PANDORA
by Henry James
CHAPTER I
It has long been the custom of the North German Lloyd steamers,
which convey passengers from Bremen to New York, to anchor for
several hours in the pleasant port of Southampton, where their human
cargo receives many additions. An intelligent young German, Count
Otto Vogelstein, hardly knew a few years ago whether to condemn this
custom or approve it. He leaned over the bulwarks of the Donau as
the American passengers crossed the plank--the travellers who embark
at Southampton are mainly of that nationality--and curiously,
indifferently, vaguely, through the smoke of his cigar, saw them
absorbed in the huge capacity of the ship, where he had the
agreeable consciousness that his own nest was comfortably made. To
watch from such a point of vantage the struggles of those less
fortunate than ourselves--of the uninformed, the unprovided, the
belated, the bewildered--is an occupation not devoid of sweetness,
and there was nothing to mitigate the complacency with which our
young friend gave himself up to it; nothing, that is, save a natural
benevolence which had not yet been extinguished by the consciousness
of official greatness. For Count Vogelstein was official, as I
think you would have seen from the straightness of his back, the
lustre of his light elegant spectacles, and something discreet and
diplomatic in the curve of his moustache, which looked as if it
might well contribute to the principal function, as cynics say, of
the lips--the active concealment of thought. He had been appointed
to the secretaryship of the German legation at Washington and in
these first days of the autumn was about to take possession of his
post. He was a model character for such a purpose--serious civil
ceremonious curious stiff, stuffed with knowledge and convinced
that, as lately rearranged, the German Empire places in the most
striking light the highest of all the possibilities of the greatest
of all the peoples. He was quite aware, however, of the claims to
economic and other consideration of the United States, and that this
quarter of the globe offered a vast field for study.
The process of inquiry had already begun for him, in spite of his
having as yet spoken to none of his fellow-passengers; the case
being that Vogelstein inquired not only with his tongue, but with
his eyes--that is with his spectacles--with his ears, with his nose,
with his palate, with all his senses and organs. He was a highly
upright young man, whose only fault was that his sense of comedy, or
of the humour of things, had never been specifically disengaged from
his several other senses. He vaguely felt that something should be
done about this, and in a general manner proposed to do it, for he
was on his way to explore a society abounding in comic aspects.
This consciousness of a missing measure gave him a certain mistrust
of what might be said of him; and if circumspection is the essence
of diplomacy our young aspirant promised well. His mind contained
several millions of facts, packed too closely together for the light
breeze of the imagination to draw through the mass. He was
impatient to report himself to his superior in Washington, and the
loss of time in an English port could only incommode him, inasmuch
as the study of English institutions was no part of his mission. On
the other hand the day was charming; the blue sea, in Southampton
Water, pricked all over with light, had no movement but that of its
infinite shimmer. Moreover he was by no means sure that he should
be happy in the United States, where doubtless he should find
himself soon enough disembarked. He knew that this was not an
important question and that happiness was an unscientific term, such
as a man of his education should be ashamed to use even in the
silence of his thoughts. Lost none the less in the inconsiderate
crowd and feeling himself neither in his own country nor in that to
which he was in a manner accredited, he was reduced to his mere
personality; so that during the hour, to save his importance, he
cultivated such ground as lay in sight for a judgement of this delay
to which the German steamer was subjected in English waters.
Mightn't it be proved, facts, figures and documents--or at least
watch--in hand, considerably greater than the occasion demanded?
Count Vogelstein was still young enough in diplomacy to think it
necessary to have opinions. He had a good many indeed which had
been formed without difficulty; they had been received ready-made
from a line of ancestors who knew what they liked. This was of
course--and under pressure, being candid, he would have admitted it
--an unscientific way of furnishing one's mind. Our young man was a
stiff conservative, a Junker of Junkers; he thought modern democracy
a temporary phase and expected to find many arguments against it in
the great Republic. In regard to these things it was a pleasure to
him to feel that, with his complete training, he had been taught
thoroughly to appreciate the nature of evidence. The ship was
heavily laden with German emigrants, whose mission in the United
States differed considerably from Count Otto's. They hung over the
bulwarks, densely grouped; they leaned forward on their elbows for
hours, their shoulders kept on a level with their ears; the men in
furred caps, smoking long-bowled pipes, the women with babies hidden
in remarkably ugly shawls. Some were yellow Germans and some were
black, and all looked greasy and matted with the sea-damp. They
were destined to swell still further the huge current of the Western
democracy; and Count Vogelstein doubtless said to himself that they
wouldn't improve its quality. Their numbers, however, were
striking, and I know not what he thought of the nature of this
particular evidence.
The passengers who came on board at Southampton were not of the
greasy class; they were for the most part American families who had
been spending the summer, or a longer period, in Europe. They had a
great deal of luggage, innumerable bags and rugs and hampers and
sea-chairs, and were composed largely of ladies of various ages, a
little pale with anticipation, wrapped also in striped shawls,
though in prettier ones than the nursing mothers of the steerage,
and crowned with very high hats and feathers. They darted to and
fro across the gangway, looking for each other and for their
scattered parcels; they separated and reunited, they exclaimed and
declared, they eyed with dismay the occupants of the forward
quarter, who seemed numerous enough to sink the vessel, and their
voices sounded faint and far as they rose to Vogelstein's ear over
the latter's great tarred sides. He noticed that in the new
contingent there were many young girls, and he remembered what a
lady in Dresden had once said to him--that America was the country
of the Madchen. He wondered whether he should like that, and
reflected that it would be an aspect to study, like everything else.
