VI
She became aware in time that this phase wouldn't have shone by
lessons, the care of her education being now only one of the many
duties devolving on Miss Overmore; a devolution as to which she
was present at various passages between that lady and her father
--passages significant, on either side, of dissent and even of
displeasure. It was gathered by the child on these occasions that
there was something in the situation for which her mother might
"come down" on them all, though indeed the remark, always dropped
by her father, was greeted on his companion's part with direct
contradiction. Such scenes were usually brought to a climax by
Miss Overmore's demanding, with more asperity than she applied to
any other subject, in what position under the sun such a person
as Mrs. Farange would find herself for coming down. As the months
went on the little girl's interpretations thickened, and the more
effectually that this stretch was the longest she had known
without a break. She got used to the idea that her mother, for
some reason, was in no hurry to reinstate her: that idea was
forcibly expressed by her father whenever Miss Overmore,
differing and decided, took him up on the question, which he was
always putting forward, of the urgency of sending her to school.
For a governess Miss Overmore differed surprisingly; far more for
instance than would have entered into the bowed head of Mrs. Wix.
She observed to Maisie many times that she was quite conscious of
not doing her justice, and that Mr. Farange equally measured and
equally lamented this deficiency. The reason of it was that she
had mysterious responsibilities that interfered--responsibilities,
Miss Overmore intimated, to Mr. Farange himself and to the friendly
noisy little house and those who came there. Mr. Farange's remedy
for every inconvenience was that the child should be put at school--
there were such lots of splendid schools, as everybody knew,
at Brighton and all over the place. That, however, Maisie learned,
was just what would bring her mother down: from the moment he
should delegate to others the housing of his little charge he
hadn't a leg to stand on before the law. Didn't he keep her away
from her mother precisely because Mrs. Farange was one of these
others?
There was also the solution of a second governess, a young person
to come in by the day and really do the work; but to this Miss
Overmore wouldn't for a moment listen, arguing against it with
great public relish and wanting to know from all comers--she put
it even to Maisie herself--they didn't see how frightfully it
would give her away. "What am I supposed to be at all, don't you
see, if I'm not here to look after her?" She was in a false
position and so freely and loudly called attention to it that it
seemed to become almost a source of glory. The way out of it of
course was just to do her plain duty; but that was unfortunately
what, with his excessive, his exorbitant demands on her, which
every one indeed appeared quite to understand, he practically, he
selfishly prevented. Beale Farange, for Miss Overmore, was now
never anything but "he," and the house was as full as ever of
lively gentlemen with whom, under that designation, she
chaffingly talked about him. Maisie meanwhile, as a subject of
familiar gossip on what was to be done with her, was left so much
to herself that she had hours of wistful thought of the large
loose discipline of Mrs. Wix; yet she none the less held it under
her father's roof a point of superiority that none of his
visitors were ladies. It added to this odd security that she had
once heard a gentleman say to him as if it were a great joke and
in obvious reference to Miss Overmore: "Hanged if she'll let
another woman come near you--hanged if she ever will. She'd let
fly a stick at her as they do at a strange cat!" Maisie greatly
preferred gentlemen as inmates in spite of their also having
their way--louder but sooner over--of laughing out at her. They
pulled and pinched, they teased and tickled her; some of them
even, as they termed it, shied things at her, and all of them
thought it funny to call her by names having no resemblance to
her own. The ladies on the other hand addressed her as "You poor
pet" and scarcely touched her even to kiss her. But it was of the
ladies she was most afraid.
She was now old enough to understand how disproportionate a stay
she had already made with her father; and also old enough to
enter a little into the ambiguity attending this excess, which
oppressed her particularly whenever the question had been touched
upon in talk with her governess. "Oh you needn't worry: she
doesn't care!" Miss Overmore had often said to her in reference
to any fear that her mother might resent her prolonged detention.
"She has other people than poor little YOU to think about, and
has gone abroad with them; so you needn't be in the least afraid
she'll stickle this time for her rights." Maisie knew Mrs.
Farange had gone abroad, for she had had weeks and weeks before a
letter from her beginning "My precious pet" and taking leave of
her for an indeterminate time; but she had not seen in it a
renunciation of hatred or of the writer's policy of asserting
herself, for the sharpest of all her impressions had been that
there was nothing her mother would ever care so much about as to
torment Mr. Farange. What at last, however, was in this connexion
bewildering and a little frightening was the dawn of a suspicion
that a better way had been found to torment Mr. Farange than to
deprive him of his periodical burden. This was the question that
worried our young lady and that Miss Overmore's confidences and
the frequent observations of her employer only rendered more
mystifying. It was a contradiction that if Ida had now a fancy
for waiving the rights she had originally been so hot about her
late husband shouldn't jump at the monopoly for which he had also
in the first instance so fiercely fought; but when Maisie, with a
subtlety beyond her years, sounded this new ground her main
success was in hearing her mother more freshly abused. Miss
Overmore had up to now rarely deviated from a decent reserve, but
the day came when she expressed herself with a vividness
not inferior to Beale's own on the subject of the lady who had
fled to the Continent to wriggle out of her job. It would serve
this lady right, Maisie gathered, if that contract, in the shape
of an overgrown and underdressed daughter, should be shipped
straight out to her and landed at her feet in the midst of
scandalous excesses.
