XII
She had not at the moment explained her ominous speech, but the
light of remarkable events soon enabled her companion to read it.
It may indeed be said that these days brought on a high
quickening of Maisie's direct perceptions, of her sense of
freedom to make out things for herself. This was helped by an
emotion intrinsically far from sweet--the increase of the alarm
that had most haunted her meditations. She had no need to be
told, as on the morrow of the revelation of Sir Claude's danger
she was told by Mrs. Wix, that her mother wanted more and more to
know why the devil her father didn't send for her: she had too
long expected mamma's curiosity on this point to express itself
sharply. Maisie could meet such pressure so far as meeting it was
to be in a position to reply, in words directly inspired, that
papa would be hanged before he'd again be saddled with her. She
therefore recognised the hour that in troubled glimpses she had
long foreseen, the hour when--the phrase for it came back to her
from Mrs. Beale--with two fathers, two mothers and two homes, six
protections in all, she shouldn't know "wherever" to go. Such
apprehension as she felt on this score was not diminished by the
fact that Mrs. Wix herself was suddenly white with terror: a
circumstance leading Maisie to the further knowledge that this
lady was still more scared on her own behalf than on that of her
pupil. A governess who had only one frock was not likely to have
either two fathers or two mothers: accordingly if even with these
resources Maisie was to be in the streets, where in the name of
all that was dreadful was poor Mrs. Wix to be? She had had, it
appeared, a tremendous brush with Ida, which had begun and ended
with the request that she would be pleased on the spot to
"bundle." It had come suddenly but completely, this signal of
which she had gone in fear. The companions confessed to each
other the dread each had hidden the worst of, but Mrs. Wix was
better off than Maisie in having a plan of defence. She declined
indeed to communicate it till it was quite mature; but meanwhile,
she hastened to declare, her feet were firm in the schoolroom.
They could only be loosened by force: she would "leave" for the
police perhaps, but she wouldn't leave for mere outrage. That
would be to play her ladyship's game, and it would take another
turn of the screw to make her desert her darling. Her ladyship
had come down with extraordinary violence: it had been one of
many symptoms of a situation strained--"between them all," as
Mrs. Wix said, "but especially between the two"--to the point of
God only knew what.
Her description of the crisis made the child blanch. "Between
which two?--papa and mamma?"
"Dear no. I mean between your mother and HIM."
Maisie, in this, recognised an opportunity to be really deep.
"'Him'?--Mr. Perriam?"
She fairly brought a blush to the scared face. "Well, my dear,
I must say what you DON'T know ain't worth mentioning. That it
won't go on for ever with Mr. Perriam--since I MUST meet you--you
can suppose? But I meant dear Sir Claude."
Maisie stood corrected rather than abashed. "I see. But it's
about Mr. Perriam he's angry?"
Mrs. Wix waited. "He says he's not."
"Not angry? He has told you so?"
Mrs. Wix looked at her hard. "Not about HIM!"
"Then about some one else?"
Mrs. Wix looked at her harder. "About some one else."
"Lord Eric?" the child promptly brought forth.
At this, of a sudden, her governess was more agitated. "Oh why,
little unfortunate, should we discuss their dreadful names?"--and
she threw herself for the millionth time on Maisie's neck. It
took her pupil but a moment to feel that she quivered with
insecurity, and, the contact of her terror aiding, the pair in
another instant were sobbing in each other's arms. Then it was
that, completely relaxed, demoralised as she had never been, Mrs.
Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her
great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, denounced her
hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, her
lying and grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, ME!" the poor woman
wailed, "who've seen what I've seen and gone through everything
only to cover her up and ease her off and smooth her down? If
I've been an 'ipocrite it's the other way round: I've pretended,
to him and to her, to myself and to you and to every one, NOT to
see! It serves me right to have held my tongue before such
horrors!"
What horrors they were her companion forbore too closely to
enquire, showing even signs not a few of an ability to take them
for granted. That put the couple more than ever, in this troubled
sea, in the same boat, so that with the consciousness of ideas on
the part of her fellow mariner Maisie could sit close and wait.
