What Maisie Knew (36 page)

She was a newer Mrs. Wix than ever, a Mrs. Wix high and great; but Sir
Claude was not after all to be treated as a little boy with a missed
lesson. "I've not killed anything," he said; "on the contrary I think
I've produced life. I don't know what to call it—I haven't even known
how decently to deal with it, to approach it; but, whatever it is, it's
the most beautiful thing I've ever met—it's exquisite, it's sacred." He
had his hands in his pockets and, though a trace of the sickness he had
just shown perhaps lingered there, his face bent itself with
extraordinary gentleness on both the friends he was about to lose. "Do
you know what I came back for?" he asked of the elder.

"I think I do!" cried Mrs. Wix, surprisingly un-mollified and with the
heat of her late engagement with Mrs. Beale still on her brow. That
lady, as if a little besprinkled by such turns of the tide, uttered a
loud inarticulate protest and, averting herself, stood a moment at the
window.

"I came back with a proposal," said Sir Claude.

"To me?" Mrs. Wix asked.

"To Maisie. That she should give you up."

"And does she?"

Sir Claude wavered. "Tell her!" he then exclaimed to the child, also
turning away as if to give her the chance. But Mrs. Wix and her pupil
stood confronted in silence, Maisie whiter than ever—more awkward,
more rigid and yet more dumb. They looked at each other hard, and as
nothing came from them Sir Claude faced about again. "You won't tell
her?—you can't?" Still she said nothing; whereupon, addressing Mrs.
Wix, he broke into a kind of ecstasy. "She refused—she refused!"

Maisie, at this, found her voice. "I didn't refuse. I didn't," she
repeated.

It brought Mrs. Beale straight back to her. "You accepted, angel—you
accepted!" She threw herself upon the child and, before Maisie could
resist, had sunk with her upon the sofa, possessed of her, encircling
her. "You've given her up already, you've given her up for ever, and
you're ours and ours only now, and the sooner she's off the better!"

Maisie had shut her eyes, but at a word of Sir Claude's they opened.
"Let her go!" he said to Mrs. Beale.

"Never, never, never!" cried Mrs. Beale. Maisie felt herself more
compressed.

"Let her go!" Sir Claude more intensely repeated. He was looking at Mrs.
Beale and there was something in his voice. Maisie knew from a loosening
of arms that she had become conscious of what it was; she slowly rose
from the sofa, and the child stood there again dropped and divided.
"You're free—you're free," Sir Claude went on; at which Maisie's back
became aware of a push that vented resentment and that placed her again
in the centre of the room, the cynosure of every eye and not knowing
which way to turn.

She turned with an effort to Mrs. Wix. "I didn't refuse to give you up.
I said I would if HE'D give up—"

"Give up Mrs. Beale?" burst from Mrs. Wix.

"Give up Mrs. Beale. What do you call that but exquisite?" Sir Claude
demanded of all of them, the lady mentioned included; speaking with a
relish as intense now as if some lovely work of art or of nature had
suddenly been set down among them. He was rapidly recovering himself on
this basis of fine appreciation. "She made her condition—with such a
sense of what it should be! She made the only right one."

"The only right one?"—Mrs. Beale returned to the charge. She had taken
a moment before a snub from him, but she was not to be snubbed on this.
"How can you talk such rubbish and how can you back her up in such
impertinence? What in the world have you done to her to make her think
of such stuff?" She stood there in righteous wrath; she flashed her eyes
round the circle. Maisie took them full in her own, knowing that here at
last was the moment she had had most to reckon with. But as regards her
stepdaughter Mrs. Beale subdued herself to a question deeply mild. "HAVE
you made, my own love, any such condition as that?"

Somehow, now that it was there, the great moment was not so bad. What
helped the child was that she knew what she wanted. All her learning and
learning had made her at last learn that; so that if she waited an
instant to reply it was only from the desire to be nice. Bewilderment
had simply gone or at any rate was going fast. Finally she answered.
"Will you give HIM up? Will you?"

"Ah leave her alone—leave her, leave her!" Sir Claude in sudden
supplication murmured to Mrs. Beale.

Mrs. Wix at the same instant found another apostrophe. "Isn't it enough
for you, madam, to have brought her to discussing your relations?"

