Mae Madden Part 7

A gentleman attending the lady whispered to her. She bent her eyes on Mae, and met her glance with a smile, and Mae smiled rapturously back.

Mae had been looking for Bero all that afternoon. She felt sure he would be there, and very soon she saw him among a crowd of officers sauntering slowly down the Corso. He looked up at the window opposite. The veiled lady leaned slightly forward and bowed and waved her white hand. Bero bowed. So did the other officers.

Norman Mann and Eric excused themselves long enough to dash over to welcome their friends and then stayed on for a little chat. These young women were quite gorgeous in opera cloaks and tiny, nearly invisible, American flags tucked through their belts. They tossed confetti down on every one's heads, and shouted--a little over-enthusiastically, but one can pardon even gush if it is only genuine. That was the question in this case.

The horse race came; and Mae went fairly wild. When it was over, every body prepared to go home. King Pasquino had virtually abdicated in favor of the Dinner Kings. Mae unclasped her tightly strained hands, clambered down from a chair she had perched herself on, smiled a good-bye at the veiled lady, and came away. She rode home quietly with a big bouquet of exquisite blue violets in her hand. There was a rose on top and a fringe of maiden's hair at the edge, and the bouquet was flung from Bero's own hand up at the side window on the quiet Jesu e Maria, when everyone else but Mae was out on the Corso balcony.

"It is dreadful to grow old," said Mae, breaking silence, as the carriage clattered over the stony streets.

"My dear," expostulated Edith, "you surely don't call yourself old. What do you mean?"

"I fancied I could take the Carnival as a child takes a big bonbon and just think with a smack of the lips, 'My! how good this is.' But here I am, wondering what my candy is made of all the time, and forgetting, except at odd moments, to enjoy myself for trying to separate false from true, and gold from gilt. Still, what is the use of this stuff now! I'll remember that horse race, for there I did forget myself and everything but motion. How I would like to be a horse!" And the volatile Mae seized the stems of her bouquet for whip and bridle and gave a little inelegant expressive click-click to her lips as if she were spurring that imaginary steed herself.

Norman smiled. "We can't keep children for ever, even--"

"The silliest of us?"

"Even the freshest and blithest."

"O, dear, that is like a moral to a Sunday-school book," said Mae; "don't be goody-goody to-night."

"What bad thing shall I do to please your majesty, my lady Pasquino?"

"Waltz," said Mae. So, after dinner, Edith and Eric sang, and Norman and Mae took to the poetry of motion as ducks take to water, and outdanced the singers.

"Thank you," said Mae, smiling up at him. "This has done me good." She pushed the brown hair back from her forehead and drew some deep breaths and leaned back in her chair, still tapping her eager, half-tired foot against the floor, while Norman fanned her with his handkerchief.

This time Bero and the strange, veiled lady and Miss Hopkins and every other confusing thought floated off, and left them quite happy for--well--say for ten minutes.

And ten minutes consecutive enjoyment is worth waiting for, old and cynical people say.

The next morning brought back all her troubles, with variations and complications, on account of some more misunderstood words.

"I think," said Mae, as she paused to blot the tenth page of a home letter, "that likes and dislikes are very similar, don't you, Edith?"

Then, as Edith did not reply, she glanced up, and saw that her friend's chair was occupied by Norman Mann. He looked up also and smiled.

"I am not Edith, you see, but I am interested in your theory all the same. Only, as I am a man, I shall require you to show up your reasons."

"Well, I find that people who affect me very intensely either way, I always feel intuitively acquainted with. I know what they will think and how they will act under given conditions, and I believe we are driven into friends.h.i.+p or strong dislikes more by the force of circ.u.mstances than by--"

"Elective affinities or any of that nonsense," suggested Norman Mann.

"Yes," said Mae, nodding her head, and repeating her original statement under another form, as a sort of conclusion and proof to the conversation. "Yes, a natural acquaintance may develop into your best friend or your worst foe." She started on page number eleven of her letter, dipping her pen deep into the ink-stand and giving such a particular flourish to her right arm, as to nearly upset the bouquet of flowers at her side. It was Bero's gift. Norman Mann put out his hand to save it. His fingers fell in among the soft flowers and touched something stiff. It felt like a little roll of paper. Indignantly and surprisedly he pulled it out. "What is this?" he cried.