Sir Claude on the morrow came in to tea, and then the ideas were
produced. It was extraordinary how the child's presence drew out
their full strength. The principal one was startling, but Maisie
appreciated the courage with which her governess handled it. It
simply consisted of the proposal that whenever and wherever they
should seek refuge Sir Claude should consent to share their
asylum. On his protesting with all the warmth in nature against
this note of secession she asked what else in the world was left
to them if her ladyship should stop supplies.
"Supplies be hanged, my dear woman!" said their delightful
friend. "Leave supplies to me--I'll take care of supplies."
Mrs. Wix rose to it. "Well, it's exactly because I knew you'd be
so glad to do so that I put the question before you. There's a
way to look after us better than any other. The way's just to
come along with us."
It hung before Maisie, Mrs. Wix's way, like a glittering picture,
and she clasped her hands in ecstasy. "Come along, come along,
come along!"
Sir Claude looked from his stepdaughter back to her governess.
"Do you mean leave this house and take up my abode with you?"
"It will be the right thing--if you feel as you've told me you
feel." Mrs. Wix, sustained and uplifted, was now as clear as a
bell.
Sir Claude had the air of trying to recall what he had told her;
then the light broke that was always breaking to make his face
more pleasant. "It's your happy thought that I shall take a house
for you?"
"For the wretched homeless child. Any roof--over our heads--will
do for us; but of course for you it will have to be something
really nice."
Sir Claude's eyes reverted to Maisie, rather hard, as she
thought; and there was a shade in his very smile that seemed to
show her--though she also felt it didn't show Mrs. Wix--that the
accommodation prescribed must loom to him pretty large. The next
moment, however, he laughed gaily enough. "My dear lady, you
exaggerate tremendously MY poor little needs." Mrs. Wix had once
mentioned to her young friend that when Sir Claude called her his
dear lady he could do anything with her; and Maisie felt a
certain anxiety to see what he would do now. Well, he only
addressed her a remark of which the child herself was aware of
feeling the force. "Your plan appeals to me immensely; but of
course--don't you see--I shall have to consider the position I
put myself in by leaving my wife."
"You'll also have to remember," Mrs. Wix replied, "that if you
don't look out your wife won't give you time to consider. Her
ladyship will leave YOU."
"Ah my good friend, I do look out!" the young man returned while
Maisie helped herself afresh to bread and butter. "Of course if
that happens I shall have somehow to turn round; but I hope with
all my heart it won't. I beg your pardon," he continued to his
stepdaughter, "for appearing to discuss that sort of possibility
under your sharp little nose. But the fact is I FORGET half the
time that Ida's your sainted mother."
"So do I!" said Maisie, her mouth full of bread and butter and to
put him the more in the right.
Her protectress, at this, was upon her again. "The little
desolate precious pet!" For the rest of the conversation she was
enclosed in Mrs. Wix's arms, and as they sat there interlocked
Sir Claude, before them with his tea-cup, looked down at them in
deepening thought. Shrink together as they might they couldn't
help, Maisie felt, being a very large lumpish image of what Mrs.
Wix required of his slim fineness. She knew moreover that this
lady didn't make it better by adding in a moment: "Of course we
shouldn't dream of a whole house. Any sort of little lodging,
however humble, would be only too blest."
"But it would have to be something that would hold us all," said
Sir Claude.
"Oh yes," Mrs. Wix concurred; "the whole point's our being
together. While you're waiting, before you act, for her ladyship
to take some step, our position here will come to an impossible
pass. You don't know what I went through with her for you
yesterday--and for our poor darling; but it's not a thing I can
promise you often to face again. She cast me out in horrible
language--she has instructed the servants not to wait on me."
"Oh the poor servants are all right!" Sir Claude eagerly cried.
