Great Short Novels of Henry James

by Henry James

  “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 es
pecially the case when after a moment she said. “There was a gentleman who some time ago wrote to her in very much those words. He also wanted her papers.”

  “And did she answer him?” I asked, rather ashamed of myself for not having her rectitude.

  “Only when he had written two or three times. He made her very angry.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said he was a devil,” Miss Tita replied simply.

  “She used that expression in her letter?”

  “Oh, no; she said it to me. She made me write to him.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I told him there were no papers at all.”

  “Ah, poor gentleman!” I exclaimed.

  “I knew there were, but I wrote what she bade me.”

  “Of course you had to do that. But I hope I shall not pass for a devil.”

  “It will depend upon what you ask me to do for you,” said Miss Tita, smiling.

  “Oh, if there is a chance of your thinking so my affair is in a bad way! I shan’t ask you to steal for me, nor even to fib—for you can’t fib, unless on paper. But the principal thing is this—to prevent her from destroying the papers.”

  “Why, I have no control of her,” said Miss Tita. “It’s she who controls me.”

  “But she doesn’t control her own arms and legs, does she? The way she would naturally destroy her letters would be to burn them. Now she can’t burn them without fire, and she can’t get fire unless you give it to her.”

  “I have always done everything she has asked,” my companion rejoined. “Besides, there’s Olimpia.”

  I was on the point of saying that Olimpia was probably corruptible, but I thought it best not to sound that note. So I simply inquired if that faithful domestic could not be managed.

  “Everyone can be managed by my aunt,” said Miss Tita. And then she observed that her holiday was over; she must go home.

  I laid my hand on her arm, across the table, to stay her a moment. “What I want of you is a general promise to help me.”

  “Oh, how can I—how can I?” she asked, wondering and troubled. She was half-surprised, half-frightened at my wishing to make her play an active part.

  “This is the main thing: to watch her carefully and warn me in time, before she commits that horrible sacrilege.”

  “I can’t watch her when she makes me go out.”

  “That’s very true.”

  “And when you do, too.”

  “Mercy on us; do you think she will have done anything tonight?”

  “I don’t know; she is very cunning.”

  “Are you trying to frighten me?” I asked.

  I felt this inquiry sufficiently answered when my companion murmured in a musing, almost envious way, “Oh, but she loves them—she loves them!”

  This reflection, repeated with such emphasis, gave me great comfort; but to obtain more of that balm I said, “If she shouldn’t intend to destroy the objects we speak of before her death she will probably have made some disposition by will.”

  “By will?”

  “Hasn’t she made a will for your benefit?”

  “Why, she has so little to leave. That’s why she likes money,” said Miss Tita.

  “Might I ask, since we are really talking things over, what you and she live on?”

  “On some money that comes from America, from a lawyer. He sends it every quarter. It isn’t much!”

  “And won’t she have disposed of that?”

  My companion hesitated—I saw she was blushing. “I believe it’s mine,” she said; and the look and tone which accompanied these words betrayed so the absence of the habit of thinking of herself that I almost thought her charming. The next instant she added, “But she had a lawyer once, ever so long ago. And some people came and signed something.”

  “They were probably witnesses. And you were not asked to sign? Well then,” I argued rapidly and hopefully, “it is because you are the legatee; she has left all her documents to you!”

  “If she has it’s with very strict conditions,” Miss Tita responded, rising quickly, while the movement gave the words a little character of decision. They seemed to imply that the bequest would be accompanied with a command that the articles bequeathed should remain concealed from every inquisitive eye and that I was very much mistaken if I thought she was the person to depart from an injunction so solemn.

  “Oh, of course you will have to abide by the terms,” I said; and she uttered nothing to mitigate the severity of this conclusion. Nonetheless, later, just before we disembarked at her own door, on our return, which had taken place almost in silence, she said to me abruptly, “I will do what I can to help you.” I was grateful for this—it was very well so far as it went; but it did not keep me from remembering that night in a worried waking hour that I now had her word for it to reinforce my own impression that the old woman was very cunning.

  VII

  THE FEAR of what this side of her character might have led her to do made me nervous for days afterward. I waited for an intimation from Miss Tita; I almost figured to myself that it was her duty to keep me informed, to let me know definitely whether or no Miss Bordereau had sacrificed her treasures. But as she gave no sign I lost patience and determined to judge so far as was possible with my own senses. I sent late one afternoon to ask if I might pay the ladies a visit, and my servant came back with surprising news. Miss Bordereau could be approached without the least difficulty; she had been moved out into the sala and was sitting by the window that overlooked the garden. I descended and found this picture correct; the old lady had been wheeled forth into the world and had a certain air, which came mainly perhaps from some brighter element in her dress, of being prepared again to have converse with it. It had not yet, however, begun to flock about her; she was perfectly alone and, though the door leading to her own quarters stood open, I had at first no glimpse of Miss Tita. The window at which she sat had the afternoon shade and, one of the shutters having been pushed back, she could see the pleasant garden, where the summer sun had by this time dried up too many of the plants—she could see the yellow light and the long shadows.

  “Have you come to tell me that you will take the rooms for six months more?” she asked as I approached her, startling me by something coarse in her cupidity almost as much as if she had not already given me a specimen of it. Juliana’s desire to make our acquaintance lucrative had been, as I have sufficiently indicated, a false note in my image of the woman who had inspired a great poet with immortal lines; but I may say here definitely that I recognized after all that it behooved me to make a large allowance for her. It was I who had kindled the unholy flame; it was I who had put into her head that she had the means of making money. She appeared never to have thought of that; she had been living wastefully for years, in a house five times too big for her, on a footing that I could explain only by the presumption that, excessive as it was, the space she enjoyed cost her next to nothing and that small as were her revenues they left her, for Venice, an appreciable margin. I had descended on her one day and taught her to calculate, and my almost extravagant comedy on the subject of the garden had presented me irresistibly in the light of a victim. Like all persons who achieve the miracle of changing their point of view when they are old she had been intensely converted; she had seized my hint with a desperate, tremulous clutch.

  I invited myself to go and get one of the chairs that stood, at a distance, against the wall (she had given herself no concern as to whether I should sit or stand); and while I placed it near her I began, gaily, “Oh, dear madam, what an imagination you have, what an intellectual sweep! I am a poor devil of a man of letters who lives from day to day. How can I take palaces by the year? My existence is precarious. I don’t know whether six months hence I shall have bread to put in my mouth. I have treated myself for once; it has been an immense luxury. But when it comes to going on—!”

  “Are your rooms too dear? If they are you can have more for the s
ame money,” Juliana responded. “We can arrange, we can combinare, as they say here.”

  “Well yes, since you ask me, they are too dear,” I said. “Evidently you suppose me richer than I am.”

  She looked at me in her barricaded way. “If you write books don’t you sell them?”

  “Do you mean don’t people buy them? A little—not so much as I could wish. Writing books, unless one be a great genius—and even then!—is the last road to fortune. I think there is no more money to be made by literature.”

  “Perhaps you don’t choose good subjects. What do you write about?” Miss Bordereau inquired.