Mae dreamed happy dreams that night, and awoke with a smile on her lips.
She dressed with the greatest care, put a touch of the color Norman
liked at her throat, and fastened a charm he had given her to her
bracelet. Still, she loitered on her way to the breakfast-room, and when
she seated herself at the table, a sudden embarrassment made her keep
her eyes on her plate, or talk to Eric, or Edith, or any one but Norman.
Yet she was perfectly conscious of his every word and motion. She knew
he only took two cups of coffee instead of three, and that he helped her
to mandarins--a fruit of which she was very fond--five times, so that
she had a plate heaping with golden untouched balls before her. After
breakfast, she felt a great desire to run away, so she asked Eric to
take her to the Capitol, and leave her there for a time. “I want to
see something solid this morning, that has lasted a long while, and the
marbles will do me good.”
Yes, Eric would take her at once. Would she go and get her hat? She
went for it, and scolded herself all the time for running away when she
wanted to stay home. Yet, after all, who dares put out one’s hand to
grasp the moon when at last it approaches? No woman, at any rate.
There was a malicious sort of teasing pleasure in running away from
Norman, mingled with a shrinking modesty; and, besides, he knew the
way to the Capitol, if he chose to follow, and knew she was to be there
alone. So, on the whole, Mae went off with a blissful heart.
As she sat down in that celebrated room, immortalized by the Gladiator,
the Faun and the Antinous, scales seemed to fall from her eyes and a
weight from her heart. Life meant something more than the mere play she
delighted in, or the labor she despised. She took it in in this way. She
realized, first of all, the enduringness of the marbles. They had stood,
they will stand, for thousands of years. What have stood? What will
stand? Idle blocks of stone, without form or meaning, or simply three
beautiful shapes? No; three souls, thinks Mae, three real people,
and she looks at the abiding faun, freedom and joy of the Satyr, the
continual sentimental sadness of the Antinous, and the perpetual brave
death-struggle of the Gladiator. They are living on now, and touching
our hearts. Their mute lips open other eloquent mouths to speak for
them. Hawthorne and Byron tell us what the Faun’s soul, what the
Gladiator’s soul, look from the white marbles to us, and the world daily
repeats the story the Antinous whispers in his bent, beautiful head, the
vanitas vanitatum that our own hearts whisper, when we drop earnest life
for voluptuous pleasures.
The Faun may smile, although life is only one long play-day in green
fields and woods, because he is a Faun. The man must sigh, when he has
drained his wine-cups and laughed his heartiest laugh, and wakes to
another morning, because he is a man. The cry of humanity echoes in our
souls. We cannot stifle it; we may hush it, and follow our idle joys,
but the day comes when we bend our head with Antinous and Solomon and
the rest of them, and sigh out our vanitas, vanitas also, in the great
weary chorus.
No need, alas! for a Hawthorne, or Byron, or even a Shakspeare to
interpret what the Antinous says for us. Our own hearts do it.
Mae caught the spirit of all this, as her eyes roamed out of the window
on the Sabine hills, where woods and springs sang. She saw the aqueducts
bounding, even in their ruin, arch after arch, to the treasure house of
the waters. “They never can reach it, now,” thinks she, “never. Suppose
they cannot, is not the spirit the same?” And now Mae is ready for the
sudden light that dawns on her soul. She springs to her feet. She is
alone in the room with the marble men; and they are quiet; even the
Gladiator bites back his last groan once more.
“The Eternal City,” shouts Mae; “I know what it means at last. Oh! Rome,
Rome, I love you!” and she rests her hand on the windowsill, and looks
out on Rome. “Why, it is like a resurrection morn. Ruins? Yes, it is all
ruins, dry bones, and great dead in dust; but there is something more. I
only saw that graveyard part of it before; now, the spirit of the great
men, and great deeds, and words, and thoughts, and prayers,” cries Mae,
exultantly. “Why, they are here; not dead, like the rest, but alive, all
around us. Oh! Rome, Rome, forgive me!”
