One afternoon, as I came down from my quarters to go out, I found Miss
Tita in the sala: it was our first encounter on that ground since I had
come to the house. She put on no air of being there by accident; there
was an ignorance of such arts in her angular, diffident directness. That
I might be quite sure she was waiting for me she informed me of the fact
and told me that Miss Bordereau wished to see me: she would take me into
the room at that moment if I had time. If I had been late for a love
tryst I would have stayed for this, and I quickly signified that I
should be delighted to wait upon the old lady. “She wants to talk with
you--to know you,” Miss Tita said, smiling as if she herself appreciated
that idea; and she led me to the door of her aunt’s apartment. I
stopped her a moment before she had opened it, looking at her with some
curiosity. I told her that this was a great satisfaction to me and a
great honor; but all the same I should like to ask what had made
Miss Bordereau change so suddenly. It was only the other day that
she wouldn’t suffer me near her. Miss Tita was not embarrassed by my
question; she had as many little unexpected serenities as if she told
fibs, but the odd part of them was that they had on the contrary their
source in her truthfulness. “Oh, my aunt changes,” she answered; “it’s
so terribly dull--I suppose she’s tired.”
“But you told me that she wanted more and more to be alone.”
Poor Miss Tita colored, as if she found me over-insistent. “Well, if
you don’t believe she wants to see you--I haven’t invented it! I think
people often are capricious when they are very old.”
“That’s perfectly true. I only wanted to be clear as to whether you have
repeated to her what I told you the other night.”
“What you told me?”
“About Jeffrey Aspern--that I am looking for materials.”
“If I had told her do you think she would have sent for you?”
“That’s exactly what I want to know. If she wants to keep him to herself
she might have sent for me to tell me so.”
“She won’t speak of him,” said Miss Tita. Then as she opened the door
she added in a lower tone, “I have told her nothing.”
The old woman was sitting in the same place in which I had seen her
last, in the same position, with the same mystifying bandage over her
eyes. her welcome was to turn her almost invisible face to me and show
me that while she sat silent she saw me clearly. I made no motion to
shake hands with her; I felt too well on this occasion that that was out
of place forever. It had been sufficiently enjoined upon me that she was
too sacred for that sort of reciprocity--too venerable to touch. There
was something so grim in her aspect (it was partly the accident of her
green shade), as I stood there to be measured, that I ceased on the spot
to feel any doubt as to her knowing my secret, though I did not in the
least suspect that Miss Tita had not just spoken the truth. She had not
betrayed me, but the old woman’s brooding instinct had served her;
she had turned me over and over in the long, still hours, and she had
guessed. The worst of it was that she looked terribly like an old woman
who at a pinch would burn her papers. Miss Tita pushed a chair forward,
saying to me, “This will be a good place for you to sit.” As I took
possession of it I asked after Miss Bordereau’s health; expressed the
hope that in spite of the very hot weather it was satisfactory. She
replied that it was good enough--good enough; that it was a great thing
to be alive.
“Oh, as to that, it depends upon what you compare it with!” I exclaimed,
laughing.
“I don’t compare--I don’t compare. If I did that I should have given
everything up long ago.”
I liked to think that this was a subtle allusion to the rapture she had
known in the society of Jeffrey Aspern--though it was true that such an
allusion would have accorded ill with the wish I imputed to her to keep
him buried in her soul. What it accorded with was my constant conviction
that no human being had ever had a more delightful social gift than his,
and what it seemed to convey was that nothing in the world was worth
speaking of if one pretended to speak of that. But one did not! Miss
Tita sat down beside her aunt, looking as if she had reason to believe
some very remarkable conversation would come off between us.
“It’s about the beautiful flowers,” said the old lady; “you sent us so
many--I ought to have thanked you for them before. But I don’t write
letters and I receive only at long intervals.”
She had not thanked me while the flowers continued to come, but she
departed from her custom so far as to send for me as soon as she began
to fear that they would not come any more. I noted this; I remembered
what an acquisitive propensity she had shown when it was a question of
extracting gold from me, and I privately rejoiced at the happy thought I
had had in suspending my tribute. She had missed it and she was willing
to make a concession to bring it back. At the first sign of this
concession I could only go to meet her. “I am afraid you have not
had many, of late, but they shall begin again immediately--tomorrow,
tonight.”
“Oh, do send us some tonight!” Miss Tita cried, as if it were an immense
circumstance.
“What else should you do with them? It isn’t a manly taste to make a
bower of your room,” the old woman remarked.
“I don’t make a bower of my room, but I am exceedingly fond of growing
flowers, of watching their ways. There is nothing unmanly in that: it
has been the amusement of philosophers, of statesmen in retirement; even
I think of great captains.”
“I suppose you know you can sell them--those you don’t use,” Miss
Bordereau went on. “I daresay they wouldn’t give you much for them;
still, you could make a bargain.”
“Oh, I have never made a bargain, as you ought to know. My gardener
disposes of them and I ask no questions.”
