The Aspern Papers | Page 7

could say no without lying.
"But you will have to change your name," said Mrs. Prest. "Juliana
lives out of the world as much as it is possible to live, but none the less
she has probably heard of Mr. Aspern's editors; she perhaps possesses
what you have published."
"I have thought of that," I returned; and I drew out of my pocketbook a
visiting card, neatly engraved with a name that was not my own.
"You are very extravagant; you might have written it," said my
companion.
"This looks more genuine."
"Certainly, you are prepared to go far! 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 will go every day to fetch them. It
will give me a little walk."
"Shall you only depend upon that?" asked Mrs. Prest. "Aren't you
coming to see me?"
"Oh, you will have left Venice, for the hot months, long before there
are any results. I am prepared to roast all summer-- as well as 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 will recognize his hand," my companion suggested.
"On the envelope he can disguise it."
"Well, you're a precious pair! Doesn't it occur to you that even if you
are able to say you are not Mr. Cumnor in person they may still suspect
you of being his emissary?"
"Certainly, and I see only one way to parry that."
"And what may that be?"
I hesitated a moment. "To make love to the niece."
"Ah," cried Mrs. Prest, "wait till you see her!"

II
"I must work the garden--I must work the garden," I said to myself, five
minutes later, as I waited, upstairs, in the long, dusky sala, where the
bare scagliola floor gleamed vaguely in a chink of the closed shutters.
The place was impressive but it looked cold and cautious. Mrs. Prest
had floated away, giving me a rendezvous at the end of half an hour by
some neighboring water steps; and I had been let into the house, after
pulling the rusty bell wire, by a little red-headed, white-faced
maidservant, who was very young and not ugly and wore clicking

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 inevitable challenge which in Italy precedes the
hospitable act. As a general thing I was irritated by this survival of
medieval manners, though as I liked the old I suppose I ought to have
liked it; but I was so determined to be genial that 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 gentleman, an
American, for a moment?" The little maid was not hostile, and I
reflected that even that was perhaps something gained. She colored, she
smiled and looked both frightened and pleased. I could see that my
arrival was a great affair, that visits were rare in that house, and that she
was a person who would have liked a sociable place. When she pushed
forward the heavy door behind me I felt that I had a foot in the citadel.
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 the dentist's parlor. It was gloomy
and stately, but it owed its character almost entirely to its noble shape
and to the fine architectural doors-- as high as the doors of
houses--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, brown
pictures, which I perceived to be bad, in battered frames, were
suspended. With the exception of several straw-bottomed chairs with
their backs to the wall, the grand obscure vista contained nothing else
to minister to effect. It was evidently never used save