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’!”
Copyrights
What Maisie Knew from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
