he went wherever he was asked, on principle, partly to study american society and partly because in washington pastimes seemed to him not so numerous that one could afford to neglect occasions. at the end of two winters he had naturally had a good many of various kinds—his study of american society had yielded considerable fruit. when, however, in april, during the second year of his residence, he presented himself at a large party given by mrs. bonnycastle and of which it was believed that it would be the last serious affair of the season, his being there (and still more his looking very fresh and talkative) was not the consequence of a rule of conduct. he went to mrs. bonnycastle’s simply because he liked the lady, whose receptions were the pleasantest in washington, and because if he didn’t go there he didn’t know what he should do; that absence of alternatives having become familiar to him by the waters of the potomac. there were a great many things he did because if he didn’t do them he didn’t know what he should do. it must be added that in this case even if there had been an alternative he would still have decided to go to mrs. bonnycastle’s. if her house wasn’t the pleasantest there it was at least difficult to say which was pleasanter; and the complaint sometimes made of it that it was too limited, that it left out, on the whole, more people than it took in, applied with much less force when it was thrown open for a general party. toward the end of the social year, in those soft scented days of the washington spring when the air began to show a southern glow and the squares and circles (to which the wide empty avenues converged according to a plan so ingenious, yet so bewildering) to flush with pink blossom and to make one wish to sit on benches—under this magic of expansion and condonation mrs. bonnycastle, who during the winter had been a good deal on the defensive, relaxed her vigilance a little, became whimsically wilful, vernally reckless, as it were, and ceased to calculate the consequences of an hospitality which a reference to the back files or even to the morning’s issue of the newspapers might easily prove a mistake. but washington life, to count otto’s apprehension, was paved with mistakes; he felt himself in a society founded on fundamental fallacies and triumphant blunders. little addicted as he was to the sportive view of existence, he had said to himself at an early stage of his sojourn that the only way to enjoy the great republic would be to burn one’s standards and warm one’s self at the blaze. such were the reflexions of a theoretic teuton who now walked for the most part amid the ashes of his prejudices.
mrs. bonnycastle had endeavoured more than once to explain to him the principles on which she received certain people and ignored certain others; but it was with difficulty that he entered into her discriminations. american promiscuity, goodness knew, had been strange to him, but it was nothing to the queerness of american criticism. this lady would discourse to him a perte de vue on differences where he only saw resemblances, and both the merits and the defects of a good many members of washington society, as this society was interpreted to him by mrs. bonnycastle, he was often at a loss to understand. fortunately she had a fund of good humour which, as i have intimated, was apt to come uppermost with the april blossoms and which made the people she didn’t invite to her house almost as amusing to her as those she did. her husband was not in politics, though politics were much in him; but the couple had taken upon themselves the responsibilities of an active patriotism; they thought it right to live in america, differing therein from many of their acquaintances who only, with some grimness, thought it inevitable. they had that burdensome heritage of foreign reminiscence with which so many americans were saddled; but they carried it more easily than most of their country-people, and one knew they had lived in europe only by their present exultation, never in the least by their regrets. their regrets, that is, were only for their ever having lived there, as mrs. bonnycastle once told the wife of a foreign minister. they solved all their problems successfully, including those of knowing none of the people they didn’t wish to, and of finding plenty of occupation in a society supposed to be meagrely provided with resources for that body which vogelstein was to hear invoked, again and again, with the mixture of desire and of deprecation that might have attended the mention of a secret vice, under the name of a leisure-class. when as the warm weather approached they opened both the wings of their house-door, it was because they thought it would entertain them and not because they were conscious of a pressure. alfred bonnycastle all winter indeed chafed a little at the definiteness of some of his wife’s reserves; it struck him that for washington their society was really a little too good. vogelstein still remembered the puzzled feeling—it had cleared up somewhat now—with which, more than a year before, he had heard mr. bonnycastle exclaim one evening, after a dinner in his own house, when every guest but the german secretary (who often sat late with the pair) had departed hang it, there’s only a month left; let us be vulgar and have some fun—let us invite the president.”
