Read Ebook: Mae Madden by Mason Mary Murdoch Miller Joaquin Contributor

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Ebook has 620 lines and 42388 words, and 13 pages

"The blue, blue bay of Naples, a grove of oranges, moonlight and a boat if it please you."

"Yes, to do our fighting on shipboard. Let us agree to hoist the white flag the day we sight land, else we shall settle down into a regular War of the Roses and never decide," laughed Norman.

"As there are six minds," continued Albert, "there will have to be some giving up."

"Why do you look at me?" enquired Mae. "I am the very most unselfish person in the world. I'll settle down anywhere for the winter, provided only that it is not in Rome."

"But that is the very place," cried Edith, and Albert, and Mrs. Jerrold from her camp-chair.

"O, how dreadful! The only way to prevent it will be for us to stand firm, boys, and make it a tie."

"But Norman is especially eager to go to Rome," said Edith, "and that makes us four strong at once in favor of that city."

"But is not Rome a fearful mixture of dead Caesar's bones and dirty beggars? And mustn't one carry hundreds of dates at one's finger-tips to appreciate this, and that, and the other? Is it not all tremendously and overwhelmingly historical, and don't you have to keep exerting your mind and thinking and remembering? I would rather go down to Southern Italy and look at lazzaroni lie on stone walls, in red cloaks, as they do in pictures, and not be obliged to topple off the common Italian to pile the gray stone with old memories of some great dead man. Everything is ghostly in Rome. Now, there must be some excitement in Southern Italy. There's Vesuvius, and she isn't dead--like Nero--but a living demon, that may erupt any night, and give you a little red grave by the sea for your share."

"She's not nearly through yet," laughed Edith, as Mae paused for breath.

"I'm only afraid," said Mae, "that after I had been down there a week, I should forget English, buy a contadina costume, marry a child of the sun, and run away from this big world with its puzzles and lessons, and rights and wrongs. Imagine me in my doorway as you passed in your travelling carriage, hot and tired on your way--say to Sorrento. I would dress my beautiful Italian all up in scarlet flowers and wreathe his big hat and kiss his brown eyes and take his brown hand, and then we would run along by the bay and laugh at you stiff, grand world's folks as we skipped past you."

"We shall know where to look for you, if ever you do disappear," said Norman Mann.

"But, my dear Mae," added Albert, "though this is amusing, it is utterly useless."

"Amusing things always are," said Mae.

"The question is, shall we or shall we not go to Rome for the winter?"

"Certainly, by all means, and if I don't like it, I'll run away to Sorrento," and Mae shook her sunny head and twinkled her eyes in a fascinating sort of way, that made Eric feel a proud brotherly pleasure in this saucy young woman, and that gave Norman Mann a sort of feeling he had had a good deal of late, a feeling hard to define, though we have all known it, a delicious concoction of pleasure and pain. His eyes were fixed on Mae, now. "What is it?" she asked. "You will like Rome, I am sure." "No, I never like what I think I shall not."

"It might save some trouble, then, if I ask you now if you expect to like me," said he, in a lower tone. "Why certainly, I do like you very much," she replied, honestly. "What a stupid question," he thinks, vexedly. "Why did I tell him I liked him?" she thinks, blushingly. So the waves of anxiety and doubt begin to swell in these two hearts as the outside waves beat with a truer sea-motion momently against the steamer's side.

As Edith and her mother quietly read, and ate grapes, and lolled in a delightfully feminine way, voices were heard,--Mae's and Norman's. They were in the middle of a conversation. "Yes," Mae was saying, "you do away with individuality altogether nowadays, with your dreadful classifications. It is all the same from daffodils up to women."

"How do we classify women, pray?"

"In the mind of man," began Mae, as if she were reading, "there are three classes of women; the giddy butterflies, the busy bees, and the woman's righters. The first are pretty and silly; the second, plain and useful; the third, mannish and odious. The first wear long trailing dresses and smile at you while waltzing, the second wear aprons and give you apple-dumplings, and the third want your manly prerogatives, your dress-coat, your money, and your vote. Flirt with the giddy butterflies, your first love was one. First loves always are. Marry the busy bee. Your mother was a busy bee. Mothers always are. And keep on the other side of the street from the woman's righter as long as you can. Alas! your daughter will be one."

