Daisy Miller: A Study
“I myself shall make a fuss if you don’t go,” said Winterbourne.
“That’s all I want--a little fuss!” And the young girl began to laugh
again.
“Mr. Randolph has gone to bed!” the courier announced frigidly.
“Oh, Daisy; now we can go!” said Mrs. Miller.
Daisy turned away from Winterbourne, looking at him, smiling and fanning
herself. “Good night,” she said; “I hope you are disappointed, or
disgusted, or something!”
He looked at her, taking the hand she offered him. “I am puzzled,” he
answered.
“Well, I hope it won’t keep you awake!” she said very smartly; and,
under the escort of the privileged Eugenio, the two ladies passed toward
the house.
Winterbourne stood looking after them; he was indeed puzzled. He
lingered beside the lake for a quarter of an hour, turning over the
mystery of the young girl’s sudden familiarities and caprices. But
the only very definite conclusion he came to was that he should enjoy
deucedly “going off” with her somewhere.
Two days afterward he went off with her to the Castle of Chillon. He
waited for her in the large hall of the hotel, where the couriers, the
servants, the foreign tourists, were lounging about and staring. It was
not the place he should have chosen, but she had appointed it. She came
tripping downstairs, buttoning her long gloves, squeezing her folded
parasol against her pretty figure, dressed in the perfection of a
soberly elegant traveling costume. Winterbourne was a man of imagination
and, as our ancestors used to say, sensibility; as he looked at her
dress and, on the great staircase, her little rapid, confiding step, he
felt as if there were something romantic going forward. He could have
believed he was going to elope with her. He passed out with her among
all the idle people that were assembled there; they were all looking
at her very hard; she had begun to chatter as soon as she joined him.
Winterbourne’s preference had been that they should be conveyed to
Chillon in a carriage; but she expressed a lively wish to go in the
little steamer; she declared that she had a passion for steamboats.
There was always such a lovely breeze upon the water, and you saw such
lots of people. The sail was not long, but Winterbourne’s companion
found time to say a great many things. To the young man himself their
little excursion was so much of an escapade--an adventure--that, even
allowing for her habitual sense of freedom, he had some expectation of
seeing her regard it in the same way. But it must be confessed that,
in this particular, he was disappointed. Daisy Miller was extremely
animated, she was in charming spirits; but she was apparently not at all
excited; she was not fluttered; she avoided neither his eyes nor those
of anyone else; she blushed neither when she looked at him nor when she
felt that people were looking at her. People continued to look at her
a great deal, and Winterbourne took much satisfaction in his pretty
companion’s distinguished air. He had been a little afraid that she
would talk loud, laugh overmuch, and even, perhaps, desire to move about
the boat a good deal. But he quite forgot his fears; he sat smiling,
with his eyes upon her face, while, without moving from her place, she
delivered herself of a great number of original reflections. It was the
most charming garrulity he had ever heard. He had assented to the idea
that she was “common”; but was she so, after all, or was he simply
getting used to her commonness? Her conversation was chiefly of what
metaphysicians term the objective cast, but every now and then it took a
subjective turn.
“What on EARTH are you so grave about?” she suddenly demanded, fixing
her agreeable eyes upon Winterbourne’s.
“Am I grave?” he asked. “I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear.”
“You look as if you were taking me to a funeral. If that’s a grin, your
ears are very near together.”
“Should you like me to dance a hornpipe on the deck?”
“Pray do, and I’ll carry round your hat. It will pay the expenses of our
journey.”
“I never was better pleased in my life,” murmured Winterbourne.
She looked at him a moment and then burst into a little laugh. “I like
to make you say those things! You’re a queer mixture!”
In the castle, after they had landed, the subjective element decidedly
prevailed. Daisy tripped about the vaulted chambers, rustled her skirts
in the corkscrew staircases, flirted back with a pretty little cry and
a shudder from the edge of the oubliettes, and turned a singularly
well-shaped ear to everything that Winterbourne told her about the
place. But he saw that she cared very little for feudal antiquities and
that the dusky traditions of Chillon made but a slight impression upon
her. They had the good fortune to have been able to walk about without
other companionship than that of the custodian; and Winterbourne
arranged with this functionary that they should not be hurried--that
they should linger and pause wherever they chose. The custodian
interpreted the bargain generously--Winterbourne, on his side, had been
generous--and ended by leaving them quite to themselves. Miss Miller’s
observations were not remarkable for logical consistency; for anything
she wanted to say she was sure to find a pretext. She found a great many
pretexts in the rugged embrasures of Chillon for asking Winterbourne
sudden questions about himself--his family, his previous history, his
tastes, his habits, his intentions--and for supplying information upon
corresponding points in her own personality. Of her own tastes, habits,
and intentions Miss Miller was prepared to give the most definite, and
indeed the most favorable account.
“Well, I hope you know enough!” she said to her companion, after he had
told her the history of the unhappy Bonivard. “I never saw a man that
knew so much!” The history of Bonivard had evidently, as they say, gone
into one ear and out of the other. But Daisy went on to say that she
wished Winterbourne would travel with them and “go round” with them;
they might know something, in that case. “Don’t you want to come
and teach Randolph?” she asked. Winterbourne said that nothing
could possibly please him so much, but that he had unfortunately other
occupations. “Other occupations? I don’t believe it!” said Miss Daisy.
