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diff --git a/211.txt b/211.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6a07986..0000000 --- a/211.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4267 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Aspern Papers, by Henry James - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Aspern Papers - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: June 29, 2008 [EBook #211] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ASPERN PAPERS *** - - - - -Produced by Judith Boss - - - - - -THE ASPERN PAPERS - -By Henry James - - -First American book edition, - -Macmillan and Co., 1888. - - - - - -I - - -I had taken Mrs. Prest into my confidence; in truth without her I -should have made but little advance, for the fruitful idea in the whole -business dropped from her friendly lips. It was she who invented the -short cut, who severed the Gordian knot. It is not supposed to be the -nature of women to rise as a general thing to the largest and most -liberal view--I mean of a practical scheme; but it has struck me that -they sometimes throw off a bold conception--such as a man would not have -risen to--with singular serenity. "Simply ask them to take you in on the -footing of a lodger"--I don't think that unaided I should have risen to -that. I was beating about the bush, trying to be ingenious, wondering -by what combination of arts I might become an acquaintance, when she -offered this happy suggestion that the way to become an acquaintance was -first to become an inmate. Her actual knowledge of the Misses Bordereau -was scarcely larger than mine, and indeed I had brought with me from -England some definite facts which were new to her. Their name had been -mixed up ages before with one of the greatest names of the century, and -they lived now in Venice in obscurity, on very small means, unvisited, -unapproachable, in a dilapidated old palace on an out-of-the-way canal: -this was the substance of my friend's impression of them. She herself -had been established in Venice for fifteen years and had done a great -deal of good there; but the circle of her benevolence did not include -the two shy, mysterious and, as it was somehow supposed, scarcely -respectable Americans (they were believed to have lost in their long -exile all national quality, besides having had, as their name implied, -some French strain in their origin), who asked no favors and desired no -attention. In the early years of her residence she had made an attempt -to see them, but this had been successful only as regards the little -one, as Mrs. Prest called the niece; though in reality as I afterward -learned she was considerably the bigger of the two. She had heard Miss -Bordereau was ill and had a suspicion that she was in want; and she had -gone to the house to offer assistance, so that if there were suffering -(and American suffering), she should at least not have it on her -conscience. The "little one" received her in the great cold, tarnished -Venetian sala, the central hall of the house, paved with marble and -roofed with dim crossbeams, and did not even ask her to sit down. This -was not encouraging for me, who wished to sit so fast, and I remarked -as much to Mrs. Prest. She however replied with profundity, "Ah, but -there's all the difference: I went to confer a favor and you will go -to ask one. If they are proud you will be on the right side." And she -offered to show me their house to begin with--to row me thither in her -gondola. I let her know that I had already been to look at it half a -dozen times; but I accepted her invitation, for it charmed me to hover -about the place. I had made my way to it the day after my arrival in -Venice (it had been described to me in advance by the friend in England -to whom I owed definite information as to their possession of the -papers), and I had besieged it with my eyes while I considered my plan -of campaign. Jeffrey Aspern had never been in it that I knew of; -but some note of his voice seemed to abide there by a roundabout -implication, a faint reverberation. - -Mrs. Prest knew nothing about the papers, but she was interested in my -curiosity, as she was always interested in the joys and sorrows of her -friends. As we went, however, in her gondola, gliding there under the -sociable hood with the bright Venetian picture framed on either side by -the movable window, I could see that she was amused by my infatuation, -the way my interest in the papers had become a fixed idea. "One would -think you expected to find in them the answer to the riddle of the -universe," she said; and I denied the impeachment only by replying -that if I had to choose between that precious solution and a bundle -of Jeffrey Aspern's letters I knew indeed which would appear to me the -greater boon. She pretended to make light of his genius, and I took -no pains to defend him. One doesn't defend one's god: one's god is -in himself a defense. Besides, today, after his long comparative -obscuration, he hangs high in the heaven of our literature, for all the -world to see; he is a part of the light by which we walk. The most I -said was that he was no doubt not a woman's poet: to which she rejoined -aptly enough that he had been at least Miss Bordereau's. The strange -thing had been for me to discover in England that she was still alive: -it was as if I had been told Mrs. Siddons was, or Queen Caroline, or -the famous Lady Hamilton, for it seemed to me that she belonged to a -generation as extinct. "Why, she must be tremendously old--at least a -hundred," I had said; but on coming to consider dates I saw that it was -not strictly necessary that she should have exceeded by very much the -common span. Nonetheless she was very far advanced in life, and her -relations with Jeffrey Aspern had occurred in her early womanhood. -"That is her excuse," said Mrs. Prest, half-sententiously and yet also -somewhat as if she were ashamed of making a speech so little in the -real tone of Venice. As if a woman needed an excuse for having loved the -divine poet! He had been not only one of the most brilliant minds of -his day (and in those years, when the century was young, there were, -as everyone knows, many), but one of the most genial men and one of the -handsomest. - -The niece, according to Mrs. Prest, was not so old, and she risked the -conjecture that she was only a grandniece. This was possible; I had -nothing but my share in the very limited knowledge of my English fellow -worshipper John Cumnor, who had never seen the couple. The world, as I -say, had recognized Jeffrey Aspern, but Cumnor and I had recognized him -most. The multitude, today, flocked to his temple, but of that temple he -and I regarded ourselves as the ministers. We held, justly, as I think, -that we had done more for his memory than anyone else, and we had done -it by opening lights into his life. He had nothing to fear from us -because he had nothing to fear from the truth, which alone at such a -distance of time we could be interested in establishing. His early -death had been the only dark spot in his life, unless the papers in Miss -Bordereau's hands should perversely bring out others. There had been an -impression about 1825 that he had "treated her badly," just as there had -been an impression that he had "served," as the London populace says, -several other ladies in the same way. Each of these cases Cumnor and -I had been able to investigate, and we had never failed to acquit -him conscientiously of shabby behavior. I judged him perhaps more -indulgently than my friend; certainly, at any rate, it appeared to me -that no man could have walked straighter in the given circumstances. -These were almost always awkward. Half the women of his time, to speak -liberally, had flung themselves at his head, and out of this pernicious -fashion many complications, some of them grave, had not failed to arise. -He was not a woman's poet, as I had said to Mrs. Prest, in the modern -phase of his reputation; but the situation had been different when -the man's own voice was mingled with his song. That voice, by every -testimony, was one of the sweetest ever heard. "Orpheus and the -Maenads!" was the exclamation that rose to my lips when I first turned -over his correspondence. Almost all the Maenads were unreasonable, and -many of them insupportable; it struck me in short that he was kinder, -more considerate than, in his place (if I could imagine myself in such a -place!) I should have been. - -It was certainly strange beyond all strangeness, and I shall not take -up space with attempting to explain it, that whereas in all these other -lines of research we had to deal with phantoms and dust, the mere echoes -of echoes, the one living source of information that had lingered -on into our time had been unheeded by us. Every one of Aspern's -contemporaries had, according to our belief, passed away; we had not -been able to look into a single pair of eyes into which his had looked -or to feel a transmitted contact in any aged hand that his had touched. -Most dead of all did poor Miss Bordereau appear, and yet she alone had -survived. We exhausted in the course of months our wonder that we had -not found her out sooner, and the substance of our explanation was that -she had kept so quiet. The poor lady on the whole had had reason for -doing so. But it was a revelation to us that it was possible to keep so -quiet as that in the latter half of the nineteenth century--the age of -newspapers and telegrams and photographs and interviewers. And she had -taken no great trouble about it either: she had not hidden herself away -in an undiscoverable hole; she had boldly settled down in a city of -exhibition. The only secret of her safety that we could perceive was -that Venice contained so many curiosities that were greater than she. -And then accident had somehow favored her, as was shown for example in -the fact that Mrs. Prest had never happened to mention her to me, though -I had spent three weeks in Venice--under her nose, as it were--five -years before. Mrs. Prest had not mentioned this much to anyone; she -appeared almost to have forgotten she was there. Of course she had not -the responsibilities of an editor. It was no explanation of the -old woman's having eluded us to say that she lived abroad, for our -researches had again and again taken us (not only by correspondence -but by personal inquiry) to France, to Germany, to Italy, in which -countries, not counting his important stay in England, so many of the -too few years of Aspern's career were spent. We were glad to think at -least that in all our publishings (some people consider I believe that -we have overdone them), we had only touched in passing and in the most -discreet manner on Miss Bordereau's connection. Oddly enough, even if we -had had the material (and we often wondered what had become of it), it -would have been the most difficult episode to handle. - -The gondola stopped, the old palace was there; it was a house of the -class which in Venice carries even in extreme dilapidation the dignified -name. "How charming! It's gray and pink!" my companion exclaimed; -and that is the most comprehensive description of it. It was not -particularly old, only two or three centuries; and it had an air not so -much of decay as of quiet discouragement, as if it had rather missed its -career. But its wide front, with a stone balcony from end to end of the -piano nobile or most important floor, was architectural enough, with the -aid of various pilasters and arches; and the stucco with which in the -intervals it had long ago been endued was rosy in the April afternoon. -It overlooked a clean, melancholy, unfrequented canal, which had -a narrow riva or convenient footway on either side. "I don't know -why--there are no brick gables," said Mrs. Prest, "but this corner has -seemed to me before more Dutch than Italian, more like Amsterdam than -like Venice. It's perversely clean, for reasons of its own; and though -you can pass on foot scarcely anyone ever thinks of doing so. It has the -air of a Protestant Sunday. Perhaps the people are afraid of the Misses -Bordereau. I daresay they have the reputation of witches." - -I forget what answer I made to this--I was given up to two other -reflections. The first of these was that if the old lady lived in such a -big, imposing house she could not be in any sort of misery and therefore -would not be tempted by a chance to let a couple of rooms. I expressed -this idea to Mrs. Prest, who gave me a very logical reply. "If she -didn't live in a big house how could it be a question of her having -rooms to spare? If she were not amply lodged herself you would lack -ground to approach her. Besides, a big house here, and especially in -this quartier perdu, proves nothing at all: it is perfectly compatible -with a state of penury. Dilapidated old palazzi, if you will go out of -the way for them, are to be had for five shillings a year. And as for -the people who live in them--no, until you have explored Venice socially -as much as I have you can form no idea of their domestic desolation. -They live on nothing, for they have nothing to live on." The other idea -that had come into my head was connected with a high blank wall which -appeared to confine an expanse of ground on one side of the house. -Blank I call it, but it was figured over with the patches that please a -painter, repaired breaches, crumblings of plaster, extrusions of brick -that had turned pink with time; and a few thin trees, with the poles of -certain rickety trellises, were visible over the top. The place was a -garden, and apparently it belonged to the house. It suddenly occurred to -me that if it did belong to the house I had my pretext. - -I sat looking out on all this with Mrs. Prest (it was covered with the -golden glow of Venice) from the shade of our felze, and she asked me if -I would go in then, while she waited for me, or come back another time. -At first I could not decide--it was doubtless very weak of me. I wanted -still to think I MIGHT get a footing, and I was afraid to meet failure, -for it would leave me, as I remarked to my companion, without another -arrow for my bow. "Why not another?" she inquired as I sat there -hesitating and thinking it over; and she wished to know why even now -and before taking the trouble of becoming an inmate (which might be -wretchedly uncomfortable after all, even if it succeeded), I had not -the resource of simply offering them a sum of money down. In that way I -might obtain the documents without bad nights. - -"Dearest lady," I exclaimed, "excuse the impatience of my tone when -I suggest that you must have forgotten the very fact (surely I -communicated it to you) which pushed me to throw myself upon your -ingenuity. The old woman won't have the documents spoken of; they are -personal, delicate, intimate, and she hasn't modern notions, God bless -her! If I should sound that note first I should certainly spoil the -game. I can arrive at the papers only by putting her off her guard, and -I can put her off her guard only by ingratiating diplomatic practices. -Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance. I am sorry for it, but for -Jeffrey Aspern's sake I would do worse still. First I must take tea with -her; then tackle the main job." And I told over what had happened to -John Cumnor when he wrote to her. No notice whatever had been taken of -his first letter, and the second had been answered very sharply, in six -lines, by the niece. "Miss Bordereau requested her to say that she -could not imagine what he meant by troubling them. They had none of Mr. -Aspern's papers, and if they had should never think of showing them -to anyone on any account whatever. She didn't know what he was talking -about and begged he would let her alone." I certainly did not want to be -met that way. - -"Well," said Mrs. Prest after a moment, provokingly, "perhaps after all -they haven't any of his things. If they deny it flat how are you sure?" - -"John Cumnor is sure, and it would take me long to tell you how his -conviction, or his very strong presumption--strong enough to stand -against the old lady's not unnatural fib--has built itself up. Besides, -he makes much of the internal evidence of the niece's letter." - -"The internal evidence?" - -"Her calling him 'Mr. Aspern.'" - -"I don't see what that proves." - -"It proves familiarity, and familiarity implies the possession of -mementoes, or relics. I can't tell you how that 'Mr.' touches me--how it -bridges over the gulf of time and brings our hero near to me--nor what -an edge it gives to my desire to see Juliana. You don't say, 'Mr.' -Shakespeare." - -"Would I, any more, if I had a box full of his letters?" - -"Yes, if he had been your lover and someone wanted them!" And I added -that John Cumnor was so convinced, and so all the more convinced by -Miss Bordereau's tone, that he would have come himself to Venice on the -business were it not that for him there was the obstacle that it would -be difficult to disprove his identity with the person who had written -to them, which the old ladies would be sure to suspect in spite of -dissimulation and a change of name. If they were to ask him point-blank -if he were not their correspondent it would be too awkward for him to -lie; whereas I was fortunately not tied in that way. I was a fresh hand -and could say no without lying. - -"But you will have to change your name," said Mrs. Prest. "Juliana lives -out of the world as much as it is possible to live, but none the less -she has probably heard of Mr. Aspern's editors; she perhaps possesses -what you have published." - -"I have thought of that," I returned; and I drew out of my pocketbook a -visiting card, neatly engraved with a name that was not my own. - -"You are very extravagant; you might have written it," said my -companion. - -"This looks more genuine." - -"Certainly, you are prepared to go far! But it will be awkward about -your letters; they won't come to you in that mask." - -"My banker will take them in, and I will go every day to fetch them. It -will give me a little walk." - -"Shall you only depend upon that?" asked Mrs. Prest. "Aren't you coming -to see me?" - -"Oh, you will have left Venice, for the hot months, long before -there are any results. I am prepared to roast all summer--as well as -hereafter, perhaps you'll say! Meanwhile, John Cumnor will bombard me -with letters addressed, in my feigned name, to the care of the padrona." - -"She will recognize his hand," my companion suggested. - -"On the envelope he can disguise it." - -"Well, you're a precious pair! Doesn't it occur to you that even if you -are able to say you are not Mr. Cumnor in person they may still suspect -you of being his emissary?" - -"Certainly, and I see only one way to parry that." - -"And what may that be?" - -I hesitated a moment. "To make love to the niece." - -"Ah," cried Mrs. Prest, "wait till you see her!" - - - - -II - - -"I must work the garden--I must work the garden," I said to myself, five -minutes later, as I waited, upstairs, in the long, dusky sala, where the -bare scagliola floor gleamed vaguely in a chink of the closed shutters. -The place was impressive but it looked cold and cautious. Mrs. Prest had -floated away, giving me a rendezvous at the end of half an hour by -some neighboring water steps; and I had been let into the house, -after pulling the rusty bell wire, by a little red-headed, white-faced -maidservant, who was very young and not ugly and wore clicking pattens -and a shawl in the fashion of a hood. She had not contented herself -with opening the door from above by the usual arrangement of a creaking -pulley, though she had looked down at me first from an upper window, -dropping the inevitable challenge which in Italy precedes the hospitable -act. As a general thing I was irritated by this survival of medieval -manners, though as I liked the old I suppose I ought to have liked it; -but I was so determined to be genial that I took my false card out of -my pocket and held it up to her, smiling as if it were a magic token. It -had the effect of one indeed, for it brought her, as I say, all the way -down. I begged her to hand it to her mistress, having first written -on it in Italian the words, "Could you very kindly see a gentleman, -an American, for a moment?" The little maid was not hostile, and I -reflected that even that was perhaps something gained. She colored, -she smiled and looked both frightened and pleased. I could see that my -arrival was a great affair, that visits were rare in that house, and -that she was a person who would have liked a sociable place. When she -pushed forward the heavy door behind me I felt that I had a foot in the -citadel. She pattered across the damp, stony lower hall and I followed -her up the high staircase--stonier still, as it seemed--without an -invitation. I think she had meant I should wait for her below, but such -was not my idea, and I took up my station in the sala. She flitted, at -the far end of it, into impenetrable regions, and I looked at the place -with my heart beating as I had known it to do in the dentist's parlor. -It was gloomy and stately, but it owed its character almost entirely -to its noble shape and to the fine architectural doors--as high as -the doors of houses--which, leading into the various rooms, repeated -themselves on either side at intervals. They were surmounted with old -faded painted escutcheons, and here and there, in the spaces between -them, brown pictures, which I perceived to be bad, in battered frames, -were suspended. With the exception of several straw-bottomed chairs with -their backs to the wall, the grand obscure vista contained nothing else -to minister to effect. It was evidently never used save as a passage, -and little even as that. I may add that by the time the door opened -again through which the maidservant had escaped, my eyes had grown used -to the want of light. - -I had not meant by my private ejaculation that I must myself cultivate -the soil of the tangled enclosure which lay beneath the windows, but the -lady who came toward me from the distance over the hard, shining floor -might have supposed as much from the way in which, as I went rapidly to -meet her, I exclaimed, taking care to speak Italian: "The garden, the -garden--do me the pleasure to tell me if it's yours!" - -She stopped short, looking at me with wonder; and then, "Nothing here is -mine," she answered in English, coldly and sadly. - -"Oh, you are English; how delightful!" I remarked, ingenuously. "But -surely the garden belongs to the house?" - -"Yes, but the house doesn't belong to me." She was a long, lean, pale -person, habited apparently in a dull-colored dressing gown, and she -spoke with a kind of mild literalness. She did not ask me to sit down, -any more than years before (if she were the niece) she had asked Mrs. -Prest, and we stood face to face in the empty pompous hall. - -"Well then, would you kindly tell me to whom I must address myself? I'm -afraid you'll think me odiously intrusive, but you know I MUST have a -garden--upon my honor I must!" - -Her face was not young, but it was simple; it was not fresh, but it was -mild. She had large eyes which were not bright, and a great deal of hair -which was not "dressed," and long fine hands which were--possibly--not -clean. She clasped these members almost convulsively as, with a -confused, alarmed look, she broke out, "Oh, don't take it away from us; -we like it ourselves!" - -"You have the use of it then?" - -"Oh, yes. If it wasn't for that!" And she gave a shy, melancholy smile. - -"Isn't it a luxury, precisely? That's why, intending to be in Venice -some weeks, possibly all summer, and having some literary work, some -reading and writing to do, so that I must be quiet, and yet if possible -a great deal in the open air--that's why I have felt that a garden -is really indispensable. I appeal to your own experience," I went on, -smiling. "Now can't I look at yours?" - -"I don't know, I don't understand," the poor woman murmured, planted -there and letting her embarrassed eyes wander all over my strangeness. - -"I mean only from one of those windows--such grand ones as you have -here--if you will let me open the shutters." And I walked toward the -back of the house. When I had advanced halfway I stopped and waited, as -if I took it for granted she would accompany me. I had been of necessity -very abrupt, but I strove at the same time to give her the impression of -extreme courtesy. "I have been looking at furnished rooms all over -the place, and it seems impossible to find any with a garden attached. -Naturally in a place like Venice gardens are rare. It's absurd if you -like, for a man, but I can't live without flowers." - -"There are none to speak of down there." She came nearer to me, as if, -though she mistrusted me, I had drawn her by an invisible thread. I went -on again, and she continued as she followed me: "We have a few, but they -are very common. It costs too much to cultivate them; one has to have a -man." - -"Why shouldn't I be the man?" I asked. "I'll work without wages; or -rather I'll put in a gardener. You shall have the sweetest flowers in -Venice." - -She protested at this, with a queer little sigh which might also have -been a gush of rapture at the picture I presented. Then she observed, -"We don't know you--we don't know you." - -"You know me as much as I know you: that is much more, because you know -my name. And if you are English I am almost a countryman." - -"We are not English," said my companion, watching me helplessly while I -threw open the shutters of one of the divisions of the wide high window. - -"You speak the language so beautifully: might I ask what you are?" Seen -from above the garden was certainly shabby; but I perceived at a glance -that it had great capabilities. She made no rejoinder, she was so lost -in staring at me, and I exclaimed, "You don't mean to say you are also -by chance American?" - -"I don't know; we used to be." - -"Used to be? Surely you haven't changed?" - -"It's so many years ago--we are nothing." - -"So many years that you have been living here? Well, I don't wonder at -that; it's a grand old house. I suppose you all use the garden," I went -on, "but