Mae sprang forward, her cheeks aflame. "It is mine," she said.

"Did you put it here?" asked Norman.

"No."

"Then how do you know it is yours? Is not this a carnival bouquet, idly tossed from the street to the balcony?"

Mae straightened to her utmost height which wasn't lofty then and said hastily: "Mr. Mann, this is utterly absurd, and more. I am not a child, and if I catch an idly flung bouquet that holds idle secrets, I surely have a right to them." She laughed hurriedly. "Come, give me my note,--some Italian babble, I dare say."

Norman looked at her for a minute with a struggle in his heart and a flash of half scorn, Mae thought, on his face. What was he thinking?

That the child was in danger. He had no doubt in his own mind now that the flowers and the note came from Bero and that Mae knew it. He held the paper crushed in his hand, while he looked at her.

"I presume you will never forgive me," he said, "but I must warn you, not as a mentor or even as a friend," noticing her annoyed air, "but as one soul is bound to warn another soul, seeing it in danger. Take care of yourself, and there!" And taking the crushed note between his two hands, he deliberately tore it asunder and threw the halves on the table before her.

"And there, and there, and there!" cried Mae, tearing the fragments impetuously, and scattering the sudden little snow flakes before him.

Then, with a look of supreme contempt, she left the room.

Norman looked down on the white heap that lay peacefully at his feet. "I am a fool," he thought.

"Little Mae Madden, little Mae Madden, I am so sorry for you," repeated that excited bit of womankind to herself in the silence of her own room.

"What won't they drive you to yet? How dreadful they think you are? And only last night we thought things were all coming around beautifully!"

And she looked at herself pityingly in the gla.s.s. A mirror is a dangerous thing for a woman who has come to pity herself. She sees the possibilities of her face too clearly. And Mae, looking into the mirror then, realized to an extent she never had before, that her eyes and mouth might be powerful friends to herself and foes to Norman Mann, if she so desired. And to-day she did so desire, and went down to the Carnival with as reckless and dangerous a spirit as good King Pasquino could have asked.

The details of this day were very like those of the last. Norman and Eric vibrated between the Madden and Hopkins balconies; the crowd was great; confetti and flowers filled the air; and up above it all, circled by her crown of misty, heavy lace-work, shone out the beautiful, wonderful face of the strange lady. She dropped smiles from under her long black lashes and from the corners of the rare, sweet mouth over the heads of the idlers to Mae, who looked up to catch them. There was a resting, almost saving influence, Mae's excited soul believed, in the strange face; and her eyes sought it constantly. She had been quite oblivious to the friends about this beautiful stranger, but once, as her eyes sought the Italian's, she saw her arise with a sudden flash of light on her face, and hold out a white hand. A head bent over it, and as it lifted itself slowly, Mae saw once more the well-known features of the Signor Bero.

She looked down toward the street quickly and a sharp pain filled her heart.

She had lost her only friend in Rome, so the silly girl said to herself.

If he knew that wonderful woman, and if she flashed those weary, great eyes for him, how could he see or think of any other? Moreover, it was very vexatious to have him there. If she smiled up at the girl, Bero might think she was watching him, trying to attract his notice. So Mae appeared very careless and played she did not see him at all, at all.

Yet she could not resist looking up now and then for one of the rare smiles. They seemed like very far between "nows and thens" to Mae, averaging possibly a distance of four minutes apart. But that is as one counts time by steady clock-ticks, and not by heart-beats.

Meanwhile, what could she do with her eyes? They would wander once in a while over to the opposite balcony, at just such moments as when Norman Mann was picking up Miss Rae's fan and receiving her thanks for it from under her drooped eyelids, or choosing a flower for himself, "the very, very prettiest, Mr. Mann," before she threw the rest to the winds and the pa.s.sing gallants.

