by Henry James
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.
14
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?”
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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 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.