Daisy Miller: A Study
more perplexed, for this inconsequent smile made nothing clear, though
it seemed to prove, indeed, that she had a sweetness and softness that
reverted instinctively to the pardon of offenses. “It has never occurred
to Mr. Winterbourne to offer me any tea,” she said with her little
tormenting manner.
“I have offered you advice,” Winterbourne rejoined.
“I prefer weak tea!” cried Daisy, and she went off with the brilliant
Giovanelli. She sat with him in the adjoining room, in the embrasure
of the window, for the rest of the evening. There was an interesting
performance at the piano, but neither of these young people gave heed
to it. When Daisy came to take leave of Mrs. Walker, this lady
conscientiously repaired the weakness of which she had been guilty at
the moment of the young girl’s arrival. She turned her back straight
upon Miss Miller and left her to depart with what grace she might.
Winterbourne was standing near the door; he saw it all. Daisy turned
very pale and looked at her mother, but Mrs. Miller was humbly
unconscious of any violation of the usual social forms. She appeared,
indeed, to have felt an incongruous impulse to draw attention to her own
striking observance of them. “Good night, Mrs. Walker,” she said; “we’ve
had a beautiful evening. You see, if I let Daisy come to parties without
me, I don’t want her to go away without me.” Daisy turned away, looking
with a pale, grave face at the circle near the door; Winterbourne saw
that, for the first moment, she was too much shocked and puzzled even
for indignation. He on his side was greatly touched.
“That was very cruel,” he said to Mrs. Walker.
“She never enters my drawing room again!” replied his hostess.
Since Winterbourne was not to meet her in Mrs. Walker’s drawing room, he
went as often as possible to Mrs. Miller’s hotel. The ladies were rarely
at home, but when he found them, the devoted Giovanelli was always
present. Very often the brilliant little Roman was in the drawing room
with Daisy alone, Mrs. Miller being apparently constantly of the opinion
that discretion is the better part of surveillance. Winterbourne
noted, at first with surprise, that Daisy on these occasions was never
embarrassed or annoyed by his own entrance; but he very presently began
to feel that she had no more surprises for him; the unexpected in her
behavior was the only thing to expect. She showed no displeasure at
her tete-a-tete with Giovanelli being interrupted; she could chatter as
freshly and freely with two gentlemen as with one; there was always,
in her conversation, the same odd mixture of audacity and puerility.
Winterbourne remarked to himself that if she was seriously interested in
Giovanelli, it was very singular that she should not take more trouble
to preserve the sanctity of their interviews; and he liked her the more
for her innocent-looking indifference and her apparently inexhaustible
good humor. He could hardly have said why, but she seemed to him a girl
who would never be jealous. At the risk of exciting a somewhat derisive
smile on the reader’s part, I may affirm that with regard to the women
who had hitherto interested him, it very often seemed to Winterbourne
among the possibilities that, given certain contingencies, he should be
afraid--literally afraid--of these ladies; he had a pleasant sense that
he should never be afraid of Daisy Miller. It must be added that this
sentiment was not altogether flattering to Daisy; it was part of his
conviction, or rather of his apprehension, that she would prove a very
light young person.
But she was evidently very much interested in Giovanelli. She looked at
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