The Aspern Papers ; The Turn of the Screw ; The Liar ; The Two Faces

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Contents

I

I HAD taken Mrs. Prest into my confidence ; without her in truth I should have made but litde advance^ for the fruitful idea in the whole business dropped from her friendly lips. It was she who found the short cut and loosed the Gordian knot. It is not supposed easy for women to rise to the large free view of anything, anything to be done; but they sometimes throw off a bold conception — such as a znan wouldn't have risen to — with singular serenity. *• Simply make them take you in on the footing of a lodger '' — I don't think that unaided I should have risen to that. I was beating about the bush, trying t o be in p ;enious, wondering by what combination of a rts 1 m if yht h^rq nrif ar ^^q"^''nti^ ncey w hen she offered this happy suggestion that the way to become an acquaintance was first to become an intimate. Her aaual knowledge of the Misses Bordereau was scarcely larger than mine, and indeed I hzS brought with me from England some definite facts that were new to her. Their name had been mixed up ages before with one of the greatest names of the century, and they now lived obscurely in Venice, lived on very small means, unvisited, unapproachable, in a sequestered and dilapidated old palace : this was the substance of my friend's impression of them. She herself had been established in Venice some fifteen years and

V'^ had done a great deal of good there; but the circle of her benevolence had never embraced the two shy, mysteriousiand, as was somehow supposed, scarcdy respectable Americans — they were believed_J2Qjiave lost in their long exile all national quality, besides being as theiFimiiie implied of some remoter French afliliation — 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 litde one, as Mrs. Prest called the niece; though in fact I afterwards found her the bigger of the two in inches. She had heard Miss Bordereau was ill and had a suspicion she was in want, and had gone to the house to offer aid, so that if there were suffering, American suffering in particular, s he should n^t hav ^ if pn ht^r rnngriPf^Q> The "litde one" had received her in the great odd tarnished Venetian sahy the central hall of the house, paved with marble and roofed with dim cross-beams, and had n't even asked 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 replied however with profundity "Ah, but there's all the difference : I went to confer a favour and you '11 go to ask one. If they 're proud you '11 be on the right side." And she offered to show me their house to begin with — to row me thither in her gondola. I let her know 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 — laying siege to it with my eyes while I considered my plan of campaign. Jeffrey Aspem had never been in it that I knew of, but some note of his voice seemed to abide there by a roundabout implication and in a 'Mying faU."

II

■ o nly by putting her ofFh er g uard, and I can put he r \ off her guard only by^ing ratiating diplom atic ar ts. " Hypocris y^ du plicity are my only chance, l^m sorr y

» r it, but there ^s " o hasfnfft I wo uld n^t commit for feffrey Aspem's sake. First I must take tea with her * — theiTtacHe the main job." And I told over what had happened to John Cumnor on his respectfully writing to her. No notice whatever had been taken of his first letter, and the second had been answered very sharply, in six lines, by the niece. "Miss Bordereau requested her to say that she could n't imagine what he meant by troubling them. They had none of Mr. Aspem's * literary remains,' and if they had had would n't have dreamed of showing them to any one on any account whatever. She could n't imagine what he was talking about and begged he would let her alone." I certainly did n't want to be met that way.

"Well," said Mrs. Prest after a moment and all provokingly, " perhaps they really have n't anything. If they deny it flat how are you sure ? "

"John Cumnor 's sure, and it would take me long to tell you how his conviction, or his very strong presumption — strong enough to stand against the old lady's not unnatural fib — has built itself up. Besides, he makes much of the internal evidence of the niece's letter."

"The internal evidence?"

"Her calling him 'Mr. Aspem.'"

"I don't see what that proves."

"It proves familiarity, and familiarity implies the possession of mementoes, of tangible objects. I can't tell you how that * Mr/ affects me — how it bridges over the gulf of time and brings our hero near to me — nor what an edge it gives to my desire to see Juliana. You don't say * Mr/ Shakespeare/'

"Would I, any more, if I had a box full of his letters ? ''

"Yes, if he had been your lover and some one wanted them/* And I added that John Cumnor was so convinced, and so all the more convinced by Miss Bordereau's tone, that he would have come himself to Venice on the undertaking were it not for the obstacle of his having, for any confidence, to disprove his identity with the person who had written to them, which the old ladies would be sure to suspect in spite of dissimulation and a change of name. If they were to ask him point-blank if he were not their snubbed correspondent it would be too awkward for him to lie; whereas I was fortunately not tied in that way. I was a fresh hand — I could protest without l ying.

