Read Online What Maisie Knew by Henry James - Free Book Online Page B

of her own for
removing her; what she couldn't for the present at least forgive any
one concerned was such an officious underhand way of bringing about the
transfer. Maisie carried more of the weight of this resentment than even
Mrs. Wix's confidential ingenuity could lighten for her, especially as
Sir Claude himself was not at all ingenious, though indeed on the other
hand he was not at all crushed. He was amused and intermittent and at
moments most startling; he impressed on his young companion, with a
frankness that agitated her much more than he seemed to guess, that he
depended on her not letting her mother, when she should see her, get
anything out of her about anything Mrs. Beale might have said to him. He
came in and out; he professed, in joke, to take tremendous precautions;
he showed a positive disposition to romp. He chaffed Mrs. Wix till she
was purple with the pleasure of it, and reminded Maisie of the reticence
he expected of her till she set her teeth like an Indian captive. Her
lessons these first days and indeed for long after seemed to be all
about Sir Claude, and yet she never really mentioned to Mrs. Wix that
she was prepared, under his inspiring injunction, to be vainly tortured.
This lady, however, had formulated the position of things with an
acuteness that showed how little she needed to be coached. Her
explanation of everything that seemed not quite pleasant—and if her own
footing was perilous it met that danger as well—that her ladyship was
passionately in love. Maisie accepted this hint with infinite awe and
pressed upon it much when she was at last summoned into the presence of
her mother.
    There she encountered matters amid which it seemed really to help to
give her a clue—an almost terrifying strangeness, full, none the less,
after a little, of reverberations of Ida's old fierce and demonstrative
recoveries of possession. They had been some time in the house together,
and this demonstration came late. Preoccupied, however, as Maisie was
with the idea of the sentiment Sir Claude had inspired, and familiar,
in addition, by Mrs. Wix's anecdotes, with the ravages that in general
such a sentiment could produce, she was able to make allowances for her
ladyship's remarkable appearance, her violent splendour, the wonderful
colour of her lips and even the hard stare, the stare of some gorgeous
idol described in a story-book, that had come into her eyes in
consequence of a curious thickening of their already rich circumference.
Her professions and explanations were mixed with eager challenges and
sudden drops, in the midst of which Maisie recognised as a memory
of other years the rattle of her trinkets and the scratch of her
endearments, the odour of her clothes and the jumps of her conversation.
She had all her old clever way—Mrs. Wix said it was "aristocratic"—of
changing the subject as she might have slammed the door in your face.
The principal thing that was different was the tint of her golden hair,
which had changed to a coppery red and, with the head it profusely
covered, struck the child as now lifted still further aloft. This
picturesque parent showed literally a grander stature and a nobler
presence, things which, with some others that might have been
bewildering, were handsomely accounted for by the romantic state of her
affections. It was her affections, Maisie could easily see, that led Ida
to break out into questions as to what had passed at the other house
between that horrible woman and Sir Claude; but it was also just here
that the little girl was able to recall the effect with which in earlier
days she had practised the pacific art of stupidity. This art again came
to her aid: her mother, in getting rid of her after an interview in
which she had achieved a hollowness beyond her years, allowed her fully
to understand she had not grown a bit more amusing.
    She could bear that; she could bear anything that helped her to feel she
had done something for Sir Claude. If she hadn't told