章节正文
"For heaven's sake meet me tonight in the garden!"
VIII
As it turned out the precaution had not been needed,
for three hours later, just as I had finished my dinner,
Miss Bordereau's niece appeared, unannounced, in the open
doorway of the room in which my simple repasts were served.
I remember well that I felt no surprise at seeing her;
which is not a proof that I did not believe in her timidity.
It was immense, but in a case in which there was a particular
reason for boldness it never would have prevented her from
running up to my rooms. I saw that she was now quite full
of a particular reason; it threw her forward--made her seize me,
as I rose to meet her, by the arm.
"My aunt is very ill; I think she is dying!"
"Never in the world," I answered bitterly. "Don't you be afraid!"
"Do go for a doctor--do, do! Olimpia is gone for the one we always have,
but she doesn't come back; I don't know what has happened to her.
I told her that if he was not at home she was to follow him where
he had gone; but apparently she is following him all over Venice.
I don't know what to do--she looks so as if she were sinking."
"May I see her, may I judge?" I asked. "Of course I shall be
delighted to bring someone; but hadn't we better send my man instead,
so that I may stay with you?"
Miss Tita assented to this and I dispatched my servant for the best
doctor in the neighborhood. I hurrieddownstairs with her,
and on the way she told me that an hour after I quitted them
in the afternoon Miss Bordereau had had an attack of "oppression,"
a terrible difficulty in breathing. This had subsided but had left
her so exhausted that she did not come up: she seemed all gone.
I repeated that she was not gone, that she would not go yet;
whereupon Miss Tita gave me a sharper sidelong glance than she
had ever directed at me and said, "Really, what do you mean?
I suppose you don't accuse her of making believe!"
I forget what reply I made to this, but I grant that in my
heart I thought the old woman capable of any weird maneuver.
Miss Tita wanted to know what I had done to her; her aunt had told
her that I had made her so angry. I declared I had done nothing--
I had been exceedingly careful; to which my companion rejoined
that Miss Bordereau had assured her she had had a scene with me--
a scene that had upset her. I answered with some resentment
that it was a scene of her own making--that I couldn't think
what she was angry with me for unless for not seeing my way
to give a thousand pounds for the portrait of Jeffrey Aspern.
"And did she show you that? Oh, gracious--oh, deary me!"
groaned Miss Tita, who appeared to feel that the situation
was passing out of her control and that the elements of her
fate were thickening around her. I said that I would give
anything to possess it, yet that I had not a thousand pounds;
but I stopped when we came to the door of Miss Bordereau's room.
I had an immensecuriosity to pass it, but I thought it my duty
to represent to Miss Tita that if I made the invalid angry she
ought perhaps to be spared the sight of me. "The sight of you?
Do you think she can SEE?" my companion demanded almost
with indignation. I did think so but forebore to say it,
and I softly followed my conductress.
I remember that what I said to her as I stood for a moment beside
the old woman's bed was, "Does she never show you her eyes then?
Have you never seen them?" Miss Bordereau had been divested
of her green shade, but (it was not my fortune to behold Juliana
in her nightcap) the upper half of her face was covered by the fall
of a piece of dingy lacelike muslin, a sort of extemporized
hood which, wound round her head, descended to the end of her nose,
leaving nothing visible but her white withered cheeks and
puckered mouth, closed tightly and, as it were consciously.
Miss Tita gave me a glance of surprise, evidently not seeing a reason
for my impatience. "You mean that she always wears something?
She does it to preserve them."
"Because they are so fine?"
"Oh, today, today!" And Miss Tita shook her head, speaking very low.
"But they used to be magnificent!"
"Yes indeed, we have Aspern's word for that." And as I looked again
at the old woman's wrappings I could imagine that she had not wished
to allow people a reason to say that the great poet had overdone it.
But I did not waste my time in considering Miss Bordereau, in whom
the appearance of respiration was so slight as to suggest that no human
attention could ever help her more. I turned my eyes all over the room,
rummaging with them the closets, the chests of drawers, the tables.
Miss Tita met them quickly and read, I think, what was in them; but she did
not answer it, turning away restlessly, anxiously, so that I felt rebuked,
with reason, for a preoccupation that was almost profane in the presence
of our dying companion. All the same I took another look, endeavoring to
pick out mentally the place to try first, for a person who should wish
to put his hand on Miss Bordereau's papers directly after her death.
