Mrs. Wix debated, then covered a still greater distance. "Why just from awful misery."

XII

She had not at the moment explained her ominous speech, but the light of remarkable events soon enabled her companion to read it. It may indeed be said that these days brought on a high quickening of Maisie's direct perceptions, of her sense of freedom to make out things for herself.

This was helped by an emotion intrinsically far from sweet--the increase of the alarm that had most haunted her meditations. She had no need to be told, as on the morrow of the revelation of Sir Claude's danger she was told by Mrs. Wix, that her mother wanted more and more to know why the devil her father didn't send for her: she had too long expected mamma's curiosity on this point to express itself sharply. Maisie could meet such pressure so far as meeting it was to be in a position to reply, in words directly inspired, that papa would be hanged before he'd again be saddled with her. She therefore recognised the hour that in troubled glimpses she had long foreseen, the hour when--the phrase for it came back to her from Mrs. Beale--with two fathers, two mothers and two homes, six protections in all, she shouldn't know "wherever" to go. Such apprehension as she felt on this score was not diminished by the fact that Mrs. Wix herself was suddenly white with terror: a circ.u.mstance leading Maisie to the further knowledge that this lady was still more scared on her own behalf than on that of her pupil. A governess who had only one frock was not likely to have either two fathers or two mothers: accordingly if even with these resources Maisie was to be in the streets, where in the name of all that was dreadful was poor Mrs. Wix to be? She had had, it appeared, a tremendous brush with Ida, which had begun and ended with the request that she would be pleased on the spot to "bundle." It had come suddenly but completely, this signal of which she had gone in fear. The companions confessed to each other the dread each had hidden the worst of, but Mrs. Wix was better off than Maisie in having a plan of defence. She declined indeed to communicate it till it was quite mature; but meanwhile, she hastened to declare, her feet were firm in the schoolroom. They could only be loosened by force: she would "leave" for the police perhaps, but she wouldn't leave for mere outrage. That would be to play her ladyship's game, and it would take another turn of the screw to make her desert her darling. Her ladyship had come down with extraordinary violence: it had been one of many symptoms of a situation strained--"between them all,"

as Mrs. Wix said, "but especially between the two"--to the point of G.o.d only knew what.

Her description of the crisis made the child blanch. "Between which two?--papa and mamma?"

"Dear no. I mean between your mother and HIM."

Maisie, in this, recognised an opportunity to be really deep.

"'Him'?--Mr. Perriam?"

She fairly brought a blush to the scared face. "Well, my dear, I must say what you DON'T know ain't worth mentioning. That it won't go on for ever with Mr. Perriam--since I MUST meet you--you can suppose? But I meant dear Sir Claude."

Maisie stood corrected rather than abashed. "I see. But it's about Mr.

Perriam he's angry?"

Mrs. Wix waited. "He says he's not."

"Not angry? He has told you so?"

Mrs. Wix looked at her hard. "Not about HIM!"

"Then about some one else?"

Mrs. Wix looked at her harder. "About some one else."

"Lord Eric?" the child promptly brought forth.

At this, of a sudden, her governess was more agitated. "Oh why, little unfortunate, should we discuss their dreadful names?"--and she threw herself for the millionth time on Maisie's neck. It took her pupil but a moment to feel that she quivered with insecurity, and, the contact of her terror aiding, the pair in another instant were sobbing in each other's arms. Then it was that, completely relaxed, demoralised as she had never been, Mrs. Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, denounced her hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, her lying and grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, ME!" the poor woman wailed, "who've seen what I've seen and gone through everything only to cover her up and ease her off and smooth her down? If I've been an 'ipocrite it's the other way round: I've pretended, to him and to her, to myself and to you and to every one, NOT to see! It serves me right to have held my tongue before such horrors!"

What horrors they were her companion forbore too closely to enquire, showing even signs not a few of an ability to take them for granted.

That put the couple more than ever, in this troubled sea, in the same boat, so that with the consciousness of ideas on the part of her fellow mariner Maisie could sit close and wait. Sir Claude on the morrow came in to tea, and then the ideas were produced. It was extraordinary how the child's presence drew out their full strength. The princ.i.p.al one was startling, but Maisie appreciated the courage with which her governess handled it. It simply consisted of the proposal that whenever and wherever they should seek refuge Sir Claude should consent to share their asylum. On his protesting with all the warmth in nature against this note of secession she asked what else in the world was left to them if her ladyship should stop supplies.

"Supplies be hanged, my dear woman!" said their delightful friend.

"Leave supplies to me--I'll take care of supplies."