I assure you I shouldn't be in your way. I would be very quiet -and stay in one corner." - -"We all use it?" she repeated after me, vaguely, not coming close to -the window but looking at my shoes. She appeared to think me capable of -throwing her out. - -"I mean all your family, as many as you are." - -"There is only one other; she is very old--she never goes down." - -"Only one other, in all this great house!" I feigned to be not only -amazed but almost scandalized. "Dear lady, you must have space then to -spare!" - -"To spare?" she repeated, in the same dazed way. - -"Why, you surely don't live (two quiet women--I see YOU are quiet, -at any rate) in fifty rooms!" Then with a burst of hope and cheer I -demanded: "Couldn't you let me two or three? That would set me up!" - -I had not struck the note that translated my purpose, and I need -not reproduce the whole of the tune I played. I ended by making my -interlocutress believe that I was an honorable person, though of course -I did not even attempt to persuade her that I was not an eccentric one. -I repeated that I had studies to pursue; that I wanted quiet; that I -delighted in a garden and had vainly sought one up and down the city; -that I would undertake that before another month was over the dear old -house should be smothered in flowers. I think it was the flowers that -won my suit, for I afterward found that Miss Tita (for such the name of -this high tremulous spinster proved somewhat incongruously to be) had an -insatiable appetite for them. When I speak of my suit as won I mean that -before I left her she had promised that she would refer the question to -her aunt. I inquired who her aunt might be and she answered, "Why, Miss -Bordereau!" with an air of surprise, as if I might have been expected to -know. There were contradictions like this in Tita Bordereau which, as I -observed later, contributed to make her an odd and affecting person. -It was the study of the two ladies to live so that the world should not -touch them, and yet they had never altogether accepted the idea that it -never heard of them. In Tita at any rate a grateful susceptibility to -human contact had not died out, and contact of a limited order there -would be if I should come to live in the house. - -"We have never done anything of the sort; we have never had a lodger or -any kind of inmate." So much as this she made a point of saying to me. -"We are very poor, we live very badly. The rooms are very bare--that you -might take; they have nothing in them. I don't know how you would sleep, -how you would eat." - -"With your permission, I could easily put in a bed and a few tables and -chairs. C'est la moindre des choses and the affair of an hour or two. -I know a little man from whom I can hire what I should want for a few -months, for a trifle, and my gondolier can bring the things round in his -boat. Of course in this great house you must have a second kitchen, and -my servant, who is a wonderfully handy fellow" (this personage was an -evocation of the moment), "can easily cook me a chop there. My tastes -and habits are of the simplest; I live on flowers!" And then I ventured -to add that if they were very poor it was all the more reason they -should let their rooms. They were bad economists--I had never heard of -such a waste of material. - -I saw in a moment that the good lady had never before been spoken to -in that way, with a kind of humorous firmness which did not exclude -sympathy but was on the contrary founded on it. She might easily have -told me that my sympathy was impertinent, but this by good fortune -did not occur to her. I left her with the understanding that she would -consider the matter with her aunt and that I might come back the next -day for their decision. - -"The aunt will refuse; she will think the whole proceeding very louche!" -Mrs. Prest declared shortly after this, when I had resumed my place in -her gondola. She had put the idea into my head and now (so little are -women to be counted on) she appeared to take a despondent view of it. -Her pessimism provoked me and I pretended to have the best hopes; I -went so far as to say that I had a distinct presentiment that I should -succeed. Upon this Mrs. Prest broke out, "Oh, I see what's in your head! -You fancy you have made such an impression in a quarter of an hour that -she is dying for you to come and can be depended upon to bring the old -one round. If you do get in you'll count it as a triumph." - -I did count it as a triumph, but only for the editor (in the last -analysis), not for the man, who had not the tradition of personal -conquest. When I went back on the morrow the little maidservant -conducted me straight through the long sala (it opened there as before -in perfect perspective and was lighter now, which I thought a good -omen) into the apartment from which the recipient of my former visit had -emerged on that occasion. It was a large shabby parlor, with a fine -old painted ceiling and a strange figure sitting alone at one of the -windows. They come back to me now almost with the palpitation they -caused, the successive feelings that accompanied my consciousness that -as the door of the room closed behind me I was really face to face with -the Juliana of some of Aspern's most exquisite and most renowned lyrics. -I grew used to her afterward, though never completely; but as she sat -there before me my heart beat as fast as if the miracle of resurrection -had taken place for my benefit. Her presence seemed somehow to contain -his, and I felt nearer to him at that first moment of seeing her than -I ever had been before or ever have been since. Yes, I remember my -emotions in their order, even including a curious little tremor that -took me when I saw that the niece was not there. With her, the day -before, I had become sufficiently familiar, but it almost exceeded my -courage (much as I had longed for the event) to be left alone with -such a terrible relic as the aunt. She was too strange, too literally -resurgent. Then came a check, with the perception that we were not -really face to face, inasmuch as she had over her eyes a horrible -green shade which, for her, served almost as a mask. I believed for the -instant that she had put it on expressly, so that from underneath it she -might scrutinize me without being scrutinized herself. At the same -time it increased the presumption that there was a ghastly death's-head -lurking behind it. The divine Juliana as a grinning skull--the vision -hung there until it passed. Then it came to me that she WAS tremendously -old--so old that death might take her at any moment, before I had time -to get what I wanted from her. The next thought was a correction to -that; it lighted up the situation. She would die next week, she would -die tomorrow--then I could seize her papers. Meanwhile she sat there -neither moving nor speaking. She was very small and shrunken, bent -forward, with her hands in her lap. She was dressed in black, and her -head was wrapped in a piece of old black lace which showed no hair. - -My emotion keeping me silent she spoke first, and the remark she made -was exactly the most unexpected. - - - - -III - - -"Our house is very far from the center, but the little canal is very -comme il faut." - -"It's the sweetest corner of Venice and I can imagine nothing more -charming," I hastened to reply. The old lady's voice was very thin and -weak, but it had an agreeable, cultivated murmur, and there was wonder -in the thought that that individual note had been in Jeffrey Aspern's -ear. - -"Please to sit down there. I hear very well," she said quietly, as if -perhaps I had been shouting at her; and the chair she pointed to was -at a certain distance. I took possession of it, telling her that I -was perfectly aware that I had intruded, that I had not been properly -introduced and could only throw myself upon her indulgence. Perhaps the -other lady, the one I had had the honor of seeing the day before, would -have explained to her about the garden. That was literally what had -given me courage to take a step so unconventional. I had fallen in love -at sight with the whole place (she herself probably was so used to -it that she did not know the impression it was capable of making on a -stranger), and I had felt it was really a case to risk something. Was -her own kindness in receiving me a sign that I was not wholly out in -my calculation? It would render me extremely happy to think so. I could -give her my word of honor that I was a most respectable, inoffensive -person and that as an inmate they would be barely conscious of my -existence. I would conform to any regulations, any restrictions if they -would only let me enjoy the garden. Moreover I should be delighted to -give her references, guarantees; they would be of the very best, both in -Venice and in England as well as in America. - -She listened to me in perfect stillness and I felt that she was looking -at me with great attention, though I could see only the lower part of -her bleached and shriveled face. Independently of the refining process -of old age it had a delicacy which once must have been great. She had -been very fair, she had had a wonderful complexion. She was silent a -little after I had ceased speaking; then she inquired, "If you are so -fond of a garden why don't you go to terra firma, where there are so -many far better than this?" - -"Oh, it's the combination!" I answered, smiling; and then, with rather a -flight of fancy, "It's the idea of a garden in the middle of the sea." - -"It's not in the middle of the sea; you can't see the water." - -I stared a moment, wondering whether she wished to convict me of fraud. -"Can't see the water? Why, dear madam, I can come up to the very gate in -my boat." - -She appeared inconsequent, for she said vaguely in reply to this, "Yes, -if you have got a boat. I haven't any; it's many years since I have been -in one of the gondolas." She uttered these words as if the gondolas were -a curious faraway craft which she knew only by hearsay. - -"Let me assure you of the pleasure with which I would put mine at your -service!" I exclaimed. I had scarcely said this, however, before I -became aware that the speech was in questionable taste and might also do -me the injury of making me appear too eager, too possessed of a hidden -motive. But the old woman remained impenetrable and her attitude -bothered me by suggesting that she had a fuller vision of me than I -had of her. She gave me no thanks for my somewhat extravagant offer -but remarked that the lady I had seen the day before was her niece; -she would presently come in. She had asked her to stay away a little -on purpose, because she herself wished to see me at first alone. She -relapsed into silence, and I asked myself why she had judged this -necessary and what was coming yet; also whether I might venture on some -judicious remark in praise of her companion. I went so far as to say -that I should be delighted to see her again: she had been so very -courteous to me, considering how odd she must have thought me--a -declaration which drew from Miss Bordereau another of her whimsical -speeches. - -"She has very good manners; I bred her up myself!" I was on the point -of saying that that accounted for the easy grace of the niece, but I -arrested myself in time, and the next moment the old woman went on: -"I don't care who you may be--I don't want to know; it signifies very -little today." This had all the air of being a formula of dismissal, as -if her next words would be that I might take myself off now that she -had had the amusement of looking on the face of such a monster of -indiscretion. Therefore I was all the more surprised when she added, -with her soft, venerable quaver, "You may have as many rooms as you -like--if you will pay a good deal of money." - -I hesitated but for a single instant, long enough to ask myself what she -meant in particular by this condition. First it struck me that she must -have really a large sum in her mind; then I reasoned quickly that -her idea of a large sum would probably not correspond to my own. My -deliberation, I think, was not so visible as to diminish the promptitude -with which I replied, "I will pay with pleasure and of course in advance -whatever you may think is proper to ask me." - -"Well then, a thousand francs a month," she rejoined instantly, while -her baffling green shade continued to cover her attitude. - -The figure, as they say, was startling and my logic had been at fault. -The sum she had mentioned was, by the Venetian measure of such matters, -exceedingly large; there was many an old palace in an out-of-the-way -corner that I might on such terms have enjoyed by the year. But so far -as my small means allowed I was prepared to spend money, and my decision -was quickly taken. I would pay her with a smiling face what she asked, -but in that case I would give myself the compensation of extracting the -papers from her for nothing. Moreover if she had asked five times -as much I should have risen to the occasion; so odious would it have -appeared to me to stand chaffering with Aspern's Juliana. It was queer -enough to have a question of money with her at all. I assured her that -her views perfectly met my own and that on the morrow I should have the -pleasure of putting three months' rent into her hand. She received this -announcement with serenity and with no apparent sense that after all -it would be becoming of her to say that I ought to see the rooms first. -This did not occur to her and indeed her serenity was mainly what I -wanted. Our little bargain was just concluded when the door opened and -the younger lady appeared on the threshold. As soon as Miss Bordereau -saw her niece she cried out almost gaily, "He will give three -thousand--three thousand tomorrow!" - -Miss Tita stood still, with her patient eyes turning from one of us to -the other; then she inquired, scarcely above her breath, "Do you mean -francs?" - -"Did you mean francs or dollars?" the old woman asked of me at this. - -"I think francs were what you said," I answered, smiling. - -"That is very good," said Miss Tita, as if she had become conscious that -her own question might have looked overreaching. - -"What do YOU know? You are ignorant," Miss Bordereau remarked; not with -acerbity but with a strange, soft coldness. - -"Yes, of money--certainly of money!" Miss Tita hastened to exclaim. - -"I am sure you have your own branches of knowledge," I took the liberty -of saying, genially. There was something painful to me, somehow, in the -turn the conversation had taken, in the discussion of the rent. - -"She had a very good education when she was young. I looked into that -myself," said Miss Bordereau. Then she added, "But she has learned -nothing since." - -"I have always been with you," Miss Tita rejoined very mildly, and -evidently with no intention of making an epigram. - -"Yes, but for that!" her aunt declared with more satirical force. She -evidently meant that but for this her niece would never have got on -at all; the point of the observation however being lost on Miss Tita, -though she blushed at hearing her history revealed to a stranger. Miss -Bordereau went on, addressing herself to me: "And what time will you -come tomorrow with the money?" - -"The sooner the better. If it suits you I will come at noon." - -"I am always here but I have my hours," said the old woman, as if her -convenience were not to be taken for granted. - -"You mean the times when you receive?" - -"I never receive. But I will see you at noon, when you come with the -money." - -"Very good, I shall be punctual;" and I added, "May I shake hands with -you, on our contract?" I thought there ought to be some little form, it -would make me really feel easier, for I foresaw that there would be -no other. Besides, though Miss Bordereau could not today be called -personally attractive and there was something even in her wasted -antiquity that bade one stand at one's distance, I felt an irresistible -desire to hold in my own for a moment the hand that Jeffrey Aspern had -pressed. - -For a minute she made no answer, and I saw that my proposal failed to -meet with her approbation. She indulged in no movement of withdrawal, -which I half-expected; she only said coldly, "I belong to a time when -that was not the custom." - -I felt rather snubbed but I exclaimed good humoredly to Miss Tita, "Oh, -you will do as well!" I shook hands with her while she replied, with a -small flutter, "Yes, yes, to show it's all arranged!" - -"Shall you bring the money in gold?" Miss Bordereau demanded, as I was -turning to the door. - -I looked at her for a moment. "Aren't you a little afraid, after all, of -keeping such a sum as that in the house?" It was not that I was annoyed -at her avidity but I was really struck with the disparity between such a -treasure and such scanty means of guarding it. - -"Whom should I be afraid of if I am not afraid of you?" she asked with -her shrunken grimness. - -"Ah well," said I, laughing, "I shall be in point of fact a protector -and I will bring gold if you prefer." - -"Thank you," the old woman returned with dignity and with an inclination -of her head which evidently signified that I might depart. I passed out -of the room, reflecting that it would not be easy to circumvent her. As -I stood in the sala again I saw that Miss Tita had followed me, and I -supposed that as her aunt had neglected to suggest that I should take a -look at my quarters it was her purpose to repair the omission. But she -made no such suggestion; she only stood there with a dim, though not a -languid smile, and with an effect of irresponsible, incompetent youth -which was almost comically at variance with the faded facts of her -person. She was not infirm, like her aunt, but she struck me as still -more helpless, because her inefficiency was spiritual, which was not the -case with Miss Bordereau's. I waited to see if she would offer to -show me the rest of the house, but I did not precipitate the question, -inasmuch as my plan was from this moment to spend as much of my time as -possible in her society. I only observed at the end of a minute: - -"I have had better fortune than I hoped. It was very kind of her to see -me. Perhaps you said a good word for me." - -"It was the idea of the money," said Miss Tita. - -"And did you suggest that?" - -"I told her that you would perhaps give a good deal." - -"What made you think that?" - -"I told her I thought you were rich." - -"And what put that idea into your head?" - -"I don't know; the way you talked." - -"Dear me, I must talk differently now," I declared. "I'm sorry to say -it's not the case." - -"Well," said Miss Tita, "I think that in Venice the forestieri, in -general, often give a great deal for something that after all isn't -much." She appeared to make this remark with a comforting intention, -to wish to remind me that if I had been extravagant I was not really -foolishly singular. We walked together along the sala, and as I took its -magnificent measure I said to her that I was afraid it would not form -a part of my quartiere. Were my rooms by chance to be among those that -opened into it? "Not if you go above, on the second floor," she answered -with a little startled air, as if she had rather taken for granted I -would know my proper place. - -"And I infer that that's where your aunt would like me to be." - -"She said your apartments ought to be very distinct." - -"That certainly would be best." And I listened with respect while she -told me that up above I was free to take whatever I liked; that there -was another staircase, but only from the floor on which we stood, and -that to pass from it to the garden-story or to come up to my lodging I -should have in effect to cross the great hall. This was an immense -point gained; I foresaw that it would constitute my whole leverage in -my relations with the two ladies. When I asked Miss Tita how I was to -manage at present to find my way up she replied with an access of that -sociable shyness which constantly marked her manner. - -"Perhaps you can't. I don't see--unless I should go with you." She -evidently had not thought of this before. - -We ascended to the upper floor and visited a long succession of empty -rooms. The best of them looked over the garden; some of the others had a -view of the blue lagoon, above the opposite rough-tiled housetops. They -were all dusty and even a little disfigured with long neglect, but I saw -that by spending a few hundred francs I should be able to convert three -or four of them into a convenient habitation. My experiment was turning -out costly, yet now that I had all but taken possession I ceased to -allow this to trouble me. I mentioned to my companion a few of the -things that I should put in, but she replied rather more precipitately -than usual that I might do exactly what I liked; she seemed to wish to -notify me that the Misses Bordereau would take no overt interest in my -proceedings. I guessed that her aunt had instructed her to adopt this -tone, and I may as well say now that I came afterward to distinguish -perfectly (as I believed) between the speeches she made on her own -responsibility and those the old lady imposed upon her. She took -no notice of the unswept condition of the rooms and indulged in no -explanations nor apologies. I said to myself that this was a sign that -Juliana and her niece (disenchanting idea!) were untidy persons, with a -low Italian standard; but I afterward recognized that a lodger who had -forced an entrance had no locus standi as a critic. We looked out of a -good many windows, for there was nothing within the rooms to look at, -and still I wanted to linger. I asked her what several different objects -in the prospect might be, but in no case did she appear to know. She was -evidently not familiar with the view--it was as if she had not looked -at it for years--and I presently saw that she was too preoccupied with -something else to pretend to care for it. Suddenly she said--the remark -was not suggested: - -"I don't know whether it will make any difference to you, but the money -is for me." - -"The money?" - -"The money you are going to bring." - -"Why, you'll make me wish to stay here two or three years." I spoke as -benevolently as possible, though it had begun to act on my nerves that -with these women so associated with Aspern the pecuniary question should -constantly come back. - -"That would be very good for me," she replied, smiling. - -"You put me on my honor!" - -She looked as if she failed to understand this, but went on: "She wants -me to have more. She thinks she is going to die." - -"Ah, not soon, I hope!" I exclaimed with genuine feeling. I had -perfectly considered the possibility that she would destroy her papers -on the day she should feel her end really approach. I believed that she -would cling to them till then, and I think I had an idea that she -read Aspern's letters over every night or at least pressed them to her -withered lips. I would have given a good deal to have a glimpse of the -latter spectacle. I asked Miss Tita if the old lady were seriously ill, -and she replied that she was only very tired--she had lived so very, -very long. That was what she said herself--she wanted to die for a -change. Besides, all her friends were dead long ago; either they ought -to have remained or she ought to have gone. That was another thing her -aunt often said--she was not at all content. - -"But people don't die when they like, do they?" Miss Tita inquired. I -took the liberty of asking why, if there was actually enough money to -maintain both of them, there would not be more than enough in case of -her being left alone. She considered this difficult problem a moment -and then she said, "Oh, well, you know, she takes care of me. She thinks -that when I'm alone I shall be a great fool, I shall not know how to -manage." - -"I should have supposed that you took care of her. I'm afraid she is -very proud." - -"Why, have you discovered that already?" Miss Tita cried with the -glimmer of an illumination in her face. - -"I was shut up with her there for a considerable time, and she struck -me, she interested me extremely. It didn't take me long to make my -discovery. She won't have much to say to me while I'm here." - -"No, I don't think she will," my companion averred. - -"Do you suppose she has some suspicion of me?" - -Miss Tita's honest eyes gave me no sign that I had touched a mark. "I -shouldn't think so--letting you in after all so easily." - -"Oh, so easily! she has covered her risk. But where is it that one could -take an advantage of her?" - -"I oughtn't to tell you if I knew, ought I?" And Miss Tita added, before -I had time to reply to this, smiling dolefully, "Do you think we have -any weak points?" - -"That's exactly what I'm asking. You would only have to mention them for -me to respect them religiously." - -She looked at me, at this, with that air of timid but candid and even -gratified curiosity with which she had confronted me from the first; and -then she said, "There is nothing to tell. We are terribly quiet. I don't -know how the days pass. We have no life." - -"I wish I might think that I should bring you a little." - -"Oh, we know what we want," she went on. "It's all right." - -There were various things I desired to ask her: how in the world they -did live; whether they had any friends or visitors, any relations in -America or in other countries. But I judged such an inquiry would -be premature; I must leave it to a later chance. "Well, don't YOU be -proud," I contented myself with saying. "Don't hide from me altogether." - -"Oh, I must stay with my aunt," she returned, without looking at me. -And at the same moment, abruptly, without any ceremony of parting, she -quitted me and disappeared, leaving me to make my own way downstairs. I -remained a while longer, wandering about the bright desert (the sun was -pouring in) of the old house, thinking the situation over on the -spot. Not even the pattering little serva came to look after me, and I -reflected that after all this treatment showed confidence. - - - - -IV - - -Perhaps it did, but all the same, six weeks later, toward the middle of -June, the moment when Mrs. Prest undertook her annual migration, I had -made no