The Aspern Papers | Page 6

explored Venice socially as much as I have
you can form no idea of their domestic desolation. They live on nothing,
for they have nothing to live on." The other idea that had come into my
head was connected with a high blank wall which appeared to confine
an expanse of ground on one side of the house. Blank I call it, but it
was figured over with the patches that please a painter, repaired
breaches, crumblings of plaster, extrusions of brick that had turned pink
with time; and a few thin trees, with the poles of certain rickety trellises,
were visible over the top. The place was a garden, and apparently it
belonged to the house. It suddenly occurred to me that if it did belong
to the house I had my pretext.
I sat looking out on all this with Mrs. Prest (it was covered with the
golden glow of Venice) from the shade of our felze, and she asked me
if I would go in then, while she waited for me, or come back another
time. At first I could not decide--it was doubtless very weak of me. I

wanted still to think I MIGHT get a footing, and I was afraid to meet
failure, for it would leave me, as I remarked to my companion, without
another arrow for my bow. "Why not another?" she inquired as I sat
there hesitating and thinking it over; and she wished to know why even
now and before taking the trouble of becoming an inmate (which might
be wretchedly uncomfortable after all, even if it succeeded), I had not
the resource of simply offering them a sum of money down. In that way
I might obtain the documents without bad nights.
"Dearest lady," I exclaimed, "excuse the impatience of my tone when I
suggest that you must have forgotten the very fact (surely I
communicated it to you) which pushed me to throw myself upon your
ingenuity. The old woman won't have the documents spoken of; they
are personal, delicate, intimate, and she hasn't modern notions, God
bless her! If I should sound that note first I should certainly spoil the
game. I can arrive at the papers only by putting her off her guard, and I
can put her off her guard only by ingratiating diplomatic practices.
Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance. I am sorry for it, but for
Jeffrey Aspern's sake I would do worse still. First I must take tea with
her; then tackle the main job." And I told over what had happened to
John Cumnor when he wrote 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
not imagine what he meant by troubling them. They had none of Mr.
Aspern's papers, and if they had should never think of showing them to
anyone on any account whatever. She didn't know what he was talking
about and begged he would let her alone." I certainly did not want to be
met that way.
"Well," said Mrs. Prest after a moment, provokingly, "perhaps after all
they haven't any of his things. If they deny it flat how are you sure?"
"John Cumnor is 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. Aspern.'"
"I don't see what that proves."
"It proves familiarity, and familiarity implies the possession of
mementoes, or relics. I can't tell you how that 'Mr.' touches 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 someone 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 business were it not that for him there was the obstacle
that it would be difficult 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 correspondent it would be too awkward
for him to lie; whereas I was fortunately not tied in that way. I was a
fresh hand and