this was mrs. bonnycastle’s carnival, and on the occasion to which i began my chapter by referring the president had not only been invited but had signified his intention of being present. i hasten to add that this was not the same august ruler to whom alfred bonnycastle’s irreverent allusion had been made. the white house had received a new tenant—the old one was then just leaving it—and count otto had had the advantage, during the first eighteen months of his stay in america, of seeing an electoral campaign, a presidential inauguration and a distribution of spoils. he had been bewildered during those first weeks by finding that at the national capital in the houses he supposed to be the best, the head of the state was not a coveted guest; for this could be the only explanation of mr. bonnycastle’s whimsical suggestion of their inviting him, as it were, in carnival. his successor went out a good deal for a president.
the legislative session was over, but this made little difference in the aspect of mrs. bonnycastle’s rooms, which even at the height of the congressional season could scarce be said to overflow with the representatives of the people. they were garnished with an occasional senator, whose movements and utterances often appeared to be regarded with a mixture of alarm and indulgence, as if they would be disappointing if they weren’t rather odd and yet might be dangerous if not carefully watched. our young man had come to entertain a kindness for these conscript fathers of invisible families, who had something of the toga in the voluminous folds of their conversation, but were otherwise rather bare and bald, with stony wrinkles in their faces, like busts and statues of ancient law-givers. there seemed to him something chill and exposed in their being at once so exalted and so naked; there were frequent lonesome glances in their eyes, as if in the social world their legislative consciousness longed for the warmth of a few comfortable laws ready-made. members of the house were very rare, and when washington was new to the inquiring secretary he used sometimes to mistake them, in the halls and on the staircases where he met them, for the functionaries engaged, under stress, to usher in guests and wait at supper. it was only a little later that he perceived these latter public characters almost always to be impressive and of that rich racial hue which of itself served as a livery. at present, however, such confounding figures were much less to be met than during the months of winter, and indeed they were never frequent at mrs. bonnycastle’s. at present the social vistas of washington, like the vast fresh flatness of the lettered and numbered streets, which at this season seemed to vogelstein more spacious and vague than ever, suggested but a paucity of political phenomena. count otto that evening knew every one or almost every one. there were often inquiring strangers, expecting great things, from new york and boston, and to them, in the friendly washington way, the young german was promptly introduced. it was a society in which familiarity reigned and in which people were liable to meet three times a day, so that their ultimate essence really became a matter of importance.
“i’ve got three new girls,” mrs. bonnycastle said. “you must talk to them all.”
“all at once?” vogelstein asked, reversing in fancy a position not at all unknown to him. he had so repeatedly heard himself addressed in even more than triple simultaneity.
“oh no; you must have something different for each; you can’t get off that way. haven’t you discovered that the american girl expects something especially adapted to herself? it’s very well for europe to have a few phrases that will do for any girl. the american girl isn’t any girl; she’s a remarkable specimen in a remarkable species. but you must keep the best this evening for miss day.”
“for miss day!”—and vogelstein had a stare of intelligence. “do you mean for pandora?”
mrs. bonnycastle broke on her side into free amusement. “one would think you had been looking for her over the globe! so you know her already—and you call her by her pet name?”
“oh no, i don’t know her; that is i haven’t seen her or thought of her from that day to this. we came to america in the same ship.”
“isn’t she an american then?”
“oh yes; she lives at utica—in the interior.”
“in the interior of utica? you can’t mean my young woman then, who lives in new york, where she’s a great beauty and a great belle and has been immensely admired this winter.”
“after all,” said count otto, considering and a little disappointed, “the name’s not so uncommon; it’s perhaps another. but has she rather strange eyes, a little yellow, but very pretty, and a nose a little arched?”
“i can’t tell you all that; i haven’t seen her. she’s staying with mrs. steuben. she only came a day or two ago, and mrs. steuben’s to bring her. when she wrote to me to ask leave she told me what i tell you. they haven’t come yet.”
vogelstein felt a quick hope that the subject of this correspondence might indeed be the young lady he had parted from on the dock at new york, but the indications seemed to point another way, and he had no wish to cherish an illusion. it didn’t seem to him probable that the energetic girl who had introduced him to mr. lansing would have the entree of the best house in washington; besides, mrs. bonnycastle’s guest was described as a beauty and belonging to the brilliant city.
