Mae’s good times were greatly dimmed after this by the thought that she was watched. The bouquets which came daily from Bero troubled her also not a little. They were invariably formed of the same flowers, and might easily attract Edith’s attention and possible suspicion. So she stayed home from the Corso one day not long after, when she was in a particularly Corso-Carnival mood. She wandered helplessly about, restless and full of desire to be down at the balcony with the rest. And such a strange thing is the human heart, that it was Norman Mann’s face she saw before her constantly, and she found Miss Rae’s little twinkling sort of eyes far more haunting than those of her veiled friend.
The rich life in Mae’s blood was surging in her veins and must be let off in some way. If she had had her music and a piano she might have thrown her soul into some great flood-waves of harmony. The Farnesina frescoes of Cupid and Psyche over across the Tiber would have helped her, but here she was alone, and so she did what so many “fervent souls” do—scribbled her heart out in a colorful, barbarous rhyme. Mae had ordinarily too good sense for this, too deep a reverence for that world of poetry, at the threshold of which one should bow the knee, and loose the shoe from his foot, and tread softly. She didn’t care for this to-day. She plunged boldly in, wrote her verse, copied it, sent it to a Roman English paper, and heard from it again two days later, in the following way.
The entire party were breakfasting together, when Albert suddenly looked up from his paper and laughed. “Look here,” he cried. “Here is another of those dreadful imitators of the Pre-Raphaelite school. Hear this from a so-called poem in the morning’s journal:
‘The gorgeous brown reds
Of the full-throated creatures of song.’”
“I don’t see anything bad in that,” said Eric, helping himself to another muffin. “What is the matter with you?”
“Matter enough,” returned Albert. “Because their masters, sometimes, daub on colors with their full palettes and strong brushes, this feeble herd tag after them and flounder around in color and passion in a way that is sickening.”
“Go on,” shouted Eric, “he is our own brother, Mae, after all, you see. Fancy my Lord Utilitarian turning to break a lance in defence of beauty. Edith, you and the picture-galleries are to blame for this.”
Mae had been paying great attention to her rolls and coffee, and very little apparently to the conversation, but she spoke eagerly now. “Their masters do not daub. They do hold palettes full of the strongest, richest colors, and dare lay them, in vivid flecks, on their canvas. They do not care if they may offend some modern cultivated eyes, used only to the invisible blues and shadowy greens and that host of cold, lifeless, toneless grays, of refined conventional art. They know well enough that their satisfying reds and browns and golds of rich, free nature will go to the beating hearts of some of us.”
Mae had a way of dashing into conversation abruptly, and the Madden family had been brought up on argument and table-talk. So the rest of the party ate their breakfast placidly enough. “Mae’s right,” said Eric, a trifle grandly, “only, to change the figure of speech for one better fitted for the occasion, they may satiate, though they never starve you. But they are wonderfully fine, sometimes. O, bother, I never can quote, but there is something about ‘I will go back to the great sweet mother.”’
“Or this,” suggested Mae,
“‘And to me thou art matchless and fair
As the tawny sweet twilight, with blended
Sunlight and red stars in her hair.’”
“I love my masters,” continued this young enthusiast, “because they fling all rules aside, and cry out as they choose. It is their very heart’s blood and the lusty wine of life that they give you, not just a scrap of ‘rosemary for remembrance’ and a soothing herb-tea made from the flowers of fancy they have culled from those much travestied, abominable fields of thought.”
“And this from a lover of Wordsworth, who holds the ‘Daffodils’ and ‘Lucy’ as her chief jewels, and quotes the ‘Immortality’ perpetually!” cried Eric. “If any body ever wandered up and down those same fields of thought, by more intricate, labyrinthine passages and byways, I’d like to know of him. Talk about soothing herbs, bless me, it’s hot catnip-tea, good and strong, that he serves up in half of his strings about—”
“O, Eric, hush,” cried Mae, “I am afraid for you with such words on your lips. Think of Ananias.”
“Before you children go wandering off on one of your poet fights,” broke in Albert, “let me take you to task, Mae, for stealing; that lusty wine you talked of just now is in the poem (?) I hold in my hand.”
“Do read it to us,” said Edith, “and let us judge for ourselves.” So Albert began:
ALL ON A SUMMER’S DAY.
“Far away the mountains rise, purpling and joyous,
Through the half mist of the warm pulsing day, while nigh
At hand gay birds hang swinging and floating
And waving betwixt earth and sky,
Ringing out from ripe throats
A sensuous trickling of notes,
That fall through the trees,
Till caught by the soft-rocking breeze
They are borne to the ears of the maiden.
Her eyes wander after the sound,
And glimpses she catches along
Through green broad-leaved shadows,
Through sunbeams gold-strong,
Of the gorgeous brown reds of the full-throated creatures of song.
