What Maisie Knew

Beale had a return of gaiety. 'There's no accounting for tastes! It's what they all say, you know.'

'I don't care—I'm sure of him!' Maisie repeated.

'Sure, you mean, that she'll bolt?'

Maisie knew all about bolting, but, decidedly, she was older, and there was something in her that could wince at the way her father made the ugly word—ugly enough at best—sound flat and low. It prompted her to amend his allusion, which she did by saying: 'I don't know what she'll do. But she'll be happy.'

'Let us hope so,' said Beale—almost as for edification. 'The more happy she is at any rate the less she'll want you about. That's why I press you,' he agreeably pursued, 'to consider this handsome offer—I mean seriously, you know—of your sole surviving parent.' Their eyes, at this, met again in a long and extraordinary communion which terminated in his ejaculating: 'Ah you little scoundrel!' She took it from him in the manner it seemed to her he would like best and with a success that encouraged him to go on: 'You are a deep little devil!' Her silence, ticking like a watch, acknowledged even this, in confirmation of which he finally brought out: 'You've settled it with the other pair!'

'Well, what if I have?' She sounded to herself most bold.

Her father, quite as in the old days, broke into a peal. 'Why, don't you know they're awful?'

She grew bolder still. 'I don't care—not a bit!'

'But they're probably the worst people in the world and the very greatest criminals,' Beale pleasantly urged. 'I'm not the man, my dear, not to let you know it.'

'Well, it doesn't prevent them from loving me. They love me tremendously.' Maisie turned crimson to hear herself.

Her companion fumbled; almost any one—let alone a daughter—would have seen how conscientious he wanted to be. 'I dare say. But do you know why?' She braved his eyes and he added: 'You're a jolly good pretext.'

'For what?' Maisie asked.

'Why, for their game. I needn't tell you what that is.'

The child reflected. 'Well then that's all the more reason.'

'Reason for what, pray?'

'For their being kind to me.'

'And for your keeping in with them?' Beale roared again; it was as if his spirits rose and rose. 'Do you realise, pray, that in saying that you're a monster?'

She turned it over. 'A monster?'

'They've made one of you. Upon my honour it's quite awful. It shows the kind of people they are. Don't you understand,' Beale pursued, 'that when they've made you as horrid as they can—as horrid as themselves—they'll just simply chuck you?'

She had at this a flicker of passion. 'They won't chuck me!'

'I beg your pardon,' her father courteously insisted; 'it's my duty to put it before you. I shouldn't forgive myself if I didn't point out to you that they'll cease to require you.' He spoke as if with an appeal to her intelligence that she must be ashamed not adequately to meet, and this gave a real distinction to his superior delicacy.

It cleared the case as he had wished. 'Cease to require me because they won't care?' She paused with that sketch of her idea.

'Of course Sir Claude won't care if his wife bolts. That's his game. It will suit him down to the ground.'

This was a proposition Maisie could perfectly embrace, but it still left a loophole for triumph. She turned it well over. 'You mean if mamma doesn't come back ever at all?' The composure with which her face was presented to that prospect would have shown a spectator the long road she had travelled. 'Well, but that won't put Mrs. Beale —'

'In the same comfortable position—?' Beale took her up with relish; he had sprung to his feet again, shaking his legs and looking at his shoes. 'Right you are, darling! Something more will be wanted for Mrs. Beale.' He just paused, then he added: 'But she may not have long to wait for it.'

Maisie also for a minute looked at his shoes, though they were not the pair she most admired, the laced yellow 'uppers' and patent-leather complement. At last, with a question, she raised her eyes. 'Aren't you coming back?'

Once more he hung fire; after which he gave a small laugh that in the oddest way in the world reminded her of the unique sounds she had heard emitted by Mrs. Wix. 'It may strike you as extraordinary that I should make you such an admission; and in point of fact you're not to understand that I do. But we'll put it that way to help your decision. The point is that that's the way my wife will presently be sure to put it. You'll hear her shrieking that she's deserted, so that she may just pile up her wrongs. She'll be as free as she likes then—as free, you see, as your mother's muff of a husband. They won't have anything more to consider and they'll just put you into the street. Do I understand,' Beale enquired, 'that, in the face of what I press on you, you still prefer to take the risk of that?' It was the most wonderful appeal any gentleman had ever addressed to his daughter, and it had placed Maisie in the middle of the room again while her father moved slowly about her with his hands in his pockets and something in his step that seemed, more than anything else he had done, to show the habit of the place. She turned her fevered little eyes over his friend's brightnesses, as if, on her own side, to press for some help in a quandary unexampled. As if also the pressure reached him he after an instant stopped short, completing the prodigy of his attitude and the pride of his loyalty by a supreme formulation of the general inducement. 'You've an eye, love! Yes, there's money. No end of money.'

This affected her at first in the manner of some great flashing dazzle in one of the pantomimes to which Sir Claude had taken her: she saw nothing in it but what it directly conveyed. 'And shall I never, never see you again —?'

'If I do go to America?' Beale brought it out like a man. 'Never, never, never!'