measurable advance. I was obliged to confess to her that I had -no results to speak of. My first step had been unexpectedly rapid, but -there was no appearance that it would be followed by a second. I was -a thousand miles from taking tea with my hostesses--that privilege -of which, as I reminded Mrs. Prest, we both had had a vision. She -reproached me with wanting boldness, and I answered that even to be bold -you must have an opportunity: you may push on through a breach but -you can't batter down a dead wall. She answered that the breach I had -already made was big enough to admit an army and accused me of wasting -precious hours in whimpering in her salon when I ought to have been -carrying on the struggle in the field. It is true that I went to see her -very often, on the theory that it would console me (I freely expressed -my discouragement) for my want of success on my own premises. But I -began to perceive that it did not console me to be perpetually chaffed -for my scruples, especially when I was really so vigilant; and I was -rather glad when my derisive friend closed her house for the summer. She -had expected to gather amusement from the drama of my intercourse with -the Misses Bordereau, and she was disappointed that the intercourse, and -consequently the drama, had not come off. "They'll lead you on to your -ruin," she said before she left Venice. "They'll get all your money -without showing you a scrap." I think I settled down to my business with -more concentration after she had gone away. - -It was a fact that up to that time I had not, save on a single brief -occasion, had even a moment's contact with my queer hostesses. The -exception had occurred when I carried them according to my promise the -terrible three thousand francs. Then I found Miss Tita waiting for me in -the hall, and she took the money from my hand so that I did not see -her aunt. The old lady had promised to receive me, but she apparently -thought nothing of breaking that vow. The money was contained in a bag -of chamois leather, of respectable dimensions, which my banker had given -me, and Miss Tita had to make a big fist to receive it. This she did -with extreme solemnity, though I tried to treat the affair a little as a -joke. It was in no jocular strain, yet it was with simplicity, that she -inquired, weighing the money in her two palms: "Don't you think it's -too much?" To which I replied that that would depend upon the amount of -pleasure I should get for it. Hereupon she turned away from me quickly, -as she had done the day before, murmuring in a tone different from any -she had used hitherto: "Oh, pleasure, pleasure--there's no pleasure in -this house!" - -After this, for a long time, I never saw her, and I wondered that the -common chances of the day should not have helped us to meet. It could -only be evident that she was immensely on her guard against them; and in -addition to this the house was so big that for each other we were lost -in it. I used to look out for her hopefully as I crossed the sala in my -comings and goings, but I was not rewarded with a glimpse of the tail of -her dress. It was as if she never peeped out of her aunt's apartment. I -used to wonder what she did there week after week and year after year. -I had never encountered such a violent parti pris of seclusion; it was -more than keeping quiet--it was like hunted creatures feigning death. -The two ladies appeared to have no visitors whatever and no sort of -contact with the world. I judged at least that people could not have -come to the house and that Miss Tita could not have gone out without my -having some observation of it. I did what I disliked myself for doing -(reflecting that it was only once in a way): I questioned my servant -about their habits and let him divine that I should be interested in any -information he could pick up. But he picked up amazingly little for a -knowing Venetian: it must be added that where there is a perpetual fast -there are very few crumbs on the floor. His cleverness in other ways was -sufficient, if it was not quite all that I had attributed to him on -the occasion of my first interview with Miss Tita. He had helped my -gondolier to bring me round a boatload of furniture; and when these -articles had been carried to the top of the palace and distributed -according to our associated wisdom he organized my household with -such promptitude as was consistent with the fact that it was composed -exclusively of himself. He made me in short as comfortable as I could be -with my indifferent prospects. I should have been glad if he had fallen -in love with Miss Bordereau's maid or, failing this, had taken her -in aversion; either event might have brought about some kind of -catastrophe, and a catastrophe might have led to some parley. It was -my idea that she would have been sociable, and I myself on various -occasions saw her flit to and fro on domestic errands, so that I was -sure she was accessible. But I tasted of no gossip from that fountain, -and I afterward learned that Pasquale's affections were fixed upon an -object that made him heedless of other women. This was a young lady with -a powdered face, a yellow cotton gown, and much leisure, who used often -to come to see him. She practiced, at her convenience, the art of a -stringer of beads (these ornaments are made in Venice, in profusion; she -had her pocket full of them, and I used to find them on the floor of my -apartment), and kept an eye on the maiden in the house. It was not for -me of course to make the domestics tattle, and I never said a word to -Miss Bordereau's cook. - -It seemed to me a proof of the old lady's determination to have nothing -to do with me that she should never have sent me a receipt for my three -months' rent. For some days I looked out for it and then, when I had -given it up, I wasted a good deal of time in wondering what her reason -had been for neglecting so indispensable and familiar a form. At first I -was tempted to send her a reminder, after which I relinquished the idea -(against my judgment as to what was right in the particular case), on -the general ground of wishing to keep quiet. If Miss Bordereau -suspected me of ulterior aims she would suspect me less if I should -be businesslike, and yet I consented not to be so. It was possible she -intended her omission as an impertinence, a visible irony, to show -how she could overreach people who attempted to overreach her. On that -hypothesis it was well to let her see that one did not notice her little -tricks. The real reading of the matter, I afterward perceived, was -simply the poor old woman's desire to emphasize the fact that I was in -the enjoyment of a favor as rigidly limited as it had been liberally -bestowed. She had given me part of her house, and now she would not give -me even a morsel of paper with her name on it. Let me say that even -at first this did not make me too miserable, for the whole episode was -essentially delightful to me. I foresaw that I should have a summer -after my own literary heart, and the sense of holding my opportunity -was much greater than the sense of losing it. There could be no Venetian -business without patience, and since I adored the place I was much more -in the spirit of it for having laid in a large provision. That spirit -kept me perpetual company and seemed to look out at me from the revived -immortal face--in which all his genius shone--of the great poet who was -my prompter. I had invoked him and he had come; he hovered before me -half the time; it was as if his bright ghost had returned to earth to -tell me that he regarded the affair as his own no less than mine and -that we should see it fraternally, cheerfully to a conclusion. It was -as if he had said, "Poor dear, be easy with her; she has some natural -prejudices; only give her time. Strange as it may appear to you she was -very attractive in 1820. Meanwhile are we not in Venice together, and -what better place is there for the meeting of dear friends? See how it -glows with the advancing summer; how the sky and the sea and the rosy -air and the marble of the palaces all shimmer and melt together." My -eccentric private errand became a part of the general romance and the -general glory--I felt even a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity -with all those who in the past had been in the service of art. They -had worked for beauty, for a devotion; and what else was I doing? That -element was in everything that Jeffrey Aspern had written, and I was -only bringing it to the light. - -I lingered in the sala when I went to and fro; I used to watch--as long -as I thought decent--the door that led to Miss Bordereau's part of the -house. A person observing me might have supposed I was trying to cast a -spell upon it or attempting some odd experiment in hypnotism. But I was -only praying it would open or thinking what treasure probably lurked -behind it. I hold it singular, as I look back, that I should never -have doubted for a moment that the sacred relics were there; never have -failed to feel a certain joy at being under the same roof with them. -After all they were under my hand--they had not escaped me yet; and they -made my life continuous, in a fashion, with the illustrious life they -had touched at the other end. I lost myself in this satisfaction to the -point of assuming--in my quiet extravagance--that poor Miss Tita also -went back, went back, as I used to phrase it. She did indeed, the gentle -spinster, but not quite so far as Jeffrey Aspern, who was simply -hearsay to her, quite as he was to me. Only she had lived for years with -Juliana, she had seen and handled the papers and (even though she was -stupid) some esoteric knowledge had rubbed off on her. That was what the -old woman represented--esoteric knowledge; and this was the idea with -which my editorial heart used to thrill. It literally beat faster often, -of an evening, when I had been out, as I stopped with my candle in the -re-echoing hall on my way up to bed. It was as if at such a moment as -that, in the stillness, after the long contradiction of the day, Miss -Bordereau's secrets were in the air, the wonder of her survival more -palpable. These were the acute impressions. I had them in another form, -with more of a certain sort of reciprocity, during the hours that I sat -in the garden looking up over the top of my book at the closed windows -of my hostess. In these windows no sign of life ever appeared; it was -as if, for fear of my catching a glimpse of them, the two ladies -passed their days in the dark. But this only proved to me that they had -something to conceal; which was what I had wished to demonstrate. Their -motionless shutters became as expressive as eyes consciously closed, -and I took comfort in thinking that at all events through invisible -themselves they saw me between the lashes. - -I made a point of spending as much time as possible in the garden, to -justify the picture I had originally given of my horticultural passion. -And I not only spent time, but (hang it! as I said) I spent money. As -soon as I had got my rooms arranged and could give the proper thought to -the matter I surveyed the place with a clever expert and made terms for -having it put in order. I was sorry to do this, for personally I liked -it better as it was, with its weeds and its wild, rough tangle, its -sweet, characteristic Venetian shabbiness. I had to be consistent, to -keep my promise that I would smother the house in flowers. Moreover -I formed this graceful project that by flowers I would make my way--I -would succeed by big nosegays. I would batter the old women with -lilies--I would bombard their citadel with roses. Their door would have -to yield to the pressure when a mountain of carnations should be piled -up against it. The place in truth had been brutally neglected. The -Venetian capacity for dawdling is of the largest, and for a good -many days unlimited litter was all my gardener had to show for his -ministrations. There was a great digging of holes and carting about -of earth, and after a while I grew so impatient that I had thoughts of -sending for my bouquets to the nearest stand. But I reflected that the -ladies would see through the chinks of their shutters that they must -have been bought and might make up their minds from this that I was a -humbug. So I composed myself and finally, though the delay was long, -perceived some appearances of bloom. This encouraged me, and I waited -serenely enough till they multiplied. Meanwhile the real summer days -arrived and began to pass, and as I look back upon them they seem to me -almost the happiest of my life. I took more and more care to be in the -garden whenever it was not too hot. I had an arbor arranged and a -low table and an armchair put into it; and I carried out books and -portfolios (I had always some business of writing in hand), and worked -and waited and mused and hoped, while the golden hours elapsed and the -plants drank in the light and the inscrutable old palace turned pale and -then, as the day waned, began to flush in it and my papers rustled in -the wandering breeze of the Adriatic. - -Considering how little satisfaction I got from it at first it is -remarkable that I should not have grown more tired of wondering what -mystic rites of ennui the Misses Bordereau celebrated in their darkened -rooms; whether this had always been the tenor of their life and how in -previous years they had escaped elbowing their neighbors. It was clear -that they must have had other habits and other circumstances; that they -must once have been young or at least middle-aged. There was no end -to the questions it was possible to ask about them and no end to -the answers it was not possible to frame. I had known many of my -country-people in Europe and was familiar with the strange ways they -were liable to take up there; but the Misses Bordereau formed altogether -a new type of the American absentee. Indeed it was plain that the -American name had ceased to have any application to them--I had seen -this in the ten minutes I spent in the old woman's room. You could -never have said whence they came, from the appearance of either of them; -wherever it was they had long ago dropped the local accent and fashion. -There was nothing in them that one recognized, and putting the question -of speech aside they might have been Norwegians or Spaniards. Miss -Bordereau, after all, had been in Europe nearly three-quarters of a -century; it appeared by some verses addressed to her by Aspern on the -occasion of his own second absence from America--verses of which Cumnor -and I had after infinite conjecture established solidly enough the -date--that she was even then, as a girl of twenty, on the foreign side -of the sea. There was an implication in the poem (I hope not just for -the phrase) that he had come back for her sake. We had no real light -upon her circumstances at that moment, any more than we had upon her -origin, which we believed to be of the sort usually spoken of as modest. -Cumnor had a theory that she had been a governess in some family in -which the poet visited and that, in consequence of her position, there -was from the first something unavowed, or rather something positively -clandestine, in their relations. I on the other hand had hatched a -little romance according to which she was the daughter of an artist, a -painter or a sculptor, who had left the western world when the century -was fresh, to study in the ancient schools. It was essential to my -hypothesis that this amiable man should have lost his wife, should have -been poor and unsuccessful and should have had a second daughter, of a -disposition quite different from Juliana's. It was also indispensable -that he should have been accompanied to Europe by these young ladies and -should have established himself there for the remainder of a struggling, -saddened life. There was a further implication that Miss Bordereau -had had in her youth a perverse and adventurous, albeit a generous and -fascinating character, and that she had passed through some singular -vicissitudes. By what passions had she been ravaged, by what sufferings -had she been blanched, what store of memories had she laid away for the -monotonous future? - -I asked myself these things as I sat spinning theories about her in my -arbor and the bees droned in the flowers. It was incontestable that, -whether for right or for wrong, most readers of certain of Aspern's -poems (poems not as ambiguous as the sonnets--scarcely more divine, I -think--of Shakespeare) had taken for granted that Juliana had not always -adhered to the steep footway of renunciation. There hovered about her -name a perfume of reckless passion, an intimation that she had not been -exactly as the respectable young person in general. Was this a sign that -her singer had betrayed her, had given her away, as we say nowadays, to -posterity? Certain it is that it would have been difficult to put one's -finger on the passage in which her fair fame suffered an imputation. -Moreover was not any fame fair enough that was so sure of duration and -was associated with works immortal through their beauty? It was a -part of my idea that the young lady had had a foreign lover (and an -unedifying tragical rupture) before her meeting with Jeffrey Aspern. -She had lived with her father and sister in a queer old-fashioned, -expatriated, artistic Bohemia, in the days when the aesthetic was only -the academic and the painters who knew the best models for a contadina -and pifferaro wore peaked hats and long hair. It was a society less -furnished than the coteries of today (in its ignorance of the wonderful -chances, the opportunities of the early bird, with which its path was -strewn), with tatters of old stuff and fragments of old crockery; so -that Miss Bordereau appeared not to have picked up or have inherited -many objects of importance. There was no enviable bric-a-brac, with its -provoking legend of cheapness, in the room in which I had seen her. Such -a fact as that suggested bareness, but nonetheless it worked happily -into the sentimental interest I had always taken in the early movements -of my countrymen as visitors to Europe. When Americans went abroad in -1820 there was something romantic, almost heroic in it, as compared with -the perpetual ferryings of the present hour, when photography and other -conveniences have annihilated surprise. Miss Bordereau sailed with -her family on a tossing brig, in the days of long voyages and sharp -differences; she had her emotions on the top of yellow diligences, -passed the night at inns where she dreamed of travelers' tales, and was -struck, on reaching the Eternal City, with the elegance of Roman pearls -and scarfs. There was something touching to me in all that, and my -imagination frequently went back to the period. If Miss Bordereau -carried it there of course Jeffrey Aspern at other times had done so a -great deal more. It was a much more important fact, if one were looking -at his genius critically, that he had lived in the days before the -general transfusion. It had happened to me to regret that he had known -Europe at all; I should have liked to see what he would have written -without that experience, by which he had incontestably been enriched. -But as his fate had ordered otherwise I went with him--I tried to judge -how the Old World would have struck him. It was not only there, however, -that I watched him; the relations he had entertained with the new had -even a livelier interest. His own country after all had had most of his -life, and his muse, as they said at that time, was essentially American. -That was originally what I had loved him for: that at a period when -our native land was nude and crude and provincial, when the famous -"atmosphere" it is supposed to lack was not even missed, when literature -was lonely there and art and form almost impossible, he had found means -to live and write like one of the first; to be free and general and not -at all afraid; to feel, understand, and express everything. - - - - -V - - -I was seldom at home in the evening, for when I attempted to occupy -myself in my apartments the lamplight brought in a swarm of noxious -insects, and it was too hot for closed windows. Accordingly I spent the -late hours either on the water (the moonlight of Venice is famous), or -in the splendid square which serves as a vast forecourt to the strange -old basilica of Saint Mark. I sat in front of Florian's cafe, eating -ices, listening to music, talking with acquaintances: the traveler will -remember how the immense cluster of tables and little chairs stretches -like a promontory into the smooth lake of the Piazza. The whole place, -of a summer's evening, under the stars and with all the lamps, all the -voices and light footsteps on marble (the only sounds of the arcades -that enclose it), is like an open-air saloon dedicated to cooling drinks -and to a still finer degustation--that of the exquisite impressions -received during the day. When I did not prefer to keep mine to myself -there was always a stray tourist, disencumbered of his Baedeker, to -discuss them with, or some domesticated painter rejoicing in the return -of the season of strong effects. The wonderful church, with its -low domes and bristling embroideries, the mystery of its mosaic and -sculpture, looking ghostly in the tempered gloom, and the sea breeze -passed between the twin columns of the Piazzetta, the lintels of a door -no longer guarded, as gently as if a rich curtain were swaying there. I -used sometimes on these occasions to think of the Misses Bordereau and -of the pity of their being shut up in apartments which in the Venetian -July even Venetian vastness did not prevent from being stuffy. Their -life seemed miles away from the life of the Piazza, and no doubt it was -really too late to make the austere Juliana change her habits. But -poor Miss Tita would have enjoyed one of Florian's ices, I was sure; -sometimes I even had thoughts of carrying one home to her. Fortunately -my patience bore fruit, and I was not obliged to do anything so -ridiculous. - -One evening about the middle of July I came in earlier than usual--I -forget what chance had led to this--and instead of going up to my -quarters made my way into the garden. The temperature was very high; it -was such a night as one would gladly have spent in the open air, and -I was in no hurry to go to bed. I had floated home in my gondola, -listening to the slow splash of the oar in the narrow dark canals, and -now the only thought that solicited me was the vague reflection that it -would be pleasant to recline at one's length in the fragrant darkness -on a garden bench. The odor of the canal was doubtless at the bottom -of that aspiration and the breath of the garden, as I entered it, gave -consistency to my purpose. It was delicious--just such an air as must -have trembled with Romeo's vows when he stood among the flowers and -raised his arms to his mistress's balcony. I looked at the windows of -the palace to see if by chance the example of Verona (Verona being -not far off) had been followed; but everything was dim, as usual, and -everything was still. Juliana, on summer nights in her youth, might have -murmured down from open windows at Jeffrey Aspern, but Miss Tita was -not a poet's mistress any more than I was a poet. This however did not -prevent my gratification from being great as I became aware on reaching -the end of the garden that Miss Tita was seated in my little bower. At -first I only made out an indistinct figure, not in the least counting on -such an overture from one of my hostesses; it even occurred to me that -some sentimental maidservant had stolen in to keep a tryst with her -sweetheart. I was going to turn away, not to frighten her, when the -figure rose to its height and I recognized Miss Bordereau's niece. I -must do myself the justice to say that I did not wish to frighten her -either, and much as I had longed for some such accident I should have -been capable of retreating. It was as if I had laid a trap for her -by coming home earlier than usual and adding to that eccentricity -by creeping into the garden. As she rose she spoke to me, and then I -reflected that perhaps, secure in my almost inveterate absence, it was -her nightly practice to take a lonely airing. There was no trap, in -truth, because I had had no suspicion. At first I took for granted that -the words she uttered expressed discomfiture at my arrival; but as she -repeated them--I had not caught them clearly--I had the surprise of -hearing her say, "Oh, dear, I'm so very glad you've come!" She and her -aunt had in common the property of unexpected speeches. She came out of -the arbor almost as if she were going to throw herself into my arms. - -I hasten to add that she did nothing of the kind; she did not even shake -hands with me. It was a gratification to her to see me and presently she -told me why--because she was nervous when she was out-of-doors at night -alone. The plants and bushes looked so strange in the dark, and there -were all sorts of queer sounds--she could not tell what they were--like -the noises of animals. She stood close to me, looking about her with an -air of greater security but without any demonstration of interest in me -as an individual. Then I guessed that nocturnal prowlings were not in -the least her habit, and I was also reminded (I had been struck with the -circumstance in talking with her before I took possession) that it was -impossible to overestimate her simplicity. - -"You speak as if you were lost in the backwoods," I said, laughing. "How -you manage to keep out of this charming place when you have only three -steps to take to get into it is more than I have yet been able to -discover. You hide away mighty well so long as I am on the premises, I -know; but I had a hope that you peeped out a little at other times. You -and your poor aunt are worse off than Carmelite nuns in their cells. -Should you mind telling me how you exist without air, without exercise, -without any sort of human contact? I don't see how you carry on the -common business of life." - -She looked at me as if I were talking some strange tongue, and her -answer was so little of an answer that I was considerably