doorstep. "You're to be under this lady's care," said +her mother. "Take her, Mrs. Wix," she added, addressing the figure +impatiently and giving the child a push from which Maisie gathered that +she wished to set Mrs. Wix an example of energy. Mrs. Wix took her and, +Maisie felt the next day, would never let her go. She had struck her at +first, just after Miss Overmore, as terrible; but something in her voice +at the end of an hour touched the little girl in a spot that had never +even yet been reached. Maisie knew later what it was, though doubtless +she couldn't have made a statement of it: these were things that a few +days' talk with Mrs. Wix quite lighted up. The principal one was a +matter Mrs. Wix herself always immediately mentioned: she had had a +little girl quite of her own, and the little girl had been killed on +the spot. She had had absolutely nothing else in all the world, and her +affliction had broken her heart. It was comfortably established between +them that Mrs. Wix's heart was broken. What Maisie felt was that she had +been, with passion and anguish, a mother, and that this was something +Miss Overmore was not, something (strangely, confusingly) that mamma was +even less. + +So it was that in the course of an extraordinarily short time she +found herself as deeply absorbed in the image of the little dead +Clara Matilda, who, on a crossing in the Harrow Road, had been knocked +down and crushed by the cruellest of hansoms, as she had ever found +herself in the family group made vivid by one of seven. "She's your +little dead sister," Mrs. Wix ended by saying, and Maisie, all in +a tremor of curiosity and compassion, addressed from that moment a +particular piety to the small accepted acquisition. Somehow she wasn't +a real sister, but that only made her the more romantic. It contributed +to this view of her that she was never to be spoken of in that character +to any one else--least of all to Mrs. Farange, who wouldn't care for +her nor recognise the relationship: it was to be just an unutterable and +inexhaustible little secret with Mrs. Wix. Maisie knew everything about +her that could be known, everything she had said or done in her little +mutilated life, exactly how lovely she was, exactly how her hair was +curled and her frocks were trimmed. Her hair came down far below her +waist--it was of the most wonderful golden brightness, just as Mrs. +Wix's own had been a long time before. Mrs. Wix's own was indeed very +remarkable still, and Maisie had felt at first that she should never get +on with it. It played a large part in the sad and strange appearance, +the appearance as of a kind of greasy greyness, which Mrs. Wix had +presented on the child's arrival. It had originally been yellow, but +time had turned that elegance to ashes, to a turbid sallow unvenerable +white. Still excessively abundant, it was dressed in a manner of which +the poor lady appeared not yet to have recognised the supersession, with +a glossy braid, like a large diadem, on the top of the head, and behind, +at the nape of the neck, a dingy rosette like a large button. She wore +glasses which, in humble reference to a divergent obliquity of vision, +she called her straighteners, and a little ugly snuff-coloured dress +trimmed with satin bands in the form of scallops and glazed with +antiquity. The straighteners, she explained to Maisie, were put on for +the sake of others, whom, as she believed, they helped to recognise the +bearing, otherwise doubtful, of her regard; the rest of the melancholy +garb could only have been put on for herself. With the added suggestion +of her goggles it reminded her pupil of the polished shell or corslet +of a horrid beetle. At first she had looked cross and almost cruel; but +this impression passed away with the child's increased perception of +her being in the eyes of the world a figure mainly to laugh at. She +was as droll as a charade or an animal toward the end of the "natural +history"--a person whom people, to make talk lively, described to each +other and imitated. Every one knew the straighteners; every one knew the +diadem and the button, the scallops and satin bands; every one, though +Maisie had never betrayed her, knew even Clara Matilda. + +It was on account of these things that mamma got her for such low pay, +really for nothing: so much, one day when Mrs. Wix had accompanied her +into the drawing-room and left her, the child heard one of the ladies +she found there--a lady with eyebrows arched like skipping-ropes and +thick black stitching, like ruled lines for musical notes on beautiful +white gloves--announce to another. She knew governesses were poor; Miss +Overmore was unmentionably and Mrs. Wix ever so publicly so. Neither +this, however, nor the old brown frock nor the diadem nor the button, +made a difference for Maisie in the charm put forth through everything, +the charm of Mrs. Wix's conveying that somehow, in her ugliness and her +poverty, she was peculiarly and soothingly safe; safer than any one +in the world, than papa, than mamma, than the lady with the arched +eyebrows; safer even, though so much less beautiful, than Miss Overmore, +on whose loveliness, as she supposed it, the little girl was faintly +conscious that one couldn't rest with quite the same tucked-in and +kissed-for-good-night feeling. Mrs. Wix was as safe as Clara Matilda, +who was in heaven and yet, embarrassingly, also in Kensal Green, where +they had been together to see her little huddled grave. It was from +something in Mrs. Wix's tone, which in spite of caricature remained +indescribable and inimitable, that Maisie, before her term with her +mother was over, drew this sense of a support, like a breast-high +banister in a place of "drops," that would never give way. If she knew +her instructress was poor and queer she also knew she was not nearly so +"qualified" as Miss Overmore, who could say lots of dates straight off +(letting you hold the book yourself), state the position of Malabar, play +six pieces without notes and, in a sketch, put in beautifully the trees +and houses and difficult parts. Maisie herself could play more pieces +than Mrs. Wix, who was moreover visibly ashamed of her houses and trees +and could only, with the help of a smutty forefinger, of doubtful +legitimacy in the field of art, do the smoke coming out of the chimneys. +They dealt, the governess and her pupil, in "subjects," but there were +many the governess put off from week to week and that they never got to +at all: she only used to say "We'll take that in its proper order." Her +order was a circle as vast as the untravelled globe. She had not the +spirit of adventure--the child could perfectly see how many subjects she +was afraid of. She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through +which indeed there curled the blue river of truth. She knew swarms of +stories, mostly those of the novels she had read; relating them with +a memory that never faltered and a wealth of detail that was Maisie's +delight. They were all about love and beauty and countesses and +wickedness. Her conversation was practically an endless narrative, +a great garden of romance, with sudden vistas into her own life and +gushing fountains of homeliness. These were the parts where they most +lingered; she made the child take with her again every step of her long, +lame course and think it beyond magic or monsters. Her pupil acquired a +vivid vision of every one who had ever, in her phrase, knocked against +her--some of them oh so hard!--every one literally but Mr. Wix, her +husband, as to whom nothing was mentioned save that he had been dead for +ages. He had been rather remarkably absent from his wife's career, and +Maisie was never taken to see his grave. + + + + +V + + +The second parting from Miss Overmore had been bad enough, but this +first parting from Mrs. Wix was much worse. The child had lately been to +the dentist's and had a term of comparison for the screwed-up intensity +of the scene. It was dreadfully silent, as it had been when her tooth +was taken out; Mrs. Wix had on that occasion grabbed her hand and they +had clung to each other with the frenzy of their determination not to +scream. Maisie, at the dentist's, had been heroically still, but just +when she felt most anguish had become aware of an audible shriek on the +part of her companion, a spasm of stifled sympathy. This was reproduced +by the only sound that broke their supreme embrace when, a month later, +the "arrangement," as her periodical uprootings were called, played the +part of the horrible forceps. Embedded in Mrs. Wix's nature as her tooth +had been socketed in her gum, the operation of extracting her would +really have been a case for chloroform. It was a hug that fortunately +left nothing to say, for the poor woman's want of words at such an +hour seemed to fall in with her want of everything. Maisie's alternate +parent, in the outermost vestibule--he liked the impertinence of +crossing as much as that of his late wife's threshold--stood over them +with his open watch and his still more open grin, while from the only +corner of an eye on which something of Mrs. Wix's didn't impinge the +child saw at the door a brougham in which Miss Overmore also waited. +She remembered the difference when, six months before, she had been +torn from the breast of that more spirited protectress. Miss Overmore, +then also in the vestibule, but of course in the other one, had been +thoroughly audible and voluble; her protest had rung out bravely and she +had declared that something--her pupil didn't know exactly what--was +a regular wicked shame. That had at the time dimly recalled to Maisie +the far-away moment of Moddle's great outbreak: there seemed always to +be "shames" connected in one way or another with her migrations. At +present, while Mrs. Wix's arms tightened and the smell of her hair was +strong, she further remembered how, in pacifying Miss Overmore, papa had +made use of the words "you dear old duck!"--an expression which, by its +oddity, had stuck fast in her young mind, having moreover a place well +prepared for it there by what she knew of the governess whom she now +always mentally characterised as the pretty one. She wondered whether +this affection would be as great as before: that would at all events be +the case with the prettiness Maisie could see in the face which showed +brightly at the window of the brougham. + +The brougham was a token of harmony, of the fine conditions papa would +this time offer: he had usually come for her in a hansom, with a +four-wheeler behind for the boxes. The four-wheeler with the boxes on it +was actually there, but mamma was the only lady with whom she had ever +been in a conveyance of the kind always of old spoken of by Moddle as a +private carriage. Papa's carriage was, now that he had one, still more +private, somehow, than mamma's; and when at last she found herself quite +on top, as she felt, of its inmates and gloriously rolling away, she +put to Miss Overmore, after another immense and talkative squeeze, a +question of which the motive was a desire for information as to the +continuity of a certain sentiment. "Did papa like you just the same +while I was gone?" she enquired--full of the sense of how markedly his +favour had been established in her presence. She had bethought herself +that this favour might, like her presence and as if depending on it, be +only intermittent and for the season. Papa, on whose knee she sat, burst +into one of those loud laughs of his that, however prepared she was, +seemed always, like some trick in a frightening game, to leap forth and +make her jump. Before Miss Overmore could speak he replied: "Why, you +little donkey, when you're away what have I left to do but just to love +her?" Miss Overmore hereupon immediately took her from him, and they had +a merry little scrimmage over her of which Maisie caught the surprised +perception in the white stare of an old lady who passed in a victoria. +Then her beautiful friend remarked to her very gravely: "I shall make +him understand that if he ever again says anything as horrid as that +to you I shall carry you straight off and we'll go and live somewhere +together and be good quiet little girls." The child couldn't quite make +out why her father's speech had been horrid, since it only expressed +that appreciation which their companion herself had of old described as +"immense." To enter more into the truth of the matter she appealed to +him again directly, asked if in all those months Miss Overmore hadn't +been with him just as she had been before and just as she would be now. +"Of course she has, old girl--where else could the poor dear be?" cried +Beale Farange, to the still greater scandal of their companion, who +protested that unless he straightway "took back" his nasty wicked fib +it would be, this time, not only him she would leave, but his child too +and his house and his tiresome trouble--all the impossible things he +had succeeded in putting on her. Beale, under this frolic menace, took +nothing back at all; he was indeed apparently on the point of repeating +his extravagance, but Miss Overmore instructed her little charge that +she was not to listen to his bad jokes: she was to understand that a +lady couldn't stay with a gentleman that way without some awfully proper +reason. + +Maisie looked from one of her companions to the other; this was the +freshest gayest start she had yet enjoyed, but she had a shy fear of not +exactly believing them. "Well, what reason IS proper?" she thoughtfully +demanded. + +"Oh a long-legged stick of a tomboy: there's none so good as that." Her +father enjoyed both her drollery and his own and tried again to get +possession of her--an effort deprecated by their comrade and leading +again to something of a public scuffle. Miss Overmore declared to the +child that she had been all the while with good friends; on which Beale +Farange went on: "She means good friends of mine, you know--tremendous +friends of mine. There has been no end of THEM about--that I WILL say +for her!" Maisie felt bewildered and was afterwards for some time +conscious of a vagueness, just slightly embarrassing, as to the subject +of so much amusement and as to where her governess had really been. +She didn't feel at all as if she had been seriously told, and no such +feeling was supplied by anything that occurred later. Her embarrassment, +of a precocious instinctive order, attached itself to the idea that +this was another of the matters it was not for her, as her mother used +to say, to go into. Therefore, under her father's roof during the time +that followed, she made no attempt to clear up her ambiguity by an +ingratiating way with housemaids; and it was an odd truth that the +ambiguity itself took nothing from the fresh pleasure promised her by +renewed contact with Miss Overmore. The confidence looked for by that +young lady was of the fine sort that explanation can't improve, and she +herself at any rate was a person superior to any confusion. For Maisie +moreover concealment had never necessarily seemed deception; she had +grown up among things as to which her foremost knowledge was that +she was never to ask about them. It was far from new to her that the +questions of the small are the peculiar diversion of the great: except +the affairs of her doll Lisette there had scarcely ever been anything at +her mother's that was explicable with a grave face. Nothing was so easy +to her as to send the ladies who gathered there off into shrieks, and +she might have practised upon them largely if she had been of a more +calculating turn. Everything had something behind it: life was like a +long, long corridor with rows of closed doors. She had learned that at +these doors it was wise not to knock--this seemed to produce from within +such sounds of derision. Little by little, however, she understood more, +for it befell that she was enlightened by Lisette's questions, which +reproduced the effect of her own upon those for whom she sat in the very +darkness of Lisette. Was she not herself convulsed by such innocence? In +the presence of it she often imitated the shrieking ladies. There were +at any rate things she really couldn't tell even a French doll. She +could only pass on her lessons and study to produce on Lisette the +impression of having mysteries in her life, wondering the while whether +she succeeded in the air of shading off, like her mother, into the +unknowable. When the reign of Miss Overmore followed that of Mrs. Wix +she took a fresh cue, emulating her governess and bridging over the +interval with the simple expectation of trust. Yes, there were matters +one couldn't "go into" with a pupil. There were for instance days when, +after prolonged absence, Lisette, watching her take off her things, +tried hard to discover where she had been. Well, she discovered a +little, but never discovered all. There was an occasion when, on her +being particularly indiscreet, Maisie replied to her--and precisely +about the motive of a disappearance--as she, Maisie, had once been +replied to by Mrs. Farange: "Find out for yourself!" She mimicked her +mother's sharpness, but she was rather ashamed afterwards, though as +to whether of the sharpness or of the mimicry was not quite clear. + + + + +VI + + +She became aware in time that this phase wouldn't have shone by +lessons, the care of her education being now only one of the many +duties devolving on Miss Overmore; a devolution as to which she was +present at various passages between that lady and her father--passages +significant, on either side, of dissent and even of displeasure. It was +gathered by the child on these occasions that there was something in the +situation for which her mother might "come down" on them all, though +indeed the remark, always dropped by her father, was greeted on his +companion's part with direct contradiction. Such scenes were usually +brought to a climax by Miss Overmore's demanding, with more asperity +than she applied to any other subject, in what position under the sun +such a person as Mrs. Farange would find herself for coming down. As the +months went on the little girl's interpretations thickened, and the more +effectually that this stretch was the longest she had known without a +break. She got used to the idea that her mother, for some reason, was +in no hurry to reinstate her: that idea was forcibly expressed by her +father whenever Miss Overmore, differing and decided, took him up on the +question, which he was always putting forward, of the urgency of sending +her to school. For a governess Miss Overmore differed surprisingly; far +more for instance than would have entered into the bowed head of Mrs. +Wix. She observed to Maisie many times that she was quite conscious of +not doing her justice, and that Mr. Farange equally measured and equally +lamented this deficiency. The reason of it was that she had mysterious +responsibilities that interfered--responsibilities, Miss Overmore +intimated, to Mr. Farange himself and to the friendly noisy little house +and those who came there. Mr. Farange's remedy for every inconvenience +was that the child should be put at school--there were such lots of +splendid schools, as everybody knew, at Brighton and all over the place. +That, however, Maisie learned, was just what would bring her mother +down: from the moment he should delegate to others the housing of his +little charge he hadn't a leg to stand on before the law. Didn't he keep +her away from her mother precisely because Mrs. Farange was one of these +others? + +There was also the solution of a second governess, a young person to +come in by the day and really do the work; but to this Miss Overmore +wouldn't for a moment listen, arguing against it with great public +relish and wanting to know from all comers--she put it even to Maisie +herself--they didn't see how frightfully it would give her away. "What +am I supposed to be at all, don't you see, if I'm not here to look +after her?" She was in a false position and so freely and loudly called +attention to it that it seemed to become almost a source of glory. The +way out of it of course was just to do her plain duty; but that was +unfortunately what, with his excessive, his exorbitant demands on her, +which every one indeed appeared quite to understand, he practically, he +selfishly prevented. Beale Farange, for Miss Overmore, was now never +anything but "he," and the house was as full as ever of lively gentlemen +with whom, under that designation, she chaffingly talked about him. +Maisie meanwhile, as a subject of familiar gossip on what was to be done +with her, was left so much to herself that she had hours of wistful +thought of the large loose discipline of Mrs. Wix; yet she none the less +held it under her father's roof a point of superiority that none of his +visitors were ladies. It added to this odd security that she had once +heard a gentleman say to him as if it were a great joke and in obvious +reference to Miss Overmore: "Hanged if she'll let another woman come +near you--hanged if she ever will. She'd let fly a stick at her as they +do at a strange cat!" Maisie greatly preferred gentlemen as inmates +in spite of their also having their way--louder but sooner over--of +laughing out at her. They pulled and pinched, they teased and tickled +her; some of them even, as they termed it, shied things at her, and all +of them thought it funny to call her by names having no resemblance to +her own. The ladies on the other hand addressed her as "You poor pet" +and scarcely touched her even to kiss her. But it was of the ladies she +was most afraid. + +She was now old enough to understand how disproportionate a stay she had +already made with her father; and also old enough to enter a little into +the ambiguity attending this excess, which oppressed her particularly +whenever the question had been touched upon in talk with her governess. +"Oh you needn't worry: she doesn't care!" Miss Overmore had often +said to her in reference to any fear that her mother might resent her +prolonged detention. "She has other people than poor little YOU to +think about, and has gone abroad with them; so you needn't be in the +least afraid she'll stickle this time for her rights." Maisie knew Mrs. +Farange had gone abroad, for she had had weeks and weeks before a letter +from her beginning "My precious pet" and taking leave of her for an +indeterminate time; but she had not seen in it a renunciation of hatred +or of the writer's policy of asserting herself, for the sharpest of all +her impressions had been that there was nothing her mother would ever +care so much about as to torment Mr. Farange. What at last, however, was +in this connexion bewildering and a little frightening was the dawn of a +suspicion that a better way had been found to torment Mr. Farange than +to deprive him of his periodical burden. This was the question that +worried our young lady and that Miss Overmore's confidences and the +frequent observations of her employer only rendered more mystifying. It +was a contradiction that if Ida had now a fancy for waiving the rights +she had originally been so hot about her late husband shouldn't jump at +the monopoly for which he had also in the first instance so fiercely +fought; but when Maisie, with a subtlety beyond her years, sounded this +new ground her main success was in hearing her mother more freshly +abused. Miss Overmore had up to now rarely deviated from a decent +reserve, but the day came when she expressed herself with a vividness +not inferior to Beale's own on the subject of the lady who had fled to +the Continent to wriggle out of her job. It would serve this lady right, +Maisie gathered, if that contract, in the shape of an overgrown and +underdressed daughter, should be shipped straight out to her and landed +at her feet in the midst of scandalous excesses. + +The picture of these pursuits was what Miss Overmore took refuge in when +the child tried timidly to ascertain if her father were disposed to feel +he had too much of her. She evaded the point and only kicked up all +round it the dust of Ida's heartlessness and folly, of which the supreme +proof, it appeared, was the fact that she was accompanied on her journey +by a gentleman whom, to be painfully plain on it, she had--well, "picked +up." The terms on which, unless they were married, ladies and gentlemen +might, as Miss Overmore expressed it, knock about together, were the +terms on which she and Mr. Farange had exposed themselves to possible +misconception. She had indeed, as has been noted, often explained this +before, often said to Maisie: "I don't know what in the world, darling, +your father and I should do without you, for you just make the +difference, as I've told you, of keeping us perfectly proper." The child +took in the office it was so endearingly presented to her that she +performed a comfort that helped her to a sense of security even in the +event of her mother's giving her up. Familiar as she had grown with the +fact of the great alternative to the proper, she felt in her governess +and her father a strong reason for not emulating that detachment. At the +same time she had heard somehow of little girls--of exalted rank, it was +true--whose education was carried on by instructors of the other sex, +and she knew that if she were at school at Brighton it would be thought +an advantage to her to be more or less in the hands of masters. She +turned these things over and remarked to Miss Overmore that if she +should go to her mother perhaps the gentleman might become her tutor. + +"The gentleman?" The proposition was complicated enough to make Miss +Overmore stare. + +"The one who's with mamma. Mightn't that make it right--as right as your +being my governess makes it for you to be with papa?" + +Miss Overmore considered; she coloured a little; then she embraced her +ingenious friend. "You're too sweet! I'm a REAL governess." + +"And couldn't he be a real tutor?" + +"Of course not. He's ignorant and bad." + +"Bad--?" Maisie echoed with wonder. + +Her companion gave a queer little laugh at her tone. "He's ever so much +younger--" But that was all. + +"Younger than you?" + +Miss Overmore laughed again; it was the first time Maisie had seen her +approach so nearly to a giggle. + +"Younger than--no matter whom. I don't know anything about him and don't +want to," she rather inconsequently added. "He's not my sort, and I'm +sure, my own darling, he's not yours." And she repeated the free caress +into which her colloquies with Maisie almost always broke and which made +the child feel that HER affection at least was a gage of safety. Parents +had come to seem vague, but governesses were evidently to be trusted. +Maisie's faith in Mrs. Wix for instance had suffered no lapse from the +fact that all communication with her had temporarily dropped. During the +first weeks of their separation Clara Matilda's mamma had repeatedly and +dolefully written to her, and Maisie had answered with an enthusiasm +controlled only by orthographical doubts; but the correspondence had +been duly submitted to Miss Overmore, with the final effect of its not +suiting her. It was this lady's view that Mr. Farange wouldn't care for +it at all, and she ended by confessing--since her pupil pushed her--that +she didn't care for it herself. She was furiously jealous, she said; and +that weakness was but a new proof of her disinterested affection. She +pronounced Mrs. Wix's effusions moreover illiterate and unprofitable; +she made no scruple of declaring it monstrous that a woman in her +senses should have placed the formation of her daughter's mind in such +ridiculous hands. Maisie was well aware that the proprietress of the old +brown dress and the old odd headgear was lower in the scale of "form" +than Miss Overmore; but it was now brought home to her with pain that +she was educationally quite out of the question. She was buried for the +time beneath a conclusive remark of her critic's: "She's really beyond a +joke!" This remark was made as that charming woman held in her hand the +last letter that Maisie was to receive from Mrs. Wix; it was fortified +by a decree proscribing the preposterous tie. "Must I then write and +tell her?" the child bewilderedly asked: she grew pale at the dreadful +things it appeared involved for her to say. "Don't dream of it, my +dear--I'll write: you may trust me!" cried Miss Overmore; who indeed +wrote to such purpose that a hush in which you could have heard a pin +drop descended upon poor Mrs. Wix. She gave for weeks and weeks no sign +whatever of life: it was as if she had been as effectually disposed of +by Miss Overmore's communication as her little girl, in the Harrow Road, +had been disposed of by the terrible hansom. Her very silence became +after this one of the largest elements of Maisie's consciousness; it +proved a warm and habitable air, into which the child penetrated further +than she dared ever to mention to her companions. Somewhere in the +depths of it the dim straighteners were fixed upon her; somewhere out of +the troubled little current Mrs. Wix intensely waited. + + + + +VII + + +It quite fell in with this intensity that one day, on returning from +a walk with the housemaid, Maisie should have found her in the hall, +seated on the stool usually occupied by the telegraph-boys who haunted +Beale Farange's door and kicked their heels while, in his room, answers +to their missives took form with the aid of smoke-puffs and growls. It +had seemed to her on their parting that Mrs. Wix had reached the last +limits of the squeeze, but she now felt those limits to be transcended +and that the duration of her visitor's hug was a direct reply to Miss +Overmore's veto. She understood in a flash how the visit had come to be +possible--that Mrs. Wix, watching her chance, must have slipped in under +protection of the fact that papa, always tormented in spite of arguments +with the idea of a school, had, for a three days' excursion to Brighton, +absolutely insisted on the attendance of her adversary. It was true that +when Maisie explained their absence and their important motive Mrs. Wix +wore an expression so peculiar that it could only have had its origin in +surprise. This contradiction indeed peeped out only to vanish, for at +the very moment that, in the spirit of it, she threw herself afresh upon +her young friend a hansom crested with neat luggage rattled up to the +door and Miss Overmore bounded out. The shock of her encounter with Mrs. +Wix was less violent than Maisie had feared on seeing her and didn't +at all interfere with the sociable tone in which, under her rival's +eyes, she explained to her little charge that she had returned, for a +particular reason, a day sooner than she first intended. She had left +papa--in such nice lodgings--at Brighton; but he would come back to +his dear little home on the morrow. As for Mrs. Wix, papa's companion +supplied Maisie in later converse with the right word for the attitude +of this personage: Mrs. Wix "stood up" to her in a manner that the child +herself felt at the time to be astonishing. This occurred indeed after +Miss Overmore had so far raised her interdict as to make a move to the +dining-room, where, in the absence of any suggestion of sitting down, +it was scarcely more than natural that even poor Mrs. Wix should stand +up. Maisie at once enquired if at Brighton, this time, anything had +come of the possibility of a school; to which, much to her surprise, +Miss Overmore, who had always grandly repudiated it, replied after an +instant, but quite as if Mrs. Wix were not there: + +"It may be, darling, that something WILL come. The objection, I must +tell you, has been quite removed." + +At this it was still more startling to hear Mrs. Wix speak out with +great firmness. "I don't think, if you'll allow me to say so, that +there's any arrangement by which the objection CAN be 'removed.' What +has brought me here to-day is that I've a message for Maisie from dear +Mrs. Farange." + +The child's heart gave a great thump. "Oh mamma's come back?" + +"Not yet, sweet love, but she's coming," said Mrs. Wix, "and she +has--most thoughtfully, you know--sent me on to prepare you." + +"To prepare her for what, pray?" asked Miss Overmore, whose first +smoothness began, with this news, to be ruffled. + +Mrs. Wix quietly applied her straighteners to Miss Overmore's flushed +beauty. "Well, miss, for a very important communication." + +"Can't dear Mrs. Farange, as you so oddly call her, make her +communications directly? Can't she take the trouble to write to her only +daughter?" the younger lady demanded. "Maisie herself will tell you that +it's months and months since she has had so much as a word from her." + +"Oh but I've written to mamma!" cried the child as if this would do +quite as well. + +"That makes her treatment of you all the greater scandal," the governess +in possession promptly declared. + +"Mrs. Farange is too well aware," said Mrs. Wix with sustained spirit, +"of what becomes of her letters in this house." + +Maisie's sense of fairness hereupon interposed for her visitor. "You +know, Miss Overmore, that papa doesn't like everything of mamma's." + +"No one likes, my dear, to be made the subject of such language as your +mother's letters contain. They were not fit for the innocent child to +see," Miss Overmore observed to Mrs. Wix. + +"Then I don't know what you complain of, and she's better without them. +It serves every purpose that I'm in Mrs. Farange's confidence." + +Miss Overmore gave a scornful laugh. "Then you must be mixed up with +some extraordinary proceedings!" + +"None so extraordinary," cried Mrs. Wix, turning very pale, "as to say +horrible things about the mother to the face of the helpless daughter!" + +"Things not a bit more horrible, I think," Miss Overmore returned, "than +those you, madam, appear to have come here to say about the father!" + +Mrs. Wix looked for a moment hard at Maisie, and then, turning again to +this witness, spoke with a trembling voice. "I came to say nothing about +him, and you must excuse Mrs. Farange and me if we're not so above all +reproach as the companion of his travels." + +The young woman thus described stared at the apparent breadth of the +description--she needed a moment to take it in. Maisie, however, gazing +solemnly from one of the disputants to the other, noted that her answer, +when it came, perched upon smiling lips. "It will do quite as well, +no doubt, if you come up to the requirements of the companion of Mrs. +Farange's!" + +Mrs. Wix broke into a queer laugh; it sounded to Maisie an unsuccessful +imitation of a neigh. "That's just what I'm here to make known--how +perfectly the poor lady comes up to them herself." She held up her head +at the child. "You must take your mamma's message, Maisie, and you must +feel that her wishing me to come to you with it this way is a great +proof of interest and affection. She sends you her particular love and +announces to you that she's engaged to be married to Sir Claude." + +"Sir Claude?" Maisie wonderingly echoed. But while Mrs. Wix explained +that this gentleman was a dear friend of Mrs. Farange's, who had been +of great assistance to her in getting to Florence and in making herself +comfortable there for the winter, she was not too violently shaken to +perceive her old friend's enjoyment of the effect of this news on Miss +Overmore. That young lady opened her eyes very wide; she immediately +remarked that Mrs. Farange's marriage would of course put an end to any +further pretension to take her daughter back. Mrs. Wix enquired with +astonishment why it should do anything of the sort, and Miss Overmore +gave as an instant reason that it was clearly but another dodge in a +system of dodges. She wanted to get out of the bargain: why else had she +now left Maisie on her father's hands weeks and weeks beyond the time +about which she had originally made such a fuss? It was vain for Mrs. +Wix to represent--as she speciously proceeded to do--that all this time +would be made up as soon as Mrs. Farange returned: she, Miss Overmore, +knew nothing, thank heaven, about her confederate, but was very sure +any person capable of forming that sort of relation with the lady in +Florence would easily agree to object to the presence in his house +of the fruit of a union that his dignity must ignore. It was a game +like another, and Mrs. Wix's visit was clearly the first move in it. +Maisie found in this exchange of asperities a fresh incitement to the +unformulated fatalism in which her sense of her own career had long +since taken refuge; and it was the beginning for her of a deeper +prevision that, in spite of Miss Overmore's brilliancy and Mrs. Wix's +passion, she should live to see a change in the nature of the struggle +she appeared to have come into the world to produce. It would still be +essentially a struggle, but its object would now be NOT to receive her. + +Mrs. Wix, after Miss Overmore's last demonstration, addressed herself +wholly to the little girl, and, drawing from the pocket of her dingy old +pelisse a small flat parcel, removed its envelope and wished to know +if THAT looked like a gentleman who wouldn't be nice to everybody--let +alone to a person he would be so sure to find so nice. Mrs. Farange, in +the candour of new-found happiness, had enclosed a "cabinet" photograph +of Sir Claude, and Maisie lost herself in admiration of the fair smooth +face, the regular features, the kind eyes, the amiable air, the general +glossiness and smartness of her prospective stepfather--only vaguely +puzzled to suppose herself now with two fathers at once. Her researches +had hitherto indicated that to incur a second parent of the same sex you +had usually to lose the first. "ISN'T he sympathetic?" asked Mrs. Wix, +who had clearly, on the strength of his charming portrait, made up her +mind that Sir Claude promised her a future. "You can see, I hope," she +added with much expression, "that HE'S a perfect gentleman!" Maisie had +never before heard the word "sympathetic" applied to anybody's face; she +heard it with pleasure and from that moment it agreeably remained with +her. She testified moreover to the force of her own perception in a +small soft sigh of response to the pleasant eyes that seemed to seek +her acquaintance, to speak to her directly. "He's quite lovely!" she +declared to Mrs. Wix. Then eagerly, irrepressibly, as she still held the +photograph and Sir Claude continued to fraternise, "Oh can't I keep it?" +she broke out. No sooner had she done so than she looked up from it at +Miss Overmore: this was with the sudden instinct of appealing to the +authority that had long ago impressed on her that she mustn't ask for +things. Miss Overmore, to her surprise, looked distant and rather odd, +hesitating and giving her time to turn again to Mrs. Wix. Then Maisie +saw that lady's long face lengthen; it was stricken and almost scared, +as if her young friend really expected more of her than she had to give. +The photograph was a possession that, direly denuded, she clung to, +and there was a momentary struggle between her fond clutch of it and +her capability of every sacrifice for her precarious pupil. With the +acuteness of her years, however, Maisie saw that her own avidity would +triumph, and she held out the picture to Miss Overmore as if she were +quite proud of her mother. "Isn't he just lovely?" she demanded while +poor Mrs. Wix hungrily wavered, her straighteners largely covering it +and her pelisse gathered about her with an intensity that strained its +ancient seams. + +"It was to ME, darling," the visitor said, "that your mamma so +generously sent it; but of course if it would give you particular +pleasure--" she faltered, only gasping her surrender. + +Miss Overmore continued extremely remote. "If the photograph's your +property, my dear, I shall be happy to oblige you by looking at it on +some future occasion. But you must excuse me if I decline to touch an +object belonging to Mrs. Wix." + +That lady had by this time grown very red. "You might as well see him +this way, miss," she retorted, "as you certainly never will, I believe, +in any other! Keep the pretty picture, by all means, my precious," she +went on: "Sir Claude will be happy himself, I dare say, to give me one +with a kind inscription." The pathetic quaver of this brave boast was +not lost on Maisie, who threw herself so gratefully on the speaker's +neck that, when they had concluded their embrace, the public tenderness +of which, she felt, made up for the sacrifice she imposed, their +companion had had time to lay a quick hand on Sir Claude and, with a +glance at him or not, whisk him effectually out of sight. Released from +the child's arms Mrs. Wix looked about for the picture; then she fixed +Miss Overmore with a hard dumb stare; and finally, with her eyes on +the little girl again, achieved the grimmest of smiles. "Well, nothing +matters, Maisie, because there's another thing your mamma wrote about. +She has made sure of me." Even after her loyal hug Maisie felt a bit of +a sneak as she glanced at Miss Overmore for permission to understand +this. But Mrs. Wix left them in no doubt of what it meant. "She has +definitely engaged me--for her return and for yours. Then you'll see +for yourself." Maisie, on the spot, quite believed she should; but +the prospect was suddenly thrown into confusion by an extraordinary +demonstration from Miss Overmore. + +"Mrs. Wix," said that young lady, "has some undiscoverable reason for +regarding your mother's hold on you as strengthened by the fact that +she's about to marry. I wonder then--on that system--what our visitor +will say to your father's." + +Miss Overmore's words were directed to her pupil, but her face, lighted +with an irony that made it prettier even than ever before, was presented +to the dingy figure that had stiffened itself for departure. The +child's discipline had been bewildering--had ranged freely between the +prescription that she was to answer when spoken to and the experience of +lively penalties on obeying that prescription. This time, nevertheless, +she felt emboldened for risks; above all as something portentous seemed +to have leaped into her sense of the relations of things. She looked at +Miss Overmore much as she had a way of looking at persons who treated +her to "grown up" jokes. "Do you mean papa's hold on me--do you mean +HE'S about to marry?" + +"Papa's not about to marry--papa IS married, my dear. Papa was married +the day before yesterday at Brighton." Miss Overmore glittered more +gaily; meanwhile it came over Maisie, and quite dazzlingly, that her +"smart" governess was a bride. "He's my husband, if you please, and I'm +his little wife. So NOW we'll see who's your little mother!" She caught +her pupil to her bosom in a manner that was not to be outdone by the +emissary of her predecessor, and a few moments later, when things had +lurched back into their places, that poor lady, quite defeated of the +last word, had soundlessly taken flight. + + + + +VIII + + +After Mrs. Wix's retreat Miss Overmore appeared to recognise that she +was not exactly in a position to denounce Ida Farange's second union; +but she drew from a table-drawer the photograph of Sir Claude and, +standing there before Maisie, studied it at some length. + +"Isn't he beautiful?" the child ingenuously asked. + +Her companion hesitated. "No--he's horrid," she, to Maisie's surprise, +sharply returned. But she debated another minute, after which she handed +back the picture. It appeared to Maisie herself to exhibit a fresh +attraction, and she was troubled, having never before had occasion to +differ from her lovely friend. So she only could ask what, such being +the case, she should do with it: should she put it quite away--where +it wouldn't be there to offend? On this Miss Overmore again cast +about; after which she said unexpectedly: "Put it on the schoolroom +mantelpiece." + +Maisie felt a fear. "Won't papa dislike to see it there?" + +"Very much indeed; but that won't matter NOW." Miss Overmore spoke with +peculiar significance and to her pupil's mystification. + +"On account of the marriage?" Maisie risked. + +Miss Overmore laughed, and Maisie could see that in spite of the +irritation produced by Mrs. Wix she was in high spirits. "Which marriage +do you mean?" + +With the question put to her it suddenly struck the child she didn't +know, so that she felt she looked foolish. So she took refuge in saying: +"Shall YOU be different--" This was a full implication that the bride of +Sir Claude would be. + +"As your father's wedded wife? Utterly!" Miss Overmore replied. And the +difference began of course in her being addressed, even by Maisie, from +that day and by her particular request, as Mrs. Beale. It was there +indeed principally that it ended, for except that the child could +reflect that she should presently have four parents in all, and also +that at the end of three months the staircase, for a little girl hanging +over banisters, sent up the deepening rustle of more elaborate advances, +everything made the same impression as before. Mrs. Beale had very +pretty frocks, but Miss Overmore's had been quite as good, and if papa +was much fonder of his second wife than he had been of his first Maisie +had foreseen that fondness, had followed its development almost as +closely as the person more directly involved. There was little indeed in +the commerce of her companions that her precocious experience couldn't +explain, for if they struck her as after all rather deficient in that +air of the honeymoon of which she had so often heard--in much detail, +for instance, from Mrs. Wix--it was natural to judge the circumstance +in the light of papa's proved disposition to contest the empire of the +matrimonial tie. His honeymoon, when he came back from Brighton--not +on the morrow of Mrs. Wix's visit, and not, oddly, till several days +later--his honeymoon was perhaps perceptibly tinged with the dawn of a +later stage of wedlock. There were things dislike of which, as the child +knew it, wouldn't matter to Mrs. Beale now, and their number increased +so that such a trifle as his hostility to the photograph of Sir Claude +quite dropped out of view. This pleasing object found a conspicuous +place in the schoolroom, which in truth Mr. Farange seldom entered and +in which silent admiration formed, during the time I speak of, almost +the sole scholastic exercise of Mrs. Beale's pupil. + +Maisie was not long in seeing just what her stepmother had meant by the +difference she should show in her new character. If she was her father's +wife she was not her own governess, and if her presence had had formerly +to be made regular by the theory of a humble function she was now on a +footing that dispensed with all theories and was inconsistent with all +servitude. That was what she had meant by the drop of the objection to +a school; her small companion was no longer required at home as--it was +Mrs. Beale's own amusing word--a little duenna. The argument against +a successor to Miss Overmore remained: it was composed frankly of the +fact, of which Mrs. Beale granted the full absurdity, that she was too +awfully fond of her stepdaughter to bring herself to see her in vulgar +and mercenary hands. The note of this particular danger emboldened +Maisie to put in a word for Mrs. Wix, the modest measure of whose +avidity she had taken from the first; but Mrs. Beale disposed afresh and +effectually of a candidate who would be sure to act in some horrible +and insidious way for Ida's interest and who moreover was personally +loathsome and as ignorant as a fish. She made also no more of a secret +of the awkward fact that a good school would be hideously expensive, and +of the further circumstance, which seemed to put an end to everything, +that when it came to the point papa, in spite of his previous clamour, +was really most nasty about paying. "Would you believe," Mrs. Beale +confidentially asked of her little charge, "that he says I'm a worse +expense than ever, and that a daughter and a wife together are really +more than he can afford?" It was thus that the splendid school at +Brighton lost itself in the haze of larger questions, though the fear +that it would provoke Ida to leap into the breach subsided with her +prolonged, her quite shameless non-appearance. Her daughter and her +successor were therefore left to gaze in united but helpless blankness +at all Maisie was not learning. + +This quantity was so great as to fill the child's days with a sense of +intermission to which even French Lisette gave no accent--with finished +games and unanswered questions and dreaded tests; with the habit, above +all, in her watch for a change, of hanging over banisters when the +door-bell sounded. This was the great refuge of her impatience, but +what she heard at such times was a clatter of gaiety downstairs; the +impression of which, from her earliest childhood, had built up in her +the belief that the grown-up time was the time of real amusement and +above all of real intimacy. Even Lisette, even Mrs. Wix had never, she +felt, in spite of hugs and tears, been so intimate with her as so many +persons at present were with Mrs. Beale and as so many others of old had +been with Mrs. Farange. The note of hilarity brought people together +still more than the note of melancholy, which was the one exclusively +sounded, for instance, by poor Mrs. Wix. Maisie in these days preferred +none the less that domestic revels should be wafted to her from a +distance: she felt sadly unsupported for facing the inquisition of the +drawing-room. That was a reason the more for making the most of Susan +Ash, who in her quality of under-housemaid moved at a very different +level and who, none the less, was much depended upon out of doors. She +was a guide to peregrinations that had little in common with those +intensely definite airings that had left with the child a vivid memory +of the regulated mind of Moddle. There had been under Moddle's system +no dawdles at shop-windows and no nudges, in Oxford Street, of "I SAY, +look at 'ER!" There had been an inexorable treatment of crossings and a +serene exemption from the fear that--especially at corners, of which she +was yet weakly fond--haunted the housemaid, the fear of being, as she +ominously said, "spoken to." The dangers of the town equally with its +diversions added to Maisie's sense of being untutored and unclaimed. + +The situation however, had taken a twist when, on another of her +returns, at Susan's side, extremely tired, from the pursuit of exercise +qualified by much hovering, she encountered another emotion. She on this +occasion learnt at the door that her instant attendance was requested +in the drawing-room. Crossing the threshold in a cloud of shame she +discerned through the blur Mrs. Beale seated there with a gentleman who +immediately drew the pain from her predicament by rising before her as +the original of the photograph of Sir Claude. She felt the moment she +looked at him that he was by far the most shining presence that had ever +made her gape, and her pleasure in seeing him, in knowing that he took +hold of her and kissed her, as quickly throbbed into a strange shy pride +in him, a perception of his making up for her fallen state, for Susan's +public nudges, which quite bruised her, and for all the lessons that, in +the dead schoolroom, where at times she was almost afraid to stay alone, +she was bored with not having. It was as if he had told her on the spot +that he belonged to her, so that she could already show him off and see +the effect he produced. No, nothing else that was most beautiful ever +belonging to her could kindle that particular joy--not Mrs. Beale at +that very moment, not papa when he was gay, nor mamma when she was +dressed, nor Lisette when she was new. The joy almost overflowed +in tears when he laid his hand on her and drew her to him, telling +her, with a smile of which the promise was as bright as that of a +Christmas-tree, that he knew her ever so well by her mother, but had +come to see her now so that he might know her for himself. She could +see that his view of this kind of knowledge was to make her come away +with him, and, further, that it was just what he was there for and had +already been some time: arranging it with Mrs. Beale and getting on with +that lady in a manner evidently not at all affected by her having on the +arrival of his portrait thought of him so ill. They had grown almost +intimate--or had the air of it--over their discussion; and it was still +further conveyed to Maisie that Mrs. Beale had made no secret, and would +make yet less of one, of all that it cost to let her go. "You seem so +tremendously eager," she said to the child, "that I hope you're at least +clear about Sir Claude's relation to you. It doesn't appear to occur to +him to give you the necessary reassurance." + +Maisie, a trifle mystified, turned quickly to her new friend. "Why it's +of course that you're MARRIED to her, isn't it?" + +Her anxious emphasis started them off, as she had learned to call it; +this was the echo she infallibly and now quite resignedly produced; +moreover Sir Claude's laughter was an indistinguishable part of the +sweetness of his being there. "We've been married, my dear child, three +months, and my interest in you is a consequence, don't you know? of my +great affection for your mother. In coming here it's of course for your +mother I'm acting." + +"Oh I know," Maisie said with all the candour of her competence. "She +can't come herself--except just to the door." Then as she thought +afresh: "Can't she come even to the door now?" + +"There you are!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed to Sir Claude. She spoke as if his +dilemma were ludicrous. + +His kind face, in a hesitation, seemed to recognise it; but he answered +the child with a frank smile. "No--not very well." + +"Because she has married you?" + +He promptly accepted this reason. "Well, that has a good deal to do with +it." + +He was so delightful to talk to that Maisie pursued the subject. "But +papa--HE has married Miss Overmore." + +"Ah you'll see that he won't come for you at your mother's," that lady +interposed. + +"Yes, but that won't be for a long time," Maisie hastened to respond. + +"We won't talk about it now--you've months and months to put in first." +And Sir Claude drew her closer. + +"Oh that's what makes it so hard to give her up!" Mrs. Beale made this +point with her arms out to her stepdaughter. Maisie, quitting Sir +Claude, went over to them and, clasped in a still tenderer embrace, felt +entrancingly the extension of the field of happiness. "I'LL come for +you," said her stepmother, "if Sir Claude keeps you too long: we must +make him quite understand that! Don't talk to me about her ladyship!" +she went on to their visitor so familiarly that it was almost as if they +must have met before. "I know her ladyship as if I had made her. They're +a pretty pair of parents!" cried Mrs. Beale. + +Maisie had so often heard them called so that the remark diverted her +but an instant from the agreeable wonder of this grand new form of +allusion to her mother; and that, in its turn, presently left her free +to catch at the pleasant possibility, in connexion with herself, of +a relation much happier as between Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude than as +between mamma and papa. Still the next thing that happened was that her +interest in such a relation brought to her lips a fresh question. + +"Have you seen papa?" she asked of Sir Claude. + +It was the signal for their going off again, as her small stoicism had +perfectly taken for granted that it would be. All that Mrs. Beale had +nevertheless to add was the vague apparent sarcasm: "Oh papa!" + +"I'm assured he's not at home," Sir Claude replied to the child; "but if +he had been I should have hoped for the pleasure of seeing him." + +"Won't he mind your coming?" Maisie asked as with need of the knowledge. + +"Oh you bad little girl!" Mrs. Beale humorously protested. + +The child could see that at this Sir Claude, though still moved to +mirth, coloured a little; but he spoke to her very kindly. "That's just +what I came to see, you know--whether your father WOULD mind. But Mrs. +Beale appears strongly of the opinion that he won't." + +This lady promptly justified that view to her stepdaughter. "It will be +very interesting, my dear, you know, to find out what it is to-day that +your father does mind. I'm sure _I_ don't know!"--and she seemed to +repeat, though with perceptible resignation, her plaint of a moment +before. "Your father, darling, is a very odd person indeed." She turned +with this, smiling, to Sir Claude. "But perhaps it's hardly civil for me +to say that of his not objecting to have YOU in the house. If you knew +some of the people he does have!" + +Maisie knew them all, and none indeed were to be compared to Sir Claude. +He laughed back at Mrs. Beale; he looked at such moments quite as Mrs. +Wix, in the long stories she told her pupil, always described the lovers +of her distressed beauties--"the perfect gentleman and strikingly +handsome." He got up, to the child's regret, as if he were going. "Oh I +dare say we should be all right!" + +Mrs. Beale once more gathered in her little charge, holding her close +and looking thoughtfully over her head at their visitor. "It's so +charming--for a man of your type--to have wanted her so much!" + +"What do you know about my type?" Sir Claude laughed. "Whatever it may +be I dare say it deceives you. The truth about me is simply that I'm the +most unappreciated of--what do you call the fellows?--'family-men.' Yes, +I'm a family-man; upon my honour I am!" + +"Then why on earth," cried Mrs. Beale, "didn't you marry a +family-woman?" + +Sir Claude looked at her hard. "YOU know who one marries, I think. +Besides, there ARE no family-women--hanged if there are! None of them +want any children--hanged if they do!" + +His account of the matter was most interesting, and Maisie, as if it +were of bad omen for her, stared at the picture in some dismay. At the +same time she felt, through encircling arms, her protectress hesitate. +"You do come out with things! But you mean her ladyship doesn't want +any--really?" + +"Won't hear of them--simply. But she can't help the one she HAS got." +And with this Sir Claude's eyes rested on the little girl in a way that +seemed to her to mask her mother's attitude with the consciousness of +his own. "She must make the best of her, don't you see? If only for the +look of the thing, don't you know? one wants one's wife to take the +proper line about her child." + +"Oh I know what one wants!" Mrs. Beale cried with a competence that +evidently impressed her interlocutor. + +"Well, if you keep HIM up--and I dare say you've had worry enough--why +shouldn't I keep Ida? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the +gander--or the other way round, don't you know? I mean to see the thing +through." + +Mrs. Beale, for a minute, still with her eyes on him as he leaned upon +the chimneypiece, appeared to turn this over. "You're just a wonder of +kindness--that's what you are!" she said at last. "A lady's expected +to have natural feelings. But YOUR horrible sex--! Isn't it a horrible +sex, little love?" she demanded with her cheek upon her stepdaughter's. + +"Oh I like gentlemen best," Maisie lucidly replied. + +The words were taken up merrily. "That's a good one for YOU!" Sir Claude +exclaimed to Mrs. Beale. + +"No," said that lady: "I've only to remember the women she sees at her +mother's." + +"Ah they're very nice now," Sir Claude returned. + +"What do you call 'nice'?" + +"Well, they're all right." + +"That doesn't answer me," said Mrs. Beale; "but I dare say you do take +care of them. That makes you more of an angel to want this job too." And +she playfully whacked her smaller companion. + +"I'm not an angel--I'm an old grandmother," Sir Claude declared. "I like +babies--I always did. If we go to smash I shall look for a place as +responsible nurse." + +Maisie, in her charmed mood, drank in an imputation on her years which +at another moment might have been bitter; but the charm was sensibly +interrupted by Mrs. Beale's screwing her round and gazing fondly into +her eyes, "You're willing to leave me, you wretch?" + +The little girl deliberated; even this consecrated tie had become as a +cord she must suddenly snap. But she snapped it very gently. "Isn't it +my turn for mamma?" + +"You're a horrible little hypocrite! The less, I think, now said about +'turns' the better," Mrs. Beale made answer. "_I_ know whose turn it is. +You've not such a passion for your mother!" + +"I say, I say: DO look out!" Sir Claude quite amiably protested. + +"There's nothing she hasn't heard. But it doesn't matter--it hasn't +spoiled her. If you knew what it costs me to part with you!" she pursued +to Maisie. + +Sir Claude watched her as she charmingly clung to the child. "I'm so +glad you really care for her. That's so much to the good." + +Mrs. Beale slowly got up, still with her hands on Maisie, but emitting a +soft exhalation. "Well, if you're glad, that may help us; for I assure +you that I shall never give up any rights in her that I may consider +I've acquired by my own sacrifices. I shall hold very fast to my +interest in her. What seems to have happened is that she has brought you +and me together." + +"She has brought you and me together," said Sir Claude. + +His cheerful echo prolonged the happy truth, and Maisie broke out almost +with enthusiasm: "I've brought you and her together!" + +Her companions of course laughed anew and Mrs. Beale gave her an +affectionate shake. "You little monster--take care what you do! But +that's what she does do," she continued to Sir Claude. "She did it to me +and Beale." + +"Well then," he said to Maisie, "you must try the trick at OUR place." +He held out his hand to her again. "Will you come now?" + +"Now--just as I am?" She turned with an immense appeal to her +stepmother, taking a leap over the mountain of "mending," the abyss of +packing that had loomed and yawned before her. "Oh MAY I?" + +Mrs. Beale addressed her assent to Sir Claude. "As well so as any other +way. I'll send on her things to-morrow." Then she gave a tug to the +child's coat, glancing at her up and down with some ruefulness. + +"She's not turned out as I should like--her mother will pull her to +pieces. But what's one to do--with nothing to do it on? And she's better +than when she came--you can tell her mother that. I'm sorry to have to +say it to you--but the poor child was a sight." + +"Oh I'll turn her out myself!" the visitor cordially said. + +"I shall like to see how!"--Mrs. Beale appeared much amused. "You must +bring her to show me--we can manage that. Good-bye, little fright!" And +her last word to Sir Claude was that she would keep him up to the mark. + + + + +IX + + +The idea of what she was to make up and the prodigious total it came +to were kept well before Maisie at her mother's. These things were the +constant occupation of Mrs. Wix, who arrived there by the back stairs, +but in tears of joy, the day after her own arrival. The process of +making up, as to which the good lady had an immense deal to say, took, +through its successive phases, so long that it heralded a term at least +equal to the child's last stretch with her father. This, however, was +a fuller and richer time: it bounded along to the tune of Mrs. Wix's +constant insistence on the energy they must both put forth. There was +a fine intensity in the way the child agreed with her that under Mrs. +Beale and Susan Ash she had learned nothing whatever; the wildness of +the rescued castaway was one of the forces that would henceforth make +for a career of conquest. The year therefore rounded itself as a +receptacle of retarded knowledge--a cup brimming over with the sense +that now at least she was learning. Mrs. Wix fed this sense from the +stores of her conversation and with the immense bustle of her reminder +that they must cull the fleeting hour. They were surrounded with +subjects they must take at a rush and perpetually getting into the +attitude of triumphant attack. They had certainly no idle hours, and the +child went to bed each night as tired as from a long day's play. This +had begun from the moment of their reunion, begun with all Mrs. Wix had +to tell her young friend of the reasons of her ladyship's extraordinary +behaviour at the very first. + +It took the form of her ladyship's refusal for three days to see her +little girl--three days during which Sir Claude made hasty merry dashes +into the schoolroom to smooth down the odd situation, to say "She'll +come round, you know; I assure you she'll come round," and a little +even to compensate Maisie for the indignity he had caused her to suffer. +There had never in the child's life been, in all ways, such a delightful +amount of reparation. It came out by his sociable admission that her +ladyship had not known of his visit to her late husband's house and +of his having made that person's daughter a pretext for striking up +an acquaintance with the dreadful creature installed there. Heaven +knew she wanted her child back and had made every plan of her own for +removing her; what she couldn't for the present at least forgive any +one concerned was such an officious underhand way of bringing about the +transfer. Maisie carried more of the weight of this resentment than even +Mrs. Wix's confidential ingenuity could lighten for her, especially as +Sir Claude himself was not at all ingenious, though indeed on the other +hand he was not at all crushed. He was amused and intermittent and at +moments most startling; he impressed on his young companion, with a +frankness that agitated her much more than he seemed to guess, that he +depended on her not letting her mother, when she should see her, get +anything out of her about anything Mrs. Beale might have said to him. He +came in and out; he professed, in joke, to take tremendous precautions; +he showed a positive disposition to romp. He chaffed Mrs. Wix till she +was purple with the pleasure of it, and reminded Maisie of the reticence +he expected of her till she set her teeth like an Indian captive. Her +lessons these first days and indeed for long after seemed to be all +about Sir Claude, and yet she never really mentioned to Mrs. Wix that +she was prepared, under his inspiring injunction, to be vainly tortured. +This lady, however, had formulated the position of things with an +acuteness that showed how little she needed to be coached. Her +explanation of everything that seemed not quite pleasant--and if her own +footing was perilous it met that danger as well--that her ladyship was +passionately in love. Maisie accepted this hint with infinite awe and +pressed upon it much when she was at last summoned into the presence of +her mother. + +There she encountered matters amid which it seemed really to help to +give her a clue--an almost terrifying strangeness, full, none the less, +after a little, of reverberations of Ida's old fierce and demonstrative +recoveries of possession. They had been some time in the house together, +and this demonstration came late. Preoccupied, however, as Maisie was +with the idea of the sentiment Sir Claude had inspired, and familiar, +in addition, by Mrs. Wix's anecdotes, with the ravages that in general +such a sentiment could produce, she was able to make allowances for her +ladyship's remarkable appearance, her violent splendour, the wonderful +colour of her lips and even the hard stare, the stare of some gorgeous +idol described in a story-book, that had come into her eyes in +consequence of a curious thickening of their already rich circumference. +Her professions and explanations were mixed with eager challenges and +sudden drops, in the midst of which Maisie recognised as a memory +of other years the rattle of her trinkets and the scratch of her +endearments, the odour of her clothes and the jumps of her conversation. +She had all her old clever way--Mrs. Wix said it was "aristocratic"--of +changing the subject as she might have slammed the door in your face. +The principal thing that was different was the tint of her golden hair, +which had changed to a coppery red and, with the head it profusely +covered, struck the child as now lifted still further aloft. This +picturesque parent showed literally a grander stature and a nobler +presence, things which, with some others that might have been +bewildering, were handsomely accounted for by the romantic state of her +affections. It was her affections, Maisie could easily see, that led Ida +to break out into questions as to what had passed at the other house +between that horrible woman and Sir Claude; but it was also just here +that the little girl was able to recall the effect with which in earlier +days she had practised the pacific art of stupidity. This art again came +to her aid: her mother, in getting rid of her after an interview in +which she had achieved a hollowness beyond her years, allowed her fully +to understand she had not grown a bit more amusing. + +She could bear that; she could bear anything that helped her to feel she +had done something for Sir Claude. If she hadn't told Mrs. Wix how Mrs. +Beale seemed to like him she certainly couldn't tell her ladyship. In +the way the past revived for her there was a queer confusion. It was +because mamma hated papa that she used to want to know bad things of +him; but if at present she wanted to know the same of Sir Claude it was +quite from the opposite motive. She was awestruck at the manner in which +a lady might be affected through the passion mentioned by Mrs. Wix; she +held her breath with the sense of picking her steps among the tremendous +things of life. What she did, however, now, after the interview with +her mother, impart to Mrs. Wix was that, in spite of her having had her +"good" effect, as she called it--the effect she studied, the effect of +harmless vacancy--her ladyship's last words had been that her ladyship's +duty by her would be thoroughly done. Over this announcement governess +and pupil looked at each other in silent profundity; but as the weeks +went by it had no consequences that interfered gravely with the breezy +gallop of making up. Her ladyship's duty took at times the form of not +seeing her child for days together, and Maisie led her life in great +prosperity between Mrs. Wix and kind Sir Claude. Mrs. Wix had a new +dress and, as she was the first to proclaim, a better position; so it +all struck Maisie as a crowded brilliant life, with, for the time, Mrs. +Beale and Susan Ash simply "left out" like children not invited to a +Christmas party. Mrs. Wix had a secret terror which, like most of her +secret feelings, she discussed with her little companion, in great +solemnity, by the hour: the possibility of her ladyship's coming down +on them, in her sudden highbred way, with a school. But she had also +a balm to this fear in a conviction of the strength of Sir Claude's +grasp of the situation. He was too pleased--didn't he constantly say +as much?--with the good impression made, in a wide circle, by Ida's +sacrifices; and he came into the schoolroom repeatedly to let them know +how beautifully he felt everything had gone off and everything would go +on. + +He disappeared at times for days, when his patient friends understood +that her ladyship would naturally absorb him; but he always came back +with the drollest stories of where he had been, a wonderful picture of +society, and even with pretty presents that showed how in absence he +thought of his home. Besides giving Mrs. Wix by his conversation a sense +that they almost themselves "went out," he gave her a five-pound note +and the history of France and an umbrella with a malachite knob, and to +Maisie both chocolate-creams and story-books, besides a lovely greatcoat +(which he took her out all alone to buy) and ever so many games +in boxes, with printed directions, and a bright red frame for the +protection of his famous photograph. The games were, as he said, to +while away the evening hour; and the evening hour indeed often passed +in futile attempts on Mrs. Wix's part to master what "it said" on the +papers. When he asked the pair how they liked the games they always +replied "Oh immensely!" but they had earnest discussions as to whether +they hadn't better appeal to him frankly for aid to understand them. +This was a course their delicacy shrank from; they couldn't have told +exactly why, but it was a part of their tenderness for him not to let +him think they had trouble. What dazzled most was his kindness to Mrs. +Wix, not only the five-pound note and the "not forgetting" her, but +the perfect consideration, as she called it with an air to which her +sounding of the words gave the only grandeur Maisie was to have seen her +wear save on a certain occasion hereafter to be described, an occasion +when the poor lady was grander than all of them put together. He shook +hands with her, he recognised her, as she said, and above all, more than +once, he took her, with his stepdaughter, to the pantomime and, in the +crowd, coming out, publicly gave her his arm. When he met them in sunny +Piccadilly he made merry and turned and walked with them, heroically +suppressing his consciousness of the stamp of his company, a heroism +that--needless for Mrs. Wix to sound THOSE words--her ladyship, though +a blood-relation, was little enough the woman to be capable of. Even to +the hard heart of childhood there was something tragic in such elation +at such humanities: it brought home to Maisie the way her humble +companion had sidled and ducked through life. But it settled the +question of the degree to which Sir Claude was a gentleman: he was +more of one than anybody else in the world--"I don't care," Mrs. Wix +repeatedly remarked, "whom you may meet in grand society, nor even to +whom you may be contracted in marriage." There were questions that +Maisie never asked; so her governess was spared the embarrassment of +telling her if he were more of a gentleman than papa. This was not +moreover from the want of opportunity, for there were no moments between +them at which the topic could be irrelevant, no subject they were going +into, not even the principal dates or the auxiliary verbs, in which it +was further off than the turn of the page. The answer on the winter +nights to the puzzle of cards and counters and little bewildering +pamphlets was just to draw up to the fire and talk about him; and if the +truth must be told this edifying interchange constituted for the time +the little girl's chief education. + +It must also be admitted that he took them far, further perhaps than +was always warranted by the old-fashioned conscience, the dingy +decencies, of Maisie's simple instructress. There were hours when Mrs. +Wix sighingly testified to the scruples she surmounted, seemed to ask +what other line one COULD take with a young person whose experience +had been, as it were, so peculiar. "It isn't as if you didn't already +know everything, is it, love?" and "I can't make you any worse than +you ARE, can I, darling?"--these were the terms in which the good lady +justified to herself and her pupil her pleasant conversational ease. +What the pupil already knew was indeed rather taken for granted than +expressed, but it performed the useful function of transcending all +textbooks and supplanting all studies. If the child couldn't be worse +it was a comfort even to herself that she was bad--a comfort offering +a broad firm support to the fundamental fact of the present crisis: +the fact that mamma was fearfully jealous. This was another side +of the circumstance of mamma's passion, and the deep couple in the +schoolroom were not long in working round to it. It brought them face +to face with the idea of the inconvenience suffered by any lady who +marries a gentleman producing on other ladies the charming effect of +Sir Claude. That such ladies wouldn't be able to help falling in love +with him was a reflexion naturally irritating to his wife. One day +when some accident, some crash of a banged door or some scurry of +a scared maid, had rendered this truth particularly vivid, Maisie, +receptive and profound, suddenly said to her companion: "And you, my +dear, are you in love with him too?" Even her profundity had left +a margin for a laugh; so she was a trifle startled by the solemn +promptitude with which Mrs. Wix plumped out: "Over head and ears. +I've NEVER since you ask me, been so far gone." + +This boldness had none the less no effect of deterrence for her when, a +few days later--it was because several had elapsed without a visit from +Sir Claude--her governess turned the tables. "May I ask you, miss, if +YOU are?" Mrs. Wix brought it out, she could see, with hesitation, but +clearly intending a joke. "Why RATHER!" the child made answer, as if in +surprise at not having long ago seemed sufficiently to commit herself; +on which her friend gave a sigh of apparent satisfaction. It might in +fact have expressed positive relief. Everything was as it should be. + +Yet it was not with them, they were very sure, that her ladyship was +furious, nor because she had forbidden it that there befell at last a +period--six months brought it round--when for days together he scarcely +came near them. He was "off," and Ida was "off," and they were sometimes +off together and sometimes apart; there were seasons when the simple +students had the house to themselves, when the very servants seemed +also to be "off" and dinner became a reckless forage in pantries and +sideboards. Mrs. Wix reminded her disciple on such occasions--hungry +moments often, when all the support of the reminder was required--that +the "real life" of their companions, the brilliant society in which it +was inevitable they should move and the complicated pleasures in which +it was almost presumptuous of the mind to follow them, must offer +features literally not to be imagined without being seen. At one +of these times Maisie found her opening it out that, though the +difficulties were many, it was Mrs. Beale who had now become the chief. +Then somehow it was brought fully to the child's knowledge that her +stepmother had been making attempts to see her, that her mother had +deeply resented it, that her stepfather had backed her stepmother up, +that the latter had pretended to be acting as the representative of her +father, and that her mother took the whole thing, in plain terms, very +hard. The situation was, as Mrs. Wix declared, an extraordinary muddle +to be sure. Her account of it brought back to Maisie the happy vision of +the way Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale had made acquaintance--an incident to +which, with her stepfather, though she had had little to say about it +to Mrs. Wix, she had during the first weeks of her stay at her mother's +found more than one opportunity to revert. As to what had taken place +the day Sir Claude came for her, she had been vaguely grateful to Mrs. +Wix for not attempting, as her mother had attempted, to put her through. +That was what Sir Claude had called the process when he warned her of +it, and again afterwards when he told her she was an awfully good "chap" +for having foiled it. Then it was that, well aware Mrs. Beale hadn't +in the least really given her up, she had asked him if he remained +in communication with her and if for the time everything must really +be held to be at an end between her stepmother and herself. This +conversation had occurred in consequence of his one day popping into the +schoolroom and finding Maisie alone. + + + + +X + + +He was smoking a cigarette and he stood before the fire and looked +at the meagre appointments of the room in a way that made her rather +ashamed of them. Then before (on the subject of Mrs. Beale) he let her +"draw" him--that was another of his words; it was astonishing how many +she gathered in--he remarked that really mamma kept them rather low on +the question of decorations. Mrs. Wix had put up a Japanese fan and two +rather grim texts; she had wished they were gayer, but they were all she +happened to have. Without Sir Claude's photograph, however, the place +would have been, as he said, as dull as a cold dinner. He had said +as well that there were all sorts of things they ought to have; yet +governess and pupil, it had to be admitted, were still divided between +discussing the places where any sort of thing would look best if any +sort of thing should ever come and acknowledging that mutability in the +child's career which was naturally unfavourable to accumulation. She +stayed long enough only to miss things, not half long enough to deserve +them. The way Sir Claude looked about the schoolroom had made her feel +with humility as if it were not very different from the shabby attic in +which she had visited Susan Ash. Then he had said in abrupt reference to +Mrs. Beale: "Do you think she really cares for you?" + +"Oh awfully!" Maisie had replied. + +"But, I mean, does she love you for yourself, as they call it, don't you +know? Is she as fond of you, now, as Mrs. Wix?" + +The child turned it over. "Oh I'm not every bit Mrs. Beale has!" + +Sir Claude seemed much amused at this. "No; you're not every bit she +has!" + +He laughed for some moments, but that was an old story to Maisie, who +was not too much disconcerted to go on: "But she'll never give me up." + +"Well, I won't either, old boy: so that's not so wonderful, and she's +not the only one. But if she's so fond of you, why doesn't she write to +you?" + +"Oh on account of mamma." This was rudimentary, and she was almost +surprised at the simplicity of Sir Claude's question. + +"I see--that's quite right," he answered. "She might get at you--there +are all sorts of ways. But of course there's Mrs. Wix." + +"There's Mrs. Wix," Maisie lucidly concurred. "Mrs. Wix can't abide +her." + +Sir Claude seemed interested. "Oh she can't abide her? Then what does +she say about her?" + +"Nothing at all--because she knows I shouldn't like it. Isn't it sweet +of her?" the child asked. + +"Certainly; rather nice. Mrs. Beale wouldn't hold her tongue for any +such thing as that, would she?" + +Maisie remembered how little she had done so; but she desired to protect +Mrs. Beale too. The only protection she could think of, however, was the +plea: "Oh at papa's, you know, they don't mind!" + +At this Sir Claude only smiled. "No, I dare say not. But here we mind, +don't we?--we take care what we say. I don't suppose it's a matter on +which I ought to prejudice you," he went on; "but I think we must on the +whole be rather nicer here than at your father's. However, I don't press +that; for it's the sort of question on which it's awfully awkward for +you to speak. Don't worry, at any rate: I assure you I'll back you up." +Then after a moment and while he smoked he reverted to Mrs. Beale and +the child's first enquiry. "I'm afraid we can't do much for her just +now. I haven't seen her since that day--upon my word I haven't seen +her." The next instant, with a laugh the least bit foolish, the young +man slightly coloured: he must have felt this profession of innocence to +be excessive as addressed to Maisie. It was inevitable to say to her, +however, that of course her mother loathed the lady of the other house. +He couldn't go there again with his wife's consent, and he wasn't the +man--he begged her to believe, falling once more, in spite of himself, +into the scruple of showing the child he didn't trip--to go there +without it. He was liable in talking with her to take the tone of her +being also a man of the world. He had gone to Mrs. Beale's to fetch +away Maisie, but that was altogether different. Now that she was in +her mother's house what pretext had he to give her mother for paying +calls on her father's wife? And of course Mrs. Beale couldn't come to +Ida's--Ida would tear her limb from limb. Maisie, with this talk of +pretexts, remembered how much Mrs. Beale had made of her being a good +one, and how, for such a function, it was her fate to be either much +depended on or much missed. Sir Claude moreover recognised on this +occasion that perhaps things would take a turn later on; and he wound +up by saying: "I'm sure she does sincerely care for you--how can she +possibly help it? She's very young and very pretty and very clever: I +think she's charming. But we must walk very straight. If you'll help me, +you know, I'll help YOU," he concluded in the pleasant fraternising, +equalising, not a bit patronising way which made the child ready to go +through anything for him and the beauty of which, as she dimly felt, was +that it was so much less a deceitful descent to her years than a real +indifference to them. + +It gave her moments of secret rapture--moments of believing she might +help him indeed. The only mystification in this was the imposing time of +life that her elders spoke of as youth. For Sir Claude then Mrs. Beale +was "young," just as for Mrs. Wix Sir Claude was: that was one of the +merits for which Mrs. Wix most commended him. What therefore was Maisie +herself, and, in another relation to the matter, what therefore was +mamma? It took her some time to puzzle out with the aid of an experiment +or two that it wouldn't do to talk about mamma's youth. She even went +so far one day, in the presence of that lady's thick colour and marked +lines, as to wonder if it would occur to any one but herself to do so. +Yet if she wasn't young then she was old; and this threw an odd light on +her having a husband of a different generation. Mr. Farange was still +older--that Maisie perfectly knew; and it brought her in due course +to the perception of how much more, since Mrs. Beale was younger than +Sir Claude, papa must be older than Mrs. Beale. Such discoveries were +disconcerting and even a trifle confounding: these persons, it appeared, +were not of the age they ought to be. This was somehow particularly +the case with mamma, and the fact made her reflect with some relief on +her not having gone with Mrs. Wix into the question of Sir Claude's +attachment to his wife. She was conscious that in confining their +attention to the state of her ladyship's own affections they had been +controlled--Mrs. Wix perhaps in especial--by delicacy and even by +embarrassment. The end of her colloquy with her stepfather in the +schoolroom was her saying: "Then if we're not to see Mrs. Beale at all +it isn't what she seemed to think when you came for me." + +He looked rather blank. "What did she seem to think?" + +"Why that I've brought you together." + +"She thought that?" Sir Claude asked. + +Maisie was surprised at his already forgetting it. "Just as I had +brought papa and her. Don't you remember she said so?" + +It came back to Sir Claude in a peal of laughter. "Oh yes--she said so!" + +"And YOU said so," Maisie lucidly pursued. + +He recovered, with increasing mirth, the whole occasion. "And YOU said +so!" he retorted as if they were playing a game. + +"Then were we all mistaken?" + +He considered a little. "No, on the whole not. I dare say it's just what +you HAVE done. We ARE together--it's really most odd. She's thinking of +us--of you and me--though we don't meet. And I've no doubt you'll find +it will be all right when you go back to her." + +"Am I going back to her?" Maisie brought out with a little gasp which +was like a sudden clutch of the happy present. + +It appeared to make Sir Claude grave a moment; it might have made him +feel the weight of the pledge his action had given. "Oh some day, I +suppose! We've plenty of time." + +"I've such a tremendous lot to make up," Maisie said with a sense of +great boldness. + +"Certainly, and you must make up every hour of it. Oh I'll SEE that you +do!" + +This was encouraging; and to show cheerfully that she was reassured she +replied: "That's what Mrs. Wix sees too." + +"Oh yes," said Sir Claude; "Mrs. Wix and I are shoulder to shoulder." + +Maisie took in a little this strong image; after which she exclaimed: +"Then I've done it also to you and her--I've brought YOU together!" + +"Blest if you haven't!" Sir Claude laughed. "And more, upon my word, +than any of the lot. Oh you've done for US! Now if you could--as I +suggested, you know, that day--only manage me and your mother!" + +The child wondered. "Bring you and HER together?" + +"You see we're not together--not a bit. But I oughtn't to tell you such +things; all the more that you won't really do it--not you. No, old +chap," the young man continued; "there you'll break down. But it won't +matter--we'll rub along. The great thing is that you and I are all +right." + +"WE'RE all right!" Maisie echoed devoutly. But the next moment, in the +light of what he had just said, she asked: "How shall I ever leave you?" +It was as if she must somehow take care of him. + +His smile did justice to her anxiety. "Oh well, you needn't! It won't +come to that." + +"Do you mean that when I do go you'll go with me?" + +Sir Claude cast about. "Not exactly 'with' you perhaps; but I shall +never be far off." + +"But how do you know where mamma may take you?" + +He laughed again. "I don't, I confess!" Then he had an idea, though +something too jocose. "That will be for you to see--that she shan't take +me too far." + +"How can I help it?" Maisie enquired in surprise. "Mamma doesn't care +for me," she said very simply. "Not really." Child as she was, her +little long history was in the words; and it was as impossible to +contradict her as if she had been venerable. + +Sir Claude's silence was an admission of this, and still more the tone +in which he presently replied: "That won't prevent her from--some time +or other--leaving me with you." + +"Then we'll live together?" she eagerly demanded. + +"I'm afraid," said Sir Claude, smiling, "that that will be Mrs. Beale's +real chance." + +Her eagerness just slightly dropped at this; she remembered Mrs. Wix's +pronouncement that it was all an extraordinary muddle. "To take me +again? Well, can't you come to see me there?" + +"Oh I dare say!" + +Though there were parts of childhood Maisie had lost she had all +childhood's preference for the particular promise. "Then you WILL +come--you'll come often, won't you?" she insisted; while at the moment +she spoke the door opened for the return of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude +hereupon, instead of replying, gave her a look which left her silent +and embarrassed. + +When he again found privacy convenient, however--which happened to be +long in coming--he took up their conversation very much where it had +dropped. "You see, my dear, if I shall be able to go to you at your +father's it yet isn't at all the same thing for Mrs. Beale to come to +you here." Maisie gave a thoughtful assent to this proposition, though +conscious she could scarcely herself say just where the difference would +lie. She felt how much her stepfather saved her, as he said with his +habitual amusement, the trouble of that. "I shall probably be able to go +to Mrs. Beale's without your mother's knowing it." + +Maisie stared with a certain thrill at the dramatic element in this. +"And she couldn't come here without mamma's--" She was unable to +articulate the word for what mamma would do. + +"My dear child, Mrs. Wix would tell of it." + +"But I thought," Maisie objected, "that Mrs. Wix and you--" + +"Are such brothers-in-arms?"--Sir Claude caught her up. "Oh yes, about +everything but Mrs. Beale. And if you should suggest," he went on, "that +we might somehow or other hide her peeping in from Mrs. Wix--" + +"Oh, I don't suggest THAT!" Maisie in turn cut him short. + +Sir Claude looked as if he could indeed quite see why. "No; it would +really be impossible." There came to her from this glance at what they +might hide the first small glimpse of something in him that she wouldn't +have expected. There had been times when she had had to make the best +of the impression that she was herself deceitful; yet she had never +concealed anything bigger than a thought. Of course she now concealed +this thought of how strange it would be to see HIM hide; and while she +was so actively engaged he continued: "Besides, you know, I'm not afraid +of your father." + +"And you are of my mother?" + +"Rather, old man!" Sir Claude returned. + + + + +XI + + +It must not be supposed that her ladyship's intermissions were not +qualified by demonstrations of another order--triumphal entries and +breathless pauses during which she seemed to take of everything in the +room, from the state of the ceiling to that of her daughter's boot-toes, +a survey that was rich in intentions. Sometimes she sat down and +sometimes she surged about, but her attitude wore equally in either +case the grand air of the practical. She found so much to deplore that +she left a great deal to expect, and bristled so with calculation that +she seemed to scatter remedies and pledges. Her visits were as good as +an outfit; her manner, as Mrs. Wix once said, as good as a pair of +curtains; but she was a person addicted to extremes--sometimes barely +speaking to her child and sometimes pressing this tender shoot to a +bosom cut, as Mrs. Wix had also observed, remarkably low. She was always +in a fearful hurry, and the lower the bosom was cut the more it was to +be gathered she was wanted elsewhere. She usually broke in alone, but +sometimes Sir Claude was with her, and during all the earlier period +there was nothing on which these appearances had had so delightful a +bearing as on the way her ladyship was, as Mrs. Wix expressed it, under +the spell. "But ISN'T she under it!" Maisie used in thoughtful but +familiar reference to exclaim after Sir Claude had swept mamma away in +peals of natural laughter. Not even in the old days of the convulsed +ladies had she heard mamma laugh so freely as in these moments of +conjugal surrender, to the gaiety of which even a little girl could see +she had at last a right--a little girl whose thoughtfulness was now all +happy selfish meditation on good omens and future fun. + +Unaccompanied, in subsequent hours, and with an effect of changing +to meet a change, Ida took a tone superficially disconcerting and +abrupt--the tone of having, at an immense cost, made over everything to +Sir Claude and wishing others to know that if everything wasn't right it +was because Sir Claude was so dreadfully vague. "He has made from the +first such a row about you," she said on one occasion to Maisie, "that +I've told him to do for you himself and try how he likes it--see? +I've washed my hands of you; I've made you over to him; and if you're +discontented it's on him, please, you'll come down. So don't haul poor +ME up--I assure you I've worries enough." One of these, visibly, was +that the spell rejoiced in by the schoolroom fire was already in danger +of breaking; another was that she was finally forced to make no secret +of her husband's unfitness for real responsibilities. The day came +indeed when her breathless auditors learnt from her in bewilderment that +what ailed him was that he was, alas, simply not serious. Maisie wept +on Mrs. Wix's bosom after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly; +considering moreover that her governess but half-patched it up in coming +out at various moments the next few days with the opinion that it was +proper to his "station" to be careless and free. That had been proper to +every one's station that she had yet encountered save poor Mrs. Wix's +own, and the particular merit of Sir Claude had seemed precisely that he +was different from every one. She talked with him, however, as time went +on, very freely about her mother; being with him, in this relation, +wholly without the fear that had kept her silent before her father--the +fear of bearing tales and making bad things worse. He appeared to accept +the idea that he had taken her over and made her, as he said, his +particular lark; he quite agreed also that he was an awful fraud and an +idle beast and a sorry dunce. And he never said a word to her against +her mother--he only remained dumb and discouraged in the face of her +ladyship's own overtopping earnestness. There were occasions when he +even spoke as if he had wrenched his little charge from the arms of a +parent who had fought for her tooth and nail. + +This was the very moral of a scene that flashed into vividness one day +when the four happened to meet without company in the drawing-room and +Maisie found herself clutched to her mother's breast and passionately +sobbed and shrieked over, made the subject of a demonstration evidently +sequent to some sharp passage just enacted. The connexion required that +while she almost cradled the child in her arms Ida should speak of her +as hideously, as fatally estranged, and should rail at Sir Claude as the +cruel author of the outrage. "He has taken you FROM me," she cried; "he +has set you AGAINST me, and you've been won away and your horrid little +mind has been poisoned! You've gone over to him, you've given yourself +up to side against me and hate me. You never open your mouth to me--you +know you don't; and you chatter to him like a dozen magpies. Don't lie +about it--I hear you all over the place. You hang about him in a way +that's barely decent--he can do what he likes with you. Well then, let +him, to his heart's content: he has been in such a hurry to take you +that we'll see if it suits him to keep you. I'm very good to break my +heart about it when you've no more feeling for me than a clammy little +fish!" She suddenly thrust the child away and, as a disgusted admission +of failure, sent her flying across the room into the arms of Mrs. Wix, +whom at this moment and even in the whirl of her transit Maisie saw, +very red, exchange a quick queer look with Sir Claude. + +The impression of the look remained with her, confronting her with such +a critical little view of her mother's explosion that she felt the less +ashamed of herself for incurring the reproach with which she had been +cast off. Her father had once called her a heartless little beast, +and now, though decidedly scared, she was as stiff and cold as if the +description had been just. She was not even frightened enough to cry, +which would have been a tribute to her mother's wrongs: she was only, +more than anything else, curious about the opinion mutely expressed by +their companions. Taking the earliest opportunity to question Mrs. Wix +on this subject she elicited the remarkable reply: "Well, my dear, it's +her ladyship's game, and we must just hold on like grim death." + +Maisie could interpret at her leisure these ominous words. Her +reflexions indeed at this moment thickened apace, and one of them made +her sure that her governess had conversations, private, earnest and not +infrequent, with her denounced stepfather. She perceived in the light +of a second episode that something beyond her knowledge had taken place +in the house. The things beyond her knowledge--numerous enough in +truth--had not hitherto, she believed, been the things that had been +nearest to her: she had even had in the past a small smug conviction +that in the domestic labyrinth she always kept the clue. This time too, +however, she at last found out--with the discreet aid, it had to be +confessed, of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude's own assistance was abruptly taken +from her, for his comment on her ladyship's game was to start on the +spot, quite alone, for Paris, evidently because he wished to show +a spirit when accused of bad behaviour. He might be fond of his +stepdaughter, Maisie felt, without wishing her to be after all thrust on +him in such a way; his absence therefore, it was clear, was a protest +against the thrusting. It was while this absence lasted that our young +lady finally discovered what had happened in the house to be that her +mother was no longer in love. + +The limit of a passion for Sir Claude had certainly been reached, she +judged, some time before the day on which her ladyship burst suddenly +into the schoolroom to introduce Mr. Perriam, who, as she announced +from the doorway to Maisie, wouldn't believe his ears that one had a +great hoyden of a daughter. Mr. Perriam was short and massive--Mrs. +Wix remarked afterwards that he was "too fat for the pace"; and it +would have been difficult to say of him whether his head were more +bald or his black moustache more bushy. He seemed also to have +moustaches over his eyes, which, however, by no means prevented these +polished little globes from rolling round the room as if they had been +billiard-balls impelled by Ida's celebrated stroke. Mr. Perriam wore +on the hand that pulled his moustache a diamond of dazzling lustre, in +consequence of which and of his general weight and mystery our young +lady observed on his departure that if he had only had a turban he +would have been quite her idea of a heathen Turk. + +"He's quite my idea," Mrs. Wix replied, "of a heathen Jew." + +"Well, I mean," said Maisie, "of a person who comes from the East." + +"That's where he MUST come from," her governess opined--"he comes from +the City." In a moment she added as if she knew all about him. "He's one +of those people who have lately broken out. He'll be immensely rich." + +"On the death of his papa?" the child interestedly enquired. + +"Dear no--nothing hereditary. I mean he has made a mass of money." + +"How much, do you think?" Maisie demanded. + +Mrs. Wix reflected and sketched it. "Oh many millions." + +"A hundred?" + +Mrs. Wix was not sure of the number, but there were enough of them to +have seemed to warm up for the time the penury of the schoolroom--to +linger there as an afterglow of the hot heavy light Mr. Perriam sensibly +shed. This was also, no doubt, on his part, an effect of that enjoyment +of life with which, among her elders, Maisie had been in contact from +her earliest years--the sign of happy maturity, the old familiar note of +overflowing cheer. "How d'ye do, ma'am? How d'ye do, little miss?"--he +laughed and nodded at the gaping figures. "She has brought me up for a +peep--it's true I wouldn't take you on trust. She's always talking about +you, but she'd never produce you; so to-day I challenged her on the +spot. Well, you ain't a myth, my dear--I back down on that," the visitor +went on to Maisie; "nor you either, miss, though you might be, to be +sure!" + +"I bored him with you, darling--I bore every one," Ida said, "and to +prove that you ARE a sweet thing, as well as a fearfully old one, I told +him he could judge for himself. So now he sees that you're a dreadful +bouncing business and that your poor old Mummy's at least sixty!"--and +her ladyship smiled at Mr. Perriam with the charm that her daughter had +heard imputed to her at papa's by the merry gentlemen who had so often +wished to get from him what they called a "rise." Her manner at that +instant gave the child a glimpse more vivid than any yet enjoyed of the +attraction that papa, in remarkable language, always denied she could +put forth. + +Mr. Perriam, however, clearly recognised it in the humour with which he +met her. "I never said you ain't wonderful--did I ever say it, hey?" and +he appealed with pleasant confidence to the testimony of the schoolroom, +about which itself also he evidently felt something might be expected of +him. "So this is their little place, hey? Charming, charming, charming!" +he repeated as he vaguely looked round. The interrupted students clung +together as if they had been personally exposed; but Ida relieved their +embarrassment by a hunch of her high shoulders. This time the smile she +addressed to Mr. Perriam had a beauty of sudden sadness. "What on earth +is a poor woman to do?" + +The visitor's grimace grew more marked as he continued to look, and +the conscious little schoolroom felt still more like a cage at a +menagerie. "Charming, charming, charming!" Mr. Perriam insisted; but +the parenthesis closed with a prompt click. "There you are!" said her +ladyship. "By-bye!" she sharply added. The next minute they were on the +stairs, and Mrs. Wix and her companion, at the open door and looking +mutely at each other, were reached by the sound of the large social +current that carried them back to their life. + +It was singular perhaps after this that Maisie never put a question +about Mr. Perriam, and it was still more singular that by the end of a +week she knew all she didn't ask. What she most particularly knew--and +the information came to her, unsought, straight from Mrs. Wix--was that +Sir Claude wouldn't at all care for the visits of a millionaire who was +in and out of the upper rooms. How little he would care was proved by +the fact that under the sense of them Mrs. Wix's discretion broke down +altogether; she was capable of a transfer of allegiance, capable, at the +altar of propriety, of a desperate sacrifice of her ladyship. As against +Mrs. Beale, she more than once intimated, she had been willing to do +the best for her, but as against Sir Claude she could do nothing for +her at all. It was extraordinary the number of things that, still +without a question, Maisie knew by the time her stepfather came back +from Paris--came bringing her a splendid apparatus for painting in +water-colours and bringing Mrs. Wix, by a lapse of memory that would +have been droll if it had not been a trifle disconcerting, a second and +even a more elegant umbrella. He had forgotten all about the first, +with which, buried in as many wrappers as a mummy of the Pharaohs, she +wouldn't for the world have done anything so profane as use it. Maisie +knew above all that though she was now, by what she called an informal +understanding, on Sir Claude's "side," she had yet not uttered a word +to him about Mr. Perriam. That gentleman became therefore a kind of +flourishing public secret, out of the depths of which governess and +pupil looked at each other portentously from the time their friend was +restored to them. He was restored in great abundance, and it was marked +that, though he appeared to have felt the need to take a stand against +the risk of being too roughly saddled with the offspring of others, he +at this period exposed himself more than ever before to the presumption +of having created expectations. + +If it had become now, for that matter, a question of sides, there was at +least a certain amount of evidence as to where they all were. Maisie of +course, in such a delicate position, was on nobody's; but Sir Claude had +all the air of being on hers. If therefore Mrs. Wix was on Sir Claude's, +her ladyship on Mr. Perriam's and Mr. Perriam presumably on her +ladyship's, this left only Mrs. Beale and Mr. Farange to account for. +Mrs. Beale clearly was, like Sir Claude, on Maisie's, and papa, it was +to be supposed, on Mrs. Beale's. Here indeed was a slight ambiguity, +as papa's being on Mrs. Beale's didn't somehow seem to place him quite +on his daughter's. It sounded, as this young lady thought it over, +very much like puss-in-the-corner, and she could only wonder if the +distribution of parties would lead to a rushing to and fro and a +changing of places. She was in the presence, she felt, of restless +change: wasn't it restless enough that her mother and her stepfather +should already be on different sides? That was the great thing that had +domestically happened. Mrs. Wix, besides, had turned another face: she +had never been exactly gay, but her gravity was now an attitude as +public as a posted placard. She seemed to sit in her new dress and brood +over her lost delicacy, which had become almost as doleful a memory as +that of poor Clara Matilda. "It IS hard for him," she often said to her +companion; and it was surprising how competent on this point Maisie +was conscious of being to agree with her. Hard as it was, however, Sir +Claude had never shown to greater advantage than in the gallant generous +sociable way he carried it off: a way that drew from Mrs. Wix a hundred +expressions of relief at his not having suffered it to embitter him. +It threw him more and more at last into the schoolroom, where he +had plainly begun to recognise that if he was to have the credit of +perverting the innocent child he might also at least have the amusement. +He never came into the place without telling its occupants that they +were the nicest people in the house--a remark which always led them to +say to each other "Mr. Perriam!" as loud as ever compressed lips and +enlarged eyes could make them articulate. He caused Maisie to remember +what she had said to Mrs. Beale about his having the nature of a good +nurse, and, rather more than she intended before Mrs. Wix, to bring the +whole thing out by once remarking to him that none of her good nurses +had smoked quite so much in the nursery. This had no more effect than +it was meant to on his cigarettes: he was always smoking, but always +declaring that it was death to him not to lead a domestic life. + +He led one after all in the schoolroom, and there were hours of late +evening, when she had gone to bed, that Maisie knew he sat there talking +with Mrs. Wix of how to meet his difficulties. His consideration for +this unfortunate woman even in the midst of them continued to show him +as the perfect gentleman and lifted the subject of his courtesy into an +upper air of beatitude in which her very pride had the hush of anxiety. +"He leans on me--he leans on me!" she only announced from time to time; +and she was more surprised than amused when, later on, she accidentally +found she had given her pupil the impression of a support literally +supplied by her person. This glimpse of a misconception led her to be +explicit--to put before the child, with an air of mourning indeed for +such a stoop to the common, that what they talked about in the small +hours, as they said, was the question of his taking right hold of life. +The life she wanted him to take right hold of was the public: "she" +being, I hasten to add, in this connexion, not the mistress of his fate, +but only Mrs. Wix herself. She had phrases about him that were full of +easy understanding, yet full of morality. "He's a wonderful nature, but +he can't live like the lilies. He's all right, you know, but he must +have a high interest." She had more than once remarked that his affairs +were sadly involved, but that they must get him--Maisie and she +together apparently--into Parliament. The child took it from her with a +flutter of importance that Parliament was his natural sphere, and she +was the less prepared to recognise a hindrance as she had never heard +of any affairs whatever that were not involved. She had in the old +days once been told by Mrs. Beale that her very own were, and with the +refreshment of knowing that she HAD affairs the information hadn't in +the least overwhelmed her. It was true and perhaps a little alarming +that she had never heard of any such matters since then. Full of +charm at any rate was the prospect of some day getting Sir Claude in; +especially after Mrs. Wix, as the fruit of more midnight colloquies, +once went so far as to observe that she really believed it was all +that was wanted to save him. This critic, with these words, struck her +disciple as cropping up, after the manner of mamma when mamma talked, +quite in a new place. The child stared as at the jump of a kangaroo. +"Save him from what?" + +Mrs. Wix debated, then covered a still greater distance. "Why just from +awful misery." + + + + +XII + + +She had not at the moment explained her ominous speech, but the light of +remarkable events soon enabled her companion to read it. It may indeed +be said that these days brought on a high quickening of Maisie's direct +perceptions, of her sense of freedom to make out things for herself. +This was helped by an emotion intrinsically far from sweet--the increase +of the alarm that had most haunted her meditations. She had no need to +be told, as on the morrow of the revelation of Sir Claude's danger she +was told by Mrs. Wix, that her mother wanted more and more to know why +the devil her father didn't send for her: she had too long expected +mamma's curiosity on this point to express itself sharply. Maisie could +meet such pressure so far as meeting it was to be in a position to +reply, in words directly inspired, that papa would be hanged before he'd +again be saddled with her. She therefore recognised the hour that in +troubled glimpses she had long foreseen, the hour when--the phrase for +it came back to her from Mrs. Beale--with two fathers, two mothers and +two homes, six protections in all, she shouldn't know "wherever" to +go. Such apprehension as she felt on this score was not diminished +by the fact that Mrs. Wix herself was suddenly white with terror: a +circumstance leading Maisie to the further knowledge that this lady +was still more scared on her own behalf than on that of her pupil. A +governess who had only one frock was not likely to have either two +fathers or two mothers: accordingly if even with these resources Maisie +was to be in the streets, where in the name of all that was dreadful +was poor Mrs. Wix to be? She had had, it appeared, a tremendous brush +with Ida, which had begun and ended with the request that she would be +pleased on the spot to "bundle." It had come suddenly but completely, +this signal of which she had gone in fear. The companions confessed to +each other the dread each had hidden the worst of, but Mrs. Wix was +better off than Maisie in having a plan of defence. She declined indeed +to communicate it till it was quite mature; but meanwhile, she hastened +to declare, her feet were firm in the schoolroom. They could only be +loosened by force: she would "leave" for the police perhaps, but she +wouldn't leave for mere outrage. That would be to play her ladyship's +game, and it would take another turn of the screw to make her desert her +darling. Her ladyship had come down with extraordinary violence: it had +been one of many symptoms of a situation strained--"between them all," +as Mrs. Wix said, "but especially between the two"--to the point of God +only knew what. + +Her description of the crisis made the child blanch. "Between which +two?--papa and mamma?" + +"Dear no. I mean between your mother and HIM." + +Maisie, in this, recognised an opportunity to be really deep. +"'Him'?--Mr. Perriam?" + +She fairly brought a blush to the scared face. "Well, my dear, I must +say what you DON'T know ain't worth mentioning. That it won't go on for +ever with Mr. Perriam--since I MUST meet you--you can suppose? But I +meant dear Sir Claude." + +Maisie stood corrected rather than abashed. "I see. But it's about Mr. +Perriam he's angry?" + +Mrs. Wix waited. "He says he's not." + +"Not angry? He has told you so?" + +Mrs. Wix looked at her hard. "Not about HIM!" + +"Then about some one else?" + +Mrs. Wix looked at her harder. "About some one else." + +"Lord Eric?" the child promptly brought forth. + +At this, of a sudden, her governess was more agitated. "Oh why, little +unfortunate, should we discuss their dreadful names?"--and she threw +herself for the millionth time on Maisie's neck. It took her pupil but +a moment to feel that she quivered with insecurity, and, the contact +of her terror aiding, the pair in another instant were sobbing in each +other's arms. Then it was that, completely relaxed, demoralised as she +had never been, Mrs. Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment +to gush. Her great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, +denounced her hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, +her lying and grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, ME!" the poor woman wailed, +"who've seen what I've seen and gone through everything only to cover +her up and ease her off and smooth her down? If I've been an 'ipocrite +it's the other way round: I've pretended, to him and to her, to myself +and to you and to every one, NOT to see! It serves me right to have held +my tongue before such horrors!" + +What horrors they were her companion forbore too closely to enquire, +showing even signs not a few of an ability to take them for granted. +That put the couple more than ever, in this troubled sea, in the same +boat, so that with the consciousness of ideas on the part of her fellow +mariner Maisie could sit close and wait. Sir Claude on the morrow came +in to tea, and then the ideas were produced. It was extraordinary how +the child's presence drew out their full strength. The principal one was +startling, but Maisie appreciated the courage with which her governess +handled it. It simply consisted of the proposal that whenever and +wherever they should seek refuge Sir Claude should consent to share +their asylum. On his protesting with all the warmth in nature against +this note of secession she asked what else in the world was left to them +if her ladyship should stop supplies. + +"Supplies be hanged, my dear woman!" said their delightful friend. +"Leave supplies to me--I'll take care of supplies." + +Mrs. Wix rose to it. "Well, it's exactly because I knew you'd be so glad +to do so that I put the question before you. There's a way to look after +us better than any other. The way's just to come along with us." + +It hung before Maisie, Mrs. Wix's way, like a glittering picture, and +she clasped her hands in ecstasy. "Come along, come along, come along!" + +Sir Claude looked from his stepdaughter back to her governess. "Do you +mean leave this house and take up my abode with you?" + +"It will be the right thing--if you feel as you've told me you feel." +Mrs. Wix, sustained and uplifted, was now as clear as a bell. + +Sir Claude had the air of trying to recall what he had told her; then +the light broke that was always breaking to make his face more pleasant. +"It's your happy thought that I shall take a house for you?" + +"For the wretched homeless child. Any roof--over OUR heads--will do for +us; but of course for you it will have to be something really nice." + +Sir Claude's eyes reverted to Maisie, rather hard, as she thought; and +there was a shade in his very smile that seemed to show her--though she +also felt it didn't show Mrs. Wix--that the accommodation prescribed +must loom to him pretty large. The next moment, however, he laughed +gaily enough. "My dear lady, you exaggerate tremendously MY poor little +needs." Mrs. Wix had once mentioned to her young friend that when Sir +Claude called her his dear lady he could do anything with her; and +Maisie felt a certain anxiety to see what he would do now. Well, he only +addressed her a remark of which the child herself was aware of feeling +the force. "Your plan appeals to me immensely; but of course--don't you +see--I shall have to consider the position I put myself in by leaving my +wife." + +"You'll also have to remember," Mrs. Wix replied, "that if you don't +look out your wife won't give you time to consider. Her ladyship will +leave YOU." + +"Ah my good friend, I do look out!" the young man returned while Maisie +helped herself afresh to bread and butter. "Of course if that happens I +shall have somehow to turn round; but I hope with all my heart it won't. +I beg your pardon," he continued to his stepdaughter, "for appearing to +discuss that sort of possibility under your sharp little nose. But the +fact is I FORGET half the time that Ida's your sainted mother." + +"So do I!" said Maisie, her mouth full of bread and butter and to put +him the more in the right. + +Her protectress, at this, was upon her again. "The little desolate +precious pet!" For the rest of the conversation she was enclosed in Mrs. +Wix's arms, and as they sat there interlocked Sir Claude, before them +with his tea-cup, looked down at them in deepening thought. Shrink +together as they might they couldn't help, Maisie felt, being a very +large lumpish image of what Mrs. Wix required of his slim fineness. +She knew moreover that this lady didn't make it better by adding in a +moment: "Of course we shouldn't dream of a whole house. Any sort of +little lodging, however humble, would be only too blest." + +"But it would have to be something that would hold us all," said Sir +Claude. + +"Oh yes," Mrs. Wix concurred; "the whole point's our being together. +While you're waiting, before you act, for her ladyship to take some +step, our position here will come to an impossible pass. You don't +know what I went through with her for you yesterday--and for our poor +darling; but it's not a thing I can promise you often to face again. She +cast me out in horrible language--she has instructed the servants not to +wait on me." + +"Oh the poor servants are all right!" Sir Claude eagerly cried. + +"They're certainly better than their mistress. It's too dreadful that I +should sit here and say of your wife, Sir Claude, and of Maisie's own +mother, that she's lower than a domestic; but my being betrayed into +such remarks is just a reason the more for our getting away. I shall +stay till I'm taken by the shoulders, but that may happen any day. What +also may perfectly happen, you must permit me to repeat, is that she'll +go off to get rid of us." + +"Oh if she'll only do that!" Sir Claude laughed. "That would be the very +making of us!" + +"Don't say it--don't say it!" Mrs. Wix pleaded. "Don't speak of anything +so fatal. You know what I mean. We must all cling to the right. You +mustn't be bad." + +Sir Claude set down his tea-cup; he had become more grave and he +pensively wiped his moustache. "Won't all the world say I'm awful if I +leave the house before--before she has bolted? They'll say it was my +doing so that made her bolt." + +Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no check +to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that--if you've done it for so high a +motive? Think of the beauty of it," the good lady pressed. + +"Of bolting with YOU?" Sir Claude ejaculated. + +She faintly smiled--she even faintly coloured. "So far from doing you +harm it will do you the highest good. Sir Claude, if you'll listen to +me, it will save you." + +"Save me from what?" + +Maisie, at this question, waited with renewed suspense for an answer +that would bring the thing to some finer point than their companion +had brought it to before. But there was on the contrary only more +mystification in Mrs. Wix's reply. "Ah from you know what!" + +"Do you mean from some other woman!" + +"Yes--from a real bad one." + +Sir Claude at least, the child could see, was not mystified; so little +indeed that a smile of intelligence broke afresh in his eyes. He turned +them in vague discomfort to Maisie, and then something in the way she +met them caused him to chuck her playfully under the chin. It was not +till after this that he good-naturedly met Mrs. Wix. "You think me much +worse than I am." + +"If that were true," she returned, "I wouldn't appeal to you. I do, Sir +Claude, in the name of all that's good in you--and oh so earnestly! We +can help each other. What you'll do for our young friend here I needn't +say. That isn't even what I want to speak of now. What I want to speak +of is what you'll GET--don't you see?--from such an opportunity to take +hold. Take hold of US--take hold of HER. Make her your duty--make her +your life: she'll repay you a thousand-fold!" + +It was to Mrs. Wix, during this appeal, that Maisie's contemplation +transferred itself: partly because, though her heart was in her throat +for trepidation, her delicacy deterred her from appearing herself to +press the question; partly from the coercion of seeing Mrs. Wix come out +as Mrs. Wix had never come before--not even on the day of her call at +Mrs. Beale's with the news of mamma's marriage. On that day Mrs. Beale +had surpassed her in dignity, but nobody could have surpassed her now. +There was in fact at this moment a fascination for her pupil in the hint +she seemed to give that she had still more of that surprise behind. So +the sharpened sense of spectatorship was the child's main support, the +long habit, from the first, of seeing herself in discussion and finding +in the fury of it--she had had a glimpse of the game of football--a sort +of compensation for the doom of a peculiar passivity. It gave her often +an odd air of being present at her history in as separate a manner as if +she could only get at experience by flattening her nose against a pane +of glass. Such she felt to be the application of her nose while she +waited for the effect of Mrs. Wix's eloquence. Sir Claude, however, +didn't keep her long in a position so ungraceful: he sat down and opened +his arms to her as he had done the day he came for her at her father's, +and while he held her there, looking at her kindly, but as if their +companion had brought the blood a good deal to his face, he said: + +"Dear Mrs. Wix is magnificent, but she's rather too grand about it. +I mean the situation isn't after all quite so desperate or quite so +simple. But I give you my word before her, and I give it to her before +you, that I'll never, never, forsake you. Do you hear that, old fellow, +and do you take it in? I'll stick to you through everything." + +Maisie did take it in--took it with a long tremor of all her little +being; and then as, to emphasise it, he drew her closer she buried her +head on his shoulder and cried without sound and without pain. While she +was so engaged she became aware that his own breast was agitated, and +gathered from it with rapture that his tears were as silently flowing. +Presently she heard a loud sob from Mrs. Wix--Mrs. Wix was the only one +who made a noise. + +She was to have made, for some time, none other but this, though +within a few days, in conversation with her pupil, she described her +intercourse with Ida as little better than the state of being battered. +There was as yet nevertheless no attempt to eject her by force, and she +recognised that Sir Claude, taking such a stand as never before, had +intervened with passion and with success. As Maisie remembered--and +remembered wholly without disdain--that he had told her he was afraid of +her ladyship, the little girl took this act of resolution as a proof of +what, in the spirit of the engagement sealed by all their tears, he was +really prepared to do. Mrs. Wix spoke to her of the pecuniary sacrifice +by which she herself purchased the scant security she enjoyed and which, +if it was a defence against the hand of violence, yet left her exposed +to incredible rudeness. Didn't her ladyship find every hour of the +day some artful means to humiliate and trample upon her? There was a +quarter's salary owing her--a great name, even Maisie could suspect, +for a small matter; she should never see it as long as she lived, but +keeping quiet about it put her ladyship, thank heaven, a little in one's +power. Now that he was doing so much else she could never have the +grossness to apply for it to Sir Claude. He had sent home for schoolroom +consumption a huge frosted cake, a wonderful delectable mountain with +geological strata of jam, which might, with economy, see them through +many days of their siege; but it was none the less known to Mrs. Wix +that his affairs were more and more involved, and her fellow partaker +looked back tenderly, in the light of these involutions, at the +expression of face with which he had greeted the proposal that he should +set up another establishment. Maisie felt that if their maintenance +should hang by a thread they must still demean themselves with the +highest delicacy. What he was doing was simply acting without delay, so +far as his embarrassments permitted, on the inspiration of his elder +friend. There was at this season a wonderful month of May--as soft as a +drop of the wind in a gale that had kept one awake--when he took out his +stepdaughter with a fresh alacrity and they rambled the great town in +search, as Mrs. Wix called it, of combined amusement and instruction. + +They rode on the top of 'buses; they visited outlying parks; they went +to cricket-matches where Maisie fell asleep; they tried a hundred places +for the best one to have tea. This was his direct way of rising to Mrs. +Wix's grand lesson--of making his little accepted charge his duty and +his life. They dropped, under incontrollable impulses, into shops that +they agreed were too big, to look at things that they agreed were too +small, and it was during these hours that Mrs. Wix, alone at home, but +a subject of regretful reference as they pulled off their gloves for +refreshment, subsequently described herself as least sheltered from the +blows her ladyship had achieved such ingenuity in dealing. She again +and again repeated that she wouldn't so much have minded having her +"attainments" held up to scorn and her knowledge of every subject +denied, hadn't she been branded as "low" in character and tone. There +was by this time no pretence on the part of any one of denying it to be +fortunate that her ladyship habitually left London every Saturday and +was more and more disposed to a return late in the week. It was almost +equally public that she regarded as a preposterous "pose," and indeed as +a direct insult to herself, her husband's attitude of staying behind to +look after a child for whom the most elaborate provision had been made. +If there was a type Ida despised, Sir Claude communicated to Maisie, it +was the man who pottered about town of a Sunday; and he also mentioned +how often she had declared to him that if he had a grain of spirit +he would be ashamed to accept a menial position about Mr. Farange's +daughter. It was her ladyship's contention that he was in craven fear +of his predecessor--otherwise he would recognise it as an obligation of +plain decency to protect his wife against the outrage of that person's +barefaced attempt to swindle her. The swindle was that Mr. Farange +put upon her the whole intolerable burden; "and even when I pay for +you myself," Sir Claude averred to his young friend, "she accuses me +the more of truckling and grovelling." It was Mrs. Wix's conviction, +they both knew, arrived at on independent grounds, that Ida's weekly +excursions were feelers for a more considerable absence. If she came +back later each week the week would be sure to arrive when she wouldn't +come back at all. This appearance had of course much to do with Mrs. +Wix's actual valour. Could they but hold out long enough the snug little +home with Sir Claude would find itself informally established. + + + + +XIII + + +This might moreover have been taken to be the sense of a remark made by +her stepfather as--one rainy day when the streets were all splash and +two umbrellas unsociable and the wanderers had sought shelter in the +National Gallery--Maisie sat beside him staring rather sightlessly at a +roomful of pictures which he had mystified her much by speaking of with +a bored sigh as a "silly superstition." They represented, with patches +of gold and cataracts of purple, with stiff saints and angular angels, +with ugly Madonnas and uglier babies, strange prayers and prostrations; +so that she at first took his words for a protest against devotional +idolatry--all the more that he had of late often come with her and +with Mrs. Wix to morning church, a place of worship of Mrs. Wix's own +choosing, where there was nothing of that sort; no haloes on heads, +but only, during long sermons, beguiling backs of bonnets, and where, +as her governess always afterwards observed, he gave the most earnest +attention. It presently appeared, however, that his reference was merely +to the affectation of admiring such ridiculous works--an admonition that +she received from him as submissively as she received everything. What +turn it gave to their talk needn't here be recorded: the transition to +the colourless schoolroom and lonely Mrs. Wix was doubtless an effect of +relaxed interest in what was before them. Maisie expressed in her own +way the truth that she never went home nowadays without expecting to +find the temple of her studies empty and the poor priestess cast out. +This conveyed a full appreciation of her peril, and it was in rejoinder +that Sir Claude uttered, acknowledging the source of that peril, the +reassurance at which I have glanced. "Don't be afraid, my dear: I've +squared her." It required indeed a supplement when he saw that it left +the child momentarily blank. "I mean that your mother lets me do what I +want so long as I let her do what SHE wants." + +"So you ARE doing what you want?" Maisie asked. + +"Rather, Miss Farange!" + +Miss Farange turned it over. "And she's doing the same?" + +"Up to the hilt!" + +Again she considered. "Then, please, what may it be?" + +"I wouldn't tell you for the whole world." + +She gazed at a gaunt Madonna; after which she broke into a slow smile. +"Well, I don't care, so long as you do let her." + +"Oh you monster!"