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
cafés, 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. It 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.