Mae Madden Part 4

The officer smiled under his long moustaches. "For three days,--at a hotel, Signorina."

"No, no; with the peasants. I am tired and sick of books, and people, and reasons. Shall I give you a day of my Heaven?"

Bero smiled and bent slightly forward and rested his hand lightly on the stick of her parasol, which lay between them. "Go on," he said.

"I would fill my ap.r.o.n with sweet flowers and golden fruit--great oranges, and those fragrant, delicious tiny mandarins--and I would get a crowd of little Italians about me, all a-babbling their pretty, pretty tongue, and I would go down to the bay and get in an anch.o.r.ed boat, and lie there all the morning, catching the sunlight in my eyes, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the brown babies and the boat with flowers, looking off at the water and the clouds, tossing the pretty fruit, and laughing, and playing, and enjoying. Later, there'd be a run on the beach, and a ride on a donkey, and a dance, with delirious music and frolic. And then the moon and quiet,--and I would steal away from the crowd, and take a little boat, and float and drift--"

"Alone?" asked Bero, softly. "Surely, you wouldn't condemn a mountaineer's yellow moustache, or a soldier's spurs and sword, if at heart he was really a child of the sun also? May I share your day of Heaven? It would be paradise for me, too." All this in the same soft, deferential manner.

"Well, well," half laughed, half sighed Mae. "All this is a dream, unless, indeed, I go home with Lisetta."

"Who is Lisetta?"

"Our padrona's cousin. She is here on a visit. She lives within a mile of Sorrento, on the coast. She goes home at the end of Carnival. Oh, how I do long for Carnival," continued Mae, frankly and confidentially.

"Don't you? I am like a child over it, I am trying already to persuade Eric--that is my brother--to take me down on the Corso the last night, for the Mocoletti. It would be much better fun than staying on our balcony."

"Where is your balcony?" asked Bero, stroking his long moustaches.

"It is on the corner of Maria e Jesu, and if I ever see you coming by, I shall be tempted to pepper your pretty uniform. How beautiful it is!"

"Yes," replied Bero, again gazing proudly down at his lithe figure, in its well-fitting clothes, "but I would be willing to be showered with confetti daily to see you. How shall I know you? What is to be the color of your domino?" And he bent forward, hitting his spurs against the paving stones, flas.h.i.+ng his deep eyes, and half reaching out his hand, in that same tender, respectful way.

Mae saw the sunlight strike his hair; she half heard his deep breath; and, like a flood, there suddenly swept over her the knowledge that this new friend, this sympathizing soul, was an unknown man, and that she was a girl. What had she done? What could she do? Confusion and embarra.s.sment suddenly overtook her. She bent her eyes away from those other eyes, that were growing bolder and more tender in their gaze.

"I--I--" she began, and just at this very inauspicious moment, while she sat there, flushed, by the stranger's side, the clatter of swiftly-approaching wheels sounded, and a carriage turned the corner, containing Mrs. Jerrold, Edith, Albert, and Norman Mann. They all saw her.

Mae laughed. It was such a dreadful situation that it was funny, and she laughed again. "Those are my friends," she said, in a low voice. "We can walk away," replied the officer, and turned his face in the opposite direction. "It is too late; and, besides, why should we?" And Mae looked full in his face, then turned to the carriage, which was close upon them.

"How do you all do?" she cried, gleefully and bravely. "Isn't there room for me in there? Mrs. Jerrold, I would like to introduce Signor--your name?"--she said, quite clearly, in Italian, turning to the officer.

"Bero," he replied.

"Signor Bero. He was very kind, and saved me from--from a little beggar boy."

"You must have been in peril, indeed," remarked Mrs. Jerrold, bowing distantly to Bero, and beckoning the coachman, as Mae sprang into the carriage, to drive on. "I am sorry to put you on the box, Norman,"

Mrs. Jerrold added, as Mae took the seat, in silence, that Mr. Mann had vacated for her, "and I hope Miss Mae is also." But Mae didn't hear this. She was plucking up courage in her heart, and a.s.suming a saucy enough expression, that sat well on her bright face. Indeed, she was a pretty picture, as she sat erect, with lips and nostrils a trifle distended, and her head a little in the air. The Italian thought so, as he walked away, smiling softly, clicking his spurs and stroking his moustache; and Norman Mann thought so too, as he tapped his cane restlessly on the dash-board and scowled at the left ear of the off horse. The party preserved an amazed and stiff silence, as they drove homeward.

"Eric," cried Norman, very late that same night. "Do be sober, I have something to say to you about Miss Mae."

