"Yes; they're in such a muddle--it may take months. Now what I want to
hear, you know, is whether you'd like to come along?"
Planted once more before him in the middle of the room she felt herself
turning white. "I?" she gasped, yet feeling as soon as she had spoken
that such a note of dismay was not altogether pretty. She felt it still
more while her father replied, with a shake of his legs, a toss of his
cigarette-ash and a fidgety look--he was for ever taking one--all the
length of his waistcoat and trousers, that she needn't be quite so
disgusted. It helped her in a few seconds to appear more as he would
like her that she saw, in the lovely light of the Countess's splendour,
exactly, however she appeared, the right answer to make. "Dear papa,
I'll go with you anywhere."
He turned his back to her and stood with his nose at the glass of the
chimneypiece while he brushed specks of ash out of his beard. Then he
abruptly said: "Do you know anything about your brute of a mother?"
It was just of her brute of a mother that the manner of the question in
a remarkable degree reminded her: it had the free flight of one of Ida's
fine bridgings of space. With the sense of this was kindled for Maisie
at the same time an inspiration. "Oh yes, I know everything!" and she
became so radiant that her father, seeing it in the mirror, turned back
to her and presently, on the sofa, had her at his knee again and was
again particularly affecting. Maisie's inspiration instructed her,
pressingly, that the more she should be able to say about mamma the
less she would be called upon to speak of her step-parents. She kept
hoping the Countess would come in before her power to protect them was
exhausted; and it was now, in closer quarters with her companion, that
the idea at the back of her head shifted its place to her lips. She told
him she had met her mother in the Park with a gentleman who, while Sir
Claude had strolled with her ladyship, had been kind and had sat and
talked to her; narrating the scene with a remembrance of her pledge of
secrecy to the Captain quite brushed away by the joy of seeing Beale
listen without profane interruption. It was almost an amazement, but it
was indeed all a joy, thus to be able to guess that papa was at last
quite tired of his anger--of his anger at any rate about mamma. He was
only bored with her now. That made it, however, the more imperative that
his spent displeasure shouldn't be blown out again. It charmed the child
to see how much she could interest him; and the charm remained even
when, after asking her a dozen questions, he observed musingly and a
little obscurely: "Yes, damned if she won't!" For in this too there was
a detachment, a wise weariness that made her feel safe. She had had
to mention Sir Claude, though she mentioned him as little as possible
and Beale only appeared to look quite over his head. It pieced itself
together for her that this was the mildness of general indifference, a
source of profit so great for herself personally that if the Countess
was the author of it she was prepared literally to hug the Countess. She
betrayed that eagerness by a restless question about her, to which her
father replied: "Oh she has a head on her shoulders. I'll back her to
get out of anything!" He looked at Maisie quite as if he could trace the
connexion between her enquiry and the impatience of her gratitude. "Do
you mean to say you'd really come with me?"
She felt as if he were now looking at her very hard indeed, and also as
if she had grown ever so much older. "I'll do anything in the world you
ask me, papa."
He gave again, with a laugh and with his legs apart, his proprietary
glance at his waistcoat and trousers. "That's a way, my dear, of saying
'No, thank you!' You know you don't want to go the least little mite.
You can't humbug ME!" Beale Farange laid down. "I don't want to bully
you--I never bullied you in my life; but I make you the offer, and it's
to take or to leave. Your mother will never again have any more to do
with you than if you were a kitchenmaid she had turned out for going
wrong. Therefore of course I'm your natural protector and you've a right
to get everything out of me you can. Now's your chance, you know--you
won't be half-clever if you don't. You can't say I don't put it before
you--you can't say I ain't kind to you or that I don't play fair. Mind
you never say that, you know--it WOULD bring me down on you. I know
what's proper. I'll take you again, just as I HAVE taken you again and
again. And I'm much obliged to you for making up such a face."
She was conscious enough that her face indeed couldn't please him if it
showed any sign--just as she hoped it didn't--of her sharp impression of
what he now really wanted to do. Wasn't he trying to turn the tables on
her, embarrass her somehow into admitting that what would really suit
her little book would be, after doing so much for good manners, to leave
her wholly at liberty to arrange for herself? She began to be nervous
again: it rolled over her that this was their parting, their parting
for ever, and that he had brought her there for so many caresses only
because it was important such an occasion should look better for him
than any other. For her to spoil it by the note of discord would
certainly give him ground for complaint; and the child was momentarily
bewildered between her alternatives of agreeing with him about her
wanting to get rid of him and displeasing him by pretending to stick
to him. So she found for the moment no solution but to murmur very
helplessly: "Oh papa--oh papa!"
"I know what you're up to--don't tell ME!" After which he came straight
over and, in the most inconsequent way in the world, clasped her in
his arms a moment and rubbed his beard against her cheek. Then she
understood as well as if he had spoken it that what he wanted, hang
it, was that she should let him off with all the honours--with all
the appearance of virtue and sacrifice on his side. It was exactly as
if he had broken out to her: "I say, you little booby, help me to be
irreproachable, to be noble, and yet to have none of the beastly bore of
it. There's only impropriety enough for one of us; so YOU must take it
all. REPUDIATE your dear old daddy--in the face, mind you, of his tender
supplications. He can't be rough with you--it isn't in his nature:
therefore you'll have successfully chucked him because he was too
generous to be as firm with you, poor man, as was, after all, his duty."
This was what he communicated in a series of tremendous pats on the
back; that portion of her person had never been so thumped since Moddle
thumped her when she choked. After a moment he gave her the further
impression of having become sure enough of her to be able very
gracefully to say out: "You know your mother loathes you, loathes you
simply. And I've been thinking over your precious man--the fellow you
told me about."
"Well," Maisie replied with competence, "I'm sure of HIM."
Her father was vague for an instant. "Do you mean sure of his liking
you?"
"Oh no; of his liking HER!"
Beale had a return of gaiety. "There's no accounting for tastes! It's
what they all say, you know."
"I don't care--I'm sure of him!" Maisie repeated.
"Sure, you mean, that she'll bolt?"
Maisie knew all about bolting, but, decidedly, she WAS older, and there
was something in her that could wince at the way her father made the
ugly word--ugly enough at best--sound flat and low. It prompted her to
amend his allusion, which she did by saying: "I don't know what she'll
do. But she'll be happy."
"Let us hope so," said Beale--almost as for edification. "The more happy
she is at any rate the less she'll want you about. That's why I press
you," he agreeably pursued, "to consider this handsome offer--I mean
seriously, you know--of your sole surviving parent." Their eyes, at
this, met again in a long and extraordinary communion which terminated
in his ejaculating: "Ah you little scoundrel!" She took it from him in
the manner it seemed to her he would like best and with a success that
encouraged him to go on: "You ARE a deep little devil!" Her silence,
ticking like a watch, acknowledged even this, in confirmation of which
he finally brought out: "You've settled it with the other pair!"
"Well, what if I have?" She sounded to herself most bold.
Her father, quite as in the old days, broke into a peal. "Why, don't you
know they're awful?"