He had known in Dresden an American family in which there were three
daughters who used to skate with the officers, and some of the
ladies now coming on board struck him as of that same habit, except
that in the Dresden days feathers weren't worn quite so high.
At last the ship began to creak and slowly bridge, and the delay at
Southampton came to an end. The gangway was removed and the vessel
indulged in the awkward evolutions that were to detach her from the
land. Count Vogelstein had finished his cigar, and he spent a long
time in walking up and down the upper deck. The charming English
coast passed before him, and he felt this to be the last of the old
world. The American coast also might be pretty--he hardly knew what
one would expect of an American coast; but he was sure it would be
different. Differences, however, were notoriously half the charm of
travel, and perhaps even most when they couldn't be expressed in
figures, numbers, diagrams or the other merely useful symbols. As
yet indeed there were very few among the objects presented to sight
on the steamer. Most of his fellow-passengers appeared of one and
the same persuasion, and that persuasion the least to be mistaken.
They were Jews and commercial to a man. And by this time they had
lighted their cigars and put on all manner of seafaring caps, some
of them with big ear-lappets which somehow had the effect of
bringing out their peculiar facial type. At last the new voyagers
began to emerge from below and to look about them, vaguely, with
that suspicious expression of face always to be noted in the newly
embarked and which, as directed to the receding land, resembles that
of a person who begins to perceive himself the victim of a trick.
Earth and ocean, in such glances, are made the subject of a sweeping
objection, and many travellers, in the general plight, have an air
at once duped and superior, which seems to say that they could
easily go ashore if they would.
It still wanted two hours of dinner, and by the time Vogelstein's
long legs had measured three or four miles on the deck he was ready
to settle himself in his sea-chair and draw from his pocket a
Tauchnitz novel by an American author whose pages, he had been
assured, would help to prepare him for some of the oddities. On the
back of his chair his name was painted in rather large letters, this
being a precaution taken at the recommendation of a friend who had
told him that on the American steamers the passengers--especially
the ladies--thought nothing of pilfering one's little comforts. His
friend had even hinted at the correct reproduction of his coronet.
This marked man of the world had added that the Americans are
greatly impressed by a coronet. I know not whether it was
scepticism or modesty, but Count Vogelstein had omitted every
pictured plea for his rank; there were others of which he might have
made use. The precious piece of furniture which on the Atlantic
voyage is trusted never to flinch among universal concussions was
emblazoned simply with his title and name. It happened, however,
that the blazonry was huge; the back of the chair was covered with
enormous German characters. This time there can be no doubt: it
was modesty that caused the secretary of legation, in placing
himself, to turn this portion of his seat outward, away from the
eyes of his companions--to present it to the balustrade of the deck.
The ship was passing the Needles--the beautiful uttermost point of
the Isle of Wight. Certain tall white cones of rock rose out of the
purple sea; they flushed in the afternoon light and their vague
rosiness gave them a human expression in face of the cold expanse
toward which the prow was turned; they seemed to say farewell, to be
the last note of a peopled world. Vogelstein saw them very
comfortably from his place and after a while turned his eyes to the
other quarter, where the elements of air and water managed to make
between them so comparatively poor an opposition. Even his American
novelist was more amusing than that, and he prepared to return to
this author. In the great curve which it described, however, his
glance was arrested by the figure of a young lady who had just
ascended to the deck and who paused at the mouth of the
companionway.
This was not in itself an extraordinary phenomenon; but what
attracted Vogelstein's attention was the fact that the young person
appeared to have fixed her eyes on him. She was slim, brightly
dressed, rather pretty; Vogelstein remembered in a moment that he
had noticed her among the people on the wharf at Southampton. She
was soon aware he had observed her; whereupon she began to move
along the deck with a step that seemed to indicate a purpose of
approaching him. Vogelstein had time to wonder whether she could be
one of the girls he had known at Dresden; but he presently reflected
that they would now be much older than that. It was true they were
apt to advance, like this one, straight upon their victim. Yet the
present specimen was no longer looking at him, and though she passed
near him it was now tolerably clear she had come above but to take a
general survey. She was a quick handsome competent girl, and she
simply wanted to see what one could think of the ship, of the
weather, of the appearance of England, from such a position as that;
possibly even of one's fellow-passengers. She satisfied herself
promptly on these points, and then she looked about, while she
walked, as if in keen search of a missing object; so that Vogelstein
finally arrived at a conviction of her real motive. She passed near
him again and this time almost stopped, her eyes bent upon him
attentively. He thought her conduct remarkable even after he had
gathered that it was not at his face, with its yellow moustache, she
was looking, but at the chair on which he was seated. Then those
words of his friend came back to him--the speech about the tendency
of the people, especially of the ladies, on the American steamers to
take to themselves one's little belongings. Especially the ladies,
he might well say; for here was one who apparently wished to pull
from under him the very chair he was sitting on. He was afraid she
would ask him for it, so he pretended to read, systematically
avoiding her eye. He was conscious she hovered near him, and was
moreover curious to see what she would do. It seemed to him strange
that such a nice-looking girl--for her appearance was really
charming--should endeavour by arts so flagrant to work upon the
quiet dignity of a secretary of legation. At last it stood out that
she was trying to look round a corner, as it were--trying to see
what was written on the back of his chair. "She wants to find out
my name; she wants to see who I am!" This reflexion passed through
his mind and caused him to raise his eyes. They rested on her own--
which for an appreciable moment she didn't withdraw. The latter
were brilliant and expressive, and surmounted a delicate aquiline
nose, which, though pretty, was perhaps just a trifle too hawk-like.