--and Sir Claude's gay vehemence brought him to his +feet. + +Another day, in another place--a place in Baker Street where at a hungry +hour she had sat down with him to tea and buns--he brought out a question +disconnected from previous talk. "I say, you know, what do you suppose +your father WOULD do?" + +Maisie hadn't long to cast about or to question his pleasant eyes. "If +you were really to go with us? He'd make a great complaint." + +He seemed amused at the term she employed. "Oh I shouldn't mind a +'complaint'!" + +"He'd talk to every one about it," said Maisie. + +"Well, I shouldn't mind that either." + +"Of course not," the child hastened to respond. "You've told me you're +not afraid of him." + +"The question is are you?" said Sir Claude. + +Maisie candidly considered; then she spoke resolutely. "No, not of +papa." + +"But of somebody else?" + +"Certainly, of lots of people." + +"Of your mother first and foremost of course." + +"Dear, yes; more of mamma than of--than of--" + +"Than of what?" Sir Claude asked as she hesitated for a comparison. + +She thought over all objects of dread. "Than of a wild elephant!" she at +last declared. "And you are too," she reminded him as he laughed. + +"Oh yes, I am too." + +Again she meditated. "Why then did you marry her?" + +"Just because I WAS afraid." + +"Even when she loved you?" + +"That made her the more alarming." + +For Maisie herself, though her companion seemed to find it droll, this +opened up depths of gravity. "More alarming than she is now?" + +"Well, in a different way. Fear, unfortunately, is a very big thing, and +there's a great variety of kinds." + +She took this in with complete intelligence. "Then I think I've got them +all." + +"You?" her friend cried. "Nonsense! You're thoroughly 'game.'" + +"I'm awfully afraid of Mrs. Beale," Maisie objected. + +He raised his smooth brows. "That charming woman?" + +"Well," she answered, "you can't understand it because you're not in the +same state." + +She had been going on with a luminous "But" when, across the table, he +laid his hand on her arm. "I CAN understand it," he confessed. "I AM in +the same state." + +"Oh but she likes you so!" Maisie promptly pleaded. + +Sir Claude literally coloured. "That has something to do with it." + +Maisie wondered again. "Being liked with being afraid?" + +"Yes, when it amounts to adoration." + +"Then why aren't you afraid of ME?" + +"Because with you it amounts to that?" He had kept his hand on her arm. +"Well, what prevents is simply that you're the gentlest spirit on earth. +Besides--" he pursued; but he came to a pause. + +"Besides--?" + +"I SHOULD be in fear if you were older--there! See--you already make me +talk nonsense," the young man added. "The question's about your father. +Is he likewise afraid of Mrs. Beale?" + +"I think not. And yet he loves her," Maisie mused. + +"Oh no--he doesn't; not a bit!" After which, as his companion stared, +Sir Claude apparently felt that he must make this oddity fit with her +recollections. "There's nothing of that sort NOW." + +But Maisie only stared the more. "They've changed?" + +"Like your mother and me." + +She wondered how he knew. "Then you've seen Mrs. Beale again?" + +He demurred. "Oh no. She has written to me," he presently subjoined. +"SHE'S not afraid of your father either. No one at all is--really." +Then he went on while Maisie's little mind, with its filial spring +too relaxed from of old for a pang at this want of parental majesty, +speculated on the vague relation between Mrs. Beale's courage and the +question, for Mrs. Wix and herself, of a neat lodging with their friend. +"She wouldn't care a bit if Mr. Farange should make a row." + +"Do you mean about you and me and Mrs. Wix? Why should she care? It +wouldn't hurt HER." + +Sir Claude, with his legs out and his hand diving into his +trousers-pocket, threw back his head with a laugh just perceptibly +tempered, as she thought, by a sigh. "My dear stepchild, you're +delightful! Look here, we must pay. You've had five buns?" + +"How CAN you?" Maisie demanded, crimson under the eye of the young woman +who had stepped to their board. "I've had three." + +Shortly after this Mrs. Wix looked so ill that it was to be feared her +ladyship had treated her to some unexampled passage. Maisie asked if +anything worse than usual had occurred; whereupon the poor woman brought +out with infinite gloom: "He has been seeing Mrs. Beale." + +"Sir Claude?" The child remembered what he had said. "Oh no--not SEEING +her!" + +"I beg your pardon. I absolutely know it." Mrs. Wix was as positive as +she was dismal. + +Maisie nevertheless ventured to challenge her. "And how, please, do you +know it?" + +She faltered a moment. "From herself. I've been to see her." + +Then on Maisie's visible surprise: "I went yesterday while you were out +with him. He has seen her repeatedly." + +It was not wholly clear to Maisie why Mrs. Wix should be prostrate at +this discovery; but her general consciousness of the way things could be +both perpetrated and resented always eased off for her the strain of the +particular mystery. "There may be some mistake. He says he hasn't." + +Mrs. Wix turned paler, as if this were a still deeper ground for alarm. +"He says so?--he denies that he has seen her?" + +"He told me so three days ago. Perhaps she's mistaken," Maisie +suggested. + +"Do you mean perhaps she lies? She lies whenever it suits her, I'm very +sure. But I know when people lie--and that's what I've loved in you, +that YOU never do. Mrs. Beale didn't yesterday at any rate. He HAS seen +her." + +Maisie was silent a little. "He says not," she then repeated. +"Perhaps--perhaps--" Once more she paused. + +"Do you mean perhaps HE lies?" + +"Gracious goodness, no!" Maisie shouted. + +Mrs. Wix's bitterness, however, again overflowed. "He does, he does," +she cried, "and it's that that's just the worst of it! They'll take +you, they'll take you, and what in the world will then become of me?" +She threw herself afresh upon her pupil and wept over her with the +inevitable effect of causing the child's own tears to flow. But Maisie +couldn't have told you if she had been crying at the image of their +separation or at that of Sir Claude's untruth. As regards this deviation +it was agreed between them that they were not in a position to bring it +home to him. Mrs. Wix was in dread of doing anything to make him, as +she said, "worse"; and Maisie was sufficiently initiated to be able to +reflect that in speaking to her as he had done he had only wished to be +tender of Mrs. Beale. It fell in with all her inclinations to think of +him as tender, and she forbore to let him know that the two ladies had, +as SHE would never do, betrayed him. + +She had not long to keep her secret, for the next day, when she went +out with him, he suddenly said in reference to some errand he had first +proposed: "No, we won't do that--we'll do something else." On this, a +few steps from the door, he stopped a hansom and helped her in; then +following her he gave the driver over the top an address that she lost. +When he was seated beside her she asked him where they were going; to +which he replied "My dear child, you'll see." She saw while she watched +and wondered that they took the direction of the Regent's Park; but +she didn't know why he should make a mystery of that, and it was not +till they passed under a pretty arch and drew up at a white house +in a terrace from which the view, she thought, must be lovely that, +mystified, she clutched him and broke out: "I shall see papa?" + +He looked down at her with a kind smile. "No, probably not. I haven't +brought you for that." + +"Then whose house is it?" + +"It's your father's. They've moved here." + +She looked about: she had known Mr. Farange in four or five houses, and +there was nothing astonishing in this except that it was the nicest +place yet. "But I shall see Mrs. Beale?" + +"It's to see her that I brought you." + +She stared, very white, and, with her hand on his arm, though they had +stopped, kept him sitting in the cab. "To leave me, do you mean?" + +He could scarce bring it out. "It's not for me to say if you CAN stay. +We must look into it." + +"But if I do I shall see papa?" + +"Oh some time or other, no doubt." Then Sir Claude went on: "Have you +really so very great a dread of that?" + +Maisie glanced away over the apron of the cab--gazed a minute at the +green expanse of the Regent's Park and, at this moment colouring to the +roots of her hair, felt the full, hot rush of an emotion more mature +than any she had yet known. It consisted of an odd unexpected shame at +placing in an inferior light, to so perfect a gentleman and so charming +a person as Sir Claude, so very near a relative as Mr. Farange. She +remembered, however, her friend's telling her that no one was seriously +afraid of her father, and she turned round with a small toss of her +head. "Oh I dare say I can manage him!" + +Sir Claude smiled, but she noted that the violence with which she had +just changed colour had brought into his own face a slight compunctious +and embarrassed flush. It was as if he had caught his first glimpse of +her sense of responsibility. Neither of them made a movement to get out, +and after an instant he said to her: "Look here, if you say so we won't +after all go in." + +"Ah but I want to see Mrs. Beale!" the child gently wailed. + +"But what if she does decide to take you? Then, you know, you'll have to +remain." + +Maisie turned it over. "Straight on--and give you up?" + +"Well--I don't quite know about giving me up." + +"I mean as I gave up Mrs. Beale when I last went to mamma's. I couldn't +do without you here for anything like so long a time as that." It struck +her as a hundred years since she had seen Mrs. Beale, who was on the +other side of the door they were so near and whom she yet had not taken +the jump to clasp in her arms. + +"Oh I dare say you'll see more of me than you've seen of Mrs. Beale. +It isn't in ME to be so beautifully discreet," Sir Claude said. "But +all the same," he continued, "I leave the thing, now that we're here, +absolutely WITH you. You must settle it. We'll only go in if you say so. +If you don't say so we'll turn right round and drive away." + +"So in that case Mrs. Beale won't take me?" + +"Well--not by any act of ours." + +"And I shall be able to go on with mamma?" Maisie asked. + +"Oh I don't say that!" + +She considered. "But I thought you said you had squared her?" + +Sir Claude poked his stick at the splashboard of the cab. "Not, my dear +child, to the point she now requires." + +"Then if she turns me out and I don't come here--" + +Sir Claude promptly took her up. "What do I offer you, you naturally +enquire? My poor chick, that's just what I ask myself. I don't see it, +I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wix." + +His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wix saw. "You mean WE can't +make a little family?" + +"It's very base of me, no doubt, but I can't wholly chuck your mother." + +Maisie, at this, emitted a low but lengthened sigh, a slight sound of +reluctant assent which would certainly have been amusing to an auditor. +"Then there isn't anything else?" + +"I vow I don't quite see what there is." + +Maisie waited; her silence seemed to signify that she too had no +alternative to suggest. But she made another appeal. "If I come here +you'll come to see me?" + +"I won't lose sight of you." + +"But how often will you come?" As he hung fire she pressed him. "Often +and often?" + +Still he faltered. "My dear old woman--" he began. Then he paused again, +going on the next moment with a change of tone. "You're too funny! Yes +then," he said; "often and often." + +"All right!" Maisie jumped out. Mrs. Beale was at home, but not in the +drawing-room, and when the butler had gone for her the child suddenly +broke out: "But when I'm here what will Mrs. Wix do?" + +"Ah you should have thought of that sooner!" said her companion with the +first faint note of asperity she had ever heard him sound. + + + + +XIV + + +Mrs Beale fairly swooped upon her and the effect of the whole hour was +to show the child how much, how quite formidably indeed, after all, she +was loved. This was the more the case as her stepmother, so changed--in +the very manner of her mother--that she really struck her as a new +acquaintance, somehow recalled more familiarity than Maisie could feel. +A rich strong expressive affection in short pounced upon her in the +shape of a handsomer, ampler, older Mrs. Beale. It was like making a +fine friend, and they hadn't been a minute together before she felt +elated at the way she had met the choice imposed on her in the cab. +There was a whole future in the combination of Mrs. Beale's beauty and +Mrs. Beale's hug. She seemed to Maisie charming to behold, and also to +have no connexion at all with anybody who had once mended underclothing +and had meals in the nursery. The child knew one of her father's wives +was a woman of fashion, but she had always dimly made a distinction, not +applying that epithet without reserve to the other. Mrs. Beale had since +their separation acquired a conspicuous right to it, and Maisie's first +flush of response to her present delight coloured all her splendour with +meanings that this time were sweet. She had told Sir Claude she was +afraid of the lady in the Regent's Park; but she had confidence enough +to break on the spot, into the frankest appreciation. "Why, aren't you +beautiful? Isn't she beautiful, Sir Claude, ISN'T she?" + +"The handsomest woman in London, simply," Sir Claude gallantly replied. +"Just as sure as you're the best little girl!" + +Well, the handsomest woman in London gave herself up, with tender +lustrous looks and every demonstration of fondness, to a happiness at +last clutched again. There was almost as vivid a bloom in her maturity +as in mamma's, and it took her but a short time to give her little +friend an impression of positive power--an impression that seemed to +begin like a long bright day. This was a perception on Maisie's part +that neither mamma, nor Sir Claude, nor Mrs. Wix, with their immense and +so varied respective attractions, had exactly kindled, and that made an +immediate difference when the talk, as it promptly did, began to turn to +her father. Oh yes, Mr. Farange was a complication, but she saw now that +he wouldn't be one for his daughter. For Mrs. Beale certainly he was an +immense one--she speedily made known as much; but Mrs. Beale from this +moment presented herself to Maisie as a person to whom a great gift had +come. The great gift was just for handling complications. Maisie felt +how little she made of them when, after she had dropped to Sir Claude +some recall of a previous meeting, he made answer, with a sound of +consternation and yet an air of relief, that he had denied to their +companion their having, since the day he came for her, seen each other +till that moment. + +Mrs. Beale could but vaguely pity it. "Why did you do anything so +silly?" + +"To protect your reputation." + +"From Maisie?" Mrs. Beale was much amused. "My reputation with Maisie is +too good to suffer." + +"But you believed me, you rascal, didn't you?" Sir Claude asked of the +child. + +She looked at him; she smiled. "Her reputation did suffer. I discovered +you had been here." + +He was not too chagrined to laugh. "The way, my dear, you talk of that +sort of thing!" + +"How should she talk," Mrs. Beale wanted to know, "after all this +wretched time with her mother?" + +"It was not mamma who told me," Maisie explained. "It was only Mrs. +Wix." She was hesitating whether to bring out before Sir Claude the +source of Mrs. Wix's information; but Mrs. Beale, addressing the young +man, showed the vanity of scruples. + +"Do you know that preposterous person came to see me a day or two +ago?--when I told her I had seen you repeatedly." + +Sir Claude, for once in a way, was disconcerted. "The old cat! She never +told me. Then you thought I had lied?" he demanded of Maisie. + +She was flurried by the term with which he had qualified her gentle +friend, but she took the occasion for one to which she must in every +manner lend herself. "Oh I didn't mind! But Mrs. Wix did," she added +with an intention benevolent to her governess. + +Her intention was not very effective as regards Mrs. Beale. "Mrs. Wix is +too idiotic!" that lady declared. + +"But to you, of all people," Sir Claude asked, "what had she to say?" + +"Why that, like Mrs. Micawber--whom she must, I think, rather +resemble--she will never, never, never desert Miss Farange." + +"Oh I'll make that all right!" Sir Claude cheerfully returned. + +"I'm sure I hope so, my dear man," said Mrs. Beale, while Maisie +wondered just how he would proceed. Before she had time to ask Mrs. +Beale continued: "That's not all she came to do, if you please. But +you'll never guess the rest." + +"Shall _I_ guess it?" Maisie quavered. + +Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why you're just the person! It must be +quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mother's. Have you +never seen women there crying to her to 'spare' the men they love?" + +Maisie, wondering, tried to remember; but Sir Claude was freshly +diverted. "Oh they don't trouble about Ida! Mrs. Wix cried to you to +spare ME?" + +"She regularly went down on her knees to me." + +"The darling old dear!" the young man exclaimed. + +These words were a joy to Maisie--they made up for his previous +description of Mrs. Wix. "And WILL you spare him?" she asked of Mrs. +Beale. + +Her stepmother, seizing her and kissing her again, seemed charmed with +the tone of her question. "Not an inch of him! I'll pick him to the +bone!" + +"You mean that he'll really come often?" Maisie pressed. + +Mrs. Beale turned lovely eyes to Sir Claude. "That's not for me to +say--its for him." + +He said nothing at once, however; with his hands in his pockets +and vaguely humming a tune--even Maisie could see he was a little +nervous--he only walked to the window and looked out at the Regent's +Park. "Well, he has promised," Maisie said. "But how will papa like it?" + +"His being in and out? Ah that's a question that, to be frank with you, +my dear, hardly matters. In point of fact, however, Beale greatly enjoys +the idea that Sir Claude too, poor man, has been forced to quarrel with +your mother." + +Sir Claude turned round and spoke gravely and kindly. "Don't be afraid, +Maisie; you won't lose sight of me." + +"Thank you so much!" Maisie was radiant. "But what I meant--don't you +know?--was what papa would say to ME." + +"Oh I've been having that out with him," said Mrs. Beale. "He'll behave +well enough. You see the great difficulty is that, though he changes +every three days about everything else in the world, he has never +changed about your mother. It's a caution, the way he hates her." + +Sir Claude gave a short laugh. "It certainly can't beat the way she +still hates HIM!" + +"Well," Mrs. Beale went on obligingly, "nothing can take the place of +that feeling with either of them, and the best way they can think of to +show it is for each to leave you as long as possible on the hands of the +other. There's nothing, as you've seen for yourself, that makes either +so furious. It isn't, asking so little as you do, that you're much of +an expense or a trouble; it's only that you make each feel so well how +nasty the other wants to be. Therefore Beale goes on loathing your +mother too much to have any great fury left for any one else. Besides, +you know, I've squared him." + +"Oh Lord!" Sir Claude cried with a louder laugh and turning again to the +window. + +"_I_ know how!" Maisie was prompt to proclaim. "By letting him do what +he wants on condition that he lets you also do it." + +"You're too delicious, my own pet!"--she was involved in another hug. +"How in the world have I got on so long without you? I've not been +happy, love," said Mrs. Beale with her cheek to the child's. + +"Be happy now!"--she throbbed with shy tenderness. + +"I think I shall be. You'll save me." + +"As I'm saving Sir Claude?" the little girl asked eagerly. + +Mrs. Beale, a trifle at a loss, appealed to her visitor, "Is she +really?" + +He showed high amusement at Maisie's question. "It's dear Mrs. Wix's +idea. There may be something in it." + +"He makes me his duty--he makes me his life," Maisie set forth to her +stepmother. + +"Why that's what _I_ want to do!"--Mrs. Beale, so anticipated, turned +pink with astonishment. + +"Well, you can do it together. Then he'll HAVE to come!" + +Mrs. Beale by this time had her young friend fairly in her lap and she +smiled up at Sir Claude. "Shall we do it together?" + +His laughter had dropped, and for a moment he turned his handsome +serious face not to his hostess, but to his stepdaughter. "Well, it's +rather more decent than some things. Upon my soul, the way things are +going, it seems to me the only decency!" He had the air of arguing it +out to Maisie, of presenting it, through an impulse of conscience, as a +connexion in which they could honourably see her participate; though his +plea of mere "decency" might well have appeared to fall below her rosy +little vision. "If we're not good for YOU" he exclaimed, "I'll be hanged +if I know who we shall be good for!" + +Mrs. Beale showed the child an intenser light. "I dare say you WILL save +us--from one thing and another." + +"Oh I know what she'll save ME from!" Sir Claude roundly asserted. +"There'll be rows of course," he went on. + +Mrs. Beale quickly took him up. "Yes, but they'll be nothing--for you +at least--to the rows your wife makes as it is. I can bear what _I_ +suffer--I can't bear what you go through." + +"We're doing a good deal for you, you know, young woman," Sir Claude +went on to Maisie with the same gravity. + +She coloured with a sense of obligation and the eagerness of her desire +it should be remarked how little was lost on her. "Oh I know!" + +"Then you must keep us all right!" This time he laughed. + +"How you talk to her!" cried Mrs. Beale. + +"No worse than you!" he gaily answered. + +"Handsome is that handsome does!" she returned in the same spirit. "You +can take off your things," she went on, releasing Maisie. + +The child, on her feet, was all emotion. "Then I'm just to stop--this +way?" + +"It will do as well as any other. Sir Claude, to-morrow, will have your +things brought." + +"I'll bring them myself. Upon my word I'll see them packed!" Sir Claude +promised. "Come here and unbutton." + +He had beckoned his young companion to where he sat, and he helped +to disengage her from her coverings while Mrs. Beale, from a little +distance, smiled at the hand he displayed. "There's a stepfather for +you! I'm bound to say, you know, that he makes up for the want of other +people." + +"He makes up for the want of a nurse!" Sir Claude laughed. "Don't you +remember I told you so the very first time?" + +"Remember? It was exactly what made me think so well of you!" + +"Nothing would induce me," the young man said to Maisie, "to tell you +what made me think so well of HER." Having divested the child he kissed +her gently and gave her a little pat to make her stand off. The pat was +accompanied with a vague sigh in which his gravity of a moment before +came back. "All the same, if you hadn't had the fatal gift of beauty--" + +"Well, what?" Maisie asked, wondering why he paused. It was the first +time she had heard of her beauty. + +"Why, we shouldn't all be thinking so well of each other!" + +"He isn't speaking of personal loveliness--you've not THAT vulgar +beauty, my dear, at all," Mrs. Beale explained. "He's just talking of +plain dull charm of character." + +"Her character's the most extraordinary thing in all the world," Sir +Claude stated to Mrs. Beale. + +"Oh I know all about that sort of thing!"--she fairly bridled with the +knowledge. + +It gave Maisie somehow a sudden sense of responsibility from which she +sought refuge. "Well, you've got it too, 'that sort of thing'--you've +got the fatal gift: you both really have!" she broke out. + +"Beauty of character? My dear boy, we haven't a pennyworth!" Sir Claude +protested. + +"Speak for yourself, sir!" she leaped lightly from Mrs. Beale. "I'm good +and I'm clever. What more do you want? For you, I'll spare your blushes +and not be personal--I'll simply say that you're as handsome as you can +stick together." + +"You're both very lovely; you can't get out of it!"--Maisie felt the +need of carrying her point. "And it's beautiful to see you side by +side." + +Sir Claude had taken his hat and stick; he stood looking at her a +moment. "You're a comfort in trouble! But I must go home and pack you." + +"And when will you come back?--to-morrow, to-morrow?" + +"You see what we're in for!" he said to Mrs. Beale. + +"Well, I can bear it if you can." + +Their companion gazed from one of them to the other, thinking that +though she had been happy indeed between Sir Claude and Mrs. Wix she +should evidently be happier still between Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale. But +it was like being perched on a prancing horse, and she made a movement +to hold on to something. "Then, you know, shan't I bid goodbye to Mrs. +Wix?" + +"Oh I'll make it all right with her," said Sir Claude. + +Maisie considered. "And with mamma?" + +"Ah mamma!" he sadly laughed. + +Even for the child this was scarcely ambiguous; but Mrs. Beale +endeavoured to contribute to its clearness. "Your mother will crow, +she'll crow--" + +"Like the early bird!" said Sir Claude as she looked about for a +comparison. + +"She'll need no consolation," Mrs. Beale went on, "for having made your +father grandly blaspheme." + +Maisie stared. "Will he grandly blaspheme?" It was impressive, it might +have been out of the Bible, and her question produced a fresh play of +caresses, in which Sir Claude also engaged. She wondered meanwhile who, +if Mrs. Wix was disposed of, would represent in her life the element of +geography and anecdote; and she presently surmounted the delicacy she +felt about asking. "Won't there be any one to give me lessons?" + +Mrs. Beale was prepared with a reply that struck her as absolutely +magnificent. "You shall have such lessons as you've never had in all +your life. You shall go to courses." + +"Courses?" Maisie had never heard of such things. + +"At institutions--on subjects." + +Maisie continued to stare. "Subjects?" + +Mrs. Beale was really splendid. "All the most important ones. French +literature--and sacred history. You'll take part in classes--with +awfully smart children." + +"I'm going to look thoroughly into the whole thing, you know." And Sir +Claude, with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of assurance +accompanied by a friendly wink. + +But Mrs. Beale went much further. "My dear child, you shall attend +lectures." + +The horizon was suddenly vast and Maisie felt herself the smaller for +it. "All alone?" + +"Oh no; I'll attend them with you," said Sir Claude. "They'll teach me +a lot I don't know." + +"So they will me," Mrs. Beale gravely admitted. "We'll go with her +together--it will be charming. It's ages," she confessed to Maisie, +"since I've had any time for study. That's another sweet way in which +you'll be a motive to us. Oh won't the good she'll do us be immense?" +she broke out uncontrollably to Sir Claude. + +He weighed it; then he replied: "That's certainly our idea." + +Of this idea Maisie naturally had less of a grasp, but it inspired her +with almost equal enthusiasm. If in so bright a prospect there would be +nothing to long for it followed that she wouldn't long for Mrs. Wix; +but her consciousness of her assent to the absence of that fond figure +caused a pair of words that had often sounded in her ears to ring in +them again. It showed her in short what her father had always meant by +calling her mother a "low sneak" and her mother by calling her father +one. She wondered if she herself shouldn't be a low sneak in learning to +be so happy without Mrs. Wix. What would Mrs. Wix do?--where would Mrs. +Wix go? Before Maisie knew it, and at the door, as Sir Claude was off, +these anxieties, on her lips, grew articulate and her stepfather had +stopped long enough to answer them. "Oh I'll square her!" he cried; and +with this he departed. + +Face to face with Mrs. Beale, Maisie, giving a sigh of relief, looked +round at what seemed to her the dawn of a higher order. "Then EVERY +ONE will be squared!" she peacefully said. On which her stepmother +affectionately bent over her again. + + + + +XV + + +It was Susan Ash who came to her with the news: "He's downstairs, miss, +and he do look beautiful." + +In the schoolroom at her father's, which had pretty blue curtains, she +had been making out at the piano a lovely little thing, as Mrs. Beale +called it, a "Moonlight Berceuse" sent her through the post by Sir +Claude, who considered that her musical education had been deplorably +neglected and who, the last months at her mother's, had been on the +point of making arrangements for regular lessons. She knew from him +familiarly that the real thing, as he said, was shockingly dear and that +anything else was a waste of money, and she therefore rejoiced the more +at the sacrifice represented by this composition, of which the price, +five shillings, was marked on the cover and which was evidently the real +thing. She was already on her feet. "Mrs. Beale has sent up for me?" + +"Oh no--it's not that," said Susan Ash. "Mrs. Beale has been out this +hour." + +"Then papa!" + +"Dear no--not papa. You'll do, miss, all but them wandering 'airs," +Susan went on. "Your papa never came 'ome at all," she added. + +"Home from where?" Maisie responded a little absently and very +excitedly. She gave a wild manual brush to her locks. + +"Oh that, miss, I should be very sorry to tell you! I'd rather tuck away +that white thing behind--though I'm blest if it's my work." + +"Do then, please. I know where papa was," Maisie impatiently continued. + +"Well, in your place I wouldn't tell." + +"He was at the club--the Chrysanthemum. So!" + +"All night long? Why the flowers shut up at night, you know!" cried +Susan Ash. + +"Well, I don't care"--he child was at the door. "Sir Claude asked for me +ALONE?" + +"The same as if you was a duchess." + +Maisie was aware on her way downstairs that she was now quite as happy +as one, and also, a moment later, as she hung round his neck, that +even such a personage would scarce commit herself more grandly. There +was moreover a hint of the duchess in the infinite point with which, +as she felt, she exclaimed: "And this is what you call coming OFTEN?" + +Sir Claude met her delightfully and in the same fine spirit. "My dear +old man, don't make me a scene--I assure you it's what every woman I +look at does. Let us have some fun--it's a lovely day: clap on something +smart and come out with me; then we'll talk it over quietly." + +They were on their way five minutes later to Hyde Park, and nothing that +even in the good days at her mother's they had ever talked over had more +of the sweetness of tranquillity than his present prompt explanations. +He was at his best in such an office and with the exception of Mrs. Wix +the only person she had met in her life who ever explained. With him, +however, the act had an authority transcending the wisdom of woman. It +all came back--the plans that always failed, all the rewards and bribes +that she was perpetually paying for in advance and perpetually out of +pocket by afterwards--the whole great stress to be dealt with introduced +her on each occasion afresh to the question of money. Even she herself +almost knew how it would have expressed the strength of his empire to +say that to shuffle away her sense of being duped he had only, from +under his lovely moustache, to breathe upon it. It was somehow in the +nature of plans to be expensive and in the nature of the expensive to be +impossible. To be "involved" was of the essence of everybody's affairs, +and also at every particular moment to be more involved than usual. +This had been the case with Sir Claude's, with papa's, with mamma's, +with Mrs. Beale's and with Maisie's own at the particular moment, a +moment of several weeks, that had elapsed since our young lady had been +re-established at her father's. There wasn't "two-and-tuppence" for +anything or for any one, and that was why there had been no sequel to +the classes in French literature with all the smart little girls. It +was devilish awkward, didn't she see? to try, without even the limited +capital mentioned, to mix her up with a remote array that glittered +before her after this as the children of the rich. She was to feel +henceforth as if she were flattening her nose upon the hard window-pane +of the sweet-shop of knowledge. If the classes, however, that were +select, and accordingly the only ones, were impossibly dear, the +lectures at the institutions--at least at some of them--were directly +addressed to the intelligent poor, and it therefore had to be easier +still to produce on the spot the reason why she had been taken to none. +This reason, Sir Claude said, was that she happened to be just going to +be, though they had nothing to do with that in now directing their steps +to the banks of the Serpentine. Maisie's own park, in the north, had +been nearer at hand, but they rolled westward in a hansom because at the +end of the sweet June days this was the direction taken by every one +that any one looked at. They cultivated for an hour, on the Row and +by the Drive, this opportunity for each observer to amuse and for one +of them indeed, not a little hilariously, to mystify the other, and +before the hour was over Maisie had elicited, in reply to her sharpest +challenge, a further account of her friend's long absence. + +"Why I've broken my word to you so dreadfully--promising so solemnly and +then never coming? Well, my dear, that's a question that, not seeing me +day after day, you must very often have put to Mrs. Beale." + +"Oh yes," the child replied; "again and again." + +"And what has she told you?" + +"That you're as bad as you're beautiful." + +"Is that what she says?" + +"Those very words." + +"Ah the dear old soul!" Sir Claude was much diverted, and his loud, +clear laugh was all his explanation. Those were just the words Maisie +had last heard him use about Mrs. Wix. She clung to his hand, which was +encased in a pearl-grey glove ornamented with the thick black lines +that, at her mother's, always used to strike her as connected with the +way the bestitched fists of the long ladies carried, with the elbows +well out, their umbrellas upside down. The mere sense of his grasp in +her own covered the ground of loss just as much as the ground of gain. +His presence was like an object brought so close to her face that she +couldn't see round its edges. He himself, however, remained showman of +the spectacle even after they had passed out of the Park and begun, +under the charm of the spot and the season, to stroll in Kensington +Gardens. What they had left behind them was, as he said, only a pretty +bad circus, and, through prepossessing gates and over a bridge, they +had come in a quarter of an hour, as he also remarked, a hundred miles +from London. A great green glade was before them, and high old trees, +and under the shade of these, in the fresh turf, the crooked course +of a rural footpath. "It's the Forest of Arden," Sir Claude had just +delightfully observed, "and I'm the banished duke, and you're--what was +the young woman called?--the artless country wench. And there," he went +on, "is the other girl--what's her name, Rosalind?--and (don't you +know?) the fellow who was making up to her. Upon my word he IS making +up to her!" + +His allusion was to a couple who, side by side, at the end of the glade, +were moving in the same direction as themselves. These distant figures, +in their slow stroll (which kept them so close together that their +heads, drooping a little forward, almost touched), presented the back of +a lady who looked tall, who was evidently a very fine woman, and that +of a gentleman whose left hand appeared to be passed well into her arm +while his right, behind him, made jerky motions with the stick that it +grasped. Maisie's fancy responded for an instant to her friend's idea +that the sight was idyllic; then, stopping short, she brought out with +all her clearness: "Why mercy--if it isn't mamma!" + +Sir Claude paused with a stare. "Mamma? But mamma's at Brussels." + +Maisie, with her eyes on the lady, wondered. "At Brussels?" + +"She's gone to play a match." + +"At billiards? You didn't tell me." + +"Of course I didn't!" Sir Claude ejaculated. "There's plenty I don't +tell you. She went on Wednesday." + +The couple had added to their distance, but Maisie's eyes more than kept +pace with them. "Then she has come back." + +Sir Claude watched the lady. "It's much more likely she never went!" + +"It's mamma!" the child said with decision. + +They had stood still, but Sir Claude had made the most of his +opportunity, and it happened that just at this moment, at the end of the +vista, the others halted and, still showing only their backs, seemed to +stay talking. "Right you are, my duck!" he exclaimed at last. "It's my +own sweet wife!" + +He had spoken with a laugh, but he had changed colour, and Maisie +quickly looked away from him. "Then who is it with her?" + +"Blest if I know!" said Sir Claude. + +"Is it Mr. Perriam?" + +"Oh dear no--Perriam's smashed." + +"Smashed?" + +"Exposed--in the City. But there are quantities of others!" Sir Claude +smiled. + +Maisie appeared to count them; she studied the gentleman's back. "Then +is this Lord Eric?" + +For a moment her companion made no answer, and when she turned her eyes +again to him he was looking at her, she thought, rather queerly. "What +do you know about Lord Eric?" + +She tried innocently to be odd in return. "Oh I know more than you +think! Is it Lord Eric?" she repeated. + +"It maybe. Blest if I care!" + +Their friends had slightly separated and now, as Sir Claude spoke, +suddenly faced round, showing all the splendour of her ladyship and all +the mystery of her comrade. Maisie held her breath. "They're coming!" + +"Let them come." And Sir Claude, pulling out his cigarettes, began to +strike a light. + +"We shall meet them!" + +"No. They'll meet US." + +Maisie stood her ground. "They see us. Just look." + +Sir Claude threw away his match. "Come straight on." The others, in the +return, evidently startled, had half-paused again, keeping well apart. +"She's horribly surprised and wants to slope," he continued. "But it's +too late." + +Maisie advanced beside him, making out even across the interval that her +ladyship was ill at ease. "Then what will she do?" + +Sir Claude puffed his cigarette. "She's quickly thinking." He appeared +to enjoy it. + +Ida had wavered but an instant; her companion clearly gave her moral +support. Maisie thought he somehow looked brave, and he had no likeness +whatever to Mr. Perriam. His face, thin and rather sharp, was smooth, +and it was not till they came nearer that she saw he had a remarkably +fair little moustache. She could already see that his eyes were of the +lightest blue. He was far nicer than Mr. Perriam. Mamma looked terrible +from afar, but even under her guns the child's curiosity flickered and +she appealed again to Sir Claude. "Is it--IS it Lord Eric?" + +Sir Claude smoked composedly enough. "I think it's the Count." + +This was a happy solution--it fitted her idea of a count. But what idea, +as she now came grandly on, did mamma fit?--unless that of an actress, +in some tremendous situation, sweeping down to the footlights as if she +would jump them. Maisie felt really so frightened that before she knew +it she had passed her hand into Sir Claude's arm. Her pressure caused +him to stop, and at the sight of this the other couple came equally to +a stand and, beyond the diminished space, remained a moment more in +talk. This, however, was the matter of an instant; leaving the Count +apparently to come round more circuitously--an outflanking movement, if +Maisie had but known--her ladyship resumed the onset. "What WILL she do +now?" her daughter asked. + +Sir Claude was at present in a position to say: "Try to pretend it's +me." + +"You?" + +"Why that I'm up to something." + +In another minute poor Ida had justified this prediction, erect there +before them like a figure of justice in full dress. There were parts of +her face that grew whiter while Maisie looked, and other parts in which +this change seemed to make other colours reign with more intensity. +"What are you doing with my daughter?" she demanded of her husband; in +spite of the indignant tone of which Maisie had a greater sense than +ever in her life before of not being personally noticed. It seemed to +her Sir Claude also grew pale as an effect of the loud defiance with +which Ida twice repeated this question. He put her, instead of answering +it, an enquiry of his own: "Who the devil have you got hold of NOW?" +and at this her ladyship turned tremendously to the child, glaring at +her as at an equal plotter of sin. Maisie received in petrifaction the +full force of her mother's huge painted eyes--they were like Japanese +lanterns swung under festal arches. But life came back to her from a +tone suddenly and strangely softened. "Go straight to that gentleman, my +dear; I've asked him to take you a few minutes. He's charming--go. I've +something to say to THIS creature." + +Maisie felt Sir Claude immediately clutch her. "No, no--thank you: that +won't do. She's mine." + +"Yours?" It was confounding to Maisie to hear her speak quite as if she +had never heard of Sir Claude before. + +"Mine. You've given her up. You've not another word to say about her. I +have her from her father," said Sir Claude--a statement that startled +his companion, who could also measure its lively action on her mother. + +There was visibly, however, an influence that made Ida consider; she +glanced at the gentleman she had left, who, having strolled with his +hands in his pockets to some distance, stood there with unembarrassed +vagueness. She directed to him the face that was like an illuminated +garden, turnstile and all, for the frequentation of which he had his +season-ticket; then she looked again at Sir Claude. "I've given her +up to her father to KEEP--not to get rid of by sending about the town +either with you or with any one else. If she's not to mind me let HIM +come and tell me so. I decline to take it from another person, and I +like your pretending that with your humbug of 'interest' you've a leg to +stand on. I know your game and have something now to say to you about +it." + +Sir Claude gave a squeeze of the child's arm. "Didn't I tell you she'd +have, Miss Farange?" + +"You're uncommonly afraid to hear it," Ida went on; "but if you think +she'll protect you from it you're mightily mistaken." She gave him a +moment. "I'll give her the benefit as soon as look at you. Should you +like her to know, my dear?" Maisie had a sense of her launching the +question with effect; yet our young lady was also conscious of hoping +that Sir Claude would declare that preference. We have already learned +that she had come to like people's liking her to "know." Before he +could reply at all, none the less, her mother opened a pair of arms of +extraordinary elegance, and then she felt the loosening of his grasp. +"My own child," Ida murmured in a voice--a voice of sudden confused +tenderness--that it seemed to her she heard for the first time. She +wavered but an instant, thrilled with the first direct appeal, as +distinguished from the mere maternal pull, she had ever had from lips +that, even in the old vociferous years, had always been sharp. The next +moment she was on her mother's breast, where, amid a wilderness of +trinkets, she felt as if she had suddenly been thrust, with a smash of +glass, into a jeweller's shop-front, but only to be as suddenly ejected +with a push and the brisk injunction: "Now go to the Captain!" + +Maisie glanced at the gentleman submissively, but felt the want of more +introduction. "The Captain?" + +Sir Claude broke into a laugh. "I told her it was the Count." + +Ida stared; she rose so superior that she was colossal. "You're too +utterly loathsome," she then declared. "Be off!" she repeated to her +daughter. + +Maisie started, moved backward and, looking at Sir Claude, "Only for a +moment," she signed to him in her bewilderment. But he was too angry +to heed her--too angry with his wife; as she turned away she heard his +anger break out. "You damned old b----"--she couldn't quite hear all. +It was enough, it was too much: she fled before it, rushing even to a +stranger for the shock of such a change of tone. + + + + +XVI + + +As she met the Captain's light blue eyes the greatest marvel occurred; +she felt a sudden relief at finding them reply with anxiety to the +horror in her face. "What in the world has he done?" He put it all on +Sir Claude. + +"He has called her a damned old brute." She couldn't help bringing that +out. + +The Captain, at the same elevation as her ladyship, gaped wide; then of +course, like every one else, he was convulsed. But he instantly caught +himself up, echoing her bad words. "A damned old brute--your mother?" + +Maisie was already conscious of her second movement. "I think she tried +to make him angry." + +The Captain's stupefaction was fine. "Angry--SHE? Why she's an angel!" + +On the spot, as he said this, his face won her over; it was so bright +and kind, and his blue eyes had such a reflexion of some mysterious +grace that, for him at least, her mother had put forth. Her fund of +observation enabled her as she gazed up at him to place him: he was a +candid simple soldier; very grave--she came back to that--but not at +all terrible. At any rate he struck a note that was new to her and that +after a moment made her say: "Do you like her very much?" + +He smiled down at her, hesitating, looking pleasanter and pleasanter. +"Let me tell you about your mother." + +He put out a big military hand which she immediately took, and they +turned off together to where a couple of chairs had been placed under +one of the trees. "She told me to come to you," Maisie explained as they +went; and presently she was close to him in a chair, with the prettiest +of pictures--the sheen of the lake through other trees--before them, and +the sound of birds, the plash of boats, the play of children in the air. +The Captain, inclining his military person, sat sideways to be closer +and kinder, and as her hand was on the arm of her seat he put his own +down on it again to emphasise something he had to say that would be good +for her to hear. He had already told her how her mother, from the moment +of seeing her so unexpectedly with a person who was--well, not at all +the right person, had promptly asked him to take charge of her while she +herself tackled, as she said, the real culprit. He gave the child the +sense of doing for the time what he liked with her; ten minutes before +she had never seen him, but she could now sit there touching him, +touched and impressed by him and thinking it nice when a gentleman +was thin and brown--brown with a kind of clear depth that made his +straw-coloured moustache almost white and his eyes resemble little pale +flowers. The most extraordinary thing was the way she didn't appear just +then to mind Sir Claude's being tackled. The Captain wasn't a bit like +him, for it was an odd part of the pleasantness of mamma's friend that +it resided in a manner in this friend's having a face so informally put +together that the only kindness could be to call it funny. An odder part +still was that it finally made our young lady, to classify him further, +say to herself that, of all people in the world, he reminded her most +insidiously of Mrs. Wix. He had neither straighteners nor a diadem, nor, +at least in the same place as the other, a button; he was sun-burnt and +deep-voiced and smelt of cigars, yet he marvellously had more in common +with her old governess than with her young stepfather. What he had +to say to her that was good for her to hear was that her poor mother +(didn't she know?) was the best friend he had ever had in all his life. +And he added: "She has told me ever so much about you. I'm awfully glad +to know you." + +She had never, she thought, been so addressed as a young lady, not even +by Sir Claude the day, so long ago, that she found him with Mrs. Beale. +It struck her as the way that at balls, by delightful partners, young +ladies must be spoken to in the intervals of dances; and she tried to +think of something that would meet it at the same high point. But this +effort flurried her, and all she could produce was: "At first, you know, +I thought you were Lord Eric." + +The Captain looked vague. "Lord Eric?" + +"And then Sir Claude thought you were the Count." + +At this he laughed out. "Why he's only five foot high and as red as +a lobster!" Maisie laughed, with a certain elegance, in return--the +young lady at the ball certainly would--and was on the point, as +conscientiously, of pursuing the subject with an agreeable question. But +before she could speak her companion challenged her. "Who in the world's +Lord Eric?" + +"Don't you know him?" She judged her young lady would say that with +light surprise. + +"Do you mean a fat man with his mouth always open?" She had to +confess that their acquaintance was so limited that she could only +describe the bearer of the name as a friend of mamma's; but a light +suddenly came to the Captain, who quickly spoke as knowing her man. +"What-do-you-call-him's brother, the fellow that owned Bobolink?" Then, +with all his kindness, he contradicted her flat. "Oh dear no; your +mother never knew HIM." + +"But Mrs. Wix said so," the child risked. + +"Mrs. Wix?" + +"My old governess." + +This again seemed amusing to the Captain. "She mixed him up, your old +governess. He's an awful beast. Your mother never looked at him." + +He was as positive as he was friendly, but he dropped for a minute after +this into a silence that gave Maisie, confused but ingenious, a chance +to redeem the mistake of pretending to know too much by the humility of +inviting further correction. "And doesn't she know the Count?" + +"Oh I dare say! But he's another ass." After which abruptly, with a +different look, he put down again on the back of her own the hand he had +momentarily removed. Maisie even thought he coloured a little. "I want +tremendously to speak to you. You must never believe any harm of your +mother." + +"Oh I assure you I DON'T!" cried the child, blushing, herself, up to her +eyes in a sudden surge of deprecation of such a thought. + +The Captain, bending his head, raised her hand to his lips with a +benevolence that made her wish her glove had been nicer. "Of course you +don't when you know how fond she is of YOU." + +"She's fond of me?" Maisie panted. + +"Tremendously. But she thinks you don't like her. You MUST like her. She +has had too much to put up with." + +"Oh yes--I know!" She rejoiced that she had never denied it. + +"Of course I've no right to speak of her except as a particular friend," +the Captain went on. "But she's a splendid woman. She has never had any +sort of justice." + +"Hasn't she?"--his companion, to hear the words, felt a thrill +altogether new. + +"Perhaps I oughtn't to say it to you, but she has had everything to +suffer." + +"Oh yes--you can SAY it to me!" Maisie hastened to profess. + +The Captain was glad. "Well, you needn't tell. It's all for YOU--do you +see?" + +Serious and smiling she only wanted to take it from him. "It's between +you and me! Oh there are lots of things I've never told!" + +"Well, keep this with the rest. I assure you she has had the most +infernal time, no matter what any one says to the contrary. She's the +cleverest woman I ever saw in all my life. She's too charming." She had +been touched already by his tone, and now she leaned back in her chair +and felt something tremble within her. "She's tremendous fun--she can +do all sorts of things better than I've ever seen any one. She has the +pluck of fifty--and I know; I assure you I do. She has the nerve for a +tiger-shoot--by Jove I'd TAKE her! And she is awfully open and generous, +don't you know? there are women that are such horrid sneaks. She'll +go through anything for any one she likes." He appeared to watch for +a moment the effect on his companion of this emphasis; then he gave a +small sigh that mourned the limits of the speakable. But it was almost +with the note of a fresh challenge that he wound up: "Look here, she's +TRUE!" + +Maisie had so little desire to assert the contrary that she found +herself, in the intensity of her response, throbbing with a joy still +less utterable than the essence of the Captain's admiration. She was +fairly hushed with the sense that he spoke of her mother as she had +never heard any one speak. It came over her as she sat silent that, +after all, this admiration and this respect were quite new words, which +took a distinction from the fact that nothing in the least resembling +them in quality had on any occasion dropped from the lips of her father, +of Mrs. Beale, of Sir Claude or even of Mrs. Wix. What it appeared to +her to come to was that on the subject of her ladyship it was the first +real kindness she had heard, so that at the touch of it something +strange and deep and pitying surged up within her--a revelation that, +practically and so far as she knew, her mother, apart from this, +had only been disliked. Mrs. Wix's original account of Sir Claude's +affection seemed as empty now as the chorus in a children's game, and +the husband and wife, but a little way off at that moment, were face to +face in hatred and with the dreadful name he had called her still in the +air. What was it the Captain on the other hand had called her? Maisie +wanted to hear that again. The tears filled her eyes and rolled down +her cheeks, which burned under them with the rush of a consciousness +that for her too, five minutes before, the vivid towering beauty whose +assault she awaited had been, a moment long, an object of pure dread. +She became on the spot indifferent to her usual fear of showing what +in children was notoriously most offensive--presented to her companion, +soundlessly but hideously, her wet distorted face. She cried, with a +pang, straight AT him, cried as she had never cried at any one in all +her life. "Oh do you love her?" she brought out with a gulp that was +the effect of her trying not to make a noise. + +It was doubtless another consequence of the thick mist through which she +saw him that in reply to her question the Captain gave her such a queer +blurred look. He stammered, yet in his voice there was also the ring of +a great awkward insistence. "Of course I'm tremendously fond of her--I +like her better than any woman I ever saw. I don't mind in the least +telling you that," he went on, "and I should think myself a great beast +if I did." Then to show that his position was superlatively clear he +made her, with a kindness that even Sir Claude had never surpassed, +tremble again as she had trembled at his first outbreak. He called her +by her name, and her name drove it home. "My dear Maisie, your mother's +an angel!" + +It was an almost unbelievable balm--it soothed so her impression of +danger and pain. She sank back in her chair, she covered her face +with her hands. "Oh mother, mother, mother!" she sobbed. She had an +impression that the Captain, beside her, if more and more friendly, was +by no means unembarrassed; in a minute, however, when her eyes were +clearer, he was erect in front of her, very red and nervously looking +about him and whacking his leg with his stick. "Say you love her, Mr. +Captain; say it, say it!" she implored. + +Mr. Captain's blue eyes fixed themselves very hard. "Of course I love +her, damn it, you know!" + +At this she also jumped up; she had fished out somehow her +pocket-handkerchief. "So do I then. I do, I do, I do!" she passionately +asseverated. + +"Then will you come back to her?" + +Maisie, staring, stopped the tight little plug of her handkerchief on +the way to her eyes. "She won't have me." + +"Yes she will. She wants you." + +"Back at the house--with Sir Claude?" + +Again he hung fire. "No, not with him. In another place." + +They stood looking at each other with an intensity unusual as between a +Captain and a little girl. "She won't have me in any place." + +"Oh yes she will if _I_ ask her!" + +Maisie's intensity continued. "Shall you be there?" + +The Captain's, on the whole, did the same. "Oh yes--some day." + +"Then you don't mean now?" + +He broke into a quick smile. "Will you come now?--go with us for an +hour?" + +Maisie considered. "She wouldn't have me even now." She could see that +he had his idea, but that her tone impressed him. That disappointed her +a little, though in an instant he rang out again. + +"She will if I ask her," he repeated. "I'll ask her this minute." + +Maisie, turning at this, looked away to where her mother and her +stepfather had stopped. At first, among the trees, nobody was visible; +but the next moment she exclaimed with expression: "It's over--here he +comes!" + +The Captain watched the approach of her ladyship's husband, who lounged +composedly over the grass, making to Maisie with his closed fingers a +little movement in the air. "I've no desire to avoid him." + +"Well, you mustn't see him," said Maisie. + +"Oh he's in no hurry himself!" Sir Claude had stopped to light another +cigarette. + +She was vague as to the way it was proper he should feel; but she had a +sense that the Captain's remark was rather a free reflexion on it. "Oh +he doesn't care!" she replied. + +"Doesn't care for what?" + +"Doesn't care who you are. He told me so. Go and ask mamma," she added. + +"If you can come with us? Very good. You really want me not to wait for +him?" + +"PLEASE don't." But Sir Claude was not yet near, and the Captain had +with his left hand taken hold of her right, which he familiarly, +sociably swung a little. "Only first," she continued, "tell me this. Are +you going to LIVE with mamma?" + +The immemorial note of mirth broke out at her seriousness. "One of these +days." + +She wondered, wholly unperturbed by his laughter. "Then where will Sir +Claude be?" + +"He'll have left her of course." + +"Does he really intend to do that?" + +"You've every opportunity to ask him." + +Maisie shook her head with decision. "He won't do it. Not first." + +Her "first" made the Captain laugh out again. "Oh he'll be sure to be +nasty! But I've said too much to you." + +"Well, you know, I'll never tell," said Maisie. + +"No, it's all for yourself. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye." Maisie kept his hand long enough to add: "I like you too." +And then supremely: "You DO love her?" + +"My dear child--!" The Captain wanted words. + +"Then don't do it only for just a little." + +"A little?" + +"Like all the others." + +"All the others?"--he stood staring. + +She pulled away her hand. "Do it always!" She bounded to meet Sir +Claude, and as she left the Captain she heard him ring out with apparent +gaiety: + +"Oh I'm in for it!" + +As she joined Sir Claude she noted her mother in the distance move +slowly off, and, glancing again at the Captain, saw him, swinging his +stick, retreat in the same direction. + +She had never seen Sir Claude look as he looked just then; flushed yet +not excited--settled rather in an immoveable disgust and at once very +sick and very hard. His conversation with her mother had clearly drawn +blood, and the child's old horror came back to her, begetting the +instant moral contraction of the days when her parents had looked to +her to feed their love of battle. Her greatest fear for the moment, +however, was that her friend would see she had been crying. The next +she became aware that he had glanced at her, and it presently occurred +to her that he didn't even wish to be looked at. At this she quickly +removed her gaze, while he said rather curtly: "Well, who in the world +IS the fellow?" + +She felt herself flooded with prudence. "Oh _I_ haven't found out!" This +sounded as if she meant he ought to have done so himself; but she could +only face doggedly the ugliness of seeming disagreeable, as she used to +face it in the hours when her father, for her blankness, called her a +dirty little donkey, and her mother, for her falsity, pushed her out of +the room. + +"Then what have you been doing all this time?" + +"Oh I don't know!" It was of the essence of her method not to be silly +by halves. + +"Then didn't the beast say anything?" They had got down by the lake and +were walking fast. + +"Well, not very much." + +"He didn't speak of your mother?" + +"Oh yes, a little!" + +"Then what I ask you, please, is HOW?" She kept silence--so long that +he presently went on: "I say, you know--don't you hear me?" At this she +produced: "Well, I'm afraid I didn't attend to him very much." + +Sir Claude, smoking rather hard, made no immediate rejoinder; but +finally he exclaimed: "Then my dear--with such a chance--you were the +perfection of a dunce!" He was so irritated--or she took him to be--that +for the rest of the time they were in the Gardens he spoke no other +word; and she meanwhile subtly abstained from any attempt to pacify him. +That would only lead to more questions. At the gate of the Gardens he +hailed a four-wheeled cab and, in silence, without meeting her eyes, put +her into it, only saying "Give him THAT" as he tossed half a crown upon +the seat. Even when from outside he had closed the door and told the man +where to go he never took her departing look. Nothing of this kind had +ever yet happened to them, but it had no power to make her love him +less; so she could not only bear it, she felt as she drove away--she +could rejoice in it. It brought again the sweet sense of success that, +ages before, she had had at a crisis when, on the stairs, returning from +her father's, she had met a fierce question of her mother's with an +imbecility as deep and had in consequence been dashed by Mrs. Farange +almost to the bottom. + + + + +XVII + + +If for reasons of her own she could bear the sense of Sir Claude's +displeasure her young endurance might have been put to a serious test. +The days went by without his knocking at her father's door, and the +time would have turned sadly to waste if something hadn't conspicuously +happened to give it a new difference. What took place was a marked +change in the attitude of Mrs. Beale--a change that somehow, even +in his absence, seemed to bring Sir Claude again into the house. It +began practically with a conversation that occurred between them the +day Maisie, came home alone in the cab. Mrs. Beale had by that time +returned, and she was more successful than their friend in extracting +from our young lady an account of the extraordinary passage with the +Captain. She came back to it repeatedly, and on the very next day it +grew distinct to the child that she was already in full possession of +what at the same moment had been enacted between her ladyship and Sir +Claude. This was the real origin of her final perception that though he +didn't come to the house her stepmother had some rare secret for not +being quite without him. This led to some rare passages with Mrs. Beale, +the promptest of which had been--not on Maisie's part--a wonderful +outbreak of tears. Mrs. Beale was not, as she herself said, a crying +creature: she hadn't cried, to Maisie's knowledge, since the lowly +governess days, the grey dawn of their connexion. But she wept now with +passion, professing loudly that it did her good and saying remarkable +things to her charge, for whom the occasion was an equal benefit, an +addition to all the fine precautionary wisdom stored away. It somehow +hadn't violated that wisdom, Maisie felt, for her to have told Mrs. +Beale what she had not told Sir Claude, inasmuch as the greatest strain, +to her sense, was between Sir Claude and Sir Claude's wife, and his wife +was just what Mrs. Beale was unfortunately not. He sent his stepdaughter +three days after the incident in Kensington Gardens a message as frank +as it was tender, and that was how Mrs. Beale had had to bring out in +a manner that seemed half an appeal, half a defiance: "Well yes, hang +it--I DO see him!" + +How and when and where, however, were just what Maisie was not to +know--an exclusion moreover that she never questioned in the light of +a participation large enough to make him, while she shared the ample +void of Mrs. Beale's rather blank independence, shine in her yearning +eye like the single, the sovereign window-square of a great dim +disproportioned room. As far as her father was concerned such hours +had no interruption; and then it was clear between them that each +was thinking of the absent and thinking the other thought, so that he +was an object of conscious reference in everything they said or did. +The wretched truth, Mrs. Beale had to confess, was that she had hoped +against hope and that in the Regent's Park it was impossible Sir Claude +should really be in and out. Hadn't they at last to look the fact in the +face?--it was too disgustingly evident that no one after all had been +squared. Well, if no one had been squared it was because every one had +been vile. No one and every one were of course Beale and Ida, the extent +of whose power to be nasty was a thing that, to a little girl, Mrs. +Beale simply couldn't give chapter and verse for. Therefore it was that +to keep going at all, as she said, that lady had to make, as she also +said, another arrangement--the arrangement in which Maisie was included +only to the point of knowing it existed and wondering wistfully what it +was. Conspicuously at any rate it had a side that was responsible for +Mrs. Beale's sudden emotion and sudden confidence--a demonstration +this, however, of which the tearfulness was far from deterrent to our +heroine's thought of how happy she should be if she could only make an +arrangement for herself. Mrs. Beale's own operated, it appeared, with +regularity and frequency; for it was almost every day or two that she +was able to bring Maisie a message and to take one back. It had been +over the vision of what, as she called it, he did for her that she +broke down; and this vision was kept in a manner before Maisie by a +subsequent increase not only of the gaiety, but literally--it seemed not +presumptuous to perceive--of the actual virtue of her friend. The friend +was herself the first to proclaim it: he had pulled her up immensely--he +had quite pulled her round. She had charming tormenting words about him: +he was her good fairy, her hidden spring--above all he was just her +"higher" conscience. That was what had particularly come out with her +startling tears: he had made her, dear man, think ever so much better of +herself. It had been thus rather surprisingly revealed that she had been +in a way to think ill, and Maisie was glad to hear of the corrective at +the same time that she heard of the ailment. + +She presently found herself supposing, and in spite of her envy even +hoping, that whenever Mrs. Beale was out of the house Sir Claude had +in some manner the satisfaction of it. This was now of more frequent +occurrence than ever before--so much so that she would have thought of +her stepmother as almost extravagantly absent had it not been that, in +the first place, her father was a superior specimen of that habit: it +was the frequent remark of his present wife, as it had been, before the +tribunals of their country, a prominent plea of her predecessor, that +he scarce came home even to sleep. In the second place Mrs. Beale, when +she WAS on the spot, had now a beautiful air of longing to make up for +everything. The only shadow in such bright intervals was that, as Maisie +put it to herself, she could get nothing by questions. It was in the +nature of things to be none of a small child's business, even when a +small child had from the first been deluded into a fear that she might +be only too much initiated. Things then were in Maisie's experience so +true to their nature that questions were almost always improper; but +she learned on the other hand soon to recognise how at last, sometimes, +patient little silences and intelligent little looks could be rewarded +by delightful little glimpses. There had been years at Beale Farange's +when the monosyllable "he" meant always, meant almost violently, the +master; but all that was changed at a period at which Sir Claude's +merits were of themselves so much in the air that it scarce took even +two letters to name him. "He keeps me up splendidly--he does, my own +precious," Mrs. Beale would observe to her comrade; or else she would +say that the situation at the other establishment had reached a point +that could scarcely be believed--the point, monstrous as it sounded, +of his not having laid eyes upon her for twelve days. "She" of course +at Beale Farange's had never meant any one but Ida, and there was the +difference in this case that it now meant Ida with renewed intensity. +Mrs. Beale--it was striking--was in a position to animadvert more and +more upon her dreadfulness, the moral of all which appeared to be how +abominably yet blessedly little she had to do with her husband. This +flow of information came home to our two friends because, truly, Mrs. +Beale had not much more to do with her own; but that was one of the +reflexions that Maisie could make without allowing it to break the +spell of her present sympathy. How could such a spell be anything but +deep when Sir Claude's influence, operating from afar, at last really +determined the resumption of his stepdaughter's studies? Mrs. Beale +again took fire about them and was quite vivid for Maisie as to their +being the great matter to which the dear absent one kept her up. + +This was the second source--I have just alluded to the first--of the +child's consciousness of something that, very hopefully, she described +to herself as a new phase; and it also presented in the brightest light +the fresh enthusiasm with which Mrs. Beale always reappeared and which +really gave Maisie a happier sense than she had yet had of being very +dear at least to two persons. That she had small remembrance at present +of a third illustrates, I am afraid, a temporary oblivion of Mrs. Wix, +an accident to be explained only by a state of unnatural excitement. For +what was the form taken by Mrs. Beale's enthusiasm and acquiring relief +in the domestic conditions still left to her but the delightful form of +"reading" with her little charge on lines directly prescribed and in +works profusely supplied by Sir Claude? He had got hold of an awfully +good list--"mostly essays, don't you know?" Mrs. Beale had said; a word +always august to Maisie, but henceforth to be softened by hazy, in fact +by quite languorous edges. There was at any rate a week in which no less +than nine volumes arrived, and the impression was to be gathered from +Mrs. Beale that the obscure intercourse she enjoyed with Sir Claude not +only involved an account and a criticism of studies, but was organised +almost for the very purpose of report and consultation. It was for +Maisie's education in short that, as she often repeated, she closed her +door--closed it to the gentlemen who used to flock there in such numbers +and whom her husband's practical desertion of her would have made it a +course of the highest indelicacy to receive. Maisie was familiar from of +old with the principle at least of the care that a woman, as Mrs. Beale +phrased it, attractive and exposed must take of her "character," and was +duly impressed with the rigour of her stepmother's scruples. There was +literally no one of the other sex whom she seemed to feel at liberty to +see at home, and when the child risked an enquiry about the ladies who, +one by one, during her own previous period, had been made quite loudly +welcome, Mrs. Beale hastened to inform her that, one by one, they had, +the fiends, been found out, after all, to be awful. If she wished to +know more about them she was recommended to approach her father. + +Maisie had, however, at the very moment of this injunction much livelier +curiosities, for the dream of lectures at an institution had at last +become a reality, thanks to Sir Claude's now unbounded energy in +discovering what could be done. It stood out in this connexion that when +you came to look into things in a spirit of earnestness an immense deal +could be done for very little more than your fare in the Underground. +The institution--there was a splendid one in a part of the town but +little known to the child--became, in the glow of such a spirit, a +thrilling place, and the walk to it from the station through Glower +Street (a pronunciation for which Mrs. Beale once laughed at her little +friend) a pathway literally strewn with "subjects." Maisie imagined +herself to pluck them as she went, though they thickened in the great +grey rooms where the fountain of knowledge, in the form usually of a +high voice that she took at first to be angry, plashed in the stillness +of rows of faces thrust out like empty jugs. "It MUST do us good--it's +all so hideous," Mrs. Beale had immediately declared; manifesting a +purity of resolution that made these occasions quite the most harmonious +of all the many on which the pair had pulled together. Maisie certainly +had never, in such an association, felt so uplifted, and never above +all been so carried off her feet, as at the moments of Mrs. Beale's +breathlessly re-entering the house and fairly shrieking upstairs to +know if they should still be in time for a lecture. Her stepdaughter, +all ready from the earliest hours, almost leaped over the banister to +respond, and they dashed out together in quest of learning as hard as +they often dashed back to release Mrs. Beale for other preoccupations. +There had been in short no bustle like these particular spasms, once +they had broken out, since that last brief flurry when Mrs. Wix, blowing +as if she were grooming her, "made up" for everything previously lost at +her father's. + +These weeks as well were too few, but they were flooded with a new +emotion, part of which indeed came from the possibility that, through +the long telescope of Glower Street, or perhaps between the pillars of +the institution--which impressive objects were what Maisie thought most +made it one--they should some day spy Sir Claude. That was what Mrs. +Beale, under pressure, had said--doubtless a little impatiently: "Oh +yes, oh yes, some day!" His joining them was clearly far less of a +matter of course than was to have been gathered from his original +profession of desire to improve in their company his own mind; and +this sharpened our young lady's guess that since that occasion either +something destructive had happened or something desirable hadn't. Mrs. +Beale had thrown but a partial light in telling her how it had turned +out that nobody had been squared. Maisie wished at any rate that +somebody WOULD be squared. However, though in every approach to the +temple of knowledge she watched in vain for Sir Claude, there was +no doubt about the action of his loved image as an incentive and a +recompense. When the institution was most on pillars--or, as Mrs. Beale +put it, on stilts--when the subject was deepest and the lecture longest +and the listeners ugliest, then it was they both felt their patron in +the background would be most pleased with them. One day, abruptly, with +a glance at this background, Mrs. Beale said to her companion: "We'll +go to-night to the thingumbob at Earl's Court"; an announcement putting +forth its full lustre when she had made known that she referred to +the great Exhibition just opened in that quarter, a collection of +extraordinary foreign things in tremendous gardens, with illuminations, +bands, elephants, switchbacks and side-shows, as well as crowds of +people among whom they might possibly see some one they knew. Maisie +flew in the same bound at the neck of her friend and at the name of Sir +Claude, on which Mrs. Beale confessed that--well, yes, there was just a +chance that he would be able to meet them. He never of course, in his +terrible position, knew what might happen from hour to hour; but he +hoped to be free and he had given Mrs. Beale the tip. "Bring her there +on the quiet and I'll try to turn up"--this was clear enough on what +so many weeks of privation had made of his desire to see the child: it +even appeared to represent on his part a yearning as constant as her +own. That in turn was just puzzling enough to make Maisie express a +bewilderment. She couldn't see, if they were so intensely of the same +mind, why the theory on which she had come back to Mrs. Beale, the +general reunion, the delightful trio, should have broken down so in +fact. Mrs. Beale furthermore only gave her more to think about in saying +that their disappointment was the result of his having got into his head +a kind of idea. + +"What kind of idea?" + +"Oh goodness knows!" She spoke with an approach to asperity. "He's so +awfully delicate." + +"Delicate?"--that was ambiguous. + +"About what he does, don't you know?" said Mrs. Beale. She fumbled. +"Well, about what WE do." + +Maisie wondered. "You and me?" + +"Me and HIM, silly!" cried Mrs. Beale with, this time, a real giggle. + +"But you don't do any harm--YOU don't," said Maisie, wondering afresh +and intending her emphasis as a decorous allusion to her parents. + +"Of course we don't, you angel--that's just the ground _I_ take!" her +companion exultantly responded. "He says he doesn't want you mixed up." + +"Mixed up with what?" + +"That's exactly what _I_ want to know: mixed up with what, and how you +are any more mixed--?" Mrs. Beale paused without ending her question. +She ended after an instant in a different way. "All you can say is that +it's his fancy." + +The tone of this, in spite of its expressing a resignation, the fruit of +weariness, that dismissed the subject, conveyed so vividly how much such +a fancy was not Mrs. Beale's own that our young lady was led by the mere +fact of contact to arrive at a dim apprehension of the unuttered and the +unknown. The relation between her step-parents had then a mysterious +residuum; this was the first time she really had reflected that except +as regards herself it was not a relationship. To each other it was only +what they might have happened to make it, and she gathered that this, +in the event, had been something that led Sir Claude to keep away from +her. Didn't he fear she would be compromised? The perception of such a +scruple endeared him the more, and it flashed over her that she might +simplify everything by showing him how little she made of such a danger. +Hadn't she lived with her eyes on it from her third year? It was the +condition most frequently discussed at the Faranges', where the word was +always in the air and where at the age of five, amid rounds of applause, +she could gabble it off. She knew as well in short that a person could +be compromised as that a person could be slapped with a hair-brush or +left alone in the dark, and it was equally familiar to her that each of +these ordeals was in general held to have too little effect. But the +first thing was to make absolutely sure of Mrs. Beale. This was done by +saying to her thoughtfully: "Well, if you don't mind--and you really +don't, do you?" + +Mrs. Beale, with a dawn of amusement, considered. "Mixing you up? Not a +bit. For what does it mean?" + +"Whatever it means I don't in the least mind BEING mixed. Therefore if +you don't and I don't," Maisie concluded, "don't you think that when I +see him this evening I had better just tell him we don't and ask him why +in the world HE should?" + + + + +XVIII + + +The child, however, was not destined to enjoy much of Sir Claude at the +"thingumbob," which took for them a very different turn indeed. On the +spot Mrs. Beale, with hilarity, had urged her to the course proposed; +but later, at the Exhibition, she withdrew this allowance, mentioning as +a result of second thoughts that when a man was so sensitive anything at +all frisky usually made him worse. It would have been hard indeed for +Sir Claude to be "worse," Maisie felt, as, in the gardens and the crowd, +when the first dazzle had dropped, she looked for him in vain up and +down. They had all their time, the couple, for frugal wistful wandering: +they had partaken together at home of the light vague meal--Maisie's +name for it was a "jam-supper"--to which they were reduced when Mr. +Farange sought his pleasure abroad. It was abroad now entirely that Mr. +Farange pursued this ideal, and it was the actual impression of his +daughter, derived from his wife, that he had three days before joined a +friend's yacht at Cowes. + +The place was full of side-shows, to which Mrs. Beale could introduce +the little girl only, alas, by revealing to her so attractive, so +enthralling a name: the side-shows, each time, were sixpence apiece, +and the fond allegiance enjoyed by the elder of our pair had been +established from the earliest time in spite of a paucity of sixpences. +Small coin dropped from her as half-heartedly as answers from bad +children to lessons that had not been looked at. Maisie passed more +slowly the great painted posters, pressing with a linked arm closer +to her friend's pocket, where she hoped for the audible chink of a +shilling. But the upshot of this was but to deepen her yearning: if Sir +Claude would only at last come the shillings would begin to ring. The +companions paused, for want of one, before the Flowers of the Forest, a +large presentment of bright brown ladies--they were brown all over--in +a medium suggestive of tropical luxuriance, and there Maisie dolorously +expressed her belief that he would never come at all. Mrs. Beale +hereupon, though discernibly disappointed, reminded her that he had not +been promised as a certainty--a remark that caused the child to gaze at +the Flowers through a blur in which they became more magnificent, yet +oddly more confused, and by which moreover confusion was imparted to the +aspect of a gentleman who at that moment, in the company of a lady, came +out of the brilliant booth. The lady was so brown that Maisie at first +took her for one of the Flowers; but during the few seconds that this +required--a few seconds in which she had also desolately given up Sir +Claude--she heard Mrs. Beale's voice, behind her, gather both wonder and +pain into a single sharp little cry. + +"Of all the wickedness--BEALE!" + +He had already, without distinguishing them in the mass of strollers, +turned another way--it seemed at the brown lady's suggestion. Her course +was marked, over heads and shoulders, by an upright scarlet plume, as to +the ownership of which Maisie was instantly eager. "Who is she--who is +she?" + +But Mrs. Beale for a moment only looked after them. "The liar--the +liar!" + +Maisie considered. "Because he's not--where one thought?" That was also, +a month ago in Kensington Gardens, where her mother had not been. +"Perhaps he has come back," she was quick to contribute. + +"He never went--the hound!" + +That, according to Sir Claude, had been also what her mother had not +done, and Maisie could only have a sense of something that in a maturer +mind would be called the way history repeats itself. + +"Who IS she?" she asked again. + +Mrs. Beale, fixed to the spot, seemed lost in the vision of an +opportunity missed. "If he had only seen me!"--it came from between her +teeth. "She's a brand-new one. But he must have been with her since +Tuesday." + +Maisie took it in. "She's almost black," she then reported. + +"They're always hideous," said Mrs. Beale. + +This was a remark on which the child had again to reflect. "Oh not his +WIVES!" she remonstrantly exclaimed. The words at another moment would +probably have set her friend "off," but Mrs. Beale was now, in her +instant vigilance, too immensely "on." "Did you ever in your life see +such a feather?" Maisie presently continued. + +This decoration appeared to have paused at some distance, and in spite +of intervening groups they could both look at it. "Oh that's the way +they dress--the vulgarest of the vulgar!" + +"They're coming back--they'll see us!" Maisie the next moment cried; +and while her companion answered that this was exactly what she wanted +and the child returned "Here they are--here they are!" the unconscious +subjects of so much attention, with a change of mind about their +direction, quickly retraced their steps and precipitated themselves upon +their critics. Their unconsciousness gave Mrs. Beale time to leap, under +her breath, to a recognition which Maisie caught. + +"It must be Mrs. Cuddon!" + +Maisie looked at Mrs. Cuddon hard--her lips even echoed the name. What +followed was extraordinarily rapid--a minute of livelier battle than had +ever yet, in so short a span at least, been waged round our heroine. The +muffled shock--lest people should notice--was violent, and it was only +for her later thought that the steps fell into their order, the steps +through which, in a bewilderment not so much of sound as of silence, she +had come to find herself, too soon for comprehension and too strangely +for fear, at the door of the Exhibition with her father. He thrust her +into a hansom and got in after her, and then it was--as she drove along +with him--that she recovered a little what had happened. Face to face +with them in the gardens he had seen them, and there had been a moment +of checked concussion during which, in a glare of black eyes and a +toss of red plumage, Mrs. Cuddon had recognised them, ejaculated and +vanished. There had been another moment at which she became aware of Sir +Claude, also poised there in surprise, but out of her father's view, as +if he had been warned off at the very moment of reaching them. It fell +into its place with all the rest that she had heard Mrs. Beale say to +her father, but whether low or loud was now lost to her, something +about his having this time a new one; on which he had growled something +indistinct but apparently in the tone and of the sort that the child, +from her earliest years, had associated with hearing somebody retort +to somebody that somebody was "another." "Oh I stick to the old!" Mrs. +Beale had then quite loudly pronounced; and her accent, even as the cab +got away, was still in the air, Maisie's effective companion having +spoken no other word from the moment of whisking her off--none at least +save the indistinguishable address which, over the top of the hansom and +poised on the step, he had given the driver. Reconstructing these things +later Maisie theorised that she at this point would have put a question +to him had not the silence into which he charmed her or scared her--she +could scarcely tell which--come from his suddenly making her feel his +arm about her, feel, as he drew her close, that he was agitated in a way +he had never yet shown her. It struck her he trembled, trembled too much +to speak, and this had the effect of making her, with an emotion which, +though it had begun to throb in an instant, was by no means all dread, +conform to his portentous hush. The act of possession that his pressure +in a manner advertised came back to her after the longest of the long +intermissions that had ever let anything come back. They drove and +drove, and he kept her close; she stared straight before her, holding +her breath, watching one dark street succeed another and strangely +conscious that what it all meant was somehow that papa was less to be +left out of everything than she had supposed. It took her but a minute +to surrender to this discovery, which, in the form of his present +embrace, suggested a purpose in him prodigiously reaffirmed and with +that a confused confidence. She neither knew exactly what he had done +nor what he was doing; she could only, altogether impressed and rather +proud, vibrate with the sense that he had jumped up to do something and +that she had as quickly become a part of it. It was a part of it too +that here they were at a house that seemed not large, but in the fresh +white front of which the street-lamp showed a smartness of flower-boxes. +The child had been in thousands of stories--all Mrs. Wix's and her own, +to say nothing of the richest romances of French Elise--but she had +never been in such a story as this. By the time he had helped her out +of the cab, which drove away, and she heard in the door of the house +the prompt little click of his key, the Arabian Nights had quite closed +round her. + +From this minute that pitch of the wondrous was in everything, +particularly in such an instant "Open Sesame" and in the departure of +the cab, a rattling void filled with relinquished step-parents; it was, +with the vividness, the almost blinding whiteness of the light that +sprang responsive to papa's quick touch of a little brass knob on the +wall, in a place that, at the top of a short soft staircase, struck her +as the most beautiful she had ever seen in her life. The next thing she +perceived it to be was the drawing-room of a lady--of a lady, she could +see in a moment, and not of a gentleman, not even of one like papa +himself or even like Sir Claude--whose things were as much prettier than +mamma's as it had always had to be confessed that mamma's were prettier +than Mrs. Beale's. In the middle of the small bright room and the +presence of more curtains and cushions, more pictures and mirrors, more +palm-trees drooping over brocaded and gilded nooks, more little silver +boxes scattered over little crooked tables and little oval miniatures +hooked upon velvet screens than Mrs. Beale and her ladyship together +could, in an unnatural alliance, have dreamed of mustering, the child +became aware, with a sharp foretaste of compassion, of something that +was strangely like a relegation to obscurity of each of those women of +taste. It was a stranger operation still that her father should on the +spot be presented to her as quite advantageously and even grandly at +home in the dazzling scene and himself by so much the more separated +from scenes inferior to it. She spent with him in it, while explanations +continued to hang back, twenty minutes that, in their sudden drop of +danger, affected her, though there were neither buns nor ginger-beer, +like an extemporised expensive treat. + +"Is she very rich?" He had begun to strike her as almost embarrassed, so +shy that he might have found himself with a young lady with whom he had +little in common. She was literally moved by this apprehension to offer +him some tactful relief. + +Beale Farange stood and smiled at his young lady, his back to +the fanciful fireplace, his light overcoat--the very lightest in +London--wide open, and his wonderful lustrous beard completely +concealing the expanse of his shirt-front. It pleased her more than ever +to think that papa was handsome and, though as high aloft as mamma and +almost, in his specially florid evening-dress, as splendid, of a beauty +somehow less belligerent, less terrible. + +"The Countess? Why do you ask me that?" + +Maisie's eyes opened wider. "Is she a Countess?" + +He seemed to treat her wonder as a positive tribute. "Oh yes, my dear, +but it isn't an English title." + +Her manner appreciated this. "Is it a French one?" + +"No, nor French either. It's American." + +She conversed agreeably. "Ah then of course she must be rich." She took +in such a combination of nationality and rank. "I never saw anything so +lovely." + +"Did you have a sight of her?" Beale asked. + +"At the Exhibition?" Maisie smiled. "She was gone too quick." + +Her father laughed. "She did slope!" She had feared he would say +something about Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude, yet the way he spared them +made her rather uneasy too. All he risked was, the next minute, "She has +a horror of vulgar scenes." + +This was something she needn't take up; she could still continue bland. +"But where do you suppose she went?" + +"Oh I thought she'd have taken a cab and have been here by this time. +But she'll turn up all right." + +"I'm sure I HOPE she will," Maisie said; she spoke with an earnestness +begotten of the impression of all the beauty about them, to which, in +person, the Countess might make further contribution. "We came awfully +fast," she added. + +Her father again laughed loud. "Yes, my dear, I made you step out!" He +waited an instant, then pursued: "I want her to see you." + +Maisie, at this, rejoiced in the attention that, for their evening out, +Mrs. Beale, even to the extent of personally "doing up" her old hat, had +given her appearance. Meanwhile her father went on: "You'll like her +awfully." + +"Oh I'm sure I shall!" After which, either from the effect of having +said so much or from that of a sudden glimpse of the impossibility of +saying more, she felt an embarrassment and sought refuge in a minor +branch of the subject. "I thought she was Mrs. Cuddon." + +Beale's gaiety rather increased than diminished. "You mean my wife +did? My dear child, my wife's a damned fool!" He had the oddest air of +speaking of his wife as of a person whom she might scarcely have known, +so that the refuge of her scruple didn't prove particularly happy. Beale +on the other hand appeared after an instant himself to feel a scruple. +"What I mean is, to speak seriously, that she doesn't really know +anything about anything." He paused, following the child's charmed eyes +and tentative step or two as they brought her nearer to the pretty +things on one of the tables. "She thinks she has good things, don't you +know!" He quite jeered at Mrs. Beale's delusion. + +Maisie felt she must confess that it WAS one; everything she had missed +at the side-shows was made up to her by the Countess's luxuries. "Yes," +she considered; "she does think that." + +There was again a dryness in the way Beale replied that it didn't matter +what she thought; but there was an increasing sweetness for his daughter +in being with him so long without his doing anything worse. The whole +hour of course was to remain with her, for days and weeks, ineffaceably +illumined and confirmed; by the end of which she was able to read +into it a hundred things that had been at the moment mere miraculous +pleasantness. What they at the moment came to was simply that her +companion was still in a good deal of a flutter, yet wished not to show +it, and that just in proportion as he succeeded in this attempt he was +able to encourage her to regard him as kind. He moved about the room +after a little, showed her things, spoke to her as a person of taste, +told her the name, which she remembered, of the famous French lady +represented in one of the miniatures, and remarked, as if he had caught +her wistful over a trinket or a trailing stuff, that he made no doubt +the Countess, on coming in, would give her something jolly. He spied a +pink satin box with a looking-glass let into the cover, which he raised, +with a quick facetious flourish, to offer her the privilege of six rows +of chocolate bonbons, cutting out thereby Sir Claude, who had never +gone beyond four rows. "I can do what I like with these," he said, "for +I don't mind telling you I gave 'em to her myself." The Countess had +evidently appreciated the gift; there were numerous gaps, a ravage now +quite unchecked, in the array. Even while they waited together Maisie +had her sense, which was the mark of what their separation had become, +of her having grown for him, since the last time he had, as it were, +noticed her, and by increase of years and of inches if by nothing else, +much more of a little person to reckon with. Yes, this was a part of +the positive awkwardness that he carried off by being almost foolishly +tender. There was a passage during which, on a yellow silk sofa under +one of the palms, he had her on his knee, stroking her hair, playfully +holding her off while he showed his shining fangs and let her, with +a vague affectionate helpless pointless "Dear old girl, dear little +daughter," inhale the fragrance of his cherished beard. She must have +been sorry for him, she afterwards knew, so well could she privately +follow his difficulty in being specific to her about anything. She had +such possibilities of vibration, of response, that it needed nothing +more than this to make up to her in fact for omissions. The tears came +into her eyes again as they had done when in the Park that day the +Captain told her so "splendidly" that her mother was good. What was +this but splendid too--this still directer goodness of her father and +this unexampled shining solitude with him, out of which everything had +dropped but that he was papa and that he was magnificent? It didn't +spoil it that she finally felt he must have, as he became restless, some +purpose he didn't quite see his way to bring out, for in the freshness +of their recovered fellowship she would have lent herself gleefully to +his suggesting, or even to his pretending, that their relations were +easy and graceful. There was something in him that seemed, and quite +touchingly, to ask her to help him to pretend--pretend he knew enough +about her life and her education, her means of subsistence and her view +of himself, to give the questions he couldn't put her a natural domestic +tone. She would have pretended with ecstasy if he could only have given +her the cue. She waited for it while, between his big teeth, he breathed +the sighs she didn't know to be stupid. And as if, though he was so +stupid all through, he had let the friendly suffusion of her eyes yet +tell him she was ready for anything, he floundered about, wondering what +the devil he could lay hold of. + + + + +XIX + + +When he had lighted a cigarette and begun to smoke in her face it was as +if he had struck with the match the note of some queer clumsy ferment +of old professions, old scandals, old duties, a dim perception of what +he possessed in her and what, if everything had only--damn it!--been +totally different, she might still be able to give him. What she was +able to give him, however, as his blinking eyes seemed to make out +through the smoke, would be simply what he should be able to get from +her. To give something, to give here on the spot, was all her own +desire. Among the old things that came back was her little instinct of +keeping the peace; it made her wonder more sharply what particular thing +she could do or not do, what particular word she could speak or not +speak, what particular line she could take or not take, that might for +every one, even for the Countess, give a better turn to the crisis. She +was ready, in this interest, for an immense surrender, a surrender of +everything but Sir Claude, of everything but Mrs. Beale. The immensity +didn't include THEM; but if he had an idea at the back of his head +she had also one in a recess as deep, and for a time, while they sat +together, there was an extraordinary mute passage between her vision +of this vision of his, his vision of her vision, and her vision of his +vision of her vision. What there was no effective record of indeed +was the small strange pathos on the child's part of an innocence so +saturated with knowledge and so directed to diplomacy. What, further, +Beale finally laid hold of while he masked again with his fine presence +half the flounces of the fireplace was: "Do you know, my dear, I shall +soon be off to America?" It struck his daughter both as a short cut and +as the way he wouldn't have said it to his wife. But his wife figured +with a bright superficial assurance in her response. + +"Do you mean with Mrs. Beale?" + +Her father looked at her hard. "Don't be a little ass!" + +Her silence appeared to represent a concentrated effort not to be. "Then +with the Countess?" + +"With her or without her, my dear; that concerns only your poor daddy. +She has big interests over there, and she wants me to take a look at +them." + +Maisie threw herself into them. "Will that take very long?" + +"Yes; they're in such a muddle--it may take months. Now what I want to +hear, you know, is whether you'd like to come along?" + +Planted once more before him in the middle of the room she felt herself +turning white. "I?" she gasped, yet feeling as soon as she had spoken +that such a note of dismay was not altogether pretty. She felt it still +more while her father replied, with a shake of his legs, a toss of his +cigarette-ash and a fidgety look--he was for ever taking one--all the +length of his waistcoat and trousers, that she needn't be quite so +disgusted. It helped her in a few seconds to appear more as he would +like her that she saw, in the lovely light of the Countess's splendour, +exactly, however she appeared, the right answer to make. "Dear papa, +I'll go with you anywhere." + +He turned his back to her and stood with his nose at the glass of the +chimneypiece while he brushed specks of ash out of his beard. Then he +abruptly said: "Do you know anything about your brute of a mother?" + +It was just of her brute of a mother that the manner of the question in +a remarkable degree reminded her: it had the free flight of one of Ida's +fine bridgings of space. With the sense of this was kindled for Maisie +at the same time an inspiration. "Oh yes, I know everything!" and she +became so radiant that her father, seeing it in the mirror, turned back +to her and presently, on the sofa, had her at his knee again and was +again particularly affecting. Maisie's inspiration instructed her, +pressingly, that the more she should be able to say about mamma the +less she would be called upon to speak of her step-parents. She kept +hoping the Countess would come in before her power to protect them was +exhausted; and it was now, in closer quarters with her companion, that +the idea at the back of her head shifted its place to her lips. She told +him she had met her mother in the Park with a gentleman who, while Sir +Claude had strolled with her ladyship, had been kind and had sat and +talked to her; narrating the scene with a remembrance of her pledge of +secrecy to the Captain quite brushed away by the joy of seeing Beale +listen without profane interruption. It was almost an amazement, but it +was indeed all a joy, thus to be able to guess that papa was at last +quite tired of his anger--of his anger at any rate about mamma. He was +only bored with her now. That made it, however, the more imperative that +his spent displeasure shouldn't be blown out again. It charmed the child +to see how much she could interest him; and the charm remained even +when, after asking her a dozen questions, he observed musingly and a +little obscurely: "Yes, damned if she won't!" For in this too there was +a detachment, a wise weariness that made her feel safe. She had had +to mention Sir Claude, though she mentioned him as little as possible +and Beale only appeared to look quite over his head. It pieced itself +together for her that this was the mildness of general indifference, a +source of profit so great for herself personally that if the Countess +was the author of it she was prepared literally to hug the Countess. She +betrayed that eagerness by a restless question about her, to which her +father replied: "Oh she has a head on her shoulders. I'll back her to +get out of anything!" He looked at Maisie quite as if he could trace the +connexion between her enquiry and the impatience of her gratitude. "Do +you mean to say you'd really come with me?" + +She felt as if he were now looking at her very hard indeed, and also as +if she had grown ever so much older. "I'll do anything in the world you +ask me, papa." + +He gave again, with a laugh and with his legs apart, his proprietary +glance at his waistcoat and trousers. "That's a way, my dear, of saying +'No, thank you!' You know you don't want to go the least little mite. +You can't humbug ME!" Beale Farange laid down. "I don't want to bully +you--I never bullied you in my life; but I make you the offer, and it's +to take or to leave. Your mother will never again have any more to do +with you than if you were a kitchenmaid she had turned out for going +wrong. Therefore of course I'm your natural protector and you've a right +to get everything out of me you can. Now's your chance, you know--you +won't be half-clever if you don't. You can't say I don't put it before +you--you can't say I ain't kind to you or that I don't play fair. Mind +you never say that, you know--it WOULD bring me down on you. I know +what's proper. I'll take you again, just as I HAVE taken you again and +again. And I'm much obliged to you for making up such a face." + +She was conscious enough that her face indeed couldn't please him if it +showed any sign--just as she hoped it didn't--of her sharp impression of +what he now really wanted to do. Wasn't he trying to turn the tables on +her, embarrass her somehow into admitting that what would really suit +her little book would be, after doing so much for good manners, to leave +her wholly at liberty to arrange for herself? She began to be nervous +again: it rolled over her that this was their parting, their parting +for ever, and that he had brought her there for so many caresses only +because it was important such an occasion should look better for him +than any other. For her to spoil it by the note of discord would +certainly give him ground for complaint; and the child was momentarily +bewildered between her alternatives of agreeing with him about her +wanting to get rid of him and displeasing him by pretending to stick +to him. So she found for the moment no solution but to murmur very +helplessly: "Oh papa--oh papa!" + +"I know what you're up to--don't tell ME!" After which he came straight +over and, in the most inconsequent way in the world, clasped her in +his arms a moment and rubbed his beard against her cheek. Then she +understood as well as if he had spoken it that what he wanted, hang +it, was that she should let him off with all the honours--with all +the appearance of virtue and sacrifice on his side. It was exactly as +if he had broken out to her: "I say, you little booby, help me to be +irreproachable, to be noble, and yet to have none of the beastly bore of +it. There's only impropriety enough for one of us; so YOU must take it +all. REPUDIATE your dear old daddy--in the face, mind you, of his tender +supplications. He can't be rough with you--it isn't in his nature: +therefore you'll have successfully chucked him because he was too +generous to be as firm with you, poor man, as was, after all, his duty." +This was what he communicated in a series of tremendous pats on the +back; that portion of her person had never been so thumped since Moddle +thumped her when she choked. After a moment he gave her the further +impression of having become sure enough of her to be able very +gracefully to say out: "You know your mother loathes you, loathes you +simply. And I've been thinking over your precious man--the fellow you +told me about." + +"Well," Maisie replied with competence, "I'm sure of HIM." + +Her father was vague for an instant. "Do you mean sure of his liking +you?" + +"Oh no; of his liking HER!" + +Beale had a return of gaiety. "There's no accounting for tastes! It's +what they all say, you know." + +"I don't care--I'm sure of him!" Maisie repeated. + +"Sure, you mean, that she'll bolt?" + +Maisie knew all about bolting, but, decidedly, she WAS older, and there +was something in her that could wince at the way her father made the +ugly word--ugly enough at best--sound flat and low. It prompted her to +amend his allusion, which she did by saying: "I don't know what she'll +do. But she'll be happy." + +"Let us hope so," said Beale--almost as for edification. "The more happy +she is at any rate the less she'll want you about. That's why I press +you," he agreeably pursued, "to consider this handsome offer--I mean +seriously, you know--of your sole surviving parent." Their eyes, at +this, met again in a long and extraordinary communion which terminated +in his ejaculating: "Ah you little scoundrel!" She took it from him in +the manner it seemed to her he would like best and with a success that +encouraged him to go on: "You ARE a deep little devil!" Her silence, +ticking like a watch, acknowledged even this, in confirmation of which +he finally brought out: "You've settled it with the other pair!" + +"Well, what if I have?" She sounded to herself most bold. + +Her father, quite as in the old days, broke into a peal. "Why, don't you +know they're awful?" + +She grew bolder still. "I don't care--not a bit!" + +"But they're probably the worst people in the world and the very +greatest criminals," Beale pleasantly urged. "I'm not the man, my dear, +not to let you know it." + +"Well, it doesn't prevent them from loving me. They love me +tremendously." Maisie turned crimson to hear herself. + +Her companion fumbled; almost any one--let alone a daughter--would +have seen how conscientious he wanted to be. "I dare say. But do you +know why?" She braved his eyes and he added: "You're a jolly good +pretext." + +"For what?" Maisie asked. + +"Why, for their game. I needn't tell you what that is." + +The child reflected. "Well then that's all the more reason." + +"Reason for what, pray?" + +"For their being kind to me." + +"And for your keeping in with them?" Beale roared again; it was as if +his spirits rose and rose. "Do you realise, pray, that in saying that +you're a monster?" + +She turned it over. "A monster?" + +"They've MADE one of you. Upon my honour it's quite awful. It shows +the kind of people they are. Don't you understand," Beale pursued, +"that when they've made you as horrid as they can--as horrid as +themselves--they'll just simply chuck you?" + +She had at this a flicker of passion. "They WON'T chuck me!" + +"I beg your pardon," her father courteously insisted; "it's my duty to +put it before you. I shouldn't forgive myself if I didn't point out to +you that they'll cease to require you." He spoke as if with an appeal to +her intelligence that she must be ashamed not adequately to meet, and +this gave a real distinction to his superior delicacy. + +It cleared the case as he had wished. "Cease to require me because they +won't care?" She paused with that sketch of her idea. + +"OF COURSE Sir Claude won't care if his wife bolts. That's his game. It +will suit him down to the ground." + +This was a proposition Maisie could perfectly embrace, but it still left +a loophole for triumph. She turned it well over. "You mean if mamma +doesn't come back ever at all?" The composure with which her face was +presented to that prospect would have shown a spectator the long road +she had travelled. "Well, but that won't put Mrs. Beale--" + +"In the same comfortable position--?" Beale took her up with relish; he +had sprung to his feet again, shaking his legs and looking at his shoes. +"Right you are, darling! Something more will be wanted for Mrs. Beale." +He just paused, then he added: "But she may not have long to wait for +it." + +Maisie also for a minute looked at his shoes, though they were not the +pair she most admired, the laced yellow "uppers" and patent-leather +complement. At last, with a question, she raised her eyes. "Aren't you +coming back?" + +Once more he hung fire; after which he gave a small laugh that in the +oddest way in the world reminded her of the unique sounds she had +heard emitted by Mrs. Wix. "It may strike you as extraordinary that I +should make you such an admission; and in point of fact you're not to +understand that I do. But we'll put it that way to help your decision. +The point is that that's the way my wife will presently be sure to put +it. You'll hear her shrieking that she's deserted, so that she may just +pile up her wrongs. She'll be as free as she likes then--as free, you +see, as your mother's muff of a husband. They won't have anything more +to consider and they'll just put you into the street. Do I understand," +Beale enquired, "that, in the face of what I press on you, you still +prefer to take the risk of that?" It was the most wonderful appeal any +gentleman had ever addressed to his daughter, and it had placed Maisie +in the middle of the room again while her father moved slowly about her +with his hands in his pockets and something in his step that seemed, +more than anything else he had done, to show the habit of the place. +She turned her fevered little eyes over his friend's brightnesses, as +if, on her own side, to press for some help in a quandary unexampled. +As if also the pressure reached him he after an instant stopped short, +completing the prodigy of his attitude and the pride of his loyalty by +a supreme formulation of the general inducement. "You've an eye, love! +Yes, there's money. No end of money." + +This affected her at first in the manner of some great flashing dazzle +in one of the pantomimes to which Sir Claude had taken her: she saw +nothing in it but what it directly conveyed. "And shall I never, never +see you again--?" + +"If I do go to America?" Beale brought it out like a man. "Never, never, +never!" + +Hereupon, with the utmost absurdity, she broke down; everything gave +way, everything but the horror of hearing herself definitely utter such +an ugliness as the acceptance of that. So she only stiffened herself and +said: "Then I can't give you up." + +She held him some seconds looking at her, showing her a strained +grimace, a perfect parade of all his teeth, in which it seemed to her +she could read the disgust he didn't quite like to express at this +departure from the pliability she had practically promised. But before +she could attenuate in any way the crudity of her collapse he gave an +impatient jerk which took him to the window. She heard a vehicle stop; +Beale looked out; then he freshly faced her. He still said nothing, but +she knew the Countess had come back. There was a silence again between +them, but with a different shade of embarrassment from that of their +united arrival; and it was still without speaking that, abruptly +repeating one of the embraces of which he had already been so prodigal, +he whisked her back to the lemon sofa just before the door of the room +was thrown open. It was thus in renewed and intimate union with him that +she was presented to a person whom she instantly recognised as the brown +lady. + +The brown lady looked almost as astonished, though not quite as alarmed, +as when, at the Exhibition, she had gasped in the face of Mrs. Beale. +Maisie in truth almost gasped in her own; this was with the fuller +perception that she was brown indeed. She literally struck the child +more as an animal than as a "real" lady; she might have been a clever +frizzled poodle in a frill or a dreadful human monkey in a spangled +petticoat. She had a nose that was far too big and eyes that were far +too small and a moustache that was, well, not so happy a feature as Sir +Claude's. Beale jumped up to her; while, to the child's astonishment, +though as if in a quick intensity of thought, the Countess advanced as +gaily as if, for many a day, nothing awkward had happened for any one. +Maisie, in spite of a large acquaintance with the phenomenon, had +never seen it so promptly established that nothing awkward was to be +mentioned. The next minute the Countess had kissed her and exclaimed to +Beale with bright tender reproach: "Why, you never told me HALF! My dear +child," she cried, "it was awfully nice of you to come!" + +"But she hasn't come--she won't come!" Beale answered. "I've put it to +her how much you'd like it, but she declines to have anything to do with +us." + +The Countess stood smiling, and after an instant that was mainly taken +up with the shock of her weird aspect Maisie felt herself reminded +of another smile, which was not ugly, though also interested--the +kind light thrown, that day in the Park, from the clean fair face of +the Captain. Papa's Captain--yes--was the Countess; but she wasn't +nearly so nice as the other: it all came back, doubtless, to Maisie's +minor appreciation of ladies. "Shouldn't you like me," said this one +endearingly, "to take you to Spa?" + +"To Spa?" The child repeated the name to gain time, not to show how the +Countess brought back to her a dim remembrance of a strange woman with a +horrid face who once, years before, in an omnibus, bending to her from +an opposite seat, had suddenly produced an orange and murmured "Little +dearie, won't you have it?" She had felt then, for some reason, a small +silly terror, though afterwards conscious that her interlocutress, +unfortunately hideous, had particularly meant to be kind. This was also +what the Countess meant; yet the few words she had uttered and the smile +with which she had uttered them immediately cleared everything up. Oh +no, she wanted to go nowhere with HER, for her presence had already, in +a few seconds, dissipated the happy impression of the room and put an +end to the pleasure briefly taken in Beale's command of such elegance. +There was no command of elegance in his having exposed her to the +approach of the short fat wheedling whiskered person in whom she had now +to recognise the only figure wholly without attraction involved in any +of the intimate connexions her immediate circle had witnessed the growth +of. She was abashed meanwhile, however, at having appeared to weigh in +the balance the place to which she had been invited; and she added as +quickly as possible: "It isn't to America then?" The Countess, at this, +looked sharply at Beale, and Beale, airily enough, asked what the deuce +it mattered when she had already given him to understand she wanted to +have nothing to do with them. There followed between her companions a +passage of which the sense was drowned for her in the deepening inward +hum of her mere desire to get off; though she was able to guess later +on that her father must have put it to his friend that it was no use +talking, that she was an obstinate little pig and that, besides, she +was really old enough to choose for herself. It glimmered back to her +indeed that she must have failed quite dreadfully to seem ideally other +than rude, inasmuch as before she knew it she had visibly given the +impression that if they didn't allow her to go home she should cry. Oh +if there had ever been a thing to cry about it was being so consciously +and gawkily below the handsomest offers any one could ever have +received. The great pain of the thing was that she could see the +Countess liked her enough to wish to be liked in return, and it was from +the idea of a return she sought utterly to flee. It was the idea of a +return that after a confusion of loud words had broken out between the +others brought to her lips with the tremor preceding disaster: "Can't +I, please, be sent home in a cab?" Yes, the Countess wanted her and the +Countess was wounded and chilled, and she couldn't help it, and it was +all the more dreadful because it only made the Countess more coaxing and +more impossible. The only thing that sustained either of them perhaps +till the cab came--Maisie presently saw it would come--was its being +in the air somehow that Beale had done what he wanted. He went out to +look for a conveyance; the servants, he said, had gone to bed, but she +shouldn't be kept beyond her time. The Countess left the room with him, +and, alone in the possession of it, Maisie hoped she wouldn't come +back. It was all the effect of her face--the child simply couldn't look +at it and meet its expression halfway. All in a moment too that queer +expression had leaped into the lovely things--all in a moment she had +had to accept her father as liking some one whom she was sure neither +her mother, nor Mrs. Beale, nor Mrs. Wix, nor Sir Claude, nor the +Captain, nor even Mr. Perriam and Lord Eric could possibly have liked. +Three minutes later, downstairs, with the cab at the door, it was +perhaps as a final confession of not having much to boast of that, on +taking leave of her, he managed to press her to his bosom without her +seeing his face. For herself she was so eager to go that their parting +reminded her of nothing, not even of a single one of all the "nevers" +that above, as the penalty of not cleaving to him, he had attached to +the question of their meeting again. There was something in the Countess +that falsified everything, even the great interests in America and yet +more the first flush of that superiority to Mrs. Beale and to mamma +which had been expressed in Sevres sets and silver boxes. These were +still there, but perhaps there were no great interests in America. +Mamma had known an American who was not a bit like this one. She was +not, however, of noble rank; her name was only Mrs. Tucker. Maisie's +detachment would none the less have been more complete if she had not +suddenly had to exclaim: "Oh dear, I haven't any money!" + +Her father's teeth, at this, were such a picture of appetite without +action as to be a match for any plea of poverty. "Make your stepmother +pay." + +"Stepmothers DON'T pay!" cried the Countess. "No stepmother ever paid +in her life!" The next moment they were in the street together, and the +next the child was in the cab, with the Countess, on the pavement, but +close to her, quickly taking money from a purse whisked out of a pocket. +Her father had vanished and there was even yet nothing in that to +reawaken the pang of loss. "Here's money," said the brown lady: "go!" +The sound was commanding: the cab rattled off. Maisie sat there with her +hand full of coin. All that for a cab? As they passed a street-lamp she +bent to see how much. What she saw was a cluster of sovereigns. There +MUST then have been great interests in America. It was still at any rate +the Arabian Nights. + + + + +XX + + +The money was far too much even for a fee in a fairy-tale, and in the +absence of Mrs. Beale, who, though the hour was now late, had not yet +returned to the Regent's Park, Susan Ash, in the hall, as loud as Maisie +was low and as bold as she was bland, produced, on the exhibition +offered under the dim vigil of the lamp that made the place a +contrast to the child's recent scene of light, the half-crown that an +unsophisticated cabman could pronounce to be the least he would take. It +was apparently long before Mrs. Beale would arrive, and in the interval +Maisie had been induced by the prompt Susan not only to go to bed like +a darling dear, but, in still richer expression of that character, to +devote to the repayment of obligations general as well as particular +one of the sovereigns in the ordered array that, on the dressing-table +upstairs, was naturally not less dazzling to a lone orphan of a +housemaid than to the subject of the manoeuvres of a quartette. This +subject went to sleep with her property gathered into a knotted +handkerchief, the largest that could be produced and lodged under her +pillow; but the explanations that on the morrow were inevitably more +complete with Mrs. Beale than they had been with her humble friend +found their climax in a surrender also more becomingly free. There were +explanations indeed that Mrs. Beale had to give as well as to ask, and +the most striking of these was to the effect that it was dreadful for +a little girl to take money from a woman who was simply the vilest of +their sex. The sovereigns were examined with some attention, the result +of which, however, was to make the author of that statement desire to +know what, if one really went into the matter, they could be called +but the wages of sin. Her companion went into it merely so far as the +question of what then they were to do with them; on which Mrs. Beale, +who had by this time put them into her pocket, replied with dignity +and with her hand on the place: "We're to send them back on the spot!" +Susan, the child soon afterwards learnt, had been invited to contribute +to this act of restitution her one appropriated coin; but a closer +clutch of the treasure showed in her private assurance to Maisie that +there was a limit to the way she could be "done." Maisie had been open +with Mrs. Beale about the whole of last night's