by Wilkie Collins (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.11 #278 (21 Jul 1855).
Chapter VII.
About eight months after the Countess d'Ascoli had been laid in her grave in the Campo Santo, two reports were circulated through the gay world of Pisa, which excited curiosity and awakened expectation everywhere. The first report announced that a grand masked ball was to be given at the Melani Palace, to celebrate the day on which the heir of the house attained his majority. All the friends of the family were delighted at the prospect of this festival; for the old Marquis Melani had the reputation of being one of the most hospitable, and, at the same time, one of the most eccentric men in Pisa. Every one expected, therefore, that he would secure for the entertainment of his guests, if he really gave the ball, the most whimsical novelties in the way of masks, dances, and amusements generally, that had ever been seen.
The second report was, that the rich widower, Fabio d'Ascoli, was on the point of returning to Pisa, after having improved his health and spirits by traveling in foreign countries; and that he might be expected to appear again in society, for the first time since the death of his wife, at the masked ball which was to be given in the Melani Palace. This announcement excited special interest among the young ladies of Pisa. Fabio had only reached his thirtieth year; and it was universally agreed that his return to society in his native city could indicate nothing more certainly than his desire to find a second mother for his infant child. All the single ladies would now have been ready to bet, as confidently as Brigida had offered to bet eight months before, that Fabio d'Ascoli would marry again.
For once in a way, report turned out to be true, in both the cases just mentioned. Invitations were actually issued from the Melani Palace, and Fabio returned from abroad to his home on the Arno.
In settling all the arrangements connected with his masked ball, the Marquis Melani showed that he was determined not only to deserve, but to increase, his reputation for oddity. He invented the most extravagant disguises, to be worn by some of his more intimate friends; he arranged grotesque dances, to be performed at stated periods of the evening by professional buffoons, hired from Florence. He composed a toy symphony, which included solos on every noisy plaything at that time manufactured for children's use. And, not content with thus avoiding the beaten track in preparing the entertainments at the ball, he determined also to show decided originality, even in selecting the attendants who were to wait on the company. Other people in his rank of life were accustomed to employ their own and hired footmen for this purpose; the marquis resolved that his attendants should be composed of young women only; that two of his rooms should be fitted up as Arcadian bowers; and that all the prettiest girls in Pisa should be placed in them to preside over the refreshments, dressed, in accordance with the mock classical taste of the period, as shepherdesses of the time of Virgil.
The only defect of this brilliantly new idea was the difficulty of executing it. The marquis had expressly ordered that not fewer than thirty shepherdesses were to be engaged, fifteen for each bower. It would have been easy to find double this number in Pisa, if beauty had been the only quality required in the attendant damsels. But it was also absolutely necessary, for the security of the marquis's gold and silver plate, that the shepherdesses should possess, besides good looks, the very homely recommendation of a fair character. This last qualification proved, it is sad to say, to be the one small merit which the majority of the ladies willing to accept engagements at the palace, did not possess. Day after day passed on; and the marquis's steward only found more and more difficulty in obtaining the appointed number of trustworthy beauties. At last, his resources failed him altogether; and he appeared in his master's presence about a week before the night of the ball, to make the humiliating acknowledgment that he was entirely at his wits' end. The total number of fair shepherdesses with fair characters, whom he had been able to engage, amounted only to twenty-three.
"Nonsense!" cried the marquis, irritably, as soon as the steward had made his confession. "I told you to get thirty girls, and thirty I mean to have. What's the use of shaking your head, when all their dresses are ordered? Thirty tunics, thirty wreaths, thirty pairs of sandals and silk stockings, thirty crooks, you scoundrel—and you have the impudence to offer me only twenty-three hands to hold them. Not a word! I won't hear a word! Get me my thirty girls, or lose your place." The marquis roared out this last terrible sentence at the top of his voice, and pointed peremptorily to the door.
The steward knew his master too well to remonstrate. He took his hat and cane, and went out. It was useless to look through the ranks of rejected volunteers again; there was not the slightest hope in that quarter. The only chance left was to call on all his friends in Pisa who had daughters out at service, and to try what he could accomplish, by bribery and persuasion, that way.
After a whole day occupied in solicitations, promises, and patient smoothing down of innumerable difficulties, the result of his efforts in the new direction, was an accession of six more shepherdesses. This brought him on bravely from twenty-three to twenty-nine, and left him, at last, with only one anxiety—where was he now to find shepherdess number thirty?
He mentally asked himself that important question, as he entered a shady by-street in the neighborhood of the Campo Santo, on his way back to the Melani Palace. Sauntering slowly along in the middle of the road, and fanning himself with his handkerchief after the oppressive exertions of the day, he passed a young girl who was standing at the street-door of one of the houses, apparently waiting for somebody to join her before she entered the building.
"Body of Bacchus!" exclaimed the steward (using one of those old Pagan ejaculations which survive in Italy even to the present day), "there stands the prettiest girl I have seen yet. If she would only be shepherdess number thirty, I should go home to supper with my mind at ease. I'll ask her, at any rate. Nothing can be lost by asking, and everything may be gained. Stop, my dear," he continued, seeing the girl turn to go into the house as he approached her. "Don't be afraid of me. I am steward to the Marquis Melani, and well known in Pisa as an eminently respectable man. I have something to say to you which may be greatly for your benefit. Don't look surprised; I am coming to the point at once. Do you want to earn a little money?—honestly, of course. You don't look as if you were very rich, child."
"I am very poor, and very much in want of some honest work to do," answered the girl, sadly.
"Then we shall suit each other to a nicety; for I have work of the pleasantest kind to give you, and plenty of money to pay for it. But before we say anything more about that, suppose you tell me first something about yourself—who you are, and so forth. You know who I am already."