It was the oddest coincidence in the world; the story Vogelstein had
taken up treated of a flighty forward little American girl who
plants herself in front of a young man in the garden of an hotel.
Wasn't the conduct of this young lady a testimony to the
truthfulness of the tale, and wasn't Vogelstein himself in the
position of the young man in the garden? That young man--though
with more, in such connexions in general, to go upon--ended by
addressing himself to his aggressor, as she might be called, and
after a very short hesitation Vogelstein followed his example. "If
she wants to know who I am she's welcome," he said to himself; and
he got out of the chair, seized it by the back and, turning it
round, exhibited the superscription to the girl. She coloured
slightly, but smiled and read his name, while Vogelstein raised his
hat.
"I'm much obliged to you. That's all right," she remarked as if the
discovery had made her very happy.
It affected him indeed as all right that he should be Count Otto
Vogelstein; this appeared even rather a flippant mode of disposing
of the fact. By way of rejoinder he asked her if she desired of him
the surrender of his seat.
"I'm much obliged to you; of course not. I thought you had one of
our chairs, and I didn't like to ask you. It looks exactly like one
of ours; not so much now as when you sit in it. Please sit down
again. I don't want to trouble you. We've lost one of ours, and
I've been looking for it everywhere. They look so much alike; you
can't tell till you see the back. Of course I see there will be no
mistake about yours," the young lady went on with a smile of which
the serenity matched her other abundance. "But we've got such a
small name--you can scarcely see it," she added with the same
friendly intention. "Our name's just Day--you mightn't think it WAS
a name, might you? if we didn't make the most of it. If you see
that on anything, I'd be so obliged if you'd tell me. It isn't for
myself, it's for my mother; she's so dependent on her chair, and
that one I'm looking for pulls out so beautifully. Now that you sit
down again and hide the lower part it does look just like ours.
Well, it must be somewhere. You must excuse me; I wouldn't disturb
you."
This was a long and even confidential speech for a young woman,
presumably unmarried, to make to a perfect stranger; but Miss Day
acquitted herself of it with perfect simplicity and self-possession.
She held up her head and stepped away, and Vogelstein could see that
the foot she pressed upon the clean smooth deck was slender and
shapely. He watched her disappear through the trap by which she had
ascended, and he felt more than ever like the young man in his
American tale. The girl in the present case was older and not so
pretty, as he could easily judge, for the image of her smiling eyes
and speaking lips still hovered before him. He went back to his
book with the feeling that it would give him some information about
her. This was rather illogical, but it indicated a certain amount
of curiosity on the part of Count Vogelstein. The girl in the book
had a mother, it appeared, and so had this young lady; the former
had also a brother, and he now remembered that he had noticed a
young man on the wharf--a young man in a high hat and a white
overcoat--who seemed united to Miss Day by this natural tie. And
there was some one else too, as he gradually recollected, an older
man, also in a high hat, but in a black overcoat--in black
altogether--who completed the group and who was presumably the head
of the family. These reflexions would indicate that Count
Vogelstein read his volume of Tauchnitz rather interruptedly.
Moreover they represented but the loosest economy of consciousness;
for wasn't he to be afloat in an oblong box for ten days with such
people, and could it be doubted he should see at least enough of
them?
It may as well be written without delay that he saw a great deal of
them. I have sketched in some detail the conditions in which he
made the acquaintance of Miss Day, because the event had a certain
importance for this fair square Teuton; but I must pass briefly over
the incidents that immediately followed it. He wondered what it was
open to him, after such an introduction, to do in relation to her,
and he determined he would push through his American tale and
discover what the hero did. But he satisfied himself in a very
short time that Miss Day had nothing in common with the heroine of
that work save certain signs of habitat and climate--and save,
further, the fact that the male sex wasn't terrible to her. The
local stamp sharply, as he gathered, impressed upon her he estimated
indeed rather in a borrowed than in a natural light, for if she was
native to a small town in the interior of the American continent one
of their fellow-passengers, a lady from New York with whom he had a
good deal of conversation, pronounced her "atrociously" provincial.