transaction; but she +now found herself on the part of their indignant inferior a recipient +of remarks that were so many ringing tokens of that lady's own +suppressions. One of these bore upon the extraordinary hour--it was +three in the morning if she really wanted to know--at which Mrs. Beale +had re-entered the house; another, in accents as to which Maisie's +criticism was still intensely tacit, characterised her appeal as such +a "gime," such a "shime," as one had never had to put up with; a +third treated with some vigour the question of the enormous sums due +belowstairs, in every department, for gratuitous labour and wasted zeal. +Our young lady's consciousness was indeed mainly filled for several +days with the apprehension created by the too slow subsidence of her +attendant's sense of wrong. These days would become terrific like the +Revolutions she had learnt by heart in Histories if an outbreak in the +kitchen should crown them; and to promote that prospect she had through +Susan's eyes more than one glimpse of the way in which Revolutions are +prepared. To listen to Susan was to gather that the spark applied to +the inflammables and already causing them to crackle would prove to +have been the circumstance of one's being called a horrid low thief for +refusing to part with one's own. The redeeming point of this tension +was, on the fifth day, that it actually appeared to have had to do with +a breathless perception in our heroine's breast that scarcely more as +the centre of Sir Claude's than as that of Susan's energies she had soon +after breakfast been conveyed from London to Folkestone and established +at a lovely hotel. These agents, before her wondering eyes, had combined +to carry through the adventure and to give it the air of having owed +its success to the fact that Mrs. Beale had, as Susan said, but just +stepped out. When Sir Claude, watch in hand, had met this fact with the +exclamation "Then pack Miss Farange and come off with us!" there had +ensued on the stairs a series of gymnastics of a nature to bring Miss +Farange's heart into Miss Farange's mouth. She sat with Sir Claude in +a four-wheeler while he still held his watch; held it longer than any +doctor who had ever felt her pulse; long enough to give her a vision +of something like the ecstasy of neglecting such an opportunity to +show impatience. The ecstasy had begun in the schoolroom and over the +Berceuse, quite in the manner of the same foretaste on the day, a little +while back, when Susan had panted up and she herself, after the hint +about the duchess, had sailed down; for what harm then had there been in +drops and disappointments if she could still have, even only a moment, +the sensation of such a name "brought up"? It had remained with her that +her father had foretold her she would some day be in the street, but it +clearly wouldn't be this day, and she felt justified of the preference +betrayed to that parent as soon as her visitor had set Susan in motion +and laid his hand, while she waited with him, kindly on her own. This +was what the Captain, in Kensington Gardens, had done; her present +situation reminded her a little of that one and renewed the dim wonder +of the fashion after which, from the first, such pats and pulls had +struck her as the steps and signs of other people's business and even a +little as the wriggle or the overflow of their difficulties. What had +failed her and what had frightened her on the night of the Exhibition +lost themselves at present alike in the impression that any "surprise" +now about to burst from Sir Claude would be too big to burst all at +once. Any awe that might have sprung from his air of leaving out her +stepmother was corrected by the force of a general rule, the odd truth +that if Mrs. Beale now never came nor went without making her think of +him, it was never, to balance that, the main mark of his own renewed +reality to appear to be a reference to Mrs. Beale. To be with Sir Claude +was to think of Sir Claude, and that law governed Maisie's mind until, +through a sudden lurch of the cab, which had at last taken in Susan and +ever so many bundles and almost reached Charing Cross, it popped again +somehow into her dizzy head the long-lost image of Mrs. Wix. + +It was singular, but from this time she understood and she followed, +followed with the sense of an ample filling-out of any void created by +symptoms of avoidance and of flight. Her ecstasy was a thing that had +yet more of a face than of a back to turn, a pair of eyes still directed +to Mrs. Wix even after the slight surprise of their not finding her, as +the journey expanded, either at the London station or at the Folkestone +hotel. It took few hours to make the child feel that if she was in +neither of these places she was at least everywhere else. Maisie had +known all along a great deal, but never so much as she was to know from +this moment on and as she learned in particular during the couple of +days that she was to hang in the air, as it were, over the sea which +represented in breezy blueness and with a summer charm a crossing of +more spaces than the Channel. It was granted her at this time to arrive +at divinations so ample that I shall have no room for the goal if I +attempt to trace the stages; as to which therefore I must be content to +say that the fullest expression we may give to Sir Claude's conduct is +a poor and pale copy of the picture it presented to his young friend. +Abruptly, that morning, he had yielded to the action of the idea pumped +into him for weeks by Mrs. Wix on lines of approach that she had been +capable of the extraordinary art of preserving from entanglement in +the fine network of his relations with Mrs. Beale. The breath of her +sincerity, blowing without a break, had puffed him up to the flight +by which, in the degree I have indicated, Maisie too was carried off +her feet. This consisted neither in more nor in less than the brave +stroke of his getting off from Mrs. Beale as well as from his wife--of +making with the child straight for some such foreign land as would +give a support to Mrs. Wix's dream that she might still see his +errors renounced and his delinquencies redeemed. It would all be a +sacrifice--under eyes that would miss no faintest shade--to what even +the strange frequenters of her ladyship's earlier period used to call +the real good of the little unfortunate. Maisie's head held a suspicion +of much that, during the last long interval, had confusedly, but quite +candidly, come and gone in his own; a glimpse, almost awe-stricken in +its gratitude, of the miracle her old governess had wrought. That +functionary could not in this connexion have been more impressive, even +at second-hand, if she had been a prophetess with an open scroll or some +ardent abbess speaking with the lips of the Church. She had clung day +by day to their plastic associate, plying him with her deep, narrow +passion, doing her simple utmost to convert him, and so working on him +that he had at last really embraced his fine chance. That the chance was +not delusive was sufficiently guaranteed by the completeness with which +he could finally figure it out that, in case of his taking action, +neither Ida nor Beale, whose book, on each side, it would only too well +suit, would make any sort of row. + +It sounds, no doubt, too penetrating, but it was not all as an effect of +Sir Claude's betrayals that Maisie was able to piece together the beauty +of the special influence through which, for such stretches of time, +he had refined upon propriety by keeping, so far as possible, his +sentimental interests distinct. She had ever of course in her mind fewer +names than conceptions, but it was only with this drawback that she now +made out her companion's absences to have had for their ground that he +was the lover of her stepmother and that the lover of her stepmother +could scarce logically pretend to a superior right to look after her. +Maisie had by this time embraced the implication of a kind of natural +divergence between lovers and little girls. It was just this indeed +that could throw light on the probable contents of the pencilled note +deposited on the hall-table in the Regent's Park and which would greet +Mrs. Beale on her return. Maisie freely figured it as provisionally +jocular in tone, even though to herself on this occasion Sir Claude +turned a graver face than he had shown in any crisis but that of putting +her into the cab when she had been horrid to him after her parting with +the Captain. He might really be embarrassed, but he would be sure, to +her view, to have muffled in some bravado of pleasantry the disturbance +produced at her father's by the removal of a valued servant. Not that +there wasn't a great deal too that wouldn't be in the note--a great deal +for which a more comfortable place was Maisie's light little brain, +where it hummed away hour after hour and caused the first outlook at +Folkestone to swim in a softness of colour and sound. It became clear in +this medium that her stepfather had really now only to take into account +his entanglement with Mrs. Beale. Wasn't he at last disentangled from +every one and every thing else? The obstacle to the rupture pressed upon +him by Mrs. Wix in the interest of his virtue would be simply that he +was in love, or rather, to put it more precisely, that Mrs. Beale had +left him no doubt of the degree in which SHE was. She was so much so as +to have succeeded in making him accept for a time her infatuated grasp +of him and even to some extent the idea of what they yet might do +together with a little diplomacy and a good deal of patience. I may not +even answer for it that Maisie was not aware of how, in this, Mrs. Beale +failed to share his all but insurmountable distaste for their allowing +their little charge to breathe the air of their gross irregularity--his +contention, in a word, that they should either cease to be irregular +or cease to be parental. Their little charge, for herself, had long +ago adopted the view that even Mrs. Wix had at one time not thought +prohibitively coarse--the view that she was after all, AS a little +charge, morally at home in atmospheres it would be appalling to analyse. +If Mrs. Wix, however, ultimately appalled, had now set her heart on +strong measures, Maisie, as I have intimated, could also work round both +to the reasons for them and to the quite other reasons for that lady's +not, as yet at least, appearing in them at first-hand. + +Oh decidedly I shall never get you to believe the number of things she +saw and the number of secrets she discovered! Why in the world, for +instance, couldn't Sir Claude have kept it from her--except on the +hypothesis of his not caring to--that, when you came to look at it and +so far as it was a question of vested interests, he had quite as much +right in her as her stepmother, not to say a right that Mrs. Beale +was in no position to dispute? He failed at all events of any such +successful ambiguity as could keep her, when once they began to look +across at France, from regarding even what was least explained as most +in the spirit of their old happy times, their rambles and expeditions in +the easier better days of their first acquaintance. Never before had she +had so the sense of giving him a lead for the sort of treatment of what +was between them that would best carry it off, or of his being grateful +to her for meeting him so much in the right place. She met him literally +at the very point where Mrs. Beale was most to be reckoned with, the +point of the jealousy that was sharp in that lady and of the need of +their keeping it as long as possible obscure to her that poor Mrs. Wix +had still a hand. Yes, she met him too in the truth of the matter that, +as her stepmother had had no one else to be jealous of, she had made +up for so gross a privation by directing the sentiment to a moral +influence. Sir Claude appeared absolutely to convey in a wink that +a moral influence capable of pulling a string was after all a moral +influence exposed to the scratching out of its eyes; and that, this +being the case, there was somebody they couldn't afford to leave +unprotected before they should see a little better what Mrs. Beale was +likely to do. Maisie, true enough, had not to put it into words to +rejoin, in the coffee-room, at luncheon: "What CAN she do but come to +you if papa does take a step that will amount to legal desertion?" +Neither had he then, in answer, to articulate anything but the jollity +of their having found a table at a window from which, as they partook of +cold beef and apollinaris--for he hinted they would have to save lots +of money--they could let their eyes hover tenderly on the far-off white +cliffs that so often had signalled to the embarrassed English a promise +of safety. Maisie stared at them as if she might really make out after a +little a queer dear figure perched on them--a figure as to which she had +already the subtle sense that, wherever perched, it would be the very +oddest yet seen in France. But it was at least as exciting to feel where +Mrs. Wix wasn't as it would have been to know where she was, and if she +wasn't yet at Boulogne this only thickened the plot. + +If she was not to be seen that day, however, the evening was marked by +an apparition before which, none the less, overstrained suspense folded +on the spot its wings. Adjusting her respirations and attaching, under +dropped lashes, all her thoughts to a smartness of frock and frill for +which she could reflect that she had not appealed in vain to a loyalty +in Susan Ash triumphant over the nice things their feverish flight had +left behind, Maisie spent on a bench in the garden of the hotel the +half-hour before dinner, that mysterious ceremony of the _table d'hote_ +for which she had prepared with a punctuality of flutter. Sir Claude, +beside her, was occupied with a cigarette and the afternoon papers; and +though the hotel was full the garden shewed the particular void that +ensues upon the sound of the dressing-bell. She had almost had time to +weary of the human scene; her own humanity at any rate, in the shape of +a smutch on her scanty skirt, had held her so long that as soon as she +raised her eyes they rested on a high fair drapery by which smutches +were put to shame and which had glided toward her over the grass without +her noting its rustle. She followed up its stiff sheen--up and up from +the ground, where it had stopped--till at the end of a considerable +journey her impression felt the shock of the fixed face which, +surmounting it, seemed to offer the climax of the dressed condition. +"Why mamma!" she cried the next instant--cried in a tone that, as +she sprang to her feet, brought Sir Claude to his own beside her and +gave her ladyship, a few yards off, the advantage of their momentary +confusion. Poor Maisie's was immense; her mother's drop had the effect +of one of the iron shutters that, in evening walks with Susan Ash, she +had seen suddenly, at the touch of a spring, rattle down over shining +shop-fronts. The light of foreign travel was darkened at a stroke; she +had a horrible sense that they were caught; and for the first time of +her life in Ida's presence she so far translated an impulse into an +invidious act as to clutch straight at the hand of her responsible +confederate. It didn't help her that he appeared at first equally hushed +with horror; a minute during which, in the empty garden, with its long +shadows on the lawn, its blue sea over the hedge and its startled peace +in the air, both her elders remained as stiff as tall tumblers filled to +the brim and held straight for fear of a spill. + +At last, in a tone that enriched the whole surprise by its unexpected +softness, her mother said to Sir Claude: "Do you mind at all my speaking +to her?" + +"Oh no; DO you?" His reply was so long in coming that Maisie was the +first to find the right note. + +He laughed as he seemed to take it from her, and she felt a sufficient +concession in his manner of addressing their visitor. "How in the world +did you know we were here?" + +His wife, at this, came the rest of the way and sat down on the bench +with a hand laid on her daughter, whom she gracefully drew to her and in +whom, at her touch, the fear just kindled gave a second jump, but now in +quite another direction. Sir Claude, on the further side, resumed his +seat and his newspapers, so that the three grouped themselves like a +family party; his connexion, in the oddest way in the world, almost +cynically and in a flash acknowledged, and the mother patting the child +into conformities unspeakable. Maisie could already feel how little it +was Sir Claude and she who were caught. She had the positive sense of +their catching their relative, catching her in the act of getting rid of +her burden with a finality that showed her as unprecedentedly relaxed. +Oh yes, the fear had dropped, and she had never been so irrevocably +parted with as in the pressure of possession now supremely exerted +by Ida's long-gloved and much-bangled arm. "I went to the Regent's +Park"--this was presently her ladyship's answer to Sir Claude. + +"Do you mean to-day?" + +"This morning, just after your own call there. That's how I found you +out; that's what has brought me." + +Sir Claude considered and Maisie waited. "Whom then did you see?" + +Ida gave a sound of indulgent mockery. "I like your scare. I know your +game. I didn't see the person I risked seeing, but I had been ready +to take my chance of her." She addressed herself to Maisie; she had +encircled her more closely. "I asked for YOU, my dear, but I saw no one +but a dirty parlourmaid. She was red in the face with the great things +that, as she told me, had just happened in the absence of her mistress; +and she luckily had the sense to have made out the place to which Sir +Claude had come to take you. If he hadn't given a false scent I should +find you here: that was the supposition on which I've proceeded." Ida +had never been so explicit about proceeding or supposing, and Maisie, +drinking this in, noted too how Sir Claude shared her fine impression of +it. "I wanted to see you," his wife continued, "and now you can judge of +the trouble I've taken. I had everything to do in town to-day, but I +managed to get off." + +Maisie and her companion, for a moment, did justice to this achievement; +but Maisie was the first to express it. "I'm glad you wanted to see me, +mamma." Then after a concentration more deep and with a plunge more +brave: "A little more and you'd have been too late." It stuck in her +throat, but she brought it out: "We're going to France." + +Ida was magnificent; Ida kissed her on the forehead. "That's just what I +thought likely; it made me decide to run down. I fancied that in spite +of your scramble you'd wait to cross, and it added to the reason I have +for seeing you." + +Maisie wondered intensely what the reason could be, but she knew ever so +much better than to ask. She was slightly surprised indeed to perceive +that Sir Claude didn't, and to hear him immediately enquire: "What in +the name of goodness can you have to say to her?" + +His tone was not exactly rude, but it was impatient enough to make his +wife's response a fresh specimen of the new softness. "That, my dear +man, is all my own business." + +"Do you mean," Sir Claude asked, "that you wish me to leave you with +her?" + +"Yes, if you'll be so good; that's the extraordinary request I take the +liberty of making." Her ladyship had dropped to a mildness of irony by +which, for a moment, poor Maisie was mystified and charmed, puzzled +with a glimpse of something that in all the years had at intervals +peeped out. Ida smiled at Sir Claude with the strange air she had on +such occasions of defying an interlocutor to keep it up as long; her +huge eyes, her red lips, the intense marks in her face formed an +_eclairage_ as distinct and public as a lamp set in a window. The +child seemed quite to see in it the very beacon that had lighted her +path; she suddenly found herself reflecting that it was no wonder the +gentlemen were guided. This must have been the way mamma had first +looked at Sir Claude; it brought back the lustre of the time they had +outlived. It must have been the way she looked also at Mr. Perriam and +Lord Eric; above all it contributed in Maisie's mind to a completer +view of that satisfied state of the Captain. Our young lady grasped +this idea with a quick lifting of the heart; there was a stillness +during which her mother flooded her with a wealth of support to the +Captain's striking tribute. This stillness remained long enough +unbroken to represent that Sir Claude too might but be gasping again +under the spell originally strong for him; so that Maisie quite hoped +he would at least say something to show a recognition of how charming +she could be. + +What he presently said was: "Are you putting up for the night?" + +His wife cast grandly about. "Not here--I've come from Dover." + +Over Maisie's head, at this, they still faced each other. "You spend the +night there?" + +"Yes, I brought some things. I went to the hotel and hastily arranged; +then I caught the train that whisked me on here. You see what a day I've +had of it." + +The statement may surprise, but these were really as obliging if not as +lucid words as, into her daughter's ears at least, Ida's lips had ever +dropped; and there was a quick desire in the daughter that for the hour +at any rate they should duly be welcomed as a ground of intercourse. +Certainly mamma had a charm which, when turned on, became a large +explanation; and the only danger now in an impulse to applaud it would +be that of appearing to signalise its rarity. Maisie, however, risked +the peril in the geniality of an admission that Ida had indeed had a +rush; and she invited Sir Claude to expose himself by agreeing with her +that the rush had been even worse than theirs. He appeared to meet this +appeal by saying with detachment enough: "You go back there to-night?" + +"Oh yes--there are plenty of trains." Again Sir Claude hesitated; it +would have been hard to say if the child, between them, more connected +or divided them. Then he brought out quietly: "It will be late for you +to knock about. I'll see you over." + +"You needn't trouble, thank you. I think you won't deny that I can help +myself and that it isn't the first time in my dreadful life that I've +somehow managed it." Save for this allusion to her dreadful life they +talked there, Maisie noted, as if they were only rather superficial +friends; a special effect that she had often wondered at before in the +midst of what she supposed to be intimacies. This effect was augmented +by the almost casual manner in which her ladyship went on: "I dare say +I shall go abroad." + +"From Dover do you mean, straight?" + +"How straight I can't say. I'm excessively ill." + +This for a minute struck Maisie as but a part of the conversation; +at the end of which time she became aware that it ought to strike +her--though it apparently didn't strike Sir Claude--as a part of +something graver. It helped her to twist nearer. "Ill, mamma--really +ill?" + +She regretted her "really" as soon as she had spoken it; but there +couldn't be a better proof of her mother's present polish than that Ida +showed no gleam of a temper to take it up. She had taken up at other +times much tinier things. She only pressed Maisie's head against her +bosom and said: "Shockingly, my dear. I must go to that new place." + +"What new place?" Sir Claude enquired. + +Ida thought, but couldn't recall it. "Oh 'Chose,' don't you know? +--where every one goes. I want some proper treatment. It's all I've ever +asked for on earth. But that's not what I came to say." + +Sir Claude, in silence, folded one by one his newspapers; then he rose +and stood whacking the palm of his hand with the bundle. "You'll stop +and dine with us?" + +"Dear no--I can't dine at this sort of hour. I ordered dinner at Dover." + +Her ladyship's tone in this one instance showed a certain superiority to +those conditions in which her daughter had artlessly found Folkestone a +paradise. It was yet not so crushing as to nip in the bud the eagerness +with which the latter broke out: "But won't you at least have a cup of +tea?" + +Ida kissed her again on the brow. "Thanks, love. I had tea before +coming." She raised her eyes to Sir Claude. "She IS sweet!" He made no +more answer than if he didn't agree; but Maisie was at ease about that +and was still taken up with the joy of this happier pitch of their talk, +which put more and more of a meaning into the Captain's version of her +ladyship and literally kindled a conjecture that such an admirer might, +over there at the other place, be waiting for her to dine. Was the same +conjecture in Sir Claude's mind? He partly puzzled her, if it had risen +there, by the slight perversity with which he returned to a question +that his wife evidently thought she had disposed of. + +He whacked his hand again with his paper. "I had really much better take +you." + +"And leave Maisie here alone?" + +Mamma so clearly didn't want it that Maisie leaped at the vision of a +Captain who had seen her on from Dover and who, while he waited to take +her back, would be hovering just at the same distance at which, in +Kensington Gardens, the companion of his walk had herself hovered. Of +course, however, instead of breathing any such guess she let Sir Claude +reply; all the more that his reply could contribute so much to her own +present grandeur. "She won't be alone when she has a maid in +attendance." + +Maisie had never before had so much of a retinue, and she waited also to +enjoy the action of it on her ladyship. "You mean the woman you brought +from town?" Ida considered. "The person at the house spoke of her in a +way that scarcely made her out company for my child." Her tone was that +her child had never wanted, in her hands, for prodigious company. But +she as distinctly continued to decline Sir Claude's. "Don't be an old +goose," she said charmingly. "Let us alone." + +In front of them on the grass he looked graver than Maisie at all now +thought the occasion warranted. "I don't see why you can't say it before +me." + +His wife smoothed one of her daughter's curls. "Say what, dear?" + +"Why what you came to say." + +At this Maisie at last interposed: she appealed to Sir Claude. "Do let +her say it to me." + +He looked hard for a moment at his little friend. "How do you know what +she may say?" + +"She must risk it," Ida remarked. + +"I only want to protect you," he continued to the child. + +"You want to protect yourself--that's what you mean," his wife replied. +"Don't be afraid. I won't touch you." + +"She won't touch you--she WON'T!" Maisie declared. She felt by this time +that she could really answer for it, and something of the emotion with +which she had listened to the Captain came back to her. It made her +so happy and so secure that she could positively patronise mamma. She +did so in the Captain's very language. "She's good, she's good!" she +proclaimed. + +"Oh Lord!"--Sir Claude, at this, let himself go. He appeared to have +emitted some sound of derision that was smothered, to Maisie's ears, by +her being again embraced by his wife. Ida released her and held her off +a little, looking at her with a very queer face. Then the child became +aware that their companion had left them and that from the face in +question a confirmatory remark had proceeded. + +"I AM good, love," said her ladyship. + + + + +XXI + + +A good deal of the rest of Ida's visit was devoted to explaining, as it +were, so extraordinary a statement. This explanation was more copious +than any she had yet indulged in, and as the summer twilight gathered +and she kept her child in the garden she was conciliatory to a degree +that let her need to arrange things a little perceptibly peep out. It +was not merely that she explained; she almost conversed; all that was +wanting was that she should have positively chattered a little less. It +was really the occasion of Maisie's life on which her mother was to have +most to say to her. That alone was an implication of generosity and +virtue, and no great stretch was required to make our young lady feel +that she should best meet her and soonest have it over by simply seeming +struck with the propriety of her contention. They sat together while +the parent's gloved hand sometimes rested sociably on the child's and +sometimes gave a corrective pull to a ribbon too meagre or a tress too +thick; and Maisie was conscious of the effort to keep out of her eyes +the wonder with which they were occasionally moved to blink. Oh there +would have been things to blink at if one had let one's self go; and +it was lucky they were alone together, without Sir Claude or Mrs. Wix +or even Mrs. Beale to catch an imprudent glance. Though profuse and +prolonged her ladyship was not exhaustively lucid, and her account of +her situation, so far as it could be called descriptive, was a muddle +of inconsequent things, bruised fruit of an occasion she had rather too +lightly affronted. None of them were really thought out and some were +even not wholly insincere. It was as if she had asked outright what +better proof could have been wanted of her goodness and her greatness +than just this marvellous consent to give up what she had so cherished. +It was as if she had said in so many words: "There have been things +between us--between Sir Claude and me--which I needn't go into, you +little nuisance, because you wouldn't understand them." It suited her +to convey that Maisie had been kept, so far as SHE was concerned or +could imagine, in a holy ignorance and that she must take for granted a +supreme simplicity. She turned this way and that in the predicament she +had sought and from which she could neither retreat with grace nor +emerge with credit: she draped herself in the tatters of her impudence, +postured to her utmost before the last little triangle of cracked glass +to which so many fractures had reduced the polished plate of filial +superstition. If neither Sir Claude nor Mrs. Wix was there this was +perhaps all the more a pity: the scene had a style of its own that would +have qualified it for presentation, especially at such a moment as that +of her letting it betray that she quite did think her wretched offspring +better placed with Sir Claude than in her own soiled hands. There was at +any rate nothing scant either in her admissions or her perversions, the +mixture of her fear of what Maisie might undiscoverably think and of the +support she at the same time gathered from a necessity of selfishness +and a habit of brutality. This habit flushed through the merit she now +made, in terms explicit, of not having come to Folkestone to kick up a +vulgar row. She had not come to box any ears or to bang any doors or +even to use any language: she had come at the worst to lose the thread +of her argument in an occasional dumb disgusted twitch of the toggery in +which Mrs. Beale's low domestic had had the impudence to serve up Miss +Farange. She checked all criticism, not committing herself even so far +as for those missing comforts of the schoolroom on which Mrs. Wix had +presumed. + +"I AM good--I'm crazily, I'm criminally good. But it won't do for YOU +any more, and if I've ceased to contend with him, and with you too, who +have made most of the trouble between us, it's for reasons that you'll +understand one of these days but too well--one of these days when I +hope you'll know what it is to have lost a mother. I'm awfully ill, but +you mustn't ask me anything about it. If I don't get off somewhere my +doctor won't answer for the consequences. He's stupefied at what I've +borne--he says it has been put on me because I was formed to suffer. I'm +thinking of South Africa, but that's none of your business. You must +take your choice--you can't ask me questions if you're so ready to +give me up. No, I won't tell you; you can find out for yourself. South +Africa's wonderful, they say, and if I do go it must be to give it a +fair trial. It must be either one thing or the other; if he takes you, +you know, he takes you. I've struck my last blow for you; I can follow +you no longer from pillar to post. I must live for myself at last, while +there's still a handful left of me. I'm very, very ill; I'm very, very +tired; I'm very, very determined. There you have it. Make the most of +it. Your frock's too filthy; but I came to sacrifice myself." Maisie +looked at the peccant places; there were moments when it was a relief to +her to drop her eyes even on anything so sordid. All her interviews, all +her ordeals with her mother had, as she had grown older, seemed to have, +before any other, the hard quality of duration; but longer than any, +strangely, were these minutes offered to her as so pacific and so +agreeably winding up the connexion. It was her anxiety that made them +long, her fear of some hitch, some check of the current, one of her +ladyship's famous quick jumps. She held her breath; she only wanted, +by playing into her visitor's hands, to see the thing through. But her +impatience itself made at instants the whole situation swim; there were +things Ida said that she perhaps didn't hear, and there were things +she heard that Ida perhaps didn't say. "You're all I have, and yet I'm +capable of this. Your father wishes you were dead--that, my dear, is +what your father wishes. You'll have to get used to it as I've done--I +mean to his wishing that I'M dead. At all events you see for yourself +how wonderful I am to Sir Claude. He wishes me dead quite as much; and +I'm sure that if making me scenes about YOU could have killed me--!" It +was the mark of Ida's eloquence that she started more hares than she +followed, and she gave but a glance in the direction of this one; going +on to say that the very proof of her treating her husband like an angel +was that he had just stolen off not to be fairly shamed. She spoke as +if he had retired on tiptoe, as he might have withdrawn from a place +of worship in which he was not fit to be present. "You'll never know +what I've been through about you--never, never, never. I spare you +everything, as I always have; though I dare say you know things that, +if I did (I mean if I knew them) would make me--well, no matter! You're +old enough at any rate to know there are a lot of things I don't say +that I easily might; though it would do me good, I assure you, to have +spoken my mind for once in my life. I don't speak of your father's +infamous wife: that may give you a notion of the way I'm letting you +off. When I say 'you' I mean your precious friends and backers. If you +don't do justice to my forbearing, out of delicacy, to mention, just as +a last word, about your stepfather, a little fact or two of a kind that +really I should only HAVE to mention to shine myself in comparison, and +after every calumny, like pure gold: if you don't do me THAT justice +you'll never do me justice at all!" + +Maisie's desire to show what justice she did her had by this time become +so intense as to have brought with it an inspiration. The great effect +of their encounter had been to confirm her sense of being launched with +Sir Claude, to make it rich and full beyond anything she had dreamed, +and everything now conspired to suggest that a single soft touch of her +small hand would complete the good work and set her ladyship so promptly +and majestically afloat as to leave the great seaway clear for the +morrow. This was the more the case as her hand had for some moments been +rendered free by a marked manoeuvre of both of her mother's. One of +these capricious members had fumbled with visible impatience in some +backward depth of drapery and had presently reappeared with a small +article in its grasp. The act had a significance for a little person +trained, in that relation, from an early age, to keep an eye on manual +motions, and its possible bearing was not darkened by the memory of the +handful of gold that Susan Ash would never, never believe Mrs. Beale had +sent back--"not she; she's too false and too greedy!"--to the munificent +Countess. To have guessed, none the less, that her ladyship's purse +might be the real figure of the object extracted from the rustling +covert at her rear--this suspicion gave on the spot to the child's eyes +a direction carefully distant. It added moreover to the optimism that +for an hour could ruffle the surface of her deep diplomacy, ruffle it +to the point of making her forget that she had never been safe unless +she had also been stupid. She in short forgot her habitual caution in +her impulse to adopt her ladyship's practical interests and show her +ladyship how perfectly she understood them. She saw without looking +that her mother pressed a little clasp; heard, without wanting to, +the sharp click that marked the closing portemonnaie from which +something had been taken. What this was she just didn't see; it was not +too substantial to be locked with ease in the fold of her ladyship's +fingers. Nothing was less new to Maisie than the art of not thinking +singly, so that at this instant she could both bring out what was on +her tongue's end and weigh, as to the object in her mother's palm, the +question of its being a sovereign against the question of its being a +shilling. No sooner had she begun to speak than she saw that within a +few seconds this question would have been settled: she had foolishly +checked the rising words of the little speech of presentation to which, +under the circumstances, even such a high pride as Ida's had had to give +some thought. She had checked it completely--that was the next thing she +felt: the note she sounded brought into her companion's eyes a look that +quickly enough seemed at variance with presentations. + +"That was what the Captain said to me that day, mamma. I think it would +have given you pleasure to hear the way he spoke of you." + +The pleasure, Maisie could now in consternation reflect, would have been +a long time coming if it had come no faster than the response evoked by +her allusion to it. Her mother gave her one of the looks that slammed +the door in her face; never in a career of unsuccessful experiments had +Maisie had to take such a stare. It reminded her of the way that once, +at one of the lectures in Glower Street, something in a big jar that, +amid an array of strange glasses and bad smells, had been promised as a +beautiful yellow was produced as a beautiful black. She had been sorry +on that occasion for the lecturer, but she was at this moment sorrier +for herself. Oh nothing had ever made for twinges like mamma's manner of +saying: "The Captain? What Captain?" + +"Why when we met you in the Gardens--the one who took me to sit with +him. That was exactly what HE said." + +Ida let it come on so far as to appear for an instant to pick up a lost +thread. "What on earth did he say?" + +Maisie faltered supremely, but supremely she brought it out. "What you +say, mamma--that you're so good." + +"What 'I' say?" Ida slowly rose, keeping her eyes on her child, and the +hand that had busied itself in her purse conformed at her side and amid +the folds of her dress to a certain stiffening of the arm. "I say you're +a precious idiot, and I won't have you put words into my mouth!" This +was much more peremptory than a mere contradiction. Maisie could only +feel on the spot that everything had broken short off and that their +communication had abruptly ceased. That was presently proved. "What +business have you to speak to me of him?" + +Her daughter turned scarlet. "I thought you liked him." + +"Him!--the biggest cad in London!" Her ladyship towered again, and in +the gathering dusk the whites of her eyes were huge. + +Maisie's own, however, could by this time pretty well match them; and +she had at least now, with the first flare of anger that had ever yet +lighted her face for a foe, the sense of looking up quite as hard as any +one could look down. "Well, he was kind about you then; he WAS, and it +made me like him. He said things--they were beautiful, they were, they +were!" She was almost capable of the violence of forcing this home, for +even in the midst of her surge of passion--of which in fact it was a +part--there rose in her a fear, a pain, a vision ominous, precocious, +of what it might mean for her mother's fate to have forfeited such a +loyalty as that. There was literally an instant in which Maisie fully +saw--saw madness and desolation, saw ruin and darkness and death. "I've +thought of him often since, and I hoped it was with him--with him--" +Here, in her emotion, it failed her, the breath of her filial hope. + +But Ida got it out of her. "You hoped, you little horror--?" + +"That it was he who's at Dover, that it was he who's to take you. I mean +to South Africa," Maisie said with another drop. + +Ida's stupefaction, on this, kept her silent unnaturally long, so long +that her daughter could not only wonder what was coming, but perfectly +measure the decline of every symptom of her liberality. She loomed there +in her grandeur, merely dark and dumb; her wrath was clearly still, as +it had always been, a thing of resource and variety. What Maisie least +expected of it was by this law what now occurred. It melted, in the +summer twilight, gradually into pity, and the pity after a little found +a cadence to which the renewed click of her purse gave an accent. +She had put back what she had taken out. "You're a dreadful dismal +deplorable little thing," she murmured. And with this she turned back +and rustled away over the lawn. + +After she had disappeared, Maisie dropped upon the bench again and for +some time, in the empty garden and the deeper dusk, sat and stared at +the image her flight had still left standing. It had ceased to be her +mother only, in the strangest way, that it might become her father, the +father of whose wish that she were dead the announcement still lingered +in the air. It was a presence with vague edges--it continued to front +her, to cover her. But what reality that she need reckon with did it +represent if Mr. Farange were, on his side, also going off--going off to +America with the Countess, or even only to Spa? That question had, from +the house, a sudden gay answer in the great roar of a gong, and at the +same moment she saw Sir Claude look out for her from the wide lighted +doorway. At this she went to him and he came forward and met her on the +lawn. For a minute she was with him there in silence as, just before, at +the last, she had been with her mother. + +"She's gone?" + +"She's gone." + +Nothing more, for the instant, passed between them but to move together +to the house, where, in the hall, he indulged in one of those sudden +pleasantries with which, to the delight of his stepdaughter, his native +animation overflowed. "Will Miss Farange do me the honour to accept my +arm?" + +There was nothing in all her days that Miss Farange had accepted with +such bliss, a bright rich element that floated them together to their +feast; before they reached which, however, she uttered, in the spirit +of a glad young lady taken in to her first dinner, a sociable word that +made him stop short. "She goes to South Africa." + +"To South Africa?" His face, for a moment, seemed to swing for a jump; +the next it took its spring into the extreme of hilarity. "Is that what +she said?" + +"Oh yes, I didn't MISTAKE!" Maisie took to herself THAT credit. "For the +climate." + +Sir Claude was now looking at a young woman with black hair, a red frock +and a tiny terrier tucked under her elbow. She swept past them on her +way to the dining-room, leaving an impression of a strong scent which +mingled, amid the clatter of the place, with the hot aroma of food. He +had become a little graver; he still stopped to talk. "I see--I see." +Other people brushed by; he was not too grave to notice them. "Did she +say anything else?" + +"Oh yes, a lot more." + +On this he met her eyes again with some intensity, but only repeating: +"I see--I see." + +Maisie had still her own vision, which she brought out. "I thought she +was going to give me something." + +"What kind of a thing?" + +"Some money that she took out of her purse and then put back." + +Sir Claude's amusement reappeared. "She thought better of it. Dear +thrifty soul! How much did she make by that manoeuvre?" + +Maisie considered. "I didn't see. It was very small." + +Sir Claude threw back his head. "Do you mean very little? Sixpence?" + +Maisie resented this almost as if, at dinner, she were already bandying +jokes with an agreeable neighbour. "It may have been a sovereign." + +"Or even," Sir Claude suggested, "a ten-pound note." She flushed at this +sudden picture of what she perhaps had lost, and he made it more vivid +by adding: "Rolled up in a tight little ball, you know--her way of +treating banknotes as if they were curl-papers!" Maisie's flush deepened +both with the immense plausibility of this and with a fresh wave of the +consciousness that was always there to remind her of his cleverness--the +consciousness of how immeasurably more after all he knew about mamma +than she. She had lived with her so many times without discovering the +material of her curl-papers or assisting at any other of her dealings +with banknotes. The tight little ball had at any rate rolled away from +her for ever--quite like one of the other balls that Ida's cue used to +send flying. Sir Claude gave her his arm again, and by the time she was +seated at table she had perfectly made up her mind as to the amount of +the sum she had forfeited. Everything about her, however--the crowded +room, the bedizened banquet, the savour of dishes, the drama of +figures--ministered to the joy of life. After dinner she smoked with her +friend--for that was exactly what she felt she did--on a porch, a kind +of terrace, where the red tips of cigars and the light dresses of ladies +made, under the happy stars, a poetry that was almost intoxicating. +They talked but little, and she was slightly surprised at his asking +for no more news of what her mother had said; but she had no need of +talk--there were a sense and a sound in everything to which words had +nothing to add. They smoked and smoked, and there was a sweetness in her +stepfather's silence. At last he said: "Let us take another turn--but +you must go to bed soon. Oh you know, we're going to have a system!" +Their turn was back into the garden, along the dusky paths from which +they could see the black masts and the red lights of boats and hear the +calls and cries that evidently had to do with happy foreign travel; and +their system was once more to get on beautifully in this further lounge +without a definite exchange. Yet he finally spoke--he broke out as he +tossed away the match from which he had taken a fresh light: "I must go +for a stroll. I'm in a fidget--I must walk it off." She fell in with +this as she fell in with everything; on which he went on: "You go up to +Miss Ash"--it was the name they had started; "you must see she's not in +mischief. Can you find your way alone?" + +"Oh yes; I've been up and down seven times." She positively enjoyed the +prospect of an eighth. + +Still they didn't separate; they stood smoking together under the stars. +Then at last Sir Claude produced it. "I'm free--I'm free." + +She looked up at him; it was the very spot on which a couple of hours +before she had looked up at her mother. "You're free--you're free." + +"To-morrow we go to France." He spoke as if he hadn't heard her; but it +didn't prevent her again concurring. + +"To-morrow we go to France." + +Again he appeared not to have heard her; and after a moment--it was an +effect evidently of the depth of his reflexions and the agitation of +his soul--he also spoke as if he had not spoken before. "I'm free--I'm +free!" + +She repeated her form of assent. "You're free--you're free." + +This time he did hear her; he fixed her through the darkness with a +grave face. But he said nothing more; he simply stooped a little and +drew her to him--simply held her a little and kissed her goodnight; +after which, having given her a silent push upstairs to Miss Ash, he +turned round again to the black masts and the red lights. Maisie mounted +as if France were at the top. + + + + +XXII + + +The next day it seemed to her indeed at the bottom--down too far, in +shuddering plunges, even to leave her a sense, on the Channel boat, of +the height at which Sir Claude remained and which had never in every way +been so great as when, much in the wet, though in the angle of a screen +of canvas, he sociably sat with his stepdaughter's head in his lap and +that of Mrs. Beale's housemaid fairly pillowed on his breast. Maisie was +surprised to learn as they drew into port that they had had a lovely +passage; but this emotion, at Boulogne, was speedily quenched in others, +above all in the great ecstasy of a larger impression of life. She was +"abroad" and she gave herself up to it, responded to it, in the bright +air, before the pink houses, among the bare-legged fishwives and the +red-legged soldiers, with the instant certitude of a vocation. Her +vocation was to see the world and to thrill with enjoyment of the +picture; she had grown older in five minutes and had by the time they +reached the hotel recognised in the institutions and manners of France a +multitude of affinities and messages. Literally in the course of an hour +she found her initiation; a consciousness much quickened by the superior +part that, as soon as they had gobbled down a French breakfast--which +was indeed a high note in the concert--she observed herself to play to +Susan Ash. Sir Claude, who had already bumped against people he knew and +who, as he said, had business and letters, sent them out together for a +walk, a walk in which the child was avenged, so far as poetic justice +required, not only for the loud giggles that in their London trudges +used to break from her attendant, but for all the years of her tendency +to produce socially that impression of an excess of the queer something +which had seemed to waver so widely between innocence and guilt. On the +spot, at Boulogne, though there might have been excess there was at +least no wavering; she recognised, she understood, she adored and took +possession; feeling herself attuned to everything and laying her hand, +right and left, on what had simply been waiting for her. She explained +to Susan, she laughed at Susan, she towered over Susan; and it was +somehow Susan's stupidity, of which she had never yet been so sure, +and Susan's bewilderment and ignorance and antagonism, that gave the +liveliest rebound to her immediate perceptions and adoptions. The place +and the people were all a picture together, a picture that, when they +went down to the wide sands, shimmered, in a thousand tints, with the +pretty organisation of the _plage_, with the gaiety of spectators and +bathers, with that of the language and the weather, and above all with +that of our young lady's unprecedented situation. For it appeared to her +that no one since the beginning of time could have had such an adventure +or, in an hour, so much experience; as a sequel to which she only +needed, in order to feel with conscious wonder how the past was changed, +to hear Susan, inscrutably aggravated, express a preference for the +Edgware Road. The past was so changed and the circle it had formed +already so overstepped that on that very afternoon, in the course of +another walk, she found herself enquiring of Sir Claude--without a +single scruple--if he were prepared as yet to name the moment at which +they should start for Paris. His answer, it must be said, gave her the +least little chill. + +"Oh Paris, my dear child--I don't quite know about Paris!" + +This required to be met, but it was much less to challenge him than for +the rich joy of her first discussion of the details of a tour that, +after looking at him a minute, she replied: "Well, isn't that the REAL +thing, the thing that when one does come abroad--?" + +He had turned grave again, and she merely threw that out: it was a way +of doing justice to the seriousness of their life. She couldn't moreover +be so much older since yesterday without reflecting that if by this time +she probed a little he would recognise that she had done enough for mere +patience. There was in fact something in his eyes that suddenly, to her +own, made her discretion shabby. Before she could remedy this he had +answered her last question, answered it in the way that, of all ways, +she had least expected. "The thing it doesn't do not to do? Certainly +Paris is charming. But, my dear fellow, Paris eats your head off. I mean +it's so beastly expensive." + +That note gave her a pang--it suddenly let in a harder light. Were they +poor then, that is was HE poor, really poor beyond the pleasantry of +apollinaris and cold beef? They had walked to the end of the long jetty +that enclosed the harbour and were looking out at the dangers they had +escaped, the grey horizon that was England, the tumbled surface of the +sea and the brown smacks that bobbed upon it. Why had he chosen an +embarrassed time to make this foreign dash? unless indeed it was just +the dash economic, of which she had often heard and on which, after +another look at the grey horizon and the bobbing boats, she was ready +to turn round with elation. She replied to him quite in his own manner: +"I see, I see." She smiled up at him. "Our affairs are involved." + +"That's it." He returned her smile. "Mine are not quite so bad as yours; +for yours are really, my dear man, in a state I can't see through at +all. But mine will do--for a mess." + +She thought this over. "But isn't France cheaper than England?" + +England, over there in the thickening gloom, looked just then remarkably +dear. "I dare say; some parts." + +"Then can't we live in those parts?" + +There was something that for an instant, in satisfaction of this, he had +the air of being about to say and yet not saying. What he presently said +was: "This very place is one of them." + +"Then we shall live here?" + +He didn't treat it quite so definitely as she liked. "Since we've come +to save money!" + +This made her press him more. "How long shall we stay?" + +"Oh three or four days." + +It took her breath away. "You can save money in that time?" + +He burst out laughing, starting to walk again and taking her under his +arm. He confessed to her on the way that she too had put a finger on +the weakest of all his weaknesses, the fact, of which he was perfectly +aware, that he probably might have lived within his means if he had +never done anything for thrift. "It's the happy thoughts that do it," he +said; "there's nothing so ruinous as putting in a cheap week." Maisie +heard afresh among the pleasant sounds of the closing day that steel +click of Ida's change of mind. She thought of the ten-pound note +it would have been delightful at this juncture to produce for her +companion's encouragement. But the idea was dissipated by his saying +irrelevantly, in presence of the next thing they stopped to admire: "We +shall stay till she arrives." + +She turned upon him. "Mrs. Beale?" + +"Mrs. Wix. I've had a wire," he went on. "She has seen your mother." + +"Seen mamma?" Maisie stared. "Where in the world?" + +"Apparently in London. They've been together." + +For an instant this looked ominous--a fear came into her eyes. "Then +she hasn't gone?" + +"Your mother?--to South Africa? I give it up, dear boy," Sir Claude +said; and she seemed literally to see him give it up as he stood +there and with a kind of absent gaze--absent, that is, from HER +affairs--followed the fine stride and shining limbs of a young fishwife +who had just waded out of the sea with her basketful of shrimps. His +thought came back to her sooner than his eyes. "But I dare say it's all +right. She wouldn't come if it wasn't, poor old thing: she knows rather +well what she's about." + +This was so reassuring that Maisie, after turning it over, could make it +fit into her dream. "Well, what IS she about?" + +He finally stopped looking at the fishwife--he met his companion's +enquiry. "Oh you know!" There was something in the way he said it that +made, between them, more of an equality than she had yet imagined; but +it had also more the effect of raising her up than of letting him down, +and what it did with her was shown by the sound of her assent. + +"Yes--I know!" What she knew, what she COULD know is by this time no +secret to us: it grew and grew at any rate, the rest of that day, in the +air of what he took for granted. It was better he should do that than +attempt to test her knowledge; but there at the worst was the gist of +the matter: it was open between them at last that their great change, +as, speaking as if it had already lasted weeks, Maisie called it, was +somehow built up round Mrs. Wix. Before she went to bed that night she +knew further that Sir Claude, since, as HE called it, they had been on +the rush, had received more telegrams than one. But they separated again +without speaking of Mrs. Beale. + +Oh what a crossing for the straighteners and the old brown dress--which +latter appurtenance the child saw thriftily revived for the possible +disasters of travel! The wind got up in the night and from her little +room at the inn Maisie could hear the noise of the sea. The next day it +was raining and everything different: this was the case even with Susan +Ash, who positively crowed over the bad weather, partly, it seemed, for +relish of the time their visitor would have in the boat, and partly to +point the moral of the folly of coming to such holes. In the wet, with +Sir Claude, Maisie went to the Folkestone packet, on the arrival of +which, with many signs of the fray, he made her wait under an umbrella +by the quay; whence almost ere the vessel touched, he was to be +descried, in quest of their friend, wriggling--that had been his +word--through the invalids massed upon the deck. It was long till +he reappeared--it was not indeed till every one had landed; when he +presented the object of his benevolence in a light that Maisie scarce +knew whether to suppose the depth of prostration or the flush of +triumph. The lady on his arm, still bent beneath her late ordeal, was +muffled in such draperies as had never before offered so much support +to so much woe. At the hotel, an hour later, this ambiguity dropped: +assisting Mrs. Wix in private to refresh and reinvest herself, Maisie +heard from her in detail how little she could have achieved if Sir +Claude hadn't put it in her power. It was a phrase that in her room she +repeated in connexions indescribable: he had put it in her power to have +"changes," as she said, of the most intimate order, adapted to climates +and occasions so various as to foreshadow in themselves the stages of +a vast itinerary. Cheap weeks would of course be in their place after +so much money spent on a governess; sums not grudged, however, by this +lady's pupil, even on her feeling her own appearance give rise, through +the straighteners, to an attention perceptibly mystified. Sir Claude in +truth had had less time to devote to it than to Mrs. Wix's; and moreover +she would rather be in her own shoes than in her friend's creaking new +ones in the event of an encounter with Mrs. Beale. Maisie was too lost +in the idea of Mrs. Beale's judgement of so much newness to pass any +judgement herself. Besides, after much luncheon and many endearments, +the question took quite another turn, to say nothing of the pleasure +of the child's quick view that there were other eyes than Susan Ash's +to open to what she could show. She couldn't show much, alas, till it +stopped raining, which it declined to do that day; but this had only the +effect of leaving more time for Mrs. Wix's own demonstration. It came +as they sat in the little white and gold salon which Maisie thought the +loveliest place she had ever seen except perhaps the apartment of the +Countess; it came while the hard summer storm lashed the windows and +blew in such a chill that Sir Claude, with his hands in his pockets and +cigarettes in his teeth, fidgeting, frowning, looking out and turning +back, ended by causing a smoky little fire to be made in the dressy +little chimney. It came in spite of something that could only be named +his air of wishing to put it off; an air that had served him--oh as all +his airs served him!--to the extent of his having for a couple of hours +confined the conversation to gratuitous jokes and generalities, kept it +on the level of the little empty coffee-cups and _petits verres_ (Mrs. +Wix had two of each!) that struck Maisie, through the fumes of the +French fire and the English tobacco, as a token more than ever that they +were launched. She felt now, in close quarters and as clearly as if Mrs. +Wix had told her, that what this lady had come over for was not merely +to be chaffed and to hear her pupil chaffed; not even to hear Sir +Claude, who knew French in perfection, imitate the strange sounds +emitted by the English folk at the hotel. It was perhaps half an effect +of her present renovations, as if her clothes had been somebody's else: +she had at any rate never produced such an impression of high colour, +of a redness associated in Maisie's mind at THAT pitch either with +measles or with "habits." Her heart was not at all in the gossip about +Boulogne; and if her complexion was partly the result of the dejeuner +and the _petits verres_ it was also the brave signal of what she was +there to say. Maisie knew when this did come how anxiously it had been +awaited by the youngest member of the party. "Her ladyship packed me +off--she almost put me into the cab!" That was what Mrs. Wix at last +brought out. + + + + +XXIII + + +Sir Claude was stationed at the window; he didn't so much as turn round, +and it was left to the youngest of the three to take up the remark. "Do +you mean you went to see her yesterday?" + +"She came to see ME. She knocked at my shabby door. She mounted my +squalid stair. She told me she had seen you at Folkestone." + +Maisie wondered. "She went back that evening?" + +"No; yesterday morning. She drove to me straight from the station. It +was most remarkable. If I had a job to get off she did nothing to make +it worse--she did a great deal to make it better." Mrs. Wix hung fire, +though the flame in her face burned brighter; then she became capable +of saying: "Her ladyship's kind! She did what I didn't expect." + +Maisie, on this, looked straight at her stepfather's back; it might well +have been for her at that hour a monument of her ladyship's kindness. It +remained, as such, monumentally still, and for a time that permitted the +child to ask of their companion: "Did she really help you?" + +"Most practically." Again Mrs. Wix paused; again she quite resounded. +"She gave me a ten-pound note." + +At that, still looking out, Sir Claude, at the window, laughed loud. "So +you see, Maisie, we've not quite lost it!" + +"Oh no," Maisie responded. "Isn't that too charming?" She smiled at Mrs. +Wix. "We know all about it." Then on her friend's showing such blankness +as was compatible with such a flush she pursued: "She does want me to +have you?" + +Mrs. Wix showed a final hesitation, which, however, while Sir Claude +drummed on the window-pane, she presently surmounted. It came to Maisie +that in spite of his drumming and of his not turning round he was really +so much interested as to leave himself in a manner in her hands; which +somehow suddenly seemed to her a greater proof than he could have given +by interfering. "She wants me to have YOU!" Mrs. Wix declared. + +Maisie answered this bang at Sir Claude. "Then that's nice for all of +us." + +Of course it was, his continued silence sufficiently admitted while +Mrs. Wix rose from her chair and, as if to take more of a stand, placed +herself, not without majesty, before the fire. The incongruity of her +smartness, the circumference of her stiff frock, presented her as really +more ready for Paris than any of them. She also gazed hard at Sir +Claude's back. "Your wife was different from anything she had ever shown +me. She recognises certain proprieties." + +"Which? Do you happen to remember?" Sir Claude asked. + +Mrs. Wix's reply was prompt. "The importance for Maisie of a +gentlewoman, of some one who's not--well, so bad! She objects to a mere +maid, and I don't in the least mind telling you what she wants me to +do." One thing was clear--Mrs. Wix was now bold enough for anything. +"She wants me to persuade you to get rid of the person from Mrs. +Beale's." + +Maisie waited for Sir Claude to pronounce on this; then she could only +understand that he on his side waited, and she felt particularly full of +common sense as she met her responsibility. "Oh I don't want Susan with +YOU!" she said to Mrs. Wix. + +Sir Claude, always from the window, approved. "That's quite simple. I'll +take her back." + +Mrs. Wix gave a positive jump; Maisie caught her look of alarm. "'Take' +her? You don't mean to go over on purpose?" + +Sir Claude said nothing for a moment; after which, "Why shouldn't I +leave you here?" he enquired. + +Maisie, at this, sprang up. "Oh do, oh do, oh do!" The next moment she +was interlaced with Mrs. Wix, and the two, on the hearth-rug, their eyes +in each other's eyes, considered the plan with intensity. Then Maisie +felt the difference of what they saw in it. + +"She can surely go back alone: why should you put yourself out?" Mrs. +Wix demanded. + +"Oh she's an idiot--she's incapable. If anything should happen to her +it would be awkward: it was I who brought her--without her asking. If I +turn her away I ought with my own hand to place her again exactly where +I found her." + +Mrs. Wix's face appealed to Maisie on such folly, and her manner, +as directed to their companion, had, to her pupil's surprise, an +unprecedented firmness. "Dear Sir Claude, I think you're perverse. Pay +her fare and give her a sovereign. She has had an experience that she +never dreamed of and that will be an advantage to her through life. +If she goes wrong on the way it will be simply because she wants to, +and, with her expenses and her remuneration--make it even what you +like!--you'll have treated her as handsomely as you always treat every +one." + +This was a new tone--as new as Mrs. Wix's cap; and it could strike a +young person with a sharpened sense for latent meanings as the upshot of +a relation that had taken on a new character. It brought out for Maisie +how much more even than she had guessed her friends were fighting side +by side. At the same time it needed so definite a justification that as +Sir Claude now at last did face them she at first supposed him merely +resentful of excessive familiarity. She was therefore yet more puzzled +to see him show his serene beauty untroubled, as well as an equal +interest in a matter quite distinct from any freedom but her ladyship's. +"Did my wife come alone?" He could ask even that good-humouredly. + +"When she called on me?" Mrs. Wix WAS red now: his good humour wouldn't +keep down her colour, which for a minute glowed there like her ugly +honesty. "No--there was some one in the cab." The only attenuation she +could think of was after a minute to add: "But they didn't come up." + +Sir Claude broke into a laugh--Maisie herself could guess what it was +at: while he now walked about, still laughing, and at the fireplace +gave a gay kick to a displaced log, she felt more vague about almost +everything than about the drollery of such a "they." She in fact could +scarce have told you if it was to deepen or to cover the joke that she +bethought herself to observe: "Perhaps it was her maid." + +Mrs. Wix gave her a look that at any rate deprecated the wrong tone. "It +was not her maid." + +"Do you mean there are this time two?" Sir Claude asked as if he hadn't +heard. + +"Two maids?" Maisie went on as if she might assume he had. + +The reproach of the straighteners darkened; but Sir Claude cut across it +with a sudden: "See here; what do you mean? And what do you suppose SHE +meant?" + +Mrs. Wix let him for a moment, in silence, understand that the answer +to his question, if he didn't take care, might give him more than he +wanted. It was as if, with this scruple, she measured and adjusted all +she gave him in at last saying: "What she meant was to make me know that +you're definitely free. To have that straight from her was a joy I of +course hadn't hoped for: it made the assurance, and my delight at it, a +thing I could really proceed upon. You already know now certainly I'd +have started even if she hadn't pressed me; you already know what, so +long, we've been looking for and what, as soon as she told me of her +step taken at Folkestone, I recognised with rapture that we HAVE. It's +your freedom that makes me right"--she fairly bristled with her logic. +"But I don't mind telling you that it's her action that makes me happy!" + +"Her action?" Sir Claude echoed. "Why, my dear woman, her action is just +a hideous crime. It happens to satisfy our sympathies in a way that's +quite delicious; but that doesn't in the least alter the fact that it's +the most abominable thing ever done. She has chucked our friend here +overboard not a bit less than if she had shoved her shrieking and +pleading, out of that window and down two floors to the paving-stones." + +Maisie surveyed serenely the parties to the discussion. "Oh your friend +here, dear Sir Claude, doesn't plead and shriek!" + +He looked at her a moment. "Never. Never. That's one, only one, but +charming so far as it goes, of about a hundred things we love her for." +Then he pursued to Mrs. Wix: "What I can't for the life of me make out +is what Ida is REALLY up to, what game she was playing in turning to you +with that cursed cheek after the beastly way she has used you. Where--to +explain her at all--does she fancy she can presently, when we least +expect it, take it out of us?" + +"She doesn't fancy anything, nor want anything out of any one. Her +cursed cheek, as you call it, is the best thing I've ever seen in her. +I don't care a fig for the beastly way she used me--I forgive it all a +thousand times over!" Mrs. Wix raised her voice as she had never raised +it; she quite triumphed in her lucidity. "I understand her, I almost +admire her!" she quavered. She spoke as if this might practically +suffice; yet in charity to fainter lights she threw out an explanation. +"As I've said, she was different; upon my word I wouldn't have known +her. She had a glimmering, she had an instinct; they brought her. It was +a kind of happy thought, and if you couldn't have supposed she would +ever have had such a thing, why of course I quite agree with you. But +she did have it! There!" + +Maisie could feel again how a certain rude rightness in this plea might +have been found exasperating; but as she had often watched Sir Claude in +apprehension of displeasures that didn't come, so now, instead of saying +"Oh hell!" as her father used, she observed him only to take refuge in a +question that at the worst was abrupt. + +"Who IS it this time, do you know?" + +Mrs. Wix tried blind dignity. "Who is what, Sir Claude?" + +"The man who stands the cabs. Who was in the one that waited at your +door?" + +At this challenge she faltered so long that her young friend's pitying +conscience gave her a hand. "It wasn't the Captain." + +This good intention, however, only converted the excellent woman's +scruple to a more ambiguous stare; besides of course making Sir Claude +go off. Mrs. Wix fairly appealed to him. "Must I really tell you?" + +His amusement continued. "Did she make you promise not to?" + +Mrs. Wix looked at him still harder. "I mean before Maisie." + +Sir Claude laughed again. "Why SHE can't hurt him!" + +Maisie felt herself, as it passed, brushed by the light humour of this. +"Yes, I can't hurt him." + +The straighteners again roofed her over; after which they seemed to +crack with the explosion of their wearer's honesty. Amid the flying +splinters Mrs. Wix produced a name. "Mr. Tischbein." + +There was for an instant a silence that, under Sir Claude's influence +and while he and Maisie looked at each other, suddenly pretended to be +that of gravity. "We don't know Mr. Tischbein, do we, dear?" + +Maisie gave the point all needful thought. "No, I can't place Mr. +Tischbein." + +It was a passage that worked visibly on their friend. "You must pardon +me, Sir Claude," she said with an austerity of which the note was real, +"if I thank God to your face that he has in his mercy--I mean his mercy +to our charge--allowed me to achieve this act." She gave out a long puff +of pain. "It was time!" Then as if still more to point the moral: "I +said just now I understood your wife. I said just now I admired her. I +stand to it: I did both of those things when I saw how even SHE, poor +thing, saw. If you want the dots on the i's you shall have them. What +she came to me for, in spite of everything, was that I'm just"--she +quavered it out--"well, just clean! What she saw for her daughter was +that there must at last be a DECENT person!" + +Maisie was quick enough to jump a little at the sound of this +implication that such a person was what Sir Claude was not; the +next instant, however, she more profoundly guessed against whom the +discrimination was made. She was therefore left the more surprised at +the complete candour with which he embraced the worst. "If she's bent on +decent persons why has she given her to ME? You don't call me a decent +person, and I'll do Ida the justice that SHE never did. I think I'm as +indecent as any one and that there's nothing in my behaviour that makes +my wife's surrender a bit less ignoble!" + +"Don't speak of your behaviour!" Mrs. Wix cried. "Don't say such +horrible things; they're false and they're wicked and I forbid you! It's +to KEEP you decent that I'm here and that I've done everything I have +done. It's to save you--I won't say from yourself, because in yourself +you're beautiful and good! It's to save you from the worst person of +all. I haven't, after all, come over to be afraid to speak of her! +That's the person in whose place her ladyship wants such a person as +even me; and if she thought herself, as she as good as told me, not fit +for Maisie's company, it's not, as you may well suppose, that she may +make room for Mrs. Beale!" + +Maisie watched his face as it took this outbreak, and the most she saw +in it was that it turned a little white. That indeed made him look, +as Susan Ash would have said, queer; and it was perhaps a part of the +queerness that he intensely smiled. "You're too hard on Mrs. Beale. She +has great merits of her own." + +Mrs. Wix, at this, instead of immediately replying, did what Sir Claude +had been doing before: she moved across to the window and stared a while +into the storm. There was for a minute, to Maisie's sense, a hush that +resounded with wind and rain. Sir Claude, in spite of these things, +glanced about for his hat; on which Maisie spied it first and, making +a dash for it, held it out to him. He took it with a gleam of a +"thank-you" in his face, and then something moved her still to hold the +other side of the brim; so that, united by their grasp of this object, +they stood some seconds looking many things at each other. By this time +Mrs. Wix had turned round. "Do you mean to tell me," she demanded, "that +you are going back?" + +"To Mrs. Beale?" Maisie surrendered his hat, and there was something +that touched her in the embarrassed, almost humiliated way their +companion's challenge made him turn it round and round. She had seen +people do that who, she was sure, did nothing else that Sir Claude did. +"I can't just say, my dear thing. We'll see about I--we'll talk of it +to-morrow. Meantime I must get some air." + +Mrs. Wix, with her back to the window, threw up her head to a height +that, still for a moment, had the effect of detaining him. "All the air +in France, Sir Claude, won't, I think, give you the courage to deny that +you're simply afraid of her!" + +Oh this time he did look queer; Maisie had no need of Susan's vocabulary +to note it! It would have come to her of itself as, with his hand on +the door, he turned his eyes from his stepdaughter to her governess and +then back again. Resting on Maisie's, though for ever so short a time, +there was something they gave up to her and tried to explain. His lips, +however, explained nothing; they only surrendered to Mrs. Wix. "Yes. I'm +simply afraid of her!" He opened the door and passed out. It brought +back to Maisie his confession of fear of her mother; it made her +stepmother then the second lady about whom he failed of the particular +virtue that was supposed most to mark a gentleman. In fact there were +three of them, if she counted in Mrs. Wix, before whom he had undeniably +quailed. Well, his want of valour was but a deeper appeal to her +tenderness. To thrill with response to it she had only to remember all +the ladies she herself had, as they called it, funked. + + + + +XXIV + + +It continued to rain so hard that our young lady's private dream of +explaining the Continent to their visitor had to contain a provision for +some adequate treatment of the weather. At the _table d'hote_ that evening +she threw out a variety of lights: this was the second ceremony of the +sort she had sat through, and she would have neglected her privilege +and dishonoured her vocabulary--which indeed consisted mainly of the +names of dishes--if she had not been proportionately ready to dazzle +with interpretations. Preoccupied and overawed, Mrs. Wix was apparently +dim: she accepted her pupil's version of the mysteries of the menu in a +manner that might have struck the child as the depression of a credulity +conscious not so much of its needs as of its dimensions. Maisie was soon +enough--though it scarce happened before bedtime--confronted again with +the different sort of programme for which she reserved her criticism. +They remounted together to their sitting-room while Sir Claude, who said +he would join them later, remained below to smoke and to converse with +the old acquaintances that he met wherever he turned. He had proposed +his companions, for coffee, the enjoyment of the _salon de lecture_, +but Mrs. Wix had replied promptly and with something of an air that it +struck her their own apartments offered them every convenience. They +offered the good lady herself, Maisie could immediately observe, not +only that of this rather grand reference, which, already emulous, so +far as it went, of her pupil, she made as if she had spent her life in +salons; but that of a stiff French sofa where she could sit and stare at +the faint French lamp, in default of the French clock that had stopped, +as for some account of the time Sir Claude would so markedly interpose. +Her demeanour accused him so directly of hovering beyond her reach that +Maisie sought to divert her by a report of Susan's quaint attitude on +the matter of their conversation after lunch. Maisie had mentioned to +the young woman for sympathy's sake the plan for her relief, but her +disapproval of alien ways appeared, strange to say, only to prompt her +to hug her gloom; so that between Mrs. Wix's effect of displacing her +and the visible stiffening of her back the child had the sense of a +double office and enlarged play for pacific powers. + +These powers played to no great purpose, it was true, in keeping before +Mrs. Wix the vision of Sir Claude's perversity, which hung there in the +pauses of talk and which he himself, after unmistakeable delays, finally +made quite lurid by bursting in--it was near ten o'clock--with an object +held up in his hand. She knew before he spoke what it was; she knew at +least from the underlying sense of all that, since the hour spent after +the Exhibition with her father, had not sprung up to reinstate Mr. +Farange--she knew it meant a triumph for Mrs. Beale. The mere present +sight of Sir Claude's face caused her on the spot to drop straight +through her last impression of Mr. Farange a plummet that reached still +deeper down than the security of these days of flight. She had wrapped +that impression in silence--a silence that had parted with half its veil +to cover also, from the hour of Sir Claude's advent, the image of Mr. +Farange's wife. But if the object in Sir Claude's hand revealed itself +as a letter which he held up very high, so there was something in his +mere motion that laid Mrs. Beale again bare. "Here we are!" he cried +almost from the door, shaking his trophy at them and looking from one to +the other. Then he came straight to Mrs. Wix; he had pulled two papers +out of the envelope and glanced at them again to see which was which. He +thrust one out open to Mrs. Wix. "Read that." She looked at him hard, +as if in fear: it was impossible not to see he was excited. Then she +took the letter, but it was not her face that Maisie watched while she +read. Neither, for that matter, was it this countenance that Sir Claude +scanned: he stood before the fire and, more calmly, now that he had +acted, communed in silence with his stepdaughter. + +The silence was in truth quickly broken; Mrs. Wix rose to her feet with +the violence of the sound she emitted. The letter had dropped from her +and lay upon the floor; it had made her turn ghastly white and she was +speechless with the effect of it. "It's too abominable--it's too +unspeakable!" she then cried. + +"Isn't it a charming thing?" Sir Claude asked. "It has just arrived, +enclosed in a word of her own. She sends it on to me with the remark +that comment's superfluous. I really think it is. That's all you can +say." + +"She oughtn't to pass such a horror about," said Mrs. Wix. "She ought +to put it straight in the fire." + +"My dear woman, she's not such a fool! It's much too precious." He had +picked the letter up and he gave it again a glance of complacency which +produced a light in his face. "Such a document"--he considered, then +concluded with a slight drop--"such a document is, in fine, a basis!" + +"A basis for what?" + +"Well--for proceedings." + +"Hers?" Mrs. Wix's voice had become outright the voice of derision. "How +can SHE proceed?" + +Sir Claude turned it over. "How can she get rid of him? Well--she IS rid +of him." + +"Not legally." Mrs. Wix had never looked to her pupil so much as if she +knew what she was talking about. + +"I dare say," Sir Claude laughed; "but she's not a bit less deprived +than I!" + +"Of the power to get a divorce? It's just your want of the power that +makes the scandal of your connexion with her. Therefore it's just her +want of it that makes that of hers with you. That's all I contend!" Mrs. +Wix concluded with an unparalleled neigh of battle. Oh she did know what +she was talking about! + +Maisie had meanwhile appealed mutely to Sir Claude, who judged it easier +to meet what she didn't say than to meet what Mrs. Wix did. + +"It's a letter to Mrs. Beale from your father, my dear, written from +Spa and making the rupture between them perfectly irrevocable. It lets +her know, and not in pretty language, that, as we technically say, he +deserts her. It puts an end for ever to their relations." He ran his +eyes over it again, then appeared to make up his mind. "In fact it +concerns you, Maisie, so nearly and refers to you so particularly that +I really think you ought to see the terms in which this new situation +is created for you." And he held out the letter. + +Mrs. Wix, at this, pounced upon it; she had grabbed it too soon even +for Maisie to become aware of being rather afraid of it. Thrusting it +instantly behind her she positively glared at Sir Claude. "See it, +wretched man?--the innocent child SEE such a thing? I think you must be +mad, and she shall not have a glimpse of it while I'm here to prevent!" + +The breadth of her action had made Sir Claude turn red--he even looked a +little foolish. "You think it's too bad, eh? But it's precisely because +it's bad that it seemed to me it would have a lesson and a virtue for +her." + +Maisie could do a quick enough justice to his motive to be able clearly +to interpose. She fairly smiled at him. "I assure you I can quite +believe how bad it is!" She thought of something, kept it back a moment, +and then spoke. "I know what's in it!" + +He of course burst out laughing and, while Mrs. Wix groaned an "Oh +heavens!" replied: "You wouldn't say that, old boy, if you did! The +point I make is," he continued to Mrs. Wix with a blandness now +re-established--"the point I make is simply that it sets Mrs. Beale +free." + +She hung fire but an instant. "Free to live with YOU?" + +"Free not to live, not to pretend to live, with her husband." + +"Ah they're mighty different things!"--a truth as to which her +earnestness could now with a fine inconsequent look invite the +participation of the child. + +Before Maisie could commit herself, however, the ground was occupied by +Sir Claude, who, as he stood before their visitor with an expression +half rueful, half persuasive, rubbed his hand sharply up and down the +back of his head. "Then why the deuce do you grant so--do you, I may +even say, rejoice so--that by the desertion of my own precious partner +I'm free?" + +Mrs. Wix met this challenge first with silence, then with a +demonstration the most extraordinary, the most unexpected. Maisie could +scarcely believe her eyes as she saw the good lady, with whom she had +associated no faintest shade of any art of provocation, actually, after +an upward grimace, give Sir Claude a great giggling insinuating naughty +slap. "You wretch--you KNOW why!" And she turned away. The face that +with this movement she left him to present to Maisie was to abide with +his stepdaughter as the very image of stupefaction; but the pair lacked +time to communicate either amusement or alarm before their admonisher +was upon them again. She had begun in fact to show infinite variety and +she flashed about with a still quicker change of tone. "Have you brought +me that thing as a pretext for your going over?" + +Sir Claude braced himself. "I can't, after such news, in common decency +not go over. I mean, don't you know, in common courtesy and humanity. +My dear lady, you can't chuck a woman that way, especially taking the +moment when she has been most insulted and wronged. A fellow must behave +like a gentleman, damn it, dear good Mrs. Wix. We didn't come away, we +two, to hang right on, you know: it was only to try our paces and just +put in a few days that might prove to every one concerned that we're in +earnest. It's exactly because we're in earnest that, dash it, we needn't +be so awfully particular. I mean, don't you know, we needn't be so +awfully afraid." He showed a vivacity, an intensity of argument, and if +Maisie counted his words she was all the more ready to swallow after a +single swift gasp those that, the next thing, she became conscious he +paused for a reply to. "We didn't come, old girl, did we," he pleaded +straight, "to stop right away for ever and put it all in NOW?" + +Maisie had never doubted she could be heroic for him. "Oh no!" It was as +if she had been shocked at the bare thought. "We're just taking it as +we find it." She had a sudden inspiration, which she backed up with a +smile. "We're just seeing what we can afford." She had never yet in her +life made any claim for herself, but she hoped that this time, frankly, +what she was doing would somehow be counted to her. Indeed she felt Sir +Claude WAS counting it, though she was afraid to look at him--afraid she +should show him tears. She looked at Mrs. Wix; she reached her maximum. +"I don't think I ought to be bad to Mrs. Beale." + +She heard, on this, a deep sound, something inarticulate and sweet, +from Sir Claude; but tears were what Mrs. Wix didn't scruple to show. +"Do you think you ought to be bad to ME?" The question was the more +disconcerting that Mrs. Wix's emotion didn't deprive her of the +advantage of her effect. "If you see that woman again you're lost!" she +declared to their companion. + +Sir Claude looked at the moony globe of the lamp; he seemed to see +for an instant what seeing Mrs. Beale would consist of. It was also +apparently from this vision that he drew strength to return: "Her +situation, by what has happened, is completely changed; and it's no +use your trying to prove to me that I needn't take any account of +that." + +"If you see that woman you're lost!" Mrs. Wix with greater force +repeated. + +"Do you think she'll not let me come back to you? My dear lady, I leave +you here, you and Maisie, as a hostage to fortune, and I promise you by +all that's sacred that I shall be with you again at the very latest on +Saturday. I provide you with funds; I install you in these lovely rooms; +I arrange with the people here that you be treated with every attention +and supplied with every luxury. The weather, after this, will mend; it +will be sure to be exquisite. You'll both be as free as air and you can +roam all over the place and have tremendous larks. You shall have a +carriage to drive you; the whole house shall be at your call. You'll +have a magnificent position." He paused, he looked from one of his +companions to the other as to see the impression he had made. Whether or +no he judged it adequate he subjoined after a moment: "And you'll oblige +me above all by not making a fuss." + +Maisie could only answer for the impression on herself, though indeed +from the heart even of Mrs. Wix's rigour there floated to her sense a +faint fragrance of depraved concession. Maisie had her dumb word for the +show such a speech could make, for the irresistible charm it could take +from his dazzling sincerity; and before she could do anything but blink +at excess of light she heard this very word sound on Mrs. Wix's lips, +just as if the poor lady had guessed it and wished, snatching it from +her, to blight it like a crumpled flower. "You're dreadful, you're +terrible, for you know but too well that it's not a small thing to me +that you should address me in terms that are princely!" Princely was +what he stood there and looked and sounded; that was what Maisie for the +occasion found herself reduced to simple worship of him for being. Yet +strange to say too, as Mrs. Wix went on, an echo rang within her that +matched the echo she had herself just produced. "How much you must WANT +to see her to say such things as that and to be ready to do so much for +the poor little likes of Maisie and me! She has a hold on you, and you +know it, and you want to feel it again and--God knows, or at least _I_ +do, what's your motive and desire--enjoy it once more and give yourself +up to it! It doesn't matter if it's one day or three: enough is as good +as a feast and the lovely time you'll have with her is something you're +willing to pay for! I dare say you'd like me to believe that your pay is +to get her to give you up; but that's a matter on which I strongly urge +you not to put down your money in advance. Give HER up first. Then pay +her what you please!" + +Sir Claude took this to the end, though there were things in it that +made him colour, called into his face more of the apprehension than +Maisie had ever perceived there of a particular sort of shock. She had +an odd sense that it was the first time she had seen any one but Mrs. +Wix really and truly scandalised, and this fed her inference, which grew +and grew from moment to moment, that Mrs. Wix was proving more of a +force to reckon with than either of them had allowed so much room for. +It was true that, long before, she had obtained a "hold" of him, as +she called it, different in kind from that obtained by Mrs. Beale and +originally by her ladyship. But Maisie could quite feel with him now +that he had really not expected this advantage to be driven so home. Oh +they hadn't at all got to where Mrs. Wix would stop, for the next minute +she was driving harder than ever. It was the result of his saying with a +certain dryness, though so kindly that what most affected Maisie in it +was his patience: "My dear friend, it's simply a matter in which I must +judge for myself. You've judged FOR me, I know, a good deal, of late, in +a way that I appreciate, I assure you, down to the ground. But you can't +do it always; no one can do that for another, don't you see, in every +case. There are exceptions, particular cases that turn up and that are +awfully delicate. It would be too easy if I could shift it all off on +you: it would be allowing you to incur an amount of responsibility that +I should simply become quite ashamed of. You'll find, I'm sure, that +you'll have quite as much as you'll enjoy if you'll be so good as to +accept the situation as circumstances happen to make it for you and to +stay here with our friend, till I rejoin you, on the footing of as much +pleasantness and as much comfort--and I think I have a right to add, to +both of you, of as much faith in ME--as possible." + +Oh he was princely indeed: that came out more and more with every word +he said and with the particular way he said it, and Maisie could feel +his monitress stiffen almost with anguish against the increase of his +spell and then hurl herself as a desperate defence from it into the +quite confessed poorness of violence, of iteration. "You're afraid +of her--afraid, afraid, afraid! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" Mrs. Wix +wailed it with a high quaver, then broke down into a long shudder of +helplessness and woe. The next minute she had flung herself again on +the lean sofa and had burst into a passion of tears. + +Sir Claude stood and looked at her a moment; he shook his head slowly, +altogether tenderly. "I've already admitted it--I'm in mortal terror; +so we'll let that settle the question. I think you had best go to bed," +he added; "you've had a tremendous day and you must both be tired to +death. I shall not expect you to concern yourselves in the morning +with my movements. There's an early boat on; I shall have cleared out +before you're up; and I shall moreover have dealt directly and most +effectively, I assure you, with the haughty but not quite hopeless Miss +Ash." He turned to his stepdaughter as if at once to take leave of her +and give her a sign of how, through all tension and friction, they were +still united in such a way that she at least needn't worry. "Maisie +boy!"--he opened his arms to her. With her culpable lightness she flew +into them and, while he kissed her, chose the soft method of silence to +satisfy him, the silence that after battles of talk was the best balm +she could offer his wounds. They held each other long enough to reaffirm +intensely their vows; after which they were almost forced apart by Mrs. +Wix's jumping to her feet. + +Her jump, either with a quick return or with a final lapse of courage, +was also to supplication almost abject. "I beseech you not to take a +step so miserable and so fatal. I know her but too well, even if you +jeer at me for saying it; little as I've seen her I know her, I know +her. I know what she'll do--I see it as I stand here. Since you're +afraid of her it's the mercy of heaven. Don't, for God's sake, be afraid +to show it, to profit by it and to arrive at the very safety that it +gives you. I'M not afraid of her, I assure you; you must already have +seen for yourself that there's nothing I'm afraid of now. Let me go to +her--I'LL settle her and I'll take that woman back without a hair of +her touched. Let me put in the two or three days--let me wind up the +connexion. You stay here with Maisie, with the carriage and the larks +and the luxury; then I'll return to you and we'll go off together--we'll +live together without a cloud. Take me, take me," she went on and +on--the tide of her eloquence was high. "Here I am; I know what I am +and what I ain't; but I say boldly to the face of you both that I'll do +better for you, far, than ever she'll even try to. I say it to yours, +Sir Claude, even though I owe you the very dress on my back and the very +shoes on my feet. I owe you everything--that's just the reason; and to +pay it back, in profusion, what can that be but what I want? Here I am, +here I am!"--she spread herself into an exhibition that, combined with +her intensity and her decorations, appeared to suggest her for strange +offices and devotions, for ridiculous replacements and substitutions. +She manipulated her gown as she talked, she insisted on the items of +her debt. "I have nothing of my own, I know--no money, no clothes, no +appearance, no anything, nothing but my hold of this little one truth, +which is all in the world I can bribe you with: that the pair of you are +more to me than all besides, and that if you'll let me help you and save +you, make what you both want possible in the one way it CAN be, why, +I'll work myself to the bone in your service!" + +Sir Claude wavered there without an answer to this magnificent appeal; +he plainly cast about for one, and in no small agitation and pain. He +addressed himself in his quest, however, only to vague quarters until he +met again, as he so frequently and actively met it, the more than filial +gaze of his intelligent little charge. That gave him--poor plastic and +dependent male--his issue. If she was still a child she was yet of +the sex that could help him out. He signified as much by a renewed +invitation to an embrace. She freshly sprang to him and again they +inaudibly conversed. "Be nice to her, be nice to her," he at last +distinctly articulated; "be nice to her as you've not even been to ME!" +On which, without another look at Mrs. Wix, he somehow got out of the +room, leaving Maisie under the slight oppression of these words as well +as of the idea that he had unmistakeably once more dodged. + + + + +XXV + + +Every single thing he had prophesied came so true that it was after all +no more than fair to expect quite as much for what he had as good as +promised. His pledges they could verify to the letter, down to his very +guarantee that a way would be found with Miss Ash. Roused in the summer +dawn and vehemently squeezed by that interesting exile, Maisie fell back +upon her couch with a renewed appreciation of his policy, a memento of +which, when she rose later on to dress, glittered at her from the carpet +in the shape of a sixpence that had overflowed from Susan's pride of +possession. Sixpences really, for the forty-eight hours that followed, +seemed to abound in her life; she fancifully computed the number of them +represented by such a period of "larks." The number was not kept down, +she presently noticed, by any scheme of revenge for Sir Claude's flight +which should take on Mrs. Wix's part the form of a refusal to avail +herself of the facilities he had so bravely ordered. It was in fact +impossible to escape them; it was in the good lady's own phrase +ridiculous to go on foot when you had a carriage prancing at the door. +Everything about them pranced: the very waiters even as they presented +the dishes to which, from a similar sense of the absurdity of +perversity, Mrs. Wix helped herself with a freedom that spoke to Maisie +quite as much of her depletion as of her logic. Her appetite was a sign +to her companion of a great many things and testified no less on the +whole to her general than to her particular condition. She had arrears +of dinner to make up, and it was touching that in a dinnerless state +her moral passion should have burned so clear. She partook largely as +a refuge from depression, and yet the opportunity to partake was just +a mark of the sinister symptoms that depressed her. The affair was +in short a combat, in which the baser element triumphed, between her +refusal to be bought off and her consent to be clothed and fed. It was +not at any rate to be gainsaid that there was comfort for her in the +developments of France; comfort so great as to leave Maisie free to take +with her all the security for granted and brush all the danger aside. +That was the way to carry out in detail Sir Claude's injunction to be +"nice"; that was the way, as well, to look, with her, in a survey of the +pleasures of life abroad, straight over the head of any doubt. + +They shrank at last, all doubts, as the weather cleared up: it had an +immense effect on them and became quite as lovely as Sir Claude had +engaged. This seemed to have put him so into the secret of things, and +the joy of the world so waylaid the steps of his friends, that little by +little the spirit of hope filled the air and finally took possession of +the scene. To drive on the long cliff was splendid, but it was perhaps +better still to creep in the shade--for the sun was strong--along the +many-coloured and many-odoured port and through the streets in which, to +English eyes, everything that was the same was a mystery and everything +that was different a joke. Best of all was to continue the creep up the +long Grand' Rue to the gate of the _haute ville_ and, passing beneath +it, mount to the quaint and crooked rampart, with its rows of trees, +its quiet corners and friendly benches where brown old women in such +white-frilled caps and such long gold earrings sat and knitted or +snoozed, its little yellow-faced houses that looked like the homes of +misers or of priests and its dark chateau where small soldiers lounged +on the bridge that stretched across an empty moat and military washing +hung from the windows of towers. This was a part of the place that could +lead Maisie to enquire if it didn't just meet one's idea of the middle +ages; and since it was rather a satisfaction than a shock to perceive, +and not for the first time, the limits in Mrs. Wix's mind of the +historic imagination, that only added one more to the variety of kinds +of insight that she felt it her own present mission to show. They sat +together on the old grey bastion; they looked down on the little new +town which seemed to them quite as old, and across at the great dome and +the high gilt Virgin of the church that, as they gathered, was famous +and that pleased them by its unlikeness to any place in which they +had worshipped. They wandered in this temple afterwards and Mrs. Wix +confessed that for herself she had probably made a fatal mistake early +in life in not being a Catholic. Her confession in its turn caused +Maisie to wonder rather interestedly what degree of lateness it was +that shut the door against an escape from such an error. They went back +to the rampart on the second morning--the spot on which they appeared +to have come furthest in the journey that was to separate them from +everything objectionable in the past: it gave them afresh the impression +that had most to do with their having worked round to a confidence that +on Maisie's part was determined and that she could see to be on her +companion's desperate. She had had for many hours the sense of showing +Mrs. Wix so much that she was comparatively slow to become conscious +of being at the same time the subject of a like aim. The business went +the faster, however, from the moment she got her glimpse of it; it then +fell into its place in her general, her habitual view of the particular +phenomenon that, had she felt the need of words for it, she might have +called her personal relation to her knowledge. This relation had never +been so lively as during the time she waited with her old governess for +Sir Claude's reappearance, and what made it so was exactly that Mrs. Wix +struck her as having a new suspicion of it. Mrs. Wix had never yet had a +suspicion--this was certain--so calculated to throw her pupil, in spite +of the closer union of such adventurous hours, upon the deep defensive. +Her pupil made out indeed as many marvels as she had made out on the +rush to Folkestone; and if in Sir Claude's company on that occasion Mrs. +Wix was the constant implication, so in Mrs. Wix's, during these hours, +Sir Claude was--and most of all through long pauses--the perpetual, the +insurmountable theme. It all took them back to the first flush of his +marriage and to the place he held in the schoolroom at that crisis of +love and pain; only he had himself blown to a much bigger balloon the +large consciousness he then filled out. + +They went through it all again, and indeed while the interval dragged +by the very weight of its charm they went, in spite of defences and +suspicions, through everything. Their intensified clutch of the future +throbbed like a clock ticking seconds; but this was a timepiece that +inevitably, as well, at the best, rang occasionally a portentous hour. +Oh there were several of these, and two or three of the worst on the old +city-wall where everything else so made for peace. There was nothing +in the world Maisie more wanted than to be as nice to Mrs. Wix as Sir +Claude had desired; but it was exactly because this fell in with her +inveterate instinct of keeping the peace that the instinct itself +was quickened. From the moment it was quickened, however, it found +other work, and that was how, to begin with, she produced the very +complication she most sought to avert. What she had essentially done, +these days, had been to read the unspoken into the spoken; so that thus, +with accumulations, it had become more definite to her that the unspoken +was, unspeakably, the completeness of the sacrifice of Mrs. Beale. There +were times when every minute that Sir Claude stayed away was like a nail +in Mrs. Beale's coffin. That brought back to Maisie--it was a roundabout +way--the beauty and antiquity of her connexion with the flower of the +Overmores as well as that lady's own grace and charm, her peculiar +prettiness and cleverness and even her peculiar tribulations. A hundred +things hummed at the back of her head, but two of these were simple +enough. Mrs. Beale was by the way, after all, just her stepmother +and her relative. She was just--and partly for that very reason--Sir +Claude's greatest intimate ("lady-intimate" was Maisie's term) so that +what together they were on Mrs. Wix's prescription to give up and break +short off with was for one of them his particular favourite and for the +other her father's wife. Strangely, indescribably her perception of +reasons kept pace with her sense of trouble; but there was something in +her that, without a supreme effort not to be shabby, couldn't take the +reasons for granted. What it comes to perhaps for ourselves is that, +disinherited and denuded as we have seen her, there still lingered in +her life an echo of parental influence--she was still reminiscent of +one of the sacred lessons of home. It was the only one she retained, +but luckily she retained it with force. She enjoyed in a word an +ineffaceable view of the fact that there were things papa called mamma +and mamma called papa a low sneak for doing or for not doing. Now this +rich memory gave her a name that she dreaded to invite to the lips of +Mrs. Beale: she should personally wince so just to hear it. The very +sweetness of the foreign life she was steeped in added with each hour +of Sir Claude's absence to the possibility of such pangs. She watched +beside Mrs. Wix the great golden Madonna, and one of the ear-ringed old +women who had been sitting at the end of their bench got up and pottered +away. "Adieu mesdames!" said the old woman in a little cracked civil +voice--a demonstration by which our friends were so affected that they +bobbed up and almost curtseyed to her. They subsided again, and it was +shortly after, in a summer hum of French insects and a phase of almost +somnolent reverie, that Maisie most had the vision of what it was to +shut out from such a perspective so appealing a participant. It had not +yet appeared so vast as at that moment, this prospect of statues shining +in the blue and of courtesy in romantic forms. + +"Why after all should we have to choose between you? Why shouldn't we +be four?" she finally demanded. + +Mrs. Wix gave the jerk of a sleeper awakened or the start even of one +who hears a bullet whiz at the flag of truce. Her stupefaction at +such a breach of the peace delayed for a moment her answer. "Four +improprieties, do you mean? Because two of us happen to be decent +people! Do I gather you to wish that I should stay on with you even +if that woman IS capable--?" + +Maisie took her up before she could further phrase Mrs. Beale's +capability. "Stay on as MY companion--yes. Stay on as just what you +were at mamma's. Mrs. Beale WOULD let you!" the child said. + +Mrs. Wix had by this time fairly sprung to her arms. "And who, I'd like +to know, would let Mrs. Beale? Do you mean, little unfortunate, that YOU +would?" + +"Why not, if now she's free?" + +"Free? Are you imitating HIM? Well, if Sir Claude's old enough to know +better, upon my word I think it's right to treat you as if you also +were. You'll have to, at any rate--to know better--if that's the line +you're proposing to take." Mrs. Wix had never been so harsh; but on the +other hand Maisie could guess that she herself had never appeared so +wanton. What was underlying, however, rather overawed than angered her; +she felt she could still insist--not for contradiction, but for ultimate +calm. Her wantonness meanwhile continued to work upon her friend, who +caught again, on the rebound, the sound of deepest provocation. "Free, +free, free? If she's as free as YOU are, my dear, she's free enough, to +be sure!" + +"As I am?"--Maisie, after reflexion and despite whatever of portentous +this seemed to convey, risked a critical echo. + +"Well," said Mrs. Wix, "nobody, you know, is free to commit a crime." + +"A crime!" The word had come out in a way that made the child sound it +again. + +"You'd commit as great a one as their own--and so should I--if we were +to condone their immorality by our presence." + +Maisie waited a little; this seemed so fiercely conclusive. "Why is it +immorality?" she nevertheless presently enquired. + +Her companion now turned upon her with a reproach softer because it was +somehow deeper. "You're too unspeakable! Do you know what we're talking +about?" + +In the interest of ultimate calm Maisie felt that she must be above all +clear. "Certainly; about their taking advantage of their freedom." + +"Well, to do what?" + +"Why, to live with us." + +Mrs. Wix's laugh, at this, was literally wild. "'Us?' Thank you!" + +"Then to live with ME." + +The words made her friend jump. "You give me up? You break with me for +ever? You turn me into the street?" + +Maisie, though gasping a little, bore up under the rain of challenges. +"Those, it seems to me, are the things you do to ME." + +Mrs. Wix made little of her valour. "I can promise you that, whatever +I do, I shall never let you out of my sight! You ask me why it's +immorality when you've seen with your own eyes that Sir Claude has felt +it to be so to that dire extent that, rather than make you face the +shame of it, he has for months kept away from you altogether? Is it any +more difficult to see that the first time he tries to do his duty he +washes his hands of HER--takes you straight away from her?" + +Maisie turned this over, but more for apparent consideration than from +any impulse to yield too easily. "Yes, I see what you mean. But at +that time they weren't free." She felt Mrs. Wix rear up again at the +offensive word, but she succeeded in touching her with a remonstrant +hand. "I don't think you know how free they've become." + +"I know, I believe, at least as much as you do!" + +Maisie felt a delicacy but overcame it. "About the Countess?" + +"Your father's--temptress?" Mrs. Wix gave her a sidelong squint. +"Perfectly. She pays him!" + +"Oh DOES she?" At this the child's countenance fell: it seemed to give a +reason for papa's behaviour and place it in a more favourable light. She +wished to be just. "I don't say she's not generous. She was so to me." + +"How, to you?" + +"She gave me a lot of money." + +Mrs. Wix stared. "And pray what did you do with a lot of money?" + +"I gave it to Mrs. Beale." + +"And what did Mrs. Beale do with it?" + +"She sent it back." + +"To the Countess? Gammon!" said Mrs. Wix. She disposed of that plea as +effectually as Susan Ash. + +"Well, I don't care!" Maisie replied. "What I mean is that you don't +know about the rest." + +"The rest? What rest?" + +Maisie wondered how she could best put it. "Papa kept me there an hour." + +"I do know--Sir Claude told me. Mrs. Beale had told him." + +Maisie looked incredulity. "How could she--when I didn't speak of it?" + +Mrs. Wix was mystified. "Speak of what?" + +"Why, of her being so frightful." + +"The Countess? Of course she's frightful!" Mrs. Wix returned. After a +moment she added: "That's why she pays him." + +Maisie pondered. "It's the best thing about her then--if she gives him +as much as she gave ME!" + +"Well, it's not the best thing about HIM! Or rather perhaps it IS too!" +Mrs. Wix subjoined. + +"But she's awful--really and truly," Maisie went on. + +Mrs. Wix arrested her. "You needn't go into details!" It was visibly at +variance with this injunction that she yet enquired: "How does that make +it any better?" + +"Their living with me? Why for the Countess--and for her whiskers!--he +has put me off on them. I understood him," Maisie profoundly said. + +"I hope then he understood you. It's more than I do!" Mrs. Wix admitted. + +This was a real challenge to be plainer, and our young lady immediately +became so. "I mean it isn't a crime." + +"Why then did Sir Claude steal you away?" + +"He didn't steal--he only borrowed me. I knew it wasn't for long," +Maisie audaciously professed. + +"You must allow me to reply to that," cried Mrs. Wix, "that you knew +nothing of the sort, and that you rather basely failed to back me up +last night when you pretended so plump that you did! You hoped in fact, +exactly as much as I did and as in my senseless passion I even hope now, +that this may be the beginning of better things." + +Oh yes, Mrs. Wix was indeed, for the first time, sharp; so that there +at last stirred in our heroine the sense not so much of being proved +disingenuous as of being precisely accused of the meanness that had +brought everything down on her through her very desire to shake herself +clear of it. She suddenly felt herself swell with a passion of protest. +"I never, NEVER hoped I wasn't going again to see Mrs. Beale! I didn't, +I didn't, I didn't!" she repeated. Mrs. Wix bounced about with a force +of rejoinder of which she also felt that she must anticipate the +concussion and which, though the good lady was evidently charged to the +brim, hung fire long enough to give time for an aggravation. "She's +beautiful and I love her! I love her and she's beautiful!" + +"And I'm hideous and you hate ME?" Mrs. Wix fixed her a moment, then +caught herself up. "I won't embitter you by absolutely accusing you of +that; though, as for my being hideous, it's hardly the first time I've +been told so! I know it so well that even if I haven't whiskers--have +I?--I dare say there are other ways in which the Countess is a Venus to +me! My pretensions must therefore seem to you monstrous--which comes to +the same thing as your not liking me. But do you mean to go so far as to +tell me that you WANT to live with them in their sin?" + +"You know what I want, you know what I want!"--Maisie spoke with the +shudder of rising tears. + +"Yes, I do; you want me to be as bad as yourself! Well, I won't. There! +Mrs. Beale's as bad as your father!" Mrs. Wix went on. + +"She's not!--she's not!" her pupil almost shrieked in retort. + +"You mean because Sir Claude at least has beauty and wit and grace? But +he pays just as the Countess pays!" Mrs. Wix, who now rose as she spoke, +fairly revealed a latent cynicism. + +It raised Maisie also to her feet; her companion had walked off a few +steps and paused. The two looked at each other as they had never looked, +and Mrs. Wix seemed to flaunt there in her finery. "Then doesn't he pay +YOU too?" her unhappy charge demanded. + +At this she bounded in her place. "Oh you incredible little waif!" +She brought it out with a wail of violence; after which, with another +convulsion, she marched straight away. + +Maisie dropped back on the bench and burst into sobs. + + + + +XXVI + + +Nothing so dreadful of course could be final or even for many minutes +prolonged: they rushed together again too soon for either to feel that +either had kept it up, and though they went home in silence it was with +a vivid perception for Maisie that her companion's hand had closed upon +her. That hand had shown altogether, these twenty-four hours, a new +capacity for closing, and one of the truths the child could least resist +was that a certain greatness had now come to Mrs. Wix. The case was +indeed that the quality of her motive surpassed the sharpness of her +angles; both the combination and the singularity of which things, when +in the afternoon they used the carriage, Maisie could borrow from the +contemplative hush of their grandeur the freedom to feel to the utmost. +She still bore the mark of the tone in which her friend had thrown out +that threat of never losing sight of her. This friend had been converted +in short from feebleness to force; and it was the light of her new +authority that showed from how far she had come. The threat in question, +sharply exultant, might have produced defiance; but before anything so +ugly could happen another process had insidiously forestalled it. The +moment at which this process had begun to mature was that of Mrs. Wix's +breaking out with a dignity attuned to their own apartments and with an +advantage now measurably gained. They had ordered coffee after luncheon, +in the spirit of Sir Claude's provision, and it was served to them while +they awaited their equipage in the white and gold saloon. It was flanked +moreover with a couple of liqueurs, and Maisie felt that Sir Claude +could scarce have been taken more at his word had it been followed +by anecdotes and cigarettes. The influence of these luxuries was +at any rate in the air. It seemed to her while she tiptoed at the +chimney-glass, pulling on her gloves and with a motion of her head +shaking a feather into place, to have had something to do with Mrs. +Wix's suddenly saying: "Haven't you really and truly ANY moral sense?" + +Maisie was aware that her answer, though it brought her down to her +heels, was vague even to imbecility, and that this was the first time +she had appeared to practise with Mrs. Wix an intellectual inaptitude to +meet her--the infirmity to which she had owed so much success with papa +and mamma. The appearance did her injustice, for it was not less through +her candour than through her playfellow's pressure that after this the +idea of a moral sense mainly coloured their intercourse. She began, the +poor child, with scarcely knowing what it was; but it proved something +that, with scarce an outward sign save her surrender to the swing of the +carriage, she could, before they came back from their drive, strike up a +sort of acquaintance with. The beauty of the day only deepened, and the +splendour of the afternoon sea, and the haze of the far headlands, and +the taste of the sweet air. It was the coachman indeed who, smiling and +cracking his whip, turning in his place, pointing to invisible objects +and uttering unintelligible sounds--all, our tourists recognised, strict +features of a social order principally devoted to language: it was this +polite person, I say, who made their excursion fall so much short that +their return left them still a stretch of the long daylight and an hour +that, at his obliging suggestion, they spent on foot by the shining +sands. Maisie had seen the _plage_ the day before with Sir Claude, but +that was a reason the more for showing on the spot to Mrs. Wix that it +was, as she said, another of the places on her list and of the things of +which she knew the French name. The bathers, so late, were absent and +the tide was low; the sea-pools twinkled in the sunset and there were +dry places as well, where they could sit again and admire and expatiate: +a circumstance that, while they listened to the lap of the waves, gave +Mrs. Wix a fresh support for her challenge. "Have you absolutely none at +all?" + +She had no need now, as to the question itself at least, to be specific; +that on the other hand was the eventual result of their quiet conjoined +apprehension of the thing that--well, yes, since they must face +it--Maisie absolutely and appallingly had so little of. This marked more +particularly the moment of the child's perceiving that her friend had +risen to a level which might--till superseded at all events--pass almost +for sublime. Nothing more remarkable had taken place in the first heat +of her own departure, no act of perception less to be overtraced by our +rough method, than her vision, the rest of that Boulogne day, of the +manner in which she figured. I so despair of courting her noiseless +mental footsteps here that I must crudely give you my word for its being +from this time forward a picture literally present to her. Mrs. Wix +saw her as a little person knowing so extraordinarily much that, for +the account to be taken of it, what she still didn't know would be +ridiculous if it hadn't been embarrassing. Mrs. Wix was in truth more +than ever qualified to meet embarrassment; I am not sure that Maisie had +not even a dim discernment of the queer law of her own life that made +her educate to that sort of proficiency those elders with whom she was +concerned. She promoted, as it were, their development; nothing could +have been more marked for instance than her success in promoting Mrs. +Beale's. She judged that if her whole history, for Mrs. Wix, had been +the successive stages of her knowledge, so the very climax of the +concatenation would, in the same view, be the stage at which the +knowledge should overflow. As she was condemned to know more and more, +how could it logically stop before she should know Most? It came to her +in fact as they sat there on the sands that she was distinctly on the +road to know Everything. She had not had governesses for nothing: what +in the world had she ever done but learn and learn and learn? She looked +at the pink sky with a placid foreboding that she soon should have +learnt All. They lingered in the flushed air till at last it turned +to grey and she seemed fairly to receive new information from every +brush of the breeze. By the time they moved homeward it was as if this +inevitability had become for Mrs. Wix a long, tense cord, twitched by +a nervous hand, on which the valued pearls of intelligence were to be +neatly strung. + +In the evening upstairs they had another strange sensation, as to which +Maisie couldn't afterwards have told you whether it was bang in the +middle or quite at the beginning that her companion sounded with fresh +emphasis the note of the moral sense. What mattered was merely that she +did exclaim, and again, as at first appeared, most disconnectedly: "God +help me, it does seem to peep out!" Oh the queer confusions that had +wooed it at last to such peeping! None so queer, however, as the words +of woe, and it might verily be said of rage, in which the poor lady +bewailed the tragic end of her own rich ignorance. There was a point at +which she seized the child and hugged her as close as in the old days of +partings and returns; at which she was visibly at a loss how to make up +to such a victim for such contaminations: appealing, as to what she had +done and was doing, in bewilderment, in explanation, in supplication, +for reassurance, for pardon and even outright for pity. + +"I don't know what I've said to you, my own: I don't know what I'm +saying or what the turn you've given my life has rendered me, heaven +forgive me, capable of saying. Have I lost all delicacy, all decency, +all measure of how far and how bad? It seems to me mostly that I have, +though I'm the last of whom you would ever have thought it. I've just +done it for YOU, precious--not to lose you, which would have been worst +of all: so that I've had to pay with my own innocence, if you do laugh! +for clinging to you and keeping you. Don't let me pay for nothing; don't +let me have been thrust for nothing into such horrors and such shames. I +never knew anything about them and I never wanted to know! Now I know +too much, too much!" the poor woman lamented and groaned. "I know so +much that with hearing such talk I ask myself where I am; and with +uttering it too, which is worse, say to myself that I'm far, too far, +from where I started! I ask myself what I should have thought with my +lost one if I had heard myself cross the line. There are lines I've +crossed with YOU where I should have fancied I had come to a pretty +pass--" She gasped at the mere supposition. "I've gone from one thing to +another, and all for the real love of you; and now what would any one +say--I mean any one but THEM--if they were to hear the way I go on? I've +had to keep up with you, haven't I?--and therefore what could I do less +than look to you to keep up with ME? But it's not THEM that are the +worst--by which I mean to say it's not HIM: it's your dreadfully base +papa and the one person in the world whom he could have found, I do +believe--and she's not the Countess, duck--wickeder than himself. While +they were about it at any rate, since they WERE ruining you, they might +have done it so as to spare an honest woman. Then I shouldn't have had +to do whatever it is that's the worst: throw up at you the badness you +haven't taken in, or find my advantage in the vileness you HAVE! What I +did lose patience at this morning was at how it was that without your +seeming to condemn--for you didn't, you remember!--you yet did seem to +KNOW. Thank God, in his mercy, at last, IF you do!" + +The night, this time, was warm, and one of the windows stood open to the +small balcony over the rail of which, on coming back from dinner, Maisie +had hung a long time in the enjoyment of the chatter, the lights, the +life of the quay made brilliant by the season and the hour. Mrs. Wix's +requirements had drawn her in from this pasture and Mrs. Wix's embrace +had detained her even though midway in the outpouring her confusion +and sympathy had permitted, or rather had positively helped, her to +disengage herself. But the casement was still wide, the spectacle, the +pleasure were still there, and from her place in the room, which, with +its polished floor and its panels of elegance, was lighted from without +more than from within, the child could still take account of them. She +appeared to watch and listen; after which she answered Mrs. Wix with a +question. "If I do know--?" + +"If you do condemn." The correction was made with some austerity. + +It had the effect of causing Maisie to heave a vague sigh of oppression +and then after an instant and as if under cover of this ambiguity pass +out again upon the balcony. She hung again over the rail; she felt the +summer night; she dropped down into the manners of France. There was +a cafe below the hotel, before which, with little chairs and tables, +people sat on a space enclosed by plants in tubs; and the impression was +enriched by the flash of the white aprons of waiters and the music of a +man and a woman who, from beyond the precinct, sent up the strum of a +guitar and the drawl of a song about "amour." Maisie knew what "amour" +meant too, and wondered if Mrs. Wix did: Mrs. Wix remained within, as +still as a mouse and perhaps not reached by the performance. After +a while, but not till the musicians had ceased and begun to circulate +with a little plate, her pupil came back to her. "IS it a crime?" Maisie +then asked. + +Mrs. Wix was as prompt as if she had been crouching in a lair. "Branded +by the Bible." + +"Well, he won't commit a crime." + +Mrs. Wix looked at her gloomily. "He's committing one now." + +"Now?" + +"In being with her." + +Maisie had it on her tongue's end to return once more: "But now he's +free." She remembered, however, in time that one of the things she had +known for the last entire hour was that this made no difference. After +that, and as if to turn the right way, she was on the point of a blind +dash, a weak reversion to the reminder that it might make a difference, +might diminish the crime for Mrs. Beale; till such a reflexion was in +its order also quashed by the visibility in Mrs. Wix's face of the +collapse produced by her inference from her pupil's manner that after +all her pains her pupil didn't even yet adequately understand. Never so +much as when confronted had Maisie wanted to understand, and all her +thought for a minute centred in the effort to come out with something +which should be a disproof of her simplicity. "Just TRUST me, dear; +that's all!"