him whenever he spoke; she was perpetually telling him to do this and
to do that; she was constantly “chaffing” and abusing him. She appeared
completely to have forgotten that Winterbourne had said anything to
displease her at Mrs. Walker’s little party. One Sunday afternoon,
having gone to St. Peter’s with his aunt, Winterbourne perceived
Daisy strolling about the great church in company with the inevitable
Giovanelli. Presently he pointed out the young girl and her cavalier to
Mrs. Costello. This lady looked at them a moment through her eyeglass,
and then she said:
“That’s what makes you so pensive in these days, eh?”
“I had not the least idea I was pensive,” said the young man.
“You are very much preoccupied; you are thinking of something.”
“And what is it,” he asked, “that you accuse me of thinking of?”
“Of that young lady’s--Miss Baker’s, Miss Chandler’s--what’s her
name?--Miss Miller’s intrigue with that little barber’s block.”
“Do you call it an intrigue,” Winterbourne asked--“an affair that goes
on with such peculiar publicity?”
“That’s their folly,” said Mrs. Costello; “it’s not their merit.”
“No,” rejoined Winterbourne, with something of that pensiveness to which
his aunt had alluded. “I don’t believe that there is anything to be
called an intrigue.”
“I have heard a dozen people speak of it; they say she is quite carried
away by him.”
“They are certainly very intimate,” said Winterbourne.
Mrs. Costello inspected the young couple again with her optical
instrument. “He is very handsome. One easily sees how it is. She thinks
him the most elegant man in the world, the finest gentleman. She has
never seen anything like him; he is better, even, than the courier.
It was the courier probably who introduced him; and if he succeeds in
marrying the young lady, the courier will come in for a magnificent
commission.”
“I don’t believe she thinks of marrying him,” said Winterbourne, “and I
don’t believe he hopes to marry her.”
“You may be very sure she thinks of nothing. She goes on from day to
day, from hour to hour, as they did in the Golden Age. I can imagine
nothing more vulgar. And at the same time,” added Mrs. Costello, “depend
upon it that she may tell you any moment that she is ‘engaged.’”
“I think that is more than Giovanelli expects,” said Winterbourne.
“Who is Giovanelli?”
“The little Italian. I have asked questions about him and learned
something. He is apparently a perfectly respectable little man. I
believe he is, in a small way, a cavaliere avvocato. But he doesn’t
move in what are called the first circles. I think it is really not
absolutely impossible that the courier introduced him. He is evidently
immensely charmed with Miss Miller. If she thinks him the finest
gentleman in the world, he, on his side, has never found himself in
personal contact with such splendor, such opulence, such expensiveness
as this young lady’s. And then she must seem to him wonderfully pretty
and interesting. I rather doubt that he dreams of marrying her. That
must appear to him too impossible a piece of luck. He has nothing but
his handsome face to offer, and there is a substantial Mr. Miller in
that mysterious land of dollars. Giovanelli knows that he hasn’t a title
to offer. If he were only a count or a marchese! He must wonder at his
luck, at the way they have taken him up.”
“He accounts for it by his handsome face and thinks Miss Miller a young
lady qui se passe ses fantaisies!” said Mrs. Costello.
“It is very true,” Winterbourne pursued, “that Daisy and her mamma have
not yet risen to that stage of--what shall I call it?--of culture at
which the idea of catching a count or a marchese begins. I believe that
they are intellectually incapable of that conception.”
“Ah! but the avvocato can’t believe it,” said Mrs. Costello.
Of the observation excited by Daisy’s “intrigue,” Winterbourne gathered
that day at St. Peter’s sufficient evidence. A dozen of the American
colonists in Rome came to talk with Mrs. Costello, who sat on a little
portable stool at the base of one of the great pilasters. The vesper
service was going forward in splendid chants and organ tones in the
adjacent choir, and meanwhile, between Mrs. Costello and her friends,
there was a great deal said about poor little Miss Miller’s going really
“too far.” Winterbourne was not pleased with what he heard, but when,
coming out upon the great steps of the church, he saw Daisy, who had
emerged before him, get into an open cab with her accomplice and roll
away through the cynical streets of Rome, he could not deny to himself
that she was going very far indeed. He felt very sorry for her--not
exactly that he believed that she had completely lost her head, but
because it was painful to hear so much that was pretty, and undefended,
and natural assigned to a vulgar place among the categories of disorder.