As Mae grew reckless her eyes grew bright. There were few pa.s.sers-by who were not attracted by the flash of those eyes. The sailor lads, as they trundled past in their s.h.i.+p on wheels, left the barrels of lime from which they had been pelting the pleasure-seekers to throw whole handfuls of flowers up to the Jesu e Maria balcony; a set of hale young Englishmen picked out their prettiest bonbons for the same purpose; and one elderly, pompous man, who drove unmasked and with staring opera gla.s.ses up and down the Corso, quite showered her with bouquets, which he threw so poorly, and with such a shaky old hand, that the street gamins caught them all except such as he craftily flung so that they might a.s.suredly tumble back to the carriage again. And Mae, though she had felt the pleased gaze of a good many eyes before, had never quite put its meaning plainly to herself. She was apt, on such occasions, to feel high-spirited, excited, joyous, but now she realized well that she was being admired, and she led on for victory ardently.

She tossed back little sprays of flowers, or quiet bonbons, or now and then mischievously let drop a sprinkling of confetti b.a.l.l.s through her half-closed fingers. To do this she drooped her hand low over among the balcony tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, following the soft shower with her eyes, as some straight soldier would wipe the tiny minie b.a.l.l.s from his face and glance up to see where they came from. If he looked up once, he never failed to look again, and generally darted around the nearest corner to return with his offering, in the shape of flowers or other pretty carnival nonsense. Mae rather satisfied her conscience, which was tolerably fast asleep for the time being, at any rate, with the fact that she didn't smile at these strangers--she only looked!

Her pleasure was heightened by the knowledge that she was watched. If she glanced across quickly, Miss Rae's eyes were invariably fixed on her and Norman Mann would be gazing in the opposite direction in the most suspicious manner. From above her strange friend leaned over admiringly and once, as Mae looked joyously upwards, clapped her white hands softly together, while beyond her a tall figure stood motionless, Mae had pretended not to see Bero yet, but as the Italian applauded her in this gentle manner, her eyes sought his involuntarily. He was gazing very fixedly and rapturously down on her, without any apparent thought of the beautiful girl by his side. After that, Mae looked up often, in a glad, childlike way, for spite of this first lesson in wholesale coquetry, and the new conflict of emotions within her mind, she was enjoying herself with the utter abandon of her glad nature.

Toward the close of the afternoon, the Italian was suddenly surrounded by a great ma.s.s of flowers, over which she waved her hand caressingly and pointed down at Mae. "For you," the gesture seemed to say. The veiled lady appeared to summon several of her friends, for a number of gentlemen left the other window and its group of girls, and began the difficult task of attempting to toss the bouquets from their height down to Mae. This was rendered the more difficult as the Madden balcony was covered, and the best shots succeeded in landing their trophies on this awning, where they were speedily captured and drawn in by the occupants of the next flat, an ogre of an old woman and her hook-nosed daughter, who wore an ugly green dress and was otherwise unattractive.

The entire Madden party became interested and stood looking on with the most encouraging smiles. The very last bouquet was vainly thrown, however, and gathered in by the ogre, when Bero suddenly appeared, a little behind the party in the window. The flowers in his hand were of the same specimens as those he had given Mae the day before, although different in arrangement. He lifted the bouquet quickly to his lips, so quickly that perhaps only Mae understood the motion, and flung it lightly forward. Mae leaned over the balcony, reaching out her eager hands, and caught it in her very finger tips. The party above bowed and applauded, as she raised the flowers triumphantly to her face.

So the second day of the Carnival was a success, till they turned their backs on the Corso. In the carriage Mrs. Jerrold spoke gently but firmly to Mae. "Be a little more careful, dear; don't let your spirits carry you quite away during these mad days." Mae smiled, but was silent.

"What a strangely beautiful girl that was in the gallery opposite,"

Edith said, a moment later. "I wonder if she is engaged to that superb man; I fancied I had seen him before. Why, Mae, what in the world are you blus.h.i.+ng at?" For Mae's face was scarlet. "Why, nothing," replied Mae, redder yet; "nothing at all. What do you mean?"

The same thought occurred to Edith and Albert. The officer was Mae's chance acquaintance. They both looked grave, and Albert remarked: "It is as well to be careful before getting up too sudden an acquaintance with your Italian girl. Take care of your eyes."