Pandora | Page 7

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