At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel; there are indeed many hotels, since the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many travellers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake1—a lake that it behoves every tourist to visit. The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array of establishments of this order, of every category, from the “grand hotel” of the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from its roof, to the small Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or yellow wall and an awkward summer-house in the angle of the garden. One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, being distinguished from many of its upstart neighbours by an air both of luxury and of maturity. In this region, through the month of June, American travellers are extremely numerous; it may be said indeed that Vevey assumes at that time some of the characteristics of an American watering-place. There are sights and sounds that evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting hither and thither of “stylish” young girls, a rustling of muslin flounces, a rattle of dance-music in the morning hours, a sound of high-pitched voices at all times. You receive an impression of these things at the excellent inn of the “Trois Couronnes,” and are transported in fancy to the Ocean House or to Congress Hall.2 But at the “Trois Couronnes,” it must be added, there are other features much at variance with these suggestions: neat German waiters who look like secretaries of legation; Russian princesses sitting in the garden; little Polish boys walking about, held by the hand, with their governors; a view of the snowy crest of the Dent du Midi and the picturesque towers of the Castle of Chillon.3
I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were uppermost in the mind of a young American, who, two or three years ago, sat in the garden of the “Trois Couronnes,” looking about him rather idly at some of the graceful objects I have mentioned. It was a beautiful summer morning, and in whatever fashion the young American looked at things they must have seemed to him charming. He had come from Geneva the day before, by the little steamer, to see his aunt, who was staying at the hotel—Geneva having been for a long time his place of residence. But his aunt had a headache—his aunt had almost always a headache—and she was now shut up in her room smelling camphor, so that he was at liberty to wander about. He was some seven-and-twenty years of age; when his friends spoke of him they usually said that he was at Geneva “studying.” When his enemies spoke of him they said—but after all he had no enemies: he was extremely amiable and generally liked. What I should say is simply that when certain persons spoke of him they conveyed that the reason of his spending so much time at Geneva was that he was extremely devoted to a lady who lived there—a foreign lady, a person older than himself. Very few Americans—truly I think none—had ever seen this lady, about whom there were some singular stories. But Winterbourne had an old attachment for the little capital of Calvinism; he had been put to school there as a boy and had afterwards even gone, on trial—trial of the grey old “Academy”4 on the steep and stony hillside—to college there; circumstances which had led to his forming a great many youthful friendships. Many of these he had kept, and they were a source of great satisfaction to him.
After knocking at his aunt’s door and learning that she was indisposed he had taken a walk about the town and then he had come in to his breakfast. He had now finished that repast, but was enjoying a small cup of coffee which had been served him on a little table in the garden by one of the waiters who looked like attachés. At last he finished his coffee and lit a cigarette. Presently a small boy came walking along the path—an urchin of nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion and sharp little features. He was dressed in knickerbockers and had red stockings that displayed his poor little spindle-shanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the sharp point of which he thrust into everything he approached—the flower-beds, the garden-benches, the trains of the ladies’ dresses. In front of Winterbourne he paused, looking at him with a pair of bright and penetrating little eyes.
“Will you give me a lump of sugar?” he asked in a small sharp hard voice—a voice immature and yet somehow not young.
Winterbourne glanced at the light table near him, on which his coffee-service rested, and saw that several morsels of sugar remained. “Yes, you may take one,” he answered; “but I don’t think too much sugar good for little boys.”
This little boy stepped forward and carefully selected three of the coveted fragments, two of which he buried in the pocket of his knickerbockers, depositing the other as promptly in another place. He poked his alpenstock, lance-fashion, into Winterbourne’s bench and tried to crack the lump of sugar with his teeth.
“Oh blazes; it’s har-r-d!” he exclaimed, divesting vowel and consonants, pertinently enough, of any taint of softness.
Winterbourne had immediately gathered that he might have the honour of claiming him as a countryman. “Take care you don’t hurt your teeth,” he said paternally.
