What Maisie Knew (33 page)

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?"