VII
It quite fell in with this intensity that one day, on returning
from a walk with the housemaid, Maisie should have found her in
the hall, seated on the stool usually occupied by the telegraph-
boys who haunted Beale Farange's door and kicked their heels
while, in his room, answers to their missives took form with the
aid of smoke-puffs and growls. It had seemed to her on their
parting that Mrs. Wix had reached the last limits of the squeeze,
but she now felt those limits to be transcended and that the
duration of her visitor's hug was a direct reply to Miss
Overmore's veto. She understood in a flash how the visit had come
to be possible--that Mrs. Wix, watching her chance, must have
slipped in under protection of the fact that papa, always
tormented in spite of arguments with the idea of a school, had,
for a three days' excursion to Brighton, absolutely insisted on
the attendance of her adversary. It was true that when Maisie
explained their absence and their important motive Mrs. Wix wore
an expression so peculiar that it could only have had its origin
in surprise. This contradiction indeed peeped out only to vanish,
for at the very moment that, in the spirit of it, she threw
herself afresh upon her young friend a hansom crested with neat
luggage rattled up to the door and Miss Overmore bounded out. The
shock of her encounter with Mrs. Wix was less violent than Maisie
had feared on seeing her and didn't at all interfere with the
sociable tone in which, under her rival's eyes, she explained to
her little charge that she had returned, for a particular reason,
a day sooner than she first intended. She had left papa--in such
nice lodgings--at Brighton; but he would come back to his dear
little home on the morrow. As for Mrs. Wix, papa's companion
supplied Maisie in later converse with the right word for the
attitude of this personage: Mrs. Wix "stood up" to her in a
manner that the child herself felt at the time to be astonishing.
This occurred indeed after Miss Overmore had so far raised her
interdict as to make a move to the dining-room, where, in the
absence of any suggestion of sitting down, it was scarcely more
than natural that even poor Mrs. Wix should stand up. Maisie at
once enquired if at Brighton, this time, anything had come of the
possibility of a school; to which, much to her surprise, Miss
Overmore, who had always grandly repudiated it, replied after an
instant, but quite as if Mrs. Wix were not there:
"It may be, darling, that something WILL come. The objection, I
must tell you, has been quite removed."
At this it was still more startling to hear Mrs. Wix speak out
with great firmness. "I don't think, if you'll allow me to say
so, that there's any arrangement by which the objection can be
'removed.' What has brought me here to-day is that I've a message
for Maisie from dear Mrs. Farange."
The child's heart gave a great thump. "Oh mamma's come back?"
"Not yet, sweet love, but she's coming," said Mrs. Wix, "and she
has--most thoughtfully, you know--sent me on to prepare you."
"To prepare her for what, pray?" asked Miss Overmore, whose first
smoothness began, with this news, to be ruffled.
Mrs. Wix quietly applied her straighteners to Miss Overmore's
flushed beauty. "Well, miss, for a very important communication."
"Can't dear Mrs. Farange, as you so oddly call her, make her
communications directly? Can't she take the trouble to write to
her only daughter?" the younger lady demanded. "Maisie herself
will tell you that it's months and months since she has had so
much as a word from her."
"Oh but I've written to mamma!" cried the child as if this would
do quite as well.
"That makes her treatment of you all the greater scandal," the
governess in possession promptly declared.
"Mrs. Farange is too well aware," said Mrs. Wix with sustained
spirit, "of what becomes of her letters in this house."
Maisie's sense of fairness hereupon interposed for her visitor.
"You know, Miss Overmore, that papa doesn't like everything of
mamma's."
"No one likes, my dear, to be made the subject of such language
as your mother's letters contain. They were not fit for the
innocent child to see," Miss Overmore observed to Mrs. Wix.
"Then I don't know what you complain of, and she's better without
them. It serves every purpose that I'm in Mrs. Farange's
confidence."
Miss Overmore gave a scornful laugh. "Then you must be mixed up
with some extraordinary proceedings!"
"None so extraordinary," cried Mrs. Wix, turning very pale, "as
to say horrible things about the mother to the face of the
helpless daughter!"