"I am only a poor work-girl, and my name is Nanina. I have nothing more, sir, to say about myself than that."
"Do you belong to Pisa?"
"Yes, sir—at least, I did. But I have been away for some time. I was a year at Florence, employed in needlework."
"All by yourself?"
"No, sir, with my little sister. I was waiting for her when you came up."
"Have you never done anything else but needlework?—never been out at service?"
"Yes, sir. For the last eight months I have had a situation to wait on a lady at Florence, and my sister (who is turned eleven, sir, and can make herself very useful) was allowed to help in the nursery."
"How came you to leave this situation?"
"The lady and her family were going to Rome, sir. They would have taken me with them, but they could not take my sister. We are alone in the world, and we never have been parted from each other and never shall be—so I was obliged to leave the situation."
"And here you are, back at Pisa—with nothing to do, I suppose?"
"Nothing yet, sir. We only came back yesterday."
"Only yesterday! You are a lucky girl, let me tell you, to have met with me. I suppose you have somebody in the town who can speak to your character?"
"The landlady of this house can, sir."
"And who is she, pray?"
"Marta Angrisani, sir."
"What! the well-known sick-nurse? You could not possibly have a better recommendation, child. I remember her being employed at the Melani Palace at the time of the marquis's last attack of gout; but I never knew that she kept a lodging-house."
"She and her daughter, sir, have owned this house longer than I can recollect. My sister and I have lived in it since I was quite a little child, and I had hoped we might be able to live here again. But the top room we used to have, is taken, and the room to let lower down is far more, I am afraid, than we can afford."
"How much is it?"
Nanina mentioned the weekly rent of the room in fear and trembling. The steward burst out laughing.
"Suppose I offered you money enough to be able to take that room for a whole year at once?" he said.
Nanina looked at him in speechless amazement.
"Suppose I offered you money enough to be able to take that room for a whole year at once?" he said.
Nanina looked at him in speechless amazement.
Suppose I offered you that?" continued the steward. "And suppose I only asked you in return to put on a fine dress and serve refreshments in a beautiful room to the company at the Marquis Melani's grand ball? What should you say to that?"
Nanina said nothing. She drew back a step or two, and looked more bewildered than before.
"You must have heard of the ball," said the steward, pompously; "the poorest people in Pisa have heard of it. It is the talk of the whole city."
Still Nanina made no answer. To have replied truthfully, she must have confessed that "the talk of the whole city" had now no interest for her. The last news from Pisa that had appealed to her sympathies was the news of the Countess d'Ascoli's death, and of Fabio's departure to travel in foreign countries. Since then, she had heard nothing more of him. She was as ignorant of his return to his native city as of all the reports connected with the marquis's ball. Something in her own heart—some feeling which she had neither the desire nor the capacity to analyze—had brought her back to Pisa and to the old home which now connected itself with her tenderest recollections. Believing that Fabio was still absent, she felt that no ill motive could now be attributed to her return; and she had not been able to resist the temptation of revisiting the scene that had been associated with the first great happiness as well as with the first great sorrow of her life. Among all the poor people of Pisa, she was perhaps the very last whose curiosity could be awakened, or whose attention could be attracted, by the rumor of gaieties at the Melani Palace.
But she could not confess all this; she could only listen with great humility and no small surprise, while the steward, in compassion for her ignorance, and with the hope of tempting her into accepting his offered engagement, described the arrangements of the approaching festival, and dwelt fondly on the magnificence of the Arcadian bowers, and the beauty of the shepherdesses' tunics. As soon as he had done, Nanina ventured on the confession that she should feel rather nervous in a grand dress that did not belong to her, and that she doubted very much her own capability of waiting properly on the great people at the ball. The steward, however, would hear of no objections, and called peremptorily for Marta Angrisani to make the necessary statement as to Nanina's character. While this formality was being complied with to the steward's perfect satisfaction, La Biondella came in, unaccompanied on this occasion by the usual companion of all her walks, the learned poodle Scarammuccia.
"This is Nanina's sister," said the good-natured sick-nurse, taking the first opportunity of introducing La Biondella to the great marquis's great man. "A very good, industrious little girl; and very clever at plaiting dinner-mats, in case his excellency should ever want any. What have you done with the dog, my dear?"
"I couldn't get him past the pork butcher's, three streets off," replied La Biondella. "He would sit down and look at the sausages. I am more than half afraid he means to steal some of them."
"A very pretty child," said the steward, patting La Biondella on the cheek. "We ought to have her at the hall. If his excellency should want a Cupid, or a youthful nymph, or anything small and light in that way, I shall come back and let you know. In the meantime, Nanina, consider yourself, Shepherdess number Thirty, and come to the housekeeper's room at the palace to try on your dress to-morrow. Nonsense! don't talk to me about being afraid and awkward. All you're wanted to do is to look pretty; and your glass must have told you, you could do that long ago. Remember the rent of the room, my dear; and don't stand in your light and your sister's. Does the little girl like sweetmeats? Of course she does! Well, I promise you a whole box of sugar-plums to take home for her, if you will come and wait at the ball."
"Oh, go to the ball, Nanina, go to the ball!" cried La Biondella, clapping her hands.
"Of course she will go to the ball," said the nurse. "She would be mad to throw away such an excellent chance."
Nanina looked perplexed. She hesitated a little, then drew Marta Angrisani away into a corner, and whispered this question to her:—
"Do you think there will be any priests at the palace where the marquis lives?"
"Heavens, child, what a thing to ask!" returned the nurse. "Priests at a masked ball! You might as well expect to find Turks performing high mass in the cathedral. But supposing you did meet with priests at the palace, what then?"