"But you'll have to take a false name," said Mrs. Prest. " Juliana lives out of the world as much as it is possible to live, but she has none the less probably heard of Mr. Aspem's editors. She perhaps possesses

what you've published."

"I've thought of that," I returned; and I drew out

of my pocket-book a visiting-card neady engraved

with a well-chosen nom de guerre.

"You're very extravagant — it adds to your immorality. You might have done it in pencil or ink,"

said my companion.

"This looks more genuine.** "Certainly you've the courage of your curiosity.

But it will be awkward about your letters ; they won't come to you in that mask."

'^ My banker will take them in and I shall go every day to get them. It will give me a litde walk."

" Shall you depend all on that ? " asked Mrs. Presto "Are n't you coming to see me ?"

" Oh you '11 have left Venice for the hot months long before there are any results. I'm prepared to roast all summer — as well as through the long hereafter perhaps you'll say! Meanwhile John Cumnor will bombard me with letters addressed, in my feigned name, to the care of the padrona."

"She'll recognise his hand," my companion suggested.

"On the envelope he can disguise it."

" Well, you 're a precious pair ! Does n't it occur to you that even if you 're able to say you 're not Mr. Cumnor in person they may still suspect you of being his emissary ? "

" Certainly, and I see only one way to pariy that."

"And what may that be?"

I hesitated a moment. "To make love to the niece.

Bce.

"Ah," cried my friend, "wait till you see her!"

II

"I MUST work the garden — I must work the garden," I said to myself five minutes later and while I waited, upstairs, in the long, dusky sala, where the bare sca^iola floor gleamed vaguely in a chink of the closed shutters. The place was impressive, yet looked somehow cold and cautious. Mrs. Prest had floated away, giving me a rendezvous at the end of half an hour by some neighbouring water-steps ; and I had been let into the house, after pulling the rusty bellwire, by a small red-headed and white-faced maid-servant, who was veiy young and not ugly and wore dicking pattens and a shawl in the fashion of a hood. She had not contented herself with opening the door from above by the usual arrangement of a creaking pulley, though she had looked down at me first from an upper window, dropping the cautious challenge which in Italy precedes the act of admission. I was / irritated as a general thing by this survival of medi- j xval manners, though as so fond, if yet so special, an antiquarian I suppose I ought to have liked it; but, with my resolve to be genial from the threshold at any price, I took my false card out of my pocket and held it up to her, smiling as if it were a magic token. It had the effect of one indeed, for it brought her, as I say, all the way down. I begged her to hand it to her mistress, having first written on it in Italian the words : "Could you very kindly see a gendeman, a travelling American, for a moment?" The litde maid was n't hostQe — even that was perhaps something gained.

She coloured, she smiled and looked both frightened and pleased. I could see that my arrival was a great affair, that visits in such a house were rare and that she was a person who would have liked a bustling place. When she pushed forward the heavy door behind me I felt my foot in the citadel and promised myself ever so firmly to keep it there. She pattered across the damp stony lower hall and I followed her up the high staircase — stonier still, as it seemed — without an invitation. I think she had meant I should wait for her below, but such was not my idea, and I took up my station in the sala. She flitted, at the far end of it, into impenetrable regions, and I looked at the place with my heart beating as I had known it to do in dentists' parlours. It had a gloomy grandeur, but owed its character almost all to its noble shape and to the fine architectural doors, as high as those of grand frontages, which, leading into the various rooms, repeated themselves on either side at intervals. They were surmounted with old faded painted escutcheons, and here and there in the spaces between them hung brown pictures, which I noted as speciously bad, in battered and tarnished frames that were yet more desirable than the canvases themselves. With the exception of several straw-bottomed chairs that kept their backs to the wall the grand obscure vista contained litde else to minister to effect. It was evidendy never used save as a passage, and scandy even as that. I may add that by the time the door through which the maid-servant had escaped opened again my eyes had grown used to the want of light.

i6

I had n't meanwhile meant by my private ejaculation that I must myself cultivate the soil of the tangled enclosure which lay beneath the windows, but the lady who came toward me from the distance over the hard shining floor might have supposed as much from the way in which, as I went rapidly to meet her, I exdaimed, taking care to speak Italian: ''The garden, the garden — do me the pleasure to tell me if it 's yours ! "

She stopped short, looking at me with wonder; and then, " Nodiing here is mine," she answered in English, coldly and sadly.