The room was a dire confusion; it looked like the room of an old actress.
There were clothes hanging over chairs, odd-looking shabby bundles
here and there, and various pasteboard boxes piled together,
battered, bulging, and discolored, which might have been fifty years old.
Miss Tita after a moment noticed the direction of my eyes again and,
as if she guessed how I judged the air of the place (forgetting I
had no business to judge it at all), said, perhaps to defend herself
from the imputation of complicity in such untidiness:
"She likes it this way; we can't move things.
There are old bandboxes she has had most of her life."
Then she added, half taking pity on my real thought,
"Those things were THERE." And she pointed to a small,
low trunk which stood under a sofa where there was just room for it.
It appeared to be a queer, superannuated coffer, of painted wood,
with elaborate handles and shriveled straps and with the color
(it had last been endued with a coat of light green) much rubbed off.
It evidently had traveled with Juliana in the olden time--
in the days of her adventures, which it had shared.
It would have made a strange figure arriving at a modern hotel.
"WERE there--they aren't now?" I asked, startled by
Miss Tita's implication.
She was going to answer, but at that moment the doctor came in--
the doctor whom the little maid had been sent to fetch and whom she
had at last overtaken. My servant, going on his own errand, had met
her with her companion in tow, and in the sociable Venetian spirit,
retracing his steps with them, had also come up to the threshold of Miss
Bordereau's room, where I saw him peeping over the doctor's shoulder.
I motioned him away the more instantly that the sight of his prying
face reminded me that I myself had almost as little to do there--
an admonition confirmed by the sharp way the little doctor looked at me,
appearing to take me for a rival who had the field before him.
He was a short, fat, brisk gentleman who wore the tall hat of his
profession and seemed to look at everything but his patient.
He looked particularly at me, as if it struck him that I
should be better for a dose, so that I bowed to him and left
him with the women, going down to smoke a cigar in the garden.
I was nervous; I could not go further; I could not leave the place.
I don't know exactly what I thought might happen, but it seemed
to me important to be there. I wandered about in the alleys--
the warm night had come on--smoking cigar after cigar and looking
at the light in Miss Bordereau's windows. They were open now,
I could see; the situation was different. Sometimes the light moved,
but not quickly; it did not suggest the hurry of a crisis.
Was the old woman dying, or was she already dead? Had the doctor
said that there was nothing to be done at her tremendous age but to
let her quietly pass away; or had he simply announced with a look
a little more conventional that the end of the end had come?
Were the other two women moving about to perform the offices that
follow in such a case? It made me uneasy not to be nearer, as if I
thought the doctor himself might carry away the papers with him.
I bit my cigar hard as it came over me again that perhaps there
were now no papers to carry!
I wandered about for an hour--for an hour and a half.
I looked out for Miss Tita at one of the windows, having a
vague idea that she might come there to give me some sign.
Would she not see the red tip of my cigar moving about in the dark
and feel that I wanted eminently to know what the doctor had said?
I am afraid it is a proof my anxieties had made me gross that I
should have taken in some degree for granted that at such an hour,
in the midst of the greatest change that could take place
in her life, they were uppermost also in Miss Tita's mind.
My servant came down and spoke to me; he knew nothing save
that the doctor had gone after a visit of half an hour.
If he had stayed half an hour then Miss Bordereau was still alive:
it could not have taken so much time as that to enunciate
the contrary. I sent the man out of the house; there were moments
when the sense of his curiosity annoyed me, and this was one of them.
HE had been watching my cigar tip from an upper window,
if Miss Tita had not; he could not know what I was after and I
could not tell him, though I was conscious he had fantastic
private theories about me which he thought fine and which I,
had I known them, should have thought offensive.
I went upstairs at last but I ascended no higher than the
sala. The door of Miss Bordereau's apartment was open,
showing from the parlor the dimness of a poor candle.
I went toward it with a light tread, and at the same moment
Miss Tita appeared and stood looking at me as I approached.
"She's better--she'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't--I 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 again--does 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 parlor 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 purpose--I 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 parlor; I wanted more and more to be
on the spot.