"Nothing," said Nanina, constrainedly. She turned pale, and walked away as she spoke. Her great dread in returning to Pisa, was the dread of meeting with Father Rocco again. She had never forgotten her first discovery at Florence, of his distrust of her. The bare thought of seeing him any more, after her faith in him had been shaken for ever, made her feel faint and sick at heart.
"To-morrow, in the house-keeper's room," said the steward, putting on his hat, "you will find your new dress all ready for you."
Nanina curtseyed, and ventured on no more objections. The prospect of securing a home for a whole year to come, among people whom she knew, reconciled her—influenced as she was also, by Marta Angrisani's advice, and by her sister's anxiety for the promised present—to brave the trial of appearing at the ball.
"What a comfort to have it all settled at last," said the steward, as soon as he was out again in the street. "We shall see what the marquis says, now. If he doesn't apologize for calling me a scoundrel the moment he sets eyes on Number Thirty, he is the most ungrateful nobleman that ever existed."
Arriving in front of the palace, the steward found workmen engaged in planning the external decorations and illuminations for the night of the ball. A little crowd had already assembled to see the ladders raised, and the scaffoldings put up. He observed among them, standing near the outskirts of the throng, a lady who attracted his attention (he was an ardent admirer of the fair sex), by the beauty and symmetry of her figure. While he lingered for a moment to look at her, a shaggy poodle-dog (licking his chops, as if he had just had something to eat) trotted by, stopped suddenly close to the lady, sniffed suspiciously for an instant, and then began to growl at her without the slightest apparent provocation. The steward advancing politely with his stick to drive the dog away, saw the lady start, and heard her exclaim to herself, amazedly:—
"You here, you beast! Can Nanina have come back to Pisa?"
This last exclamation gave the steward, as a gallant man, an excuse for speaking to the elegant stranger.
"Excuse me, madam," he said, "but I heard you mention the name of Nanina. May I ask whether you mean a pretty little work-girl, who lives near the Campo Santo?"
"The same," said the lady, looking very much surprised and interested immediately.
"It may be a gratification to you, madam, to know that she has just returned to Pisa," continued the steward politely; "and, moreover, that she is in a fair way to rise in the world. I have just engaged her to wait at the marquis's grand ball, and I need hardly say, under those circumstances, that if she plays her cards properly, her fortune is made."
The lady bowed, looked at her informant very intently and thoughtfully for a moment, then suddenly walked away without uttering a word.
"A curious woman," thought the steward, entering the palace. "I must ask Number Thirty about her to-morrow."
Chapter VIII.
The death of Maddalena d'Ascoli produced a complete change in the lives of her father and her uncle. After the first shock of the bereavement was over, Luca Lomi declared that it would be impossible for him to work in his studio again—for some time to come, at least—after the death of the beloved daughter, with whom every corner of it was now so sadly and closely associated. He accordingly accepted an engagement to assist in restoring several newly discovered works of ancient sculpture at Naples, and set forth for that city, leaving the care of his work-rooms at Pisa entirely to his brother.
On the master-sculptor's departure, Father Rocco caused the statues and busts to be carefully enveloped in linen cloths, locked the studio doors, and, to the astonishment of all who knew of his former industry and dexterity as a sculptor, never approached the place again. His clerical duties he performed with the same assiduity as ever; but he went out less than had been his custom, hitherto, to the houses of his friends. His most regular visits were to the Ascoli Palace, to inquire at the porter's lodge after the health of Maddalena's child, who was always reported to be thriving admirably under the care of the best nurses that could be found in Pisa. As for any communications with his polite little friend from Florence, they had ceased months ago. The information—speedily conveyed to him—that Nanina was in the service of one of the most respectable ladies in the city, seemed to relieve any anxieties which he might otherwise have felt on her account. He made no attempt to justify himself to her; and only required that his over-courteous little visitor of former days should let him know whenever the girl might happen to leave her new situation. The admirers of Father Rocco, seeing the alteration in his life, and the increased quietness of his manner, said, that as he was growing older he was getting more and more above the things of this world. His enemies (for even Father Rocco had them) did not scruple to assert that the change in him was decidedly for the worse, and that he belonged to the order of men who are most to be distrusted when they become most subdued. The priest himself paid no attention, either to his eulogists or his depreciators. Nothing disturbed the regularity and discipline of his daily habits; and vigilant Scandal, though it sought often to surprise him, sought always in vain.
Such was Father Rocco's life from the period of his niece's death to Fabio's return to Pisa.
As a matter of course, the priest was one of the first to call at the palace and welcome the young nobleman back. What passed between them at this interview never was precisely known; but it was surmised readily enough that some misunderstanding had taken place, for Father Rocco did not repeat his visit. He made no complaints of Fabio, but simply stated that he had said something, intended for the young man's good, which had not been received in a right spirit; and that he thought it desirable to avoid the painful chance of any further collision by not presenting himself at the palace again for some little time. People were rather amazed at this; they would have been still more surprised if the subject of the masked ball had not just then occupied all their attention, and prevented their noticing it, by another strange event in connection with the priest. Father Rocco, some weeks after the cessation of his intercourse with Fabio, returned one morning to his old way of life as a sculptor, and opened the long-closed doors of his brother's studio.
