Of all the persons who had been present, in any capacity, at the Marquis
Melani’s ball, the earliest riser on the morning after it was Nanina.
The agitation produced by the strange events in which she had been
concerned destroyed the very idea of sleep. Through the hours of
darkness she could not even close her eyes; and, as soon as the new day
broke, she rose to breathe the early morning air at her window, and to
think in perfect tranquillity over all that had passed since she entered
the Melani Palace to wait on the guests at the masquerade.
On reaching home the previous night, all her other sensations had been
absorbed in a vague feeling of mingled dread and curiosity, produced
by the sight of the weird figure in the yellow mask, which she had left
standing alone with Fabio in the palace corridor. The morning light,
however, suggested new thoughts. She now opened the note which the young
nobleman had pressed into her hand, and read over and over again the
hurried pencil lines scrawled on the paper. Could there be any harm, any
forgetfulness of her own duty, in using the key inclosed in the note,
and keeping her appointment in the Ascoli gardens at ten o’clock? Surely
not--surely the last sentence he had written, “Believe in my truth and
honor, Nanina, for I believe implicitly in yours,” was enough to satisfy
her this time that she could not be doing wrong in listening for once to
the pleading of her own heart. And besides, there in her lap lay the key
of the wicket-gate. It was absolutely necessary to use that, if only for
the purpose of giving it back safely into the hand of its owner.
As this last thought was passing through her mind, and plausibly
overcoming any faint doubts and difficulties which she might still have
left, she was startled by a sudden knocking at the street door; and,
looking out of the window immediately, saw a man in livery standing in
the street, anxiously peering up at the house to see if his knocking had
aroused anybody.
“Does Marta Angrisani, the sick-nurse, live here?” inquired the man, as
soon as Nanina showed herself at the window.
“Yes,” she answered. “Must I call her up? Is there some person ill?”
“Call her up directly,” said the servant; “she is wanted at the Ascoli
Palace. My master, Count Fabio--”
Nanina waited to hear no more. She flew to the room in which the
sick-nurse slept, and awoke her, almost roughly, in an instant.
“He is ill!” she cried, breathlessly. “Oh, make haste, make haste! He is
ill, and he has sent for you!”
Marta inquired who had sent for her, and on being informed, promised
to lose no time. Nanina ran downstairs to tell the servant that the
sick-nurse was getting on her clothes. The man’s serious expression,
when she came close to him, terrified her. All her usual self-distrust
vanished; and she entreated him, without attempting to conceal her
anxiety, to tell her particularly what his master’s illness was, and how
it had affected him so suddenly after the ball.
“I know nothing about it,” answered the man, noticing Nanina’s manner
as she put her question, with some surprise, “except that my master was
brought home by two gentlemen, friends of his, about a couple of hours
ago, in a very sad state; half out of his mind, as it seemed to me. I
gathered from what was said that he had got a dreadful shock from seeing
some woman take off her mask, and show her face to him at the ball. How
that could be I don’t in the least understand; but I know that when the
doctor was sent for, he looked very serious, and talked about fearing
brain-fever.”
Here the servant stopped; for, to his astonishment, he saw Nanina
suddenly turn away from him, and then heard her crying bitterly as she
went back into the house.
Marta Angrisani had huddled on her clothes and was looking at herself in
the glass to see that she was sufficiently presentable to appear at the
palace, when she felt two arms flung round her neck; and, before she
could say a word, found Nanina sobbing on her bosom.
“He is ill--he is in danger!” cried the girl. “I must go with you to
help him. You have always been kind to me, Marta--be kinder than ever
now. Take me with you--take me with you to the palace!”
“You, child!” exclaimed the nurse, gently unclasping her arms.
“Yes--yes! if it is only for an hour,” pleaded Nanina; “if it is only
for one little hour every day. You have only to say that I am your
helper, and they would let me in. Marta! I shall break my heart if I
can’t see him, and help him to get well again.”
The nurse still hesitated. Nanina clasped her round the neck once more,
and laid her cheek--burning hot now, though the tears had been streaming
down it but an instant before--close to the good woman’s face.
