The Yellow Mask / Желтая маска. Уилки Коллинз
no; the strangest, simplest little creature-'
Just then a faint tap was audible at the door of the room.
Brigida laid her finger on her lips, and called impatiently to the person outside to come in.
The door opened gently, and a young girl, poorly but very neatly dressed, entered the room. She was rather thin and under the average height; but her head and figure were in perfect proportion. Her hair was of that gorgeous auburn color, her eyes of that deep violet-blue, which the portraits of Giorgione and Titian have made famous as the type of Venetian beauty. Her features possessed the definiteness and regularity, the 'good modeling' (to use an artist's term), which is the rarest of all womanly charms, in Italy as elsewhere. The one serious defect of her face was its paleness. Her cheeks, wanting nothing in form, wanted every-thing in color. That look of health, which is the essential crowning-point of beauty, was the one attraction which her face did not possess.
She came into the room with a sad and weary expression in her eyes, which changed, however, the moment she observed the magnificently-dressed French forewoman, into a look of astonishment, and almost of awe. Her manner became shy and embarrassed; and after an instant of hesitation, she turned back silently to the door.
'Stop, stop, Nanina,' said Brigida, in Italian. 'Don't be afraid of that lady. She is our new forewoman; and she has it in her power to do all sorts of kind things for you. Look up, and tell us what you want. You were sixteen last birthday, Nanina, and you behave like a baby of two years old!'
'I only came to know if there was any work for me to-day,' said the girl, in a very sweet voice, that trembled a little as she tried to face the fashionable French forewoman again.
'No work, child, that is easy enough for you to do,' said Brigida. 'Are you going to the studio to-day?'
Some of the color that Nanina's cheeks wanted began to steal over them as she answered 'Yes.'
'Don't forget my message, darling. And if Master Luca Lomi asks where I live, answer that you are ready to deliver a letter to me; but that you are forbidden to enter into any particulars at first about who I am, or where I live.'
'Why am I forbidden?' inquired Nanina, innocently.
'Don't ask questions, baby! Do as you are told. Bring me back a nice note or message to-morrow from the studio, and I will intercede with this lady to get you some work. You are a foolish child to want it, when you might make more money here and at Florence, by sitting to painters and sculptors; though what they can see to paint or model in you I never could understand.'
'I like working at home better than going abroad to sit,' said Nanina, looking very much abashed as she faltered out the answer, and escaping from the room with a terrified farewell obeisance, which was an eccentric compound of a start, a bow, and a courtesy.
'That awkward child would be pretty,' said Mademoiselle Virginie, making rapid progress with the cutting-out of her dress, 'if she knew how to give herself a complexion, and had a presentable gown on her back. Who is she?'
'The friend who is to get me into Master Luca Lomi's studio,' replied Brigida, laughing. 'Rather a curious ally for me to take up with, isn't she?'
'Where did you meet with her?'
'Here, to be sure; she hangs about this place for any plain work she can get to do, and takes it home to the oddest little room in a street near the Campo Santo. I had the curiosity to follow her one day, and knocked at her door soon after she had gone in, as if I was a visitor. She answered my knock in a great flurry and fright, as you may imagine. I made myself agreeable, affected immense interest in her affairs, and so got into her room. Such a place! A mere corner of it curtained off to make a bedroom. One chair, one stool, one saucepan on the fire. Before the hearth the most grotesquely hideous unshaven poodle-dog you ever saw; and on the stool a fair little girl plaiting dinner-mats. Such was the household-furniture and all included. “Where is your father?” I asked. “He ran away and left us years ago,” answers my awkward little friend who has just left the room, speaking in that simple way of hers, with all the composure in the world. “And your mother?”-“Dead.” She went up to the little mat-plaiting girl as she gave that answer, and began playing with her long flaxen hair. “Your sister, I suppose,” said I. “What is her name?”-“They call me La Biondella,” says the child, looking up from her mat (La Biondella, Virginie, means The Fair). “And why do you let that great, shaggy, ill-looking brute lie before your fireplace?” I asked. “Oh!” cried the little mat-plaiter, “that is our dear old dog, Scarammuccia. He takes care of the house when Nanina is not at home. He dances on his hind legs, and jumps through a hoop, and tumbles down dead when I cry Bang! Scarammuccia followed us home one night, years ago, and he has lived with us ever since. He goes out every day by himself, we can't tell where, and generally returns licking his chops, which makes us afraid that he is a thief; but nobody finds him out, because he is the cleverest dog that ever lived!” The child ran on in this way about the great beast by the fireplace, till I was obliged to stop her; while that simpleton Nanina stood by, laughing and encouraging her. I asked them a few more questions, which produced some strange answers. They did not seem to know of any relations of theirs in the world. The neighbors in the house had helped them, after their father ran away, until they were old enough to help themselves; and they did not seem to think there was anything in the least wretched or pitiable in their way of living. The last thing I heard, when I left them that day, was La Biondella crying “Bang!”-then a bark, a thump on the floor, and a scream of laughter. If it was not for their dog, I should go and see them oftener. But the ill-conditioned beast has taken a dislike to me, and growls and shows his teeth whenever I come near him.'
'The girl looked sickly when she came in here. Is she always like that?'
'No. She has altered within the last month. I suspect our interesting young nobleman has produced an impression. The oftener the girl has sat to him lately, the paler and more out of spirits she has become.'
'Oh! she has sat to him, has she?'
'She is sitting to him now. He is doing a bust of some Pagan nymph or other, and prevailed on Nanina to let him copy from her head and face. According to her own account the little fool was frightened at first, and gave him all the trouble in the world before she would consent.'
'And now she has consented, don't you think it likely she may turn out rather a dangerous rival? Men are such fools, and take such fancies into their heads-'
'Ridiculous! A thread-paper of a girl like that, who has no manner, no talk, no intelligence; who has nothing to recommend her but an awkward, babyish prettiness! Dangerous to me? No, no! If there is danger at all, I have to dread it from the sculptor's daughter. I don't mind confessing that I am anxious to see Maddalena Lomi. But as for Nanina, she will simply be of use to me. All I know already about the studio and the artists in it, I know through her. She will deliver my message, and procure me my introduction; and when we have got so far, I shall give her an old gown and a shake of the hand; and then, good-bye to our little innocent!'
'Well, well, for your sake I hope you are the wiser of the two in this matter. For my part, I always distrust innocence. Wait one moment, and I shall have the body and sleeves of this dress ready for the needle-women. There, ring the bell, and order them up; for I have directions to give, and you must interpret for me.'
While Brigida went to the bell, the energetic Frenchwoman began planning out the skirt of the new dress. She laughed as she measured off yard after yard of the silk.
'What are you laughing about?' asked Brigida, opening the door and ringing a hand-bell in the passage.
'I can't help fancying, dear, in spite of her innocent face and her artless ways, that your young friend is a hypocrite.'
'And I am quite certain, love, that she is only a simpleton.'
Chapter II
The studio of the master-sculptor, Luca Lomi, was composed of two large rooms unequally divided by a wooden partition, with an arched doorway cut in the middle of it.
While the milliners of the Grifoni establishment were industriously shaping dresses, the sculptors in Luca Lomi's workshop were, in their way, quite as hard at work shaping marble and clay.