“what’s the social position of mrs. steuben?” it occurred to him to ask while he meditated. he had an earnest artless literal way of putting such a question as that; you could see from it that he was very thorough.
mrs. bonnycastle met it, however, but, with mocking laughter. “i’m sure i don’t know! what’s your own?”—and she left him to turn to her other guests, to several of whom she repeated his question. could they tell her what was the social position of mrs. steuben? there was count vogelstein who wanted to know. he instantly became aware of course that he oughtn’t so to have expressed himself. wasn’t the lady’s place in the scale sufficiently indicated by mrs. bonnycastle’s acquaintance with her? still there were fine degrees, and he felt a little unduly snubbed. it was perfectly true, as he told his hostess, that with the quick wave of new impressions that had rolled over him after his arrival in america the image of pandora was almost completely effaced; he had seen innumerable things that were quite as remarkable in their way as the heroine of the donau, but at the touch of the idea that he might see her and hear her again at any moment she became as vivid in his mind as if they had parted the day before: he remembered the exact shade of the eyes he had described to mrs. bonnycastle as yellow, the tone of her voice when at the last she expressed the hope he might judge america correctly. had he judged america correctly? if he were to meet her again she doubtless would try to ascertain. it would be going much too far to say that the idea of such an ordeal was terrible to count otto; but it may at least be said that the thought of meeting pandora day made him nervous. the fact is certainly singular, but i shall not take on myself to explain it; there are some things that even the most philosophic historian isn’t bound to account for.
he wandered into another room, and there, at the end of five minutes, he was introduced by mrs. bonnycastle to one of the young ladies of whom she had spoken. this was a very intelligent girl who came from boston and showed much acquaintance with spielhagen’s novels. “do you like them?” vogelstein asked rather vaguely, not taking much interest in the matter, as he read works of fiction only in case of a sea-voyage. the young lady from boston looked pensive and concentrated; then she answered that she liked some of them very much, but that there were others she didn’t like—and she enumerated the works that came under each of these heads. spielhagen is a voluminous writer, and such a catalogue took some time; at the end of it moreover vogelstein’s question was not answered, for he couldn’t have told us whether she liked spielhagen or not.
on the next topic, however, there was no doubt about her feelings. they talked about washington as people talk only in the place itself, revolving about the subject in widening and narrowing circles, perching successively on its many branches, considering it from every point of view. our young man had been long enough in america to discover that after half a century of social neglect washington had become the fashion and enjoyed the great advantage of being a new resource in conversation. this was especially the case in the months of spring, when the inhabitants of the commercial cities came so far southward to escape, after the long winter, that final affront. they were all agreed that washington was fascinating, and none of them were better prepared to talk it over than the bostonians. vogelstein originally had been rather out of step with them; he hadn’t seized their point of view, hadn’t known with what they compared this object of their infatuation. but now he knew everything; he had settled down to the pace; there wasn’t a possible phase of the discussion that could find him at a loss. there was a kind of hegelian element in it; in the light of these considerations the american capital took on the semblance of a monstrous mystical infinite werden. but they fatigued vogelstein a little, and it was his preference, as a general thing, not to engage the same evening with more than one newcomer, one visitor in the freshness of initiation. this was why mrs. bonnycastle’s expression of a wish to introduce him to three young ladies had startled him a little; he saw a certain process, in which he flattered himself that he had become proficient, but which was after all tolerably exhausting, repeated for each of the damsels. after separating from his judicious bostonian he rather evaded mrs. bonnycastle, contenting himself with the conversation of old friends, pitched for the most part in a lower and easier key.