He made an attempt after this to give a hint to Mrs. Miller. He met one
day in the Corso a friend, a tourist like himself, who had just come
out of the Doria Palace, where he had been walking through the beautiful
gallery. His friend talked for a moment about the superb portrait
of Innocent X by Velasquez which hangs in one of the cabinets of the
palace, and then said, “And in the same cabinet, by the way, I had the
pleasure of contemplating a picture of a different kind--that pretty
American girl whom you pointed out to me last week.” In answer to
Winterbourne’s inquiries, his friend narrated that the pretty American
girl--prettier than ever--was seated with a companion in the secluded
nook in which the great papal portrait was enshrined.
“Who was her companion?” asked Winterbourne.
“A little Italian with a bouquet in his buttonhole. The girl is
delightfully pretty, but I thought I understood from you the other day
that she was a young lady du meilleur monde.”
“So she is!” answered Winterbourne; and having assured himself that his
informant had seen Daisy and her companion but five minutes before, he
jumped into a cab and went to call on Mrs. Miller. She was at home; but
she apologized to him for receiving him in Daisy’s absence.
“She’s gone out somewhere with Mr. Giovanelli,” said Mrs. Miller. “She’s
always going round with Mr. Giovanelli.”
“I have noticed that they are very intimate,” Winterbourne observed.
“Oh, it seems as if they couldn’t live without each other!” said Mrs.
Miller. “Well, he’s a real gentleman, anyhow. I keep telling Daisy she’s
engaged!”
“And what does Daisy say?”
“Oh, she says she isn’t engaged. But she might as well be!” this
impartial parent resumed; “she goes on as if she was. But I’ve made Mr.
Giovanelli promise to tell me, if SHE doesn’t. I should want to write to
Mr. Miller about it--shouldn’t you?”
Winterbourne replied that he certainly should; and the state of mind of
Daisy’s mamma struck him as so unprecedented in the annals of parental
vigilance that he gave up as utterly irrelevant the attempt to place her
upon her guard.
After this Daisy was never at home, and Winterbourne ceased to meet her
at the houses of their common acquaintances, because, as he perceived,
these shrewd people had quite made up their minds that she was going too
far. They ceased to invite her; and they intimated that they desired to
express to observant Europeans the great truth that, though Miss
Daisy Miller was a young American lady, her behavior was not
representative--was regarded by her compatriots as abnormal.
Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that
were turned toward her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that
she did not feel at all. He said to himself that she was too light and
childish, too uncultivated and unreasoning, too provincial, to have
reflected upon her ostracism, or even to have perceived it. Then at
other moments he believed that she carried about in her elegant and
irresponsible little organism a defiant, passionate, perfectly observant
consciousness of the impression she produced. He asked himself whether
Daisy’s defiance came from the consciousness of innocence, or from her
being, essentially, a young person of the reckless class. It must be
admitted that holding one’s self to a belief in Daisy’s “innocence” came
to seem to Winterbourne more and more a matter of fine-spun gallantry.
As I have already had occasion to relate, he was angry at finding
himself reduced to chopping logic about this young lady; he was vexed at
his want of instinctive certitude as to how far her eccentricities were
generic, national, and how far they were personal. From either view
of them he had somehow missed her, and now it was too late. She was
“carried away” by Mr. Giovanelli.
A few days after his brief interview with her mother, he encountered her
in that beautiful abode of flowering desolation known as the Palace of
the Caesars. The early Roman spring had filled the air with bloom and
perfume, and the rugged surface of the Palatine was muffled with tender
verdure. Daisy was strolling along the top of one of those great mounds
of ruin that are embanked with mossy marble and paved with monumental
inscriptions. It seemed to him that Rome had never been so lovely as
just then. He stood, looking off at the enchanting harmony of line and
color that remotely encircles the city, inhaling the softly humid odors,
and feeling the freshness of the year and the antiquity of the place
reaffirm themselves in mysterious interfusion. It seemed to him also
that Daisy had never looked so pretty, but this had been an observation
of his whenever he met her. Giovanelli was at her side, and Giovanelli,
too, wore an aspect of even unwonted brilliancy.
“Well,” said Daisy, “I should think you would be lonesome!”
“Lonesome?” asked Winterbourne.
“You are always going round by yourself. Can’t you get anyone to walk
with you?”
“I am not so fortunate,” said Winterbourne, “as your companion.”