“I love him, Marta; great as he is, I love him with all my heart and
soul and strength,” she went on, in quick, eager, whispering tones; “and
he loves me. He would have married me if I had not gone away to save
him from it. I could keep my love for him a secret while he was well; I
could stifle it, and crush it down, and wither it up by absence. But now
he is ill, it gets beyond me; I can’t master it. Oh, Marta! don’t break
my heart by denying me! I have suffered so much for his sake, that I
have earned the right to nurse him!”
Marta was not proof against this last appeal. She had one great and rare
merit for a middle-aged woman--she had not forgotten her own youth.
“Come, child,” said she, soothingly; “I won’t attempt to deny you. Dry
your eyes, put on your mantilla; and, when we get face to face with the
doctor, try to look as old and ugly as you can, if you want to be let
into the sick-room along with me.”
The ordeal of medical scrutiny was passed more easily than Marta
Angrisani had anticipated. It was of great importance, in the doctor’s
opinion, that the sick man should see familiar faces at his bedside.
Nanina had only, therefore, to state that he knew her well, and that she
had sat to him as a model in the days when he was learning the art of
sculpture, to be immediately accepted as Marta’s privileged assistant in
the sick-room.
The worst apprehensions felt by the doctor for the patient were soon
realized. The fever flew to his brain. For nearly six weeks he lay
prostrate, at the mercy of death; now raging with the wild strength
of delirium, and now sunk in the speechless, motionless, sleepless
exhaustion which was his only repose. At last; the blessed day came when
he enjoyed his first sleep, and when the doctor began, for the first
time, to talk of the future with hope. Even then, however, the same
terrible peculiarity marked his light dreams which had previously shown
itself in his fierce delirium. From the faintly uttered, broken phrases
which dropped from him when he slept, as from the wild words which burst
from him when his senses were deranged, the one sad discovery inevitably
resulted--that his mind was still haunted, day and night, hour after
hour, by the figure in the yellow mask.
As his bodily health improved, the doctor in attendance on him grew more
and more anxious as to the state of his mind. There was no appearance
of any positive derangement of intellect, but there was a mental
depression--an unaltering, invincible prostration, produced by his
absolute belief in the reality of the dreadful vision that he had seen
at the masked ball--which suggested to the physician the gravest doubts
about the case. He saw with dismay that the patient showed no anxiety,
as he got stronger, except on one subject. He was eagerly desirous of
seeing Nanina every day by his bedside; but, as soon as he was assured
that his wish should be faithfully complied with, he seemed to care for
nothing more. Even when they proposed, in the hope of rousing him to an
exhibition of something like pleasure, that the girl should read to him
for an hour every day out of one of his favorite books, he only showed a
languid satisfaction. Weeks passed away, and still, do what they would,
they could not make him so much as smile.
One day Nanina had begun to read to him as usual, but had not proceeded
far before Marta Angrisani informed her that he had fallen into a doze.
She ceased with a sigh, and sat looking at him sadly, as he lay near
her, faint and pale and mournful in his sleep--miserably altered from
what he was when she first knew him. It had been a hard trial to watch
by his bedside in the terrible time of his delirium; but it was a harder
trial still to look at him now, and to feel less and less hopeful with
each succeeding day.
While her eyes and thoughts were still compassionately fixed on him, the
door of the bedroom opened, and the doctor came in, followed by Andrea
D’Arbino, whose share in the strange adventure with the Yellow Mask
caused him to feel a special interest in Fabio’s progress toward
recovery.
“Asleep, I see; and sighing in his sleep,” said the doctor, going to
the bedside. “The grand difficulty with him,” he continued, turning to
D’Arbino, “remains precisely what it was. I have hardly left a single
means untried of rousing him from that fatal depression; yet, for the
last fortnight, he has not advanced a single step. It is impossible to
shake his conviction of the reality of that face which he saw (or rather
which he thinks he saw) when the yellow mask was removed; and, as long
as he persists in his own shocking view of the case, so long he will
lie there, getting better, no doubt, as to his body, but worse as to his
mind.”
