Pandora | Page 9

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,