"Oh you're English; how delightful!" I ingenuously cried. "But surely the garden belongs to the Kouse?"

"Yes, but the house does n't belong to me." She was a long lean pale person, habited apparendy in a dull-coloured dressing-gown, and she spoke very simply and mildly. She did n't ask me to sit down, any more than years before — if she were the niece — she had asked Mrs. Prest, and we stood face to face in the empty pompous hall.

" Well then, would you kindly tell me to whom I must address myself ? I 'm afraid you '11 think me horribly intrusive, but you know I must have a garden — upon my honour I must ! "

He r face was not young, but it was candi d ; it was not fresh, but it was clear^ She had large eyes which were not bright, and a great deal of hair which was not "dressed," and long fine hands which were — poss ibly — not cl ean. She clasped these members almost convulsively as, with a confused alarmed look, she broke out : " Oh don't take it away from us ; we it ourselves ! "

"You have the use of it then ?*'

"Oh yes. If it was n't for that — !*' And she g a wan vague smQe.

** Is n't it a luxuiy, precisely ? That 's ^y, intc ing to be in Venice some weeks, possibly all sumr and having some literary work, some reading writing to do, so that I must be quiet and yet if ] sible a great deal in the open air — that 's why 1 felt a garden to be really indispensable. I appea your own experience," I went on with as sociabi smile as I could risk. " Now can't I look at your

"I don't know, I do n't understanj L^^ the poor man murmurea, planted there and letting her w wonder deal — hdplessly enough, as I felt — with strangeness.

" I mean only from one of those windows — s grand ones as you have here — if you '11 let me o the shutters." And I walked toward the back of house. When I had advanced halfway I stopped waited as in the belief she would accompany mc had been of necessity quite abrupt, but I strove at same time to give her the impression of extreme co esy. "I've looked at furnished rooms all over place, and it seems impossible to find any with a j den attached. Naturally in a place like Venice gard are rare. It's absurd if you like, for a man, but I c live without flowers."

"There are none to speak of down there." came nearer, as if, though she mistrusted me, I drawn her by an invisible thread. I went on ag

i8 and she continued as she followed me: "WeVe a few, but they 're veiy common. It costs too much to cultivate them; one has to have a man/*

"Why should n't I be the man ?'' I asked. "Ill work without wages ; or rather I 'U put in a gardener. You shall have the sweetest flowers in Venice."

She protested against this with a small quaver of sound that might have been at the same time a gush of rapture for my free sketch. Then she gasped : "We don't know you — we don't know you."

"You know me as much as I know you; or rather much more, because you know my name. And if you're English I'm almost a countiyman."

"We're not English," said my companion, watching me in practical submission while I threw open the shutters of one of the divisions of the wide high window.

"You speak the language so beautifully: might I ask what you are ? " Seen from above the garden was in truth shabby, yet I felt at a glance that it had great capabilities. She made no rejoinder, she was so lost in her blankness and gendeness, and I exclaimed : "You don't mean to say you 're also by chance American?"

"I don't know. We used to be."

"Used tober Surely you have n't changed ?" "It's so many years ago. We don't seem to be any-

thingnow." o c '

"So many years that you've been living here?

Well, I don't wonder at that; it's a grand old house.

I suppose you all use the garden," I went on, " but I

assure you I should n't be in your way. I 'd be very

quiet and stay quite in one comer."

We all use it ? " she repeated after me vaguely, not coming dose to the window but looking at my shoes. She appeared to think me capable of throwing her out

" I mean all your family — as many as you are."

" There 's only one other than me. She 's very old. She never goes down."

I feel again my thrill at this dose identification of Juliana ; in spite of which, however, I kept my head. " Only one other in all this great house ! " I feigned to be not only amazed but almost scandalised. '* Dear lady, you must have space then to spare ! "

"To spare ?" she repeated — almost as for the rich unwonted joy to her of spoken words.

