Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [97]
“When she approached me about renting rooms in a palace together, the idea struck me as inspired.” At the expression of shock on Cal’s face, Coleman hurried on: “The palace was the property of Constance Aspern, a very old woman who in her youth was supposed to have been one of Lord Byron’s lovers. The fortune that had sustained her decades in Venice was drying up, the consequence of a series of bad investments, and she thought that by taking in lodgers, she might at least slow its loss. She offered a suite of rooms on the top floor, and another on the ground floor, but really, whichever floor you chose, you had the run of it, since Miss Aspern did not stray often or far from her rooms on the middle floor. The entire palace had seen better days, but there was a kind of shabby glory to it—not to mention, the rent was ridiculously low. I took the top floor, Philippa the ground floor, and we settled into what seemed a particularly fortuitous arrangement.
“For one winter and part of the following spring, it was. Philippa and I passed our mornings working, then joined Miss Aspern for lunch, then ventured out into Venice. So might we have continued to this very day, I daresay.”
“What happened?” Cal asked.
“Our friendship changed,” Coleman said after a moment. “It . . . deepened. I was—Philippa was a good ten years my junior. Children were . . . I . . . a long time ago, I had decided that, in order for me to achieve the art it was my ambition to produce, I would have to lead a certain kind of life. Until this point, I had remained true to my original plan. I suppose my resolve had borne fruit, albeit in books that were more praised than read. At private moments over the years, I had wondered whether the course I’d chosen was the best one, but I’d never had so clear an alternative presented to me. For a week in early, spring, I—we. . .
“The end of that time found me on a train to Paris. I was not—I had been contacted by an editor about the possibility of writing a piece for his magazine about the French capital ten years after its emergence from martial law. I decided that the ten days such a trip would require would allow me to evaluate the path onto which my life had swerved. I feared—I knew how my departure would appear to Philippa, and I did my best to reassure her that I was not fleeing her. She wasn’t pleased, but neither was she overwrought. I would be back soon, and we would talk when I was.
“That was the last I saw of her. The night I left, the railing on which she was leaning as she stood at the window gave way, plummeting her to the courtyard thirty feet below. She was not killed instantly; she survived another three days in the hospital. No one knew how to reach me. Philippa departed this life without regaining consciousness, with only Miss Aspern for company. By the time I returned, a day later than I’d planned, she had been buried for several days.”
“You had decided . . .”
“Does it matter?” Coleman said.
Cal did not answer.
“I left Venice not long after,” Coleman said. “Miss Aspern had no objection to my maintaining my rooms; I believe she had some notion of congruence between us. I had neither the inclination nor the desire to figure in her tableau. I did see Grace—Philippa’s younger sister, now married with four children. I met her at her sister’s grave. I hadn’t remembered Grace as especially remarkable, and in the years since I had seen her last, she had grown into one