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."