Daisy Miller
by Henry James
IN TWO PARTS
PART I
At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a
particularly comfortable hotel. There are, indeed, many hotels,
for the
entertainment of tourists is the business of the place,
which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge
of a
remarkably blue lake--a lake that it behooves 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 little Swiss
pension of an elder day, with its name
inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or yellow
wall and an
awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden.
One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical,
being
distinguished from many of its upstart neighbors
by an air both of
luxury and of
maturity. In this region,
in the month of June, American travelers are
extremely numerous;
it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period
some of the characteristics of an American watering place.
There are sights and sounds which evoke a
vision, an echo,
of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting
hither and t
hitherof "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.
But at the "Trois Couronnes," it must be added, there are other
features that are 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 sunny crest of the Dent du Midi and the picturesque
towers of the Castle of Chillon.
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 now she was 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 an
extremelyamiable fellow, and
universally liked.
What I should say is, simply, that when certain persons spoke
of him they affirmed that the reason of his spending so much
time at Geneva was that he was
extremelydevoted to a lady
who lived there--a foreign lady--a person older than himself.
Very few Americans--indeed, I think none--had ever seen this lady,
about whom there were some
singular stories. But Winterbourne
had an old
attachment for the little
metropolis of Calvinism;
he had been put to school there as a boy, and he had afterward
gone 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 his breakfast; but he was drinking
a small cup of coffee, which had been served to him on a little table
in the garden by one of the waiters who looked like an attache.
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, with red stockings, which 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 that he approached--the flowerbeds,
the garden benches, the trains of the ladies' dresses. In front
of Winterbourne he paused, looking at him with a pair of bright,
penetrating little eyes.
"Will you give me a lump of sugar?" he asked in a sharp, hard little voice--
a voice immature and yet, somehow, not young.
Winterbourne glanced at the small 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 sugar
is 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, pronouncing the adjective
in a
peculiar manner.
Winterbourne had immediately
perceived that he might
have the honor of claiming him as a fellow countryman.
"Take care you don't hurt your teeth," he said, paternally.
"I haven't got any teeth to hurt. They have all come out.
I have only got seven teeth. My mother counted them last night,
and one came out right afterward. 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 said.
"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?" asked Winterbourne.
"I don't know. I'm an American boy," said the child.
"I see you are one of the best!" laughed Winterbourne.
"Are you an American man?" pursued this vivacious infant.
And then, on Winterbourne's affirmative reply--"American men
are the best," he declared.
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 a second lump of sugar.
Winterbourne wondered if he himself had been like this in his infancy,
for he had been brought to Europe at about this age.
"Here comes my sister!" cried the child in a moment.
"She's an American girl."
Winterbourne looked along the path and saw a beautiful
young lady advancing. "American girls are the best girls,"
he said
cheerfully to his young
companion.
"My sister ain't the best!" the child declared.
"She's always blowing at me."
"I imagine that is 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-colored
ribbon.
She was bareheaded, but 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 Winterbourne, straightening himself
in his seat, as if he were prepared to rise.
The young lady paused in front of his bench, near the parapet of the garden,
which overlooked the lake. The little 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.
"Randolph," said the young lady, "what ARE you doing?"
"I'm going up the Alps," replied Randolph. "This is the way!"
And he gave another little jump, scattering the pebbles
about Winterbourne's ears.
"That's the way they come down," said Winterbourne.
"He's an American man!" cried Randolph, in his little hard voice.
The young lady gave no heed to this
announcement, but looked
straight at her brother. "Well, I guess you had 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 young girl, 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 was not at liberty
to speak to a young
unmarried lady except under certain
rarely occurring
conditions; but here at Vevey, what conditions could be better than these?--
a pretty American girl coming and
standing in front of you in a garden.
This pretty American girl, however, 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 he
decided that he must advance farther, rather than retreat.
While he was thinking of something else to say, the young lady turned
to the little boy again.
"I should like to know where you got that pole," she said.
"I bought it," responded Randolph.
"You don't mean to say you're going to take it to Italy?"
"Yes, I am going to take it to Italy," the child declared.
The young girl glanced over the front of her dress and smoothed out a knot
or two of
ribbon. Then she rested her eyes upon the
prospect again.
"Well, I guess you had better leave it somewhere," she said after a moment.
"Are you going to Italy?" Winterbourne inquired in a tone
of great respect.
The young lady glanced at him again. "Yes, sir," she replied.
And she said nothing more.
"Are you--a-- going over the Simplon?" Winterbourne pursued,
a little embarrassed.
"I don't know," she said. "I suppose it's some mountain.
Randolph, what mountain are we going over?"
"Going where?" the child demanded.
"To Italy," Winterbourne explained.
"I don't know," said Randolph. "I don't want to go to Italy.
I want to go to America."
"Oh, Italy is a beautiful place!" rejoined the young man.
"Can you get candy there?" Randolph loudly inquired.
"I hope not," said his sister. "I guess you have 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 upon the beauty
of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had begun
to
perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself.
There had not been the slightest
alteration in her
charmingcomplexion;
she was
evidently neither offended nor flattered.
If she looked another way when he spoke to her, and seemed not
particularly to hear him, this was simply her habit, her manner.
Yet, as he talked a little more and
pointed out some of the objects
of interest in the view, with which she appeared quite unacquainted,
she gradually gave him more of the benefit of her glance; and then
he saw that this glance was
perfectly direct and unshrinking.
It was not, however, what would have been called an immodest glance,
for the young girl's eyes were
singularly honest and fresh.
They were
wonderfully pretty eyes; and, indeed, Winterbourne had not
seen for a long time anything prettier than his fair countrywoman's
various features--her
complexion, her nose, her ears, her teeth.
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