Mrs. Beale left Sir Claude unheeded, but Mrs. Wix could make her flame.
"My relations? What do you know, you hideous creature, about my
relations, and what business on earth have you to speak of them? Leave
the room this instant, you horrible old woman!"

"I think you had better go—you must really catch your boat," Sir Claude
said distressfully to Mrs. Wix. He was out of it now, or wanted to be;
he knew the worst and had accepted it: what now concerned him was to
prevent, to dissipate vulgarities. "Won't you go—won't you just get off
quickly?"

"With the child as quickly as you like. Not without her." Mrs. Wix was
adamant.

"Then why did you lie to me, you fiend?" Mrs. Beale almost yelled. "Why
did you tell me an hour ago that you had given her up?"

"Because I despaired of her—because I thought she had left me." Mrs.
Wix turned to Maisie. "You were WITH them—in their connexion. But now
your eyes are open, and I take you!"

"No you don't!" and Mrs. Beale made, with a great fierce jump, a wild
snatch at her stepdaughter. She caught her by the arm and, completing an
instinctive movement, whirled her round in a further leap to the door,
which had been closed by Sir Claude the instant their voices had risen.
She fell back against it and, even while denouncing and waving off Mrs.
Wix, kept it closed in an incoherence of passion. "You don't take her,
but you bundle yourself: she stays with her own people and she's rid of
you! I never heard anything so monstrous!" Sir Claude had rescued Maisie
and kept hold of her; he held her in front of him, resting his hands
very lightly on her shoulders and facing the loud adversaries. Mrs.
Beale's flush had dropped; she had turned pale with a splendid wrath.
She kept protesting and dismissing Mrs. Wix; she glued her back to the
door to prevent Maisie's flight; she drove out Mrs. Wix by the window or
the chimney. "You're a nice one—'discussing relations'—with your talk
of our 'connexion' and your insults! What in the world's our connexion
but the love of the child who's our duty and our life and who holds us
together as closely as she originally brought us?"

"I know, I know!" Maisie said with a burst of eagerness. "I did bring
you."

The strangest of laughs escaped from Sir Claude. "You did bring us—you
did!" His hands went up and down gently on her shoulders.

Mrs. Wix so dominated the situation that she had something sharp for
every one. "There you have it, you see!" she pregnantly remarked to her
pupil.

"WILL you give him up?" Maisie persisted to Mrs. Beale.

"To YOU, you abominable little horror?" that lady indignantly enquired,
"and to this raving old demon who has filled your dreadful little mind
with her wickedness? Have you been a hideous little hypocrite all these
years that I've slaved to make you love me and deludedly believed you
did?"

"I love Sir Claude—I love HIM," Maisie replied with an awkward sense
that she appeared to offer it as something that would do as well. Sir
Claude had continued to pat her, and it was really an answer to his
pats.

"She hates you—she hates you," he observed with the oddest quietness to
Mrs. Beale.

His quietness made her blaze. "And you back her up in it and give me up
to outrage?"

"No; I only insist that she's free—she's free."

Mrs. Beale stared—Mrs. Beale glared. "Free to starve with this pauper
lunatic?"

"I'll do more for her than YOU ever did!" Mrs. Wix retorted. "I'll work
my fingers to the bone."

Maisie, with Sir Claude's hands still on her shoulders, felt, just as
she felt the fine surrender in them, that over her head he looked in a
certain way at Mrs. Wix. "You needn't do that," she heard him say. "She
has means."

"Means?—Maisie?" Mrs. Beale shrieked. "Means that her vile father has
stolen!"

"I'll get them back—I'll get them back. I'll look into it." He smiled
and nodded at Mrs. Wix.

This had a fearful effect on his other friend. "Haven't I looked into
it, I should like to know, and haven't I found an abyss? It's too
inconceivable—your cruelty to me!" she wildly broke out. She had hot
tears in her eyes.

He spoke to her very kindly, almost coaxingly. "We'll look into it
again; we'll look into it together. It IS an abyss, but he CAN be
made—or Ida can. Think of the money they're getting now!" he laughed.
"It's all right, it's all right," he continued. "It wouldn't do—it
wouldn't do. We CAN'T work her in. It's perfectly true—she's unique.
We're not good enough—oh no!" and, quite exuberantly, he laughed again.