Luca Lomi's former workmen, discovering this, applied to him immediately for employment; but were informed that their services would not be needed. Visitors called at the studio, but were always sent away again by the disappointing announcement that there was nothing new to show them. So the days passed on until Nanina left her situation and returned to Pisa. This circumstance was duly reported to Father Rocco by his correspondent at Florence; but, whether he was too much occupied among the statues, or whether it was one result of his cautious resolution never to expose himself unnecessarily to so much as the breath of detraction, he made no attempt to see Nanina, or even to justify himself toward her by writing her a letter. All his mornings continued to be spent alone in the studio, and all his afternoons to be occupied by his clerical duties, until the day before the masked ball at the Melani Palace. Early on that day, he covered over the statues, and locked the doors of the workrooms once more; then returned to his own lodgings, and did not go out again. One or two of his friends who wanted to see him were informed that he was not well enough to be able to receive them. If they had penetrated into his little study, and had seen him, they would have been easily satisfied that this was no mere excuse. They would have noticed that his face was startlingly pale, and that the ordinary composure of his manner was singularly disturbed.
Toward evening this restlessness increased; and his old housekeeper, on pressing him to take some nourishment, was astonished to hear him answer her sharply and irritably for the first time since she had been in his service. A little later her surprise was increased by his sending her with a note to the Ascoli Palace, and by the quick return of an answer, brought ceremoniously by one of Fabio's servants. "It is long since he has had any communication with that quarter. Are they going to be friends again?" thought the housekeeper as she took the answer up stairs to her master.
"I feel better to-night," he said as he read it: "well enough indeed to venture out. If any one inquires for me tell them that I am gone to the Ascoli Palace." Saying this, he walked to the door—then returned, and trying the lock of his cabinet, satisfied himself that it was properly secured; then went out.
He found Fabio in one of the large drawing-rooms of the palace, walking irritably backwards and forwards, with several little notes crumpled together in his hands, and a plain black domino dress for the masquerade of the ensuing night spread out on one of the tables.
"I was just going to write to you," said the young man, abruptly, "when I received your letter. You offer me a renewal of our friendship, and I accept the offer. I have no doubt those references of yours, when we last met, to the subject of second marriages, were well meant, but they irritated me; and, speaking under that irritation, I said words that I had better not have spoken. If I pained you I am sorry for it. Wait! pardon me for one moment. I have not quite done yet. It seems that you are by no means the only person in Pisa to whom the question of my possibly marrying again appears to have presented itself. Ever since it was known that I intended to renew my intercourse with society, at the ball to-morrow night, I have been persecuted by anonymous letters—infamous letters, written from some motive which it is impossible for me to understand. I want your advice on the best means of discovering the writers; and I have also a very important question to ask you. But read one of the letters first yourself; any one will do as a sample of the rest."
Fixing his eyes searchingly on the priest, he handed him one of the notes. Still a little paler than usual, Father Rocco sat down by the nearest lamp, and shading his eyes, read these lines:—
"Count Fabio—It is the common talk of Pisa that you are likely, as a young man left with a motherless child, to marry again. Your having accepted an invitation to the Melani Palace gives a color of truth to this report. Widowers who are true to the departed do not go among all the handsomest single women in a city at a masked ball. Reconsider your determination, and remain at home. I know you, and I knew your wife, and I say to you solemnly, avoid temptation, for you must never marry again. Neglect my advice, and you will repent it to the end of your life. I have reasons for what I say—serious, fatal reasons, which I cannot divulge. If you would let your wife lie easy in her grave, if you would avoid a terrible warning, go not to the masked ball!"
"I ask you, and I ask any man, if that is not infamous?" exclaimed Fabio, passionately, as the priest handed him back the letter. "An attempt to work on my fears through the memory of my poor dead wife! An insolent assumption that I want to marry again, when I myself have not even so much as thought of the subject at all! What is the secret object of this letter, and of the rest here that resemble it? Whose interest is it to keep me away from the ball? What is the meaning of such a phrase as—'if you would let your wife lie easy in her grave?' Have you no advice to give me? No plan to propose for discovering the vile hand that traced these lines? Speak to me! Why, in Heaven's name, don't you speak?"
The priest leaned his head on his hand, and, turning his face from the light as if it dazzled his eyes, replied in his lowest and quietest tones:
"I cannot speak till I have had time to think. The mystery of that letter is not to be solved in a moment. There are things in it that are enough to perplex and amaze any man!"
"What things?"
"It is impossible for me to go into details—at least at the present moment."
"You speak with a strange air of secresy. Have you nothing definite to say—no advice to give me?"
"I should advise you not to go to the ball."
"You would! Why?"
"If I gave you my reasons, I am afraid I should only be irritating you to no purpose."
"Father Rocco! Neither your words nor your manner satisfy me. You speak in riddles; and you sit there in the dark, with your face hidden from me—"
The priest instantly started up, and turned his face to the light.
"I recommend you to control your temper, and to treat me with common courtesy," he said, in his quietest, firmest tones, looking at Fabio steadily while he spoke.
"We will not prolong this interview," said the young man, calming himself by an evident effort. "I have one question to ask you, and then no more to say."
The priest bowed his head, in token that he was ready to listen. He still stood up, calm, pale, and firm, in the full light of the lamp.
"It is just possible," continued Fabio, "that these letters may refer to some incautious words which my late wife might have spoken. I ask you as her spiritual director, and as a near relation who enjoyed her confidence, if you ever heard her express a wish, in the event of my surviving her, that I should abstain from marrying again?"
"Did she never express such a wish to you?"
"Never. But why do you evade my question by asking me another?"
"It is impossible for me to reply to your question."
"For what reason?"
"Because it is impossible for me to give answers which must refer, whether they are affirmative or negative, to what I have heard in confession."
