Over Maisie's head, at this, they still faced each other. "You spend the
night there?"
"Yes, I brought some things. I went to the hotel and hastily arranged;
then I caught the train that whisked me on here. You see what a day I've
had of it."
The statement may surprise, but these were really as obliging if not as
lucid words as, into her daughter's ears at least, Ida's lips had ever
dropped; and there was a quick desire in the daughter that for the hour
at any rate they should duly be welcomed as a ground of intercourse.
Certainly mamma had a charm which, when turned on, became a large
explanation; and the only danger now in an impulse to applaud it would
be that of appearing to signalise its rarity. Maisie, however, risked
the peril in the geniality of an admission that Ida had indeed had a
rush; and she invited Sir Claude to expose himself by agreeing with her
that the rush had been even worse than theirs. He appeared to meet this
appeal by saying with detachment enough: "You go back there to-night?"
"Oh yes--there are plenty of trains." Again Sir Claude hesitated; it
would have been hard to say if the child, between them, more connected
or divided them. Then he brought out quietly: "It will be late for you
to knock about. I'll see you over."
"You needn't trouble, thank you. I think you won't deny that I can help
myself and that it isn't the first time in my dreadful life that I've
somehow managed it." Save for this allusion to her dreadful life they
talked there, Maisie noted, as if they were only rather superficial
friends; a special effect that she had often wondered at before in the
midst of what she supposed to be intimacies. This effect was augmented
by the almost casual manner in which her ladyship went on: "I dare say
I shall go abroad."
"From Dover do you mean, straight?"
"How straight I can't say. I'm excessively ill."
This for a minute struck Maisie as but a part of the conversation;
at the end of which time she became aware that it ought to strike
her--though it apparently didn't strike Sir Claude--as a part of
something graver. It helped her to twist nearer. "Ill, mamma--really
ill?"
She regretted her "really" as soon as she had spoken it; but there
couldn't be a better proof of her mother's present polish than that Ida
showed no gleam of a temper to take it up. She had taken up at other
times much tinier things. She only pressed Maisie's head against her
bosom and said: "Shockingly, my dear. I must go to that new place."
"What new place?" Sir Claude enquired.
Ida thought, but couldn't recall it. "Oh 'Chose,' don't you know?
--where every one goes. I want some proper treatment. It's all I've ever
asked for on earth. But that's not what I came to say."
Sir Claude, in silence, folded one by one his newspapers; then he rose
and stood whacking the palm of his hand with the bundle. "You'll stop
and dine with us?"
"Dear no--I can't dine at this sort of hour. I ordered dinner at Dover."
Her ladyship's tone in this one instance showed a certain superiority to
those conditions in which her daughter had artlessly found Folkestone a
paradise. It was yet not so crushing as to nip in the bud the eagerness
with which the latter broke out: "But won't you at least have a cup of
tea?"
Ida kissed her again on the brow. "Thanks, love. I had tea before
coming." She raised her eyes to Sir Claude. "She IS sweet!" He made no
more answer than if he didn't agree; but Maisie was at ease about that
and was still taken up with the joy of this happier pitch of their talk,
which put more and more of a meaning into the Captain's version of her
ladyship and literally kindled a conjecture that such an admirer might,
over there at the other place, be waiting for her to dine. Was the same
conjecture in Sir Claude's mind? He partly puzzled her, if it had risen
there, by the slight perversity with which he returned to a question
that his wife evidently thought she had disposed of.
He whacked his hand again with his paper. "I had really much better take
you."
"And leave Maisie here alone?"
Mamma so clearly didn't want it that Maisie leaped at the vision of a
Captain who had seen her on from Dover and who, while he waited to take
her back, would be hovering just at the same distance at which, in
Kensington Gardens, the companion of his walk had herself hovered. Of
course, however, instead of breathing any such guess she let Sir Claude
reply; all the more that his reply could contribute so much to her own
present grandeur. "She won't be alone when she has a maid in
attendance."
Maisie had never before had so much of a retinue, and she waited also to
enjoy the action of it on her ladyship. "You mean the woman you brought
from town?" Ida considered. "The person at the house spoke of her in a
way that scarcely made her out company for my child." Her tone was that
her child had never wanted, in her hands, for prodigious company. But
she as distinctly continued to decline Sir Claude's. "Don't be an old
goose," she said charmingly. "Let us alone."
In front of them on the grass he looked graver than Maisie at all now
thought the occasion warranted. "I don't see why you can't say it before
me."