The Complete Short Stories of Wilkie Collins. Уилки Коллинз
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vinegary, garlicky morsel slide noiselessly into his mouth, I began to feel rather sick. My hands were dirty with moving the books, and I asked if I could wash them before beginning to work at the likeness, as a good excuse for getting out of the room, while Professor Tizzi was unctuously disposing of his simple vegetable meal.
The philosopher looked a little astonished at my request, as if the washing of hands at irregular times and seasons offered a comparatively new subject of contemplation to him; but he rang a handbell on his table immediately, and told the old servant to take me up into his bedroom.
The interior of the parlor had astonished me; but a sight of the bedroom was a new sensation — not of the most agreeable kind. The couch on which the philosopher sought repose after his labours was a truckle-bed that would not have fetched half a crown at a sale. On one side of it dangled from the ceiling a complete male skeleton, looking like all that was left of a man who might have hung himself about a century ago, and who had never been disturbed since the moment of his suicide. On the other side of the bed stood a long press, in which I observed hideous coloured preparations of the muscular system, and bottles with curious, twining, thread-like substances inside them, which might have been remarkable worms or dissections of nerves, scattered amicably side by side with the Professor’s hairbrush (three parts worn out), with remnants of his beard on bits of shaving-paper, with a broken shoe-horn, and with a traveling looking-glass of the sort usually sold at sixpence apiece. Repetitions of the litter of books in the parlor lay all about over the floor; coloured anatomical prints were nailed anyhow against the walls; rolled-up towels were scattered here, there, and everywhere in the wildest confusion, as if the room had been bombarded with them; and last, but by no means least remarkable among the other extraordinary objects in the bedchamber, the stuffed figure of a large unshaven poodle-dog, stood on an old card-table, keeping perpetual watch over a pair of the philosopher’s black breeches twisted round his forepaws.
I had started, on entering the room, at the skeleton, and I started once more at the dog. The old servant noticed me each time with a sardonic grin. “Don’t be afraid,” he said; “one is as dead as the other.” With these words, he left me to wash my hands.
Finding little more than a pint of water at my disposal, and failing altogether to discover where the soap was kept, I was not long in performing my ablutions. Before leaving the room, I looked again at the stuffed poodle. On the board to which he was fixed, I saw painted in faded letters the word “Scarammuccia,” evidently the comic Italian name to which he had answered in his lifetime. There was no other inscription; but I made up my mind that the dog must have been the Professor’s pet, and that he kept the animal stuffed in his bedroom as a remembrance of past times. “Who would have suspected so great a philosopher of having so much heart!” thought I, leaving the bedroom to go downstairs again.
The Professor had done his breakfast, and was anxious to begin the sitting; so I took out my chalks and paper, and set to work at once — I seated on one pile of books and he on another.
“Fine anatomical preparations in my room, are there not, Mr. Kerby?” said the old gentleman. “Did you notice a very interesting and perfect arrangement of the intestinal ganglia? They form the subject of an important chapter in my great work.”
“I am afraid you will think me very ignorant,” I replied. “But I really do not know the intestinal ganglia when I see them. The object I noticed with most curiosity in your room was something more on a level with my own small capacity.”
“And what was that?” asked the Professor.
“The figure of the stuffed poodle. I suppose he was a favorite of yours?”
“Of mine? No, no; a young woman’s favorite, sir, before I was born; and a very remarkable dog, too. The vital principle in that poodle, Mr. Kerby, must have been singularly intensified. He lived to a fabulous old age, and he was clever enough to play an important part of his own in what you English call a Romance of Real Life! If I could only have dissected that poodle, I would have put him into my book; he should have headed my chapter on the Vital Principle of Beasts.”
“Here is a story in prospect,” thought I, “if I can only keep his attention 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 washhand 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. Rumour 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