What Maisie Knew Part 33

Maisie carried her eyes wistfully to the train, where, amid cries of _"En voiture, en voiture!"_ heads were at windows and doors banging loud. The porter was pressing. _"Ah vous n'avez plus le temps!"_

"It's going--it's going!" cried Maisie.

They watched it move, they watched it start; then the man went his way with a shrug. "It's gone!" Sir Claude said.

Maisie crept some distance up the platform; she stood there with her back to her companion, following it with her eyes, keeping down tears, nursing her pink and yellow books. She had had a real fright but had fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in her fall her fear too had been dashed down and broken. It was gone. She looked round at last, from where she had paused, at Sir Claude's, and then saw that his wasn't. It sat there with him on the bench to which, against the wall of the station, he had retreated, and where, leaning back and, as she thought, rather queer, he still waited. She came down to him and he continued to offer his ineffectual intention of pleasantry. "Yes, I've chosen," she said to him. "I'll let her go if you--if you--"

She faltered; he quickly took her up. "If I, if I--"

"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 cafe 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 pa.s.sed 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."

Sir Claude looked almost foolish. "Is she going in that boat?"

"I suppose so. I won't even bid her good-bye," Maisie continued. "I'll stay out till the boat has gone. I'll go up to the old rampart."

"The old rampart?"

"I'll sit on that old bench where you see the gold Virgin."

"The gold Virgin?" he vaguely echoed. But it brought his eyes back to her as if after an instant he could see the place and the thing she named--could see her sitting there alone. "While I break with Mrs.

Beale?"

"While you break with Mrs. Beale."

He gave a long deep smothered sigh. "I must see her first."

"You won't do as I do? Go out and wait?"

"Wait?"--once more he appeared at a loss.

"Till they both have gone," Maisie said.

"Giving US up?"

"Giving US up."

Oh with what a face for an instant he wondered if that could be! But his wonder the next moment only made him go to the door and, with his hand on the k.n.o.b, stand as if listening for voices. Maisie listened, but she heard none. All she heard presently was Sir Claude's saying with speculation quite choked off, but so as not to be heard in the salon: "Mrs. Beale will never go." On this he pushed open the door and she went in with him. The salon was empty, but as an effect of their entrance the lady he had just mentioned appeared at the door of the bedroom. "Is she going?" he then demanded.

Mrs. Beale came forward, closing her door behind her. "I've had the most extraordinary scene with her. She told me yesterday she'd stay."

"And my arrival has altered it?"

"Oh we took that into account!" Mrs. Beale was flushed, which was never quite becoming to her, and her face visibly testified to the encounter to which she alluded. Evidently, however, she had not been worsted, and she held up her head and smiled and rubbed her hands as if in sudden emulation of the _patronne_. "She promised she'd stay even if you should come."

"Then why has she changed?"

"Because she's a hound. The reason she herself gives is that you've been out too long."

Sir Claude stared. "What has that to do with it?"

"You've been out an age," Mrs. Beale continued; "I myself couldn't imagine what had become of you. The whole morning," she exclaimed, "and luncheon long since over!"

Sir Claude appeared indifferent to that. "Did Mrs. Wix go down with you?" he only asked.

"Not she; she never budged!"--and Mrs. Beale's flush, to Maisie's vision, deepened. "She moped there--she didn't so much as come out to me; and when I sent to invite her she simply declined to appear. She said she wanted nothing, and I went down alone. But when I came up, fortunately a little primed"--and Mrs. Beale smiled a fine smile of battle--"she WAS in the field!"

"And you had a big row?"

"We had a big row"--she a.s.sented with a frankness as large. "And while you left me to that sort of thing I should like to know where you were!"

She paused for a reply, but Sir Claude merely looked at Maisie; a movement that promptly quickened her challenge. "Where the mischief have you been?"

"You seem to take it as hard as Mrs. Wix," Sir Claude returned.

"I take it as I choose to take it, and you don't answer my question."

He looked again at Maisie--as if for an aid to this effort; whereupon she smiled at her stepmother and offered: "We've been everywhere."

Mrs. Beale, however, made her no response, thereby adding to a surprise of which our young lady had already felt the light brush. She had received neither a greeting nor a glance, but perhaps this was not more remarkable than the omission, in respect to Sir Claude, parted with in London two days before, of any sign of a sense of their reunion. Most remarkable of all was Mrs. Beale's announcement of the pledge given by Mrs. Wix and not hitherto revealed to her pupil. Instead of heeding this witness she went on with acerbity: "It might surely have occurred to you that something would come up."

Sir Claude looked at his watch. "I had no idea it was so late, nor that we had been out so long. We weren't hungry. It pa.s.sed like a flash. What HAS come up?"

"Oh that she's disgusted," said Mrs. Beale.

"With whom then?"

"With Maisie." Even now she never looked at the child, who stood there equally a.s.sociated and disconnected. "For having no moral sense."

"How SHOULD she have?" Sir Claude tried again to shine a little at the companion of his walk. "How at any rate is it proved by her going out with me?"