--she came out finally with that; and it was perhaps a good +sign of her action that with a long, impartial moan Mrs. Wix floated her +to bed. + +There was no letter the next morning from Sir Claude--which Mrs. Wix let +out that she deemed the worst of omens; yet it was just for the quieter +communion they so got with him that, when after the coffee and rolls +which made them more foreign than ever, it came to going forth for fresh +drafts upon his credit they wandered again up the hill to the rampart +instead of plunging into distraction with the crowd on the sands or into +the sea with the semi-nude bathers. They gazed once more at their gilded +Virgin; they sank once more upon their battered bench; they felt once +more their distance from the Regent's Park. At last Mrs. Wix became +definite about their friend's silence. "He IS afraid of her! She has +forbidden him to write." The fact of his fear Maisie already knew; but +her companion's mention of it had at this moment two unexpected results. +The first was her wondering in dumb remonstrance how Mrs. Wix, with +a devotion not after all inferior to her own, could put into such an +allusion such a grimness of derision; the second was that she found +herself suddenly drop into a deeper view of it. She too had been afraid, +as we have seen, of the people of whom Sir Claude was afraid, and by +that law she had had her due measure of latest apprehension of Mrs. +Beale. What occurred at present, however, was that, whereas this +sympathy appeared vain as for him, the ground of it loomed dimly as a +reason for selfish alarm. That uneasiness had not carried her far before +Mrs. Wix spoke again and with an abruptness so great as almost to seem +irrelevant. "Has it never occurred to you to be jealous of her?" + +It never had in the least; yet the words were scarce in the air before +Maisie had jumped at them. She held them well, she looked at them hard; +at last she brought out with an assurance which there was no one, alas, +but herself to admire: "Well, yes--since you ask me." She debated, then +continued: "Lots of times!" + +Mrs. Wix glared askance an instant; such approval as her look expressed +was not wholly unqualified. It expressed at any rate something that +presumably had to do with her saying once more: "Yes. He's afraid of +her." + +Maisie heard, and it had afresh its effect on her even through the +blur of the attention now required by the possibility of that idea of +jealousy--a possibility created only by her feeling she had thus found +the way to show she was not simple. It struck out of Mrs. Wix that +this lady still believed her moral sense to be interested and feigned; +so what could be such a gage of her sincerity as a peep of the most +restless of the passions? Such a revelation would baffle discouragement, +and discouragement was in fact so baffled that, helped in some degree +by the mere intensity of their need to hope, which also, according to +its nature, sprang from the dark portent of the absent letter, the real +pitch of their morning was reached by the note, not of mutual scrutiny, +but of unprecedented frankness. There were broodings indeed and +silences, and Maisie sank deeper into the vision that for her friend +she was, at the most, superficial, and that also, positively, she was +the more so the more she tried to appear complete. Was the sum of all +knowledge only to know how little in this presence one would ever reach +it? The answer to that question luckily lost itself in the brightness +suffusing the scene as soon as Maisie had thrown out in regard to Mrs. +Beale such a remark as she had never dreamed she should live to make. +"If I thought she was unkind to him--I don't know WHAT I should do!" + +Mrs. Wix dropped one of her squints; she even confirmed it by a wild +grunt. "I know what _I_ should!" + +Maisie at this felt that she lagged. "Well, I can think of ONE thing." + +Mrs. Wix more directly challenged her. "What is it then?" + +Maisie met her expression as if it were a game with forfeits for +winking. "I'd KILL her!" That at least, she hoped as she looked away, +would guarantee her moral sense. She looked away, but her companion said +nothing for so long that she at last turned her head again. Then she saw +the straighteners all blurred with tears which after a little seemed to +have sprung from her own eyes. There were tears in fact on both sides of +the spectacles, and they were even so thick that it was presently all +Maisie could do to make out through them that slowly, finally Mrs. Wix +put forth a hand. It was the material pressure that settled this and +even at the end of some minutes more things besides. It settled in its +own way one thing in particular, which, though often, between them, +heaven knew, hovered round and hung over, was yet to be established +without the shadow of an attenuating smile. Oh there was no gleam of +levity, as little of humour as of deprecation, in the long time they now +sat together or in the way in which at some unmeasured point of it Mrs. +Wix became distinct enough for her own dignity and yet not loud enough +for the snoozing old women. + +"I adore him. I adore him." + +Maisie took it well in; so well that in a moment more she would have +answered profoundly: "So do I." But before that moment passed something +took place that brought other words to her lips; nothing more, very +possibly, than the closer consciousness in her hand of the significance +of Mrs. Wix's. Their hands remained linked in unutterable sign of their +union, and what Maisie at last said was simply and serenely: "Oh I +know!" + +Their hands were so linked and their union was so confirmed that it took +the far deep note of a bell, borne to them on the summer air, to call +them back to a sense of hours and proprieties. They had touched bottom +and melted together, but they gave a start at last: the bell was the +voice of the inn and the inn was the image of luncheon. They should be +late for it; they got up, and their quickened step on the return had +something of the swing of confidence. When they reached the hotel the +_table d'hote_ had begun; this was clear from the threshold, clear +from the absence in the hall and on the stairs of the "personnel," +as Mrs. Wix said--she had picked THAT up--all collected in the +dining-room. They mounted to their apartments for a brush before the +glass, and it was Maisie who, in passing and from a vain impulse, +threw open the white and gold door. She was thus first to utter the +sound that brought Mrs. Wix almost on top of her, as by the other +accident it would have brought her on top of Mrs. Wix. It had at any +rate the effect of leaving them bunched together in a strained stare +at their new situation. This situation had put on in a flash the +bright form of Mrs. Beale: she stood there in her hat and her jacket, +amid bags and shawls, smiling and holding out her arms. If she had +just arrived it was a different figure from either of the two that for +THEIR benefit, wan and tottering and none too soon to save life, the +Channel had recently disgorged. She was as lovely as the day that had +brought her over, as fresh as the luck and the health that attended +her: it came to Maisie on the spot that she was more beautiful than +she had ever been. All this was too quick to count, but there was +still time in it to give the child the sense of what had kindled the +light. That leaped out of the open arms, the open eyes, the open +mouth; it leaped out with Mrs. Beale's loud cry at her: "I'm free, +I'm free!" + + + + +XXVII + + +The greatest wonder of all was the way Mrs. Beale addressed her +announcement, so far as could be judged, equally to Mrs. Wix, who, as +if from sudden failure of strength, sank into a chair while Maisie +surrendered to the visitor's embrace. As soon as the child was liberated +she met with profundity Mrs. Wix's stupefaction and actually was able to +see that while in a manner sustaining the encounter her face yet seemed +with intensity to say: "Now, for God's sake, don't crow 'I told you +so!'" Maisie was somehow on the spot aware of an absence of disposition +to crow; it had taken her but an extra minute to arrive at such a quick +survey of the objects surrounding Mrs. Beale as showed that among them +was no appurtenance of Sir Claude's. She knew his dressing-bag now--oh +with the fondest knowledge!--and there was an instant during which its +not being there was a stroke of the worst news. She was yet to learn +what it could be to recognise in some lapse of a sequence the proof of +an extinction, and therefore remained unaware that this momentary pang +was a foretaste of the experience of death. It of course yielded in +a flash to Mrs. Beale's brightness, it gasped itself away in her own +instant appeal. "You've come alone?" + +"Without Sir Claude?" Strangely, Mrs. Beale looked even brighter. "Yes; +in the eagerness to get at you. You abominable little villain!"--and her +stepmother, laughing clear, administered to her cheek a pat that was +partly a pinch. "What were you up to and what did you take me for? But +I'm glad to be abroad, and after all it's you who have shown me the way. +I mightn't, without you, have been able to come--to come, that is, so +soon. Well, here I am at any rate and in a moment more I should have +begun to worry about you. This will do very well"--she was good-natured +about the place and even presently added that it was charming. Then with +a rosier glow she made again her great point: "I'm free, I'm free!" +Maisie made on her side her own: she carried back her gaze to Mrs. Wix, +whom amazement continued to hold; she drew afresh her old friend's +attention to the superior way she didn't take that up. What she did take +up the next minute was the question of Sir Claude. "Where is he? Won't +he come?" + +Mrs. Beale's consideration of this oscillated with a smile between the +two expectancies with which she was flanked: it was conspicuous, it +was extraordinary, her unblinking acceptance of Mrs. Wix, a miracle of +which Maisie had even now begun to read a reflexion in that lady's long +visage. "He'll come, but we must MAKE him!" she gaily brought forth. + +"Make him?" Maisie echoed. + +"We must give him time. We must play our cards." + +"But he promised us awfully," Maisie replied. + +"My dear child, he has promised ME awfully; I mean lots of things, and +not in every case kept his promise to the letter." Mrs. Beale's good +humour insisted on taking for granted Mrs. Wix's, to whom her attention +had suddenly grown prodigious. "I dare say he has done the same with +you, and not always come to time. But he makes it up in his own way--and +it isn't as if we didn't know exactly what he is. There's one thing he +is," she went on, "which makes everything else only a question, for us, +of tact." They scarce had time to wonder what this was before, as they +might have said, it flew straight into their face. "He's as free as I +am!" + +"Yes, I know," said Maisie; as if, however, independently weighing the +value of that. She really weighed also the oddity of her stepmother's +treating it as news to HER, who had been the first person literally to +whom Sir Claude had mentioned it. For a few seconds, as if with the +sound of it in her ears, she stood with him again, in memory and in the +twilight, in the hotel garden at Folkestone. + +Anything Mrs. Beale overlooked was, she indeed divined, but the effect +of an exaltation of high spirits, a tendency to soar that showed even +when she dropped--still quite impartially--almost to the confidential. +"Well, then--we've only to wait. He can't do without us long. I'm sure, +Mrs. Wix, he can't do without YOU! He's devoted to you; he has told me +so much about you. The extent I count on you, you know, count on you to +help me--" was an extent that even all her radiance couldn't express. +What it couldn't express quite as much as what it could made at any rate +every instant her presence and even her famous freedom loom larger; and +it was this mighty mass that once more led her companions, bewildered +and disjoined, to exchange with each other as through a thickening veil +confused and ineffectual signs. They clung together at least on the +common ground of unpreparedness, and Maisie watched without relief the +havoc of wonder in Mrs. Wix. It had reduced her to perfect impotence, +and, but that gloom was black upon her, she sat as if fascinated by Mrs. +Beale's high style. It had plunged her into a long deep hush; for what +had happened was the thing she had least allowed for and before which +the particular rigour she had worked up could only grow limp and sick. +Sir Claude was to have reappeared with his accomplice or without +her; never, never his accomplice without HIM. Mrs. Beale had gained +apparently by this time an advantage she could pursue: she looked at the +droll dumb figure with jesting reproach. "You really won't shake hands +with me? Never mind; you'll come round!" She put the matter to no test, +going on immediately and, instead of offering her hand, raising it, with +a pretty gesture that her bent head met, to a long black pin that played +a part in her back hair. "Are hats worn at luncheon? If you're as hungry +as I am we must go right down." + +Mrs. Wix stuck fast, but she met the question in a voice her pupil +scarce recognised. "I wear mine." + +Mrs. Beale, swallowing at one glance her brand-new bravery, which she +appeared at once to refer to its origin and to follow in its flights, +accepted this as conclusive. "Oh but I've not such a beauty!" Then she +turned rejoicingly to Maisie. "I've got a beauty for YOU my dear." + +"A beauty?" + +"A love of a hat--in my luggage. I remembered THAT"--she nodded at the +object on her stepdaughter's head--"and I've brought you one with a +peacock's breast. It's the most gorgeous blue!" + +It was too strange, this talking with her there already not about +Sir Claude but about peacocks--too strange for the child to have the +presence of mind to thank her. But the felicity in which she had arrived +was so proof against everything that Maisie felt more and more the depth +of the purpose that must underlie it. She had a vague sense of its being +abysmal, the spirit with which Mrs. Beale carried off the awkwardness, +in the white and gold salon, of such a want of breath and of welcome. +Mrs. Wix was more breathless than ever; the embarrassment of Mrs. +Beale's isolation was as nothing to the embarrassment of her grace. The +perception of this dilemma was the germ on the child's part of a new +question altogether. What if WITH this indulgence--? But the idea lost +itself in something too frightened for hope and too conjectured for +fear; and while everything went by leaps and bounds one of the waiters +stood at the door to remind them that the _table d'hote_ was half over. + +"Had you come up to wash hands?" Mrs. Beale hereupon asked them. "Go and +do it quickly and I'll be with you: they've put my boxes in that nice +room--it was Sir Claude's. Trust him," she laughed, "to have a nice +one!" The door of a neighbouring room stood open, and now from the +threshold, addressing herself again to Mrs. Wix, she launched a note +that gave the very key of what, as she would have said, she was up to. +"Dear lady, please attend to my daughter." + +She was up to a change of deportment so complete that it represented--oh +for offices still honourably subordinate if not too explicitly +menial--an absolute coercion, an interested clutch of the old woman's +respectability. There was response, to Maisie's view, I may say at once, +in the jump of that respectability to its feet: it was itself capable of +one of the leaps, one of the bounds just mentioned, and it carried its +charge, with this momentum and while Mrs. Beale popped into Sir Claude's +chamber, straight away to where, at the end of the passage, pupil and +governess were quartered. The greatest stride of all, for that matter, +was that within a few seconds the pupil had, in another relation, been +converted into a daughter. Maisie's eyes were still following it when, +after the rush, with the door almost slammed and no thought of soap and +towels, the pair stood face to face. Mrs. Wix, in this position, was the +first to gasp a sound. "Can it ever be that SHE has one?" + +Maisie felt still more bewildered. "One what?" + +"Why moral sense." + +They spoke as if you might have two, but Mrs. Wix looked as if it were +not altogether a happy thought, and Maisie didn't see how even an +affirmative from her own lips would clear up what had become most of a +mystery. It was to this larger puzzle she sprang pretty straight. "IS +she my mother now?" + +It was a point as to which an horrific glimpse of the responsibility of +an opinion appeared to affect Mrs. Wix like a blow in the stomach. She +had evidently never thought of it; but she could think and rebound. "If +she is, he's equally your father." + +Maisie, however, thought further. "Then my father and my mother--!" + +But she had already faltered and Mrs. Wix had already glared back: +"Ought to live together? Don't begin it AGAIN!" She turned away with +a groan, to reach the washing-stand, and Maisie could by this time +recognise with a certain ease that that way verily madness did lie. Mrs. +Wix gave a great untidy splash, but the next instant had faced round. +"She has taken a new line." + +"She was nice to you," Maisie concurred. + +"What SHE thinks so--'go and dress the young lady!' But it's something!" +she panted. Then she thought out the rest. "If he won't have her, why +she'll have YOU. She'll be the one." + +"The one to keep me abroad?" + +"The one to give you a home." Mrs. Wix saw further; she mastered all the +portents. "Oh she's cruelly clever! It's not a moral sense." She reached +her climax: "It's a game!" + +"A game?" + +"Not to lose him. She has sacrificed him--to her duty." + +"Then won't he come?" Maisie pleaded. + +Mrs. Wix made no answer; her vision absorbed her. "He has fought. But +she has won." + +"Then won't he come?" the child repeated. + +Mrs. Wix made it out. "Yes, hang him!" She had never been so profane. + +For all Maisie minded! "Soon--to-morrow?" + +"Too soon--whenever. Indecently soon." + +"But then we SHALL be together!" the child went on. It made Mrs. Wix +look at her as if in exasperation; but nothing had time to come before +she precipitated: "Together with YOU!" The air of criticism continued, +but took voice only in her companion's bidding her wash herself and come +down. The silence of quick ablutions fell upon them, presently broken, +however, by one of Maisie's sudden reversions. "Mercy, isn't she +handsome?" + +Mrs. Wix had finished; she waited. "She'll attract attention." They +were rapid, and it would have been noticed that the shock the beauty +had given them acted, incongruously, as a positive spur to their +preparations for rejoining her. She had none the less, when they +returned to the sitting-room, already descended; the open door of her +room showed it empty and the chambermaid explained. Here again they were +delayed by another sharp thought of Mrs. Wix's. "But what will she live +on meanwhile?" + +Maisie stopped short. "Till Sir Claude comes?" + +It was nothing to the violence with which her friend had been arrested. +"Who'll pay the bills?" + +Maisie thought. "Can't SHE?" + +"She? She hasn't a penny." + +The child wondered. "But didn't papa--?" + +"Leave her a fortune?" Mrs. Wix would have appeared to speak of papa as +dead had she not immediately added: "Why he lives on other women!" + +Oh yes, Maisie remembered. "Then can't he send--" She faltered again; +even to herself it sounded queer. + +"Some of their money to his wife?" Mrs. Wix pave a laugh still stranger +than the weird suggestion. "I dare say she'd take it!" + +They hurried on again; yet again, on the stairs, Maisie pulled up. +"Well, if she had stopped in England--!" she threw out. + +Mrs. Wix considered. "And he had come over instead?" + +"Yes, as we expected." Maisie launched her speculation. "What then would +she have lived on?" + +Mrs. Wix hung fire but an instant. "On other men!" And she marched +downstairs. + + + + +XXVIII + + +Mrs. Beale, at table between the pair, plainly attracted the attention +Mrs. Wix had foretold. No other lady present was nearly so handsome, +nor did the beauty of any other accommodate itself with such art to the +homage it produced. She talked mainly to her other neighbour, and that +left Maisie leisure both to note the manner in which eyes were riveted +and nudges interchanged, and to lose herself in the meanings that, dimly +as yet and disconnectedly, but with a vividness that fed apprehension, +she could begin to read into her stepmother's independent move. Mrs. Wix +had helped her by talking of a game; it was a connexion in which the +move could put on a strategic air. Her notions of diplomacy were thin, +but it was a kind of cold diplomatic shoulder and an elbow of more than +usual point that, temporarily at least, were presented to her by the +averted inclination of Mrs. Beale's head. There was a phrase familiar to +Maisie, so often was it used by this lady to express the idea of one's +getting what one wanted: one got it--Mrs. Beale always said SHE at all +events always got it or proposed to get it--by "making love." She was +at present making love, singular as it appeared, to Mrs. Wix, and her +young friend's mind had never moved in such freedom as on thus finding +itself face to face with the question of what she wanted to get. This +period of the _omelette aux rognons_ and the poulet saute, while her sole +surviving parent, her fourth, fairly chattered to her governess, left +Maisie rather wondering if her governess would hold out. It was strange, +but she became on the spot quite as interested in Mrs. Wix's moral +sense as Mrs. Wix could possibly be in hers: it had risen before her so +pressingly that this was something new for Mrs. Wix to resist. Resisting +Mrs. Beale herself promised at such a rate to become a very different +business from resisting Sir Claude's view of her. More might come of +what had happened--whatever it was--than Maisie felt she could have +expected. She put it together with a suspicion that, had she ever in +her life had a sovereign changed, would have resembled an impression, +baffled by the want of arithmetic, that her change was wrong: she groped +about in it that she was perhaps playing the passive part in a case of +violent substitution. A victim was what she should surely be if the +issue between her step-parents had been settled by Mrs. Beale's saying: +"Well, if she can live with but one of us alone, with which in the world +should it be but me?" That answer was far from what, for days, she had +nursed herself in, and the desolation of it was deepened by the absence +of anything from Sir Claude to show he had not had to take it as +triumphant. Had not Mrs. Beale, upstairs, as good as given out that +she had quitted him with the snap of a tension, left him, dropped him +in London, after some struggle as a sequel to which her own advent +represented that she had practically sacrificed him? Maisie assisted in +fancy at the probable episode in the Regent's Park, finding elements +almost of terror in the suggestion that Sir Claude had not had fair +play. They drew something, as she sat there, even from the pride of an +association with such beauty as Mrs. Beale's; and the child quite forgot +that, though the sacrifice of Mrs. Beale herself was a solution she had +not invented, she would probably have seen Sir Claude embark upon it +without a direct remonstrance. + +What her stepmother had clearly now promised herself to wring from Mrs. +Wix was an assent to the great modification, the change, as smart as a +juggler's trick, in the interest of which nothing so much mattered as +the new convenience of Mrs. Beale. Maisie could positively seize the +moral that her elbow seemed to point in ribs thinly defended--the moral +of its not mattering a straw which of the step-parents was the guardian. +The essence of the question was that a girl wasn't a boy: if Maisie had +been a mere rough trousered thing, destined at the best probably to grow +up a scamp, Sir Claude would have been welcome. As the case stood he had +simply tumbled out of it, and Mrs. Wix would henceforth find herself in +the employ of the right person. These arguments had really fallen into +their place, for our young friend, at the very touch of that tone in +which she had heard her new title declared. She was still, as a result +of so many parents, a daughter to somebody even after papa and mamma +were to all intents dead. If her father's wife and her mother's husband, +by the operation of a natural or, for all she knew, a legal rule, were +in the shoes of their defunct partners, then Mrs. Beale's partner was +exactly as defunct as Sir Claude's and her shoes the very pair to which, +in "Farange _v._ Farange and Others," the divorce court had given +priority. The subject of that celebrated settlement saw the rest of +her day really filled out with the pomp of all that Mrs. Beale assumed. +The assumption rounded itself there between this lady's entertainers, +flourished in a way that left them, in their bottomless element, scarce +a free pair of eyes to exchange signals. It struck Maisie even a little +that there was a rope or two Mrs. Wix might have thrown out if she +would, a rocket or two she might have sent up. They had at any rate +never been so long together without communion or telegraphy, and their +companion kept them apart by simply keeping them with her. From this +situation they saw the grandeur of their intenser relation to her pass +and pass like an endless procession. It was a day of lively movement +and of talk on Mrs. Beale's part so brilliant and overflowing as to +represent music and banners. She took them out with her promptly to walk +and to drive, and even--towards night--sketched a plan for carrying them +to the Etablissement, where, for only a franc apiece, they should listen +to a concert of celebrities. It reminded Maisie, the plan, of the +side-shows at Earl's Court, and the franc sounded brighter than the +shillings which had at that time failed; yet this too, like the other, +was a frustrated hope: the francs failed like the shillings and the +side-shows had set an example to the concert. The Etablissement in short +melted away, and it was little wonder that a lady who from the moment of +her arrival had been so gallantly in the breach should confess herself +it last done up. Maisie could appreciate her fatigue; the day had not +passed without such an observer's discovering that she was excited and +even mentally comparing her state to that of the breakers after a gale. +It had blown hard in London, and she would take time to go down. It was +of the condition known to the child by report as that of talking against +time that her emphasis, her spirit, her humour, which had never dropped, +now gave the impression. + +She too was delighted with foreign manners; but her daughter's +opportunities of explaining them to her were unexpectedly forestalled +by her own tone of large acquaintance with them. One of the things that +nipped in the bud all response to her volubility was Maisie's surprised +retreat before the fact that Continental life was what she had been +almost brought up on. It was Mrs. Beale, disconcertingly, who began to +explain it to her friends; it was she who, wherever they turned, was the +interpreter, the historian and the guide. She was full of reference to +her early travels--at the age of eighteen: she had at that period made, +with a distinguished Dutch family, a stay on the Lake of Geneva. Maisie +had in the old days been regaled with anecdotes of these adventures, +but they had with time become phantasmal, and the heroine's quite showy +exemption from bewilderment at Boulogne, her acuteness on some of the +very subjects on which Maisie had been acute to Mrs. Wix, were a high +note of the majesty, of the variety of advantage, with which she had +alighted. It was all a part of the wind in her sails and of the weight +with which her daughter was now to feel her hand. The effect of it on +Maisie was to add already the burden of time to her separation from Sir +Claude. This might, to her sense, have lasted for days; it was as if, +with their main agitation transferred thus to France and with neither +mamma now nor Mrs. Beale nor Mrs. Wix nor herself at his side, he must +be fearfully alone in England. Hour after hour she felt as if she were +waiting; yet she couldn't have said exactly for what. There were moments +when Mrs. Beale's flow of talk was a mere rattle to smother a knock. +At no part of the crisis had the rattle so public a purpose as when, +instead of letting Maisie go with Mrs. Wix to prepare for dinner, she +pushed her--with a push at last incontestably maternal--straight into +the room inherited from Sir Claude. She titivated her little charge with +her own brisk hands; then she brought out: "I'm going to divorce your +father." + +This was so different from anything Maisie had expected that it took +some time to reach her mind. She was aware meanwhile that she probably +looked rather wan. "To marry Sir Claude?" + +Mrs. Beale rewarded her with a kiss. "It's sweet to hear you put it so." + +This was a tribute, but it left Maisie balancing for an objection. "How +CAN you when he's married?" + +"He isn't--practically. He's free, you know." + +"Free to marry?" + +"Free, first, to divorce his own fiend." + +The benefit that, these last days, she had felt she owed a certain +person left Maisie a moment so ill-prepared for recognising this lurid +label that she hesitated long enough to risk: "Mamma?" + +"She isn't your mamma any longer," Mrs. Beale returned. "Sir Claude has +paid her money to cease to be." Then as if remembering how little, to +the child, a pecuniary transaction must represent: "She lets him off +supporting her if he'll let her off supporting you." + +Mrs. Beale appeared, however, to have done injustice to her daughter's +financial grasp. "And support me himself?" Maisie asked. + +"Take the whole bother and burden of you and never let her hear of you +again. It's a regular signed contract." + +"Why that's lovely of her!" Maisie cried. + +"It's not so lovely, my dear, but that he'll get his divorce." + +Maisie was briefly silent; after which, "No--he won't get it," she said. +Then she added still more boldly: "And you won't get yours." + +Mrs. Beale, who was at the dressing-glass, turned round with amusement +and surprise. "How do you know that?" + +"Oh I know!" cried Maisie. + +"From Mrs. Wix?" + +Maisie debated, then after an instant took her cue from Mrs. Beale's +absence of anger, which struck her the more as she had felt how much of +her courage she needed. "From Mrs. Wix," she admitted. + +Mrs. Beale, at the glass again, made play with a powder-puff. "My own +sweet, she's mistaken!" was all she said. + +There was a certain force in the very amenity of this, but our young +lady reflected long enough to remember that it was not the answer Sir +Claude himself had made. The recollection nevertheless failed to prevent +her saying: "Do you mean then that he won't come till he has got it?" + +Mrs. Beale gave a last touch; she was ready; she stood there in all her +elegance. "I mean, my dear, that it's because he HASN'T got it that I +left him." + +This opened a view that stretched further than Maisie could reach. She +turned away from it, but she spoke before they went out again. "Do you +like Mrs. Wix now?" + +"Why, my chick, I was just going to ask you if you think she has come at +all to like poor bad me!" + +Maisie thought, at this hint; but unsuccessfully. "I haven't the least +idea. But I'll find out." + +"Do!" said Mrs. Beale, rustling out with her in a scented air and as if +it would be a very particular favour. + +The child tried promptly at bed-time, relieved now of the fear that +their visitor would wish to separate her for the night from her +attendant. "Have you held out?" she began as soon as the two doors at +the end of the passage were again closed on them. + +Mrs. Wix looked hard at the flame of the candle. "Held out--?" + +"Why, she has been making love to you. Has she won you over?" + +Mrs. Wix transferred her intensity to her pupil's face. "Over to what?" + +"To HER keeping me instead." + +"Instead of Sir Claude?" Mrs. Wix was distinctly gaining time. + +"Yes; who else? since it's not instead of you." + +Mrs. Wix coloured at this lucidity. "Yes, that IS what she means." + +"Well, do you like it?" Maisie asked. + +She actually had to wait, for oh her friend was embarrassed! "My +opposition to the connexion--theirs--would then naturally to some extent +fall. She has treated me to-day as if I weren't after all quite such a +worm; not that I don't know very well where she got the pattern of her +politeness. But of course," Mrs. Wix hastened to add, "I shouldn't like +her as THE one nearly so well as him." + +"'Nearly so well!'" Maisie echoed. "I should hope indeed not." She spoke +with a firmness under which she was herself the first to quiver. "I +thought you 'adored' him." + +"I do," Mrs. Wix sturdily allowed. + +"Then have you suddenly begun to adore her too?" + +Mrs. Wix, instead of directly answering, only blinked in support of her +sturdiness. "My dear, in what a tone you ask that! You're coming out." + +"Why shouldn't I? YOU'VE come out. Mrs. Beale has come out. We each have +our turn!" And Maisie threw off the most extraordinary little laugh that +had ever passed her young lips. + +There passed Mrs. Wix's indeed the next moment a sound that more than +matched it. "You're most remarkable!" she neighed. + +Her pupil, though wholly without aspirations to pertness, barely +faltered. "I think you've done a great deal to make me so." + +"Very true, I have." She dropped to humility, as if she recalled her so +recent self-arraignment. + +"Would you accept her then? That's what I ask," said Maisie. + +"As a substitute?" Mrs. Wix turned it over; she met again the child's +eyes. "She has literally almost fawned upon me." + +"She hasn't fawned upon HIM. She hasn't even been kind to him." + +Mrs. Wix looked as if she had now an advantage. "Then do you propose to +'kill' her?" + +"You don't answer my question," Maisie persisted. "I want to know if you +accept her." + +Mrs. Wix continued to hedge. "I want to know if YOU do!" + +Everything in the child's person, at this, announced that it was easy to +know. "Not for a moment." + +"Not the two now?" Mrs. Wix had caught on; she flushed with it. "Only +him alone?" + +"Him alone or nobody." + +"Not even ME?" cried Mrs. Wix. + +Maisie looked at her a moment, then began to undress. "Oh you're +nobody!" + + + + +XXIX + + +Her sleep was drawn out, she instantly recognised lateness in the way +her eyes opened to Mrs. Wix, erect, completely dressed, more dressed +than ever, and gazing at her from the centre of the room. The next thing +she was sitting straight up, wide awake with the fear of the hours of +"abroad" that she might have lost. Mrs. Wix looked as if the day had +already made itself felt, and the process of catching up with it began +for Maisie in hearing her distinctly say: "My poor dear, he has come!" + +"Sir Claude?" Maisie, clearing the little bed-rug with the width of her +spring, felt the polished floor under her bare feet. + +"He crossed in the night; he got in early." Mrs. Wix's head jerked +stiffly backward. "He's there." + +"And you've seen him?" + +"No. He's there--he's there," Mrs. Wix repeated. Her voice came out with +a queer extinction that was not a voluntary drop, and she trembled so +that it added to their common emotion. Visibly pale, they gazed at each +other. + +"Isn't it too BEAUTIFUL?" Maisie panted back at her; a challenge with an +answer to which, however, she was not ready at once. The term Maisie had +used was a flash of diplomacy--to prevent at any rate Mrs. Wix's using +another. To that degree it was successful; there was only an appeal, +strange and mute, in the white old face, which produced the effect of +a want of decision greater than could by any stretch of optimism have +been associated with her attitude toward what had happened. For Maisie +herself indeed what had happened was oddly, as she could feel, less of a +simple rapture than any arrival or return of the same supreme friend had +ever been before. What had become overnight, what had become while she +slept, of the comfortable faculty of gladness? She tried to wake it up a +little wider by talking, by rejoicing, by plunging into water and into +clothes, and she made out that it was ten o'clock, but also that Mrs. +Wix had not yet breakfasted. The day before, at nine, they had had +together a _cafe complet_ in their sitting-room. Mrs. Wix on her side +had evidently also a refuge to seek. She sought it in checking the +precipitation of some of her pupil's present steps, in recalling to her +with an approach to sternness that of such preliminaries those embodied +in a thorough use of soap should be the most thorough, and in throwing +even a certain reprobation on the idea of hurrying into clothes for +the sake of a mere stepfather. She took her in hand with a silent +insistence; she reduced the process to sequences more definite than any +it had known since the days of Moddle. Whatever it might be that had +now, with a difference, begun to belong to Sir Claude's presence was +still after all compatible, for our young lady, with the instinct of +dressing to see him with almost untidy haste. Mrs. Wix meanwhile luckily +was not wholly directed to repression. "He's there--he's there!" she +had said over several times. It was her answer to every invitation +to mention how long she had been up and her motive for respecting so +rigidly the slumber of her companion. It formed for some minutes her +only account of the whereabouts of the others and her reason for not +having yet seen them, as well as of the possibility of their presently +being found in the salon. + +"He's there--he's there!" she declared once more as she made, on the +child, with an almost invidious tug, a strained undergarment "meet." + +"Do you mean he's in the salon?" Maisie asked again. + +"He's WITH her," Mrs. Wix desolately said. "He's with her," she +reiterated. + +"Do you mean in her own room?" Maisie continued. + +She waited an instant. "God knows!" + +Maisie wondered a little why, or how, God should know; this, however, +delayed but an instant her bringing out: "Well, won't she go back?" + +"Go back? Never!" + +"She'll stay all the same?" + +"All the more." + +"Then won't Sir Claude go?" Maisie asked. + +"Go back--if SHE doesn't?" Mrs. Wix appeared to give this question the +benefit of a minute's thought. "Why should he have come--only to go +back?" + +Maisie produced an ingenious solution. "To MAKE her go. To take her." + +Mrs. Wix met it without a concession. "If he can make her go so easily, +why should he have let her come?" + +Maisie considered. "Oh just to see ME. She has a right." + +"Yes--she has a right." + +"She's my mother!" Maisie tentatively tittered. + +"Yes--she's your mother." + +"Besides," Maisie went on, "he didn't let her come. He doesn't like her +coming, and if he doesn't like it--" + +Mrs. Wix took her up. "He must lump it--that's what he must do! Your +mother was right about him--I mean your real one. He has no strength. +No--none at all." She seemed more profoundly to muse. "He might have +had some even with HER--I mean with her ladyship. He's just a poor sunk +slave," she asserted with sudden energy. + +Maisie wondered again. "A slave?" + +"To his passions." + +She continued to wonder and even to be impressed; after which she went +on: "But how do you know he'll stay?" + +"Because he likes us!"--and Mrs. Wix, with her emphasis of the word, +whirled her charge round again to deal with posterior hooks. She had +positively never shaken her so. + +It was as if she quite shook something out of her. "But how will that +help him if we--in spite of his liking!--don't stay?" + +"Do you mean if we go off and leave him with her?--" Mrs. Wix put the +question to the back of her pupil's head. "It WON'T help him. It will be +his ruin. He'll have got nothing. He'll have lost everything. It will be +his utter destruction, for he's certain after a while to loathe her." + +"Then when he loathes her"--it was astonishing how she caught the +idea--"he'll just come right after us!" Maisie announced. + +"Never." + +"Never?" + +"She'll keep him. She'll hold him for ever." + +Maisie doubted. "When he 'loathes' her?" + +"That won't matter. She won't loathe HIM. People don't!" Mrs. Wix +brought up. + +"Some do. Mamma does," Maisie contended. + +"Mamma does NOT!" It was startling--her friend contradicted her flat. +"She loves him--she adores him. A woman knows." Mrs. Wix spoke not only +as if Maisie were not a woman, but as if she would never be one. "_I_ +know!" she cried. + +"Then why on earth has she left him?" + +Mrs. Wix hesitated. "He hates HER. Don't stoop so--lift up your hair. +You know how I'm affected toward him," she added with dignity; "but +you must also know that I see clear." + +Maisie all this time was trying hard to do likewise. "Then if she has +left him for that why shouldn't Mrs. Beale leave him?" + +"Because she's not such a fool!" + +"Not such a fool as mamma?" + +"Precisely--if you WILL have it. Does it look like her leaving him?" +Mrs. Wix enquired. She brooded again; then she went on with more +intensity: "Do you want to know really and truly why? So that she may +be his wretchedness and his punishment." + +"His punishment?"--this was more than as yet Maisie could quite accept. +"For what?" + +"For everything. That's what will happen: he'll be tied to her for ever. +She won't mind in the least his hating her, and she won't hate him back. +She'll only hate US." + +"Us?" the child faintly echoed. + +"She'll hate YOU." + +"Me? Why, I brought them together!" Maisie resentfully cried. + +"You brought them together." There was a completeness in Mrs. Wix's +assent. "Yes; it was a pretty job. Sit down." She began to brush her +pupil's hair and, as she took up the mass of it with some force of +hand, went on with a sharp recall: "Your mother adored him at first--it +might have lasted. But he began too soon with Mrs. Beale. As you say," +she pursued with a brisk application of the brush, "you brought them +together." + +"I brought them together"--Maisie was ready to reaffirm it. She felt +none the less for a moment at the bottom of a hole; then she seemed to +see a way out. "But I didn't bring mamma together--" She just faltered. + +"With all those gentlemen?"--Mrs. Wix pulled her up. "No; it isn't quite +so bad as that." + +"I only said to the Captain"--Maisie had the quick memory of it--"that +I hoped he at least (he was awfully nice!) would love her and keep her." + +"And even that wasn't much harm," threw in Mrs. Wix. + +"It wasn't much good," Maisie was obliged to recognise. "She can't bear +him--not even a mite. She told me at Folkestone." + +Mrs. Wix suppressed a gasp; then after a bridling instant during +which she might have appeared to deflect with difficulty from her odd +consideration of Ida's wrongs: "He was a nice sort of person for her to +talk to you about!" + +"Oh I LIKE him!" Maisie promptly rejoined; and at this, with an +inarticulate sound and an inconsequence still more marked, her companion +bent over and dealt her on the cheek a rapid peck which had the apparent +intention of a kiss. + +"Well, if her ladyship doesn't agree with you, what does it only prove?" +Mrs. Wix demanded in conclusion. "It proves that she's fond of Sir +Claude!" + +Maisie, in the light of some of the evidence, reflected on that till her +hair was finished, but when she at last started up she gave a sign of no +very close embrace of it. She grasped at this moment Mrs. Wix's arm. "He +must have got his divorce!" + +"Since day before yesterday? Don't talk trash." + +This was spoken with an impatience which left the child nothing to +reply; whereupon she sought her defence in a completely different +relation to the fact. "Well, I knew he would come!" + +"So did I; but not in twenty-four hours. I gave him a few days!" Mrs. +Wix wailed. + +Maisie, whom she had now released, looked at her with interest. "How +many did SHE give him?" + +Mrs. Wix faced her a moment; then as if with a bewildered sniff: "You +had better ask her!" But she had no sooner uttered the words than she +caught herself up. "Lord o' mercy, how we talk!" + +Maisie felt that however they talked she must see him, but she said +nothing more for a time, a time during which she conscientiously +finished dressing and Mrs. Wix also kept silence. It was as if they each +had almost too much to think of, and even as if the child had the sense +that her friend was watching her and seeing if she herself were watched. +At last Mrs. Wix turned to the window and stood--sightlessly, as Maisie +could guess--looking away. Then our young lady, before the glass, gave +the supreme shake. "Well, I'm ready. And now to SEE him!" + +Mrs. Wix turned round, but as if without having heard her. "It's +tremendously grave." There were slow still tears behind the +straighteners. + +"It is--it is." Maisie spoke as if she were now dressed quite up to the +occasion; as if indeed with the last touch she had put on the +judgement-cap. "I must see him immediately." + +"How can you see him if he doesn't send for you?" + +"Why can't I go and find him?" + +"Because you don't know where he is." + +"Can't I just look in the salon?" That still seemed simple to Maisie. + +Mrs. Wix, however, instantly cut it off. "I wouldn't have you look in +the salon for all the world!" Then she explained a little: "The salon +isn't ours now." + +"Ours?" + +"Yours and mine. It's theirs." + +"Theirs?" Maisie, with her stare, continued to echo. "You mean they want +to keep us out?" + +Mrs. Wix faltered; she sank into a chair and, as Maisie had often enough +seen her do before, covered her face with her hands. "They ought to, at +least. The situation's too monstrous!" + +Maisie stood there a moment--she looked about the room. "I'll go to +him--I'll find him." + +"_I_ won't! I won't go NEAR them!" cried Mrs. Wix. + +"Then I'll see him alone." The child spied what she had been looking +for--she possessed herself of her hat. "Perhaps I'll take him out!" And +with decision she quitted the room. + +When she entered the salon it was empty, but at the sound of the opened +door some one stirred on the balcony, and Sir Claude, stepping straight +in, stood before her. He was in light fresh clothes and wore a straw hat +with a bright ribbon; these things, besides striking her in themselves +as the very promise of the grandest of grand tours, gave him a certain +radiance and, as it were, a tropical ease; but such an effect only +marked rather more his having stopped short and, for a longer minute +than had ever at such a juncture elapsed, not opened his arms to her. +His pause made her pause and enabled her to reflect that he must have +been up some time, for there were no traces of breakfast; and that +though it was so late he had rather markedly not caused her to be called +to him. Had Mrs. Wix been right about their forfeiture of the salon? Was +it all his now, all his and Mrs. Beale's? Such an idea, at the rate her +small thoughts throbbed, could only remind her of the way in which what +had been hers hitherto was what was exactly most Mrs. Beale's and his. +It was strange to be standing there and greeting him across a gulf, +for he had by this time spoken, smiled and said: "My dear child, my +dear child!" but without coming any nearer. In a flash she saw he was +different--more so than he knew or designed. The next minute indeed it +was as if he caught an impression from her face: this made him hold out +his hand. Then they met, he kissed her, he laughed, she thought he even +blushed: something of his affection rang out as usual. "Here I am, you +see, again--as I promised you." + +It was not as he had promised them--he had not promised them Mrs. Beale; +but Maisie said nothing about that. What she said was simply: "I knew +you had come. Mrs. Wix told me." + +"Oh yes. And where is she?" + +"In her room. She got me up--she dressed me." + +Sir Claude looked at her up and down; a sweetness of mockery that she +particularly loved came out in his face whenever he did that, and it +was not wanting now. He raised his eyebrows and his arms to play at +admiration; he was evidently after all disposed to be gay. "Got you +up?--I should think so! She has dressed you most beautifully. Isn't she +coming?" + +Maisie wondered if she had better tell. "She said not." + +"Doesn't she want to see a poor devil?" + +She looked about under the vibration of the way he described himself, +and her eyes rested on the door of the room he had previously occupied. +"Is Mrs. Beale in there?" + +Sir Claude looked blankly at the same object. "I haven't the least +idea!" + +"You haven't seen her?" + +"Not the tip of her nose." + +Maisie thought: there settled on her, in the light of his beautiful +smiling eyes, the faintest purest coldest conviction that he wasn't +telling the truth. "She hasn't welcomed you?" + +"Not by a single sign." + +"Then where is she?" + +Sir Claude laughed; he seemed both amused and surprised at the point +she made of it. "I give it up!" + +"Doesn't she know you've come?" + +He laughed again. "Perhaps she doesn't care!" + +Maisie, with an inspiration, pounced on his arm. "Has she GONE?" + +He met her eyes and then she could see that his own were really much +graver than his manner. "Gone?" She had flown to the door, but before +she could raise her hand to knock he was beside her and had caught it. +"Let her be. I don't care about her. I want to see YOU." + +"Then she HASN'T gone?" + +Maisie fell back with him. He still looked as if it were a joke, but the +more she saw of him the more she could make out that he was troubled. +"It wouldn't be like her!" + +She stood wondering at him. "Did you want her to come?" + +"How can you suppose--?" He put it to her candidly. "We had an immense +row over it." + +"Do you mean you've quarrelled?" + +Sir Claude was at a loss. "What has she told you?" + +"That I'm hers as much as yours. That she represents papa." + +His gaze struck away through the open window and up to the sky; she +could hear him rattle in his trousers-pockets his money or his keys. +"Yes--that's what she keeps saying." It gave him for a moment an air +that was almost helpless. + +"You say you don't care about her," Maisie went on. "DO you mean you've +quarrelled?" + +"We do nothing in life but quarrel." + +He rose before her, as he said this, so soft and fair, so rich, in spite +of what might worry him, in restored familiarities, that it gave a +bright blur to the meaning--to what would otherwise perhaps have been +the palpable promise--of the words. + +"Oh YOUR quarrels!" she exclaimed with discouragement. + +"I assure you hers are quite fearful!" + +"I don't speak of hers. I speak of yours." + +"Ah don't do it till I've had my coffee! You're growing up clever," he +added. Then he said: "I suppose you've breakfasted?" + +"Oh no--I've had nothing." + +"Nothing in your room?"--he was all compunction. "My dear old +man!--we'll breakfast then together." He had one of his happy thoughts. +"I say--we'll go out." + +"That was just what I hoped. I've brought my hat." + +"You ARE clever! We'll go to a cafe." Maisie was already at the door; he +glanced round the room. "A moment--my stick." But there appeared to be +no stick. "No matter; I left it--oh!" He remembered with an odd drop and +came out. + +"You left it in London?" she asked as they went downstairs. + +"Yes--in London: fancy!" + +"You were in such a hurry to come," Maisie explained. + +He had his arm round her. "That must have been the reason." + +Halfway down he stopped short again, slapping his leg. "And poor Mrs. +Wix?" + +Maisie's face just showed a shadow. "Do you want her to come?" + +"Dear no--I want to see you alone." + +"That's the way I want to see YOU!" she replied. "Like before." + +"Like before!" he gaily echoed. "But I mean has she had her coffee?" + +"No, nothing." + +"Then I'll send it up to her. Madame!" He had already, at the foot of +the stair, called out to the stout _patronne_, a lady who turned to +him from the bustling, breezy hall a countenance covered with fresh +matutinal powder and a bosom as capacious as the velvet shelf of a +chimneypiece, over which her round white face, framed in its golden +frizzle, might have figured as a showy clock. He ordered, with +particular recommendations, Mrs. Wix's repast, and it was a charm to +hear his easy brilliant French: even his companion's ignorance could +measure the perfection of it. The _patronne_, rubbing her hands and +breaking in with high swift notes as into a florid duet, went with him +to the street, and while they talked a moment longer Maisie remembered +what Mrs. Wix had said about every one's liking him. It came out enough +through the morning powder, it came out enough in the heaving bosom, how +the landlady liked him. He had evidently ordered something lovely for +Mrs. Wix. _"Et bien soigne, n'est-ce-pas?"_ + +_"Soyez tranquille"_--the patronne beamed upon him. _"Et pour Madame?"_ + +_"Madame?"_ he echoed--it just pulled him up a little. + +_"Rien encore?"_ + +"_Rien encore._ Come, Maisie." She hurried along with him, but on the way +to the cafe he said nothing. + + + + +XXX + + +After they were seated there it was different: the place was not below +the hotel, but further along the quay; with wide, clear windows and a +floor sprinkled with bran in a manner that gave it for Maisie something +of the added charm of a circus. They had pretty much to themselves the +painted spaces and the red plush benches; these were shared by a few +scattered gentlemen who picked teeth, with facial contortions, behind +little bare tables, and by an old personage in particular, a very old +personage with a red ribbon in his buttonhole, whose manner of soaking +buttered rolls in coffee and then disposing of them in the little that +was left of the interval between his nose and chin might at a less +anxious hour have cast upon Maisie an almost envious spell. They too +had their _cafe au lait_ and their buttered rolls, determined by Sir +Claude's asking her if she could with that light aid wait till the hour +of dejeuner. His allusion to this meal gave her, in the shaded sprinkled +coolness, the scene, as she vaguely felt, of a sort of ordered mirrored +licence, the haunt of those--the irregular, like herself--who went to +bed or who rose too late, something to think over while she watched +the white-aproned waiter perform as nimbly with plates and saucers as +a certain conjurer her friend had in London taken her to a music-hall +to see. Sir Claude had presently begun to talk again, to tell her how +London had looked and how long he had felt himself, on either side, to +have been absent; all about Susan Ash too and the amusement as well as +the difficulty he had had with her; then all about his return journey +and the Channel in the night and the crowd of people coming over and +the way there were always too many one knew. He spoke of other matters +beside, especially of what she must tell him of the occupations, while +he was away, of Mrs. Wix and her pupil. Hadn't they had the good time he +had promised?--had he exaggerated a bit the arrangements made for their +pleasure? Maisie had something--not all there was--to say of his success +and of their gratitude: she had a complication of thought that grew +every minute, grew with the consciousness that she had never seen him in +this particular state in which he had been given back. + +Mrs. Wix had once said--it was once or fifty times; once was enough for +Maisie, but more was not too much--that he was wonderfully various. +Well, he was certainly so, to the child's mind, on the present occasion: +he was much more various than he was anything else. Besides, the fact +that they were together in a shop, at a nice little intimate table as +they had so often been in London, only made greater the difference of +what they were together about. This difference was in his face, in his +voice, in every look he gave her and every movement he made. They were +not the looks and the movements he really wanted to show, and she could +feel as well that they were not those she herself wanted. She had +seen him nervous, she had seen every one she had come in contact with +nervous, but she had never seen him so nervous as this. Little by little +it gave her a settled terror, a terror that partook of the coldness she +had felt just before, at the hotel, to find herself, on his answer about +Mrs. Beale, disbelieve him. She seemed to see at present, to touch +across the table, as if by laying her hand on it, what he had meant when +he confessed on those several occasions to fear. Why was such a man so +often afraid? It must have begun to come to her now that there was one +thing just such a man above all could be afraid of. He could be afraid +of himself. His fear at all events was there; his fear was sweet to her, +beautiful and tender to her, was having coffee and buttered rolls and +talk and laughter that were no talk and laughter at all with her; his +fear was in his jesting postponing perverting voice; it was just in +this make-believe way he had brought her out to imitate the old London +playtimes, to imitate indeed a relation that had wholly changed, a +relation that she had with her very eyes seen in the act of change when, +the day before in the salon, Mrs. Beale rose suddenly before her. She +rose before her, for that matter, now, and even while their refreshment +delayed Maisie arrived at the straight question for which, on their +entrance, his first word had given opportunity. "Are we going to have +dejeuner with Mrs. Beale?" + +His reply was anything but straight. "You and I?" + +Maisie sat back in her chair. "Mrs. Wix and me." + +Sir Claude also shifted. "That's an enquiry, my dear child, that Mrs. +Beale herself must answer." Yes, he had shifted; but abruptly, after a +moment during which something seemed to hang there between them and, as +it heavily swayed, just fan them with the air of its motion, she felt +that the whole thing was upon them. "Do you mind," he broke out, "my +asking you what Mrs. Wix has said to you?" + +"Said to me?" + +"This day or two--while I was away." + +"Do you mean about you and Mrs. Beale?" + +Sir Claude, resting on his elbows, fixed his eyes a moment on the white +marble beneath them. "No; I think we had a good deal of that--didn't +we?--before I left you. It seems to me we had it pretty well all out. I +mean about yourself, about your--don't you know?--associating with us, +as I might say, and staying on with us. While you were alone with our +friend what did she say?" + +Maisie felt the weight of the question; it kept her silent for a space +during which she looked at Sir Claude, whose eyes remained bent. +"Nothing," she returned at last. + +He showed incredulity. "Nothing?" + +"Nothing," Maisie repeated; on which an interruption descended in the +form of a tray bearing the preparations for their breakfast. These +preparations were as amusing as everything else; the waiter poured their +coffee from a vessel like a watering-pot and then made it froth with the +curved stream of hot milk that dropped from the height of his raised +arm; but the two looked across at each other through the whole play of +French pleasantness with a gravity that had now ceased to dissemble. +Sir Claude sent the waiter off again for something and then took up her +answer. "Hasn't she tried to affect you?" + +Face to face with him thus it seemed to Maisie that she had tried so +little as to be scarce worth mentioning; again therefore an instant she +shut herself up. Presently she found her middle course. "Mrs. Beale +likes her now; and there's one thing I've found out--a great thing. +Mrs. Wix enjoys her being so kind. She was tremendously kind all day +yesterday." + +"I see. And what did she do?" Sir Claude asked. + +Maisie was now busy with her breakfast, and her companion attacked his +own; so that it was all, in form at least, even more than their old +sociability. "Everything she could think of. She was as nice to her as +you are," the child said. "She talked to her all day." + +"And what did she say to her?" + +"Oh I don't know." Maisie was a little bewildered with his pressing her +so for knowledge; it didn't fit into the degree of intimacy with Mrs. +Beale that Mrs. Wix had so denounced and that, according to that lady, +had now brought him back in bondage. Wasn't he more aware than his +stepdaughter of what would be done by the person to whom he was bound? +In a moment, however, she added: "She made love to her." + +Sir Claude looked at her harder, and it was clearly something in her +tone that made him quickly say: "You don't mind my asking you, do you?" + +"Not at all; only I should think you'd know better than I." + +"What Mrs. Beale did yesterday?" + +She thought he coloured a trifle; but almost simultaneously with that +impression she found herself answering: "Yes--if you have seen her." + +He broke into the loudest of laughs. "Why, my dear boy, I told you just +now I've absolutely not. I say, don't you believe me?" + +There was something she was already so afraid of that it covered up +other fears. "Didn't you come back to see her?" she enquired in a +moment. "Didn't you come back because you always want to so much?" + +He received her enquiry as he had received her doubt--with an +extraordinary absence of resentment. "I can imagine of course why you +think that. But it doesn't explain my doing what I have. It was, as I +said to you just now at the inn, really and truly you I wanted to see." + +She felt an instant as she used to feel when, in the back garden at her +mother's, she took from him the highest push of a swing--high, high, +high--that he had had put there for her pleasure and that had finally +broken down under the weight and the extravagant patronage of the cook. +"Well, that's beautiful. But to see me, you mean, and go away again?" + +"My going away again is just the point. I can't tell yet--it all +depends." + +"On Mrs. Beale?" Maisie asked. "SHE won't go away." He finished emptying +his coffee-cup and then, when he had put it down, leaned back in his +chair, where she could see that he smiled on her. This only added to her +idea that he was in trouble, that he was turning somehow in his pain and +trying different things. He continued to smile and she went on: "Don't +you know that?" + +"Yes, I may as well confess to you that as much as that I do know. SHE +won't go away. She'll stay." + +"She'll stay. She'll stay," Maisie repeated. + +"Just so. Won't you have some more coffee?" + +"Yes, please." + +"And another buttered roll?" + +"Yes, please." + +He signed to the hovering waiter, who arrived with the shining spout of +plenty in either hand and with the friendliest interest in mademoiselle. +_"Les tartines sont la."_ Their cups were replenished and, while he +watched almost musingly the bubbles in the fragrant mixture, "Just +so--just so," Sir Claude said again and again. "It's awfully awkward!" +he exclaimed when the waiter had gone. + +"That she won't go?" + +"Well--everything! Well, well, well!" But he pulled himself together; +he began again to eat. "I came back to ask you something. That's what +I came back for." + +"I know what you want to ask me," Maisie said. + +"Are you very sure?" + +"I'm ALMOST very." + +"Well then risk it. You mustn't make ME risk everything." + +She was struck with the force of this. "You want to know if I should be +happy with THEM." + +"With those two ladies only? No, no, old man: _vous n'y etes pas_. So +now--there!" Sir Claude laughed. + +"Well then what is it?" + +The next minute, instead of telling her what it was, he laid his hand +across the table on her own and held her as if under the prompting of a +thought. "Mrs. Wix would stay with HER?" + +"Without you? Oh yes--now." + +"On account, as you just intimated, of Mrs. Beale's changed manner?" + +Maisie, with her sense of responsibility, weighed both Mrs. Beale's +changed manner and Mrs. Wix's human weakness. "I think she talked her +round." + +Sir Claude thought a moment. "Ah poor dear!" + +"Do you mean Mrs. Beale?" + +"Oh no--Mrs. Wix." + +"She likes being talked round--treated like any one else. Oh she likes +great politeness," Maisie expatiated. "It affects her very much." + +Sir Claude, to her surprise, demurred a little to this. "Very much--up +to a certain point." + +"Oh up to any point!" Maisie returned with emphasis. + +"Well, haven't I been polite to her?" + +"Lovely--and she perfectly worships you." + +"Then, my dear child, why can't she let me alone?"--this time Sir +Claude unmistakeably blushed. Before Maisie, however, could answer his +question, which would indeed have taken her long, he went on in another +tone: "Mrs. Beale thinks she has probably quite broken her down. But she +hasn't." + +Though he spoke as if he were sure, Maisie was strong in the impression +she had just uttered and that she now again produced. "She has talked +her round." + +"Ah yes; round to herself, but not round to me." + +Oh she couldn't bear to hear him say that! "To you? Don't you really +believe how she loves you?" + +Sir Claude examined his belief. "Of course I know she's wonderful." + +"She's just every bit as fond of you as _I_ am," said Maisie. "She told +me so yesterday." + +"Ah then," he promptly exclaimed, "she HAS tried to affect you! I don't +love HER, don't you see? I do her perfect justice," he pursued, "but I +mean I don't love her as I do you, and I'm sure you wouldn't seriously +expect it. She's not my daughter--come, old chap! She's not even my +mother, though I dare say it would have been better for me if she had +been. I'll do for her what I'd do for my mother, but I won't do more." +His real excitement broke out in a need to explain and justify himself, +though he kept trying to correct and conceal it with laughs and +mouthfuls and other vain familiarities. Suddenly he broke off, wiping +his moustache with sharp pulls and coming back to Mrs. Beale. "Did she +try to talk YOU over?" + +"No--to me she said very little. Very little indeed," Maisie continued. + +Sir Claude seemed struck with this. "She was only sweet to Mrs. Wix?" + +"As sweet as sugar!" cried Maisie. + +He looked amused at her comparison, but he didn't contest it; he uttered +on the contrary, in an assenting way, a little inarticulate sound. "I +know what she CAN be. But much good may it have done her! Mrs. Wix won't +COME 'round.' That's what makes it so fearfully awkward." + +Maisie knew it was fearfully awkward; she had known this now, she felt, +for some time, and there was something else it more pressingly concerned +her to learn. "What is it you meant you came over to ask me?" + +"Well," said Sir Claude, "I was just going to say. Let me tell you it +will surprise you." She had finished breakfast now and she sat back in +her chair again: she waited in silence to hear. He had pushed the things +before him a little way and had his elbows on the table. This time, she +was convinced, she knew what was coming, and once more, for the crash, +as with Mrs. Wix lately in her room, she held her breath and drew +together her eyelids. He was going to say she must give him up. He +looked hard at her again; then he made his effort. "Should you see your +way to let her go?" + +She was bewildered. "To let who--?" + +"Mrs. Wix simply. I put it at the worst. Should you see your way to +sacrifice her? Of course I know what I'm asking." + +Maisie's eyes opened wide again; this was so different from what she had +expected. "And stay with you alone?" + +He gave another push to his coffee-cup. "With me and Mrs. Beale. Of +course it would be rather rum; but everything in our whole story is +rather rum, you know. What's more unusual than for any one to be given +up, like you, by her parents?" + +"Oh nothing is more unusual than THAT!" Maisie concurred, relieved at +the contact of a proposition as to which concurrence could have +lucidity. + +"Of course it would be quite unconventional," Sir Claude went on--"I +mean the little household we three should make together; but things have +got beyond that, don't you see? They got beyond that long ago. We shall +stay abroad at any rate--it's ever so much easier and it's our affair +and nobody else's: it's no one's business but ours on all the blessed +earth. I don't say that for Mrs. Wix, poor dear--I do her absolute +justice. I respect her; I see what she means; she has done me a lot of +good. But there are the facts. There they are, simply. And here am I, +and here are you. And she won't come round. She's right from her point +of view. I'm talking to you in the most extraordinary way--I'm always +talking to you in the most extraordinary way, ain't I? One would think +you were about sixty and that I--I don't know what any one would think +_I_ am. Unless a beastly cad!" he suggested. "I've been awfully worried, +and this's what it has come to. You've done us the most tremendous good, +and you'll do it still and always, don't you see? We can't let you +go--you're everything. There are the facts as I say. She IS your mother +now, Mrs. Beale, by what has happened, and I, in the same way, I'm your +father. No one can contradict that, and we can't get out of it. My idea +would be a nice little place--somewhere in the South--where she and you +would be together and as good as any one else. And I should be as good +too, don't you see? for I shouldn't live with you, but I should be close +to you--just round the corner, and it would be just the same. My idea +would be that it should all be perfectly open and frank. _Honi soit qui +mal y pense_, don't you know? You're the best thing--you and what we can +do for you--that either of us has ever known," he came back to that. +"When I say to her 'Give her up, come,' she lets me have it bang in the +face: 'Give her up yourself!' It's the same old vicious circle--and when +I say vicious I don't mean a pun, a what-d'-ye-call-'em. Mrs. Wix is the +obstacle; I mean, you know, if she has affected you. She has affected +ME, and yet here I am. I never was in such a tight place: please believe +it's only that that makes me put it to you as I do. My dear child, isn't +that--to put it so--just the way out of it? That came to me yesterday, +in London, after Mrs. Beale had gone: I had the most infernal atrocious +day. 'Go straight over and put it to her: let her choose, freely, her +own self.' So I do, old girl--I put it to you. CAN you choose freely?" + +This long address, slowly and brokenly uttered, with fidgets and +falterings, with lapses and recoveries, with a mottled face and +embarrassed but supplicating eyes, reached the child from a quarter +so close that after the shock of the first sharpness she could see +intensely its direction and follow it from point to point; all the more +that it came back to the point at which it had started. There was a word +that had hummed all through it. "Do you call it a 'sacrifice'?" + +"Of Mrs. Wix? I'll call it whatever YOU call it. I won't funk it--I +haven't, have I? I'll face it in all its baseness. Does it strike you it +IS base for me to get you well away from her, to smuggle you off here +into a corner and bribe you with sophistries and buttered rolls to +betray her?" + +"To betray her?" + +"Well--to part with her." + +Maisie let the question wait; the concrete image it presented was the +most vivid side of it. "If I part with her where will she go?" + +"Back to London." + +"But I mean what will she do?" + +"Oh as for that I won't pretend I know. I don't. We all have our +difficulties." + +That, to Maisie, was at this moment more striking than it had ever been. +"Then who'll teach me?" + +Sir Claude laughed out. "What Mrs. Wix teaches?" + +She smiled dimly; she saw what he meant. "It isn't so very very much." + +"It's so very very little," he returned, "that that's a thing we've +positively to consider. We probably shouldn't give you another +governess. To begin with we shouldn't be able to get one--not of the +only kind that would do. It wouldn't do--the kind that WOULD do," he +queerly enough explained. "I mean they wouldn't stay--heigh-ho! We'd +do you ourselves. Particularly me. You see I CAN now; I haven't got to +mind--what I used to. I won't fight shy as I did--she can show out WITH +me. Our relation, all round, is more regular." + +It seemed wonderfully regular, the way he put it; yet none the less, +while she looked at it as judiciously as she could, the picture it made +persisted somehow in being a combination quite distinct--an old woman +and a little girl seated in deep silence on a battered old bench by the +rampart of the _haute ville_. It was just at that hour yesterday; they +were hand in hand; they had melted together. "I don't think you yet +understand how she clings to you," Maisie said at last. + +"I do--I do. But for all that--" And he gave, turning in his conscious +exposure, an oppressed impatient sigh; the sigh, even his companion +could recognise, of the man naturally accustomed to that argument, the +man who wanted thoroughly to be reasonable, but who, if really he had to +mind so many things, would be always impossibly hampered. What it came +to indeed was that he understood quite perfectly. If Mrs. Wix clung it +was all the more reason for shaking Mrs. Wix off. + +This vision of what she had brought him to occupied our young lady +while, to ask what he owed, he called the waiter and put down a gold +piece that the man carried off for change. Sir Claude looked after him, +then went on: "How could a woman have less to reproach a fellow with? I +mean as regards herself." + +Maisie entertained the question. "Yes. How COULD she have less? So why +are you so sure she'll go?" + +"Surely you heard why--you heard her come out three nights ago? How can +she do anything but go--after what she then said? I've done what she +warned me of--she was absolutely right. So here we are. Her liking Mrs. +Beale, as you call it now, is a motive sufficient, with other things, +to make her, for your sake, stay on without me; it's not a motive +sufficient to make her, even for yours, stay on WITH me--swallow, don't +you see? what she can't swallow. And when you say she's as fond of me as +you are I think I can, if that's the case, challenge you a little on it. +Would YOU, only with those two, stay on without me?" + +The waiter came back with the change, and that gave her, under this +appeal, a moment's respite. But when he had retreated again with the +"tip" gathered in with graceful thanks on a subtle hint from Sir +Claude's forefinger, the latter, while pocketing the money, followed +the appeal up. "Would you let her make you live with Mrs. Beale?" + +"Without you? Never," Maisie then answered. "Never," she said again. + +It made him quite triumph, and she was indeed herself shaken by the mere +sound of it. "So you see you're not, like her," he exclaimed, "so ready +to give me away!" Then he came back to his original question. "CAN you +choose? I mean can you settle it by a word yourself? Will you stay on +with us without her?" Now in truth she felt the coldness of her terror, +and it seemed to her that suddenly she knew, as she knew it about Sir +Claude, what she was afraid of. She was afraid of herself. She looked at +him in such a way that it brought, she could see, wonder into his face, +a wonder held in check, however, by his frank pretension to play fair +with her, not to use advantages, not to hurry nor hustle her--only to +put her chance clearly and kindly before her. "May I think?" she finally +asked. + +"Certainly, certainly. But how long?" + +"Oh only a little while," she said meekly. + +He had for a moment the air of wishing to look at it as if it were the +most cheerful prospect in the world. "But what shall we do while you're +thinking?" He spoke as if thought were compatible with almost any +distraction. + +There was but one thing Maisie wished to do, and after an instant she +expressed it. "Have we got to go back to the hotel?" + +"Do you want to?" + +"Oh no." + +"There's not the least necessity for it." He bent his eyes on his watch; +his face was now very grave. "We can do anything else in the world." He +looked at her again almost as if he were on the point of saying that +they might for instance start off for Paris. But even while she wondered +if that were not coming he had a sudden drop. "We can take a walk." + +She was all ready, but he sat there as if he had still something more to +say. This too, however, didn't come; so she herself spoke. "I think I +should like to see Mrs. Wix first." + +"Before you decide? All right--all right." He had put on his hat, but +he had still to light a cigarette. He smoked a minute, with his head +thrown back, looking at the ceiling; then he said: "There's one thing +to remember--I've a right to impress it on you: we stand absolutely in +the place of your parents. It's their defection, their extraordinary +baseness, that has made our responsibility. Never was a young person +more directly committed and confided." He appeared to say this over, at +the ceiling, through his smoke, a little for his own illumination. It +carried him after a pause somewhat further. "Though I admit it was to +each of us separately." + +He gave her so at that moment and in that attitude the sense of wanting, +as it were, to be on her side--on the side of what would be in every way +most right and wise and charming for her--that she felt a sudden desire +to prove herself not less delicate and magnanimous, not less solicitous +for his own interests. What were these but that of the "regularity" +he had just before spoken of? "It WAS to each of you separately," she +accordingly with much earnestness remarked. "But don't you remember? I +brought you together." + +He jumped up with a delighted laugh. "Remember? Rather! You brought us +together, you brought us together. Come!" + + + + +XXXI + + +She remained out with him for a time of which she could take no measure +save that it was too short for what she wished to make of it--an +interval, a barrier indefinite, insurmountable. They walked about, they +dawdled, they looked in shop-windows; they did all the old things +exactly as if to try to get back all the old safety, to get something +out of them that they had always got before. This had come before, +whatever it was, without their trying, and nothing came now but the +intenser consciousness of their quest and their subterfuge. The +strangest thing of all was what had really happened to the old safety. +What had really happened was that Sir Claude was "free" and that Mrs. +Beale was "free," and yet that the new medium was somehow still more +oppressive than the old. She could feel that Sir Claude concurred with +her in the sense that the oppression would be worst at the inn, where, +till something should be settled, they would feel the want of +something--of what could they call it but a footing? The question of the +settlement loomed larger to her now: it depended, she had learned, so +completely on herself. Her choice, as her friend had called it, was +there before her like an impossible sum on a slate, a sum that in spite +of her plea for consideration she simply got off from doing while she +walked about with him. She must see Mrs. Wix before she could do her +sum; therefore the longer before she saw her the more distant would be +the ordeal. She met at present no demand whatever of her obligation; she +simply plunged, to avoid it, deeper into the company of Sir Claude. She +saw nothing that she had seen hitherto--no touch in the foreign picture +that had at first been always before her. The only touch was that of Sir +Claude's hand, and to feel her own in it was her mute resistance to +time. She went about as sightlessly as if he had been leading her +blindfold. If they were afraid of themselves it was themselves they +would find at the inn. She was certain now that what awaited them there +would be to lunch with Mrs. Beale. All her instinct was to avoid that, +to draw out their walk, to find pretexts, to take him down upon the +beach, to take him to the end of the pier. He said no other word to her +about what they had talked of at breakfast, and she had a dim vision of +how his way of not letting her see him definitely wait for anything from +her would make any one who should know of it, would make Mrs. Wix for +instance, think him more than ever a gentleman. It was true that once or +twice, on the jetty, on the sands, he looked at her for a minute with +eyes that seemed to propose to her to come straight off with him to +Paris. That, however, was not to give her a nudge about her +responsibility. He evidently wanted to procrastinate quite as much as +she did; he was not a bit more in a hurry to get back to the others. +Maisie herself at this moment could be secretly merciless to Mrs. Wix-- +to the extent at any rate of not caring if her continued disappearance +did make that lady begin to worry about what had become of her, even +begin to wonder perhaps if the truants hadn't found their remedy. Her +want of mercy to Mrs. Beale indeed was at least as great; for Mrs. +Beale's worry and wonder would be as much greater as the object at which +they were directed. When at last Sir Claude, at the far end of the +_plage_, which they had already, in the many-coloured crowd, once +traversed, suddenly, with a look at his watch, remarked that it was +time, not to get back to the _table d'hote_, but to get over to the +station and meet the Paris papers--when he did this she found herself +thinking quite with intensity what Mrs. Beale and Mrs. Wix WOULD say. On +the way over to the station she had even a mental picture of the +stepfather and the pupil established in a little place in the South +while the governess and the stepmother, in a little place in the North, +remained linked by a community of blankness and by the endless series of +remarks it would give birth to. The Paris papers had come in and her +companion, with a strange extravagance, purchased no fewer than eleven: +it took up time while they hovered at the bookstall on the restless +platform, where the little volumes in a row were all yellow and pink and +one of her favourite old women in one of her favourite old caps +absolutely wheedled him into the purchase of three. They had thus so +much to carry home that it would have seemed simpler, with such a +provision for a nice straight journey through France, just to "nip," as +she phrased it to herself, into the coupe of the train that, a little +further along, stood waiting to start. She asked Sir Claude where it was +going. + +"To Paris. Fancy!" + +She could fancy well enough. They stood there and smiled, he with all +the newspapers under his arm and she with the three books, one yellow +and two pink. He had told her the pink were for herself and the yellow +one for Mrs. Beale, implying in an interesting way that these were the +natural divisions in France of literature for the young and for the old. +She knew how prepared they looked to pass into the train, and she +presently brought out to her companion: "I wish we could go. Won't you +take me?" + +He continued to smile. "Would you really come?" + +"Oh yes, oh yes. Try." + +"Do you want me to take our tickets?" + +"Yes, take them." + +"Without any luggage?" + +She showed their two armfuls, smiling at him as he smiled at her, but so +conscious of being more frightened than she had ever been in her life +that she seemed to see her whiteness as in a glass. Then she knew that +what she saw was Sir Claude's whiteness: he was as frightened as +herself. "Haven't we got plenty of luggage?" she asked. "Take the +tickets--haven't you time? When does the train go?" + +Sir Claude turned to a porter. "When does the train go?" + +The man looked up at the station-clock. "In two minutes. _Monsieur est +place?_" + +_"Pas encore."_ + +_"Et vos billets?--vous n'avez que le temps."_ Then after a look at +Maisie, _"Monsieur veut-il que je les prenne?"_ the man said. + +Sir Claude turned back to her. _"Veux-tu lieu qu'il en prenne?"_ + +It was the most extraordinary thing in the world: in the intensity of +her excitement she not only by illumination understood all their French, +but fell into it with an active perfection. She addressed herself +straight to the porter. _"Prenny, prenny. Oh prenny!"_ + +_"Ah si mademoiselle le veut--!"_ He waited there for the money. + +But Sir Claude only stared--stared at her with his white face. "You HAVE +chosen then? You'll let her go?" + +Maisie carried her eyes wistfully to the train, where, amid cries of +_"En voiture, en voiture!"_ heads were at windows and doors banging +loud. The porter was pressing. _"Ah vous n'avez plus le temps!"_ + +"It's going--it's going!" cried Maisie. + +They watched it move, they watched it start; then the man went his way +with a shrug. "It's gone!" Sir Claude said. + +Maisie crept some distance up the platform; she stood there with her +back to her companion, following it with her eyes, keeping down tears, +nursing her pink and yellow books. She had had a real fright but had +fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in her fall her fear too +had been dashed down and broken. It was gone. She looked round at last, +from where she had paused, at Sir Claude's, and then saw that his +wasn't. It sat there with him on the bench to which, against the wall of +the station, he had retreated, and where, leaning back and, as she +thought, rather queer, he still waited. She came down to him and he +continued to offer his ineffectual intention of pleasantry. "Yes, I've +chosen," she said to him. "I'll let her go if you--if you--" + +She faltered; he quickly took her up. "If I, if I--" + +"If you'll give up Mrs. Beale." + +"Oh!" he exclaimed; on which she saw how much, how hopelessly he was +afraid. She had supposed at the cafe that it was of his rebellion, of +his gathering motive; but how could that be when his temptations--that +temptation for example of the train they had just lost--were after all +so slight? Mrs. Wix was right. He was afraid of his weakness--of his +weakness. + +She couldn't have told you afterwards how they got back to the inn: she +could only have told you that even from this point they had not gone +straight, but once more had wandered and loitered and, in the course of +it, had found themselves on the edge of the quay where--still apparently +with half an hour to spare--the boat prepared for Folkestone was drawn +up. Here they hovered as they had done at the station; here they +exchanged silences again, but only exchanged silences. There were +punctual people on the deck, choosing places, taking the best; some of +them already contented, all established and shawled, facing to England +and attended by the steward, who, confined on such a day to the lighter +offices, tucked up the ladies' feet or opened bottles with a pop. They +looked down at these things without a word; they even picked out a good +place for two that was left in the lee of a lifeboat; and if they +lingered rather stupidly, neither deciding to go aboard nor deciding to +come away, it was Sir Claude quite as much as she who wouldn't move. It +was Sir Claude who cultivated the supreme stillness by which she knew +best what he meant. He simply meant that he knew all she herself meant. +But there was no pretence of pleasantry now: their faces were grave and +tired. When at last they lounged off it was as if his fear, his fear of +his weakness, leaned upon her heavily as they followed the harbour. In +the hall of the hotel as they passed in she saw a battered old box that +she recognised, an ancient receptacle with dangling labels that she knew +and a big painted W, lately done over and intensely personal, that +seemed to stare at her with a recognition and even with some suspicion +of its own. Sir Claude caught it too, and there was agitation for both +of them in the sight of this object on the move. Was Mrs. Wix going and +was the responsibility of giving her up lifted, at a touch, from her +pupil? Her pupil and her pupil's companion, transfixed a moment, held, +in the presence of the omen, communication more intense than in the +presence either of the Paris train or of the Channel steamer; then, and +still without a word, they went straight upstairs. There, however, on +the landing, out of sight of the people below, they collapsed so that +they had to sink down together for support: they simply seated +themselves on the uppermost step while Sir Claude grasped the hand of +his stepdaughter with a pressure that at another moment would probably +have made her squeal. Their books and papers were all scattered. "She +thinks you've given her up!" + +"Then I must see her--I must see her," Maisie said. + +"To bid her good-bye?" + +"I must see her--I must see her," the child only repeated. + +They sat a minute longer, Sir Claude, with his tight grip of her hand +and looking away from her, looking straight down the staircase to where, +round the turn, electric bells rattled and the pleasant sea-draught +blew. At last, loosening his grasp, he slowly got up while she did the +same. They went together along the lobby, but before they reached the +salon he stopped again. "If I give up Mrs. Beale--?" + +"I'll go straight out with you again and not come back till she has +gone." + +He seemed to wonder. "Till Mrs. Beale--?" He had made it sound like a +bad joke. + +"I mean till Mrs. Wix leaves--in that boat." + +Sir Claude looked almost foolish. "Is she going in that boat?" + +"I suppose so. I won't even bid her good-bye," Maisie continued. "I'll +stay out till the boat has gone. I'll go up to the old rampart." + +"The old rampart?" + +"I'll sit on that old bench where you see the gold Virgin." + +"The gold Virgin?" he vaguely echoed. But it brought his eyes back to +her as if after an instant he could see the place and the thing she +named--could see her sitting there alone. "While I break with Mrs. +Beale?" + +"While you break with Mrs. Beale." + +He gave a long deep smothered sigh. "I must see her first." + +"You won't do as I do? Go out and wait?" + +"Wait?"--once more he appeared at a loss. + +"Till they both have gone," Maisie said. + +"Giving US up?" + +"Giving US up." + +Oh with what a face for an instant he wondered if that could be! But his +wonder the next moment only made him go to the door and, with his hand +on the knob, stand as if listening for voices. Maisie listened, but she +heard none. All she heard presently was Sir Claude's saying with +speculation quite choked off, but so as not to be heard in the salon: +"Mrs. Beale will never go." On this he pushed open the door and she went +in with him. The salon was empty, but as an effect of their entrance the +lady he had just mentioned appeared at the door of the bedroom. "Is she +going?" he then demanded. + +Mrs. Beale came forward, closing her door behind her. "I've had the most +extraordinary scene with her. She told me yesterday she'd stay." + +"And my arrival has altered it?" + +"Oh we took that into account!" Mrs. Beale was flushed, which was never +quite becoming to her, and her face visibly testified to the encounter +to which she alluded. Evidently, however, she had not been worsted, and +she held up her head and smiled and rubbed her hands as if in sudden +emulation of the _patronne_. "She promised she'd stay even if you should +come." + +"Then why has she changed?" + +"Because she's a hound. The reason she herself gives is that you've been +out too long." + +Sir Claude stared. "What has that to do with it?" + +"You've been out an age," Mrs. Beale continued; "I myself couldn't +imagine what had become of you. The whole morning," she exclaimed, "and +luncheon long since over!" + +Sir Claude appeared indifferent to that. "Did Mrs. Wix go down with +you?" he only asked. + +"Not she; she never budged!"--and Mrs. Beale's flush, to Maisie's +vision, deepened. "She moped there--she didn't so much as come out to +me; and when I sent to invite her she simply declined to appear. She +said she wanted nothing, and I went down alone. But when I came up, +fortunately a little primed"--and Mrs. Beale smiled a fine smile of +battle--"she WAS in the field!" + +"And you had a big row?" + +"We had a big row"--she assented with a frankness as large. "And while +you left me to that sort of thing I should like to know where you were!" +She paused for a reply, but Sir Claude merely looked at Maisie; a +movement that promptly quickened her challenge. "Where the mischief have +you been?" + +"You seem to take it as hard as Mrs. Wix," Sir Claude returned. + +"I take it as I choose to take it, and you don't answer my question." + +He looked again at Maisie--as if for an aid to this effort; whereupon +she smiled at her stepmother and offered: "We've been everywhere." + +Mrs. Beale, however, made her no response, thereby adding to a surprise +of which our young lady had already felt the light brush. She had +received neither a greeting nor a glance, but perhaps this was not more +remarkable than the omission, in respect to Sir Claude, parted with in +London two days before, of any sign of a sense of their reunion. Most +remarkable of all was Mrs. Beale's announcement of the pledge given by +Mrs. Wix and not hitherto revealed to her pupil. Instead of heeding this +witness she went on with acerbity: "It might surely have occurred to you +that something would come up." + +Sir Claude looked at his watch. "I had no idea it was so late, nor that +we had been out so long. We weren't hungry. It passed like a flash. What +HAS come up?" + +"Oh that she's disgusted," said Mrs. Beale. + +"With whom then?" + +"With Maisie." Even now she never looked at the child, who stood there +equally associated and disconnected. "For having no moral sense." + +"How SHOULD she have?" Sir Claude tried again to shine a little at the +companion of his walk. "How at any rate is it proved by her going out +with me?" + +"Don't ask ME; ask that woman. She drivels when she doesn't rage," Mrs. +Beale declared. + +"And she leaves the child?" + +"She leaves the child," said Mrs. Beale with great emphasis and looking +more than ever over Maisie's head. + +In this position suddenly a change came into her face, caused, as the +others could the next thing see, by the reappearance of Mrs. Wix in the +doorway which, on coming in at Sir Claude's heels, Maisie had left +gaping. "I DON'T leave the child--I don't, I don't!" she thundered from +the threshold, advancing upon the opposed three but addressing herself +directly to Maisie. She was girded--positively harnessed--for departure, +arrayed as she had been arrayed on her advent and armed with a small fat +rusty reticule which, almost in the manner of a battle-axe, she +brandished in support of her words. She had clearly come straight from +her room, where Maisie in an instant guessed she had directed the +removal of her minor effects. "I don't leave you till I've given you +another chance. Will you come WITH me?" + +Maisie turned to Sir Claude, who struck her as having been removed to a +distance of about a mile. To Mrs. Beale she turned no more than Mrs. +Beale had turned: she felt as if already their difference had been +disclosed. What had come out about that in the scene between the two +women? Enough came out now, at all events, as she put it practically to +her stepfather. "Will YOU come? Won't you?" she enquired as if she had +not already seen that she should have to give him up. It was the last +flare of her dream. By this time she was afraid of nothing. + +"I should think you'd be too proud to ask!" Mrs. Wix interposed. Mrs. +Wix was herself conspicuously too proud. + +But at the child's words Mrs. Beale had fairly bounded. "Come away from +ME, Maisie?" It was a wail of dismay and reproach, in which her +stepdaughter was astonished to read that she had had no hostile +consciousness and that if she had been so actively grand it was not from +suspicion, but from strange entanglements of modesty. + +Sir Claude presented to Mrs. Beale an expression positively sick. "Don't +put it to her THAT way!" There had indeed been something in Mrs. Beale's +tone, and for a moment our young lady was reminded of the old days in +which so many of her friends had been "compromised." + +This friend blushed; she was before Mrs. Wix, and though she bridled she +took the hint. "No--it isn't the way." Then she showed she knew the way. +"Don't be a still bigger fool, dear, but go straight to your room and +wait there till I can come to you." + +Maisie made no motion to obey, but Mrs. Wix raised a hand that +forestalled every evasion. "Don't move till you've heard me. I'M going, +but I must first understand. Have you lost it again?" + +Maisie surveyed--for the idea of a describable loss--the immensity of +space. Then she replied lamely enough: "I feel as if I had lost +everything." + +Mrs. Wix looked dark. "Do you mean to say you HAVE lost what we found +together with so much difficulty two days ago?" As her pupil failed of +response she continued: "Do you mean to say you've already forgotten +what we found together?" + +Maisie dimly remembered. "My moral sense?" + +"Your moral sense. HAVEN'T I, after all, brought it out?" She spoke as +she had never spoken even in the schoolroom and with the book in her +hand. + +It brought back to the child's recollection how she sometimes couldn't +repeat on Friday the sentence that had been glib on Wednesday, and she +dealt all feebly and ruefully with the present tough passage. Sir Claude +and Mrs. Beale stood there like visitors at an "exam." She had indeed an +instant a whiff of the faint flower that Mrs. Wix pretended to have +plucked and now with such a peremptory hand thrust at her nose. Then it +left her, and, as if she were sinking with a slip from a foothold, her +arms made a short jerk. What this jerk represented was the spasm within +her of something still deeper than a moral sense. She looked at her +examiner; she looked at the visitors; she felt the rising of the tears +she had kept down at the station. They had nothing--no, distinctly +nothing--to do with her moral sense. The only thing was the old flat +shameful schoolroom plea. "I don't know--I don't know." + +"Then you've lost it." Mrs. Wix seemed to close the book as she fixed +the straighteners on Sir Claude. "You've nipped it in the bud. You've +killed it when it had begun to live." + +She was a newer Mrs. Wix than ever, a Mrs. Wix high and great; but Sir +Claude was not after all to be treated as a little boy with a missed +lesson. "I've not killed anything," he said; "on the contrary I think +I've produced life. I don't know what to call it--I haven't even known +how decently to deal with it, to approach it; but, whatever it is, it's +the most beautiful thing I've ever met--it's exquisite, it's sacred." He +had his hands in his pockets and, though a trace of the sickness he had +just shown perhaps lingered there, his face bent itself with +extraordinary gentleness on both the friends he was about to lose. "Do +you know what I came back for?" he asked of the elder. + +"I think I do!" cried Mrs. Wix, surprisingly un-mollified and with the +heat of her late engagement with Mrs. Beale still on her brow. That +lady, as if a little besprinkled by such turns of the tide, uttered a +loud inarticulate protest and, averting herself, stood a moment at the +window. + +"I came back with a proposal," said Sir Claude. + +"To me?" Mrs. Wix asked. + +"To Maisie. That she should give you up." + +"And does she?" + +Sir Claude wavered. "Tell her!" he then exclaimed to the child, also +turning away as if to give her the chance. But Mrs. Wix and her pupil +stood confronted in silence, Maisie whiter than ever--more awkward, +more rigid and yet more dumb. They looked at each other hard, and as +nothing came from them Sir Claude faced about again. "You won't tell +her?--you can't?" Still she said nothing; whereupon, addressing Mrs. +Wix, he broke into a kind of ecstasy. "She refused--she refused!" + +Maisie, at this, found her voice. "I didn't refuse. I didn't," she +repeated. + +It brought Mrs. Beale straight back to her. "You accepted, angel--you +accepted!" She threw herself upon the child and, before Maisie could +resist, had sunk with her upon the sofa, possessed of her, encircling +her. "You've given her up already, you've given her up for ever, and +you're ours and ours only now, and the sooner she's off the better!" + +Maisie had shut her eyes, but at a word of Sir Claude's they opened. +"Let her go!" he said to Mrs. Beale. + +"Never, never, never!" cried Mrs. Beale. Maisie felt herself more +compressed. + +"Let her go!" Sir Claude more intensely repeated. He was looking at Mrs. +Beale and there was something in his voice. Maisie knew from a loosening +of arms that she had become conscious of what it was; she slowly rose +from the sofa, and the child stood there again dropped and divided. +"You're free--you're free," Sir Claude went on; at which Maisie's back +became aware of a push that vented resentment and that placed her again +in the centre of the room, the cynosure of every eye and not knowing +which way to turn. + +She turned with an effort to Mrs. Wix. "I didn't refuse to give you up. +I said I would if HE'D give up--" + +"Give up Mrs. Beale?" burst from Mrs. Wix. + +"Give up Mrs. Beale. What do you call that but exquisite?" Sir Claude +demanded of all of them, the lady mentioned included; speaking with a +relish as intense now as if some lovely work of art or of nature had +suddenly been set down among them. He was rapidly recovering himself on +this basis of fine appreciation. "She made her condition--with such a +sense of what it should be! She made the only right one." + +"The only right one?"--Mrs. Beale returned to the charge. She had taken +a moment before a snub from him, but she was not to be snubbed on this. +"How can you talk such rubbish and how can you back her up in such +impertinence? What in the world have you done to her to make her think +of such stuff?" She stood there in righteous wrath; she flashed her eyes +round the circle. Maisie took them full in her own, knowing that here at +last was the moment she had had most to reckon with. But as regards her +stepdaughter Mrs. Beale subdued herself to a question deeply mild. "HAVE +you made, my own love, any such condition as that?" + +Somehow, now that it was there, the great moment was not so bad. What +helped the child was that she knew what she wanted. All her learning and +learning had made her at last learn that; so that if she waited an +instant to reply it was only from the desire to be nice. Bewilderment +had simply gone or at any rate was going fast. Finally she answered. +"Will you give HIM up? Will you?" + +"Ah leave her alone--leave her, leave her!" Sir Claude in sudden +supplication murmured to Mrs. Beale. + +Mrs. Wix at the same instant found another apostrophe. "Isn't it enough +for you, madam, to have brought her to discussing your relations?" + +Mrs. Beale left Sir Claude unheeded, but Mrs. Wix could make her flame. +"My relations? What do you know, you hideous creature, about my +relations, and what business on earth have you to speak of them? Leave +the room this instant, you horrible old woman!" + +"I think you had better go--you must really catch your boat," Sir Claude +said distressfully to Mrs. Wix. He was out of it now, or wanted to be; +he knew the worst and had accepted it: what now concerned him was to +prevent, to dissipate vulgarities. "Won't you go--won't you just get off +quickly?" + +"With the child as quickly as you like. Not without her." Mrs. Wix was +adamant. + +"Then why did you lie to me, you fiend?" Mrs. Beale almost yelled. "Why +did you tell me an hour ago that you had given her up?" + +"Because I despaired of her--because I thought she had left me." Mrs. +Wix turned to Maisie. "You were WITH them--in their connexion. But now +your eyes are open, and I take you!" + +"No you don't!" and Mrs. Beale made, with a great fierce jump, a wild +snatch at her stepdaughter. She caught her by the arm and, completing an +instinctive movement, whirled her round in a further leap to the door, +which had been closed by Sir Claude the instant their voices had risen. +She fell back against it and, even while denouncing and waving off Mrs. +Wix, kept it closed in an incoherence of passion. "You don't take her, +but you bundle yourself: she stays with her own people and she's rid of +you! I never heard anything so monstrous!" Sir Claude had rescued Maisie +and kept hold of her; he held her in front of him, resting his hands +very lightly on her shoulders and facing the loud adversaries. Mrs. +Beale's flush had dropped; she had turned pale with a splendid wrath. +She kept protesting and dismissing Mrs. Wix; she glued her back to the +door to prevent Maisie's flight; she drove out Mrs. Wix by the window or +the chimney. "You're a nice one--'discussing relations'--with your talk +of our 'connexion' and your insults! What in the world's our connexion +but the love of the child who's our duty and our life and who holds us +together as closely as she originally brought us?" + +"I know, I know!" Maisie said with a burst of eagerness. "I did bring +you." + +The strangest of laughs escaped from Sir Claude. "You did bring us--you +did!" His hands went up and down gently on her shoulders. + +Mrs. Wix so dominated the situation that she had something sharp for +every one. "There you have it, you see!" she pregnantly remarked to her +pupil. + +"WILL you give him up?" Maisie persisted to Mrs. Beale. + +"To YOU, you abominable little horror?" that lady indignantly enquired, +"and to this raving old demon who has filled your dreadful little mind +with her wickedness? Have you been a hideous little hypocrite all these +years that I've slaved to make you love me and deludedly believed you +did?" + +"I love Sir Claude--I love HIM," Maisie replied with an awkward sense +that she appeared to offer it as something that would do as well. Sir +Claude had continued to pat her, and it was really an answer to his +pats. + +"She hates you--she hates you," he observed with the oddest quietness to +Mrs. Beale. + +His quietness made her blaze. "And you back her up in it and give me up +to outrage?" + +"No; I only insist that she's free--she's free." + +Mrs. Beale stared--Mrs. Beale glared. "Free to starve with this pauper +lunatic?" + +"I'll do more for her than YOU ever did!" Mrs. Wix retorted. "I'll work +my fingers to the bone." + +Maisie, with Sir Claude's hands still on her shoulders, felt, just as +she felt the fine surrender in them, that over her head he looked in a +certain way at Mrs. Wix. "You needn't do that," she heard him say. "She +has means." + +"Means?--Maisie?" Mrs. Beale shrieked. "Means that her vile father has +stolen!" + +"I'll get them back--I'll get them back. I'll look into it." He smiled +and nodded at Mrs. Wix. + +This had a fearful effect on his other friend. "Haven't I looked into +it, I should like to know, and haven't I found an abyss? It's too +inconceivable--your cruelty to me!" she wildly broke out. She had hot +tears in her eyes. + +He spoke to her very kindly, almost coaxingly. "We'll look into it +again; we'll look into it together. It IS an abyss, but he CAN be +made--or Ida can. Think of the money they're getting now!" he laughed. +"It's all right, it's all right," he continued. "It wouldn't do--it +wouldn't do. We CAN'T work her in. It's perfectly true--she's unique. +We're not good enough--oh no!" and, quite exuberantly, he laughed again. + +"Not good enough, and that beast IS?" Mrs. Beale shouted. + +At this for a moment there was a hush in the room, and in the midst of +it Sir Claude replied to the question by moving with Maisie to Mrs. Wix. +The next thing the child knew she was at that lady's side with an arm +firmly grasped. Mrs. Beale still guarded the door. "Let them pass," said +Sir Claude at last. + +She remained there, however; Maisie saw the pair look at each other. +Then she saw Mrs. Beale turn to her. "I'm your mother now, Maisie. And +he's your father." + +"That's just where it is!" sighed Mrs. Wix with an effect of irony +positively detached and philosophic. + +Mrs. Beale continued to address her young friend, and her effort to be +reasonable and tender was in its way remarkable. "We're representative, +you know, of Mr. Farange and his former wife. This person represents +mere illiterate presumption. We take our stand on the law." + +"Oh the law, the law!" Mrs. Wix superbly jeered. "You had better indeed +let the law have a look at you!" + +"Let them pass--let them pass!" Sir Claude pressed his friend hard--he +pleaded. + +But she fastened herself still to Maisie. "DO you hate me, dearest?" + +Maisie looked at her with new eyes, but answered as she had answered +before. "Will you give him up?" + +Mrs. Beale's rejoinder hung fire, but when it came it was noble. "You +shouldn't talk to me of such things!" She was shocked, she was +scandalised to tears. + +For Mrs. Wix, however, it was her discrimination that was indelicate. +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she roundly cried. + +Sir Claude made a supreme appeal. "Will you be so good as to allow these +horrors to terminate?" + +Mrs. Beale fixed her eyes on him, and again Maisie watched them. "You +should do him justice," Mrs. Wix went on to Mrs. Beale. "We've always +been devoted to him, Maisie and I--and he has shown how much he likes +us. He would like to please her; he would like even, I think, to please +me. But he hasn't given you up." + +They stood confronted, the step-parents, still under Maisie's +observation. That observation had never sunk so deep as at this +particular moment. "Yes, my dear, I haven't given you up," Sir Claude +said to Mrs. Beale at last, "and if you'd like me to treat our friends +here as solemn witnesses I don't mind giving you my word for it that I +never never will. There!" he dauntlessly exclaimed. + +"He can't!" Mrs. Wix tragically commented. + +Mrs. Beale, erect and alive in her defeat, jerked her handsome face +about. "He can't!" she literally mocked. + +"He can't, he can't, he can't!"--Sir Claude's gay emphasis wonderfully +carried it off. + +Mrs. Beale took it all in, yet she held her ground; on which Maisie +addressed Mrs. Wix. "Shan't we lose the boat?" + +"Yes, we shall lose the boat," Mrs. Wix remarked to Sir Claude. + +Mrs. Beale meanwhile faced full at Maisie. "I don't know what to make of +you!" she launched. + +"Good-bye," said Maisie to Sir Claude. + +"Good-bye, Maisie," Sir Claude answered. + +Mrs. Beale came away from the door. "Goodbye!" she hurled at Maisie; +then passed straight across the room and disappeared in the adjoining +one. + +Sir Claude had reached the other door and opened it. Mrs. Wix was +already out. On the threshold Maisie paused; she put out her hand to her +stepfather. He took it and held it a moment, and their eyes met as the +eyes of those who have done for each other what they can. "Good-bye," he +repeated. + +"Good-bye." And Maisie followed Mrs. Wix. + +They caught the steamer, which was just putting off, and, hustled across +the gulf, found themselves on the deck so breathless and so scared that +they gave up half the voyage to letting their emotion sink. It sank +slowly and imperfectly; but at last, in mid-channel, surrounded by the +quiet sea, Mrs. Wix had courage to revert. "I didn't look back, did +you?" + +"Yes. He wasn't there," said Maisie. + +"Not on the balcony?" + +Maisie waited a moment; then "He wasn't there" she simply said again. + +Mrs. Wix also was silent a while. "He went to HER," she finally +observed. + +"Oh I know!" the child replied. + +Mrs. Wix gave a sidelong look. She still had room for wonder at what +Maisie knew. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT MAISIE KNEW*** + + +******* This file should be named 7118.txt or 7118.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/7/1/1/7118 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!**** + + +Title: What Maisie Knew + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7118] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on March 12, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT MAISIE KNEW *** + + + + +Etext created by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA + + + + +WHAT MAISIE KNEW + +HENRY JAMES + + +The litigation seemed interminable and had in fact been +complicated; but by the decision on the appeal the judgement of +the divorce-court was confirmed as to the assignment of the +child. The father, who, though bespattered from head to foot, had +made good his case, was, in pursuance of this triumph, appointed +to keep her: it was not so much that the mother's character had +been more absolutely damaged as that the brilliancy of a lady's +complexion (and this lady's, in court, was immensely remarked) +might be more regarded as showing the spots. Attached, however, +to the second pronouncement was a condition that detracted, for +Beale Farange, from its sweetness--an order that he should refund +to his late wife the twenty-six hundred pounds put down by her, +as it was called, some three years before, in the interest of the +child's maintenance and precisely on a proved understanding that +he would take no proceedings: a sum of which he had had the +administration and of which he could render not the least +account. The obligation thus attributed to her adversary was no +small balm to Ida's resentment; it drew a part of the sting from +her defeat and compelled Mr. Farange perceptibly to lower his +crest. He was unable to produce the money or to raise it in any +way; so that after a squabble scarcely less public and scarcely +more decent than the original shock of battle his only issue from +his predicament was a compromise proposed by his legal advisers +and finally accepted by hers. + +His debt was by this arrangement remitted to him and the little +girl disposed of in a manner worthy of the judgement-seat of +Solomon. She was divided in two and the portions tossed +impartially to the disputants. They would take her, in rotation, +for six months at a time; she would spend half the year with +each. This was odd justice in the eyes of those who still blinked +in the fierce light projected from the tribunal--a light in which +neither parent figured in the least as a happy example to youth +and innocence. What was to have been expected on the evidence was +the nomination, in loco parentis, of some proper third person, +some respectable or at least some presentable friend. Apparently, +however, the circle of the Faranges had been scanned in vain for +any such ornament; so that the only solution finally meeting all +the difficulties was, save that of sending Maisie to a Home, the +partition of the tutelary office in the manner I have mentioned. +There were more reasons for her parents to agree to it than there +had ever been for them to agree to anything; and they now +prepared with her help to enjoy the distinction that waits upon +vulgarity sufficiently attested. Their rupture had resounded, and +after being perfectly insignificant together they would be +decidedly striking apart. Had they not produced an impression +that warranted people in looking for appeals in the newspapers +for the rescue of the little one--reverberation, amid a +vociferous public, of the idea that some movement should be +started or some benevolent person should come forward? A good +lady came indeed a step or two: she was distantly related to Mrs. +Farange, to whom she proposed that, having children and nurseries +wound up and going, she should be allowed to take home the bone +of contention and, by working it into her system, relieve at +least one of the parents. This would make every time, for Maisie, +after her inevitable six months with Beale, much more of a +change. + +"More of a change?" Ida cried. "Won't it be enough of a change +for her to come from that low brute to the person in the world +who detests him most?" + +"No, because you detest him so much that you'll always talk to +her about him. You'll keep him before her by perpetually abusing +him." + +Mrs. Farange stared. "Pray, then, am I to do nothing to +counteract his villainous abuse of ME?" + +The good lady, for a moment, made no reply: her silence was a +grim judgement of the whole point of view. "Poor little monkey!" +she at last exclaimed; and the words were an epitaph for the tomb +of Maisie's childhood. She was abandoned to her fate. What was +clear to any spectator was that the only link binding her to +either parent was this lamentable fact of her being a ready +vessel for bitterness, a deep little porcelain cup in which +biting acids could be mixed. They had wanted her not for any good +they could do her, but for the harm they could, with her +unconscious aid, do each other. She should serve their anger and +seal their revenge, for husband and wife had been alike crippled +by the heavy hand of justice, which in the last resort met on +neither side their indignant claim to get, as they called it, +everything. If each was only to get half this seemed to concede +that neither was so base as the other pretended, or, to put it +differently, offered them both as bad indeed, since they were +only as good as each other. The mother had wished to prevent the +father from, as she said, "so much as looking" at the child; the +father's plea was that the mother's lightest touch was "simply +contamination." These were the opposed principles in which Maisie +was to be educated--she was to fit them together as she might. +Nothing could have been more touching at first than her failure +to suspect the ordeal that awaited her little unspotted soul. +There were persons horrified to think what those in charge of it +would combine to try to make of it: no one could conceive in +advance that they would be able to make nothing ill. This was a +society in which for the most part people were occupied only with +chatter, but the disunited couple had at last grounds for +expecting a time of high activity. They girded their loins, they +felt as if the quarrel had only begun. They felt indeed more +married than ever, inasmuch as what marriage had mainly suggested +to them was the unbroken opportunity to quarrel. There had been +"sides" before, and there were sides as much as ever; for the +sider too the prospect opened out, taking the pleasant form of a +superabundance of matter for desultory conversation. The many +friends of the Faranges drew together to differ about them; +contradiction grew young again over teacups and cigars. Everybody +was always assuring everybody of something very shocking, and +nobody would have been jolly if nobody had been outrageous. The +pair appeared to have a social attraction which failed merely as +regards each other: it was indeed a great deal to be able to say +for Ida that no one but Beale desired her blood, and for Beale +that if he should ever have his eyes scratched out it would be +only by his wife. It was generally felt, to begin with, that they +were awfully good-looking--they had really not been analysed to a +deeper residuum. They made up together for instance some twelve +feet three of stature, and nothing was more discussed than the +apportionment of this quantity. The sole flaw in Ida's beauty was +a length and reach of arm conducive perhaps to her having so +often beaten her ex-husband at billiards, a game in which she +showed a superiority largely accountable, as she maintained, for +the resentment finding expression in his physical violence. +Billiards was her great accomplishment and the distinction her +name always first produced the mention of. Notwithstanding some +very long lines everything about her that might have been large +and that in many women profited by the licence was, with a single +exception, admired and cited for its smallness. The exception was +her eyes, which might have been of mere regulation size, but +which overstepped the modesty of nature; her mouth, on the other +hand, was barely perceptible, and odds were freely taken as to +the measurement of her waist. She was a person who, when she was +out and she was always out--produced everywhere a sense of having +been seen often, the sense indeed of a kind of abuse of +visibility, so that it would have been, in the usual places +rather vulgar to wonder at her. Strangers only did that; but +they, to the amusement of the familiar, did it very much: it was +an inevitable way of betraying an alien habit. Like her husband +she carried clothes, carried them as a train carries passengers: +people had been known to compare their taste and dispute about +the accommodation they gave these articles, though inclining on +the whole to the commendation of Ida as less overcrowded, +especially with jewellery and flowers. Beale Farange had natural +decorations, a kind of costume in his vast fair beard, burnished +like a gold breastplate, and in the eternal glitter of the teeth +that his long moustache had been trained not to hide and that +gave him, in every possible situation, the look of the joy of +life. He had been destined in his youth for diplomacy and +momentarily attached, without a salary, to a legation which +enabled him often to say "In MY time in the East": but +contemporary history had somehow had no use for him, had hurried +past him and left him in perpetual Piccadilly. Every one knew +what he had only twenty-five hundred. Poor Ida, who had run +through everything, had now nothing but her carriage and her +paralysed uncle. This old brute as he was called, was supposed to +have a lot put away. The child was provided for, thanks to a +crafty godmother, a defunct aunt of Beale's, who had left her +something in such a manner that the parents could appropriate +only the income. + + + +I + +The child was provided for, but the new arrangement was +inevitably confounding to a young intelligence intensely aware +that something had happened which must matter a good deal and +looking anxiously out for the effects of so great a cause. It was +to be the fate of this patient little girl to see much more than +she at first understood, but also even at first to understand +much more than any little girl, however patient, had perhaps ever +understood before. Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or a story +could have been so in the thick of the fight. She was taken into +the confidence of passions on which she fixed just the stare she +might have had for images bounding across the wall in the slide +of a magic-lantern. Her little world was phantasmagoric--strange +shadows dancing on a sheet. It was as if the whole performance +had been given for her--a mite of a half-scared infant in a great +dim theatre. She was in short introduced to life with a +liberality in which the selfishness of others found its account, +and there was nothing to avert the sacrifice but the modesty of +her youth. + +Her first term was with her father, who spared her only in not +letting her have the wild letters addressed to her by her mother: +he confined himself to holding them up at her and shaking them, +while he showed his teeth, and then amusing her by the way he +chucked them, across the room, bang into the fire. Even at +that moment, however, she had a scared anticipation of fatigue, a +guilty sense of not rising to the occasion, feeling the charm of +the violence with which the stiff unopened envelopes, whose big +monograms--Ida bristled with monograms--she would have liked to +see, were made to whizz, like dangerous missiles, through the +air. The greatest effect of the great cause was her own greater +importance, chiefly revealed to her in the larger freedom with +which she was handled, pulled hither and thither and kissed, and +the proportionately greater niceness she was obliged to show. Her +features had somehow become prominent; they were so perpetually +nipped by the gentlemen who came to see her father and the smoke +of whose cigarettes went into her face. Some of these gentlemen +made her strike matches and light their cigarettes; others, +holding her on knees violently jolted, pinched the calves of her +legs till she shrieked--her shriek was much admired--and +reproached them with being toothpicks. The word stuck in her +mind and contributed to her feeling from this time that she was +deficient in something that would meet the general desire. She +found out what it was: it was a congenital tendency to the +production of a substance to which Moddle, her nurse, gave a +short ugly name, a name painfully associated at dinner with the +part of the joint that she didn't like. She had left behind her +the time when she had no desires to meet, none at least save +Moddle's, who, in Kensington Gardens, was always on the bench +when she came back to see if she had been playing too far. +Moddle's desire was merely that she shouldn't do that, and she +met it so easily that the only spots in that long brightness were +the moments of her wondering what would become of her if, on her +rushing back, there should be no Moddle on the bench. They still +went to the Gardens, but there was a difference even there; she +was impelled perpetually to look at the legs of other children +and ask her nurse if THEY were toothpicks. Moddle was terribly +truthful; she always said: "Oh my dear, you'll not find such +another pair as your own." It seemed to have to do with something +else that Moddle often said: "You feel the strain--that's where +it is; and you'll feel it still worse, you know." + +Thus from the first Maisie not only felt it, but knew she felt +it. A part of it was the consequence of her father's telling her +he felt it too, and telling Moddle, in her presence, that she +must make a point of driving that home. She was familiar, at the +age of six, with the fact that everything had been changed on her +account, everything ordered to enable him to give himself up to +her. She was to remember always the words in which Moddle +impressed upon her that he did so give himself: "Your papa wishes +you never to forget, you know, that he has been dreadfully put +about." If the skin on Moddle's face had to Maisie the air of +being unduly, almost painfully, stretched, it never presented +that appearance so much as when she uttered, as she often had +occasion to utter, such words. The child wondered if they didn't +make it hurt more than usual; but it was only after some time +that she was able to attach to the picture of her father's +sufferings, and more particularly to her nurse's manner about +them, the meaning for which these things had waited. By the time +she had grown sharper, as the gentlemen who had criticised her +calves used to say, she found in her mind a collection of images +and echoes to which meanings were attachable--images and echoes +kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high +drawers, like games she wasn't yet big enough to play. The great +strain meanwhile was that of carrying by the right end the things +her father said about her mother--things mostly indeed that +Moddle, on a glimpse of them, as if they had been complicated +toys or difficult books, took out of her hands and put away in +the closet. A wonderful assortment of objects of this kind she +was to discover there later, all tumbled up too with the things, +shuffled into the same receptacle, that her mother had said about +her father. + +She had the knowledge that on a certain occasion which every day +brought nearer her mother would be at the door to take her away, +and this would have darkened all the days if the ingenious Moddle +hadn't written on a paper in very big easy words ever so many +pleasures that she would enjoy at the other house. These promises +ranged from "a mother's fond love" to "a nice poached egg to +your tea," and took by the way the prospect of sitting up ever so +late to see the lady in question dressed, in silks and velvets +and diamonds and pearls, to go out: so that it was a real support +to Maisie, at the supreme hour, to feel how, by Moddle's +direction, the paper was thrust away in her pocket and there +clenched in her fist. The supreme hour was to furnish her with a +vivid reminiscence, that of a strange outbreak in the drawing- +room on the part of Moddle, who, in reply to something her father +had just said, cried aloud: "You ought to be perfectly ashamed of +yourself--you ought to blush, sir, for the way you go on!" The +carriage, with her mother in it, was at the door; a gentleman who +was there, who was always there, laughed out very loud; her +father, who had her in his arms, said to Moddle: "My dear woman, +I'll settle you presently!"