irritated. -"We go to bed very early--earlier than you would believe." I was on the -point of saying that this only deepened the mystery when she gave me -some relief by adding, "Before you came we were not so private. But I -never have been out at night." - -"Never in these fragrant alleys, blooming here under your nose?" - -"Ah," said Miss Tita, "they were never nice till now!" There was an -unmistakable reference in this and a flattering comparison, so that -it seemed to me I had gained a small advantage. As it would help me to -follow it up to establish a sort of grievance I asked her why, since -she thought my garden nice, she had never thanked me in any way for the -flowers I had been sending up in such quantities for the previous three -weeks. I had not been discouraged--there had been, as she would have -observed, a daily armful; but I had been brought up in the common forms -and a word of recognition now and then would have touched me in the -right place. - -"Why I didn't know they were for me!" - -"They were for both of you. Why should I make a difference?" - -Miss Tita reflected as if she might by thinking of a reason for that, -but she failed to produce one. Instead of this she asked abruptly, "Why -in the world do you want to know us?" - -"I ought after all to make a difference," I replied. "That question is -your aunt's; it isn't yours. You wouldn't ask it if you hadn't been put -up to it." - -"She didn't tell me to ask you," Miss Tita replied without confusion; -she was the oddest mixture of the shrinking and the direct. - -"Well, she has often wondered about it herself and expressed her wonder -to you. She has insisted on it, so that she has put the idea into your -head that I am insufferably pushing. Upon my word I think I have -been very discreet. And how completely your aunt must have lost every -tradition of sociability, to see anything out of the way in the idea -that respectable intelligent people, living as we do under the same -roof, should occasionally exchange a remark! What could be more natural? -We are of the same country, and we have at least some of the same -tastes, since, like you, I am intensely fond of Venice." - -My interlocutress appeared incapable of grasping more than one clause -in any proposition, and she declared quickly, eagerly, as if she were -answering my whole speech: "I am not in the least fond of Venice. I -should like to go far away!" - -"Has she always kept you back so?" I went on, to show her that I could -be as irrelevant as herself. - -"She told me to come out tonight; she has told me very often," said Miss -Tita. "It is I who wouldn't come. I don't like to leave her." - -"Is she too weak, is she failing?" I demanded, with more emotion, I -think, than I intended to show. I judged this by the way her eyes rested -upon me in the darkness. It embarrassed me a little, and to turn -the matter off I continued genially: "Do let us sit down together -comfortably somewhere, and you will tell me all about her." - -Miss Tita made no resistance to this. We found a bench less secluded, -less confidential, as it were, than the one in the arbor; and we were -still sitting there when I heard midnight ring out from those clear -bells of Venice which vibrate with a solemnity of their own over the -lagoon and hold the air so much more than the chimes of other places. -We were together more than an hour, and our interview gave, as it struck -me, a great lift to my undertaking. Miss Tita accepted the situation -without a protest; she had avoided me for three months, yet now she -treated me almost as if these three months had made me an old friend. If -I had chosen I might have inferred from this that though she had avoided -me she had given a good deal of consideration to doing so. She paid no -attention to the flight of time--never worried at my keeping her so long -away from her aunt. She talked freely, answering questions and asking -them and not even taking advantage of certain longish pauses with which -they inevitably alternated to say she thought she had better go in. It -was almost as if she were waiting for something--something I might say -to her--and intended to give me my opportunity. I was the more struck -by this as she told me that her aunt had been less well for a good many -days and in a way that was rather new. She was weaker; at moments it -seemed as if she had no strength at all; yet more than ever before she -wished to be left alone. That was why she had told her to come out--not -even to remain in her own room, which was alongside; she said her niece -irritated her, made her nervous. She sat still for hours together, as -if she were asleep; she had always done that, musing and dozing; but at -such times formerly she gave at intervals some small sign of life, of -interest, liking her companion to be near her with her work. Miss Tita -confided to me that at present her aunt was so motionless that she -sometimes feared she was dead; moreover she took hardly any food--one -couldn't see what she lived on. The great thing was that she still on -most days got up; the serious job was to dress her, to wheel her out of -her bedroom. She clung to as many of her old habits as possible and she -had always, little company as they had received for years, made a point -of sitting in the parlor. - -I scarcely knew what to think of all this--of Miss Tita's sudden -conversion to sociability and of the strange circumstance that the more -the old lady appeared to decline toward her end the less she should -desire to be looked after. The story did not hang together, and I even -asked myself whether it were not a trap laid for me, the result of a -design to make me show my hand. I could not have told why my companions -(as they could only by courtesy be called) should have this purpose--why -they should try to trip up so lucrative a lodger. At any rate I kept on -my guard, so that Miss Tita should not have occasion again to ask me if -I had an arriere-pensee. Poor woman, before we parted for the night my -mind was at rest as to HER capacity for entertaining one. - -She told me more about their affairs than I had hoped; there was no -need to be prying, for it evidently drew her out simply to feel that I -listened, that I cared. She ceased wondering why I cared, and at last, -as she spoke of the brilliant life they had led years before, she almost -chattered. It was Miss Tita who judged it brilliant; she said that when -they first came to live in Venice, years and years before (I saw that -her mind was essentially vague about dates and the order in which events -had occurred), there was scarcely a week that they had not some visitor -or did not make some delightful passeggio in the city. They had seen all -the curiosities; they had even been to the Lido in a boat (she spoke -as if I might think there was a way on foot); they had had a collation -there, brought in three baskets and spread out on the grass. I asked -her what people they had known and she said, Oh! very nice ones--the -Cavaliere Bombicci and the Contessa Altemura, with whom they had had a -great friendship. Also English people--the Churtons and the Goldies and -Mrs. Stock-Stock, whom they had loved dearly; she was dead and gone, -poor dear. That was the case with most of their pleasant circle (this -expression was Miss Tita's own), though a few were left, which was a -wonder considering how they had neglected them. She mentioned the names -of two or three Venetian old women; of a certain doctor, very clever, -who was so kind--he came as a friend, he had really given up practice; -of the avvocato Pochintesta, who wrote beautiful poems and had addressed -one to her aunt. These people came to see them without fail every year, -usually at the capo d'anno, and of old her aunt used to make them some -little present--her aunt and she together: small things that she, Miss -Tita, made herself, like paper lampshades or mats for the decanters of -wine at dinner or those woolen things that in cold weather were worn -on the wrists. The last few years there had not been many presents; she -could not think what to make, and her aunt had lost her interest and -never suggested. But the people came all the same; if the Venetians -liked you once they liked you forever. - -There was something affecting in the good faith of this sketch of former -social glories; the picnic at the Lido had remained vivid through the -ages, and poor Miss Tita evidently was of the impression that she had -had a brilliant youth. She had in fact had a glimpse of the Venetian -world in its gossiping, home-keeping, parsimonious, professional walks; -for I observed for the first time that she had acquired by contact -something of the trick of the familiar, soft-sounding, almost infantile -speech of the place. I judged that she had imbibed this invertebrate -dialect from the natural way the names of things and people--mostly -purely local--rose to her lips. If she knew little of what they -represented she knew still less of anything else. Her aunt had drawn -in--her failing interest in the table mats and lampshades was a sign of -that--and she had not been able to mingle in society or to entertain -it alone; so that the matter of her reminiscences struck one as an old -world altogether. If she had not been so decent her references would -have seemed to carry one back to the queer rococo Venice of Casanova. -I found myself falling into the error of thinking of her too as one of -Jeffrey Aspern's contemporaries; this came from her having so little in -common with my own. It was possible, I said to myself, that she had not -even heard of him; it might very well be that Juliana had not cared to -lift even for her the veil that covered the temple of her youth. In this -case she perhaps would not know of the existence of the papers, and I -welcomed that presumption--it made me feel more safe with her--until -I remembered that we had believed the letter of disavowal received by -Cumnor to be in the handwriting of the niece. If it had been dictated -to her she had of course to know what it was about; yet after all the -effect of it was to repudiate the idea of any connection with the poet. -I held it probable at all events that Miss Tita had not read a word of -his poetry. Moreover if, with her companion, she had always escaped the -interviewer there was little occasion for her having got it into her -head that people were "after" the letters. People had not been after -them, inasmuch as they had not heard of them; and Cumnor's fruitless -feeler would have been a solitary accident. - -When midnight sounded Miss Tita got up; but she stopped at the door of -the house only after she had wandered two or three times with me round -the garden. "When shall I see you again?" I asked before she went in; to -which she replied with promptness that she should like to come out the -next night. She added however that she should not come--she was so far -from doing everything she liked. - -"You might do a few things that _I_ like," I said with a sigh. - -"Oh, you--I don't believe you!" she murmured at this, looking at me with -her simple solemnity. - -"Why don't you believe me?" - -"Because I don't understand you." - -"That is just the sort of occasion to have faith." I could not say more, -though I should have liked to, as I saw that I only mystified her; for -I had no wish to have it on my conscience that I might pass for -having made love to her. Nothing less should I have seemed to do had -I continued to beg a lady to "believe in me" in an Italian garden on -a midsummer night. There was some merit in my scruples, for Miss Tita -lingered and lingered: I perceived that she felt that she should -not really soon come down again and wished therefore to protract the -present. She insisted too on making the talk between us personal to -ourselves; and altogether her behavior was such as would have been -possible only to a completely innocent woman. - -"I shall like the flowers better now that I know they are also meant for -me." - -"How could you have doubted it? If you will tell me the kind you like -best I will send a double lot of them." - -"Oh, I like them all best!" Then she went on, familiarly: "Shall you -study--shall you read and write--when you go up to your rooms?" - -"I don't do that at night, at this season. The lamplight brings in the -animals." - -"You might have known that when you came." - -"I did know it!" - -"And in winter do you work at night?" - -"I read a good deal, but I don't often write." She listened as if these -details had a rare interest, and suddenly a temptation quite at variance -with the prudence I had been teaching myself associated itself with her -plain, mild face. Ah yes, she was safe and I could make her safer! -It seemed to me from one moment to another that I could not wait -longer--that I really must take a sounding. So I went on: "In general -before I go to sleep--very often in bed (it's a bad habit, but I confess -to it), I read some great poet. In nine cases out of ten it's a volume -of Jeffrey Aspern." - -I watched her well as I pronounced that name but I saw nothing -wonderful. Why should I indeed--was not Jeffrey Aspern the property of -the human race? - -"Oh, we read him--we HAVE read him," she quietly replied. - -"He is my poet of poets--I know him almost by heart." - -For an instant Miss Tita hesitated; then her sociability was too much -for her. - -"Oh, by heart--that's nothing!" she murmured, smiling. "My aunt used to -know him--to know him"--she paused an instant and I wondered what she -was going to say--"to know him as a visitor." - -"As a visitor?" I repeated, staring. - -"He used to call on her and take her out." - -I continued to stare. "My dear lady, he died a hundred years ago!" - -"Well," she said mirthfully, "my aunt is a hundred and fifty." - -"Mercy on us!" I exclaimed; "why didn't you tell me before? I should -like so to ask her about him." - -"She wouldn't care for that--she wouldn't tell you," Miss Tita replied. - -"I don't care what she cares for! She MUST tell me--it's not a chance to -be lost." - -"Oh, you should have come twenty years ago: then she still talked about -him." - -"And what did she say?" I asked eagerly. - -"I don't know--that he liked her immensely." - -"And she--didn't she like him?" - -"She said he was a god." Miss Tita gave me this information flatly, -without expression; her tone might have made it a piece of trivial -gossip. But it stirred me deeply as she dropped the words into the -summer night; it seemed such a direct testimony. - -"Fancy, fancy!" I murmured. And then, "Tell me this, please--has she got -a portrait of him? They are distressingly rare." - -"A portrait? I don't know," said Miss Tita; and now there was -discomfiture in her face. "Well, good night!" she added; and she turned -into the house. - -I accompanied her into the wide, dusky, stone-paved passage which on the -ground floor corresponded with our grand sala. It opened at one end into -the garden, at the other upon the canal, and was lighted now only by the -small lamp that was always left for me to take up as I went to bed. An -extinguished candle which Miss Tita apparently had brought down with her -stood on the same table with it. "Good night, good night!" I replied, -keeping beside her as she went to get her light. "Surely you would know, -shouldn't you, if she had one?" - -"If she had what?" the poor lady asked, looking at me queerly over the -flame of her candle. - -"A portrait of the god. I don't know what I wouldn't give to see it." - -"I don't know what she has got. She keeps her things locked up." And -Miss Tita went away, toward the staircase, with the sense evidently that -she had said too much. - -I let her go--I wished not to frighten her--and I contented myself with -remarking that Miss Bordereau would not have locked up such a glorious -possession as that--a thing a person would be proud of and hang up in a -prominent place on the parlor wall. Therefore of course she had not any -portrait. Miss Tita made no direct answer to this and, candle in hand, -with her back to me, ascended two or three stairs. Then she stopped -short and turned round, looking at me across the dusky space. - -"Do you write--do you write?" There was a shake in her voice--she could -scarcely bring out what she wanted to ask. - -"Do I write? Oh, don't speak of my writing on the same day with -Aspern's!" - -"Do you write about HIM--do you pry into his life?" - -"Ah, that's your aunt's question; it can't be yours!" I said, in a tone -of slightly wounded sensibility. - -"All the more reason then that you should answer it. Do you, please?" - -I thought I had allowed for the falsehoods I should have to tell; but -I found that in fact when it came to the point I had not. Besides, now -that I had an opening there was a kind of relief in being frank. Lastly -(it was perhaps fanciful, even fatuous), I guessed that Miss Tita -personally would not in the last resort be less my friend. So after a -moment's hesitation I answered, "Yes, I have written about him and I am -looking for more material. In heaven's name have you got any?" - -"Santo Dio!" she exclaimed, without heeding my question; and she hurried -upstairs and out of sight. I might count upon her in the last resort, -but for the present she was visibly alarmed. The proof of it was that -she began to hide again, so that for a fortnight I never beheld her. I -found my patience ebbing and after four or five days of this I told the -gardener to stop the flowers. - - - - -VI - - -One afternoon, as I came down from my quarters to go out, I found Miss -Tita in the sala: it was our first encounter on that ground since I had -come to the house. She put on no air of being there by accident; there -was an ignorance of such arts in her angular, diffident directness. That -I might be quite sure she was waiting for me she informed me of the fact -and told me that Miss Bordereau wished to see me: she would take me into -the room at that moment if I had time. If I had been late for a love -tryst I would have stayed for this, and I quickly signified that I -should be delighted to wait upon the old lady. "She wants to talk with -you--to know you," Miss Tita said, smiling as if she herself appreciated -that idea; and she led me to the door of her aunt's apartment. I -stopped her a moment before she had opened it, looking at her with some -curiosity. I told her that this was a great satisfaction to me and a -great honor; but all the same I should like to ask what had made -Miss Bordereau change so suddenly. It was only the other day that -she wouldn't suffer me near her. Miss Tita was not embarrassed by my -question; she had as many little unexpected serenities as if she told -fibs, but the odd part of them was that they had on the contrary their -source in her truthfulness. "Oh, my aunt changes," she answered; "it's -so terribly dull--I suppose she's tired." - -"But you told me that she wanted more and more to be alone." - -Poor Miss Tita colored, as if she found me over-insistent. "Well, if -you don't believe she wants to see you--I haven't invented it! I think -people often are capricious when they are very old." - -"That's perfectly true. I only wanted to be clear as to whether you have -repeated to her what I told you the other night." - -"What you told me?" - -"About Jeffrey Aspern--that I am looking for materials." - -"If I had told her do you think she would have sent for you?" - -"That's exactly what I want to know. If she wants to keep him to herself -she might have sent for me to tell me so." - -"She won't speak of him," said Miss Tita. Then as she opened the door -she added in a lower tone, "I have told her nothing." - -The old woman was sitting in the same place in which I had seen her -last, in the same position, with the same mystifying bandage over her -eyes. her welcome was to turn her almost invisible face to me and show -me that while she sat silent she saw me clearly. I made no motion to -shake hands with her; I felt too well on this occasion that that was out -of place forever. It had been sufficiently enjoined upon me that she was -too sacred for that sort of reciprocity--too venerable to touch. There -was something so grim in her aspect (it was partly the accident of her -green shade), as I stood there to be measured, that I ceased on the spot -to feel any doubt as to her knowing my secret, though I did not in the -least suspect that Miss Tita had not just spoken the truth. She had not -betrayed me, but the old woman's brooding instinct had served her; -she had turned me over and over in the long, still hours, and she had -guessed. The worst of it was that she looked terribly like an old woman -who at a pinch would burn her papers. Miss Tita pushed a chair forward, -saying to me, "This will be a good place for you to sit." As I took -possession of it I asked after Miss Bordereau's health; expressed the -hope that in spite of the very hot weather it was satisfactory. She -replied that it was good enough--good enough; that it was a great thing -to be alive. - -"Oh, as to that, it depends upon what you compare it with!" I exclaimed, -laughing. - -"I don't compare--I don't compare. If I did that I should have given -everything up long ago." - -I liked to think that this was a subtle allusion to the rapture she had -known in the society of Jeffrey Aspern--though it was true that such an -allusion would have accorded ill with the wish I imputed to her to keep -him buried in her soul. What it accorded with was my constant conviction -that no human being had ever had a more delightful social gift than his, -and what it seemed to convey was that nothing in the world was worth -speaking of if one pretended to speak of that. But one did not! Miss -Tita sat down beside her aunt, looking as if she had reason to believe -some very remarkable conversation would come off between us. - -"It's about the beautiful flowers," said the old lady; "you sent us so -many--I ought to have thanked you for them before. But I don't write -letters and I receive only at long intervals." - -She had not thanked me while the flowers continued to come, but she -departed from her custom so far as to send for me as soon as she began -to fear that they would not come any more. I noted this; I remembered -what an acquisitive propensity she had shown when it was a question of -extracting gold from me, and I privately rejoiced at the happy thought I -had had in suspending my tribute. She had missed it and she was willing -to make a concession to bring it back. At the first sign of this -concession I could only go to meet her. "I am afraid you have not -had many, of late, but they shall begin again immediately--tomorrow, -tonight." - -"Oh, do send us some tonight!" Miss Tita cried, as if it were an immense -circumstance. - -"What else should you do with them? It isn't a manly taste to make a -bower of your room," the old woman remarked. - -"I don't make a bower of my room, but I am exceedingly fond of growing -flowers, of watching their ways. There is nothing unmanly in that: it -has been the amusement of philosophers, of statesmen in retirement; even -I think of great captains." - -"I suppose you know you can sell them--those you don't use," Miss -Bordereau went on. "I daresay they wouldn't give you much for them; -still, you could make a bargain." - -"Oh, I have never made a bargain, as you ought to know. My gardener -disposes of them and I ask no questions." - -"I would ask a few, I can promise you!" said Miss Bordereau; and it was -the first time I had heard her laugh. I could not get used to the -idea that this vision of pecuniary profit was what drew out the divine -Juliana most. - -"Come into the garden yourself and pick them; come as often as you like; -come every day. They are all for you," I pursued, addressing Miss Tita -and carrying off this veracious statement by treating it as an innocent -joke. "I can't imagine why she doesn't come down," I added, for Miss -Bordereau's benefit. - -"You must make her come; you must come up and fetch her," said the old -woman, to my stupefaction. "That odd thing you have made in the corner -would be a capital place for her to sit." - -The allusion to my arbor was irreverent; it confirmed the impression I -had already received that there was a flicker of impertinence in Miss -Bordereau's talk, a strange mocking lambency which must have been a part -of her adventurous youth and which had outlived passions and faculties. -Nonetheless I asked, "Wouldn't it be possible for you to come down there -yourself? Wouldn't it do you good to sit there in the shade, in the -sweet air?" - -"Oh, sir, when I move out of this it won't be to sit in the air, and -I'm afraid that any that may be stirring around me won't be particularly -sweet! It will be a very dark shade indeed. But that won't be just yet," -Miss Bordereau continued cannily, as if to correct any hopes that this -courageous allusion to the last receptacle of her mortality might lead -me to entertain. "I have sat here many a day and I have had enough of -arbors in my time. But I'm not afraid to wait till I'm called." - -Miss Tita had expected some interesting talk, but perhaps she found it -less genial on her aunt's side (considering that I had been sent -for with a civil intention) than she had hoped. As if to give the -conversation a turn that would put our companion in a light more -favorable she said to me, "Didn't I tell you the other night that she -had sent me out? You see that I can do what I like!" - -"Do you pity her--do you teach her to pity herself?" Miss Bordereau -demanded before I had time to answer this appeal. "She has a much easier -life than I had when I was her age." - -"You must remember that it has been quite open to me to think you rather -inhuman." - -"Inhuman? That's what the poets used to call the women a hundred years -ago. Don't try that; you won't do as well as they!" Juliana declared. -"There is no more poetry in the world--that I know of at least. But -I won't bandy words with you," she pursued, and I well remember the -old-fashioned, artificial sound she gave to the speech. "You have made -me talk, talk! It isn't good for me at all." I got up at this and told -her I would take no more of her time; but she detained me to ask, "Do -you remember, the day I saw you about the rooms, that you