“I haven’t got any teeth to hurt. They’ve all come out. I’ve only got seven teeth. Mother counted them last night, and one came out right afterwards. She said she’d slap me if any more came out. I can’t help it. It’s this old Europe. It’s the climate that makes them come out. In America they didn’t come out. It’s these hotels.”
Winterbourne was much amused. “If you eat three lumps of sugar your mother will certainly slap you,” he ventured.
“She’s got to give me some candy then,” rejoined his young interlocutor. “I can’t get any candy here—any American candy. American candy’s the best candy.”
“And are American little boys the best little boys?” Winterbourne asked.
“I don’t know. I’m an American boy,” said the child.
“I see you’re one of the best!” the young man laughed.
“Are you an American man?” pursued this vivacious infant. And then on his friend’s affirmative reply, “American men are the best,” he declared with assurance.
His companion thanked him for the compliment, and the child, who had now got astride of his alpenstock, stood looking about him while he attacked another lump of sugar. Winterbourne wondered if he himself had been like this in his infancy, for he had been brought to Europe at about the same age.
“Here comes my sister!” cried his young compatriot. “She’s an American girl, you bet!”
Winterbourne looked along the path and saw a beautiful young lady advancing. “American girls are the best girls,” he thereupon cheerfully remarked to his visitor.
“My sister ain’t the best!” the child promptly returned. “She’s always blowing at me.”
“I imagine that’s your fault, not hers,” said Winterbourne. The young lady meanwhile had drawn near. She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces and knots of pale-coloured ribbon. Bareheaded, she balanced in her hand a large parasol with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty. “How pretty they are!” thought our friend, who straightened himself in his seat as if he were ready to rise.
The young lady paused in front of his bench, near the parapet of the garden, which overlooked the lake. The small boy had now converted his alpenstock into a vaulting-pole, by the aid of which he was springing about in the gravel and kicking it up not a little. “Why Randolph,” she freely began, “what are you doing?”
“I’m going up the Alps!” cried Randolph. “This is the way!” And he gave another extravagant jump, scattering the pebbles about Winterbourne’s ears.
“That’s the way they come down,” said Winterbourne.
“He’s an American man!” proclaimed Randolph in his harsh little voice.
The young lady gave no heed to this circumstance, but looked straight at her brother. “Well, I guess you’d better be quiet,” she simply observed.
It seemed to Winterbourne that he had been in a manner presented. He got up and stepped slowly toward the charming creature, throwing away his cigarette. “This little boy and I have made acquaintance,” he said with great civility. In Geneva, as he had been perfectly aware, a young man wasn’t at liberty to speak to a young unmarried lady save under certain rarely-occurring conditions; but here at Vevey what conditions could be better than these?—a pretty American girl coming to stand in front of you in a garden with all the confidence in life. This pretty American girl, whatever that might prove, on hearing Winterbourne’s observation simply glanced at him; she then turned her head and looked over the parapet, at the lake and the opposite mountains. He wondered whether he had gone too far, but decided that he must gallantly advance rather than retreat. While he was thinking of something else to say the young lady turned again to the little boy, whom she addressed quite as if they were alone together. “I should like to know where you got that pole.”
“I bought it!” Randolph shouted.
“You don’t mean to say you’re going to take it to Italy!”
“Yes, I’m going to take it t’ Italy!” the child rang out.
She glanced over the front of her dress and smoothed out a knot or two of ribbon. Then she gave her sweet eyes to the prospect again. “Well, I guess you’d better leave it somewhere,” she dropped after a moment.
“Are you going to Italy?” Winterbourne now decided very respectfully to enquire.
She glanced at him with lovely remoteness. “Yes, sir,” she then replied. And she said nothing more.
“And are you—a—thinking of the Simplon?” he pursued with a slight drop of assurance.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it’s some mountain. Randolph, what mountain are we thinking of?”
“Thinking of?”—the boy stared.
“Why going right over.”
“Going to where?” he demanded.
“Why right down to Italy”—Winterbourne felt vague emulations.
