Literary Love

by Gabrielle Vigot

  “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. Daisy had imparted herself to a mere situation of arousal and failure. Oh, if it were true that the following happened, Winterbourne might have been so forlorn as to swear off studying whatsoever. He promptly returned home, pulled up the covers on the chaise unused since last winter, and slept soundly, dipping into a reverie.

  He immediately dreamt that 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. Co
stello 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.”

  “Is that a modest way,” asked Mrs. Costello, “of saying that she would have reciprocated one’s affection?”

  Frederick Winterbourne awoke with every muscle aching sorely, next to the edge of the chaise, on the floor. He looked to his bare left leg; a bruise had appeared after his falling rudely in the very middle of the night, and the soreness had begun to reverberate and shatter through his rêve fantasmagorique. The dialogue of the dream had a gargled, groggy way about it, and Winterbourne lay on his back for a few minutes debating his options. He had felt utterly subdued by Daisy’s inpenetrable nature on several occasions. To him, in these past few days after Miss Walker’s party, Daisy was a calculus on his happiness, invading his independent thoughts like a fresh vine on a trellis. To say the very least, she was beginning to unnerve him in a way that was foreign and uncomfortable. He could shoot himself. After all, she would never allow him the coup de grace. Her sweet smile had played him for a fool when she wasn’t even in the same city. Unless he was mistaken, she had even said this at Miss Walker’s party. Yet he was a haunted man. Should he forever abandon his desire for her hand, her brilliant and soft tongue, her tears of sadness and happy moments?

  Winterbourne offered no answer to this question remaining from his dream; but he presently said to himself, “Miss Costello was right in that remark she made last summer. I was booked to make a mistake. I have lived too long in foreign parts.”

  He sat on the nearest chair, brooding for hours. All of this was spot on. He had practically thrown himself in her way until he exhausted himself, and he was not known for such behavior. Daisy, for all practical purposes, had turned him into a gentleman-at-arms. He felt that he must at all costs not give up on her cause. It would be worse than the Roman fever for him. From whence he slept, he decided once and for all he would stop this silliness and bid her confess herself, or board the new Cunard on the way to somewhere, anywhere, shortly after.

  Winterbourne massaged his temples, groaning at the thought of confronting the petite, sick girl. When he arrived to Daisy’s apartment, he cast his eyes to the ceiling, appreciating fully the lack of Mr. Giovanelli. He was received immediately by Mrs. Miller. “Mr. Winterbourne! I willed you to come over the night Daisy came down with this terrible illness, but Daisy forebade me from inviting even Randolph to play at her bedside. Even his pleasant follies have disturbed her, pained though she is to admit it.”

  Winterbourne nodded and blushed. He thought to himself he must appear a souse, hair disheveled and silent. He murmured a hello and inquired politely about the affairs of Mrs. Miller’s health as well as the fragile state of her daughter. Mrs. Miller replied bluntly. “My dear, you have visited her so often since she was taken sick that you must care a great deal about her health. I implore you to make this clear to Daisy, as young ladies of our family’s standing can be as unwavering as bulls in their callousness toward suitors of yours. Perhaps putting it delicately will help your cause. It could be the reason for her lingering sickness, one might say.”

  Winterbourne stepped back involuntarily when these fiery words were uttered. Was his infatuation so obvious that even Daisy’s mother tired of his presence? And what did Mrs. Miller mean by “it could be the reason for her lingering sickness”? it crossed his mind that Mrs. Miller may be more manipulative than he bargained for. It must make her violently ill to see her daughter cavort with the underclass, after all! Though barely sated with her daughter’s rejection of Giovanelli as a husband, Mrs. Miller probably would pay Winterbourne a dowry three times whatever Giovanelli would accept, just to avoid Daisy dipping herself lower into social displays.

  Winterbourne saw that Mrs. Miller’s smile had hardened again; he interjected before she could say another word. “Mrs. Miller, if she will take me, I will spirit your daughter away from the people you have been acquainted with here in Rome. I have arranged for the sale of Chillon as an historical property. It is still the property of Switzerland, Vevey, of course, but I’ve come across a considerable amount of political clout, courtesy of my newly minted lawyer friends.

  The private upper rampart area, with its twenty-one rooms, well I should hope Daisy would visit me there. All of the Millers are more than welcome.