"They're certainly better than their mistress. It's too dreadful
that I should sit here and say of your wife, Sir Claude, and of
Maisie's own mother, that she's lower than a domestic; but my
being betrayed into such remarks is just a reason the more for
our getting away. I shall stay till I'm taken by the shoulders,
but that may happen any day. What also may perfectly happen, you
must permit me to repeat, is that she'll go off to get rid of
us."
"Oh if she'll only do that!" Sir Claude laughed. "That would be
the very making of us!"
"Don't say it--don't say it!" Mrs. Wix pleaded. "Don't speak of
anything so fatal. You know what I mean. We must all cling to the
right. You mustn't be bad."
Sir Claude set down his tea-cup; he had become more grave and he
pensively wiped his moustache. "Won't all the world say I'm awful
if I leave the house before--before she has bolted? They'll say
it was my doing so that made her bolt."
Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no
check to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that--if you've done it for
so high a motive? Think of the beauty of it," the good lady
pressed.
"Of bolting with YOU?" Sir Claude ejaculated.
She faintly smiled--she even faintly coloured. "So far from doing
you harm it will do you the highest good. Sir Claude, if you'll
listen to me, it will save you."
"Save me from what?"
Maisie, at this question, waited with renewed suspense for an
answer that would bring the thing to some finer point than their
companion had brought it to before. But there was on the contrary
only more mystification in Mrs. Wix's reply. "Ah from you know
what!"
"Do you mean from some other woman!"
"Yes--from a real bad one."
Sir Claude at least, the child could see, was not mystified; so
little indeed that a smile of intelligence broke afresh in his
eyes. He turned them in vague discomfort to Maisie, and then
something in the way she met them caused him to chuck her
playfully under the chin. It was not till after this that he
good-naturedly met Mrs. Wix. "You think me much worse than I am."
"If that were true," she returned, "I wouldn't appeal to you. I
do, Sir Claude, in the name of all that's good in you--and oh so
earnestly! We can help each other. What you'll do for our young
friend here I needn't say. That isn't even what I want to speak
of now. What I want to speak of is what you'll GET--don't you
see?--from such an opportunity to take hold. Take hold of US--
take hold of HER. Make her your duty--make her your life: she'll
repay you a thousand-fold!"
It was to Mrs. Wix, during this appeal, that Maisie's contemplation
transferred itself: partly because, though her heart was in her
throat for trepidation, her delicacy deterred her from appearing
herself to press the question; partly from the coercion of seeing
Mrs. Wix come out as Mrs. Wix had never come Before--not even on
the day of her call at Mrs. Beale's with the news of mamma's
marriage. On that day Mrs. Beale had surpassed her in dignity,
but nobody could have surpassed her now. There was in fact at
this moment a fascination for her pupil in the hint she seemed
to give that she had still more of that surprise behind. So the
sharpened sense of spectatorship was the child's main support,
the long habit, from the first, of seeing herself in discussion
and finding in the fury of it--she had had a glimpse of the game
of football--a sort of compensation for the doom of a peculiar
passivity. It gave her often an odd air of being present at her
history in as separate a manner as if she could only get at
experience by flattening her nose against a pane of glass.
Such she felt to be the application of her nose while she waited
for the effect of Mrs. Wix's eloquence. Sir Claude, however,
didn't keep her long in a position so ungraceful: he sat down
and opened his arms to her as he had done the day he came for
her at her father's, and while he held her there, looking at
her kindly, but as if their companion had brought the blood
a good deal to his face, he said:
"Dear Mrs. Wix is magnificent, but she's rather too grand about
it. I mean the situation isn't after all quite so desperate or
quite so simple. But I give you my word before her, and I give it
to her before you, that I'll never, never, forsake you. Do you
hear that, old fellow, and do you take it in? I'll stick to you
through everything."
Maisie did take it in--took it with a long tremor of all her
little being; and then as, to emphasise it, he drew her closer
she buried her head on his shoulder and cried without sound and
without pain. While she was so engaged she became aware that his
own breast was agitated, and gathered from it with rapture that
his tears were as silently flowing. Presently she heard a loud
sob from Mrs. Wix--Mrs. Wix was the only one who made a noise.