offered us the -use of your gondola?" And when I assented, promptly, struck again with -her disposition to make a "good thing" of being there and wondering what -she now had in her eye, she broke out, "Why don't you take that girl out -in it and show her the place?" - -"Oh, dear Aunt, what do you want to do with me?" cried the "girl" with a -piteous quaver. "I know all about the place!" - -"Well then, go with him as a cicerone!" said Miss Bordereau with an -effort of something like cruelty in her implacable power of retort--an -incongruous suggestion that she was a sarcastic, profane, cynical old -woman. "Haven't we heard that there have been all sorts of changes in -all these years? You ought to see them and at your age (I don't mean -because you're so young) you ought to take the chances that come. You're -old enough, my dear, and this gentleman won't hurt you. He will show you -the famous sunsets, if they still go on--DO they go on? The sun set for -me so long ago. But that's not a reason. Besides, I shall never miss -you; you think you are too important. Take her to the Piazza; it used -to be very pretty," Miss Bordereau continued, addressing herself to me. -"What have they done with the funny old church? I hope it hasn't tumbled -down. Let her look at the shops; she may take some money, she may buy -what she likes." - -Poor Miss Tita had got up, discountenanced and helpless, and as we stood -there before her aunt it would certainly have seemed to a spectator of -the scene that the old woman was amusing herself at our expense. Miss -Tita protested, in a confusion of exclamations and murmurs; but I -lost no time in saying that if she would do me the honor to accept the -hospitality of my boat I would engage that she should not be bored. -Or if she did not want so much of my company the boat itself, with the -gondolier, was at her service; he was a capital oar and she might have -every confidence. Miss Tita, without definitely answering this speech, -looked away from me, out of the window, as if she were going to cry; and -I remarked that once we had Miss Bordereau's approval we could easily -come to an understanding. We would take an hour, whichever she liked, -one of the very next days. As I made my obeisance to the old lady I -asked her if she would kindly permit me to see her again. - -For a moment she said nothing; then she inquired, "Is it very necessary -to your happiness?" - -"It diverts me more than I can say." - -"You are wonderfully civil. Don't you know it almost kills ME?" - -"How can I believe that when I see you more animated, more brilliant -than when I came in?" - -"That is very true, Aunt," said Miss Tita. "I think it does you good." - -"Isn't it touching, the solicitude we each have that the other shall -enjoy herself?" sneered Miss Bordereau. "If you think me brilliant -today you don't know what you are talking about; you have never seen an -agreeable woman. Don't try to pay me a compliment; I have been spoiled," -she went on. "My door is shut, but you may sometimes knock." - -With this she dismissed me, and I left the room. The latch closed behind -me, but Miss Tita, contrary to my hope, had remained within. I passed -slowly across the hall and before taking my way downstairs I waited -a little. My hope was answered; after a minute Miss Tita followed me. -"That's a delightful idea about the Piazza," I said. "When will you -go--tonight, tomorrow?" - -She had been disconcerted, as I have mentioned, but I had already -perceived and I was to observe again that when Miss Tita was embarrassed -she did not (as most women would have done) turn away from you and try -to escape, but came closer, as it were, with a deprecating, clinging -appeal to be spared, to be protected. Her attitude was perpetually a -sort of prayer for assistance, for explanation; and yet no woman in the -world could have been less of a comedian. From the moment you were kind -to her she depended on you absolutely; her self-consciousness dropped -from her and she took the greatest intimacy, the innocent intimacy which -was the only thing she could conceive, for granted. She told me she did -not know what had got into her aunt; she had changed so quickly, she had -got some idea. I replied that she must find out what the idea was and -then let me know; we would go and have an ice together at Florian's, and -she should tell me while we listened to the band. - -"Oh, it will take me a long time to find out!" she said, rather -ruefully; and she could promise me this satisfaction neither for that -night nor for the next. I was patient now, however, for I felt that I -had only to wait; and in fact at the end of the week, one lovely evening -after dinner, she stepped into my gondola, to which in honor of the -occasion I had attached a second oar. - -We swept in the course of five minutes into the Grand Canal; whereupon -she uttered a murmur of ecstasy as fresh as if she had been a tourist -just arrived. She had forgotten how splendid the great waterway looked -on a clear, hot summer evening, and how the sense of floating between -marble palaces and reflected lights disposed the mind to sympathetic -talk. We floated long and far, and though Miss Tita gave no high-pitched -voice to her satisfaction I felt that she surrendered herself. She was -more than pleased, she was transported; the whole thing was an immense -liberation. The gondola moved with slow strokes, to give her time to -enjoy it, and she listened to the plash of the oars, which grew louder -and more musically liquid as we passed into narrow canals, as if it were -a revelation of Venice. When I asked her how long it was since she had -been in a boat she answered, "Oh, I don't know; a long time--not since -my aunt began to be ill." This was not the only example she gave me of -her extreme vagueness about the previous years and the line which marked -off the period when Miss Bordereau flourished. I was not at liberty to -keep her out too long, but we took a considerable GIRO before going -to the Piazza. I asked her no questions, keeping the conversation on -purpose away from her domestic situation and the things I wanted to -know; I poured treasures of information about Venice into her ears, -described Florence and Rome, discoursed to her on the charms and -advantages of travel. She reclined, receptive, on the deep leather -cushions, turned her eyes conscientiously to everything I pointed out to -her, and never mentioned to me till sometime afterward that she might -be supposed to know Florence better than I, as she had lived there for -years with Miss Bordereau. At last she asked, with the shy impatience of -a child, "Are we not really going to the Piazza? That's what I want to -see!" I immediately gave the order that we should go straight; and -then we sat silent with the expectation of arrival. As some time still -passed, however, she said suddenly, of her own movement, "I have found -out what is the matter with my aunt: she is afraid you will go!" - -"What has put that into her head?" - -"She has had an idea you have not been happy. That is why she is -different now." - -"You mean she wants to make me happier?" - -"Well, she wants you not to go; she wants you to stay." - -"I suppose you mean on account of the rent," I remarked candidly. - -Miss Tita's candor showed itself a match for my own. "Yes, you know; so -that I shall have more." - -"How much does she want you to have?" I asked, laughing. "She ought to -fix the sum, so that I may stay till it's made up." - -"Oh, that wouldn't please me," said Miss Tita. "It would be unheard of, -your taking that trouble." - -"But suppose I should have my own reasons for staying in Venice?" - -"Then it would be better for you to stay in some other house." - -"And what would your aunt say to that?" - -"She wouldn't like it at all. But I should think you would do well to -give up your reasons and go away altogether." - -"Dear Miss Tita," I said, "it's not so easy to give them up!" - -She made no immediate answer to this, but after a moment she broke out: -"I think I know what your reasons are!" - -"I daresay, because the other night I almost told you how I wish you -would help me to make them good." - -"I can't do that without being false to my aunt." - -"What do you mean, being false to her?" - -"Why, she would never consent to what you want. She has been asked, she -has been written to. It made her fearfully angry." - -"Then she HAS got papers of value?" I demanded quickly. - -"Oh, she has got everything!" sighed Miss Tita with a curious weariness, -a sudden lapse into gloom. - -These words caused all my pulses to throb, for I regarded them as -precious evidence. For some minutes I was too agitated to speak, and -in the interval the gondola approached the Piazzetta. After we had -disembarked I asked my companion whether she would rather walk round the -square or go and sit at the door of the cafe; to which she replied that -she would do whichever I liked best--I must only remember again how -little time she had. I assured her there was plenty to do both, and we -made the circuit of the long arcades. Her spirits revived at the sight -of the bright shop windows, and she lingered and stopped, admiring or -disapproving of their contents, asking me what I thought of things, -theorizing about prices. My attention wandered from her; her words of -a while before, "Oh, she has got everything!" echoed so in my -consciousness. We sat down at last in the crowded circle at Florian's, -finding an unoccupied table among those that were ranged in the square. -It was a splendid night and all the world was out-of-doors; Miss Tita -could not have wished the elements more auspicious for her return to -society. I saw that she enjoyed it even more than she told; she was -agitated with the multitude of her impressions. She had forgotten -what an attractive thing the world is, and it was coming over her that -somehow she had for the best years of her life been cheated of it. This -did not make her angry; but as she looked all over the charming scene -her face had, in spite of its smile of appreciation, the flush of a sort -of wounded surprise. She became silent, as if she were thinking with a -secret sadness of opportunities, forever lost, which ought to have been -easy; and this gave me a chance to say to her, "Did you mean a while ago -that your aunt has a plan of keeping me on by admitting me occasionally -to her presence?" - -"She thinks it will make a difference with you if you sometimes see -her. She wants you so much to stay that she is willing to make that -concession." - -"And what good does she consider that I think it will do me to see her?" - -"I don't know; she thinks it's interesting," said Miss Tita simply. "You -told her you found it so." - -"So I did; but everyone doesn't think so." - -"No, of course not, or more people would try." - -"Well, if she is capable of making that reflection she is capable of -making this further one," I went on: "that I must have a particular -reason for not doing as others do, in spite of the interest she -offers--for not leaving her alone." Miss Tita looked as if she failed to -grasp this rather complicated proposition; so I continued, "If you have -not told her what I said to you the other night may she not at least -have guessed it?" - -"I don't know; she is very suspicious." - -"But she has not been made so by indiscreet curiosity, by persecution?" - -"No, no; it isn't that," said Miss Tita, turning on me a somewhat -troubled face. "I don't know how to say it: it's on account of -something--ages ago, before I was born--in her life." - -"Something? What sort of thing?" I asked as if I myself could have no -idea. - -"Oh, she has never told me," Miss Tita answered; and I was sure she was -speaking the truth. - -Her extreme limpidity was almost provoking, and I felt for the moment -that she would have been more satisfactory if she had been less -ingenuous. "Do you suppose it's something to which Jeffrey Aspern's -letters and papers--I mean the things in her possession--have -reference?" - -"I daresay it is!" my companion exclaimed as if this were a very happy -suggestion. "I have never looked at any of those things." - -"None of them? Then how do you know what they are?" - -"I don't," said Miss Tita placidly. "I have never had them in my hands. -But I have seen them when she has had them out." - -"Does she have them out often?" - -"Not now, but she used to. She is very fond of them." - -"In spite of their being compromising?" - -"Compromising?" Miss Tita repeated as if she was ignorant of the meaning -of the word. I felt almost as one who corrupts the innocence of youth. - -"I mean their containing painful memories." - -"Oh, I don't think they are painful." - -"You mean you don't think they affect her reputation?" - -At this a singular look came into the face of Miss Bordereau's niece--a -kind of confession of helplessness, an appeal to me to deal fairly, -generously with her. I had brought her to the Piazza, placed her among -charming influences, paid her an attention she appreciated, and now I -seemed to let her perceive that all this had been a bribe--a bribe to -make her turn in some way against her aunt. She was of a yielding nature -and capable of doing almost anything to please a person who was kind to -her; but the greatest kindness of all would be not to presume too much -on this. It was strange enough, as I afterward thought, that she had -not the least air of resenting my want of consideration for her aunt's -character, which would have been in the worst possible taste if anything -less vital (from my point of view) had been at stake. I don't think she -really measured it. "Do you mean that she did something bad?" she asked -in a moment. - -"Heaven forbid I should say so, and it's none of my business. Besides, -if she did," I added, laughing, "it was in other ages, in another world. -But why should she not destroy her papers?" - -"Oh, she loves them too much." - -"Even now, when she may be near her end?" - -"Perhaps when she's sure of that she will." - -"Well, Miss Tita," I said, "it's just what I should like you to -prevent." - -"How can I prevent it?" - -"Couldn't you get them away from her?" - -"And give them to you?" - -This put the case very crudely, though I am sure there was no irony in -her intention. "Oh, I mean that you might let me see them and look them -over. It isn't for myself; there is no personal avidity in my desire. -It is simply that they would be of such immense interest to the public, -such immeasurable importance as a contribution to Jeffrey Aspern's -history." - -She listened to me in her usual manner, as if my speech were full of -reference to things she had never heard of, and I felt particularly like -the reporter of a newspaper who forces his way into a house of mourning. -This was especially the case when after a moment she said. "There was -a gentleman who some time ago wrote to her in very much those words. He -also wanted her papers." - -"And did she answer him?" I asked, rather ashamed of myself for not -having her rectitude. - -"Only when he had written two or three times. He made her very angry." - -"And what did she say?" - -"She said he was a devil," Miss Tita replied simply. - -"She used that expression in her letter?" - -"Oh, no; she said it to me. She made me write to him." - -"And what did you say?" - -"I told him there were no papers at all." - -"Ah, poor gentleman!" I exclaimed. - -"I knew there were, but I wrote what she bade me." - -"Of course you had to do that. But I hope I shall not pass for a devil." - -"It will depend upon what you ask me to do for you," said Miss Tita, -smiling. - -"Oh, if there is a chance of YOUR thinking so my affair is in a bad way! -I shan't ask you to steal for me, nor even to fib--for you can't fib, -unless on paper. But the principal thing is this--to prevent her from -destroying the papers." - -"Why, I have no control of her," said Miss Tita. "It's she who controls -me." - -"But she doesn't control her own arms and legs, does she? The way she -would naturally destroy her letters would be to burn them. Now she can't -burn them without fire, and she can't get fire unless you give it to -her." - -"I have always done everything she has asked," my companion rejoined. -"Besides, there's Olimpia." - -I was on the point of saying that Olimpia was probably corruptible, but -I thought it best not to sound that note. So I simply inquired if that -faithful domestic could not be managed. - -"Everyone can be managed by my aunt," said Miss Tita. And then she -observed that her holiday was over; she must go home. - -I laid my hand on her arm, across the table, to stay her a moment. "What -I want of you is a general promise to help me." - -"Oh, how can I--how can I?" she asked, wondering and troubled. She was -half-surprised, half-frightened at my wishing to make her play an active -part. - -"This is the main thing: to watch her carefully and warn me in time, -before she commits that horrible sacrilege." - -"I can't watch her when she makes me go out." - -"That's very true." - -"And when you do, too." - -"Mercy on us; do you think she will have done anything tonight?" - -"I don't know; she is very cunning." - -"Are you trying to frighten me?" I asked. - -I felt this inquiry sufficiently answered when my companion murmured in -a musing, almost envious way, "Oh, but she loves them--she loves them!" - -This reflection, repeated with such emphasis, gave me great comfort; but -to obtain more of that balm I said, "If she shouldn't intend to destroy -the objects we speak of before her death she will probably have made -some disposition by will." - -"By will?" - -"Hasn't she made a will for your benefit?" - -"Why, she has so little to leave. That's why she likes money," said Miss -Tita. - -"Might I ask, since we are really talking things over, what you and she -live on?" - -"On some money that comes from America, from a lawyer. He sends it every -quarter. It isn't much!" - -"And won't she have disposed of that?" - -My companion hesitated--I saw she was blushing. "I believe it's mine," -she said; and the look and tone which accompanied these words betrayed -so the absence of the habit of thinking of herself that I almost thought -her charming. The next instant she added, "But she had a lawyer once, -ever so long ago. And some people came and signed something." - -"They were probably witnesses. And you were not asked to sign? Well -then," I argued rapidly and hopefully, "it is because you are the -legatee; she has left all her documents to you!" - -"If she has it's with very strict conditions," Miss Tita responded, -rising quickly, while the movement gave the words a little character -of decision. They seemed to imply that the bequest would be accompanied -with a command that the articles bequeathed should remain concealed from -every inquisitive eye and that I was very much mistaken if I thought she -was the person to depart from an injunction so solemn. - -"Oh, of course you will have to abide by the terms," I said; and -she uttered nothing to mitigate the severity of this conclusion. -Nonetheless, later, just before we disembarked at her own door, on -our return, which had taken place almost in silence, she said to -me abruptly, "I will do what I can to help you." I was grateful for -this--it was very well so far as it went; but it did not keep me from -remembering that night in a worried waking hour that I now had her -word for it to reinforce my own impression that the old woman was very -cunning. - - - - -VII - - -The fear of what this side of her character might have led her to do -made me nervous for days afterward. I waited for an intimation from -Miss Tita; I almost figured to myself that it was her duty to keep me -informed, to let me know definitely whether or no Miss Bordereau had -sacrificed her treasures. But as she gave no sign I lost patience and -determined to judge so far as was possible with my own senses. I sent -late one afternoon to ask if I might pay the ladies a visit, and -my servant came back with surprising news. Miss Bordereau could be -approached without the least difficulty; she had been moved out into -the sala and was sitting by the window that overlooked the garden. I -descended and found this picture correct; the old lady had been wheeled -forth into the world and had a certain air, which came mainly perhaps -from some brighter element in her dress, of being prepared again to have -converse with it. It had not yet, however, begun to flock about her; -she was perfectly alone and, though the door leading to her own quarters -stood open, I had at first no glimpse of Miss Tita. The window at which -she sat had the afternoon shade and, one of the shutters having been -pushed back, she could see the pleasant garden, where the summer sun had -by this time dried up too many of the plants--she could see the yellow -light and the long shadows. - -"Have you come to tell me that you will take the rooms for six months -more?" she asked as I approached her, startling me by something coarse -in her cupidity almost as much as if she had not already given me a -specimen of it. Juliana's desire to make our acquaintance lucrative had -been, as I have sufficiently indicated, a false note in my image of the -woman who had inspired a great poet with immortal lines; but I may say -here definitely that I recognized after all that it behooved me to make -a large allowance for her. It was I who had kindled the unholy flame; it -was I who had put into her head that she had the means of making -money. She appeared never to have thought of that; she had been living -wastefully for years, in a house five times too big for her, on a -footing that I could explain only by the presumption that, excessive as -it was, the space she enjoyed cost her next to nothing and that small -as were her revenues they left her, for Venice, an appreciable margin. I -had descended on her one day and taught her to calculate, and my -almost extravagant comedy on the subject of the garden had presented me -irresistibly in the light of a victim. Like all persons who achieve the -miracle of changing their point of view when they are old she had been -intensely converted; she had seized my hint with a desperate, tremulous -clutch. - -I invited myself to go and get one of the chairs that stood, at a -distance, against the wall (she had given herself no concern as to -whether I should sit or stand); and while I placed it near her I -began, gaily, "Oh, dear madam, what an imagination you have, what an -intellectual sweep! I am a poor devil of a man of letters who lives -from day to day. How can I take palaces by the year? My existence is -precarious. I don't know whether six months hence I shall have bread to -put in my mouth. I have treated myself for once; it has been an immense -luxury. But when it comes to going on--!" - -"Are your rooms too dear? If they are you can have more for the same -money," Juliana responded. "We can arrange, we can combinare, as they -say here." - -"Well yes, since you ask me, they are too dear," I said. "Evidently you -suppose me richer than I am." - -She looked at me in her barricaded way. "If you write books don't you -sell them?" - -"Do you mean don't people buy them? A little--not so much as I could -wish. Writing books, unless one be a great genius--and even then!