Giovanelli, from the first, had treated Winterbourne with distinguished
politeness. He listened with a deferential air to his remarks; he
laughed punctiliously at his pleasantries; he seemed disposed to testify
to his belief that Winterbourne was a superior young man. He carried
himself in no degree like a jealous wooer; he had obviously a great deal
of tact; he had no objection to your expecting a little humility of him.
It even seemed to Winterbourne at times that Giovanelli would find a
certain mental relief in being able to have a private understanding with
him--to say to him, as an intelligent man, that, bless you, HE knew
how extraordinary was this young lady, and didn’t flatter himself with
delusive--or at least TOO delusive--hopes of matrimony and dollars. On
this occasion he strolled away from his companion to pluck a sprig of
almond blossom, which he carefully arranged in his buttonhole.
“I know why you say that,” said Daisy, watching Giovanelli. “Because you
think I go round too much with HIM.” And she nodded at her attendant.
“Every one thinks so--if you care to know,” said Winterbourne.
“Of course I care to know!” Daisy exclaimed seriously. “But I don’t
believe it. They are only pretending to be shocked. They don’t really
care a straw what I do. Besides, I don’t go round so much.”
“I think you will find they do care. They will show it disagreeably.”
Daisy looked at him a moment. “How disagreeably?”
“Haven’t you noticed anything?” Winterbourne asked.
“I have noticed you. But I noticed you were as stiff as an umbrella the
first time I saw you.”
“You will find I am not so stiff as several others,” said Winterbourne,
smiling.
“How shall I find it?”
“By going to see the others.”
“What will they do to me?”
“They will give you the cold shoulder. Do you know what that means?”
Daisy was looking at him intently; she began to color. “Do you mean as
Mrs. Walker did the other night?”
“Exactly!” said Winterbourne.
She looked away at Giovanelli, who was decorating himself with his
almond blossom. Then looking back at Winterbourne, “I shouldn’t think
you would let people be so unkind!” she said.
“How can I help it?” he asked.
“I should think you would say something.”
“I do say something;” and he paused a moment. “I say that your mother
tells me that she believes you are engaged.”
“Well, she does,” said Daisy very simply.
Winterbourne began to laugh. “And does Randolph believe it?” he asked.
“I guess Randolph doesn’t believe anything,” said Daisy. Randolph’s
skepticism excited Winterbourne to further hilarity, and he observed
that Giovanelli was coming back to them. Daisy, observing it too,
addressed herself again to her countryman. “Since you have mentioned
it,” she said, “I AM engaged.” * * * Winterbourne looked at her; he had
stopped laughing. “You don’t believe!” she added.
He was silent a moment; and then, “Yes, I believe it,” he said.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” she answered. “Well, then--I am not!”
The young girl and her cicerone were on their way to the gate of the
enclosure, so that Winterbourne, who had but lately entered, presently
took leave of them. A week afterward he went to dine at a beautiful
villa on the Caelian Hill, and, on arriving, dismissed his hired
vehicle. The evening was charming, and he promised himself the
satisfaction of walking home beneath the Arch of Constantine and past
the vaguely lighted monuments of the Forum. There was a waning moon in
the sky, and her radiance was not brilliant, but she was veiled in a
thin cloud curtain which seemed to diffuse and equalize it. When, on his
return from the villa (it was eleven o’clock), Winterbourne approached
the dusky circle of the Colosseum, it recurred to him, as a lover of
the picturesque, that the interior, in the pale moonshine, would be well
worth a glance. He turned aside and walked to one of the empty arches,
near which, as he observed, an open carriage--one of the little Roman
streetcabs--was stationed. Then he passed in, among the cavernous
shadows of the great structure, and emerged upon the clear and silent
arena. The place had never seemed to him more impressive. One-half of
the gigantic circus was in deep shade, the other was sleeping in the
luminous dusk. As he stood there he began to murmur Byron’s famous
lines, out of “Manfred,” but before he had finished his quotation
he remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are
recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors. The
historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere,
scientifically considered, was no better than a villainous miasma.
Winterbourne walked to the middle of the arena, to take a more general
glance, intending thereafter to make a hasty retreat. The great cross in
the center was covered with shadow; it was only as he drew near it that
he made it out distinctly. Then he saw that two persons were stationed
upon the low steps which formed its base. One of these was a woman,
seated; her companion was standing in front of her.
