“It was a kind of a wishing-cap,” said Winterbourne.
“Yes,” said Miss Miller, without examining this analogy; “it always made me wish I was here. But I needn’t have done that for dresses. I am sure they send all the pretty ones to America; you see the most frightful things here. The only thing I don’t like,” she proceeded, “is the society. There isn’t any society; or, if there is, I don’t know where it keeps itself. Do you? I suppose there is some society somewhere, but I haven’t seen anything of it. I’m very fond of society, and I have always had a great deal of it. I don’t mean only in Schenectady, but in New York. I used to go to New York every winter. In New York I had lots of society. Last winter I had seventeen dinners given me; and three of them were by gentlemen,” added Daisy Miller. “I have more friends in New York than in Schenectady—more gentleman friends; and more young lady friends too,” she resumed in a moment. She paused again for an instant; she was looking at Winterbourne with all her prettiness in her lively eyes and in her light, slightly monotonous smile. “I have always had,” she said, “a great deal of gentlemen’s society.”
Poor Winterbourne was amused, perplexed, and decidedly charmed. He had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just this fashion; never, at least, save in cases where to say such things seemed a kind of demonstrative evidence of a certain laxity of deportment. And yet was he to accuse Miss Daisy Miller of actual or potential inconduite, as they said at Geneva? He felt that he had lived at Geneva so long that he had lost a good deal; he had become dishabituated to the American tone. Never, indeed, since he had grown old enough to appreciate things, had he encountered a young American girl of so pronounced a type as this. Certainly she was very charming, but how deucedly sociable! Was she simply a pretty girl from New York State? were they all like that, the pretty girls who had a good deal of gentlemen’s society? Or was she also a designing, an audacious, an unscrupulous young person? Winterbourne had lost his instinct in this matter, and his reason could not help him. Miss Daisy Miller looked extremely innocent. Some people had told him that, after all, American girls were exceedingly innocent; and others had told him that, after all, they were not. He was inclined to think Miss Daisy Miller was a flirt—a pretty American flirt. He had never, as yet, had any relations with young ladies of this category. He had known, here in Europe, two or three women—persons older than Miss Daisy Miller, and provided, for respectability’s sake, with husbands—who were great coquettes—dangerous, terrible women, with whom one’s relations were liable to take a serious turn. But this young girl was not a coquette in that sense; she was very unsophisticated; she was only a pretty American flirt. Winterbourne was almost grateful for having found the formula that applied to Miss Daisy Miller. He leaned back in his seat; he remarked to himself that she had the most charming nose he had ever seen; he wondered what were the regular conditions and limitations of one’s intercourse with a pretty American flirt. It presently became apparent that he was on the way to learn.
“Have you been to that old castle?” asked the young girl, pointing with her parasol to the far-gleaming walls of the Château de Chillon.
“Yes, formerly, more than once,” said Winterbourne. “You too, I suppose, have seen it?”
“No; we haven’t been there. I want to go there dreadfully. Of course I mean to go there. I wouldn’t go away from here without having seen that old castle.”
“It’s a very pretty excursion,” said Winterbourne, “and very easy to make. You can drive, you know, or you can go by the little steamer.”
“You can go in the cars,” said Miss Miller.
“Yes; you can go in the cars,” Winterbourne assented.
“Our courier says they take you right up to the castle,” the young girl continued. “We were going last week; but my mother gave out. She suffers dreadfully from dyspepsia. She said she couldn’t go. Randolph wouldn’t go either; he says he doesn’t think much of old castles. But I guess we’ll go this week, if we can get Randolph.”
“Your brother is not interested in ancient monuments?” Winterbourne inquired, smiling.
“He says he don’t care much about old castles. He’s only nine. He wants to stay at the hotel. Mother’s afraid to leave him alone, and the courier won’t stay with him; so we haven’t been to many places. But it will be too bad if we don’t go up there.” And Miss Miller pointed again at the Château de Chillon.
“I should think it might be arranged,” said Winterbourne. “Couldn’t you get some one to stay for the afternoon with Randolph?”
Miss Miller looked at him a moment, and then, very placidly, “I wish you would stay with him!” she said.
Winterbourne hesitated a moment. “I should much rather go to Chillon with you.”