How the lady arrived at this certitude didn't appear, for Vogelstein
observed that she held no communication with the girl. It was true
she gave it the support of her laying down that certain Americans
could tell immediately who other Americans were, leaving him to
judge whether or no she herself belonged to the critical or only to
the criticised half of the nation. Mrs. Dangerfield was a handsome
confidential insinuating woman, with whom Vogelstein felt his talk
take a very wide range indeed. She convinced him rather effectually
that even in a great democracy there are human differences, and that
American life was full of social distinctions, of delicate shades,
which foreigners often lack the intelligence to perceive. Did he
suppose every one knew every one else in the biggest country in the
world, and that one wasn't as free to choose one's company there as
in the most monarchical and most exclusive societies? She laughed
such delusions to scorn as Vogelstein tucked her beautiful furred
coverlet--they reclined together a great deal in their elongated
chairs--well over her feet. How free an American lady was to choose
her company she abundantly proved by not knowing any one on the
steamer but Count Otto.
He could see for himself that Mr. and Mrs. Day had not at all her
grand air. They were fat plain serious people who sat side by side
on the deck for hours and looked straight before them. Mrs. Day had
a white face, large cheeks and small eyes: her forehead was
surrounded with a multitude of little tight black curls; her lips
moved as if she had always a lozenge in her mouth. She wore
entwined about her head an article which Mrs. Dangerfield spoke of
as a "nuby," a knitted pink scarf concealing her hair, encircling
her neck and having among its convolutions a hole for her perfectly
expressionless face. Her hands were folded on her stomach, and in
her still, swathed figure her little bead-like eyes, which
occasionally changed their direction, alone represented life. Her
husband had a stiff grey beard on his chin and a bare spacious upper
lip, to which constant shaving had imparted a hard glaze. His
eyebrows were thick and his nostrils wide, and when he was
uncovered, in the saloon, it was visible that his grizzled hair was
dense and perpendicular. He might have looked rather grim and
truculent hadn't it been for the mild familiar accommodating gaze
with which his large light-coloured pupils--the leisurely eyes of a
silent man--appeared to consider surrounding objects. He was
evidently more friendly than fierce, but he was more diffident than
friendly. He liked to have you in sight, but wouldn't have
pretended to understand you much or to classify you, and would have
been sorry it should put you under an obligation. He and his wife
spoke sometimes, but seldom talked, and there was something vague
and patient in them, as if they had become victims of a wrought
spell. The spell however was of no sinister cast; it was the
fascination of prosperity, the confidence of security, which
sometimes makes people arrogant, but which had had such a different
effect on this simple satisfied pair, in whom further development of
every kind appeared to have been happily arrested.
Mrs. Dangerfield made it known to Count Otto that every morning
after breakfast, the hour at which he wrote his journal in his
cabin, the old couple were guided upstairs and installed in their
customary corner by Pandora. This she had learned to be the name of
their elder daughter, and she was immensely amused by her discovery.
"Pandora"--that was in the highest degree typical; it placed them in
the social scale if other evidence had been wanting; you could tell
that a girl was from the interior, the mysterious interior about
which Vogelstein's imagination was now quite excited, when she had
such a name as that. This young lady managed the whole family, even
a little the small beflounced sister, who, with bold pretty innocent
eyes, a torrent of fair silky hair, a crimson fez, such as is worn
by male Turks, very much askew on top of it, and a way of galloping
and straddling about the ship in any company she could pick up--she
had long thin legs, very short skirts and stockings of every tint--
was going home, in elegant French clothes, to resume an interrupted
education. Pandora overlooked and directed her relatives;
Vogelstein could see this for himself, could see she was very active
and decided, that she had in a high degree the sentiment of
responsibility, settling on the spot most of the questions that
could come up for a family from the interior.
The voyage was remarkably fine, and day after day it was possible to
sit there under the salt sky and feel one's self rounding the great
curves of the globe. The long deck made a white spot in the sharp
black circle of the ocean and in the intense sea-light, while the
shadow of the smoke-streamers trembled on the familiar floor, the
shoes of fellow-passengers, distinctive now, and in some cases
irritating, passed and repassed, accompanied, in the air so
tremendously "open," that rendered all voices weak and most remarks
rather flat, by fragments of opinion on the run of the ship.
Vogelstein by this time had finished his little American story and
now definitely judged that Pandora Day was not at all like the
heroine. She was of quite another type; much more serious and
strenuous, and not at all keen, as he had supposed, about making the
acquaintance of gentlemen. Her speaking to him that first afternoon
had been, he was bound to believe, an incident without importance
for herself; in spite of her having followed it up the next day by
the remark, thrown at him as she passed, with a smile that was
almost fraternal: "It's all right, sir! I've found that old
chair." After this she hadn't spoken to him again and had scarcely
looked at him. She read a great deal, and almost always French
books, in fresh yellow paper; not the lighter forms of that
literature, but a volume of Sainte-Beuve, of Renan or at the most,
in the way of dissipation, of Alfred de Musset. She took frequent
exercise and almost always walked alone, apparently not having made
many friends on the ship and being without the resource of her
parents, who, as has been related, never budged out of the cosy
corner in which she planted them for the day.