"We have spoken enough," said Fabio, turning angrily from the priest. "I expected you to help me in clearing up these mysteries, and you do your best to thicken them. What your motives are, what your conduct means, it is impossible for me to know; but I say to you, what I would say in far other terms, if they were here, to the villains who have written these letters—no menaces, no mysteries, no conspiracies, will prevent me from being at the ball to-morrow. I can listen to persuasion, but I scorn threats. There lies my dress for the masquerade; no power on earth shall prevent me from wearing it to-morrow night!" He pointed, as he spoke, to the black domino and half-mask lying on the table.
"No power on earth!" repeated Father Rocco, with a smile, and an emphasis on the last word. "Superstitious still, Count Fabio! Do you suspect the powers of the other world of interfering with mortals at masquerades?"
Fabio started, and, turning from the table, fixed his eyes intently on the priest's face.
"You suggested just now that we had better not prolong this interview," said Father Rocco, still smiling. "I think you were right; if we part at once, we may still part friends. You have had my advice not to go to the ball, and you decline following it. I have nothing more to say. Good-night."
Before Fabio could utter the angry rejoinder that rose to his lips, the door of the room had opened and closed again, and the priest was gone.
Chapter IX.
The next night, at the time of assembling specified in the invitations to the masked ball, Fabio was still lingering in his palace, and still allowing the black domino to lie untouched and unheeded on his dressing-table. This delay was not produced by any change in his resolution to go to the Melani Palace. His determination to be present at the ball remained unshaken; and yet, at the last moment, he lingered and lingered on, without knowing why. Some strange influence seemed to be keeping him within the walls of his lonely home. It was as if the great, empty, silent palace had almost recovered on that night the charm which it had lost when its mistress died.
He left his own apartment and went to the bedroom where his infant child lay asleep in her little crib. He sat watching her, and thinking quietly and tenderly of many past events in his life for a long time; then returned to his room. A sudden sense of loneliness came upon him after his visit to the child's bedside; but he did not attempt to raise his spirits, even then, by going to the ball. He descended instead to his study, lighted his reading-lamp, and then, opening a bureau, took from one of the drawers in it the letter which Nanina had written to him. This was not the first time that a sudden sense of his solitude had connected itself inexplicably with the remembrance of the work-girl's letter.
He read it through slowly, and when he had done, kept it open in his hand. "I have youth, titles, wealth," he thought to himself, sadly; "everything that is envied and sought after in this world. And yet, if I try to think of any human being who really and truly loves me, I can remember but one—the poor, faithful girl who wrote these lines!"
Old recollections of the first day when he met with Nanina, of the first sitting she had given him in Luca Lomi's studio, of the first visit to the neat little room in the bye-street, began to rise more and more vividly in his mind. Entirely absorbed by them, he sat absently drawing with pen and ink, on some sheets of letter-paper lying under his hand, lines and circles, and fragments of decorations, and vague remembrances of old ideas for statues, until the sudden sinking of the flame of his lamp awoke his attention abruptly to present things. He looked at his watch. It was close on midnight.
This discovery at last aroused him to the necessity of immediate departure. In a few minutes he had put on his domino and mask, and was on his way to the ball.
Before he reached the Melani Palace the first part of the entertainment had come to an end. The "Toy Symphony" had been played, the grotesque dance performed, amid universal laughter; and now the guests were for the most part fortifying themselves in the Arcadian bowers for new dances, in which all persons present were expected to take part. The Marquis Melani had, with characteristic oddity, divided his two classical refreshment-rooms into what he termed the Light and Heavy Departments. Fruit, pastry, sweetmeats, salads, and harmless drinks were included under the first head, and all the stimulating liquors and solid eatables under the last. The thirty shepherdesses had been, according to the marquis's order, equally divided at the outset of the evening between the two rooms. But, as the company began to crowd more and more resolutely in the direction of the Heavy Department, ten of the shepherdesses attached to the Light Department were told off to assist in attending on the hungry and thirsty majority of guests who were not to be appeased by pastry and lemonade. Among the five girls who were left behind in the room for the light refreshments was Nanina. The steward soon discovered that the novelty of her situation made her really nervous, and he wisely concluded that if he trusted her where the crowd was greatest and the noise loudest, she would not only be utterly useless, but also very much in the way of her more confident and experienced companions.
When Fabio arrived at the palace, the jovial uproar in the Heavy Department was at its height, and several gentlemen, fired by the classical costumes of the shepherdesses, were beginning to speak Latin to them with a thick utterance and a valorous contempt for all restrictions of gender, number, and case. As soon as he could escape from the congratulations on his return to his friends, which poured on him from all sides, Fabio withdrew to seek some quieter room. The heat, noise, and confusion had so bewildered him, after the tranquil life he had been leading for many months past, that it was quite a relief to stroll through the half deserted dancing-rooms, to the opposite extremity of the great suite of apartments, and there to find himself in a second Arcadian bower, which seemed peaceful enough to deserve its name.
A few guests were in this room when he first entered it; but the distant sound of some first notes of dance music drew them all away. After a careless look at the quaint decorations about him, he sat down alone on a divan near the door, and beginning already to feel the heat and discomfort of his mask, took it off. He had not removed it more than a moment, before he heard a faint cry in the direction of a long refreshment-table, behind which the five waiting-girls were standing. He started up directly, and could hardly believe his senses, when he found himself standing face to face with Nanina.
Her cheeks had turned perfectly colorless. Her astonishment at seeing the young nobleman appeared to have some sensation of terror mingled with it. The waiting-woman, who happened to stand by her side, instinctively stretched out an arm to support her, observing that she caught at the edge of the table as Fabio hurried round to get behind it and speak to her. When he drew near, her head drooped on her breast, and she said, faintly: "I never knew you were at Pisa: I never thought you would be here. Oh, I am true to what I said in my letter, though I seem so false to it!"
"I want to speak to you about the letter—to tell you how carefully I have kept it, how often I have read it," said Fabio.
