The Author of Beltraffio, Pandora, Georgina's Reasons, The Path of Duty, Four Meetings/Pandora/Part 1
PANDORA.
PART 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 a point of vantage the struggles of later comers—of the uninformed, the unprovided, 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 mustache, which looked as if it might well contribute to the principal function, as cynics say, of the lips,—the concealment of thought. He had been appointed to the secretaryship of the German legation at Washington, and in these first days of the autumn he was going to take possession of his post. He was a model character for such a purpose,—serious, civil, ceremonious, stiff, inquisitive, stuffed with knowledge, and convinced that at present the German empire is the country in the world most highly evolved. He was quite aware, however, of the claims of the United States, and that this portion of the globe presented an enormous field for study.
The process of inquiry had already begun, in spite of his having as yet spoken to none of his fellow-passengers, for Vogelstein inquired not only with his tongue,—he inquired 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 an excellent young man, and his only fault was that he had not a high sense of humor. He had enough, however, to suspect this deficiency, and he was aware that he was about to visit a highly humorous people. This suspicion 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. But, 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. And 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 happiness was an unscientific term, which he was ashamed to use even in the silence of his thoughts. But lost 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, for the moment, to fill himself out, he tried to have an opinion on the subject of this delay to which the German steamer was subjected in English waters. It appeared to him that it might be proved to be 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 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 United States. 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, with their shoulders on a level with their ears; the men in furred caps, smoking long-bowled pipes; the women with babies hidden in their shawls. Some were yellow Germans and some were black, and all of them looked greasy and matted with the sea damp. They were destined to swell the current of western democracy; and Count Vogelstein doubtless said to himself that they would not improve its quality. Their numbers, however, were striking, and I know not what he thought of the nature of this 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 in striped shawls 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 steerage, who seemed numerous enough to sink the vessel, and their voices sounded faint and far as they rose to Vogelstein's ear over the tarred sides of the ship. He observed 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 a country of girls. He wondered whether he should like that, and reflected that it would be a question 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 seemed to him of that same habit, except that in the Dresden days feathers were not worn quite so high.
At last the ship began to creak and slowly budge, and the delay at Southampton came to an end. The gangway was removed, and the vessel indulged in the awkward evolutions which 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 that this was 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 half the charm of travel. As yet, indeed, there were very few on the steamer. Most of his fellow-passengers appeared to be of 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 which is to be perceived in the newly embarked, and which, as directed to the receding land, resembles that of a person who begins to perceive that he is the victim of a trick. Earth and ocean, in such glances, are made the subject of a general objection, and many travellers, in these circumstances, 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. 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 said that in his place he would have his coronet painted. This cynical adviser 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 this ensign of his rank; the precious piece of furniture which, on the Atlantic voyage, is depended upon to remain steady among general 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 the 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 outermost 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 kind of human expression, in face of the cold expanse toward which the ship 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 he turned his eyes to the other quarter, where the sky and sea between them managed to make so 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 companion-way.
In itself this was not 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, and rather pretty; Vogelstein remembered in a moment that he had noticed her among the people on the wharf at Southampton. She very soon saw that he was looking at her; whereupon she began to move along the deck with a step which seemed to indicate that she was coming straight toward 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 this. It was true they came straight toward one, like that. This young lady, however, was no longer looking at him, and, though she passed near him, it was now tolerably clear that she had come upstairs simply to take a general survey. She was a quick, handsome, competent girl, and she wished 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 she were in search of a missing object; so that Vogelstein presently saw this was what she really had come up for. She passed near him again, and this time she almost stopped, with her eyes bent upon him attentively. He thought her conduct remarkable, even after he had perceived that it was not at his face, with its yellow mustache, 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 people, especially the ladies, on the American steamers taking 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, without meeting her eye. He was conscious that she hovered near him, and he was 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 endeavor by arts so flagrant to attract the attention of a secretary of legation. At last it became evident to him 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 reflection passed through his mind, and caused him to raise his eyes. They rested on her own,—which for an appreciable moment she did not 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. Was not the conduct of this young lady a testimony to the truthfulness of the tale, and was not Vogelstein himself in the position of the young man in the garden? That young man ended by speaking 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 is 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 colored slightly, but she smiled and read his name, while Vogelstein raised his hat.
"I am much obliged to you. That's all right," she remarked, as if the discovery had made her very happy.
It seemed to him indeed all right that he should be Count Otto Vogelstein; this appeared even a rather flippant mode of disposing of the fact. By way of rejoinder, he asked her if she desired his seat.