“With me?” asked the young girl, with the same placidity.
She didn’t rise, blushing, as a young girl at Geneva would have done; and yet Winterbourne, conscious that he had been very bold, thought it possible she was offended. “With your mother,” he answered, very respectfully.
But it seemed that both his audacity and his respect were lost upon Miss Daisy Miller. “I guess my mother won’t go, after all,” she said. “She don’t like to ride round in the afternoon. But did you really mean what you said just now—that you would like to go up there?”
“Most earnestly,” Winterbourne declared.
“Then we may arrange it. If mother will stay with Randolph, I guess Eugenio will.”
“Eugenio?” the young man inquired.
“Eugenio’s our courier. He doesn’t like to stay with Randolph; he’s the most fastidious man I ever saw. But he’s a splendid courier. I guess he’ll stay at home with Randolph if mother does, and then we can go to the castle.”
Winterbourne reflected for an instant as lucidly as possible—“we” could only mean Miss Daisy Miller and himself. This programme seemed almost too agreeable for credence; he felt as if he ought to kiss the young lady’s hand. Possibly he would have done so, and quite spoiled the project; but at this moment another person, presumably Eugenio, appeared. A tall, handsome man, with superb whiskers, wearing a velvet morning-coat and a brilliant watch-chain, approached Miss Miller, looking sharply at her companion. “Oh, Eugenio!” said Miss Miller, with the friendliest accent.
Eugenio had looked at Winterbourne from head to foot; he now bowed gravely to the young lady. “I have the honor to inform mademoiselle that luncheon is upon the table.”
Miss Miller slowly rose. “See here, Eugenio!” she said; “I’m going to that old castle, anyway.”
“To the Château de Chillon, mademoiselle?” the courier inquired. “Mademoiselle has made arrangements?” he added, in a tone which struck Winterbourne as very impertinent.
Eugenio’s tone apparently threw, even to Miss Miller’s own apprehension, a slightly ironical light upon the young girl’s situation. She turned to Winterbourne, blushing a little—a very little. “You won’t back out?” she said.
“I shall not be happy till we go!” he protested.
“And you are staying in this hotel?” she went on. “And you are really an American?”
The courier stood looking at Winterbourne offensively. The young man, at least, thought his manner of looking an offence to Miss Miller; it conveyed an imputation that she “picked up” acquaintances. “I shall have the honor of presenting to you a person who will tell you all about me,” he said, smiling, and referring to his aunt.
“Oh, well, we’ll go some day,” said Miss Miller. And she gave him a smile and turned away. She put up her parasol and walked back to the inn beside Eugenio. Winterbourne stood looking after her; and as she moved away, drawing her muslin furbelows over the gravel, said to himself that she had the tournure of a princess.
He had, however, engaged to do more than proved feasible, in promising to present his aunt, Mrs. Costello, to Miss Daisy Miller. As soon as the former lady had got better of her headache he waited upon her in her apartment; and, after the proper inquiries
in regard to her health, he asked her if she had observed in the hotel an American family—a mamma, a daughter, and a little boy.
“And a courier?” said Mrs. Costello. “Oh yes, I have observed them. Seen them—heard them—and kept out of their way.” Mrs. Costello was a widow with a fortune; a person of much distinction, who frequently intimated that, if she were not so dreadfully liable to sick-headaches, she would probably have left a deeper impress upon her time. She had a long, pale face, a high nose, and a great deal of very striking white hair, which she wore in large puffs and rouleaux over the top of her head. She had two sons married in New York, and another who was now in Europe. This young man was amusing himself at Hambourg; and, though he was on his travels, was rarely perceived to visit any particular city at the moment selected by his mother for her own appearance there. Her nephew, who had come up to Vevay expressly to see her, was therefore more attentive than those who, as she said, were nearer to her. He had imbibed at Geneva the idea that one must always be attentive to one’s aunt. Mrs. Costello had not seen him for many years, and she was greatly pleased with him, manifesting her approbation by initiating him into many of the secrets of that social sway which, as she gave him to understand, she exerted in the American capital. She admitted that she was very exclusive; but, if he were acquainted with New York, he would see that one had to be. And her picture of the minutely hierarchical constitution of the society of that city, which she presented to him in many different lights, was, to Winterbourne’s imagination, almost oppressively striking.
