At first I was tempted to send her a reminder, after which Irelinquished the idea (against my judgment as to what was right in the particular case), on the general ground of wishing to keep quiet.If Miss Bordereau suspected me of ulterior aims she would suspect me less if I should be businesslike, and yet I consented not to be so.It was possible she intended her omission as an impertinence, a visible irony, to show how she could overreach people who attempted to overreach her.
On that hypothesis it was well to let her see that one did not notice her little tricks.The real reading of the matter, I afterward perceived, was simply the poor old woman's desire to emphasize the fact that I was in the enjoyment of a favor as rigidly limited as it had been liberally bestowed.
She had given me part of her house, and now she would not give me even a morsel of paper with her name on it.
Let me say that even at first this did not make me too miserable, for the whole episode was essentially delightful to me.
I foresaw that I should have a summer after my own literary heart, and the sense of holding my opportunity was much greater than the sense of losing it.There could be no Venetian business without patience, and since I adored the place I was much more in the spirit of it for having laid in a large provision.
That spirit kept me perpetual company and seemed to look out at me from the revived immortal face--in which all his genius shone--of the great poet who was my prompter.
I had invoked him and he had come; he hovered before me half the time;it was as if his bright ghost had returned to earth to tell me that he regarded the affair as his own no less than mine and that we should see it fraternally, cheerfully to a conclusion.
It was as if he had said, "Poor dear, be easy with her;she has some natural prejudices; only give her time.
Strange as it may appear to you she was very attractive in 1820.
Meanwhile are we not in Venice together, and what better place is there for the meeting of dear friends?
See how it glows with the advancing summer; how the sky and the sea and the rosy air and the marble of the palaces all shimmer and melt together." My eccentric private errand became a part of the general romance and the general glory--I felt even a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity with all those who in the past had been in the service of art.They had worked for beauty, for a devotion; and what else was I doing?
That element was in everything that Jeffrey Aspern had written, and I was only bringing it to the light.
I lingered in the sala when I went to and fro; I used to watch--as long as I thought decent--the door that led to Miss Bordereau's part of the house.A person observing me might have supposed I was trying to cast a spell upon it or attempting some odd experiment in hypnotism.
But I was only praying it would open or thinking what treasure probably lurked behind it.I hold it singular, as I look back, that I should never have doubted for a moment that the sacred relics were there; never have failed to feel a certain joy at being under the same roof with them.
After all they were under my hand--they had not escaped me yet;and they made my life continuous, in a fashion, with the illustrious life they had touched at the other end.I lost myself in this satisfaction to the point of assuming--in my quiet extravagance--that poor Miss Tita also went back, went back, as I used to phrase it.
She did indeed, the gentle spinster, but not quite so far as Jeffrey Aspern, who was simply hearsay to her, quite as he was to me.Only she had lived for years with Juliana, she had seen and handled the papers and (even though she was stupid) some esoteric knowledge had rubbed off on her.
That was what the old woman represented--esoteric knowledge;and this was the idea with which my editorial heart used to thrill.
It literally beat faster often, of an evening, when I had been out, as I stopped with my candle in the re-echoing hall on my way up to bed.
It was as if at such a moment as that, in the stillness, after the long contradiction of the day, Miss Bordereau's secrets were in the air, the wonder of her survival more palpable.These were the acute impressions.
I had them in another form, with more of a certain sort of reciprocity, during the hours that I sat in the garden looking up over the top of my book at the closed windows of my hostess.In these windows no sign of life ever appeared; it was as if, for fear of my catching a glimpse of them, the two ladies passed their days in the dark.
But this only proved to me that they had something to conceal;which was what I had wished to demonstrate.Their motionless shutters became as expressive as eyes consciously closed, and I took comfort in thinking that at all events through invisible themselves they saw me between the lashes.
I made a point of spending as much time as possible in the garden, to justify the picture I had originally given of my horticultural passion.
And I not only spent time, but (hang it! as I said) I spent money.
As soon as I had got my rooms arranged and could give the proper thought to the matter I surveyed the place with a clever expert and made terms for having it put in order.I was sorry to do this, for personally I liked it better as it was, with its weeds and its wild, rough tangle, its sweet, characteristic Venetian shabbiness.
I had to be consistent, to keep my promise that I would smother the house in flowers.Moreover I formed this graceful project that by flowers I would make my way--I would succeed by big nosegays.
I would batter the old women with lilies--I would bombard their citadel with roses.Their door would have to yield to the pressure when a mountain of carnations should be piled up against it.
The place in truth had been brutally neglected.The Venetian capacity for dawdling is of the largest, and for a good many days unlimited litter was all my gardener had to show for his ministrations.