“I don’t know,” said Randolph. “I don’t want to go t’ Italy. I want to go to America.”
“Oh Italy’s a beautiful place!” the young man laughed.
“Can you get candy there?” Randolph asked of all the echoes.
“I hope not,” said his sister. “I guess you’ve had enough candy, and mother thinks so too.”
“I haven’t had any for ever so long—for a hundred weeks!” cried the boy, still jumping about.
The young lady inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; and Winterbourne presently risked an observation on the beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be in doubt, for he had begun to perceive that she was really not in the least embarrassed. She might be cold, she might be austere, she might even be prim; for that was apparently—he had already so generalised—what the most “distant” American girls did: they came and planted themselves straight in front of you to show how rigidly unapproachable they were. There hadn’t been the slightest flush in her fresh fairness however; so that she was clearly neither offended nor fluttered. Only she was composed—he had seen that before too—of charming little parts that didn’t match and that made no ensemble; and if she looked another way when he spoke to her, and seemed not particularly to hear him, this was simply her habit, her manner, the result of her having no idea whatever of “form” (with such a tell-tale appendage as Randolph where in the world would she have got it?) in any such connexion. As he talked a little more and pointed out some of the objects of interest in the view, with which she appeared wholly unacquainted, she gradually, none the less, gave him more of the benefit of her attention; and then he saw that act unqualified by the faintest shadow of reserve. It wasn’t however what would have been called a “bold” front that she presented, for her expression was as decently limpid as the very cleanest water. Her eyes were the very prettiest conceivable, and indeed Winterbourne hadn’t for a long time seen anything prettier than his fair countrywoman’s various features—her complexion, her nose, her ears, her teeth. He took a great interest generally in that range of effects and was addicted to noting and, as it were, recording them; so that in regard to this young lady’s face he made several observations. It wasn’t at all insipid, yet at the same time wasn’t pointedly—what point, on earth, could she ever make?—expressive; and though it offered such a collection of small finenesses and neatnesses he mentally accused it—very forgivingly—of a want of finish. He thought nothing more likely than that its wearer would have had her own experience of the action of her charms, as she would certainly have acquired a resulting confidence; but even should she depend on this for her main amusement her bright sweet superficial little visage gave out neither mockery nor irony. Before long it became clear that, however these things might be, she was much disposed to conversation. She remarked to Winterbourne that they were going to Rome for the winter—she and her mother and Randolph. She asked him if he was a “real American”; she wouldn’t have taken him for one; he seemed more like a German—this flower was gathered as from a large field of comparison—especially when he spoke. Winterbourne, laughing, answered that he had met Germans who spoke like Americans, but not, so far as he remembered, any American with the resemblance she noted. Then he asked her if she mightn’t be more at ease should she occupy the bench he had just quitted. She answered that she liked hanging round, but she none the less resignedly, after a little, dropped to the bench. She told him she was from New York State—“if you know where that is”; but our friend really quickened this current by catching hold of her small slippery brother and making him stand a few minutes by his side.
“Tell me your honest name, my boy.” So he artfully proceeded.
In response to which the child was indeed unvarnished truth. “Randolph C. Miller. And I’ll tell you hers.” With which he levelled his alpenstock at his sister.
“You had better wait till you’re asked!” said this young lady quite at her leisure.
“I should like very much to know your name,” Winterbourne made free to reply.
“Her name’s Daisy Miller!” cried the urchin. “But that ain’t her real name; that ain’t her name on her cards.”
“It’s a pity you haven’t got one of my cards!” Miss Miller quite as naturally remarked.
“Her real name’s Annie P. Miller,” the boy went on.
It seemed, all amazingly, to do her good. “Ask him his now”—and she indicated their friend.
But to this point Randolph seemed perfectly indifferent; he continued to supply information with regard to his own family. “My father’s name is Ezra B. Miller. My father ain’t in Europe—he’s in a better place than Europe.” Winterbourne for a moment supposed this the manner in which the child had been taught to intimate that Mr. Miller had been removed to the sphere of celestial rewards. But Randolph immediately added: “My father’s in Schenectady. He’s got a big business. My father’s rich, you bet.”
