Part 30 (1/2)

Halfway down he stopped short again, slapping his leg. ”And poor Mrs.

Wix?”

Maisie's face just showed a shadow. ”Do you want her to come?”

”Dear no--I want to see you alone.”

”That's the way I want to see YOU!” she replied. ”Like before.”

”Like before!” he gaily echoed. ”But I mean has she had her coffee?”

”No, nothing.”

”Then I'll send it up to her. Madame!” He had already, at the foot of the stair, called out to the stout _patronne_, a lady who turned to him from the bustling, breezy hall a countenance covered with fresh matutinal powder and a bosom as capacious as the velvet shelf of a chimneypiece, over which her round white face, framed in its golden frizzle, might have figured as a showy clock. He ordered, with particular recommendations, Mrs. Wix's repast, and it was a charm to hear his easy brilliant French: even his companion's ignorance could measure the perfection of it. The _patronne_, rubbing her hands and breaking in with high swift notes as into a florid duet, went with him to the street, and while they talked a moment longer Maisie remembered what Mrs. Wix had said about every one's liking him. It came out enough through the morning powder, it came out enough in the heaving bosom, how the landlady liked him. He had evidently ordered something lovely for Mrs. Wix. _”Et bien soigne, n'est-ce-pas?”_

_”Soyez tranquille”_--the patronne beamed upon him. _”Et pour Madame?”_

_”Madame?”_ he echoed--it just pulled him up a little.

_”Rien encore?”_

”_Rien encore._ Come, Maisie.” She hurried along with him, but on the way to the cafe he said nothing.

x.x.x

After they were seated there it was different: the place was not below the hotel, but further along the quay; with wide, clear windows and a floor sprinkled with bran in a manner that gave it for Maisie something of the added charm of a circus. They had pretty much to themselves the painted s.p.a.ces and the red plush benches; these were shared by a few scattered gentlemen who picked teeth, with facial contortions, behind little bare tables, and by an old personage in particular, a very old personage with a red ribbon in his b.u.t.tonhole, whose manner of soaking b.u.t.tered rolls in coffee and then disposing of them in the little that was left of the interval between his nose and chin might at a less anxious hour have cast upon Maisie an almost envious spell. They too had their _cafe au lait_ and their b.u.t.tered rolls, determined by Sir Claude's asking her if she could with that light aid wait till the hour of dejeuner. His allusion to this meal gave her, in the shaded sprinkled coolness, the scene, as she vaguely felt, of a sort of ordered mirrored licence, the haunt of those--the irregular, like herself--who went to bed or who rose too late, something to think over while she watched the white-ap.r.o.ned waiter perform as nimbly with plates and saucers as a certain conjurer her friend had in London taken her to a music-hall to see. Sir Claude had presently begun to talk again, to tell her how London had looked and how long he had felt himself, on either side, to have been absent; all about Susan Ash too and the amus.e.m.e.nt as well as the difficulty he had had with her; then all about his return journey and the Channel in the night and the crowd of people coming over and the way there were always too many one knew. He spoke of other matters beside, especially of what she must tell him of the occupations, while he was away, of Mrs. Wix and her pupil. Hadn't they had the good time he had promised?--had he exaggerated a bit the arrangements made for their pleasure? Maisie had something--not all there was--to say of his success and of their grat.i.tude: she had a complication of thought that grew every minute, grew with the consciousness that she had never seen him in this particular state in which he had been given back.

Mrs. Wix had once said--it was once or fifty times; once was enough for Maisie, but more was not too much--that he was wonderfully various.

Well, he was certainly so, to the child's mind, on the present occasion: he was much more various than he was anything else. Besides, the fact that they were together in a shop, at a nice little intimate table as they had so often been in London, only made greater the difference of what they were together about. This difference was in his face, in his voice, in every look he gave her and every movement he made. They were not the looks and the movements he really wanted to show, and she could feel as well that they were not those she herself wanted. She had seen him nervous, she had seen every one she had come in contact with nervous, but she had never seen him so nervous as this. Little by little it gave her a settled terror, a terror that partook of the coldness she had felt just before, at the hotel, to find herself, on his answer about Mrs. Beale, disbelieve him. She seemed to see at present, to touch across the table, as if by laying her hand on it, what he had meant when he confessed on those several occasions to fear. Why was such a man so often afraid? It must have begun to come to her now that there was one thing just such a man above all could be afraid of. He could be afraid of himself. His fear at all events was there; his fear was sweet to her, beautiful and tender to her, was having coffee and b.u.t.tered rolls and talk and laughter that were no talk and laughter at all with her; his fear was in his jesting postponing perverting voice; it was just in this make-believe way he had brought her out to imitate the old London playtimes, to imitate indeed a relation that had wholly changed, a relation that she had with her very eyes seen in the act of change when, the day before in the salon, Mrs. Beale rose suddenly before her. She rose before her, for that matter, now, and even while their refreshment delayed Maisie arrived at the straight question for which, on their entrance, his first word had given opportunity. ”Are we going to have dejeuner with Mrs. Beale?”

His reply was anything but straight. ”You and I?”

Maisie sat back in her chair. ”Mrs. Wix and me.”

Sir Claude also s.h.i.+fted. ”That's an enquiry, my dear child, that Mrs.

Beale herself must answer.” Yes, he had s.h.i.+fted; but abruptly, after a moment during which something seemed to hang there between them and, as it heavily swayed, just fan them with the air of its motion, she felt that the whole thing was upon them. ”Do you mind,” he broke out, ”my asking you what Mrs. Wix has said to you?”

”Said to me?”

”This day or two--while I was away.”

”Do you mean about you and Mrs. Beale?”

Sir Claude, resting on his elbows, fixed his eyes a moment on the white marble beneath them. ”No; I think we had a good deal of that--didn't we?--before I left you. It seems to me we had it pretty well all out. I mean about yourself, about your--don't you know?--a.s.sociating with us, as I might say, and staying on with us. While you were alone with our friend what did she say?”

Maisie felt the weight of the question; it kept her silent for a s.p.a.ce during which she looked at Sir Claude, whose eyes remained bent.

”Nothing,” she returned at last.

He showed incredulity. ”Nothing?”