XIV
Mrs Beale fairly swooped upon her and the effect of the whole
hour was to show the child how much, how quite formidably indeed,
after all, she was loved. This was the more the case as her
stepmother, so changed--in the very manner of her mother--that
she really struck her as a new acquaintance, somehow recalled
more familiarity than Maisie could feel. A rich strong expressive
affection in short pounced upon her in the shape of a handsomer,
ampler, older Mrs. Beale. It was like making a fine friend, and
they hadn't been a minute together before she felt elated at the
way she had met the choice imposed on her in the cab. There was a
whole future in the combination of Mrs. Beale's beauty and Mrs.
Beale's hug. She seemed to Maisie charming to behold, and also to
have no connexion at all with anybody who had once mended
underclothing and had meals in the nursery. The child knew one of
her father's wives was a woman of fashion, but she had always
dimly made a distinction, not applying that epithet without
reserve to the other. Mrs. Beale had since their separation
acquired a conspicuous right to it, and Maisie's first flush of
response to her present delight coloured all her splendour with
meanings that this time were sweet. She had told Sir Claude she
was afraid of the lady in the Regent's Park; but she had
confidence enough to break on the spot, into the frankest
appreciation. "Why, aren't you beautiful? Isn't she beautiful,
Sir Claude, ISN'T SHE?"
"The handsomest woman in London, simply," Sir Claude gallantly
replied. "Just as sure as you're the best little girl!"
Well, the handsomest woman in London gave herself up, with tender
lustrous looks and every demonstration of fondness, to a
happiness at last clutched again. There was almost as vivid a
bloom in her maturity as in mamma's, and it took her but a short
time to give her little friend an impression of positive power--
an impression that seemed to begin like a long bright day. This
was a perception on Maisie's part that neither mamma, nor Sir
Claude, nor Mrs. Wix, with their immense and so varied respective
attractions, had exactly kindled, and that made an immediate
difference when the talk, as it promptly did, began to turn to
her father. Oh yes, Mr. Farange was a complication, but she saw
now that he wouldn't be one for his daughter. For Mrs. Beale
certainly he was an immense one--she speedily made known as much;
but Mrs. Beale from this moment presented herself to Maisie as a
person to whom a great gift had come. The great gift was just for
handling complications. Maisie felt how little she made of them
when, after she had dropped to Sir Claude some recall of a
previous meeting, he made answer, with a sound of consternation
and yet an air of relief, that he had denied to their companion
their having, since the day he came for her, seen each other till
that moment.
Mrs. Beale could but vaguely pity it. "Why did you do anything so
silly?"
"To protect your reputation."
"From Maisie?" Mrs. Beale was much amused. "My reputation with
Maisie is too good to suffer."
"But you believed me, you rascal, didn't you?" Sir Claude asked
of the child.
She looked at him; she smiled. "Her reputation did suffer. I
discovered you had been here."
He was not too chagrined to laugh. "The way, my dear, you talk of
that sort of thing!"
"How should she talk," Mrs. Beale wanted to know, "after all this
wretched time with her mother?"
"It was not mamma who told me," Maisie explained. "It was only
Mrs. Wix." She was hesitating whether to bring out before Sir
Claude the source of Mrs. Wix's information; but Mrs. Beale,
addressing the young man, showed the vanity of scruples.
"Do you know that preposterous person came to see me a day or two
ago?--when I told her I had seen you repeatedly."
Sir Claude, for once in a way, was disconcerted. "The old cat!
She never told me. Then you thought I had lied?" he demanded of
Maisie.
She was flurried by the term with which he had qualified her
gentle friend, but she took the occasion for one to which she
must in every manner lend herself. "Oh I didn't mind! But Mrs.
Wix did," she added with an intention benevolent to her
governess.
Her intention was not very effective as regards Mrs. Beale. "Mrs.
Wix is too idiotic!" that lady declared.
"But to you, of all people," Sir Claude asked, "what had she to
say?"
"Why that, like Mrs. Micawber--whom she must, I think, rather
resemble--she will never, never, never desert Miss Farange."
"Oh I'll make that all right!" Sir Claude cheerfully returned.
"I'm sure I hope so, my dear man," said Mrs. Beale, while Maisie
wondered just how he would proceed. Before she had time to ask
Mrs. Beale continued: "That's not all she came to do, if you
please. But you'll never guess the rest."
"Shall _I_ guess it?" Maisie quavered.
Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why you're just the person! It must
be quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mother's.
Have you never seen women there crying to her to 'spare' the men
they love?"
Maisie, wondering, tried to remember; but Sir Claude was freshly
diverted. "Oh they don't trouble about Ida! Mrs. Wix cried to you
to spare ME?"
"She regularly went down on her knees to me."
"The darling old dear!" the young man exclaimed.
These words were a joy to Maisie--they made up for his previous
description of Mrs. Wix. "And WILL you spare him?" she asked of
Mrs. Beale.
Her stepmother, seizing her and kissing her again, seemed charmed
with the tone of her question. "Not an inch of him! I'll pick him
to the bone!"