  At this, Mrs. Miller’s hand clutched at her heart in a violent manner, and Winterbourne wondered for a flickering moment how he’d best run to her aid. Would she need smelling salts, or water? But then Mrs. Miller applied a beige silk handkerchief to her nose and spoke softly. “Daisy has been crying out for you in the middle of the night. Her trip to Chillon hangs heavy in her mind, and she wishes for nothing more than to speak with you.” Mrs. Miller’s sleeve was in tatters. To the point that her dressing gown looked as though it could be torn by one mistakenly shoving one’s arm through the moth-eaten holes in the side a number of times, before finally getting it through the sleeve.

  The funneling of the fiduciary means of the family into Daisy’s care showed in small ways such as these. With that, Winterbourne gained some resolve. “Please grant me the opportunity to entertain Daisy with my presence, if nothing else. I will be gentle as a lamb, I swear it.” Not another word passed between them as Mrs. Miller led him to Daisy’s bedside and abruptly left to tend to Randolph. Winterbourne didn’t waste a moment in kneeling tenderly by Daisy’s bedside.

  She looked dew-eyed, as if she had been crying only moments before, but straightened up when Winterbourne walked in. “Daisy, I have infinite regrets in how I left you in the care of that, that cur, Giovanelli. The dog should be hung. You are the only girl for me, so please, if you ask of me anything, I should do it without hesitation. Please just accept this small sum, if only as a loan, as I can only hope you’ll make a full recovery.”

  Winterbourne laid a large money sack on her nightstand and grasped Daisy’s little hand so tightly, she gave him a tight smile and giggled, covering her mouth with the other, now unnaturally slender arm. She spoke in a taunting yet soft voice.

  “Winterbourne, I am nineteen. What are you asking of me? Do you wish to donate a sizeable part of your family’s riches to mine simply because you enjoy my company? Or do you — ”

  “Daisy, I can’t pretend I don’t love you!” blurted Winterbourne. She turned as red as the turnips in her hometown, and Winterbourne did the same. They sat in silence, Daisy on her elbows in her bed. Then —

  “Winterbourne, I thought you were simply going to ask if you’d wanted us to pay you back with interest after my father sends the money. I assume courtship isn’t a condition of this lending. But very well, I will sell off my filigreed dresses from when I am well until the Millers have paid their debt to you. I can’t go about dying, and the medicine isn’t so costly anyway.” She looked at him as a lioness might look after experiencing an injury at the hooves of her prey. “And Winterbourne, as for the question of courtship, my answer is that it should be a splendid competition. Between you and so many of my other ‘suitors’ as the other Americans are fond of saying. Consider yourself in the running. But whether you end up champion or vice champion of my heart, I will decide. All wagers are off. I tire of this flirtatiousness, and in fact wish to be betrothed in a matter of a week. You have been frank with me, so I will be frank with you, Winterbourne. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with flirting, and if I am to be betrothed, why should I hesitate to have a little, shall we say, fun?”

  “But Daisy! What do you mean?” Winterbourne gasped out.

  “Winterbourne, you are very close to the finish line, to my heart. I know you are
a generous, caring, winsome man, and you are very dear to me. But there are so many others in kind who would jump up at the opportunity to woo me. I want the chance to explore my options, at least between you and dear Giovanelli, who have also shown me many kindnesses. Neither of you has fought for me in the way I wish to be fought for, and perhaps that is why you two have made it this far in competition for my heart. I only propose continuing the competition.”

  Winterbourne thought about this. If he had a fifty-per-cent chance of marrying his beloved Daisy, he had a one-hundred-percent chance of being lovesick to the end of his days if he didn’t even try. He imagined the mention of Giovanelli’s name might be a distraction from her hesitance at being so young. He told Daisy he was up for the challenge, and leaned in. He put his hand behind her fair cheek. He sat softly next to her. He kissed her deeply and passionately, and she trembled, melting into their shared, sacred moment.

  Then she opened her eyes. A great tear rolled down her cheek. “Of — Of course, you and Giovanelli are free to pursue other — more traditional — ladies as well.”

  For an ill violet, Daisy was as pretty as ever. Winterbourne ordered her to hush. “Daisy, you are not a negotiator at heart. I’ve already said that you’re the one for me. But if you dare, test my love and dedication in the next week, and I shall surely prove myself.” Daisy nodded in her bright, delicate way. Winterbourne bent down to give her a kiss goodbye, and she rolled her eyes and gave him a naughty, slight smile.

  “I feel better already,” she said.

  Winterbourne left, puzzled. He’d never felt more perplexed, and he’d never felt more alive. He was perspiring, and went to bed immediately.