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 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 by-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 pocketbook, and wrote on it, “I must tell you how I honor 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 honor, 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, gayly, 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 ballroom.”
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 ballroom.
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
ballroom, 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 lighted up and beautifully ornamented
with flowers. On the right hand this corridor led to the ballroom; 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 ballroom.
“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.