"You mean that he'll really come often?" Maisie pressed.
Mrs. Beale turned lovely eyes to Sir Claude. "That's not for me
to say--its for him."
He said nothing at once, however; with his hands in his pockets
and vaguely humming a tune--when Maisie could see he was a little
nervous--he only walked to the window and looked out at the
Regent's Park. "Well, he has promised," Maisie said. "But how
will papa like it?"
"His being in and out? Ah that's a question that, to be frank
with you, my dear, hardly matters. In point of fact, however,
Beale greatly enjoys the idea that Sir Claude too, poor man, has
been forced to quarrel with your mother."
Sir Claude turned round and spoke gravely and kindly. "Don't be
afraid, Maisie; you won't lose sight of me."
"Thank you so much!" Maisie was radiant. "But what I meant--don't
you know?--was what papa would say to ME."
"Oh I've been having that out with him," said Mrs. Beale. "He'll
behave well enough. You see the great difficulty is that, though
he changes every three days about everything else in the world,
he has never changed about your mother. It's a caution, the way
he hates her."
Sir Claude gave a short laugh. "It certainly can't beat the way
she still hates HIM!"
"Well," Mrs. Beale went on obligingly, "nothing can take the
place of that feeling with either of them, and the best way they
can think of to show it is for each to leave you as long as
possible on the hands of the other. There's nothing, as you've
seen for yourself, that makes either so furious. It isn't, asking
so little as you do, that you're much of an expense or a trouble;
it's only that you make each feel so well how nasty the other
wants to be. Therefore Beale goes on loathing your mother too
much to have any great fury left for any one else. Besides, you
know, I've squared him."
"Oh Lord!" Sir Claude cried with a louder laugh and turning again
to the window.
"_I_ know how!" Maisie was prompt to proclaim. "By letting him do
what he wants on condition that he lets you also do it."
"You're too delicious, my own pet!"--she was involved in another
hug. "How in the world have I got on so long without you? I've
not been happy, love," said Mrs. Beale with her cheek to the
child's.
"Be happy now!"--she throbbed with shy tenderness.
"I think I shall be. You'll save me."
"As I'm saving Sir Claude?" the little girl asked eagerly.
Mrs. Beale, a trifle at a loss, appealed to her visitor, "Is she
really?"
He showed high amusement at Maisie's question. "It's dear Mrs.
Wix's idea. There may be something in it."
"He makes me his duty--he makes me his life," Maisie set forth to
her stepmother.
"Why that's what _I_ want to do!"--Mrs. Beale, so anticipated,
turned pink with astonishment.
"Well, you can do it together. Then he'll HAVE to come!"
Mrs. Beale by this time had her young friend fairly in her lap
and she smiled up at Sir Claude. "Shall we do it together?"
His laughter had dropped, and for a moment he turned his handsome
serious face not to his hostess, but to his stepdaughter. "Well,
it's rather more decent than some things. Upon my soul, the way
things are going, it seems to me the only decency!" He had the
air of arguing it out to Maisie, of presenting it, through an
impulse of conscience, as a connexion in which they could
honourably see her participate; though his plea of mere "decency"
might well have appeared to fall below her rosy little vision.
"If we're not good for YOU" he exclaimed, "I'll be hanged if I
know who we shall be good for!"
Mrs. Beale showed the child an intenser light. "I dare say you
WILL save us--from one thing and another."
"Oh I know what she'll save ME from!" Sir Claude roundly
asserted. "There'll be rows of course," he went on.
Mrs. Beale quickly took him up. "Yes, but they'll be nothing--for
you at least--to the rows your wife makes as it is. I can bear
what _I_ suffer--I can't bear what you go through."
"We're doing a good deal for you, you know, young woman," Sir
Claude went on to Maisie with the same gravity.
She coloured with a sense of obligation and the eagerness of her
desire it should be remarked how little was lost on her. "Oh I
know!"
"Then you must keep us all right!" This time he laughed.
"How you talk to her!" cried Mrs. Beale.
"No worse than you!" he gaily answered.
"Handsome is that handsome does!" she returned in the same
spirit. "You can take off your things," she went on, releasing
Maisie.
The child, on her feet, was all emotion. "Then I'm just to stop--
this way?"
"It will do as well as any other. Sir Claude, to-morrow, will have
your things brought."
"I'll bring them myself. Upon my word I'll see them packed!" Sir
Claude promised. "Come here and unbutton."
He had beckoned his young companion to where he sat, and he
helped to disengage her from her coverings while Mrs. Beale, from
a little distance, smiled at the hand he displayed. "There's a
stepfather for you! I'm bound to say, you know, that he makes up
for the want of other people."
"He makes up for the want of a nurse!" Sir Claude laughed. "Don't
you remember I told you so the very first time?"
"Remember? It was exactly what made me think so well of you!"