“I suppose, poor fellow, he is not in a fit state to be reasoned with?”
“On the contrary, like all men with a fixed delusion, he has plenty of
intelligence to appeal to on every point, except the one point on which
he is wrong. I have argued with him vainly by the hour together. He
possesses, unfortunately, an acute nervous sensibility and a vivid
imagination; and besides, he has, as I suspect, been superstitiously
brought up as a child. It would be probably useless to argue rationally
with him on certain spiritual subjects, even if his mind was in
perfect health. He has a good deal of the mystic and the dreamer in his
composition; and science and logic are but broken reeds to depend upon
with men of that kind.”
“Does he merely listen to you when you reason with him, or does he
attempt to answer?”
“He has only one form of answer, and that is, unfortunately, the most
difficult of all to dispose of. Whenever I try to convince him of his
delusion, he invariably retorts by asking me for a rational explanation
of what happened to him at the masked ball. Now, neither you nor I,
though we believe firmly that he has been the dupe of some infamous
conspiracy, have been able as yet to penetrate thoroughly into this
mystery of the Yellow Mask. Our common sense tells us that he must be
wrong in taking his view of it, and that we must be right in taking
ours; but if we cannot give him actual, tangible proof of that--if we
can only theorize, when he asks us for an explanation--it is but too
plain, in his present condition, that every time we remonstrate with him
on the subject we only fix him in his delusion more and more firmly.”
“It is not for want of perseverance on my part,” said D’Arbino, after a
moment of silence, “that we are still left in the dark. Ever since the
extraordinary statement of the coachman who drove the woman home, I
have been inquiring and investigating. I have offered the reward of
two hundred scudi for the discovery of her; I have myself examined
the servants at the palace, the night-watchman at the Campo Santo, the
police-books, the lists of keepers of hotels and lodging-houses, to hit
on some trace of this woman; and I have failed in all directions. If my
poor friend’s perfect recovery does indeed depend on his delusion being
combated by actual proof, I fear we have but little chance of restoring
him. So far as I am concerned, I confess myself at the end of my
resources.”
“I hope we are not quite conquered yet,” returned the doctor. “The
proofs we want may turn up when we least expect them. It is certainly
a miserable case,” he continued, mechanically laying his fingers on the
sleeping man’s pulse. “There he lies, wanting nothing now but to recover
the natural elasticity of his mind; and here we stand at his bedside,
unable to relieve him of the weight that is pressing his faculties down.
I repeat it, Signor Andrea, nothing will rouse him from his delusion
that he is the victim of a supernatural interposition but the production
of some startling, practical proof of his error. At present he is in the
position of a man who has been imprisoned from his birth in a dark room,
and who denies the existence of daylight. If we cannot open the shutters
and show him the sky outside, we shall never convert him to a knowledge
of the truth.”
Saying these words, the doctor turned to lead the way out of the room,
and observed Nanina, who had moved from the bedside on his entrance,
standing near the door. He stopped to look at her, shook his head
good-humoredly, and called to Marta, who happened to be occupied in an
adjoining room.
“Signora Marta,” said the doctor, “I think you told me some time ago
that your pretty and careful little assistant lives in your house. Pray,
does she take much walking exercise?”
“Very little, Signor Dottore. She goes home to her sister when she
leaves the palace. Very little walking exercise, indeed.”
“I thought so! Her pale cheeks and heavy eyes told me as much. Now, my
dear,” said the doctor, addressing Nanina, “you are a very good girl,
and I am sure you will attend to what I tell you. Go out every morning
before you come here, and take a walk in the fresh air. You are too
young not to suffer by being shut up in close rooms every day, unless
you get some regular exercise. Take a good long walk in the morning, or
you will fall into my hands as a patient, and be quite unfit to continue
your attendance here. Now, Signor Andrea, I am ready for you. Mind, my
child, a walk every day in the open air outside the town, or you will
fall ill, take my word for it!”