" Why you surely don*t live (two quiet women — I see you are quiet, at any rate) in fifty rooms I " Then with a burst of hope and cheer I put the question straight. " Could n't you for a good rent let me two or three ? That would set me up ! "

I had now struck the note that translated my purpose, and I need n't reproduce the whole of the tune I played. I ended by making my entertainer believe mean und esignin g person, t nQu p;h of course even attempt to persuade her I was n ot an eccentric one. I repeated that I had studiesto pursue^ that 1 wSIited quiet; that I delighted in a garden and had vainly sought one up and down the city : that I would undertake that before another month was over the dear old house should be smothered in flowers. I think it was the flowers that won my suit, for I afterwards found that Miss Tina — for such the name of this high tremulous spinster proved somewhat incongruously to be — had an insatiable appetite for them.

When I speak of my suit as won I mean that before I left her she had promised me she would refer the question to her aunt. I invited information as to who her aunt might be and she answered "Why Miss Bordereau ! " with an air of surprise, as if I might have been expected to know. There were contradictions like this in Miss Tina which, as I observed later, contributed to make her rather pleasingly incalculable and interesting. It was the study of the two ladies to live so that the woild should n't talk of them or touch diem, and yet they had never altogether accepted the idea that it did n't hear of them. In Miss Tina at any rate a grateful susceptibility to human contact had not died out, and contact of a limited order there would be if I should come to live in the house.

"We've never done anything of the sort; we've never had a lodger or any kind of inmate." So much as this she made a point of saying to me. " We 're very poor, we live very badly — almost on nothing. The rooms are very bare — those you might take; they've nothing at all in them. I don't know how you 'd sleep, how you 'd eat."

"With your permission I could easily put in a bed and a few tables and chairs. Oest la moindre des choses and the affair of an hour or two. I know a litde man from whom I can hire for a trifle what I should so briefly want, what I should use; my gondolier can bring the things round in his boat. Of course in this great house you must have a second kitchen, and my servant, who 's a wonderfully handy fellow " — this personage was an evocation of the moment — " can easily cook me a chop there. My tastes and habits are of the simplest : I live on flowers ! " And then I ventured to add that if they were veiy poor it was all the more reason they should let their rooms. They were bad economists — I had never heard of such a waste of material.

I saw in a moment my good lady had never before been spoken to in any such fashion — with a humorous firmness that did n't exclude sympathy, that was quite founded on it. She might easily have told me that my sympathy was impertinent, but this by good fortune did n't occur to her. I left her with the understanding that she would submit the question to her aunt and that I might come back the next day for their decision.

"The aunt will refuse; she'll think the whole proceeding very louche!** Mrs. Prest declared shortly after this, when I had resumed my place in her gondola. She had put the idea into my head and now — so litde are women to be counted on — she appeared to take a despondent view of it. Her pessimism provoked me and I pretended to have the best hopes ; I went so far as to boast of a distinct prevision of success. Upon this Mrs. Prest broke out: "Oh I see what 's in your head ! You fancy you 've made such an impression in five minutes that she 's dying for you to come and can be depended on to bring the old one round. If you do get in you '11 count it as a triumph."

I jid cou nt it as a frinrnjji^ Kiif pnly for t\^et cc^ m-

mentatgr ^;^ in the las t analysis — not for the man^ who hadn ot the traditio n ot p ^rgnnf^l rnnqnf>c»"^ V^h^n I went back on the morrow the litde maid-servant conducted me straight through the long sala — it opened there as before in large perspective and was lighter now, which I thought a good omen — into the apartment from which the recipient of my former visit had emerged on that occasion. It was a spacious shabby parlour with a fine old painted ceiling under which a strange figure sat alone at one of the windows. They come back to me now almost with the palpitation they caused, the successive states marking my consciousness that as the door of the room closed behind me I was really face to face with the Juliana of some of Aspem's most exquisite and most renowned