He immediately perceived, from her tone, that Miss Daisy Miller’s place in the social scale was low. “I am afraid you don’t approve of them,” he said.
“They are very common,” Mrs. Costello declared. “They are the sort of Americans that one does one’s duty by not—not accepting.”
“Ah, you don’t accept them?” said the young man.
“I can’t, my dear Frederick. I would if I could, but I can’t.”
“The young girl is very pretty,” said Winterbourne, in a moment.
“Of course she’s pretty. But she is very common.”
“I see what you mean, of course,” said Winterbourne, after another pause.
“She has that charming look that they all have,” his aunt resumed. “I can’t think where they pick it up; and she dresses in perfection—no, you don’t know how well she dresses. I can’t think where they get their taste.”
“But, my dear aunt, she is not, after all, a Camanche savage.”
“She is a young lady,” said Mrs. Costello, “who has an intimacy with her mamma’s courier.”
“An intimacy with the courier?” the young man demanded.
“Oh, the mother is just as bad! They treat the courier like a familiar friend—like a gentleman. I shouldn’t wonder if he dines with them. Very likely they have never seen a man with such good manners, such fine clothes, so like a gentleman. He probably corresponds to the young lady’s idea of a count. He sits with them in the garden in the evening. I think he smokes.”
Winterbourne listened with interest to these disclosures; they helped him to make up his mind about Miss Daisy. Evidently she was rather wild. “Well,” he said, “I am not a courier, and yet she was very charming to me.”
“You had better have said at first,” said Mrs. Costello, with dignity, “that you had made her acquaintance.”
“We simply met in the garden, and we talked a bit.”
“Tout bonnement! And pray what did you say?”
“I said I should take the liberty of introducing her to my admirable aunt.”
“I am much obliged to you.”
“It was to guarantee my respectability,” said Winterbourne.
“And pray who is to guarantee hers?”
“Ah, you are cruel!” said the young man. “She’s a very nice young girl.”
“You don’t say that as if you believed it,” Mrs. Costello observed.
“She is completely uncultivated,” Winterbourne went on. “But she is wonderfully pretty, and, in short, she is very nice. To prove that I believe it, I am going to take her to the Château de Chillon.”
“You two are going off there together? I should say it proved just the contrary. How long had you known her, may I ask, when this interesting project was formed? You haven’t been twenty-four hours in the house.”
“I had known her half an hour!” said Winterbourne, smiling.
“Dear me!” cried Mrs. Costello. “What a dreadful girl!”
Her nephew was silent for some moments. “You really think, then,” he began, earnestly, and with a desire for trustworthy information—“you really think that—” But he paused again.
“Think what, sir?” said his aunt.
“That she is the sort of young lady who expects a man, sooner or later, to carry her off ?”
“I haven’t the least idea what such young ladies expect a man to do. But I really think that you had better not meddle with little American girls that are uncultivated, as you call them. You have lived too long out of the country. You will be sure to make some great mistake. You are too innocent.”
“My dear aunt, I am not so innocent,” said Winterbourne, smiling and curling his mustache.
“You are guilty too, then!”
Winterbourne continued to curl his mustache, meditatively. “You won’t let the poor girl know you then?” he asked at last.
“Is it literally true that she is going to the Château de Chillon with you?”
“I think that she fully intends it.”
“Then, my dear Frederick,” said Mrs. Costello, “I must decline the honor of her acquaintance. I am an old woman, but I am not too old, thank Heaven, to be shocked!”
“But don’t they all do these things—the young girls in America?” Winterbourne inquired.
Mrs. Costello stared a moment. “I should like to see my granddaughters do them!” she declared, grimly.
This seemed to throw some light upon the matter, for Winterbourne remembered to have heard that his pretty cousins in New York were “tremendous flirts.” If, therefore, Miss Daisy Miller exceeded the liberal margin allowed to these young ladies, it was probable that anything might be expected of her. Winterbourne was impatient to see her again, and he was vexed with himself that, by instinct, he should not appreciate her justly.
