What Maisie Knew

the door almost slammed and no thought of soap and towels, the pair stood face to face. Mrs. Wix, in this position, was the first to gasp a sound. 'Can it ever be that she has one?'

Maisie felt still more bewildered. 'One what?'

'Why moral sense.'

They spoke as if you might have two, but Mrs. Wix looked as if it were not altogether a happy thought, and Maisie didn't see how even an affirmative from her own lips would clear up what had become most of a mystery. It was to this larger puzzle she sprang pretty straight. 'Is she my mother now?'

It was a point as to which an horrific glimpse of the responsibility of an opinion appeared to affect Mrs. Wix like a blow in the stomach. She had evidently never thought of it; but she could think and rebound. 'If she is, he's equally your father.'

Maisie, however, thought further. 'Then my father and my mother—!'

But she had already faltered and Mrs. Wix had already glared back: 'Ought to live together? Don't begin it again!' She turned away with a groan, to reach the washing-stand, and Maisie could by this time recognise with a certain ease that that way verily madness did lie. Mrs. Wix gave a great untidy splash, but the next instant had faced round. 'She has taken a new line.'

'She was nice to you,' Maisie concurred.

'What she thinks so—'go and dress the young lady!' But it's something!' she panted. Then she thought out the rest. 'If he won't have her, why she'll have you. She'll be the one.'

'The one to keep me abroad?'

'The one to give you a home.' Mrs. Wix saw further; she mastered all the portents. 'Oh she's cruelly clever! It's not a moral sense.' She reached her climax: 'It's a game!'

'A game?'

'Not to lose him. She has sacrificed him—to her duty.'

'Then won't he come?' Maisie pleaded.

Mrs. Wix made no answer; her vision absorbed her. 'He has fought. But she has won.'

'Then won't he come?' the child repeated.

Mrs. Wix made it out. 'Yes, hang him!' She had never been so profane.

For all Maisie minded! 'Soon—to-morrow?'

'Too soon—whenever. Indecently soon.'

'But then we shall be together!' the child went on. It made Mrs. Wix look at her as if in exasperation; but nothing had time to come before she precipitated: 'Together with you!' The air of criticism continued, but took voice only in her companion's bidding her wash herself and come down. The silence of quick ablutions fell upon them, presently broken, however, by one of Maisie's sudden reversions. 'Mercy, isn't she handsome?'

Mrs. Wix had finished; she waited. 'She'll attract attention.' They were rapid, and it would have been noticed that the shock the beauty had given them acted, incongruously, as a positive spur to their preparations for rejoining her. She had none the less, when they returned to the sitting-room, already descended; the open door of her room showed it empty and the chambermaid explained. Here again they were delayed by another sharp thought of Mrs. Wix's. 'But what will she live on meanwhile?'

Maisie stopped short. 'Till Sir Claude comes?'

It was nothing to the violence with which her friend had been arrested. 'Who'll pay the bills?'

Maisie thought. 'Can't she?'

'She? She hasn't a penny.'

The child wondered. 'But didn't papa—?'

'Leave her a fortune?' Mrs. Wix would have appeared to speak of papa as dead had she not immediately added: 'Why he lives on other women!'

Oh yes, Maisie remembered. 'Then can't he send—' She faltered again; even to herself it sounded queer.

'Some of their money to his wife?' Mrs. Wix pave a laugh still stranger than the weird suggestion. 'I dare say she'd take it!'

They hurried on again; yet again, on the stairs, Maisie pulled up. 'Well, if she had stopped in England—!' she threw out.

Mrs. Wix considered. 'And he had come over instead?'

'Yes, as we expected.' Maisie launched her speculation. 'What then would she have lived on?'

Mrs. Wix hung fire but an instant. 'On other men!' And she marched downstairs.

XXVIII

 

Mrs. Beale, at table between the pair, plainly attracted the attention Mrs. Wix had foretold. No other lady present was nearly so handsome, nor did the beauty of any other accommodate itself with such art to the homage it produced. She talked mainly to her other neighbour, and that left Maisie leisure both to note the manner in which eyes were riveted and nudges interchanged, and to lose herself in the meanings that, dimly as yet and disconnectedly, but with a vividness that fed apprehension, she could begin to read into her stepmother's independent move. Mrs. Wix had helped her by talking of a game; it was a connexion in which the move could put on a strategic air. Her notions of diplomacy were thin, but it was a kind of cold diplomatic shoulder and an elbow of more than usual point that, temporarily at least, were presented to her by the averted inclination of Mrs. Beale's head. There was a phrase familiar to Maisie, so often was it used by this lady to express the idea of one's getting what one wanted: one got it—Mrs. Beale always said she at all events always got it or