What Maisie Knew

On the spot, as he said this, his face won her over; it was so bright and kind, and his blue eyes had such a reflexion of some mysterious grace that, for him at least, her mother had put forth. Her fund of observation enabled her as she gazed up at him to place him: he was a candid simple soldier; very grave—she came back to that—but not at all terrible. At any rate he struck a note that was new to her and that after a moment made her say: 'Do you like her very much?'

He smiled down at her, hesitating, looking pleasanter and pleasanter. 'Let me tell you about your mother.'

He put out a big military hand which she immediately took, and they turned off together to where a couple of chairs had been placed under one of the trees. 'She told me to come to you,' Maisie explained as they went; and presently she was close to him in a chair, with the prettiest of pictures—the sheen of the lake through other trees —before them, and the sound of birds, the plash of boats, the play of children in the air. The Captain, inclining his military person, sat sideways to be closer and kinder, and as her hand was on the arm of her seat he put his own down on it again to emphasise something he had to say that would be good for her to hear. He had already told her how her mother, from the moment of seeing her so unexpectedly with a person who was—well, not at all the right person, had promptly asked him to take charge of her while she herself tackled, as she said, the real culprit. He gave the child the sense of doing for the time what he liked with her; ten minutes before she had never seen him, but she could now sit there touching him, touched and impressed by him and thinking it nice when a gentleman was thin and brown—brown with a kind of clear depth that made his straw-coloured moustache almost white and his eyes resemble little pale flowers. The most extraordinary thing was the way she didn't appear just then to mind Sir Claude's being tackled. The Captain wasn't a bit like him, for it was an odd part of the pleasantness of mamma's friend that it resided in a manner in this friend's having a face so informally put together that the only kindness could be to call it funny. An odder part still was that it finally made our young lady, to classify him further, say to herself that, of all people in the world, he reminded her most insidiously of Mrs. Wix. He had neither straighteners nor a diadem, nor, at least in the same place as the other, a button; he was sun-burnt and deep-voiced and smelt of cigars, yet he marvellously had more in common with her old governess than with her young stepfather. What he had to say to her that was good for her to hear was that her poor mother (didn't she know?) was the best friend he had ever had in all his life. And he added: 'She has told me ever so much about you. I'm awfully glad to know you.'

She had never, she thought, been so addressed as a young lady, not even by Sir Claude the day, so long ago, that she found him with Mrs. Beale. It struck her as the way that at balls, by delightful partners, young ladies must be spoken to in the intervals of dances; and she tried to think of something that would meet it at the same high point. But this effort flurried her, and all she could produce was: 'At first, you know, I thought you were Lord Eric.'

The Captain looked vague. 'Lord Eric?'

'And then Sir Claude thought you were the Count.'

At this he laughed out. 'Why he's only five foot high and as red as a lobster!' Maisie laughed, with a certain elegance, in return—the young lady at the ball certainly would—and was on the point, as conscientiously, of pursuing the subject with an agreeable question. But before she could speak her companion challenged her. 'Who in the world's Lord Eric?'

'Don't you know him?' She judged her young lady would say that with light surprise.

'Do you mean a fat man with his mouth always open?' She had to confess that their acquaintance was so limited that she could only describe the bearer of the name as a friend of mamma's; but a light suddenly came to the Captain, who quickly spoke as knowing her man. 'What-do-you-call-him's brother, the fellow that owned Bobolink?' Then, with all his kindness, he contradicted her flat. 'Oh dear no; your mother never knew him.'

'But Mrs. Wix said so,' the child risked.

'Mrs. Wix?'

'My old governess.'

This again seemed amusing to the Captain. 'She mixed him up, your old governess. He's an awful beast. Your mother never looked at him.'

He was as positive as he was friendly, but he dropped for a minute after this into a silence that gave Maisie, confused but ingenious, a chance to redeem the mistake of pretending to know too much by the humility of inviting further correction. 'And doesn't she know the Count?'

'Oh I dare say! But he's another ass.' After which abruptly, with a different look, he put down again on the back of her own the hand he had momentarily removed. Maisie even thought he coloured a little. 'I want tremendously to speak to you. You must never believe any harm of your mother.'

'Oh I assure you I don't!' cried the child, blushing, herself, up to her eyes in a sudden surge of deprecation of such a thought.

The Captain, bending his head, raised her hand to his lips with a benevolence that made her wish her glove had been nicer. 'Of course you don't when you know how fond she is of you.'

'She's fond of me?' Maisie panted.

'Tremendously. But she thinks you don't like her. You must like her. She has had too much to put up with.'

'Oh yes—I know!' She rejoiced that she had never denied it.

'Of course I've no right to speak of her except as a particular friend,' the Captain went on. 'But she's a splendid woman. She has never had any sort of justice.'

'Hasn't she?'—his companion, to hear the words, felt a thrill altogether new.

'Perhaps I oughtn't to say it to you, but she has had everything to suffer.'

'Oh yes—you can say it to me!' Maisie hastened to profess.

The Captain was glad. 'Well, you needn't tell. It's all for you—do you see?'

Serious and smiling she only wanted to take it from him. 'It's between you and me! Oh there are lots of things I've never told!'