Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (51 page)

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Authors: Henry James

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BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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Page 297
bettershe's better, she said, even before I had asked. The doctor has given her something; she woke up, came back to life while he was there. He says there is no immediate danger.
No immediate danger? Surely he thinks her condition strange!
Yes, because she had been excited. That affects her dreadfully.
It will do so again then, because she excites herself. She did so this afternoon.
Yes; she mustn't come out any more, said Miss Tita, with one of her lapses into a deeper placidity.
What is the use of making such a remark as that if you begin to rattle her about again the first time she bids you?
I won'tI won't do it any more.
You must learn to resist her, I went on.
Oh yes, I shall; I shall do so better if you tell me it's right.
You mustn't do it for me; you must do it for yourself. It all comes back to you, if you are frightened.
Well, I am not frightened now, said Miss Tita, cheerfully. She is very quiet.
Is she conscious againdoes she speak?
No, she doesn't speak, but she takes my hand. She holds it fast.
Yes, I rejoined, I can see what force she still has by the way she grabbed that picture this afternoon. But if she holds you fast how comes it that you are here?
Miss Tita hesitated a moment; though her face was in deep shadow (she had her back to the light in the parlour and I had put down my own candle far off, near the door of the sala), I thought I saw her smile ingenuously. I came on purposeI heard your step.
Why, I came on tiptoe, as inaudibly as possible.
Well, I heard you, said Miss Tita.
And is your aunt alone now?
Oh no; Olimpia is sitting there.
On my side I hesitated. Shall we then step in there? And I nodded at the parlour; I wanted more and more to be on the spot.
We can't talk thereshe will hear us.
I was on the point of replying that in that case we would
 
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sit silent, but I was too conscious that this would not do, as there was something I desired immensely to ask her. So I proposed that we should walk a little in the sala, keeping more at the other end, where we should not disturb the old lady. Miss Tita assented unconditionally; the doctor was coming again, she said, and she would be there to meet him at the door. We strolled through the fine superfluous hall, where on the marble floorparticularly as at first we said nothingour footsteps were more audible than I had expected. When we reached the other endthe wide window, inveterately closed, connecting with the balcony that overhung the canalI suggested that we should remain there, as she would see the doctor arrive still better. I opened the window and we passed out on the balcony. The air of the canal seemed even heavier, hotter than that of the sala. The place was hushed and void; the quiet neighbourhood had gone to sleep. A lamp, here and there, over the narrow black water, glimmered in double; the voice of a man going homeward singing, with his jacket on his shoulder and his hat on his ear, came to us from a distance. This did not prevent the scene from being very
comme il faut,
as Miss Bordereau had called it the first time I saw her. Presently a gondola passed along the canal with its slow rhythmical plash, and as we listened we watched it in silence. It did not stop, it did not carry the doctor; and after it had gone on I said to Miss Tita:
And where are they nowthe things that were in the trunk?
In the trunk?
That green box you pointed out to me in her room. You said her papers had been there; you seemed to imply that she had transferred them.
Oh yes; they are not in the trunk, said Miss Tita.
May I ask if you have looked?
Yes, I have lookedfor you.
How for me, dear Miss Tita? Do you mean you would have given them to me if you had found them? I asked, almost trembling.
She delayed to reply and I waited. Suddenly she broke out, I don't know what I would dowhat I wouldn't!
Would you look againsomewhere else?
 
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She had spoken with a strange, unexpected emotion, and she went on in the same tone: I can'tI can'twhile she lies there. It isn't decent.
No, it isn't decent, I replied, gravely. Let the poor lady rest in peace. And the words, on my lips, were not hypocritical, for I felt reprimanded and shamed.
Miss Tita added in a moment, as if she had guessed this and were sorry for me, but at the same time wished to explain that I did drive her on or at least did insist too much: I can't deceive her that way. I can't deceive herperhaps on her deathbed.
Heaven forbid I should ask you, though I have been guilty myself!
You have been guilty?
I have sailed under false colours. I felt now as if I must tell her that I had given her an invented name, on account of my fear that her aunt would have heard of me and would refuse to take me in. I explained this and also that I had really been a party to the letter written to them by John Cumnor months before.
She listened with great attention, looking at me with parted lips, and when I had made my confession she said, Then your real namewhat is it? She repeated it over twice when I had told her, accompanying it with the exclamation Gracious, gracious! Then she added, I like your own best.
So do I, I said, laughing. Ouf! it's a relief to get rid of the other.
So it was a regular plota kind of conspiracy?
Oh, a conspiracywe were only two, I replied, leaving out Mrs. Prest of course.
She hesitated; I thought she was perhaps going to say that we had been very base. But she remarked after a moment, in a candid, wondering way, How much you must want them!
Oh, I do, passionately! I conceded, smiling. And this chance made me go on, forgetting my compunction of a moment before. How can she possibly have changed their place herself? How can she walk? How can she arrive at that sort of muscular exertion? How can she lift and carry things?
Oh, when one wants and when one has so much will! said Miss Tita, as if she had thought over my question already
 