"Things not a bit more horrible, I think," Miss Overmore
returned, "than those you, madam, appear to have come here to say
about the father!"
Mrs. Wix looked for a moment hard at Maisie, and then, turning
again to this witness, spoke with a trembling voice. "I came to
say nothing about him, and you must excuse Mrs. Farange and me if
we're not so above all reproach as the companion of his travels."
The young woman thus described stared at the apparent breadth of
the description--she needed a moment to take it in. Maisie,
however, gazing solemnly from one of the disputants to the other,
noted that her answer, when it came, perched upon smiling lips.
"It will do quite as well, no doubt, if you come up to the
requirements of the companion of Mrs. Farange's!"
Mrs. Wix broke into a queer laugh; it sounded to Maisie an
unsuccessful imitation of a neigh. "That's just what I'm here to
make known--how perfectly the poor lady comes up to them
herself." She held up her head at the child. "You must take your
mamma's message, Maisie, and you must feel that her wishing me to
come to you with it this way is a great proof of interest and
affection. She sends you her particular love and announces to you
that she's engaged to be married to Sir Claude."
"Sir Claude?" Maisie wonderingly echoed. But while Mrs. Wix
explained that this gentleman was a dear friend of Mrs.
Farange's, who had been of great assistance to her in getting to
Florence and in making herself comfortable there for the winter,
she was not too violently shaken to perceive her old friend's
enjoyment of the effect of this news on Miss Overmore. That young
lady opened her eyes very wide; she immediately remarked that
Mrs. Farange's marriage would of course put an end to any further
pretension to take her daughter back. Mrs. Wix enquired with
astonishment why it should do anything of the sort, and Miss
Overmore gave as an instant reason that it was clearly but
another dodge in a system of dodges. She wanted to get out of the
bargain: why else had she now left Maisie on her father's hands
weeks and weeks beyond the time about which she had originally
made such a fuss? It was vain for Mrs. Wix to represent--as she
speciously proceeded to do--that all this time would be made up
as soon as Mrs. Farange returned: she, Miss Overmore, knew
nothing, thank heaven, about her confederate, but was very sure
any person capable of forming that sort of relation with the lady
in Florence would easily agree to object to the presence in his
house of the fruit of a union that his dignity must ignore. It
was a game like another, and Mrs. Wix's visit was clearly the
first move in it. Maisie found in this exchange of asperities a
fresh incitement to the unformulated fatalism in which her sense
of her own career had long since taken refuge; and it was the
beginning for her of a deeper prevision that, in spite of Miss
Overmore's brilliancy and Mrs. Wix's passion, she should live to
see a change in the nature of the struggle she appeared to have
come into the world to produce. It would still be essentially a
struggle, but its object would now be NOT to receive her.
Mrs. Wix, after Miss Overmore's last demonstration, addressed
herself wholly to the little girl, and, drawing from the pocket
of her dingy old pelisse a small flat parcel, removed its
envelope and wished to know if THAT looked like a gentleman who
wouldn't be nice to everybody--let alone to a person he would be
so sure to find so nice. Mrs. Farange, in the candour of
new-found happiness, had enclosed a "cabinet" photograph of Sir
Claude, and Maisie lost herself in admiration of the fair smooth
face, the regular features, the kind eyes, the amiable air, the
general glossiness and smartness of her prospective stepfather--
only vaguely puzzled to suppose herself now with two fathers at
once. Her researches had hitherto indicated that to incur a
second parent of the same sex you had usually to lose the first.
"ISN'T he sympathetic?" asked Mrs. Wix, who had clearly, on the
strength of his charming portrait, made up her mind that Sir
Claude promised her a future. "You can see, I hope," she added
with much expression, "that HE'S a perfect gentleman!" Maisie
had never before heard the word "sympathetic" applied to
anybody's face; she heard it with pleasure and from that moment
it agreeably remained with her. She testified moreover to the
force of her own perception in a small soft sigh of response to
the pleasant eyes that seemed to seek her acquaintance, to speak
to her directly. "He's quite lovely!" she declared to Mrs. Wix.