"Well, isn't there any classifying on the other side? Aren't there horsemen and sporting men and booky men, in the feminine mind?"

"Perhaps so. There certainly are the fops, and nowadays this terrible army of reformers and radicals, of whom my brother Albert here is the best known example."

"What is it?" asked Albert, looking up abstractedly from his book, for he and Eric had sauntered up the stairs too, by this time.

"They are the creatures," continued Mae, "who scorn joys and idle pleasures. They deal with the good of the many and the problems of the universe, and step solemnly along to that dirge known as the March of Progress. And what do they get for it all? Something like this. Put down your book, I'm going to prophesy," and Mae backed resolutely up against the railing and held her floating scarfs and veils in a bunch at her throat, while she prophesied in this way:

"Behold me, direct lineal descendant of Albert Madden, speaking to my children in the year 1995: 'What, children, want amusement? Want to see the magic lantern to note the effects of light? Alas! how frivolous. Listen, children, to the achievements of your great ancestor, as reported by the Encyclopedia. "A. Madden--promoter of civilization and progress, chiefly known by his excellent theory entitled The Number of Cells in a Human Brain compared to the Working Powers of Man, and that remarkable essay, headed by this formula: Given--10,000,000 laboring men, to find the number of loaves of bread in the world." Here, children, take these works. Progressimus, you may have the theory, while Civilizationica reads the essay. Then change about. Ponder them well, and while we walk to the Museum later, tell me their errors. Then I will show you the preserved ears of the first man found in Boshland by P. T. Barnum, jr.' Oh, bosh," said Mae suddenly, letting fly her streamers, "what a dry set of locusts you nineteenth century leaders are. You are devouring our green land, and some of us butterflies would like to turn our yellow wings into solid shields against you, if we could. There, I've made a goose of myself again on the old subject. Edith, there's the lunch bell. Take me down before I say another word." Exeunt feminines all.

"Where did the child pick up all that?" queried Albert.

"'All that' is in the air just now," answered Norman. "It is a natural reaction of a strong physical nature against the utilitarian views of the day. Miss Mae is a type of--"

"O, nonsense, what prigs you are," interrupted Eric, "Mae is jolly. Do stop your reasoning about her. If you are bound to be a potato yourself to help save the masses from starvation, don't grumble because she grew a flower. Come, let us go to lunch too."

Conversation was not always of this sort. One evening, not long after, there was a moon, and Edith and Albert were missing. Eric was following a blue-eyed girl along the deck, and Mae and Norman wandered off by themselves up to this same hurricane deck again. The moonlight was wonderful. It touched little groups here and there and fell full on the face of a woman in the steerage, who sat with her arms crossed on her knee and her face set eastward. She was singing, and her voice rose clearly above the puff of the engine and the jabber below. There was a chorus to the song, in which rough men and tired looking women joined. The song was about home, and once in a while the girl unclasped her arms and passed her hands over her eyes. Mae and Norman Mann looked at her silently. "I suppose we don't know when we make pictures," said Mae. "Don't we?" asked Norman pointedly. Mae looked very reprovingly out from her white wraps at him, but he smiled back composedly and admiringly, and drew her hand a trifle closer in his arm. And saucy Mae began to feel in that sort of purring mood women come to when they drop the bristling, ready-for-fight air with which they start on an acquaintance. Perhaps, if the steamer had been a sailing-vessel, there would have been no story to tell about Mae Madden, for a long line of evenings, and girls singing songs, and hurricane decks by moonlight, are dangerous things. But the vessel was a fast steamer, and was swiftly nearing land again.

ROME, February, 18--.