One hand on her brown bosom rests,
Rising and falling with every heart-beat
Of the delicate, slow-swelling breasts.
A lily, proud, all color of amber and wine,
Waves peerless there, by right divine
Queen o’er the moment and place.
As the wind bends her coaxingly,
Brushes softly the maiden’s white hand—
That falls with an idle grace,
Listlessly closed at her side—
With a rippling touch, such as the tide,
Rising, leaves on a summer day,
On the quiet shore of some peaceful bay.
There she stands in the heavily-bladed grass,
Under the trumpet-vine,
Drinking long, deep, intoxicate draughts
Of Nature’s lusty, live wine.
There he sees her as he approaches;
Then pauses, as full on his ear
There swells, on a sudden, loud and clear,
A wonderful burst of song.
A mad delicious glory; a rainbow rhythm of life,
Strong and young and free, a burst of the senses all astrife,
Each one fighting to be first,
While above, beyond them all,
Loud a woman’s heart makes call.”
“Now, fire ahead,” said Eric, “get your stones ready. Mrs. Jerrold, pray begin; let us put down this young parrot with her ‘lusty, live wine.’”
“Her?” exclaimed Edith. “Him, you mean.”
“Not a bit of it; a woman wrote that, didn’t she?”
Eric was very confident. Norman agreed with him, and he glanced at Mae to discover her opinion. There was a look of secret amusement in her face, and a dim suspicion entered his mind, which decided him to watch her closely.
“Well,” said Mrs. Jerrold, “I will be lenient. You children may throw all the stones. It is not poetry to my taste. There’s no metre to it, and I should certainly be sorry to think a woman wrote it.”
“Why?” asked Mae, quickly, almost commandingly. Norman glanced at her. There was a tiny rosebud on each cheek.
“Because,” replied Mrs. Jerrold, “it is too—too what, Edith?”
“Physical, perhaps,” suggested Edith.
“It is a satyr-like sort of writing,” suggested Norman.
“I should advise this person,” said Edith—
“To keep still?” interrupted Eric.
“No, to go to work; that is what he or she needs.”
“That is odd advice,” said Mae; “suppose she—or he—is young, doesn’t know what to do, is a traveler, like ourselves, for instance.”
“There are plenty of benevolent schemes in Rome, I am sure,” said Edith, a trifle sanctimoniously.
“And there’s study,” said Albert, “art or history. Think what a chance for studying them one has here. Yes, Edith is right—work or study, and a general shutting up of the fancy is what this mind needs.”
“I disagree with you entirely,” said Norman with energy. “She needs play, relaxation, freedom.” Then he was sorry he had said it; Mae’s eyes sparkled so.
“She needs,” said Eric, pushing back his chair, “to be married. She is in love. That’s what’s the matter. Read those two last lines, Albert:
‘While above, beyond them all,
Loud a woman’s heart makes call.’
“Don’t you see?”
“O, wise young man,” laughed Edith. But Mae arose. The scarlet buds in her cheeks flamed into full-blown roses. “There speaks the man,” she cried passionately, “and pray doesn’t a woman’s heart ever call for anything but love—aren’t life and liberty more than all the love in the world? Oh!” and she stopped abruptly.
“Well, we have wasted more time than is worth while over this young, wild gosling,” laughed Albert. “Let us hope she will take our advice.”
Mae shook her head involuntarily. There was a smile on Norman Mann’s lips.
“Here’s health and happiness to the poor child at any rate,” he said.
“He pities me,” thought Mae, “and I hate him.” But then she didn’t at all.
Mae wandered off to the kitchen, as usual, that day, for another of Lisetta’s stories. The Italian, with her glibness of tongue and ready fund of anecdote, was transformed in her imaginative mind into a veritable improvisatore. Talila was not by any means the only heroine of the little tales. Mae had made the acquaintance of many youths and maidens, and to-day Lisetta, after thinking over her list of important personages, chose the Madre Ilkana as the heroine of the occasion. Mae had already heard one or two amusing incidents connected with this old mother. “I am sure she has a cousin in America,” she asserted to-day, before Lisetta began, “for I know her well. She knits all the time, and is as bony as a ledge of rocks, and her eyes are as sharp as her knitting-needles, and her words are the sharpest of all. Her name is Miss Mary Ann Rogers. Is she like the Madre Ilkana?”
Lisetta shook her head. “No, no, Signorina, La Madre is as plump and round as a loaf of bread, and as soft as the butter on it. She has five double chins that she shakes all the while, but then she has stiff bristles, like a man’s, growing on them, and her knitting-needles and her words are all sharp as la Signora Maria Anne R-o-o-g-eers, I doubt not. But her eyes! Why, Signorina, she has the evil eye!” This Lisetta said in a whisper, while Giovanni shrugged his shoulders bravely, and little Roberto cuddled closer to Mae.