She turned away her head, and tried hard to repress the tears that would force their way into her eyes "We should never have met," she said; "never, never have met again!"
Before Fabio could reply, the waiting-woman by Nanina's side interposed.
"For Heaven's sake, don't stop speaking to her here!" she exclaimed, impatiently. "If the steward or one of the upper servants was to come in, you would get her into dreadful trouble. Wait till to-morrow, and find some fitter place than this."
Fabio felt the justice of the reproof immediately. He tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, and wrote on it, "I must tell you how I honour and thank you for that letter. To-morrow—ten o'clock—the wicket-gate at the back of the Ascoli gardens. Believe in my truth and honour, Nanina, for I believe implicitly in yours." Having written these lines, he took from among his bunch of watch-seals a little key, wrapped it up in the note, and pressed it into her hand. In spite of himself his fingers lingered round hers, and he was on the point of speaking to her again, when he saw the waiting-woman's hand, which was just raised to motion him away, suddenly drop. Her color changed at the same moment, and she looked fixedly across the table.
He turned round immediately, and saw a masked woman standing alone in the room, dressed entirely in yellow from head to foot. She had a yellow hood, a yellow half-mask with deep fringe hanging down over her mouth, and a yellow domino, cut at the sleeves and edges into long flame-shaped points, which waved backward and forward tremulously in the light air wafted through the doorway. The woman's black eyes seemed to gleam with an evil brightness through the sight-holes of the mask; and the tawny fringe hanging before her mouth fluttered slowly with every breath she drew. Without a word or a gesture she stood before the table, and her gleaming black eyes fixed steadily on Fabio, the instant he confronted her. A sudden chill struck through him, as he observed that the yellow of the stranger's domino and mask was of precisely the same shade as the yellow of the hangings and furniture which his wife had chosen after their marriage, for the decoration of her favorite sitting-room.
"The Yellow Mask!" whispered the waiting-girls nervously, crowding together behind the table. "The Yellow Mask again!"
"Make her speak!"
"Ask her to have something!"
"This gentleman will ask her. Speak to her, sir. Do speak to her! She glides about in that fearful yellow dress like a ghost."
Fabio looked around mechanically at the girl who was whispering to him. He saw at the same time that Nanina still kept her head turned away, and that she had her handkerchief at her eyes. She was evidently struggling yet with the agitation produced by their unexpected meeting, and was, most probably for that reason, the only person in the room not conscious of the presence of the Yellow Mask.
"Speak to her, sir. Do speak to her!" whispered two of the waiting-girls together.
Fabio turned again toward the table. The black eyes were still gleaming at him from behind the tawny yellow of the mask. He nodded to the girls who had just spoken, cast one farewell look at Nanina, and moved down the room to get round to the side of the table at which the Yellow Mask was standing. Step by step as he moved, the bright eyes followed him. Steadily and more steadily their evil light seemed to shine through and through him, as he turned the corner of the table, and approached the still, spectral figure.
He came close up to the woman, but she never moved; her eyes never wavered for an instant. He stopped and tried to speak; but the chill struck through him again. An overpowering dread, an unutterable loathing, seized on him; all sense of outer things—the whispering of the waiting-girls behind the table, the gentle cadence of the dance music, the distant hum of joyous talk—suddenly left him. He turned away shuddering, and quitted the room.
Following the sound of the music, and desiring before all things now to join the crowd wherever it was largest, he was stopped in one of the smaller apartments by a gentleman who had just risen from the card-table, and who held out his hand with the cordiality of an old friend.
"Welcome back to the world, Count Fabio!" he began, gaily, then suddenly checked himself. "Why, you look pale, and your hand feels cold. Not ill, I hope?"
"No, no. I have been rather startled—I can't say why—by a very strangely dressed woman, who fairly stared me out of countenance."
"You don't mean the Yellow Mask?"
"Yes I do. Have you seen her?"
"Everybody has seen her; but nobody can make her unmask, or get her to speak. Our host has not the slightest notion who she is; and our hostess is horribly frightened at her. For my part, I think she has given us quite enough of her mystery and her grim dress; and if my name, instead of being nothing but plain Andrea D'Arbino, was Marquis Melani, I would say to her, 'Madam, we are here to laugh and amuse ourselves; suppose you open your lips, and charm us by appearing in a prettier dress!'"
During this conversation they had sat down together, with their backs toward the door, by the side of one of the card-tables. While D'Arbino was speaking, Fabio suddenly felt himself shuddering again, and became conscious of a sound of low breathing behind him. He turned round instantly, and there, standing between them, and peering down at them, was the Yellow Mask!
Fabio started up, and his friend followed his example. Again the gleaming black eyes rested steadily on the young nobleman's face, and again their look chilled him to the heart.
"Yellow Lady, do you know my friend?" exclaimed D'Arbino, with mock solemnity.
There was no answer. The fatal eyes never moved from Fabio's face.
"Yellow Lady," continued the other, "listen to the music. Will you dance with me?"
The eyes looked away, and the figure glided slowly from the room.
"My dear count," said D'Arbino, "that woman seems to have quite an effect on you. I declare she has left you paler than ever. Come into the supper-room with me, and have some wine; you really look as if you wanted it."
They went at once to the large refreshment-room. Nearly all the guests had by this time begun to dance again. They had the whole apartment, therefore, almost entirely to themselves.
Among the decorations of the room, which were not strictly in accordance with genuine Arcadian simplicity, was a large looking-glass, placed over a well-furnished sideboard. D'Arbino led Fabio in this direction, exchanging greetings as he advanced with a gentleman who stood near the glass looking into it, and carelessly fanning himself with his mask.
