It must not be supposed that her ladyship's intermissions were not
qualified by demonstrations of another order--triumphal entries and
breathless pauses during which she seemed to take of everything in the
room, from the state of the ceiling to that of her daughter's boot-toes,
a survey that was rich in intentions. Sometimes she sat down and
sometimes she surged about, but her attitude wore equally in either
case the grand air of the practical. She found so much to deplore that
she left a great deal to expect, and bristled so with calculation that
she seemed to scatter remedies and pledges. Her visits were as good as
an outfit; her manner, as Mrs. Wix once said, as good as a pair of
curtains; but she was a person addicted to extremes--sometimes barely
speaking to her child and sometimes pressing this tender shoot to a
bosom cut, as Mrs. Wix had also observed, remarkably low. She was always
in a fearful hurry, and the lower the bosom was cut the more it was to
be gathered she was wanted elsewhere. She usually broke in alone, but
sometimes Sir Claude was with her, and during all the earlier period
there was nothing on which these appearances had had so delightful a
bearing as on the way her ladyship was, as Mrs. Wix expressed it, under
the spell. "But ISN'T she under it!" Maisie used in thoughtful but
familiar reference to exclaim after Sir Claude had swept mamma away in
peals of natural laughter. Not even in the old days of the convulsed
ladies had she heard mamma laugh so freely as in these moments of
conjugal surrender, to the gaiety of which even a little girl could see
she had at last a right--a little girl whose thoughtfulness was now all
happy selfish meditation on good omens and future fun.
Unaccompanied, in subsequent hours, and with an effect of changing
to meet a change, Ida took a tone superficially disconcerting and
abrupt--the tone of having, at an immense cost, made over everything to
Sir Claude and wishing others to know that if everything wasn't right it
was because Sir Claude was so dreadfully vague. "He has made from the
first such a row about you," she said on one occasion to Maisie, "that
I've told him to do for you himself and try how he likes it--see?
I've washed my hands of you; I've made you over to him; and if you're
discontented it's on him, please, you'll come down. So don't haul poor
ME up--I assure you I've worries enough." One of these, visibly, was
that the spell rejoiced in by the schoolroom fire was already in danger
of breaking; another was that she was finally forced to make no secret
of her husband's unfitness for real responsibilities. The day came
indeed when her breathless auditors learnt from her in bewilderment that
what ailed him was that he was, alas, simply not serious. Maisie wept
on Mrs. Wix's bosom after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly;
considering moreover that her governess but half-patched it up in coming
out at various moments the next few days with the opinion that it was
proper to his "station" to be careless and free. That had been proper to
every one's station that she had yet encountered save poor Mrs. Wix's
own, and the particular merit of Sir Claude had seemed precisely that he
was different from every one. She talked with him, however, as time went
on, very freely about her mother; being with him, in this relation,
wholly without the fear that had kept her silent before her father--the
fear of bearing tales and making bad things worse. He appeared to accept
the idea that he had taken her over and made her, as he said, his
particular lark; he quite agreed also that he was an awful fraud and an
idle beast and a sorry dunce. And he never said a word to her against
her mother--he only remained dumb and discouraged in the face of her
ladyship's own overtopping earnestness. There were occasions when he
even spoke as if he had wrenched his little charge from the arms of a
parent who had fought for her tooth and nail.
This was the very moral of a scene that flashed into vividness one day
when the four happened to meet without company in the drawing-room and
Maisie found herself clutched to her mother's breast and passionately
sobbed and shrieked over, made the subject of a demonstration evidently
sequent to some sharp passage just enacted. The connexion required that
while she almost cradled the child in her arms Ida should speak of her
as hideously, as fatally estranged, and should rail at Sir Claude as the
cruel author of the outrage. "He has taken you FROM me," she cried; "he
has set you AGAINST me, and you've been won away and your horrid little
mind has been poisoned! You've gone over to him, you've given yourself
up to side against me and hate me. You never open your mouth to me--you
know you don't; and you chatter to him like a dozen magpies. Don't lie
about it--I hear you all over the place. You hang about him in a way
that's barely decent--he can do what he likes with you. Well then, let
him, to his heart's content: he has been in such a hurry to take you
that we'll see if it suits him to keep you. I'm very good to break my
heart about it when you've no more feeling for me than a clammy little
fish!" She suddenly thrust the child away and, as a disgusted admission
of failure, sent her flying across the room into the arms of Mrs. Wix,
whom at this moment and even in the whirl of her transit Maisie saw,
very red, exchange a quick queer look with Sir Claude.
The impression of the look remained with her, confronting her with such
a critical little view of her mother's explosion that she felt the less
ashamed of herself for incurring the reproach with which she had been
cast off. Her father had once called her a heartless little beast,
and now, though decidedly scared, she was as stiff and cold as if the
description had been just. She was not even frightened enough to cry,
which would have been a tribute to her mother's wrongs: she was only,
more than anything else, curious about the opinion mutely expressed by
their companions. Taking the earliest opportunity to question Mrs. Wix
on this subject she elicited the remarkable reply: "Well, my dear, it's
her ladyship's game, and we must just hold on like grim death."
Maisie could interpret at her leisure these ominous words. Her
reflexions indeed at this moment thickened apace, and one of them made
her sure that her governess had conversations, private, earnest and not
infrequent, with her denounced stepfather. She perceived in the light
of a second episode that something beyond her knowledge had taken place
in the house. The things beyond her knowledge--numerous enough in
truth--had not hitherto, she believed, been the things that had been
nearest to her: she had even had in the past a small smug conviction
that in the domestic labyrinth she always kept the clue. This time too,
however, she at last found out--with the discreet aid, it had to be
confessed, of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude's own assistance was abruptly taken
from her, for his comment on her ladyship's game was to start on the
spot, quite alone, for Paris, evidently because he wished to show
a spirit when accused of bad behaviour. He might be fond of his
stepdaughter, Maisie felt, without wishing her to be after all thrust on
him in such a way; his absence therefore, it was clear, was a protest
against the thrusting. It was while this absence lasted that our young
lady finally discovered what had happened in the house to be that her
mother was no longer in love.
The limit of a passion for Sir Claude had certainly been reached, she
judged, some time before the day on which her ladyship burst suddenly
into the schoolroom to introduce Mr. Perriam, who, as she announced
from the doorway to Maisie, wouldn't believe his ears that one had a
great hoyden of a daughter. Mr. Perriam was short and massive--Mrs.
Wix remarked afterwards that he was "too fat for the pace"; and it
would have been difficult to say of him whether his head were more
bald or his black moustache more bushy. He seemed also to have
moustaches over his eyes, which, however, by no means prevented these
polished little globes from rolling round the room as if they had been
billiard-balls impelled by Ida's celebrated stroke. Mr. Perriam wore
on the hand that pulled his moustache a diamond of dazzling lustre, in
consequence of which and of his general weight and mystery our young
lady observed on his departure that if he had only had a turban he
would have been quite her idea of a heathen Turk.
"He's quite my idea," Mrs. Wix replied, "of a heathen Jew."
"Well, I mean," said Maisie, "of a person who comes from the East."
"That's where he MUST come from," her governess opined--"he comes from
the City." In a moment she added as if she knew all about him. "He's one
of those people who have lately broken out. He'll be immensely rich."
"On the death of his papa?" the child interestedly enquired.
"Dear no--nothing hereditary. I mean he has made a mass of money."
"How much, do you think?" Maisie demanded.