--is -the last road to fortune. I think there is no more money to be made by -literature." - -"Perhaps you don't choose good subjects. What do you write about?" Miss -Bordereau inquired. - -"About the books of other people. I'm a critic, an historian, in a small -way." I wondered what she was coming to. - -"And what other people, now?" - -"Oh, better ones than myself: the great writers mainly--the great -philosophers and poets of the past; those who are dead and gone and -can't speak for themselves." - -"And what do you say about them?" - -"I say they sometimes attached themselves to very clever women!" I -answered, laughing. I spoke with great deliberation, but as my words -fell upon the air they struck me as imprudent. However, I risked them -and I was not sorry, for perhaps after all the old woman would be -willing to treat. It seemed to be tolerably obvious that she knew my -secret: why therefore drag the matter out? But she did not take what I -had said as a confession; she only asked: - -"Do you think it's right to rake up the past?" - -"I don't know that I know what you mean by raking it up; but how can we -get at it unless we dig a little? The present has such a rough way of -treading it down." - -"Oh, I like the past, but I don't like critics," the old woman declared -with her fine tranquility. - -"Neither do I, but I like their discoveries." - -"Aren't they mostly lies?" - -"The lies are what they sometimes discover," I said, smiling at the -quiet impertinence of this. "They often lay bare the truth." - -"The truth is God's, it isn't man's; we had better leave it alone. Who -can judge of it--who can say?" - -"We are terribly in the dark, I know," I admitted; "but if we give up -trying what becomes of all the fine things? What becomes of the work I -just mentioned, that of the great philosophers and poets? It is all vain -words if there is nothing to measure it by." - -"You talk as if you were a tailor," said Miss Bordereau whimsically; and -then she added quickly, in a different manner, "This house is very fine; -the proportions are magnificent. Today I wanted to look at this place -again. I made them bring me out here. When your man came, just now, to -learn if I would see you, I was on the point of sending for you, to -ask if you didn't mean to go on. I wanted to judge what I'm letting you -have. This sala is very grand," she pursued, like an auctioneer, moving -a little, as I guessed, her invisible eyes. "I don't believe you often -have lived in such a house, eh?" - -"I can't often afford to!" I said. - -"Well then, how much will you give for six months?" - -I was on the point of exclaiming--and the air of excruciation in my face -would have denoted a moral face--"Don't, Juliana; for HIS sake, don't!" -But I controlled myself and asked less passionately: "Why should I -remain so long as that?" - -"I thought you liked it," said Miss Bordereau with her shriveled -dignity. - -"So I thought I should." - -For a moment she said nothing more, and I left my own words to suggest -to her what they might. I half-expected her to say, coldly enough, that -if I had been disappointed we need not continue the discussion, and -this in spite of the fact that I believed her now to have in her -mind (however it had come there) what would have told her that my -disappointment was natural. But to my extreme surprise she ended by -observing: "If you don't think we have treated you well enough perhaps -we can discover some way of treating you better." This speech was -somehow so incongruous that it made me laugh again, and I excused myself -by saying that she talked as if I were a sulky boy, pouting in the -corner, to be "brought round." I had not a grain of complaint to -make; and could anything have exceeded Miss Tita's graciousness in -accompanying me a few nights before to the Piazza? At this the old woman -went on: "Well, you brought it on yourself!" And then in a different -tone, "She is a very nice girl." I assented cordially to this -proposition, and she expressed the hope that I did so not merely to be -obliging, but that I really liked her. Meanwhile I wondered still more -what Miss Bordereau was coming to. "Except for me, today," she said, -"she has not a relation in the world." Did she by describing her niece -as amiable and unencumbered wish to represent her as a parti? - -It was perfectly true that I could not afford to go on with my rooms at -a fancy price and that I had already devoted to my undertaking almost -all the hard cash I had set apart for it. My patience and my time were -by no means exhausted, but I should be able to draw upon them only on a -more usual Venetian basis. I was willing to pay the venerable woman -with whom my pecuniary dealings were such a discord twice as much as any -other padrona di casa would have asked, but I was not willing to pay her -twenty times as much. I told her so plainly, and my plainness appeared -to have some success, for she exclaimed, "Very good; you have done what -I asked--you have made an offer!" - -"Yes, but not for half a year. Only by the month." - -"Oh, I must think of that then." She seemed disappointed that I would -not tie myself to a period, and I guessed that she wished both to secure -me and to discourage me; to say severely, "Do you dream that you can get -off with less than six months? Do you dream that even by the end of that -time you will be appreciably nearer your victory?" What was more in my -mind was that she had a fancy to play me the trick of making me engage -myself when in fact she had annihilated the papers. There was a moment -when my suspense on this point was so acute that I all but broke out -with the question, and what kept it back was but a kind of instinctive -recoil (lest it should be a mistake), from the last violence of -self-exposure. She was such a subtle old witch that one could never -tell where one stood with her. You may imagine whether it cleared up the -puzzle when, just after she had said she would think of my proposal -and without any formal transition, she drew out of her pocket with an -embarrassed hand a small object wrapped in crumpled white paper. She -held it there a moment and then she asked, "Do you know much about -curiosities?" - -"About curiosities?" - -"About antiquities, the old gimcracks that people pay so much for today. -Do you know the kind of price they bring?" - -I thought I saw what was coming, but I said ingenuously, "Do you want to -buy something?" - -"No, I want to sell. What would an amateur give me for that?" She -unfolded the white paper and made a motion for me to take from her a -small oval portrait. I possessed myself of it with a hand of which I -could only hope that she did not perceive the tremor, and she added, "I -would part with it only for a good price." - -At the first glance I recognized Jeffrey Aspern, and I was well aware -that I flushed with the act. As she was watching me however I had the -consistency to exclaim, "What a striking face! Do tell me who it is." - -"It's an old friend of mine, a very distinguished man in his day. He -gave it to me himself, but I'm afraid to mention his name, lest you -never should have heard of him, critic and historian as you are. I know -the world goes fast and one generation forgets another. He was all the -fashion when I was young." - -She was perhaps amazed at my assurance, but I was surprised at hers; at -her having the energy, in her state of health and at her time of -life, to wish to sport with me that way simply for her private -entertainment--the humor to test me and practice on me. This, at least, -was the interpretation that I put upon her production of the portrait, -for I could not believe that she really desired to sell it or cared -for any information I might give her. What she wished was to dangle it -before my eyes and put a prohibitive price on it. "The face comes back -to me, it torments me," I said, turning the object this way and that and -looking at it very critically. It was a careful but not a supreme work -of art, larger than the ordinary miniature and representing a young man -with a remarkably handsome face, in a high-collared green coat and -a buff waistcoat. I judged the picture to have a valuable quality -of resemblance and to have been painted when the model was about -twenty-five years old. There are, as all the world knows, three other -portraits of the poet in existence, but none of them is of so early a -date as this elegant production. "I have never seen the original but -I have seen other likenesses," I went on. "You expressed doubt of this -generation having heard of the gentleman, but he strikes me for all the -world as a celebrity. Now who is he? I can't put my finger on him--I -can't give him a label. Wasn't he a writer? Surely he's a poet." I was -determined that it should be she, not I, who should first pronounce -Jeffrey Aspern's name. - -My resolution was taken in ignorance of Miss Bordereau's extremely -resolute character, and her lips never formed in my hearing the -syllables that meant so much for her. She neglected to answer my -question but raised her hand to take back the picture, with a gesture -which though ineffectual was in a high degree peremptory. "It's only -a person who should know for himself that would give me my price," she -said with a certain dryness. - -"Oh, then, you have a price?" I did not restore the precious thing; not -from any vindictive purpose but because I instinctively clung to it. We -looked at each other hard while I retained it. - -"I know the least I would take. What it occurred to me to ask you about -is the most I shall be able to get." - -She made a movement, drawing herself together as if, in a spasm of -dread at having lost her treasure, she were going to attempt the immense -effort of rising to snatch it from me. I instantly placed it in her hand -again, saying as I did so, "I should like to have it myself, but with -your ideas I could never afford it." - -She turned the small oval plate over in her lap, with its face down, -and I thought I saw her catch her breath a little, as if she had had -a strain or an escape. This however did not prevent her saying in a -moment, "You would buy a likeness of a person you don't know, by an -artist who has no reputation?" - -"The artist may have no reputation, but that thing is wonderfully well -painted," I replied, to give myself a reason. - -"It's lucky you thought of saying that, because the painter was my -father." - -"That makes the picture indeed precious!" I exclaimed, laughing; and I -may add that a part of my laughter came from my satisfaction in finding -that I had been right in my theory of Miss Bordereau's origin. Aspern -had of course met the young lady when he went to her father's studio as -a sitter. I observed to Miss Bordereau that if she would entrust me with -her property for twenty-four hours I should be happy to take advice upon -it; but she made no answer to this save to slip it in silence into her -pocket. This convinced me still more that she had no sincere intention -of selling it during her lifetime, though she may have desired to -satisfy herself as to the sum her niece, should she leave it to her, -might expect eventually to obtain for it. "Well, at any rate I hope -you will not offer it without giving me notice," I said as she remained -irresponsive. "Remember that I am a possible purchaser." - -"I should want your money first!" she returned with unexpected rudeness; -and then, as if she bethought herself that I had just cause to complain -of such an insinuation and wished to turn the matter off, asked abruptly -what I talked about with her niece when I went out with her that way in -the evening. - -"You speak as if we had set up the habit," I replied. "Certainly I -should be very glad if it were to become a habit. But in that case I -should feel a still greater scruple at betraying a lady's confidence." - -"Her confidence? Has she got confidence?" - -"Here she is--she can tell you herself," I said; for Miss Tita now -appeared on the threshold of the old woman's parlor. "Have you got -confidence, Miss Tita? Your aunt wants very much to know." - -"Not in her, not in her!" the younger lady declared, shaking her head -with a dolefulness that was neither jocular not affected. "I don't know -what to do with her; she has fits of horrid imprudence. She is so easily -tired--and yet she has begun to roam--to drag herself about the house." -And she stood looking down at her immemorial companion with a sort of -helpless wonder, as if all their years of familiarity had not made her -perversities, on occasion, any more easy to follow. - -"I know what I'm about. I'm not losing my mind. I daresay you would like -to think so," said Miss Bordereau with a cynical little sigh. - -"I don't suppose you came out here yourself. Miss Tita must have had to -lend you a hand," I interposed with a pacifying intention. - -"Oh, she insisted that we should push her; and when she insists!" said -Miss Tita in the same tone of apprehension; as if there were no knowing -what service that she disapproved of her aunt might force her next to -render. - -"I have always got most things done I wanted, thank God! The people I -have lived with have humored me," the old woman continued, speaking out -of the gray ashes of her vanity. - -"I suppose you mean that they have obeyed you." - -"Well, whatever it is, when they like you." - -"It's just because I like you that I want to resist," said Miss Tita -with a nervous laugh. - -"Oh, I suspect you'll bring Miss Bordereau upstairs next to pay me a -visit," I went on; to which the old lady replied: - -"Oh, no; I can keep an eye on you from here!" - -"You are very tired; you will certainly be ill tonight!" cried Miss -Tita. - -"Nonsense, my dear; I feel better at this moment than I have done for -a month. Tomorrow I shall come out again. I want to be where I can see -this clever gentleman." - -"Shouldn't you perhaps see me better in your sitting room?" I inquired. - -"Don't you mean shouldn't you have a better chance at me?" she returned, -fixing me a moment with her green shade. - -"Ah, I haven't that anywhere! I look at you but I don't see you." - -"You excite her dreadfully--and that is not good," said Miss Tita, -giving me a reproachful, appealing look. - -"I want to watch you--I want to watch you!" the old lady went on. - -"Well then, let us spend as much of our time together as possible--I -don't care where--and that will give you every facility." - -"Oh, I've seen you enough for today. I'm satisfied. Now I'll go home." -Miss Tita laid her hands on the back of her aunt's chair and began to -push, but I begged her to let me take her place. "Oh, yes, you may move -me this way--you shan't in any other!" Miss Bordereau exclaimed as she -felt herself propelled firmly and easily over the smooth, hard floor. -Before we reached the door of her own apartment she commanded me to -stop, and she took a long, last look up and down the noble sala. "Oh, -it's a magnificent house!" she murmured; after which I pushed her -forward. When we had entered the parlor Miss Tita told me that she -should now be able to manage, and at the same moment the little -red-haired donna came to meet her mistress. Miss Tita's idea was -evidently to get her aunt immediately back to bed. I confess that in -spite of this urgency I was guilty of the indiscretion of lingering; it -held me there to think that I was nearer the documents I coveted--that -they were probably put away somewhere in the faded, unsociable room. -The place had indeed a bareness which did not suggest hidden treasures; -there were no dusky nooks nor curtained corners, no massive cabinets nor -chests with iron bands. Moreover it was possible, it was perhaps even -probable that the old lady had consigned her relics to her bedroom, to -some battered box that was shoved under the bed, to the drawer of some -lame dressing table, where they would be in the range of vision by the -dim night lamp. Nonetheless I scrutinized every article of furniture, -every conceivable cover for a hoard, and noticed that there were half a -dozen things with drawers, and in particular a tall old secretary, -with brass ornaments of the style of the Empire--a receptacle somewhat -rickety but still capable of keeping a great many secrets. I don't -know why this article fascinated me so, inasmuch as I certainly had no -definite purpose of breaking into it; but I stared at it so hard that -Miss Tita noticed me and changed color. Her doing this made me think -I was right and that wherever they might have been before the Aspern -papers at that moment languished behind the peevish little lock of the -secretary. It was hard to remove my eyes from the dull mahogany front -when I reflected that a simple panel divided me from the goal of my -hopes; but I remembered my prudence and with an effort took leave of -Miss Bordereau. To make the effort graceful I said to her that I should -certainly bring her an opinion about the little picture. - -"The little picture?" Miss Tita asked, surprised. - -"What do YOU know about it, my dear?" the old woman demanded. "You -needn't mind. I have fixed my price." - -"And what may that be?" - -"A thousand pounds." - -"Oh Lord!" cried poor Miss Tita irrepressibly. - -"Is that what she talks to you about?" said Miss Bordereau. - -"Imagine your aunt's wanting to know!" I had to separate from Miss Tita -with only those words, though I should have liked immensely to add, "For -heaven's sake meet me tonight in the garden!" - - - - -VIII - - -As it turned out the precaution had not been needed, for three hours -later, just as I had finished my dinner, Miss Bordereau's niece -appeared, unannounced, in the open doorway of the room in which my -simple repasts were served. I remember well that I felt no surprise at -seeing her; which is not a proof that I did not believe in her timidity. -It was immense, but in a case in which there was a particular reason for -boldness it never would have prevented her from running up to my rooms. -I saw that she was now quite full of a particular reason; it threw her -forward--made her seize me, as I rose to meet her, by the arm. - -"My aunt is very ill; I think she is dying!" - -"Never in the world," I answered bitterly. "Don't you be afraid!" - -"Do go for a doctor--do, do! Olimpia is gone for the one we always have, -but she doesn't come back; I don't know what has happened to her. I told -her that if he was not at home she was to follow him where he had gone; -but apparently she is following him all over Venice. I don't know what -to do--she looks so as if she were sinking." - -"May I see her, may I judge?" I asked. "Of course I shall be delighted -to bring someone; but hadn't we better send my man instead, so that I -may stay with you?" - -Miss Tita assented to this and I dispatched my servant for the best -doctor in the neighborhood. I hurried downstairs with her, and on the -way she told me that an hour after I quitted them in the afternoon Miss -Bordereau had had an attack of "oppression," a terrible difficulty in -breathing. This had subsided but had left her so exhausted that she did -not come up: she seemed all gone. I repeated that she was not gone, that -she would not go yet; whereupon Miss Tita gave me a sharper sidelong -glance than she had ever directed at me and said, "Really, what do you -mean? I suppose you don't accuse her of making believe!" I forget what -reply I made to this, but I grant that in my heart I thought the old -woman capable of any weird maneuver. Miss Tita wanted to know what I -had done to her; her aunt had told her that I had made her so angry. I -declared I had done nothing--I had been exceedingly careful; to which -my companion rejoined that Miss Bordereau had assured her she had had -a scene with me--a scene that had upset her. I answered with some -resentment that it was a scene of her own making--that I couldn't think -what she was angry with me for unless for not seeing my way to give a -thousand pounds for the portrait of Jeffrey Aspern. "And did she show -you that? Oh, gracious--oh, deary me!" groaned Miss Tita, who appeared -to feel that the situation was passing out of her control and that the -elements of her fate were thickening around her. I said that I would -give anything to possess it, yet that I had not a thousand pounds; but -I stopped when we came to the door of Miss Bordereau's room. I had an -immense curiosity to pass it, but I thought it my duty to represent -to Miss Tita that if I made the invalid angry she ought perhaps to be -spared the sight of me. "The sight of you? Do you think she can SEE?" my -companion demanded almost with indignation. I did think so but forebore -to say it, and I softly followed my conductress. - -I remember that what I said to her as I stood for a moment beside the -old woman's bed was, "Does she never show you her eyes then? Have you -never seen them?" Miss Bordereau had been divested of her green shade, -but (it was not my fortune to behold Juliana in her nightcap) the upper -half of her face was covered by the fall of a piece of dingy lacelike -muslin, a sort of extemporized hood which, wound round her head, -descended to the end of her nose, leaving nothing visible but her white -withered cheeks and puckered mouth, closed tightly and, as it were -consciously. Miss Tita gave me a glance of surprise, evidently not -seeing a reason for my impatience. "You mean that she always wears -something? She does it to preserve them." - -"Because they are so fine?" - -"Oh, today, today!" And Miss Tita shook her head, speaking very low. -"But they used to be magnificent!" - -"Yes indeed, we have Aspern's word for that." And as I looked again at -the old woman's wrappings I could imagine that she had not wished to -allow people a reason to say that the great poet had overdone it. But -I did not waste my time in considering Miss Bordereau, in whom the -appearance of respiration was so slight as to suggest that no human -attention could ever help her more. I turned my eyes all over the room, -rummaging with them the closets, the chests of drawers, the tables. Miss -Tita met them quickly and read, I think, what was in them; but she -did not answer it, turning away restlessly, anxiously, so that I felt -rebuked, with reason, for a preoccupation that was almost profane in -the presence of our dying companion. All the same I took another look, -endeavoring to pick out mentally the place to try first, for a person -who should wish to put his hand on Miss Bordereau's papers directly -after her death. The room was a dire confusion; it looked like the room -of an old actress. There were clothes hanging over chairs, odd-looking -shabby bundles here and there, and various pasteboard boxes piled -together, battered, bulging, and discolored, which might have been fifty -years old. Miss Tita after a moment noticed the direction of my -eyes again and, as if she guessed how I judged the air of the place -(forgetting I had no business to judge it at all), said, perhaps to -defend herself from the imputation of complicity in such untidiness: - -"She likes it this way; we can't move things. There are old bandboxes -she has had most of her life." Then she added, half taking pity on my -real thought, "Those things were THERE." And she pointed to a small, -low trunk which stood under a sofa where there was just room for it. -It appeared to be a queer, superannuated coffer, of painted wood, with -elaborate handles and shriveled straps and with the color (it had last -been endued with a coat of light green) much rubbed off. It evidently -had traveled with Juliana in the olden time--in the days of her -adventures, which it had shared. It would have made a strange figure -arriving at a modern hotel. - -"WERE there--they aren't now?" I asked, startled by Miss Tita's -implication. - -She was going to answer, but at that moment the doctor came in--the -doctor whom the little maid had been sent to fetch and whom she had at -last overtaken. My servant, going on his own errand, had met her with -her companion in tow, and in the sociable Venetian spirit, retracing his -steps with them, had also come up to the threshold of Miss Bordereau's -room, where I saw him peeping over the doctor's shoulder. I motioned him -away the more instantly that the sight of his prying face reminded me -that I myself had almost as little to do there--an admonition confirmed -by the sharp way the little doctor looked at me, appearing to take me -for a rival who had the field before him. He was a short, fat, brisk -gentleman who wore the tall hat of his profession and seemed to look -at everything but his patient. He looked particularly at me, as if it -struck him that I should be better for a dose, so that I bowed to him -and left him with the women, going down to smoke a cigar in the garden. -I was nervous; I could not go further; I could not leave the place. -I don't know exactly what I thought might happen, but it seemed to me -important to be there. I wandered about in the alleys--the warm night -had come on--smoking cigar after cigar and looking at the light in Miss -Bordereau's windows. They were open now, I could see; the situation -was different. Sometimes the light moved, but not quickly; it did not -suggest the hurry of a crisis. Was the old woman dying, or was she -already dead? Had the doctor said that there was nothing to be done at -her tremendous age but to let her quietly pass away; or had he simply -announced with a look a little more conventional that the end of the end -had come? Were the other two women moving about to perform the offices -that follow in such a case? It made me uneasy not to be nearer, as if I -thought the doctor himself might carry away the papers with him. I bit -my cigar hard as it came over me again that perhaps there were now no -papers to carry! - -I wandered about for an hour--for an hour and a half. I looked out for -Miss Tita at one of the windows, having a vague idea that she might come -there to give me some sign. Would she not see the red tip of my cigar -moving about in the dark and feel that I wanted eminently to know what -the doctor had said? I am afraid it is a proof my anxieties had made me -gross that I should have taken in some degree for granted that at such -an hour, in the midst of the greatest change that could take place in -her life, they were uppermost also in Miss Tita's mind. My servant came -down and spoke to me; he knew nothing save that the doctor had gone -after a visit of half an hour. If he had stayed half an hour then Miss -Bordereau was still alive: it could not have taken so much time as that -to enunciate the contrary. I sent the man out of the house; there were -moments when the sense of his curiosity annoyed me, and this was one of -them. HE had been watching my cigar tip from an upper window, if Miss -Tita had not; he could not know what I was after and I could not tell -him, though I was conscious he had fantastic private theories about me -which he thought fine and which I, had I known them, should have thought -offensive. - -I went upstairs at last but I ascended no higher than the sala. The -door of Miss Bordereau's apartment was open, showing from the parlor the -dimness of a poor candle. I went toward it with a light tread, and -at the same moment Miss Tita appeared and stood looking at me as I -approached. "She's better--she's better," she said, even before I had -asked. "The doctor has given her something; she woke up, came back to -life while he was there. He says there is no immediate danger." - -"No immediate danger? Surely he thinks her condition strange!" - -"Yes, because she had been excited. That affects her dreadfully." - -"It will do so again then, because she excites herself. She did so this -afternoon." - -"Yes; she mustn't come out any more," said Miss Tita, with one of her -lapses into a deeper placidity. - -"What is the use of making such a remark as that if you begin to rattle -her about again the first time she bids you?" - -"I won't--I won't do it any more." - -"You must learn to resist her," I went on. - -"Oh, yes, I shall; I shall do so better if you tell me it's right." - -"You mustn't do it for me; you must do it for yourself. It all comes -back to you, if you are frightened." - -"Well, I am not frightened now," said Miss Tita cheerfully. "She is very -quiet." - -"Is she conscious again--does she speak?" - -"No, she doesn't speak, but she takes my hand. She holds it fast." - -"Yes," I rejoined, "I can see what force she still has by the way she -grabbed that picture this afternoon. But if she holds you fast how comes -it that you are here?" - -Miss Tita hesitated a moment; though her face was in deep shadow (she -had her back to the light in the parlor and I had put down my own -candle far off, near the door of the sala), I thought I saw her smile -ingenuously. "I came on purpose--I heard your step." - -"Why, I came on tiptoe, as inaudibly as possible." - -"Well, I heard you," said Miss Tita. - -"And is your aunt alone now?" - -"Oh, no; Olimpia is sitting there." - -On my side I hesitated. "Shall we then step in there?" And I nodded at -the parlor; I wanted more and more to be on the spot. - -"We can't talk there--she will hear us." - -I was on the point of replying that in that case we would sit silent, -but I was