Mae met Mr. Mann at the breakfast table the next morning without the
least embarrassment. 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 passage 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 pass 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, shivery 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 Othello ‘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 passed 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 pronoun 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 pronoun 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 scrap 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.
“You flatter me,” replied Norman, “I had aspired to no such position,
but for your brother’s sake, if not for your own, I wished to tell Eric
that the Roman air at midnight was dangerous to your health. I saw you
had your window open.”
“Did you look through the ceiling, pray?” Mae retorted from the
door-way. “Eric, ring if you want anything. Rosetta is close at hand.”
“I have put my foot in it this time,” said Eric, clumsily. “I am real
sorry, Norman, old boy.”
Norman did not feel like being pitied, and this remark of Eric’s roused
him. He fairly ground his teeth and clenched his hands, but his big
brown moustache and the tablecloth hid these outer manifestations of
anger. “Don’t be a goose, Ric,” he said. “What possible difference can
all this make to me? Your sister is young and quick.”
Now, it was Eric’s turn to wince. Was he giving this fellow the
impression that he thought his sister’s opinions would affect him?
Horrible suspicion! Boys always fancy everybody in love with their
sister. He must cure that at once. “Of course,” he replied quickly, “I
know you and Mae never agree, that you barely stand each other. But I
didn’t know but you would prefer to be on good terms with her, for all
that.”
“Miss Mae can choose the terms on which we meet. I shall be content
whatever her decision. What are your plans for the day?”
Lounging Eric straightened himself at once. “I was a perfect fool last
night,” he confessed, “and I must rely on you, old fellow, to help me
out. I made engagements for two weeks ahead with Miss Hopkins and Miss
Rae. At any rate, I’m booked for the play to-night. Now, I can’t take
two girls very well. That is, I can, but I thought you might like a
show. You may have your choice of the two. Miss Rae, by the way, says
she’s wild to know you; thought you were the most provoking man she ever
saw; and that you were--nonsensical idea--engaged to Mae. All because
you wouldn’t look at her the other day when she passed you two, But you
can go with Miss Hopkins, if you prefer.”
“Are they pretty?” asked Norman, apparently warming to the task, “and
bright?”
“I should say they were. Miss Hopkins has gorgeous great eyes,--but Miss
Rae is more your style. Still, you may have your choice.”
“Silly boy; you’re afraid to death that I shall choose Miss Hopkins.
Well, if they are not over stupid and flirtatious--”
“Stupid! Oh, no,”--Eric scouted that idea--“and flirtatious, perhaps.
Miss Hopkins rolls her eyes a good deal, but then she has a frankness, a
winning way.”
“Well,” laughed Norman, “you’re such a transparent, susceptible
infant-in-arms that I’ll go with you.”
“As shepherd,” suggested Eric, “as long as Mae won’t have you. But come,
we must go down and call on these people. It won’t do at all for you to
appear suddenly this evening, and say, ‘I’ll relieve my friend here of
one of you.’”
“Oh, what a bore. Is that necessary? Won’t a card or a box of Stillman’s
bon-bons do them? Well, if it must be, come along, then.”