Now, this might have seemed absurd to the custode, or some other people,
if they had put their head in at the door just then. But they didn’t;
and, really, it was not absurd. I cannot believe that this small Mae
Madden is the only being who has had a swift, brilliant awakening from
the first surface, depressing thoughts of Rome--an awakening to the
living spirits which float proudly over their vacant shells that lie
below the old pavements. Once you do feel the strong, rich Roman life
about you, the decay, the ruin float off on the dust of the ages, before
the glorified breath of proud matrons and stately warriors, who step
over the centuries to walk by your side. And the centuries have
improved them,--have left their grandeur, and nobility, and bravery,
and civilized them a bit. They form into pageants for you, and fill the
baths and the palaces, but never crowd the Coliseum for the dreadful
contests, unless, maybe, for an occasional bull-fight--some great,
horrid, big bull which would be killed at market to-morrow at any
rate--and even that is as you please. It is wonderful, truly, once we
discern the spirits around us, to notice what a miraculous place Rome
is; how the intervening years of purgatorial flames have turned old Nero
himself into a fairly benevolent, soft old gentleman, even though his
estates have crumbled to such an extent that he may put his golden
palace into the head of his cane, which he always carries now, since his
chariots have gone away. Where are they? Caligula has even made it up
with his mother-in-law, and you reflect with joy on that fact, as the
two flit by your mind’s eye, hand in hand. All this nonsense is for
those of us who HAVE awakenings. The rest of “our party” may sit at
Spillman’s and eat coffee-cakes and sip Lachrymae Christi, while we walk
alone through the Coliseum, with the crowd of old heathen. They stop,
every one, at the iron cross in the middle, reared over their carnage
and mad mirth, and press their lips to it now. The centuries have done
that. We only, alas! stand gazing mournfully, doubtingly. “Will you
have another coffee-cake?” says some one, and we remember that we are at
Spillman’s also. And, indeed, we might be more sensible to stay with our
party always; eat cakes, drink wine, laugh at the old world, vaunt the
new, read Baedeker and the Bible, say our orthodox Protestant prayers,
with a special “Lead us not into Romanism” codicil, and go to bed,
and dream of our own golden houses, Paris dresses, and fat letters of
credit.
At any rate, Mae Madden was electrified by a great sudden sweep of love,
a surging rush of reverence for Rome, and makes no doubt in her own
mind, to this day, that the Faun laughed with her in her joy. In this
exalted frame of mind, she wandered down through the long halls. She was
passing from the room of the Caesars when she heard Norman’s voice. So
he had come for her with Eric. She had half fancied he would. She paused
to listen. It was a ringing elastic voice, in no wise lagging in speech,
with a certain measurement in its tones, as if he weighed his words and
thoughts, and gave them out generously, pound for pound, a fair measure
which our grandmother’s recipes approved. Mae smiled to herself. “He has
loved Rome always. He caught the spirit of it long ago. He will be glad
to know I have found it also. I wish”--and Mae sighed a scrap of a
sigh, and looked down at the toe of her boot, with which she drew little
semi-circles before her.
Mae was truly in a very tender mood to-day. I think if Norman had caught
sight of her face at that moment, he would have sent Eric off, and right
there and then, before all the Caesars--why what is the matter? The face
contracts as if in pain. What was the cause? She had heard Norman say,
“I’m afraid I was wrong, but I never meant anything by my attentions to
the girl, Eric. It was really on your account. I never liked Miss Rae
particularly. I was thrown much with her because you and I have been
together constantly, but she does not grow on me. I never expected
you should consider me as her necessary cavalier always. As for this
evening, I am engaged to Miss Mae, so that settles this matter, but I
wish that hereafter you would not get me into such scrapes.”
Poor Mae! she leaned against Nero--or was it Caracalla?--surely somebody
very hard and cold and cruel,--and stopped breathing for a moment.
For she had heard wrong, had misunderstood Miss Rae for Miss Mae, and
supposed it was of herself that he spoke. Her heart stood still for the
minutest part of a minute. Then she turned softly and quickly, went back
to the Gladiator’s room, left word with the custode for Eric that she
wasn’t well, and had gone home alone, walked off down the Capitol steps,
took a cab and drove away.
At home she had a long, earnest talk with Lisetta, after which Lisetta
had a short, brisk talk with the padrona. “It means money,” she said,
“and I can play I did it for the Signorina’s safety.” Later, Mae wrote
a brief, polite note to Norman Mann. She was ill, had gone to bed, and
wouldn’t be able to go to the Corso with him to-night. She tried to
stifle the hot anger and other emotions out of the words, and read and
re-read them to assure herself that they were perfectly easy, natural,
and polite. At last she tore them up and sent this instead:
MY DEAR MR. MANN:--Such a pity that we are not to have our fun, after
all. Yet, perhaps it is just as well. I should be very speedily without
my light, and the cry of “senza moccolo, senza moccola,” must be very
dispiriting. Have a good time right along. Good-bye--good-bye.
