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PANDORA
PANDORA 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
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