Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1893 — Page 2

THE YELLOW MASK

BY WILKIE COLLINS.

Part Third. ... ’.'CHAPTER lll.— Continued. in spite of himself ho trembled at har touch, but still retained _prcsenco of mind enough to sign to the gir! to make her escape. With a look of eager inquiry in the direction of the Mask, and a half-sup-pressed exclamation of terror, she obeyed him and hastened away to the ball-room. . ~ “We are alone.” said Fabio, confronting the gleaming black eyes, and reaching out his hand resolutely toward the Yellow Mask. “Tell me who you are, and why you follow me, or I will uncover your face and solve the mystery for myself.” The woman pushed his hand aside, and drew back a few paces, but never spoke a word. He followed her. There was not an instant tp be lost, for just then the sound of footsteps hastily approaching the corridor became audible. “Now or never,” he whispered to himself, and snatched at the mask. His arm was again thrust aside; but this time the woman raised her disengaged hand at the same moment, and removed the yellow mask. The lamps shed their soft light full on her face. It was the face of his dead wife. CHAPTER IV. Signor Andrea d'Arbino, searching vainly through the variousrboms in the palace for Count Fabio d’Ascoli, and trying as a last resoul ce, the corridor leading to the ball room and grand staircase, discovered his friend lying on the floor in a swoon, without any living creature near him. Determined to avoid alarming the guests if possible, D’Arbino first sought help in the antechamber. He found the Mara uis’s valet assisting the Cavaliere Finello (who was just taking his departure) to put on his cloak. While Finello and his friend carried Fabio to an open window in the antechamber the valet procured some iced water. This simple remedy and the change of atmosphere proved enough to restore the fainting man to his senses, but hardly—as it seemed to his friends—to his former self. They noticed a change to blankness and stillness in his . face, and when he spoke an indescribable in the tone of his voice. “I found you in a room in the corridor,” said D’Arbino. “What made you faint? Don’t you remember? Was it the heat?” Fabio waited for a moment painfully collecting his ideas. He looked At the valet and Finello signed to the .man to withdraw. “Was it the heat?” repeated D’Arbino. “No," answered Fabio in strangely hushed, steady tones. “I have seen the face that was behind the yellow mask.” • “Well?” - * ' “It was the face of my dead wife.” “Your dead wife!” “When the mask was removed I saw her face. Not as I remember it in the pride of her youth and beauty —not even as I remember her on her sick bed —but as I remember her in her coffin.”

‘‘Count! for God’s sake rouse yourself 1 Collect your thoughts—rememberwhere you arc and free your mind of its horrible delusion.” “Spare me ail remonstrances; I am not fit to bear them. My life has only one object now —the pursuing of this mystery to the end. Will you help me? lam scarcely fit to act for myself.” He still spoke in the same unnaturally hushed, deliberate tones. D’Arbino and Finello exchanged glances behind him as he rose from the sofa on which he had been lying. “We will help you in everything,” said D’Arbino, soothingiy. “Trust in us to the end. What do you wish to do first?” “The figure must have gone through this room. Let us descend the staircase and ask the servants if they have seen it pass. ” (Roth D’Ai'bino and Finello remarked that he did not say her.) They inquired down to the courtyard. Not one of the servants had seen the Yellow Mask. The last resource was the porter at the outer gate. They applied to him; and in answer to their questions he asserted that he had most certainly seen a lady in a yellow domino and mask drive away, about half an hour before, in a hired coach. “Should you remember the coachman again?” asked D’Arbino. “Perfectly; he is an old friend of mine.” “And you know where he lives?” “Yes; as well as I know where I do." “Any reward you like, if you can get somebody to mind your lodge, and can take us to that house." , In a few minutes they were following the porter through the dark, silent streets. “We had better try the stables first,” said the man. “My. friend the coachman will hardly have had time to do more than set the lady down. We shall most likely catch him just putting up his horses.” The porter turned out to be right. On entering the stable-yard, they found that the empty coach had just driven into it. “You have been taking home a lady in a yellow domino from the masquerade?” said D'Arbino, putting some money into the coachman’s hand. “Yes, sir; I was engaged by that tedjr far the evening—engaged to

