Pandora
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Henry James >> Pandora
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from the 1922 Macmillan and Co. edition. Proofing was by David,
Jeremy Kwock and Uzma G.
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.