What Maisie Knew by Henry James

Maisie
knew above all that though she was now, by what she called an informal
understanding, on Sir Claude's "side," she had yet not uttered a word
to him about Mr. Perriam. That gentleman became therefore a kind of
flourishing public secret, out of the depths of which governess and
pupil looked at each other portentously from the time their friend was
restored to them. He was restored in great abundance, and it was marked
that, though he appeared to have felt the need to take a stand against
the risk of being too roughly saddled with the offspring of others, he
at this period exposed himself more than ever before to the presumption
of having created expectations.
    If it had become now, for that matter, a question of sides, there was at
least a certain amount of evidence as to where they all were. Maisie of
course, in such a delicate position, was on nobody's; but Sir Claude had
all the air of being on hers. If therefore Mrs. Wix was on Sir Claude's,
her ladyship on Mr. Perriam's and Mr. Perriam presumably on her
ladyship's, this left only Mrs. Beale and Mr. Farange to account for.
Mrs. Beale clearly was, like Sir Claude, on Maisie's, and papa, it was
to be supposed, on Mrs. Beale's. Here indeed was a slight ambiguity,
as papa's being on Mrs. Beale's didn't somehow seem to place him quite
on his daughter's. It sounded, as this young lady thought it over,
very much like puss-in-the-corner, and she could only wonder if the
distribution of parties would lead to a rushing to and fro and a
changing of places. She was in the presence, she felt, of restless
change: wasn't it restless enough that her mother and her stepfather
should already be on different sides? That was the great thing that had
domestically happened. Mrs. Wix, besides, had turned another face: she
had never been exactly gay, but her gravity was now an attitude as
public as a posted placard. She seemed to sit in her new dress and brood
over her lost delicacy, which had become almost as doleful a memory as
that of poor Clara Matilda. "It IS hard for him," she often said to her
companion; and it was surprising how competent on this point Maisie
was conscious of being to agree with her. Hard as it was, however, Sir
Claude had never shown to greater advantage than in the gallant generous
sociable way he carried it off: a way that drew from Mrs. Wix a hundred
expressions of relief at his not having suffered it to embitter him.
It threw him more and more at last into the schoolroom, where he
had plainly begun to recognise that if he was to have the credit of
perverting the innocent child he might also at least have the amusement.
He never came into the place without telling its occupants that they
were the nicest people in the house—a remark which always led them to
say to each other "Mr. Perriam!" as loud as ever compressed lips and
enlarged eyes could make them articulate. He caused Maisie to remember
what she had said to Mrs. Beale about his having the nature of a good
nurse, and, rather more than she intended before Mrs. Wix, to bring the
whole thing out by once remarking to him that none of her good nurses
had smoked quite so much in the nursery. This had no more effect than
it was meant to on his cigarettes: he was always smoking, but always
declaring that it was death to him not to lead a domestic life.
    He led one after all in the schoolroom, and there were hours of late
evening, when she had gone to bed, that Maisie knew he sat there talking
with Mrs. Wix of how to meet his difficulties. His consideration for
this unfortunate woman even in the midst of them continued to show him
as the perfect gentleman and lifted the subject of his courtesy into an
upper air of beatitude in which her very pride had the hush of anxiety.
"He leans on me—he leans on me!" she only announced from time to time;
and she was more surprised than amused when, later on, she accidentally
found she had given her pupil the impression of a support literally
supplied by her person. This