drive her to the ball as well as to drive her home. ” “Where did you take her from?” “From a very extraordinary place—from the gate of the Campo Santo burial-ground. ” During this colloquy Finello and D’Arbino had been standing with Fabio between, them,-- .each giving him an arm. The instant the last auswer was given, he reeled back with a cry of horror. “Where have you taken her to now?” asked D'Arbino. He looked about him nervously as he put the question, and spoke for the first time in a whisper. “To the Campo Santo again,” said the coachman. Fabio suddenly drew his arms out .of the arrn&of his friends,arfd sank to his knees on the ground, hiding his face, From some broken ejaculations which escaped him, it seemed as if he dreaded that his senses were leaving him, and that he was praying to be preserved in his right mind. “Why is he so violently agitated?” said Finello eagerlyTo his friend: “Hush!” returned the other. “You heard him say that when he saw the face behind the yellow mask, it was the face of his dead wife?” “Yes. But what then?” "His wife Was buried in the Campo Santo.” CHAPTER V. Of all the persons who had been present, in any capacity, at the Marquis Mclani'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 tranquility 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 Fabio in the palace corridor. The morning light, however, suggested new ideas. She now opened the note which the young nobleman had pressed into her hand, and read over and over again the 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 10 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 doiug wrong in listening for once to the pleadings 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 flitting through her mind, and plausibly overcoming any faint doubts and difficulties which she might still have left, she was startled by a knocking at the street door; and, looking out of the window immediately, saw a man iu livery standing in the street, anxiously peering up at the house to see if his knocking had aroused anybody. ' ♦ - —flDoea Marti Angrasina, the siclcnurse, 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 down stairs 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 him. All her usual selfdistrust vanished; and 6he 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 ,mau. noticing Nanina’s manner as she put her question with some sunprise, “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 tho glass to seo that she was sufficiently presentable to appear at the palace, when she felt two anns flung round her neck; and 1 efare she could say a word, found Nanina sobbing on her bosom

“He is ill-f-he is in dangerl” 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 unelaspmif her anns. — “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 iook as old and -ugly as you can, if you want to be let into the sick room alone with me. ” The ordeal of medical scrutiny was passed more easily than Marta Angrisana 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 tnat she had sat to him as a modgl in the days wh*en 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 yas 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 delirum. 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 hapnted, day and night, hour after hour, by the figure in the yellow mask.

As his bodily health improved, the docror 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 doub'ts 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 hqpe of rousing him to an exhibition of something like pleasure, that girl should read to him for an hour every day out of one of his favorite books, he only showed a languid satisfaction. W eeks passed a way jand still, do what they would, they could not make him do 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 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 bed room opened and the doctor came in. followed by Andrea d’A rhino, whose share in the strange adventure with the Yellow Mask caused him to feel a special interest in Fabio’s progress toward recovery. (to be continued.)

A Sprinkle of Spice.

The man who does not comb his hair looks best with a chrysanthemum in his button hole. One swallow does not make a summer, but if taken from a demijohn it may lead to a fall. She—l saw somebody this morning for whom you have great admiration. t He—Ah! you were at the mirror.

THE WORLD’S FAIR.

The Wonderful Contrasts— The Has t-er-s Cabin— The Midway Plaisance. The Fair is the place for contrasts. The crowd ism early always thickest is the narrey strip of groundbetweeu the Transportation building and the lagoon. But two minutes’ walk - will take one to a spot that is almost completely isolated from the surrounding Fair. On the south end of the wooded island in the lagoon is a low building, hidden among the trees. It is approached by a narrow pathway, which most people pass without noticing. This building is a favorite resort of New Yorkers. It is the World's Fair exhibit of the Boone and Crocket Club, but is generally known as the “Hunter’s Cabin.” It is a typical home of a hunter or a club of hunters on a large scale. Such a house might look out of place on a street of the Fair, next to one of the bij? buildings, but here oh the island itis decidedly appropriate, for it is in the center of a miniature forest. The cabin contains only one room and has log walls and board roof. Small places for windows are cut in the logs. At one end is a large open fireplace. Over it is a rude wooden mantel, the central adornment of which is the skull of a grizzly bear. On the floor are tanned skins of bears, elk, moose, panthers and other big game. Scattered about the room are all sorts of articles for hunters’ use—snow" shoes, blankets, saddles, field glasses, rifles, shotguns and cartridge belts. Elk horns and other spoils of the chase are fastened on the walls. It looks primitive but it is very comfortable, for there are wooden benches and other seats over which furs are thrown, j

ana in hot weather it is the coolest place inside of the World’s Fair grounds. The outside of the building savers as much of the frontier as does the inside. A pair of antlers are over the doorway and an oldfashioned “prairie schooner,” or emgrant wager., stands near by. Theodore Roosevelt is the leading spirit in the -Boone and Crocket Club,