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herself and had simply had no choice but that answerthe idea that in the dead of night, or at some moment when the coast was clear, the old woman had been capable of a miraculous effort.
Have you questioned Olimpia? Hasn't she helped herhasn't she done it for her? I asked; to which Miss Tita replied promptly and positively that their servant had had nothing to do with the matter, though without admitting definitely that she had spoken to her. It was as if she were a little shy, a little ashamed now of letting me see how much she had entered into my uneasiness and had me on her mind. Suddenly she said to me, without any immediate relevance:
I feel as if you were a new person, now that you have got a new name.
It isn't a new one; it is a very good old one, thank heaven!
She looked at me a moment. I do like it better.
Oh, if you didn't I would almost go on with the other!
Would you really?
I laughed again, but for all answer to this inquiry I said, Of course if she can rummage about that way she can perfectly have burnt them.
You must waityou must wait, Miss Tita moralised mournfully; and her tone ministered little to my patience, for it seemed after all to accept that wretched possibility. I would teach myself to wait, I declared nevertheless; because in the first place I could not do otherwise and in the second I had her promise, given me the other night, that she would help me.
Of course if the papers are gone that's no use, she said; not as if she wished to recede, but only to be conscientious.
Naturally. But if you could only find out! I groaned, quivering again.
I thought you said you would wait.
Oh, you mean wait even for that?
For what then?
Oh, nothing, I replied, rather foolishly, being ashamed to tell her what had been implied in my submission to delaythe idea that she would do more than merely find out. I know not whether she guessed this; at all events she appeared to become aware of the necessity for being a little more rigid.
 
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I didn't promise to deceive, did I? I don't think I did.
It doesn't much matter whether you did or not, for you couldn't!
I don't think Miss Tita would have contested this even had she not been diverted by our seeing the doctor's gondola shoot into the little canal and approach the house. I noted that he came as fast as if he believed that Miss Bordereau was still in danger. We looked down at him while he disembarked and then went back into the sala to meet him. When he came up however I naturally left Miss Tita to go off with him alone, only asking her leave to come back later for news.
I went out of the house and took a long walk, as far as the Piazza, where my restlessness declined to quit me. I was unable to sit down (it was very late now but there were people still at the little tables in front of the cafés); I could only walk round and round, and I did so half a dozen times. I was uncomfortable, but it gave me a certain pleasure to have told Miss Tita who I really was. At last I took my way home again, slowly getting all but inextricably lost, as I did whenever I went out in Venice: so that it was considerably past midnight when I reached my door. The sala, upstairs, was as dark as usual and my lamp as I crossed it found nothing satisfactory to show me. I was disappointed, for I had notified Miss Tita that I would come back for a report, and I thought she might have left a light there as a sign. The door of the ladies' apartment was closed; which seemed an intimation that my faltering friend had gone to bed, tired of waiting for me. I stood in the middle of the place, considering, hoping she would hear me and perhaps peep out, saying to myself too that she would never go to bed with her aunt in a state so critical; she would sit up and watchshe would be in a chair, in her dressing-gown. I went nearer the door; I stopped there and listened. I heard nothing at all and at last I tapped gently. No answer came and after another minute I turned the handle. There was no light in the room; this ought to have prevented me from going in, but it had no such effect. If I have candidly narrated the importunities, the indelicacies, of which my desire to possess myself of Jeffrey Aspern's papers had rendered me capable I need not shrink from confessing this last indiscretion. I think it was the worst thing I did; yet there were
 
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extenuating circumstances. I was deeply though doubtless not disinterestedly anxious for more news of the old lady, and Miss Tita had accepted from me, as it were, a rendezvous which it might have been a point of honour with me to keep. It may be said that her leaving the place dark was a positive sign that she released me, and to this I can only reply that I desired not to be released.
The door of Miss Bordereau's room was open and I could see beyond it the faintness of a taper. There was no soundmy footstep caused no one to stir. I came further into the room; I lingered there with my lamp in my hand. I wanted to give Miss Tita a chance to come to me if she were with her aunt, as she must be. I made no noise to call her; I only waited to see if she would not notice my light. She did not, and I explained this (I found afterwards I was right) by the idea that she had fallen asleep. If she had fallen asleep her aunt was not on her mind, and my explanation ought to have led me to go out as I had come. I must repeat again that it did not, for I found myself at the same moment thinking of something else. I had no definite purpose, no bad intention, but I felt myself held to the spot by an acute, though absurd, sense of opportunity. For what I could not have said, inasmuch as it was not in my mind that I might commit a theft. Even if it had been I was confronted with the evident fact that Miss Bordereau did not leave her secretary, her cupboard and the drawers of her tables gaping. I had no keys, no tools and no ambition to smash her furniture. None the less it came to me that I was now, perhaps alone, unmolested, at the hour of temptation and secrecy, nearer to the tormenting treasure than I had ever been. I held up my lamp, let the light play on the different objects as if it could tell me something. Still there came no movement from the other room. If Miss Tita was sleeping she was sleeping sound. Was she doing sogenerous creatureon purpose to leave me the field? Did she know I was there and was she just keeping quiet to see what I would dowhat I
could
do? But what could I do, when it came to that? She herself knew even better than I how little.
I stopped in front of the secretary, looking at it very idiotically; for what had it to say to me after all? In the first place it was locked, and in the second it almost surely contained

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