MY DEAR MAMMA:--Yes, it is Rome, mamma, and everybody is impressed. The boys talk of emperors all the time; Edith is wild over Madonnas and saints, and Mrs. Jerrold runs from Paul's house to Paul's walks and Paul's drives and Paul's stand at the prisoner's bar, and reads the Acts through five times a day, in the most religious and Romanistic spirit. No one could make more fuss over a patron saint, I am sure. For my part, I feel as if I were in the most terrible ghost story. The old Romans are all around me. Underneath the street noises, I seem to hear cries, and in the air I half see a constant flashing of swords and scars and blood, and I can't even put my foot on the Roman pavement without wondering which dead Caesar my saucy Burt boot No. 2 is walking over. I shouldn't mind trampling old Caligula, but I don't like the thought on general principles. I feel all out of place, so modern and fixed up and flimsy. If I could get into old picturesque clothes and out of the English-speaking quarter, I should not be so oppressed and might worship Rome. But I seriously think I shall die if I stay here much longer. There's a spirit-malaria that eats into my life. I feel as if all the volumes of Roman history bound in heavy vellum, that papa has in his study, were laid right on top of my little heart, so that every time it beats, it thumps against them, and I assure you, mamma, its worse than dyspepsia. If I could only get out on a New England hillside, where there were no graves more important than those of grasshoppers and butterflies! What should I do when I got there? Take off my hat, and scream for joy, and feel free and glad to be in a fresh country, with rich, warm, untainted earth and young life.

But all this is nonsense, mamma, and I shouldn't be writing it, if I hadn't just come from the catacombs of St. Calixtus. To think of Albert's insisting upon going there the very first thing! But so he did, and so we went, and talked solemnly about the Appian Way, and saw everybody's tombs and ashes, and quoted poetry, until I stuck a pin in Albert's arm and sang Yankee Doodle, to keep from crying. Then, oh, how shocked they looked. Even Mr. Mann seemed ashamed of me. When we reached the place, we each took a candle and the guide led the way down into the bowels of the earth. Mamma, they are very unpleasant. There were two German youths along, and green lizards crawled all over. They winked at me. The way grew so narrow that we had to walk one by one through lines of wall perforated with holes for dead bodies. Once in a while we would come to a small chapel, for miserable variety's sake, and be told to admire some very old, very wretched painting. Jonah and the whale were represented in a double-barreled miracle picture. Not only was the whale about to swallow Jonah, but he was only as large as a good-sized brook trout, while Jonah towered away above him like a Goliath. I found myself wondering if the guide had convulsions, and, if he should have one now, and die, how many days would pass before we should eat each other. And would they take me first, because I am youngest and plumpest? Albert would make good soup bones, and Eric's shoulder serve as a delicious fore-quarter. And by the time we came to the top again, I was all ready to cry. And then, mamma, I did an awful thing. Mr. Mann exclaimed: "Why, Miss Mae, how frightened you look. You are quite white." And I answered very sharply: "What a disagreeable man you are. I'm not frightened at all." I said it in a dreadful tone, and how his face changed. He looked so strangely. Everybody was still but Albert, and he said, "Why, Mae, you are very rude to Mr. Mann." Even then I didn't apologize. So here we are at sword's points, and all the rest sympathizing with my foe, who is only on the defensive. Why am I such a belligerent? I can't conceive where I got my nature, unless from that very disagreeable dear old grandpapa of papa's, who fought the whole world all his life. But how egotistic I am, even to my mother. Of course you want to know how we are lodged and clothed and fed. We have taken apartments, as I presume Albert wrote you, on the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino, quite near the Costanzi hotel, which is in the height of the fashion as a hotel; near too, which is better, to Mr. Story's studio and the old Barberini palace and the Barberini square and fountains. Off behind, is that terrible church of the Cappucini, with its cemetery underneath of bones and skulls and such horrors. I like the apartments very much, principally because I have made three staunch friends and one good enemy, in the kitchen. The padrona,--she's the woman who keeps the house, and serves us, too, in this case--though Mrs. Jerrold has a maid to wait on the table and care for our rooms--well, the padrona is my first friend. Her cousin, a handsome southern Italian, is here on a visit, and she is not only my friend, but my instructress. She tells me lovely stories about her home and the peasants and their life, while I sit on the floor with Giovanni,--friend number three and eldest son of the padrona,--and even Roberto, my enemy, the crying baby of three years, hushes his naughty mouth to listen to Lisetta, for that is the cousin's name. I am so glad I studied Italian as hard as I did for my music, for it comes very easily to me now, and already I slip the pretty words from my halting tongue much more smoothly and quickly than you would imagine I could. Mrs. Jerrold isn't quite satisfied, and would prefer the Costanzi, only she doesn't believe in letting us girls stay at large hotels. She and Edith are shocked at my kitchen tastes, so that I generally creep off quietly and say nothing about it. It is strange for me to have to keep anything secret, but I am learning how.

