It continued to rain so hard that our young lady's private dream of
explaining the Continent to their visitor had to contain a provision for
some adequate treatment of the weather. At the _table d'hôte_ that evening
she threw out a variety of lights: this was the second ceremony of the
sort she had sat through, and she would have neglected her privilege
and dishonoured her vocabulary--which indeed consisted mainly of the
names of dishes--if she had not been proportionately ready to dazzle
with interpretations. Preoccupied and overawed, Mrs. Wix was apparently
dim: she accepted her pupil's version of the mysteries of the menu in a
manner that might have struck the child as the depression of a credulity
conscious not so much of its needs as of its dimensions. Maisie was soon
enough--though it scarce happened before bedtime--confronted again with
the different sort of programme for which she reserved her criticism.
They remounted together to their sitting-room while Sir Claude, who said
he would join them later, remained below to smoke and to converse with
the old acquaintances that he met wherever he turned. He had proposed
his companions, for coffee, the enjoyment of the _salon de lecture_,
but Mrs. Wix had replied promptly and with something of an air that it
struck her their own apartments offered them every convenience. They
offered the good lady herself, Maisie could immediately observe, not
only that of this rather grand reference, which, already emulous, so
far as it went, of her pupil, she made as if she had spent her life in
salons; but that of a stiff French sofa where she could sit and stare at
the faint French lamp, in default of the French clock that had stopped,
as for some account of the time Sir Claude would so markedly interpose.
Her demeanour accused him so directly of hovering beyond her reach that
Maisie sought to divert her by a report of Susan's quaint attitude on
the matter of their conversation after lunch. Maisie had mentioned to
the young woman for sympathy's sake the plan for her relief, but her
disapproval of alien ways appeared, strange to say, only to prompt her
to hug her gloom; so that between Mrs. Wix's effect of displacing her
and the visible stiffening of her back the child had the sense of a
double office and enlarged play for pacific powers.
These powers played to no great purpose, it was true, in keeping before
Mrs. Wix the vision of Sir Claude's perversity, which hung there in the
pauses of talk and which he himself, after unmistakeable delays, finally
made quite lurid by bursting in--it was near ten o'clock--with an object
held up in his hand. She knew before he spoke what it was; she knew at
least from the underlying sense of all that, since the hour spent after
the Exhibition with her father, had not sprung up to reinstate Mr.
Farange--she knew it meant a triumph for Mrs. Beale. The mere present
sight of Sir Claude's face caused her on the spot to drop straight
through her last impression of Mr. Farange a plummet that reached still
deeper down than the security of these days of flight. She had wrapped
that impression in silence--a silence that had parted with half its veil
to cover also, from the hour of Sir Claude's advent, the image of Mr.
Farange's wife. But if the object in Sir Claude's hand revealed itself
as a letter which he held up very high, so there was something in his
mere motion that laid Mrs. Beale again bare. "Here we are!" he cried
almost from the door, shaking his trophy at them and looking from one to
the other. Then he came straight to Mrs. Wix; he had pulled two papers
out of the envelope and glanced at them again to see which was which. He
thrust one out open to Mrs. Wix. "Read that." She looked at him hard,
as if in fear: it was impossible not to see he was excited. Then she
took the letter, but it was not her face that Maisie watched while she
read. Neither, for that matter, was it this countenance that Sir Claude
scanned: he stood before the fire and, more calmly, now that he had
acted, communed in silence with his stepdaughter.
The silence was in truth quickly broken; Mrs. Wix rose to her feet with
the violence of the sound she emitted. The letter had dropped from her
and lay upon the floor; it had made her turn ghastly white and she was
speechless with the effect of it. "It's too abominable--it's too
unspeakable!" she then cried.
"Isn't it a charming thing?" Sir Claude asked. "It has just arrived,
enclosed in a word of her own. She sends it on to me with the remark
that comment's superfluous. I really think it is. That's all you can
say."
"She oughtn't to pass such a horror about," said Mrs. Wix. "She ought
to put it straight in the fire."
"My dear woman, she's not such a fool! It's much too precious." He had
picked the letter up and he gave it again a glance of complacency which
produced a light in his face. "Such a document"--he considered, then
concluded with a slight drop--"such a document is, in fine, a basis!"
"A basis for what?"
"Well--for proceedings."
"Hers?" Mrs. Wix's voice had become outright the voice of derision. "How
can SHE proceed?"
Sir Claude turned it over. "How can she get rid of him? Well--she IS rid
of him."
"Not legally." Mrs. Wix had never looked to her pupil so much as if she
knew what she was talking about.
"I dare say," Sir Claude laughed; "but she's not a bit less deprived
than I!"
"Of the power to get a divorce? It's just your want of the power that
makes the scandal of your connexion with her. Therefore it's just her
want of it that makes that of hers with you. That's all I contend!" Mrs.
Wix concluded with an unparalleled neigh of battle. Oh she did know what
she was talking about!
Maisie had meanwhile appealed mutely to Sir Claude, who judged it easier
to meet what she didn't say than to meet what Mrs. Wix did.
"It's a letter to Mrs. Beale from your father, my dear, written from
Spa and making the rupture between them perfectly irrevocable. It lets
her know, and not in pretty language, that, as we technically say, he
deserts her. It puts an end for ever to their relations." He ran his
eyes over it again, then appeared to make up his mind. "In fact it
concerns you, Maisie, so nearly and refers to you so particularly that
I really think you ought to see the terms in which this new situation
is created for you." And he held out the letter.
Mrs. Wix, at this, pounced upon it; she had grabbed it too soon even
for Maisie to become aware of being rather afraid of it. Thrusting it
instantly behind her she positively glared at Sir Claude. "See it,
wretched man?--the innocent child SEE such a thing? I think you must be
mad, and she shall not have a glimpse of it while I'm here to prevent!"
The breadth of her action had made Sir Claude turn red--he even looked a
little foolish. "You think it's too bad, eh? But it's precisely because
it's bad that it seemed to me it would have a lesson and a virtue for
her."
Maisie could do a quick enough justice to his motive to be able clearly
to interpose. She fairly smiled at him. "I assure you I can quite
believe how bad it is!" She thought of something, kept it back a moment,
and then spoke. "I know what's in it!"
He of course burst out laughing and, while Mrs. Wix groaned an "Oh
heavens!" replied: "You wouldn't say that, old boy, if you did! The
point I make is," he continued to Mrs. Wix with a blandness now
re-established--"the point I make is simply that it sets Mrs. Beale
free."