The picture of these pursuits was what Miss Overmore took refuge
in when the child tried timidly to ascertain if her father were
disposed to feel he had too much of her. She evaded the point and
only kicked up all round it the dust of Ida's heartlessness and
folly, of which the supreme proof, it appeared, was the fact that
she was accompanied on her journey by a gentleman whom, to be
painfully plain on it, she had--well, "picked up." The terms on
which, unless they were married, ladies and gentlemen might, as
Miss Overmore expressed it, knock about together, were the terms
on which she and Mr. Farange had exposed themselves to possible
misconception. She had indeed, as has been noted, often explained
this before, often said to Maisie: "I don't know what in the
world, darling, your father and I should do without you, for you
just make the difference, as I've told you, of keeping us
perfectly proper." The child took in the office it was so
endearingly presented to her that she performed a comfort that
helped her to a sense of security even in the event of her
mother's giving her up. Familiar as she had grown with the fact
of the great alternative to the proper, she felt in her governess
and her father a strong reason for not emulating that detachment.
At the same time she had heard somehow of little girls--of
exalted rank, it was true--whose education was carried on by
instructors of the other sex, and she knew that if she were at
school at Brighton it would be thought an advantage to her to be
more or less in the hands of masters. She turned these things
over and remarked to Miss Overmore that if she should go to her
mother perhaps the gentleman might become her tutor.
"The gentleman?" The proposition was complicated enough to make
Miss Overmore stare.
"The one who's with mamma. Mightn't that make it right--as right
as your being my governess makes it for you to be with papa?"
Miss Overmore considered; she coloured a little; then she
embraced her ingenious friend. "You're too sweet! I'm a REAL
governess."
"And couldn't he be a real tutor?"
"Of course not. He's ignorant and bad."
"Bad--?" Maisie echoed with wonder. Her companion gave a queer
little laugh at her tone. "He's ever so much younger--" But that
was all.
"Younger than you?"
Miss Overmore laughed again; it was the first time Maisie had
seen her approach so nearly to a giggle.
"Younger than--no matter whom. I don't know anything about him
and don't want to," she rather inconsequently added. "He's not my
sort, and I'm sure, my own darling, he's not yours." And she
repeated the free caress into which her colloquies with Maisie
almost always broke and which made the child feel that her
affection at least was a gage of safety. Parents had come to seem
vague, but governesses were evidently to be trusted. Maisie's
faith in Mrs. Wix for instance had suffered no lapse from the
fact that all communication with her had temporarily dropped.
During the first weeks of their separation Clara Matilda's mamma
had repeatedly and dolefully written to her, and Maisie had
answered with an enthusiasm controlled only by orthographical
doubts; but the correspondence had been duly submitted to Miss
Overmore, with the final effect of its not suiting her. It was
this lady's view that Mr. Farange wouldn't care for it at all,
and she ended by confessing--since her pupil pushed her--that she
didn't care for it herself. She was furiously jealous, she said;
and that weakness was but a new proof of her disinterested
affection. She pronounced Mrs. Wix's effusions moreover
illiterate and unprofitable; she made no scruple of declaring it
monstrous that a woman in her senses should have placed the
formation of her daughter's mind in such ridiculous hands. Maisie
was well aware that the proprietress of the old brown dress and
the old odd headgear was lower in the scale of "form" than Miss
Overmore; but it was now brought home to her with pain that she
was educationally quite out of the question. She was buried for
the time beneath a conclusive remark of her critic's: "She's
really beyond a joke!" This remark was made as that charming
woman held in her hand the last letter that Maisie was to receive
from Mrs. Wix; it was fortified by a decree proscribing the
preposterous tie. "Must I then write and tell her?" the child
bewilderedly asked: she grew pale at the dreadful things it
appeared involved for her to say. "Don't dream of it, my dear--
I'll write: you may trust me!" cried Miss Overmore; who indeed
wrote to such purpose that a hush in which you could have heard a
pin drop descended upon poor Mrs. Wix. She gave for weeks and
weeks no sign whatever of life: it was as if she had been as
effectually disposed of by Miss Overmore's communication as her
little girl, in the Harrow Road, had been disposed of by the
terrible hansom. Her very silence became after this one of the
largest elements of Maisie's consciousness; it proved a warm and
habitable air, into which the child penetrated further than she
dared ever to mention to her companions. Somewhere in the depths
of it the dim straighteners were fixed upon her; somewhere out of
the troubled little current Mrs. Wix intensely waited.
