Produced by Judith Boss THE ASPERN PAPERS By Henry James First American book edition, Macmillan and Co., 1888. I I had taken Mrs. Prest into my confidence; in truth without her I should have made but little advance, for the fruitful idea in the whole business dropped from her friendly lips. It was she who invented the short cut, who severed the Gordian knot. It is not supposed to be the nature of women to rise as a general thing to the largest and most liberal view--I mean of a practical scheme; but it has struck me that they sometimes throw off a bold conception--such as a man would not have risen to--with singular serenity. âSimply ask them to take you in on the footing of a lodgerâ--I donât 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 friendâs 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 âlittle oneâ 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, âAh, but thereâs 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.â 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. âOne would think you expected to find in them the answer to the riddle of the universe,â 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 Aspernâs 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 doesnât defend oneâs god: oneâs 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 womanâs poet: to which she rejoined aptly enough that he had been at least Miss Bordereauâs. 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. âWhy, she must be tremendously old--at least a hundred,â 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. âThat is her excuse,â 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 Bordereauâs hands should perversely bring out others. There had been an impression about 1825 that he had âtreated her badly,â just as there had been an impression that he had âserved,â 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 womanâs poet, as I had said to Mrs. Prest, in the modern phase of his reputation; but the situation had been different when the manâs own voice was mingled with his song. That voice, by every testimony, was one of the sweetest ever heard. âOrpheus and the Maenads!â 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 Aspernâs 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 womanâs 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 Aspernâs 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 Bordereauâs 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. âHow charming! Itâs gray and pink!â 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. âI donât know why--there are no brick gables,â said Mrs. Prest, âbut this corner has seemed to me before more Dutch than Italian, more like Amsterdam than like Venice. Itâs 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.â 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. âIf she didnât 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.â 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. âWhy not another?â 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. âDearest lady,â I exclaimed, âexcuse 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 wonât have the documents spoken of; they are personal, delicate, intimate, and she hasnât 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 Aspernâs sake I would do worse still. First I must take tea with her; then tackle the main job.â 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. âMiss Bordereau requested her to say that she could not imagine what he meant by troubling them. They had none of Mr. Aspernâs papers, and if they had should never think of showing them to anyone on any account whatever. She didnât know what he was talking about and begged he would let her alone.â I certainly did not want to be met that way. âWell,â said Mrs. Prest after a moment, provokingly, âperhaps after all they havenât any of his things. If they deny it flat how are you sure?â âJohn 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 ladyâs not unnatural fib--has built itself up. Besides, he makes much of the internal evidence of the nieceâs letter.â âThe internal evidence?â âHer calling him âMr. Aspern.ââ âI donât see what that proves.â âIt proves familiarity, and familiarity implies the possession of mementoes, or relics. I canât tell you how that âMr.â 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 donât say, âMr.â Shakespeare.â âWould I, any more, if I had a box full of his letters?â âYes, if he had been your lover and someone wanted them!â And I added that John Cumnor was so convinced, and so all the more convinced by Miss Bordereauâs 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. âBut you will have to change your name,â said Mrs. Prest. âJuliana lives out of the world as much as it is possible to live, but none the less she has probably heard of Mr. Aspernâs editors; she perhaps possesses what you have published.â âI have thought of that,â I returned; and I drew out of my pocketbook a visiting card, neatly engraved with a name that was not my own. âYou are very extravagant; you might have written it,â said my companion. âThis looks more genuine.â âCertainly, you are prepared to go far! But it will be awkward about your letters; they wonât come to you in that mask.â âMy banker will take them in, and I will go every day to fetch them. It will give me a little walk.â âShall you only depend upon that?â asked Mrs. Prest. âArenât you coming to see me?â âOh, 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 youâll say! Meanwhile, John Cumnor will bombard me with letters addressed, in my feigned name, to the care of the padrona.â âShe will recognize his hand,â my companion suggested. âOn the envelope he can disguise it.â âWell, youâre a precious pair! Doesnât 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?â âCertainly, and I see only one way to parry that.â âAnd what may that be?â I hesitated a moment. âTo make love to the niece.â âAh,â cried Mrs. Prest, âwait till you see her!â II âI must work the garden--I must work the garden,â 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, âCould you very kindly see a gentleman, an American, for a moment?â 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 dentistâs 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: âThe garden, the garden--do me the pleasure to tell me if itâs yours!â She stopped short, looking at me with wonder; and then, âNothing here is mine,â she answered in English, coldly and sadly. âOh, you are English; how delightful!â I remarked, ingenuously. âBut surely the garden belongs to the house?â âYes, but the house doesnât belong to me.â 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. âWell then, would you kindly tell me to whom I must address myself? Iâm afraid youâll think me odiously intrusive, but you know I MUST have a garden--upon my honor I must!â 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 âdressed,â and long fine hands which were--possibly--not clean. She clasped these members almost convulsively as, with a confused, alarmed look, she broke out, âOh, donât take it away from us; we like it ourselves!â âYou have the use of it then?â âOh, yes. If it wasnât for that!â And she gave a shy, melancholy smile. âIsnât it a luxury, precisely? Thatâs 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--thatâs why I have felt that a garden is really indispensable. I appeal to your own experience,â I went on, smiling. âNow canât I look at yours?â âI donât know, I donât understand,â the poor woman murmured, planted there and letting her embarrassed eyes wander all over my strangeness. âI mean only from one of those windows--such grand ones as you have here--if you will let me open the shutters.â 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. âI 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. Itâs absurd if you like, for a man, but I canât live without flowers.â âThere are none to speak of down there.