--after which he repeated, showing his +teeth more than ever at Maisie while he hugged her, the words for +which her nurse had taken him up. Maisie was not at the moment so +fully conscious of them as of the wonder of Moddle's sudden +disrespect and crimson face; but she was able to produce them in +the course of five minutes when, in the carriage, her mother, all +kisses, ribbons, eyes, arms, strange sounds and sweet smells, +said to her: "And did your beastly papa, my precious angel, send +any message to your own loving mamma?" Then it was that she found +the words spoken by her beastly papa to be, after all, in her +little bewildered ears, from which, at her mother's appeal, they +passed, in her clear shrill voice, straight to her little +innocent lips. "He said I was to tell you, from him," she +faithfully reported, "that you're a nasty horrid pig!" + + + + +II + +In that lively sense of the immediate which is the very air of a +child's mind the past, on each occasion, became for her as +indistinct as the future: she surrendered herself to the actual +with a good faith that might have been touching to either parent. +Crudely as they had calculated they were at first justified by +the event: she was the little feathered shuttlecock they could +fiercely keep flying between them. The evil they had the gift of +thinking or pretending to think of each other they poured into +her little gravely-gazing soul as into a boundless receptacle, +and each of them had doubtless the best conscience in the world +as to the duty of teaching her the stern truth that should be her +safeguard against the other. She was at the age for which all +stories are true and all conceptions are stories. The actual was +the absolute, the present alone was vivid. The objurgation for +instance launched in the carriage by her mother after she had at +her father's bidding punctually performed was a missive that +dropped into her memory with the dry rattle of a letter falling +into a pillar-box. Like the letter it was, as part of the +contents of a well-stuffed post-bag, delivered in due course at +the right address. In the presence of these overflowings, after +they had continued for a couple of years, the associates of +either party sometimes felt that something should be done for +what they called "the real good, don't you know?" of the child. +The only thing done, however, in general, took place when it was +sighingly remarked that she fortunately wasn't all the year round +where she happened to be at the awkward moment, and that, +furthermore, either from extreme cunning or from extreme +stupidity, she appeared not to take things in. + +The theory of her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents, +corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the +complete vision, private but final, of the strange office she +filled. It was literally a moral revolution and accomplished in +the depths of her nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves +began to move their arms and legs; old forms and phrases began to +have a sense that frightened her. She had a new feeling, the +feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea +of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment. She puzzled +out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she +had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that +everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. +Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be +employed no longer. She would forget everything, she would repeat +nothing, and when, as a tribute to the successful application of +her system, she began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a +pleasure new and keen. When therefore, as she grew older, her +parents in turn announced before her that she had grown shockingly +dull, it was not from any real contraction of her little stream of +life. She spoiled their fun, but she practically added to her own. +She saw more and more; she saw too much. It was Miss Overmore, +her first governess, who on a momentous occasion had sown the +seeds of secrecy; sown them not by anything she said, but by a +mere roll of those fine eyes which Maisie already admired. +Moddle had become at this time, after alternations of residence +of which the child had no clear record, an image faintly embalmed +in the remembrance of hungry disappearances from the nursery +and distressful lapses in the alphabet, sad embarrassments, +in particular, when invited to recognise something her nurse +described as "the important letter haitch." Miss Overmore, +however hungry, never disappeared: this marked her somehow as of +higher rank, and the character was confirmed by a prettiness that +Maisie supposed to be extraordinary. Mrs. Farange had described her +as almost too pretty, and some one had asked what that mattered +so long as Beale wasn't there. "Beale or no Beale," Maisie had +heard her mother reply, "I take her because she's a lady and yet +awfully poor. Rather nice people, but there are seven sisters +at home. What do people mean?" + +Maisie didn't know what people meant, but she knew very soon all +the names of all the sisters; she could say them off better than +she could say the multiplication-table. She privately wondered +moreover, though she never asked, about the awful poverty, of +which her companion also never spoke. Food at any rate came up by +mysterious laws; Miss Overmore never, like Moddle, had on an +apron, and when she ate she held her fork with her little finger +curled out. The child, who watched her at many moments, watched +her particularly at that one. "I think you're lovely," she often +said to her; even mamma, who was lovely too, had not such a +pretty way with the fork. Maisie associated this showier presence +with her now being "big," knowing of course that nursery- +governesses were only for little girls who were not, as she said, +"really" little. She vaguely knew, further, somehow, that the +future was still bigger than she, and that a part of what made it +so was the number of governesses lurking in it and ready to dart +out. Everything that had happened when she was really little was +dormant, everything but the positive certitude, bequeathed from +afar by Moddle, that the natural way for a child to have her +parents was separate and successive, like her mutton and her +pudding or her bath and her nap. + +"DOES he know he lies?"--that was what she had vivaciously asked +Miss Overmore on the occasion which was so suddenly to lead to a +change in her life. + +"Does he know--" Miss Overmore stared; she had a stocking pulled +over her hand and was pricking at it with a needle which she +poised in the act. Her task was homely, but her movement, like +all her movements, graceful. + +"Why papa." + +"That he 'lies'?" + +"That's what mamma says I'm to tell him--'that he lies and he +knows he lies.'" Miss Overmore turned very red, though she +laughed out till her head fell back; then she pricked again at +her muffled hand so hard that Maisie wondered how she could +bear it. "AM I to tell him?" the child went on. It was then that +her companion addressed her in the unmistakeable language of a +pair of eyes of deep dark grey. "I can't say No," they replied as +distinctly as possible; "I can't say No, because I'm afraid of +your mamma, don't you see? Yet how can I say Yes after your papa +has been so kind to me, talking to me so long the other day, +smiling and flashing his beautiful teeth at me the time we met +him in the Park, the time when, rejoicing at the sight of us, he +left the gentlemen he was with and turned and walked with us, +stayed with us for half an hour?" Somehow in the light of Miss +Overmore's lovely eyes that incident came back to Maisie with a +charm it hadn't had at the time, and this in spite of the fact +that after it was over her governess had never but once alluded +to it. On their way home, when papa had quitted them, she had +expressed the hope that the child wouldn't mention it to mamma. +Maisie liked her so, and had so the charmed sense of being liked +by her, that she accepted this remark as settling the matter and +wonderingly conformed to it. The wonder now lived again, lived in +the recollection of what papa had said to Miss Overmore: "I've +only to look at you to see you're a person I can appeal to for +help to save my daughter." Maisie's ignorance of what she was to +be saved from didn't diminish the pleasure of the thought that +Miss Overmore was saving her. It seemed to make them cling +together as in some wild game of "going round." + + + +III + +She was therefore all the more startled when her mother said to +her in connexion with something to be done before her next +migration: "You understand of course that she's not going with +you." + +Maisie turned quite faint. "Oh I thought she was." + +"It doesn't in the least matter, you know, what you think," Mrs. +Farange loudly replied; "and you had better indeed for the +future, miss, learn to keep your thoughts to yourself." This was +exactly what Maisie had already learned, and the accomplishment +was just the source of her mother's irritation. It was of a +horrid little critical system, a tendency, in her silence, to +judge her elders, that this lady suspected her, liking as she +did, for her own part, a child to be simple and confiding. She +liked also to hear the report of the whacks she administered to +Mr. Farange's character, to his pretensions to peace of mind: the +satisfaction of dealing them diminished when nothing came back. +The day was at hand, and she saw it, when she should feel more +delight in hurling Maisie at him than in snatching her away; so +much so that her conscience winced under the acuteness of a +candid friend who had remarked that the real end of all their +tugging would be that each parent would try to make the little +girl a burden to the other--a sort of game in which a fond mother +clearly wouldn't show to advantage. The prospect of not showing +to advantage, a distinction in which she held she had never +failed, begot in Ida Farange an ill humour of which several +persons felt the effect. She determined that Beale at any rate +should feel it; she reflected afresh that in the study of how to +be odious to him she must never give way. Nothing could incommode +him more than not to get the good, for the child, of a nice +female appendage who had clearly taken a fancy to her. One of the +things Ida said to the appendage was that Beale's was a house +in which no decent woman could consent to be seen. It was Miss +Overmore herself who explained to Maisie that she had had a hope +of being allowed to accompany her to her father's, and that this +hope had been dashed by the way her mother took it. "She says +that if I ever do such a thing as enter his service I must never +expect to show my face in this house again. So I've promised not +to attempt to go with you. If I wait patiently till you come back +here we shall certainly be together once more." + +Waiting patiently, and above all waiting till she should come +back there, seemed to Maisie a long way round--it reminded her of +all the things she had been told, first and last, that she should +have if she'd be good and that in spite of her goodness she had +never had at all. "Then who'll take care of me at papa's?" + +"Heaven only knows, my own precious!" Miss Overmore replied, +tenderly embracing her. There was indeed no doubt that she was +dear to this beautiful friend. What could have proved it better +than the fact that before a week was out, in spite of their +distressing separation and her mother's prohibition and Miss +Overmore's scruples and Miss Overmore's promise, the beautiful +friend had turned up at her father's? The little lady already +engaged there to come by the hour, a fat dark little lady with a +foreign name and dirty fingers, who wore, throughout, a bonnet +that had at first given her a deceptive air, too soon dispelled, +of not staying long, besides asking her pupil questions that had +nothing to do with lessons, questions that Beale Farange himself, +when two or three were repeated to him, admitted to be awfully +low--this strange apparition faded before the bright creature who +had braved everything for Maisie's sake. The bright creature told +her little charge frankly what had happened--that she had really +been unable to hold out. She had broken her vow to Mrs. Farange; +she had struggled for three days and then had come straight to +Maisie's papa and told him the simple truth. She adored his +daughter; she couldn't give her up; she'd make for her any +sacrifice. On this basis it had been arranged that she should +stay; her courage had been rewarded; she left Maisie in no doubt +as to the amount of courage she had required. Some of the things +she said made a particular impression on the child--her +declaration for instance that when her pupil should get older +she'd understand better just how "dreadfully bold" a young lady, +to do exactly what she had done, had to be. + +"Fortunately your papa appreciates it; he appreciates it +IMMENSELY"--that was one of the things Miss Overmore also said, +with a striking insistence on the adverb. Maisie herself was no +less impressed with what this martyr had gone through, especially +after hearing of the terrible letter that had come from Mrs. +Farange. Mamma had been so angry that, in Miss Overmore's own +words, she had loaded her with insult--proof enough indeed that +they must never look forward to being together again under +mamma's roof. Mamma's roof, however, had its turn, this time, for +the child, of appearing but remotely contingent, so that, to +reassure her, there was scarce a need of her companion's secret, +solemnly confided--the probability there would be no going back +to mamma at all. It was Miss Overmore's private conviction, and a +part of the same communication, that if Mr. Farange's daughter +would only show a really marked preference she would be backed up +by "public opinion" in holding on to him. Poor Maisie could +scarcely grasp that incentive, but she could surrender herself to +the day. She had conceived her first passion, and the object of +it was her governess. It hadn't been put to her, and she +couldn't, or at any rate she didn't, put it to herself, that she +liked Miss Overmore better than she liked papa; but it would have +sustained her under such an imputation to feel herself able to +reply that papa too liked Miss Overmore exactly as much. He had +particularly told her so. Besides she could easily see it. + + + +IV + +All this led her on, but it brought on her fate as well, the day +when her mother would be at the door in the carriage in which +Maisie now rode on no occasions but these. There was no question +at present of Miss Overmore's going back with her: it was +universally recognised that her quarrel with Mrs. Farange was +much too acute. The child felt it from the first; there was no +hugging nor exclaiming as that lady drove her away--there was +only a frightening silence, unenlivened even by the invidious +enquiries of former years, which culminated, according to its +stern nature, in a still more frightening old woman, a figure +awaiting her on the very doorstep. "You're to be under this +lady's care," said her mother. "Take her, Mrs. Wix," she added, +addressing the figure impatiently and giving the child a push +from which Maisie gathered that she wished to set Mrs. Wix an +example of energy. Mrs. Wix took her and, Maisie felt the next +day, would never let her go. She had struck her at first, just +after Miss Overmore, as terrible; but something in her voice at +the end of an hour touched the little girl in a spot that had +never even yet been reached. Maisie knew later what it was, +though doubtless she couldn't have made a statement of it: these +were things that a few days' talk with Mrs. Wix quite lighted up. +The principal one was a matter Mrs. Wix herself always +immediately mentioned: she had had a little girl quite of her +own, and the little girl had been killed on the spot. She had had +absolutely nothing else in all the world, and her affliction had +broken her heart. It was comfortably established between them +that Mrs. Wix's heart was broken. What Maisie felt was that she +had been, with passion and anguish, a mother, and that this was +something Miss Overmore was not, something (strangely, +confusingly) that mamma was even less. So it was that in the +course of an extraordinarily short time she found herself as +deeply absorbed in the image of the little dead Clara Matilda, +who, on a crossing in the Harrow Road, had been knocked down and +crushed by the cruellest of hansoms, as she had ever found +herself in the family group made vivid by one of seven. "She's +your little dead sister," Mrs. Wix ended by saying, and Maisie, +all in a tremor of curiosity and compassion, addressed from that +moment a particular piety to the small accepted acquisition. +Somehow she wasn't a real sister, but that only made her the more +romantic. It contributed to this view of her that she was never +to be spoken of in that character to any one else--least of all +to Mrs. Farange, who wouldn't care for her nor recognise the +relationship: it was to be just an unutterable and inexhaustible +little secret with Mrs. Wix. Maisie knew everything about her +that could be known, everything she had said or done in her +little mutilated life, exactly how lovely she was, exactly how +her hair was curled and her frocks were trimmed. Her hair came +down--far below her waist--it was of the most wonderful golden +brightness, just as Mrs. Wix's own had been a long time before. +Mrs. Wix's own was indeed very remarkable still, and Maisie had +felt at first that she should never get on with it. It played a +large part in the sad and strange appearance, the appearance as +of a kind of greasy greyness, which Mrs. Wix had presented on the +child's arrival. It had originally been yellow, but time had +turned that elegance to ashes, to a turbid sallow unvenerable +white. Still excessively abundant, it was dressed in a manner of +which the poor lady appeared not yet to have recognised the +supersession, with a glossy braid, like a large diadem, on the +top of the head, and behind, at the nape of the neck, a dingy +rosette like a large button. She wore glasses which, in humble +reference to a divergent obliquity of vision, she called her +straighteners, and a little ugly snuff-coloured dress trimmed +with satin bands in the form of scallops and glazed with +antiquity. The straighteners, she explained to Maisie, were put +on for the sake of others, whom, as she believed, they helped to +recognise the bearing, otherwise doubtful, of her regard; the +rest of the melancholy garb could only have been put on for +herself. With the added suggestion of her goggles it reminded her +pupil of the polished shell or corslet of a horrid beetle. At +first she had looked cross and almost cruel; but this impression +passed away with the child's increased perception of her being in +the eyes of the world a figure mainly to laugh at. She was as +droll as a charade or an animal toward the end of the "natural +history"--a person whom people, to make talk lively, described to +each other and imitated. Every one knew the straighteners; every +one knew the diadem and the button, the scallops and satin bands; +every one, though Maisie had never betrayed her, knew even Clara +Matilda. + +It was on account of these things that mamma got her for such low +pay, really for nothing: so much, one day when Mrs. Wix had +accompanied her into the drawing-room and left her, the child +heard one of the ladies she found there--a lady with eyebrows +arched like skipping-ropes and thick black stitching, like ruled +lines for musical notes on beautiful white gloves--announce to +another. She knew governesses were poor; Miss Overmore was +unmentionably and Mrs. Wix ever so publicly so. Neither this, +however, nor the old brown frock nor the diadem nor the button, +made a difference for Maisie in the charm put forth through +everything, the charm of Mrs. Wix's conveying that somehow, in +her ugliness and her poverty, she was peculiarly and soothingly +safe; safer than any one in the world, than papa, than mamma, +than the lady with the arched eyebrows; safer even, though so +much less beautiful, than Miss Overmore, on whose loveliness, as +she supposed it, the little girl was faintly conscious that one +couldn't rest with quite the same tucked-in and kissed-for-good- +night feeling. Mrs. Wix was as safe as Clara Matilda, who was in +heaven and yet, embarrassingly, also in Kensal Green, where they +had been together to see her little huddled grave. It was from +something in Mrs. Wix's tone, which in spite of caricature +remained indescribable and inimitable, that Maisie, before her +term with her mother was over, drew this sense of a support, like +a breast-high banister in a place of "drops," that would never +give way. If she knew her instructress was poor and queer she +also knew she was not nearly so "qualified" as Miss Overmore, who +could say lots of dates straight off (letting you hold the book +yourself) state the position of Malabar, play six pieces without +notes and, in a sketch, put in beautifully the trees and houses +and difficult parts. Maisie herself could play more pieces than +Mrs. Wix, who was moreover visibly ashamed of her houses and +trees and could only, with the help of a smutty forefinger, of +doubtful legitimacy in the field of art, do the smoke coming out +of the chimneys. They dealt, the governess and her pupil, in +"subjects," but there were many the governess put off from week +to week and that they never got to at all: she only used to say +"We'll take that in its proper order." Her order was a circle as +vast as the untravelled globe. She had not the spirit of +adventure--the child could perfectly see how many subjects she +was afraid of. She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, +through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth. She +knew swarms of stories, mostly those of the novels she had read; +relating them with a memory that never faltered and a wealth of +detail that was Maisie's delight. They were all about love and +beauty and countesses and wickedness. Her conversation was +practically an endless narrative, a great garden of romance, with +sudden vistas into her own life and gushing fountains of +homeliness. These were the parts where they most lingered; she +made the child take with her again every step of her long, lame +course and think it beyond magic or monsters. Her pupil acquired +a vivid vision of every one who had ever, in her phrase, knocked +against her--some of them oh so hard!--every one literally but +Mr. Wix, her husband, as to whom nothing was mentioned save that +he had been dead for ages. He had been rather remarkably absent +from his wife's career, and Maisie was never taken to see his +grave. + + + +V + +The second parting from Miss Overmore had been bad enough, but +this first parting from Mrs. Wix was much worse. The child had +lately been to the dentist's and had a term of comparison for the +screwed-up intensity of the scene. It was dreadfully silent, as +it had been when her tooth was taken out; Mrs. Wix had on that +occasion grabbed her hand and they had clung to each other with +the frenzy of their determination not to scream. Maisie, at the +dentist's, had been heroically still, but just when she felt most +anguish had become aware of an audible shriek on the part of her +companion, a spasm of stifled sympathy. This was reproduced by +the only sound that broke their supreme embrace when, a month +later, the "arrangement," as her periodical uprootings were +called, played the part of the horrible forceps. Embedded in Mrs. +Wix's nature as her tooth had been socketed in her gum, the +operation of extracting her would really have been a case for +chloroform. It was a hug that fortunately left nothing to say, +for the poor woman's want of words at such an hour seemed to fall +in with her want of everything. Maisie's alternate parent, in the +outermost vestibule--he liked the impertinence of crossing as +much as that of his late wife's threshold--stood over them with +his open watch and his still more open grin, while from the only +corner of an eye on which something of Mrs. Wix's didn't impinge +the child saw at the door a brougham in which Miss Overmore also +waited. She remembered the difference when, six months before, +she had been torn from the breast of that more spirited +protectress. Miss Overmore, then also in the vestibule, but of +course in the other one, had been thoroughly audible and voluble; +her protest had rung out bravely and she had declared that +something--her pupil didn't know exactly what--was a regular +wicked shame. That had at the time dimly recalled to Maisie the +far-away moment of Moddle's great outbreak: there seemed always +to be "shames" connected in one way or another with her +migrations. At present, while Mrs. Wix's arms tightened and the +smell of her hair was strong, she further remembered how, in +pacifying Miss Overmore, papa had made use of the words "you dear +old duck!"--an expression which, by its oddity, had stuck fast in +her young mind, having moreover a place well prepared for it +there by what she knew of the governess whom she now always +mentally characterised as the pretty one. She wondered whether +this affection would be as great as before: that would at all +events be the case with the prettiness Maisie could see in the +face which showed brightly at the window of the brougham. + +The brougham was a token of harmony, of the fine conditions papa +would this time offer: he had usually come for her in a hansom, +with a four-wheeler behind for the boxes. The four-wheeler with +the boxes on it was actually there, but mamma was the only lady +with whom she had ever been in a conveyance of the kind always of +old spoken of by Moddle as a private carriage. Papa's carriage +was, now that he had one, still more private, somehow, than +mamma's; and when at last she found herself quite on top, as she +felt, of its inmates and gloriously rolling away, she put to Miss +Overmore, after another immense and talkative squeeze, a question +of which the motive was a desire for information as to the +continuity of a certain sentiment. "Did papa like you just the +same while I was gone?" she enquired--full of the sense of how +markedly his favour had been established in her presence. She had +bethought herself that this favour might, like her presence and +as if depending on it, be only intermittent and for the season. +Papa, on whose knee she sat, burst into one of those loud laughs +of his that, however prepared she was, seemed always, like some +trick in a frightening game, to leap forth and make her jump. +Before Miss Overmore could speak he replied: "Why, you little +donkey, when you're away what have I left to do but just to love +her?" Miss Overmore hereupon immediately took her from him, and +they had a merry little scrimmage over her of which Maisie caught +the surprised perception in the white stare of an old lady who +passed in a victoria. Then her beautiful friend remarked to her +very gravely: "I shall make him understand that if he ever again +says anything as horrid as that to you I shall carry you straight +off and we'll go and live somewhere together and be good quiet +little girls." The child couldn't quite make out why her father's +speech had been horrid, since it only expressed that appreciation +which their companion herself had of old described as "immense." +To enter more into the truth of the matter she appealed to him +again directly, asked if in all those months Miss Overmore hadn't +been with him just as she had been before and just as she would +be now. "Of course she has, old girl--where else could the poor +dear be?" cried Beale Farange, to the still greater scandal of +their companion, who protested that unless he straightway "took +back" his nasty wicked fib it would be, this time, not only him +she would leave, but his child too and his house and his tiresome +trouble--all the impossible things he had succeeded in putting on +her. Beale, under this frolic menace, took nothing back at all; +he was indeed apparently on the point of repeating his +extravagance, but Miss Overmore instructed her little charge that +she was not to listen to his bad jokes: she was to understand +that a lady couldn't stay with a gentleman that way without some +awfully proper reason. + +Maisie looked from one of her companions to the other; this was +the freshest gayest start she had yet enjoyed, but she had a shy +fear of not exactly believing them. "Well, what reason IS +proper?" she thoughtfully demanded. + +"Oh a long-legged stick of a tomboy: there's none so good as +that." Her father enjoyed both her drollery and his own and tried +again to get possession of her--an effort deprecated by their +comrade and leading again to something of a public scuffle. Miss +Overmore declared to the child that she had been all the while +with good friends; on which Beale Farange went on: "She means +good friends of mine, you know--tremendous friends of mine. There +has been no end of THEM about--that I WILL say for her!" Maisie +felt bewildered and was afterwards for some time conscious of a +vagueness, just slightly embarrassing, as to the subject of so +much amusement and as to where her governess had really been. She +didn't feel at all as if she had been seriously told, and no such +feeling was supplied by anything that occurred later. Her +embarrassment, of a precocious instinctive order, attached itself +to the idea that this was another of the matters it was not for +her, as her mother used to say, to go into. Therefore, under her +father's roof during the time that followed, she made no attempt +to clear up her ambiguity by an ingratiating way with housemaids; +and it was an odd truth that the ambiguity itself took nothing +from the fresh pleasure promised her by renewed contact with Miss +Overmore. The confidence looked for by that young lady was of the +fine sort that explanation can't improve, and she herself at any +rate was a person superior to any confusion. For Maisie moreover +concealment had never necessarily seemed deception; she had grown +up among things as to which her foremost knowledge was that she +was never to ask about them. It was far from new to her that the +questions of the small are the peculiar diversion of the great: +except the affairs of her doll Lisette there had scarcely ever +been anything at her mother's that was explicable with a grave +face. Nothing was so easy to her as to send the ladies who +gathered there off into shrieks, and she might have practised +upon them largely if she had been of a more calculating turn. +Everything had something behind it: life was like a long, long +corridor with rows of closed doors. She had learned that at these +doors it was wise not to knock--this seemed to produce from +within such sounds of derision. Little by little, however, she +understood more, for it befell that she was enlightened by +Lisette's questions, which reproduced the effect of her own upon +those for whom she sat in the very darkness of Lisette. Was she +not herself convulsed by such innocence? In the presence of it +she often imitated the shrieking ladies. There were at any rate +things she really couldn't tell even a French doll. She could +only pass on her lessons and study to produce on Lisette the +impression of having mysteries in her life, wondering the while +whether she succeeded in the air of shading off, like her mother, +into the unknowable. When the reign of Miss Overmore followed +that of Mrs. Wix she took a fresh cue, emulating her governess +and bridging over the interval with the simple expectation of +trust. Yes, there were matters one couldn't "go into" with a +pupil. There were for instance days when, after prolonged +absence, Lisette, watching her take off her things, tried hard to +discover where she had been. Well, she discovered a little, but +never discovered all. There was an occasion when, on her being +particularly indiscreet, Maisie replied to her--and precisely +about the motive of a disappearance--as she, Maisie, had once +been replied to by Mrs. Farange: "Find out for yourself!" She +mimicked her mother's sharpness, but she was rather ashamed +afterwards, though as to whether of the sharpness or of the +mimicry was not quite clear. + + + +VI + +She became aware in time that this phase wouldn't have shone by +lessons, the care of her education being now only one of the many +duties devolving on Miss Overmore; a devolution as to which she +was present at various passages between that lady and her father +--passages significant, on either side, of dissent and even of +displeasure. It was gathered by the child on these occasions that +there was something in the situation for which her mother might +"come down" on them all, though indeed the remark, always dropped +by her father, was greeted on his companion's part with direct +contradiction. Such scenes were usually brought to a climax by +Miss Overmore's demanding, with more asperity than she applied to +any other subject, in what position under the sun such a person +as Mrs. Farange would find herself for coming down. As the months +went on the little girl's interpretations thickened, and the more +effectually that this stretch was the longest she had known +without a break. She got used to the idea that her mother, for +some reason, was in no hurry to reinstate her: that idea was +forcibly expressed by her father whenever Miss Overmore, +differing and decided, took him up on the question, which he was +always putting forward, of the urgency of sending her to school. +For a governess Miss Overmore differed surprisingly; far more for +instance than would have entered into the bowed head of Mrs. Wix. +She observed to Maisie many times that she was quite conscious of +not doing her justice, and that Mr. Farange equally measured and +equally lamented this deficiency. The reason of it was that she +had mysterious responsibilities that interfered--responsibilities, +Miss Overmore intimated, to Mr. Farange himself and to the friendly +noisy little house and those who came there. Mr. Farange's remedy +for every inconvenience was that the child should be put at school-- +there were such lots of splendid schools, as everybody knew, +at Brighton and all over the place. That, however, Maisie learned, +was just what would bring her mother down: from the moment he +should delegate to others the housing of his little charge he +hadn't a leg to stand on before the law. Didn't he keep her away +from her mother precisely because Mrs. Farange was one of these +others? + +There was also the solution of a second governess, a young person +to come in by the day and really do the work; but to this Miss +Overmore wouldn't for a moment listen, arguing against it with +great public relish and wanting to know from all comers--she put +it even to Maisie herself--they didn't see how frightfully it +would give her away. "What am I supposed to be at all, don't you +see, if I'm not here to look after her?" She was in a false +position and so freely and loudly called attention to it that it +seemed to become almost a source of glory. The way out of it of +course was just to do her plain duty; but that was unfortunately +what, with his excessive, his exorbitant demands on her, which +every one indeed appeared quite to understand, he practically, he +selfishly prevented. Beale Farange, for Miss Overmore, was now +never anything but "he," and the house was as full as ever of +lively gentlemen with whom, under that designation, she +chaffingly talked about him. Maisie meanwhile, as a subject of +familiar gossip on what was to be done with her, was left so much +to herself that she had hours of wistful thought of the large +loose discipline of Mrs. Wix; yet she none the less held it under +her father's roof a point of superiority that none of his +visitors were ladies. It added to this odd security that she had +once heard a gentleman say to him as if it were a great joke and +in obvious reference to Miss Overmore: "Hanged if she'll let +another woman come near you--hanged if she ever will. She'd let +fly a stick at her as they do at a strange cat!" Maisie greatly +preferred gentlemen as inmates in spite of their also having +their way--louder but sooner over--of laughing out at her. They +pulled and pinched, they teased and tickled her; some of them +even, as they termed it, shied things at her, and all of them +thought it funny to call her by names having no resemblance to +her own. The ladies on the other hand addressed her as "You poor +pet" and scarcely touched her even to kiss her. But it was of the +ladies she was most afraid. + +She was now old enough to understand how disproportionate a stay +she had already made with her father; and also old enough to +enter a little into the ambiguity attending this excess, which +oppressed her particularly whenever the question had been touched +upon in talk with her governess. "Oh you needn't worry: she +doesn't care!" Miss Overmore had often said to her in reference +to any fear that her mother might resent her prolonged detention. +"She has other people than poor little YOU to think about, and +has gone abroad with them; so you needn't be in the least afraid +she'll stickle this time for her rights." Maisie knew Mrs. +Farange had gone abroad, for she had had weeks and weeks before a +letter from her beginning "My precious pet" and taking leave of +her for an indeterminate time; but she had not seen in it a +renunciation of hatred or of the writer's policy of asserting +herself, for the sharpest of all her impressions had been that +there was nothing her mother would ever care so much about as to +torment Mr. Farange. What at last, however, was in this connexion +bewildering and a little frightening was the dawn of a suspicion +that a better way had been found to torment Mr. Farange than to +deprive him of his periodical burden. This was the question that +worried our young lady and that Miss Overmore's confidences and +the frequent observations of her employer only rendered more +mystifying. It was a contradiction that if Ida had now a fancy +for waiving the rights she had originally been so hot about her +late husband shouldn't jump at the monopoly for which he had also +in the first instance so fiercely fought; but when Maisie, with a +subtlety beyond her years, sounded this new ground her main +success was in hearing her mother more freshly abused. Miss +Overmore had up to now rarely deviated from a decent reserve, but +the day came when she expressed herself with a vividness +not inferior to Beale's own on the subject of the lady who had +fled to the Continent to wriggle out of her job. It would serve +this lady right, Maisie gathered, if that contract, in the shape +of an overgrown and underdressed daughter, should be shipped +straight out to her and landed at her feet in the midst of +scandalous excesses. + +The picture of these pursuits was what Miss Overmore took refuge +in when the child tried timidly to ascertain if her father were +disposed to feel he had too much of her. She evaded the point and +only kicked up all round it the dust of Ida's heartlessness and +folly, of which the supreme proof, it appeared, was the fact that +she was accompanied on her journey by a gentleman whom, to be +painfully plain on it, she had--well, "picked up." The terms on +which, unless they were married, ladies and gentlemen might, as +Miss Overmore expressed it, knock about together, were the terms +on which she and Mr. Farange had exposed themselves to possible +misconception. She had indeed, as has been noted, often explained +this before, often said to Maisie: "I don't know what in the +world, darling, your father and I should do without you, for you +just make the difference, as I've told you, of keeping us +perfectly proper." The child took in the office it was so +endearingly presented to her that she performed a comfort that +helped her to a sense of security even in the event of her +mother's giving her up. Familiar as she had grown with the fact +of the great alternative to the proper, she felt in her governess +and her father a strong reason for not emulating that detachment. +At the same time she had heard somehow of little girls--of +exalted rank, it was true--whose education was carried on by +instructors of the other sex, and she knew that if she were at +school at Brighton it would be thought an advantage to her to be +more or less in the hands of masters. She turned these things +over and remarked to Miss Overmore that if she should go to her +mother perhaps the gentleman might become her tutor. + +"The gentleman?" The proposition was complicated enough to make +Miss Overmore stare. + +"The one who's with mamma. Mightn't that make it right--as right +as your being my governess makes it for you to be with papa?" + +Miss Overmore considered; she coloured a little; then she +embraced her ingenious friend. "You're too sweet! I'm a REAL +governess." + +"And couldn't he be a real tutor?" + +"Of course not. He's ignorant and bad." + +"Bad--?" Maisie echoed with wonder. Her companion gave a queer +little laugh at her tone. "He's ever so much younger--" But that +was all. + +"Younger than you?" + +Miss Overmore laughed again; it was the first time Maisie had +seen her approach so nearly to a giggle. + +"Younger than--no matter whom. I don't know anything about him +and don't want to," she rather inconsequently added. "He's not my +sort, and I'm sure, my own darling, he's not yours." And she +repeated the free caress into which her colloquies with Maisie +almost always broke and which made the child feel that her +affection at least was a gage of safety. Parents had come to seem +vague, but governesses were evidently to be trusted. Maisie's +faith in Mrs. Wix for instance had suffered no lapse from the +fact that all communication with her had temporarily dropped. +During the first weeks of their separation Clara Matilda's mamma +had repeatedly and dolefully written to her, and Maisie had +answered with an enthusiasm controlled only by orthographical +doubts; but the correspondence had been duly submitted to Miss +Overmore, with the final effect of its not suiting her. It was +this lady's view that Mr. Farange wouldn't care for it at all, +and she ended by confessing--since her pupil pushed her--that she +didn't care for it herself. She was furiously jealous, she said; +and that weakness was but a new proof of her disinterested +affection. She pronounced Mrs. Wix's effusions moreover +illiterate and unprofitable; she made no scruple of declaring it +monstrous that a woman in her senses should have placed the +formation of her daughter's mind in such ridiculous hands. Maisie +was well aware that the proprietress of the old brown dress and +the old odd headgear was lower in the scale of "form" than Miss +Overmore; but it was now brought home to her with pain that she +was educationally quite out of the question. She was buried for +the time beneath a conclusive remark of her critic's: "She's +really beyond a joke!" This remark was made as that charming +woman held in her hand the last letter that Maisie was to receive +from Mrs. Wix; it was fortified by a decree proscribing the +preposterous tie. "Must I then write and tell her?" the child +bewilderedly asked: she grew pale at the dreadful things it +appeared involved for her to say. "Don't dream of it, my dear-- +I'll write: you may trust me!" cried Miss Overmore; who indeed +wrote to such purpose that a hush in which you could have heard a +pin drop descended upon poor Mrs. Wix. She gave for weeks and +weeks no sign whatever of life: it was as if she had been as +effectually disposed of by Miss Overmore's communication as her +little girl, in the Harrow Road, had been disposed of by the +terrible hansom. Her very silence became after this one of the +largest elements of Maisie's consciousness; it proved a warm and +habitable air, into which the child penetrated further than she +dared ever to mention to her companions. Somewhere in the depths +of it the dim straighteners were fixed upon her; somewhere out of +the troubled little current Mrs. Wix intensely waited. + + + +VII + +It quite fell in with this intensity that one day, on returning +from a walk with the housemaid, Maisie should have found her in +the hall, seated on the stool usually occupied by the telegraph- +boys who haunted Beale Farange's door and kicked their heels +while, in his room, answers to their missives took form with the +aid of smoke-puffs and growls. It had seemed to her on their +parting that Mrs. Wix had reached the last limits of the squeeze, +but she now felt those limits to be transcended and that the +duration of her visitor's hug was a direct reply to Miss +Overmore's veto. She understood in a flash how the visit had come +to be possible--that Mrs. Wix, watching her chance, must have +slipped in under protection of the fact that papa, always +tormented in spite of arguments with the idea of a school, had, +for a three days' excursion to Brighton, absolutely insisted on +the attendance of her adversary. It was true that when Maisie +explained their absence and their important motive Mrs. Wix wore +an expression so peculiar that it could only have had its origin +in surprise. This contradiction indeed peeped out only to vanish, +for at the very moment that, in the spirit of it, she threw +herself afresh upon her young friend a hansom crested with neat +luggage rattled up to the door and Miss Overmore bounded out. The +shock of her encounter with Mrs. Wix was less violent than Maisie +had feared on seeing her and didn't at all interfere with the +sociable tone in which, under her rival's eyes, she explained to +her little charge that she had returned, for a particular reason, +a day sooner than she first intended. She had left papa--in such +nice lodgings--at Brighton; but he would come back to his dear +little home on the morrow. As for Mrs. Wix, papa's companion +supplied Maisie in later converse with the right word for the +attitude of this personage: Mrs. Wix "stood up" to her in a +manner that the child herself felt at the time to be astonishing. +This occurred indeed after Miss Overmore had so far raised her +interdict as to make a move to the dining-room, where, in the +absence of any suggestion of sitting down, it was scarcely more +than natural that even poor Mrs. Wix should stand up. Maisie at +once enquired if at Brighton, this time, anything had come of the +possibility of a school; to which, much to her surprise, Miss +Overmore, who had always grandly repudiated it, replied after an +instant, but quite as if Mrs. Wix were not there: + +"It may be, darling, that something WILL come. The objection, I +must tell you, has been quite removed." + +At this it was still more startling to hear Mrs. Wix speak out +with great firmness. "I don't think, if you'll allow me to say +so, that there's any arrangement by which the objection can be +'removed.' What has brought me here to-day is that I've a message +for Maisie from dear Mrs. Farange." + +The child's heart gave a great thump. "Oh mamma's come back?" + +"Not yet, sweet love, but she's coming," said Mrs. Wix, "and she +has--most thoughtfully, you know--sent me on to prepare you." + +"To prepare her for what, pray?" asked Miss Overmore, whose first +smoothness began, with this news, to be ruffled. + +Mrs. Wix quietly applied her straighteners to Miss Overmore's +flushed beauty. "Well, miss, for a very important communication." + +"Can't dear Mrs. Farange, as you so oddly call her, make her +communications directly? Can't she take the trouble to write to +her only daughter?" the younger lady demanded. "Maisie herself +will tell you that it's months and months since she has had so +much as a word from her." + +"Oh but I've written to mamma!" cried the child as if this would +do quite as well. + +"That makes her treatment of you all the greater scandal," the +governess in possession promptly declared. + +"Mrs. Farange is too well aware," said Mrs. Wix with sustained +spirit, "of what becomes of her letters in this house." + +Maisie's sense of fairness hereupon interposed for her visitor. +"You know, Miss Overmore, that papa doesn't like everything of +mamma's." + +"No one likes, my dear, to be made the subject of such language +as your mother's letters contain. They were not fit for the +innocent child to see," Miss Overmore observed to Mrs. Wix. + +"Then I don't know what you complain of, and she's better without +them. It serves every purpose that I'm in Mrs. Farange's +confidence." + +Miss Overmore gave a scornful laugh. "Then you must be mixed up +with some extraordinary proceedings!" + +"None so extraordinary," cried Mrs. Wix, turning very pale, "as +to say horrible things about the mother to the face of the +helpless daughter!" + +"Things not a bit more horrible, I think," Miss Overmore +returned, "than those you, madam, appear to have come here to say +about the father!" + +Mrs. Wix looked for a moment hard at Maisie, and then, turning +again to this witness, spoke with a trembling voice. "I came to +say nothing about him, and you must excuse Mrs. Farange and me if +we're not so above all reproach as the companion of his travels." + +The young woman thus described stared at the apparent breadth of +the description--she needed a moment to take it in. Maisie, +however, gazing solemnly from one of the disputants to the other, +noted that her answer, when it came, perched upon smiling lips. +"It will do quite as well, no doubt, if you come up to the +requirements of the companion of Mrs. Farange's!" + +Mrs. Wix broke into a queer laugh; it sounded to Maisie an +unsuccessful imitation of a neigh. "That's just what I'm here to +make known--how perfectly the poor lady comes up to them +herself." She held up her head at the child. "You must take your +mamma's message, Maisie, and you must feel that her wishing me to +come to you with it this way is a great proof of interest and +affection. She sends you her particular love and announces to you +that she's engaged to be married to Sir Claude." + +"Sir Claude?" Maisie wonderingly echoed. But while Mrs. Wix +explained that this gentleman was a dear friend of Mrs. +Farange's, who had been of great assistance to her in getting to +Florence and in making herself comfortable there for the winter, +she was not too violently shaken to perceive her old friend's +enjoyment of the effect of this news on Miss Overmore. That young +lady opened her eyes very wide; she immediately remarked that +Mrs. Farange's marriage would of course put an end to any further +pretension to take her daughter back. Mrs. Wix enquired with +astonishment why it should do anything of the sort, and Miss +Overmore gave as an instant reason that it was clearly but +another dodge in a system of dodges. She wanted to get out of the +bargain: why else had she now left Maisie on her father's hands +weeks and weeks beyond the time about which she had originally +made such a fuss? It was vain for Mrs. Wix to represent--as she +speciously proceeded to do--that all this time would be made up +as soon as Mrs. Farange returned: she, Miss Overmore, knew +nothing, thank heaven, about her confederate, but was very sure +any person capable of forming that sort of relation with the lady +in Florence would easily agree to object to the presence in his +house of the fruit of a union that his dignity must ignore. It +was a game like another, and Mrs. Wix's visit was clearly the +first move in it. Maisie found in this exchange of asperities a +fresh incitement to the unformulated fatalism in which her sense +of her own career had long since taken refuge; and it was the +beginning for her of a deeper prevision that, in spite of Miss +Overmore's brilliancy and Mrs. Wix's passion, she should live to +see a change in the nature of the struggle she appeared to have +come into the world to produce. It would still be essentially a +struggle, but its object would now be NOT to receive her. + +Mrs. Wix, after Miss Overmore's last demonstration, addressed +herself wholly to the little girl, and, drawing from the pocket +of her dingy old pelisse a small flat parcel, removed its +envelope and wished to know if THAT looked like a gentleman who +wouldn't be nice to everybody--let alone to a person he would be +so sure to find so nice. Mrs. Farange, in the candour of +new-found happiness, had enclosed a "cabinet" photograph of Sir +Claude, and Maisie lost herself in admiration of the fair smooth +face, the regular features, the kind eyes, the amiable air, the +general glossiness and smartness of her prospective stepfather-- +only vaguely puzzled to suppose herself now with two fathers at +once. Her researches had hitherto indicated that to incur a +second parent of the same sex you had usually to lose the first. +"ISN'T he sympathetic?" asked Mrs. Wix, who had clearly, on the +strength of his charming portrait, made up her mind that Sir +Claude promised her a future. "You can see, I hope," she added +with much expression, "that HE'S a perfect gentleman!" Maisie +had never before heard the word "sympathetic" applied to +anybody's face; she heard it with pleasure and from that moment +it agreeably remained with her. She testified moreover to the +force of her own perception in a small soft sigh of response to +the pleasant eyes that seemed to seek her acquaintance, to speak +to her directly. "He's quite lovely!" she declared to Mrs. Wix. +Then eagerly, irrepressibly, as she still held the photograph and +Sir Claude continued to fraternise, "Oh can't I keep it?" she +broke out. No sooner had she done so than she looked up from it +at Miss Overmore: this was with the sudden instinct of appealing +to the authority that had long ago impressed on her that she +mustn't ask for things. Miss Overmore, to her surprise, looked +distant and rather odd, hesitating and giving her time to turn +again to Mrs. Wix. Then Maisie saw that lady's long face +lengthen; it was stricken and almost scared, as if her young +friend really expected more of her than she had to give. The +photograph was a possession that, direly denuded, she clung to, +and there was a momentary struggle between her fond clutch of it +and her capability of every sacrifice for her precarious pupil. +With the acuteness of her years, however, Maisie saw that her own +avidity would triumph, and she held out the picture to Miss +Overmore as if she were quite proud of her mother. "Isn't he just +lovely?" she demanded while poor Mrs. Wix hungrily wavered, her +straighteners largely covering it and her pelisse gathered about +her with an intensity that strained its ancient seams. + +"It was to ME, darling," the visitor said, "that your mamma so +generously sent it; but of course if it would give you particular +pleasure--" she faltered, only gasping her surrender. + +Miss Overmore continued extremely remote. "If the photograph's +your property, my dear, I shall be happy to oblige you by looking +at it on some future occasion. But you must excuse me if I +decline to touch an object belonging to Mrs. Wix." + +That lady had by this time grown very red. "You might as well see +him this way, miss," she retorted, "as you certainly never will, +I believe, in any other! Keep the pretty picture, by all means, +my precious," she went on: "Sir Claude will be happy himself, I +dare say, to give me one with a kind inscription." The pathetic +quaver of this brave boast was not lost on Maisie, who threw +herself so gratefully on the speaker's neck that, when they had +concluded their embrace, the public tenderness of which, she +felt, made up for the sacrifice she imposed, their companion had +had time to lay a quick hand on Sir Claude and, with a glance at +him or not, whisk him effectually out of sight. Released from the +child's arms Mrs. Wix looked about for the picture; then she +fixed Miss Overmore with a hard dumb stare; and finally, with her +eyes on the little girl again, achieved the grimmest of smiles. +"Well, nothing matters, Maisie, because there's another thing +your mamma wrote about. She has made sure of me." Even after her +loyal hug Maisie felt a bit of a sneak as she glanced at Miss +Overmore for permission to understand this. But Mrs. Wix left +them in no doubt of what it meant. "She has definitely engaged me +--for her return and for yours. Then you'll see for yourself." +Maisie, on the spot, quite believed she should; but the prospect +was suddenly thrown into confusion by an extraordinary +demonstration from Miss Overmore. + +"Mrs. Wix," said that young lady, "has some undiscoverable reason +for regarding your mother's hold on you as strengthened by the +fact that she's about to marry. I wonder then--on that system-- +what our visitor will say to your father's." + +Miss Overmore's words were directed to her pupil, but her face, +lighted with an irony that made it prettier even than ever before, +was presented to the dingy figure that had stiffened itself for +departure. The child's discipline had been bewildering--had +ranged freely between the prescription that she was to answer +when spoken to and the experience of lively penalties on obeying +that prescription. This time, nevertheless, she felt emboldened +for risks; above all as something portentous seemed to have +leaped into her sense of the relations of things. She looked at +Miss Overmore much as she had a way of looking at persons who +treated her to "grown up" jokes. "Do you mean papa's hold on me-- +do you mean HE'S about to marry?" + +"Papa's not about to marry--papa IS married, my dear. Papa was +married the day before yesterday at Brighton." Miss Overmore +glittered more gaily; meanwhile it came over Maisie, and quite +dazzlingly, that her "smart" governess was a bride. "He's my +husband, if you please, and I'm his little wife. So NOW we'll see +who's your little mother!" She caught her pupil to her bosom in a +manner that was not to be outdone by the emissary of her +predecessor, and a few moments later, when things had lurched +back into their places, that poor lady, quite defeated of the +last word, had soundlessly taken flight. + + + +VIII + +After Mrs. Wix's retreat Miss Overmore appeared to recognise that +she was not exactly in a position to denounce Ida Farange's +second union; but she drew from a table-drawer the photograph of +Sir Claude and, standing there before Maisie, studied it at some +length. + +"Isn't he beautiful?" the child ingenuously asked. + +Her companion hesitated. "No--he's horrid," she, to Maisie's +surprise, sharply returned. But she debated another minute, after +which she handed back the picture. It appeared to Maisie herself +to exhibit a fresh attraction, and she was troubled, having never +before had occasion to differ from her lovely friend. So she only +could ask what, such being the case, she should do with it: +should she put it quite away--where it wouldn't be there to +offend? On this Miss Overmore again cast about; after which she +said unexpectedly: "Put it on the schoolroom mantelpiece." + +Maisie felt a fear. "Won't papa dislike to see it there?" + +"Very much indeed; but that won't matter NOW." Miss Overmore +spoke with peculiar significance and to her pupil's mystification. + +"On account of the marriage?" Maisie risked. + +Miss Overmore laughed, and Maisie could see that in spite of the +irritation produced by Mrs. Wix she was in high spirits. "Which +marriage do you mean?" + +With the question put to her it suddenly struck the child she +didn't know, so that she felt she looked foolish. So she took +refuge in saying: "Shall YOU be different--" This was a full +implication that the bride of Sir Claude would be. + +"As your father's wedded wife? Utterly!" Miss Overmore replied. +And the difference began of course in her being addressed, even +by Maisie, from that day and by her particular request, as Mrs. +Beale. It was there indeed principally that it ended, for except +that the child could reflect that she should presently have four +parents in all, and also that at the end of three months the +staircase, for a little girl hanging over banisters, sent up the +deepening rustle of more elaborate advances, everything made the +same impression as before. Mrs. Beale had very pretty frocks, but +Miss Overmore's had been quite as good, and if papa was much +fonder of his second wife than he had been of his first Maisie +had foreseen that fondness, had followed its development almost +as closely as the person more directly involved. There was little +indeed in the commerce of her companions that her precocious +experience couldn't explain, for if they struck her as after all +rather deficient in that air of the honeymoon of which she had so +often heard--in much detail, for instance, from Mrs. Wix--it was +natural to judge the circumstance in the light of papa's proved +disposition to contest the empire of the matrimonial tie. His +honeymoon, when he came back from Brighton--not on the morrow of +Mrs. Wix's visit, and not, oddly, till several days later--his +honeymoon was perhaps perceptibly tinged with the dawn of a later +stage of wedlock. There were things dislike of which, as the +child knew it, wouldn't matter to Mrs. Beale now, and their +number increased so that such a trifle as his hostility to the +photograph of Sir Claude quite dropped out of view. This pleasing +object found a conspicuous place in the schoolroom, which in +truth Mr. Farange seldom entered and in which silent admiration +formed, during the time I speak of, almost the sole scholastic +exercise of Mrs. Beale's pupil. + +Maisie was not long in seeing just what her stepmother had meant +by the difference she should show in her new character. If she +was her father's wife she was not her own governess, and if her +presence had had formerly to be made regular by the theory of a +humble function she was now on a footing that dispensed with all +theories and was inconsistent with all servitude. That was what +she had meant by the drop of the objection to a school; her small +companion was no longer required at home as--it was Mrs. Beale's +own amusing word--a little duenna. The argument against a +successor to Miss Overmore remained: it was composed frankly of +the fact, of which Mrs. Beale granted the full absurdity, that +she was too awfully fond of her stepdaughter to bring herself to +see her in vulgar and mercenary hands. The note of this +particular danger emboldened Maisie to put in a word for Mrs. +Wix, the modest measure of whose avidity she had taken from the +first; but Mrs. Beale disposed afresh and effectually of a +candidate who would be sure to act in some horrible and insidious +way for Ida's interest and who moreover was personally loathsome +and as ignorant as a fish. She made also no more of a secret of +the awkward fact that a good school would be hideously expensive, +and of the further circumstance, which seemed to put an end to +everything, that when it came to the point papa, in spite of his +previous clamour, was really most nasty about paying. "Would you +believe," Mrs. Beale confidentially asked of her little charge, +"that he says I'm a worse expense than ever, and that a daughter +and a wife together are really more than he can afford?" It was +thus that the splendid school at Brighton lost itself in the haze +of larger questions, though the fear that it would provoke Ida to +leap into the breach subsided with her prolonged, her quite +shameless non-appearance. Her daughter and her successor were +therefore left to gaze in united but helpless blankness at all +Maisie was not learning. + +This quantity was so great as to fill the child's days with a +sense of intermission to which even French Lisette gave no accent +--with finished games and unanswered questions and dreaded tests; +with the habit, above all, in her watch for a change, of hanging +over banisters when the door-bell sounded. This was the great +refuge of her impatience, but what she heard at such times was a +clatter of gaiety downstairs; the impression of which, from her +earliest childhood, had built up in her the belief that the +grown-up time was the time of real amusement and above all of +real intimacy. Even Lisette, even Mrs. Wix had never, she felt, +in spite of hugs and tears, been so intimate with her as so many +persons at present were with Mrs. Beale and as so many others of +old had been with Mrs. Farange. The note of hilarity brought +people together still more than the note of melancholy, which was +the one exclusively sounded, for instance, by poor Mrs. Wix. +Maisie in these days preferred none the less that domestic revels +should be wafted to her from a distance: she felt sadly +unsupported for facing the inquisition of the drawing-room. That +was a reason the more for making the most of Susan Ash, who in +her quality of under-housemaid moved at a very different level +and who, none the less, was much depended upon out of doors. She +was a guide to peregrinations that had little in common with +those intensely definite airings that had left with the child a +vivid memory of the regulated mind of Moddle. There had been +under Moddle's system no dawdles at shop-windows and no nudges, +in Oxford Street, of "I SAY, look at 'ER!" There had been an +inexorable treatment of crossings and a serene exemption from the +fear that--especially at corners, of which she was yet weakly +fond--haunted the housemaid, the fear of being, as she ominously +said, "spoken to." The dangers of the town equally with its +diversions added to Maisie's sense of being untutored and +unclaimed. + +The situation however, had taken a twist when, on another of her +returns, at Susan's side, extremely tired, from the pursuit of +exercise qualified by much hovering, she encountered another +emotion. She on this occasion learnt at the door that her instant +attendance was requested in the drawing-room. Crossing the +threshold in a cloud of shame she discerned through the blur Mrs. +Beale seated there with a gentleman who immediately drew the pain +from her predicament by rising before her as the original of the +photograph of Sir Claude. She felt the moment she looked at him +that he was by far the most shining presence that had ever made +her gape, and her pleasure in seeing him, in knowing that he took +hold of her and kissed her, as quickly throbbed into a strange +shy pride in him, a perception of his making up for her fallen +state, for Susan's public nudges, which quite bruised her, and +for all the lessons that, in the dead schoolroom, where at times +she was almost afraid to stay alone, she was bored with not +having. It was as if he had told her on the spot that he belonged +to her, so that she could already show him off and see the effect +he produced. No, nothing else that was most beautiful ever +belonging to her could kindle that particular joy--not Mrs. Beale +at that very moment, not papa when he was gay, nor mamma when she +was dressed, nor Lisette when she was new. The joy almost +overflowed in tears when he laid his hand on her and drew her to +him, telling her, with a smile of which the promise was as bright +as that of a Christmas-tree, that he knew her ever so well by her +mother, but had come to see her now so that he might know her for +himself. She could see that his view of this kind of knowledge +was to make her come away with him, and, further, that it was +just what he was there for and had already been some time: +arranging it with Mrs. Beale and getting on with that lady in a +manner evidently not at all affected by her having on the arrival +of his portrait thought of him so ill. They had grown almost +intimate--or had the air of it--over their discussion; and it was +still further conveyed to Maisie that Mrs. Beale had made no +secret, and would make yet less of one, of all that it cost to +let her go. "You seem so tremendously eager," she said to the +child, "that I hope you're at least clear about Sir Claude's +relation to you. It doesn't appear to occur to him to give you +the necessary reassurance." + +Maisie, a trifle mystified, turned quickly to her new friend. +"Why it's of course that you're MARRIED to her, isn't it?" + +Her anxious emphasis started them off, as she had learned to call +it; this was the echo she infallibly and now quite resignedly +produced; moreover Sir Claude's laughter was an indistinguishable +part of the sweetness of his being there. "We've been married, my +dear child, three months, and my interest in you is a consequence, +don't you know? of my great affection for your mother. In coming +here it's of course for your mother I'm acting." + +"Oh I know," Maisie said with all the candour of her competence. +"She can't come herself--except just to the door." Then as she +thought afresh: "Can't she come even to the door now?" + +"There you are!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed to Sir Claude. She spoke as +if his dilemma were ludicrous. + +His kind face, in a hesitation, seemed to recognise it; but he +answered the child with a frank smile. "No--not very well." + +"Because she has married you?" + +He promptly accepted this reason. "Well, that has a good deal to +do with it." + +He was so delightful to talk to that Maisie pursued the subject. + +"But papa--HE has married Miss Overmore." + +"Ah you'll see that he won't come for you at your mother's," that +lady interposed. + +"Yes, but that won't be for a long time," Maisie hastened to +respond. + +"We won't talk about it now--you've months and months to put in +first." And Sir Claude drew her closer. + +"Oh that's what makes it so hard to give her up!" Mrs. Beale made +this point with her arms out to her stepdaughter. Maisie, +quitting Sir Claude, went over to them and, clasped in a still +tenderer embrace, felt entrancingly the extension of the field of +happiness. "I'LL come for you," said her stepmother, "if Sir +Claude keeps you too long: we must make him quite understand +that! Don't talk to me about her ladyship!" she went on to their +visitor so familiarly that it was almost as if they must have met +before. "I know her ladyship as if I had made her. They're a +pretty pair of parents!" cried Mrs. Beale. + +Maisie had so often heard them called so that the remark diverted +her but an instant from the agreeable wonder of this grand new +form of allusion to her mother; and that, in its turn, presently +left her free to catch at the pleasant possibility, in connexion +with herself, of a relation much happier as between Mrs. Beale +and Sir Claude than as between mamma and papa. Still the next +thing that happened was that her interest in such a relation +brought to her lips a fresh question. + +"Have you seen papa?" she asked of Sir Claude. + +It was the signal for their going off again, as her small +stoicism had perfectly taken for granted that it would be. All +that Mrs. Beale had nevertheless to add was the vague apparent +sarcasm: "Oh papa!" + +"I'm assured he's not at home," Sir Claude replied to the child; +"but if he had been I should have hoped for the pleasure of +seeing him." + +"Won't he mind your coming?" Maisie asked as with need of the +knowledge. + +"Oh you bad little girl!" Mrs. Beale humorously protested. + +The child could see that at this Sir Claude, though still moved +to mirth, coloured a little; but he spoke to her very kindly. +"That's just what I came to see, you know--whether your father +WOULD mind. But Mrs. Beale appears strongly of the opinion that +he won't." + +This lady promptly justified that view to her stepdaughter. "It +will be very interesting, my dear, you know, to find out what it +is to-day that your father does mind. I'm sure _I_ don't know!" +--and she seemed to repeat, though with perceptible resignation, +her plaint of a moment before. "Your father, darling, is a very +odd person indeed." She turned with this, smiling, to Sir Claude. +"But perhaps it's hardly civil for me to say that of his not +objecting to have YOU in the house. If you knew some of the +people he does have!" + +Maisie knew them all, and none indeed were to be compared to Sir +Claude. He laughed back at Mrs. Beale; he looked at such moments +quite as Mrs. Wix, in the long stories she told her pupil, always +described the lovers of her distressed beauties--"the perfect +gentleman and strikingly handsome." He got up, to the child's +regret, as if he were going. "Oh I dare say we should be all +right!" + +Mrs. Beale once more gathered in her little charge, holding her +close and looking thoughtfully over her head at their visitor. +"It's so charming--a man of your type--to have wanted her so +much!" + +"What do you know about my type?" Sir Claude laughed. "Whatever +it may be I dare say it deceives you. The truth about me is +simply that I'm the most unappreciated of--what do you call the +fellows?--'family-men.' Yes, I'm a family-man; upon my honour I +am!" + +"Then why on earth," cried Mrs. Beale, "didn't you marry a +family-woman?" + +Sir Claude looked at her hard. "YOU know who one marries, I +think. Besides, there ARE no family-women--hanged if there are! +None of them want any children--hanged if they do!" + +His account of the matter was most interesting, and Maisie, as if +it were of bad omen for her, stared at the picture in some +dismay. At the same time she felt, through encircling arms, her +protectress hesitate. "You do come out with things! But you mean +her ladyship doesn't want any--really?" + +"Won't hear of them--simply. But she can't help the one she HAS +got." And with this Sir Claude's eyes rested on the little girl +in a way that seemed to her to mask her mother's attitude with +the consciousness of his own. "She must make the best of her, +don't you see? If only for the look of the thing, don't you know? +one wants one's wife to take the proper line about her child." + +"Oh I know what one wants!" Mrs. Beale cried with a competence +that evidently impressed her interlocutor. + +"Well, if you keep HIM up--and I dare say you've had worry enough +--why shouldn't I keep Ida? What's sauce for the goose is sauce +for the gander--or the other way round, don't you know? I mean to +see the thing through." + +Mrs. Beale, for a minute, still with her eyes on him as he leaned +upon the chimneypiece, appeared to turn this over. "You're just a +wonder of kindness--that's what you are!" she said at last. "A +lady's expected to have natural feelings. But YOUR horrible +sex--isn't it a horrible sex, little love?" she demanded with her +cheek upon her stepdaughter's. + +"Oh I like gentlemen best," Maisie lucidly replied. + +The words were taken up merrily. "That's a good one for YOU!" Sir +Claude exclaimed to Mrs. Beale. + +"No," said that lady: "I've only to remember the women she sees +at her mother's." + +"Ah they're very nice now," Sir Claude returned. + +"What do you call 'nice'?" + +"Well, they're all right." + +"That doesn't answer me," said Mrs. Beale; "but I dare say you do +take care of them. That makes you more of an angel to want this +job too." And she playfully whacked her smaller companion. + +"I'm not an angel--I'm an old grandmother," Sir Claude declared. +"I like babies--I always did. If we go to smash I shall look for +a place as responsible nurse." + +Maisie, in her charmed mood, drank in an imputation on her years +which at another moment might have been bitter; but the charm was +sensibly interrupted by Mrs. Beale's screwing her round and +gazing fondly into her eyes, "You're willing to leave me, you +wretch?" + +The little girl deliberated; even this consecrated tie had become +as a cord she must suddenly snap. But she snapped it very gently. +"Isn't it my turn for mamma?" + +"You're a horrible little hypocrite! The less, I think, now said +about 'turns' the better," Mrs. Beale made answer. "_I_ know +whose turn it is. You've not such a passion for your mother!" + +"I say, I say: DO look out!" Sir Claude quite amiably protested. +"There's nothing she hasn't heard. But it doesn't matter--it +hasn't spoiled her. If you knew what it costs me to part with +you!" she pursued to Maisie. + +Sir Claude watched her as she charmingly clung to the child. "I'm +so glad you really care for her. That's so much to the good." + +Mrs. Beale slowly got up, still with her hands on Maisie, but +emitting a soft exhalation. "Well, if you're glad, that may help +us; for I assure you that I shall never give up any rights in her +that I may consider I've acquired by my own sacrifices. I shall +hold very fast to my interest in her. What seems to have happened +is that she has brought you and me together." + +"She has brought you and me together," said Sir Claude. + +His cheerful echo prolonged the happy truth, and Maisie broke out +almost with enthusiasm: "I've brought you and her together!" + +Her companions of course laughed anew and Mrs. Beale gave her an +affectionate shake. "You little monster--take care what you do! +But that's what she does do," she continued to Sir Claude. "She +did it to me and Beale." + +"Well then," he said to Maisie, "you must try the trick at our +place." He held out his hand to her again. "Will you come now?" + +"Now--just as I am?" She turned with an immense appeal to her +stepmother, taking a leap over the mountain of "mending," the +abyss of packing that had loomed and yawned before her. "Oh may +I?" + +Mrs. Beale addressed her assent to Sir Claude. "As well so as any +other way. I'll send on her things to-morrow." Then she gave a +tug to the child's coat, glancing at her up and down with some +ruefulness. + +"She's not turned out as I should like--her mother will pull her +to pieces. But what's one to do--with nothing to do it on? And +she's better than when she came--you can tell her mother that. +I'm sorry to have to say it to you--but the poor child was a +sight." + +"Oh I'll turn her out myself!" the visitor cordially said. + +"I shall like to see how!"--Mrs. Beale appeared much amused. "You +must bring her to show me--we can manage that. Good-bye, little +fright!" And her last word to Sir Claude was that she would keep +him up to the mark. + + +IX + +The idea of what she was to make up and the prodigious total it +came to were kept well before Maisie at her mother's. These +things were the constant occupation of Mrs. Wix, who arrived +there by the back stairs, but in tears of joy, the day after her +own arrival. The process of making up, as to which the good lady +had an immense deal to say, took, through its successive phases, +so long that it heralded a term at least equal to the child's +last stretch with her father. This, however, was a fuller and +richer time: it bounded along to the tune of Mrs. Wix's constant +insistence on the energy they must both put forth. There was a +fine intensity in the way the child agreed with her that under +Mrs. Beale and Susan Ash she had learned nothing whatever; the +wildness of the rescued castaway was one of the forces that would +henceforth make for a career of conquest. The year therefore +rounded itself as a receptacle of retarded knowledge--a cup +brimming over with the sense that now at least she was learning. +Mrs. Wix fed this sense from the stores of her conversation and +with the immense bustle of her reminder that they must cull the +fleeting hour. They were surrounded with subjects they must take +at a rush and perpetually getting into the attitude of triumphant +attack. They had certainly no idle hours, and the child went to +bed each night as tired as from a long day's play. This had begun +from the moment of their reunion, begun with all Mrs. Wix had to +tell her young friend of the reasons of her ladyship's extraordinary +behaviour at the very first. + +It took the form of her ladyship's refusal for three days to see +her little girl--three days during which Sir Claude made hasty +merry dashes into the schoolroom to smooth down the odd +situation, to say "She'll come round, you know; I assure you +she'll come round," and a little even to compensate Maisie for +the indignity he had caused her to suffer. There had never in the +child's life been, in all ways, such a delightful amount of +reparation. It came out by his sociable admission that her +ladyship had not known of his visit to her late husband's house +and of his having made that person's daughter a pretext for +striking up an acquaintance with the dreadful creature installed +there. Heaven knew she wanted her child back and had made every +plan of her own for removing her; what she couldn't for the +present at least forgive any one concerned was such an officious +underhand way of bringing about the transfer. Maisie carried more +of the weight of this resentment than even Mrs. Wix's confidential +ingenuity could lighten for her, especially as Sir Claude himself +was not at all ingenious, though indeed on the other hand he was +not at all crushed. He was amused and intermittent and at moments +most startling; he impressed on his young companion, with a +frankness that agitated her much more than he seemed to guess, +that he depended on her not letting her mother, when she should +see her, get anything out of her about anything Mrs. Beale might +have said to him. He came in and out; he professed, in joke, +to take tremendous precautions; he showed a positive disposition +to romp. He chaffed Mrs. Wix till she was purple with the pleasure +of it, and reminded Maisie of the reticence he expected of her +till she set her teeth like an Indian captive. Her lessons these +first days and indeed for long after seemed to be all about +Sir Claude, and yet she never really mentioned to Mrs. Wix that +she was prepared, under his inspiring injunction, to be vainly +tortured. This lady, however, had formulated the position of +things with an acuteness that showed how little she needed to be +coached. Her explanation of everything that seemed not quite +pleasant--and if her own footing was perilous it met that danger +as well--that her ladyship was passionately in love. Maisie +accepted this hint with infinite awe and pressed upon it much +when she was at last summoned into the presence of her mother. + +There she encountered matters amid which it seemed really to help +to give her a clue--an almost terrifying strangeness, full, none +the less, after a little, of reverberations of Ida's old fierce +and demonstrative recoveries of possession. They had been some +time in the house together, and this demonstration came late. +Preoccupied, however, as Maisie was with the idea of the +sentiment Sir Claude had inspired, and familiar, in addition, by +Mrs. Wix's anecdotes, with the ravages that in general such a +sentiment could produce, she was able to make allowances for her +ladyship's remarkable appearance, her violent splendour, the +wonderful colour of her lips and even the hard stare, the stare +of some gorgeous idol described in a story-book, that had come +into her eyes in consequence of a curious thickening of their +already rich circumference. Her professions and explanations were +mixed with eager challenges and sudden drops, in the midst of +which Maisie recognised as a memory of other years the rattle of +her trinkets and the scratch of her endearments, the odour of her +clothes and the jumps of her conversation. She had all her old +clever way--Mrs. Wix said it was "aristocratic"--of changing the +subject as she might have slammed the door in your face. The +principal thing that was different was the tint of her golden +hair, which had changed to a coppery red and, with the head it +profusely covered, struck the child as now lifted still further +aloft. This picturesque parent showed literally a grander stature +and a nobler presence, things which, with some others that might +have been bewildering, were handsomely accounted for by the +romantic state of her affections. It was her affections, Maisie +could easily see, that led Ida to break out into questions as to +what had passed at the other house between that horrible woman +and Sir Claude; but it was also just here that the little girl +was able to recall the effect with which in earlier days she had +practised the pacific art of stupidity. This art again came to +her aid: her mother, in getting rid of her after an interview in +which she had achieved a hollowness beyond her years, allowed her +fully to understand she had not grown a bit more amusing. + +She could bear that; she could bear anything that helped her to +feel she had done something for Sir Claude. If she hadn't told +Mrs. Wix how Mrs. Beale seemed to like him she certainly couldn't +tell her ladyship. In the way the past revived for her there was +a queer confusion. It was because mamma hated papa that she used +to want to know bad things of him; but if at present she wanted +to know the same of Sir Claude it was quite from the opposite +motive. She was awestruck at the manner in which a lady might be +affected through the passion mentioned by Mrs. Wix; she held her +breath with the sense of picking her steps among the tremendous +things of life. What she did, however, now, after the interview +with her mother, impart to Mrs. Wix was that, in spite of her +having had her "good" effect, as she called it--the effect she +studied, the effect of harmless vacancy--her ladyship's last +words had been that her ladyship's duty by her would be +thoroughly done. Over this announcement governess and pupil +looked at each other in silent profundity; but as the weeks went +by it had no consequences that interfered gravely with the breezy +gallop of making up. Her ladyship's duty took at times the form +of not seeing her child for days together, and Maisie led her +life in great prosperity between Mrs. Wix and kind Sir Claude. +Mrs. Wix had a new dress and, as she was the first to proclaim, a +better position; so it all struck Maisie as a crowded brilliant +life, with, for the time, Mrs. Beale and Susan Ash simply "left +out" like children not invited to a Christmas party. Mrs. Wix had +a secret terror which, like most of her secret feelings, she +discussed with her little companion, in great solemnity, by the +hour: the possibility of her ladyship's coming down on them, in +her sudden highbred way, with a school. But she had also a balm +to this fear in a conviction of the strength of Sir Claude's +grasp of the situation. He was too pleased--didn't he constantly +say as much?--with the good impression made, in a wide circle, by +Ida's sacrifices; and he came into the schoolroom repeatedly to +let them know how beautifully he felt everything had gone off and +everything would go on. + +He disappeared at times for days, when his patient friends +understood that her ladyship would naturally absorb him; but he +always came back with the drollest stories of where he had been, +a wonderful picture of society, and even with pretty presents +that showed how in absence he thought of his home. Besides giving +Mrs. Wix by his conversation a sense that they almost themselves +"went out," he gave her a five-pound note and the history of +France and an umbrella with a malachite knob, and to Maisie both +chocolate-creams and story-books, besides a lovely greatcoat +(which he took her out all alone to buy) and ever so many games +in boxes, with printed directions, and a bright red frame for the +protection of his famous photograph. The games were, as he said, +to while away the evening hour; and the evening hour indeed often +passed in futile attempts on Mrs. Wix's part to master what "it +said" on the papers. When he asked the pair how they liked the +games they always replied "Oh immensely!" but they had earnest +discussions as to whether they hadn't better appeal to him +frankly for aid to understand them. This was a course their +delicacy shrank from; they couldn't have told exactly why, but it +was a part of their tenderness for him not to let him think they +had trouble. What dazzled most was his kindness to Mrs. Wix, not +only the five-pound note and the "not forgetting" her, but the +perfect consideration, as she called it with an air to which her +sounding of the words gave the only grandeur Maisie was to have +seen her wear save on a certain occasion hereafter to be +described, an occasion when the poor lady was grander than all of +them put together. He shook hands with her, he recognised her, as +she said, and above all, more than once, he took her, with his +stepdaughter, to the pantomime and, in the crowd, coming out, +publicly gave her his arm. When he met them in sunny Piccadilly +he made merry and turned and walked with them, heroically +suppressing his consciousness of the stamp of his company, a +heroism that--needless for Mrs. Wix to sound THOSE words--her +ladyship, though a blood-relation, was little enough the woman to +be capable of. Even to the hard heart of childhood there was +something tragic in such elation at such humanities: it brought +home to Maisie the way her humble companion had sidled and ducked +through life. But it settled the question of the degree to which +Sir Claude was a gentleman: he was more of one than anybody else +in the world--"I don't care," Mrs. Wix repeatedly remarked, "whom +you may meet in grand society, nor even to whom you may be +contracted in marriage." There were questions that Maisie never +asked; so her governess was spared the embarrassment of telling +her if he were more of a gentleman than papa. This was not +moreover from the want of opportunity, for there were no moments +between them at which the topic could be irrelevant, no subject +they were going into, not even the principal dates or the +auxiliary verbs, in which it was further off than the turn of the +page. The answer on the winter nights to the puzzle of cards and +counters and little bewildering pamphlets was just to draw up to +the fire and talk about him; and if the truth must be told this +edifying interchange constituted for the time the little girl's +chief education. It must also be admitted that he took them far, +further perhaps than was always warranted by the old-fashioned +conscience, the dingy decencies, of Maisie's simple instructress. +There were hours when Mrs. Wix sighingly testified to the +scruples she surmounted, seemed to ask what other line one COULD +take with a young person whose experience had been, as it were, +so peculiar. "It isn't as if you didn't already know everything, +is it, love?" and "I can't make you any worse than you ARE, can +I, darling?"--these were the terms in which the good lady +justified to herself and her pupil her pleasant conversational +ease. What the pupil already knew was indeed rather taken for +granted than expressed, but it performed the useful function of +transcending all textbooks and supplanting all studies. If the +child couldn't be worse it was a comfort even to herself that she +was bad--a comfort offering a broad firm support to the +fundamental fact of the present crisis: the fact that mamma was +fearfully jealous. This was another side of the circumstance of +mamma's passion, and the deep couple in the schoolroom were not +long in working round to it. It brought them face to face with +the idea of the inconvenience suffered by any lady who marries a +gentleman producing on other ladies the charming effect of Sir +Claude. That such ladies wouldn't be able to help falling in love +with him was a reflexion naturally irritating to his wife. One +day when some accident, some crash of a banged door or some +scurry of a scared maid, had rendered this truth particularly +vivid, Maisie, receptive and profound, suddenly said to her +companion: "And you, my dear, are you in love with him too?" +Even her profundity had left a margin for a laugh; so she was a +trifle startled by the solemn promptitude with which Mrs. Wix +plumped out: "Over head and ears. I've NEVER since you ask me, +been so far gone." + +This boldness had none the less no effect of deterrence for her +when, a few days later--it was because several had elapsed +without a visit from Sir Claude--her governess turned the tables. +"May I ask you, miss, if YOU are?" Mrs. Wix brought it out, she +could see, with hesitation, but clearly intending a joke. "Why +RATHER!" the child made answer, as if in surprise at not having +long ago seemed sufficiently to commit herself; on which her +friend gave a sigh of apparent satisfaction. It might in fact +have expressed positive relief. Everything was as it should be. + +Yet it was not with them, they were very sure, that her ladyship +was furious, nor because she had forbidden it that there befell +at last a period--six months brought it round--when for days +together he scarcely came near them. He was "off," and Ida was +"off," and they were sometimes off together and sometimes apart; +there were seasons when the simple students had the house to +themselves, when the very servants seemed also to be "off" and +dinner became a reckless forage in pantries and sideboards. Mrs. +Wix reminded her disciple on such occasions--hungry moments +often, when all the support of the reminder was required--that +the "real life" of their companions, the brilliant society in +which it was inevitable they should move and the complicated +pleasures in which it was almost presumptuous of the mind to +follow them, must offer features literally not to be imagined +without being seen. At one of these times Maisie found her +opening it out that, though the difficulties were many, it was +Mrs. Beale who had now become the chief. Then somehow it was +brought fully to the child's knowledge that her stepmother had +been making attempts to see her, that her mother had deeply +resented it, that her stepfather had backed her stepmother up, +that the latter had pretended to be acting as the representative +of her father, and that her mother took the whole thing, in plain +terms, very hard. The situation was, as Mrs. Wix declared, an +extraordinary muddle to be sure. Her account of it brought back +to Maisie the happy vision of the way Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale +had made acquaintance--an incident to which, with her stepfather, +though she had had little to say about it to Mrs. Wix, she had +during the first weeks of her stay at her mother's found more +than one opportunity to revert. As to what had taken place the +day Sir Claude came for her, she had been vaguely grateful to +Mrs. Wix for not attempting, as her mother had attempted, to put +her through. That was what Sir Claude had called the process when +he warned her of it, and again afterwards when he told her she +was an awfully good "chap" for having foiled it. Then it was +that, well aware Mrs. Beale hadn't in the least really given her +up, she had asked him if he remained in communication with her +and if for the time everything must really be held to be at an +end between her stepmother and herself. This conversation had +occurred in consequence of his one day popping into the +schoolroom and finding Maisie alone. + + + +X + +He was smoking a cigarette and he stood before the fire and +looked at the meagre appointments of the room in a way that made +her rather ashamed of them. Then before (on the subject of Mrs. +Beale) he let her "draw" him--that was another of his words; it +was astonishing how many she gathered in--he remarked that really +mamma kept them rather low on the question of decorations. Mrs. +Wix had put up a Japanese fan and two rather grim texts; she had +wished they were gayer, but they were all she happened to have. +Without Sir Claude's photograph, however, the place would have +been, as he said, as dull as a cold dinner. He had said as well +that there were all sorts of things they ought to have; yet +governess and pupil, it had to be admitted, were still divided +between discussing the places where any sort of thing would look +best if any sort of thing should ever come and acknowledging that +mutability in the child's career which was naturally unfavourable +to accumulation. She stayed long enough only to miss things, not +half long enough to deserve them. The way Sir Claude looked about +the schoolroom had made her feel with humility as if it were not +very different from the shabby attic in which she had visited +Susan Ash. Then he had said in abrupt reference to Mrs. Beale: +"Do you think she really cares for you?" + +"Oh awfully!" Maisie had replied. + +"But, I mean, does she love you for yourself, as they call it, +don't you know? Is she as fond of you, now, as Mrs. Wix?" + +The child turned it over. "Oh I'm not every bit Mrs. Beale has!" + +Sir Claude seemed much amused at this. "No; you're not every bit +she has!" + +He laughed for some moments, but that was an old story to Maisie, +who was not too much disconcerted to go on: "But she'll never +give me up." + +"Well, I won't either, old boy: so that's not so wonderful, and +she's not the only one. But if she's so fond of you, why doesn't +she write to you?" + +"Oh on account of mamma." This was rudimentary, and she was +almost surprised at the simplicity of Sir Claude's question. + +"I see--that's quite right," he answered. "She might get at you-- +there are all sorts of ways. But of course there's Mrs. Wix." + +"There's Mrs. Wix," Maisie lucidly concurred. "Mrs. Wix can't +abide her." + +Sir Claude seemed interested. "Oh she can't abide her? Then what +does she say about her?" + +"Nothing at all--because she knows I shouldn't like it. Isn't it +sweet of her?" the child asked. + +"Certainly; rather nice. Mrs. Beale wouldn't hold her tongue for +any such thing as that, would she?" + +Maisie remembered how little she had done so; but she desired to +protect Mrs. Beale too. The only protection she could think of, +however, was the plea: "Oh at papa's, you know, they don't mind!" + +At this Sir Claude only smiled. "No, I dare say not. But here we +mind, don't we?--we take care what we say. I don't suppose it's a +matter on which I ought to prejudice you," he went on; "but I +think we must on the whole be rather nicer here than at your +father's. However, I don't press that; for it's the sort of +question on which it's awfully awkward for you to speak. Don't +worry, at any rate: I assure you I'll back you up." Then after a +moment and while he smoked he reverted to Mrs. Beale and the +child's first enquiry. "I'm afraid we can't do much for her just +now. I haven't seen her since that day--upon my word I haven't +seen her." The next instant, with a laugh the least bit foolish, +the young man slightly coloured: he must have felt this +profession of innocence to be excessive as addressed to Maisie. +It was inevitable to say to her, however, that of course her +mother loathed the lady of the other house. He couldn't go there +again with his wife's consent, and he wasn't the man--he begged +her to believe, falling once more, in spite of himself, into the +scruple of showing the child he didn't trip--to go there without +it. He was liable in talking with her to take the tone of her +being also a man of the world. He had gone to Mrs. Beale's to +fetch away Maisie, but that was altogether different. Now that +she was in her mother's house what pretext had he to give her +mother for paying calls on her father's wife? And of course Mrs. +Beale couldn't come to Ida's--Ida would tear her limb from limb. +Maisie, with this talk of pretexts, remembered how much Mrs. +Beale had made of her being a good one, and--how, for such a +function, it was her fate to be either much depended on or much +missed. Sir Claude moreover recognised on this occasion that +perhaps things would take a turn later on; and he wound up by +saying: "I'm sure she does sincerely care for you--how can she +possibly help it? She's very young and very pretty and very +clever: I think she's charming. But we must walk very straight. +If you'll help me, you know, I'll help YOU," he concluded in the +pleasant fraternising, equalising, not a bit patronising way +which made the child ready to go through anything for him and the +beauty of which, as she dimly felt, was that it was so much less +a deceitful descent to her years than a real indifference to +them. + +It gave her moments of secret rapture--moments of believing she +might help him indeed. The only mystification in this was the +imposing time of life that her elders spoke of as youth. For Sir +Claude then Mrs. Beale was "young," just as for Mrs. Wix Sir +Claude was: that was one of the merits for which Mrs. Wix most +commended him. What therefore was Maisie herself, and, in another +relation to the matter, what therefore was mamma? It took her +some time to puzzle out with the aid of an experiment or two that +it wouldn't do to talk about mamma's youth. She even went so far +one day, in the presence of that lady's thick colour and marked +lines, as to wonder if it would occur to any one but herself to +do so. Yet if she wasn't young then she was old; and this threw +an odd light on her having a husband of a different generation. +Mr. Farange was still older--that Maisie perfectly knew; and it +brought her in due course to the perception of how much more, +since Mrs. Beale was younger than Sir Claude, papa must be older +than Mrs. Beale. Such discoveries were disconcerting and even a +trifle confounding: these persons, it appeared, were not of the +age they ought to be. This was somehow particularly the case with +mamma, and the fact made her reflect with some relief on her not +having gone with Mrs. Wix into the question of Sir Claude's +attachment to his wife. She was conscious that in confining their +attention to the state of her ladyship's own affections they had +been controlled--Mrs. Wix perhaps in especial--by delicacy and +even by embarrassment. The end of her colloquy with her +stepfather in the schoolroom was her saying: "Then if we're not +to see Mrs. Beale at all it isn't what she seemed to think when +you came for me." + +He looked rather blank. "What did she seem to think?" + +"Why that I've brought you together." + +"She thought that?" Sir Claude asked. + +Maisie was surprised at his already forgetting it. "Just as I had +brought papa and her. Don't you remember she said so?" + +It came back to Sir Claude in a peal of laughter. "Oh yes--she +said so!" + +"And YOU said so," Maisie lucidly pursued. + +He recovered, with increasing mirth, the whole occasion. "And YOU +said so!" he retorted as if they were playing a game. + +"Then were we all mistaken?" + +He considered a little. "No, on the whole not. I dare say it's +just what you HAVE done. We ARE together--it's really most odd. +She's thinking of us--of you and me--though we don't meet. And +I've no doubt you'll find it will be all right when you go back +to her." + +"Am I going back to her?" Maisie brought out with a little gasp +which was like a sudden clutch of the happy present. + +It appeared to make Sir Claude grave a moment; it might have made +him feel the weight of the pledge his action had given. "Oh some +day, I suppose! We've plenty of time." + +"I've such a tremendous lot to make up," Maisie said with a sense +of great boldness. + +"Certainly, and you must make up every hour of it. Oh I'll SEE +that you do!" + +This was encouraging; and to show cheerfully that she was +reassured she replied: "That's what Mrs. Wix sees too." + +"Oh yes," said Sir Claude; "Mrs. Wix and I are shoulder to +shoulder." + +Maisie took in a little this strong image; after which she +exclaimed: "Then I've done it also to you and her--I've brought +YOU together!" + +"Blest if you haven't!" Sir Claude laughed. "And more, upon my +word, than any of the lot. Oh you've done for US! Now if you +could--as I suggested, you know, that day--only manage me and +your mother!" + +The child wondered. "Bring you and HER together?" + +"You see we're not together--not a bit. But I oughtn't to tell +you such things; all the more that you won't really do it--not +you. No, old chap," the young man continued; "there you'll break +down. But it won't matter--we'll rub along. The great thing is +that you and I are all right." + +"WE'RE all right!" Maisie echoed devoutly. But the next moment, +in the light of what he had just said, she asked: "How shall I +ever leave you?" It was as if she must somehow take care of him. + +His smile did justice to her anxiety. "Oh well, you needn't! It +won't come to that." + +"Do you mean that when I do go you'll go with me?" + +Sir Claude cast about. "Not exactly 'with' you perhaps; but I +shall never be far off." + +"But how do you know where mamma may take you?" + +He laughed again. "I don't, I confess!" Then he had an idea, +though something too jocose. "That will be for you to see--that +she shan't take me too far." + +"How can I help it?" Maisie enquired in surprise. "Mamma doesn't +care for me," she said very simply. "Not really." Child as she +was, her little long history was in the words; and it was as +impossible to contradict her as if she had been venerable. + +Sir Claude's silence was an admission of this, and still more the +tone in which he presently replied: "That won't prevent her from +--some time or other--leaving me with you." + +"Then we'll live together?" she eagerly demanded. + +"I'm afraid," said Sir Claude, smiling, "that that will be Mrs. +Beale's real chance." + +Her eagerness just slightly dropped at this; she remembered Mrs. +Wix's pronouncement that it was all an extraordinary muddle. "To +take me again? Well, can't you come to see me there?" + +"Oh I dare say!" + +Though there were parts of childhood Maisie had lost she had all +childhood's preference for the particular promise. "Then you WILL +come--you'll come often, won't you?" she insisted; while at the +moment she spoke the door opened for the return of Mrs. Wix. Sir +Claude hereupon, instead of replying, gave her a look which left +her silent and embarrassed. + +When he again found privacy convenient, however--which happened +to be long in coming--he took up their conversation very much +where it had dropped. "You see, my dear, if I shall be able to go +to you at your father's it yet isn't at all the same thing for +Mrs. Beale to come to you here." Maisie gave a thoughtful assent +to this proposition, though conscious she could scarcely herself +say just where the difference would lie. She felt how much her +stepfather saved her, as he said with his habitual amusement, the +trouble of that. "I shall probably be able to go to Mrs. Beale's +without your mother's knowing it." + +Maisie stared with a certain thrill at the dramatic element in +this. "And she couldn't come here without mamma's--" She was +unable to articulate the word for what mamma would do. + +"My dear child, Mrs. Wix would tell of it." + +"But I thought," Maisie objected, "that Mrs. Wix and you--" + +"Are such brothers-in-arms?"--Sir Claude caught her up. "Oh yes, +about everything but Mrs. Beale. And if you should suggest," he +went on, "that we might somehow or other hide her peeping in from +Mrs. Wix--" + +"Oh, I don't suggest THAT!" Maisie in turn cut him short. + +Sir Claude looked as if he could indeed quite see why. "No; it +would really be impossible." There came to her from this glance +at what they might hide the first small glimpse of something in +him that she wouldn't have expected. There had been times when +she had had to make the best of the impression that she was +herself deceitful; yet she had never concealed anything bigger +than a thought. Of course she now concealed this thought of how +strange it would be to see HIM hide; and while she was so +actively engaged he continued: "Besides, you know, I'm not afraid +of your father." + +"And you are of my mother?" + +"Rather, old man!" Sir Claude returned. + + + +XI + +It must not be supposed that her ladyship's intermissions were +not qualified by demonstrations of another order--triumphal +entries and breathless pauses during which she seemed to take of +everything in the room, from the state of the ceiling to that of +her daughter's boot-toes, a survey that was rich in intentions. +Sometimes she sat down and sometimes she surged about, but her +attitude wore equally in either case the grand air of the +practical. She found so much to deplore that she left a great +deal to expect, and bristled so with calculation that she seemed +to scatter remedies and pledges. Her visits were as good as an +outfit; her manner, as Mrs. Wix once said, as good as a pair of +curtains; but she was a person addicted to extremes--sometimes +barely speaking to her child and sometimes pressing this tender +shoot to a bosom cut, as Mrs. Wix had also observed, remarkably +low. She was always in a fearful hurry, and the lower the bosom +was cut the more it was to be gathered she was wanted elsewhere. +She usually broke in alone, but sometimes Sir Claude was with +her, and during all the earlier period there was nothing on which +these appearances had had so delightful a bearing as on the way +her ladyship was, as Mrs. Wix expressed it, under the spell. +"But ISN'T she under it!" Maisie used in thoughtful but familiar +reference to exclaim after Sir Claude had swept mamma away +in peals of natural laughter. Not even in the old days of the +convulsed ladies had she heard mamma laugh so freely as in these +moments of conjugal surrender, to the gaiety of which even a +little girl could see she had at last a right--a little girl +whose thoughtfulness was now all happy selfish meditation on good +omens and future fun. + +Unaccompanied, in subsequent hours, and with an effect of +changing to meet a change, Ida took a tone superficially +disconcerting and abrupt--the tone of having, at an immense cost, +made over everything to Sir Claude and wishing others to know +that if everything wasn't right it was because Sir Claude was so +dreadfully vague. "He has made from the first such a row about +you," she said on one occasion to Maisie, "that I've told him to +do for you himself and try how he likes it--see? I've washed my +hands of you; I've made you over to him; and if you're discontented +it's on him, please, you'll come down. So don't haul poor ME up-- +I assure you I've worries enough." One of these, visibly, was that +the spell rejoiced in by the schoolroom fire was already in danger +of breaking; another was that she was finally forced to make no +secret of her husband's unfitness for real responsibilities. +The day came indeed when her breathless auditors learnt from her +in bewilderment that what ailed him was that he was, alas, +simply not serious. Maisie wept on Mrs. Wix's bosom after hearing +that Sir Claude was a butterfly; considering moreover that her +governess but half-patched it up in coming out at various moments +the next few days with the opinion that it was proper to his +"station" to be careless and free. That had been proper to every +one's station that she had yet encountered save poor Mrs. Wix's own, +and the particular merit of Sir Claude had seemed precisely that +he was different from every one. She talked with him, however, +as time went on, very freely about her mother; being with him, +in this relation, wholly without the fear that had kept her silent +before her father--the fear of bearing tales and making bad things +worse. He appeared to accept the idea that he had taken her over +and made her, as he said, his particular lark; he quite agreed +also that he was an awful fraud and an idle beast and a sorry +dunce. And he never said a word to her against her mother--he +only remained dumb and discouraged in the face of her ladyship's +own overtopping earnestness. There were occasions when he even +spoke as if he had wrenched his little charge from the arms of +a parent who had fought for her tooth and nail. + +This was the very moral of a scene that flashed into vividness +one day when the four happened to meet without company in the +drawing-room and Maisie found herself clutched to her mother's +breast and passionately sobbed and shrieked over, made the +subject of a demonstration evidently sequent to some sharp +passage just enacted. The connexion required that while she +almost cradled the child in her arms Ida should speak of her as +hideously, as fatally estranged, and should rail at Sir Claude as +the cruel author of the outrage. "He has taken you FROM me," she +cried; "he has set you AGAINST me, and you've been won away and +your horrid little mind has been poisoned! You've gone over to +him, you've given yourself up to side against me and hate me. You +never open your mouth to me--you know you don't; and you chatter +to him like a dozen magpies. Don't lie about it--I hear you all +over the place. You hang about him in a way that's barely decent +--he can do what he likes with you. Well then, let him, to his +heart's content: he has been in such a hurry to take you that +we'll see if it suits him to keep you. I'm very good to break my +heart about it when you've no more feeling for me than a clammy +little fish!" She suddenly thrust the child away and, as a +disgusted admission of failure, sent her flying across the room +into the arms of Mrs. Wix, whom at this moment and even in the +whirl of her transit Maisie saw, very red, exchange a quick queer +look with Sir Claude. + +The impression of the look remained with her, confronting her +with such a critical little view of her mother's explosion that +she felt the less ashamed of herself for incurring the reproach +with which she had been cast off. Her father had once called her +a heartless little beast, and now, though decidedly scared, she +was as stiff and cold as if the description had been just. She +was not even frightened enough to cry, which would have been a +tribute to her mother's wrongs: she was only, more than anything +else, curious about the opinion mutely expressed by their +companions. Taking the earliest opportunity to question Mrs. Wix +on this subject she elicited the remarkable reply: "Well, my +dear, it's her ladyship's game, and we must just hold on like +grim death." + +Maisie could interpret at her leisure these ominous words. Her +reflexions indeed at this moment thickened apace, and one of them +made her sure that her governess had conversations, private, +earnest and not infrequent, with her denounced stepfather. She +perceived in the light of a second episode that something beyond +her knowledge had taken place in the house. The things beyond her +knowledge--numerous enough in truth--had not hitherto, she +believed, been the things that had been nearest to her: she had +even had in the past a small smug conviction that in the domestic +labyrinth she always kept the clue. This time too, however, she +at last found out--with the discreet aid, it had to be confessed, +of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude's own assistance was abruptly taken from +her, for his comment on her ladyship's game was to start on the +spot, quite alone, for Paris, evidently because he wished to show +a spirit when accused of bad behaviour. He might be fond of his +stepdaughter, Maisie felt, without wishing her to be after all +thrust on him in such a way; his absence therefore, it was clear, +was a protest against the thrusting. It was while this absence +lasted that our young lady finally discovered what had happened +in the house to be that her mother was no longer in love. The +limit of a passion for Sir Claude had certainly been reached, she +judged, some time before the day on which her ladyship burst +suddenly into the schoolroom to introduce Mr. Perriam, who, as +she announced from the doorway to Maisie, wouldn't believe his +ears that one had a great hoyden of a daughter. Mr. Perriam was +short and massive--Mrs. Wix remarked afterwards that he was "too +fat for the pace"; and it would have been difficult to say of him +whether his head were more bald or his black moustache more +bushy. He seemed also to have moustaches over his eyes, which, +however, by no means prevented these polished little globes from +rolling round the room as if they had been billiard-balls +impelled by Ida's celebrated stroke. Mr. Perriam wore on the hand +that pulled his moustache a diamond of dazzling lustre, in +consequence of which and of his general weight and mystery our +young lady observed on his departure that if he had only had a +turban he would have been quite her idea of a heathen Turk. + +"He's quite my idea," Mrs. Wix replied, "of a heathen Jew." + +"Well, I mean," said Maisie, "of a person who comes from the +East." + +"That's where he MUST come from," her governess opined--"he comes +from the City." In a moment she added as if she knew all about +him. "He's one of those people who have lately broken out. He'll +be immensely rich." + +"On the death of his papa?" the child interestedly enquired. + +"Dear no--nothing hereditary. I mean he has made a mass of +money." + +"How much, do you think?" Maisie demanded. + +Mrs. Wix reflected and sketched it. "Oh many millions." + +"A hundred?" + +Mrs. Wix was not sure of the number, but there were enough of +them to have seemed to warm up for the time the penury of the +schoolroom--to linger there as an afterglow of the hot heavy +light Mr. Perriam sensibly shed. This was also, no doubt, on his +part, an effect of that enjoyment of life with which, among her +elders, Maisie had been in contact from her earliest years--the +sign of happy maturity, the old familiar note of overflowing +cheer. "How d'ye do, ma'am? How d'ye do, little miss?"--he +laughed and nodded at the gaping figures. "She has brought me up +for a peep--it's true I wouldn't take you on trust. She's always +talking about you, but she'd never produce you; so to-day I +challenged her on the spot. Well, you ain't a myth, my dear--I +back down on that," the visitor went on to Maisie; "nor you +either, miss, though you might be, to be sure!'" + +"I bored him with you, darling--I bore every one," Ida said, "and +to prove that you ARE a sweet thing, as well as a fearfully old +one, I told him he could judge for himself. So now he sees that +you're a dreadful bouncing business and that your poor old +Mummy's at least sixty!"--and her ladyship smiled at Mr. Perriam +with the charm that her daughter had heard imputed to her at +papa's by the merry gentlemen who had so often wished to get from +him what they called a "rise." Her manner at that instant gave +the child a glimpse more vivid than any yet enjoyed of the +attraction that papa, in remarkable language, always denied she +could put forth. + +Mr. Perriam, however, clearly recognised it in the humour with +which he met her. "I never said you ain't wonderful--did I ever +say it, hey?" and he appealed with pleasant confidence to the +testimony of the schoolroom, about which itself also he evidently +felt something might be expected of him. "So this is their little +place, hey? Charming, charming, charming!" he repeated as he +vaguely looked round. The interrupted students clung together as +if they had been personally exposed; but Ida relieved their +embarrassment by a hunch of her high shoulders. This time the +smile she addressed to Mr. Perriam had a beauty of sudden +sadness. "What on earth is a poor woman to do?" + +The visitor's grimace grew more marked as he continued to look, +and the conscious little schoolroom felt still more like a cage +at a menagerie. "Charming, charming, charming!" Mr. Perriam +insisted; but the parenthesis closed with a prompt click. "There +you are!" said her ladyship. "By-bye!" she sharply added. The +next minute they were on the stairs, and Mrs. Wix and her +companion, at the open door and looking mutely at each other, +were reached by the sound of the large social current that +carried them back to their life. + +It was singular perhaps after this that Maisie never put a +question about Mr. Perriam, and it was still more singular that +by the end of a week she knew all she didn't ask. What she most +particularly knew--and the information came to her, unsought, +straight from Mrs. Wix--was that Sir Claude wouldn't at all care +for the visits of a millionaire who was in and out of the upper +rooms. How little he would care was proved by the fact that under +the sense of them Mrs. Wix's discretion broke down altogether; +she was capable of a transfer of allegiance, capable, at the +altar of propriety, of a desperate sacrifice of her ladyship. As +against Mrs. Beale, she more than once intimated, she had been +willing to do the best for her, but as against Sir Claude she +could do nothing for her at all. It was extraordinary the number +of things that, still without a question, Maisie knew by the time +her stepfather came back from Paris--came bringing her a splendid +apparatus for painting in water-colours and bringing Mrs. Wix, by +a lapse of memory that would have been droll if it had not been a +trifle disconcerting, a second and even a more elegant umbrella. +He had forgotten all about the first, with which, buried in as +many wrappers as a mummy of the Pharaohs, she wouldn't for the +world have done anything so profane as use it. Maisie knew above +all that though she was now, by what she called an informal +understanding, on Sir Claude's "side," she had yet not uttered a +word to him about Mr. Perriam. That gentleman became therefore a +kind of flourishing public secret, out of the depths of which +governess and pupil looked at each other portentously from the +time their friend was restored to them. He was restored in great +abundance, and it was marked that, though he appeared to have +felt the need to take a stand against the risk of being too +roughly saddled with the offspring of others, he at this period +exposed himself more than ever before to the presumption of +having created expectations. + +If it had become now, for that matter, a question of sides, there +was at least a certain amount of evidence as to where they all +were. Maisie of course, in such a delicate position, was on +nobody's; but Sir Claude had all the air of being on hers. If +therefore Mrs. Wix was on Sir Claude's, her ladyship on Mr. +Perriam's and Mr. Perriam presumably on her ladyship's, this left +only Mrs. Beale and Mr. Farange to account for. Mrs. Beale +clearly was, like Sir Claude, on Maisie's, and papa, it was to be +supposed, on Mrs. Beale's. Here indeed was a slight ambiguity, as +papa's being on Mrs. Beale's didn't somehow seem to place him +quite on his daughter's. It sounded, as this young lady thought +it over, very much like puss-in-the-corner, and she could only +wonder if the distribution of parties would lead to a rushing to +and fro and a changing of places. She was in the presence, she +felt, of restless change: wasn't it restless enough that her +mother and her stepfather should already be on different sides? +That was the great thing that had domestically happened. Mrs. +Wix, besides, had turned another face: she had never been exactly +gay, but her gravity was now an attitude as public as a posted +placard. She seemed to sit in her new dress and brood over her +lost delicacy, which had become almost as doleful a memory as +that of poor Clara Matilda. "It IS hard for him," she often said +to her companion; and it was surprising how competent on this +point Maisie was conscious of being to agree with her. Hard as it +was, however, Sir Claude had never shown to greater advantage +than in the gallant generous sociable way he carried it off: a +way that drew from Mrs. Wix a hundred expressions of relief at +his not having suffered it to embitter him. It threw him more and +more at last into the schoolroom, where he had plainly begun to +recognise that if he was to have the credit of perverting the +innocent child he might also at least have the amusement. He +never came into the place without telling its occupants that they +were the nicest people in the house--a remark which always led +them to say to each other "Mr. Perriam!" as loud as ever +compressed lips and enlarged eyes could make them articulate. He +caused Maisie to remember what she had said to Mrs. Beale about +his having the nature of a good nurse, and, rather more than she +intended before Mrs. Wix, to bring the whole thing out by once +remarking to him that none of her good nurses had smoked quite so +much in the nursery. This had no more effect than it was meant to +on his cigarettes: he was always smoking, but always declaring +that it was death to him not to lead a domestic life. + +He led one after all in the schoolroom, and there were hours of +late evening, when she had gone to bed, that Maisie knew he sat +there talking with Mrs. Wix of how to meet his difficulties. His +consideration for this unfortunate woman even in the midst of +them continued to show him as the perfect gentleman and lifted +the subject of his courtesy into an upper air of beatitude in +which her very pride had the hush of anxiety. "He leans on me-- +he leans on me!" she only announced from time to time; and she +was more surprised than amused when, later on, she accidentally +found she had given her pupil the impression of a support +literally supplied by her person. This glimpse of a misconception +led her to be explicit--to put before the child, with an air of +mourning indeed for such a stoop to the common, that what they +talked about in the small hours, as they said, was the question +of his taking right hold of life. The life she wanted him to take +right hold of was the public: "she" being, I hasten to add, in +this connexion, not the mistress of his fate, but only Mrs. Wix +herself. She had phrases about him that were full of easy +understanding, yet full of morality. "He's a wonderful nature, +but he can't live like the lilies. He's all right, you know, but +he must have a high interest." She had more than once remarked +that his affairs were sadly involved, but that they must get him +--Maisie and she together apparently--into Parliament. The child +took it from her with a flutter of importance that Parliament was +his natural sphere, and she was the less prepared to recognise a +hindrance as she had never heard of any affairs whatever that +were not involved. She had in the old days once been told by Mrs. +Beale that her very own were, and with the refreshment of knowing +that she HAD affairs the information hadn't in the least +overwhelmed her. It was true and perhaps a little alarming that +she had never heard of any such matters since then. Full of charm +at any rate was the prospect of some day getting Sir Claude in; +especially after Mrs. Wix, as the fruit of more midnight +colloquies, once went so far as to observe that she really +believed it was all that was wanted to save him. This critic, +with these words, struck her disciple as cropping up, after the +manner of mamma when mamma talked, quite in a new place. The +child stared as at the jump of a kangaroo. "Save him from what?" + +Mrs. Wix debated, then covered a still greater distance. "Why +just from awful misery." + + + +XII + +She had not at the moment explained her ominous speech, but the +light of remarkable events soon enabled her companion to read it. +It may indeed be said that these days brought on a high +quickening of Maisie's direct perceptions, of her sense of +freedom to make out things for herself. This was helped by an +emotion intrinsically far from sweet--the increase of the alarm +that had most haunted her meditations. She had no need to be +told, as on the morrow of the revelation of Sir Claude's danger +she was told by Mrs. Wix, that her mother wanted more and more to +know why the devil her father didn't send for her: she had too +long expected mamma's curiosity on this point to express itself +sharply. Maisie could meet such pressure so far as meeting it was +to be in a position to reply, in words directly inspired, that +papa would be hanged before he'd again be saddled with her. She +therefore recognised the hour that in troubled glimpses she had +long foreseen, the hour when--the phrase for it came back to her +from Mrs. Beale--with two fathers, two mothers and two homes, six +protections in all, she shouldn't know "wherever" to go. Such +apprehension as she felt on this score was not diminished by the +fact that Mrs. Wix herself was suddenly white with terror: a +circumstance leading Maisie to the further knowledge that this +lady was still more scared on her own behalf than on that of her +pupil. A governess who had only one frock was not likely to have +either two fathers or two mothers: accordingly if even with these +resources Maisie was to be in the streets, where in the name of +all that was dreadful was poor Mrs. Wix to be? She had had, it +appeared, a tremendous brush with Ida, which had begun and ended +with the request that she would be pleased on the spot to +"bundle." It had come suddenly but completely, this signal of +which she had gone in fear. The companions confessed to each +other the dread each had hidden the worst of, but Mrs. Wix was +better off than Maisie in having a plan of defence. She declined +indeed to communicate it till it was quite mature; but meanwhile, +she hastened to declare, her feet were firm in the schoolroom. +They could only be loosened by force: she would "leave" for the +police perhaps, but she wouldn't leave for mere outrage. That +would be to play her ladyship's game, and it would take another +turn of the screw to make her desert her darling. Her ladyship +had come down with extraordinary violence: it had been one of +many symptoms of a situation strained--"between them all," as +Mrs. Wix said, "but especially between the two"--to the point of +God only knew what. + +Her description of the crisis made the child blanch. "Between +which two?