Wix's conviction, they both knew, arrived at on independent grounds, that Ida's weekly excursions were feelers for a more considerable absence. If she came back later each week the week would be sure to arrive when she wouldn't come back at all. This appearance had of course much to do with Mrs. Wix's actual valour. Could they but hold out long enough the snug little home with Sir Claude would find itself informally established.

 

 

XIII
 

This might moreover have been taken to be the sense of a remark made by her stepfather as—one rainy day when the streets were all splash and two umbrellas unsociable and the wanderers had sought shelter in the National Gallery—Maisie sat beside him staring rather sightlessly at a roomful of pictures which he had mystified her much by speaking of with a bored sigh as a "silly superstition." They represented, with patches of gold and cataracts of purple, with stiff saints and angular angels, with ugly Madonnas and uglier babies, strange prayers and prostrations; so that she at first took his words for a protest against devotional idolatry—all the more that he had of late often come with her and with Mrs. Wix to morning church, a place of worship of Mrs. Wix's own choosing, where there was nothing of that sort; no haloes on heads, but only, during long sermons, beguiling backs of bonnets, and where, as her governess always afterwards observed, he gave the most earnest attention. It presently appeared, however, that his reference was merely to the affectation of admiring such ridiculous works—an admonition that she received from him as submissively as she received everything. What turn it gave to their talk needn't here be recorded: the transition to the colourless schoolroom and lonely Mrs. Wix was doubtless an effect of relaxed interest in what was before them. Maisie expressed in her own way the truth that she never went home nowadays without expecting to find the temple of her studies empty and the poor priestess cast out. This conveyed a full appreciation of her peril, and it was in rejoinder that Sir Claude uttered, acknowledging the source of that peril, the reassurance at which I have glanced. "Don't be afraid, my dear: I've squared her." It required indeed a supplement when he saw that it left the child momentarily blank. "I mean that your mother lets me do what I want so long as I let her do what she wants."

"So you are doing what you want?" Maisie asked.

"Rather, Miss Farange!"

Miss Farange turned it over. "And she's doing the same?"

"Up to the hilt!"

Again she considered. "Then, please, what may it be?"

"I wouldn't tell you for the whole world."

She gazed at a gaunt Madonna; after which she broke into a slow smile. "Well, I don't care, so long as you do let her."

"Oh you monster!"—and Sir Claude's gay vehemence brought him to his feet.

Another day, in another place—a place in Baker Street where at a hungry hour she had sat down with him to tea and buns—he brought out a question disconnected from previous talk. "I say, you know, what do you suppose your father would do?"

Maisie hadn't long to cast about or to question his pleasant eyes. "If you were really to go with us? He'd make a great complaint."

He seemed amused at the term she employed. "Oh I shouldn't mind a 'complaint'!"

"He'd talk to every one about it," said Maisie.

"Well, I shouldn't mind that either."

"Of course not," the child hastened to respond. "You've told me you're not afraid of him."

"The question is are you?" said Sir Claude.

Maisie candidly considered; then she spoke resolutely. "No, not of papa."

"But of somebody else?"

"Certainly, of lots of people."

"Of your mother first and foremost of course."

"Dear, yes; more of mamma than of—than of—"

"Than of what?" Sir Claude asked as she hesitated for a comparison.

She thought over all objects of dread. "Than of a wild elephant!" she at last declared. "And you are too," she reminded him as he laughed.

"Oh yes, I am too."

Again she meditated. "Why then did you marry her?"

"Just because I was afraid."

"Even when she loved you?"

"That made her the more alarming."

For Maisie herself, though her companion seemed to find it droll, this opened up depths of gravity. "More alarming than she is now?"

"Well, in a different way. Fear, unfortunately, is a very big thing, and there's a great variety of kinds."

She took this in with complete intelligence. "Then I think I've got them all."

"You?" her friend cried. "Nonsense! You're thoroughly 'game.'"

"I'm awfully afraid of Mrs. Beale," Maisie objected.

He raised his smooth brows. "That charming woman?"

"Well," she answered, "you can't understand it because you're not in the same state."

She had been going on with a luminous "But" when, across the table, he laid his hand on her arm.