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.”
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