"Norman, old boy, how can a fellow of my make be sober when he has drunk four gla.s.ses of wine, waltzed fifteen times, and torn six flounces from a Paris dress? Why, man, I am delirious, I am. Tra, la, la, tra, la, la. Oh, Norman, if you could have heard that waltz," and Eric seized his companion in his big arms and started about the room in a mad dance. "You are Miss Hopkins, Norman, you are. Here goes--" but Norman struck out a bold stroke that nearly staggered Eric and broke loose. "For Heaven's sake, Eric, stop this fooling; I want to speak to you earnestly."

"Evidently," replied Eric, with excited face, "forcibly also. Blows belong after words, not before," and the big boy tramped indignantly off to bed.

Norman Mann was in earnest truly, forcible also, for he opened his mouth to let out a very expressive word as Eric left the room. It did him good seemingly, for he strode up and down more quietly. At last he sat down and began to talk with himself. "Norman Mann, you've got to do it all alone," he said. "Albert and Edith and Aunt Martha are too vexed and shocked to do the little rebel any good. Ric, oh, dear, Ric is a silly boy, G.o.d bless him, and here I am doomed to make that child hate me, and with no possible authority over her, or power, for that matter, trying to keep her from something terribly wild. If they don't look out, she will break loose. I know her well, and there's strong character under this storm a-top, if only some one could get at it. d.a.m.n it." Norman grew forcible again. "Why can't I keep my silly eyes away from her, and go off with the fellows. You see," continued Norman, still addressing his patient double, "she is a rebel, and--pshaw, I dare say it is half my fancy, but I hate that long moustached officer. I wish he would be summoned to the front and be shot. O, I forgot, there's no war. Well, then, I wish he would fall in love with any body but Mae. It must be late. Ric didn't leave that little party very early, I'm sure, but I can't sleep. I'll get down my Sismondi and read awhile. I wonder if that child is feeling badly now. I half believe she is--but here's my book."

Yes, Mae was feeling badly, heart-brokenly, all alone in her room. After a long, harrowing talk with Mrs. Jerrold, at the close of which she had received commands never to go out alone in Rome, because it wasn't proper, she had been allowed to depart for her own room. Here she closed the door leading into Mrs. Jerrold's and Edith's apartment, and opened her window wide, and held her head out in the night air--the poisonous Roman air. The street was very quiet. Now and then some late wayfarer pa.s.sed under the light at the corner, but Mae had, on the whole, a desolate outlook--high, dark buildings opposite, and black clouds above, with only here and there a star peeping through.

She had taken down her long hair, thrown off her dress, and half wrapped herself in a shawl, out of which her bare arms stretched as she leaned on the deep window seat. She looked like the first woman--of the Darwinian, not the Biblical, Creation. There was a wild, half-hunted expression on her face that was like the set air of an animal brought suddenly to bay. She thought in little jerks, quick sentences that were almost like the barking growls with which a beast lashes itself to greater fury.

"They treated me unfairly. They had no right. I shall choose my own friends. How dare they accuse me of flirting? I flirt, pah! I'd like to run away. This stupid, stupid life!" And so on till the sentences grew more human. "I suppose Mr. Mann thinks I am horrid, but I don't care.

I wish I could see Eric, he wouldn't blame me so. What a goose I am to mind anyway. The Carnival is coming! Even these old tombs must give way for ten whole riotous days. I must make them madly merry days. I wonder how I will look in my domino. I suppose the pink one is mine."

So Miss Mae dried her eyes, picked her deshabille self from the window seat, turned up the light, slipped into her pink and white carnival attire, and walked to the window again.

"This is the Corso all full of people, and I'll pelt them merrily, so, and so, and so!" She reached forth her bare, round arm into the darkness, and looked down, where, full under the street light, gazing up at her, stood the Piedmontese officer.

It was at that very moment that Norman Mann put down his Sismondi, and looked from his window also.

CHAPTER IV.

Mae met Mr. Mann at the breakfast table the next morning without the least embarra.s.sment. Indeed, the little flutter in her talk could easily be attributed to unusually high spirits and an excited and pleased fancy. That was how Norman Mann translated it, of course. Really, the flutter was a genuine stirring of her heart with inquietude, timidity and semi-repentance; but Mae couldn't say this, and it's only what one says out that can be reckoned on in this world. So Norman Mann, who saw only the bright cheeks and eyes and restless quickening of an eager girl and did not see the palpitating feminine heart inside, was displeased and half-cold.

Could any one be long cold to Mae Madden? She believed not. She was quite accustomed to lightning-like white heats of anger in those with whom she came in contact, but coldness was out of her line. Still she met the occasion well. "Shall I give you some coffee?" she asked, pleasantly. "We breakfast all alone, until Eric appears. Mrs. Jerrold is not well, and Edith and Albert are off for Frascati."

"Poor child; how much alone she is," he thought to himself.

"I understand we all go to the play tonight?" queried Mae.