"My dear friend!" cried D'Arbino, "you are the very man to lead us straight to the best bottle of wine in the palace. Count Fabio, let me present to you my intimate and good friend, the Cavaliere Finello, with whose family I know you are well acquainted. Finello, the count is a little out of spirits, and I have prescribed a good dose of wine. I see a whole row of bottles at your side, and I leave it to you to apply the remedy.—Glasses there! three glasses, my lovely shepherdess with the black eyes—the three largest you have got."
The glasses were brought; the Cavaliere Finello chose a particular bottle, and filled them. All three gentlemen turned round to the sideboard to use it as a table, and thus necessarily faced the looking-glass.
"Now let us drink the toast of toasts," said D'Arbino. "Finello, Count Fabio—the ladies of Pisa!"
Fabio raised the wine to his lips, and was on the point of drinking it, when he saw reflected in the glass the figure of the Yellow Mask. The glittering eyes were again fixed on him, and the yellow-hooded head bowed slowly, as if in acknowledgment of the toast he was about to drink. For the third time, the strange chill seized him, and he set down his glass of wine untasted.
"What is the matter?" asked D'Arbino.
"Have you any dislike, count, to that particular wine?" inquired the Cavaliere.
"The Yellow Mask!" whispered Fabio. "The Yellow Mask again!"
They all three turned round directly toward the door. But it was too late—the figure had disappeared.
"Does any one know who this Yellow Mask is?" asked Finello. "One may guess by the walk that the figure is a woman's. Perhaps it may be the strange color she has chosen for her dress, or perhaps her stealthy way of moving from room to room; but there is certainly something mysterious and startling about her."
"Startling enough, as the count would tell you," said D'Arbino. "The Yellow Mask has been responsible for his loss of spirits and change of complexion, and now she has prevented him even from drinking his wine."
"I can't account for it," said Fabio, looking round him uneasily; "but this is the third room into which she has followed me—the third time she has seemed to fix her eyes on me alone. I suppose my nerves are hardly in a fit state yet for masked balls and adventures; the sight of her seems to chill me. Who can she be?"
"If she followed me a fourth time," said Finello, "I should insist on her unmasking."
"And suppose she refused?" asked his friend
"Then I should take her mask off for her."
"It is impossible to do that with a woman," said Fabio. "I prefer trying to lose her in the crowd. Excuse me, gentlemen, if I leave you to finish the wine, and then to meet me, if you like, in the great ball-room."
He retired as he spoke, put on his mask, and joined the dancers immediately, taking care to keep always in the most crowded corner of the apartment. For some time this plan of action proved successful, and he saw no more of the mysterious yellow domino. Ere long, however, some new dances were arranged, in which the great majority of the persons in the ballroom took part; the figures resembling the old English country dances in this respect, that the ladies and gentlemen were placed in long rows opposite to each other. The sets consisted of about twenty couples each, placed sometimes across, and sometimes along the apartment; and the spectators were all required to move away on either side, and range themselves close to the walls. As Fabio among others complied with this necessity, he looked down a row of dancers waiting during the performance of the orchestral prelude; and there, watching him again, from the opposite end of the lane formed by the gentlemen on one side and the ladies on the other, he saw the Yellow Mask.
He moved abruptly back toward another row of dancers, placed at right angles to the first row; and there again; at the opposite end of the gay lane of brightly-dressed figures, was the Yellow Mask. He slipped into the middle of the room, but it was only to find her occupying his former position near the wall, and still, in spite of his disguise, watching him through row after row of dancers. The persecution began to grow intolerable; he felt a kind of angry curiosity mingling now with the vague dread that had hitherto oppressed him. Finello's advice recurred to his memory; and he determined to make the woman unmask at all hazards. With this intention he returned to the supper-room in which he had left his friends.
They were gone, probably to the ballroom to look for him. Plenty of wine was still left on the sideboard; and he poured himself out a glass. Finding that his hand trembled as he did so, he drank several more glasses in quick succession, to nerve himself for the approaching encounter with the Yellow Mask. While he was drinking, he expected every moment to see her in the looking-glass again; but she never appeared—and yet he felt almost certain that he had detected her gliding out after him when he left the ball-room.
He thought it possible that she might be waiting for him in one of the smaller apartments; and, taking off his mask, walked through several of them, without meeting her, until he came to the door of the refreshment-room in which Nanina and he had recognized each other. The waiting-woman behind the table, who had first spoken to him, caught sight of him now, and ran round to the door.
"Don't come in and speak to Nanina again," she said, mistaking the purpose which had brought him to the door. "What with frightening her first and making her cry afterward, you have rendered her quite unfit for her work. The steward is in there at this moment, very good-natured, but not very sober. He says she is pale and red-eyed, and not fit to be a shepherdess any longer, and that, as she will not be missed now, she may go home if she likes. We have got her an old cloak, and she is going to try and slip through the rooms unobserved, to get downstairs and change her dress. Don't speak to her, pray—or you will only make her cry again, and what is worse, make the steward fancy—"
She stopped at that last word, and pointed suddenly over Fabio's shoulder.
"The Yellow Mask!" she exclaimed. "Oh, sir! draw her away into the ball-room, and give Nanina a chance of getting out!"
Fabio turned directly, and approached the Mask, who, as they looked at each other, slowly retreated before him. The waiting-woman, seeing the yellow figure retire, hastened back to Nanina in the refreshment-room.