“Yes,” continued Lisetta, “and so no one knows exactly about her eyes, not daring to look directly into them, but as nearly as I can make out they are black, and have a soft veil over them, so that you would think at first they were just about to cry, when suddenly, fires creep up and burn out the drops, and leave her hot and angry and scorching.
“She must be terrible,” cried Mae, with a sudden shrinking.
“She IS terrible,” replied Lisetta, “but then she is very clever. You will see if she is not clever when you hear the story I shall now tell you,” and Lisetta laughed, and showed her own one double chin, with its two little round dimples. Then she smoothed down her peasant apron, bade Giovanni leave off pinching Roberto, and commenced.
“The government hates the banditti,” began Lisetta, wisely, “and indeed it should,” and she looked gravely at Giovanni, “for they are very wild men, who live reckless bad lives, and steal, and are quite dreadful. But we poor, we do not hate them as the government does, because they are good to us, and do not war with us, and sometimes those we love join them—a brother or a cousin, perhaps,”—and Lisetta’s black eyes filled, and her lip quivered. “As for the Madre, she loved them all, and said they were all relations.
“At this time of which I speak, the soldiers were chasing and hunting the banditti very hard, and they had been compelled to hide for their lives up among the mountains. There they would have died, had it not been for the peasants, who supplied them with food. Small parties of the bandits would come out for it. There were two very powerful men of the banditti, who were skirmishing about in this way, not far from the Madre Ilkana’s, when they saw two soldiers, in advance of their company, approaching them. The banditti were not afraid for themselves, but they wanted to get back to their friends with the bread and meat, so instead of fighting, they fled to the Madre. She took them in, and bade them be sure they were safe with her. But the soldiers had caught sight of them, and they stopped at every house and enquired and searched for them; and so, soon they came to the Madre Ilkana’s. They charged her in the name of the government to give up the banditti in her house. The Madre kept on with her knitting, and told them there were only her two sons in the house, and mothers never gave up their sons to any one.
“‘Ha!’ laughed one of the soldiers,’ mothers must give up their children to King Death, and it is He who wants your bad boys.’ Upon which, the Madre arose and cursed them. Curses are common with us, Signorina, but not La Madre’s curses. She talked of their mothers to them, and of their sons, and of the Holy Virgin and child, and she cursed them in the name of all these, if they dared steal her children from her. They should take them over her old dead body, she swore, though her knitting-needles and her eyes were her only weapons, and then she turned her eyes full upon them, with the evil spirit leering and laughing out of them, and the soldiers, one of whom was an officer, fell on their knees and shook like leaves, and prayed her to forgive them; saying that they were sure her boys were good sons, and no banditti. And while they knelt crouching there, La Madre knocked on the floor and in rushed the banditti, armed with great knives. They caught and bound the two soldiers, and took away their weapons, and jumped on their horses, and fled.
“La Madre took her knitting again, and sat down quietly by the side of the bound men, until a half hour later some twelve more soldiers cantered up. As they rode by, all the people came to their doorways, and the soldiers stopped and asked if they had seen two horsemen. Then La Madre gathered up her knitting and went quietly out into the crowd. She made a low bow to the man with the biggest feather in his cap, and she told him her story. ‘I have two sons,’ she said, ‘whom I love so well.’ Then she told how the soldiers mistook her sons for banditti, and tried to take them from her in her own house. ‘Though I am old, I have a good life among my friends and neighbors here, and I fought a while in my own mind before I said to my sons: Go, my boys, your mother will die for you. But I did it. I bade them bind the soldiers and steal away. Then I sat guarding the men till you came. You will find them safe in my little house there. Now, take me to prison—kill me, but look in my eyes first, and then, whoever lays a hand on me, take La Madre Ilkana’s curse.’
“And the people all swore that there were two snakes coiled up in La Madre’s eyes then, and they hissed, and struck out with their fiery tongues, and the crowd fell on their knees, and the neighbors all set up a great shout of ‘La Madre Ilkana,’ so that they quite drowned the voice of the man with the big feather.”
“Is that all?” asked Mae, as Lisetta paused. “What did the soldiers do?”
“O, they hired a passing carriage to take the men whose horses were stolen back to Castellamare, and they all cantered off, without saying a word to La Madre, and when they had turned a corner of the road, she began to laugh. O, how she laughed! All the people laughed with her, and the children crowed and the dogs barked, for the rest of that whole day.
“And a neighbor who passed La Madre’s at midnight, said she was laughing out loud then.”
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