Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (39 page)

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Page 225
claimed. When he came back to Stresa he sneaked off to his room; he wouldn't look me in the face.
Mamma was so vexed that she took him apart and gave him a scolding, the girl went on. And to punish
me
she sent me straight to bed. She has very old-fashioned ideashaven't you, mamma? she added, looking over my head at Mrs. Pallant, who had just come in behind me.
I forget what answer Mrs. Pallant made to Linda's appeal; she stood there with two letters, sealed and addressed, in her hand. She greeted me gaily and then asked her daughter if she had any postage-stamps. Linda consulted a somewhat shabby pocket-book and confessed that she was destitute; whereupon her mother gave her the letters, with the request that she would go into the hotel, buy the proper stamps at the office, carefully affix them and put the letters into the box. She was to pay for the stamps, not have them put on the billa preference for which Mrs. Pallant gave her reasons. I had bought some at Stresa that morning and I was on the point of offering them, when, apparently having guessed my intention, the elder lady silenced me with a look. Linda told her she had no money and she fumbled in her pocket for a franc. When she had found it and the girl had taken it Linda kissed her before going off with the letters.
Darling mother, you haven't any too many of them, have you? she murmured; and she gave me, sidelong, as she left us, the prettiest half comical, half pitiful smile.
She's amazingshe's amazing, said Mrs. Pallant, as we looked at each other.
Does she know what you have done?
She knows I have done something and she is making up her mind what it isor she will in the course of the next twenty-four hours, if your nephew doesn't come back. I think I can promise you he won't.
And won't she ask you?
Never!
Shall you not tell her? Can you sit down together in this summer-house, this divine day, with such a dreadful thing as that between you?
Don't you remember what I told you about our relationsthat everything was implied between us and nothing
 
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expressed? The ideas we have had in commonour perpetual worldliness, our always looking out for chancesare not the sort of thing that can be uttered gracefully between persons who like to keep up forms, as we both do: so that if we understood each other it was enough. We shall understand each other now, as we have always done, and nothing will be changed, because there has always been something between us that couldn't be talked about.
Certainly, she is amazingshe is amazing, I repeated; but so are you. And then I asked her what she had said to my boy.
She seemed surprised. Hasn't he told you?
No, and he never will.
I am glad of that, she said, simply.
But I am not sure he won't come back. He didn't this morning, but he had already half a mind to.
That's your imagination, said Mrs. Pallant, decisively. If you knew what I told him you would be sure.
And you won't let me know?
Never, my near friend.
And did he believe you?
Time will show; but I think so.
And how did you make it plausible to him that you should take so unnatural a course?
For a moment she said nothing, only looking at me. Then at lastI told him the truth.
The truth? I repeated.
Take him awaytake him away! she broke out. That's why I got rid of Linda, to tell you that you mustn't stayyou must leave Stresa to-morrow. This time it's you that must do it; I can't fly from you againit costs too much! And she smiled strangely.
Don't be afraid; don't be afraid. We will leave to-morrow; I want to go myself. I took her hand in farewell, and while I held it I said, The way you put it, about Linda, was very bad?
It was horrible.
I turned awayI felt indeed that I wanted to leave the neighbourhood. She kept me from going to the hotel, as I might meet Linda coming back, which I was far from wishing
 
Page 227
to do, and showed me another way into the road. Then she turned round to meet her daughter and spend the rest of the morning in the summer-house with her, looking at the bright blue lake and the snowy crests of the Alps. When I reached Stresa again I found that Archie had gone off to Milan (to see the cathedral, the servant said), leaving a message for me to the effect that, as he should not be back for a day or two (though there were numerous trains), he had taken a small portmanteau with him. The next day I got a telegram from him notifying me that he had determined to go on to Venice and requesting me to forward the rest of his luggage. Please don't come after me, this missive added; I want to be alone; I shall do no harm. That sounded pathetic to me, in the light of what I knew, and I was glad to leave the poor boy to his own devices. He proceeded to Venice and I recrossed the Alps. For several weeks after this I expected to discover that he had rejoined Mrs. Pallant; but when we met in Paris, in November, I saw that he had nothing to hide from me, except indeed the secret of what that lady had told him. This he concealed from me then and has concealed ever since. He returned to America before Christmas and then I felt that the crisis had passed. I have never seen my old friend since. About a year after the time to which my story refers, Linda married, in London, a young Englishman, the possessor of a large fortune, a fortune acquired by his father in some useful industry. Mrs. Gimingham's photographs (such is her present name) may be obtained from the principal stationers. I am convinced her mother was sincere. My nephew has not changed his state yet, and now even my sister is beginning, for the first time, to desire it. I related to her as soon as I saw her the substance of the story I have written here, and (such is the inconsequence of women) nothing can exceed her reprobation of Louisa Pallant.
 
