When she entered the salon it was empty, but at the sound of the opened door some one stirred on the balcony, and Sir Claude, stepping straight in, stood before her. He was in light fresh clothes and wore a straw hat with a bright ribbon; these things, besides striking her in themselves as the very promise of the grandest of grand tours, gave him a certain radiance and, as it were, a tropical ease; but such an effect only marked rather more his having stopped short and, for a longer minute than had ever at such a juncture elapsed, not opened his arms to her. His pause made her pause and enabled her to reflect that he must have been up some time, for there were no traces of breakfast; and that though it was so late he had rather markedly not caused her to be called to him. Had Mrs. Wix been right about their forfeiture of the salon? Was it all his now, all his and Mrs. Beale's? Such an idea, at the rate her small thoughts throbbed, could only remind her of the way in which what had been hers hitherto was what was exactly most Mrs. Beale's and his. It was strange to be standing there and greeting him across a gulf, for he had by this time spoken, smiled and said: "My dear child, my dear child!" but without coming any nearer. In a flash she saw he was different—more so than he knew or designed. The next minute indeed it was as if he caught an impression from her face: this made him hold out his hand. Then they met, he kissed her, he laughed, she thought he even blushed: something of his affection rang out as usual. "Here I am, you see, again—as I promised you."
It was not as he had promised them—he had not promised them Mrs. Beale; but Maisie said nothing about that. What she said was simply: "I knew you had come. Mrs. Wix told me."
"Oh yes. And where is she?"
"In her room. She got me up—she dressed me."
Sir Claude looked at her up and down; a sweetness of mockery that she particularly loved came out in his face whenever he did that, and it was not wanting now. He raised his eyebrows and his arms to play at admiration; he was evidently after all disposed to be gay. "Got you up?—I should think so! She has dressed you most beautifully. Isn't she coming?"
Maisie wondered if she had better tell. "She said not."
"Doesn't she want to see a poor devil?"
She looked about under the vibration of the way he described himself, and her eyes rested on the door of the room he had previously occupied. "Is Mrs. Beale in there?"
Sir Claude looked blankly at the same object. "I haven't the least idea!"
"You haven't seen her?"
"Not the tip of her nose."
Maisie thought: there settled on her, in the light of his beautiful smiling eyes, the faintest purest coldest conviction that he wasn't telling the truth. "She hasn't welcomed you?"
"Not by a single sign."
"Then where is she?"
Sir Claude laughed; he seemed both amused and surprised at the point she made of it. "I give it up!"
"Doesn't she know you've come?"
He laughed again. "Perhaps she doesn't care!"
Maisie, with an inspiration, pounced on his arm. "Has she gone?"
He met her eyes and then she could see that his own were really much graver than his manner. "Gone?" She had flown to the door, but before she could raise her hand to knock he was beside her and had caught it. "Let her be. I don't care about her. I want to see you."
"Then she hasn't gone?"
Maisie fell back with him. He still looked as if it were a joke, but the more she saw of him the more she could make out that he was troubled. "It wouldn't be like her!"
She stood wondering at him. "Did you want her to come?"
"How can you suppose—?" He put it to her candidly. "We had an immense row over it."
"Do you mean you've quarrelled?"
Sir Claude was at a loss. "What has she told you?"
"That I'm hers as much as yours. That she represents papa."
His gaze struck away through the open window and up to the sky; she could hear him rattle in his trousers-pockets his money or his keys. "Yes—that's what she keeps saying." It gave him for a moment an air that was almost helpless.
"You say you don't care about her," Maisie went on. "Do you mean you've quarrelled?"
"We do nothing in life but quarrel."
He rose before her, as he said this, so soft and fair, so rich, in spite of what might worry him, in restored familiarities, that it gave a bright blur to the meaning—to what would otherwise perhaps have been the palpable promise—of the words.
"Oh your quarrels!" she exclaimed with discouragement.
"I assure you hers are quite fearful!"
"I don't speak of hers. I speak of yours."
"Ah don't do it till I've had my coffee! You're growing up clever," he added. Then he said: "I suppose you've breakfasted?"
"Oh no—I've had nothing."
"Nothing in your room?"—he was all compunction. "My dear old man!—we'll breakfast then together." He had one of his happy thoughts. "I say—we'll go out."
"That was just what I hoped. I've brought my hat."
"You are clever! We'll go to a café." Maisie was already at the door; he glanced round the room. "A moment—my stick." But there appeared to be no stick. "No matter; I left it—oh!" He remembered with an odd drop and came out.
"You left it in London?" she asked as they went downstairs.
"Yes—in London: fancy!"
"You were in such a hurry to come," Maisie explained.
He had his arm round her. "That must have been the reason."
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 soigné, 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 café he said nothing.
XXX
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 spaces 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 buttonhole, whose manner of soaking buttered 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 café au lait and their buttered rolls, determined by Sir Claude's asking her if she could with that light aid wait till the hour of déjeuner. 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-aproned 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 amusement 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 gratitude: 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.