"I am much obliged to you; of course not. I thought you had one of our chairs, and I did n'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 have lost one of ours, and I have 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 frank smile. "But we have got such a small name—you can scarcely see it," she added, with the same friendly intention. "Our name is Day. If you see that on anything, I should be so obliged if you would tell me. It is n't for myself, it's for my mother; she is so dependent on her chair, and that one I am 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 am much obliged to 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 reflections would indicate that Count Vogelstein read his volume of Tauchnitz rather interruptedly. Moreover, they represented a considerable waste of time; for was he not to be afloat in an oblong box, for ten days, with such people, and could it be doubted that he should see at least enough of them?
It may as well be said without delay that he saw a great deal of them. I have depicted with some precision the circumstances under which he made the acquaintance of Miss Day, because the event had a certain importance for this candid 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 with regard to her, and he determined he would push through his American tale and discover what the hero did. But in a very short time he perceived that Miss Day had nothing in common with the heroine of that work, save a certain local quality and the fact that the male sex was not terrible to her. Her local quality, indeed, he took rather on trust than apprehended for himself. She was native to a small town in the interior of the American continent, and a lady from New York, who was on the ship, and with whom he had a good deal of conversation, assured him Miss Day was exceedingly provincial. How this lady ascertained the fact did not appear, for Vogelstein observed that she held no communication with the girl. It is true that she threw some light on her processes by remarking to him that certain Americans could tell immediately who other Americans were, leaving him to judge whether or no she herself belonged to the discriminating class. She was a Mrs. Dangerfield, a handsome, confidential, insinuating woman, and Vogelstein's talk with her took a turn that was almost philosophic. 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 are often too stupid to perceive. Did he suppose that every one knew every one else, in the biggest country in the world, and that one was not as free to choose one's company there as in the most monarchical communities? She laughed these ideas 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 her peculiar stamp. They were fat, plain, serious people, who sat side by side on the deck for hours, looking 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, and 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 which covered her coiffure and encircled her neck, 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 gray beard on his chin, and a bare, spacious upper lip, to which constant shaving had imparted a kind of 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, if it had not been for the mild, familiar, accommodating gaze with which his large, light-colored 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 look at you, but he would not have pretended to understand you much nor to classify you, and would have been sorry that it should put you under an obligation. He and his wife spoke sometimes, but they seldom talked, and there was something passive and patient about them, as if they were victims of a spell. The spell, however, was evidently pleasant; it was the fascination of prosperity, the confidence of security, which sometimes makes people arrogant, but which had had such a different effect upon this simple, satisfied pair, in which further development of every kind appeared to have been arrested.
Mrs. Dangerfield told Count Vogelstein 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 elaborate French clothes, to resume an interrupted education. Pandora overlooked and directed her relatives; Vogelstein could see that for himself, could see that she was very active and decided, that she had in a high degree the sentiment of responsibility, and settled 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 preoccupied, 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 have found that old chair." After this she had not 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, not, apparently, 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 cosey 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 were the most transcendent flights of American humor. 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 did not resemble the dreadful little girl in the tale I have so often 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, in the Tauchnitz volume, was 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 Vogelstein yielded to an attraction peculiar in its nature, and finally irresistible, and in spite of Mrs. Dangerfield's warnings, sought an opportunity for a little continuous talk with Miss Pandora Day. To mention this sentiment without mentioning sundry other impressions of his voyage, 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 a vague fascination for Vogelstein in this quick, bright, silent girl, who could smile and turn vocal in an instant, who imparted a sort of 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 absent-minded 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 Vogelstein's conception of a young man of the upper class, and that her sister should be a Daisy Miller en herbe. Repeatedly warned 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. Mrs. Dangerfield reminded him, and he had made the observation himself, in other capitals, that the first year, and even the second, is the time for prudence. One is ignorant of proportions and values; one is exposed, and thankful for attention, and one may give one's self away to people who afterwards prove a great incumbrance. Mrs. Dangerfield struck a note which resounded in Vogelstein's imagination. She assured him that if he did n't "look out" he would be falling in love with some American girl with an impossible family. In America, when one fell in love with a girl, there was nothing to be done but marry her, and what should he say, for instance, to finding himself a near relation of Mr. and Mrs. P. W. Day? (These were the initials inscribed on the back of the two chairs of that couple.) Vogelstein 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 Chassepôt rifle, the Socialistic spirit; it was one of the complications of modern life.
