What Maisie Knew

"Handsome is that handsome does!" she returned in the same spirit. "You can take off your things," she went on, releasing Maisie.

The child, on her feet, was all emotion. "Then I'm just to stop—this way?"

"It will do as well as any other. Sir Claude, to-morrow, will have your things brought."

"I'll bring them myself. Upon my word I'll see them packed!" Sir Claude promised. "Come here and unbutton."

He had beckoned his young companion to where he sat, and he helped to disengage her from her coverings while Mrs. Beale, from a little distance, smiled at the hand he displayed. "There's a stepfather for you! I'm bound to say, you know, that he makes up for the want of other people."

"He makes up for the want of a nurse!" Sir Claude laughed. "Don't you remember I told you so the very first time?"

"Remember? It was exactly what made me think so well of you!"

"Nothing would induce me," the young man said to Maisie, "to tell you what made me think so well of her." Having divested the child he kissed her gently and gave her a little pat to make her stand off. The pat was accompanied with a vague sigh in which his gravity of a moment before came back. "All the same, if you hadn't had the fatal gift of beauty—"

"Well, what?" Maisie asked, wondering why he paused. It was the first time she had heard of her beauty.

"Why, we shouldn't all be thinking so well of each other!"

"He isn't speaking of personal loveliness—you've not that vulgar beauty, my dear, at all," Mrs. Beale explained. "He's just talking of plain dull charm of character."

"Her character's the most extraordinary thing in all the world," Sir Claude stated to Mrs. Beale.

"Oh I know all about that sort of thing!"—she fairly bridled with the knowledge.

It gave Maisie somehow a sudden sense of responsibility from which she sought refuge. "Well, you've got it too, 'that sort of thing'—you've got the fatal gift: you both really have!" she broke out.

"Beauty of character? My dear boy, we haven't a pennyworth!" Sir Claude protested.

"Speak for yourself, sir!" she leaped lightly from Mrs. Beale. "I'm good and I'm clever. What more do you want? For you, I'll spare your blushes and not be personal—I'll simply say that you're as handsome as you can stick together."

"You're both very lovely; you can't get out of it!"—Maisie felt the need of carrying her point. "And it's beautiful to see you side by side."

Sir Claude had taken his hat and stick; he stood looking at her a moment. "You're a comfort in trouble! But I must go home and pack you."

"And when will you come back?—to-morrow, to-morrow?"

"You see what we're in for!" he said to Mrs. Beale.

"Well, I can bear it if you can."

Their companion gazed from one of them to the other, thinking that though she had been happy indeed between Sir Claude and Mrs. Wix she should evidently be happier still between Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale. But it was like being perched on a prancing horse, and she made a movement to hold on to something. "Then, you know, shan't I bid goodbye to Mrs. Wix?"

"Oh I'll make it all right with her," said Sir Claude.

Maisie considered. "And with mamma?"

"Ah mamma!" he sadly laughed.

Even for the child this was scarcely ambiguous; but Mrs. Beale endeavoured to contribute to its clearness. "Your mother will crow, she'll crow—"

"Like the early bird!" said Sir Claude as she looked about for a comparison.

"She'll need no consolation," Mrs. Beale went on, "for having made your father grandly blaspheme."

Maisie stared. "Will he grandly blaspheme?" It was impressive, it might have been out of the Bible, and her question produced a fresh play of caresses, in which Sir Claude also engaged. She wondered meanwhile who, if Mrs. Wix was disposed of, would represent in her life the element of geography and anecdote; and she presently surmounted the delicacy she felt about asking. "Won't there be any one to give me lessons?"

Mrs. Beale was prepared with a reply that struck her as absolutely magnificent. "You shall have such lessons as you've never had in all your life. You shall go to courses."

"Courses?" Maisie had never heard of such things.

"At institutions—on subjects."

Maisie continued to stare. "Subjects?"

Mrs. Beale was really splendid. "All the most important ones. French literature—and sacred history. You'll take part in classes—with awfully smart children."

"I'm going to look thoroughly into the whole thing, you know." And Sir Claude, with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of assurance accompanied by a friendly wink.

But Mrs. Beale went much further. "My dear child, you shall attend lectures."

The horizon was suddenly vast and Maisie felt herself the smaller for it. "All alone?"

"Oh no; I'll attend them with you," said Sir Claude. "They'll teach me a lot I don't know."

"So they will me," Mrs. Beale gravely admitted. "We'll go with her together—it will be charming. It's ages," she confessed to Maisie, "since I've had any time for study. That's another sweet way in which you'll be a motive to us. Oh won't the good she'll do us be immense?" she broke out uncontrollably to Sir Claude.

He weighed it; then he replied: "That's certainly our idea."

Of this idea Maisie naturally had less of a grasp, but it inspired her with almost equal enthusiasm. If in so bright a prospect there would be nothing to long for it followed that she wouldn't long for Mrs. Wix; but her consciousness of her assent to the absence of that fond figure caused a pair of words that had often sounded in her ears to ring in them again. It showed her in short what her father had always meant by calling her mother a "low sneak" and her mother by calling her father one. She wondered if she herself shouldn't be a low sneak in learning to be so happy without Mrs. Wix. What would Mrs. Wix do?—where would Mrs. Wix go? Before Maisie knew it, and at the door, as Sir Claude was off, these anxieties, on her lips, grew articulate and her stepfather had stopped long enough to answer them. "Oh I'll square her!" he cried; and with this he departed.

Face to face with Mrs. Beale, Maisie, giving a sigh of relief, looked round at what seemed to her the dawn of a higher order. "Then every one will be squared!" she peacefully said. On which her stepmother affectionately bent over her again.

XV

It was Susan Ash who came to her with the news: "He's downstairs, miss, and he do look beautiful."

In the schoolroom at her father's, which had pretty blue curtains, she had been making out at the piano a lovely little thing, as Mrs. Beale called it, a "Moonlight Berceuse" sent her through the post by Sir Claude, who considered that her musical education had been deplorably neglected and who, the last months at her mother's, had been on the point of making arrangements for regular lessons. She knew from him familiarly that the real thing, as he said, was shockingly dear and that anything else was a waste of money, and she therefore rejoiced the more at the sacrifice represented by this composition, of which the price, five shillings, was marked on the cover and which was evidently the real thing. She was already on her feet. "Mrs. Beale has sent up for me?"

"Oh no—it's not that," said Susan Ash. "Mrs. Beale has been out this hour."

"Then papa!"

"Dear no—not papa. You'll do, miss, all but them wandering 'airs," Susan went on. "Your papa never came 'ome at all," she added.

"Home from where?" Maisie responded a little absently and very excitedly. She gave a wild manual brush to her locks.

"Oh that, miss, I should be very sorry to tell you! I'd rather tuck away that white thing behind—though I'm blest if it's my work."