Presently the sound of the woman’s voice came to him distinctly in the
warm night air. “Well, he looks at us as one of the old lions or tigers
may have looked at the Christian martyrs!” These were the words he
heard, in the familiar accent of Miss Daisy Miller.
“Let us hope he is not very hungry,” responded the ingenious Giovanelli.
“He will have to take me first; you will serve for dessert!”
Winterbourne stopped, with a sort of horror, and, it must be added, with
a sort of relief. It was as if a sudden illumination had been flashed
upon the ambiguity of Daisy’s behavior, and the riddle had become easy
to read. She was a young lady whom a gentleman need no longer be
at pains to respect. He stood there, looking at her--looking at her
companion and not reflecting that though he saw them vaguely, he himself
must have been more brightly visible. He felt angry with himself that he
had bothered so much about the right way of regarding Miss Daisy Miller.
Then, as he was going to advance again, he checked himself, not from the
fear that he was doing her injustice, but from a sense of the danger
of appearing unbecomingly exhilarated by this sudden revulsion from
cautious criticism. He turned away toward the entrance of the place,
but, as he did so, he heard Daisy speak again.
“Why, it was Mr. Winterbourne! He saw me, and he cuts me!”
What a clever little reprobate she was, and how smartly she played at
injured innocence! But he wouldn’t cut her. Winterbourne came forward
again and went toward the great cross. Daisy had got up; Giovanelli
lifted his hat. Winterbourne had now begun to think simply of the
craziness, from a sanitary point of view, of a delicate young girl
lounging away the evening in this nest of malaria. What if she WERE
a clever little reprobate? that was no reason for her dying of the
perniciosa. “How long have you been here?” he asked almost brutally.
Daisy, lovely in the flattering moonlight, looked at him a moment.
Then--“All the evening,” she answered, gently. * * * “I never saw
anything so pretty.”
“I am afraid,” said Winterbourne, “that you will not think Roman fever
very pretty. This is the way people catch it. I wonder,” he added,
turning to Giovanelli, “that you, a native Roman, should countenance
such a terrible indiscretion.”
“Ah,” said the handsome native, “for myself I am not afraid.”
“Neither am I--for you! I am speaking for this young lady.”
Giovanelli lifted his well-shaped eyebrows and showed his brilliant
teeth. But he took Winterbourne’s rebuke with docility. “I told the
signorina it was a grave indiscretion, but when was the signorina ever
prudent?”
“I never was sick, and I don’t mean to be!” the signorina declared. “I
don’t look like much, but I’m healthy! I was bound to see the Colosseum
by moonlight; I shouldn’t have wanted to go home without that; and we
have had the most beautiful time, haven’t we, Mr. Giovanelli? If there
has been any danger, Eugenio can give me some pills. He has got some
splendid pills.”
“I should advise you,” said Winterbourne, “to drive home as fast as
possible and take one!”
“What you say is very wise,” Giovanelli rejoined. “I will go and make
sure the carriage is at hand.” And he went forward rapidly.
Daisy followed with Winterbourne. He kept looking at her; she seemed
not in the least embarrassed. Winterbourne said nothing; Daisy chattered
about the beauty of the place. “Well, I HAVE seen the Colosseum by
moonlight!” she exclaimed. “That’s one good thing.” Then, noticing
Winterbourne’s silence, she asked him why he didn’t speak. He made
no answer; he only began to laugh. They passed under one of the dark
archways; Giovanelli was in front with the carriage. Here Daisy stopped
a moment, looking at the young American. “DID you believe I was engaged,
the other day?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter what I believed the other day,” said Winterbourne,
still laughing.
“Well, what do you believe now?”
“I believe that it makes very little difference whether you are engaged
or not!”
He felt the young girl’s pretty eyes fixed upon him through the thick
gloom of the archway; she was apparently going to answer. But Giovanelli
hurried her forward. “Quick! quick!” he said; “if we get in by midnight
we are quite safe.”
Daisy took her seat in the carriage, and the fortunate Italian placed
himself beside her. “Don’t forget Eugenio’s pills!” said Winterbourne as
he lifted his hat.
“I don’t care,” said Daisy in a little strange tone, “whether I have
Roman fever or not!” Upon this the cab driver cracked his whip, and they
rolled away over the desultory patches of the antique pavement.