It would doubtless be too much to say that Vogelstein was afraid of falling in love with Pandora Day; a young woman who was not strikingly beautiful, and with whom he had talked, in all, but ten minutes. But, as I say, he went so far as to wish that the human belongings of a girl whose independence appeared to have no taint either of fastness, as they said in England, or of subversive opinion, and whose nose was so very well bred, should not be a little more distinguished. There was something almost comical in her attitude toward these belongings; she appeared to regard them as a care, but not as an interest; it was as if they had been intrusted to her honor, and she had engaged to convey them safe to a certain point; she was detached and inadvertent; then, suddenly, she remembered, repented, and came back to tuck her parents 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 came near them Mr. and Mrs. Day closed their eyes placidly, like a pair of household dogs who expect to be scratched.
One morning she brought up the captain 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 inspiration. It was not 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 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 captain with very little change of countenance; then looked at each other in the same way. He saluted and bent toward them a moment; but Pandora shook her head, she seemed to be answering for them; she made little gestures as if she were explaining to the captain some of their peculiarities, as, for instance, that they would n't 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 commander of the ship, who treated her with evident consideration, bowing very low, in spite of his supreme position, when, presently after, they separated. Vogelstein could see that she was capable of making an impression; and the moral of our episode is that in spite of Mrs. Dangerfield, in spite of the resolutions of his prudence, in spite of the meagreness of the conversation that had passed between them, in spite of Mr. and Mrs. Day and the young man in the smoking-room, she had fixed his attention.
It was 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 evening being mild and brilliant and the stars remarkably fine. There were scattered talkers and smokers and couples, unrecognizable, that moved quickly through the gloom. The vessel dipped with long, regular pulsations; vague and spectral, under the stars, with its swaying pinnacles spotted here and there with lights, it seemed to rush through the darkness faster than by day. Vogelstein 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 that seemed intended to protect it from the sea-damp. He stopped, turned, hurried after her, threw away his cigar, and asked her if she would do him the honor to accept his arm. She declined his arm, but accepted his company, and he walked with her for an hour. They had a great deal of talk, and he remembered afterwards some of the things she said. There was now a certainty of the ship getting into dock the next morning but one, and this pretext afforded an obvious topic. Some of Miss Day's expressions struck him as singular, but, of course, as he knew, his knowledge of English was not nice enough to give him a perfect measure.
"I am not in a hurry to arrive; I am very happy here," she said. "I am afraid I shall have such a time putting my people through."
"Putting them through?"
"Through the Custom-house. We have made so many purchases. Well, I have written to a friend to come down, and perhaps he can help us. He is very well acquainted with the head. Once I'm chalked, I don't care. I feel like a kind of black-board by this time, any way. We found them awful in Germany."
Vogelstein wondered whether the friend she had written to were her lover, and if she were engaged to him, especially when she alluded to him again as "that gentleman that is coming down." He asked her about her travels, her impressions, whether she had been long in Europe, and what she liked best, and she told 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 that Germans were fond of 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 young; remarkable sights made so much more impression when the mind was fresh; she had read something of that sort in Goethe, somewhere. She had wanted to come herself, when she was her sister's age; but her father was in business then, and they could n't leave Utica. Vogelstein 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, and 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 a pleasant place, if it would be an interesting city for him, as a stranger, to see. His companion replied frankly that it was horrid, but added that all the same she would ask him to "come and visit us at our home," if it were not that they should probably soon leave it.
"Ah! You are going to live elsewhere?"
"Well, I am working for New York. I flatter myself I have loosened them, while we have been away. They won't find Utica the same; that was my idea. I want a big place, and, of course, Utica—" and the girl broke off with a little sigh.
"I suppose Utica is small?" Vogelstein suggested.
"Well, no, it's middle-sized. 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 thought there was something in her air and port that carried out such a spirit.
"What is her social position?" he inquired of Mrs. Dangerfield the next day. "I can't make it out at all, it is so contradictory. She strikes me as having much cultivation and much spirit. Her appearance, too, is very nice. Yet her parents are little burghers. That is easily seen."
"Oh, social position," Mrs. Dangerfield exclaimed, nodding two or three times rather portentously. "What big expressions you use! Do you think every body in the world has a social position? That is 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 has n't got any; where should she have got it? Poor girl, it is n't fair of you to ask such questions as that."
"Well," said Vogelstein, "if she is 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, Count Vogelstein?"