Her brother was always in the smoking-room, where Vogelstein
observed him, in very tight clothes, his neck encircled with a
collar like a palisade. He had a sharp little face, which was not
disagreeable; he smoked enormous cigars and began his drinking early
in the day: but his appearance gave no sign of these excesses. As
regards euchre and poker and the other distractions of the place he
was guilty of none. He evidently understood such games in
perfection, for he used to watch the players, and even at moments
impartially advise them; but Vogelstein never saw the cards in his
hand. He was referred to as regards disputed points, and his
opinion carried the day. He took little part in the conversation,
usually much relaxed, that prevailed in the smoking-room, but from
time to time he made, in his soft flat youthful voice, a remark
which every one paused to listen to and which was greeted with roars
of laughter. Vogelstein, well as he knew English, could rarely
catch the joke; but he could see at least that these must be choice
specimens of that American humour admired and practised by a whole
continent and yet to be rendered accessible to a trained
diplomatist, clearly, but by some special and incalculable
revelation. The young man, in his way, was very remarkable, for, as
Vogelstein heard some one say once after the laughter had subsided,
he was only nineteen. If his sister didn't resemble the dreadful
little girl in the tale already mentioned, there was for Vogelstein
at least an analogy between young Mr. Day and a certain small
brother--a candy-loving Madison, Hamilton or Jefferson--who was, in
the Tauchnitz volume, attributed to that unfortunate maid. This was
what the little Madison would have grown up to at nineteen, and the
improvement was greater than might have been expected.
The days were long, but the voyage was short, and it had almost come
to an end before Count Otto yielded to an attraction peculiar in its
nature and finally irresistible, and, in spite of Mrs. Dangerfield's
emphatic warning, sought occasion for a little continuous talk with
Miss Pandora. To mention that this impulse took effect without
mentioning sundry other of his current impressions with which it had
nothing to do is perhaps to violate proportion and give a false
idea; but to pass it by would be still more unjust. The Germans, as
we know, are a transcendental people, and there was at last an
irresistible appeal for Vogelstein in this quick bright silent girl
who could smile and turn vocal in an instant, who imparted a rare
originality to the filial character, and whose profile was delicate
as she bent it over a volume which she cut as she read, or presented
it in musing attitudes, at the side of the ship, to the horizon they
had left behind. But he felt it to be a pity, as regards a possible
acquaintance with her, that her parents should be heavy little
burghers, that her brother should not correspond to his conception
of a young man of the upper class, and that her sister should be a
Daisy Miller en herbe. Repeatedly admonished by Mrs. Dangerfield,
the young diplomatist was doubly careful as to the relations he
might form at the beginning of his sojourn in the United States.
That lady reminded him, and he had himself made the observation in
other capitals, that the first year, and even the second, is the
time for prudence. One was ignorant of proportions and values; one
was exposed to mistakes and thankful for attention, and one might
give one's self away to people who would afterwards be as a
millstone round one's neck: Mrs. Dangerfield struck and sustained
that note, which resounded in the young man's imagination. She
assured him that if he didn't "look out" he would be committing
himself to some American girl with an impossible family. In
America, when one committed one's self, there was nothing to do but
march to the altar, and what should he say for instance to finding
himself a near relation of Mr. and Mrs. P. W. Day?--since such were
the initials inscribed on the back of the two chairs of that couple.
Count Otto felt the peril, for he could immediately think of a dozen
men he knew who had married American girls. There appeared now to
be a constant danger of marrying the American girl; it was something
one had to reckon with, like the railway, the telegraph, the
discovery of dynamite, the Chassepot rifle, the Socialistic spirit:
it was one of the complications of modern life.
It would doubtless be too much to say that he feared being carried
away by a passion for a young woman who was not strikingly beautiful
and with whom he had talked, in all, but ten minutes. But, as we
recognise, he went so far as to wish that the human belongings of a
person whose high spirit appeared to have no taint either of
fastness, as they said in England, or of subversive opinion, and
whose mouth had charming lines, should not be a little more
distinguished. There was an effect of drollery in her behaviour to
these subjects of her zeal, whom she seemed to regard as a care, but
not as an interest; it was as if they had been entrusted to her
honour and she had engaged to convey them safe to a certain point;
she was detached and inadvertent, and then suddenly remembered,
repented and came back to tuck them into their blankets, to alter
the position of her mother's umbrella, to tell them something about
the run of the ship. These little offices were usually performed
deftly, rapidly, with the minimum of words, and when their daughter
drew near them Mr. and Mrs. Day closed their eyes after the fashion
of a pair of household dogs who expect to be scratched.
One morning she brought up the Captain of the ship to present to
them; she appeared to have a private and independent acquaintance
with this officer, and the introduction to her parents had the air
of a sudden happy thought. It wasn't so much an introduction as an
exhibition, as if she were saying to him: "This is what they look
like; see how comfortable I make them. Aren't they rather queer and
rather dear little people? But they leave me perfectly free. Oh I
can assure you of that. Besides, you must see it for yourself."