at last he heard it mentioned that the president had arrived, had been some half-hour in the house, and he went in search of the illustrious guest, whose whereabouts at washington parties was never indicated by a cluster of courtiers. he made it a point, whenever he found himself in company with the president, to pay him his respects, and he had not been discouraged by the fact that there was no association of ideas in the eye of the great man as he put out his hand presidentially and said, “happy to meet you, sir.” count otto felt himself taken for a mere loyal subject, possibly for an office-seeker; and he used to reflect at such moments that the monarchical form had its merits it provided a line of heredity for the faculty of quick recognition. he had now some difficulty in finding the chief magistrate, and ended by learning that he was in the tea-room, a small apartment devoted to light refection near the entrance of the house. here our young man presently perceived him seated on a sofa and in conversation with a lady. there were a number of people about the table, eating, drinking, talking; and the couple on the sofa, which was not near it but against the wall, in a shallow recess, looked a little withdrawn, as if they had sought seclusion and were disposed to profit by the diverted attention of the others. the president leaned back; his gloved hands, resting on either knee, made large white spots. he looked eminent, but he looked relaxed, and the lady beside him ministered freely and without scruple, it was clear, to this effect of his comfortably unbending. vogelstein caught her voice as he approached. he heard her say “well now, remember; i consider it a promise.” she was beautifully dressed, in rose-colour; her hands were clasped in her lap and her eyes attached to the presidential profile.
“well, madam, in that case it’s about the fiftieth promise i’ve given today.”
it was just as he heard these words, uttered by her companion in reply, that count otto checked himself, turned away and pretended to be looking for a cup of tea. it wasn’t usual to disturb the president, even simply to shake hands, when he was sitting on a sofa with a lady, and the young secretary felt it in this case less possible than ever to break the rule, for the lady on the sofa was none other than pandora day. he had recognised her without her appearing to see him, and even with half an eye, as they said, had taken in that she was now a person to be reckoned with. she had an air of elation, of success; she shone, to intensity, in her rose-coloured dress; she was extracting promises from the ruler of fifty millions of people. what an odd place to meet her, her old shipmate thought, and how little one could tell, after all, in america, who people were! he didn’t want to speak to her yet; he wanted to wait a little and learn more; but meanwhile there was something attractive in the fact that she was just behind him, a few yards off, that if he should turn he might see her again. it was she mrs. bonnycastle had meant, it was she who was so much admired in new york. her face was the same, yet he had made out in a moment that she was vaguely prettier; he had recognised the arch of her nose, which suggested a fine ambition. he took some tea, which he hadn’t desired, in order not to go away. he remembered her entourage on the steamer; her father and mother, the silent senseless burghers, so little “of the world,” her infant sister, so much of it, her humorous brother with his tall hat and his influence in the smoking-room. he remembered mrs. dangerfield’s warnings—yet her perplexities too—and the letter from mr. bellamy, and the introduction to mr. lansing, and the way pandora had stooped down on the dirty dock, laughing and talking, mistress of the situation, to open her trunk for the customs. he was pretty sure she had paid no duties that day; this would naturally have been the purpose of mr. bellamy’s letter. was she still in correspondence with that gentleman, and had he got over the sickness interfering with their reunion? these images and these questions coursed through count otto’s mind, and he saw it must be quite in pandora’s line to be mistress of the situation, for there was evidently nothing on the present occasion that could call itself her master. he drank his tea and as; he put down his cup heard the president, behind him, say: “well, i guess my wife will wonder why i don’t come home.”
“why didn’t you bring her with you?” pandora benevolently asked.
“well, she doesn’t go out much. then she has got her sister staying with her—mrs. runkle, from natchez. she’s a good deal of an invalid, and my wife doesn’t like to leave her.”
“she must be a very kind woman”—and there was a high mature competence in the way the girl sounded the note of approval.
“well, i guess she isn’t spoiled—yet.”
“i should like very much to come and see her,” said pandora.
“do come round. couldn’t you come some night?” the great man responded.
“well, i’ll come some time. and i shall remind you of your promise.”
“all right. there’s nothing like keeping it up. well,” said the president, “i must bid good-bye to these bright folks.”
vogelstein heard him rise from the sofa with his companion; after which he gave the pair time to pass out of the room before him. they did it with a certain impressive deliberation, people making way for the ruler of fifty millions and looking with a certain curiosity at the striking pink person at his side. when a little later he followed them across the hall, into one of the other rooms, he saw the host and hostess accompany the president to the door and two foreign ministers and a judge of the supreme court address themselves to pandora day. he resisted the impulse to join this circle: if he should speak to her at all he would somehow wish it to be in more privacy. she continued nevertheless to occupy him, and when mrs. bonnycastle came back from the hall he immediately approached her with an appeal. “i wish you’d tell me something more about that girl—that one opposite and in pink.”
