“Here is a story in prospect,” thought I, “if I can only keep his attentio n up to the subject.”
“He should have figured in my great work, sir,” the Professor went on. “Scarammuccia should have taken his place among the examples that prove my new theory; but unfortunately he died before I was born. His mistress gave him, stuffed, as you see upstairs, to my father to take care of for her, and he has descended as an heirloom to me. Talking of dogs, Mr. Kerby, I have ascertained, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the brachial plexus in people who die of hydrophobia–but stop! I had better show you how it is–the preparation is upstairs under my wash-hand stand.”
He left his seat as he spoke. In another minute he would have sent the servant to fetch the “preparation,” and I should have lost the story. At the risk of his taking offense, I begged him not to move just then, unless he wished me to spoil his likeness. This alarmed, but fortunately did not irritate him. He returned to his seat, and I resumed the subject of the stuffed poodle, asking him boldly to tell me the story with which the dog was connected. The demand seemed to impress him with no very favorable opinion of my intellectual tastes; but he complied with it, and related, not without many a wearisome digression to the subject of his great work, the narrative which I propose calling by the name of “The Yellow Mask.” After the slight specimens that I have given of his character and style of conversation, it will be almost unnecessary for me to premise that I tell this story as I have told the last, and “Sister Rose,” in my own language, and according to my own plan in the disposition of the incidents–adding nothing, of course, to the facts, but keeping them within the limits which my disposable space prescribes to me.
I may perhaps be allowed to add in this place, that I have not yet seen or heard of my portrait in an engraved state. Professor Tizzi is still alive; but I look in vain through the publishers’ lists for an announcement of his learned work on the Vital Principle. Possibly he may be adding a volume or two to the twelve already completed, by way of increasing the debt which a deeply obliged posterity is, sooner or later, sure of owing to him.
THE PROFESSOR’S STORY
OF THE YELLOW MASK.
PART FIRST.
CHAPTER I.
ABOUT a century ago, there lived in the ancient city of Pisa a famous Italian milliner, who, by way of vindicating to all customers her familiarity with Paris fashions, adopted a French title, and called herself the Demoiselle Grifoni. She was a wizen little woman with a mischievous face, a quick tongue, a nimble foot, a talent for business, and an uncertain disposition. Rumor hinted that she was immensely rich, and scandal suggested that she would do anything for money.
The one undeniable good quality which raised Demoiselle Grifoni above all her rivals in the trade was her inexhaustible fortitude. She was never known to yield an inch under any pressure of adverse circumstances Thus the memorable occasion of her life on which she was threatened with ruin was also the occasion on which she most triumphantly asserted the energy and decision of her character. At the height of the demoiselle’s prosperity her skilled forewoman and cutter-out basely married and started in business as her rival. Such a calamity as this would have ruined an ordinary milliner; but the invincible Grifoni rose superior to it almost without an effort, and proved incontestably that it was impossible for hostile Fortune to catch her at the end of her resources. While the minor milliners were prophesying that she would shut up shop, she was quietly carrying on a private correspondence with an agent in Paris. Nobody knew what these letters were about until a few weeks had elapsed, and then circulars were received by all the ladies in Pisa, announcing that the best French forewoman who could be got for money was engaged to superintend the great Grifoni establishment. This master-stroke decided the victory . All the demoiselle’s customers declined giving orders elsewhere until the forewoman from Paris had exhibited to the natives of Pisa the latest fashions from the metropolis of the world of dress.
The Frenchwoman arrived punctual to the appointed day–glib and curt, smiling and flippant, tight of face and supple of figure. Her name was Mademoiselle Virginie, and her family had inhumanly deserted her. She was set to work the moment she was inside the doors of the Grifoni establishment. A room was devoted to her own private use; magnificent materials in velvet, silk, and satin, with due accompaniment of muslins, laces, and ribbons were placed at her disposal; she was told to spare no expense, and to produce, in the shortest possible time, the finest and nearest specimen dresses for exhibition in the show-room. Mademoiselle Virginie undertook to do everything required of her, produced her portfolios of patterns and her book of colored designs, and asked for one assistant who could speak French enough to interpret her orders to the Italian girls in the work-room.
“I have the very person you want,” cried Demoiselle Grifoni. “A work-woman we call Brigida here–the idlest slut in Pisa, but as sharp as a needle–has been in France, and speaks the language like a native. I’ll send her to you directly.”
Mademoiselle Virginie was not left long alone with her patterns and silks. A tall woman, with bold black eyes, a reckless manner, and a step as firm as a man’s, stalked into the room with the gait of a tragedy-queen crossing the stage. The instant her eyes fell on the French forewoman, she stopped, threw up her hands in astonishment, and exclaimed, “Finette!”
“Teresa!” cried the Frenchwoman, casting her scissors on the table, and advancing a few steps.
“Hush! call me Brigida.”
“Hush! call me Virginie.”
These two exclamations were uttered at the same moment, and then the two women scrutinized each other in silence. The swarthy cheeks of the Italian turned to a dull yellow, and the voice of the Frenchwoman trembled a little when she spoke again.
“How, in the name of Heaven, have you dropped down in the world as low as this?” she asked. “I thought you were provided for when–”
“Silence!” interrupted Brigida. “You see I was not provided for. I have had my misfortunes; and you are the last woman alive who ought to refer to them.”
“Do you think I have not had my misfortunes, too, since we met?” (Brigida’s face brightened maliciously at those words.) “You have had your revenge,” continued Mademoiselle Virginie, coldly, turning away to the table and taking up the scissors again.
Brigida followed her, threw one arm roughly round her neck, and kissed her on the cheek. “Let us be friends again,” she said. The Frenchwoman laughed. “Tell me how I have had my revenge,” pursued the other, tightening her grasp. Mademoiselle Virginie signed to Brigida to stoop, and whispered rapidly in her ear. The Italian listened eagerly, with fierce, suspicious eyes fixed on the door. When the whispering ceased, she loosened her hold, and, with a sigh of relief, pushed back her heavy black hair from her temples. “Now we are friends,” she said, and sat down indolently in a chair placed by the worktable.
“Friends,” repeated Mademoiselle Virginie, with another laugh. “And now for business,” she continued, getting a row of pins ready for use by putting them between her teeth. ” I am here, I believe, for the purpose of ruining the late forewoman, who has set up in opposition to us? Good! I will ruin her. Spread out the yellow brocaded silk, my dear, and pin that pattern on at your end, while I pin at mine. And what are your plans, Brigida? (Mind you don’t forget that Finette is dead, and that Virginie has risen from her ashes.) You can’t possibly intend to stop here all your life? (Leave an inch outside the paper, all round.) You must have projects? What are they?”
“Look at my figure,” said Brigida, placing herself in an attitude in the middle of the room.
“Ah,” rejoined the other, “it’s not what it was. There’s too much of it. You want diet, walking, and a French stay-maker,” muttered Mademoiselle Virginie through her chevaus-defrise of pins.
“Did the goddess Minerva walk, and employ a French stay-maker? I thought she rode upon clouds, and lived at a period before waists were invented.”
“What do you mean?”
“This–that my present project is to try if I can’t make my fortune by sitting as a model for Minerva in the studio of the best sculptor in Pisa.”
“And who is he! (Unwind me a yard or two of that black lace.)”
“The master-sculptor, Luca Lomi–an old family, once noble, but down in the world now. The master is obliged to make statues to get a living for his daughter and himself.”