"Not good enough, and that beast IS?" Mrs. Beale shouted.

At this for a moment there was a hush in the room, and in the midst of
it Sir Claude replied to the question by moving with Maisie to Mrs. Wix.
The next thing the child knew she was at that lady's side with an arm
firmly grasped. Mrs. Beale still guarded the door. "Let them pass," said
Sir Claude at last.

She remained there, however; Maisie saw the pair look at each other.
Then she saw Mrs. Beale turn to her. "I'm your mother now, Maisie. And
he's your father."

"That's just where it is!" sighed Mrs. Wix with an effect of irony
positively detached and philosophic.

Mrs. Beale continued to address her young friend, and her effort to be
reasonable and tender was in its way remarkable. "We're representative,
you know, of Mr. Farange and his former wife. This person represents
mere illiterate presumption. We take our stand on the law."

"Oh the law, the law!" Mrs. Wix superbly jeered. "You had better indeed
let the law have a look at you!"

"Let them pass—let them pass!" Sir Claude pressed his friend hard—he
pleaded.

But she fastened herself still to Maisie. "DO you hate me, dearest?"

Maisie looked at her with new eyes, but answered as she had answered
before. "Will you give him up?"

Mrs. Beale's rejoinder hung fire, but when it came it was noble. "You
shouldn't talk to me of such things!" She was shocked, she was
scandalised to tears.

For Mrs. Wix, however, it was her discrimination that was indelicate.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she roundly cried.

Sir Claude made a supreme appeal. "Will you be so good as to allow these
horrors to terminate?"

Mrs. Beale fixed her eyes on him, and again Maisie watched them. "You
should do him justice," Mrs. Wix went on to Mrs. Beale. "We've always
been devoted to him, Maisie and I—and he has shown how much he likes
us. He would like to please her; he would like even, I think, to please
me. But he hasn't given you up."

They stood confronted, the step-parents, still under Maisie's
observation. That observation had never sunk so deep as at this
particular moment. "Yes, my dear, I haven't given you up," Sir Claude
said to Mrs. Beale at last, "and if you'd like me to treat our friends
here as solemn witnesses I don't mind giving you my word for it that I
never never will. There!" he dauntlessly exclaimed.

"He can't!" Mrs. Wix tragically commented.

Mrs. Beale, erect and alive in her defeat, jerked her handsome face
about. "He can't!" she literally mocked.

"He can't, he can't, he can't!"—Sir Claude's gay emphasis wonderfully
carried it off.

Mrs. Beale took it all in, yet she held her ground; on which Maisie
addressed Mrs. Wix. "Shan't we lose the boat?"

"Yes, we shall lose the boat," Mrs. Wix remarked to Sir Claude.

Mrs. Beale meanwhile faced full at Maisie. "I don't know what to make of
you!" she launched.

"Good-bye," said Maisie to Sir Claude.

"Good-bye, Maisie," Sir Claude answered.

Mrs. Beale came away from the door. "Goodbye!" she hurled at Maisie;
then passed straight across the room and disappeared in the adjoining
one.

Sir Claude had reached the other door and opened it. Mrs. Wix was
already out. On the threshold Maisie paused; she put out her hand to her
stepfather. He took it and held it a moment, and their eyes met as the
eyes of those who have done for each other what they can. "Good-bye," he
repeated.

"Good-bye." And Maisie followed Mrs. Wix.

They caught the steamer, which was just putting off, and, hustled across
the gulf, found themselves on the deck so breathless and so scared that
they gave up half the voyage to letting their emotion sink. It sank
slowly and imperfectly; but at last, in mid-channel, surrounded by the
quiet sea, Mrs. Wix had courage to revert. "I didn't look back, did
you?"

"Yes. He wasn't there," said Maisie.

"Not on the balcony?"

Maisie waited a moment; then "He wasn't there" she simply said again.

Mrs. Wix also was silent a while. "He went to HER," she finally
observed.

"Oh I know!" the child replied.

Mrs. Wix gave a sidelong look. She still had room for wonder at what
Maisie knew.