“the lovely day—that’s what they call her, i believe? i wanted you to talk with her.”
“i find she is the one i’ve met. but she seems to be so different here. i can’t make it out,” said count otto.
there was something in his expression that again moved mrs. bonnycastle to mirth. “how we do puzzle you europeans! you look quite bewildered.”
“i’m sorry i look so—i try to hide it. but of course we’re very simple. let me ask then a simple earnest childlike question. are her parents also in society?”
“parents in society? d’ou tombez-vous? did you ever hear of the parents of a triumphant girl in rose-colour, with a nose all her own, in society?”
“is she then all alone?” he went on with a strain of melancholy in his voice.
mrs. bonnycastle launched at him all her laughter.
“you’re too pathetic. don’t you know what she is? i supposed of course you knew.”
“it’s exactly what i’m asking you.”
“why she’s the new type. it has only come up lately. they have had articles about it in the papers. that’s the reason i told mrs. steuben to bring her.”
“the new type? what new type, mrs. bonnycastle?” he returned pleadingly—so conscious was he that all types in america were new.
her laughter checked her reply a moment, and by the time she had recovered herself the young lady from boston, with whom vogelstein had been talking, stood there to take leave. this, for an american type, was an old one, he was sure; and the process of parting between the guest and her hostess had an ancient elaboration. count otto waited a little; then he turned away and walked up to pandora day, whose group of interlocutors had now been reenforced by a gentleman who had held an important place in the cabinet of the late occupant of the presidential chair. he had asked mrs. bonnycastle if she were “all alone”; but there was nothing in her present situation to show her for solitary. she wasn’t sufficiently alone for our friend’s taste; but he was impatient and he hoped she’d give him a few words to himself. she recognised him without a moment’s hesitation and with the sweetest smile, a smile matching to a shade the tone in which she said: “i was watching you. i wondered if you weren’t going to speak to me.”
“miss day was watching him!” one of the foreign ministers exclaimed; “and we flattered ourselves that her attention was all with us.”
“i mean before,” said the girl, “while i was talking with the president.”
at which the gentlemen began to laugh, one of them remarking that this was the way the absent were sacrificed, even the great; while another put on record that he hoped vogelstein was duly flattered.
“oh i was watching the president too,” said pandora. “i’ve got to watch him. he has promised me something.”
“it must be the mission to england,” the judge of the supreme court suggested. “a good position for a lady; they’ve got a lady at the head over there.”
“i wish they would send you to my country,” one of the foreign ministers suggested. “i’d immediately get recalled.”
“why perhaps in your country i wouldn’t speak to you! it’s only because you’re here,” the exheroine of the donau returned with a gay familiarity which evidently ranked with her but as one of the arts of defence. “you’ll see what mission it is when it comes out. but i’ll speak to count vogelstein anywhere,” she went on. “he’s an older friend than any right here. i’ve known him in difficult days.”
“oh yes, on the great ocean,” the young man smiled. “on the watery waste, in the tempest!”
“oh i don’t mean that so much; we had a beautiful voyage and there wasn’t any tempest. i mean when i was living in utica. that’s a watery waste if you like, and a tempest there would have been a pleasant variety.”
“your parents seemed to me so peaceful!” her associate in the other memories sighed with a vague wish to say something sympathetic.
“oh you haven’t seen them ashore! at utica they were very lively. but that’s no longer our natural home. don’t you remember i told you i was working for new york? well, i worked—l had to work hard. but we’ve moved.”
count otto clung to his interest. “and i hope they’re happy.”
“my father and mother? oh they will be, in time. i must give them time. they’re very young yet, they’ve years before them. and you’ve been always in washington?” pandora continued. “i suppose you’ve found out everything about everything.”
“oh no—there are some things i can’t find out.”
“come and see me and perhaps i can help you. i’m very different from what i was in that phase. i’ve advanced a great deal since then.”
“oh how was miss day in that phase?” asked a cabinet minister of the last administration.
“she was delightful of course,” count otto said.
