by Henry James
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.
30
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?”