too conscious that this would not do, as there was something I -desired immensely to ask her. So I proposed that we should walk a little -in the sala, keeping more at the other end, where we should not disturb -the old lady. Miss Tita assented unconditionally; the doctor was coming -again, she said, and she would be there to meet him at the door. -We strolled through the fine superfluous hall, where on the marble -floor--particularly as at first we said nothing--our footsteps were more -audible than I had expected. When we reached the other end--the wide -window, inveterately closed, connecting with the balcony that overhung -the canal--I suggested that we should remain there, as she would see the -doctor arrive still better. I opened the window and we passed out on the -balcony. The air of the canal seemed even heavier, hotter than that of -the sala. The place was hushed and void; the quiet neighborhood had gone -to sleep. A lamp, here and there, over the narrow black water, glimmered -in double; the voice of a man going homeward singing, with his jacket -on his shoulder and his hat on his ear, came to us from a distance. -This did not prevent the scene from being very comme il faut, as Miss -Bordereau had called it the first time I saw her. Presently a gondola -passed along the canal with its slow rhythmical plash, and as we -listened we watched it in silence. It did not stop, it did not carry the -doctor; and after it had gone on I said to Miss Tita: - -"And where are they now--the things that were in the trunk?" - -"In the trunk?" - -"That green box you pointed out to me in her room. You said her papers -had been there; you seemed to imply that she had transferred them." - -"Oh, yes; they are not in the trunk," said Miss Tita. - -"May I ask if you have looked?" - -"Yes, I have looked--for you." - -"How for me, dear Miss Tita? Do you mean you would have given them to me -if you had found them?" I asked, almost trembling. - -She delayed to reply and I waited. Suddenly she broke out, "I don't know -what I would do--what I wouldn't!" - -"Would you look again--somewhere else?" - -She had spoken with a strange unexpected emotion, and she went on in the -same tone: "I can't--I can't--while she lies there. It isn't decent." - -"No, it isn't decent," I replied gravely. "Let the poor lady rest in -peace." And the words, on my lips, were not hypocritical, for I felt -reprimanded and shamed. - -Miss Tita added in a moment, as if she had guessed this and were sorry -for me, but at the same time wished to explain that I did drive her on -or at least did insist too much: "I can't deceive her that way. I can't -deceive her--perhaps on her deathbed." - -"Heaven forbid I should ask you, though I have been guilty myself!" - -"You have been guilty?" - -"I have sailed under false colors." I felt now as if I must tell her -that I had given her an invented name, on account of my fear that her -aunt would have heard of me and would refuse to take me in. I explained -this and also that I had really been a party to the letter written to -them by John Cumnor months before. - -She listened with great attention, looking at me with parted lips, and -when I had made my confession she said, "Then your real name--what is -it?" She repeated it over twice when I had told her, accompanying it -with the exclamation "Gracious, gracious!" Then she added, "I like your -own best." - -"So do I," I said, laughing. "Ouf! it's a relief to get rid of the -other." - -"So it was a regular plot--a kind of conspiracy?" - -"Oh, a conspiracy--we were only two," I replied, leaving out Mrs. Prest -of course. - -She hesitated; I thought she was perhaps going to say that we had been -very base. But she remarked after a moment, in a candid, wondering way, -"How much you must want them!" - -"Oh, I do, passionately!" I conceded, smiling. And this chance made -me go on, forgetting my compunction of a moment before. "How can she -possibly have changed their place herself? How can she walk? How can -she arrive at that sort of muscular exertion? How can she lift and carry -things?" - -"Oh, when one wants and when one has so much will!" said Miss Tita, as -if she had thought over my question already herself and had simply had -no choice but that answer--the idea that in the dead of night, or at -some moment when the coast was clear, the old woman had been capable of -a miraculous effort. - -"Have you questioned Olimpia? Hasn't she helped her--hasn't she done it -for her?" I asked; to which Miss Tita replied promptly and positively -that their servant had had nothing to do with the matter, though without -admitting definitely that she had spoken to her. It was as if she were -a little shy, a little ashamed now of letting me see how much she had -entered into my uneasiness and had me on her mind. Suddenly she said to -me, without any immediate relevance: - -"I feel as if you were a new person, now that you have got a new name." - -"It isn't a new one; it is a very good old one, thank heaven!" - -She looked at me a moment. "I do like it better." - -"Oh, if you didn't I would almost go on with the other!" - -"Would you really?" - -I laughed again, but for all answer to this inquiry I said, "Of course -if she can rummage about that way she can perfectly have burnt them." - -"You must wait--you must wait," Miss Tita moralized mournfully; and her -tone ministered little to my patience, for it seemed after all to accept -that wretched possibility. I would teach myself to wait, I declared -nevertheless; because in the first place I could not do otherwise and in -the second I had her promise, given me the other night, that she would -help me. - -"Of course if the papers are gone that's no use," she said; not as if -she wished to recede, but only to be conscientious. - -"Naturally. But if you could only find out!" I groaned, quivering again. - -"I thought you said you would wait." - -"Oh, you mean wait even for that?" - -"For what then?" - -"Oh, nothing," I replied, rather foolishly, being ashamed to tell her -what had been implied in my submission to delay--the idea that she would -do more than merely find out. I know not whether she guessed this; at -all events she appeared to become aware of the necessity for being a -little more rigid. - -"I didn't promise to deceive, did I? I don't think I did." - -"It doesn't much matter whether you did or not, for you couldn't!" - -I don't think Miss Tita would have contested this event had she not been -diverted by our seeing the doctor's gondola shoot into the little canal -and approach the house. I noted that he came as fast as if he believed -that Miss Bordereau was still in danger. We looked down at him while he -disembarked and then went back into the sala to meet him. When he came -up however I naturally left Miss Tita to go off with him alone, only -asking her leave to come back later for news. - -I went out of the house and took a long walk, as far as the Piazza, -where my restlessness declined to quit me. I was unable to sit down (it -was very late now but there were people still at the little tables in -front of the cafes); I could only walk round and round, and I did -so half a dozen times. I was uncomfortable, but it gave me a certain -pleasure to have told Miss Tita who I really was. At last I took my way -home again, slowly getting all but inextricably lost, as I did whenever -I went out in Venice: so that it was considerably past midnight when I -reached my door. The sala, upstairs, was as dark as usual and my lamp as -I crossed it found nothing satisfactory to show me. I was disappointed, -for I had notified Miss Tita that I would come back for a report, and -I thought she might have left a light there as a sign. The door of -the ladies' apartment was closed; which seemed an intimation that my -faltering friend had gone to bed, tired of waiting for me. I stood -in the middle of the place, considering, hoping she would hear me and -perhaps peep out, saying to myself too that she would never go to bed -with her aunt in a state so critical; she would sit up and watch--she -would be in a chair, in her dressing gown. I went nearer the door; I -stopped there and listened. I heard nothing at all and at last I tapped -gently. No answer came and after another minute I turned the handle. -There was no light in the room; this ought to have prevented me from -going in, but it had no such effect. If I have candidly narrated the -importunities, the indelicacies, of which my desire to possess myself of -Jeffrey Aspern's papers had rendered me capable I need not shrink from -confessing this last indiscretion. I think it was the worst thing I did; -yet there were extenuating circumstances. I was deeply though doubtless -not disinterestedly anxious for more news of the old lady, and Miss Tita -had accepted from me, as it were, a rendezvous which it might have been -a point of honor with me to keep. It may be said that her leaving the -place dark was a positive sign that she released me, and to this I can -only reply that I desired not to be released. - -The door of Miss Bordereau's room was open and I could see beyond it the -faintness of a taper. There was no sound--my footstep caused no one to -stir. I came further into the room; I lingered there with my lamp in my -hand. I wanted to give Miss Tita a chance to come to me if she were with -her aunt, as she must be. I made no noise to call her; I only waited to -see if she would not notice my light. She did not, and I explained this -(I found afterward I was right) by the idea that she had fallen -asleep. If she had fallen asleep her aunt was not on her mind, and my -explanation ought to have led me to go out as I had come. I must repeat -again that it did not, for I found myself at the same moment thinking of -something else. I had no definite purpose, no bad intention, but I -felt myself held to the spot by an acute, though absurd, sense of -opportunity. For what I could not have said, inasmuch as it was not -in my mind that I might commit a theft. Even if it had been I was -confronted with the evident fact that Miss Bordereau did not leave her -secretary, her cupboard, and the drawers of her tables gaping. I had no -keys, no tools, and no ambition to smash her furniture. Nonetheless it -came to me that I was now, perhaps alone, unmolested, at the hour of -temptation and secrecy, nearer to the tormenting treasure than I had -ever been. I held up my lamp, let the light play on the different -objects as if it could tell me something. Still there came no movement -from the other room. If Miss Tita was sleeping she was sleeping sound. -Was she doing so--generous creature--on purpose to leave me the field? -Did she know I was there and was she just keeping quiet to see what I -would do--what I COULD do? But what could I do, when it came to that? -She herself knew even better than I how little. - -I stopped in front of the secretary, looking at it very idiotically; for -what had it to say to me after all? In the first place it was locked, -and in the second it almost surely contained nothing in which I was -interested. Ten to one the papers had been destroyed; and even if they -had not been destroyed the old woman would not have put them in such a -place as that after removing them from the green trunk--would not have -transferred them, if she had the idea of their safety on her brain, -from the better hiding place to the worse. The secretary was more -conspicuous, more accessible in a room in which she could no longer -mount guard. It opened with a key, but there was a little brass handle, -like a button, as well; I saw this as I played my lamp over it. I did -something more than this at that moment: I caught a glimpse of the -possibility that Miss Tita wished me really to understand. If she did -not wish me to understand, if she wished me to keep away, why had she -not locked the door of communication between the sitting room and the -sala? That would have been a definite sign that I was to leave them -alone. If I did not leave them alone she meant me to come for a -purpose--a purpose now indicated by the quick, fantastic idea that to -oblige me she had unlocked the secretary. She had not left the key, -but the lid would probably move if I touched the button. This theory -fascinated me, and I bent over very close to judge. I did not propose -to do anything, not even--not in the least--to let down the lid; I only -wanted to test my theory, to see if the cover WOULD move. I touched the -button with my hand--a mere touch would tell me; and as I did so (it is -embarrassing for me to relate it), I looked over my shoulder. It was -a chance, an instinct, for I had not heard anything. I almost let my -luminary drop and certainly I stepped back, straightening myself up at -what I saw. Miss Bordereau stood there in her nightdress, in the doorway -of her room, watching me; her hands were raised, she had lifted the -everlasting curtain that covered half her face, and for the first, the -last, the only time I beheld her extraordinary eyes. They glared at me, -they made me horribly ashamed. I never shall forget her strange little -bent white tottering figure, with its lifted head, her attitude, her -expression; neither shall I forget the tone in which as I turned, -looking at her, she hissed out passionately, furiously: - -"Ah, you publishing scoundrel!" - -I know not what I stammered, to excuse myself, to explain; but I went -toward her, to tell her I meant no harm. She waved me off with her old -hands, retreating before me in horror; and the next thing I knew she had -fallen back with a quick spasm, as if death had descended on her, into -Miss Tita's arms. - - - - -IX - - -I left Venice the next morning, as soon as I learned that the old lady -had not succumbed, as I feared at the moment, to the shock I had given -her--the shock I may also say she had given me. How in the world could I -have supposed her capable of getting out of bed by herself? I failed to -see Miss Tita before going; I only saw the donna, whom I entrusted with -a note for her younger mistress. In this note I mentioned that I -should be absent but for a few days. I went to Treviso, to Bassano, to -Castelfranco; I took walks and drives and looked at musty old churches -with ill-lighted pictures and spent hours seated smoking at the doors of -cafes, where there were flies and yellow curtains, on the shady side of -sleepy little squares. In spite of these pastimes, which were mechanical -and perfunctory, I scantily enjoyed my journey: there was too strong a -taste of the disagreeable in my life. I had been devilish awkward, as -the young men say, to be found by Miss Bordereau in the dead of night -examining the attachment of her bureau; and it had not been less so -to have to believe for a good many hours afterward that it was highly -probable I had killed her. In writing to Miss Tita I attempted to -minimize these irregularities; but as she gave me no word of answer I -could not know what impression I made upon her. It rankled in my mind -that I had been called a publishing scoundrel, for certainly I did -publish and certainly I had not been very delicate. There was a moment -when I stood convinced that the only way to make up for this latter -fault was to take myself away altogether on the instant; to sacrifice -my hopes and relieve the two poor women forever of the oppression of -my intercourse. Then I reflected that I had better try a short absence -first, for I must already have had a sense (unexpressed and dim) that -in disappearing completely it would not be merely my own hopes that I -should condemn to extinction. It would perhaps be sufficient if I stayed -away long enough to give the elder lady time to think she was rid of me. -That she would wish to be rid of me after this (if I was not rid of her) -was now not to be doubted: that nocturnal scene would have cured her of -the disposition to put up with my company for the sake of my dollars. -I said to myself that after all I could not abandon Miss Tita, and I -continued to say this even while I observed that she quite failed to -comply with my earnest request (I had given her two or three addresses, -at little towns, post restante) that she would let me know how she was -getting on. I would have made my servant write to me but that he was -unable to manage a pen. It struck me there was a kind of scorn in Miss -Tita's silence (little disdainful as she had ever been), so that I was -uncomfortable and sore. I had scruples about going back and yet I -had others about not doing so, for I wanted to put myself on a better -footing. The end of it was that I did return to Venice on the twelfth -day; and as my gondola gently bumped against Miss Bordereau's steps -a certain palpitation of suspense told me that I had done myself a -violence in holding off so long. - -I had faced about so abruptly that I had not telegraphed to my servant. -He was therefore not at the station to meet me, but he poked out his -head from an upper window when I reached the house. "They have put her -into the earth, la vecchia," he said to me in the lower hall, while he -shouldered my valise; and he grinned and almost winked, as if he knew I -should be pleased at the news. - -"She's dead!" I exclaimed, giving him a very different look. - -"So it appears, since they have buried her." - -"It's all over? When was the funeral?" - -"The other yesterday. But a funeral you could scarcely call it, signore; -it was a dull little passeggio of two gondolas. Poveretta!" the man -continued, referring apparently to Miss Tita. His conception of funerals -was apparently that they were mainly to amuse the living. - -I wanted to know about Miss Tita--how she was and where she was--but I -asked him no more questions till we had got upstairs. Now that the fact -had met me I took a bad view of it, especially of the idea that poor -Miss Tita had had to manage by herself after the end. What did she know -about arrangements, about the steps to take in such a case? Poveretta -indeed! I could only hope that the doctor had given her assistance and -that she had not been neglected by the old friends of whom she had told -me, the little band of the faithful whose fidelity consisted in coming -to the house once a year. I elicited from my servant that two old -ladies and an old gentleman had in fact rallied round Miss Tita and had -supported her (they had come for her in a gondola of their own) during -the journey to the cemetery, the little red-walled island of tombs which -lies to the north of the town, on the way to Murano. It appeared -from these circumstances that the Misses Bordereau were Catholics, a -discovery I had never made, as the old woman could not go to church and -her niece, so far as I perceived, either did not or went only to early -mass in the parish, before I was stirring. Certainly even the priests -respected their seclusion; I had never caught the whisk of the curato's -skirt. That evening, an hour later, I sent my servant down with five -words written on a card, to ask Miss Tita if she would see me for a few -moments. She was not in the house, where he had sought her, he told me -when he came back, but in the garden walking about to refresh herself -and gathering flowers. He had found her there and she would be very -happy to see me. - -I went down and passed half an hour with poor Miss Tita. She had always -had a look of musty mourning (as if she were wearing out old robes of -sorrow that would not come to an end), and in this respect there was no -appreciable change in her appearance. But she evidently had been crying, -crying a great deal--simply, satisfyingly, refreshingly, with a sort of -primitive, retarded sense of loneliness and violence. But she had none -of the formalism or the self-consciousness of grief, and I was almost -surprised to see her standing there in the first dusk with her hands -full of flowers, smiling at me with her reddened eyes. Her white face, -in the frame of her mantilla, looked longer, leaner than usual. I had -had an idea that she would be a good deal disgusted with me--would -consider that I ought to have been on the spot to advise her, to help -her; and, though I was sure there was no rancor in her composition and -no great conviction of the importance of her affairs, I had prepared -myself for a difference in her manner, for some little injured look, -half-familiar, half-estranged, which should say to my conscience, "Well, -you are a nice person to have professed things!" But historic truth -compels me to declare that Tita Bordereau's countenance expressed -unqualified pleasure in seeing her late aunt's lodger. That touched him -extremely, and he thought it simplified his situation until he found it -did not. I was as kind to her that evening as I knew how to be, and -I walked about the garden with her for half an hour. There was no -explanation of any sort between us; I did not ask her why she had not -answered my letter. Still less did I repeat what I had said to her -in that communication; if she chose to let me suppose that she had -forgotten the position in which Miss Bordereau surprised me that night -and the effect of the discovery on the old woman I was quite willing to -take it that way: I was grateful to her for not treating me as if I had -killed her aunt. - -We strolled and strolled and really not much passed between us save the -recognition of her bereavement, conveyed in my manner and in a visible -air that she had of depending on me now, since I let her see that I took -an interest in her. Miss Tita had none of the pride that makes a person -wish to preserve the look of independence; she did not in the least -pretend that she knew at present what would become of her. I forebore to -touch particularly on that, however, for I certainly was not prepared -to say that I would take charge of her. I was cautious; not ignobly, I -think, for I felt that her knowledge of life was so small that in her -unsophisticated vision there would be no reason why--since I seemed -to pity her--I should not look after her. She told me how her aunt had -died, very peacefully at the last, and how everything had been done -afterward by the care of her good friends (fortunately, thanks to me, -she said, smiling, there was money in the house; and she repeated that -when once the Italians like you they are your friends for life); and -when we had gone into this she asked me about my giro, my impressions, -the places I had seen. I told her what I could, making it up partly, I -am afraid, as in my depression I had not seen much; and after she had -heard me she exclaimed, quite as if she had forgotten her aunt and her -sorrow, "Dear, dear, how much I should like to do such things--to take a -little journey!" It came over me for the moment that I ought to propose -some tour, say I would take her anywhere she liked; and I remarked at -any rate that some excursion--to give her a change--might be managed: -we would think of it, talk it over. I said never a word to her about the -Aspern documents; asked no questions as to what she had ascertained or -what had otherwise happened with regard to them before Miss Bordereau's -death. It was not that I was not on pins and needles to know, but that -I thought it more decent not to betray my anxiety so soon after the -catastrophe. I hoped she herself would say something, but she never -glanced that way, and I thought this natural at the time. Later however, -that night, it occurred to me that her silence was somewhat strange; -for if she had talked of my movements, of anything so detached as the -Giorgione at Castelfranco, she might have alluded to what she could -easily remember was in my mind. It was not to be supposed that the -emotion produced by her aunt's death had blotted out the recollection -that I was interested in that lady's relics, and I fidgeted afterward -as it came to me that her reticence might very possibly mean simply that -nothing had been found. We separated in the garden (it was she who -said she must go in); now that she was alone in the rooms I felt that -(judged, at any rate, by Venetian ideas) I was on rather a different -footing in regard to visiting her there. As I shook hands with her for -goodnight I asked her if she had any general plan--had thought over what -she had better do. "Oh, yes, oh, yes, but I haven't settled anything -yet," she replied quite cheerfully. Was her cheerfulness explained by -the impression that I would settle for her? - -I was glad the next morning that we had neglected practical questions, -for this gave me a pretext for seeing her again immediately. There was a -very practical question to be touched upon. I owed it to her to let her -know formally that of course I did not expect her to keep me on as a -lodger, and also to show some interest in her own tenure, what she might -have on her hands in the way of a lease. But I was not destined, as it -happened, to converse with her for more than an instant on either of -these points. I sent her no message; I simply went down to the sala and -walked to and fro there. I knew she would come out; she would very soon -discover I was there. Somehow I preferred not to be shut up with her; -gardens and big halls seemed better places to talk. It was a splendid -morning, with something in the air that told of the waning of the long -Venetian summer; a freshness from the sea which stirred the flowers in -the garden and made a pleasant draught in the house, less shuttered and -darkened now than when the old woman was alive. It was the beginning of -autumn, of the end of the golden months. With this it was the end of -my experiment--or would be in the course of half an hour, when I should -really have learned that the papers had been reduced to ashes. After -that there would be nothing left for me but to go to the station; for -seriously (and as it struck me in the morning light) I could not linger -there to act as guardian to a piece of middle-aged female helplessness. -If she had not saved the papers wherein should I be indebted to her? -I think I winced a little as I asked myself how much, if she HAD saved -them, I should have to recognize and, as it were, to reward such -a courtesy. Might not that circumstance after all saddle me with a -guardianship? If this idea did not make me more uncomfortable as I -walked up and down it was because