Winterbourne, to do him justice, as it were, mentioned to no one that
he had encountered Miss Miller, at midnight, in the Colosseum with a
gentleman; but nevertheless, a couple of days later, the fact of her
having been there under these circumstances was known to every member
of the little American circle, and commented accordingly. Winterbourne
reflected that they had of course known it at the hotel, and that, after
Daisy’s return, there had been an exchange of remarks between the porter
and the cab driver. But the young man was conscious, at the same moment,
that it had ceased to be a matter of serious regret to him that the
little American flirt should be “talked about” by low-minded menials.
These people, a day or two later, had serious information to give: the
little American flirt was alarmingly ill. Winterbourne, when the rumor
came to him, immediately went to the hotel for more news. He found that
two or three charitable friends had preceded him, and that they were
being entertained in Mrs. Miller’s salon by Randolph.
“It’s going round at night,” said Randolph--“that’s what made her sick.
She’s always going round at night. I shouldn’t think she’d want to,
it’s so plaguy dark. You can’t see anything here at night, except when
there’s a moon. In America there’s always a moon!” Mrs. Miller was
invisible; she was now, at least, giving her daughter the advantage of
her society. It was evident that Daisy was dangerously ill.
Winterbourne went often to ask for news of her, and once he saw Mrs.
Miller, who, though deeply alarmed, was, rather to his surprise,
perfectly composed, and, as it appeared, a most efficient and judicious
nurse. She talked a good deal about Dr. Davis, but Winterbourne paid her
the compliment of saying to himself that she was not, after all, such
a monstrous goose. “Daisy spoke of you the other day,” she said to him.
“Half the time she doesn’t know what she’s saying, but that time I think
she did. She gave me a message she told me to tell you. She told me to
tell you that she never was engaged to that handsome Italian. I am sure
I am very glad; Mr. Giovanelli hasn’t been near us since she was taken
ill. I thought he was so much of a gentleman; but I don’t call that
very polite! A lady told me that he was afraid I was angry with him for
taking Daisy round at night. Well, so I am, but I suppose he knows I’m a
lady. I would scorn to scold him. Anyway, she says she’s not engaged. I
don’t know why she wanted you to know, but she said to me three times,
‘Mind you tell Mr. Winterbourne.’ And then she told me to ask if you
remembered the time you went to that castle in Switzerland. But I said
I wouldn’t give any such messages as that. Only, if she is not engaged,
I’m sure I’m glad to know it.”
But, as Winterbourne had said, it mattered very little. A week after
this, the poor girl died; it had been a terrible case of the fever.
Daisy’s grave was in the little Protestant cemetery, in an angle of
the wall of imperial Rome, beneath the cypresses and the thick spring
flowers. Winterbourne stood there beside it, with a number of other
mourners, a number larger than the scandal excited by the young lady’s
career would have led you to expect. Near him stood Giovanelli, who came
nearer still before Winterbourne turned away. Giovanelli was very pale:
on this occasion he had no flower in his buttonhole; he seemed to wish
to say something. At last he said, “She was the most beautiful young
lady I ever saw, and the most amiable;” and then he added in a moment,
“and she was the most innocent.”
Winterbourne looked at him and presently repeated his words, “And the
most innocent?”
“The most innocent!”
Winterbourne felt sore and angry. “Why the devil,” he asked, “did you
take her to that fatal place?”
Mr. Giovanelli’s urbanity was apparently imperturbable. He looked on the
ground a moment, and then he said, “For myself I had no fear; and she
wanted to go.”
“That was no reason!” Winterbourne declared.
The subtle Roman again dropped his eyes. “If she had lived, I should
have got nothing. She would never have married me, I am sure.”
“She would never have married you?”
“For a moment I hoped so. But no. I am sure.”
Winterbourne listened to him: he stood staring at the raw protuberance
among the April daisies. When he turned away again, Mr. Giovanelli, with
his light, slow step, had retired.
Winterbourne almost immediately left Rome; but the following summer he
again met his aunt, Mrs. Costello at Vevey. Mrs. Costello was fond of
Vevey. In the interval Winterbourne had often thought of Daisy Miller
and her mystifying manners. One day he spoke of her to his aunt--said it
was on his conscience that he had done her injustice.
“I am sure I don’t know,” said Mrs. Costello. “How did your injustice
affect her?”
“She sent me a message before her death which I didn’t understand at the
time; but I have understood it since. She would have appreciated one’s
esteem.”