What Maisie Knew (8 page)

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.

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.