Though he was impatient to see her, he hardly knew what he should say to her about his aunt’s refusal to become acquainted with her; but he discovered, promptly enough, that with Miss Daisy Miller there was no great need of walking on tiptoe. He found her that evening in the garden, wandering about in the warm starlight like an indolent sylph, and swinging to and fro the largest fan he had ever beheld. It was ten o’clock. He had dined with his aunt, had been sitting with her since dinner, and had just taken leave of her till the morrow. Miss Daisy Miller seemed very glad to see him; she declared it was the longest evening she had ever passed.
“Have you been all alone?” he asked.
“I have been walking round with mother. But mother gets tired walking round,” she answered.
“Has she gone to bed?”
“No; she doesn’t like to go to bed,” said the young girl. “She doesn’t sleep—not three hours. She says she doesn’t know how she lives. She’s dreadfully nervous. I guess she sleeps more than she thinks. She’s gone somewhere after Randolph; she wants to try to get him to go to bed. He doesn’t like to go to bed.”
“Let us hope she will persuade him,” observed Winterbourne.
“She will talk to him all she can; but he doesn’t like her to talk to him,” said Miss Daisy, opening her fan. “She’s going to try to get Eugenio to talk to him. But he isn’t afraid of Eugenio. Eugenio’s a splendid courier, but he can’t make much impression on Randolph! I don’t believe he’ll go to bed before eleven.” It appeared that Randolph’s vigil was in fact triumphantly prolonged, for Winterbourne strolled about with the young girl for some time without meeting her mother. “I have
been looking round for that lady you want to introduce me to,” his companion resumed. “She’s your aunt.” Then, on Winterbourne’s admitting the fact, and expressing some curiosity as to how she had learned it, she said she had heard all about Mrs. Costello from the chamber-maid. She was very quiet, and very comme il faut; she wore white puffs; she spoke to no one, and she never dined at the table d’hôte. Every two days she had a headache. “I think that’s a lovely description, headache and all!” said Miss Daisy, chattering along in her thin, gay voice. “I want to know her ever so much. I know just what your aunt would be; I know I should like her. She would be very exclusive. I like a lady to be exclusive; I’m dying to be exclusive myself. Well, we are exclusive, mother and I. We don’t speak to every one—or they don’t speak to us. I suppose it’s about the same thing. Anyway, I shall be ever so glad to know your aunt.”
Winterbourne was embarrassed. “She would be most happy,” he said; “but I am afraid those headaches will interfere.”
The young girl looked at him through the dusk. “But I suppose she doesn’t have a headache every day,” she said, sympathetically.
Winterbourne was silent a moment. “She tells me she does,” he answered at last, not knowing what to say.
Miss Daisy Miller stopped, and stood looking at him. Her prettiness was still visible in the darkness; she was opening and closing her enormous fan. “She doesn’t want to know me!” she said, suddenly. “Why don’t you say so? You needn’t be afraid. I’m not afraid!” And she gave a little laugh.
Winterbourne fancied there was a tremor in her voice; he was touched, shocked, mortified by it. “My dear young lady,” he protested, “she knows no one. It’s her wretched health.”
The young girl walked on a few steps, laughing still. “You needn’t be afraid,” she repeated. “Why should she want to know me?” Then she paused again; she was close to the parapet of the garden, and in front of her was the starlit lake. There was a vague sheen upon its surface, and in the distance were dimly-seen mountain forms. Daisy Miller looked out upon the mysterious prospect, and then she gave another little laugh. “Gracious! she is exclusive!” she said. Winterbourne wondered whether she was seriously wounded, and for a moment almost wished that her sense of injury might be such as to make it becoming in him to attempt to reassure and comfort her. He had a pleasant sense that she would be very approachable for consolatory purposes. He felt then, for the instant, quite ready to sacrifice his aunt, conversationally; to admit that she was a proud, rude woman, and to declare that they needn’t mind her. But before he had time to commit himself to this perilous mixture of gallantry and impiety, the young lady, resuming her walk, gave an exclamation in quite another tone. “Well, here’s mother! I guess she hasn’t got Randolph to go to bed.” The figure of a lady appeared, at a distance, very indistinct in the darkness, and advancing with a slow and wavering movement. Suddenly it seemed to pause.
The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II Page 13