Literary Love

by Gabrielle Vigot

  He had a great relish for feminine beauty; he was addicted to observing and analyzing it; and as regards this young lady’s face he made several observations. It was not at all insipid, but it was not exactly expressive; and though it was eminently delicate, Winterbourne mentally accused it — very forgivingly — of a want of finish. He thought it very possible that Master Randolph’s sister was a coquette; he was sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial little visage there was no mockery, no irony. Before long it became obvious that she was much disposed toward conversation.

  She told him 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 shouldn’t have taken him for one; he seemed more like a German — this was said after a little hesitation — especially when he spoke. Winterbourne, laughing, answered that he had met Germans who spoke like Americans, but that he had not, so far as he remembered, met an American who spoke like a German. Then he asked her if she should not be more comfortable in sitting upon the bench which he had just quitted. She answered that she liked standing up and walking about; but she presently sat down. She told him she was from New York State — “if you know where that is.” Winterbourne learned more about her by catching hold of her small, slippery brother and making him stand a few minutes by his side.

  “Tell me your name, my boy,” he said.

  “Randolph C. Miller,” said the boy sharply. “And I’ll tell you her name;” and he leveled his alpenstock at his sister.

  “You had better wait till you are asked!” said this young lady calmly.

  “I should like very much to know your name,” said Winterbourne.

  “Her name is Daisy Miller!” cried the child. “But that isn’t her real name; that isn’t her name on her cards.”

  “It’s a pity you haven’t got one of my cards!” said Miss Miller.

  “Her real name is Annie P. Miller,” the boy went on.

  “Ask him HIS name,” said his sister, indicating Winterbourne.

  But on 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,” he announced. “My father ain’t in Europe; my father’s in a better place than Europe.”

  Winterbourne imagined for a moment that this was the manner in which the child had been taught to intimate that Mr. Miller had been removed to the sphere of celestial reward. 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 doesn’t like Europe,” said the young girl. “He wants to go back.”

  “To Schenectady, you mean?”

  “Yes; he wants to go right home. He hasn’t got any boys here. There is 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 inquired.

  “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 traveling round with us. He said he wouldn’t have lessons when he was in the cars. 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 to Italy. Can you get good teachers in Italy?”

  “Very good, I should think,” said Winterbourne.

  “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 by, and the beautiful view. She talked to Winterbourne 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 unknown young lady, 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 decidedly sociable. She gave Winterbourne a history 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 have never seen so many — it’s nothing but hotels.” But Miss Miller did not make this remark with a querulous accent; she appeared to be in the best humor with everything. She declared that the hotels were very good, when once you got used to their ways, and that Europe was perfectly sweet. She was not disappointed — not a bit. Perhaps it was because she had heard so much about it before. She had ever so many intimate friends that had been there ever so many times. 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,” 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.” Daisy smiled to herself as she recalled a few of these gentleman friends. Though she was conscious of hoping for Winterbourne’s eventual friendship and sensed he might be a better man, and more gentle, than the rough ones she knew from New York, she found it hard to keep her imagination under control. She felt heat pulse through her, coming from between her legs for several seconds, and somehow managed to excuse herself to walk round the corner. She was sweating in the summer sunshine and was suddenly very uncomfortable in her three-tiered skirt and silk stockings.

  She had wanted to stop on the trip to Vevey at the Plage de Curtineaux at night, alone, and search for other friends. She’d wanted to feel intoxicated, as she did back home, in the presence of foreign men. What she would have given to finally fulfill her sense of longing, to give in to pleasures only married women could admit to! In the frigid months of the Schenectady winter, she had desired to lower her own frigidity in the company of gentlemen. She’d become anxious in a way that had plagued her since pubescence. It was a sweet anxiety, and one that made her pu
lse in anticipation. She had, many times, thanked the gods that it was invisible to the outside world, but it encouraged her to go on the qui vive for male company, if only to sit in their presence and laugh awhile together. She had had her share of dalliances, but never before had she allowed a man such liberties as she did a fortnight ago in her cousin’s home upstate.

  Away from the kind, warm eyes of Winterbourne and other prying hotel guests, she allowed herself to remember, the sweet feeling emanating from her sex as she stole behind the parapet and thought of that night. She rubbed her skirts over her thin thighs, more and more directly on and under her feminine mound as her pleasure grew.

  During her cousin Daphne’s annual masquerade, the midwinter soirée, Daisy had felt out of sorts, and thought perhaps her cousin’s fiendishly handsome friend Isaac could ease her discomfort. She shivered recalling his tall frame, the way he ran his hands through his wavy brown hair, and his broad and rough, yet exquisitely knowledgeable, hands on her. Daphne had whispered about Isaac at the party, and how, though he was ever discreet and feigned innocence when questioned, he had “ways with women” that made him quite the eligible bachelor. He had been casual at the party, looking Daisy’s way and smiling at her several times until she bent over the table of canapés, whereupon he had made his way across the party to her, staring rudely at her décolletage and almost tripping over himself on the way over. She’d meant to slap him, but instead followed him into the kitchen on the pretense of gathering Daphne’s silver for another guest. Isaac having taken Daisy’s hand, the pair had snuck out of the back door. After he had bestowed upon her a flurry of slavish compliments, she had told Isaac that he was mildly attractive, and he shut up and she looked down and noticed his massive erection.

  Without so much as a tiny kiss, he smiled at her in a most naughty way.

  His skillful hands had forcefully pushed up her skirts and then pulled down her bodice. He rubbed her mound while alternating between her nipples, sucking fiercely and causing her exquisite torture. When his index finger slipped into her wet slit, she almost screamed in pleasure.

  He put up his hand to her mouth and told her she mustn’t make a sound or he would stop. And then she wouldn’t be having so much fun, would she? Daisy had breathlessly sworn to keep quiet in the empty night. He had cupped a damp hand over her mouth and carefully tried to slither a second finger into her while pulling her taut nipple roughly into his mouth with his teeth.

  As she felt her climax rise, he swiftly pulled his fingers out of her and started moving his head away from her breasts. Distraught over the sudden loss of gratification, Daisy cried out in anguish. Isaac meant to continue to play with her body until he burst his hot fluid on her, and she knew this. He slanted his tongue over her hottest spot, her flowering, engorged bud, and began to suck at her, lapping greedily at her juices. This pushed Daisy over the edge, and she bit her tongue hard to keep from screaming out from between his fingers, still over her mouth. She gave Isaac a reward for his efforts, a small shudder, and she knew she was the closest to ecstasy she’d ever been.

  After Daisy’s fantasy faded, she pulled down her skirts and took to wondering whether Winterbourne might have been as skilled would he have been given the chance to touch her in the fresh snow as Isaac had. Daisy quietly stepped over to Winterbourne and announced her return to him with a winning smile.

  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 Chateau 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 Chateau 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 doesn’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 do
es, 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 program 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 Chateau 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?”