XVI
As she met the Captain's light blue eyes the greatest marvel
occurred; she felt a sudden relief at finding them reply with
anxiety to the horror in her face. "What in the world has he
done?" He put it all on Sir Claude.
"He has called her a damned old brute." She couldn't help
bringing that out.
The Captain, at the same elevation as her ladyship, gaped wide;
then of course, like every one else, he was convulsed. But he
instantly caught himself up, echoing her bad words. "A damned old
brute--your mother?"
Maisie was already conscious of her second movement. "I think she
tried to make him angry."
The Captain's stupefaction was fine. "Angry--SHE? Why she's an
angel!"
On the spot, as he said this, his face won her over; it was so
bright and kind, and his blue eyes had such a reflexion of some
mysterious grace that, for him at least, her mother had put
forth. Her fund of observation enabled her as she gazed up at him
to place him: he was a candid simple soldier; very grave--she
came back to that--but not at all terrible. At any rate he struck
a note that was new to her and that after a moment made her say:
"Do you like her very much?"
He smiled down at her, hesitating, looking pleasanter and
pleasanter. "Let me tell you about your mother."
He put out a big military hand which she immediately took, and
they turned off together to where a couple of chairs had been
placed under one of the trees. "She told me to come to you,"
Maisie explained as they went; and presently she was close to him
in a chair, with the prettiest of pictures--the sheen of the lake
through other trees--before them, and the sound of birds, the
plash of boats, the play of children in the air. The Captain,
inclining his military person, sat sideways to be closer and
kinder, and as her hand was on the arm of her seat he put his own
down on it again to emphasise something he had to say that would
be good for her to hear. He had already told her how her mother,
from the moment of seeing her so unexpectedly with a person who
was--well, not at all the right person, had promptly asked him to
take charge of her while she herself tackled, as she said, the
real culprit. He gave the child the sense of doing for the time
what he liked with her; ten minutes before she had never seen
him, but she could now sit there touching him, touched and
impressed by him and thinking it nice when a gentleman was thin
and brown--brown with a kind of clear depth that made his straw-
coloured moustache almost white and his eyes resemble little pale
flowers. The most extraordinary thing was the way she didn't
appear just then to mind Sir Claude's being tackled. The Captain
wasn't a bit like him, for it was an odd part of the pleasantness
of mamma's friend that it resided in a manner in this friend's
having a face so informally put together that the only kindness
could be to call it funny. An odder part still was that it
finally made our young lady, to classify him further, say to
herself that, of all people in the world, he reminded her most
insidiously of Mrs. Wix. He had neither straighteners nor a
diadem, nor, at least in the same place as the other, a button;
he was sun-burnt and deep-voiced and smelt of cigars, yet he
marvellously had more in common with her old governess than with
her young stepfather. What he had to say to her that was good for
her to hear was that her poor mother (didn't she know?) was the
best friend he had ever had in all his life. And he added: "She
has told me ever so much about you. I'm awfully glad to know
you."
She had never, she thought, been so addressed as a young lady,
not even by Sir Claude the day, so long ago, that she found him
with Mrs. Beale. It struck her as the way that at balls, by
delightful partners, young ladies must be spoken to in the
intervals of dances; and she tried to think of something that
would meet it at the same high point. But this effort flurried
her, and all she could produce was: "At first, you know, I
thought you were Lord Eric."
The Captain looked vague. "Lord Eric?"
"And then Sir Claude thought you were the Count."
At this he laughed out. "Why he's only five foot high and as red
as a lobster!" Maisie laughed, with a certain elegance, in return
--the young lady at the ball certainly would--and was on the
point, as conscientiously, of pursuing the subject with an
agreeable question. But before she could speak her companion
challenged her. "Who in the world's Lord Eric?"
"Don't you know him?" She judged her young lady would say that
with light surprise.
"Do you mean a fat man with his mouth always open?" She had to
confess that their acquaintance was so limited that she could
only describe the bearer of the name as a friend of mamma's; but
a light suddenly came to the Captain, who quickly spoke as
knowing her man. "What-do-you-call-him's brother, the fellow that
owned Bobolink?" Then, with all his kindness, he contradicted her
flat. "Oh dear no; your mother never knew HIM."
"But Mrs. Wix said so," the child risked.
"Mrs. Wix?"
"My old governess."
This again seemed amusing to the Captain. "She mixed him up, your
old governess. He's an awful beast. Your mother never looked at
him."
He was as positive as he was friendly, but he dropped for a
minute after this into a silence that gave Maisie, confused but
ingenious, a chance to redeem the mistake of pretending to know
too much by the humility of inviting further correction. "And
doesn't she know the Count?"
"Oh I dare say! But he's another ass." After which abruptly, with
a different look, he put down again on the back of her own the
hand he had momentarily removed. Maisie even thought he coloured
a little. "I want tremendously to speak to you. You must never
believe any harm of your mother."
"Oh I assure you I DON'T!" cried the child, blushing, herself, up
to her eyes in a sudden surge of deprecation of such a thought.