“he’s very flattering; i didn’t open my mouth!” pandora cried. “here comes mrs. steuben to take me to some other place. i believe it’s a literary party near the capitol. everything seems so separate in washington. mrs. steuben’s going to read a poem. i wish she’d read it here; wouldn’t it do as well?”
this lady, arriving, signified to her young friend the necessity of their moving on. but miss day’s companions had various things to say to her before giving her up. she had a vivid answer for each, and it was brought home to vogelstein while he listened that this would be indeed, in her development, as she said, another phase. daughter of small burghers as she might be she was really brilliant. he turned away a little and while mrs. steuben waited put her a question. he had made her half an hour before the subject of that inquiry to which mrs. bonnycastle returned so ambiguous an answer; but this wasn’t because he failed of all direct acquaintance with the amiable woman or of any general idea of the esteem in which she was held. he had met her in various places and had been at her house. she was the widow of a commodore, was a handsome mild soft swaying person, whom every one liked, with glossy bands of black hair and a little ringlet depending behind each ear. some one had said that she looked like the vieux jeu, idea of the queen in hamlet. she had written verses which were admired in the south, wore a full-length portrait of the commodore on her bosom and spoke with the accent of savannah. she had about her a positive strong odour of washington. it had certainly been very superfluous in our young man to question mrs. bonnycastle about her social position.
“do kindly tell me,” he said, lowering his voice, “what’s the type to which that young lady belongs? mrs. bonnycastle tells me it’s a new one.”
mrs. steuben for a moment fixed her liquid eyes on the secretary of legation. she always seemed to be translating the prose of your speech into the finer rhythms with which her own mind was familiar. “do you think anything’s really new?” she then began to flute. “i’m very fond of the old; you know that’s a weakness of we southerners.” the poor lady, it will be observed, had another weakness as well. “what we often take to be the new is simply the old under some novel form. were there not remarkable natures in the past? if you doubt it you should visit the south, where the past still lingers.”
vogelstein had been struck before this with mrs. steuben’s pronunciation of the word by which her native latitudes were designated; transcribing it from her lips you would have written it (as the nearest approach) the sooth. but at present he scarce heeded this peculiarity; he was wondering rather how a woman could be at once so copious and so uninforming. what did he care about the past or even about the sooth? he was afraid of starting her again. he looked at her, discouraged and helpless, as bewildered almost as mrs. bonnycastle had found him half an hour before; looked also at the commodore, who, on her bosom, seemed to breathe again with his widow’s respirations. “call it an old type then if you like,” he said in a moment. “all i want to know is what type it is! it seems impossible,” he gasped, “to find out.”
“you can find out in the newspapers. they’ve had articles about it. they write about everything now. but it isn’t true about miss day. it’s one of the first families. her great-grandfather was in the revolution.” pandora by this time had given her attention again to mrs. steuben. she seemed to signify that she was ready to move on. “wasn’t your great-grandfather in the revolution?” the elder lady asked. “i’m telling count vogelstein about him.”
“why are you asking about my ancestors?” the girl demanded of the young german with untempered brightness. “is that the thing you said just now that you can’t find out? well, if mrs. steuben will only be quiet you never will.”
mrs. steuben shook her head rather dreamily. “well, it’s no trouble for we of the sooth to be quiet. there’s a kind of languor in our blood. besides, we have to be today. but i’ve got to show some energy to-night. i’ve got to get you to the end of pennsylvania avenue.”
pandora gave her hand to count otto and asked him if he thought they should meet again. he answered that in washington people were always meeting again and that at any rate he shouldn’t fail to wait upon her. hereupon, just as the two ladies were detaching themselves, mrs. steuben remarked that if the count and miss day wished to meet again the picnic would be a good chance—the picnic she was getting up for the following thursday. it was to consist of about twenty bright people, and they’d go down the potomac to mount vernon. the count answered that if mrs. steuben thought him bright enough he should be delighted to join the party; and he was told the hour for which the tryst was taken.
he remained at mrs. bonnycastle’s after every one had gone, and then he informed this lady of his reason for waiting. would she have mercy on him and let him know, in a single word, before he went to rest—for without it rest would be impossible—what was this famous type to which pandora day belonged?