“Well!” ejaculated Miss Miller, lowering her parasol and looking at the embroidered border. Winterbourne presently released the child, who departed, dragging his alpenstock along the path. “He don’t like Europe,” said the girl as with an artless instinct for historic truth. “He wants to go back.”
“To Schenectady, you mean?”
“Yes, he wants to go right home. He hasn’t got any boys here. There’s one boy here, but he always goes round with a teacher. They won’t let him play.”
“And your brother hasn’t any teacher?” Winterbourne enquired.
It tapped, at a touch, the spring of confidence. “Mother thought of getting him one—to travel round with us. There was a lady told her of a very good teacher; an American lady—perhaps you know her—Mrs. Sanders. I think she came from Boston. She told her of this teacher, and we thought of getting him to travel round with us. But Randolph said he didn’t want a teacher travelling round with us. He said he wouldn’t have lessons when he was in the cars.5 And we are in the cars about half the time. There was an English lady we met in the cars—I think her name was Miss Featherstone; perhaps you know her. She wanted to know why I didn’t give Randolph lessons—give him ‘instruction,’ she called it. I guess he could give me more instruction than I could give him. He’s very smart.”
“Yes,” said Winterbourne; “he seems very smart.”
“Mother’s going to get a teacher for him as soon as we get t’ Italy. Can you get good teachers in Italy?”
“Very good, I should think,” Winterbourne hastened to reply.
“Or else she’s going to find some school. He ought to learn some more. He’s only nine. He’s going to college.” And in this way Miss Miller continued to converse upon the affairs of her family and upon other topics. She sat there with her extremely pretty hands, ornamented with very brilliant rings, folded in her lap, and with her pretty eyes now resting upon those of Winterbourne, now wandering over the garden, the people who passed before her and the beautiful view. She addressed her new acquaintance as if she had known him a long time. He found it very pleasant. It was many years since he had heard a young girl talk so much. It might have been said of this wandering maiden who had come and sat down beside him upon a bench that she chattered. She was very quiet, she sat in a charming tranquil attitude; but her lips and her eyes were constantly moving. She had a soft slender agreeable voice, and her tone was distinctly sociable. She gave Winterbourne a report of her movements and intentions, and those of her mother and brother, in Europe, and enumerated in particular the various hotels at which they had stopped. “That English lady in the cars,” she said—“Miss Featherstone—asked me if we didn’t all live in hotels in America. I told her I had never been in so many hotels in my life as since I came to Europe. I’ve never seen so many—it’s nothing but hotels.” But Miss Miller made this remark with no querulous accent; she appeared to be in the best humour with everything. She declared that the hotels were very good when once you got used to their ways and that Europe was perfectly entrancing. She wasn’t disappointed—not a bit. Perhaps it was because she had heard so much about it before. She had ever so many intimate friends who had been there ever so many times, and that way she had got thoroughly posted. And then she had had ever so many dresses and things from Paris. Whenever she put on a Paris dress she felt as if she were in Europe.
“It was a kind of a wishing-cap,” Winterbourne smiled.
“Yes,” said Miss Miller at once and without examining this analogy; “it always made me wish I was here. But I needn’t have done that for dresses. I’m 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 ain’t any society—or if there is I don’t know where it keeps itself. Do you? I suppose there’s some society somewhere, but I haven’t seen anything of it. I’m very fond of society and I’ve always had plenty 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’ve more friends in New York than in Schenectady—more gentlemen 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 frank gay eyes and in her clear rather uniform smile. “I’ve always had,” she said, “a great deal of gentlemen’s society.”