Of course, if Mae had not been beside herself with conflicting emotions,
she would never have sent this note, or repeated the good-bye in that
echoing, departing sort of way. Norman Mann knit his brow as he read it.
“What is the row now?” he thought. “What a child it is, anyway. She has
had the mocoletti fun in her mind since we left America, and now she
throws it away. Well, there’s no help for it; I’m booked for Miss Rae.
I’ll get Eric to see if Mae’s really ill. I wonder if she’s afraid of
me, because she cried last night, afraid I took that big tear for more
than it was worth.
“Mae,” said Eric, entering her room an hour later, “Norman feels
dreadfully that you are not able to go to-night, and so do I. I suppose
those wretched marbles did it this morning. Couldn’t you possibly come?”
“No,” replied Mae, rising on her elbow, “but sit down a moment, Eric.”
“How pretty you look,” said her brother, seating himself by her side.
Mae’s hair was tumbled in brown waves that looked as if they couldn’t
quite make up their minds to curl, much as they wanted to; her eyes
shone strangely; and the little scarlet shawl that she had drawn over
her head and shoulders was no brighter than her flushed cheeks. She
smiled at her brother, but said hurriedly; “Tell me of your plans for
to-night. I suppose you and Mr. Mann are going with your new friends.”
“Yes, Norman will go with me and the girls, but he does it with a bad
enough grace. He’s dreadfully tired of Miss Rae; and, to tell you the
truth, Mae, she is rather namby-pamby--very different from Miss Hopkins,
and then, besides, he had so set his heart on going with you to-night.”
“O, yes,” said Mae, scornfully, and bit her lips.
“Why, Mae, what is the matter with you? You seem to doubt every one
and everything. You know Norman is truth itself.” “Is he?” asked Mae,
indifferently.
“I’ve seen for a long time,” continued Eric, “that you two were not the
friends you once were, but I don’t understand this open dislike. Doesn’t
it spoil your pleasure? You don’t seem to have the real old-fashioned
good times, my little girl,” and Eric pulled his clumsy dear hand
through a twist of the brown hair caressingly.
“O, Eric,” cried Mae, “that is like old times again,” and a tear
splattered down into the big hand. “What, crying, Mae?” “No, dear--that
is, yes. I believe I am a little bit homesick. I wish I could go
back behind my teens again. Do you remember the summer that I was
twelve--that summer up by the lake? I wish you and I could paddle around
in one of the old flat-bottomed tubs once more, don’t you, Eric? We’d go
for lilies and fish for minnows--that is, we’d fish for perch and catch
the minnows--and talk about when you should go to college and pull in
the race, and I should wear a long dress and learn all the college tunes
to sing with you and your Yale friends. Do you remember, Eric? And
now, O dear me, you lost your race, and I hate my long gowns.
O--my--dear--brother--do you like it all as well as you thought you
would?”
“Why, Mae, you poor little tot, you’re sentimental--for you. Yes, I like
the future as well as I always did. I never gave much for the present,
at any rate.”
“But I did, Eric; I always did, till just now, and now I hate it, and
I’m afraid of the future, and I’d like to grow backwards, and instead,
in a month, I’ll have another birth-day, and go into those dreadful
twenties.” Then Mae was quiet a moment. “Eric, I was sentimental,” she
said, after a pause. “Really, I do like the future very much. I quite
forgot how much for the moment.”
“You’re a strange child, indeed,” replied Eric, the puzzled. “Your words
are like lightning. I had just got melted down and ready to reply to
your reminiscences by lots of others, and here you are all jolly and
matter-of-fact again. I was growing so dreadfully unselfish that I
should have insisted on staying home with you this evening to cheer you
up a bit.”
“And give up the mocoletti! Why, Eric! I shouldn’t have known how to
take such an offer. No, no, trot off and array yourself, and you may
come back and say good-bye.”
“I must say good-bye now, dear, for I dine at the Costanzi with the
girls and their aunt.”
“Now, just now, Eric?”
“Why yes, Mae. You are getting blue again, aren’t you? Getting ready for
Ash Wednesday to-morrow?”
“Oh, no, no, dear. Kiss me, Eric, again. You’re a good, dear boy. No; I
didn’t cry that drop at all. Good-bye; and to-morrow is Ash Wednesday.
But we don’t sorrow or fast in Paradise, I suppose.”