“What do you mean? You are not in business.” The young man admitted that
he was not in business; but he had engagements which, even within a day
or two, would force him to go back to Geneva. “Oh, bother!” she said; “I
don’t believe it!” and she began to talk about something else. But a few
moments later, when he was pointing out to her the pretty design of an
antique fireplace, she broke out irrelevantly, “You don’t mean to say
you are going back to Geneva?”
“It is a melancholy fact that I shall have to return to Geneva
tomorrow.”
“Well, Mr. Winterbourne,” said Daisy, “I think you’re horrid!”
“Oh, don’t say such dreadful things!” said Winterbourne--“just at the
last!”
“The last!” cried the young girl; “I call it the first. I have half a
mind to leave you here and go straight back to the hotel alone.” And
for the next ten minutes she did nothing but call him horrid. Poor
Winterbourne was fairly bewildered; no young lady had as yet done him
the honor to be so agitated by the announcement of his movements. His
companion, after this, ceased to pay any attention to the curiosities of
Chillon or the beauties of the lake; she opened fire upon the mysterious
charmer in Geneva whom she appeared to have instantly taken it for
granted that he was hurrying back to see. How did Miss Daisy Miller
know that there was a charmer in Geneva? Winterbourne, who denied the
existence of such a person, was quite unable to discover, and he was
divided between amazement at the rapidity of her induction and amusement
at the frankness of her persiflage. She seemed to him, in all this, an
extraordinary mixture of innocence and crudity. “Does she never allow
you more than three days at a time?” asked Daisy ironically. “Doesn’t
she give you a vacation in summer? There’s no one so hard worked but
they can get leave to go off somewhere at this season. I suppose, if you
stay another day, she’ll come after you in the boat. Do wait over
till Friday, and I will go down to the landing to see her arrive!”
Winterbourne began to think he had been wrong to feel disappointed in
the temper in which the young lady had embarked. If he had missed the
personal accent, the personal accent was now making its appearance.
It sounded very distinctly, at last, in her telling him she would stop
“teasing” him if he would promise her solemnly to come down to Rome in
the winter.
“That’s not a difficult promise to make,” said Winterbourne. “My aunt
has taken an apartment in Rome for the winter and has already asked me
to come and see her.”
“I don’t want you to come for your aunt,” said Daisy; “I want you to
come for me.” And this was the only allusion that the young man was ever
to hear her make to his invidious kinswoman. He declared that, at
any rate, he would certainly come. After this Daisy stopped teasing.
Winterbourne took a carriage, and they drove back to Vevey in the dusk;
the young girl was very quiet.
In the evening Winterbourne mentioned to Mrs. Costello that he had spent
the afternoon at Chillon with Miss Daisy Miller.
“The Americans--of the courier?” asked this lady.
“Ah, happily,” said Winterbourne, “the courier stayed at home.”
“She went with you all alone?”
“All alone.”
Mrs. Costello sniffed a little at her smelling bottle. “And that,” she
exclaimed, “is the young person whom you wanted me to know!”
PART II
Winterbourne, who had returned to Geneva the day after his excursion
to Chillon, went to Rome toward the end of January. His aunt had been
established there for several weeks, and he had received a couple of
letters from her. “Those people you were so devoted to last summer at
Vevey have turned up here, courier and all,” she wrote. “They seem to
have made several acquaintances, but the courier continues to be the
most intime. The young lady, however, is also very intimate with some
third-rate Italians, with whom she rackets about in a way that makes
much talk. Bring me that pretty novel of Cherbuliez’s--Paule Mere--and
don’t come later than the 23rd.”
In the natural course of events, Winterbourne, on arriving in Rome,
would presently have ascertained Mrs. Miller’s address at the American
banker’s and have gone to pay his compliments to Miss Daisy. “After what
happened at Vevey, I think I may certainly call upon them,” he said to
Mrs. Costello.
“If, after what happens--at Vevey and everywhere--you desire to keep
up the acquaintance, you are very welcome. Of course a man may know
everyone. Men are welcome to the privilege!”
“Pray what is it that happens--here, for instance?” Winterbourne
demanded.
“The girl goes about alone with her foreigners. As to what happens
further, you must apply elsewhere for information. She has picked up
half a dozen of the regular Roman fortune hunters, and she takes them
about to people’s houses. When she comes to a party she brings with her
a gentleman with a good deal of manner and a wonderful mustache.”
“And where is the mother?”
“I haven’t the least idea. They are very dreadful people.”
Winterbourne meditated a moment. “They are very ignorant--very innocent
only. Depend upon it they are not bad.”
“They are hopelessly vulgar,” said Mrs. Costello. “Whether or no being
hopelessly vulgar is being ‘bad’ is a question for the metaphysicians.
They are bad enough to dislike, at any rate; and for this short life
that is quite enough.”
The news that Daisy Miller was surrounded by half a dozen wonderful
mustaches checked Winterbourne’s impulse to go straightway to see her.