Slowly the masked woman retreated from one apartment to another till she entered a corridor, brilliantly lit up and beautifully ornamented with flowers. On the right hand, this corridor led to the ball-room; on the left, to an ante-chamber at the head of the palace staircase. The Yellow Mask went on a few paces toward the left; then stopped. The bright eyes fixed themselves as before on Fabio's face, but only for a moment. He heard a light step behind him, and then he saw the eyes move. Following the direction they took, he turned round, and discovered Nanina, wrapped up in the old cloak which was to enable her to get downstairs unobserved.
"Oh, how can I get out? how can I get out?" cried the girl, shrinking back affrightedly as she saw the Yellow Mask.
"That way," said Fabio, pointing in the direction of the ballroom. "Nobody will notice you in the cloak; it will only be thought some new disguise." He took her arm, as he spoke, to reassure her; and continued in a whisper,—"Don't forget to-morrow."
At the same moment he felt a hand laid on him. It was the hand of the masked woman, and it put him back from Nanina. In spite of himself, he trembled at her touch, but still retained presence of mind enough to sign to the girl to make her escape. With a look of eager inquiry in the direction of the Mask, and a half-suppressed exclamation of terror, she obeyed him, and hastened away toward the ball-room.
"We are alone," said Fabio, confronting the gleaming black eyes, and reaching out his hand resolutely toward the Yellow Mask. "Tell me who you are, and why you follow me, or I will uncover your face, and solve the mystery for myself."
The woman pushed his hand aside, and drew back a few paces, but never spoke a word. He followed her. There was not an instant to be lost, for just then the sound of footsteps hastily approaching the corridor became audible.
"Now or never," he whispered to himself, and snatched at the mask.
His arm was again thrust aside; but this time the woman raised her disengaged hand at the same moment, and removed the yellow mask.
The lamps shed their soft light full on her face.
It was the face of his dead wife.
Signor Andrea D'Arbino, searching vainly through the various rooms in the palace for Count Fabio d'Ascoli, and trying, as a last resource, the corridor leading to the ball-room and grand staircase, discovered his friend lying on the floor in a swoon, without any living creature near him. Determining to avoid alarming the guests, if possible, D'Arbino first sought help in the ante-chamber. He found there the marquis's valet, assisting the Cavaliere Finello (who was just taking his departure) to put on his cloak.
While Finello and his friend carried Fabio to an open window in the ante-chamber, the valet procured some iced water. This simple remedy, and the change of atmosphere, proved enough to restore the fainting man to his senses, but hardly—as it seemed to his friends—to his former self. They noticed a change to blankness and stillness in his face, and, when he spoke, an indescribable alteration in the tone of his voice.
"I found you in a room in the corridor," said D'Arbino. "What made you faint? Don't you remember? Was it the heat?"
Fabio waited for a moment, painfully collecting his ideas. He looked at the valet; and Finello signed to the man to withdraw.
"Was it the heat?" repeated D'Arbino.
"No," answered Fabio, in strangely hushed, steady tones. "I have seen the face that was behind the Yellow Mask."
"Well?"
"It was the face of my dead wife."
"Your dead wife!"
"When the mask was removed I saw her face. Not as I remember it in the pride of her youth and beauty—not even as I remember her on her sick-bed—but as I remember her in her coffin."
"Count! for God's sake, rouse yourself! Collect your thoughts—remember where you are—and free your mind of its horrible delusion."
"Spare me all remonstrances—I am not fit to bear them. My life has only one object now—the pursuing of this mystery to the end. Will you help me? I am scarcely fit to act for myself."
He still spoke in the same unnaturally hushed, deliberate tones. D'Arbino and Finello exchanged glances behind him as he rose from the sofa on which he had hitherto been lying.
"We will help you in everything," said D'Arbino, soothingly. "Trust in us to the end. What do you wish to do first?"
"The figure must have gone through this room. Let us descend the staircase, and ask the servants if they have seen it pass."
(Both D'Arbino and Finello remarked that he did not say her.)
They inquired down to the very court-yard. Not one of the servants had seen the Yellow Mask.
The last resource was the porter at the outer gate. They applied to him; and in answer to their questions, he asserted that he had most certainly seen a lady in a yellow domino and mask drive away, about half an hour before, in a hired coach.
"Should you remember the coachman again?" asked D'Arbino.
"Perfectly; he is an old friend of mine."
"And you know where he lives?"
"Yes, as well as I know where I do."
"Any reward you like, if you can get somebody to mind your lodge, and can take us to that house."
In a few minutes they were following the porter through the dark, silent streets. "We had better try the stables first," said the man. "My friend the coachman will hardly have had time to do more than set the lady down. We shall most likely catch him just putting up his horses."
The porter turned out to be right. On entering the stable-yard, they found that the empty coach had just driven into it.
"You have been taking home a lady in a yellow domino from the masquerade?" said D'Arbino, putting some money into the coachman's hand.
"Yes, sir; I was engaged by that lady for the evening—engaged to drive her to the ball, as well as to drive her home."
"Where did you take her from?"
"From a very extraordinary place—from the gate of the Campo Santo."
During this colloquy, Finello and D'Arbino had been standing with Fabio between them, each giving him an arm. The instant the last answer was given, he reeled back with a cry of horror.
"Where have you taken her to now?" asked D'Arbino. He looked about him nervously as he put the question and spoke, for the first time in a whisper.
"To the Campo Santo again," said the coachman.
Fabio suddenly drew his arms out of the arms of his friends, and sank to his knees on the ground, hiding his face. From some broken ejaculations which escaped him, it seemed as if he dreaded that his senses were leaving him, and that he was praying to be preserved in his right mind.
"Why is he so violently agitated?" said Finello, eagerly, to his friend.
"Hush!" returned the other. "You heard him say that when he saw the face behind the Yellow Mask, it was the face of his dead wife?"
"Yes. But what then?"
"His wife was buried in the Campo Santo."