Collected Stories by Henry James
IV
HE flattered himself on the following day that there was no smiling among the servants when he, at least, asked for Mrs Miller at her hotel. This lady and her daughter, however, were not at home; and on the next day after, repeating his visit, Winterbourne again had the misfortune not to find them. Mrs Walker’s party took place on the evening of the third day, and in spite of the frigidity of his last interview with the hostess Winterbourne was among the guests. Mrs Walker was one of those American ladies who, while residing abroad, make a point, in their own phrase, of studying European society; and she had on this occasion collected several specimens of her diversely-born fellow-mortals to serve, as it were, as text-books. When Winterbourne arrived Daisy Miller was not there; but in a few moments he saw her mother come in alone, very shyly and ruefully. Mrs Miller’s hair, above her exposed-looking temples, was more frizzled than ever. As she approached Mrs Walker, Winterbourne also drew near.
‘You see I’ve come all alone,’ said poor Mrs Miller. ‘I’m so frightened; I don’t know what to do; it’s the first time I’ve ever been to a party alone – especially in this country. I wanted to bring Randolph or Eugenio, or some one, but Daisy just pushed me off by myself. I ain’t used to going round alone.’
‘And does not your daughter intend to favour us with her society?’ demanded Mrs Walker, impressively.
‘Well, Daisy’s all dressed,’ said Mrs Miller, with that accent of the dispassionate, if not of the philosophic, historian with which she always recorded the current incidents of her daughter’s career. ‘She got dressed on purpose before dinner. But she’s got a friend of hers there; that gentleman – the Italian – that she wanted to bring. They’ve got going at the piano; it seems as if they couldn’t leave off. Mr Giovanelli sings splendidly. But I guess they’ll come before very long,’ concluded Mrs Miller hopefully.
‘I’m sorry she should come – in that way,’ said Mrs Walker.
‘Well, I told her that there was no use in her getting dressed before dinner if she was going to wait three hours,’ responded Daisy’s mamma. ‘I didn’t see the use of her putting on such a dress as that to sit round with Mr Giovanelli.’
‘This is most horrible!’ said Mrs Walker, turning away and addressing herself to Winterbourne. ‘Elle s’affiche. It’s her revenge for my having ventured to remonstrate with her. When she comes I shall not speak to her.’
Daisy came after eleven o’clock, but she was not, on such an occasion, a young lady to wait to be spoken to. She rustled forward in radiant loveliness, smiling and chattering, carrying a large bouquet and attended by Mr Giovanelli. Every one stopped talking, and turned and looked at her. She came straight to Mrs Walker. ‘I’m afraid you thought I never was coming, so I sent mother off to tell you. I wanted to make Mr Giovanelli practise some things before he came; you know he sings beautifully, and I want you to ask him to sing. This is Mr Giovanelli; you know I introduced him to you; he’s got the most lovely voice and he knows the most charming set of songs. I made him go over them this evening, on purpose; we had the greatest time at the hotel.’ Of all this Daisy delivered herself with the sweetest, brightest audibleness, looking now at her hostess and now round the room, while she gave a series of little pats, round her shoulders, to the edges of her dress. ‘Is there any one I know?’ she asked.
‘I think every one knows you!’ said Mrs Walker pregnantly, and she gave a very cursory greeting to Mr Giovanelli. This gentleman bore himself gallantly. He smiled and bowed and showed his white teeth, he curled his moustaches and rolled his eyes, and performed all the proper functions of a handsome Italian at an evening party. He sang, very prettily, half-a-dozen songs, though Mrs Walker afterwards declared that she had been quite unable to find out who asked him. It was apparently not Daisy who had given him his orders. Daisy sat at a distance from the piano, and though she had publicly, as it were, professed a high admiration for his singing, talked, not inaudibly, while it was going on.
‘It’s a pity these rooms are so small; we can’t dance,’ she said to Winterbourne, as if she had seen him five minutes before.
‘I am not sorry we can’t dance,’ Winterbourne answered; ‘I don’t dance.’
‘Of course you don’t dance; you’re too stiff,’ said Miss Daisy. ‘I hope you enjoyed your drive with Mrs Walker.’
‘No, I didn’t enjoy it; I preferred walking with you.’
‘We paired off, that was much better,’ said Daisy. ‘But did you ever hear anything so cool as Mrs Walker’s wanting me to get into her carriage and drop poor Mr Giovanelli; and under the pretext that it was proper? People have different ideas! It would have been most unkind; he had been talking about that walk for ten days.’
‘He should not have talked about it at all,’ said Winterbourne; ‘he would never have proposed to a young lady of this country to walk about the streets with him.’
‘About the streets?’ cried Daisy, with her pretty stare. ‘Where then would he have proposed to her to walk? The Pincio is not the streets, either; and I, thank goodness, am not a young lady of this country. The young ladies of this country have a dreadfully poky time of it, so far as I can learn; I don’t see why I should change my habits for them.’
‘I am afraid your habits are those of a flirt,’ said Winterbourne gravely.
‘Of course they are,’ she cried, giving him her little smiling stare again. ‘I’m a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not? But I suppose you will tell me now that I am not a nice girl.’
‘You’re a very nice girl, but I wish you would flirt with me, and me only,’ said Winterbourne.
‘Ah! thank you, thank you very much; you are the last man I should think of flirting with. As I have had the pleasure of informing you, you are too stiff.’
‘You say that too often,’ said Winterbourne.
Daisy gave a delighted laugh. ‘If I could have the sweet hope of making you angry, I would say it again.’
‘Don’t do that; when I am angry I’m stiffer than ever. But if you won’t flirt with me, do cease at least to flirt with your friend at the piano; they don’t understand that sort of thing here.’
‘I thought they understood nothing else!’ exclaimed Daisy. ‘Not in young unmarried women.’
‘It seems to me much more proper in young unmarried women than in old married ones,’ Daisy declared.
‘Well,’ said Winterbourne, ‘when you deal with natives you must go by the custom of the place. Flirting is a purely American custom; it doesn’t exist here. So when you show yourself in public with Mr Giovanelli and without your mother —’
‘Gracious! poor mother!’ interposed Daisy.
‘Though you may be flirting, Mr Giovanelli is not; he means something else.’
‘He isn’t preaching, at any rate,’ said Daisy with vivacity. ‘And if you want very much to know, we are neither of us flirting; we are too good friends for that; we are very intimate friends.’
‘Ah!’ rejoined Winterbourne, ‘if you are in love with each other it is another affair.’
She had allowed him up to this point to talk so frankly that he had no expectation of shocking her by this ejaculation; but she immediately got up, blushing visibly, and leaving him to exclaim mentally that little American flirts were the queerest creatures in the world. ‘Mr Giovanelli, at least,’ she said, giving her interlocutor a single glance, ‘never says such very disagreeable things to me.’
Winterbourne was bewildered; he stood staring. Mr Giovanelli had finished singing; he left the piano and came over to Daisy. ‘Won’t you come into the other room and have some tea?’ he asked, bending before her with his decorative smile.
Daisy turned to Winterbourne, beginning to smile again. He was still 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 offences. ‘It has never occurred to Mr Winterbourne to offer me any tea,’ she said, with
‘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 polished 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 behaviour was the only thing to expect. She showed no displeasure at her tête-à-tête 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 humour. 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 pre-occupied, 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 splendour, such opulence, such expensiveness, as this young lady’s. And then she must seem to him wonderfully pretty and interesting. I rather doubt whether 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 cavaliere 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 t
‘Who was her companion?’ asked Winterbourne.
‘A little Italian with a bouquet in his button-hole. 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 apologised 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?’