“gracious, you don’t mean to say you’ve not found out that type yet!” mrs. bonnycastle exclaimed with a return of her hilarity. “what have you been doing all the evening? you germans may be thorough, but you certainly are not quick!”
it was alfred bonnycastle who at last took pity on him. “my dear vogelstein, she’s the latest freshest fruit of our great american evolution. she’s the self-made girl!”
count otto gazed a moment. “the fruit of the great american revolution? yes, mrs. steuben told me her great-grandfather—” but the rest of his sentence was lost in a renewed explosion of mrs. bonnycastle’s sense of the ridiculous. he bravely pushed his advantage, such as it was, however, and, desiring his host’s definition to be defined, inquired what the self-made girl might be.
“sit down and we’ll tell you all about it,” mrs. bonnycastle said. “i like talking this way, after a party’s over. you can smoke if you like, and alfred will open another window. well, to begin with, the self-made girl’s a new feature. that, however, you know. in the second place she isn’t self-made at all. we all help to make her—we take such an interest in her.”
“that’s only after she’s made!” alfred bonnycastle broke in. “but it’s vogelstein that takes an interest. what on earth has started you up so on the subject of miss day?”
the visitor explained as well as he could that it was merely the accident of his having crossed the ocean in the steamer with her; but he felt the inadequacy of this account of the matter, felt it more than his hosts, who could know neither how little actual contact he had had with her on the ship, how much he had been affected by mrs. dangerfield’s warnings, nor how much observation at the same time he had lavished on her. he sat there half an hour, and the warm dead stillness of the washington night—nowhere are the nights so silent—came in at the open window, mingled with a soft sweet earthy smell, the smell of growing things and in particular, as he thought, of mrs. steuben’s sooth. before he went away he had heard all about the self-made girl, and there was something in the picture that strongly impressed him. she was possible doubtless only in america; american life had smoothed the way for her. she was not fast, nor emancipated, nor crude, nor loud, and there wasn’t in her, of necessity at least, a grain of the stuff of which the adventuress is made. she was simply very successful, and her success was entirely personal. she hadn’t been born with the silver spoon of social opportunity; she had grasped it by honest exertion. you knew her by many different signs, but chiefly, infallibly, by the appearance of her parents. it was her parents who told her story; you always saw how little her parents could have made her. her attitude with regard to them might vary in different ways. as the great fact on her own side was that she had lifted herself from a lower social plane, done it all herself, and done it by the simple lever of her personality, it was naturally to be expected that she would leave the authors of her mere material being in the shade. sometimes she had them in her wake, lost in the bubbles and the foam that showed where she had passed; sometimes, as alfred bonnycastle said, she let them slide altogether; sometimes she kept them in close confinement, resorting to them under cover of night and with every precaution; sometimes she exhibited them to the public in discreet glimpses, in prearranged attitudes. but the general characteristic of the self-made girl was that, though it was frequently understood that she was privately devoted to her kindred, she never attempted to impose them on society, and it was striking that, though in some of her manifestations a bore, she was at her worst less of a bore than they. they were almost always solemn and portentous, and they were for the most part of a deathly respectability. she wasn’t necessarily snobbish, unless it was snobbish to want the best. she didn’t cringe, she didn’t make herself smaller than she was; she took on the contrary a stand of her own and attracted things to herself. naturally she was possible only in america—only in a country where whole ranges of competition and comparison were absent. the natural history of this interesting creature was at last completely laid bare to the earnest stranger, who, as he sat there in the animated stillness, with the fragrant breath of the western world in his nostrils, was convinced of what he had already suspected, that conversation in the great republic was more yearningly, not to say gropingly, psychological than elsewhere. another thing, as he learned, that you knew the self-made girl by was her culture, which was perhaps a little too restless and obvious. she had usually got into society more or less by reading, and her conversation was apt to be garnished with literary allusions, even with familiar quotations. vogelstein hadn’t had time to observe this element as a developed form in pandora day; but alfred bonnycastle hinted that he wouldn’t trust her to keep it under in a tete-a-tete. it was needless to say that these young persons had always been to europe; that was usually the first place they got to. by such arts they sometimes entered society on the other side before they did so at home; it was to be added at the same time that this resource was less and less valuable, for europe, in the american world, had less and less prestige and people in the western hemisphere now kept a watch on that roundabout road. all of which quite applied to pandora day— the journey to europe, the culture (as exemplified in the books she read on the ship), the relegation, the effacement, of the family. the only thing that was exceptional was the rapidity of her march; for the jump she had taken since he left her in the hands of mr. lansing struck vogelstein, even after he had made all allowance for the abnormal homogeneity of the american mass, as really considerable. it took all her cleverness to account for such things. when she “moved” from utica—mobilised her commissariat— the battle appeared virtually to have been gained.
