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The Aspern Papers-Part2_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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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 as a passage, and little even as that.

I may add that by the time the door opened again through



which the maidservant had escaped, my eyes had grown used

to the want of light.



I had not 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 exclaimed, 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, "Nothing here

is mine," she answered in English, coldly and sadly.



"Oh, you are English; how delightful!" I remarked, ingenuously.

"But surely the garden belongs to the house?"



"Yes, but the house doesn't belong to me." She was a long,

lean, pale person, habited apparently in a dull-colored



dressing gown, and she spoke with a kind of mild literalness.

She did not 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'll think me odiously intrusive, but you know I MUST



have a garden--upon my honor I must!"

Her face was not young, but it was simple; it was not fresh, but it was mild.



She had large eyes which were not bright, and a great deal of hair which

was not "dressed," and long fine hands which were--possibly--not clean.



She clasped these members almost convulsively as, with a confused,

alarmed look, she broke out, "Oh, don't take it away from us;



we like it ourselves!"

"You have the use of it then?"



"Oh, yes. If it wasn't for that!" And she gave a shy, melancholy smile.

"Isn't it a luxury, precisely? That's why, intending to be



in Venice some weeks, possibly all summer, and having some

literary work, some reading and writing to do, so that I must



be quiet, and yet if possible a great deal in the open air--

that's why I have felt that a garden is really indispensable.



I appeal to your own experience," I went on, smiling.

"Now can't I look at yours?"



"I don't know, I don't understand," the poor woman murmured,

planted there and letting her embarrassed eyes wander all



over my strangeness.

"I mean only from one of those windows--such grand ones



as you have here--if you will let me open the shutters."

And I walked toward the back of the house. When I had advanced



halfway I stopped and waited, as if I took it for granted she would

accompany me. I had been of necessity very abrupt, but I strove



at the same time to give her the impression of extreme courtesy.

"I have been looking at furnished rooms all over the place,



and it seems impossible to find any with a garden attached.

Naturally in a place like Venice gardens are rare. It's absurd



if you like, for a man, but I can't live without flowers."

"There are none to speak of down there." She came nearer to me, as if,



though she mistrusted me, I had drawn her by an invisible thread.




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