Then eagerly, irrepressibly, as she still held the photograph and
Sir Claude continued to fraternise, "Oh can't I keep it?" she
broke out. No sooner had she done so than she looked up from it
at Miss Overmore: this was with the sudden instinct of appealing
to the authority that had long ago impressed on her that she
mustn't ask for things. Miss Overmore, to her surprise, looked
distant and rather odd, hesitating and giving her time to turn
again to Mrs. Wix. Then Maisie saw that lady's long face
lengthen; it was stricken and almost scared, as if her young
friend really expected more of her than she had to give. The
photograph was a possession that, direly denuded, she clung to,
and there was a momentary struggle between her fond clutch of it
and her capability of every sacrifice for her precarious pupil.
With the acuteness of her years, however, Maisie saw that her own
avidity would triumph, and she held out the picture to Miss
Overmore as if she were quite proud of her mother. "Isn't he just
lovely?" she demanded while poor Mrs. Wix hungrily wavered, her
straighteners largely covering it and her pelisse gathered about
her with an intensity that strained its ancient seams.
"It was to ME, darling," the visitor said, "that your mamma so
generously sent it; but of course if it would give you particular
pleasure--" she faltered, only gasping her surrender.
Miss Overmore continued extremely remote. "If the photograph's
your property, my dear, I shall be happy to oblige you by looking
at it on some future occasion. But you must excuse me if I
decline to touch an object belonging to Mrs. Wix."
That lady had by this time grown very red. "You might as well see
him this way, miss," she retorted, "as you certainly never will,
I believe, in any other! Keep the pretty picture, by all means,
my precious," she went on: "Sir Claude will be happy himself, I
dare say, to give me one with a kind inscription." The pathetic
quaver of this brave boast was not lost on Maisie, who threw
herself so gratefully on the speaker's neck that, when they had
concluded their embrace, the public tenderness of which, she
felt, made up for the sacrifice she imposed, their companion had
had time to lay a quick hand on Sir Claude and, with a glance at
him or not, whisk him effectually out of sight. Released from the
child's arms Mrs. Wix looked about for the picture; then she
fixed Miss Overmore with a hard dumb stare; and finally, with her
eyes on the little girl again, achieved the grimmest of smiles.
"Well, nothing matters, Maisie, because there's another thing
your mamma wrote about. She has made sure of me." Even after her
loyal hug Maisie felt a bit of a sneak as she glanced at Miss
Overmore for permission to understand this. But Mrs. Wix left
them in no doubt of what it meant. "She has definitely engaged me
--for her return and for yours. Then you'll see for yourself."
Maisie, on the spot, quite believed she should; but the prospect
was suddenly thrown into confusion by an extraordinary
demonstration from Miss Overmore.
"Mrs. Wix," said that young lady, "has some undiscoverable reason
for regarding your mother's hold on you as strengthened by the
fact that she's about to marry. I wonder then--on that system--
what our visitor will say to your father's."
Miss Overmore's words were directed to her pupil, but her face,
lighted with an irony that made it prettier even than ever before,
was presented to the dingy figure that had stiffened itself for
departure. The child's discipline had been bewildering--had
ranged freely between the prescription that she was to answer
when spoken to and the experience of lively penalties on obeying
that prescription. This time, nevertheless, she felt emboldened
for risks; above all as something portentous seemed to have
leaped into her sense of the relations of things. She looked at
Miss Overmore much as she had a way of looking at persons who
treated her to "grown up" jokes. "Do you mean papa's hold on me--
do you mean HE'S about to marry?"
"Papa's not about to marry--papa IS married, my dear. Papa was
married the day before yesterday at Brighton." Miss Overmore
glittered more gaily; meanwhile it came over Maisie, and quite
dazzlingly, that her "smart" governess was a bride. "He's my
husband, if you please, and I'm his little wife. So NOW we'll see
who's your little mother!" She caught her pupil to her bosom in a
manner that was not to be outdone by the emissary of her
predecessor, and a few moments later, when things had lurched
back into their places, that poor lady, quite defeated of the
last word, had soundlessly taken flight.