comglfijely; but as she sat there before me my heart beat as fast as if the miracle of resu rrr ^*'i^" ^^^ *'^kfD pl ace for my benefi t. Her presence seemed somehow to contain and express his own, and I felt nearer to him at that first moment of seeing her than I ever had been before or ever have been since. Yes, I remember my emotions in their order, even including a curious litde tremor that took me when I saw the niece not to be there. With her, the day before, I had become sufficiendy familiar, but it almost exceeded my courage . — much as I had longed for the event — to be left alone with so terrible a relic as the aunt. She was too strange, too literally resurgent. Then came a check from the perception that we were n't really face to face, inasmuch as she had over her eyes a horrible green shade which served for her almost as a mask. I believed for the instant that she had put it on expressly, so that from underneath it she might take me all in without my getting at herself. At the same time it created a presumption of some ghasdy death's-head lurking behind it. Tli^ Amnt^ J^liap^ ^^ ^ p;r" ning sku ll — the vision hung there until it passed. Then it came to me that she was tremendously old — so old that death might take her at any moment, before I should have time to compass my end. The next thought was a correction to that; it lighted up the situatio n, Sl^ip would dje next week, she would jjf r^-rr*^rr^w — the n I cpuld ^poun ce on her possessions and ra ngarlr herjia30zers. Meanwhile she sat there neither moving nor speaking. She was very small and shrunken, bent forward with her hands in her lap. She was dressed in black and her head was wrapped in a piece of old black lace which showed no hair.

My emotion keeping me silent she spoke first, and the remark she made was exacdy the most unexpected.

Ill

**OuR house is very far from the centre, but the little canal is very comme il faut.^^

"It's the sweetest comer of Venice and I can imagine nothing more charming," I hastened to reply. The dd lady's voice was very thin and weak, but it had an agreeable, cultivated murmur and there was wonder in the thought that that individual note had been in Jeffrey Aspem's ear.

"Please to sit down there. I hear very well,'* she

said quiedy , as if perhaps I had been shouting ; and

the chair she pointed to was at a certain distance. I

took possession of it, assuring her I was perfecdy

aware of my intrusion and of my not having been

properly introduced, and that I could but throw my-

sdf on her indulgence. Perhaps the other lady, the

one I had had the honour of seeing the day before,

would have explained to her about the garden. That

was literally what had given me courage to take a step

so unconventional. I had fallen in love at sight with

the whole place — she herself was probably so used to

it that she did n't know the impression it was capable

of making on a stranger — and I had felt it really a

case to risk something. Was her own kindness in

receiving me a sign that I was not wholly out in my

calculation ? It would make me extremely happy to

think so. I could give her my word of h onouL-that I

was a most respectable inoff ensive person and that as a co-tenant of the palace, so to speak, they would be barely conscious of my existence. I would conform to any regulations, any restrictions, if they would only let me enjoy the garden. Moreover I should be delighted to give her references, guarantees ; they would be of the very best, both in Venice and in England, as well as in America.

She listened to me in perfect stillness and I felt her look at me with great penetration, though I could see only the lower part of her bleached and shrivelled face. Independendy of the refining process of old age it had a delicacy which once must have been great. She had been very fair, she had had a wonderful complexion. She was silent a litde after I had ceased speaking; then she began : " If you 're so fond of a garden why don't you go to terra frmaj where there are so many far better than this ? "

"Oh it's the combination!" I answered, smiling; and then with rather a flight of fancy : " It 's the idea of a garden in the middle of the sea."

"This isn't the middle of the sea; you can't so much as see the water."

I stared a moment, wondering if she wished to convict me of fraud. " Can't see the water ? Why, dear madam, I can come up to the very gate in my boat."

She appeared inconsequent, for she said vaguely in reply to this : " Yes, if you 've got a boat. I have n't any; it's many years since I've been in one of the gondole.^^ She uttered these words as if they designed a curious far-away craft known to her only by hearsay.

" Let me assure you of the pleasure with which I would put mine at your service ! " I returned. I had scarcely said this however before I became aware that the speech was in questionable taste and might also do me the injury of making me appear too eager, too possessed of a hidden motive. But the old woman remained impenetrable and her attitude worried me by suggesting that she had a fuller vision of me than I had of her. She gave me no thanks for my somewhat extravagant offer, but remarked that the lady I had seen the day before was her niece ; she would presendy come in. She had asked her to stay away a litde on purpose — had had her reasons for seeing me first alone. She relapsed into silence and I turned over the fact of these unmentioned reasons and die question of what might come yet ; also that of whedier I might venture on some judicious remark m praise of her companion. I went so far as to say I should be delighted to see our absent friend again : she had been so very patient with me, considering how odd she must have thought me — a declaration which drew from Miss Bordereau another of her whimsical speeches.