I was convinced I had nothing to look -to. If the old woman had not destroyed everything before she pounced -upon me in the parlor she had done so afterward. - -It took Miss Tita rather longer than I had expected to guess that I was -there; but when at last she came out she looked at me without surprise. -I said to her that I had been waiting for her, and she asked why I had -not let her know. I was glad the next day that I had checked myself -before remarking that I had wished to see if a friendly intuition would -not tell her: it became a satisfaction to me that I had not indulged in -that rather tender joke. What I did say was virtually the truth--that I -was too nervous, since I expected her now to settle my fate. - -"Your fate?" said Miss Tita, giving me a queer look; and as she spoke I -noticed a rare change in her. She was different from what she had been -the evening before--less natural, less quiet. She had been crying the -day before and she was not crying now, and yet she struck me as less -confident. It was as if something had happened to her during the -night, or at least as if she had thought of something that troubled -her--something in particular that affected her relations with me, made -them more embarrassing and complicated. Had she simply perceived that -her aunt's not being there now altered my position? - -"I mean about our papers. ARE there any? You must know now." - -"Yes, there are a great many; more than I supposed." I was struck with -the way her voice trembled as she told me this. - -"Do you mean that you have got them in there--and that I may see them?" - -"I don't think you can see them," said Miss Tita with an extraordinary -expression of entreaty in her eyes, as if the dearest hope she had in -the world now was that I would not take them from her. But how could -she expect me to make such a sacrifice as that after all that had passed -between us? What had I come back to Venice for but to see them, to take -them? My delight in learning they were still in existence was such that -if the poor woman had gone down on her knees to beseech me never to -mention them again I would have treated the proceeding as a bad joke. "I -have got them but I can't show them," she added. - -"Not even to me? Ah, Miss Tita!" I groaned, with a voice of infinite -remonstrance and reproach. - -She colored, and the tears came back to her eyes; I saw that it cost her -a kind of anguish to take such a stand but that a dreadful sense of duty -had descended upon her. It made me quite sick to find myself confronted -with that particular obstacle; all the more that it appeared to me I -had been extremely encouraged to leave it out of account. I almost -considered that Miss Tita had assured me that if she had no greater -hindrance than that--! "You don't mean to say you made her a deathbed -promise? It was precisely against your doing anything of that sort -that I thought I was safe. Oh, I would rather she had burned the papers -outright than that!" - -"No, it isn't a promise," said Miss Tita. - -"Pray what is it then?" - -She hesitated and then she said, "She tried to burn them, but I -prevented it. She had hid them in her bed." - -"In her bed?" - -"Between the mattresses. That's where she put them when she took them -out of the trunk. I can't understand how she did it, because Olimpia -didn't help her. She tells me so, and I believe her. My aunt only told -her afterward, so that she shouldn't touch the bed--anything but the -sheets. So it was badly made," added Miss Tita simply. - -"I should think so! And how did she try to burn them?" - -"She didn't try much; she was too weak, those last days. But she told -me--she charged me. Oh, it was terrible! She couldn't speak after that -night; she could only make signs." - -"And what did you do?" - -"I took them away. I locked them up." - -"In the secretary?" - -"Yes, in the secretary," said Miss Tita, reddening again. - -"Did you tell her you would burn them?" - -"No, I didn't--on purpose." - -"On purpose to gratify me?" - -"Yes, only for that." - -"And what good will you have done me if after all you won't show them?" - -"Oh, none; I know that--I know that." - -"And did she believe you had destroyed them?" - -"I don't know what she believed at the last. I couldn't tell--she was -too far gone." - -"Then if there was no promise and no assurance I can't see what ties -you." - -"Oh, she hated it so--she hated it so! She was so jealous. But here's -the portrait--you may have that," Miss Tita announced, taking the little -picture, wrapped up in the same manner in which her aunt had wrapped it, -out of her pocket. - -"I may have it--do you mean you give it to me?" I questioned, staring, -as it passed into my hand. - -"Oh, yes." - -"But it's worth money--a large sum." - -"Well!" said Miss Tita, still with her strange look. - -I did not know what to make of it, for it could scarcely mean that she -wanted to bargain like her aunt. She spoke as if she wished to make me a -present. "I can't take it from you as a gift," I said, "and yet I can't -afford to pay you for it according to the ideas Miss Bordereau had of -its value. She rated it at a thousand pounds." - -"Couldn't we sell it?" asked Miss Tita. - -"God forbid! I prefer the picture to the money." - -"Well then keep it." - -"You are very generous." - -"So are you." - -"I don't know why you should think so," I replied; and this was a -truthful speech, for the singular creature appeared to have some very -fine reference in her mind, which I did not in the least seize. - -"Well, you have made a great difference for me," said Miss Tita. - -I looked at Jeffrey Aspern's face in the little picture, partly in order -not to look at that of my interlocutress, which had begun to trouble me, -even to frighten me a little--it was so self-conscious, so unnatural. -I made no answer to this last declaration; I only privately consulted -Jeffrey Aspern's delightful eyes with my own (they were so young and -brilliant, and yet so wise, so full of vision); I asked him what on -earth was the matter with Miss Tita. He seemed to smile at me with -friendly mockery, as if he were amused at my case. I had got into a -pickle for him--as if he needed it! He was unsatisfactory, for the only -moment since I had known him. Nevertheless, now that I held the little -picture in my hand I felt that it would be a precious possession. "Is -this a bribe to make me give up the papers?" I demanded in a moment, -perversely. "Much as I value it, if I were to be obliged to choose, the -papers are what I should prefer. Ah, but ever so much!" - -"How can you choose--how can you choose?" Miss Tita asked, slowly, -lamentably. - -"I see! Of course there is nothing to be said, if you regard the -interdiction that rests upon you as quite insurmountable. In this case -it must seem to you that to part with them would be an impiety of the -worst kind, a simple sacrilege!" - -Miss Tita shook her head, full of her dolefulness. "You would understand -if you had known her. I'm afraid," she quavered suddenly--"I'm afraid! -She was terrible when she was angry." - -"Yes, I saw something of that, that night. She was terrible. Then I saw -her eyes. Lord, they were fine!" - -"I see them--they stare at me in the dark!" said Miss Tita. - -"You are nervous, with all you have been through." - -"Oh, yes, very--very!" - -"You mustn't mind; that will pass away," I said, kindly. Then I added, -resignedly, for it really seemed to me that I must accept the situation, -"Well, so it is, and it can't be helped. I must renounce." Miss Tita, at -this, looking at me, gave a low, soft moan, and I went on: "I only wish -to heaven she had destroyed them; then there would be nothing more to -say. And I can't understand why, with her ideas, she didn't." - -"Oh, she lived on them!" said Miss Tita. - -"You can imagine whether that makes me want less to see them," I -answered, smiling. "But don't let me stand here as if I had it in my -soul to tempt you to do anything base. Naturally you will understand if -I give up my rooms. I leave Venice immediately." And I took up my hat, -which I had placed on a chair. We were still there rather awkwardly, -on our feet, in the middle of the sala. She had left the door of the -apartments open behind her but she had not led me that way. - -A kind of spasm came into her face as she saw me take my hat. -"Immediately--do you mean today?" The tone of the words was -tragical--they were a cry of desolation. - -"Oh, no; not so long as I can be of the least service to you." - -"Well, just a day or two more--just two or three days," she panted. Then -controlling herself, she added in another manner, "She wanted to say -something to me--the last day--something very particular, but she -couldn't." - -"Something very particular?" - -"Something more about the papers." - -"And did you guess--have you any idea?" - -"No, I have thought--but I don't know. I have thought all kinds of -things." - -"And for instance?" - -"Well, that if you were a relation it would be different." - -"If I were a relation?" - -"If you were not a stranger. Then it would be the same for you as for -me. Anything that is mine--would be yours, and you could do what you -like. I couldn't prevent you--and you would have no responsibility." - -She brought out this droll explanation with a little nervous rush, as if -she were speaking words she had got by heart. They gave me an impression -of subtlety and at first I failed to follow. But after a moment her face -helped me to see further, and then a light came into my mind. It was -embarrassing, and I bent my head over Jeffrey Aspern's portrait. What -an odd expression was in his face! "Get out of it as you can, my dear -fellow!" I put the picture into the pocket of my coat and said to Miss -Tita, "Yes, I'll sell it for you. I shan't get a thousand pounds by any -means, but I shall get something good." - -She looked at me with tears in her eyes, but she seemed to try to smile -as she remarked, "We can divide the money." - -"No, no, it shall be all yours." Then I went on, "I think I know what -your poor aunt wanted to say. She wanted to give directions that her -papers should be buried with her." - -Miss Tita appeared to consider this suggestion for a moment; after which -she declared, with striking decision, "Oh no, she wouldn't have thought -that safe!" - -"It seems to me nothing could be safer." - -"She had an idea that when people want to publish they are capable--" -And she paused, blushing. - -"Of violating a tomb? Mercy on us, what must she have thought of me!" - -"She was not just, she was not generous!" Miss Tita cried with sudden -passion. - -The light that had come into my mind a moment before increased. "Ah, -don't say that, for we ARE a dreadful race." Then I pursued, "If she -left a will, that may give you some idea." - -"I have found nothing of the sort--she destroyed it. She was very fond -of me," Miss Tita added incongruously. "She wanted me to be happy. And -if any person should be kind to me--she wanted to speak of that." - -I was almost awestricken at the astuteness with which the good lady -found herself inspired, transparent astuteness as it was and sewn, as -the phrase is, with white thread. "Depend upon it she didn't want to -make any provision that would be agreeable to me." - -"No, not to you but to me. She knew I should like it if you could carry -out your idea. Not because she cared for you but because she did think -of me," Miss Tita went on with her unexpected, persuasive volubility. -"You could see them--you could use them." She stopped, seeing that I -perceived the sense of that conditional--stopped long enough for me -to give some sign which I did not give. She must have been conscious, -however, that though my face showed the greatest embarrassment that was -ever painted on a human countenance it was not set as a stone, it was -also full of compassion. It was a comfort to me a long time afterward -to consider that she could not have seen in me the smallest symptom -of disrespect. "I don't know what to do; I'm too tormented, I'm too -ashamed!" she continued with vehemence. Then turning away from me and -burying her face in her hands she burst into a flood of tears. If she -did not know what to do it may be imagined whether I did any better. -I stood there dumb, watching her while her sobs resounded in the great -empty hall. In a moment she was facing me again, with her streaming -eyes. "I would give you everything--and she would understand, where she -is--she would forgive me!" - -"Ah, Miss Tita--ah, Miss Tita," I stammered, for all reply. I did -not know what to do, as I say, but at a venture I made a wild, vague -movement in consequence of which I found myself at the door. I remember -standing there and saying, "It wouldn't do--it wouldn't do!" pensively, -awkwardly, grotesquely, while I looked away to the opposite end of the -sala as if there were a beautiful view there. The next thing I remember -is that I was downstairs and out of the house. My gondola was there and -my gondolier, reclining on the cushions, sprang up as soon as he saw me. -I jumped in and to his usual "Dove commanda?" I replied, in a tone that -made him stare, "Anywhere, anywhere; out into the lagoon!" - -He rowed me away and I sat there prostrate, groaning softly to myself, -with my hat pulled over my face. What in the name of the preposterous -did she mean if she did not mean to offer me her hand? That was the -price--that was the price! And did she think I wanted it, poor deluded, -infatuated, extravagant lady? My gondolier, behind me, must have seen my -ears red as I wondered, sitting there under the fluttering tenda, with -my hidden face, noticing nothing as we passed--wondered whether her -delusion, her infatuation had been my own reckless work. Did she think -I had made love to her, even to get the papers? I had not, I had not; -I repeated that over to myself for an hour, for two hours, till I was -wearied if not convinced. I don't know where my gondolier took me; we -floated aimlessly about in the lagoon, with slow, rare strokes. At last -I became conscious that we were near the Lido, far up, on the right -hand, as you turn your back to Venice, and I made him put me ashore. I -wanted to walk, to move, to shed some of my bewilderment. I crossed the -narrow strip and got to the sea beach--I took my way toward Malamocco. -But presently I flung myself down again on the warm sand, in the breeze, -on the coarse dry grass. It took it out of me to think I had been -so much at fault, that I had unwittingly but nonetheless deplorably -trifled. But I had not given her cause--distinctly I had not. I had -said to Mrs. Prest that I would make love to her; but it had been a joke -without consequences and I had never said it to Tita Bordereau. I had -been as kind as possible, because I really liked her; but since when had -that become a crime where a woman of such an age and such an appearance -was concerned? I am far from remembering clearly the succession of -events and feelings during this long day of confusion, which I spent -entirely in wandering about, without going home, until late at night; -it only comes back to me that there were moments when I pacified my -conscience and others when I lashed it into pain. I did not laugh all -day--that I do recollect; the case, however it might have struck others, -seemed to me so little amusing. It would have been better perhaps for me -to feel the comic side of it. At any rate, whether I had given cause or -not it went without saying that I could not pay the price. I could -not accept. I could not, for a bundle of tattered papers, marry a -ridiculous, pathetic, provincial old woman. It was a proof that she did -not think the idea would come to me, her having determined to suggest -it herself in that practical, argumentative, heroic way, in which the -timidity however had been so much more striking than the boldness that -her reasons appeared to come first and her feelings afterward. - -As the day went on I grew to wish that I had never heard of Aspern's -relics, and I cursed the extravagant curiosity that had put John Cumnor -on the scent of them. We had more than enough material without them, -and my predicament was the just punishment of that most fatal of human -follies, our not having known when to stop. It was very well to say -it was no predicament, that the way out was simple, that I had only to -leave Venice by the first train in the morning, after writing a note to -Miss Tita, to be placed in her hand as soon as I got clear of the house; -for it was a strong sign that I was embarrassed that when I tried to -make up the note in my mind in advance (I would put it on paper as soon -as I got home, before going to bed), I could not think of anything but -"How can I thank you for the rare confidence you have placed in me?" -That would never do; it sounded exactly as if an acceptance were to -follow. Of course I might go away without writing a word, but that -would be brutal and my idea was still to exclude brutal solutions. As my -confusion cooled I was lost in wonder at the importance I had attached -to Miss Bordereau's crumpled scraps; the thought of them became odious -to me, and I was as vexed with the old witch for the superstition that -had prevented her from destroying them as I was with myself for having -already spent more money than I could afford in attempting to control -their fate. I forget what I did, where I went after leaving the Lido and -at what hour or with what recovery of composure I made my way back to my -boat. I only know that in the afternoon, when the air was aglow with -the sunset, I was standing before the church of Saints John and Paul and -looking up at the small square-jawed face of Bartolommeo Colleoni, the -terrible condottiere who sits so sturdily astride of his huge bronze -horse, on the high pedestal on which Venetian gratitude maintains him. -The statue is incomparable, the finest of all mounted figures, unless -that of Marcus Aurelius, who rides benignant before the Roman Capitol, -be finer: but I was not thinking of that; I only found myself staring at -the triumphant captain as if he had an oracle on his lips. The western -light shines into all his grimness at that hour and makes it wonderfully -personal. But he continued to look far over my head, at the red -immersion of another day--he had seen so many go down into the lagoon -through the centuries--and if he were thinking of battles and stratagems -they were of a different quality from any I had to tell him of. He could -not direct me what to do, gaze up at him as I might. Was it before this -or after that I wandered about for an hour in the small canals, to -the continued stupefaction of my gondolier, who had never seen me so -restless and yet so void of a purpose and could extract from me no order -but "Go anywhere--everywhere--all over the place"? He reminded me that -I had not lunched and expressed therefore respectfully the hope that I -would dine earlier. He had had long periods of leisure during the day, -when I had left the boat and rambled, so that I was not obliged to -consider him, and I told him that that day, for a change, I would touch -no meat. It was an effect of poor Miss Tita's proposal, not altogether -auspicious, that I had quite lost my appetite. I don't know why it -happened that on this occasion I was more than ever struck with that -queer air of sociability, of cousinship and family life, which makes up -half the expression of Venice. Without streets and vehicles, the uproar -of wheels, the brutality of horses, and with its little winding ways -where people crowd together, where voices sound as in the corridors of -a house, where the human step circulates as if it skirted the angles of -furniture and shoes never wear out, the place has the character of an -immense collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco is the most -ornamented corner and palaces and churches, for the rest, play the -part of great divans of repose, tables of entertainment, expanses -of decoration. And somehow the splendid common domicile, familiar, -domestic, and resonant, also resembles a theater, with actors clicking -over bridges and, in straggling processions, tripping along fondamentas. -As you sit in your gondola the footways that in certain parts edge the -canals assume to the eye the importance of a stage, meeting it at the -same angle, and the Venetian figures, moving to and fro against the -battered scenery of their little houses of comedy, strike you as members -of an endless dramatic troupe. - -I went to bed that night very tired, without being able to compose a -letter to Miss Tita. Was this failure the reason why I became conscious -the next morning as soon as I awoke of a determination to see the poor -lady again the first moment she would receive me? That had something to -do with it, but what had still more was the fact that during my sleep a -very odd revulsion had taken place in my spirit. I found myself aware of -this almost as soon as I opened my eyes; it made me jump out of my bed -with the movement of a man who remembers that he has left the house door -ajar or a candle burning under a shelf. Was I still in time to save my -goods? That question was in my heart; for what had now come to pass -was that in the unconscious cerebration of sleep I had swung back to a -passionate appreciation of Miss Bordereau's papers. They were now more -precious than ever, and a kind of ferocity had come into my desire to -possess them. The condition Miss Tita had attached to the possession of -them no longer appeared an obstacle worth thinking of, and for an hour, -that morning, my repentant imagination brushed it aside. It was absurd -that I should be able to invent nothing; absurd to renounce so easily -and turn away helpless from the idea that the only way to get hold of -the papers was to unite myself to her for life. I would not unite myself -and yet I would have them. I must add that by the time I sent down to -ask if she would see me I had invented no alternative, though to do so I -had had all the time that I was dressing. This failure was humiliating, -yet what could the alternative be? Miss Tita sent back word that I -might come; and as I descended the stairs and crossed the sala to her -door--this time she received me in her aunt's forlorn parlor--I hoped -she would not think my errand was to tell her I accepted her hand. She -certainly would have made the day before the reflection that I declined -it. - -As soon as I came into the room I saw that she had drawn this inference, -but I also saw something which had not been in my forecast. Poor Miss -Tita's sense of her failure had produced an extraordinary alteration in -her, but I had been too full of my literary concupiscence to think of -that. Now I perceived it; I can scarcely tell how it startled me. She -stood in the middle of the room with a face of mildness bent upon -me, and her look of forgiveness, of absolution, made her angelic. It -beautified her; she was younger; she was not a ridiculous old woman. -This optical trick gave her a sort of phantasmagoric brightness, and -while I was still the victim of it I heard a whisper somewhere in the -depths of my conscience: "Why not, after all--why not?" It seemed to -me I was ready to pay the price. Still more distinctly however than -the whisper I heard Miss Tita's own voice. I was so struck with the -different effect she made upon me that at first I was not clearly aware -of what she was saying; then I perceived she had bade me goodbye--she -said something about hoping I should be very happy. - -"Goodbye--goodbye?" I repeated with an inflection interrogative and -probably foolish. - -I saw she did not feel the interrogation, she only heard the words; she -had strung herself up to accepting our separation and they fell upon -her ear as a proof. "Are you going today?" she asked. "But it doesn't -matter, for whenever you go I shall not see you again. I don't want to." -And she smiled strangely, with an infinite gentleness. She had never -doubted that I had left her the day before in horror. How could she, -since I had not come back before night to contradict, even as a simple -form, such an idea? And now she had the force of soul--Miss Tita with -force of soul was a new conception--to smile at me in her humiliation. - -"What shall you do--where shall you go?" I asked. - -"Oh, I don't know. I have done the great thing. I have destroyed the -papers." - -"Destroyed them?" I faltered. - -"Yes; what was I to keep them for? I burned them last night, one by one, -in the kitchen." - -"One by one?" I repeated, mechanically. - -"It took a long time--there were so many." The room seemed to go round -me as she said this, and a real darkness for a moment descended upon my -eyes. When it passed Miss Tita was there still, but the transfiguration -was over and she had changed back to a plain, dingy, elderly person. -It was in this character she spoke as she said, "I can't stay with you -longer, I can't;" and it was in this character that she turned her back -upon me, as I had turned mine upon her twenty-four hours before, and -moved to the door of her room. Here she did what I had not done when I -quitted her--she paused long enough to give me one look. I have never -forgotten it and I sometimes still suffer from it, though it was not -resentful. No, there was no resentment, nothing hard or vindictive in -poor Miss Tita; for when, later, I sent her in exchange for the portrait -of Jeffrey Aspern a larger sum of money than I had hoped to be able to -gather for her, writing to her that I had sold the picture, she kept it -with thanks; she never sent it back. I wrote to her that I had sold the -picture, but I admitted to Mrs. Prest, at the time (I met her in London, -in the autumn), that it hangs above my writing table. When I look at it -my chagrin at the loss of the letters becomes almost intolerable. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Aspern Papers, by Henry James - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ASPERN PAPERS *** - -***** This file should be named 211.txt or 211.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/211/ - -Produced by Judith Boss - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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