"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.