What Maisie Knew | Page 4

that she
shouldn't do that, and she met it so easily that the only spots in that long
brightness were the moments of her wondering what would become of
her if, on her rushing back, there should be no Moddle on the bench.
They still went to the Gardens, but there was a difference even there;
she was impelled perpetually to look at the legs of other children and
ask her nurse if THEY were toothpicks. Moddle was terribly truthful;
she always said: "Oh my dear, you'll not find such another pair as your
own." It seemed to have to do with something else that Moddle often
said: "You feel the strain--that's where it is; and you'll feel it still worse,
you know."
Thus from the first Maisie not only felt it, but knew she felt it. A part of
it was the consequence of her father's telling her he felt it too, and
telling Moddle, in her presence, that she must make a point of driving

that home. She was familiar, at the age of six, with the fact that
everything had been changed on her account, everything ordered to
enable him to give himself up to her. She was to remember always the
words in which Moddle impressed upon her that he did so give himself:
"Your papa wishes you never to forget, you know, that he has been
dreadfully put about." If the skin on Moddle's face had to Maisie the air
of being unduly, almost painfully, stretched, it never presented that
appearance so much as when she uttered, as she often had occasion to
utter, such words. The child wondered if they didn't make it hurt more
than usual; but it was only after some time that she was able to attach to
the picture of her father's sufferings, and more particularly to her
nurse's manner about them, the meaning for which these things had
waited. By the time she had grown sharper, as the gentlemen who had
criticised her calves used to say, she found in her mind a collection of
images and echoes to which meanings were attachable--images and
echoes kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high
drawers, like games she wasn't yet big enough to play. The great strain
meanwhile was that of carrying by the right end the things her father
said about her mother--things mostly indeed that Moddle, on a glimpse
of them, as if they had been complicated toys or difficult books, took
out of her hands and put away in the closet. A wonderful assortment of
objects of this kind she was to discover there later, all tumbled up too
with the things, shuffled into the same receptacle, that her mother had
said about her father.
She had the knowledge that on a certain occasion which every day
brought nearer her mother would be at the door to take her away, and
this would have darkened all the days if the ingenious Moddle hadn't
written on a paper in very big easy words ever so many pleasures that
she would enjoy at the other house. These promises ranged from "a
mother's fond love" to "a nice poached egg to your tea," and took by
the way the prospect of sitting up ever so late to see the lady in
question dressed, in silks and velvets and diamonds and pearls, to go
out: so that it was a real support to Maisie, at the supreme hour, to feel
how, by Moddle's direction, the paper was thrust away in her pocket
and there clenched in her fist. The supreme hour was to furnish her
with a vivid reminiscence, that of a strange outbreak in the drawing-

room on the part of Moddle, who, in reply to something her father had
just said, cried aloud: "You ought to be perfectly ashamed of
yourself--you ought to blush, sir, for the way you go on!" The carriage,
with her mother in it, was at the door; a gentleman who was there, who
was always there, laughed out very loud; her father, who had her in his
arms, said to Moddle: "My dear woman, I'll settle you presently!"--after
which he repeated, showing his teeth more than ever at Maisie while he
hugged her, the words for which her nurse had taken him up. Maisie
was not at the moment so fully conscious of them as of the wonder of
Moddle's sudden disrespect and crimson face; but she was able to
produce them in the course of five minutes when, in the carriage, her
mother, all kisses, ribbons, eyes, arms, strange sounds and sweet smells,
said to her: "And did your beastly papa, my precious angel, send any
message to your own loving mamma?" Then it was that she found the
words spoken