"Nothing would induce me," the young man said to Maisie, "to tell
you what made me think so well of HER." Having divested the child
he kissed her gently and gave her a little pat to make her stand
off. The pat was accompanied with a vague sigh in which his
gravity of a moment before came back. "All the same, if you
hadn't had the fatal gift of beauty--"
"Well, what?" Maisie asked, wondering why he paused. It was the
first time she had heard of her beauty.
"Why, we shouldn't all be thinking so well of each other!"
"He isn't speaking of personal loveliness--you've not THAT vulgar
beauty, my dear, at all," Mrs. Beale explained. "He's just
talking of plain dull charm of character."
"Her character's the most extraordinary thing in all the world,"
Sir Claude stated to Mrs. Beale.
"Oh I know all about that sort of thing!"--she fairly bridled
with the knowledge.
It gave Maisie somehow a sudden sense of responsibility from
which she sought refuge. "Well, you've got it too, 'that sort of
thing'--you've got the fatal gift: you both really have!" she
broke out.
"Beauty of character? My dear boy, we haven't a pennyworth!" Sir
Qaude protested.
"Speak for yourself, sir!" she leaped lightly from Mrs. Beale.
"I'm good and I'm clever. What more do you want? For you, I'll
spare your blushes and not be personal--I'll simply say that
you're as handsome as you can stick together."
"You're both very lovely; you can't get out of it!"--Maisie felt
the need of carrying her point. "And it's beautiful to see you
side by side."
Sir Claude had taken his hat and stick; he stood looking at her a
moment. "You're a comfort in trouble! But I must go home and pack
you."
"And when will you come back?--to-morrow, to-morrow?"
"You see what we're in for!" he said to Mrs. Beale.
"Well, I can bear it if you can."
Their companion gazed from one of them to the other, thinking
that though she had been happy indeed between Sir Claude and Mrs.
Wix she should evidently be happier still between Sir Claude and
Mrs. Beale. But it was like being perched on a prancing horse,
and she made a movement to hold on to something. "Then, you know,
shan't I bid goodbye to Mrs. Wix?"
"Oh I'll make it all right with her," said Sir Claude.
Maisie considered. "And with mamma?"
"Ah mamma!" he sadly laughed.
Even for the child this was scarcely ambiguous; but Mrs. Beale
endeavoured to contribute to its clearness. "Your mother will
crow, she'll crow--"
"Like the early bird!" said Sir Claude as she looked about for a
comparison.
"She'll need no consolation," Mrs. Beale went on, "for having
made your father grandly blaspheme."
Maisie stared. "Will he grandly blaspheme?" It was impressive, it
might have been out of the Bible, and her question produced a
fresh play of caresses, in which Sir Claude also engaged. She
wondered meanwhile who, if Mrs. Wix was disposed of, would
represent in her life the element of geography and anecdote; and
she presently surmounted the delicacy she felt about asking.
"Won't there be any one to give me lessons?"
Mrs. Beale was prepared with a reply that struck her as
absolutely magnificent. "You shall have such lessons as you've
never had in all your life. You shall go to courses."
"Courses?" Maisie had never heard of such things.
"At institutions--on subjects."
Maisie continued to stare. "Subjects?"
Mrs. Beale was really splendid. "All the most important ones.
French literature--and sacred history. You'll take part in
classes--with awfully smart children."
"I'm going to look thoroughly into the whole thing, you know."
And Sir Claude, with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of
assurance accompanied by a friendly wink.
But Mrs. Beale went much further. "My dear child, you shall
attend lectures."
The horizon was suddenly vast and Maisie felt herself the smaller
for it. "All alone?"
"Oh no; I'll attend them with you," said Sir Claude. "They'll
teach me a lot I don't know."
"So they will me," Mrs. Beale gravely admitted. "We'll go with
her together--it will be charming. It's ages," she confessed to
Maisie, "since I've had any time for study. That's another sweet
way in which you'll be a motive to us. Oh won't the good she'll
do us be immense?" she broke out uncontrollably to Sir Claude.
He weighed it; then he replied: "That's certainly our idea."
Of this idea Maisie naturally had less of a grasp, but it
inspired her with almost equal enthusiasm. If in so bright a
prospect there would be nothing to long for it followed that she
wouldn't long for Mrs. Wix; but her consciousness of her assent
to the absence of that fond figure caused a pair of words that
had often sounded in her ears to ring in them again. It showed
her in short what her father had always meant by calling her
mother a "low sneak" and her mother by calling her father one.
She wondered if she herself shouldn't be a low sneak in learning
to be so happy without Mrs. Wix. What would Mrs. Wix do?--where
would Mrs. Wix go? Before Maisie knew it, and at the door, as Sir
Claude was off, these anxieties, on her lips, grew articulate and
her stepfather had stopped long enough to answer them. "Oh I'll
square her!" he cried; and with this he departed.
Face to face with Mrs. Beale Maisie, giving a sigh of relief,
looked round at what seemed to her the dawn of a higher order.
"Then EVERY ONE will be squared!" she peacefully said. On which
her stepmother affectionately bent over her again.