â 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: âWe have a few, but they are very common. It costs too much to cultivate them; one has to have a man.â âWhy shouldnât I be the man?â I asked. âIâll work without wages; or rather Iâll put in a gardener. You shall have the sweetest flowers in Venice.â 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, âWe donât know you--we donât know you.â âYou 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.â âWe are not English,â said my companion, watching me helplessly while I threw open the shutters of one of the divisions of the wide high window. âYou speak the language so beautifully: might I ask what you are?â 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, âYou donât mean to say you are also by chance American?â âI donât know; we used to be.â âUsed to be? Surely you havenât changed?â âItâs so many years ago--we are nothing.â âSo many years that you have been living here? Well, I donât wonder at that; itâs a grand old house. I suppose you all use the garden,â I went on, âbut I assure you I shouldnât be in your way. I would be very quiet and stay in one corner.â âWe all use it?â 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. âI mean all your family, as many as you are.â âThere is only one other; she is very old--she never goes down.â âOnly one other, in all this great house!â I feigned to be not only amazed but almost scandalized. âDear lady, you must have space then to spare!â âTo spare?â she repeated, in the same dazed way. âWhy, you surely donât live (two quiet women--I see YOU are quiet, at any rate) in fifty rooms!â Then with a burst of hope and cheer I demanded: âCouldnât you let me two or three? That would set me up!â 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, âWhy, Miss Bordereau!â 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. âWe have never done anything of the sort; we have never had a lodger or any kind of inmate.â So much as this she made a point of saying to me. âWe are very poor, we live very badly. The rooms are very bare--that you might take; they have nothing in them. I donât know how you would sleep, how you would eat.â âWith your permission, I could easily put in a bed and a few tables and chairs. Câest 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 fellowâ (this personage was an evocation of the moment), âcan easily cook me a chop there. My tastes and habits are of the simplest; I live on flowers!â 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. âThe aunt will refuse; she will think the whole proceeding very louche!â 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, âOh, I see whatâs 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 youâll count it as a triumph.â 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 Aspernâs 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 deathâs-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 âOur house is very far from the center, but the little canal is very comme il faut.â âItâs the sweetest corner of Venice and I can imagine nothing more charming,â I hastened to reply. The old ladyâs 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 Aspernâs ear. âPlease to sit down there. I hear very well,â 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, âIf you are so fond of a garden why donât you go to terra firma, where there are so many far better than this?â âOh, itâs the combination!â I answered, smiling; and then, with rather a flight of fancy, âItâs the idea of a garden in the middle of the sea.â âItâs not in the middle of the sea; you canât see the water.â I stared a moment, wondering whether she wished to convict me of fraud. âCanât see the water? Why, dear madam, I can come up to the very gate in my boat.â She appeared inconsequent, for she said vaguely in reply to this, âYes, if you have got a boat. I havenât any; itâs many years since I have been in one of the gondolas.â She uttered these words as if the gondolas were a curious faraway craft which she knew only by hearsay. âLet me assure you of the pleasure with which I would put mine at your service!â 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. âShe has very good manners; I bred her up myself!â 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: âI donât care who you may be--I donât want to know; it signifies very little today.â 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, âYou may have as many rooms as you like--if you will pay a good deal of money.â 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, âI will pay with pleasure and of course in advance whatever you may think is proper to ask me.â âWell then, a thousand francs a month,â 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 Aspernâs 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 monthsâ 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, âHe will give three thousand--three thousand tomorrow!â Miss Tita stood still, with her patient eyes turning from one of us to the other; then she inquired, scarcely above her breath, âDo you mean francs?â âDid you mean francs or dollars?â the old woman asked of me at this. âI think francs were what you said,â I answered, smiling. âThat is very good,â said Miss Tita, as if she had become conscious that her own question might have looked overreaching. âWhat do YOU know? You are ignorant,â Miss Bordereau remarked; not with acerbity but with a strange, soft coldness. âYes, of money--certainly of money!â Miss Tita hastened to exclaim. âI am sure you have your own branches of knowledge,â 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. âShe had a very good education when she was young. I looked into that myself,â said Miss Bordereau. Then she added, âBut she has learned nothing since.â âI have always been with you,â Miss Tita rejoined very mildly, and evidently with no intention of making an epigram. âYes, but for that!â 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: âAnd what time will you come tomorrow with the money?â âThe sooner the better. If it suits you I will come at noon.â âI am always here but I have my hours,â said the old woman, as if her convenience were not to be taken for granted. âYou mean the times when you receive?â âI never receive. But I will see you at noon, when you come with the money.â âVery good, I shall be punctual;â and I added, âMay I shake hands with you, on our contract?â 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 oneâs 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, âI belong to a time when that was not the custom.â I felt rather snubbed but I exclaimed good humoredly to Miss Tita, âOh, you will do as well!â I shook hands with her while she replied, with a small flutter, âYes, yes, to show itâs all arranged!â âShall you bring the money in gold?â Miss Bordereau demanded, as I was turning to the door. I looked at her for a moment. âArenât you a little afraid, after all, of keeping such a sum as that in the house?â 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. âWhom should I be afraid of if I am not afraid of you?â she asked with her shrunken grimness. âAh well,â said I, laughing, âI shall be in point of fact a protector and I will bring gold if you prefer.â âThank you,â 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 Bordereauâs. 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: âI have had better fortune than I hoped. It was very kind of her to see me. Perhaps you said a good word for me.â âIt was the idea of the money,â said Miss Tita. âAnd did you suggest that?â âI told her that you would perhaps give a good deal.â âWhat made you think that?â âI told her I thought you were rich.â âAnd what put that idea into your head?â âI donât know; the way you talked.â âDear me, I must talk differently now,â I declared. âIâm sorry to say itâs not the case.â âWell,â said Miss Tita, âI think that in Venice the forestieri, in general, often
{'title': 'The Aspern Papers by Henry James', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}