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diff --git a/old/asprn10.txt b/old/asprn10.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 83cfb62..0000000 --- a/old/asprn10.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4376 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Aspern Papers by Henry James - -Please take a look at the important information in this header. -We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an -electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. - - -**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** - -**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** - -*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* - -Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and -further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* - - - - - - - - -The text is that of the first American book edition, Macmillan and Co., 1888. - - - THE ASPERN PAPERS - - - 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 GIRL 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 Etext of The Aspern Papers by Henry James - - - diff --git a/old/asprn10.zip b/old/asprn10.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 13f2f31..0000000 --- a/old/asprn10.zip +++ /dev/null |