"We can't talk there--she will hear us."
I was on the point of replying that in that case we would
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,
VIII
As it turned out the precaution had not been needed,
for three hours later, just as I had finished my dinner,
Miss Bordereau's niece appeared, unannounced, in the open
doorway of the room in which my simple repasts were served.
I remember well that I felt no surprise at seeing her;
which is not a proof that I did not believe in her timidity.
It was immense, but in a case in which there was a particular
reason for boldness it never would have prevented her from
running up to my rooms. I saw that she was now quite full
of a particular reason; it threw her forward--made her seize me,
as I rose to meet her, by the arm.
"My aunt is very ill; I think she is dying!"
"Never in the world," I answered bitterly. "Don't you be afraid!"
"Do go for a doctor--do, do! Olimpia is gone for the one we always have,
but she doesn't come back; I don't know what has happened to her.
I told her that if he was not at home she was to follow him where
he had gone; but apparently she is following him all over Venice.
I don't know what to do--she looks so as if she were sinking."
"May I see her, may I judge?" I asked. "Of course I shall be
delighted to bring someone; but hadn't we better send my man instead,
so that I may stay with you?"
Miss Tita assented to this and I dispatched my servant for the best
doctor in the neighborhood. I hurrieddownstairs with her,
and on the way she told me that an hour after I quitted them
in the afternoon Miss Bordereau had had an attack of "oppression,"
a terrible difficulty in breathing. This had subsided but had left
her so exhausted that she did not come up: she seemed all gone.
I repeated that she was not gone, that she would not go yet;
whereupon Miss Tita gave me a sharper sidelong glance than she
had ever directed at me and said, "Really, what do you mean?
I suppose you don't accuse her of making believe!"
I forget what reply I made to this, but I grant that in my
heart I thought the old woman capable of any weird maneuver.
Miss Tita wanted to know what I had done to her; her aunt had told
her that I had made her so angry. I declared I had done nothing--
I had been exceedingly careful; to which my companion rejoined
that Miss Bordereau had assured her she had had a scene with me--
a scene that had upset her. I answered with some resentment
that it was a scene of her own making--that I couldn't think
what she was angry with me for unless for not seeing my way
to give a thousand pounds for the portrait of Jeffrey Aspern.
"And did she show you that? Oh, gracious--oh, deary me!"
groaned Miss Tita, who appeared to feel that the situation
was passing out of her control and that the elements of her
fate were thickening around her. I said that I would give
anything to possess it, yet that I had not a thousand pounds;
but I stopped when we came to the door of Miss Bordereau's room.
I had an immensecuriosity to pass it, but I thought it my duty
to represent to Miss Tita that if I made the invalid angry she
ought perhaps to be spared the sight of me. "The sight of you?
Do you think she can SEE?" my companion demanded almost
with indignation. I did think so but forebore to say it,
and I softly followed my conductress.
I remember that what I said to her as I stood for a moment beside
the old woman's bed was, "Does she never show you her eyes then?
Have you never seen them?" Miss Bordereau had been divested
of her green shade, but (it was not my fortune to behold Juliana
in her nightcap) the upper half of her face was covered by the fall
of a piece of dingy lacelike muslin, a sort of extemporized
hood which, wound round her head, descended to the end of her nose,
leaving nothing visible but her white withered cheeks and
puckered mouth, closed tightly and, as it were consciously.
Miss Tita gave me a glance of surprise, evidently not seeing a reason
for my impatience. "You mean that she always wears something?
She does it to preserve them."
"Because they are so fine?"
"Oh, today, today!" And Miss Tita shook her head, speaking very low.
"But they used to be magnificent!"
"Yes indeed, we have Aspern's word for that." And as I looked again
at the old woman's wrappings I could imagine that she had not wished
to allow people a reason to say that the great poet had overdone it.
But I did not waste my time in considering Miss Bordereau, in whom
the appearance of respiration was so slight as to suggest that no human
attention could ever help her more. I turned my eyes all over the room,
rummaging with them the closets, the chests of drawers, the tables.
Miss Tita met them quickly and read, I think, what was in them; but she did
not answer it, turning away restlessly, anxiously, so that I felt rebuked,
with reason, for a preoccupation that was almost profane in the presence
of our dying companion. All the same I took another look, endeavoring to
pick out mentally the place to try first, for a person who should wish
to put his hand on Miss Bordereau's papers directly after her death.