Page 228
The Aspern Papers
In had taken Mrs. Prest into my confidence; in truth without her I should have made but little advance, for the fruitful idea in the whole business dropped from her friendly lips. It was she who invented the short cut, who severed the Gordian knot. It is not supposed to be the nature of women to rise as a general thing to the largest and most liberal viewI mean of a practical scheme; but it has struck me that they sometimes throw off a bold conceptionsuch as a man would not have risen towith singular serenity. Simply ask them to take you in on the footing of a lodgerI don't think that unaided I should have risen to that. I was beating about the bush, trying to be ingenious, wondering by what combination of arts I might become an acquaintance, when she offered this happy suggestion that the way to become an acquaintance was first to become an inmate. Her actual knowledge of the Misses Bordereau was scarcely larger than mine, and indeed I had brought with me from England some definite facts which were new to her. Their name had been mixed up ages before with one of the greatest names of the century, and they lived now in Venice in obscurity, on very small means, unvisited, unapproachable, in a dilapidated old palace on an out-of-the-way canal: this was the substance of my friend's impression of them. She herself had been established in Venice for fifteen years and had done a great deal of good there; but the circle of her benevolence did not include the two shy, mysterious and, as it was somehow supposed, scarcely respectable Americans (they were believed to have lost in their long exile all national quality, besides having had, as their name implied, some French strain in their origin), who asked no favours and desired no attention. In the early years of her residence she had made an attempt to see them, but this had been successful only as regards the little one, as Mrs. Prest called the niece; though in reality as I afterwards learned she was considerably the bigger of the two. She had heard Miss Bordereau was ill and had a suspicion that she was in want; and she had gone to the house to offer assistance, so that if
 
Page 229
there were suffering (and American suffering), she should at least not have it on her conscience. The little one received her in the great cold, tarnished Venetian
sala,
the central hall of the house, paved with marble and roofed with dim cross-beams, and did not even ask her to sit down. This was not encouraging for me, who wished to sit so fast, and I remarked as much to Mrs. Prest. She however replied with profundity, Ah, but there's all the difference: I went to confer a favour and you will go to ask one. If they are proud you will be on the right side. And she offered to show me their house to begin withto row me thither in her gondola. I let her know that I had already been to look at it half a dozen times; but I accepted her invitation, for it charmed me to hover about the place. I had made my way to it the day after my arrival in Venice (it had been described to me in advance by the friend in England to whom I owed definite information as to their possession of the papers), and I had besieged it with my eyes while I considered my plan of campaign. Jeffrey Aspern had never been in it that I knew of; but some note of his voice seemed to abide there by a roundabout implication, a faint reverberation.
Mrs. Prest knew nothing about the papers, but she was interested in my curiosity, as she was always interested in the joys and sorrows of her friends. As we went, however, in her gondola, gliding there under the sociable hood with the bright Venetian picture framed on either side by the movable window, I could see that she was amused by my infatuation, the way my interest in the papers had become a fixed idea. One would think you expected to find in them the answer to the riddle of the universe, she said; and I denied the impeachment only by replying that if I had to choose between that precious solution and a bundle of Jeffrey Aspern's letters I knew indeed which would appear to me the greater boon. She pretended to make light of his genius and I took no pains to defend him. One doesn't defend one's god: one's god is in himself a defence. Besides, to-day, after his long comparative obscuration, he hangs high in the heaven of our literature, for all the world to see; he is a part of the light by which we walk. The most I said was that he was no doubt not a woman's poet: to which she rejoined aptly enough that he had been at least Miss Bordereau's. The strange thing had been for me to
 
Page 230
discover in England that she was still alive: it was as if I had been told Mrs. Siddons was, or Queen Caroline, or the famous Lady Hamilton, for it seemed to me that she belonged to a generation as extinct. Why, she must be tremendously oldat least a hundred, I had said; but on coming to consider dates I saw that it was not strictly necessary that she should have exceeded by very much the common span. None the less she was very far advanced in life and her relations with Jeffrey Aspern had occurred in her early womanhood. That is her excuse, said Mrs. Prest, half sententiously and yet also somewhat as if she were ashamed of making a speech so little in the real tone of Venice. As if a woman needed an excuse for having loved the divine poet! He had been not only one of the most brilliant minds of his day (and in those years, when the century was young, there were, as every one knows, many), but one of the most genial men and one of the handsomest.
The niece, according to Mrs. Prest, was not so old, and she risked the conjecture that she was only a grand-niece. This was possible; I had nothing but my share in the very limited knowledge of my English fellow-worshipper John Cumnor, who had never seen the couple. The world, as I say, had recognised Jeffrey Aspern, but Cumnor and I had recognised him most. The multitude, to-day, flocked to his temple, but of that temple he and I regarded ourselves as the ministers. We held, justly, as I think, that we had done more for his memory than any one else, and we had done it by opening lights into his life. He had nothing to fear from us because he had nothing to fear from the truth, which alone at such a distance of time we could be interested in establishing. His early death had been the only dark spot in his life, unless the papers in Miss Bordereau's hands should perversely bring out others. There had been an impression about 1825 that he had treated her badly, just as there had been an impression that he had served, as the London populace says, several other ladies in the same way. Each of these cases Cumnor and I had been able to investigate, and we had never failed to acquit him conscientiously of shabby behaviour. I judged him perhaps more indulgently than my friend; certainly, at any rate, it appeared to me that no man could have walked straighter in the given circumstances. These were almost always awk-

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