“I would ask a few, I can promise you!” said Miss Bordereau; and it was
the first time I had heard her laugh. I could not get used to the
idea that this vision of pecuniary profit was what drew out the divine
Juliana most.
“Come into the garden yourself and pick them; come as often as you like;
come every day. They are all for you,” I pursued, addressing Miss Tita
and carrying off this veracious statement by treating it as an innocent
joke. “I can’t imagine why she doesn’t come down,” I added, for Miss
Bordereau’s benefit.
“You must make her come; you must come up and fetch her,” said the old
woman, to my stupefaction. “That odd thing you have made in the corner
would be a capital place for her to sit.”
The allusion to my arbor was irreverent; it confirmed the impression I
had already received that there was a flicker of impertinence in Miss
Bordereau’s talk, a strange mocking lambency which must have been a part
of her adventurous youth and which had outlived passions and faculties.
Nonetheless I asked, “Wouldn’t it be possible for you to come down there
yourself? Wouldn’t it do you good to sit there in the shade, in the
sweet air?”
“Oh, sir, when I move out of this it won’t be to sit in the air, and
I’m afraid that any that may be stirring around me won’t be particularly
sweet! It will be a very dark shade indeed. But that won’t be just yet,”
Miss Bordereau continued cannily, as if to correct any hopes that this
courageous allusion to the last receptacle of her mortality might lead
me to entertain. “I have sat here many a day and I have had enough of
arbors in my time. But I’m not afraid to wait till I’m called.”
Miss Tita had expected some interesting talk, but perhaps she found it
less genial on her aunt’s side (considering that I had been sent
for with a civil intention) than she had hoped. As if to give the
conversation a turn that would put our companion in a light more
favorable she said to me, “Didn’t I tell you the other night that she
had sent me out? You see that I can do what I like!”
“Do you pity her--do you teach her to pity herself?” Miss Bordereau
demanded before I had time to answer this appeal. “She has a much easier
life than I had when I was her age.”
“You must remember that it has been quite open to me to think you rather
inhuman.”
“Inhuman? That’s what the poets used to call the women a hundred years
ago. Don’t try that; you won’t do as well as they!” Juliana declared.
“There is no more poetry in the world--that I know of at least. But
I won’t bandy words with you,” she pursued, and I well remember the
old-fashioned, artificial sound she gave to the speech. “You have made
me talk, talk! It isn’t good for me at all.” I got up at this and told
her I would take no more of her time; but she detained me to ask, “Do
you remember, the day I saw you about the rooms, that you offered us the
use of your gondola?” And when I assented, promptly, struck again with
her disposition to make a “good thing” of being there and wondering what
she now had in her eye, she broke out, “Why don’t you take that girl out
in it and show her the place?”
“Oh, dear Aunt, what do you want to do with me?” cried the “girl” with a
piteous quaver. “I know all about the place!”
“Well then, go with him as a cicerone!” said Miss Bordereau with an
effort of something like cruelty in her implacable power of retort--an
incongruous suggestion that she was a sarcastic, profane, cynical old
woman. “Haven’t we heard that there have been all sorts of changes in
all these years? You ought to see them and at your age (I don’t mean
because you’re so young) you ought to take the chances that come. You’re
old enough, my dear, and this gentleman won’t hurt you. He will show you
the famous sunsets, if they still go on--DO they go on? The sun set for
me so long ago. But that’s not a reason. Besides, I shall never miss
you; you think you are too important. Take her to the Piazza; it used
to be very pretty,” Miss Bordereau continued, addressing herself to me.
“What have they done with the funny old church? I hope it hasn’t tumbled
down. Let her look at the shops; she may take some money, she may buy
what she likes.”
Poor Miss Tita had got up, discountenanced and helpless, and as we stood
there before her aunt it would certainly have seemed to a spectator of
the scene that the old woman was amusing herself at our expense. Miss
Tita protested, in a confusion of exclamations and murmurs; but I
lost no time in saying that if she would do me the honor to accept the
hospitality of my boat I would engage that she should not be bored.
Or if she did not want so much of my company the boat itself, with the
gondolier, was at her service; he was a capital oar and she might have
every confidence. Miss Tita, without definitely answering this speech,
looked away from me, out of the window, as if she were going to cry; and
I remarked that once we had Miss Bordereau’s approval we could easily
come to an understanding. We would take an hour, whichever she liked,
one of the very next days. As I made my obeisance to the old lady I
asked her if she would kindly permit me to see her again.
For a moment she said nothing; then she inquired, “Is it very necessary
to your happiness?”
“It diverts me more than I can say.”
“You are wonderfully civil. Don’t you know it almost kills ME?”
“How can I believe that when I see you more animated, more brilliant
than when I came in?”
“That is very true, Aunt,” said Miss Tita. “I think it does you good.”
“Isn’t it touching, the solicitude we each have that the other shall
enjoy herself?” sneered Miss Bordereau. “If you think me brilliant
today you don’t know what you are talking about; you have never seen an
agreeable woman. Don’t try to pay me a compliment; I have been spoiled,”
she went on. “My door is shut, but you may sometimes knock.”