Mr. and Mrs. Day looked up at the high functionary who thus unbent
to them with very little change of countenance; then looked at each
other in the same way. He saluted, he inclined himself a moment;
but Pandora shook her head, she seemed to be answering for them; she
made little gestures as if in explanation to the good Captain of
some of their peculiarities, as for instance that he needn't expect
them to speak. They closed their eyes at last; she appeared to have
a kind of mesmeric influence on them, and Miss Day walked away with
the important friend, who treated her with evident consideration,
bowing very low, for all his importance, when the two presently
after separated. Vogelstein could see she was capable of making an
impression; and the moral of our little matter is that in spite of
Mrs. Dangerfield, in spite of the resolutions of his prudence, in
spite of the limits of such acquaintance as he had momentarily made
with her, in spite of Mr. and Mrs. Day and the young man in the
smoking-room, she had fixed his attention.
It was in the course of the evening after the scene with the Captain
that he joined her, awkwardly, abruptly, irresistibly, on the deck,
where she was pacing to and fro alone, the hour being auspiciously
mild and the stars remarkably fine. There were scattered talkers
and smokers and couples, unrecognisable, that moved quickly through
the gloom. The vessel dipped with long regular pulsations; vague
and spectral under the low stars, its swaying pinnacles spotted here
and there with lights, it seemed to rush through the darkness faster
than by day. Count Otto had come up to walk, and as the girl
brushed past him he distinguished Pandora's face--with Mrs.
Dangerfield he always spoke of her as Pandora--under the veil worn
to protect it from the sea-damp. He stopped, turned, hurried after
her, threw away his cigar--then asked her if she would do him the
honour to accept his arm. She declined his arm but accepted his
company, and he allowed her to enjoy it for an hour. They had a
great deal of talk, and he was to remember afterwards some of the
things she had said. There was now a certainty of the ship's
getting into dock the next morning but one, and this prospect
afforded an obvious topic. Some of Miss Day's expressions struck
him as singular, but of course, as he was aware, his knowledge of
English was not nice enough to give him a perfect measure.
"I'm not in a hurry to arrive; I'm very happy here," she said. "I'm
afraid I shall have such a time putting my people through."
"Putting them through?"
"Through the Custom-House. We've made so many purchases. Well,
I've written to a friend to come down, and perhaps he can help us.
He's very well acquainted with the head. Once I'm chalked I don't
care. I feel like a kind of blackboard by this time anyway. We
found them awful in Germany."
Count Otto wondered if the friend she had written to were her lover
and if they had plighted their troth, especially when she alluded to
him again as "that gentleman who's coming down." He asked her about
her travels, her impressions, whether she had been long in Europe
and what she liked best, and she put it to him that they had gone
abroad, she and her family, for a little fresh experience. Though
he found her very intelligent he suspected she gave this as a reason
because he was a German and she had heard the Germans were rich in
culture. He wondered what form of culture Mr. and Mrs. Day had
brought back from Italy, Greece and Palestine--they had travelled
for two years and been everywhere--especially when their daughter
said: "I wanted father and mother to see the best things. I kept
them three hours on the Acropolis. I guess they won't forget that!"
Perhaps it was of Phidias and Pericles they were thinking,
Vogelstein reflected, as they sat ruminating in their rugs. Pandora
remarked also that she wanted to show her little sister everything
while she was comparatively unformed ("comparatively!" he mutely
gasped); remarkable sights made so much more impression when the
mind was fresh: she had read something of that sort somewhere in
Goethe. She had wanted to come herself when she was her sister's
age; but her father was in business then and they couldn't leave
Utica. The young man thought of the little sister frisking over the
Parthenon and the Mount of Olives and sharing for two years, the
years of the school-room, this extraordinary pilgrimage of her
parents; he wondered whether Goethe's dictum had been justified in
this case. He asked Pandora if Utica were the seat of her family,
if it were an important or typical place, if it would be an
interesting city for him, as a stranger, to see. His companion
replied frankly that this was a big question, but added that all the
same she would ask him to "come and visit us at our home" if it
weren't that they should probably soon leave it.
"Ah, you're going to live elsewhere?" Vogelstein asked, as if that
fact too would be typical.
"Well, I'm working for New York. I flatter myself I've loosened
them while we've been away," the girl went on. "They won't find in
Utica the same charm; that was my idea. I want a big place, and of
course Utica--!" She broke off as before a complex statement.
"I suppose Utica is inferior--?" Vogelstein seemed to see his way to
suggest.
"Well no, I guess I can't have you call Utica inferior. It isn't
supreme--that's what's the matter with it, and I hate anything
middling," said Pandora Day. She gave a light dry laugh, tossing
back her head a little as she made this declaration. And looking at
her askance in the dusk, as she trod the deck that vaguely swayed,
he recognised something in her air and port that matched such a
pronouncement.
"What's her social position?" he inquired of Mrs. Dangerfield the
next day. "I can't make it out at all--it's so contradictory. She
strikes me as having much cultivation and much spirit. Her
appearance, too, is very neat. Yet her parents are complete little
burghers. That's easily seen."