The Captain, bending his head, raised her hand to his lips with a
benevolence that made her wish her glove had been nicer. "Of
course you don't when you know how fond she is of YOU."
"She's fond of me?" Maisie panted.
"Tremendously. But she thinks you don't like her. You MUST like
her. She has had too much to put up with."
"Oh yes--I know!" She rejoiced that she had never denied it.
"Of course I've no right to speak of her except as a particular
friend," the Captain went on. "But she's a splendid woman. She
has never had any sort of justice."
"Hasn't she?"--his companion, to hear the words, felt a thrill
altogether new.
"Perhaps I oughtn't to say it to you, but she has had everything
to suffer."
"Oh yes--you can SAY it to me!" Maisie hastened to profess.
The Captain was glad. "Well, you needn't tell. It's all for YOU--
do you see?"
Serious and smiling she only wanted to take it from him. "It's
between you and me! Oh there are lots of things I've never told!"
"Well, keep this with the rest. I assure you she has had the most
infernal time, no matter what any one says to the contrary. She's
the cleverest woman I ever saw in all my life. She's too
charming." She had been touched already by his tone, and now she
leaned back in her chair and felt something tremble within her.
"She's tremendous fun--she can do all sorts of things better than
I've ever seen any one. She has the pluck of fifty--and I know; I
assure you I do. She has the nerve for a tiger-shoot--by Jove I'd
TAKE her! And she is awfully open and generous, don't you know?
there are women that are such horrid sneaks. She'll go through
anything for any one she likes." He appeared to watch for a
moment the effect on his companion of this emphasis; then he gave
a small sigh that mourned the limits of the speakable. But it was
almost with the note of a fresh challenge that he wound up:
"Look here, she's TRUE!"
Maisie had so little desire to assert the contrary that she found
herself, in the intensity of her response, throbbing with a joy
still less utterable than the essence of the Captain's admiration.
She was fairly hushed with the sense that he spoke of her mother
as she had never heard any one speak. It came over her as she sat
silent that, after all, this admiration and this respect were
quite new words, which took a distinction from the fact that
nothing in the least resembling them in quality had on any occasion
dropped from the lips of her father, of Mrs. Beale, of Sir Claude
or even of Mrs. Wix. What it appeared to her to come to was that
on the subject of her ladyship it was the first real kindness she
had heard, so that at the touch of it something strange and deep
and pitying surged up within her--a revelation that, practically
and so far as she knew, her mother, apart from this, had only been
disliked. Mrs. Wix's original account of Sir Claude's affection
seemed as empty now as the chorus in a children's game, and the
husband and wife, but a little way off at that moment, were face
to face in hatred and with the dreadful name he had called her
still in the air. What was it the Captain on the other hand had
called her? Maisie wanted to hear that again. The tears filled
her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, which burned under them
with the rush of a consciousness that for her too, five minutes
before, the vivid towering beauty whose assault she awaited had
been, a moment long, an object of pure dread. She became on the
spot indifferent to her usual fear of showing what in children
was notoriously most offensive--presented to her companion,
soundlessly but hideously, her wet distorted face. She cried,
with a pang, straight AT him, cried as she had never cried at
any one in all her life. "Oh do you love her?" she brought out
with a gulp that was the effect of her trying not to make a noise.
It was doubtless another consequence of the thick mist through
which she saw him that in reply to her question the Captain gave
her such a queer blurred look. He stammered, yet in his voice
there was also the ring of a great awkward insistence. "Of course
I'm tremendously fond of her--I like her better than any woman I
ever saw. I don't mind in the least telling you that," he went
on, "and I should think myself a great beast if I did." Then to
show that his position was superlatively clear he made her, with
a kindness that even Sir Claude had never surpassed, tremble
again as she had trembled at his first outbreak. He called her by
her name, and her name drove it home. "My dear Maisie, your
mother's an angel!"
It was an almost unbelievable balm--it soothed so her impression
of danger and pain. She sank back in her chair, she covered her
face with her hands. "Oh mother, mother, mother!" she sobbed. She
had an impression that the Captain, beside her, if more and more
friendly, was by no means unembarrassed; in a minute, however,
when her eyes were clearer, he was erect in front of her, very
red and nervously looking about him and whacking his leg with his
stick. "Say you love her, Mr. Captain; say it, say it!" she
implored.
Mr. Captain's blue eyes fixed themselves very hard. "Of course I
love her, damn it, you know!"
At this she also jumped up; she had fished out somehow her
pocket-handkerchief. "So do I then. I do, I do, I do!" she
passionately asseverated.
"Then will you come back to her?"
Maisie, staring, stopped the tight little plug of her handkerchief
on the way to her eyes. "She won't have me."
"Yes she will. She wants you."
"Back at the house--with Sir Claude?"
Again he hung fire. "No, not with him. In another place."
They stood looking at each other with an intensity unusual as
between a Captain and a little girl. "She won't have me in any
place."
"Oh yes she will if _I_ ask her!"
