"If you'll give up Mrs. Beale."
"Oh!" he exclaimed; on which she saw how much, how hopelessly he was
afraid. She had supposed at the café that it was of his rebellion, of
his gathering motive; but how could that be when his temptations--that
temptation for example of the train they had just lost--were after all
so slight? Mrs. Wix was right. He was afraid of his weakness--of his
weakness.
She couldn't have told you afterwards how they got back to the inn: she
could only have told you that even from this point they had not gone
straight, but once more had wandered and loitered and, in the course of
it, had found themselves on the edge of the quay where--still apparently
with half an hour to spare--the boat prepared for Folkestone was drawn
up. Here they hovered as they had done at the station; here they
exchanged silences again, but only exchanged silences. There were
punctual people on the deck, choosing places, taking the best; some of
them already contented, all established and shawled, facing to England
and attended by the steward, who, confined on such a day to the lighter
offices, tucked up the ladies' feet or opened bottles with a pop. They
looked down at these things without a word; they even picked out a good
place for two that was left in the lee of a lifeboat; and if they
lingered rather stupidly, neither deciding to go aboard nor deciding to
come away, it was Sir Claude quite as much as she who wouldn't move. It
was Sir Claude who cultivated the supreme stillness by which she knew
best what he meant. He simply meant that he knew all she herself meant.
But there was no pretence of pleasantry now: their faces were grave and
tired. When at last they lounged off it was as if his fear, his fear of
his weakness, leaned upon her heavily as they followed the harbour. In
the hall of the hotel as they passed in she saw a battered old box that
she recognised, an ancient receptacle with dangling labels that she knew
and a big painted W, lately done over and intensely personal, that
seemed to stare at her with a recognition and even with some suspicion
of its own. Sir Claude caught it too, and there was agitation for both
of them in the sight of this object on the move. Was Mrs. Wix going and
was the responsibility of giving her up lifted, at a touch, from her
pupil? Her pupil and her pupil's companion, transfixed a moment, held,
in the presence of the omen, communication more intense than in the
presence either of the Paris train or of the Channel steamer; then, and
still without a word, they went straight upstairs. There, however, on
the landing, out of sight of the people below, they collapsed so that
they had to sink down together for support: they simply seated
themselves on the uppermost step while Sir Claude grasped the hand of
his stepdaughter with a pressure that at another moment would probably
have made her squeal. Their books and papers were all scattered. "She
thinks you've given her up!"
"Then I must see her--I must see her," Maisie said.
"To bid her good-bye?"
"I must see her--I must see her," the child only repeated.
They sat a minute longer, Sir Claude, with his tight grip of her hand
and looking away from her, looking straight down the staircase to where,
round the turn, electric bells rattled and the pleasant sea-draught
blew. At last, loosening his grasp, he slowly got up while she did the
same. They went together along the lobby, but before they reached the
salon he stopped again. "If I give up Mrs. Beale--?"
"I'll go straight out with you again and not come back till she has
gone."
He seemed to wonder. "Till Mrs. Beale--?" He had made it sound like a
bad joke.
"I mean till Mrs. Wix leaves--in that boat."