The Aspern Papers, Henry James [book club books TXT] 📗

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