"Oh, social position," and Mrs. Dangerfield nodded two or three
times portentously. "What big expressions you use! Do you think
everybody in the world has a social position? That's reserved for
an infinitely small majority of mankind. You can't have a social
position at Utica any more than you can have an opera-box. Pandora
hasn't got one; where, if you please, should she have got it? Poor
girl, it isn't fair of you to make her the subject of such questions
as that."
"Well," said Vogelstein, "if she's of the lower class it seems to me
very--very--" And he paused a moment, as he often paused in
speaking English, looking for his word.
"Very what, dear Count?"
"Very significant, very representative."
"Oh dear, she isn't of the lower class," Mrs. Dangerfield returned
with an irritated sense of wasted wisdom. She liked to explain her
country, but that somehow always required two persons.
"What is she then?"
"Well, I'm bound to admit that since I was at home last she's a
novelty. A girl like that with such people--it IS a new type."
"I like novelties"--and Count Otto smiled with an air of
considerable resolution. He couldn't however be satisfied with a
demonstration that only begged the question; and when they
disembarked in New York he felt, even amid the confusion of the
wharf and the heaps of disembowelled baggage, a certain acuteness of
regret at the idea that Pandora and her family were about to vanish
into the unknown. He had a consolation however: it was apparent
that for some reason or other--illness or absence from town--the
gentleman to whom she had written had not, as she said, come down.
Vogelstein was glad--he couldn't have told you why--that this
sympathetic person had failed her; even though without him Pandora
had to engage single-handed with the United States Custom-House.
Our young man's first impression of the Western world was received
on the landing-place of the German steamers at Jersey City--a huge
wooden shed covering a wooden wharf which resounded under the feet,
an expanse palisaded with rough-hewn piles that leaned this way and
that, and bestrewn with masses of heterogeneous luggage. At one
end; toward the town, was a row of tall painted palings, behind
which he could distinguish a press of hackney-coachmen, who
brandished their whips and awaited their victims, while their voices
rose, incessant, with a sharp strange sound, a challenge at once
fierce and familiar. The whole place, behind the fence, appeared to
bristle and resound. Out there was America, Count Otto said to
himself, and he looked toward it with a sense that he should have to
muster resolution. On the wharf people were rushing about amid
their trunks, pulling their things together, trying to unite their
scattered parcels. They were heated and angry, or else quite
bewildered and discouraged. The few that had succeeded in
collecting their battered boxes had an air of flushed indifference
to the efforts of their neighbours, not even looking at people with
whom they had been fondly intimate on the steamer. A detachment of
the officers of the Customs was in attendance, and energetic
passengers were engaged in attempts to drag them toward their
luggage or to drag heavy pieces toward them. These functionaries
were good-natured and taciturn, except when occasionally they
remarked to a passenger whose open trunk stared up at them,
eloquent, imploring, that they were afraid the voyage had been
"rather glassy." They had a friendly leisurely speculative way of
discharging their duty, and if they perceived a victim's name
written on the portmanteau they addressed him by it in a tone of old
acquaintance. Vogelstein found however that if they were familiar
they weren't indiscreet. He had heard that in America all public
functionaries were the same, that there wasn't a different tenue, as
they said in France, for different positions, and he wondered
whether at Washington the President and ministers, whom he expected
to see--to HAVE to see--a good deal of, would be like that.
He was diverted from these speculations by the sight of Mr. and Mrs.
Day seated side by side upon a trunk and encompassed apparently by
the accumulations of their tour. Their faces expressed more
consciousness of surrounding objects than he had hitherto
recognised, and there was an air of placid expansion in the
mysterious couple which suggested that this consciousness was
agreeable. Mr. and Mrs. Day were, as they would have said, real
glad to get back. At a little distance, on the edge of the dock,
our observer remarked their son, who had found a place where,
between the sides of two big ships, he could see the ferry-boats
pass; the large pyramidal low-laden ferry-boats of American waters.
He stood there, patient and considering, with his small neat foot on
a coil of rope, his back to everything that had been disembarked,
his neck elongated in its polished cylinder, while the fragrance of
his big cigar mingled with the odour of the rotting piles, and his
little sister, beside him, hugged a huge post and tried to see how
far she could crane over the water without falling in. Vogelstein's
servant was off in search of an examiner; Count Otto himself had got
his things together and was waiting to be released, fully expecting
that for a person of his importance the ceremony would be brief.
Before it began he said a word to young Mr. Day, raising his hat at
the same time to the little girl, whom he had not yet greeted and
who dodged his salute by swinging herself boldly outward to the
dangerous side of the pier. She was indeed still unformed, but was
evidently as light as a feather.
"I see you're kept waiting like me. It's very tiresome," Count Otto
said.
The young American answered without looking behind him. "As soon as
we're started we'll go all right. My sister has written to a
gentleman to come down."
"I've looked for Miss Day to bid her good-bye," Vogelstein went on;
"but I don't see her."
"I guess she has gone to meet that gentleman; he's a great friend of
hers."
"I guess he's her lover!" the little girl broke out. "She was
always writing to him in Europe."
Her brother puffed his cigar in silence a moment. "That was only
for this. I'll tell on you, sis," he presently added.
