Free What Maisie Knew by Henry James Page B

months brought it round—when for days together he scarcely
came near them. He was "off," and Ida was "off," and they were sometimes
off together and sometimes apart; there were seasons when the simple
students had the house to themselves, when the very servants seemed
also to be "off" and dinner became a reckless forage in pantries and
sideboards. Mrs. Wix reminded her disciple on such occasions—hungry
moments often, when all the support of the reminder was required—that
the "real life" of their companions, the brilliant society in which it
was inevitable they should move and the complicated pleasures in which
it was almost presumptuous of the mind to follow them, must offer
features literally not to be imagined without being seen. At one
of these times Maisie found her opening it out that, though the
difficulties were many, it was Mrs. Beale who had now become the chief.
Then somehow it was brought fully to the child's knowledge that her
stepmother had been making attempts to see her, that her mother had
deeply resented it, that her stepfather had backed her stepmother up,
that the latter had pretended to be acting as the representative of her
father, and that her mother took the whole thing, in plain terms, very
hard. The situation was, as Mrs. Wix declared, an extraordinary muddle
to be sure. Her account of it brought back to Maisie the happy vision of
the way Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale had made acquaintance—an incident to
which, with her stepfather, though she had had little to say about it
to Mrs. Wix, she had during the first weeks of her stay at her mother's
found more than one opportunity to revert. As to what had taken place
the day Sir Claude came for her, she had been vaguely grateful to Mrs.
Wix for not attempting, as her mother had attempted, to put her through.
That was what Sir Claude had called the process when he warned her of
it, and again afterwards when he told her she was an awfully good "chap"
for having foiled it. Then it was that, well aware Mrs. Beale hadn't
in the least really given her up, she had asked him if he remained
in communication with her and if for the time everything must really
be held to be at an end between her stepmother and herself. This
conversation had occurred in consequence of his one day popping into the
schoolroom and finding Maisie alone.

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    He was smoking a cigarette and he stood before the fire and looked
at the meagre appointments of the room in a way that made her rather
ashamed of them. Then before (on the subject of Mrs. Beale) he let her
"draw" him—that was another of his words; it was astonishing how many
she gathered in—he remarked that really mamma kept them rather low on
the question of decorations. Mrs. Wix had put up a Japanese fan and two
rather grim texts; she had wished they were gayer, but they were all she
happened to have. Without Sir Claude's photograph, however, the place
would have been, as he said, as dull as a cold dinner. He had said
as well that there were all sorts of things they ought to have; yet
governess and pupil, it had to be admitted, were still divided between
discussing the places where any sort of thing would look best if any
sort of thing should ever come and acknowledging that mutability in the
child's career which was naturally unfavourable to accumulation. She
stayed long enough only to miss things, not half long enough to deserve
them. The way Sir Claude looked about the schoolroom had made her feel
with humility as if it were not very different from the shabby attic in
which she had visited Susan Ash. Then he had said in abrupt reference to
Mrs. Beale: "Do you think she really cares for you?"
    "Oh awfully!" Maisie had replied.
    "But, I mean, does she love you for yourself, as they call it, don't you
know? Is she as fond of you, now, as Mrs. Wix?"
    The child turned it over. "Oh I'm not every bit Mrs. Beale has!"
    Sir Claude seemed much amused at this. "No; you're not every bit she
has!"
    He laughed for some moments, but