Your loving daughter,

MAE.

Mae felt a great deal better when she had finished the letter, and, like a volatile girl as she was, buttoned her Burt boots and Paris gloves, singing gaily a dash from Trovatore in a very light-hearted manner.

"Why, you look like a different girl," cried Eric, as she entered the parlor, where he and Mr. Mann were sitting. "Mrs. Jerrold, Edith, and Albert have gone on in a carriage, and you are left to my tender care; will you ride or walk?"

"How can you ask? My feet are quite wild. No wonder I am a different girl. Are we not going to the Pincian hill to look at the live world and people? I have just unlocked the stop-gates and let the blood bound in my veins as it wants to."

"It has been taking the cinque-pace, I should say from your long face to-day."

"O, it has only been trying to keep step with the march of the ages, or some such stately tread, but it was hard work, and now the dear life of me hops, skips and jumps, like this," and Mae seized her brother and danced across the room, stopping very near Mr. Mann, who stood with his back to them, drumming on the window pane. She looked at him quizzically and half raised her eyebrows.

Eric shook his head, and said aloud in his outspoken way: "You owe him an apology, Mae, for this morning's rudeness."

Mr. Mann turned quickly. "I am surprised, Eric. Let your sister find out for herself when she is rude."

"Bless me," cried Eric, "what is the row?"

Mae looked determined. "Are you going to the Pincian with us?" she asked.

"No, I am going to stay home."

"Well, good-bye, then. Come, Eric." The door closed behind them.

Mr. Mann stood by the window and watched them walk away. Mae, with her eager, restless, fresh life showing out in every motion; Eric, with his boy-man air and his student swing and happy-go-lucky toss of his head. Mr. Mann smiled and then he sighed. "That's a good boy, so square and fair and merry--and a queer girl," he added. "Rome isn't the place for her. She must get away, though why I should take care for her, or worry about her, little vixen. I don't see." Still he smiled as one would over a very winning, very wicked child, and shortly after took his hat and went to the Pincio, after all.

Meantime, the brother and sister had walked gaily along, passed the Spanish Steps, and were on the Pincian hill. Here, Mae was indeed happy. The fine equipages and dark, rich beauty of the Italians delighted her, and she and Eric found a shaded bench, and watched the carriages drive round and round, and criticised, and admired, and laughed like two idle children. They bought some flowers, and Mae sat pulling them to pieces, when they caught sight, down the pathway, of two approaching Piedmontese officers.

"O," cried Mae, and dropped her flowers, and clasped her hands, and sprang to her feet, "O, Eric, are they gods or men?"

The Piedmontese officer is godlike. He must be of a certain imposing height to obtain his position, and his luxurious yellow moustaches and blue black eyes, enriched and intensified by southern blood, give him a strange fascination. The cold, manly beauty and strength of a northern blonde meet with the heat and lithe grace of the more supple southerner to produce this paragon. There is a combination of half-indolent elegance and sensuous langour, with a fire, a verve, a nobility, that puts him at the very head of masculine beauty. Add to the charms of his physique, the jauntiest, most bewitching of uniforms, the clinking spurs, the shining buttons, the jacket following every line of his figure, and no wonder maidens' hearts seek him out always and young pulses beat quicker at his approach.

Mae's admiration was simply rapturous. Utterly regardless of the pretty picture she herself made, of her vivid coloring and sparkling beauty, she stood among her dropped flowers until the two pairs of eyes were fixed upon her. Then she became suddenly aware of her attitude and with quick feminine cunning endeavored to transfer her admiration to some beautiful horses cantering by, exclaiming in Italian, that the officers might surely understand she was thinking only of the fine animals: "O, what wonderful horses!"

The foreign pronunciation, Eric's amusement, Mae's confusion, were not lost upon the men. Their curiosity was piqued, their eyes and pride gratified. They sauntered leisurely past, only to turn a corner and quicken their steps again toward the bench where Eric and Mae were seated. They found the brother and sister just arising, and followed them slowly.

An Italian is quick to detect secrets. The two had not proceeded far before one said to the other; "Eh, Luigi, we are not the only interested party."

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