But the younger Miss Day gave no heed to his menace; she addressed
herself only, though with all freedom, to Vogelstein. "This is New
York; I like it better than Utica."
He had no time to reply, for his servant had arrived with one of the
dispensers of fortune; but as he turned away he wondered, in the
light of the child's preference, about the towns of the interior.
He was naturally exempt from the common doom. The officer who took
him in hand, and who had a large straw hat and a diamond breastpin,
was quite a man of the world, and in reply to the Count's formal
declarations only said, "Well, I guess it's all right; I guess I'll
just pass you," distributing chalk-marks as if they had been so many
love-pats. The servant had done some superfluous unlocking and
unbuckling, and while he closed the pieces the officer stood there
wiping his forehead and conversing with Vogelstein. "First visit to
our country, sir?--quite alone--no ladies? Of course the ladies are
what we're most after." It was in this manner he expressed himself,
while the young diplomatist wondered what he was waiting for and
whether he ought to slip something into his palm. But this
representative of order left our friend only a moment in suspense;
he presently turned away with the remark quite paternally uttered,
that he hoped the Count would make quite a stay; upon which the
young man saw how wrong he should have been to offer a tip. It was
simply the American manner, which had a finish of its own after all.
Vogelstein's servant had secured a porter with a truck, and he was
about to leave the place when he saw Pandora Day dart out of the
crowd and address herself with much eagerness to the functionary who
had just liberated him. She had an open letter in her hand which
she gave him to read and over which he cast his eyes, thoughtfully
stroking his beard. Then she led him away to where her parents sat
on their luggage. Count Otto sent off his servant with the porter
and followed Pandora, to whom he really wished to address a word of
farewell. The last thing they had said to each other on the ship
was that they should meet again on shore. It seemed improbable
however that the meeting would occur anywhere but just here on the
dock; inasmuch as Pandora was decidedly not in society, where
Vogelstein would be of course, and as, if Utica--he had her sharp
little sister's word for it--was worse than what was about him
there, he'd be hanged if he'd go to Utica. He overtook Pandora
quickly; she was in the act of introducing the representative of
order to her parents, quite in the same manner in which she had
introduced the Captain of the ship. Mr. and Mrs. Day got up and
shook hands with him and they evidently all prepared to have a
little talk. "I should like to introduce you to my brother and
sister," he heard the girl say, and he saw her look about for these
appendages. He caught her eye as she did so, and advanced with his
hand outstretched, reflecting the while that evidently the
Americans, whom he had always heard described as silent and
practical, rejoiced to extravagance in the social graces. They
dawdled and chattered like so many Neapolitans.
"Good-bye, Count Vogelstein," said Pandora, who was a little flushed
with her various exertions but didn't look the worse for it. "I
hope you'll have a splendid time and appreciate our country."
"I hope you'll get through all right," Vogelstein answered, smiling
and feeling himself already more idiomatic.
"That gentleman's sick that I wrote to," she rejoined; "isn't it too
bad? But he sent me down a letter to a friend of his--one of the
examiners--and I guess we won't have any trouble. Mr. Lansing, let
me make you acquainted with Count Vogelstein," she went on,
presenting to her fellow-passenger the wearer of the straw hat and
the breastpin, who shook hands with the young German as if he had
never seen him before. Vogelstein's heart rose for an instant to
his throat; he thanked his stars he hadn't offered a tip to the
friend of a gentleman who had often been mentioned to him and who
had also been described by a member of Pandora's family as Pandora's
lover.
"It's a case of ladies this time," Mr. Lansing remarked to him with
a smile which seemed to confess surreptitiously, and as if neither
party could be eager, to recognition.
"Well, Mr. Bellamy says you'll do anything for HIM," Pandora said,
smiling very sweetly at Mr. Lansing. "We haven't got much; we've
been gone only two years."
Mr. Lansing scratched his head a little behind, with a movement that
sent his straw hat forward in the direction of his nose. "I don't
know as I'd do anything for him that I wouldn't do for you," he
responded with an equal geniality. "I guess you'd better open that
one"--and he gave a little affectionate kick to one of the trunks.
"Oh mother, isn't he lovely? It's only your sea-things," Pandora
cried, stooping over the coffer with the key in her hand.
"I don't know as I like showing them," Mrs. Day modestly murmured.
Vogelstein made his German salutation to the company in general, and
to Pandora he offered an audible good-bye, which she returned in a
bright friendly voice, but without looking round as she fumbled at
the lock of her trunk.
"We'll try another, if you like," said Mr. Lansing good-humouredly.
"Oh no it has got to be this one! Good-bye, Count Vogelstein. I
hope you'll judge us correctly!"
The young man went his way and passed the barrier of the dock. Here
he was met by his English valet with a face of consternation which
led him to ask if a cab weren't forthcoming.
"They call 'em 'acks 'ere, sir," said the man, "and they're beyond
everything. He wants thirty shillings to take you to the inn."
Vogelstein hesitated a moment. "Couldn't you find a German?"
"By the way he talks he IS a German said the man; and in a moment
Count Otto began his career in America by discussing the tariff of
hackney-coaches in the language of the fatherland.