The room was a dire confusion; it looked like the room of an old actress.
There were clothes hanging over chairs, odd-looking shabby bundles
here and there, and various pasteboard boxes piled together,
battered, bulging, and discolored, which might have been fifty years old.
Miss Tita after a moment noticed the direction of my eyes again and,
as if she guessed how I judged the air of the place (forgetting I
had no business to judge it at all), said, perhaps to defend herself
from the imputation of complicity in such untidiness:
"She likes it this way; we can't move things.
There are old bandboxes she has had most of her life."
Then she added, half taking pity on my real thought,
"Those things were THERE." And she pointed to a small,
low trunk which stood under a sofa where there was just room for it.
It appeared to be a queer, superannuated coffer, of painted wood,
with elaborate handles and shriveled straps and with the color
(it had last been endued with a coat of light green) much rubbed off.
It evidently had traveled with Juliana in the olden time--
in the days of her adventures, which it had shared.
It would have made a strange figure arriving at a modern hotel.
"WERE there--they aren't now?" I asked, startled by
Miss Tita's implication.
She was going to answer, but at that moment the doctor came in--
the doctor whom the little maid had been sent to fetch and whom she
had at last overtaken. My servant, going on his own errand, had met
her with her companion in tow, and in the sociable Venetian spirit,
retracing his steps with them, had also come up to the threshold of Miss
Bordereau's room, where I saw him peeping over the doctor's shoulder.
I motioned him away the more instantly that the sight of his prying
face reminded me that I myself had almost as little to do there--
an admonition confirmed by the sharp way the little doctor looked at me,
appearing to take me for a rival who had the field before him.
He was a short, fat, brisk gentleman who wore the tall hat of his
profession and seemed to look at everything but his patient.
He looked particularly at me, as if it struck him that I
should be better for a dose, so that I bowed to him and left
him with the women, going down to smoke a cigar in the garden.
I was nervous; I could not go further; I could not leave the place.
I don't know exactly what I thought might happen, but it seemed
to me important to be there. I wandered about in the alleys--
the warm night had come on--smoking cigar after cigar and looking
at the light in Miss Bordereau's windows. They were open now,
I could see; the situation was different. Sometimes the light moved,
but not quickly; it did not suggest the hurry of a crisis.
Was the old woman dying, or was she already dead? Had the doctor
said that there was nothing to be done at her tremendous age but to
let her quietly pass away; or had he simply announced with a look
a little more conventional that the end of the end had come?
Were the other two women moving about to perform the offices that
follow in such a case? It made me uneasy not to be nearer, as if I
thought the doctor himself might carry away the papers with him.
I bit my cigar hard as it came over me again that perhaps there
were now no papers to carry!
I wandered about for an hour--for an hour and a half.
I looked out for Miss Tita at one of the windows, having a
vague idea that she might come there to give me some sign.
Would she not see the red tip of my cigar moving about in the dark
and feel that I wanted eminently to know what the doctor had said?
I am afraid it is a proof my anxieties had made me gross that I
should have taken in some degree for granted that at such an hour,
in the midst of the greatest change that could take place
in her life, they were uppermost also in Miss Tita's mind.
My servant came down and spoke to me; he knew nothing save
that the doctor had gone after a visit of half an hour.
If he had stayed half an hour then Miss Bordereau was still alive:
it could not have taken so much time as that to enunciate
the contrary. I sent the man out of the house; there were moments
when the sense of his curiosity annoyed me, and this was one of them.
HE had been watching my cigar tip from an upper window,
if Miss Tita had not; he could not know what I was after and I
could not tell him, though I was conscious he had fantastic
private theories about me which he thought fine and which I,
had I known them, should have thought offensive.
I went upstairs at last but I ascended no higher than the
sala. The door of Miss Bordereau's apartment was open,
showing from the parlor the dimness of a poor candle.
I went toward it with a light tread, and at the same moment
Miss Tita appeared and stood looking at me as I approached.
"She's better--she'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't--I 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 again--does 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 parlor 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 purpose--I 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 parlor; I wanted more and more to be
on the spot.