She was to have made, for some time, none other but this, though
within a few days, in conversation with her pupil, she described
her intercourse with Ida as little better than the state of being
battered. There was as yet nevertheless no attempt to eject her
by force, and she recognised that Sir Claude, taking such a stand
as never before, had intervened with passion and with success. As
Maisie remembered--and remembered wholly without disdain--that he
had told her he was afraid of her ladyship, the little girl took
this act of resolution as a proof of what, in the spirit of the
engagement sealed by all their tears, he was really prepared to
do. Mrs. Wix spoke to her of the pecuniary sacrifice by which she
herself purchased the scant security she enjoyed and which, if it
was a defence against the hand of violence, yet left her exposed
to incredible rudeness. Didn't her ladyship find every hour of
the day some artful means to humiliate and trample upon her?
There was a quarter's salary owing her--a great name, even Maisie
could suspect, for a small matter; she should never see it as
long as she lived, but keeping quiet about it put her ladyship,
thank heaven, a little in one's power. Now that he was doing so
much else she could never have the grossness to apply for it to
Sir Claude. He had sent home for schoolroom consumption a huge
frosted cake, a wonderful delectable mountain with geological
strata of jam, which might, with economy, see them through many
days of their siege; but it was none the less known to Mrs. Wix
that his affairs were more and more involved, and her fellow
partaker looked back tenderly, in the light of these involutions,
at the expression of face with which he had greeted the proposal
that he should set up another establishment. Maisie felt that if
their maintenance should hang by a thread they must still demean
themselves with the highest delicacy. What he was doing was
simply acting without delay, so far as his embarrassments
permitted, on the inspiration of his elder friend. There was at
this season a wonderful month of May--as soft as a drop of the
wind in a gale that had kept one awake--when he took out his
stepdaughter with a fresh alacrity and they rambled the great
town in search, as Mrs. Wix called it, of combined amusement and
instruction.
They rode on the top of 'buses; they visited outlying parks; they
went to cricket-matches where Maisie fell asleep; they tried a
hundred places for the best one to have tea. This was his direct
way of rising to Mrs. Wix's grand lesson--of making his little
accepted charge his duty and his life. They dropped, under
incontrollable impulses, into shops that they agreed were too
big, to look at things that they agreed were too small, and it
was during these hours that Mrs. Wix, alone at home, but a
subject of regretful reference as they pulled off their gloves
for refreshment, subsequently described herself as least
sheltered from the blows her ladyship had achieved such ingenuity
in dealing. She again and again repeated that she wouldn't so
much have minded having her "attainments" held up to scorn and
her knowledge of every subject denied, hadn't she been branded as
"low" in character and tone. There was by this time no pretence
on the part of any one of denying it to be fortunate that her
ladyship habitually left London every Saturday and was more and
more disposed to a return late in the week. It was almost equally
public that she regarded as a preposterous "pose," and indeed as
a direct insult to herself, her husband's attitude of staying
behind to look after a child for whom the most elaborate
provision had been made. If there was a type Ida despised, Sir
Claude communicated to Maisie, it was the man who pottered about
town of a Sunday; and he also mentioned how often she had
declared to him that if he had a grain of spirit he would be
ashamed to accept a menial position about Mr. Farange's daughter.
It was her ladyship's contention that he was in craven fear of
his predecessor--otherwise he would recognise it as an obligation
of plain decency to protect his wife against the outrage of that
person's barefaced attempt to swindle her. The swindle was that
Mr. Farange put upon her the whole intolerable burden; "and even
when I pay for you myself," Sir Claude averred to his young
friend, "she accuses me the more of truckling and grovelling." It
was Mrs. Wix's conviction, they both knew, arrived at on
independent grounds, that Ida's weekly excursions were feelers
for a more considerable absence. If she came back later each week
the week would be sure to arrive when she wouldn't come back at
all. This appearance had of course much to do with Mrs. Wix's
actual valour. Could they but hold out long enough the snug
little home with Sir Claude would find itself informally
established.
