After Dark by Wilkie Collins (best desktop ebook reader txt) 📕

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 that?” continued the steward. “And suppose I only ask 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 gayeties 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 forever, made her feel faint and sick at heart.

“To-morrow, in the housekeeper’s room,” said the steward, putting on his hat, “you will find your new dress all ready for you.”

Nanina courtesied, 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