Maisie's intensity continued. "Shall you be there?"
The Captain's, on the whole, did the same. "Oh yes--some day."
"Then you don't mean now?"
He broke into a quick smile. "Will you come now?--go with us for
an hour?"
Maisie considered. "She wouldn't have me even now." She could see
that he had his idea, but that her tone impressed him. That
disappointed her a little, though in an instant he rang out
again.
"She will if I ask her," he repeated. "I'll ask her this minute."
Maisie, turning at this, looked away to where her mother and her
stepfather had stopped. At first, among the trees, nobody was
visible; but the next moment she exclaimed with expression: "It's
over--here he comes!"
The Captain watched the approach of her ladyship's husband, who
lounged composedly over the grass, making to Maisie with his
closed fingers a little movement in the air. "I've no desire to
avoid him."
"Well, you mustn't see him," said Maisie.
"Oh he's in no hurry himself!" Sir Claude had stopped to light
another cigarette.
She was vague as to the way it was proper he should feel; but she
had a sense that the Captain's remark was rather a free reflexion
on it. "Oh he doesn't care!" she replied.
"Doesn't care for what?"
"Doesn't care who you are. He told me so. Go and ask mamma," she
added.
"If you can come with us? Very good. You really want me not to
wait for him?"
"PLEASE don't." But Sir Claude was not yet near, and the Captain
had with his left hand taken hold of her right, which he
familiarly, sociably swung a little. "Only first," she continued,
"tell me this. Are you going to LIVE with mamma?"
The immemorial note of mirth broke out at her seriousness. "One
of these days."
She wondered, wholly unperturbed by his laughter. "Then where
will Sir Claude be?"
"He'll have left her of course."
"Does he really intend to do that?"
"You've every opportunity to ask him."
Maisie shook her head with decision. "He won't do it. Not first."
Her "first" made the Captain laugh out again. "Oh he'll be sure
to be nasty! But I've said too much to you."
"Well, you know, I'll never tell," said Maisie.
"No, it's all for yourself. Good-bye."
"Good-bye." Maisie kept his hand long enough to add: "I like you
too." And then supremely: "You DO love her?"
"My dear child--!" The Captain wanted words.
"Then don't do it only for just a little."
"A little?"
"Like all the others."
"All the others?"--he stood staring.
She pulled away her hand. "Do it always!" She bounded to meet Sir
Claude, and as she left the Captain she heard him ring out with
apparent gaiety:
"Oh I'm in for it!"
As she joined Sir Claude she noted her mother in the distance
move slowly off, and, glancing again at the Captain, saw him,
swinging his stick, retreat in the same direction.
She had never seen Sir Claude look as he looked just then;
flushed yet not excited--settled rather in an immoveable disgust
and at once very sick and very hard. His conversation with her
mother had clearly drawn blood, and the child's old horror came
back to her, begetting the instant moral contraction of the days
when her parents had looked to her to feed their love of battle.
Her greatest fear for the moment, however, was that her friend
would see she had been crying. The next she became aware that he
had glanced at her, and it presently occurred to her that he
didn't even wish to be looked at. At this she quickly removed her
gaze, while he said rather curtly: "Well, who in the world IS the
fellow?"
She felt herself flooded with prudence. "Oh _I_ haven't found
out!" This sounded as if she meant he ought to have done so
himself; but she could only face doggedly the ugliness of seeming
disagreeable, as she used to face it in the hours when her
father, for her blankness, called her a dirty little donkey, and
her mother, for her falsity, pushed her out of the room.
"Then what have you been doing all this time?"
"Oh I don't know!" It was of the essence of her method not to be
silly by halves.
"Then didn't the beast say anything?" They had got down by the
lake and were walking fast.
"Well, not very much."
"He didn't speak of your mother?"
"Oh yes, a little!"
"Then what I ask you, please, is HOW?" She kept silence--so long
that he presently went on: "I say, you know--don't you hear me?"
At this she produced: "Well, I'm afraid I didn't attend to him
very much."
Sir Claude, smoking rather hard, made no immediate rejoinder; but
finally he exclaimed: "Then my dear--with such a chance--you were
the perfection of a dunce!" He was so irritated--or she took him
to be--that for the rest of the time they were in the Gardens he
spoke no other word; and she meanwhile subtly abstained from any
attempt to pacify him. That would only lead to more questions. At
the gate of the Gardens he hailed a four-wheeled cab and, in
silence, without meeting her eyes, put her into it, only saying
"Give him THAT" as he tossed half a crown upon the seat. Even
when from outside he had closed the door and told the man where
to go he never took her departing look. Nothing of this kind had
ever yet happened to them, but it had no power to make her love
him less; so she could not only bear it, she felt as she drove
away--she could rejoice in it. It brought again the sweet sense
of success that, ages before, she had had at a crisis when, on
the stairs, returning from her father's, she had met a fierce
question of her mother's with an imbecility as deep and had in
consequence been dashed by Mrs. Farange almost to the bottom.