--papa and mamma?" + +"Dear no. I mean between your mother and HIM." + +Maisie, in this, recognised an opportunity to be really deep. +"'Him'?--Mr. Perriam?" + +She fairly brought a blush to the scared face. "Well, my dear, +I must say what you DON'T know ain't worth mentioning. That it +won't go on for ever with Mr. Perriam--since I MUST meet you--you +can suppose? But I meant dear Sir Claude." + +Maisie stood corrected rather than abashed. "I see. But it's +about Mr. Perriam he's angry?" + +Mrs. Wix waited. "He says he's not." + +"Not angry? He has told you so?" + +Mrs. Wix looked at her hard. "Not about HIM!" + +"Then about some one else?" + +Mrs. Wix looked at her harder. "About some one else." + +"Lord Eric?" the child promptly brought forth. + +At this, of a sudden, her governess was more agitated. "Oh why, +little unfortunate, should we discuss their dreadful names?"--and +she threw herself for the millionth time on Maisie's neck. It +took her pupil but a moment to feel that she quivered with +insecurity, and, the contact of her terror aiding, the pair in +another instant were sobbing in each other's arms. Then it was +that, completely relaxed, demoralised as she had never been, Mrs. +Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her +great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, denounced her +hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, her +lying and grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, ME!" the poor woman +wailed, "who've seen what I've seen and gone through everything +only to cover her up and ease her off and smooth her down? If +I've been an 'ipocrite it's the other way round: I've pretended, +to him and to her, to myself and to you and to every one, NOT to +see! It serves me right to have held my tongue before such +horrors!" + +What horrors they were her companion forbore too closely to +enquire, showing even signs not a few of an ability to take them +for granted. That put the couple more than ever, in this troubled +sea, in the same boat, so that with the consciousness of ideas on +the part of her fellow mariner Maisie could sit close and wait. +Sir Claude on the morrow came in to tea, and then the ideas were +produced. It was extraordinary how the child's presence drew out +their full strength. The principal one was startling, but Maisie +appreciated the courage with which her governess handled it. It +simply consisted of the proposal that whenever and wherever they +should seek refuge Sir Claude should consent to share their +asylum. On his protesting with all the warmth in nature against +this note of secession she asked what else in the world was left +to them if her ladyship should stop supplies. + +"Supplies be hanged, my dear woman!" said their delightful +friend. "Leave supplies to me--I'll take care of supplies." + +Mrs. Wix rose to it. "Well, it's exactly because I knew you'd be +so glad to do so that I put the question before you. There's a +way to look after us better than any other. The way's just to +come along with us." + +It hung before Maisie, Mrs. Wix's way, like a glittering picture, +and she clasped her hands in ecstasy. "Come along, come along, +come along!" + +Sir Claude looked from his stepdaughter back to her governess. +"Do you mean leave this house and take up my abode with you?" + +"It will be the right thing--if you feel as you've told me you +feel." Mrs. Wix, sustained and uplifted, was now as clear as a +bell. + +Sir Claude had the air of trying to recall what he had told her; +then the light broke that was always breaking to make his face +more pleasant. "It's your happy thought that I shall take a house +for you?" + +"For the wretched homeless child. Any roof--over our heads--will +do for us; but of course for you it will have to be something +really nice." + +Sir Claude's eyes reverted to Maisie, rather hard, as she +thought; and there was a shade in his very smile that seemed to +show her--though she also felt it didn't show Mrs. Wix--that the +accommodation prescribed must loom to him pretty large. The next +moment, however, he laughed gaily enough. "My dear lady, you +exaggerate tremendously MY poor little needs." Mrs. Wix had once +mentioned to her young friend that when Sir Claude called her his +dear lady he could do anything with her; and Maisie felt a +certain anxiety to see what he would do now. Well, he only +addressed her a remark of which the child herself was aware of +feeling the force. "Your plan appeals to me immensely; but of +course--don't you see--I shall have to consider the position I +put myself in by leaving my wife." + +"You'll also have to remember," Mrs. Wix replied, "that if you +don't look out your wife won't give you time to consider. Her +ladyship will leave YOU." + +"Ah my good friend, I do look out!" the young man returned while +Maisie helped herself afresh to bread and butter. "Of course if +that happens I shall have somehow to turn round; but I hope with +all my heart it won't. I beg your pardon," he continued to his +stepdaughter, "for appearing to discuss that sort of possibility +under your sharp little nose. But the fact is I FORGET half the +time that Ida's your sainted mother." + +"So do I!" said Maisie, her mouth full of bread and butter and to +put him the more in the right. + +Her protectress, at this, was upon her again. "The little +desolate precious pet!" For the rest of the conversation she was +enclosed in Mrs. Wix's arms, and as they sat there interlocked +Sir Claude, before them with his tea-cup, looked down at them in +deepening thought. Shrink together as they might they couldn't +help, Maisie felt, being a very large lumpish image of what Mrs. +Wix required of his slim fineness. She knew moreover that this +lady didn't make it better by adding in a moment: "Of course we +shouldn't dream of a whole house. Any sort of little lodging, +however humble, would be only too blest." + +"But it would have to be something that would hold us all," said +Sir Claude. + +"Oh yes," Mrs. Wix concurred; "the whole point's our being +together. While you're waiting, before you act, for her ladyship +to take some step, our position here will come to an impossible +pass. You don't know what I went through with her for you +yesterday--and for our poor darling; but it's not a thing I can +promise you often to face again. She cast me out in horrible +language--she has instructed the servants not to wait on me." + +"Oh the poor servants are all right!" Sir Claude eagerly cried. + +"They're certainly better than their mistress. It's too dreadful +that I should sit here and say of your wife, Sir Claude, and of +Maisie's own mother, that she's lower than a domestic; but my +being betrayed into such remarks is just a reason the more for +our getting away. I shall stay till I'm taken by the shoulders, +but that may happen any day. What also may perfectly happen, you +must permit me to repeat, is that she'll go off to get rid of +us." + +"Oh if she'll only do that!" Sir Claude laughed. "That would be +the very making of us!" + +"Don't say it--don't say it!" Mrs. Wix pleaded. "Don't speak of +anything so fatal. You know what I mean. We must all cling to the +right. You mustn't be bad." + +Sir Claude set down his tea-cup; he had become more grave and he +pensively wiped his moustache. "Won't all the world say I'm awful +if I leave the house before--before she has bolted? They'll say +it was my doing so that made her bolt." + +Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no +check to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that--if you've done it for +so high a motive? Think of the beauty of it," the good lady +pressed. + +"Of bolting with YOU?" Sir Claude ejaculated. + +She faintly smiled--she even faintly coloured. "So far from doing +you harm it will do you the highest good. Sir Claude, if you'll +listen to me, it will save you." + +"Save me from what?" + +Maisie, at this question, waited with renewed suspense for an +answer that would bring the thing to some finer point than their +companion had brought it to before. But there was on the contrary +only more mystification in Mrs. Wix's reply. "Ah from you know +what!" + +"Do you mean from some other woman!" + +"Yes--from a real bad one." + +Sir Claude at least, the child could see, was not mystified; so +little indeed that a smile of intelligence broke afresh in his +eyes. He turned them in vague discomfort to Maisie, and then +something in the way she met them caused him to chuck her +playfully under the chin. It was not till after this that he +good-naturedly met Mrs. Wix. "You think me much worse than I am." + +"If that were true," she returned, "I wouldn't appeal to you. I +do, Sir Claude, in the name of all that's good in you--and oh so +earnestly! We can help each other. What you'll do for our young +friend here I needn't say. That isn't even what I want to speak +of now. What I want to speak of is what you'll GET--don't you +see?--from such an opportunity to take hold. Take hold of US-- +take hold of HER. Make her your duty--make her your life: she'll +repay you a thousand-fold!" + +It was to Mrs. Wix, during this appeal, that Maisie's contemplation +transferred itself: partly because, though her heart was in her +throat for trepidation, her delicacy deterred her from appearing +herself to press the question; partly from the coercion of seeing +Mrs. Wix come out as Mrs. Wix had never come Before--not even on +the day of her call at Mrs. Beale's with the news of mamma's +marriage. On that day Mrs. Beale had surpassed her in dignity, +but nobody could have surpassed her now. There was in fact at +this moment a fascination for her pupil in the hint she seemed +to give that she had still more of that surprise behind. So the +sharpened sense of spectatorship was the child's main support, +the long habit, from the first, of seeing herself in discussion +and finding in the fury of it--she had had a glimpse of the game +of football--a sort of compensation for the doom of a peculiar +passivity. It gave her often an odd air of being present at her +history in as separate a manner as if she could only get at +experience by flattening her nose against a pane of glass. +Such she felt to be the application of her nose while she waited +for the effect of Mrs. Wix's eloquence. Sir Claude, however, +didn't keep her long in a position so ungraceful: he sat down +and opened his arms to her as he had done the day he came for +her at her father's, and while he held her there, looking at +her kindly, but as if their companion had brought the blood +a good deal to his face, he said: + +"Dear Mrs. Wix is magnificent, but she's rather too grand about +it. I mean the situation isn't after all quite so desperate or +quite so simple. But I give you my word before her, and I give it +to her before you, that I'll never, never, forsake you. Do you +hear that, old fellow, and do you take it in? I'll stick to you +through everything." + +Maisie did take it in--took it with a long tremor of all her +little being; and then as, to emphasise it, he drew her closer +she buried her head on his shoulder and cried without sound and +without pain. While she was so engaged she became aware that his +own breast was agitated, and gathered from it with rapture that +his tears were as silently flowing. Presently she heard a loud +sob from Mrs. Wix--Mrs. Wix was the only one who made a noise. + +She was to have made, for some time, none other but this, though +within a few days, in conversation with her pupil, she described +her intercourse with Ida as little better than the state of being +battered. There was as yet nevertheless no attempt to eject her +by force, and she recognised that Sir Claude, taking such a stand +as never before, had intervened with passion and with success. As +Maisie remembered--and remembered wholly without disdain--that he +had told her he was afraid of her ladyship, the little girl took +this act of resolution as a proof of what, in the spirit of the +engagement sealed by all their tears, he was really prepared to +do. Mrs. Wix spoke to her of the pecuniary sacrifice by which she +herself purchased the scant security she enjoyed and which, if it +was a defence against the hand of violence, yet left her exposed +to incredible rudeness. Didn't her ladyship find every hour of +the day some artful means to humiliate and trample upon her? +There was a quarter's salary owing her--a great name, even Maisie +could suspect, for a small matter; she should never see it as +long as she lived, but keeping quiet about it put her ladyship, +thank heaven, a little in one's power. Now that he was doing so +much else she could never have the grossness to apply for it to +Sir Claude. He had sent home for schoolroom consumption a huge +frosted cake, a wonderful delectable mountain with geological +strata of jam, which might, with economy, see them through many +days of their siege; but it was none the less known to Mrs. Wix +that his affairs were more and more involved, and her fellow +partaker looked back tenderly, in the light of these involutions, +at the expression of face with which he had greeted the proposal +that he should set up another establishment. Maisie felt that if +their maintenance should hang by a thread they must still demean +themselves with the highest delicacy. What he was doing was +simply acting without delay, so far as his embarrassments +permitted, on the inspiration of his elder friend. There was at +this season a wonderful month of May--as soft as a drop of the +wind in a gale that had kept one awake--when he took out his +stepdaughter with a fresh alacrity and they rambled the great +town in search, as Mrs. Wix called it, of combined amusement and +instruction. + +They rode on the top of 'buses; they visited outlying parks; they +went to cricket-matches where Maisie fell asleep; they tried a +hundred places for the best one to have tea. This was his direct +way of rising to Mrs. Wix's grand lesson--of making his little +accepted charge his duty and his life. They dropped, under +incontrollable impulses, into shops that they agreed were too +big, to look at things that they agreed were too small, and it +was during these hours that Mrs. Wix, alone at home, but a +subject of regretful reference as they pulled off their gloves +for refreshment, subsequently described herself as least +sheltered from the blows her ladyship had achieved such ingenuity +in dealing. She again and again repeated that she wouldn't so +much have minded having her "attainments" held up to scorn and +her knowledge of every subject denied, hadn't she been branded as +"low" in character and tone. There was by this time no pretence +on the part of any one of denying it to be fortunate that her +ladyship habitually left London every Saturday and was more and +more disposed to a return late in the week. It was almost equally +public that she regarded as a preposterous "pose," and indeed as +a direct insult to herself, her husband's attitude of staying +behind to look after a child for whom the most elaborate +provision had been made. If there was a type Ida despised, Sir +Claude communicated to Maisie, it was the man who pottered about +town of a Sunday; and he also mentioned how often she had +declared to him that if he had a grain of spirit he would be +ashamed to accept a menial position about Mr. Farange's daughter. +It was her ladyship's contention that he was in craven fear of +his predecessor--otherwise he would recognise it as an obligation +of plain decency to protect his wife against the outrage of that +person's barefaced attempt to swindle her. The swindle was that +Mr. Farange put upon her the whole intolerable burden; "and even +when I pay for you myself," Sir Claude averred to his young +friend, "she accuses me the more of truckling and grovelling." It +was Mrs. Wix's conviction, they both knew, arrived at on +independent grounds, that Ida's weekly excursions were feelers +for a more considerable absence. If she came back later each week +the week would be sure to arrive when she wouldn't come back at +all. This appearance had of course much to do with Mrs. Wix's +actual valour. Could they but hold out long enough the snug +little home with Sir Claude would find itself informally +established. + + + +XIII + +This might moreover have been taken to be the sense of a remark +made by her stepfather as--one rainy day when the streets were +all splash and two umbrellas unsociable and the wanderers had +sought shelter in the National Gallery--Maisie sat beside him +staring rather sightlessly at a roomful of pictures which he had +mystified her much by speaking of with a bored sigh as a "silly +superstition." They represented, with patches of gold and +cataracts of purple, with stiff saints and angular angels, with +ugly Madonnas and uglier babies, strange prayers and prostrations; +so that she at first took his words for a protest against +devotional idolatry--all the more that he had of late often come +with her and with Mrs. Wix to morning church, a place of worship +of Mrs. Wix's own choosing, where there was nothing of that sort; +no haloes on heads, but only, during long sermons, beguiling +backs of bonnets, and where, as her governess always afterwards +observed, he gave the most earnest attention. It presently +appeared, however, that his reference was merely to the affectation +of admiring such ridiculous works--an admonition that she received +from him as submissively as she received everything. What turn it +gave to their talk needn't here be recorded: the transition to the +colourless schoolroom and lonely Mrs. Wix was doubtless an effect +of relaxed interest in what was before them. Maisie expressed in +her own way the truth that she never went home nowadays without +expecting to find the temple of her studies empty and the poor +priestess cast out. This conveyed a full appreciation of her peril, +and it was in rejoinder that Sir Claude uttered, acknowledging +the source of that peril, the reassurance at which I have glanced. +"Don't be afraid, my dear: I've squared her." It required indeed +a supplement when he saw that it left the child momentarily blank. +"I mean that your mother lets me do what I want so long as I let +her do what SHE wants." + +"So you ARE doing what you want?" Maisie asked. + +"Rather, Miss Farange!" + +Miss Farange turned it over. "And she's doing the same?" + +"Up to the hilt!" + +Again she considered. "Then, please, what may it be?" + +"I wouldn't tell you for the whole world." + +She gazed at a gaunt Madonna; after which she broke into a slow +smile. "Well, I don't care, so long as you do let her." + +"Oh you monster!"--and Sir Claude's gay vehemence brought him to +his feet. + +Another day, in another place--a place in Baker Street where at a +hungry hour she had sat down with him to tea and bun--he brought +out a question disconnected from previous talk. "I say, you know, +what do you suppose your father WOULD do?" + +Maisie hadn't long to cast about or to question his pleasant +eyes. "If you were really to go with us? He'd make a great +complaint." + +He seemed amused at the term she employed. "Oh I shouldn't mind a +'complaint'!" + +"He'd talk to every one about it," said Maisie. + +"Well, I shouldn't mind that either." + +"Of course not," the child hastened to respond. "You've told me +you're not afraid of him." + +"The question is are you?" said Sir Claude. + +Maisie candidly considered; then she spoke resolutely. "No, not +of papa." + +"But of somebody else?" + +"Certainly, of lots of people." + +"Of your mother first and foremost of course." + +"Dear, yes; more of mamma than of--than of--" + +"Than of what?" Sir Claude asked as she hesitated for a +comparison. + +She thought over all objects of dread. "Than of a wild elephant!" +she at last declared. "And you are too," she reminded him as he +laughed. + +"Oh yes, I am too." + +Again she meditated. "Why then did you marry her?" + +"Just because I WAS afraid." + +"Even when she loved you?" + +"That made her the more alarming." + +For Maisie herself, though her companion seemed to find it droll, +this opened up depths of gravity. "More alarming than she is +now?" + +"Well, in a different way. Fear, unfortunately, is a very big +thing, and there's a great variety of kinds." + +She took this in with complete intelligence. "Then I think I've +got them all." + +"You?" her friend cried. "Nonsense! You're thoroughly 'game.'" + +"I'm awfully afraid of Mrs. Beale," Maisie objected. + +He raised his smooth brows. "That charming woman?" + +"Well," she answered, "you can't understand it because you're not +in the same state." + +She had been going on with a luminous "But" when, across the +table, he laid his hand on her arm. "I CAN understand it," he +confessed. "I AM in the same state." + +"Oh but she likes you so!" Maisie promptly pleaded. + +Sir Claude literally coloured. "That has something to do with +it." + +Maisie wondered again. "Being liked with being afraid?" + +"Yes, when it amounts to adoration." + +"Then why aren't you afraid of ME?" + +"Because with you it amounts to that?" He had kept his hand on +her arm. "Well, what prevents is simply that you're the gentlest +spirit on earth. Besides--" he pursued; but he came to a pause. + +"Besides--?" + +"I SHOULD be in fear if you were older--there! See--you already +make me talk nonsense," the young man added. "The question's +about your father. Is he likewise afraid of Mrs. Beale?" + +"I think not. And yet he loves her," Maisie mused. + +"Oh no--he doesn't; not a bit!" After which, as his companion +stared, Sir Claude apparently felt that he must make this oddity +fit with her recollections. "There's nothing of that sort NOW." + +But Maisie only stared the more. "They've changed?" + +"Like your mother and me." She wondered how he knew. + +"Then you've seen Mrs. Beale again?" + +He demurred. "Oh no. She has written to me," he presently +subjoined. "SHE'S not afraid of your father either. No one at all +is--really." Then he went on while Maisie's little mind, with its +filial spring too relaxed from of old for a pang at this want of +parental majesty, speculated on the vague relation between Mrs. +Beale's courage and the question, for Mrs. Wix and herself, of a +neat lodging with their friend. "She wouldn't care a bit if Mr. +Farange should make a row." + +"Do you mean about you and me and Mrs. Wix? Why should she care? +It wouldn't hurt HER." + +Sir Claude, with his legs out and his hand diving into his +trousers-pocket, threw back his head with a laugh just +perceptibly tempered, as she thought, by a sigh. "My dear +stepchild, you're delightful! Look here, we must pay. You've had +five buns?" + +"How CAN you?" Maisie demanded, crimson under the eye of the +young woman who had stepped to their board. "I've had three." + +Shortly after this Mrs. Wix looked so ill that it was to be +feared her ladyship had treated her to some unexampled passage. +Maisie asked if anything worse than usual had occurred; whereupon +the poor woman brought out with infinite gloom: "He has been +seeing Mrs. Beale." + +"Sir Claude?" The child remembered what he had said. "Oh no--not +SEEING her!" + +"I beg your pardon. I absolutely know it." Mrs. Wix was as +positive as she was dismal. + +Maisie nevertheless ventured to challenge her. "And how, please, +do you know it?" + +She faltered a moment. "From herself. I've been to see her." + +Then on Maisie's visible surprise: "I went yesterday while you +were out with him. He has seen her repeatedly." + +It was not wholly clear to Maisie why Mrs. Wix should be +prostrate at this discovery; but her general consciousness of the +way things could be both perpetrated and resented always eased +off for her the strain of the particular mystery. "There may be +some mistake. He says he hasn't." + +Mrs. Wix turned paler, as if this were a still deeper ground for +alarm. "He says so?--he denies that he has seen her?" + +"He told me so three days ago. Perhaps she's mistaken," Maisie +suggested. + +"Do you mean perhaps she lies? She lies whenever it suits her, +I'm very sure. But I know when people lie--and that's what I've +loved in you, that YOU never do. Mrs. Beale didn't yesterday at +any rate. He HAS seen her." + +Maisie was silent a little. "He says not," she then repeated. +"Perhaps--perhaps--" Once more she paused. + +"Do you mean perhaps HE lies?" + +"Gracious goodness, no!" Maisie shouted. + +Mrs. Wix's bitterness, however, again overflowed. "He does, he +does," she cried, "and it's that that's just the worst of it! +They'll take you, they'll take you, and what in the world will +then become of me?" She threw herself afresh upon her pupil and +wept over her with the inevitable effect of causing the child's +own tears to flow. But Maisie couldn't have told you if she had +been crying at the image of their separation or at that of Sir +Claude's untruth. As regards this deviation it was agreed between +them that they were not in a position to bring it home to him. +Mrs. Wix was in dread of doing anything to make him, as she said, +"worse"; and Maisie was sufficiently initiated to be able to +reflect that in speaking to her as he had done he had only wished +to be tender of Mrs. Beale. It fell in with all her inclinations +to think of him as tender, and she forbore to let him know that +the two ladies had, as SHE would never do, betrayed him. She had +not long to keep her secret, for the next day, when she went out +with him, he suddenly said in reference to some errand he had +first proposed: "No, we won't do that--we'll do something else." +On this, a few steps from the door, he stopped a hansom and +helped her in; then following her he gave the driver over the top +an address that she lost. When he was seated beside her she asked +him where they were going; to which he replied "My dear child, +you'll see." She saw while she watched and wondered that they +took the direction of the Regent's Park; but she didn't know why +he should make a mystery of that, and it was not till they passed +under a pretty arch and drew up at a white house in a terrace +from which the view, she thought, must be lovely that, mystified, +she clutched him and broke out: "I shall see papa?" + +He looked down at her with a kind smile. "No, probably not. I +haven't brought you for that." + +"Then whose house is it?" + +"It's your father's. They've moved her." + +She looked about: she had known Mr. Farange in four or five +houses, and there was nothing astonishing in this except that it +was the nicest place yet. "But I shall see Mrs. Beale?" + +"It's to see her that I brought you." + +She stared, very white, and, with her hand on his arm, though +they had stopped, kept him sitting in the cab. "To leave me, do +you mean?" + +He could scarce bring it out. "It's not for me to say if you CAN +stay. We must look into it." + +"But if I do I shall see papa?" + +"Oh some time or other, no doubt." Then Sir Claude went on: "Have +you really so very great a dread of that?" + +Maisie glanced away over the apron of the cab--gazed a minute at +the green expanse of the Regent's Park and, at this moment +colouring to the roots of her hair, felt the full, hot rush of an +emotion more mature than any she had yet known. It consisted of +an odd unexpected shame at placing in an inferior light, to so +perfect a gentleman and so charming a person as Sir Claude, so +very near a relative as Mr. Farange. She remembered, however, her +friend's telling her that no one was seriously afraid of her +father, and she turned round with a small toss of her head. "Oh I +dare say I can manage him!" + +Sir Claude smiled, but she noted that the violence with which she +had just changed colour had brought into his own face a slight +compunctious and embarrassed flush. It was as if he had caught +his first glimpse of her sense of responsibility. Neither of them +made a movement to get out, and after an instant he said to her: +"Look here, if you say so we won't after all go in." + +"Ah but I want to see Mrs. Beale!" the child gently wailed. + +"But what if she does decide to take you? Then, you know, you'll +have to remain." + +Maisie turned it over. "Straight on--and give you up?" + +"Well--I don't quite know about giving me up." + +"I mean as I gave up Mrs. Beale when I last went to mamma's. I +couldn't do without you here for anything like so long a time as +that." It struck her as a hundred years since she had seen Mrs. +Beale, who was on the other side of the door they were so near +and whom she yet had not taken the jump to clasp in her arms. + +"Oh I dare say you'll see more of me than you've seen of Mrs. +Beale. It isn't in ME to be so beautifully discreet," Sir Claude +said. "But all the same," he continued, "I leave the thing, now +that we're here, absolutely WITH you. You must settle it. We'll +only go in if you say so. If you don't say so we'll turn right +round and drive away." + +"So in that case Mrs. Beale won't take me?" + +"Well--not by any act of ours." + +"And I shall be able to go on with mamma?" Maisie asked. + +"Oh I don't say that!" + +She considered. "But I thought you said you had squared her?" + +Sir Claude poked his stick at the splashboard of the cab. "Not, +my dear child, to the point she now requires." + +"Then if she turns me out and I don't come here--" + +Sir Claude promptly took her up. "What do I offer you, you +naturally enquire? My poor chick, that's just what I ask myself. +I don't see it, I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wix." + +His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wix saw. "You mean WE +can't make a little family?" + +"It's very base of me, no doubt, but I can't wholly chuck your +mother." + +Maisie, at this, emitted a low but lengthened sigh, a slight +sound of reluctant assent which would certainly have been amusing +to an auditor. "Then there isn't anything else?" + +"I vow I don't quite see what there is." + +Maisie waited; her silence seemed to signify that she too had no +alternative to suggest. But she made another appeal. "If I come +here you'll come to see me?" + +"I won't lose sight of you." + +"But how often will you come?" As he hung fire she pressed him. +"Often and often?" + +Still he faltered. "My dear old woman--" he began. Then he paused +again, going on the next moment with a change of tone. "You're +too funny! Yes then," he said; "often and often." + +"All right!" Maisie jumped out. Mrs. Beale was at home, but not +in the drawing-room, and when the butler had gone for her the +child suddenly broke out: "But when I'm here what will Mrs. Wix +do?" + +"Ah you should have thought of that sooner!" said her companion +with the first faint note of asperity she had ever heard him +sound. + + + +XIV + +Mrs Beale fairly swooped upon her and the effect of the whole +hour was to show the child how much, how quite formidably indeed, +after all, she was loved. This was the more the case as her +stepmother, so changed--in the very manner of her mother--that +she really struck her as a new acquaintance, somehow recalled +more familiarity than Maisie could feel. A rich strong expressive +affection in short pounced upon her in the shape of a handsomer, +ampler, older Mrs. Beale. It was like making a fine friend, and +they hadn't been a minute together before she felt elated at the +way she had met the choice imposed on her in the cab. There was a +whole future in the combination of Mrs. Beale's beauty and Mrs. +Beale's hug. She seemed to Maisie charming to behold, and also to +have no connexion at all with anybody who had once mended +underclothing and had meals in the nursery. The child knew one of +her father's wives was a woman of fashion, but she had always +dimly made a distinction, not applying that epithet without +reserve to the other. Mrs. Beale had since their separation +acquired a conspicuous right to it, and Maisie's first flush of +response to her present delight coloured all her splendour with +meanings that this time were sweet. She had told Sir Claude she +was afraid of the lady in the Regent's Park; but she had +confidence enough to break on the spot, into the frankest +appreciation. "Why, aren't you beautiful? Isn't she beautiful, +Sir Claude, ISN'T SHE?" + +"The handsomest woman in London, simply," Sir Claude gallantly +replied. "Just as sure as you're the best little girl!" + +Well, the handsomest woman in London gave herself up, with tender +lustrous looks and every demonstration of fondness, to a +happiness at last clutched again. There was almost as vivid a +bloom in her maturity as in mamma's, and it took her but a short +time to give her little friend an impression of positive power-- +an impression that seemed to begin like a long bright day. This +was a perception on Maisie's part that neither mamma, nor Sir +Claude, nor Mrs. Wix, with their immense and so varied respective +attractions, had exactly kindled, and that made an immediate +difference when the talk, as it promptly did, began to turn to +her father. Oh yes, Mr. Farange was a complication, but she saw +now that he wouldn't be one for his daughter. For Mrs. Beale +certainly he was an immense one--she speedily made known as much; +but Mrs. Beale from this moment presented herself to Maisie as a +person to whom a great gift had come. The great gift was just for +handling complications. Maisie felt how little she made of them +when, after she had dropped to Sir Claude some recall of a +previous meeting, he made answer, with a sound of consternation +and yet an air of relief, that he had denied to their companion +their having, since the day he came for her, seen each other till +that moment. + +Mrs. Beale could but vaguely pity it. "Why did you do anything so +silly?" + +"To protect your reputation." + +"From Maisie?" Mrs. Beale was much amused. "My reputation with +Maisie is too good to suffer." + +"But you believed me, you rascal, didn't you?" Sir Claude asked +of the child. + +She looked at him; she smiled. "Her reputation did suffer. I +discovered you had been here." + +He was not too chagrined to laugh. "The way, my dear, you talk of +that sort of thing!" + +"How should she talk," Mrs. Beale wanted to know, "after all this +wretched time with her mother?" + +"It was not mamma who told me," Maisie explained. "It was only +Mrs. Wix." She was hesitating whether to bring out before Sir +Claude the source of Mrs. Wix's information; but Mrs. Beale, +addressing the young man, showed the vanity of scruples. + +"Do you know that preposterous person came to see me a day or two +ago?--when I told her I had seen you repeatedly." + +Sir Claude, for once in a way, was disconcerted. "The old cat! +She never told me. Then you thought I had lied?" he demanded of +Maisie. + +She was flurried by the term with which he had qualified her +gentle friend, but she took the occasion for one to which she +must in every manner lend herself. "Oh I didn't mind! But Mrs. +Wix did," she added with an intention benevolent to her +governess. + +Her intention was not very effective as regards Mrs. Beale. "Mrs. +Wix is too idiotic!" that lady declared. + +"But to you, of all people," Sir Claude asked, "what had she to +say?" + +"Why that, like Mrs. Micawber--whom she must, I think, rather +resemble--she will never, never, never desert Miss Farange." + +"Oh I'll make that all right!" Sir Claude cheerfully returned. + +"I'm sure I hope so, my dear man," said Mrs. Beale, while Maisie +wondered just how he would proceed. Before she had time to ask +Mrs. Beale continued: "That's not all she came to do, if you +please. But you'll never guess the rest." + +"Shall _I_ guess it?" Maisie quavered. + +Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why you're just the person! It must +be quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mother's. +Have you never seen women there crying to her to 'spare' the men +they love?" + +Maisie, wondering, tried to remember; but Sir Claude was freshly +diverted. "Oh they don't trouble about Ida! Mrs. Wix cried to you +to spare ME?" + +"She regularly went down on her knees to me." + +"The darling old dear!" the young man exclaimed. + +These words were a joy to Maisie--they made up for his previous +description of Mrs. Wix. "And WILL you spare him?" she asked of +Mrs. Beale. + +Her stepmother, seizing her and kissing her again, seemed charmed +with the tone of her question. "Not an inch of him! I'll pick him +to the bone!" + +"You mean that he'll really come often?" Maisie pressed. + +Mrs. Beale turned lovely eyes to Sir Claude. "That's not for me +to say--its for him." + +He said nothing at once, however; with his hands in his pockets +and vaguely humming a tune--when Maisie could see he was a little +nervous--he only walked to the window and looked out at the +Regent's Park. "Well, he has promised," Maisie said. "But how +will papa like it?" + +"His being in and out? Ah that's a question that, to be frank +with you, my dear, hardly matters. In point of fact, however, +Beale greatly enjoys the idea that Sir Claude too, poor man, has +been forced to quarrel with your mother." + +Sir Claude turned round and spoke gravely and kindly. "Don't be +afraid, Maisie; you won't lose sight of me." + +"Thank you so much!" Maisie was radiant. "But what I meant--don't +you know?--was what papa would say to ME." + +"Oh I've been having that out with him," said Mrs. Beale. "He'll +behave well enough. You see the great difficulty is that, though +he changes every three days about everything else in the world, +he has never changed about your mother. It's a caution, the way +he hates her." + +Sir Claude gave a short laugh. "It certainly can't beat the way +she still hates HIM!" + +"Well," Mrs. Beale went on obligingly, "nothing can take the +place of that feeling with either of them, and the best way they +can think of to show it is for each to leave you as long as +possible on the hands of the other. There's nothing, as you've +seen for yourself, that makes either so furious. It isn't, asking +so little as you do, that you're much of an expense or a trouble; +it's only that you make each feel so well how nasty the other +wants to be. Therefore Beale goes on loathing your mother too +much to have any great fury left for any one else. Besides, you +know, I've squared him." + +"Oh Lord!" Sir Claude cried with a louder laugh and turning again +to the window. + +"_I_ know how!" Maisie was prompt to proclaim. "By letting him do +what he wants on condition that he lets you also do it." + +"You're too delicious, my own pet!"--she was involved in another +hug. "How in the world have I got on so long without you? I've +not been happy, love," said Mrs. Beale with her cheek to the +child's. + +"Be happy now!"--she throbbed with shy tenderness. + +"I think I shall be. You'll save me." + +"As I'm saving Sir Claude?" the little girl asked eagerly. + +Mrs. Beale, a trifle at a loss, appealed to her visitor, "Is she +really?" + +He showed high amusement at Maisie's question. "It's dear Mrs. +Wix's idea. There may be something in it." + +"He makes me his duty--he makes me his life," Maisie set forth to +her stepmother. + +"Why that's what _I_ want to do!"--Mrs. Beale, so anticipated, +turned pink with astonishment. + +"Well, you can do it together. Then he'll HAVE to come!" + +Mrs. Beale by this time had her young friend fairly in her lap +and she smiled up at Sir Claude. "Shall we do it together?" + +His laughter had dropped, and for a moment he turned his handsome +serious face not to his hostess, but to his stepdaughter. "Well, +it's rather more decent than some things. Upon my soul, the way +things are going, it seems to me the only decency!" He had the +air of arguing it out to Maisie, of presenting it, through an +impulse of conscience, as a connexion in which they could +honourably see her participate; though his plea of mere "decency" +might well have appeared to fall below her rosy little vision. +"If we're not good for YOU" he exclaimed, "I'll be hanged if I +know who we shall be good for!" + +Mrs. Beale showed the child an intenser light. "I dare say you +WILL save us--from one thing and another." + +"Oh I know what she'll save ME from!" Sir Claude roundly +asserted. "There'll be rows of course," he went on. + +Mrs. Beale quickly took him up. "Yes, but they'll be nothing--for +you at least--to the rows your wife makes as it is. I can bear +what _I_ suffer--I can't bear what you go through." + +"We're doing a good deal for you, you know, young woman," Sir +Claude went on to Maisie with the same gravity. + +She coloured with a sense of obligation and the eagerness of her +desire it should be remarked how little was lost on her. "Oh I +know!" + +"Then you must keep us all right!" This time he laughed. + +"How you talk to her!" cried Mrs. Beale. + +"No worse than you!" he gaily answered. + +"Handsome is that handsome does!" she returned in the same +spirit. "You can take off your things," she went on, releasing +Maisie. + +The child, on her feet, was all emotion. "Then I'm just to stop-- +this way?" + +"It will do as well as any other. Sir Claude, to-morrow, will have +your things brought." + +"I'll bring them myself. Upon my word I'll see them packed!" Sir +Claude promised. "Come here and unbutton." + +He had beckoned his young companion to where he sat, and he +helped to disengage her from her coverings while Mrs. Beale, from +a little distance, smiled at the hand he displayed. "There's a +stepfather for you! I'm bound to say, you know, that he makes up +for the want of other people." + +"He makes up for the want of a nurse!" Sir Claude laughed. "Don't +you remember I told you so the very first time?" + +"Remember? It was exactly what made me think so well of you!" + +"Nothing would induce me," the young man said to Maisie, "to tell +you what made me think so well of HER." Having divested the child +he kissed her gently and gave her a little pat to make her stand +off. The pat was accompanied with a vague sigh in which his +gravity of a moment before came back. "All the same, if you +hadn't had the fatal gift of beauty--" + +"Well, what?" Maisie asked, wondering why he paused. It was the +first time she had heard of her beauty. + +"Why, we shouldn't all be thinking so well of each other!" + +"He isn't speaking of personal loveliness--you've not THAT vulgar +beauty, my dear, at all," Mrs. Beale explained. "He's just +talking of plain dull charm of character." + +"Her character's the most extraordinary thing in all the world," +Sir Claude stated to Mrs. Beale. + +"Oh I know all about that sort of thing!"--she fairly bridled +with the knowledge. + +It gave Maisie somehow a sudden sense of responsibility from +which she sought refuge. "Well, you've got it too, 'that sort of +thing'--you've got the fatal gift: you both really have!" she +broke out. + +"Beauty of character? My dear boy, we haven't a pennyworth!" Sir +Qaude protested. + +"Speak for yourself, sir!" she leaped lightly from Mrs. Beale. +"I'm good and I'm clever. What more do you want? For you, I'll +spare your blushes and not be personal--I'll simply say that +you're as handsome as you can stick together." + +"You're both very lovely; you can't get out of it!"--Maisie felt +the need of carrying her point. "And it's beautiful to see you +side by side." + +Sir Claude had taken his hat and stick; he stood looking at her a +moment. "You're a comfort in trouble! But I must go home and pack +you." + +"And when will you come back?--to-morrow, to-morrow?" + +"You see what we're in for!" he said to Mrs. Beale. + +"Well, I can bear it if you can." + +Their companion gazed from one of them to the other, thinking +that though she had been happy indeed between Sir Claude and Mrs. +Wix she should evidently be happier still between Sir Claude and +Mrs. Beale. But it was like being perched on a prancing horse, +and she made a movement to hold on to something. "Then, you know, +shan't I bid goodbye to Mrs. Wix?" + +"Oh I'll make it all right with her," said Sir Claude. + +Maisie considered. "And with mamma?" + +"Ah mamma!" he sadly laughed. + +Even for the child this was scarcely ambiguous; but Mrs. Beale +endeavoured to contribute to its clearness. "Your mother will +crow, she'll crow--" + +"Like the early bird!" said Sir Claude as she looked about for a +comparison. + +"She'll need no consolation," Mrs. Beale went on, "for having +made your father grandly blaspheme." + +Maisie stared. "Will he grandly blaspheme?" It was impressive, it +might have been out of the Bible, and her question produced a +fresh play of caresses, in which Sir Claude also engaged. She +wondered meanwhile who, if Mrs. Wix was disposed of, would +represent in her life the element of geography and anecdote; and +she presently surmounted the delicacy she felt about asking. +"Won't there be any one to give me lessons?" + +Mrs. Beale was prepared with a reply that struck her as +absolutely magnificent. "You shall have such lessons as you've +never had in all your life. You shall go to courses." + +"Courses?" Maisie had never heard of such things. + +"At institutions--on subjects." + +Maisie continued to stare. "Subjects?" + +Mrs. Beale was really splendid. "All the most important ones. +French literature--and sacred history. You'll take part in +classes--with awfully smart children." + +"I'm going to look thoroughly into the whole thing, you know." +And Sir Claude, with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of +assurance accompanied by a friendly wink. + +But Mrs. Beale went much further. "My dear child, you shall +attend lectures." + +The horizon was suddenly vast and Maisie felt herself the smaller +for it. "All alone?" + +"Oh no; I'll attend them with you," said Sir Claude. "They'll +teach me a lot I don't know." + +"So they will me," Mrs. Beale gravely admitted. "We'll go with +her together--it will be charming. It's ages," she confessed to +Maisie, "since I've had any time for study. That's another sweet +way in which you'll be a motive to us. Oh won't the good she'll +do us be immense?" she broke out uncontrollably to Sir Claude. + +He weighed it; then he replied: "That's certainly our idea." + +Of this idea Maisie naturally had less of a grasp, but it +inspired her with almost equal enthusiasm. If in so bright a +prospect there would be nothing to long for it followed that she +wouldn't long for Mrs. Wix; but her consciousness of her assent +to the absence of that fond figure caused a pair of words that +had often sounded in her ears to ring in them again. It showed +her in short what her father had always meant by calling her +mother a "low sneak" and her mother by calling her father one. +She wondered if she herself shouldn't be a low sneak in learning +to be so happy without Mrs. Wix. What would Mrs. Wix do?--where +would Mrs. Wix go? Before Maisie knew it, and at the door, as Sir +Claude was off, these anxieties, on her lips, grew articulate and +her stepfather had stopped long enough to answer them. "Oh I'll +square her!" he cried; and with this he departed. + +Face to face with Mrs. Beale Maisie, giving a sigh of relief, +looked round at what seemed to her the dawn of a higher order. +"Then EVERY ONE will be squared!" she peacefully said. On which +her stepmother affectionately bent over her again. + + + +XV + +It was Susan Ash who came to her with the news: "He's downstairs, +miss, and he do look beautiful." + +In the schoolroom at her father's, which had pretty blue +curtains, she had been making out at the piano a lovely little +thing, as Mrs. Beale called it, a "Moonlight Berceuse" sent her +through the post by Sir Claude, who considered that her musical +education had been deplorably neglected and who, the last months +at her mother's, had been on the point of making arrangements for +regular lessons. She knew from him familiarly that the real +thing, as he said, was shockingly dear and that anything else was +a waste of money, and she therefore rejoiced the more at the +sacrifice represented by this composition, of which the price, +five shillings, was marked on the cover and which was evidently +the real thing. She was already on her feet. "Mrs. Beale has sent +up for me?" + +"Oh no--it's not that," said Susan Ash. "Mrs. Beale has been out +this hour." + +"Then papa!" + +"Dear no--not papa. You'll do, miss, all but them wandering +'airs," Susan went on. "Your papa never came 'ome at all," she +added. + +"Home from where?" Maisie responded a little absently and very +excitedly. She gave a wild manual brush to her locks. + +"Oh that, miss, I should be very sorry to tell you! I'd rather +tuck away that white thing behind--though I'm blest if it's my +work." + +"Do then, please. I know where papa was," Maisie impatiently +continued. + +"Well, in your place I wouldn't tell." + +"He was at the club--the Chrysanthemum. So!" + +"All night long? Why the flowers shut up at night, you know!" +cried Susan Ash. + +"Well, I don't care"--he child was at the door. "Sir Claude asked +for me ALONE?" + +"The same as if you was a duchess." Maisie was aware on her way +downstairs that she was now quite as happy as one, and also, a +moment later, as she hung round his neck, that even such a +personage would scarce commit herself more grandly. There was +moreover a hint of the duchess in the infinite point with which, +as she felt, she exclaimed: "And this is what you call coming +OFTEN?" + +Sir Claude met her delightfully and in the same fine spirit. "My +dear old man, don't make me a scene--I assure you it's what every +woman I look at does. Let us have some fun--it's a lovely day: +clap on something smart and come out with me; then we'll talk it +over quietly." + +They were on their way five minutes later to Hyde Park, and +nothing that even in the good days at her mother's they had ever +talked over had more of the sweetness of tranquillity than his +present prompt explanations. He was at his best in such an office +and with the exception of Mrs. Wix the only person she had met in +her life who ever explained. With him, however, the act had +an authority transcending the wisdom of woman. It all came back-- +the plans that always failed, all the rewards and bribes that she +was perpetually paying for in advance and perpetually out of +pocket by afterwards--the whole great stress to be dealt with +introduced her on each occasion afresh to the question of money. +Even she herself almost knew how it would have expressed the +strength of his empire to say that to shuffle away her sense of +being duped he had only, from under his lovely moustache, to +breathe upon it. It was somehow in the nature of plans to be +expensive and in the nature of the expensive to be impossible. +To be "involved" was of the essence of everybody's affairs, and +also at every particular moment to be more involved than usual. +This had been the case with Sir Claude's, with papa's, with +mamma's, with Mrs. Beale's and with Maisie's own at the +particular moment, a moment of several weeks, that had elapsed +since our young lady had been re-established at her father's. +There wasn't "two-and-tuppence" for anything or for any one, and +that was why there had been no sequel to the classes in French +literature with all the smart little girls. It was devilish +awkward, didn't she see? to try, without even the limited capital +mentioned, to mix her up with a remote array that glittered +before her after this as the children of the rich. She was to +feel henceforth as if she were flattening her nose upon the hard +window-pane of the sweet-shop of knowledge. If the classes, +however, that were select, and accordingly the only ones, were +impossibly dear, the lectures at the institutions--at least at +some of them--were directly addressed to the intelligent poor, +and it therefore had to be easier still to produce on the spot +the reason why she had been taken to none. This reason, Sir +Claude said, was that she happened to be just going to be, though +they had nothing to do with that in now directing their steps to +the banks of the Serpentine. Maisie's own park, in the north, had +been nearer at hand, but they rolled westward in a hansom because +at the end of the sweet June days this was the direction taken by +every one that any one looked at. They cultivated for an hour, on +the Row and by the Drive, this opportunity for each observer to +amuse and for one of them indeed, not a little hilariously, to +mystify the other, and before the hour was over Maisie had +elicited, in reply to her sharpest challenge, a further account +of her friend's long absence. + +"Why I've broken my word to you so dreadfully--promising so +solemnly and then never coming? Well, my dear, that's a question +that, not seeing me day after day, you must very often have put +to Mrs. Beale." + +"Oh yes," the child replied; "again and again." + +"And what has she told you?" + +"That you're as bad as you're beautiful." + +"Is that what she says?" + +"Those very words." + +"Ah the dear old soul!" Sir Claude was much diverted, and his +loud, clear laugh was all his explanation. Those were just the +words Maisie had last heard him use about Mrs. Wix. She clung to +his hand, which was encased in a pearl-grey glove ornamented with +the thick black lines that, at her mother's, always used to +strike her as connected with the way the bestitched fists of the +long ladies carried, with the elbows well out, their umbrellas +upside down. The mere sense of his grasp in her own covered the +ground of loss just as much as the ground of gain. His presence +was like an object brought so close to her face that she couldn't +see round its edges. He himself, however, remained showman of the +spectacle even after they had passed out of the Park and begun, +under the charm of the spot and the season, to stroll in +Kensington Gardens. What they had left behind them was, as he +said, only a pretty bad circus, and, through prepossessing gates +and over a bridge, they had come in a quarter of an hour, as he +also remarked, a hundred miles from London. A great green glade +was before them, and high old trees, and under the shade of +these, in the fresh turf, the crooked course of a rural footpath. +"It's the Forest of Arden," Sir Claude had just delightfully +observed, "and I'm the banished duke, and you're--what was the +young woman called?--the artless country wench. And there," he +went on, "is the other girl--what's her name, Rosalind?--and +(don't you know?) the fellow who was making up to her. Upon my +word he IS making up to her!" + +His allusion was to a couple who, side by side, at the end of the +glade, were moving in the same direction as themselves. These +distant figures, in their slow stroll (which kept them so close +together that their heads, drooping a little forward, almost +touched), presented the back of a lady who looked tall, who +was evidently a very fine woman, and that of a gentleman whose +left hand appeared to be passed well into her arm while his +right, behind him, made jerky motions with the stick that it +grasped. Maisie's fancy responded for an instant to her friend's +idea that the sight was idyllic; then, stopping short, she +brought out with all her clearness: "Why mercy--if it isn't +mamma!" + +Sir Claude paused with a stare. "Mamma? But mamma's at Brussels." + +Maisie, with her eyes on the lady, wondered. "At Brussels?" + +"She's gone to play a match." + +"At billiards? You didn't tell me." + +"Of course _I_ didn't!" Sir Claude ejaculated. "There's plenty I +don't tell you. She went on Wednesday." + +The couple had added to their distance, but Maisie's eyes more +than kept pace with them. "Then she has come back." + +Sir Claude watched the lady. "It's much more likely she never +went!" + +"It's mamma!" the child said with decision. + +They had stood still, but Sir Claude had made the most of his +opportunity, and it happened that just at this moment, at the end +of the vista, the others halted and, still showing only their +backs, seemed to stay talking. "Right you are, my duck!" he ex- +claimed at last. "It's my own sweet wife!" + +He had spoken with a laugh, but he had changed colour, and Maisie +quickly looked away from him. "Then who is it with her?" + +"Blest if I know!" said Sir Claude. + +"Is it Mr. Perriam?" + +"Oh dear no--Perriam's smashed." + +"Smashed?" + +"Exposed--in the City. But there are quantities of others!" Sir +Claude smiled. + +Maisie appeared to count them; she studied the gentleman's back. +"Then is this Lord Eric?" + +For a moment her companion made no answer, and when she turned +her eyes again to him he was looking at her, she thought, rather +queerly. "What do you know about Lord Eric?" + +She tried innocently to be odd in return. "Oh I know more than +you think! Is it Lord Eric?" she repeated. + +"It maybe. Blest if I care!" + +Their friends had slightly separated and now, as Sir Claude +spoke, suddenly faced round, showing all the splendour of her +ladyship and all the mystery of her comrade. Maisie held her +breath. "They're coming!" + +"Let them come." And Sir Claude, pulling out his cigarettes, +began to strike a light. + +"We shall meet them!" + +"No. They'll meet US." + +Maisie stood her ground. "They see us. Just look." + +Sir Claude threw away his match. "Come straight on." The others, +in the return, evidently startled, had half-paused again, keeping +well apart. "She's horribly surprised and wants to slope," he +continued. "But it's too late." + +Maisie advanced beside him, making out even across the interval +that her ladyship was ill at ease. "Then what will she do?" + +Sir Claude puffed his cigarette. "She's quickly thinking." He +appeared to enjoy it. + +Ida had wavered but an instant; her companion clearly gave her +moral support. Maisie thought he somehow looked brave, and he had +no likeness whatever to Mr. Perriam. His face, thin and rather +sharp, was smooth, and it was not till they came nearer that she +saw he had a remarkably fair little moustache. She could already +see that his eyes were of the lightest blue. He was far nicer +than Mr. Perriam. Mamma looked terrible from afar, but even under +her guns the child's curiosity flickered and she appealed again +to Sir Claude. "Is it--IS it Lord Eric?" + +Sir Claude smoked composedly enough. "I think it's the Count." + +This was a happy solution--it fitted her idea of a count. But +what idea, as she now came grandly on, did mamma fit?--unless +that of an actress, in some tremendous situation, sweeping down +to the footlights as if she would jump them. Maisie felt really +so frightened that before she knew it she had passed her hand +into Sir Claude's arm. Her pressure caused him to stop, and at +the sight of this the other couple came equally to a stand and, +beyond the diminished space, remained a moment more in talk. +This, however, was the matter of an instant; leaving the Count +apparently to come round more circuitously--an outflanking +movement, if Maisie had but known--her ladyship resumed the +onset. "What WILL she do now?" her daughter asked. + +Sir Claude was at present in a position to say: "Try to pretend +it's me." + +"You?" + +"Why that I'm up to something." + +In another minute poor Ida had justified this prediction, erect +there before them like a figure of justice in full dress. There +were parts of her face that grew whiter while Maisie looked, and +other parts in which this change seemed to make other colours +reign with more intensity. "What are you doing with my daughter?" +she demanded of her husband; in spite of the indignant tone of +which Maisie had a greater sense than ever in her life before of +not being personally noticed. It seemed to her Sir Claude also +grew pale as an effect of the loud defiance with which Ida twice +repeated this question. He put her, instead of answering it, an +enquiry of his own: "Who the devil have you got hold of NOW?" and +at this her ladyship turned tremendously to the child, glaring at +her as at an equal plotter of sin. Maisie received in petrifaction +the full force of her mother's huge painted eyes--they were like +Japanese lanterns swung under festal arches. But life came back +to her from a tone suddenly and strangely softened. "Go straight +to that gentleman, my dear; I've asked him to take you a few +minutes. He's charming--go. I've something to say to THIS creature." + +Maisie felt Sir Claude immediately clutch her. "No, no--thank +you: that won't do. She's mine." + +"Yours?" It was confounding to Maisie to hear her speak quite as +if she had never heard of Sir Claude before. + +"Mine. You've given her up. You've not another word to say about +her. I have her from her father," said Sir Claude--a statement +that startled his companion, who could also measure its lively +action on her mother. + +There was visibly, however, an influence that made Ida consider; +she glanced at the gentleman she had left, who, having strolled +with his hands in his pockets to some distance, stood there with +unembarrassed vagueness. She directed to him the face that was +like an illuminated garden, turnstile and all, for the +frequentation of which he had his season-ticket; then she looked +again at Sir Claude. "I've given her up to her father to KEEP-- +not to get rid of by sending about the town either with you or +with any one else. If she's not to mind me let HIM come and tell +me so. I decline to take it from another person, and I like your +pretending that with your humbug of 'interest' you've a leg to +stand on. I know your game and have something now to say to you +about it." + +Sir Claude gave a squeeze of the child's arm. "Didn't I tell you +she'd have, Miss Farange?" + +"You're uncommonly afraid to hear it," Ida went on; "but if you +think she'll protect you from it you're mightily mistaken." She +gave him a moment. "I'll give her the benefit as soon as look at +you. Should you like her to know, my dear?" Maisie had a sense of +her launching the question with effect; yet our young lady was +also conscious of hoping that Sir Claude would declare that +preference. We have already learned that she had come to like +people's liking her to "know." Before he could reply at all, none +the less, her mother opened a pair of arms of extraordinary +elegance, and then she felt the loosening of his grasp. "My own +child," Ida murmured in a voice--a voice of sudden confused +tenderness--that it seemed to her she heard for the first time. +She wavered but an instant, thrilled with the first direct +appeal, as distinguished from the mere maternal pull, she had +ever had from lips that, even in the old vociferous years, had +always been sharp. The next moment she was on her mother's +breast, where, amid a wilderness of trinkets, she felt as if she +had suddenly been thrust, with a smash of glass, into a +jeweller's shop-front, but only to be as suddenly ejected with a +push and the brisk injunction: "Now go to the Captain!" + +Maisie glanced at the gentleman submissively, but felt the want +of more introduction. "The Captain?" + +Sir Claude broke into a laugh. "I told her it was the Count." + +Ida stared; she rose so superior that she was colossal. "You're +too utterly loathsome," she then declared. "Be off!" she repeated +to her daughter. + +Maisie started, moved backward and, looking at Sir Claude, "Only +for a moment," she signed to him in her bewilderment. But he was +too angry to heed her--too angry with his wife; as she turned +away she heard his anger break out. "You damned old b--"--she +couldn't quite hear all. It was enough, it was too much: she fled +before it, rushing even to a stranger for the shock of such a +change of tone. + + + +XVI + +As she met the Captain's light blue eyes the greatest marvel +occurred; she felt a sudden relief at finding them reply with +anxiety to the horror in her face. "What in the world has he +done?" He put it all on Sir Claude. + +"He has called her a damned old brute." She couldn't help +bringing that out. + +The Captain, at the same elevation as her ladyship, gaped wide; +then of course, like every one else, he was convulsed. But he +instantly caught himself up, echoing her bad words. "A damned old +brute--your mother?" + +Maisie was already conscious of her second movement. "I think she +tried to make him angry." + +The Captain's stupefaction was fine. "Angry--SHE? Why she's an +angel!" + +On the spot, as he said this, his face won her over; it was so +bright and kind, and his blue eyes had such a reflexion of some +mysterious grace that, for him at least, her mother had put +forth. Her fund of observation enabled her as she gazed up at him +to place him: he was a candid simple soldier; very grave--she +came back to that--but not at all terrible. At any rate he struck +a note that was new to her and that after a moment made her say: +"Do you like her very much?" + +He smiled down at her, hesitating, looking pleasanter and +pleasanter. "Let me tell you about your mother." + +He put out a big military hand which she immediately took, and +they turned off together to where a couple of chairs had been +placed under one of the trees. "She told me to come to you," +Maisie explained as they went; and presently she was close to him +in a chair, with the prettiest of pictures--the sheen of the lake +through other trees--before them, and the sound of birds, the +plash of boats, the play of children in the air. The Captain, +inclining his military person, sat sideways to be closer and +kinder, and as her hand was on the arm of her seat he put his own +down on it again to emphasise something he had to say that would +be good for her to hear. He had already told her how her mother, +from the moment of seeing her so unexpectedly with a person who +was--well, not at all the right person, had promptly asked him to +take charge of her while she herself tackled, as she said, the +real culprit. He gave the child the sense of doing for the time +what he liked with her; ten minutes before she had never seen +him, but she could now sit there touching him, touched and +impressed by him and thinking it nice when a gentleman was thin +and brown--brown with a kind of clear depth that made his straw- +coloured moustache almost white and his eyes resemble little pale +flowers. The most extraordinary thing was the way she didn't +appear just then to mind Sir Claude's being tackled. The Captain +wasn't a bit like him, for it was an odd part of the pleasantness +of mamma's friend that it resided in a manner in this friend's +having a face so informally put together that the only kindness +could be to call it funny. An odder part still was that it +finally made our young lady, to classify him further, say to +herself that, of all people in the world, he reminded her most +insidiously of Mrs. Wix. He had neither straighteners nor a +diadem, nor, at least in the same place as the other, a button; +he was sun-burnt and deep-voiced and smelt of cigars, yet he +marvellously had more in common with her old governess than with +her young stepfather. What he had to say to her that was good for +her to hear was that her poor mother (didn't she know?) was the +best friend he had ever had in all his life. And he added: "She +has told me ever so much about you. I'm awfully glad to know +you." + +She had never, she thought, been so addressed as a young lady, +not even by Sir Claude the day, so long ago, that she found him +with Mrs. Beale. It struck her as the way that at balls, by +delightful partners, young ladies must be spoken to in the +intervals of dances; and she tried to think of something that +would meet it at the same high point. But this effort flurried +her, and all she could produce was: "At first, you know, I +thought you were Lord Eric." + +The Captain looked vague. "Lord Eric?" + +"And then Sir Claude thought you were the Count." + +At this he laughed out. "Why he's only five foot high and as red +as a lobster!" Maisie laughed, with a certain elegance, in return +--the young lady at the ball certainly would--and was on the +point, as conscientiously, of pursuing the subject with an +agreeable question. But before she could speak her companion +challenged her. "Who in the world's Lord Eric?" + +"Don't you know him?" She judged her young lady would say that +with light surprise. + +"Do you mean a fat man with his mouth always open?" She had to +confess that their acquaintance was so limited that she could +only describe the bearer of the name as a friend of mamma's; but +a light suddenly came to the Captain, who quickly spoke as +knowing her man. "What-do-you-call-him's brother, the fellow that +owned Bobolink?" Then, with all his kindness, he contradicted her +flat. "Oh dear no; your mother never knew HIM." + +"But Mrs. Wix said so," the child risked. + +"Mrs. Wix?" + +"My old governess." + +This again seemed amusing to the Captain. "She mixed him up, your +old governess. He's an awful beast. Your mother never looked at +him." + +He was as positive as he was friendly, but he dropped for a +minute after this into a silence that gave Maisie, confused but +ingenious, a chance to redeem the mistake of pretending to know +too much by the humility of inviting further correction. "And +doesn't she know the Count?" + +"Oh I dare say! But he's another ass." After which abruptly, with +a different look, he put down again on the back of her own the +hand he had momentarily removed. Maisie even thought he coloured +a little. "I want tremendously to speak to you. You must never +believe any harm of your mother." + +"Oh I assure you I DON'T!" cried the child, blushing, herself, up +to her eyes in a sudden surge of deprecation of such a thought. + +The Captain, bending his head, raised her hand to his lips with a +benevolence that made her wish her glove had been nicer. "Of +course you don't when you know how fond she is of YOU." + +"She's fond of me?" Maisie panted. + +"Tremendously. But she thinks you don't like her. You MUST like +her. She has had too much to put up with." + +"Oh yes--I know!" She rejoiced that she had never denied it. + +"Of course I've no right to speak of her except as a particular +friend," the Captain went on. "But she's a splendid woman. She +has never had any sort of justice." + +"Hasn't she?"--his companion, to hear the words, felt a thrill +altogether new. + +"Perhaps I oughtn't to say it to you, but she has had everything +to suffer." + +"Oh yes--you can SAY it to me!" Maisie hastened to profess. + +The Captain was glad. "Well, you needn't tell. It's all for YOU-- +do you see?" + +Serious and smiling she only wanted to take it from him. "It's +between you and me! Oh there are lots of things I've never told!" + +"Well, keep this with the rest. I assure you she has had the most +infernal time, no matter what any one says to the contrary. She's +the cleverest woman I ever saw in all my life. She's too +charming." She had been touched already by his tone, and now she +leaned back in her chair and felt something tremble within her. +"She's tremendous fun--she can do all sorts of things better than +I've ever seen any one. She has the pluck of fifty--and I know; I +assure you I do. She has the nerve for a tiger-shoot--by Jove I'd +TAKE her! And she is awfully open and generous, don't you know? +there are women that are such horrid sneaks. She'll go through +anything for any one she likes." He appeared to watch for a +moment the effect on his companion of this emphasis; then he gave +a small sigh that mourned the limits of the speakable. But it was +almost with the note of a fresh challenge that he wound up: +"Look here, she's TRUE!" + +Maisie had so little desire to assert the contrary that she found +herself, in the intensity of her response, throbbing with a joy +still less utterable than the essence of the Captain's admiration. +She was fairly hushed with the sense that he spoke of her mother +as she had never heard any one speak. It came over her as she sat +silent that, after all, this admiration and this respect were +quite new words, which took a distinction from the fact that +nothing in the least resembling them in quality had on any occasion +dropped from the lips of her father, of Mrs. Beale, of Sir Claude +or even of Mrs. Wix. What it appeared to her to come to was that +on the subject of her ladyship it was the first real kindness she +had heard, so that at the touch of it something strange and deep +and pitying surged up within her--a revelation that, practically +and so far as she knew, her mother, apart from this, had only been +disliked. Mrs. Wix's original account of Sir Claude's affection +seemed as empty now as the chorus in a children's game, and the +husband and wife, but a little way off at that moment, were face +to face in hatred and with the dreadful name he had called her +still in the air. What was it the Captain on the other hand had +called her? Maisie wanted to hear that again. The tears filled +her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, which burned under them +with the rush of a consciousness that for her too, five minutes +before, the vivid towering beauty whose assault she awaited had +been, a moment long, an object of pure dread. She became on the +spot indifferent to her usual fear of showing what in children +was notoriously most offensive--presented to her companion, +soundlessly but hideously, her wet distorted face. She cried, +with a pang, straight AT him, cried as she had never cried at +any one in all her life. "Oh do you love her?" she brought out +with a gulp that was the effect of her trying not to make a noise. + +It was doubtless another consequence of the thick mist through +which she saw him that in reply to her question the Captain gave +her such a queer blurred look. He stammered, yet in his voice +there was also the ring of a great awkward insistence. "Of course +I'm tremendously fond of her--I like her better than any woman I +ever saw. I don't mind in the least telling you that," he went +on, "and I should think myself a great beast if I did." Then to +show that his position was superlatively clear he made her, with +a kindness that even Sir Claude had never surpassed, tremble +again as she had trembled at his first outbreak. He called her by +her name, and her name drove it home. "My dear Maisie, your +mother's an angel!" + +It was an almost unbelievable balm--it soothed so her impression +of danger and pain. She sank back in her chair, she covered her +face with her hands. "Oh mother, mother, mother!" she sobbed. She +had an impression that the Captain, beside her, if more and more +friendly, was by no means unembarrassed; in a minute, however, +when her eyes were clearer, he was erect in front of her, very +red and nervously looking about him and whacking his leg with his +stick. "Say you love her, Mr. Captain; say it, say it!" she +implored. + +Mr. Captain's blue eyes fixed themselves very hard. "Of course I +love her, damn it, you know!" + +At this she also jumped up; she had fished out somehow her +pocket-handkerchief. "So do I then. I do, I do, I do!" she +passionately asseverated. + +"Then will you come back to her?" + +Maisie, staring, stopped the tight little plug of her handkerchief +on the way to her eyes. "She won't have me." + +"Yes she will. She wants you." + +"Back at the house--with Sir Claude?" + +Again he hung fire. "No, not with him. In another place." + +They stood looking at each other with an intensity unusual as +between a Captain and a little girl. "She won't have me in any +place." + +"Oh yes she will if _I_ ask her!" + +Maisie's intensity continued. "Shall you be there?" + +The Captain's, on the whole, did the same. "Oh yes--some day." + +"Then you don't mean now?" + +He broke into a quick smile. "Will you come now?--go with us for +an hour?" + +Maisie considered. "She wouldn't have me even now." She could see +that he had his idea, but that her tone impressed him. That +disappointed her a little, though in an instant he rang out +again. + +"She will if I ask her," he repeated. "I'll ask her this minute." + +Maisie, turning at this, looked away to where her mother and her +stepfather had stopped. At first, among the trees, nobody was +visible; but the next moment she exclaimed with expression: "It's +over--here he comes!" + +The Captain watched the approach of her ladyship's husband, who +lounged composedly over the grass, making to Maisie with his +closed fingers a little movement in the air. "I've no desire to +avoid him." + +"Well, you mustn't see him," said Maisie. + +"Oh he's in no hurry himself!" Sir Claude had stopped to light +another cigarette. + +She was vague as to the way it was proper he should feel; but she +had a sense that the Captain's remark was rather a free reflexion +on it. "Oh he doesn't care!" she replied. + +"Doesn't care for what?" + +"Doesn't care who you are. He told me so. Go and ask mamma," she +added. + +"If you can come with us? Very good. You really want me not to +wait for him?" + +"PLEASE don't." But Sir Claude was not yet near, and the Captain +had with his left hand taken hold of her right, which he +familiarly, sociably swung a little. "Only first," she continued, +"tell me this. Are you going to LIVE with mamma?" + +The immemorial note of mirth broke out at her seriousness. "One +of these days." + +She wondered, wholly unperturbed by his laughter. "Then where +will Sir Claude be?" + +"He'll have left her of course." + +"Does he really intend to do that?" + +"You've every opportunity to ask him." + +Maisie shook her head with decision. "He won't do it. Not first." + +Her "first" made the Captain laugh out again. "Oh he'll be sure +to be nasty! But I've said too much to you." + +"Well, you know, I'll never tell," said Maisie. + +"No, it's all for yourself. Good-bye." + +"Good-bye." Maisie kept his hand long enough to add: "I like you +too." And then supremely: "You DO love her?" + +"My dear child--!" The Captain wanted words. + +"Then don't do it only for just a little." + +"A little?" + +"Like all the others." + +"All the others?"--he stood staring. + +She pulled away her hand. "Do it always!" She bounded to meet Sir +Claude, and as she left the Captain she heard him ring out with +apparent gaiety: + +"Oh I'm in for it!" + +As she joined Sir Claude she noted her mother in the distance +move slowly off, and, glancing again at the Captain, saw him, +swinging his stick, retreat in the same direction. + +She had never seen Sir Claude look as he looked just then; +flushed yet not excited--settled rather in an immoveable disgust +and at once very sick and very hard. His conversation with her +mother had clearly drawn blood, and the child's old horror came +back to her, begetting the instant moral contraction of the days +when her parents had looked to her to feed their love of battle. +Her greatest fear for the moment, however, was that her friend +would see she had been crying. The next she became aware that he +had glanced at her, and it presently occurred to her that he +didn't even wish to be looked at. At this she quickly removed her +gaze, while he said rather curtly: "Well, who in the world IS the +fellow?" + +She felt herself flooded with prudence. "Oh _I_ haven't found +out!" This sounded as if she meant he ought to have done so +himself; but she could only face doggedly the ugliness of seeming +disagreeable, as she used to face it in the hours when her +father, for her blankness, called her a dirty little donkey, and +her mother, for her falsity, pushed her out of the room. + +"Then what have you been doing all this time?" + +"Oh I don't know!" It was of the essence of her method not to be +silly by halves. + +"Then didn't the beast say anything?" They had got down by the +lake and were walking fast. + +"Well, not very much." + +"He didn't speak of your mother?" + +"Oh yes, a little!" + +"Then what I ask you, please, is HOW?" She kept silence--so long +that he presently went on: "I say, you know--don't you hear me?" +At this she produced: "Well, I'm afraid I didn't attend to him +very much." + +Sir Claude, smoking rather hard, made no immediate rejoinder; but +finally he exclaimed: "Then my dear--with such a chance--you were +the perfection of a dunce!" He was so irritated--or she took him +to be--that for the rest of the time they were in the Gardens he +spoke no other word; and she meanwhile subtly abstained from any +attempt to pacify him. That would only lead to more questions. At +the gate of the Gardens he hailed a four-wheeled cab and, in +silence, without meeting her eyes, put her into it, only saying +"Give him THAT" as he tossed half a crown upon the seat. Even +when from outside he had closed the door and told the man where +to go he never took her departing look. Nothing of this kind had +ever yet happened to them, but it had no power to make her love +him less; so she could not only bear it, she felt as she drove +away--she could rejoice in it. It brought again the sweet sense +of success that, ages before, she had had at a crisis when, on +the stairs, returning from her father's, she had met a fierce +question of her mother's with an imbecility as deep and had in +consequence been dashed by Mrs. Farange almost to the bottom. + + + +XVII + +If for reasons of her own she could bear the sense of Sir +Claude's displeasure her young endurance might have been put to a +serious test. The days went by without his knocking at her +father's door, and the time would have turned sadly to waste if +something hadn't conspicuously happened to give it a new +difference. What took place was a marked change in the attitude +of Mrs. Beale--a change that somehow, even in his absence, seemed +to bring Sir Claude again into the house. It began practically +with a conversation that occurred between them the day Maisie, +came home alone in the cab. Mrs. Beale had by that time returned, +and she was more successful than their friend in extracting from +our young lady an account of the extraordinary passage with the +Captain. She came back to it repeatedly, and on the very next day +it grew distinct to the child that she was already in full +possession of what at the same moment had been enacted between +her ladyship and Sir Claude. This was the real origin of her +final perception that though he didn't come to the house her +stepmother had some rare secret for not being quite without him. +This led to some rare passages with Mrs. Beale, the promptest of +which had been--not on Maisie's part--a wonderful outbreak of +tears. Mrs. Beale was not, as she herself said, a crying +creature: she hadn't cried, to Maisie's knowledge, since the +lowly governess days, the grey dawn of their connexion. But she +wept now with passion, professing loudly that it did her good and +saying remarkable things to her charge, for whom the occasion was +an equal benefit, an addition to all the fine precautionary +wisdom stored away. It somehow hadn't violated that wisdom, +Maisie felt, for her to have told Mrs. Beale what she had not +told Sir Claude, inasmuch as the greatest strain, to her sense, +was between Sir Claude and Sir Claude's wife, and his wife was +just what Mrs. Beale was unfortunately not. He sent his +stepdaughter three days after the incident in Kensington Gardens +a message as frank as it was tender, and that was how Mrs. Beale +had had to bring out in a manner that seemed half an appeal, half +a defiance: "Well yes, hang it--I DO see him!" How and when and +where, however, were just what Maisie was not to know--an +exclusion moreover that she never questioned in the light of a +participation large enough to make him, while she shared the +ample void of Mrs. Beale's rather blank independence, shine in +her yearning eye like the single, the sovereign window-square of +a great dim disproportioned room. As far as her father was +concerned such hours had no interruption; and then it was clear +between them that each was thinking of the absent and thinking +the other thought, so that he was an object of conscious +reference in everything they said or did. The wretched truth, +Mrs. Beale had to confess, was that she had hoped against hope +and that in the Regent's Park it was impossible Sir Claude should +really be in and out. Hadn't they at last to look the fact in the +face?--it was too disgustingly evident that no one after all had +been squared. Well, if no one had been squared it was because +every one had been vile. No one and every one were of course +Beale and Ida, the extent of whose power to be nasty was a thing +that, to a little girl, Mrs. Beale simply couldn't give chapter +and verse for. Therefore it was that to keep going at all, as she +said, that lady had to make, as she also said, another arrangement-- +the arrangement in which Maisie was included only to the point of +knowing it existed and wondering wistfully what it was. +Conspicuously at any rate it had a side that was responsible +for Mrs. Beale's sudden emotion and sudden confidence--a +demonstration this, however, of which the tearfulness was far +from deterrent to our heroine's thought of how happy she should +be if she could only make an arrangement for herself. Mrs. +Beale's own operated, it appeared, with regularity and frequency; +for it was almost every day or two that she was able to bring +Maisie a message and to take one back. It had been over the +vision of what, as she called it, he did for her that she broke +down; and this vision was kept in a manner before Maisie by a +subsequent increase not only of the gaiety, but literally--it +seemed not presumptuous to perceive--of the actual virtue of her +friend. The friend was herself the first to proclaim it: he had +pulled her up immensely--he had quite pulled her round. She had +charming tormenting words about him: he was her good fairy, her +hidden spring--above all he was just her "higher" conscience. +That was what had particularly come out with her startling tears: +he had made her, dear man, think ever so much better of herself. +It had been thus rather surprisingly revealed that she had been +in a way to think ill, and Maisie was glad to hear of the +corrective at the same time that she heard of the ailment. + +She presently found herself supposing, and in spite of her envy +even hoping, that whenever Mrs. Beale was out of the house Sir +Claude had in some manner the satisfaction of it. This was now of +more frequent occurrence than ever before--so much so that she +would have thought of her stepmother as almost extravagantly +absent had it not been that, in the first place, her father was a +superior specimen of that habit: it was the frequent remark of +his present wife, as it had been, before the tribunals of their +country, a prominent plea of her predecessor, that he scarce came +home even to sleep. In the second place Mrs. Beale, when she WAS +on the spot, had now a beautiful air of longing to make up for +everything. The only shadow in such bright intervals was that, as +Maisie put it to herself, she could get nothing by questions. It +was in the nature of things to be none of a small child's +business, even when a small child had from the first been deluded +into a fear that she might be only too much initiated. Things +then were in Maisie's experience so true to their nature that +questions were almost always improper; but she learned on the +other hand soon to recognise how at last, sometimes, patient +little silences and intelligent little looks could be rewarded by +delightful little glimpses. There had been years at Beale +Farange's when the monosyllable "he" meant always, meant almost +violently, the master; but all that was changed at a period at +which Sir Claude's merits were of themselves so much in the air +that it scarce took even two letters to name him. "He keeps me up +splendidly--he does, my own precious," Mrs. Beale would observe +to her comrade; or else she would say that the situation at the +other establishment had reached a point that could scarcely be +believed--the point, monstrous as it sounded, of his not having +laid eyes upon her for twelve days. "She" of course at Beale +Farange's had never meant any one but Ida, and there was the +difference in this case that it now meant Ida with renewed +intensity. Mrs. Beale--it was striking--was in a position to +animadvert more and more upon her dreadfulness, the moral of all +which appeared to be how abominably yet blessedly little she had +to do with her husband. This flow of information came home to our +two friends because, truly, Mrs. Beale had not much more to do +with her own; but that was one of the reflexions that Maisie +could make without allowing it to break the spell of her present +sympathy. How could such a spell be anything but deep when Sir +Claude's influence, operating from afar, at last really +determined the resumption of his stepdaughter's studies? Mrs. +Beale again took fire about them and was quite vivid for Maisie +as to their being the great matter to which the dear absent one +kept her up. + +This was the second source--I have just alluded to the first--of +the child's consciousness of something that, very hopefully, she +described to herself as a new phase; and it also presented in the +brightest light the fresh enthusiasm with which Mrs. Beale always +reappeared and which really gave Maisie a happier sense than she +had yet had of being very dear at least to two persons. That she +had small remembrance at present of a third illustrates, I am +afraid, a temporary oblivion of Mrs. Wix, an accident to be +explained only by a state of unnatural excitement. For what was +the form taken by Mrs. Beale's enthusiasm and acquiring relief in +the domestic conditions still left to her but the delightful form +of "reading" with her little charge on lines directly prescribed +and in works profusely supplied by Sir Claude? He had got hold of +an awfully good list--"mostly essays, don't you know?" Mrs. Beale +had said; a word always august to Maisie, but henceforth to be +softened by hazy, in fact by quite languorous edges. There was at +any rate a week in which no less than nine volumes arrived, and +the impression was to be gathered from Mrs. Beale that the +obscure intercourse she enjoyed with Sir Claude not only involved +an account and a criticism of studies, but was organised almost +for the very purpose of report and consultation. It was for +Maisie's education in short that, as she often repeated, she +closed her door--closed it to the gentlemen who used to flock +there in such numbers and whom her husband's practical desertion +of her would have made it a course of the highest indelicacy to +receive. Maisie was familiar from of old with the principle at +least of the care that a woman, as Mrs. Beale phrased it, +attractive and exposed must take of her "character," and was duly +impressed with the rigour of her stepmother's scruples. +There was literally no one of the other sex whom she seemed to +feel at liberty to see at home, and when the child risked an +enquiry about the ladies who, one by one, during her own previous +period, had been made quite loudly welcome, Mrs. Beale hastened +to inform her that, one by one, they had, the fiends, been found +out, after all, to be awful. If she wished to know more about +them she was recommended to approach her father. + +Maisie had, however, at the very moment of this injunction much +livelier curiosities, for the dream of lectures at an institution +had at last become a reality, thanks to Sir Claude's now +unbounded energy in discovering what could be done. It stood out +in this connexion that when you came to look into things in a +spirit of earnestness an immense deal could be done for very +little more than your fare in the Underground. The institution-- +there was a splendid one in a part of the town but little known +to the child--became, in the glow of such a spirit, a thrilling +place, and the walk to it from the station through Glower Street +(a pronunciation for which Mrs. Beale once laughed at her little +friend) a pathway literally strewn with "subjects." Maisie +imagined herself to pluck them as she went, though they thickened +in the great grey rooms where the fountain of knowledge, in the +form usually of a high voice that she took at first to be angry, +plashed in the stillness of rows of faces thrust out like empty +jugs. "It MUST do us good--it's all so hideous," Mrs. Beale had +immediately declared; manifesting a purity of resolution that +made these occasions quite the most harmonious of all the many on +which the pair had pulled together. Maisie certainly had never, +in such an association, felt so uplifted, and never above all +been so carried off her feet, as at the moments of Mrs. Beale's +breathlessly re-entering the house and fairly shrieking upstairs +to know if they should still be in time for a lecture. Her +stepdaughter, all ready from the earliest hours, almost leaped +over the banister to respond, and they dashed out together in +quest of learning as hard as they often dashed back to release +Mrs. Beale for other preoccupations. There had been in short no +bustle like these particular spasms, once they had broken out, +since that last brief flurry when Mrs. Wix, blowing as if she +were grooming her, "made up" for everything previously lost at +her father's. + +These weeks as well were too few, but they were flooded with a +new emotion, part of which indeed came from the possibility that, +through the long telescope of Glower Street, or perhaps between +the pillars of the institution--which impressive objects were +what Maisie thought most made it one--they should some day spy +Sir Claude. That was what Mrs. Beale, under pressure, had said-- +doubtless a little impatiently: "Oh yes, oh yes, some day!" His +joining them was clearly far less of a matter of course than was +to have been gathered from his original profession of desire to +improve in their company his own mind; and this sharpened our +young lady's guess that since that occasion either something +destructive had happened or something desirable hadn't. Mrs. +Beale had thrown but a partial light in telling her how it had +turned out that nobody had been squared. Maisie wished at any +rate that somebody WOULD be squared. However, though in every +approach to the temple of knowledge she watched in vain for Sir +Claude, there was no doubt about the action of his loved image as +an incentive and a recompense. When the institution was most on +pillars--or, as Mrs. Beale put it, on stilts--when the subject +was deepest and the lecture longest and the listeners ugliest, +then it was they both felt their patron in the background would +be most pleased with them. One day, abruptly, with a glance at +this background, Mrs. Beale said to her companion: "We'll go +to-night to the thingumbob at Earl's Court"; an announcement +putting forth its full lustre when she had made known that she +referred to the great Exhibition just opened in that quarter, a +collection of extraordinary foreign things in tremendous gardens, +with illuminations, bands, elephants, switchbacks and side-shows, +as well as crowds of people among whom they might possibly see +some one they knew. Maisie flew in the same bound at the neck of +her friend and at the name of Sir Claude, on which Mrs. Beale +confessed that--well, yes, there was just a chance that he would +be able to meet them. He never of course, in his terrible +position, knew what might happen from hour to hour; but he hoped +to be free and he had given Mrs. Beale the tip. "Bring her there +on the quiet and I'll try to turn up"--this was clear enough on +what so many weeks of privation had made of his desire to see the +child: it even appeared to represent on his part a yearning +as constant as her own. That in turn was just puzzling enough to +make Maisie express a bewilderment. She couldn't see, if they +were so intensely of the same mind, why the theory on which she +had come back to Mrs. Beale, the general reunion, the delightful +trio, should have broken down so in fact. Mrs. Beale furthermore +only gave her more to think about in saying that their +disappointment was the result of his having got into his head a +kind of idea. + +"What kind of idea?" + +"Oh goodness knows!" She spoke with an approach to asperity. +"He's so awfully delicate." + +"Delicate?"--that was ambiguous. + +"About what he does, don't you know?" said Mrs. Beale. She +fumbled. "Well, about what WE do." + +Maisie wondered. "You and me?" + +"Me and HIM, silly!" cried Mrs. Beale with, this time, a real +giggle. + +"But you don't do any harm--YOU don't," said Maisie, wondering +afresh and intending her emphasis as a decorous allusion to her +parents. + +"Of course we don't, you angel--that's just the ground _I_ take!" +her companion exultantly responded. "He says he doesn't want you +mixed up." + +"Mixed up with what?" + +"That's exactly what I want to know: mixed up with what, and how +you are any more mixed--?" Mrs. Beale paused without ending her +question. She ended after an instant in a different way. "All you +can say is that it's his fancy." + +The tone of this, in spite of its expressing a resignation, the +fruit of weariness, that dismissed the subject, conveyed so +vividly how much such a fancy was not Mrs. Beale's own that our +young lady was led by the mere fact of contact to arrive at a dim +apprehension of the unuttered and the unknown. The relation +between her step-parents had then a mysterious residuum; this was +the first time she really had reflected that except as regards +herself it was not a relationship. To each other it was only what +they might have happened to make it, and she gathered that this, +in the event, had been something that led Sir Claude to keep away +from her. Didn't he fear she would be compromised? The perception +of such a scruple endeared him the more, and it flashed over her +that she might simplify everything by showing him how little she +made of such a danger. Hadn't she lived with her eyes on it from +her third year? It was the condition most frequently discussed at +the Faranges', where the word was always in the air and where at +the age of five, amid rounds of applause, she could gabble it +off. She knew as well in short that a person could be compromised +as that a person could be slapped with a hair-brush or left alone +in the dark, and it was equally familiar to her that each of +these ordeals was in general held to have too little effect. But +the first thing was to make absolutely sure of Mrs. Beale. This +was done by saying to her thoughtfully: "Well, if you don't mind +--and you really don't, do you?" + +Mrs. Beale, with a dawn of amusement, considered. "Mixing you up? +Not a bit. For what does it mean?" + +"Whatever it means I don't in the least mind BEING mixed. +Therefore if you don't and I don't," Maisie concluded, "don't +you think that when I see him this evening I had better just tell +him we don't and ask him why in the world HE should?" + + + +XVIII + +The child, however, was not destined to enjoy much of Sir Claude +at the "thingumbob," which took for them a very different turn +indeed. On the spot Mrs. Beale, with hilarity, had urged her to +the course proposed; but later, at the Exhibition, she withdrew +this allowance, mentioning as a result of second thoughts that +when a man was so sensitive anything at all frisky usually made +him worse. It would have been hard indeed for Sir Claude to be +"worse," Maisie felt, as, in the gardens and the crowd, when the +first dazzle had dropped, she looked for him in vain up and down. +They had all their time, the couple, for frugal wistful +wandering: they had partaken together at home of the light vague +meal--Maisie's name for it was a "jam-supper"--to which they were +reduced when Mr. Farange sought his pleasure abroad. It was +abroad now entirely that Mr. Farange pursued this ideal, and it +was the actual impression of his daughter, derived from his wife, +that he had three days before joined a friend's yacht at Cowes. +The place was full of side-shows, to which Mrs. Beale could +introduce the little girl only, alas, by revealing to her so +attractive, so enthralling a name: the side-shows, each time, +were sixpence apiece, and the fond allegiance enjoyed by the +elder of our pair had been established from the earliest time in +spite of a paucity of sixpences. Small coin dropped from her as +half-heartedly as answers from bad children to lessons that had +not been looked at. Maisie passed more slowly the great painted +posters, pressing with a linked arm closer to her friend's +pocket, where she hoped for the audible chink of a shilling. But +the upshot of this was but to deepen her yearning: if Sir Claude +would only at last come the shillings would begin to ring. The +companions paused, for want of one, before the Flowers of the +Forest, a large presentment of bright brown ladies--they were +brown all over--in a medium suggestive of tropical luxuriance, +and there Maisie dolorously expressed her belief that he would +never come at all. Mrs. Beale hereupon, though discernibly +disappointed, reminded her that he had not been promised as a +certainty--a remark that caused the child to gaze at the Flowers +through a blur in which they became more magnificent, yet oddly +more confused, and by which moreover confusion was imparted to +the aspect of a gentleman who at that moment, in the company of a +lady, came out of the brilliant booth. The lady was so brown that +Maisie at first took her for one of the Flowers; but during the +few seconds that this required--a few seconds in which she had +also desolately given up Sir Claude--she heard Mrs. Beale's +voice, behind her, gather both wonder and pain into a single +sharp little cry. + +"Of all the wickedness--BEALE!" + +He had already, without distinguishing them in the mass of +strollers, turned another way--it seemed at the brown lady's +suggestion. Her course was marked, over heads and shoulders, by +an upright scarlet plume, as to the ownership of which Maisie was +instantly eager. "Who is she--who is she?" + +But Mrs. Beale for a moment only looked after them. "The liar-- +the liar!" + +Maisie considered. "Because he's not--where one thought?" That +was also, a month ago in Kensington Gardens, where her mother had +not been. "Perhaps he has come back," she was quick to contribute. + +"He never went--the hound!" + +That, according to Sir Claude, had been also what her mother had +not done, and Maisie could only have a sense of something that in +a maturer mind would be called the way history repeats itself. + +"Who IS she?" she asked again. + +Mrs. Beale, fixed to the spot, seemed lost in the vision of an +opportunity missed. "If he had only seen me!"--it came from +between her teeth. "She's a brand-new one. But he must have been +with her since Tuesday." + +Maisie took it in. "She's almost black," she then reported. + +"They're always hideous," said Mrs. Beale. + +This was a remark on which the child had again to reflect. "Oh +not his WIVES!" she remonstrantly exclaimed. The words at another +moment would probably have set her friend "off," but Mrs. Beale +was now, in her instant vigilance, too immensely "on." "Did you +ever in your life see such a feather?" Maisie presently +continued. + +This decoration appeared to have paused at some distance, and in +spite of intervening groups they could both look at it. "Oh +that's the way they dress--the vulgarest of the vulgar!" + +"They're coming back--they'll see us!" Maisie the next moment +cried; and while her companion answered that this was exactly +what she wanted and the child returned "Here they are--here they +are!" the unconscious subjects of so much attention, with a +change of mind about their direction, quickly retraced their +steps and precipitated themselves upon their critics. Their +unconsciousness gave Mrs. Beale time to leap, under her breath, +to a recognition which Maisie caught. + +"It must be Mrs. Cuddon!" + +Maisie looked at Mrs. Cuddon hard--her lips even echoed the name. +What followed was extraordinarily rapid--a minute of livelier +battle than had ever yet, in so short a span at least, been waged +round our heroine. The muffled shock--lest people should notice-- +was violent, and it was only for her later thought that the steps +fell into their order, the steps through which, in a bewilderment +not so much of sound as of silence, she had come to find herself, +too soon for comprehension and too strangely for fear, at the +door of the Exhibition with her father. He thrust her into a +hansom and got in after her, and then it was--as she drove along +with him--that she recovered a little what had happened. Face to +face with them in the gardens he had seen them, and there had +been a moment of checked concussion during which, in a glare of +black eyes and a toss of red plumage, Mrs. Cuddon had recognised +them, ejaculated and vanished. There had been another moment at +which she became aware of Sir Claude, also poised there in +surprise, but out of her father's view, as if he had been warned +off at the very moment of reaching them. It fell into its place +with all the rest that she had heard Mrs. Beale say to her +father, but whether low or loud was now lost to her, something +about his having this time a new one; on which he had growled +something indistinct but apparently in the tone and of the sort +that the child, from her earliest years, had associated with +hearing somebody retort to somebody that somebody was "another." +"Oh I stick to the old!" Mrs. Beale had then quite loudly +pronounced; and her accent, even as the cab got away, was still +in the air, Maisie's effective companion having spoken no other +word from the moment of whisking her off--none at least save the +indistinguishable address which, over the top of the hansom and +poised on the step, he had given the driver. Reconstructing these +things later Maisie theorised that she at this point would have +put a question to him had not the silence into which he charmed +her or scared her--she could scarcely tell which--come from his +suddenly making her feel his arm about her, feel, as he drew her +close, that he was agitated in a way he had never yet shown her. +It struck her he trembled, trembled too much to speak, and this +had the effect of making her, with an emotion which, though it +had begun to throb in an instant, was by no means all dread, +conform to his portentous hush. The act of possession that his +pressure in a manner advertised came back to her after the +longest of the long intermissions that had ever let anything come +back. They drove and drove, and he kept her close; she stared +straight before her, holding her breath, watching one dark street +succeed another and strangely conscious that what it all meant +was somehow that papa was less to be left out of everything than +she had supposed. It took her but a minute to surrender to this +discovery, which, in the form of his present embrace, suggested a +purpose in him prodigiously reaffirmed and with that a confused +confidence. She neither knew exactly what he had done nor what he +was doing; she could only, altogether impressed and rather proud, +vibrate with the sense that he had jumped up to do something and +that she had as quickly become a part of it. It was a part of it +too that here they were at a house that seemed not large, but in +the fresh white front of which the street-lamp showed a smartness +of flower-boxes. The child had been in thousands of stories--all +Mrs. Wix's and her own, to say nothing of the richest romances of +French Elise--but she had never been in such a story as this. By +the time he had helped her out of the cab, which drove away, and +she heard in the door of the house the prompt little click of his +key, the Arabian Nights had quite closed round her. + +From this minute that pitch of the wondrous was in everything, +particularly in such an instant "Open Sesame" and in the +departure of the cab, a rattling void filled with relinquished +step-parents; it was, with the vividness, the almost blinding +whiteness of the light that sprang responsive to papa's quick +touch of a little brass knob on the wall, in a place that, at the +top of a short soft staircase, struck her as the most beautiful +she had ever seen in her life. The next thing she perceived it to +be was the drawing-room of a lady--of a lady, she could see in a +moment, and not of a gentleman, not even of one like papa himself +or even like Sir Claude--whose things were as much prettier than +mamma's as it had always had to be confessed that mamma's were +prettier than Mrs. Beale's. In the middle of the small bright +room and the presence of more curtains and cushions, more +pictures and mirrors, more palm-trees drooping over brocaded and +gilded nooks, more little silver boxes scattered over little +crooked tables and little oval miniatures hooked upon velvet +screens than Mrs. Beale and her ladyship together could, in an +unnatural alliance, have dreamed of mustering, the child became +aware, with a sharp foretaste of compassion, of something that +was strangely like a relegation to obscurity of each of those +women of taste. It was a stranger operation still that her father +should on the spot be presented to her as quite advantageously +and even grandly at home in the dazzling scene and himself by so +much the more separated from scenes inferior to it. She spent +with him in it, while explanations continued to hang back, twenty +minutes that, in their sudden drop of danger, affected her, +though there were neither buns nor ginger-beer, like an +extemporised expensive treat. + +"Is she very rich?" He had begun to strike her as almost +embarrassed, so shy that he might have found himself with a young +lady with whom he had little in common. She was literally moved +by this apprehension to offer him some tactful relief. + +Beale Farange stood and smiled at his young lady, his back to the +fanciful fireplace, his light overcoat--the very lightest in +London--wide open, and his wonderful lustrous beard completely +concealing the expanse of his shirt-front. It pleased her more +than ever to think that papa was handsome and, though as high +aloft as mamma and almost, in his specially florid evening-dress, +as splendid, of a beauty somehow less belligerent, less terrible. + +"The Countess? Why do you ask me that?" + +Maisie's eyes opened wider. "Is she a Countess?" + +He seemed to treat her wonder as a positive tribute. "Oh yes, my +dear, but it isn't an English title." + +Her manner appreciated this. "Is it a French one?" + +"No, nor French either. It's American." + +She conversed agreeably. "Ah then of course she must be rich." +She took in such a combination of nationality and rank. "I never +saw anything so lovely." + +"Did you have a sight of her?" Beale asked. + +"At the Exhibition?" Maisie smiled. "She was gone too quick." + +Her father laughed. "She did slope!" She had feared he would say +something about Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude, yet the way he spared +them made her rather uneasy too. All he risked was, the next +minute, "She has a horror of vulgar scenes." + +This was something she needn't take up; she could still continue +bland. "But where do you suppose she went?" + +"Oh I thought she'd have taken a cab and have been here by this +time. But she'll turn up all right." + +"I'm sure I HOPE she will," Maisie said; she spoke with an +earnestness begotten of the impression of all the beauty about +them, to which, in person, the Countess might make further +contribution. "We came awfully fast," she added. + +Her father again laughed loud. "Yes, my dear, I made you step +out!" He waited an instant, then pursued: "I want her to see +you." + +Maisie, at this, rejoiced in the attention that, for their +evening out, Mrs. Beale, even to the extent of personally "doing +up" her old hat, had given her appearance. Meanwhile her father +went on: "You'll like her awfully." + +"Oh I'm sure I shall!" After which, either from the effect of +having said so much or from that of a sudden glimpse of the +impossibility of saying more, she felt an embarrassment and +sought refuge in a minor branch of the subject. "I thought she +was Mrs. Cuddon." + +Beale's gaiety rather increased than diminished. "You mean my +wife did? My dear child, my wife's a damned fool!" He had the +oddest air of speaking of his wife as of a person whom she might +scarcely have known, so that the refuge of her scruple didn't +prove particularly happy. Beale on the other hand appeared after +an instant himself to feel a scruple. "What I mean is, to speak +seriously, that she doesn't really know anything about anything." +He paused, following the child's charmed eyes and tentative step +or two as they brought her nearer to the pretty things on one of +the tables. "She thinks she has good things, don't you know!" He +quite jeered at Mrs. Beale's delusion. + +Maisie felt she must confess that it WAS one; everything she had +missed at the side-shows was made up to her by the Countess's +luxuries. "Yes," she considered; "she does think that." + +There was again a dryness in the way Beale replied that it didn't +matter what she thought; but there was an increasing sweetness +for his daughter in being with him so long without his doing +anything worse. The whole hour of course was to remain with her, +for days and weeks, ineffaceably illumined and confirmed; by the +end of which she was able to read into it a hundred things that +had been at the moment mere miraculous pleasantness. What they at +the moment came to was simply that her companion was still in a +good deal of a flutter, yet wished not to show it, and that just +in proportion as he succeeded in this attempt he was able to +encourage her to regard him as kind. He moved about the room +after a little, showed her things, spoke to her as a person of +taste, told her the name, which she remembered, of the famous +French lady represented in one of the miniatures, and remarked, +as if he had caught her wistful over a trinket or a trailing +stuff, that he made no doubt the Countess, on coming in, would +give her something jolly. He spied a pink satin box with a +looking-glass let into the cover, which he raised, with a quick +facetious flourish, to offer her the privilege of six rows of +chocolate bonbons, cutting out thereby Sir Claude, who had never +gone beyond four rows. "I can do what I like with these," he +said, "for I don't mind telling you I gave 'em to her myself." +The Countess had evidently appreciated the gift; there were +numerous gaps, a ravage now quite unchecked, in the array. Even +while they waited together Maisie had her sense, which was the +mark of what their separation had become, of her having grown for +him, since the last time he had, as it were, noticed her, and by +increase of years and of inches if by nothing else, much more of +a little person to reckon with. Yes, this was a part of the +positive awkwardness that he carried off by being almost +foolishly tender. There was a passage during which, on a yellow +silk sofa under one of the palms, he had her on his knee, +stroking her hair, playfully holding her off while he showed his +shining fangs and let her, with a vague affectionate helpless +pointless "Dear old girl, dear little daughter," inhale the +fragrance of his cherished beard. She must have been sorry for +him, she afterwards knew, so well could she privately follow his +difficulty in being specific to her about anything. She had such +possibilities of vibration, of response, that it needed nothing +more than this to make up to her in fact for omissions. The tears +came into her eyes again as they had done when in the Park that +day the Captain told her so "splendidly" that her mother was +good. What was this but splendid too--this still directer +goodness of her father and this unexampled shining solitude with +him, out of which everything had dropped but that he was papa and +that he was magnificent? It didn't spoil it that she finally felt +he must have, as he became restless, some purpose he didn't quite +see his way to bring out, for in the freshness of their recovered +fellowship she would have lent herself gleefully to his +suggesting, or even to his pretending, that their relations were +easy and graceful. There was something in him that seemed, and +quite touchingly, to ask her to help him to pretend--pretend he +knew enough about her life and her education, her means of +subsistence and her view of himself, to give the questions he +couldn't put her a natural domestic tone. She would have +pretended with ecstasy if he could only have given her the cue. +She waited for it while, between his big teeth, he breathed the +sighs she didn't know to be stupid. And as if, though he was so +stupid all through, he had let the friendly suffusion of her eyes +yet tell him she was ready for anything, he floundered about, +wondering what the devil he could lay hold of. + + + + +XIX + +When he had lighted a cigarette and begun to smoke in her face it +was as if he had struck with the match the note of some queer +clumsy ferment of old professions, old scandals, old duties, a +dim perception of what he possessed in her and what, if +everything had only--damn it!