"Very significant, very representative."
"Oh, dear, she isn't of the lower class," Mrs. Dangerfield murmured, helplessly.
"What is she, then?"
"Well, I'm bound to admit that since I was at home last she is a novelty. A girl like that, with such people, it's a new type."
"I like novelties," said Count Vogelstein, smiling, with an air of considerable resolution. He could not, however, be satisfied with an explanation 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 could n'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. Vogelstein'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, palisaded with rough-hewn, slanting piles, 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, brandishing their whips and waiting their victims, while their voices rose, incessant, with a sharp, strange sound, at once fierce and familiar. The whole place, behind the fence, appeared to bristle and resound. Out there was America, Vogelstein said to himself, and he looked toward it with a sense that he ought 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 neighbors, not even looking at people with whom they had been 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, imploring, that they were afraid the voyage had been "rather glassy." They had a friendly, leisurely, speculative way of performing their office, 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 were not indiscreet. He had heard that in America all public functionaries were the same, that there was not 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, would be like that.
He was diverted from these speculations by the sight of Mr. and Mrs. Day, who were seated side by side upon a trunk, encompassed, apparently, by the accumulations of their tour. Their faces expressed more consciousness of surrounding objects than he had hitherto perceived, and there was an air of placid expansion in the mysterious couple which suggested that this consciousness was agreeable. Mr. and Mrs. Day, as they would have said, were glad to get back. At a little distance, on the edge of the dock, Vogelstein 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 odor 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 failing in. Vogelstein's servant had gone in pursuit of an examiner; he 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, taking off 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 not much "formed" yet, but she was evidently as light as a feather.
"I see you are kept waiting, like me. It is very tiresome," Mr. Vogelstein said.
The young man answered without looking behind him. "As soon as we begin we shall go straight. My sister has written to a gentleman to come down."
"I have looked for Miss Day to bid her good-by," 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 for a moment. "That was only for this. I 'll tell on you," he presently added.
But the younger Miss Day gave no heed to his announcement; she addressed herself to Vogelstein. "This is New York; I like it better than Utica."
Vogelstein had no time to reply, for his servant had arrived with one of the emissaries of the customs; but as he turned away he wondered, in the light of the child's preference, about the towns of the interior. He was very well treated. 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 formal declarations of the Count, only said, "Well, I guess it's all right; I guess I'll just pass you;" and he distributed freely a dozen chalk-marks. The servant had unlocked and unbuckled various pieces, and while he was closing them 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 are 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 some thing into his palm. But Vogelstein's visitor left him only a moment in suspense; he presently turned away, with the remark, very quietly 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 him a tip. It was simply the American manner, and it was very amicable, 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 he cast his eyes over it, deliberately, stroking his beard. Then she led him away, to where her parents sat upon their luggage. Vogelstein sent off his servant with the porter, and followed Pandora, to whom he really wished to speak 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 was not—he had her sharp little sister's word for it—as agreeable as what was about him there, he would be hanged if he would go to Utica. He overtook Pandora quickly; she was in the act of introducing the agent of the customs to her parents, quite in the same manner in which she had introduced the captain of the steamer. 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 her 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, were not unversed in certain social arts. They dawdled and chattered like so many Neapolitans.
"Good-by, Count Vogelstein," said Pandora, who was a little flushed with her various exertions, but did not 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 is sick that I wrote to," she rejoined; "is n'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 breast-pin, 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 that he had not offered a tip to the friend of a gentleman who had often been mentioned to him, and who had been described by a member of Pandora's family as her lover.
"It's a case of ladies this time," Mr. Lansing remarked to Vogelstein, 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 have been gone only two years."
Mr. Lansing scratched his head a little behind, with a movement which sent his straw hat forward in the direction of his nose. "I don't know as I would do anything for him that I should n't do for you," he responded, returning the smile of the girl. "I guess you 'd better open that one," and he gave a little affectionate kick to one of the trunks.
"Oh, mother, is n't he lovely! It's only your sea-things," Pandora cried, stooping over the coffer instantly, with the key in her hand.
"I don't know that I like showing them," Mrs. Day murmured, modestly.
Vogelstein made his German salutation to the company in general, and to Pandora he offered an audible good-by, 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, laughing.
"Oh, no, it's got to be this one! Good-by, 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 servant, who had a face of consternation, which led him to ask whether a cab were not 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 Vogelstein began his career in America by discussing the tariff of hackney-coaches in the language of the fatherland.