MUMMY AND PORTRAIT.

which was formed in New York city , three years ago for the preservation of the large game of the United States, and especially of the Yellowstone Park. A reproduction of the famous Bayeux tapestry ornaments the eastern corridor of the Woman’s Building. While it is by no means beautiful, the original has a varied and interesting history. It is supposed to have been the work of Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror, although other authorities insist that it was made by the women of Bayeux for Odo, half-brother of Wiliiam, Bishop of Bayeux. It was preserved in the cathedral of the town until the French revolution. In 1106 it narrowly escaped burning, It 1652 it was saved from the pillage of the Calvinists, and in 1792 a priest rescued it from the unhallowed hands of the French soldiery, who wished td cut it up to protect their guns. In 1813 it was exhibited in tne Musee Napoleon. The tapestry is. 230 feet 91 inches long by 19} inches wide. There are represented in it 620 persons, 180 horses, 550 other animals, and various implements of war. Latin inscriptions tell the story the tapestry sets forth, whk... is a full history of Harrold, the last of the Saxon kings, arid William the Con,ueror. One of the most conspicuous points made is of the Mora, the largest of William’s fleet of 609 sails, which vessel was the gilt of Matilda to her husband. It is not likely that old Mr. Ptolaoy t of Egypt, intended to make an exhibit at the Columbian Exposition, but one of his graveyards has

contributed a. rare and unique display to the Falh The Ancient Egytisms had a curious custom of representing- the coufitenartces of, their dead at the head of the mum mv. In the ages before Grecian art invaded the land of the Nile it was customary to make a plastic head, sometimes of stuff similar to that of which the Fair buildings are con-; structed, but these casts were not always good likenesses. The Egyptians continued the old practice long after the Greeks and the Romans had swept over their country, but modified it by substituting portraits for the molded figures. The portrait was painted on a thin panel of wood. This was laid over the face of the mujnmy, and the outer bandages, of the shroud were wrapped over the edges of wood, thus holding it in place. The effect of a* mummy of this sort was that of a person looking out from an opening in the swathings of the dead figure. This enabled relatives of the deceased to view the remains and enjoy the melancholy pleasure of looking on the reproduced features of the departed one. A few mummies of this kind were found years ago near Memphis and Thebes, but it is only in recent years that large numbers have been discovered at Hawara and Rubaijat in the province of Faijum, a section that formerly had a large Greek popnlation. The pictures which Theodore Graf is now exhibiting at old Vienna came from Rubaijat, and most of them date back to a period between 350 and 200 B. C. The graveyard which they once graced was ransacked ages aero by thieves in search of gold. The plunderers destroyed coffins and mummies and threw away the pictures. These were buried in the dry sand, which i preserved their colors* for the aeciI dental discoverer of * these nine--1 tee nth-century days.

THE HUNTER’S CABIN.

The colors of these pictures are scarcely dimmed, and they give an excellent idea of portrait painting before the Christian era. Some cf them are purely Egyptian in their physiognomies, while others indicate a strain of the Greek. Quite a number, judging from the jewelry and the badges of office, must have represented persons of the ruling class. Meissonier and George Ebers have found in one of them a striking likeness to the portrait of Cleopatra as preserved on ancient coins. A portrait of a young man has a lock of hair back of the ear like an inverted interrogation point, and Ebers, the Egyptologist, who is better known m America as theauthor of “Uarda," and other historical novels with scenes on the Nile, says only members of the royal family were permitted to wear such a lock. This panel also has on its back an inscription. said to be in Phoenician of the thira or fourth century before Christ. It has been translated as Baal-adar. which means “Baal helgs,” or “Baal disposes.” The portrait of one man shows the subject wearing a golden wreath and a scarf like ribbon. On the left breast is shown a gold button, which leads some scientists to believe that the original was a priest of Isis. There is in the collection one portrait of a girl, whose neck and ear jewels and rich purple dress, with black, gold edged shoulder stripes indicate a family of exalted position. Thus each one has peculiarities of the ancient life of Egypt, and the collection, taken in connection with its history, is one of the most curi-