--been totally different, she might +still be able to give him. What she was able to give him, +however, as his blinking eyes seemed to make out through the +smoke, would be simply what he should be able to get from her. To +give something, to give here on the spot, was all her own desire. +Among the old things that came back was her little instinct of +keeping the peace; it made her wonder more sharply what +particular thing she could do or not do, what particular word she +could speak or not speak, what particular line she could take or +not take, that might for every one, even for the Countess, give a +better turn to the crisis. She was ready, in this interest, for +an immense surrender, a surrender of everything but Sir Claude, +of everything but Mrs. Beale. The immensity didn't include THEM; +but if he had an idea at the back of his head she had also one in +a recess as deep, and for a time, while they sat together, there +was an extraordinary mute passage between her vision of this +vision of his, his vision of her vision, and her vision of his +vision of her vision. What there was no effective record of +indeed was the small strange pathos on the child's part of an +innocence so saturated with knowledge and so directed to +diplomacy. What, further, Beale finally laid hold of while he +masked again with his fine presence half the flounces of the +fireplace was: "Do you know, my dear, I shall soon be off to +America?" It struck his daughter both as a short cut and as the +way he wouldn't have said it to his wife. But his wife figured +with a bright superficial assurance in her response. + +"Do you mean with Mrs. Beale?" + +Her father looked at her hard. "Don't be a little ass!" + +Her silence appeared to represent a concentrated effort not to +be. "Then with the Countess?" + +"With her or without her, my dear; that concerns only your poor +daddy. She has big interests over there, and she wants me to take +a look at them." + +Maisie threw herself into them. "Will that take very long?" + +"Yes; they're in such a muddle--it may take months. Now what I +want to hear, you know, is whether you'd like to come along?" + +Planted once more before him in the middle of the room she felt +herself turning white. "I?" she gasped, yet feeling as soon as +she had spoken that such a note of dismay was not altogether +pretty. She felt it still more while her father replied, with a +shake of his legs, a toss of his cigarette-ash and a fidgety look +--he was for ever taking one--all the length of his waistcoat and +trousers, that she needn't be quite so disgusted. It helped her +in a few seconds to appear more as he would like her that she +saw, in the lovely light of the Countess's splendour, exactly, +however she appeared, the right answer to make. "Dear papa, I'll +go with you anywhere." + +He turned his back to her and stood with his nose at the glass of +the chimneypiece while he brushed specks of ash out of his beard. +Then he abruptly said: "Do you know anything about your brute of +a mother?" + +It was just of her brute of a mother that the manner of the +question in a remarkable degree reminded her: it had the free +flight of one of Ida's fine bridgings of space. With the sense of +this was kindled for Maisie at the same time an inspiration. "Oh +yes, I know everything!" and she became so radiant that her +father, seeing it in the mirror, turned back to her and +presently, on the sofa, had her at his knee again and was again +particularly affecting. Maisie's inspiration instructed her, +pressingly, that the more she should be able to say about mamma +the less she would be called upon to speak of her step-parents. +She kept hoping the Countess would come in before her power to +protect them was exhausted; and it was now, in closer quarters +with her companion, that the idea at the back of her head shifted +its place to her lips. She told him she had met her mother in the +Park with a gentleman who, while Sir Claude had strolled with her +ladyship, had been kind and had sat and talked to her; narrating +the scene with a remembrance of her pledge of secrecy to the +Captain quite brushed away by the joy of seeing Beale listen +without profane interruption. It was almost an amazement, but it +was indeed all a joy, thus to be able to guess that papa was at +last quite tired of his anger--of his anger at any rate about +mamma. He was only bored with her now. That made it, however, the +more imperative that his spent displeasure shouldn't be blown out +again. It charmed the child to see how much she could interest +him; and the charm remained even when, after asking her a dozen +questions, he observed musingly and a little obscurely: "Yes, +damned if she won't!" For in this too there was a detachment, a +wise weariness that made her feel safe. She had had to mention +Sir Claude, though she mentioned him as little as possible and +Beale only appeared to look quite over his head. It pieced itself +together for her that this was the mildness of general indifference, +a source of profit so great for herself personally that if the +Countess was the author of it she was prepared literally to hug +the Countess. She betrayed that eagerness by a restless question +about her, to which her father replied: "Oh she has a head on her +shoulders. I'll back her to get out of anything!" He looked at +Maisie quite as if he could trace the connexion between her +enquiry and the impatience of her gratitude. "Do you mean to say +you'd really come with me?" She felt as if he were now looking +at her very hard indeed, and also as if she had grown ever so +much older. "I'll do anything in the world you ask me, papa." + +He gave again, with a laugh and with his legs apart, his +proprietary glance at his waistcoat and trousers. "That's a way, +my dear, of saying 'No, thank you!' You know you don't want to go +the least little mite. You can't humbug ME!" Beale Farange laid +down. "I don't want to bully you--I never bullied you in my life; +but I make you the offer, and it's to take or to leave. Your +mother will never again have any more to do with you than if you +were a kitchenmaid she had turned out for going wrong. Therefore +of course I'm your natural protector and you've a right to get +everything out of me you can. Now's your chance, you know--you +won't be half-clever if you don't. You can't say I don't put it +before you--you can't say I ain't kind to you or that I don't +play fair. Mind you never say that, you know--it WOULD bring me +down on you. I know what's proper. I'll take you again, just as I +HAVE taken you again and again. And I'm much obliged to you for +making up such a face." + +She was conscious enough that her face indeed couldn't please him +if it showed any sign--just as she hoped it didn't--of her sharp +impression of what he now really wanted to do. Wasn't he trying +to turn the tables on her, embarrass her somehow into admitting +that what would really suit her little book would be, after doing +so much for good manners, to leave her wholly at liberty to +arrange for herself? She began to be nervous again: it rolled +over her that this was their parting, their parting for ever, and +that he had brought her there for so many caresses only because +it was important such an occasion should look better for him than +any other. For her to spoil it by the note of discord would +certainly give him ground for complaint; and the child was +momentarily bewildered between her alternatives of agreeing with +him about her wanting to get rid of him and displeasing him by +pretending to stick to him. So she found for the moment no +solution but to murmur very helplessly: "Oh papa--oh papa!" + +"I know what you're up to--don't tell ME!" After which he came +straight over and, in the most inconsequent way in the world, +clasped her in his arms a moment and rubbed his beard against her +cheek. Then she understood as well as if he had spoken it that +what he wanted, hang it, was that she should let him off with all +the honours--with all the appearance of virtue and sacrifice on +his side. It was exactly as if he had broken out to her: "I say, +you little booby, help me to be irreproachable, to be noble, and +yet to have none of the beastly bore of it. There's only +impropriety enough for one of us; so YOU must take it all. +REPUDIATE your dear old daddy--in the face, mind you, of his +tender supplications. He can't be rough with you--it isn't in +his nature: therefore you'll have successfully chucked him +because he was too generous to be as firm with you, poor man, as +was, after all, his duty." This was what he communicated in a +series of tremendous pats on the back; that portion of her person +had never been so thumped since Moddle thumped her when she +choked. After a moment he gave her the further impression of +having become sure enough of her to be able very gracefully to +say out: "You know your mother loathes you, loathes you simply. +And I've been thinking over your precious man--the fellow you +told me about." + +"Well," Maisie replied with competence, "I'm sure of HIM." + +Her father was vague for an instant. "Do you mean sure of his +liking you?" + +"Oh no; of his liking HER!" + +Beale had a return of gaiety. "There's no accounting for tastes! +It's what they all say, you know." + +"I don't care--I'm sure of him!" Maisie repeated. + +"Sure, you mean, that she'll bolt?" + +Maisie knew all about bolting, but, decidedly, she WAS older, and +there was something in her that could wince at the way her father +made the ugly word--ugly enough at best--sound flat and low. It +prompted her to amend his allusion, which she did by saying: "I +don't know what she'll do. But she'll be happy." + +"Let us hope so," said Beale--almost as for edification. "The +more happy she is at any rate the less she'll want you about. +That's why I press you," he agreeably pursued, "to consider this +handsome offer--I mean seriously, you know--of your sole +surviving parent." Their eyes, at this, met again in a long and +extraordinary communion which terminated in his ejaculating: "Ah +you little scoundrel!" She took it from him in the manner it +seemed to her he would like best and with a success that +encouraged him to go on: "You ARE a deep little devil!" Her +silence, ticking like a watch, acknowledged even this, in +confirmation of which he finally brought out: "You've settled it +with the other pair!" + +"Well, what if I have?" She sounded to herself most bold. + +Her father, quite as in the old days, broke into a peal. "Why, +don't you know they're awful?" + +She grew bolder still. "I don't care--not a bit!" + +"But they're probably the worst people in the world and the very +greatest criminals," Beale pleasantly urged. "I'm not the man, my +dear, not to let you know it." + +"Well, it doesn't prevent them from loving me. They love me +tremendously." Maisie turned crimson to hear herself. + +Her companion fumbled; almost any one--et alone a daughter-- +would have seen how conscientious he wanted to be. "I dare say. +But do you know why?" She braved his eyes and he added: "You're a +jolly good pretext." + +"For what?" Maisie asked. + +"Why, for their game. I needn't tell you what that is." + +The child reflected. "Well then that's all the more reason." + +"Reason for what, pray?" + +"For their being kind to me." + +"And for your keeping in with them?" Beale roared again; it was +as if his spirits rose and rose. "Do you realise, pray, that in +saying that you're a monster?" + +She turned it over. "A monster?" + +"They've MADE one of you. Upon my honour it's quite awful. It +shows the kind of people they are. Don't you understand," Beale +pursued, "that when they've made you as horrid as they can--as +horrid as themselves--they'll just simply chuck you?" + +She had at this a flicker of passion. "They WON'T chuck me!" + +"I beg your pardon," her father courteously insisted; "it's my +duty to put it before you. I shouldn't forgive myself if I didn't +point out to you that they'll cease to require you." He spoke as +if with an appeal to her intelligence that she must be ashamed +not adequately to meet, and this gave a real distinction to his +superior delicacy. + +It cleared the case as he had wished. "Cease to require me +because they won't care?" She paused with that sketch of her +idea. + +"OF COURSE Sir Claude won't care if his wife bolts. That's his +game. It will suit him down to the ground." + +This was a proposition Maisie could perfectly embrace, but it +still left a loophole for triumph. She turned it well over. "You +mean if mamma doesn't come back ever at all?" The composure with +which her face was presented to that prospect would have shown a +spectator the long road she had travelled. "Well, but that won't +put Mrs. Beale--" + +"In the same comfortable position--?" Beale took her up with +relish; he had sprung to his feet again, shaking his legs and +looking at his shoes. "Right you are, darling! Something more +will be wanted for Mrs. Beale." He just paused, then he added: +"But she may not have long to wait for it." + +Maisie also for a minute looked at his shoes, though they were +not the pair she most admired, the laced yellow "uppers" and +patent-leather complement. At last, with a question, she raised +her eyes. "Aren't you coming back?" + +Once more he hung fire; after which he gave a small laugh that in +the oddest way in the world reminded her of the unique sounds she +had heard emitted by Mrs. Wix. "It may strike you as extraordinary +that I should make you such an admission; and in point of fact +you're not to understand that I do. But we'll put it that way to +help your decision. The point is that that's the way my wife will +presently be sure to put it. You'll hear her shrieking that she's +deserted, so that she may just pile up her wrongs. She'll be as +free as she likes then--as free, you see, as your mother's muff +of a husband. They won't have anything more to consider and +they'll just put you into the street. Do I understand," Beale +enquired, "that, in the face of what I press on you, you still +prefer to take the risk of that?" It was the most wonderful +appeal any gentleman had ever addressed to his daughter, and +it had placed Maisie in the middle of the room again while her +father moved slowly about her with his hands in his pockets +and something in his step that seemed, more than anything else +he had done, to show the habit of the place. She turned her +fevered little eyes over his friend's brightnesses, as if, on +her own side, to press for some help in a quandary unexampled. +As if also the pressure reached him he after an instant +stopped short, completing the prodigy of his attitude and the +pride of his loyalty by a supreme formulation of the general +inducement. "You've an eye, love! Yes, there's money. No end of +money." + +This affected her at first in the manner of some great flashing +dazzle in one of the pantomimes to which Sir Claude had taken +her: she saw nothing in it but what it directly conveyed. "And +shall I never, never see you again--?" + +"If I do go to America?" Beale brought it out like a man. "Never, +never, never!" + +Hereupon, with the utmost absurdity, she broke down; everything +gave way, everything but the horror of hearing herself definitely +utter such an ugliness as the acceptance of that. So she only +stiffened herself and said: "Then I can't give you up." + +She held him some seconds looking at her, showing her a strained +grimace, a perfect parade of all his teeth, in which it seemed to +her she could read the disgust he didn't quite like to express at +this departure from the pliability she had practically promised. +But before she could attenuate in any way the crudity of her +collapse he gave an impatient jerk which took him to the window. +She heard a vehicle stop; Beale looked out; then he freshly faced +her. He still said nothing, but she knew the Countess had come +back. There was a silence again between them, but with a +different shade of embarrassment from that of their united +arrival; and it was still without speaking that, abruptly +repeating one of the embraces of which he had already been so +prodigal, he whisked her back to the lemon sofa just before the +door of the room was thrown open. It was thus in renewed and +intimate union with him that she was presented to a person whom +she instantly recognised as the brown lady. + +The brown lady looked almost as astonished, though not quite as +alarmed, as when, at the Exhibition, she had gasped in the face +of Mrs. Beale. Maisie in truth almost gasped in her own; this was +with the fuller perception that she was brown indeed. She +literally struck the child more as an animal than as a "real" +lady; she might have been a clever frizzled poodle in a frill or +a dreadful human monkey in a spangled petticoat. She had a nose +that was far too big and eyes that were far too small and a +moustache that was, well, not so happy a feature as Sir Claude's. +Beale jumped up to her; while, to the child's astonishment, +though as if in a quick intensity of thought, the Countess +advanced as gaily as if, for many a day, nothing awkward had +happened for any one. Maisie, in spite of a large acquaintance +with the phenomenon, had never seen it so promptly established +that nothing awkward was to be mentioned. The next minute the +Countess had kissed her and exclaimed to Beale with bright tender +reproach: "Why, you never told me HALF! My dear child," she +cried, "it was awfully nice of you to come!" + +"But she hasn't come--she won't come!" Beale answered. "I've put +it to her how much you'd like it, but she declines to have +anything to do with us." + +The Countess stood smiling, and after an instant that was mainly +taken up with the shock of her weird aspect Maisie felt herself +reminded of another smile, which was not ugly, though also +interested--the kind light thrown, that day in the Park, from the +clean fair face of the Captain. Papa's Captain--yes--was the +Countess; but she wasn't nearly so nice as the other: it all came +back, doubtless, to Maisie's minor appreciation of ladies. +"Shouldn't you like me," said this one endearingly, "to take you +to Spa?" + +"To Spa?" The child repeated the name to gain time, not to show +how the Countess brought back to her a dim remembrance of a +strange woman with a horrid face who once, years before, in an +omnibus, bending to her from an opposite seat, had suddenly +produced an orange and murmured "Little dearie, won't you have it?" +She had felt then, for some reason, a small silly terror, though +afterwards conscious that her interlocutress, unfortunately hideous, +had particularly meant to be kind. This was also what the Countess +meant; yet the few words she had uttered and the smile with which +she had uttered them immediately cleared everything up. Oh no, +she wanted to go nowhere with HER, for her presence had already, +in a few seconds, dissipated the happy impression of the room and +put an end to the pleasure briefly taken in Beale's command of such +elegance. There was no command of elegance in his having exposed +her to the approach of the short fat wheedling whiskered person +in whom she had now to recognise the only figure wholly without +attraction involved in any of the intimate connexions her immediate +circle had witnessed the growth of. She was abashed meanwhile, +however, at having appeared to weigh in the balance the place +to which she had been invited; and she added as quickly as possible: +"It isn't to America then?" The Countess, at this, looked sharply +at Beale, and Beale, airily enough, asked what the deuce it +mattered when she had already given him to understand she wanted +to have nothing to do with them. There followed between her +companions a passage of which the sense was drowned for her +in the deepening inward hum of her mere desire to get off; +though she was able to guess later on that her father must have +put it to his friend that it was no use talking, that she was an +obstinate little pig and that, besides, she was really old enough +to choose for herself. It glimmered back to her indeed that she +must have failed quite dreadfully to seem ideally other than rude, +inasmuch as before she knew it she had visibly given the +impression that if they didn't allow her to go home she should +cry. Oh if there had ever been a thing to cry about it was being +so consciously and gawkily below the handsomest offers any one +could ever have received. The great pain of the thing was that +she could see the Countess liked her enough to wish to be liked +in return, and it was from the idea of a return she sought utterly +to flee. It was the idea of a return that after a confusion of +loud words had broken out between the others brought to her lips +with the tremor preceding disaster: "Can't I, please, be sent +home in a cab?" Yes, the Countess wanted her and the Countess +was wounded and chilled, and she couldn't help it, and it was +all the more dreadful because it only made the Countess more +coaxing and more impossible. The only thing that sustained +either of them perhaps till the cab came--Maisie presently saw +it would come--was its being in the air somehow that Beale had +done what he wanted. He went out to look for a conveyance; +the servants, he said, had gone to bed, but she shouldn't be +kept beyond her time. The Countess left the room with him, +and, alone in the possession of it, Maisie hoped she wouldn't +come back. It was all the effect of her face--the child simply +couldn't look at it and meet its expression halfway. All in a +moment too that queer expression had leaped into the lovely +things--all in a moment she had had to accept her father as +liking some one whom she was sure neither her mother, nor +Mrs. Beale, nor Mrs. Wix, nor Sir Claude, nor the Captain, +nor even Mr. Perriam and Lord Eric could possibly have liked. +Three minutes later, downstairs, with the cab at the door, +it was perhaps as a final confession of not having much to boast +of that, on taking leave of her, he managed to press her to his +bosom without her seeing his face. For herself she was so eager +to go that their parting reminded her of nothing, not even of a +single one of all the "nevers" that above, as the penalty of not +cleaving to him, he had attached to the question of their meeting +again. There was something in the Countess that falsified +everything, even the great interests in America and yet more the +first flush of that superiority to Mrs. Beale and to mamma which +had been expressed in Sevres sets and silver boxes. These were +still there, but perhaps there were no great interests in +America. Mamma had known an American who was not a bit like this +one. She was not, however, of noble rank; her name was only Mrs. +Tucker. Maisie's detachment would none the less have been more +complete if she had not suddenly had to exclaim: "Oh dear, I +haven't any money!" + +Her father's teeth, at this, were such a picture of appetite +without action as to be a match for any plea of poverty. "Make +your stepmother pay." + +"Stepmothers DON'T pay!" cried the Countess. "No stepmother ever +paid in her life!" The next moment they were in the street +together, and the next the child was in the cab, with the +Countess, on the pavement, but close to her, quickly taking money +from a purse whisked out of a pocket. Her father had vanished and +there was even yet nothing in that to reawaken the pang of loss. +"Here's money," said the brown lady: "go!" The sound was +commanding: the cab rattled off. Maisie sat there with her hand +full of coin. All that for a cab? As they passed a street-lamp +she bent to see how much. What she saw was a cluster of +sovereigns. There MUST then have been great interests in America. +It was still at any rate the Arabian Nights. + + + +XX + +The money was far too much even for a fee in a fairy-tale, and in +the absence of Mrs. Beale, who, though the hour was now late, had +not yet returned to the Regent's Park, Susan Ash, in the hall, as +loud as Maisie was low and as bold as she was bland, produced, on +the exhibition offered under the dim vigil of the lamp that made +the place a contrast to the child's recent scene of light, the +half-crown that an unsophisticated cabman could pronounce to be +the least he would take. It was apparently long before Mrs. Beale +would arrive, and in the interval Maisie had been induced by the +prompt Susan not only to go to bed like a darling dear, but, in +still richer expression of that character, to devote to the +repayment of obligations general as well as particular one of the +sovereigns in the ordered array that, on the dressing-table +upstairs, was naturally not less dazzling to a lone orphan of a +housemaid than to the subject of the manoeuvres of a quartette. +This subject went to sleep with her property gathered into a +knotted handkerchief, the largest that could be produced and +lodged under her pillow; but the explanations that on the morrow +were inevitably more complete with Mrs. Beale than they had been +with her humble friend found their climax in a surrender also +more becomingly free. There were explanations indeed that Mrs. +Beale had to give as well as to ask, and the most striking of +these was to the effect that it was dreadful for a little girl to +take money from a woman who was simply the vilest of their sex. +The sovereigns were examined with some attention, the result of +which, however, was to make the author of that statement desire +to know what, if one really went into the matter, they could be +called but the wages of sin. Her companion went into it merely so +far as the question of what then they were to do with them; on +which Mrs. Beale, who had by this time put them into her pocket, +replied with dignity and with her hand on the place: "We're to +send them back on the spot!" Susan, the child soon afterwards +learnt, had been invited to contribute to this act of restitution +her one appropriated coin; but a closer clutch of the treasure +showed in her private assurance to Maisie that there was a limit +to the way she could be "done." Maisie had been open with Mrs. +Beale about the whole of last night's transaction; but she now +found herself on the part of their indignant inferior a recipient +of remarks that were so many ringing tokens of that lady's own +suppressions. One of these bore upon the extraordinary hour--it +was three in the morning if she really wanted to know--at which +Mrs. Beale had re-entered the house; another, in accents as to +which Maisie's criticism was still intensely tacit, characterised +her appeal as such a "gime," such a "shime," as one had never had +to put up with; a third treated with some vigour the question of +the enormous sums due belowstairs, in every department, for +gratuitous labour and wasted zeal. Our young lady's consciousness +was indeed mainly filled for several days with the apprehension +created by the too slow subsidence of her attendant's sense of +wrong. These days would become terrific like the Revolutions she +had learnt by heart in Histories if an outbreak in the kitchen +should crown them; and to promote that prospect she had through +Susan's eyes more than one glimpse of the way in which Revolutions +are prepared. To listen to Susan was to gather that the spark +applied to the inflammables and already causing them to crackle +would prove to have been the circumstance of one's being called +a horrid low thief for refusing to part with one's own. The +redeeming point of this tension was, on the fifth day, that it +actually appeared to have had to do with a breathless perception +in our heroine's breast that scarcely more as the centre of +Sir Claude's than as that of Susan's energies she had soon after +breakfast been conveyed from London to Folkestone and established +at a lovely hotel. These agents, before her wondering eyes, +had combined to carry through the adventure and to give it the +air of having owed its success to the fact that Mrs. Beale had, +as Susan said, but just stepped out. When Sir Claude, watch in +hand, had met this fact with the exclamation "Then pack Miss +Farange and come OFF with us!" there had ensued on the stairs a +series of gymnastics of a nature to bring Miss Farange's heart into +Miss Farange's mouth. She sat with Sir Claude in a four-wheeler +while he still held his watch; held it longer than any doctor who +had ever felt her pulse; long enough to give her a vision of +something like the ecstasy of neglecting such an opportunity to +show impatience. The ecstasy had begun in the schoolroom and over +the Berceuse, quite in the manner of the same foretaste on the day, +a little while back, when Susan had panted up and she herself, +after the hint about the duchess, had sailed down; for what harm +then had there been in drops and disappointments if she could +still have, even only a moment, the sensation of such a name +"brought up"? It had remained with her that her father had foretold +her she would some day be in the street, but it clearly wouldn't +be this day, and she felt justified of the preference betrayed to +that parent as soon as her visitor had set Susan in motion and +laid his hand, while she waited with him, kindly on her own. +This was what the Captain, in Kensington Gardens, had done; +her present situation reminded her a little of that one and +renewed the dim wonder of the fashion after which, from the first, +such pats and pulls had struck her as the steps and signs of other +people's business and even a little as the wriggle or the overflow +of their difficulties. What had failed her and what had frightened +her on the night of the Exhibition lost themselves at present +alike in the impression that any "surprise" now about to burst +from Sir Claude would be too big to burst all at once. Any awe +that might have sprung from his air of leaving out her stepmother +was corrected by the force of a general rule, the odd truth that +if Mrs. Beale now never came nor went without making her think of +him, it was never, to balance that, the main mark of his own +renewed reality to appear to be a reference to Mrs. Beale. +To be with Sir Claude was to think of Sir Claude, and that law +governed Maisie's mind until, through a sudden lurch of the cab, +which had at last taken in Susan and ever so many bundles and +almost reached Charing Cross, it popped again somehow into her +dizzy head the long-lost image of Mrs. Wix. + +It was singular, but from this time she understood and she +followed, followed with the sense of an ample filling-out of any +void created by symptoms of avoidance and of flight. Her ecstasy +was a thing that had yet more of a face than of a back to turn, a +pair of eyes still directed to Mrs. Wix even after the slight +surprise of their not finding her, as the journey expanded, +either at the London station or at the Folkestone hotel. It took +few hours to make the child feel that if she was in neither of +these places she was at least everywhere else. Maisie had known +all along a great deal, but never so much as she was to know from +this moment on and as she learned in particular during the couple +of days that she was to hang in the air, as it were, over the sea +which represented in breezy blueness and with a summer charm a +crossing of more spaces than the Channel. It was granted her at +this time to arrive at divinations so ample that I shall have no +room for the goal if I attempt to trace the stages; as to which +therefore I must be content to say that the fullest expression we +may give to Sir Claude's conduct is a poor and pale copy of the +picture it presented to his young friend. Abruptly, that morning, +he had yielded to the action of the idea pumped into him for +weeks by Mrs. Wix on lines of approach that she had been capable +of the extraordinary art of preserving from entanglement in the +fine network of his relations with Mrs. Beale. The breath of her +sincerity, blowing without a break, had puffed him up to the +flight by which, in the degree I have indicated, Maisie too was +carried off her feet. This consisted neither in more nor in less +than the brave stroke of his getting off from Mrs. Beale as well +as from his wife--of making with the child straight for some such +foreign land as would give a support to Mrs. Wix's dream that she +might still see his errors renounced and his delinquencies +redeemed. It would all be a sacrifice--under eyes that would miss +no faintest shade--to what even the strange frequenters of her +ladyship's earlier period used to call the real good of the +little unfortunate. Maisie's head held a suspicion of much that, +during the last long interval, had confusedly, but quite candidly, +come and gone in his own; a glimpse, almost awe-stricken in its +gratitude, of the miracle her old governess had wrought. That +functionary could not in this connexion have been more impressive, +even at second-hand, if she had been a prophetess with an open +scroll or some ardent abbess speaking with the lips of the Church. +She had clung day by day to their plastic associate, plying him +with her deep, narrow passion, doing her simple utmost to convert +him, and so working on him that he had at last really embraced +his fine chance. That the chance was not delusive was sufficiently +guaranteed by the completeness with which he could finally figure +it out that, in case of his taking action, neither Ida nor Beale, +whose book, on each side, it would only too well suit, would make +any sort of row. + +It sounds, no doubt, too penetrating, but it was not all as an +effect of Sir Claude's betrayals that Maisie was able to piece +together the beauty of the special influence through which, for +such stretches of time, he had refined upon propriety by keeping, +so far as possible, his sentimental interests distinct. She had +ever of course in her mind fewer names than conceptions, but it +was only with this drawback that she now made out her companion's +absences to have had for their ground that he was the lover of +her stepmother and that the lover of her stepmother could scarce +logically pretend to a superior right to look after her. Maisie +had by this time embraced the implication of a kind of natural +divergence between lovers and little girls. It was just this +indeed that could throw light on the probable contents of the +pencilled note deposited on the hall-table in the Regent's Park +and which would greet Mrs. Beale on her return. Maisie freely +figured it as provisionally jocular in tone, even though to +herself on this occasion Sir Claude turned a graver face than he +had shown in any crisis but that of putting her into the cab when +she had been horrid to him after her parting with the Captain. +He might really be embarrassed, but he would be sure, to her +view, to have muffled in some bravado of pleasantry the +disturbance produced at her father's by the removal of a valued +servant. Not that there wasn't a great deal too that wouldn't be +in the note--a great deal for which a more comfortable place was +Maisie's light little brain, where it hummed away hour after hour +and caused the first outlook at Folkestone to swim in a softness +of colour and sound. It became clear in this medium that her +stepfather had really now only to take into account his +entanglement with Mrs. Beale. Wasn't he at last disentangled from +every one and every thing else? The obstacle to the rupture +pressed upon him by Mrs. Wix in the interest of his virtue would +be simply that he was in love, or rather, to put it more +precisely, that Mrs. Beale had left him no doubt of the degree in +which SHE was. She was so much so as to have succeeded in making +him accept for a time her infatuated grasp of him and even to +some extent the idea of what they yet might do together with a +little diplomacy and a good deal of patience. I may not even +answer for it that Maisie was not aware of how, in this, Mrs. +Beale failed to share his all but insurmountable distaste for +their allowing their little charge to breathe the air of their +gross irregularity--his contention, in a word, that they should +either cease to be irregular or cease to be parental. Their +little charge, for herself, had long ago adopted the view that +even Mrs. Wix had at one time not thought prohibitively +coarse--the view that she was after all, AS a little charge, +morally at home in atmospheres it would be appalling to analyse. +If Mrs. Wix, however, ultimately appalled, had now set her heart +on strong measures, Maisie, as I have intimated, could also work +round both to the reasons for them and to the quite other reasons +for that lady's not, as yet at least, appearing in them at +first-hand. + +Oh decidedly I shall never get you to believe the number of +things she saw and the number of secrets she discovered! Why in +the world, for instance, couldn't Sir Claude have kept it from +her--except on the hypothesis of his not caring to--that, when +you came to look at it and so far as it was a question of vested +interests, he had quite as much right in her as her stepmother, +not to say a right that Mrs. Beale was in no position to dispute? +He failed at all events of any such successful ambiguity as could +keep her, when once they began to look across at France, from +regarding even what was least explained as most in the spirit of +their old happy times, their rambles and expeditions in the +easier better days of their first acquaintance. Never before had +she had so the sense of giving him a lead for the sort of +treatment of what was between them that would best carry it off, +or of his being grateful to her for meeting him so much in the +right place. She met him literally at the very point where Mrs. +Beale was most to be reckoned with, the point of the jealousy +that was sharp in that lady and of the need of their keeping it +as long as possible obscure to her that poor Mrs. Wix had still a +hand. Yes, she met him too in the truth of the matter that, as +her stepmother had had no one else to be jealous of, she had made +up for so gross a privation by directing the sentiment to a moral +influence. Sir Claude appeared absolutely to convey in a wink +that a moral influence capable of pulling a string was after all +a moral influence exposed to the scratching out of its eyes; and +that, this being the case, there was somebody they couldn't +afford to leave unprotected before they should see a little +better what Mrs. Beale was likely to do. Maisie, true enough, had +not to put it into words to rejoin, in the coffee-room, at +luncheon: "What CAN she do but come to you if papa does take a +step that will amount to legal desertion?" Neither had he then, +in answer, to articulate anything but the jollity of their having +found a table at a window from which, as they partook of cold +beef and apollinaris--for he hinted they would have to save lots +of money--they could let their eyes hover tenderly on the far-off +white cliffs that so often had signalled to the embarrassed +English a promise of safety. Maisie stared at them as if she +might really make out after a little a queer dear figure perched +on them--a figure as to which she had already the subtle sense +that, wherever perched, it would be the very oddest yet seen in +France. But it was at least as exciting to feel where Mrs. Wix +wasn't as it would have been to know where she was, and if she +wasn't yet at Boulogne this only thickened the plot. + +If she was not to be seen that day, however, the evening was +marked by an apparition before which, none the less, overstrained +suspense folded on the spot its wings. Adjusting her respirations +and attaching, under dropped lashes, all her thoughts to a +smartness of frock and frill for which she could reflect that she +had not appealed in vain to a loyalty in Susan Ash triumphant +over the nice things their feverish flight had left behind, +Maisie spent on a bench in the garden of the hotel the half-hour +before dinner, that mysterious ceremony of the table d'hote for +which she had prepared with a punctuality of flutter. Sir Claude, +beside her, was occupied with a cigarette and the afternoon +papers; and though the hotel was full the garden shewed the +particular void that ensues upon the sound of the dressing-bell. +She had almost had time to weary of the human scene; her own +humanity at any rate, in the shape of a smutch on her scanty +skirt, had held her so long that as soon as she raised her eyes +they rested on a high fair drapery by which smutches were put to +shame and which had glided toward her over the grass without her +noting its rustle. She followed up its stiff sheen--up and up +from the ground, where it had stopped--till at the end of a +considerable journey her impression felt the shock of the fixed +face which, surmounting it, seemed to offer the climax of the +dressed condition. "Why mamma!" she cried the next instant--cried +in a tone that, as she sprang to her feet, brought Sir Claude to +his own beside her and gave her ladyship, a few yards off, the +advantage of their momentary confusion. Poor Maisie's was +immense; her mother's drop had the effect of one of the iron +shutters that, in evening walks with Susan Ash, she had seen +suddenly, at the touch of a spring, rattle down over shining +shop-fronts. The light of foreign travel was darkened at a +stroke; she had a horrible sense that they were caught; and for +the first time of her life in Ida's presence she so far +translated an impulse into an invidious act as to clutch straight +at the hand of her responsible confederate. It didn't help her +that he appeared at first equally hushed with horror; a minute +during which, in the empty garden, with its long shadows on the +lawn, its blue sea over the hedge and its startled peace in the +air, both her elders remained as stiff as tall tumblers filled to +the brim and held straight for fear of a spill. + +At last, in a tone that enriched the whole surprise by its +unexpected softness, her mother said to Sir Claude: "Do you mind +at all my speaking to her?" + +"Oh no; DO you?" His reply was so long in coming that Maisie was +the first to find the right note. + +He laughed as he seemed to take it from her, and she felt a +sufficient concession in his manner of addressing their visitor. +"How in the world did you know we were here?" + +His wife, at this, came the rest of the way and sat down on the +bench with a hand laid on her daughter, whom she gracefully drew +to her and in whom, at her touch, the fear just kindled gave a +second jump, but now in quite another direction. Sir Claude, on +the further side, resumed his seat and his newspapers, so that +the three grouped themselves like a family party; his connexion, +in the oddest way in the world, almost cynically and in a flash +acknowledged, and the mother patting the child into conformities +unspeakable. Maisie could already feel how little it was Sir Claude +and she who were caught. She had the positive sense of their +catching their relative, catching her in the act of getting rid +of her burden with a finality that showed her as unprecedentedly +relaxed. Oh yes, the fear had dropped, and she had never been so +irrevocably parted with as in the pressure of possession now +supremely exerted by Ida's long-gloved and much-bangled arm. +"I went to the Regent's Park"--this was presently her ladyship's +answer to Sir Claude. + +"Do you mean to-day?" + +"This morning, just after your own call there. That's how I +found you out; that's what has brought me." + +Sir Claude considered and Maisie waited. "Whom then did you +see?" + +Ida gave a sound of indulgent mockery. "I like your scare. I know +your game. I didn't see the person I risked seeing, but I had +been ready to take my chance of her." She addressed herself to +Maisie; she had encircled her more closely. "I asked for YOU, my +dear, but I saw no one but a dirty parlourmaid. She was red in +the face with the great things that, as she told me, had just +happened in the absence of her mistress; and she luckily had the +sense to have made out the place to which Sir Claude had come to +take you. If he hadn't given a false scent I should find you +here: that was the supposition on which I've proceeded." Ida had +never been so explicit about proceeding or supposing, and Maisie, +drinking this in, noted too how Sir Claude shared her fine +impression of it. "I wanted to see you," his wife continued, +"and now you can judge of the trouble I've taken. I had +everything to do in town to-day, but I managed to get off." + +Maisie and her companion, for a moment, did justice to this +achievement; but Maisie was the first to express it. "I'm glad +you wanted to see me, mamma." Then after a concentration more +deep and with a plunge more brave: "A little more and you'd have +been too late." It stuck in her throat, but she brought it out: +"We're going to France." + +Ida was magnificent; Ida kissed her on the forehead. "That's just +what I thought likely; it made me decide to run down. I fancied +that in spite of your scramble you'd wait to cross, and it added +to the reason I have for seeing you." + +Maisie wondered intensely what the reason could be, but she knew +ever so much better than to ask. She was slightly surprised +indeed to perceive that Sir Claude didn't, and to hear him +immediately enquire: "What in the name of goodness can you have +to say to her?" + +His tone was not exactly rude, but it was impatient enough to +make his wife's response a fresh specimen of the new softness. +"That, my dear man, is all my own business." + +"Do you mean," Sir Claude asked, "that you wish me to leave you +with her?" + +"Yes, if you'll be so good; that's the extraordinary request I +take the liberty of making." Her ladyship had dropped to a +mildness of irony by which, for a moment, poor Maisie was +mystified and charmed, puzzled with a glimpse of something that +in all the years had at intervals peeped out. Ida smiled at Sir +Claude with the strange air she had on such occasions of defying +an interlocutor to keep it up as long; her huge eyes, her red +lips, the intense marks in her face formed an eclairage as +distinct and public as a lamp set in a window. The child seemed +quite to see in it the very beacon that had lighted her path; she +suddenly found herself reflecting that it was no wonder the +gentlemen were guided. This must have been the way mamma had +first looked at Sir Claude; it brought back the lustre of the +time they had outlived. It must have been the way she looked also +at Mr. Perriam and Lord Eric; above all it contributed in +Maisie's mind to a completer view of that satisfied state of the +Captain. Our young lady grasped this idea with a quick lifting of +the heart; there was a stillness during which her mother flooded +her with a wealth of support to the Captain's striking tribute. +This stillness remained long enough unbroken to represent that +Sir Claude too might but be gasping again under the spell +originally strong for him; so that Maisie quite hoped he would at +least say something to show a recognition of how charming she +could be. + +What he presently said was: "Are you putting up for the night?" + +His wife cast grandly about. "Not here--I've come from Dover." + +Over Maisie's head, at this, they still faced each other. "You +spend the night there?" + +"Yes, I brought some things. I went to the hotel and hastily +arranged; then I caught the train that whisked me on here. You +see what a day I've had of it." + +The statement may surprise, but these were really as obliging if +not as lucid words as, into her daughter's ears at least, Ida's +lips had ever dropped; and there was a quick desire in the +daughter that for the hour at any rate they should duly be +welcomed as a ground of intercourse. Certainly mamma had a charm +which, when turned on, became a large explanation; and the only +danger now in an impulse to applaud it would be that of appearing +to signalise its rarity. Maisie, however, risked the peril in the +geniality of an admission that Ida had indeed had a rush; and she +invited Sir Claude to expose himself by agreeing with her that +the rush had been even worse than theirs. He appeared to meet +this appeal by saying with detachment enough: "You go back there +to-night?" + +"Oh yes--there are plenty of trains." Again Sir Claude hesitated; +it would have been hard to say if the child, between them, more +connected or divided them. Then he brought out quietly: "It will +be late for you to knock about. I'll see you over." + +"You needn't trouble, thank you. I think you won't deny that I +can help myself and that it isn't the first time in my dreadful +life that I've somehow managed it." Save for this allusion to her +dreadful life they talked there, Maisie noted, as if they were +only rather superficial friends; a special effect that she had +often wondered at before in the midst of what she supposed to be +intimacies. This effect was augmented by the almost casual manner +in which her ladyship went on: "I dare say I shall go abroad." + +"From Dover do you mean, straight?" + +"How straight I can't say. I'm excessively ill." This for a +minute struck Maisie as but a part of the conversation; at the +end of which time she became aware that it ought to strike her-- +though it apparently didn't strike Sir Claude--as a part of +something graver. It helped her to twist nearer. "Ill, mamma-- +really ill?" + +She regretted her "really" as soon as she had spoken it; but +there couldn't be a better proof of her mother's present polish +than that Ida showed no gleam of a temper to take it up. She had +taken up at other times much tinier things. She only pressed +Maisie's head against her bosom and said: "Shockingly, my dear. I +must go to that new place." + +"What new place?" Sir Claude enquired. + +Ida thought, but couldn't recall it. "Oh 'Chose,' don't you know? +--where every one goes. I want some proper treatment. It's all +I've ever asked for on earth. But that's not what I came to say." + +Sir Claude, in silence, folded one by one his newspapers; then he +rose and stood whacking the palm of his hand with the bundle. +"You'll stop and dine with us?" + +"Dear no--I can't dine at this sort of hour. I ordered dinner at +Dover." + +Her ladyship's tone in this one instance showed a certain +superiority to those conditions in which her daughter had +artlessly found Folkestone a paradise. It was yet not so crushing +as to nip in the bud the eagerness with which the latter broke +out: "But won't you at least have a cup of tea?" + +Ida kissed her again on the brow. "Thanks, love. I had tea before +coming." She raised her eyes to Sir Claude. "She IS sweet!" He +made no more answer than if he didn't agree; but Maisie was at +ease about that and was still taken up with the joy of this +happier pitch of their talk, which put more and more of a meaning +into the Captain's version of her ladyship and literally kindled +a conjecture that such an admirer might, over there at the other +place, be waiting for her to dine. Was the same conjecture in Sir +Claude's mind? He partly puzzled her, if it had risen there, by +the slight perversity with which he returned to a question that +his wife evidently thought she had disposed of. + +He whacked his hand again with his paper. "I had really much +better take you." + +"And leave Maisie here alone?" + +Mamma so clearly didn't want it that Maisie leaped at the vision +of a Captain who had seen her on from Dover and who, while he +waited to take her back, would be hovering just at the same +distance at which, in Kensington Gardens, the companion of his +walk had herself hovered. Of course, however, instead of +breathing any such guess she let Sir Claude reply; all the more +that his reply could contribute so much to her own present +grandeur. "She won't be alone when she has a maid in attendance." + +Maisie had never before had so much of a retinue, and she waited +also to enjoy the action of it on her ladyship. "You mean the +woman you brought from town?" Ida considered. "The person at the +house spoke of her in a way that scarcely made her out company +for my child." Her tone was that her child had never wanted, in +her hands, for prodigious company. But she as distinctly +continued to decline Sir Claude's. "Don't be an old goose," she +said charmingly. "Let us alone." + +In front of them on the grass he looked graver than Maisie at all +now thought the occasion warranted. "I don't see why you can't +say it before me." + +His wife smoothed one of her daughter's curls. "Say what, dear?" + +"Why what you came to say." + +At this Maisie at last interposed: she appealed to Sir Claude. +"Do let her say it to me." + +He looked hard for a moment at his little friend. "How do you +know what she may say?" + +"She must risk it," Ida remarked. + +"I only want to protect you," he continued to the child. + +"You want to protect yourself--that's what you mean," his wife +replied. "Don't be afraid. I won't touch you." + +"She won't touch you--she WON'T!" Maisie declared. She felt by +this time that she could really answer for it, and something of +the emotion with which she had listened to the Captain came back +to her. It made her so happy and so secure that she could +positively patronise mamma. She did so in the Captain's very +language. "She's good, she's good!" she proclaimed. + +"Oh Lord!"--Sir Claude, at this, let himself go. He appeared to +have emitted some sound of derision that was smothered, to +Maisie's ears, by her being again embraced by his wife. Ida +released her and held her off a little, looking at her with a +very queer face. Then the child became aware that their companion +had left them and that from the face in question a confirmatory +remark had proceeded. + +"I AM good, love," said her ladyship. + + + +XXI + +A good deal of the rest of Ida's visit was devoted to explaining, +as it were, so extraordinary a statement. This explanation was +more copious than any she had yet indulged in, and as the summer +twilight gathered and she kept her child in the garden she was +conciliatory to a degree that let her need to arrange things a +little perceptibly peep out. It was not merely that she +explained; she almost conversed; all that was wanting was that +she should have positively chattered a little less. It was really +the occasion of Maisie's life on which her mother was to have +most to say to her. That alone was an implication of generosity +and virtue, and no great stretch was required to make our young +lady feel that she should best meet her and soonest have it over +by simply seeming struck with the propriety of her contention. +They sat together while the parent's gloved hand sometimes rested +sociably on the child's and sometimes gave a corrective pull to a +ribbon too meagre or a tress too thick; and Maisie was conscious +of the effort to keep out of her eyes the wonder with which they +were occasionally moved to blink. Oh there would have been things +to blink at if one had let one's self go; and it was lucky they +were alone together, without Sir Claude or Mrs. Wix or even Mrs. +Beale to catch an imprudent glance. Though profuse and prolonged +her ladyship was not exhaustively lucid, and her account of her +situation, so far as it could be called descriptive, was a muddle +of inconsequent things, bruised fruit of an occasion she had +rather too lightly affronted. None of them were really thought +out and some were even not wholly insincere. It was as if she had +asked outright what better proof could have been wanted of her +goodness and her greatness than just this marvellous consent to +give up what she had so cherished. It was as if she had said in +so many words: "There have been things between us--between Sir +Claude and me--which I needn't go into, you little nuisance, +because you wouldn't understand them." It suited her to convey +that Maisie had been kept, so far as SHE was concerned or could +imagine, in a holy ignorance and that she must take for granted a +supreme simplicity. She turned this way and that in the +predicament she had sought and from which she could neither +retreat with grace nor emerge with credit: she draped herself in +the tatters of her impudence, postured to her utmost before the +last little triangle of cracked glass to which so many fractures +had reduced the polished plate of filial superstition. If neither +Sir Claude nor Mrs. Wix was there this was perhaps all the more a +pity: the scene had a style of its own that would have qualified +it for presentation, especially at such a moment as that of her +letting it betray that she quite did think her wretched offspring +better placed with Sir Claude than in her own soiled hands. There +was at any rate nothing scant either in her admissions or her +perversions, the mixture of her fear of what Maisie might +undiscoverably think and of the support she at the same time +gathered from a necessity of selfishness and a habit of +brutality. This habit flushed through the merit she now made, in +terms explicit, of not having come to Folkestone to kick up a +vulgar row. She had not come to box any ears or to bang any doors +or even to use any language: she had come at the worst to lose +the thread of her argument in an occasional dumb disgusted twitch +of the toggery in which Mrs. Beale's low domestic had had the +impudence to serve up Miss Farange. She checked all criticism, not +committing herself even so far as for those missing comforts of +the schoolroom on, which Mrs. Wix had presumed. + +"I AM good--I'm crazily, I'm criminally good. But it won't do for +YOU any more, and if I've ceased to contend with him, and with +you too, who have made most of the trouble between us, it's for +reasons that you'll understand one of these days but too well +--one of these days when I hope you'll know what it is to have +lost a mother. I'm awfully ill, but you mustn't ask me anything +about it. If I don't get off somewhere my doctor won't answer for +the consequences. He's stupefied at what I've borne--he says it +has been put on me because I was formed to suffer. I'm thinking +of South Africa, but that's none of your business. You must take +your choice--you can't ask me questions if you're so ready to +give me up. No, I won't tell you; you can find out for yourself. +South Africa's wonderful, they say, and if I do go it must be to +give it a fair trial. It must be either one thing or the other; +if he takes you, you know, he takes you. I've struck my last blow +for you; I can follow you no longer from pillar to post. I must +live for myself at last, while there's still a handful left of +me. I'm very, very ill; I'm very, very tired; I'm very, very +determined. There you have it. Make the most of it. Your frock's +too filthy; but I came to sacrifice myself." Maisie looked at the +peccant places; there were moments when it was a relief to her to +drop her eyes even on anything so sordid. All her interviews, all +her ordeals with her mother had, as she had grown older, seemed +to have, before any other, the hard quality of duration; but +longer than any, strangely, were these minutes offered to her as +so pacific and so agreeably winding up the connexion. It was her +anxiety that made them long, her fear of some hitch, some check +of the current, one of her ladyship's famous quick jumps. She +held her breath; she only wanted, by playing into her visitor's +hands, to see the thing through. But her impatience itself made +at instants the whole situation swim; there were things Ida said +that she perhaps didn't hear, and there were things she heard +that Ida perhaps didn't say. "You're all I have, and yet I'm +capable of this. Your father wishes you were dead--that, my dear, +is what your father wishes. You'll have to get used to it as +I've done--I mean to his wishing that I'M dead. At all events you +see for yourself how wonderful I am to Sir Claude. He wishes me +dead quite as much; and I'm sure that if making me scenes about +you could have killed me--!" It was the mark of Ida's eloquence +that she started more hares than she followed, and she gave but a +glance in the direction of this one; going on to say that the +very proof of her treating her husband like an angel was that he +had just stolen off not to be fairly shamed. She spoke as if he +had retired on tiptoe, as he might have withdrawn from a place of +worship in which he was not fit to be present. "You'll never know +what I've been through about you--never, never, never. I spare +you everything, as I always have; though I dare say you know +things that, if I did (I mean if I knew them) would make me-- +well, no matter! You're old enough at any rate to know there are +a lot of things I don't say that I easily might; though it would +do me good, I assure you, to have spoken my mind for once in my +life. I don't speak of your father's infamous wife: that may give +you a notion of the way I'm letting you off. When I say 'you' I +mean your precious friends and backers. If you don't do justice +to my forbearing, out of delicacy, to mention, just as a last +word, about your stepfather, a little fact or two of a kind that +really I should only HAVE to mention to shine myself in +comparison, and after every calumny, like pure gold: if you don't +do me THAT justice you'll never do me justice at all!" + +Maisie's desire to show what justice she did her had by this time +become so intense as to have brought with it an inspiration. The +great effect of their encounter had been to confirm her sense of +being launched with Sir Claude, to make it rich and full beyond +anything she had dreamed, and everything now conspired to suggest +that a single soft touch of her small hand would complete the +good work and set her ladyship so promptly and majestically +afloat as to leave the great seaway clear for the morrow. This +was the more the case as her hand had for some moments been +rendered free by a marked manoeuvre of both of her mother's. +One of these capricious members had fumbled with visible +impatience in some backward depth of drapery and had presently +reappeared with a small article in its grasp. The act had a +significance for a little person trained, in that relation, from +an early age, to keep an eye on manual motions, and its possible +bearing was not darkened by the memory of the handful of gold +that Susan Ash would never, never believe Mrs. Beale had sent +back--"not she; she's too false and too greedy!"--to the +munificent Countess. To have guessed, none the less, that her +ladyship's purse might be the real figure of the object extracted +from the rustling covert at her rear--this suspicion gave on the +spot to the child's eyes a direction carefully distant. It added +moreover to the optimism that for an hour could ruffle the +surface of her deep diplomacy, ruffle it to the point of making +her forget that she had never been safe unless she had also been +stupid. She in short forgot her habitual caution in her impulse +to adopt her ladyship's practical interests and show her ladyship +how perfectly she understood them. She saw without looking that +her mother pressed a little clasp; heard, without wanting to, the +sharp click that marked the closing portemonnaie from which +something had been taken. What this was she just didn't see; it +was not too substantial to be locked with ease in the fold of her +ladyship's fingers. Nothing was less new to Maisie than the art +of not thinking singly, so that at this instant she could both +bring out what was on her tongue's end and weigh, as to the +object in her mother's palm, the question of its being a +sovereign against the question of its being a shilling. No sooner +had she begun to speak than she saw that within a few seconds +this question would have been settled: she had foolishly checked +the rising words of the little speech of presentation to which, +under the circumstances, even such a high pride as Ida's had had +to give some thought. She had checked it completely--that was the +next thing she felt: the note she sounded brought into her +companion's eyes a look that quickly enough seemed at variance +with presentations. + +"That was what the Captain said to me that day, mamma. I think it +would have given you pleasure to hear the way he spoke of you." + +The pleasure, Maisie could now in consternation reflect, would +have been a long time coming if it had come no faster than the +response evoked by her allusion to it. Her mother gave her one of +the looks that slammed the door in her face; never in a career of +unsuccessful experiments had Maisie had to take such a stare. It +reminded her of the way that once, at one of the lectures in +Glower Street, something in a big jar that, amid an array of +strange glasses and bad smells, had been promised as a beautiful +yellow was produced as a beautiful black. She had been sorry on +that occasion for the lecturer, but she was at this moment +sorrier for herself. Oh nothing had ever made for twinges like +mamma's manner of saying: "The Captain? What Captain?" + +"Why when we met you in the Gardens--the one who took me to sit +with him. That was exactly what HE said." + +Ida let it come on so far as to appear for an instant to pick up +a lost thread. "What on earth did he say?" + +Maisie faltered supremely, but supremely she brought it out. +"What you say, mamma--that you're so good." + +"What 'I' say?" Ida slowly rose, keeping her eyes on her child, +and the hand that had busied itself in her purse conformed at her +side and amid the folds of her dress to a certain stiffening of +the arm. "I say you're a precious idiot, and I won't have you put +words into my mouth!" This was much more peremptory than a mere +contradiction. Maisie could only feel on the spot that everything +had broken short off and that their communication had abruptly +ceased. That was presently proved. "What business have you to +speak to me of him?" + +Her daughter turned scarlet. "I thought you liked him." + +"Him!--the biggest cad in London!" Her ladyship towered again, +and in the gathering dusk the whites of her eyes were huge. + +Maisie's own, however, could by this time pretty well match them; +and she had at least now, with the first flare of anger that had +ever yet lighted her face for a foe, the sense of looking up +quite as hard as any one could look down. "Well, he was kind +about you then; he WAS, and it made me like him. He said things +--they were beautiful, they were, they were!" She was almost +capable of the violence of forcing this home, for even in the +midst of her surge of passion--of which in fact it was a part-- +there rose in her a fear, a pain, a vision ominous, precocious, +of what it might mean for her mother's fate to have forfeited +such a loyalty as that. There was literally an instant in which +Maisie fully saw--saw madness and desolation, saw ruin and +darkness and death. "I've thought of him often since, and I hoped +it was with him--with him--" Here, in her emotion, it failed her, +the breath of her filial hope. + +But Ida got it out of her. "You hoped, you little horror--?" + +"That it was he who's at Dover, that it was he who's to take you. +I mean to South Africa," Maisie said with another drop. + +Ida's stupefaction on this, kept her silent unnaturally long, so +long that her daughter could not only wonder what was coming, but +perfectly measure the decline of every symptom of her liberality. +She loomed there in her grandeur, merely dark and dumb; her wrath +was clearly still, as it had always been, a thing of resource and +variety. What Maisie least expected of it was by this law what +now occurred. It melted, in the summer twilight, gradually into +pity, and the pity after a little found a cadence to which the +renewed click of her purse gave an accent. She had put back what +she had taken out. "You're a dreadful dismal deplorable little +thing," she murmured. And with this she turned back and rustled +away over the lawn. + +After she had disappeared, Maisie dropped upon the bench again +and for some time, in the empty garden and the deeper dusk, sat +and stared at the image her flight had still left standing. It +had ceased to be her mother only, in the strangest way, that it +might become her father, the father of whose wish that she were +dead the announcement still lingered in the air. It was a +presence with vague edges--it continued to front her, to cover +her. But what reality that she need reckon with did it represent +if Mr. Farange were, on his side, also going off--going off to +America with the Countess, or even only to Spa? That question +had, from the house, a sudden gay answer in the great roar of a +gong, and at the same moment she saw Sir Claude look out for her +from the wide lighted doorway. At this she went to him and he +came forward and met her on the lawn. For a minute she was with +him there in silence as, just before, at the last, she had been +with her mother. + +"She's gone?" + +"She's gone." + +Nothing more, for the instant, passed between them but to move +together to the house, where, in the hall, he indulged in one of +those sudden pleasantries with which, to the delight of his +stepdaughter, his native animation overflowed. "Will Miss Farange +do me the honour to accept my arm?" + +There was nothing in all her days that Miss Farange had accepted +with such bliss, a bright rich element that floated them together +to their feast; before they reached which, however, she uttered, +in the spirit of a glad young lady taken in to her first +dinner, a sociable word that made him stop short. "She goes to +South Africa." + +"To South Africa?" His face, for a moment, seemed to swing for a +jump; the next it took its spring into the extreme of hilarity. +"Is that what she said?" + +"Oh yes, I didn't MISTAKE!" Maisie took to herself THAT credit. +"For the climate." + +Sir Claude was now looking at a young woman with black hair, a +red frock and a tiny terrier tucked under her elbow. She swept +past them on her way to the dining-room, leaving an impression of +a strong scent which mingled, amid the clatter of the place, with +the hot aroma of food. He had become a little graver; he still +stopped to talk. "I see--I see." Other people brushed by; he was +not too grave to notice them. "Did she say anything else?" + +"Oh yes, a lot more." + +On this he met her eyes again with some intensity, but only +repeating: "I see--I see." + +Maisie had still her own vision, which she brought out. "I +thought she was going to give me something." + +"What kind of a thing?" + +"Some money that she took out of her purse and then put back." + +Sir Claude's amusement reappeared. "She thought better of it. +Dear thrifty soul! How much did she make by that manoeuvre?" + +Maisie considered. "I didn't see. It was very small." + +Sir Claude threw back his head. "Do you mean very little? +Sixpence?" + +Maisie resented this almost as if, at dinner, she were already +bandying jokes with an agreeable neighbour. "It may have been a +sovereign." + +"Or even," Sir Claude suggested, "a ten-pound note." She flushed +at this sudden picture of what she perhaps had lost, and he made +it more vivid by adding: "Rolled up in a tight little ball, you +know--her way of treating banknotes as if they were curlpapers!" +Maisie's flush deepened both with the immense plausibility of +this and with a fresh wave of the consciousness that was always +there to remind her of his cleverness--the consciousness of how +immeasurably more after all he knew about mamma than she. She had +lived with her so many times without discovering the material of +her curl-papers or assisting at any other of her dealings with +banknotes. The tight little ball had at any rate rolled away from +her for ever--quite like one of the other balls that Ida's cue +used to send flying. Sir Claude gave her his arm again, and by +the time she was seated at table she had perfectly made up her +mind as to the amount of the sum she had forfeited. Everything +about her, however--the crowded room, the bedizened banquet, the +savour of dishes, the drama of figures--ministered to the joy of +life. After dinner she smoked with her friend--for that was +exactly what she felt she did--on a porch, a kind of terrace, +where the red tips of cigars and the light dresses of ladies made, +under the happy stars, a poetry that was almost intoxicating. +They talked but little, and she was slightly surprised at his +asking for no more news of what her mother had said; but she had +no need of talk--there were a sense and a sound in everything to +which words had nothing to add. They smoked and smoked, and there +was a sweetness in her stepfather's silence. At last he said: +"Let us take another turn--but you must go to bed soon. Oh you +know, we're going to have a system!" Their turn was back into +the garden, along the dusky paths from which they could see the +black masts and the red lights of boats and hear the calls and +cries that evidently had to do with happy foreign travel; +and their system was once more to get on beautifully in this +further lounge without a definite exchange. Yet he finally +spoke--he broke out as he tossed away the match from which he had +taken a fresh light: "I must go for a stroll. I'm in a fidget--I +must walk it off." She fell in with this as she fell in with +everything; on which he went on: "You go up to Miss Ash"--it was +the name they had started; "you must see she's not in mischief. +Can you find your way alone?" + +"Oh yes; I've been up and down seven times." She positively +enjoyed the prospect of an eighth. + +Still they didn't separate; they stood smoking together under the +stars. Then at last Sir Claude produced it. "I'm free--I'm free." + +She looked up at him; it was the very spot on which a couple of +hours before she had looked up at her mother. "You're free-- +you're free." + +"To-morrow we go to France." He spoke as if he hadn't heard her; +but it didn't prevent her again concurring. + +"To-morrow we go to France." + +Again he appeared not to have heard her; and after a moment--it +was an effect evidently of the depth of his reflexions and the +agitation of his soul--he also spoke as if he had not spoken +before. "I'm free--I'm free!" + +She repeated her form of assent. "You're free--you're free." + +This time he did hear her; he fixed her through the darkness with +a grave face. But he said nothing more; he simply stooped a +little and drew her to him--simply held her a little and kissed +her goodnight; after which, having given her a silent push +upstairs to Miss Ash, he turned round again to the black masts +and the red lights. Maisie mounted as if France were at the top. + + + +XXII + +THE next day it seemed to her indeed at the bottom--down too far, +in shuddering plunges, even to leave her a sense, on the Channel +boat, of the height at which Sir Claude remained and which had +never in every way been so great as when, much in the wet, though +in the angle of a screen of canvas, he sociably sat with his +stepdaughter's head in his lap and that of Mrs. Beale's housemaid +fairly pillowed on his breast. Maisie was surprised to learn as +they drew into port that they had had a lovely passage; but this +emotion, at Boulogne, was speedily quenched in others, above all +in the great ecstasy of a larger impression of life. She was +"abroad" and she gave herself up to it, responded to it, in the +bright air, before the pink houses, among the bare-legged +fishwives and the red-legged soldiers, with the instant certitude +of a vocation. Her vocation was to see the world and to thrill +with enjoyment of the picture; she had grown older in five +minutes and had by the time they reached the hotel recognised in +the institutions and manners of France a multitude of affinities +and messages. Literally in the course of an hour she found her +initiation; a consciousness much quickened by the superior part +that, as soon as they had gobbled down a French breakfast--which +was indeed a high note in the concert--she observed herself to +play to Susan Ash. Sir Claude, who had already bumped against +people he knew and who, as he said, had business and letters, +sent them out together for a walk, a walk in which the child was +avenged, so far as poetic justice required, not only for the loud +giggles that in their London trudges used to break from her +attendant, but for all the years of her tendency to produce +socially that impression of an excess of the queer something +which had seemed to waver so widely between innocence and guilt. +On the spot, at Boulogne, though there might have been excess +there was at least no wavering; she recognised, she understood, +she adored and took possession; feeling herself attuned to +everything and laying her hand, right and left, on what had +simply been waiting for her. She explained to Susan, she laughed +at Susan, she towered over Susan; and it was somehow Susan's +stupidity, of which she had never yet been so sure, and Susan's +bewilderment and ignorance and antagonism, that gave the +liveliest rebound to her immediate perceptions and adoptions. The +place and the people were all a picture together, a picture that, +when they went down to the wide sands, shimmered, in a thousand +tints, with the pretty organisation of the plage, with the gaiety +of spectators and bathers, with that of the language and the +weather, and above all with that of our young lady's unprecedented +situation. For it appeared to her that no one since the beginning +of time could have had such an adventure or, in an hour, so much +experience; as a sequel to which she only needed, in order to feel +with conscious wonder how the past was changed, to hear Susan, +inscrutably aggravated, express a preference for the Edgware Road. +The past was so changed and the circle it had formed already so +overstepped that on that very afternoon, in the course of another +walk, she found herself enquiring of Sir Claude--without a single +scruple--if he were prepared as yet to name the moment at which +they should start for Paris. His answer, it must be said, gave +her the least little chill. + +"Oh Paris, my dear child--I don't quite know about Paris!" + +This required to be met, but it was much less to challenge him +than for the rich joy of her first discussion of the details of a +tour that, after looking at him a minute, she replied: "Well, +isn't that the REAL thing, the thing that when one does come +abroad--?" + +He had turned grave again, and she merely threw that out: it was +a way of doing justice to the seriousness of their life. She +couldn't moreover be so much older since yesterday without +reflecting that if by this time she probed a little he would +recognise that she had done enough for mere patience. There was +in fact something in his eyes that suddenly, to her own, made her +discretion shabby. Before she could remedy this he had answered +her last question, answered it in the way that, of all ways, she +had least expected. "The thing it doesn't do not to do? Certainly +Paris is charming. But, my dear fellow, Paris eats your head off. +I mean it's so beastly expensive." + +That note gave her a pang--it suddenly let in a harder light. +Were they poor then, that is was HE poor, really poor beyond the +pleasantry of apollinaris and cold beef? They had walked to the +end of the long jetty that enclosed the harbour and were looking +out at the dangers they had escaped, the grey horizon that was +England, the tumbled surface of the sea and the brown smacks that +bobbed upon it. Why had he chosen an embarrassed time to make +this foreign dash? unless indeed it was just the dash economic, +of which she had often heard and on which, after another look at +the grey horizon and the bobbing boats, she was ready to turn +round with elation. She replied to him quite in his own manner: +"I see, I see." She smiled up at him. "Our affairs are involved." + +"That's it." He returned her smile. "Mine are not quite so bad as +yours; for yours are really, my dear man, in a state I can't see +through at all. But mine will do--for a mess." + +She thought this over. "But isn't France cheaper than England?" + +England, over there in the thickening gloom, looked just then +remarkably dear. "I dare say; some parts." + +"Then can't we live in those parts?" + +There was something that for an instant, in satisfaction of this, +he had the air of being about to say and yet not saying. What he +presently said was: "This very place is one of them." + +"Then we shall live here?" + +He didn't treat it quite so definitely as she liked. "Since we've +come to save money!" + +This made her press him more. "How long shall we stay?" + +"Oh three or four days." + +It took her breath away. "You can save money in that time?" + +He burst out laughing, starting to walk again and taking her +under his arm. He confessed to her on the way that she too had +put a finger on the weakest of all his weaknesses, the fact, of +which he was perfectly aware, that he probably might have lived +within his means if he had never done anything for thrift. "It's +the happy thoughts that do it," he said; "there's nothing so +ruinous as putting in a cheap week." Maisie heard afresh among +the pleasant sounds of the closing day that steel click of Ida's +change of mind. She thought of the ten-pound note it would have +been delightful at this juncture to produce for her companion's +encouragement. But the idea was dissipated by his saying +irrelevantly, in presence of the next thing they stopped to +admire: "We shall stay till she arrives." + +She turned upon him. "Mrs. Beale?" + +"Mrs. Wix. I've had a wire," he went on. "She has seen your +mother." + +"Seen mamma?" Maisie stared. "Where in the world?" + +"Apparently in London. They've been together." + +For an instant this looked ominous--a fear came into her eyes. + +"Then she hasn't gone?" + +"Your mother?--to South Africa? I give it up, dear boy," Sir +Claude said; and she seemed literally to see him give it up as he +stood there and with a kind of absent gaze--absent, that is, from +HER affairs--followed the fine stride and shining limbs of a +young fishwife who had just waded out of the sea with her +basketful of shrimps. His thought came back to her sooner than +his eyes. "But I dare say it's all right. She wouldn't come if it +wasn't, poor old thing: she knows rather well what she's about." + +This was so reassuring that Maisie, after turning it over, could +make it fit into her dream. "Well, what IS she about?" + +He finally stopped looking at the fishwife--he met his +companion's enquiry. "Oh you know!" There was something in the +way he said it that made, between them, more of an equality than +she had yet imagined; but it had also more the effect of raising +her up than of letting him down, and what it did with her was +shown by the sound of her assent. + +"Yes--I know!" What she knew, what she COULD know is by this time +no secret to us: it grew and grew at any rate, the rest of that +day, in the air of what he took for granted. It was better he +should do that than attempt to test her knowledge; but there at +the worst was the gist of the matter: it was open between them at +last that their great change, as, speaking as if it had already +lasted weeks, Maisie called it, was somehow built up round Mrs. +Wix. Before she went to bed that night she knew further that Sir +Claude, since, as HE called it, they had been on the rush, had +received more telegrams than one. But they separated again +without speaking of Mrs. Beale. + +Oh what a crossing for the straighteners and the old brown dress +--which latter appurtenance the child saw thriftily revived for +the possible disasters of travel! The wind got up in the night +and from her little room at the inn Maisie could hear the noise +of the sea. The next day it was raining and everything different: +this was the case even with Susan Ash, who positively crowed +over the bad weather, partly, it seemed, for relish of the time +their visitor would have in the boat, and partly to point the +moral of the folly of coming to such holes. In the wet, with +Sir Claude, Maisie went to the Folkestone packet, on the arrival +of which, with many signs of the fray, he made her wait under an +umbrella by the quay; whence almost ere the vessel touched, he +was to be descried, in quest of their friend, wriggling--that had +been his word--through the invalids massed upon the deck. It was +long till he reappeared--it was not indeed till every one had +landed; when he presented the object of his benevolence in a +light that Maisie scarce knew whether to suppose the depth of +prostration or the flush of triumph. The lady on his arm, still +bent beneath her late ordeal, was muffled in such draperies as +had never before offered so much support to so much woe. At the +hotel, an hour later, this ambiguity dropped: assisting Mrs. Wix +in private to refresh and reinvest herself, Maisie heard from her +in detail how little she could have achieved if Sir Claude hadn't +put it in her power. It was a phrase that in her room she +repeated in connexions indescribable: he had put it in her power +to have "changes," as she said, of the most intimate order, +adapted to climates and occasions so various as to foreshadow in +themselves the stages of a vast itinerary. Cheap weeks would of +course be in their place after so much money spent on a +governess; sums not grudged, however, by this lady's pupil, even +on her feeling her own appearance give rise, through the +straighteners, to an attention perceptibly mystified. Sir Claude +in truth had had less time to devote to it than to Mrs. Wix's; +and moreover she would rather be in her own shoes than in her +friend's creaking new ones in the event of an encounter with Mrs. +Beale. Maisie was too lost in the idea of Mrs. Beale's judgement +of so much newness to pass any judgement herself. Besides, after +much luncheon and many endearments, the question took quite +another turn, to say nothing of the pleasure of the child's quick +view that there were other eyes than Susan Ash's to open to what +she could show. She couldn't show much, alas, till it stopped +raining, which it declined to do that day; but this had only the +effect of leaving more time for Mrs. Wix's own demonstration. It +came as they sat in the little white and gold salon which Maisie +thought the loveliest place she had ever seen except perhaps the +apartment of the Countess; it came while the hard summer storm +lashed the windows and blew in such a chill that Sir Claude, with +his hands in his pockets and cigarettes in his teeth, fidgeting, +frowning, looking out and turning back, ended by causing a smoky +little fire to be made in the dressy little chimney. It came in +spite of something that could only be named his air of wishing to +put it off; an air that had served him--oh as all his airs served +him!--to the extent of his having for a couple of hours confined +the conversation to gratuitous jokes and generalities, kept it on +the level of the little empty coffee-cups and petits verres (Mrs. +Wix had two of each!) that struck Maisie, through the fumes of +the French fire and the English tobacco, as a token more than +ever that they were launched. She felt now, in close quarters and +as clearly as if Mrs. Wix had told her, that what this lady had +come over for was not merely to be chaffed and to hear her pupil +chaffed; not even to hear Sir Claude, who knew French in +perfection, imitate the strange sounds emitted by the English +folk at the hotel. It was perhaps half an effect of her present +renovations, as if her clothes had been somebody's else: she had +at any rate never produced such an impression of high colour, of +a redness associated in Maisie's mind at THAT pitch either with +measles or with "habits." Her heart was not at all in the gossip +about Boulogne; and if her complexion was partly the result of +the dejeuner and the petits verres it was also the brave signal +of what she was there to say. Maisie knew when this did come how +anxiously it had been awaited by the youngest member of the +party. "Her ladyship packed me off--she almost put me into the +cab!" That was what Mrs. Wix at last brought out. + + + +XXIII + +Sir Claude was stationed at the window; he didn't so much as turn +round, and it was left to the youngest of the three to take up +the remark. "Do you mean you went to see her yesterday?" + +"She came to see ME. She knocked at my shabby door. She mounted +my squalid stair. She told me she had seen you at Folkestone." + +Maisie wondered. "She went back that evening?" + +"No; yesterday morning. She drove to me straight from the +station. It was most remarkable. If I had a job to get off she +did nothing to make it worse--she did a great deal to make it +better." Mrs. Wix hung fire, though the flame in her face burned +brighter; then she became capable of saying: "Her ladyship's +kind! She did what I didn't expect." + +Maisie, on this, looked straight at her stepfather's back; it +might well have been for her at that hour a monument of her +ladyship's kindness. It remained, as such, monumentally still, +and for a time that permitted the child to ask of their +companion: "Did she really help you?" + +"Most practically." Again Mrs. Wix paused; again she quite +resounded. "She gave me a ten-pound note." + +At that, still looking out, Sir Claude, at the window, laughed +loud. "So you see, Maisie, we've not quite lost it!" + +"Oh no," Maisie responded. "Isn't that too charming?" She smiled +at Mrs. Wix. "We know all about it." Then on her friend's showing +such blankness as was compatible with such a flush she pursued: +"She does want me to have you?" + +Mrs. Wix showed a final hesitation, which, however, while Sir +Claude drummed on the window-pane, she presently surmounted. It +came to Maisie that in spite of his drumming and of his not +turning round he was really so much interested as to leave +himself in a manner in her hands; which somehow suddenly seemed +to her a greater proof than he could have given by interfering. +"She wants me to have YOU!" Mrs. Wix declared. + +Maisie answered this bang at Sir Claude. "Then that's nice for +all of us." + +Of course it was, his continued silence sufficiently admitted +while Mrs. Wix rose from her chair and, as if to take more of a +stand, placed herself, not without majesty, before the fire. The +incongruity of her smartness, the circumference of her stiff +frock, presented her as really more ready for Paris than any of +them. She also gazed hard at Sir Claude's back. "Your wife was +different from anything she had ever shown me. She recognises +certain proprieties." + +"Which? Do you happen to remember?" Sir Claude asked. + +Mrs. Wix's reply was prompt. "The importance for Maisie of a +gentlewoman, of some one who's not--well, so bad! She objects to +a mere maid, and I don't in the least mind telling you what she +wants me to do." One thing was clear--Mrs. Wix was now bold +enough for anything. "She wants me to persuade you to get rid of +the person from Mrs. Beale's." + +Maisie waited for Sir Claude to pronounce on this; then she could +only understand that he on his side waited, and she felt +particularly full of common sense as she met her responsibility. +"Oh I don't want Susan with YOU!" she said to Mrs. Wix. + +Sir Claude, always from the window, approved. "That's quite +simple. I'll take her back." + +Mrs. Wix gave a positive jump; Maisie caught her look of alarm. +"'Take' her? You don't mean to go over on purpose?" + +Sir Claude said nothing for a moment; after which, "Why shouldn't +I leave you here?" he enquired. + +Maisie, at this, sprang up. "Oh do, oh do, oh do!" The next +moment she was interlaced with Mrs. Wix, and the two, on the +hearth-rug, their eyes in each other's eyes, considered the plan +with intensity. Then Maisie felt the difference of what they saw +in it. + +"She can surely go back alone: why should you put yourself out?" +Mrs. Wix demanded. + +"Oh she's an idiot--she's incapable. If anything should happen to +her it would be awkward: it was I who brought her--without her +asking. If I turn her away I ought with my own hand to place her +again exactly where I found her." + +Mrs. Wix's face appealed to Maisie on such folly, and her manner, +as directed to their companion, had, to her pupil's surprise, an +unprecedented firmness. "Dear Sir Claude, I think you're +perverse. Pay her fare and give her a sovereign. She has had an +experience that she never dreamed of and that will be an +advantage to her through life. If she goes wrong on the way it +will be simply because she wants to, and, with her expenses and +her remuneration--make it even what you like!--you'll have +treated her as handsomely as you always treat every one." + +This was a new tone--as new as Mrs. Wix's cap; and it could +strike a young person with a sharpened sense for latent meanings +as the upshot of a relation that had taken on a new character. It +brought out for Maisie how much more even than she had guessed +her friends were fighting side by side. At the same time it +needed so definite a justification that as Sir Claude now at last +did face them she at first supposed him merely resentful of +excessive familiarity. She was therefore yet more puzzled to see +him show his serene beauty untroubled, as well as an equal +interest in a matter quite distinct from any freedom but her +ladyship's. "Did my wife come alone?" He could ask even that +good-humouredly. + +"When she called on me?" Mrs. Wix WAS red now: his good humour +wouldn't keep down her colour, which for a minute glowed there +like her ugly honesty. "No--there was some one in the cab." The +only attenuation she could think of was after a minute to add: +"But they didn't come up." + +Sir Claude broke into a laugh--Maisie herself could guess what it +was at: while he now walked about, still laughing, and at the +fireplace gave a gay kick to a displaced log, she felt more vague +about almost everything than about the drollery of such a "they." +She in fact could scarce have told you if it was to deepen or to +cover the joke that she bethought herself to observe: "Perhaps it +was her maid." + +Mrs. Wix gave her a look that at any rate deprecated the wrong +tone. "It was not her maid." + +"Do you mean there are this time two?" Sir Claude asked as if he +hadn't heard. + +"Two maids?" Maisie went on as if she might assume he had. + +The reproach of the straighteners darkened; but Sir Claude cut +across it with a sudden: "See here; what do you mean? And what do +you suppose SHE meant?" + +Mrs. Wix let him for a moment, in silence, understand that the +answer to his question, if he didn't take care, might give him +more than he wanted. It was as if, with this scruple, she +measured and adjusted all she gave him in at last saying: "What +she meant was to make me know that you're definitely free. To +have that straight from her was a joy I of course hadn't hoped +for: it made the assurance, and my delight at it, a thing I could +really proceed upon. You already know now certainly I'd have +started even if she hadn't pressed me; you already know what, so +long, we've been looking for and what, as soon as she told me of +her step taken at Folkestone, I recognised with rapture that we +HAVE. It's your freedom that makes me right"--she fairly bristled +with her logic. "But I don't mind telling you that it's her +action that makes me happy!" + +"Her action?" Sir Claude echoed. "Why, my dear woman, her action +is just a hideous crime. It happens to satisfy our sympathies in +a way that's quite delicious; but that doesn't in the least alter +the fact that it's the most abominable thing ever done. She has +chucked our friend here overboard not a bit less than if she had +shoved her shrieking and pleading, out of that window and down +two floors to the paving-stones." + +Maisie surveyed serenely the parties to the discussion. "Oh your +friend here, dear Sir Claude, doesn't plead and shriek!" + +He looked at her a moment. "Never. Never. That's one, only one, +but charming so far as it goes, of about a hundred things we love +her for." Then he pursued to Mrs. Wix: "What I can't for the life +of me make out is what Ida is REALLY up to, what game she was +playing in turning to you with that cursed cheek after the +beastly way she has used you. Where--to explain her at all--does +she fancy she can presently, when we least expect it, take it out +of us?" + +"She doesn't fancy anything, nor want anything out of any one. +Her cursed cheek, as you call it, is the best thing I've ever +seen in her. I don't care a fig for the beastly way she used me-- +I forgive it all a thousand times over!" Mrs. Wix raised her +voice as she had never raised it; she quite triumphed in her +lucidity. "I understand her, I almost admire her!" she quavered. +She spoke as if this might practically suffice; yet in charity to +fainter lights she threw out an explanation. "As I've said, she +was different; upon my word I wouldn't have known her. She had a +glimmering, she had an instinct; they brought her. It was a kind +of happy thought, and if you couldn't have supposed she would +ever have had such a thing, why of course I quite agree with you. +But she did have it! There!" + +Maisie could feel again how a certain rude rightness in this plea +might have been found exasperating; but as she had often watched +Sir Claude in apprehension of displeasures that didn't come, so +now, instead of saying "Oh hell!" as her father used, she +observed him only to take refuge in a question that at the worst +was abrupt. + +"Who IS it this time, do you know?" + +Mrs. Wix tried blind dignity. "Who is what, Sir Claude?" + +"The man who stands the cabs. Who was in the one that waited at +your door?" + +At this challenge she faltered so long that her young friend's +pitying conscience gave her a hand. "It wasn't the Captain." + +This good intention, however, only converted the excellent +woman's scruple to a more ambiguous stare; besides of course +making Sir Claude go off. Mrs. Wix fairly appealed to him. "Must +I really tell you?" + +His amusement continued. "Did she make you promise not to?" + +Mrs. Wix looked at him still harder. "I mean before Maisie." + +Sir Claude laughed again. "Why SHE can't hurt him!" + +Maisie felt herself, as it passed, brushed by the light humour of +this. "Yes, I can't hurt him." + +The straighteners again roofed her over; after which they seemed +to crack with the explosion of their wearer's honesty. Amid the +flying splinters Mrs. Wix produced a name. "Mr. Tischbein." + +There was for an instant a silence that, under Sir Claude's +influence and while he and Maisie looked at each other, suddenly +pretended to be that of gravity. "We don't know Mr. Tischbein, do +we, dear?" + +Maisie gave the point all needful thought. "No, I can't place Mr. +Tischbein." + +It was a passage that worked visibly on their friend. "You must +pardon me, Sir Claude," she said with an austerity of which the +note was real, "if I thank God to your face that he has in his +mercy--I mean his mercy to our charge--allowed me to achieve this +act." She gave out a long puff of pain. "It was time!" Then as if +still more to point the moral: "I said just now I understood your +wife. I said just now I admired her. I stand to it: I did both of +those things when I saw how even SHE, poor thing, saw. If you +want the dots on the i's you shall have them. What she came to me +for, in spite of everything, was that I'm just"--she quavered it +out--"well, just clean! What she saw for her daughter was that +there must at last be a DECENT person!" + +Maisie was quick enough to jump a little at the sound of this +implication that such a person was what Sir Claude was not; the +next instant, however, she more profoundly guessed against whom +the discrimination was made. She was therefore left the more +surprised at the complete candour with which he embraced the +worst. "If she's bent on decent persons why has she given her to +ME? You don't call me a decent person, and I'll do Ida the +justice that SHE never did. I think I'm as indecent as any one +and that there's nothing in my behaviour that makes my wife's +surrender a bit less ignoble!" + +"Don't speak of your behaviour!" Mrs. Wix cried. "Don't say such +horrible things; they're false and they're wicked and I forbid +you! It's to KEEP you decent that I'm here and that I've done +everything I have done. It's to save you--I won't say from +yourself, because in yourself you're beautiful and good! It's to +save you from the worst person of all. I haven't, after all, come +over to be afraid to speak of her! That's the person in whose +place her ladyship wants such a person as even me; and if she +thought herself, as she as good as told me, not fit for Maisie's +company, it's not, as you may well suppose, that she may make +room for Mrs. Beale!" + +Maisie watched his face as it took this outbreak, and the most +she saw in it was that it turned a little white. That indeed made +him look, as Susan Ash would have said, queer; and it was perhaps +a part of the queerness that he intensely smiled. "You're too +hard on Mrs. Beale. She has great merits of her own." + +Mrs. Wix, at this, instead of immediately replying, did what Sir +Claude had been doing before: she moved across to the window and +stared a while into the storm. There was for a minute, to +Maisie's sense, a hush that resounded with wind and rain. Sir +Claude, in spite of these things, glanced about for his hat; on +which Maisie spied it first and, making a dash for it, held it +out to him. He took it with a gleam of a "thank-you" in his face, +and then something moved her still to hold the other side of the +brim; so that, united by their grasp of this object, they stood +some seconds looking many things at each other. By this time Mrs. +Wix had turned round. "Do you mean to tell me," she demanded, +"that you are going back?" + +"To Mrs. Beale?" Maisie surrendered his hat, and there was +something that touched her in the embarrassed, almost humiliated +way their companion's challenge made him turn it round and round. +She had seen people do that who, she was sure, did nothing else +that Sir Claude did. "I can't just say, my dear thing. We'll see +about I--we'll talk of it to-morrow. Meantime I must get some +air." + +Mrs. Wix, with her back to the window, threw up her head to a +height that, still for a moment, had the effect of detaining him. +"All the air in France, Sir Claude, won't, I think, give you the +courage to deny that you're simply afraid of her!" + +Oh this time he did look queer; Maisie had no need of Susan's +vocabulary to note it! It would have come to her of itself as, +with his hand on the door, he turned his eyes from his +stepdaughter to her governess and then back again. Resting on +Maisie's, though for ever so short a time, there was something +they gave up to her and tried to explain. His lips, however, +explained nothing; they only surrendered to Mrs. Wix. "Yes. I'm +simply afraid of her!" He opened the door and passed out. +It brought back to Maisie his confession of fear of her mother; +it made her stepmother then the second lady about whom he failed +of the particular virtue that was supposed most to mark a +gentleman. In fact there were three of them, if she counted in +Mrs. Wix, before whom he had undeniably quailed. Well, his want +of valour was but a deeper appeal to her tenderness. To thrill +with response to it she had only to remember all the ladies she +herself had, as they called it, funked. + + + +XXIV + +It continued to rain so hard that our young lady's private dream +of explaining the Continent to their visitor had to contain a +provision for some adequate treatment of the weather. At the +table d'hote that evening she threw out a variety of lights: this +was the second ceremony of the sort she had sat through, and she +would have neglected her privilege and dishonoured her vocabulary +--which indeed consisted mainly of the names of dishes--if she +had not been proportionately ready to dazzle with interpretations. +Preoccupied and overawed, Mrs. Wix was apparently dim: she +accepted her pupil's version of the mysteries of the menu in a +manner that might have struck the child as the depression of a +credulity conscious not so much of its needs as of its dimensions. +Maisie was soon enough--though it scarce happened before bedtime-- +confronted again with the different sort of programme for which +she reserved her criticism. They remounted together to their +sitting-room while Sir Claude, who said he would join them later, +remained below to smoke and to converse with the old acquaintances +that he met wherever he turned. He had proposed his companions, +for coffee, the enjoyment of the salon de lecture, but Mrs. Wix +had replied promptly and with something of an air that it struck +her their own apartments offered them every convenience. They +offered the good lady herself, Maisie could immediately observe, +not only that of this rather grand reference, which, already +emulous, so far as it went, of her pupil, she made as if she had +spent her life in salons; but that of a stiff French sofa where +she could sit and stare at the faint French lamp, in default of +the French clock that had stopped, as for some account of the +time Sir Claude would so markedly interpose. Her demeanour +accused him so directly of hovering beyond her reach that Maisie +sought to divert her by a report of Susan's quaint attitude on +the matter of their conversation after lunch. Maisie had +mentioned to the young woman for sympathy's sake the plan for +her relief, but her disapproval of alien ways appeared, +strange to say, only to prompt her to hug her gloom; so that +between Mrs. Wix's effect of displacing her and the visible +stiffening of her back the child had the sense of a double +office and enlarged play for pacific powers. + +These powers played to no great purpose, it was true, in keeping +before Mrs. Wix the vision of Sir Claude's perversity, which hung +there in the pauses of talk and which he himself, after +unmistakeable delays, finally made quite lurid by bursting in--it +was near ten o'clock--with an object held up in his hand. She +knew before he spoke what it was; she knew at least from the +underlying sense of all that, since the hour spent after the +Exhibition with her father, had not sprung up to reinstate Mr. +Farange--she knew it meant a triumph for Mrs. Beale. The mere +present sight of Sir Claude's face caused her on the spot to drop +straight through her last impression of Mr. Farange a plummet +that reached still deeper down than the security of these days of +flight. She had wrapped that impression in silence--a silence +that had parted with half its veil to cover also, from the hour +of Sir Claude's advent, the image of Mr. Farange's wife. But if +the object in Sir Claude's hand revealed itself as a letter which +he held up very high, so there was something in his mere motion +that laid Mrs. Beale again bare. "Here we are!" he cried almost +from the door, shaking his trophy at them and looking from one to +the other. Then he came straight to Mrs. Wix; he had pulled two +papers out of the envelope and glanced at them again to see which +was which. He thrust one out open to Mrs. Wix. "Read that." She +looked at him hard, as if in fear: it was impossible not to see +he was excited. Then she took the letter, but it was not her face +that Maisie watched while she read. Neither, for that matter, was +it this countenance that Sir Claude scanned: he stood before the +fire and, more calmly, now that he had acted, communed in silence +with his stepdaughter. + +The silence was in truth quickly broken; Mrs. Wix rose to her +feet with the violence of the sound she emitted. The letter had +dropped from her and lay upon the floor; it had made her turn +ghastly white and she was speechless with the effect of it. +"It's too abominable--it's too unspeakable!" she then cried. + +"Isn't it a charming thing?" Sir Claude asked. "It has just +arrived, enclosed in a word of her own. She sends it on to me +with the remark that comment's superfluous. I really think it is. +That's all you can say." + +"She oughtn't to pass such a horror about," said Mrs. Wix. "She +ought to put it straight in the fire." + +"My dear woman, she's not such a fool! It's much too precious." +He had picked the letter up and he gave it again a glance of +complacency which produced a light in his face. "Such a document" +--considered, then concluded with a slight drop--"such a document +is, in fine, a basis!" + +"A basis for what?" + +"Well--for proceedings." + +"Hers?" Mrs. Wix's voice had become outright the voice of +derision. "How can SHE proceed?" + +Sir Claude turned it over. "How can she get rid of him? Well--she +IS rid of him." + +"Not legally." Mrs. Wix had never looked to her pupil so much as +if she knew what she was talking about. + +"I dare say," Sir Claude laughed; "but she's not a bit less +deprived than I!" + +"Of the power to get a divorce? It's just your want of the power +that makes the scandal of your connexion with her. Therefore it's +just her want of it that makes that of hers with you. That's all +I contend!" Mrs. Wix concluded with an unparalleled neigh of +battle. Oh she did know what she was talking about! + +Maisie had meanwhile appealed mutely to Sir Claude, who judged it +easier to meet what she didn't say than to meet what Mrs. Wix +did. + +"It's a letter to Mrs. Beale from your father, my dear, written from +Spa and making the rupture between them perfectly irrevocable. It +lets her know, and not in pretty language, that, as we technically +say, he deserts her. It puts an end for ever to their relations." +He ran his eyes over it again, then appeared to make up his mind. +"In fact it concerns you, Maisie, so nearly and refers to you so +particularly that I really think you ought to see the terms in which +this new situation is created for you." And he held out the letter. + +Mrs. Wix, at this, pounced upon it; she had grabbed it too soon +even for Maisie to become aware of being rather afraid of it. +Thrusting it instantly behind her she positively glared at Sir +Claude. "See it, wretched man?--the innocent child SEE such a +thing? I think you must be mad, and she shall not have a glimpse +of it while I'm here to prevent!" + +The breadth of her action had made Sir Claude turn red--he even +looked a little foolish. "You think it's too bad, eh? But it's +precisely because it's bad that it seemed to me it would have a +lesson and a virtue for her." + +Maisie could do a quick enough justice to his motive to be able +clearly to interpose. She fairly smiled at him. "I assure you I +can quite believe how bad it is!" She thought of something, kept +it back a moment, and then spoke. "I know what's in it!" + +He of course burst out laughing and, while Mrs. Wix groaned an +"Oh heavens!" replied: "You wouldn't say that, old boy, if you +did! The point I make is," he continued to Mrs. Wix with a +blandness now re-established--"the point I make is simply that it +sets Mrs. Beale free." + +She hung fire but an instant. "Free to live with YOU?" + +"Free not to live, not to pretend to live, with her husband." + +"Ah they're mighty different things!"--a truth as to which her +earnestness could now with a fine inconsequent look invite the +participation of the child. + +Before Maisie could commit herself, however, the ground was +occupied by Sir Claude, who, as he stood before their visitor +with an expression half rueful, half persuasive, rubbed his hand +sharply up and down the back of his head. "Then why the deuce do +you grant so--do you, I may even say, rejoice so--that by the +desertion of my own precious partner I'm free?" + +Mrs. Wix met this challenge first with silence, then with a +demonstration the most extraordinary, the most unexpected. Maisie +could scarcely believe her eyes as she saw the good lady, with +whom she had associated no faintest shade of any art of +provocation, actually, after an upward grimace, give Sir Claude a +great giggling insinuating naughty slap. "You wretch--you KNOW +why!" And she turned away. The face that with this movement she +left him to present to Maisie was to abide with his stepdaughter +as the very image of stupefaction; but the pair lacked time to +communicate either amusement or alarm before their admonisher was +upon them again. She had begun in fact to show infinite variety +and she flashed about with a still quicker change of tone. "Have +you brought me that thing as a pretext for your going over?" + +Sir Claude braced himself. "I can't, after such news, in common +decency not go over. I mean, don't you know, in common courtesy +and humanity. My dear lady, you can't chuck a woman that way, +especially taking the moment when she has been most insulted and +wronged. A fellow must behave like a gentleman, damn it, dear +good Mrs. Wix. We didn't come away, we two, to hang right on, you +know: it was only to try our paces and just put in a few days +that might prove to every one concerned that we're in earnest. +It's exactly because we're in earnest that, dash it, we needn't +be so awfully particular. I mean, don't you know, we needn't be +so awfully afraid." He showed a vivacity, an intensity of +argument, and if Maisie counted his words she was all the more +ready to swallow after a single swift gasp those that, the next +thing, she became conscious he paused for a reply to. "We didn't +come, old girl, did we," he pleaded straight, "to stop right away +for ever and put it all in NOW?" + +Maisie had never doubted she could be heroic for him. "Oh no!" It +was as if she had been shocked at the bare thought. "We're just +taking it as we find it." She had a sudden inspiration, which she +backed up with a smile. "We're just seeing what we can afford." +She had never yet in her life made any claim for herself, but she +hoped that this time, frankly, what she was doing would somehow +be counted to her. Indeed she felt Sir Claude WAS counting it, +though she was afraid to look at him--afraid she should show him +tears. She looked at Mrs. Wix; she reached her maximum. "I don't +think I ought to be bad to Mrs. Beale." + +She heard, on this, a deep sound, something inarticulate and +sweet, from Sir Claude; but tears were what Mrs. Wix didn't +scruple to show. "Do you think you ought to be bad to ME?" The +question was the more disconcerting that Mrs. Wix's emotion +didn't deprive her of the advantage of her effect. "If you see +that woman again you're lost!" she declared to their companion. +Sir Claude looked at the moony globe of the lamp; he seemed to +see for an instant what seeing Mrs. Beale would consist of. It +was also apparently from this vision that he drew strength to +return: "Her situation, by what has happened, is completely +changed; and it's no use your trying to prove to me that I +needn't take any account of that." + +"If you see that woman you're lost!" Mrs. Wix with greater force +repeated. + +"Do you think she'll not let me come back to you? My dear lady, I +leave you here, you and Maisie, as a hostage to fortune, and I +promise you by all that's sacred that I shall be with you again +at the very latest on Saturday. I provide you with funds; I +install you in these lovely rooms; I arrange with the people here +that you be treated with every attention and supplied with every +luxury. The weather, after this, will mend; it will be sure to be +exquisite. You'll both be as free as air and you can roam all +over the place and have tremendous larks. You shall have a +carriage to drive you; the whole house shall be at your call. +You'll have a magnificent position." He paused, he looked from +one of his companions to the other as to see the impression he +had made. Whether or no he judged it adequate he subjoined after +a moment: "And you'll oblige me above all by not making a fuss." + +Maisie could only answer for the impression on herself, though +indeed from the heart even of Mrs. Wix's rigour there floated to +her sense a faint fragrance of depraved concession. Maisie had +her dumb word for the show such a speech could make, for the +irresistible charm it could take from his dazzling sincerity; and +before she could do anything but blink at excess of light she +heard this very word sound on Mrs. Wix's lips, just as if the +poor lady had guessed it and wished, snatching it from her, to +blight it like a crumpled flower. "You're dreadful, you're +terrible, for you know but too well that it's not a small thing +to me that you should address me in terms that are princely!" +Princely was what he stood there and looked and sounded; that was +what Maisie for the occasion found herself reduced to simple +worship of him for being. Yet strange to say too, as Mrs. Wix +went on, an echo rang within her that matched the echo she had +herself just produced. "How much you must WANT to see her to say +such things as that and to be ready to do so much for the poor +little likes of Maisie and me! She has a hold on you, and you +know it, and you want to feel it again and--God knows, or at +least _I_ do, what's your motive and desire--enjoy it once more +and give yourself up to it! It doesn't matter if it's one day or +three: enough is as good as a feast and the lovely time you'll +have with her is something you're willing to pay for! I dare say +you'd like me to believe that your pay is to get her to give you +up; but that's a matter on which I strongly urge you not to put +down your money in advance. Give HER up first. Then pay her what +you please!" + +Sir Claude took this to the end, though there were things in it +that made him colour, called into his face more of the apprehension +than Maisie had ever perceived there of a particular sort of shock. +She had an odd sense that it was the first time she had seen any +one but Mrs. Wix really and truly scandalised, and this fed her +inference, which grew and grew from moment to moment, that Mrs. Wix +was proving more of a force to reckon with than either of them had +allowed so much room for. It was true that, long before, she had +obtained a "hold" of him, as she called it, different in kind from +that obtained by Mrs. Beale and originally by her ladyship. +But Maisie could quite feel with him now that he had really not +expected this advantage to be driven so home. Oh they hadn't at all +got to where Mrs. Wix would stop, for the next minute she was +driving harder than ever. It was the result of his saying with a +certain dryness, though so kindly that what most affected Maisie +in it was his patience: "My dear friend, it's simply a matter in +which I must judge for myself. You've judged FOR me, I know, +a good deal, of late, in a way that I appreciate, I assure you, +down to the ground. But you can't do it always; no one can do +that for another, don't you see, in every case. There are +exceptions, particular cases that turn up and that are awfully +delicate. It would be too easy if I could shift it all off on you: +it would be allowing you to incur an amount of responsibility +that I should simply become quite ashamed of. You'll find, +I'm sure, that you'll have quite as much as you'll enjoy if +you'll be so good as to accept the situation as circumstances +happen to make it for you and to stay here with our friend, +till I rejoin you, on the footing of as much pleasantness and +as much comfort--and I think I have a right to add, to both +of you, of as much faith in ME--as possible." + +Oh he was princely indeed: that came out more and more with every +word he said and with the particular way he said it, and Maisie +could feel his monitress stiffen almost with anguish against the +increase of his spell and then hurl herself as a desperate +defence from it into the quite confessed poorness of violence, of +iteration. "You're afraid of her--afraid, afraid, afraid! Oh +dear, oh dear, oh dear!" Mrs. Wix wailed it with a high quaver, +then broke down into a long shudder of helplessness and woe. The +next minute she had flung herself again on the lean sofa and had +burst into a passion of tears. + +Sir Claude stood and looked at her a moment; he shook his head +slowly, altogether tenderly. "I've already admitted it--I'm in +mortal terror; so we'll let that settle the question. I think you +had best go to bed," he added; "you've had a tremendous day and +you must both be tired to death. I shall not expect you to +concern yourselves in the morning with my movements. There's an +early boat on; I shall have cleared out before you're up; and I +shall moreover have dealt directly and most effectively, I assure +you, with the haughty but not quite hopeless Miss Ash." He turned +to his stepdaughter as if at once to take leave of her and give +her a sign of how, through all tension and friction, they were +still united in such a way that she at least needn't worry. +"Maisie boy!"--he opened his arms to her. With her culpable +lightness she flew into them and, while he kissed her, chose the +soft method of silence to satisfy him, the silence that after +battles of talk was the best balm she could offer his wounds. +They held each other long enough to reaffirm intensely their +vows; after which they were almost forced apart by Mrs. Wix's +jumping to her feet. + +Her jump, either with a quick return or with a final lapse of +courage, was also to supplication almost abject. "I beseech you +not to take a step so miserable and so fatal. I know her but too +well, even if you jeer at me for saying it; little as I've seen +her I know her, I know her. I know what she'll do--I see it as I +stand here. Since you're afraid of her it's the mercy of heaven. +Don't, for God's sake, be afraid to show it, to profit by it and +to arrive at the very safety that it gives you. I'M not afraid of +her, I assure you; you must already have seen for yourself that +there's nothing I'm afraid of now. Let me go to her--I'LL settle +her and I'll take that woman back without a hair of her touched. +Let me put in the two or three days--let me wind up the +connexion. You stay here with Maisie, with the carriage and the +larks and the luxury; then I'll return to you and we'll go off +together--we'll live together without a cloud. Take me, take me," +she went on and on--the tide of her eloquence was high. "Here I +am; I know what I am and what I ain't; but I say boldly to the +face of you both that I'll do better for you, far, than ever +she'll even try to. I say it to yours, Sir Claude, even though I +owe you the very dress on my back and the very shoes on my feet. +I owe you everything--that's just the reason; and to pay it back, +in profusion, what can that be but what I want? Here I am, here I +am!"--she spread herself into an exhibition that, combined with +her intensity and her decorations, appeared to suggest her for +strange offices and devotions, for ridiculous replacements and +substitutions. She manipulated her gown as she talked, she +insisted on the items of her debt. "I have nothing of my own, I +know--no money, no clothes, no appearance, no anything, nothing +but my hold of this little one truth, which is all in the world I +can bribe you with: that the pair of you are more to me than all +besides, and that if you'll let me help you and save you, make +what you both want possible in the one way it CAN be, why, I'll +work myself to the bone in your service!" + +Sir Claude wavered there without an answer to this magnificent +appeal; he plainly cast about for one, and in no small agitation +and pain. He addressed himself in his quest, however, only to +vague quarters until he met again, as he so frequently and +actively met it, the more than filial gaze of his intelligent +little charge. That gave him--poor plastic and dependent male-- +his issue. If she was still a child she was yet of the sex that +could help him out. He signified as much by a renewed invitation +to an embrace. She freshly sprang to him and again they inaudibly +conversed. "Be nice to her, be nice to her," he at last +distinctly articulated; "be nice to her as you've not even been +to ME!" On which, without another look at Mrs. Wix, he somehow +got out of the room, leaving Maisie under the slight oppression +of these words as well as of the idea that he had unmistakeably +once more dodged. + + + +XXV + +Every single thing he had prophesied came so true that it was +after all no more than fair to expect quite as much for what he +had as good as promised. His pledges they could verify to the +letter, down to his very guarantee that a way would be found with +Miss Ash. Roused in the summer dawn and vehemently squeezed by +that interesting exile, Maisie fell back upon her couch with a +renewed appreciation of his policy, a memento of which, when she +rose later on to dress, glittered at her from the carpet in the +shape of a sixpence that had overflowed from Susan's pride of +possession. Sixpences really, for the forty-eight hours that +followed, seemed to abound in her life; she fancifully computed +the number of them represented by such a period of "larks." The +number was not kept down, she presently noticed, by any scheme of +revenge for Sir Claude's flight which should take on Mrs. Wix's +part the form of a refusal to avail herself of the facilities he +had so bravely ordered. It was in fact impossible to escape them; +it was in the good lady's own phrase ridiculous to go on foot +when you had a carriage prancing at the door. Everything about +them pranced: the very waiters even as they presented the dishes +to which, from a similar sense of the absurdity of perversity, +Mrs. Wix helped herself with a freedom that spoke, to Maisie +quite as much of her depletion as of her logic. Her appetite was +a sign to her companion of a great many things and testified no +less on the whole to her general than to her particular +condition. She had arrears of dinner to make up, and it was +touching that in a dinnerless state her moral passion should have +burned so clear. She partook largely as a refuge from depression, +and yet the opportunity to partake was just a mark of the +sinister symptoms that depressed her. The affair was in short a +combat, in which the baser element triumphed, between her refusal +to be bought off and her consent to be clothed and fed. It was +not at any rate to be gainsaid that there was comfort for her in +the developments of France; comfort so great as to leave Maisie +free to take with her all the security for granted and brush all +the danger aside. That was the way to carry out in detail Sir +Claude's injunction to be "nice"; that was the way, as well, to +look, with her, in a survey of the pleasures of life abroad, +straight over the head of any doubt. + +They shrank at last, all doubts, as the weather cleared up: it +had an immense effect on them and became quite as lovely as Sir +Claude had engaged. This seemed to have put him so into the +secret of things, and the joy of the world so waylaid the steps +of his friends, that little by little the spirit of hope filled +the air and finally took possession of the scene. To drive on the +long cliff was splendid, but it was perhaps better still to creep +in the shade--for the sun was strong--along the many-coloured and +many-odoured port and through the streets in which, to English +eyes, everything that was the same was a mystery and everything +that was different a joke. Best of all was to continue the creep +up the long Grand' Rue to the gate of the haute ville and, +passing beneath it, mount to the quaint and crooked rampart, with +its rows of trees, its quiet corners and friendly benches where +brown old women in such white-frilled caps and such long gold +earrings sat and knitted or snoozed, its little yellow-faced +houses that looked like the homes of misers or of priests and its +dark chateau where small soldiers lounged on the bridge that +stretched across an empty moat and military washing hung from the +windows of towers. This was a part of the place that could lead +Maisie to enquire if it didn't just meet one's idea of the middle +ages; and since it was rather a satisfaction than a shock to +perceive, and not for the first time, the limits in Mrs. Wix's +mind of the historic imagination, that only added one more to the +variety of kinds of insight that she felt it her own present +mission to show. They sat together on the old grey bastion; they +looked down on the little new town which seemed to them quite as +old, and across at the great dome and the high gilt Virgin of the +church that, as they gathered, was famous and that pleased them +by its unlikeness to any place in which they had worshipped. They +wandered in this temple afterwards and Mrs. Wix confessed that +for herself she had probably made a fatal mistake early in life +in not being a Catholic. Her confession in its turn caused Maisie +to wonder rather interestedly what degree of lateness it was that +shut the door against an escape from such an error. They went +back to the rampart on the second morning--the spot on which they +appeared to have come furthest in the journey that was to +separate them from everything objectionable in the past: it gave +them afresh the impression that had most to do with their having +worked round to a confidence that on Maisie's part was determined +and that she could see to be on her companion's desperate. She +had had for many hours the sense of showing Mrs. Wix so much that +she was comparatively slow to become conscious of being at the +same time the subject of a like aim. The business went the +faster, however, from the moment she got her glimpse of it; it +then fell into its place in her general, her habitual view of the +particular phenomenon that, had she felt the need of words for +it, she might have called her personal relation to her knowledge. +This relation had never been so lively as during the time she +waited with her old governess for Sir Claude's reappearance, and +what made it so was exactly that Mrs. Wix struck her as having a +new suspicion of it. Mrs. Wix had never yet had a suspicion--this +was certain--so calculated to throw her pupil, in spite of the +closer union of such adventurous hours, upon the deep defensive. +Her pupil made out indeed as many marvels as she had made out on +the rush to Folkestone; and if in Sir Claude's company on that +occasion Mrs. Wix was the constant implication, so in Mrs. Wix's, +during these hours, Sir Claude was--and most of all through long +pauses--the perpetual, the insurmountable theme. It all took them +back to the first flush of his marriage and to the place he held +in the schoolroom at that crisis of love and pain; only he had +himself blown to a much bigger balloon the large consciousness he +then filled out. + +They went through it all again, and indeed while the interval +dragged by the very weight of its charm they went, in spite of +defences and suspicions, through everything. Their intensified +clutch of the future throbbed like a clock ticking seconds; but +this was a timepiece that inevitably, as well, at the best, rang +occasionally a portentous hour. Oh there were several of these, +and two or three of the worst on the old city-wall where +everything else so made for peace. There was nothing in the world +Maisie more wanted than to be as nice to Mrs. Wix as Sir Claude +had desired; but it was exactly because this fell in with her +inveterate instinct of keeping the peace that the instinct itself +was quickened. From the moment it was quickened, however, it +found other work, and that was how, to begin with, she produced +the very complication she most sought to avert. What she had +essentially done, these days, had been to read the unspoken into +the spoken; so that thus, with accumulations, it had become more +definite to her that the unspoken was, unspeakably, the +completeness of the sacrifice of Mrs. Beale. There were times +when every minute that Sir Claude stayed away was like a nail in +Mrs. Beale's coffin. That brought back to Maisie--it was a +roundabout way--the beauty and antiquity of her connexion with +the flower of the Overmores as well as that lady's own grace and +charm, her peculiar prettiness and cleverness and even her +peculiar tribulations. A hundred things hummed at the back of her +head, but two of these were simple enough. Mrs. Beale was by the +way, after all, just her stepmother and her relative. She was +just--and partly for that very reason--Sir Claude's greatest +intimate ("lady-intimate" was Maisie's term) so that what +together they were on Mrs. Wix's prescription to give up and +break short off with was for one of them his particular favourite +and for the other her father's wife. Strangely, indescribably her +perception of reasons kept pace with her sense of trouble; but +there was something in her that, without a supreme effort not to +be shabby, couldn't take the reasons for granted. What it comes +to perhaps for ourselves is that, disinherited and denuded as we +have seen her, there still lingered in her life an echo of +parental influence--she was still reminiscent of one of the +sacred lessons of home. It was the only one she retained, but +luckily she retained it with force. She enjoyed in a word an +ineffaceable view of the fact that there were things papa called +mamma and mamma called papa a low sneak for doing or for not +doing. Now this rich memory gave her a name that she dreaded to +invite to the lips of Mrs. Beale: she should personally wince so +just to hear it. The very sweetness of the foreign life she was +steeped in added with each hour of Sir Claude's absence to the +possibility of such pangs. She watched beside Mrs. Wix the great +golden Madonna, and one of the ear-ringed old women who had been +sitting at the end of their bench got up and pottered away. +"Adieu mesdames!" said the old woman in a little cracked civil +voice--a demonstration by which our friends were so affected that +they bobbed up and almost curtseyed to her. They subsided again, +and it was shortly after, in a summer hum of French insects and a +phase of almost somnolent reverie, that Maisie most had the +vision of what it was to shut out from such a perspective so +appealing a participant. It had not yet appeared so vast as at +that moment, this prospect of statues shining in the blue and of +courtesy in romantic forms. + +"Why after all should we have to choose between you? Why +shouldn't we be four?" she finally demanded. + +Mrs. Wix gave the jerk of a sleeper awakened or the start even of +one who hears a bullet whiz at the flag of truce. Her stupefaction +at such a breach of the peace delayed for a moment her answer. +"Four improprieties, do you mean? Because two of us happen to be +decent people! Do I gather you to wish that I should stay on with +you even if that woman IS capable--?" + +Maisie took her up before she could further phrase Mrs. Beale's +capability. "Stay on as MY companion--yes. Stay on as just what +you were at mamma's. Mrs. Beale WOULD let you!" the child said. + +Mrs. Wix had by this time fairly sprung to her arms. "And who, +I'd like to know, would let Mrs. Beale? Do you mean, little +unfortunate, that YOU would?" + +"Why not, if now she's free?" + +"Free? Are you imitating HIM? Well, if Sir Claude's old enough to +know better, upon my word I think it's right to treat you as if +you also were. You'll have to, at any rate--to know better--if +that's the line you're proposing to take." Mrs. Wix had never +been so harsh; but on the other hand Maisie could guess that she +herself had never appeared so wanton. What was underlying, +however, rather overawed than angered her; she felt she could +still insist--not for contradiction, but for ultimate calm. Her +wantonness meanwhile continued to work upon her friend, who +caught again, on the rebound, the sound of deepest provocation. +"Free, free, free? If she's as free as YOU are, my dear, she's +free enough, to be sure!" + +"As I am?--" Maisie, after reflexion and despite whatever of +portentous this seemed to convey, risked a critical echo. + +"Well," said Mrs. Wix, "nobody, you know, is free to commit a +crime." + +"A crime!" The word had come out in a way that made the child +sound it again. + +"You'd commit as great a one as their own--and so should I--if we +were to condone their immorality by our presence." + +Maisie waited a little; this seemed so fiercely conclusive. "Why +is it immorality?" she nevertheless presently enquired. + +Her companion now turned upon her with a reproach softer because +it was somehow deeper. "You're too unspeakable! Do you know what +we're talking about?" + +In the interest of ultimate calm Maisie felt that she must be +above all clear. "Certainly; about their taking advantage of +their freedom." + +"Well, to do what?" + +"Why, to live with us." + +Mrs. Wix's laugh, at this, was literally wild. "'Us?' Thank you!" + +"Then to live with ME." + +The words made her friend jump. "You give me up? You break with +me for ever? You turn me into the street?" + +Maisie, though gasping a little, bore up under the rain of +challenges. "Those, it seems to me, are the things you do to ME." + +Mrs. Wix made little of her valour. "I can promise you that, +whatever I do, I shall never let you out of my sight! You ask me +why it's immorality when you've seen with your own eyes that Sir +Claude has felt it to be so to that dire extent that, rather than +make you face the shame of it, he has for months kept away from +you altogether? Is it any more difficult to see that the first +time he tries to do his duty he washes his hands of HER--takes +you straight away from her?" + +Maisie turned this over, but more for apparent consideration than +from any impulse to yield too easily. "Yes, I see what you mean. +But at that time they weren't free." She felt Mrs. Wix rear up +again at the offensive word, but she succeeded in touching her +with a remonstrant hand. "I don't think you know how free they've +become." + +"I know, I believe, at least as much as you do!" + +Maisie felt a delicacy but overcame it. "About the Countess?" + +"Your father's--temptress?" Mrs. Wix gave her a sidelong squint. +"Perfectly. She pays him!" + +"Oh DOES she?" At this the child's countenance fell: it seemed to +give a reason for papa's behaviour and place it in a more +favourable light. She wished to be just. "I don't say she's not +generous. She was so to me." + +"How, to you?" + +"She gave me a lot of money." + +Mrs. Wix stared. "And pray what did you do with a lot of money?" + +"I gave it to Mrs. Beale." + +"And what did Mrs. Beale do with it?" + +"She sent it back." + +"To the Countess? Gammon!" said Mrs. Wix. She disposed of that +plea as effectually as Susan Ash. + +"Well, I don't care!" Maisie replied. "What I mean is that you +don't know about the rest." + +"The rest? What rest?" + +Maisie wondered how she could best put it. "Papa kept me there an +hour." + +"I do know--Sir Claude told me. Mrs. Beale had told him." + +Maisie looked incredulity. "How could she--when I didn't speak of +it?" + +Mrs. Wix was mystified. "Speak of what?" + +"Why, of her being so frightful." + +"The Countess? Of course she's frightful!" Mrs. Wix returned. +After a moment she added: "That's why she pays him." + +Maisie pondered. "It's the best thing about her then--if she +gives him as much as she gave ME!" + +"Well, it's not the best thing about HIM! Or rather perhaps it IS +too!" Mrs. Wix subjoined. + +"But she's awful--really and truly," Maisie went on. + +Mrs. Wix arrested her. "You needn't go into details!" It was +visibly at variance with this injunction that she yet enquired: +"How does that make it any better?" + +"Their living with me? Why for the Countess--and for her +whiskers!