What Maisie Knew

'Well, keep this with the rest. I assure you she has had the most infernal time, no matter what any one says to the contrary. She's the cleverest woman I ever saw in all my life. She's too charming.' She had been touched already by his tone, and now she leaned back in her chair and felt something tremble within her. 'She's tremendous fun—she can do all sorts of things better than I've ever seen any one. She has the pluck of fifty—and I know; I assure you I do. She has the nerve for a tiger-shoot—by Jove I'd take her! And she is awfully open and generous, don't you know? there are women that are such horrid sneaks. She'll go through anything for any one she likes.' He appeared to watch for a moment the effect on his companion of this emphasis; then he gave a small sigh that mourned the limits of the speakable. But it was almost with the note of a fresh challenge that he wound up: 'Look here, she's true!'

Maisie had so little desire to assert the contrary that she found herself, in the intensity of her response, throbbing with a joy still less utterable than the essence of the Captain's admiration. She was fairly hushed with the sense that he spoke of her mother as she had never heard any one speak. It came over her as she sat silent that, after all, this admiration and this respect were quite new words, which took a distinction from the fact that nothing in the least resembling them in quality had on any occasion dropped from the lips of her father, of Mrs. Beale, of Sir Claude or even of Mrs. Wix. What it appeared to her to come to was that on the subject of her ladyship it was the first real kindness she had heard, so that at the touch of it something strange and deep and pitying surged up within her—a revelation that, practically and so far as she knew, her mother, apart from this, had only been disliked. Mrs. Wix's original account of Sir Claude's affection seemed as empty now as the chorus in a children's game, and the husband and wife, but a little way off at that moment, were face to face in hatred and with the dreadful name he had called her still in the air. What was it the Captain on the other hand had called her? Maisie wanted to hear that again. The tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, which burned under them with the rush of a consciousness that for her too, five minutes before, the vivid towering beauty whose assault she awaited had been, a moment long, an object of pure dread. She became on the spot indifferent to her usual fear of showing what in children was notoriously most offensive—presented to her companion, soundlessly but hideously, her wet distorted face. She cried, with a pang, straight at him, cried as she had never cried at any one in all her life. 'Oh do you love her?' she brought out with a gulp that was the effect of her trying not to make a noise.

It was doubtless another consequence of the thick mist through which she saw him that in reply to her question the Captain gave her such a queer blurred look. He stammered, yet in his voice there was also the ring of a great awkward insistence. 'Of course I'm tremendously fond of her—I like her better than any woman I ever saw. I don't mind in the least telling you that,' he went on, 'and I should think myself a great beast if I did.' Then to show that his position was superlatively clear he made her, with a kindness that even Sir Claude had never surpassed, tremble again as she had trembled at his first outbreak. He called her by her name, and her name drove it home. 'My dear Maisie, your mother's an angel!'

It was an almost unbelievable balm—it soothed so her impression of danger and pain. She sank back in her chair, she covered her face with her hands. 'Oh mother, mother, mother!' she sobbed. She had an impression that the Captain, beside her, if more and more friendly, was by no means unembarrassed; in a minute, however, when her eyes were clearer, he was erect in front of her, very red and nervously looking about him and whacking his leg with his stick. 'Say you love her, Mr. Captain; say it, say it!' she implored.

Mr. Captain's blue eyes fixed themselves very hard. 'Of course I love her, damn it, you know!'

At this she also jumped up; she had fished out somehow her pocket-handkerchief. 'So do I then. I do, I do, I do!' she passionately asseverated.

'Then will you come back to her?'

Maisie, staring, stopped the tight little plug of her handkerchief on the way to her eyes. 'She won't have me.'

'Yes she will. She wants you.'

'Back at the house—with Sir Claude?'

Again he hung fire. 'No, not with him. In another place.'

They stood looking at each other with an intensity unusual as between a Captain and a little girl. 'She won't have me in any place.'

'Oh yes she will if I ask her!'

Maisie's intensity continued. 'Shall you be there?'

The Captain's, on the whole, did the same. 'Oh yes—some day.'

'Then you don't mean now?'

He broke into a quick smile. 'Will you come now?—go with us for an hour?'

Maisie considered. 'She wouldn't have me even now.' She could see that he had his idea, but that her tone impressed him. That disappointed her a little, though in an instant he rang out again.

'She will if I ask her,' he repeated. 'I'll ask her this minute.'

Maisie, turning at this, looked away to where her mother and her stepfather had stopped. At first, among the trees, nobody was visible; but the next moment she exclaimed with expression: 'It's over—here he comes!'

The Captain watched the approach of her ladyship's husband, who lounged composedly over the grass, making to Maisie with his closed fingers a little movement in the air. 'I've no desire to avoid him.'

'Well, you mustn't see him,' said Maisie.

'Oh he's in no hurry himself!' Sir Claude had stopped to light another cigarette.

She was vague as to the way it was proper he should feel; but she had a sense that the Captain's remark was rather a free reflexion on it. 'Oh he doesn't care!' she replied.

'Doesn't care for what?'

'Doesn't care who you are. He told me so. Go and ask mamma,' she added.

'If you can come with us? Very good. You really want me not to wait for him?'

'Please don't.' But Sir Claude was not yet near, and the Captain had with his left hand taken hold of her right, which he familiarly, sociably swung a little. 'Only first,' she continued, 'tell me this. Are you going to live with mamma?'