ONE OF PTOLEMY'S NOBLES.

ous in the Fair. It IS accompanied by a fine specimen of a mummy, which is perfect in its swathings and has at its head the portrait of a wopaan, showing how the panels were secured by the bandages. The “Midway” at the Fair, as it is familiarly called, is undoubtedly the I most unique and interesting pleasI ure-walk in the world- It is a thoroughfare of ever-shifting scenes and ever-recuring incidents. Within Its precincts enough of interest can be found to engage the attention of a

visitor for inanydays. In a careless stroll through this great interna- n tional promenade, many features entertain the curious. T»e following is a plan of the place showing the relative positions of the villages:

THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE.

1. Parade grounds. 2. West Point cadets. —Mfe Cigar pavilion. 4. Captive balloon park, r>. Lapland village. <fe Chinese village. ------ V 7. Dahomey village. 8. Chinese theater. 9. Austrian village. 10. Volcano of Kilauea. 11. Cigar pavilion. 12. Theater. 13. St. Peter’s. 14. Algeria and Tunis. 15. Ferris wheel. 16. Cairo street. 17. Moorish palace and restaurant. 18. German village. 19. Turkish village. 20. Japanese village. 21. Bernese Alps. 22. Japan bazar. 23. Natatorium. 24. Libby glass works. 25. South Sea island village. 26. International Costume Co. 27. Vienna glass works. 28. New England home. 29. Irish village. 30. Hagenback animal show.

PEOPLE.

The Norwegian explorer, 'Dr. Nansen, who is soon to start on another expedition to the North Pole, has been preparing himself for coming hardships by sleeping as often as possible during the winter in a tent on his place near Christiana. Ex-Senator Wade .Hampton, now United States railroad commissioner, is in San Francisco, whither he has gone on a journey of inspection of the Pacific roads. He has with him a party of about a dozen people, including his two daughters. He will go from San Francisco to Tacoma, and from there begin an examination eastward of the Northern Pacific. % In modeling the horse for his equestrian statue of General Grant for the Union League Club, of Brooklyn, the sculptor, William Ordway Partridge, has had casts made from a living charger kept at his country home in Milton, Mass., where he is at work. It is believed to be the first time that casts of a horse have ever been taken for such a purpose. Mr. von Mumra, formerly of the German legation at Washington, but since transferred to Bucharest and Iheh to Rome, is a zealous amateur photographer. Among the pictnres carried away by him as mementoes of his Washington sojourn was a collection of portraits of nearly every girl prominent in Washington society for the last half dozen years.

The venerable Robert C. Winthrop, who, everything considered, is the most distinguished citizen of Massachusetts, is one ol the summer cottagers at Nahant. Commenting on the fine old man’s sprightliness at eighty-four a Boston journal says. “The man *who takes the hand of Mr. Winthrop to-day takes the hand that William Wordsworth grasped, that was shaken by Samuel Rogers, and that found its way with acceptance into the hands of the Duke of Wellington. Of what other American can the same be said?” A rather amusing story is told of Charles Gervais, a great French cheese merchant, who recently died in Paris full of years and honors and wealth. M. Gervais was a self-made man and no scholar. Last year he stood for some municipal post in the department of Seine Inferleure, and, in the course of his campaign, read a speech composed for him by a journalist of Rouen, beginning as follows: “As a candidate for this important office— comma—fully understanding your wants —I come to solicit your votes —full stop.” The scribe 1 d writen down the stops as a guide to elocution, but poor M. Gervais conscientiously delivered it as part of his speech. A Boston jeweler who had occasion at times to manufacture jewels for Mr. Booth, to be worn in different characters, says he was extremely conscientious in having them made not only of the best material, but as near* as possible historically correct. In having a costly crown of gold and precious stones made for the character of Richard 111. iie sent to L*>*don to get the correct design; so in the jewels for the character of Richelieu he took great pains to consult the best authorities. It did not satisfy him to be told that the real could not be distinguished from the imitation on the stage, hence he bought the costliest laces and materials for his costumes.