Maisie looked at her with new eyes, but answered as she had answered
before. "Will you give him up?"
Mrs. Beale's rejoinder hung fire, but when it came it was noble. "You
shouldn't talk to me of such things!" She was shocked, she was
scandalised to tears.
For Mrs. Wix, however, it was her discrimination that was indelicate.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she roundly cried.
Sir Claude made a supreme appeal. "Will you be so good as to allow these
horrors to terminate?"
Mrs. Beale fixed her eyes on him, and again Maisie watched them. "You
should do him justice," Mrs. Wix went on to Mrs. Beale. "We've always
been devoted to him, Maisie and I--and he has shown how much he likes
us. He would like to please her; he would like even, I think, to please
me. But he hasn't given you up."
They stood confronted, the step-parents, still under Maisie's
observation. That observation had never sunk so deep as at this
particular moment. "Yes, my dear, I haven't given you up," Sir Claude
said to Mrs. Beale at last, "and if you'd like me to treat our friends
here as solemn witnesses I don't mind giving you my word for it that I
never never will. There!" he dauntlessly exclaimed.
"He can't!" Mrs. Wix tragically commented.
Mrs. Beale, erect and alive in her defeat, jerked her handsome face
about. "He can't!" she literally mocked.
"He can't, he can't, he can't!"--Sir Claude's gay emphasis wonderfully
carried it off.
Mrs. Beale took it all in, yet she held her ground; on which Maisie
addressed Mrs. Wix. "Shan't we lose the boat?"
"Yes, we shall lose the boat," Mrs. Wix remarked to Sir Claude.
Mrs. Beale meanwhile faced full at Maisie. "I don't know what to make of
you!" she launched.
"Good-bye," said Maisie to Sir Claude.
"Good-bye, Maisie," Sir Claude answered.
Mrs. Beale came away from the door. "Goodbye!" she hurled at Maisie;
then passed straight across the room and disappeared in the adjoining
one.
Sir Claude had reached the other door and opened it. Mrs. Wix was
already out. On the threshold Maisie paused; she put out her hand to her
stepfather. He took it and held it a moment, and their eyes met as the
eyes of those who have done for each other what they can. "Good-bye," he
repeated.
"Good-bye." And Maisie followed Mrs. Wix.
They caught the steamer, which was just putting off, and, hustled across
the gulf, found themselves on the deck so breathless and so scared that
they gave up half the voyage to letting their emotion sink. It sank
slowly and imperfectly; but at last, in mid-channel, surrounded by the
quiet sea, Mrs. Wix had courage to revert. "I didn't look back, did
you?"
"Yes. He wasn't there," said Maisie.
"Not on the balcony?"
Maisie waited a moment; then "He wasn't there" she simply said again.
Mrs. Wix also was silent a while. "He went to HER," she finally
observed.
"Oh I know!" the child replied.
Mrs. Wix gave a sidelong look. She still had room for wonder at what
Maisie knew.