Poor Winterbourne was amused and perplexed—above all he was 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 was to have at the same time some rather complicated consciousness about them. And yet was he to accuse Miss Daisy Miller of an actual or a potential arrière-pensée, as they said at Geneva? He felt he had lived at Geneva so long as to have got morally muddled; he had lost the right sense for the young American tone. Never indeed since he had grown old enough to appreciate things had he encountered a young compatriot of so “strong” a type as this. Certainly she was very charming, but how extraordinarily communicative and how tremendously easy! Was she simply a pretty girl from New York State—were they all like that, the pretty girls who had had a good deal of gentlemen’s society? Or was she also a designing, an audacious, in short an expert young person? Yes, his instinct for such a question had ceased to serve him, and his reason could but mislead. 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 weren’t. He must on the whole take Miss Daisy Miller for a flirt—a pretty American flirt. He had never as yet had relations with representatives of that class. 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 light commerce might indeed take a serious turn. But this charming apparition wasn’t 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 finest little 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?” the girl soon asked, pointing with her parasol to the far-shining 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,” the young man returned, “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 courier6 says they take you right up to the castle,” she continued. “We were going last week, but mother gave out. She suffers dreadfully from dyspepsia. She said she couldn’t any more go—!” But this sketch of Mrs. Miller’s plea remained unfinished. “Randolph wouldn’t go either; he says he don’t think much of old castles. But I guess we’ll go this week if we can get Randolph.”
“Your brother isn’t interested in ancient monuments?” Winterbourne indulgently asked.
He now drew her, as he guessed she would herself have said, every time. “Why no, 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,” Winterbourne was thus emboldened to reply. “Couldn’t you get some one to stay—for the afternoon—with Randolph?”
Miss Miller looked at him a moment, and then with all serenity, “I wish you’d stay with him!” she said.
He pretended to consider it. “I’d much rather go to Chillon with you.”
“With me?” she asked without a shadow of emotion.
She didn’t rise blushing, as a young person at Geneva would have done; and yet, conscious that he had gone very far, he thought it possible she had drawn back. “And with your mother,” he answered very respectfully.
But it seemed that both his audacity and his respect were lost on Miss Daisy Miller. “I guess mother wouldn’t go—for you,” she smiled. “And she ain’t much bent on going, anyway. She don’t like to ride round in the afternoon.” After which she familiarly proceeded: “But did you really mean what you said just now—that you’d like to go up there?”
“Most earnestly I meant it,” Winterbourne declared.
“Then we may arrange it. If mother will stay with Randolph I guess Eugenio will.”
“Eugenio?” the young man echoed.
“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 Miller and himself. This prospect seemed almost too good to believe; he felt as if he ought to kiss the young lady’s hand. Possibly he would have done so,—and quite spoiled his chance; but at this moment another person—presumably Eugenio—appeared. A tall handsome man, with superb whiskers and wearing a velvet morning-coat and a voluminous watch-guard, approached the young lady, looking sharply at her companion. “Oh Eugenio!” she said with the friendliest accent.
Eugenio had eyed Winterbourne from head to foot; he now bowed gravely to Miss Miller. “I have the honour to inform Mademoiselle that luncheon’s on table.”
Mademoiselle slowly rose. “See here, Eugenio, I’m going to that old castle anyway.”
“To the Château de Chillon, Mademoiselle?” the courier enquired. “Mademoiselle has made arrangements?” he added in a tone that struck Winterbourne as impertinent.
Eugenio’s tone apparently threw, even to Miss Miller’s own apprehension, a slightly ironical light on her position. She turned to Winterbourne with the slightest blush. “You won’t back out?”
“I shall not be happy till we go!” he protested.
“And you’re staying in this hotel?” she went on. “And you’re really American?”
The courier still stood there with an effect of offence for the young man so far as the latter saw in it a tacit reflexion on Miss Miller’s behaviour and an insinuation that she “picked up” acquaintances. “I shall have the honour of presenting to you a person who’ll tell you all about me,” he said, smiling, and referring to his aunt.
“Oh well, we’ll go some day,” she beautifully answered; with which she gave him a smile and turned away. She put up her parasol and walked back to the inn beside Eugenio. Winterbourne stood watching her, and as she moved away, drawing her muslin furbelows over the walk, he spoke to himself of her natural elegance.