What Maisie Knew (19 page)

"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.