We held, justly, as I think, that we had done more for his memory than anyone 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 behavior.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 awkward.
Half the women of his time, to speak liberally, had flung themselves at his head, and out of this pernicious fashion many complications, some of them grave, had not failed to arise.
He was not a woman's poet, as I had said to Mrs.Prest, in the modern phase of his reputation; but the situation had been different when the man's own voice was mingled with his song.
That voice, by every testimony, was one of the sweetest ever heard.
"Orpheus and the Maenads!" was the exclamation that rose to my lips when I first turned over his correspondence.Almost all the Maenads were unreasonable, and many of them insupportable;it struck me in short that he was kinder, more considerate than, in his place (if I could imagine myself in such a place!)I should have been.
It was certainly strange beyond all strangeness, and I shall not take up space with attempting to explain it, that whereas in all these other lines of research we had to deal with phantoms and dust, the mere echoes of echoes, the one living source of information that had lingered on into our time had been unheeded by us.
Every one of Aspern's contemporaries had, according to our belief, passed away; we had not been able to look into a single pair of eyes into which his had looked or to feel a transmitted contact in any aged hand that his had touched.
Most dead of all did poor Miss Bordereau appear, and yet she alone had survived.We exhausted in the course of months our wonder that we had not found her out sooner, and the substance of our explanation was that she had kept so quiet.
The poor lady on the whole had had reason for doing so.
But it was a revelation to us that it was possible to keep so quiet as that in the latter half of the nineteenth century--the age of newspapers and telegrams and photographs and interviewers.
And she had taken no great trouble about it either:
she had not hidden herself away in an undiscoverable hole;she had boldly settled down in a city of exhibition.
The only secret of her safety that we could perceive was that Venice contained so many curiosities that were greater than she.
And then accident had somehow favored her, as was shown for example in the fact that Mrs.Prest had never happened to mention her to me, though I had spent three weeks in Venice--under her nose, as it were--five years before.
Mrs.Prest had not mentioned this much to anyone;she appeared almost to have forgotten she was there.
Of course she had not the responsibilities of an editor.
It was no explanation of the old woman's having eluded us to say that she lived abroad, for our researches had again and again taken us (not only by correspondence but by personal inquiry)to France, to Germany, to Italy, in which countries, not counting his important stay in England, so many of the too few years of Aspern's career were spent.We were glad to think at least that in all our publishings (some people consider I believe that we have overdone them), we had only touched in passing and in the most discreet manner on Miss Bordereau's connection.
Oddly enough, even if we had had the material (and we often wondered what had become of it), it would have been the most difficult episode to handle.
The gondola stopped, the old palace was there; it was a house of the class which in Venice carries even in extreme dilapidation the dignified name.
"How charming! It's gray and pink!" my companion exclaimed;and that is the most comprehensive description of it.
It was not particularly old, only two or three centuries;and it had an air not so much of decay as of quiet discouragement, as if it had rather missed its career.But its wide front, with a stone balcony from end to end of the piano nobile or most important floor, was architectural enough, with the aid of various pilasters and arches; and the stucco with which in the intervals it had long ago been endued was rosy in the April afternoon.
It overlooked a clean, melancholy, unfrequented canal, which had a narrow riva or convenient footway on either side.
"I don't know why--there are no brick gables," said Mrs.Prest, "but this corner has seemed to me before more Dutch than Italian, more like Amsterdam than like Venice.It's perversely clean, for reasons of its own; and though you can pass on foot scarcely anyone ever thinks of doing so.It has the air of a Protestant Sunday.
Perhaps the people are afraid of the Misses Bordereau.
I daresay they have the reputation of witches."I forget what answer I made to this--I was given up to two other reflections.The first of these was that if the old lady lived in such a big, imposing house she could not be in any sort of misery and therefore would not be tempted by a chance to let a couple of rooms.I expressed this idea to Mrs.Prest, who gave me a very logical reply."If she didn't live in a big house how could it be a question of her having rooms to spare?