IX
The idea of what she was to make up and the prodigious total it
came to were kept well before Maisie at her mother's. These
things were the constant occupation of Mrs. Wix, who arrived
there by the back stairs, but in tears of joy, the day after her
own arrival. The process of making up, as to which the good lady
had an immense deal to say, took, through its successive phases,
so long that it heralded a term at least equal to the child's
last stretch with her father. This, however, was a fuller and
richer time: it bounded along to the tune of Mrs. Wix's constant
insistence on the energy they must both put forth. There was a
fine intensity in the way the child agreed with her that under
Mrs. Beale and Susan Ash she had learned nothing whatever; the
wildness of the rescued castaway was one of the forces that would
henceforth make for a career of conquest. The year therefore
rounded itself as a receptacle of retarded knowledge--a cup
brimming over with the sense that now at least she was learning.
Mrs. Wix fed this sense from the stores of her conversation and
with the immense bustle of her reminder that they must cull the
fleeting hour. They were surrounded with subjects they must take
at a rush and perpetually getting into the attitude of triumphant
attack. They had certainly no idle hours, and the child went to
bed each night as tired as from a long day's play. This had begun
from the moment of their reunion, begun with all Mrs. Wix had to
tell her young friend of the reasons of her ladyship's extraordinary
behaviour at the very first.
It took the form of her ladyship's refusal for three days to see
her little girl--three days during which Sir Claude made hasty
merry dashes into the schoolroom to smooth down the odd
situation, to say "She'll come round, you know; I assure you
she'll come round," and a little even to compensate Maisie for
the indignity he had caused her to suffer. There had never in the
child's life been, in all ways, such a delightful amount of
reparation. It came out by his sociable admission that her
ladyship had not known of his visit to her late husband's house
and of his having made that person's daughter a pretext for
striking up an acquaintance with the dreadful creature installed
there. Heaven knew she wanted her child back and had made every
plan of her own for removing her; what she couldn't for the
present at least forgive any one concerned was such an officious
underhand way of bringing about the transfer. Maisie carried more
of the weight of this resentment than even Mrs. Wix's confidential
ingenuity could lighten for her, especially as Sir Claude himself
was not at all ingenious, though indeed on the other hand he was
not at all crushed. He was amused and intermittent and at moments
most startling; he impressed on his young companion, with a
frankness that agitated her much more than he seemed to guess,
that he depended on her not letting her mother, when she should
see her, get anything out of her about anything Mrs. Beale might
have said to him. He came in and out; he professed, in joke,
to take tremendous precautions; he showed a positive disposition
to romp. He chaffed Mrs. Wix till she was purple with the pleasure
of it, and reminded Maisie of the reticence he expected of her
till she set her teeth like an Indian captive. Her lessons these
first days and indeed for long after seemed to be all about
Sir Claude, and yet she never really mentioned to Mrs. Wix that
she was prepared, under his inspiring injunction, to be vainly
tortured. This lady, however, had formulated the position of
things with an acuteness that showed how little she needed to be
coached. Her explanation of everything that seemed not quite
pleasant--and if her own footing was perilous it met that danger
as well--that her ladyship was passionately in love. Maisie
accepted this hint with infinite awe and pressed upon it much
when she was at last summoned into the presence of her mother.
There she encountered matters amid which it seemed really to help
to give her a clue--an almost terrifying strangeness, full, none
the less, after a little, of reverberations of Ida's old fierce
and demonstrative recoveries of possession. They had been some
time in the house together, and this demonstration came late.
Preoccupied, however, as Maisie was with the idea of the
sentiment Sir Claude had inspired, and familiar, in addition, by
Mrs. Wix's anecdotes, with the ravages that in general such a
sentiment could produce, she was able to make allowances for her
ladyship's remarkable appearance, her violent splendour, the
wonderful colour of her lips and even the hard stare, the stare
of some gorgeous idol described in a story-book, that had come
into her eyes in consequence of a curious thickening of their
already rich circumference. Her professions and explanations were
mixed with eager challenges and sudden drops, in the midst of
which Maisie recognised as a memory of other years the rattle of
her trinkets and the scratch of her endearments, the odour of her
clothes and the jumps of her conversation. She had all her old
clever way--Mrs. Wix said it was "aristocratic"--of changing the
subject as she might have slammed the door in your face. The
principal thing that was different was the tint of her golden
hair, which had changed to a coppery red and, with the head it
profusely covered, struck the child as now lifted still further
aloft. This picturesque parent showed literally a grander stature
and a nobler presence, things which, with some others that might
have been bewildering, were handsomely accounted for by the
romantic state of her affections. It was her affections, Maisie
could easily see, that led Ida to break out into questions as to
what had passed at the other house between that horrible woman
and Sir Claude; but it was also just here that the little girl
was able to recall the effect with which in earlier days she had
practised the pacific art of stupidity. This art again came to
her aid: her mother, in getting rid of her after an interview in
which she had achieved a hollowness beyond her years, allowed her
fully to understand she had not grown a bit more amusing.
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.