With this she dismissed me, and I left the room. The latch closed behind
me, but Miss Tita, contrary to my hope, had remained within. I passed
slowly across the hall and before taking my way downstairs I waited
a little. My hope was answered; after a minute Miss Tita followed me.
“That’s a delightful idea about the Piazza,” I said. “When will you
go--tonight, tomorrow?”
She had been disconcerted, as I have mentioned, but I had already
perceived and I was to observe again that when Miss Tita was embarrassed
she did not (as most women would have done) turn away from you and try
to escape, but came closer, as it were, with a deprecating, clinging
appeal to be spared, to be protected. Her attitude was perpetually a
sort of prayer for assistance, for explanation; and yet no woman in the
world could have been less of a comedian. From the moment you were kind
to her she depended on you absolutely; her self-consciousness dropped
from her and she took the greatest intimacy, the innocent intimacy which
was the only thing she could conceive, for granted. She told me she did
not know what had got into her aunt; she had changed so quickly, she had
got some idea. I replied that she must find out what the idea was and
then let me know; we would go and have an ice together at Florian’s, and
she should tell me while we listened to the band.
“Oh, it will take me a long time to find out!” she said, rather
ruefully; and she could promise me this satisfaction neither for that
night nor for the next. I was patient now, however, for I felt that I
had only to wait; and in fact at the end of the week, one lovely evening
after dinner, she stepped into my gondola, to which in honor of the
occasion I had attached a second oar.
We swept in the course of five minutes into the Grand Canal; whereupon
she uttered a murmur of ecstasy as fresh as if she had been a tourist
just arrived. She had forgotten how splendid the great waterway looked
on a clear, hot summer evening, and how the sense of floating between
marble palaces and reflected lights disposed the mind to sympathetic
talk. We floated long and far, and though Miss Tita gave no high-pitched
voice to her satisfaction I felt that she surrendered herself. She was
more than pleased, she was transported; the whole thing was an immense
liberation. The gondola moved with slow strokes, to give her time to
enjoy it, and she listened to the plash of the oars, which grew louder
and more musically liquid as we passed into narrow canals, as if it were
a revelation of Venice. When I asked her how long it was since she had
been in a boat she answered, “Oh, I don’t know; a long time--not since
my aunt began to be ill.” This was not the only example she gave me of
her extreme vagueness about the previous years and the line which marked
off the period when Miss Bordereau flourished. I was not at liberty to
keep her out too long, but we took a considerable GIRO before going
to the Piazza. I asked her no questions, keeping the conversation on
purpose away from her domestic situation and the things I wanted to
know; I poured treasures of information about Venice into her ears,
described Florence and Rome, discoursed to her on the charms and
advantages of travel. She reclined, receptive, on the deep leather
cushions, turned her eyes conscientiously to everything I pointed out to
her, and never mentioned to me till sometime afterward that she might
be supposed to know Florence better than I, as she had lived there for
years with Miss Bordereau. At last she asked, with the shy impatience of
a child, “Are we not really going to the Piazza? That’s what I want to
see!” I immediately gave the order that we should go straight; and
then we sat silent with the expectation of arrival. As some time still
passed, however, she said suddenly, of her own movement, “I have found
out what is the matter with my aunt: she is afraid you will go!”
“What has put that into her head?”
“She has had an idea you have not been happy. That is why she is
different now.”
“You mean she wants to make me happier?”
“Well, she wants you not to go; she wants you to stay.”
“I suppose you mean on account of the rent,” I remarked candidly.
Miss Tita’s candor showed itself a match for my own. “Yes, you know; so
that I shall have more.”
“How much does she want you to have?” I asked, laughing. “She ought to
fix the sum, so that I may stay till it’s made up.”
“Oh, that wouldn’t please me,” said Miss Tita. “It would be unheard of,
your taking that trouble.”
“But suppose I should have my own reasons for staying in Venice?”
“Then it would be better for you to stay in some other house.”
“And what would your aunt say to that?”
“She wouldn’t like it at all. But I should think you would do well to
give up your reasons and go away altogether.”
“Dear Miss Tita,” I said, “it’s not so easy to give them up!”
She made no immediate answer to this, but after a moment she broke out:
“I think I know what your reasons are!”
“I daresay, because the other night I almost told you how I wish you
would help me to make them good.”
“I can’t do that without being false to my aunt.”
“What do you mean, being false to her?”
“Why, she would never consent to what you want. She has been asked, she
has been written to. It made her fearfully angry.”
“Then she HAS got papers of value?” I demanded quickly.
“Oh, she has got everything!” sighed Miss Tita with a curious weariness,
a sudden lapse into gloom.
These words caused all my pulses to throb, for I regarded them as
precious evidence. For some minutes I was too agitated to speak, and
in the interval the gondola approached the Piazzetta. After we had
disembarked I asked my companion whether she would rather walk round the
square or go and sit at the door of the café; 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.