Nanina promised compliance; but she spoke rather absently, and seemed
scarcely conscious of the kind familiarity which marked the doctor’s
manner. The truth was, that all her thoughts were occupied with what
he had been saying by Fabio’s bedside. She had not lost one word of the
conversation while the doctor was talking of his patient, and of the
conditions on which his recovery depended. “Oh, if that proof which
would cure him could only be found!” she thought to herself, as she
stole back anxiously to the bedside when the room was empty.
On getting home that day she found a letter waiting for her, and was
greatly surprised to see that it was written by no less a person than
the master-sculptor, Luca Lomi. It was very short; simply informing her
that he had just returned to Pisa, and that he was anxious to know when
she could sit to him for a new bust--a commission from a rich foreigner
at Naples.
Nanina debated with herself for a moment whether she should answer the
letter in the hardest way, to her, by writing, or, in the easiest
way, in person; and decided on going to the studio and telling the
master-sculptor that it would be impossible for her to serve him as a
model, at least for some time to come. It would have taken her a long
hour to say this with due propriety on paper; it would only take her
a few minutes to say it with her own lips. So she put on her mantilla
again and departed for the studio.
On, arriving at the gate and ringing the bell, a thought suddenly
occurred to her, which she wondered had not struck her before. Was
it not possible that she might meet Father Rocco in his brother’s
work-room? It was too late to retreat now, but not too late to ask,
before she entered, if the priest was in the studio. Accordingly, when
one of the workmen opened the door to her, she inquired first, very
confusedly and anxiously, for Father Rocco. Hearing that he was not with
his brother then, she went tranquilly enough to make her apologies to
the master-sculptor.
She did not think it necessary to tell him more than that she was now
occupied every day by nursing duties in a sick-room, and that it
was consequently out of her power to attend at the studio. Luca Lomi
expressed, and evidently felt, great disappointment at her failing him
as a model, and tried hard to persuade her that she might find time
enough, if she chose, to sit to him, as well as to nurse the sick
person. The more she resisted his arguments and entreaties, the more
obstinately he reiterated them. He was dusting his favorite busts and
statues, after his long absence, with a feather-brush when she came in;
and he continued this occupation all the while he was talking--urging
a fresh plea to induce Nanina to reconsider her refusal to sit at every
fresh piece of sculpture he came to, and always receiving the same
resolute apology from her as she slowly followed him down the studio
toward the door.
Arriving thus at the lower end of the room, Luca stopped with a fresh
argument on his lips before his statue of Minerva. He had dusted it
already, but he lovingly returned to dust it again. It was his favorite
work--the only good likeness (although it did assume to represent
a classical subject) of his dead daughter that he possessed. He had
refused to part with it for Maddalena’s sake; and, as he now approached
it with his brush for the second time, he absently ceased speaking, and
mounted on a stool to look at the face near and blow some specks of dust
off the forehead. Nanina thought this a good opportunity of escaping
from further importunities. She was on the point of slipping away to the
door with a word of farewell, when a sudden exclamation from Luca Lomi
arrested her.
“Plaster!” cried the master-sculptor, looking intently at that part of
the hair of the statue which lay lowest on the forehead. “Plaster here!”
He took out his penknife as he spoke, and removed a tiny morsel of some
white substance from an interstice between two folds of the hair
where it touched the face. “It _is_ plaster!” he exclaimed, excitedly.
“Somebody has been taking a cast from the face of my statue!”
He jumped off the stool, and looked all round the studio with an
expression of suspicious inquiry. “I must have this cleared up,” he
said. “My statues were left under Rocco’s care, and he is answerable
if there has been any stealing of casts from any one of them. I must
question him directly.”
Nanina, seeing that he took no notice of her, felt that she might now
easily effect her retreat. She opened the studio door, and repeated,
for the twentieth time at least, that she was sorry she could not sit to
him.
“I am sorry too, child,” he said, irritably looking about for his hat.
He found it apparently just as Nanina was going out; for she heard him
call to one of the workmen in the inner studio, and order the man to
say, if anybody wanted him, that he had gone to Father Rocco’s lodgings.