--he has put me off on them. I understood him," Maisie +profoundly said. + +"I hope then he understood you. It's more than I do!" Mrs. Wix +admitted. + +This was a real challenge to be plainer, and our young lady +immediately became so. "I mean it isn't a crime." + +"Why then did Sir Claude steal you away?" + +"He didn't steal--he only borrowed me. I knew it wasn't for +long," Maisie audaciously professed. + +"You must allow me to reply to that," cried Mrs. Wix, "that you +knew nothing of the sort, and that you rather basely failed to +back me up last night when you pretended so plump that you did! +You hoped in fact, exactly as much as I did and as in my +senseless passion I even hope now, that this may be the beginning +of better things." + +Oh yes, Mrs. Wix was indeed, for the first time, sharp; so that +there at last stirred in our heroine the sense not so much of +being proved disingenuous as of being precisely accused of the +meanness that had brought everything down on her through her very +desire to shake herself clear of it. She suddenly felt herself +swell with a passion of protest. "I never, NEVER hoped I wasn't +going again to see Mrs. Beale! I didn't, I didn't, I didn't!" she +repeated. Mrs. Wix bounced about with a force of rejoinder of +which she also felt that she must anticipate the concussion and +which, though the good lady was evidently charged to the brim, +hung fire long enough to give time for an aggravation. "She's +beautiful and I love her! I love her and she's beautiful!" + +"And I'm hideous and you hate ME?" Mrs. Wix fixed her a moment, +then caught herself up. "I won't embitter you by absolutely +accusing you of that; though, as for my being hideous, it's +hardly the first time I've been told so! I know it so well that +even if I haven't whiskers--have I?--I dare say there are other +ways in which the Countess is a Venus to me! My pretensions must +therefore seem to you monstrous--which comes to the same thing as +your not liking me. But do you mean to go so far as to tell me +that you WANT to live with them in their sin?" + +"You know what I want, you know what I want!"--Maisie spoke with +the shudder of rising tears. + +"Yes, I do; you want me to be as bad as yourself! Well, I won't. +There! Mrs. Beale's as bad as your father!" Mrs. Wix went on. + +"She's not!--she's not!" her pupil almost shrieked in retort. + +"You mean because Sir Claude at least has beauty and wit and +grace? But he pays just as the Countess pays!" Mrs. Wix, who now +rose as she spoke, fairly revealed a latent cynicism. + +It raised Maisie also to her feet; her companion had walked off a +few steps and paused. The two looked at each other as they had +never looked, and Mrs. Wix seemed to flaunt there in her finery. +"Then doesn't he pay YOU too?" her unhappy charge demanded. + +At this she bounded in her place. "Oh you incredible little +waif!" She brought it out with a wail of violence; after which, +with another convulsion, she marched straight away. + +Maisie dropped back on the bench and burst into sobs. + + + + +XXVI + +Nothing so dreadful of course could be final or even for many +minutes prolonged: they rushed together again too soon for either +to feel that either had kept it up, and though they went home in +silence it was with a vivid perception for Maisie that her +companion's hand had closed upon her. That hand had shown +altogether, these twenty-four hours, a new capacity for closing, +and one of the truths the child could least resist was that a +certain greatness had now come to Mrs. Wix. The case was indeed +that the quality of her motive surpassed the sharpness of her +angles; both the combination and the singularity of which things, +when in the afternoon they used the carriage, Maisie could borrow +from the contemplative hush of their grandeur the freedom to feel +to the utmost. She still bore the mark of the tone in which her +friend had thrown out that threat of never losing sight of her. +This friend had been converted in short from feebleness to force; +and it was the light of her new authority that showed from how +far she had come. The threat in question, sharply exultant, might +have produced defiance; but before anything so ugly could happen +another process had insidiously forestalled it. The moment at +which this process had begun to mature was that of Mrs. Wix's +breaking out with a dignity attuned to their own apartments and +with an advantage now measurably gained. They had ordered +coffee after luncheon, in the spirit of Sir Claude's provision, +and it was served to them while they awaited their equipage in +the white and gold saloon. It was flanked moreover with a couple +of liqueurs, and Maisie felt that Sir Claude could scarce have +been taken more at his word had it been followed by anecdotes and +cigarettes. The influence of these luxuries was at any rate in +the air. It seemed to her while she tiptoed at the chimney-glass, +pulling on her gloves and with a motion of her head shaking a +feather into place, to have had something to do with Mrs. Wix's +suddenly saying: "Haven't you really and truly ANY moral sense?" + +Maisie was aware that her answer, though it brought her down to +her heels, was vague even to imbecility, and that this was the +first time she had appeared to practise with Mrs. Wix an +intellectual inaptitude to meet her--the infirmity to which she +had owed so much success with papa and mamma. The appearance did +her injustice, for it was not less through her candour than +through her playfellow's pressure that after this the idea of a +moral sense mainly coloured their intercourse. She began, the +poor child, with scarcely knowing what it was; but it proved +something that, with scarce an outward sign save her surrender to +the swing of the carriage, she could, before they came back from +their drive, strike up a sort of acquaintance with. The beauty of +the day only deepened, and the splendour of the afternoon sea, +and the haze of the far headlands, and the taste of the sweet +air. It was the coachman indeed who, smiling and cracking his +whip, turning in his place, pointing to invisible objects and +uttering unintelligible sounds--all, our tourists recognised, +strict features of a social order principally devoted to +language: it was this polite person, I say, who made their +excursion fall so much short that their return left them still a +stretch of the long daylight and an hour that, at his obliging +suggestion, they spent on foot by the shining sands. Maisie had +seen the plage the day before with Sir Claude, but that was a +reason the more for showing on the spot to Mrs. Wix that it was, +as she said, another of the places on her list and of the things +of which she knew the French name. The bathers, so late, were +absent and the tide was low; the sea-pools twinkled in the sunset +and there were dry places as well, where they could sit again and +admire and expatiate: a circumstance that, while they listened to +the lap of the waves, gave Mrs. Wix a fresh support for her +challenge. "Have you absolutely none at all?" + +She had no need now, as to the question itself at least, to be +specific; that on the other hand was the eventual result of their +quiet conjoined apprehension of the thing that--well, yes, since +they must face it--Maisie absolutely and appallingly had so +little of. This marked more particularly the moment of the +child's perceiving that her friend had risen to a level which +might--till superseded at all events--pass almost for sublime. +Nothing more remarkable had taken place in the first heat of her +own departure, no act of perception less to be overtraced by our +rough method, than her vision, the rest of that Boulogne day, of +the manner in which she figured. I so despair of courting her +noiseless mental footsteps here that I must crudely give you my +word for its being from this time forward a picture literally +present to her. Mrs. Wix saw her as a little person knowing so +extraordinarily much that, for the account to be taken of it, +what she still didn't know would be ridiculous if it hadn't been +embarrassing. Mrs. Wix was in truth more than ever qualified to +meet embarrassment; I am not sure that Maisie had not even a dim +discernment of the queer law of her own life that made her +educate to that sort of proficiency those elders with whom she +was concerned. She promoted, as it were, their development; +nothing could have been more marked for instance than her success +in promoting Mrs. Beale's. She judged that if her whole history, +for Mrs. Wix, had been the successive stages of her knowledge, so +the very climax of the concatenation would, in the same view, be +the stage at which the knowledge should overflow. As she was +condemned to know more and more, how could it logically stop +before she should know Most? It came to her in fact as they sat +there on the sands that she was distinctly on the road to know +Everything. She had not had governesses for nothing: what in the +world had she ever done but learn and learn and learn? She looked +at the pink sky with a placid foreboding that she soon should +have learnt All. They lingered in the flushed air till at last it +turned to grey and she seemed fairly to receive new information +from every brush of the breeze. By the time they moved homeward +it was as if this inevitability had become for Mrs. Wix a long, +tense cord, twitched by a nervous hand, on which the valued +pearls of intelligence were to be neatly strung. + +In the evening upstairs they had another strange sensation, as to +which Maisie couldn't afterwards have told you whether it was +bang in the middle or quite at the beginning that her companion +sounded with fresh emphasis the note of the moral sense. What +mattered was merely that she did exclaim, and again, as at first +appeared, most disconnectedly: "God help me, it does seem to +peep out!" Oh the queer confusions that had wooed it at last to +such peeping! None so queer, however, as the words of woe, and it +might verily be said of rage, in which the poor lady bewailed the +tragic end of her own rich ignorance. There was a point at which +she seized the child and hugged her as close as in the old days +of partings and returns; at which she was visibly at a loss how +to make up to such a victim for such contaminations: appealing, +as to what she had done and was doing, in bewilderment, in +explanation, in supplication, for reassurance, for pardon and +even outright for pity. + +"I don't know what I've said to you, my own: I don't know what +I'm saying or what the turn you've given my life has rendered me, +heaven forgive me, capable of saying. Have I lost all delicacy, +all decency, all measure of how far and how bad? It seems to me +mostly that I have, though I'm the last of whom you would ever +have thought it. I've just done it for YOU, precious--not to lose +you, which would have been worst of all: so that I've had to pay +with my own innocence, if you do laugh! for clinging to you and +keeping you. Don't let me pay for nothing; don't let me have been +thrust for nothing into such horrors and such shames. I never +knew anything about them and I never wanted to know! Now I know +too much, too much!" the poor woman lamented and groaned. "I know +so much that with hearing such talk I ask myself where I am; and +with uttering it too, which is worse, say to myself that I'm far, +too far, from where I started! I ask myself what I should have +thought with my lost one if I had heard myself cross the line. +There are lines I've crossed with you where I should have fancied +I had come to a pretty pass--" She gasped at the mere supposition. +"I've gone from one thing to another, and all for the real love +of you; and now what would any one say--I mean any one of THEM-- +if they were to hear the way I go on? I've had to keep up with you, +haven't I?--and therefore what could I do less than look to you +to keep up with ME? but it's not THEM that are the worst--by which +I mean to say it's not HIM: it's your dreadfully base papa and the +one person in the world whom he could have found, I do believe-- +and she's not the Countess, duck--wickeder than himself. +While they were about it at any rate, since they WERE ruining you, +they might have done it so as to spare an honest woman. Then I +shouldn't have had to do whatever it is that's the worst: +throw up at you the badness you haven't taken in, or find my +advantage in the vileness you HAVE! What I did lose patience at +this morning was at how it was that without your seeming to +condemn--for you didn't, you remember!--you yet did seem to KNOW. +Thank God, in his mercy, at last, IF you do!" + +The night, this time, was warm, and one of the windows stood open +to the small balcony over the rail of which, on coming back from +dinner, Maisie had hung a long time in the enjoyment of the +chatter, the lights, the life of the quay made brilliant by the +season and the hour. Mrs. Wix's requirements had drawn her in +from this pasture and Mrs. Wix's embrace had detained her even +though midway in the outpouring her confusion and sympathy had +permitted, or rather had positively helped, her to disengage +herself. But the casement was still wide, the spectacle, the +pleasure were still there, and from her place in the room, which, +with its polished floor and its panels of elegance, was lighted +from without more than from within, the child could still take +account of them. She appeared to watch and listen; after which +she answered Mrs. Wix with a question. "If I do know--?" + +"If you do condemn." The correction was made with some austerity. + +It had the effect of causing Maisie to heave a vague sigh of +oppression and then after an instant and as if under cover of +this ambiguity pass out again upon the balcony. She hung again +over the rail; she felt the summer night; she dropped down into +the manners of France. There was a cafe below the hotel, before +which, with little chairs and tables, people sat on a space +enclosed by plants in tubs; and the impression was enriched by +the flash of the white aprons of waiters and the music of a man +and a woman who, from beyond the precinct, sent up the strum of a +guitar and the drawl of a song about "amour." Maisie knew what +"amour" meant too, and wondered if Mrs. Wix did: Mrs. Wix +remained within, as still as a mouse and perhaps not reached by +the performance. After awhile, but not till the musicians had +ceased and begun to circulate with a little plate, her pupil came +back to her. "IS it a crime?" Maisie then asked. + +Mrs. Wix was as prompt as if she had been crouching in a lair. +"Branded by the Bible." + +"Well, he won't commit a crime." + +Mrs. Wix looked at her gloomily. "He's committing one now." + +"Now?" + +"In being with her." + +Maisie had it on her tongue's end to return once more: "But now +he's free." She remembered, however, in time that one of the +things she had known for the last entire hour was that this made +no difference. After that, and as if to turn the right way, she +was on the point of a blind dash, a weak reversion to the +reminder that it might make a difference, might diminish the +crime for Mrs. Beale; till such a reflexion was in its order also +quashed by the visibility in Mrs. Wix's face of the collapse +produced by her inference from her pupil's manner that after all +her pains her pupil didn't even yet adequately understand. Never +so much as when confronted had Maisie wanted to understand, and +all her thought for a minute centred in the effort to come out +with something which should be a disproof of her simplicity. +"Just TRUST me, dear; that's all!"--she came out finally with +that; and it was perhaps a good sign of her action that with a +long, impartial moan Mrs. Wix floated her to bed. + +There was no letter the next morning from Sir Claude--which Mrs. +Wix let out that she deemed the worst of omens; yet it was just +for the quieter communion they so got with him that, when after +the coffee and rolls which made them more foreign than ever, it +came to going forth for fresh drafts upon his credit they +wandered again up the hill to the rampart instead of plunging +into distraction with the crowd on the sands or into the sea with +the semi-nude bathers. They gazed once more at their gilded +Virgin; they sank once more upon their battered bench; they felt +once more their distance from the Regent's Park. At last Mrs. Wix +became definite about their friend's silence. "He IS afraid of +her! She has forbidden him to write." The fact of his fear Maisie +already knew; but her companion's mention of it had at this +moment two unexpected results. The first was her wondering in +dumb remonstrance how Mrs. Wix, with a devotion not after all +inferior to her own, could put into such an allusion such a +grimness of derision; the second was that she found herself +suddenly drop into a deeper view of it. She too had been afraid, +as we have seen, of the people of whom Sir Claude was afraid, and +by that law she had had her due measure of latest apprehension of +Mrs. Beale. What occurred at present, however, was that, whereas +this sympathy appeared vain as for him, the ground of it loomed +dimly as a reason for selfish alarm. That uneasiness had not +carried her far before Mrs. Wix spoke again and with an +abruptness so great as almost to seem irrelevant. "Has it never +occurred to you to be jealous of her?" + +It never had in the least; yet the words were scarce in the air +before Maisie had jumped at them. She held them well, she looked +at them hard; at last she brought out with an assurance which +there was no one, alas, but herself to admire: "Well, yes--since +you ask me." She debated, then continued: "Lots of times!" + +Mrs. Wix glared askance an instant; such approval as her look +expressed was not wholly unqualified. It expressed at any rate +something that presumably had to do with her saying once more: +"Yes. He's afraid of her." + +Maisie heard, and it had afresh its effect on her even through +the blur of the attention now required by the possibility of that +idea of jealousy--a possibility created only by her feeling she +had thus found the way to show she was not simple. It struck out +of Mrs. Wix that this lady still believed her moral sense to be +interested and feigned; so what could be such a gage of her +sincerity as a peep of the most restless of the passions? Such a +revelation would baffle discouragement, and discouragement was in +fact so baffled that, helped in some degree by the mere intensity +of their need to hope, which also, according to its nature, +sprang from the dark portent of the absent letter, the real pitch +of their morning was reached by the note, not of mutual scrutiny, +but of unprecedented frankness. There were breedings indeed and +silences, and Maisie sank deeper into the vision that for her +friend she was, at the most, superficial, and that also, +positively, she was the more so the more she tried to appear +complete. Was the sum of all knowledge only to know how little in +this presence one would ever reach it? The answer to that +question luckily lost itself in the brightness suffusing the +scene as soon as Maisie had thrown out in regard to Mrs. Beale +such a remark as she had never dreamed she should live to make. +"If I thought she was unkind to him--I don't know WHAT I should +do!" + +Mrs. Wix dropped one of her squints; she even confirmed it by a +wild grunt. "I know what _I_ should!" + +Maisie at this felt that she lagged. "Well, I can think of one +thing." + +Mrs. Wix more directly challenged her. "What is it then?" + +Maisie met her expression as if it were a game with forfeits for +winking. "I'd KILL her!" That at least, she hoped as she looked +away, would guarantee her moral sense. She looked away, but her +companion said nothing for so long that she at last turned her +head again. Then she saw the straighteners all blurred with +tears which after a little seemed to have sprung from her own +eyes. There were tears in fact on both sides of the spectacles, +and they were even so thick that it was presently all Maisie +could do to make out through them that slowly, finally Mrs. Wix +put forth a hand. It was the material pressure that settled this +and even at the end of some minutes more things besides. It +settled in its own way one thing in particular, which, though +often, between them, heaven knew, hovered round and hung over, +was yet to be established without the shadow of an attenuating +smile. Oh there was no gleam of levity, as little of humour as of +deprecation, in the long time they now sat together or in the way +in which at some unmeasured point of it Mrs. Wix became distinct +enough for her own dignity and yet not loud enough for the +snoozing old women. + +"I adore him. I adore him." + +Maisie took it well in; so well that in a moment more she would +have answered profoundly: "So do I." But before that moment +passed something took place that brought other words to her lips; +nothing more, very possibly, than the closer consciousness in her +hand of the significance of Mrs. Wix's. Their hands remained +linked in unutterable sign of their union, and what Maisie at +last said was simply and serenely: "Oh I know!" + +Their hands were so linked and their union was so confirmed that +it took the far deep note of a bell, borne to them on the summer +air, to call them back to a sense of hours and proprieties. They +had touched bottom and melted together, but they gave a start at +last: the bell was the voice of the inn and the inn was the image +of luncheon. They should be late for it; they got up, and their +quickened step on the return had something of the swing of +confidence. When they reached the hotel the table d'hote had +begun; this was clear from the threshold, clear from the absence +in the hall and on the stairs of the "personnel," as Mrs. Wix +said--she had picked THAT up--all collected in the dining-room. +They mounted to their apartments for a brush before the glass, +and it was Maisie who, in passing and from a vain impulse, threw +open the white and gold door. She was thus first to utter the +sound that brought Mrs. Wix almost on top of her, as by the other +accident it would have brought her on top of Mrs. Wix. It had at +any rate the effect of leaving them bunched together in a +strained stare at their new situation. This situation had put on +in a flash the bright form of Mrs. Beale: she stood there in her +hat and her jacket, amid bags and shawls, smiling and holding out +her arms. If she had just arrived it was a different figure from +either of the two that for THEIR benefit, wan and tottering and +none too soon to save life, the Channel had recently disgorged. +She was as lovely as the day that had brought her over, as fresh +as the luck and the health that attended her: it came to Maisie +on the spot that she was more beautiful than she had ever been. +All this was too quick to count, but there was still time in it +to give the child the sense of what had kindled the light. That +leaped out of the open arms, the open eyes, the open mouth; it +leaped out with Mrs. Beale's loud cry at her: "I'm free, I'm +free!" + + + +XXVII + +The greatest wonder of all was the way Mrs. Beale addressed her +announcement, so far as could be judged, equally to Mrs. Wix, +who, as if from sudden failure of strength, sank into a chair +while Maisie surrendered to the visitor's embrace. As soon as the +child was liberated she met with profundity Mrs. Wix's stupefaction +and actually was able to see that while in a manner sustaining the +encounter her face yet seemed with intensity to say: "Now, for +God's sake, don't crow 'I told you so!'" Maisie was somehow on +the spot aware of an absence of disposition to crow; it had taken +her but an extra minute to arrive at such a quick survey of the +objects surrounding Mrs. Beale as showed that among them was no +appurtenance of Sir Claude's. She knew his dressing-bag now-- +oh with the fondest knowledge!--and there was an instant during +which its not being there was a stroke of the worst news. +She was yet to learn what it could be to recognise in some lapse +of a sequence the proof of an extinction, and therefore remained +unaware that this momentary pang was a foretaste of the experience +of death. It of course yielded in a flash to Mrs. Beale's +brightness, it gasped itself away in her own instant appeal. +"You've come alone?" + +"Without Sir Claude?" Strangely, Mrs. Beale looked even brighter. +"Yes; in the eagerness to get at you. You abominable little +villain!"--and her stepmother, laughing clear, administered to +her cheek a pat that was partly a pinch. "What were you up to and +what did you take me for? But I'm glad to be abroad, and after +all it's you who have shown me the way. I mightn't, without you, +have been able to come--to come, that is, so soon. Well, here I +am at any rate and in a moment more I should have begun to worry +about you. This will do very well"--she was good-natured about +the place and even presently added that it was charming. Then +with a rosier glow she made again her great point: "I'm free, I'm +free!" Maisie made on her side her own: she carried back her +gaze to Mrs. Wix, whom amazement continued to hold; she drew +afresh her old friend's attention to the superior way she didn't +take that up. What she did take up the next minute was the +question of Sir Claude. "Where is he? Won't he come?" + +Mrs. Beale's consideration of this oscillated with a smile +between the two expectancies with which she was flanked: it was +conspicuous, it was extraordinary, her unblinking acceptance of +Mrs. Wix, a miracle of which Maisie had even now begun to read a +reflexion in that lady's long visage. "He'll come, but we must +MAKE him!" she gaily brought forth. + +"Make him?" Maisie echoed. + +"We must give him time. We must play our cards." + +"But he promised us awfully," Maisie replied. + +"My dear child, he has promised ME awfully; I mean lots of +things, and not in every case kept his promise to the letter." +Mrs. Beale's good humour insisted on taking for granted Mrs. +Wix's, to whom her attention had suddenly grown prodigious. "I +dare say he has done the same with you, and not always come to +time. But he makes it up in his own way--and it isn't as if we +didn't know exactly what he is. There's one thing he is," she +went on, "which makes everything else only a question, for us, of +tact." They scarce had time to wonder what this was before, as +they might have said, it flew straight into their face. "He's as +free as I am!" + +"Yes, I know," said Maisie; as if, however, independently +weighing the value of that. She really weighed also the oddity of +her stepmother's treating it as news to HER, who had been the +first person literally to whom Sir Claude had mentioned it. For a +few seconds, as if with the sound of it in her ears, she stood +with him again, in memory and in the twilight, in the hotel +garden at Folkestone. + +Anything Mrs. Beale overlooked was, she indeed divined, but the +effect of an exaltation of high spirits, a tendency to soar that +showed even when she dropped--still quite impartially--almost to +the confidential. "Well, then--we've only to wait. He can't do +without us long. I'm sure, Mrs. Wix, he can't do without YOU! +He's devoted to you; he has told me so much about you. The extent +I count on you, you know, count on you to help me--" was an +extent that even all her radiance couldn't express. What it +couldn't express quite as much as what it could made at any rate +every instant her presence and even her famous freedom loom +larger; and IT was this mighty mass that once more led her +companions, bewildered and disjoined, to exchange with each other +as through a thickening veil confused and ineffectual signs. They +clung together at least on the common ground of unpreparedness, +and Maisie watched without relief the havoc of wonder in Mrs. +Wix. It had reduced her to perfect impotence, and, but that gloom +was black upon her, she sat as if fascinated by Mrs. Beale's high +style. It had plunged her into a long deep hush; for what had +happened was the thing she had least allowed for and before which +the particular rigour she had worked up could only grow limp and +sick. Sir Claude was to have reappeared with his accomplice or +without her; never, never his accomplice without HIM. Mrs. Beale +had gained apparently by this time an advantage she could pursue: +she looked at the droll dumb figure with jesting reproach. "You +really won't shake hands with me? Never mind; you'll come round!" +She put the matter to no test, going on immediately and, instead +of offering her hand, raising it, with a pretty gesture that her +bent head met, to a long black pin that played a part in her back +hair. "Are hats worn at luncheon? If you're as hungry as I am we +must go right down." + +Mrs. Wix stuck fast, but she met the question in a voice her +pupil scarce recognised. "I wear mine." + +Mrs. Beale, swallowing at one glance her brand-new bravery, which +she appeared at once to refer to its origin and to follow in its +flights, accepted this as conclusive. "Oh but I've not such a +beauty!" Then she turned rejoicingly to Maisie. "I've got a +beauty for YOU my dear." + +"A beauty?" + +"A love of a hat--in my luggage. I remembered THAT"--she nodded +at the object on her stepdaughter's head--"and I've brought you +one with a peacock's breast. It's the most gorgeous blue!" + +It was too strange, this talking with her there already not about +Sir Claude but about peacocks--too strange for the child to have +the presence of mind to thank her. But the felicity in which she +had arrived was so proof against everything that Maisie felt more +and more the depth of the purpose that must underlie it. She had +a vague sense of its being abysmal, the spirit with which Mrs. +Beale carried off the awkwardness, in the white and gold salon, +of such a want of breath and of welcome. Mrs. Wix was more +breathless than ever; the embarrassment of Mrs. Beale's isolation +was as nothing to the embarrassment of her grace. The perception +of this dilemma was the germ on the child's part of a new +question altogether. What if WITH this indulgence--? But the idea +lost itself in something too frightened for hope and too +conjectured for fear; and while everything went by leaps and +bounds one of the waiters stood at the door to remind them that +the table d'hote was half over. + +"Had you come up to wash hands?" Mrs. Beale hereupon asked them. +"Go and do it quickly and I'll be with you: they've put my boxes +in that nice room--it was Sir Claude's. Trust him," she laughed, +"to have a nice one!" The door of a neighbouring room stood open, +and now from the threshold, addressing herself again to Mrs. Wix, +she launched a note that gave the very key of what, as she would +have said, she was up to. "Dear lady, please attend to my +daughter." + +She was up to a change of deportment so complete that it +represented--oh for offices still honourably subordinate if not +too explicitly menial--an absolute coercion, an interested clutch +of the old woman's respectability. There was response, to Maisie's +view, I may say at once, in the jump of that respectability to its +feet: it was itself capable of one of the leaps, one of the bounds +just mentioned, and it carried its charge, with this momentum and +while Mrs. Beale popped into Sir Claude's chamber, straight away +to where, at the end of the passage, pupil and governess were +quartered. The greatest stride of all, for that matter, was that +within a few seconds the pupil had, in another relation, been +converted into a daughter. Maisie's eyes were still following it +when, after the rush, with the door almost slammed and no thought +of soap and towels, the pair stood face to face. Mrs. Wix, +in this position, was the first to gasp a sound. "Can it ever be +that SHE has one?" + +Maisie felt still more bewildered. "One what?" + +"Why moral sense." + +They spoke as if you might have two, but Mrs. Wix looked as if it +were not altogether a happy thought, and Maisie didn't see how +even an affirmative from her own lips would clear up what had +become most of a mystery. It was to this larger puzzle she sprang +pretty straight. "IS she my mother now?" + +It was a point as to which an horrific glimpse of the responsibility +of an opinion appeared to affect Mrs. Wix like a blow in the +stomach. She had evidently never thought of it; but she could +think and rebound. "If she is, he's equally your father." + +Maisie, however, thought further. "Then my father and my +mother--!" + +But she had already faltered and Mrs. Wix had already glared +back: "Ought to live together? Don't begin it AGAIN!" She turned +away with a groan, to reach the washing-stand, and Maisie could +by this time recognise with a certain ease that that way verily +madness did lie. Mrs. Wix gave a great untidy splash, but the +next instant had faced round. "She has taken a new line." + +"She was nice to you," Maisie concurred. + +"What SHE thinks so--'go and dress the young lady!' But it's +something!" she panted. Then she thought out the rest. "If he +won't have her, why she'll have YOU. She'll be the one." + +"The one to keep me abroad?" + +"The one to give you a home." Mrs. Wix saw further; she mastered +all the portents. "Oh she's cruelly clever! It's not a moral +sense." She reached her climax: "It's a game!" + +"A game?" + +"Not to lose him. She has sacrificed him--to her duty." + +"Then won't he come?" Maisie pleaded. + +Mrs. Wix made no answer; her vision absorbed her. "He has fought. +But she has won." + +"Then won't he come?" the child repeated. + +Mrs. Wix made it out. "Yes, hang him!" She had never been so +profane. + +For all Maisie minded! "Soon--to-morrow?" + +"Too soon--whenever. Indecently soon." + +"But then we SHALL be together!" the child went on. It made Mrs. +Wix look at her as if in exasperation; but nothing had time to +come before she precipitated: "Together with YOU!" The air of +criticism continued, but took voice only in her companion's +bidding her wash herself and come down. The silence of quick +ablutions fell upon them, presently broken, however, by one of +Maisie's sudden reversions. "Mercy, isn't she handsome?" + +Mrs. Wix had finished; she waited. "She'll attract attention." +They were rapid, and it would have been noticed that the shock +the beauty had given them acted, incongruously, as a positive +spur to their preparations for rejoining her. She had none the +less, when they returned to the sitting-room, already descended; +the open door of her room showed it empty and the chambermaid +explained. Here again they were delayed by another sharp thought +of Mrs. Wix's. "But what will she live on meanwhile?" + +Maisie stopped short. "Till Sir Claude comes?" + +It was nothing to the violence with which her friend had been +arrested. "Who'll pay the bills?" + +Maisie thought. "Can't SHE?" + +"She? She hasn't a penny." + +The child wondered. "But didn't papa--?" + +"Leave her a fortune?" Mrs. Wix would have appeared to speak of +papa as dead had she not immediately added: "Why he lives on +other women!" + +Oh yes, Maisie remembered. "Then can't he send--" She faltered +again; even to herself it sounded queer. + +"Some of their money to his wife?" Mrs. Wix pave a laugh still +stranger than the weird suggestion. "I dare say she'd take it!" + +They hurried on again; yet again, on the stairs, Maisie pulled +up. "Well, if she had stopped in England--!" she threw out. + +Mrs. Wix considered. "And he had come over instead?" + +"Yes, as we expected." Maisie launched her speculation. "What +then would she have lived on?" + +Mrs. Wix hung fire but an instant. "On other men!" And she +marched downstairs. + + + +XXVIII + +Mrs. Beale, at table between the pair, plainly attracted the +attention Mrs. Wix had foretold. No other lady present was nearly +so handsome, nor did the beauty of any other accommodate itself +with such art to the homage it produced. She talked mainly to her +other neighbour, and that left Maisie leisure both to note the +manner in which eyes were riveted and nudges interchanged, and to +lose herself in the meanings that, dimly as yet and disconnectedly, +but with a vividness that fed apprehension, she could begin to +read into her stepmother's independent move. Mrs. Wix had helped +her by talking of a game; it was a connexion in which the move +could put on a strategic air. Her notions of diplomacy were thin, +but it was a kind of cold diplomatic shoulder and an elbow of more +than usual point that, temporarily at least, were presented to her +by the averted inclination of Mrs. Beale's head. There was a phrase +familiar to Maisie, so often was it used by this lady to express +the idea of one's getting what one wanted: one got it--Mrs. Beale +always said SHE at all events always got it or proposed to get it-- +by "making love." She was at present making love, singular as it +appeared, to Mrs. Wix, and her young friend's mind had never moved +in such freedom as on thus finding itself face to face with the +question of what she wanted to get. This period of the omelette aux +rognons and the poulet saute, while her sole surviving parent, +her fourth, fairly chattered to her governess, left Maisie rather +wondering if her governess would hold out. It was strange, but +she became on the spot quite as interested in Mrs. Wix's moral +sense as Mrs. Wix could possibly be in hers: it had risen before +her so pressingly that this was something new for Mrs. Wix to +resist. Resisting Mrs. Beale herself promised at such a rate to +become a very different business from resisting Sir Claude's view +of her. More might come of what had happened--whatever it was-- +than Maisie felt she could have expected. She put it together +with a suspicion that, had she ever in her life had a sovereign +changed, would have resembled an impression, baffled by the want +of arithmetic, that her change was wrong: she groped about in it +that she was perhaps playing the passive part in a case of +violent substitution. A victim was what she should surely be if +the issue between her step-parents had been settled by Mrs. +Beale's saying: "Well, if she can live with but one of us alone, +with which in the world should it be but me?" That answer was far +from what, for days, she had nursed herself in, and the +desolation of it was deepened by the absence of anything from Sir +Claude to show he had not had to take it as triumphant. Had not +Mrs. Beale, upstairs, as good as given out that she had quitted +him with the snap of a tension, left him, dropped him in London, +after some struggle as a sequel to which her own advent +represented that she had practically sacrificed him? Maisie +assisted in fancy at the probable episode in the Regent's Park, +finding elements almost of terror in the suggestion that Sir +Claude had not had fair play. They drew something, as she sat +there, even from the pride of an association with such beauty as +Mrs. Beale's; and the child quite forgot that, though the +sacrifice of Mrs. Beale herself was a solution she had not +invented, she would probably have seen Sir Claude embark upon it +without a direct remonstrance. What her stepmother had clearly +now promised herself to wring from Mrs. Wix was an assent to the +great modification, the change, as smart as a juggler's trick, in +the interest of which nothing so much mattered as the new +convenience of Mrs. Beale. Maisie could positively seize the +moral that her elbow seemed to point in ribs thinly defended-- +the moral of its not mattering a straw which of the step-parents +was the guardian. The essence of the question was that a girl +wasn't a boy: if Maisie had been a mere rough trousered thing, +destined at the best probably to grow up a scamp, Sir Claude +would have been welcome. As the case stood he had simply tumbled +out of it, and Mrs. Wix would henceforth find herself in the +employ of the right person. These arguments had really fallen +into their place, for our young friend, at the very touch of that +tone in which she had heard her new title declared. She was +still, as a result of so many parents, a daughter to somebody +even after papa and mamma were to all intents dead. If her +father's wife and her mother's husband, by the operation of a +natural or, for all she knew, a legal rule, were in the shoes of +their defunct partners, then Mrs. Beale's partner was exactly as +defunct as Sir Claude's and her shoes the very pair to which, in +"Farange v. Farange and Others," the divorce court had given +priority. The subject of that celebrated settlement saw the rest +of her day really filled out with the pomp of all that Mrs. Beale +assumed. The assumption rounded itself there between this lady's +entertainers, flourished in a way that left them, in their +bottomless element, scarce a free pair of eyes to exchange +signals. It struck Maisie even a little that there was a rope or +two Mrs. Wix might have thrown out if she would, a rocket or two +she might have sent up. They had at any rate never been so long +together without communion or telegraphy, and their companion +kept them apart by simply keeping them with her. From this +situation they saw the grandeur of their intenser relation to her +pass and pass like an endless procession. It was a day of lively +movement and of talk on Mrs. Beale's part so brilliant and +overflowing as to represent music and banners. She took them out +with her promptly to walk and to drive, and even--towards night-- +sketched a plan for carrying them to the Etablissement, where, +for only a franc apiece, they should listen to a concert of +celebrities. It reminded Maisie, the plan, of the side-shows at +Earl's Court, and the franc sounded brighter than the shillings +which had at that time failed; yet this too, like the other, was +a frustrated hope: the francs failed like the shillings and the +side-shows had set an example to the concert. The Etablissement +in short melted away, and it was little wonder that a lady who +from the moment of her arrival had been so gallantly in the +breach should confess herself it last done up. Maisie could +appreciate her fatigue; the day had not passed without such an +observer's discovering that she was excited and even mentally +comparing her state to that of the breakers after a gale. It had +blown hard in London, and she would take time to go down. It was +of the condition known to the child by report as that of talking +against time that her emphasis, her spirit, her humour, which had +never dropped, now gave the impression. + +She too was delighted with foreign manners; but her daughter's +opportunities of explaining them to her were unexpectedly +forestalled by her own tone of large acquaintance with them. +One of the things that nipped in the bud all response to her +volubility was Maisie's surprised retreat before the fact that +Continental life was what she had been almost brought up on. It +was Mrs. Beale, disconcertingly, who began to explain it to her +friends; it was she who, wherever they turned, was the interpreter, +the historian and the guide. She was full of reference to her +early travels--at the age of eighteen: she had at that period made, +with a distinguished Dutch family, a stay on the Lake of Geneva. +Maisie had in the old days been regaled with anecdotes of these +adventures, but they had with time become phantasmal, and the +heroine's quite showy exemption from bewilderment at Boulogne, +her acuteness on some of the very subjects on which Maisie had +been acute to Mrs. Wix, were a high note of the majesty, +of the variety of advantage, with which she had alighted. +It was all a part of the wind in her sails and of the weight +with which her daughter was now to feel her hand. The effect +of it on Maisie was to add already the burden of time to her +separation from Sir Claude. This might, to her sense, have +lasted for days; it was as if, with their main agitation +transferred thus to France and with neither mamma now nor Mrs. +Beale nor Mrs. Wix nor herself at his side, he must be fearfully +alone in England. Hour after hour she felt as if she were +waiting; yet she couldn't have said exactly for what. There were +moments when Mrs. Beale's flow of talk was a mere rattle to +smother a knock. At no part of the crisis had the rattle so +public a purpose as when, instead of letting Maisie go with Mrs. +Wix to prepare for dinner, she pushed her--with a push at last +incontestably maternal--straight into the room inherited from +Sir Claude. She titivated her little charge with her own brisk +hands; then she brought out: "I'm going to divorce your father." + +This was so different from anything Maisie had expected that it +took some time to reach her mind. She was aware meanwhile that +she probably looked rather wan. "To marry Sir Claude?" + +Mrs. Beale rewarded her with a kiss. "It's sweet to hear you put +it so." + +This was a tribute, but it left Maisie balancing for an +objection. "How CAN you when he's married?" + +"He isn't--practically. He's free, you know." + +"Free to marry?" + +"Free, first, to divorce his own fiend." + +The benefit that, these last days, she had felt she owed a +certain person left Maisie a moment so ill-prepared for +recognising this lurid label that she hesitated long enough to +risk: "Mamma?" + +"She isn't your mamma any longer," Mrs. Beale returned. "Sir +Claude has paid her money to cease to be." Then as if remembering +how little, to the child, a pecuniary transaction must represent: +"She lets him off supporting her if he'll let her off supporting +you." + +Mrs. Beale appeared, however, to have done injustice to her +daughter's financial grasp. "And support me himself?" Maisie +asked. + +"Take the whole bother and burden of you and never let her hear +of you again. It's a regular signed contract." + +"Why that's lovely of her!" Maisie cried. + +"It's not so lovely, my dear, but that he'll get his divorce." + +Maisie was briefly silent; after which, "No--he won't get it," +she said. Then she added still more boldly: "And you won't get +yours." + +Mrs. Beale, who was at the dressing-glass, turned round with +amusement and surprise. "How do you know that?" + +"Oh I know!" cried Maisie. + +"From Mrs. Wix?" + +Maisie debated, then after an instant took her cue from Mrs. +Beale's absence of anger, which struck her the more as she had +felt how much of her courage she needed. "From Mrs. Wix," she +admitted. + +Mrs. Beale, at the glass again, made play with a powder-puff. +"My own sweet, she's mistaken!" was all she said. + +There was a certain force in the very amenity of this, but our +young lady reflected long enough to remember that it was not the +answer Sir Claude himself had made. The recollection nevertheless +failed to prevent her saying: "Do you mean then that he won't +come till he has got it?" + +Mrs. Beale gave a last touch; she was ready; she stood there in +all her elegance. "I mean, my dear, that it's because he HASN'T +got it that I left him." + +This opened a view that stretched further than Maisie could +reach. She turned away from it, but she spoke before they went +out again. "Do you like Mrs. Wix now?" + +"Why, my chick, I was just going to ask you if you think she has +come at all to like poor bad me!" + +Maisie thought, at this hint; but unsuccessfully. "I haven't the +least idea. But I'll find out." + +"Do!" said Mrs. Beale, rustling out with her in a scented air and +as if it would be a very particular favour. + +The child tried promptly at bed-time, relieved now of the fear +that their visitor would wish to separate her for the night from +her attendant. "Have you held out?" she began as soon as the two +doors at the end of the passage were again closed on them. + +Mrs. Wix looked hard at the flame of the candle. "Held out--?" + +"Why, she has been making love to you. Has she won you over?" + +Mrs. Wix transferred her intensity to her pupil's face. "Over to +what?" + +"To HER keeping me instead." + +"Instead of Sir Claude?" Mrs. Wix was distinctly gaining time. + +"Yes; who else? since it's not instead of you." + +Mrs. Wix coloured at this lucidity. "Yes, that IS what she +means." + +"Well, do you like it?" Maisie asked. + +She actually had to wait, for oh her friend was embarrassed! "My +opposition to the connexion--theirs--would then naturally to some +extent fall. She has treated me to-day as if I weren't after all +quite such a worm; not that I don't KNOW very well where she got +the pattern of her politeness. But of course," Mrs. Wix hastened +to add, "I shouldn't like her as THE one nearly so well as him." + +"'Nearly so well!'" Maisie echoed. "I should hope indeed not." + +She spoke with a firmness under which she was herself the first +to quiver. "_I_ thought you 'adored' him." + +"I do," Mrs. Wix sturdily allowed. + +"Then have you suddenly begun to adore her too?" + +Mrs. Wix, instead of directly answering, only blinked in support +of her sturdiness. "My dear, in what a tone you ask that! +You're coming out." + +"Why shouldn't I? YOU'VE come out. Mrs. Beale has come out. We +each have our turn!" And Maisie threw off the most extraordinary +little laugh that had ever passed her young lips. + +There passed Mrs. Wix's indeed the next moment a sound that more +than matched it. "You're most remarkable!" she neighed. + +Her pupil, though wholly without aspirations to pertness, barely +faltered. "I think you've done a great deal to make me so." + +"Very true, I have." She dropped to humility, as if she recalled +her so recent self-arraignment. + +"Would you accept her then? That's what I ask," said Maisie. + +"As a substitute?" Mrs. Wix turned it over; she met again the +child's eyes. "She has literally almost fawned upon me." + +"She hasn't fawned upon HIM. She hasn't even been kind to him." + +Mrs. Wix looked as if she had now an advantage. "Then do you +propose to 'kill' her?" + +"You don't answer my question," Maisie persisted. "I want to know +if you accept her." + +Mrs. Wix continued to hedge. "I want to know if YOU do!" + +Everything in the child's person, at this, announced that it was +easy to know. "Not for a moment." + +"Not the two now?" Mrs. Wix had caught on; she flushed with it. + +"Only him alone?" + +"Him alone or nobody." + +"Not even ME?" cried Mrs. Wix. + +Maisie looked at her a moment, then began to undress. "Oh you're +nobody!" + + + +XXIX + +Her sleep was drawn out, she instantly recognised lateness in the +way her eyes opened to Mrs. Wix, erect, completely dressed, more +dressed than ever, and gazing at her from the centre of the room. +The next thing she was sitting straight up, wide awake with the +fear of the hours of "abroad" that she might have lost. Mrs. Wix +looked as if the day had already made itself felt, and the +process of catching up with it began for Maisie in hearing her +distinctly say: "My poor dear, he has come!" + +"Sir Claude?" Maisie, clearing the little bed-rug with the width +of her spring, felt the polished floor under her bare feet. + +"He crossed in the night; he got in early." Mrs. Wix's head +jerked stiffly backward. "He's there." + +"And you've seen him?" + +"No. He's there--he's there," Mrs. Wix repeated. Her voice came +out with a queer extinction that was not a voluntary drop, and +she trembled so that it added to their common emotion. Visibly +pale, they gazed at each other. + +"Isn't it too BEAUTIFUL?" Maisie panted back at her; a challenge +with an answer to which, however, she was not ready at once. The +term Maisie had used was a flash of diplomacy--to prevent at any +rate Mrs. Wix's using another. To that degree it was successful; +there was only an appeal, strange and mute, in the white old +face, which produced the effect of a want of decision greater +than could by any stretch of optimism have been associated with +her attitude toward what had happened. For Maisie herself indeed +what had happened was oddly, as she could feel, less of a simple +rapture than any arrival or return of the same supreme friend had +ever been before. What had become overnight, what had become +while she slept, of the comfortable faculty of gladness? She +tried to wake it up a little wider by talking, by rejoicing, by +plunging into water and into clothes, and she made out that it +was ten o'clock, but also that Mrs. Wix had not yet breakfasted. +The day before, at nine, they had had together a cafe complet in +their sitting-room. Mrs. Wix on her side had evidently also a +refuge to seek. She sought it in checking the precipitation of +some of her pupil's present steps, in recalling to her with an +approach to sternness that of such preliminaries those embodied +in a thorough use of soap should be the most thorough, and in +throwing even a certain reprobation on the idea of hurrying into +clothes for the sake of a mere stepfather. She took her in hand +with a silent insistence; she reduced the process to sequences +more definite than any it had known since the days of Moddle. +Whatever it might be that had now, with a difference, begun to +belong to Sir Claude's presence was still after all compatible, +for our young lady, with the instinct of dressing to see him with +almost untidy haste. Mrs. Wix meanwhile luckily was not wholly +directed to repression. "He's there--he's there!" she had said +over several times. It was her answer to every invitation to +mention how long she had been up and her motive for respecting so +rigidly the slumber of her companion. It formed for some minutes +her only account of the whereabouts of the others and her reason +for not having yet seen them, as well as of the possibility of +their presently being found in the salon. + +"He's there--he's there!" she declared once more as she made, on +the child, with an almost invidious tug, a strained undergarment +"meet." + +"Do you mean he's in the salon?" Maisie asked again. + +"He's WITH her," Mrs. Wix desolately said. "He's with her," she +reiterated. + +"Do you mean in her own room?" Maisie continued. + +She waited an instant. "God knows!" + +Maisie wondered a little why, or how, God should know; this, +however, delayed but an instant her bringing out: "Well, won't +she go back?" + +"Go back? Never!" + +"She'll stay all the same?" + +"All the more." + +"Then won't Sir Claude go?" Maisie asked. + +"Go back--if SHE doesn't?" Mrs. Wix appeared to give this +question the benefit of a minute's thought. "Why should he have +come--only to go back?" + +Maisie produced an ingenious solution. "To MAKE her go. To take +her." + +Mrs. Wix met it without a concession. "If he can make her go so +easily, why should he have let her come?" + +Maisie considered. "Oh just to see ME. She has a right." + +"Yes--she has a right." + +"She's my mother!" Maisie tentatively tittered. + +"Yes--she's your mother." + +"Besides," Maisie went on, "he didn't let her come. He doesn't +like her coming, and if he doesn't like it--" + +Mrs. Wix took her up. "He must lump it--that's what he must do! +Your mother was right about him--I mean your real one. He has no +strength. No--none at all." She seemed more profoundly to muse. +"He might have had some even with HER--I mean with her ladyship. +He's just a poor sunk slave," she asserted with sudden energy. + +Maisie wondered again. "A slave?" + +"To his passions." + +She continued to wonder and even to be impressed; after which she +went on: "But how do you know he'll stay?" + +"Because he likes us!"--and Mrs. Wix, with her emphasis of the +word, whirled her charge round again to deal with posterior +hooks. She had positively never shaken her so. + +It was as if she quite shook something out of her. "But how will +that help him if we--in spite of his liking!--don't stay?" + +"Do you mean if we go off and leave him with her?--" Mrs. Wix put +the question to the back of her pupil's head. "It WON'T help him. +It will be his ruin. He'll have got nothing. He'll have lost +everything. It will be his utter destruction, for he's certain +after a while to loathe her." + +"Then when he loathes her"--it was astonishing how she caught the +idea--"he'll just come right after us!" Maisie announced. + +"Never." + +"Never?" + +"She'll keep him. She'll hold him for ever." Maisie doubted. + +"When he 'loathes' her?" + +"That won't matter. She won't loathe HIM. People don't!" Mrs. Wix +brought up. + +"Some do. Mamma does," Maisie contended. + +"Mamma does NOT!" It was startling--her friend contradicted her +flat. "She loves him--she adores him. A woman knows." + +Mrs. Wix spoke not only as if Maisie were not a woman, but as if +she would never be one. "I know!" she cried. + +"Then why on earth has she left him?" + +Mrs. Wix hesitated. + +"He hates HER. Don't stoop so--lift up your hair. You know how +I'm affected toward him," she added with dignity; "but you must +also know that I see clear." + +Maisie all this time was trying hard to do likewise. "Then if she +has left him for that why shouldn't Mrs. Beale leave him?" + +"Because she's not such a fool!" + +"Not such a fool as mamma?" + +"Precisely--if you WILL have it. Does it look like her leaving +him?" Mrs. Wix enquired. She brooded again; then she went on with +more intensity: "Do you want to know really and truly why? So +that she may be his wretchedness and his punishment." + +"His punishment?"--this was more than as yet Maisie could quite +accept. "For what?" + +"For everything. That's what will happen: he'll be tied to her +for ever. She won't mind in the least his hating her, and she +won't hate him back. She'll only hate US." + +"Us?" the child faintly echoed. + +"She'll hate YOU." + +"Me? Why, I brought them together!" Maisie resentfully cried. + +"You brought them together." There was a completeness in Mrs. Wix's +assent. "Yes; it was a pretty job. Sit down." She began to brush +her pupil's hair and, as she took up the mass of it with some force +of hand, went on with a sharp recall: "Your mother adored him at +first--it might have lasted. But he began too soon with Mrs. Beale. +As you say," she pursued with a brisk application of the brush, +"you brought them together." + +"I brought them together"--Maisie was ready to reaffirm it. She +felt none the less for a moment at the bottom of a hole; then she +seemed to see a way out. "But I didn't bring mamma together--" +She just faltered. + +"With all those gentlemen?"--Mrs. Wix pulled her up. "No; it +isn't quite so bad as that." + +"I only said to the Captain"--Maisie had the quick memory of it-- +"that I hoped he at least (he was awfully nice!) would love her +and keep her." + +"And even that wasn't much harm," threw in Mrs. Wix. + +"It wasn't much good," Maisie was obliged to recognise. "She +can't bear him--not even a mite. She told me at Folkestone." + +Mrs. Wix suppressed a gasp; then after a bridling instant during +which she might have appeared to deflect with difficulty from her +odd consideration of Ida's wrongs: "He was a nice sort of person +for her to talk to you about!" + +"Oh I LIKE him!" Maisie promptly rejoined; and at this, with an +inarticulate sound and an inconsequence still more marked, her +companion bent over and dealt her on the cheek a rapid peck which +had the apparent intention of a kiss. + +"Well, if her ladyship doesn't agree with you, what does it only +prove?" Mrs. Wix demanded in conclusion. "It proves that she's +fond of Sir Claude!" + +Maisie, in the light of some of the evidence, reflected on that +till her hair was finished, but when she at last started up she +gave a sign of no very close embrace of it. She grasped at this +moment Mrs. Wix's arm. "He must have got his divorce!" + +"Since day before yesterday? Don't talk trash." + +This was spoken with an impatience which left the child nothing +to reply; whereupon she sought her defence in a completely +different relation to the fact. "Well, I knew he would come!" + +"So did I; but not in twenty-four hours. I gave him a few days!" +Mrs. Wix wailed. + +Maisie, whom she had now released, looked at her with interest. +"How many did SHE give him?" + +Mrs. Wix faced her a moment; then as if with a bewildered sniff: +"You had better ask her!" But she had no sooner uttered the words +than she caught herself up. "Lord o' mercy, how we talk!" + +Maisie felt that however they talked she must see him, but she said +nothing more for a time, a time during which she conscientiously +finished dressing and Mrs. Wix also kept silence. It was as if +they each had almost too much to think of, and even as if the +child had the sense that her friend was watching her and seeing +if she herself were watched. At last Mrs. Wix turned to the window +and stood--sightlessly, as Maisie could guess--looking away. +Then our young lady, before the glass, gave the supreme shake. +"Well, I'm ready. And now to SEE him!" + +Mrs. Wix turned round, but as if without having heard her. "It's +tremendously grave." There were slow still tears behind the +straighteners. + +"It is--it is." Maisie spoke as if she were now dressed quite up +to the occasion; as if indeed with the last touch she had put on +the judgement-cap. "I must see him immediately." + +"How can you see him if he doesn't send for you?" + +"Why can't I go and find him?" + +"Because you don't know where he is." + +"Can't I just look in the salon?" That still seemed simple to +Maisie. + +Mrs. Wix, however, instantly cut it off. "I wouldn't have you +look in the salon for all the world!" Then she explained a +little: "The salon isn't ours now." + +"Ours?" + +"Yours and mine. It's theirs." + +"Theirs?" Maisie, with her stare, continued to echo. "You mean +they want to keep us out?" + +Mrs. Wix faltered; she sank into a chair and, as Maisie had often +enough seen her do before, covered her face with her hands. "They +ought to, at least. The situation's too monstrous!" + +Maisie stood there a moment--she looked about the room. "I'll go +to him--I'll find him." + +"I won't! I won't go NEAR them!" cried Mrs. Wix. + +"Then I'll see him alone." The child spied what she had been +looking for--she possessed herself of her hat. "Perhaps I'll take +him out!" And with decision she quitted the room. + +When she entered the salon it was empty, but at the sound of the +opened door some one stirred on the balcony, and Sir Claude, +stepping straight in, stood before her. He was in light fresh +clothes and wore a straw hat with a bright ribbon; these things, +besides striking her in themselves as the very promise of the +grandest of grand tours, gave him a certain radiance and, as it +were, a tropical ease; but such an effect only marked rather more +his having stopped short and, for a longer minute than had ever +at such a juncture elapsed, not opened his arms to her. His pause +made her pause and enabled her to reflect that he must have been +up some time, for there were no traces of breakfast; and that +though it was so late he had rather markedly not caused her to be +called to him. Had Mrs. Wix been right about their forfeiture of +the salon? Was it all his now, all his and Mrs. Beale's? Such an +idea, at the rate her small thoughts throbbed, could only remind +her of the way in which what had been hers hitherto was what was +exactly most Mrs. Beale's and his. It was strange to be standing +there and greeting him across a gulf, for he had by this time +spoken, smiled and said: "My dear child, my dear child!" but +without coming any nearer. In a flash she saw he was different-- +more so than he knew or designed. The next minute indeed it was +as if he caught an impression from her face: this made him hold +out his hand. Then they met, he kissed her, he laughed, she +thought he even blushed: something of his affection rang out as +usual. "Here I am, you see, again--as I promised you." + +It was not as he had promised them--he had not promised them Mrs. +Beale; but Maisie said nothing about that. What she said was +simply: "I knew you had come. Mrs. Wix told me." + +"Oh yes. And where is she?" + +"In her room. She got me up--she dressed me." + +Sir Claude looked at her up and down; a sweetness of mockery that +she particularly loved came out in his face whenever he did that, +and it was not wanting now. He raised his eyebrows and his arms +to play at admiration; he was evidently after all disposed to be +gay. "Got you up?--I should think so! She has dressed you most +beautifully. Isn't she coming?" + +Maisie wondered if she had better tell. "She said not." + +"Doesn't she want to see a poor devil?" + +She looked about under the vibration of the way he described +himself, and her eyes rested on the door of the room he had +previously occupied. "Is Mrs. Beale in there?" + +Sir Claude looked blankly at the same object. "I haven't the +least idea!" + +"You haven't seen her?" + +"Not the tip of her nose." + +Maisie thought: there settled on her, in the light of his +beautiful smiling eyes, the faintest purest coldest conviction +that he wasn't telling the truth. "She hasn't welcomed you?" + +"Not by a single sign." + +"Then where is she?" + +Sir Claude laughed; he seemed both amused and surprised at the +point she made of it. "I give it up!" + +"Doesn't she know you've come?" + +He laughed again. "Perhaps she doesn't care!" + +Maisie, with an inspiration, pounced on his arm. "Has she GONE?" + +He met her eyes and then she could see that his own were really +much graver than his manner. "Gone?" She had flown to the door, +but before she could raise her hand to knock he was beside her +and had caught it. "Let her be. I don't care about her. I want to +see YOU." + +"Then she HASN'T gone?" + +Maisie fell back with him. He still looked as if it were a joke, +but the more she saw of him the more she could make out that he +was troubled. "It wouldn't be like her!" + +She stood wondering at him. "Did you want her to come?" + +"How can you suppose--?" He put it to her candidly. "We had an +immense row over it." + +"Do you mean you've quarrelled?" + +Sir Claude was at a loss. "What has she told you?" + +"That I'm hers as much as yours. That she represents papa." + +His gaze struck away through the open window and up to the sky; +she could hear him rattle in his trousers-pockets his money or +his keys. "Yes--that's what she keeps saying." It gave him for a +moment an air that was almost helpless. + +"You say you don't care about her," Maisie went on. "DO you mean +you've quarrelled?" + +"We do nothing in life but quarrel." + +He rose before her, as he said this, so soft and fair, so rich, +in spite of what might worry him, in restored familiarities, that +it gave a bright blur to the meaning--to what would otherwise +perhaps have been the palpable promise--of the words. + +"Oh YOUR quarrels!" she exclaimed with discouragement. + +"I assure you hers are quite fearful!" + +"I don't speak of hers. I speak of yours." + +"Ah don't do it till I've had my coffee! You're growing up +clever," he added. Then he said: "I suppose you've breakfasted?" + +"Oh no--I've had nothing." + +"Nothing in your room?"--he was all compunction. "My dear old +man!--we'll breakfast then together." He had one of his happy +thoughts. "I say--we'll go out." + +"That was just what I hoped. I've brought my hat." + +"You ARE clever! We'll go to a cafe." Maisie was already at the +door; he glanced round the room. "A moment--my stick." But there +appeared to be no stick. "No matter; I left it--oh!" He +remembered with an odd drop and came out. + +"You left it in London?" she asked as they went downstairs. + +"Yes--in London: fancy!" + +"You were in such a hurry to come," Maisie explained. + +He had his arm round her. "That must have been the reason." + +Halfway down he stopped short again, slapping his leg. "And poor +Mrs. Wix?" + +Maisie's face just showed a shadow. "Do you want her to come?" + +"Dear no--I want to see you alone." + +"That's the way I want to see YOU!" she replied. "Like before." + +"Like before!" he gaily echoed. "But I mean has she had her +coffee?" + +"No, nothing." + +"Then I'll send it up to her. Madame!" He had already, at the +foot of the stair, called out to the stout patronne, a lady who +turned to him from the bustling, breezy hall a countenance +covered with fresh matutinal powder and a bosom as capacious as +the velvet shelf of a chimneypiece, over which her round white +face, framed in its golden frizzle, might have figured as a showy +clock. He ordered, with particular recommendations, Mrs. Wix's +repast, and it was a charm to hear his easy brilliant French: +even his companion's ignorance could measure the perfection of +it. The patronne, rubbing her hands and breaking in with high +swift notes as into a florid duet, went with him to the street, +and while they talked a moment longer Maisie remembered what Mrs. +Wix had said about every one's liking him. It came out enough +through the morning powder, it came out enough in the heaving +bosom, how the landlady liked him. He had evidently ordered +something lovely for Mrs. Wix. "Et bien soigne, n'est-ce-pas?" + +"Soyez tranquille"--the patronne beamed upon him. "Et pour +Madame?" + +"Madame?" he echoed--it just pulled him up a little. + +"Rien encore?" + +"Rien encore. Come, Maisie." She hurried along with him, but on +the way to the cafe he said nothing. + + + +XXX + +After they were seated there it was different: the place was not +below the hotel, but further along the quay; with wide, clear +windows and a floor sprinkled with bran in a manner that gave it +for Maisie something of the added charm of a circus. They had +pretty much to themselves the painted spaces and the red plush +benches; these were shared by a few scattered gentlemen who +picked teeth, with facial contortions, behind little bare tables, +and by an old personage in particular, a very old personage with +a red ribbon in his buttonhole, whose manner of soaking buttered +rolls in coffee and then disposing of them in the little that was +left of the interval between his nose and chin might at a less +anxious hour have cast upon Maisie an almost envious spell. They +too had their cafe au lait and their buttered rolls, determined +by Sir Claude's asking her if she could with that light aid wait +till the hour of dejeuner. His allusion to this meal gave her, in +the shaded sprinkled coolness, the scene, as she vaguely felt, of +a sort of ordered mirrored licence, the haunt of those--the +irregular, like herself--who went to bed or who rose too late, +something to think over while she watched the white-aproned +waiter perform as nimbly with plates and saucers as a certain +conjurer her friend had in London taken her to a music-hall to +see. Sir Claude had presently begun to talk again, to tell her +how London had looked and how long he had felt himself, on either +side, to have been absent; all about Susan Ash too and the +amusement as well as the difficulty he had had with her; then all +about his return journey and the Channel in the night and the +crowd of people coming over and the way there were always too +many one knew. He spoke of other matters beside, especially of +what she must tell him of the occupations, while he was away, of +Mrs. Wix and her pupil. Hadn't they had the good time he had +promised?--had he exaggerated a bit the arrangements made for +their pleasure? Maisie had something--not all there was--to say +of his success and of their gratitude: she had a complication of +thought that grew every minute, grew with the consciousness that +she had never seen him in this particular state in which he had +been given back. + +Mrs. Wix had once said--it was once or fifty times; once was +enough for Maisie, but more was not too much--that he was +wonderfully various. Well, he was certainly so, to the child's +mind, on the present occasion: he was much more various than he +was anything else. Besides, the fact that they were together in a +shop, at a nice little intimate table as they had so often been +in London, only made greater the difference of what they were +together about. This difference was in his face, in his voice, in +every look he gave her and every movement he made. They were not +the looks and the movements he really wanted to show, and she +could feel as well that they were not those she herself wanted. +She had seen him nervous, she had seen every one she had come in +contact with nervous, but she had never seen him so nervous as +this. Little by little it gave her a settled terror, a terror +that partook of the coldness she had felt just before, at the +hotel, to find herself, on his answer about Mrs. Beale, +disbelieve him. She seemed to see at present, to touch across the +table, as if by laying her hand on it, what he had meant when he +confessed on those several occasions to fear. Why was such a man +so often afraid? It must have begun to come to her now that there +was one thing just such a man above all could be afraid of. He +could be afraid of himself. His fear at all events was there; his +fear was sweet to her, beautiful and tender to her, was having +coffee and buttered rolls and talk and laughter that were no talk +and laughter at all with her; his fear was in his jesting +postponing perverting voice; it was just in this make-believe way +he had brought her out to imitate the old London playtimes, to +imitate indeed a relation that had wholly changed, a relation +that she had with her very eyes seen in the act of change when, +the day before in the salon, Mrs. Beale rose suddenly before her. +She rose before her, for that matter, now, and even while their +refreshment delayed Maisie arrived at the straight question for +which, on their entrance, his first word had given opportunity. +"Are we going to have dejeuner with Mrs. Beale?" + +His reply was anything but straight. "You and I?" + +Maisie sat back in her chair. "Mrs. Wix and me." + +Sir Claude also shifted. "That's an enquiry, my dear child, that +Mrs. Beale herself must answer." Yes, he had shifted; but +abruptly, after a moment during which something seemed to hang +there between them and, as it heavily swayed, just fan them with +the air of its motion, she felt that the whole thing was upon +them. "Do you mind," he broke out, "my asking you what Mrs. Wix +has said to you?" + +"Said to me?" + +"This day or two--while I was away." + +"Do you mean about you and Mrs. Beale?" + +Sir Claude, resting on his elbows, fixed his eyes a moment on the +white marble beneath them. "No; I think we had a good deal of +that--didn't we?--before I left you. It seems to me we had it +pretty well all out. I mean about yourself, about your--don't you +know?--associating with us, as I might say, and staying on with +us. While you were alone with our friend what did she say?" + +Maisie felt the weight of the question; it kept her silent for a +space during which she looked at Sir Claude, whose eyes remained +bent. "Nothing," she returned at last. + +He showed incredulity. "Nothing?" + +"Nothing," Maisie repeated; on which an interruption descended in +the form of a tray bearing the preparations for their breakfast. +These preparations were as amusing as everything else; the waiter +poured their coffee from a vessel like a watering-pot and then +made it froth with the curved stream of hot milk that dropped +from the height of his raised arm; but the two looked across at +each other through the whole play of French pleasantness with a +gravity that had now ceased to dissemble. Sir Claude sent the +waiter off again for something and then took up her answer. +"Hasn't she tried to affect you?" + +Face to face with him thus it seemed to Maisie that she had tried +so little as to be scarce worth mentioning; again therefore an +instant she shut herself up. Presently she found her middle +course. "Mrs. Beale likes her now; and there's one thing I've +found out--a great thing. Mrs. Wix enjoys her being so kind. She +was tremendously kind all day yesterday." + +"I see. And what did she do?" Sir Claude asked. + +Maisie was now busy with her breakfast, and her companion +attacked his own; so that it was all, in form at least, even more +than their old sociability. "Everything she could think of. She +was as nice to her as you are," the child said. "She talked to +her all day." + +"And what did she say to her?" + +"Oh I don't know." Maisie was a little bewildered with his +pressing her so for knowledge; it didn't fit into the degree of +intimacy with Mrs. Beale that Mrs. Wix had so denounced and that, +according to that lady, had now brought him back in bondage. +Wasn't he more aware than his stepdaughter of what would be done +by the person to whom he was bound? In a moment, however, she +added: "She made love to her." + +Sir Claude looked at her harder, and it was clearly something in +her tone that made him quickly say: "You don't mind my asking +you, do you?" + +"Not at all; only I should think you'd know better than I." + +"What Mrs. Beale did yesterday?" She thought he coloured a +trifle; but almost simultaneously with that impression she found +herself answering: "Yes--if you have seen her." + +He broke into the loudest of laughs. "Why, my dear boy, I told +you just now I've absolutely not. I say, don't you believe me?" + +There was something she was already so afraid of that it covered +up other fears. "Didn't you come back to see her?" she enquired +in a moment. "Didn't you come back because you always want to so +much?" + +He received her enquiry as he had received her doubt--with an +extraordinary absence of resentment. "I can imagine of course why +you think that. But it doesn't explain my doing what I have. It +was, as I said to you just now at the inn, really and truly you I +wanted to see." + +She felt an instant as she used to feel when, in the back garden +at her mother's, she took from him the highest push of a swing-- +high, high, high--that he had had put there for her pleasure and +that had finally broken down under the weight and the extravagant +patronage of the cook. "Well, that's beautiful. But to see me, +you mean, and go away again?" + +"My going away again is just the point. I can't tell yet--it all +depends." + +"On Mrs. Beale?" Maisie asked. "SHE won't go away." He finished +emptying his coffee-cup and then, when he had put it down, leaned +back in his chair, where she could see that he smiled on her. +This only added to her idea that he was in trouble, that he was +turning somehow in his pain and trying different things. He +continued to smile and she went on: "Don't you know that?" + +"Yes, I may as well confess to you that as much as that I do +know. SHE won't go away. She'll stay." + +"She'll stay. She'll stay," Maisie repeated. + +"Just so. Won't you have some more coffee?" + +"Yes, please." + +"And another buttered roll?" + +"Yes, please." + +He signed to the hovering waiter, who arrived with the shining +spout of plenty in either hand and with the friendliest interest +in mademoiselle. "Les tartines sont la." Their cups were +replenished and, while he watched almost musingly the bubbles in +the fragrant mixture, "Just so--just so," Sir Claude said again +and again. "It's awfully awkward!" he exclaimed when the waiter +had gone. + +"That she won't go?" + +"Well--everything! Well, well, well!" But he pulled himself +together; he began again to eat. "I came back to ask you +something. That's what I came back for." + +"I know what you want to ask me," Maisie said. + +"Are you very sure?" + +"I'm almost very." + +"Well then risk it. You mustn't make ME risk everything." + +She was struck with the force of this. "You want to know if I +should be happy with THEM." + +"With those two ladies only? No, no, old man: vous n'y etes pas. +So now--there!" Sir Claude laughed. + +"Well then what is it?" + +The next minute, instead of telling her what it was, he laid his +hand across the table on her own and held her as if under the +prompting of a thought. "Mrs. Wix would stay with HER?" + +"Without you? Oh yes--now." + +"On account, as you just intimated, of Mrs. Beale's changed +manner?" + +Maisie, with her sense of responsibility, weighed both Mrs. +Beale's changed manner and Mrs. Wix's human weakness. "I think +she talked her round." + +Sir Claude thought a moment. "Ah poor dear!" + +"Do you mean Mrs. Beale?" + +"Oh no--Mrs. Wix." + +"She likes being talked round--treated like any one else. Oh she +likes great politeness," Maisie expatiated. "It affects her very +much." + +Sir Claude, to her surprise, demurred a little to this. "Very +much--up to a certain point." + +"Oh up to any point!" Maisie returned with emphasis. + +"Well, haven't I been polite to her?" + +"Lovely--and she perfectly worships you." + +"Then, my dear child, why can't she let me alone?"--this time Sir +Claude unmistakeably blushed. Before Maisie, however, could +answer his question, which would indeed have taken her long, he +went on in another tone: "Mrs. Beale thinks she has probably +quite broken her down. But she hasn't." + +Though he spoke as if he were sure, Maisie was strong in the +impression she had just uttered and that she now again produced. +"She has talked her round." + +"Ah yes; round to herself, but not round to me." + +Oh she couldn't bear to hear him say that! "To you? Don't you +really believe how she loves you?" + +Sir Claude examined his belief. "Of course I know she's +wonderful." + +"She's just every bit as fond of you as _I_ am," said Maisie. + +"She told me so yesterday." + +"Ah then," he promptly exclaimed, "she HAS tried to affect you! I +don't love HER, don't you see? I do her perfect justice," he +pursued, "but I mean I don't love her as I do you, and I'm sure +you wouldn't seriously expect it. She's not my daughter--come, +old chap! She's not even my mother, though I dare say it would +have been better for me if she had been. I'll do for her what I'd +do for my mother, but I won't do more." His real excitement broke +out in a need to explain and justify himself, though he kept +trying to correct and conceal it with laughs and mouthfuls and +other vain familiarities. Suddenly he broke off, wiping his +moustache with sharp pulls and coming back to Mrs. Beale. "Did +she try to talk YOU over?" + +"No--to me she said very little. Very little indeed," Maisie +continued. + +Sir Claude seemed struck with this. "She was only sweet to Mrs. +Wix?" + +"As sweet as sugar!" cried Maisie. + +He looked amused at her comparison, but he didn't contest it; he +uttered on the contrary, in an assenting way, a little inarticulate +sound. "I know what she CAN be. But much good may it have done her! +Mrs. Wix won't COME 'round.' That's what makes it so fearfully +awkward." + +Maisie knew it was fearfully awkward; she had known this now, she +felt, for some time, and there was something else it more +pressingly concerned her to learn. "What is it you meant you came +over to ask me?" + +"Well," said Sir Claude, "I was just going to say. Let me tell +you it will surprise you." She had finished breakfast now and she +sat back in her chair again: she waited in silence to hear. He +had pushed the things before him a little way and had his elbows +on the table. This time, she was convinced, she knew what was +coming, and once more, for the crash, as with Mrs. Wix lately in +her room, she held her breath and drew together her eyelids. He +was going to say she must give him up. He looked hard at her +again; then he made his effort. "Should you see your way to let +her go?" + +She was bewildered. "To let who--?" + +"Mrs. Wix simply. I put it at the worst. Should you see your way +to sacrifice her? Of course I know what I'm asking." + +Maisie's eyes opened wide again; this was so different from what +she had expected. "And stay with you alone?" + +He gave another push to his coffee-cup. "With me and Mrs. Beale. +Of course it would be rather rum; but everything in our whole +story is rather rum, you know. What's more unusual than for any +one to be given up, like you, by her parents?" + +"Oh nothing is more unusual than THAT!" Maisie concurred, +relieved at the contact of a proposition as to which concurrence +could have lucidity. + +"Of course it would be quite unconventional," Sir Claude went on +--"I mean the little household we three should make together; but +things have got beyond that, don't you see? They got beyond that +long ago. We shall stay abroad at any rate--it's ever so much +easier and it's our affair and nobody else's: it's no one's +business but ours on all the blessed earth. I don't say that for +Mrs. Wix, poor dear--I do her absolute justice. I respect her; I +see what she means; she has done me a lot of good. But there are +the facts. There they are, simply. And here am I, and here are +you. And she won't come round. She's right from her point of +view. I'm talking to you in the most extraordinary way--I'm +always talking to you in the most extraordinary way, ain't I? +One would think you were about sixty and that I--I don't know +what any one would think _I_ am. Unless a beastly cad!" he +suggested. "I've been awfully worried, and this's what it has +come to. You've done us the most tremendous good, and you'll do +it still and always, don't you see? We can't let you go--you're +everything. There are the facts as I say. She IS your mother now, +Mrs. Beale, by what has happened, and I, in the same way, I'm +your father. No one can contradict that, and we can't get out of +it. My idea would be a nice little place--somewhere in the South +--where she and you would be together and as good as any one +else. And I should be as good too, don't you see? for I shouldn't +live with you, but I should be close to you--just round the +corner, and it would be just the same. My idea would be that it +should all be perfectly open and frank. Honi soit qui mal y +pense, don't you know? You're the best thing--you and what we +can do for you--that either of us has ever known," he came back +to that. "When I say to her 'Give her up, come,' she lets me have +it bang in the face: 'Give her up yourself!' It's the same old +vicious circle--and when I say vicious I don't mean a pun, a +what-d'-ye-call-'em. Mrs. Wix is the obstacle; I mean, you know, +if she has affected you. She has affected ME, and yet here I am. +I never was in such a tight place: please believe it's only that +that makes me put it to you as I do. My dear child, isn't that-- +to put it so--just the way out of it? That came to me yesterday, +in London, after Mrs. Beale had gone: I had the most infernal +atrocious day. 'Go straight over and put it to her: let her +choose, freely, her own self.' So I do, old girl--I put it to +you. CAN you choose freely?" + +This long address, slowly and brokenly uttered, with fidgets and +falterings, with lapses and recoveries, with a mottled face and +embarrassed but supplicating eyes, reached the child from a +quarter so close that after the shock of the first sharpness she +could see intensely its direction and follow it from point to +point; all the more that it came back to the point at which it +had started. There was a word that had hummed all through it. +"Do you call it a 'sacrifice'?" + +"Of Mrs. Wix? I'll call it whatever you call it. I won't funk it +--I haven't, have I? I'll face it in all its baseness. Does it +strike you it IS base for me to get you well away from her, to +smuggle you off here into a corner and bribe you with sophistries +and buttered rolls to betray her?" + +"To betray her?" + +"Well--to part with her." + +Maisie let the question wait; the concrete image it presented was +the most vivid side of it. "If I part with her where will she +go?" + +"Back to London." + +"But I mean what will she do?" + +"Oh as for that I won't pretend I know. I don't. We all have our +difficulties." + +That, to Maisie, was at this moment more striking than it had +ever been. "Then who'll teach me?" + +Sir Claude laughed out. "What Mrs. Wix teaches?" + +She smiled dimly; she saw what he meant. "It isn't so very very +much." + +"It's so very very little," he returned, "that that's a thing +we've positively to consider. We probably shouldn't give you +another governess. To begin with we shouldn't be able to get one +--not of the only kind that would do. It wouldn't do--the kind +that WOULD do," he queerly enough explained. "I mean they +wouldn't stay--heigh-ho! We'd do you ourselves. Particularly me. +You see I CAN now; I haven't got to mind--what I used to. I won't +fight shy as I did--she can show out WITH me. Our relation, all +round, is more regular." + +It seemed wonderfully regular, the way he put it; yet none the +less, while she looked at it as judiciously as she could, the +picture it made persisted somehow in being a combination quite +distinct--an old woman and a little girl seated in deep silence +on a battered old bench by the rampart of the haute ville. It was +just at that hour yesterday; they were hand in hand; they had +melted together. "I don't think you yet understand how she clings +to you," Maisie said at last. + +"I do--I do. But for all that--" And he gave, turning in his +conscious exposure, an oppressed impatient sigh; the sigh, even +his companion could recognise, of the man naturally accustomed to +that argument, the man who wanted thoroughly to be reasonable, +but who, if really he had to mind so many things, would be always +impossibly hampered. What it came to indeed was that he +understood quite perfectly. If Mrs. Wix clung it was all the more +reason for shaking Mrs. Wix off. + +This vision of what she had brought him to occupied our young +lady while, to ask what he owed, he called the waiter and put +down a gold piece that the man carried off for change. Sir Claude +looked after him, then went on: "How could a woman have less to +reproach a fellow with? I mean as regards herself." + +Maisie entertained the question. "Yes. How COULD she have less? +So why are you so sure she'll go?" + +"Surely you heard why--you heard her come out three nights ago? +How can she do anything but go--after what she then said? I've +done what she warned me of--she was absolutely right. So here we +are. Her liking Mrs. Beale, as you call it now, is a motive +sufficient, with other things, to make her, for your sake, stay +on without me; it's not a motive sufficient to make her, even for +yours, stay on WITH me--swallow, don't you see? what she can't +swallow. And when you say she's as fond of me as you are I think +I can, if that's the case, challenge you a little on it. Would +YOU, only with those two, stay on without me?" + +The waiter came back with the change, and that gave her, under +this appeal, a moment's respite. But when he had retreated again +with the "tip" gathered in with graceful thanks on a subtle hint +from Sir Claude's forefinger, the latter, while pocketing the +money, followed the appeal up. "Would you let her make you live +with Mrs. Beale?" + +"Without you? Never," Maisie then answered. "Never," she said +again. + +It made him quite triumph, and she was indeed herself shaken by +the mere sound of it. "So you see you're not, like her," he +exclaimed, "so ready to give me away!" Then he came back to his +original question. "CAN you choose? I mean can you settle it by a +word yourself? Will you stay on with us without her?" Now in +truth she felt the coldness of her terror, and it seemed to her +that suddenly she knew, as she knew it about Sir Claude, what she +was afraid of. She was afraid of herself. She looked at him in +such a way that it brought, she could see, wonder into his face, +a wonder held in check, however, by his frank pretension to play +fair with her, not to use advantages, not to hurry nor hustle her +--only to put her chance clearly and kindly before her. "May I +think?" she finally asked. + +"Certainly, certainly. But how long?" + +"Oh only a little while," she said meekly. He had for a moment +the air of wishing to look at it as if it were the most cheerful +prospect in the world. "But what shall we do while you're +thinking?" He spoke as if thought were compatible with almost any +distraction. + +There was but one thing Maisie wished to do, and after an instant +she expressed it. "Have we got to go back to the hotel?" + +"Do you want to?" + +"Oh no." + +"There's not the least necessity for it." He bent his eyes on his +watch; his face was now very grave. "We can do anything else in +the world." He looked at her again almost as if he were on the +point of saying that they might for instance start off for Paris. +But even while she wondered if that were not coming he had a +sudden drop. "We can take a walk." + +She was all ready, but he sat there as if he had still something +more to say. This too, however, didn't come; so she herself +spoke. "I think I should like to see Mrs. Wix first." + +"Before you decide? All right--all right." He had put on his hat, +but he had still to light a cigarette. He smoked a minute, with +his head thrown back, looking at the ceiling; then he said: +"There's one thing to remember--I've a right to impress it on +you: we stand absolutely in the place of your parents. It's their +defection, their extraordinary baseness, that has made our +responsibility. Never was a young person more directly committed +and confided." He appeared to say this over, at the ceiling, +through his smoke, a little for his own illumination. It carried +him after a pause somewhat further. "Though I admit it was to +each of us separately." + +He gave her so at that moment and in that attitude the sense of +wanting, as it were, to be on her side--on the side of what would +be in every way most right and wise and charming for her--that +she felt a sudden desire to prove herself not less delicate and +magnanimous, not less solicitous for his own interests. What were +these but that of the "regularity" he had just before spoken of? +"It WAS to each of you separately," she accordingly with much +earnestness remarked. "But don't you remember? I brought you +together." + +He jumped up with a delighted laugh. "Remember? Rather! You +brought us together, you brought us together. Come!" + + + +XXXI + +She remained out with him for a time of which she could take no +measure save that it was too short for what she wished to make of +it--an interval, a barrier indefinite, insurmountable. They +walked about, they dawdled, they looked in shop-windows; they did +all the old things exactly as if to try to get back all the old +safety, to get something out of them that they had always got +before. This had come before, whatever it was, without their +trying, and nothing came now but the intenser consciousness of +their quest and their subterfuge. The strangest thing of all was +what had really happened to the old safety. What had really +happened was that Sir Claude was "free" and that Mrs. Beale was +"free," and yet that the new medium was somehow still more +oppressive than the old. She could feel that Sir Claude concurred +with her in the sense that the oppression would be worst at the +inn, where, till something should be settled, they would feel the +want of something--of what could they call it but a footing? The +question of the settlement loomed larger to her now: it depended, +she had learned, so completely on herself. Her choice, as her +friend had called it, was there before her like an impossible sum +on a slate, a sum that in spite of her plea for consideration she +simply got off from doing while she walked about with him. She +must see Mrs. Wix before she could do her sum; therefore the +longer before she saw her the more distant would be the ordeal. +She met at present no demand whatever of her obligation; she +simply plunged, to avoid it, deeper into the company of Sir +Claude. She saw nothing that she had seen hitherto--no touch in +the foreign picture that had at first been always before her. +The only touch was that of Sir Claude's hand, and to feel her own +in it was her mute resistance to time. She went about as +sightlessly as if he had been leading her blindfold. If they were +afraid of themselves it was themselves they would find at the +inn. She was certain now that what awaited them there would be to +lunch with Mrs. Beale. All her instinct was to avoid that, to +draw out their walk, to find pretexts, to take him down upon the +beach, to take him to the end of the pier. He said no other word +to her about what they had talked of at breakfast, and she had a +dim vision of how his way of not letting her see him definitely +wait for anything from her would make any one who should know of +it, would make Mrs. Wix for instance, think him more than ever a +gentleman. It was true that once or twice, on the jetty, on the +sands, he looked at her for a minute with eyes that seemed to +propose to her to come straight off with him to Paris. That, +however, was not to give her a nudge about her responsibility. +He evidently wanted to procrastinate quite as much as she did; he +was not a bit more in a hurry to get back to the others. Maisie +herself at this moment could be secretly merciless to Mrs. Wix-- +to the extent at any rate of not caring if her continued +disappearance did make that lady begin to worry about what had +become of her, even begin to wonder perhaps if the truants hadn't +found their remedy. Her want of mercy to Mrs. Beale indeed was at +least as great; for Mrs. Beale's worry and wonder would be as +much greater as the object at which they were directed. When at +last Sir Claude, at the far end of the plage, which they had +already, in the many-coloured crowd, once traversed, suddenly, +with a look at his watch, remarked that it was time, not to get +back to the table d'hote, but to get over to the station and meet +the Paris papers--when he did this she found herself thinking +quite with intensity what Mrs. Beale and Mrs. Wix WOULD say. On +the way over to the station she had even a mental picture of the +stepfather and the pupil established in a little place in the +South while the governess and the stepmother, in a little place +in the North, remained linked by a community of blankness and by +the endless series of remarks it would give birth to. The Paris +papers had come in and her companion, with a strange extravagance, +purchased no fewer than eleven: it took up time while they +hovered at the bookstall on the restless platform, where the +little volumes in a row were all yellow and pink and one of her +favourite old women in one of her favourite old caps absolutely +wheedled him into the purchase of three. They had thus so much +to carry home that it would have seemed simpler, with such a +provision for a nice straight journey through France, just to +"nip," as she phrased it to herself, into the coupe of the train +that, a little further along, stood waiting to start. She asked +Sir Claude where it was going. + +"To Paris. Fancy!" + +She could fancy well enough. They stood there and smiled, he with +all the newspapers under his arm and she with the three books, +one yellow and two pink. He had told her the pink were for +herself and the yellow one for Mrs. Beale, implying in an +interesting way that these were the natural divisions in France +of literature for the young and for the old. She knew how +prepared they looked to pass into the train, and she presently +brought out to her companion: "I wish we could go. Won't you take +me?" + +He continued to smile. "Would you really come?" + +"Oh yes, oh yes. Try." + +"Do you want me to take our tickets?" + +"Yes, take them." + +"Without any luggage?" + +She showed their two armfuls, smiling at him as he smiled at her, +but so conscious of being more frightened than she had ever been +in her life that she seemed to see her whiteness as in a glass. +Then she knew that what she saw was Sir Claude's whiteness: he +was as frightened as herself. "Haven't we got plenty of luggage?" +she asked. "Take the tickets--haven't you time? When does the +train go?" + +Sir Claude turned to a porter. "When does the train go?" + +The man looked up at the station-clock. "In two minutes. Monsieur +est place?" + +"Pas encore." + +"Et vos billets?--vous n'avez que le temps." Then after a look at +Maisie, "Monsieur veut-il que je les prenne?" the man said. + +Sir Claude turned back to her. "Veux-tu lieu quil en prenne?" + +It was the most extraordinary thing in the world: in the +intensity of her excitement she not only by illumination +understood all their French, but fell into it with an active +perfection. She addressed herself straight to the porter. + +"Prenny, prenny. Oh prenny!" + +"Ah si mademoiselle le veut--!" He waited there for the money. + +But Sir Claude only stared--stared at her with his white face. +"You have chosen then? You'll let her go?" + +Maisie carried her eyes wistfully to the train, where, amid cries +of "En voiture, en voiture!" heads were at windows and doors +banging loud. The porter was pressing. "Ah vous n'avez plus le +temps!" + +"It's going--it's going!" cried Maisie. + +They watched it move, they watched it start; then the man went +his way with a shrug. "It's gone!" Sir Claude said. + +Maisie crept some distance up the platform; she stood there with +her back to her companion, following it with her eyes, keeping +down tears, nursing her pink and yellow books. She had had a real +fright but had fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in +her fall her fear too had been dashed down and broken. It was +gone. She looked round at last, from where she had paused, at Sir +Claude's, and then saw that his wasn't. It sat there with him on +the bench to which, against the wall of the station, he had +retreated, and where, leaning back and, as she thought, rather +queer, he still waited. She came down to him and he continued to +offer his ineffectual intention of pleasantry. "Yes, I've +chosen," she said to him. "I'll let her go if you--if you--" + +She faltered; he quickly took her up. "If I, if I--" + +"If you'll give up Mrs. Beale." + +"Oh!" he exclaimed; on which she saw how much, how hopelessly he +was afraid. She had supposed at the cafe that it was of his +rebellion, of his gathering motive; but how could that be when +his temptations--that temptation for example of the train they +had just lost--were after all so slight? Mrs. Wix was right. He +was afraid of his weakness--of his weakness. + +She couldn't have told you afterwards how they got back to the +inn: she could only have told you that even from this point they +had not gone straight, but once more had wandered and loitered +and, in the course of it, had found themselves on the edge of the +quay where--still apparently with half an hour to spare--the boat +prepared for Folkestone was drawn up. Here they hovered as they +had done at the station; here they exchanged silences again, but +only exchanged silences. There were punctual people on the deck, +choosing places, taking the best; some of them already contented, +all established and shawled, facing to England and attended by +the steward, who, confined on such a day to the lighter offices, +tucked up the ladies' feet or opened bottles with a pop. They +looked down at these things without a word; they even picked out +a good place for two that was left in the lee of a lifeboat; and +if they lingered rather stupidly, neither deciding to go aboard +nor deciding to come away, it was Sir Claude quite as much as she +who wouldn't move. It was Sir Claude who cultivated the supreme +stillness by which she knew best what he meant. He simply meant +that he knew all she herself meant. But there was no pretence of +pleasantry now: their faces were grave and tired. When at last +they lounged off it was as if his fear, his fear of his weakness, +leaned upon her heavily as they followed the harbour. In the hall +of the hotel as they passed in she saw a battered old box that +she recognised, an ancient receptacle with dangling labels that +she knew and a big painted W, lately done over and intensely +personal, that seemed to stare at her with a recognition and even +with some suspicion of its own. Sir Claude caught it too, and +there was agitation for both of them in the sight of this object +on the move. Was Mrs. Wix going and was the responsibility of +giving her up lifted, at a touch, from her pupil? Her pupil and +her pupil's companion, transfixed a moment, held, in the presence +of the omen, communication more intense than in the presence +either of the Paris train or of the Channel steamer; then, and +still without a word, they went straight upstairs. There, +however, on the landing, out of sight of the people below, they +collapsed so that they had to sink down together for support: +they simply seated themselves on the uppermost step while Sir +Claude grasped the hand of his stepdaughter with a pressure that +at another moment would probably have made her squeal. Their +books and papers were all scattered. "She thinks you've given her +up!" + +"Then I must see her--I must see her," Maisie said. + +"To bid her good-bye?" + +"I must see her--I must see her," the child only repeated. +They sat a minute longer, Sir Claude, with his tight grip of her +hand and looking away from her, looking straight down the +staircase to where, round the turn, electric bells rattled and +the pleasant sea-draught blew. At last, loosening his grasp, he +slowly got up while she did the same. They went together along +the lobby, but before they reached the salon he stopped again. +"If I give up Mrs. Beale--?" + +"I'll go straight out with you again and not come back till she +has gone." + +He seemed to wonder. "Till Mrs. Beale--?" he had made it sound +like a bad joke. + +"I mean till Mrs. Wix leaves--in that boat." + +Sir Claude looked almost foolish. "Is she going in that boat?" + +"I suppose so. I won't even bid her good-bye," Maisie continued. + +"I'll stay out till the boat has gone. I'll go up to the old +rampart." + +"The old rampart?" + +"I'll sit on that old bench where you see the gold Virgin." + +"The gold Virgin?" he vaguely echoed. But it brought his eyes +back to her as if after an instant he could see the place and the +thing she named--could see her sitting there alone. "While I +break with Mrs. Beale?" + +"While you break with Mrs. Beale." + +He gave a long deep smothered sigh. "I must see her first." + +"You won't do as I do? Go out and wait?" + +"Wait?"--once more he appeared at a loss. + +"Till they both have gone," Maisie said. + +"Giving US up?" + +"Giving US up." + +Oh with what a face for an instant he wondered if that could be! +But his wonder the next moment only made him go to the door and, +with his hand on the knob, stand as if listening for voices. +Maisie listened, but she heard none. All she heard presently was +Sir Claude's saying with speculation quite choked off, but so as +not to be heard in the salon: "Mrs. Beale will never go." On this +he pushed open the door and she went in with him. The salon was +empty, but as an effect of their entrance the lady he had just +mentioned appeared at the door of the bedroom. "Is she going?" he +then demanded. + +Mrs. Beale came forward, closing her door behind her. "I've had +the most extraordinary scene with her. She told me yesterday +she'd stay." + +"And my arrival has altered it?" + +"Oh we took that into account!" Mrs. Beale was flushed, which was +never quite becoming to her, and her face visibly testified to +the encounter to which she alluded. Evidently, however, she had +not been worsted, and she held up her head and smiled and rubbed +her hands as if in sudden emulation of the patronne. "She +promised she'd stay even if you should come." + +"Then why has she changed?" + +"Because she's a hound. The reason she herself gives is that +you've been out too long." + +Sir Claude stared. "What has that to do with it?" + +"You've been out an age," Mrs. Beale continued; "I myself +couldn't imagine what had become of you. The whole morning," she +exclaimed, "and luncheon long since over!" + +Sir Claude appeared indifferent to that. "Did Mrs. Wix go down +with you?" he only asked. + +"Not she; she never budged!"--and Mrs. Beale's flush, to Maisie's +vision, deepened. "She moped there--she didn't so much as come +out to me; and when I sent to invite her she simply declined to +appear. She said she wanted nothing, and I went down alone. But +when I came up, fortunately a little primed"--and Mrs. Beale +smiled a fine smile of battle--"she WAS in the field!" + +"And you had a big row?" + +"We had a big row"--she assented with a frankness as large. "And +while you left me to that sort of thing I should like to know +where you were!" She paused for a reply, but Sir Claude merely +looked at Maisie; a movement that promptly quickened her +challenge. "Where the mischief have you been?" + +"You seem to take it as hard as Mrs. Wix," Sir Claude returned. + +"I take it as I choose to take it, and you don't answer my +question." + +He looked again at Maisie--as if for an aid to this effort; +whereupon she smiled at her stepmother and offered: "We've been +everywhere." + +Mrs. Beale, however, made her no response, thereby adding to a +surprise of which our young lady had already felt the light +brush. She had received neither a greeting nor a glance, but +perhaps this was not more remarkable than the omission, in +respect to Sir Claude, parted with in London two days before, of +any sign of a sense of their reunion. Most remarkable of all was +Mrs. Beale's announcement of the pledge given by Mrs. Wix and not +hitherto revealed to her pupil. Instead of heeding this witness +she went on with acerbity: "It might surely have occurred to you +that something would come up." + +Sir Claude looked at his watch. "I had no idea it was so late, +nor that we had been out so long. We weren't hungry. It passed +like a flash. What HAS come up?" + +"Oh that she's disgusted," said Mrs. Beale. + +"With whom then?" + +"With Maisie." Even now she never looked at the child, who stood +there equally associated and disconnected. "For having no moral +sense." + +"How SHOULD she have?" Sir Claude tried again to shine a little +at the companion of his walk. "How at any rate is it proved by +her going out with me?" + +"Don't ask ME; ask that woman. She drivels when she doesn't +rage," Mrs. Beale declared. + +"And she leaves the child?" + +"She leaves the child," said Mrs. Beale with great emphasis and +looking more than ever over Maisie's head. + +In this position suddenly a change came into her face, caused, as +the others could the next thing see, by the reappearance of Mrs. +Wix in the doorway which, on coming in at Sir Claude's heels, +Maisie had left gaping. "I DON'T leave the child--I don't, I +don't!" she thundered from the threshold, advancing upon the +opposed three but addressing herself directly to Maisie. She was +girded--positively harnessed--for departure, arrayed as she had +been arrayed on her advent and armed with a small fat rusty +reticule which, almost in the manner of a battle-axe, she +brandished in support of her words. She had clearly come straight +from her room, where Maisie in an instant guessed she had +directed the removal of her minor effects. "I don't leave you +till I've given you another chance. Will you come WITH me?" + +Maisie turned to Sir Claude, who struck her as having been +removed to a distance of about a mile. To Mrs. Beale she turned +no more than Mrs. Beale had turned: she felt as if already their +difference had been disclosed. What had come out about that in +the scene between the two women? Enough came out now, at all +events, as she put it practically to her stepfather. "Will YOU +come? Won't you?" she enquired as if she had not already seen +that she should have to give him up. It was the last flare of her +dream. By this time she was afraid of nothing. + +"I should think you'd be too proud to ask!" Mrs. Wix interposed. +Mrs. Wix was herself conspicuously too proud. + +But at the child's words Mrs. Beale had fairly bounded. "Come +away from ME, Maisie?" It was a wail of dismay and reproach, in +which her stepdaughter was astonished to read that she had had no +hostile consciousness and that if she had been so actively grand +it was not from suspicion, but from strange entanglements of +modesty. + +Sir Claude presented to Mrs. Beale an expression positively sick. +"Don't put it to her THAT way!" There had indeed been something +in Mrs. Beale's tone, and for a moment our young lady was +reminded of the old days in which so many of her friends had been +"compromised." + +This friend blushed; she was before Mrs. Wix, and though she +bridled she took the hint. "No--it isn't the way." Then she +showed she knew the way. "Don't be a still bigger fool, dear, but +go straight to your room and wait there till I can come to you." + +Maisie made no motion to obey, but Mrs. Wix raised a hand that +forestalled every evasion. "Don't move till you've heard me. I'M +going, but I must first understand. Have you lost it again?" + +Maisie surveyed--for the idea of a describable loss--the +immensity of space. Then she replied lamely enough: "I feel as if +I had lost everything." + +Mrs. Wix looked dark. "Do you mean to say you HAVE lost what we +found together with so much difficulty two days ago?" As her +pupil failed of response she continued: "Do you mean to say +you've already forgotten what we found together?" + +Maisie dimly remembered. "My moral sense?" + +"Your moral sense. HAVEN'T I, after all, brought it out?" She +spoke as she had never spoken even in the schoolroom and with the +book in her hand. + +It brought back to the child's recollection how she sometimes +couldn't repeat on Friday the sentence that had been glib on +Wednesday, and she dealt all feebly and ruefully with the present +tough passage. Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale stood there like +visitors at an "exam." She had indeed an instant a whiff of the +faint flower that Mrs. Wix pretended to have plucked and now with +such a peremptory hand thrust at her nose. Then it left her, and, +as if she were sinking with a slip from a foothold, her arms made +a short jerk. What this jerk represented was the spasm within her +of something still deeper than a moral sense. She looked at her +examiner; she looked at the visitors; she felt the rising of the +tears she had kept down at the station. They had nothing--no, +distinctly nothing--to do with her moral sense. The only thing +was the old flat shameful schoolroom plea. "I don't know--I don't +know." + +"Then you've lost it." Mrs. Wix seemed to close the book as she +fixed the straighteners on Sir Claude. "You've nipped it in the +bud. You've killed it when it had begun to live." + +She was a newer Mrs. Wix than ever, a Mrs. Wix high and great; +but Sir Claude was not after all to be treated as a little boy +with a missed lesson. "I've not killed anything," he said; "on +the contrary I think I've produced life. I don't know what to +call it--I haven't even known how decently to deal with it, to +approach it; but, whatever it is, it's the most beautiful thing +I've ever met--it's exquisite, it's sacred." He had his hands in +his pockets and, though a trace of the sickness he had just shown +perhaps lingered there, his face bent itself with extraordinary +gentleness on both the friends he was about to lose. "Do you know +what I came back for?" he asked of the elder. + +"I think I do!" cried Mrs. Wix, surprisingly un-mollified and +with the heat of her late engagement with Mrs. Beale still on her +brow. That lady, as if a little besprinkled by such turns of the +tide, uttered a loud inarticulate protest and, averting herself, +stood a moment at the window. + +"I came back with a proposal," said Sir Claude. + +"To me?" Mrs. Wix asked. + +"To Maisie. That she should give you up." + +"And does she?" + +Sir Claude wavered. "Tell her!" he then exclaimed to the child, +also turning away as if to give her the chance. But Mrs. Wix and +her pupil stood confronted in silence, Maisie whiter than ever-- +more awkward, more rigid and yet more dumb. They looked at each +other hard, and as nothing came from them Sir Claude faced about +again. "You won't tell her?--you can't?" Still she said nothing; +whereupon, addressing Mrs. Wix, he broke into a kind of ecstasy. +"She refused--she refused!" + +Maisie, at this, found her voice. "I didn't refuse. I didn't," +she repeated. + +It brought Mrs. Beale straight back to her. "You accepted, angel +--you accepted!" She threw herself upon the child and, before +Maisie could resist, had sunk with her upon the sofa, possessed +of her, encircling her. "You've given her up already, you've +given her up for ever, and you're ours and ours only now, and the +sooner she's off the better!" + +Maisie had shut her eyes, but at a word of Sir Claude's they +opened. "Let her go!" he said to Mrs. Beale. + +"Never, never, never!" cried Mrs. Beale. Maisie felt herself more +compressed. + +"Let her go!" Sir Claude more intensely repeated. He was looking +at Mrs. Beale and there was something in his voice. Maisie knew +from a loosening of arms that she had become conscious of what it +was; she slowly rose from the sofa, and the child stood there +again dropped and divided. "You're free--you're free," Sir Claude +went on; at which Maisie's back became aware of a push that +vented resentment and that placed her again in the centre of the +room, the cynosure of every eye and not knowing which way to +turn. + +She turned with an effort to Mrs. Wix. "I didn't refuse to give +you up. I said I would if HE'D give up--" + +"Give up Mrs. Beale?" burst from Mrs. Wix. + +"Give up Mrs. Beale. What do you call that but exquisite?" Sir +Claude demanded of all of them, the lady mentioned included; +speaking with a relish as intense now as if some lovely work of +art or of nature had suddenly been set down among them. He was +rapidly recovering himself on this basis of fine appreciation. +"She made her condition--with such a sense of what it should be! +She made the only right one." + +"The only right one?"--Mrs. Beale returned to the charge. She had +taken a moment before a snub from him, but she was not to be +snubbed on this. "How can you talk such rubbish and how can you +back her up in such impertinence? What in the world have you done +to her to make her think of such stuff?" She stood there in +righteous wrath; she flashed her eyes round the circle. Maisie +took them full in her own, knowing that here at last was the +moment she had had most to reckon with. But as regards her +stepdaughter Mrs. Beale subdued herself to a question deeply +mild. "HAVE you made, my own love, any such condition as that?" + +Somehow, now that it was there, the great moment was not so bad. +What helped the child was that she knew what she wanted. All her +learning and learning had made her at last learn that; so that if +she waited an instant to reply it was only from the desire to be +nice. Bewilderment had simply gone or at any rate was going fast. +Finally she answered. "Will you give HIM up? Will you?" + +"Ah leave her alone--leave her, leave her!" Sir Claude in sudden +supplication murmured to Mrs. Beale. + +Mrs. Wix at the same instant found another apostrophe. "Isn't it +enough for you, madam, to have brought her to discussing your +relations?" + +Mrs. Beale left Sir Claude unheeded, but Mrs. Wix could make her +flame. "My relations? What do you know, you hideous creature, +about my relations, and what business on earth have you to speak +of them? Leave the room this instant, you horrible old woman!" + +"I think you had better go--you must really catch your boat," Sir +Claude said distressfully to Mrs. Wix. He was out of it now, or +wanted to be; he knew the worst and had accepted it: what now +concerned him was to prevent, to dissipate vulgarities. "Won't +you go--won't you just get off quickly?" + +"With the child as quickly as you like. Not without her." Mrs. +Wix was adamant. + +"Then why did you lie to me, you fiend?" Mrs. Beale almost +yelled. "Why did you tell me an hour ago that you had given her +up?" + +"Because I despaired of her--because I thought she had left me." +Mrs. Wix turned to Maisie. "You were WITH them--in their +connexion. But now your eyes are open, and I take you!" + +"No you don't!" and Mrs. Beale made, with a great fierce jump, a +wild snatch at her stepdaughter. She caught her by the arm and, +completing an instinctive movement, whirled her round in a +further leap to the door, which had been closed by Sir Claude the +instant their voices had risen. She fell back against it and, +even while denouncing and waving off Mrs. Wix, kept it closed in +an incoherence of passion. "You don't take her, but you bundle +yourself: she stays with her own people and she's rid of you! I +never heard anything so monstrous!" Sir Claude had rescued Maisie +and kept hold of her; he held her in front of him, resting his +hands very lightly on her shoulders and facing the loud adversaries. +Mrs. Beale's flush had dropped; she had turned pale with a splendid +wrath. She kept protesting and dismissing Mrs. Wix; she glued her +back to the door to prevent Maisie's flight; she drove out Mrs. Wix +by the window or the chimney. "You're a nice one--'discussing +relations'--with your talk of our 'connexion' and your insults! +What in the world's our connexion but the love of the child who's +our duty and our life and who holds us together as closely as she +originally brought us?" + +"I know, I know!" Maisie said with a burst of eagerness. "I did +bring you." + +The strangest of laughs escaped from Sir Claude. "You did bring +us--you did!" His hands went up and down gently on her shoulders. + +Mrs. Wix so dominated the situation that she had something sharp +for every one. "There you have it, you see!" she pregnantly +remarked to her pupil. + +"WILL you give him up?" Maisie persisted to Mrs. Beale. + +"To YOU, you abominable little horror?" that lady indignantly +enquired, "and to this raving old demon who has filled your +dreadful little mind with her wickedness? Have you been a hideous +little hypocrite all these years that I've slaved to make you +love me and deludedly believed you did?" + +"I love Sir Claude--I love HIM," Maisie replied with an awkward +sense that she appeared to offer it as something that would do as +well. Sir Claude had continued to pat her, and it was really an +answer to his pats. + +"She hates you--she hates you," he observed with the oddest +quietness to Mrs. Beale. + +His quietness made her blaze. "And you back her up in it and give +me up to outrage?" + +"No; I only insist that she's free--she's free." + +Mrs. Beale stared--Mrs. Beale glared. "Free to starve with this +pauper lunatic?" + +"I'll do more for her than you ever did!" Mrs. Wix retorted. +"I'll work my fingers to the bone." + +Maisie, with Sir Claude's hands still on her shoulders, felt, +just as she felt the fine surrender in them, that over her head +he looked in a certain way at Mrs. Wix. "You needn't do that," +she heard him say. "She has means." + +"Means?--Maisie?" Mrs. Beale shrieked. "Means that her vile +father has stolen!" + +"I'll get them back--I'll get them back. I'll look into it." He +smiled and nodded at Mrs. Wix. + +This had a fearful effect on his other friend. "Haven't I looked +into it, I should like to know, and haven't I found an abyss? +It's too inconceivable--your cruelty to me!" she wildly broke +out. She had hot tears in her eyes. + +He spoke to her very kindly, almost coaxingly. "We'll look into +it again; we'll look into it together. It IS an abyss, but he CAN +be made--or Ida can. Think of the money they're getting now!" he +laughed. "It's all right, it's all right," he continued. "It +wouldn't do--it wouldn't do. We CAN'T work her in. It's perfectly +true--she's unique. We're not good enough--oh no!" and, quite +exuberantly, he laughed again. + +"Not good enough, and that beast IS?" Mrs. Beale shouted. + +At this for a moment there was a hush in the room, and in the +midst of it Sir Claude replied to the question by moving with +Maisie to Mrs. Wix. The next thing the child knew she was at that +lady's side with an arm firmly grasped. Mrs. Beale still guarded +the door. "Let them pass," said Sir Claude at last. + +She remained there, however; Maisie saw the pair look at each +other. Then she saw Mrs. Beale turn to her. "I'm your mother now, +Maisie. And he's your father." + +"That's just where it is!" sighed Mrs. Wix with an effect of +irony positively detached and philosophic. + +Mrs. Beale continued to address her young friend, and her effort +to be reasonable and tender was in its way remarkable. "We're +representative, you know, of Mr. Farange and his former wife. +This person represents mere illiterate presumption. We take our +stand on the law." + +"Oh the law, the law!" Mrs. Wix superbly jeered. "You had better +indeed let the law have a look at you!" + +"Let them pass--let them pass!" Sir Claude pressed his friend +hard--he pleaded. + +But she fastened herself still to Maisie. "DO you hate me, +dearest?" + +Maisie looked at her with new eyes, but answered as she had +answered before. "Will you give him up?" + +Mrs. Beale's rejoinder hung fire, but when it came it was noble. +"You shouldn't talk to me of such things!" She was shocked, she +was scandalised to tears. + +For Mrs. Wix, however, it was her discrimination that was +indelicate. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she roundly +cried. + +Sir Claude made a supreme appeal. "Will you be so good as to +allow these horrors to terminate?" + +Mrs. Beale fixed her eyes on him, and again Maisie watched them. +"You should do him justice," Mrs. Wix went on to Mrs. Beale. +"We've always been devoted to him, Maisie and I--and he has shown +how much he likes us. He would like to please her; he would like +even, I think, to please me. But he hasn't given you up." + +They stood confronted, the step-parents, still under Maisie's +observation. That observation had never sunk so deep as at this +particular moment. "Yes, my dear, I haven't given you up," Sir +Claude said to Mrs. Beale at last, "and if you'd like me to treat +our friends here as solemn witnesses I don't mind giving you my +word for it that I never never will. There!" he dauntlessly +exclaimed. + +"He can't!" Mrs. Wix tragically commented. + +Mrs. Beale, erect and alive in her defeat, jerked her handsome +face about. "He can't!" she literally mocked. + +"He can't, he can't, he can't!"--Sir Claude's gay emphasis +wonderfully carried it off. + +Mrs. Beale took it all in, yet she held her ground; on which +Maisie addressed Mrs. Wix. "Shan't we lose the boat?" + +"Yes, we shall lose the boat," Mrs. Wix remarked to Sir Claude. + +Mrs. Beale meanwhile faced full at Maisie. "I don't know what to +make of you!" she launched. + +"Good-bye," said Maisie to Sir Claude. + +"Good-bye, Maisie," Sir Claude answered. + +Mrs. Beale came away from the door. "Goodbye!" she hurled at +Maisie; then passed straight across the room and disappeared in +the adjoining one. + +Sir Claude had reached the other door and opened it. Mrs. Wix was +already out. On the threshold Maisie paused; she put out her hand +to her stepfather. He took it and held it a moment, and their +eyes met as the eyes of those who have done for each other what +they can. "Good-bye," he repeated. + +"Good-bye." And Maisie followed Mrs. Wix. + +They caught the steamer, which was just putting off, and, hustled +across the gulf, found themselves on the deck so breathless and +so scared that they gave up half the voyage to letting their +emotion sink. It sank slowly and imperfectly; but at last, in +mid-channel, surrounded by the quiet sea, Mrs. Wix had courage to +revert. "I didn't look back, did you?" + +"Yes. He wasn't there," said Maisie. + +"Not on the balcony?" + +Maisie waited a moment; then "He wasn't there" she simply said +again. + +Mrs. Wix also was silent a while. "He went to HER," she finally +observed. + +"Oh I know!" the child replied. + +Mrs. Wix gave a sidelong look. She still had room for wonder at +what Maisie knew. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Maisie Knew, by Henry James + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT MAISIE KNEW *** + +This file should be named wmais10.txt or wmais10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, wmais11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, wmais10a.txt + +Etext created by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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