"We can't talk there--she will hear us."
I was on the point of replying that in that case we would
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,
- immense [i´mens]
a.广大的，无限的 (初中英语单词) - bitterly [´bitəli] ad.悲痛地；憎恨地 (初中英语单词)
- neighborhood [´neibəhud] n.邻居；邻近；附近 (初中英语单词)
- downstairs [,daun´steəz] ad.在楼下 a.楼下的 (初中英语单词)
- accuse [ə´kju:z] vt.谴责；控告，告发 (初中英语单词)
- capable [´keipəbəl] a.有能力；能干的 (初中英语单词)
- companion [kəm´pæniən] n.同伴；同事；伴侣 (初中英语单词)
- curiosity [,kjuəri´ɔsiti] n.好奇；奇事；珍品 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- visible [´vizəbəl] a.可见的；明显的 (初中英语单词)
- evidently [´evidəntli] ad.明显地 (初中英语单词)
- preserve [pri´zə:v] v.保藏 n.保藏物 (初中英语单词)
- confusion [kən´fju:ʒən] n.混乱(状态)；骚乱 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- elaborate [i´læbərət, -reit] a.精心设计的 (初中英语单词)
- errand [´erənd] n.差使，使命 (初中英语单词)
- instantly [´instəntli] ad.立即，立刻 (初中英语单词)
- nervous [´nə:vəs] a.神经的；神经过敏的 (初中英语单词)
- tremendous [tri´mendəs] a.可怕的；巨大的 (初中英语单词)
- contrary [´kɔntrəri] a.相反的 n.相反 (初中英语单词)
- conscious [´kɔnʃəs] a.意识的；自觉的 (初中英语单词)
- apartment [ə´pɑ:tmənt] n.一套房间 (初中英语单词)
- parlor [´pɑ:lə] n.客厅；起居室 (初中英语单词)
- resist [ri´zist] v.抵抗；对抗；抵制 (初中英语单词)
- disturb [di´stə:b] vt.扰乱；使不安；打乱 (初中英语单词)
- precaution [pri´kɔ:ʃən] n.预防 vt.预先警告 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- apparently [ə´pærəntli] ad.显然，表面上地 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- exceedingly [ik´si:diŋli] ad.非常地，极度地 (高中英语单词)
- portrait [´pɔ:trit] n.肖像；相片；雕像 (高中英语单词)
- indignation [,indig´neiʃən] n.愤慨；气愤 (高中英语单词)
- tightly [´taitli] ad.紧，紧密地 (高中英语单词)
- anxiously [´æŋkʃəsli] ad.挂念地；渴望地 (高中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- shabby [´ʃæbi] a.(衣服)破旧的 (高中英语单词)
- threshold [´θreʃhəuld] n.门槛；入门；开端 (高中英语单词)
- uneasy [ʌn´i:zi] a.不安的；不自在的 (高中英语单词)
- boldness [´bəuldnis] n.大胆；冒失；显著 (英语四级单词)
- invalid [in´vælid] n.病人 a.无效的 (英语四级单词)
- muslin [´mʌzlin] n.平纹细布，薄纱织物 (英语四级单词)
- impatience [im´peiʃəns] n.不耐烦，急躁 (英语四级单词)
- considering [kən´sidəriŋ] prep.就...而论 (英语四级单词)
- profane [prə´fein] a.亵渎的 vt.玷污 (英语四级单词)
- traveled [´trævəld] a.见面广的；旅客多的 (英语四级单词)
- venetian [vi´ni:ʃ(ə)n] a.威尼斯城的 (英语四级单词)
- conventional [kən´venʃənəl] a.常规的；协定的 (英语四级单词)
- upstairs [,ʌp´steəz] ad.在楼上 a.楼上的 (英语四级单词)
- tiptoe [´tiptəu] n.脚尖 vi.踮着脚走 (英语四级单词)
- immensely [i´mensli] ad.极大地，无限地 (英语四级单词)
- assured [ə´ʃuəd] a.确实的 n.被保险人 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- respiration [,respə´reiʃən] n.呼吸(作用) (英语六级单词)
- restlessly [´restlisli] ad.不安定地；烦躁地 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- coffer [´kɔfə] n.保险箱；资产 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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