Only once in Henry’s presence did Tito speak of her. One night, as they waited for her daughter, Mrs Benedict asked Henry to compliment Tito on his dexterity, especially on corners and small canals. When Henry translated her remarks, Tito bowed solemnly to her and then said that Miss Woolson had sought him out not for the dexterity she had mentioned, which all the gondoliers had, but because he knew the lagoon, the open water, and could navigate safely there. Miss Woolson always preferred to move out from the city, out into the lagoon, he said. Many Americans, he said, love the Grand Canal and want to travel up and down it all day. But not Miss Woolson. She liked the Grand Canal because it led out to the lonely open water, where you would meet no one. Even in the winter, she had loved it, he said. Even in the bad weather. As far out as you could go. She had her favourite places there, he said.
Henry wanted to ask him if she had taken such journeys right until the end, but he knew from the way that Tito had finished his speech that no more information would be forthcoming unless Mrs Benedict were to ask a question. Once Henry had translated for her, however, she smiled at the gondolier distractedly, and asked Henry what he thought her daughter might be doing to keep them waiting so long.
AFTER A WHILE he began to wake in the night; the worried thoughts which came disturbed him, and in the morning there remained a residue of the night’s unease. After a time, however, his waking was merely an interlude in his sleeping, another aspect of the night’s deep rest rather than a disturbance; he felt no fear, and no worried thoughts came into his mind, but rather a sense of abiding warmth. In this period, he did not feel Constance’s presence at all. He felt instead a nameless and numinous presence. As time passed, the glow on entering these rooms, and when he woke in the night, took on a more particular intensity. He found himself all day looking forward to this, and wondering if, when he left here and returned to London, such ease and sweet goodwill could follow him.
It was not a ghost, not anything unsettled and haunting, but rather it was a figure hovering gently, the shadow movements of his mother’s protecting aura coming to him now in the night, pure and exquisite in its female tenderness, gentle and enclosing, cajoling him back to sleep in those rooms which had so recently been inhabited by his friend, whose death still filled him with guilt and whose sad, impassive spirit looked on at his determination each day, as he sat at her desk quietly setting aside letters from her doctor and from Alice’s friend Miss Loring and, when the coast was clear, putting them into the fire.
AFTER MUCH negotiation with the American consul about their relative’s estate, and much fussing and prevarication, the Benedicts oversaw the packing of her papers and the wrapping of her paintings and mementoes which they placed in the consul’s care until legal matters were sorted out to his satisfaction. The month of April had been rainy and chilly and both of the women had caught colds and been confined to quarters. By the time they emerged again Venice had changed; the days were longer and the wind had died down and many of their acquaintances had also, for one reason or another, left the city. Thus their farewell dinner was desultory and badly attended with Henry eager to stand up from the table before nine, as usual, and shake their hands, and kiss them if they should need kissing, and look into their eyes, promising that, as he still had a key to her apartment at Casa Semitecolo, he would oversee the final clearing out of her effects and the return of the key to the landlord.
In the morning when the Benedicts had left the city Henry discovered that they had made no arrangements to dispose of Constance’s clothes. They must have known, he realized, that her wardrobe and dressing tables were full because they had searched for her will there. He wondered if they had discussed the matter, or if it had evoked too much sadness for them to deal with, and then, at the end, they were too embarrassed to mention it. In any case, they had, it seemed, left him to deal with Constance’s wardrobe and personal effects. He waited for several days in case one of their Venetian friends made contact to arrange the removal of the clothes. As no one did, he became certain that the Benedicts had taken advantage of his support and had fled leaving wardrobes full of dresses and cupboards full of shoes, underclothes and other items, that appeared not to have been disturbed.
He wanted no further discussions about Constance’s estate, and therefore did not wish to contact any of her friends who would, he knew, quickly spread the news that her clothes had been left in the apartment, thus offering the freedom to visit and snoop as they pleased, asking for the key at will, and invading the privacy he had guarded for her in the time after her death. When he had pictured her planning each scene in which he and her relatives took part, this aspect of her demise was far from his mind. The throwing away, or giving away, of her clothes had not been, he was sure, part of her dream afterlife. While he had felt her deep displeasure as he burned the letters, now he felt a dull sadness and the grim weight of her absence as he contemplated the clearing-out of her wardrobe.
He confided in no one except Tito who, he felt, would be willing, under his supervision, to transport what was left of his friend’s worldly goods. Tito, he believed, would know what to do with them. But when Henry showed him the mass of clothes in the wardrobe and the shoes and then the underclothes, Tito merely shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He repeated these gestures when Henry suggested that perhaps one of the convents might be interested in old clothes. Not the clothes of the dead, Tito told him, no one will want the clothes of the dead.
For one moment, Henry wished he had handed the key to the landlord and left the city, but he knew that it would not have been long before he received letters about the clothes, asking what should be done with them, not only from the landlord himself, but from members of the colony.
Tito, in the meantime, stood in what had been Constance’s bedroom watching him fiercely.
‘What can we do with them?’ Henry asked him.
His shrug this time was almost contemptuous. Henry held his gaze and sternly insisted that the clothes would have to be moved.
‘We cannot leave them here,’ he said.
Tito did not reply. Henry knew that his boat was waiting, he knew that together they would have to carry these clothes and place them in the gondola.
‘Can you burn them?’ Henry asked.
Tito shook his head. He was intensely studying the wardrobe, as though he were guarding its contents. Henry felt that if he made to empty the wardrobe, Tito would rush at him to prevent his interfering with his mistress’s clothes. He sighed and kept his eyes down, hoping that the impasse at which they had arrived would cause Tito to speak or make a suggestion. As the silence between them lingered, Henry opened the windows and went to the balcony and looked at the building across the way and the ground onto which Constance had fallen.
On turning and catching Tito’s eye, he saw that Tito wanted to say something. He gestured to him in encouragement. All of this, Tito said, should have been taken to America. Henry nodded in agreement and then said that it was too late now.
Tito shrugged again.
Henry opened one of the cupboard drawers and then another. Tito, when he turned, was watching him with an interest bordering on alarm. Henry stood and faced him.
Did he know, he asked him, the place in the lagoon to which he had ferried her regularly? The one he had told Henry about? Where there was nothing?
Tito nodded. He waited for Henry to speak again, but Henry merely gazed at him as he considered what had just been said. Tito seemed worried. Several times he made as though to speak, but sighed instead. Finally, as though someone were in the next room, he pointed surreptitiously to the clothes and then in the direction of the door and then in the direction of the far lagoon. They could, he silently asserted, take the clothes there and bury them in the water. Henry nodded in agreement, but still neither of them moved until Tito lifted his right hand and stretched out the fingers.