"The thought of Shakspeare dressed in Italian is not pleasant to me,"

said Mr. Mann, after a silence of a few minutes.

"I am quite longing to see him in his new clothes. There is so much softness and beauty in Italian that I expect to gain new ideas from hearing the play robed in more flowing phrases. Shakspeare certainly is for all the world."

"But Shakspeare's words are so strongly chosen that they are a great element in his great plays. And a translation at best is something of a parody, especially a translation from a northern tongue, with its force and backbone, so to speak, into a southern, serpentine, gliding language. You have heard the absurd rendering of that pa.s.sage from Macbeth where the witches salute him with 'Hail to thee, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!' into such French as 'Comment vous portez vous, Monsieur Macbeth; comment vous portez vous, Monsieur Thane de Cawdor!' A translation must pa.s.s through the medium of another mind, and other minds like Shakspeare's are hard to find."

Norman spoke with so much reverence for Mae's greatest idol that her heart warmed and she smiled approval, though for argument's sake she remained on the other side.

"Isn't a translation more like an engraver's art, and aren't fine engravings to be sought and admired even when we know the great original in its glory of color? Then all writing is only translation, not copying. Shakspeare had to translate the tongues he found in stones, the books he found in brooks, with twenty-six little characters and his great mind, into what we all study, and love, and strive after. But he had to use these twenty-six characters in certain hard, Anglo-Saxon forms and confine himself to them. When he wanted to talk about

'fen-sucked fogs,'

and such damp, s.h.i.+very places, he is all right, but when he sings of 'love's light wings,' and all that nonsense, he is impeded; now open to him 'Italian, the language of angels'--you know the old rhyme--and see what a chance he has among the "liquid l's and bell-voiced m's and crushed tz's." To-night you will hear Desdemona call Oth.e.l.lo 'Il mio marito,' in a way that will start the tears. What are the stiff English words to that? 'My husband!' Husband is a very uneuphonious name, I think."

Norman Mann smiled. "Another cup of coffee, if you please--not quite as sweet as the last," and he pa.s.sed his cup. "I believe there is always a charm in a novel word that has not been commonized by the crowd. 'Dear'

means very little to us nowadays, because every school girl is every other school girl's 'dear,' and elderly ladies 'my dear' the world at large, in a pretty and benevolent way. So with the words 'husband' and 'wife'; we hear them every day in commonest speech--'the coachman and his wife,' or 'Sally Jones's husband,'--but I take it this is when we stand outside. That wonderful little possessive p.r.o.noun MY has a great, thrilling power. 'My husband' will be as fine to your ears as 'il mio marito,' which has, after all, a slippery, uncertain sound; and as for 'my wife'--"

At that moment the coffee cup, which was on its way back, had reached the middle of the table, where by right it should have been met and guided by the steadier, masculine hand; Norman's hand was there in readiness, but instead of gently removing the cup from Mae's clasp, it folded itself involuntarily about the white, round wrist, as he paused on these last words. Was it the little possessive p.r.o.noun that sent the sudden thrill through the unexpecting wrist? At any rate it trembled; the cup, the saucer, the coffee, the spoon, followed a well known precedent, and "went to pieces all at once;" "all at once and nothing first just as bubbles do when they burst." And so alas! did the conversation, and that burst a beautiful bubble Norman had just blown.

Damages were barely repaired when Eric entered the breakfast room with a petulant sort of face and flung himself into a chair. "My! what a head I have on me this morning," he groaned. "Soda water would be worth all the coffee in the world, Mae; I'll take it black, if you please. How cosy you two look. I always take too much of every thing at a party, from flirtation to--O, Mae, you needn't look so sad. I'm not the one in disgrace now. Mrs. Jerrold, Edith and Albert are just piping mad at you, and as for Mann, here,--by the way," and Eric rubbed his forehead, as if trying to sharpen up a still sleepy memory, "I suppose you two have had it out by this time. Norman sat up till ever so late to talk you over with me, Mae. Do thank him for me; I am under the impression that I didn't do so last night."

Mae tapped her fourth finger, on which a small ring glistened, sharply against the cream jug. "If I were every body's pet lamb or black sheep, I couldn't have more shepherd's crooks about me. Have you joined the laudable band, Mr. Mann, and am I requested to thank you for that?"

"Not at all. Perhaps your brother's remembrances of last night are not very distinct. I certainly sat up for Sismondi's sake, not for yours."

And he really thought, for the moment, that he told the truth.

"I warn you," continued Mae, rising as she spoke, "that I have a tremendous retinue of mentors, and nurses, and governesses already.

You had better content yourself with the fact that you have four proper traveling companions, and bear the disgrace of being shocked as best you may by one wild sc.r.a.p of femininity who will have her own way in spite of you all." Mae half laughed, but she was serious, and the boys both knew it.