Mrs. Wix rose to it. "Well, it's exactly because I knew you'd be so glad to do so that I put the question before you. There's a way to look after us better than any other. The way's just to come along with us."

It hung before Maisie, Mrs. Wix's way, like a glittering picture, and she clasped her hands in ecstasy. "Come along, come along, come along!"

Sir Claude looked from his stepdaughter back to her governess. "Do you mean leave this house and take up my abode with you?"

"It will be the right thing--if you feel as you've told me you feel."

Mrs. Wix, sustained and uplifted, was now as clear as a bell.

Sir Claude had the air of trying to recall what he had told her; then the light broke that was always breaking to make his face more pleasant.

"It's your happy thought that I shall take a house for you?"

"For the wretched homeless child. Any roof--over OUR heads--will do for us; but of course for you it will have to be something really nice."

Sir Claude's eyes reverted to Maisie, rather hard, as she thought; and there was a shade in his very smile that seemed to show her--though she also felt it didn't show Mrs. Wix--that the accommodation prescribed must loom to him pretty large. The next moment, however, he laughed gaily enough. "My dear lady, you exaggerate tremendously MY poor little needs." Mrs. Wix had once mentioned to her young friend that when Sir Claude called her his dear lady he could do anything with her; and Maisie felt a certain anxiety to see what he would do now. Well, he only addressed her a remark of which the child herself was aware of feeling the force. "Your plan appeals to me immensely; but of course--don't you see--I shall have to consider the position I put myself in by leaving my wife."

"You'll also have to remember," Mrs. Wix replied, "that if you don't look out your wife won't give you time to consider. Her ladyship will leave YOU."

"Ah my good friend, I do look out!" the young man returned while Maisie helped herself afresh to bread and b.u.t.ter. "Of course if that happens I shall have somehow to turn round; but I hope with all my heart it won't.

I beg your pardon," he continued to his stepdaughter, "for appearing to discuss that sort of possibility under your sharp little nose. But the fact is I FORGET half the time that Ida's your sainted mother."

"So do I!" said Maisie, her mouth full of bread and b.u.t.ter and to put him the more in the right.

Her protectress, at this, was upon her again. "The little desolate precious pet!" For the rest of the conversation she was enclosed in Mrs.

Wix's arms, and as they sat there interlocked Sir Claude, before them with his tea-cup, looked down at them in deepening thought. Shrink together as they might they couldn't help, Maisie felt, being a very large lumpish image of what Mrs. Wix required of his slim fineness.

She knew moreover that this lady didn't make it better by adding in a moment: "Of course we shouldn't dream of a whole house. Any sort of little lodging, however humble, would be only too blest."

"But it would have to be something that would hold us all," said Sir Claude.

"Oh yes," Mrs. Wix concurred; "the whole point's our being together.

While you're waiting, before you act, for her ladyship to take some step, our position here will come to an impossible pa.s.s. You don't know what I went through with her for you yesterday--and for our poor darling; but it's not a thing I can promise you often to face again. She cast me out in horrible language--she has instructed the servants not to wait on me."

"Oh the poor servants are all right!" Sir Claude eagerly cried.

"They're certainly better than their mistress. It's too dreadful that I should sit here and say of your wife, Sir Claude, and of Maisie's own mother, that she's lower than a domestic; but my being betrayed into such remarks is just a reason the more for our getting away. I shall stay till I'm taken by the shoulders, but that may happen any day. What also may perfectly happen, you must permit me to repeat, is that she'll go off to get rid of us."

"Oh if she'll only do that!" Sir Claude laughed. "That would be the very making of us!"

"Don't say it--don't say it!" Mrs. Wix pleaded. "Don't speak of anything so fatal. You know what I mean. We must all cling to the right. You mustn't be bad."

Sir Claude set down his tea-cup; he had become more grave and he pensively wiped his moustache. "Won't all the world say I'm awful if I leave the house before--before she has bolted? They'll say it was my doing so that made her bolt."

Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no check to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that--if you've done it for so high a motive? Think of the beauty of it," the good lady pressed.

"Of bolting with YOU?" Sir Claude e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

She faintly smiled--she even faintly coloured. "So far from doing you harm it will do you the highest good. Sir Claude, if you'll listen to me, it will save you."

"Save me from what?"

Maisie, at this question, waited with renewed suspense for an answer that would bring the thing to some finer point than their companion had brought it to before. But there was on the contrary only more mystification in Mrs. Wix's reply. "Ah from you know what!"

"Do you mean from some other woman!"

"Yes--from a real bad one."