count otto called the next day, and mrs. steuben’s blackamoor informed him, in the communicative manner of his race, that the ladies had gone out to pay some visits and look at the capitol. pandora apparently had not hitherto examined this monument, and our young man wished he had known, the evening before, of her omission, so that he might have offered to be her initiator. there is too obvious a connexion for us to fail of catching it between his regret and the fact that in leaving mrs. steuben’s door he reminded himself that he wanted a good walk, and that he thereupon took his way along pennsylvania avenue. his walk had become fairly good by the time he reached the great white edifice that unfolds its repeated colonnades and uplifts its isolated dome at the end of a long vista of saloons and tobacco-shops. he slowly climbed the great steps, hesitating a little, even wondering why he had come. the superficial reason was obvious enough, but there was a real one behind it that struck him as rather wanting in the solidity which should characterise the motives of an emissary of prince bismarck. the superficial reason was a belief that mrs. steuben would pay her visit first—it was probably only a question of leaving cards—and bring her young friend to the capitol at the hour when the yellow afternoon light would give a tone to the blankness of its marble walls. the capitol was a splendid building, but it was rather wanting in tone. vogelstein’s curiosity about pandora day had been much more quickened than checked by the revelations made to him in mrs. bonnycastle’s drawing-room. it was a relief to have the creature classified; but he had a desire, of which he had not been conscious before, to see really to the end how well, in other words how completely and artistically, a girl could make herself. his calculations had been just, and he had wandered about the rotunda for only ten minutes, looking again at the paintings, commemorative of the national annals, which occupy its lower spaces, and at the simulated sculptures, so touchingly characteristic of early american taste, which adorn its upper reaches, when the charming women he had been counting on presented themselves in charge of a licensed guide. he went to meet them and didn’t conceal from them that he had marked them for his very own. the encounter was happy on both sides, and he accompanied them through the queer and endless interior, through labyrinths of bleak bare development, into legislative and judicial halls. he thought it a hideous place; he had seen it all before and asked himself what senseless game he was playing. in the lower house were certain bedaubed walls, in the basest style of imitation, which made him feel faintly sick, not to speak of a lobby adorned with artless prints and photographs of eminent defunct congressmen that was all too serious for a joke and too comic for a valhalla. but pandora was greatly interested; she thought the capitol very fine; it was easy to criticise the details, but as a whole it was the most impressive building she had ever seen. she proved a charming fellow tourist; she had constantly something to say, but never said it too much; it was impossible to drag in the wake of a cicerone less of a lengthening or an irritating chain. vogelstein could see too that she wished to improve her mind; she looked at the historical pictures, at the uncanny statues of local worthies, presented by the different states—they were of different sizes, as if they had been “numbered,” in a shop—she asked questions of the guide and in the chamber of the senate requested him to show her the chairs of the gentlemen from new york. she sat down in one of them, though mrs. steuben told her that senator (she mistook the chair, dropping into another state) was a horrid old thing.
throughout the hour he spent with her vogelstein seemed to see how it was she had made herself. they walked about, afterwards on the splendid terrace that surrounds the capitol, the great marble floor on which it stands, and made vague remarks—pandora’s were the most definite—about the yellow sheen of the potomac, the hazy hills of virginia, the far-gleaming pediment of arlington, the raw confused-looking country. washington was beneath them, bristling and geometrical; the long lines of its avenues seemed to stretch into national futures. pandora asked count otto if he had ever been to athens and, on his admitting so much, sought to know whether the eminence on which they stood didn’t give him an idea of the acropolis in its prime. vogelstein deferred the satisfaction of this appeal to their next meeting; he was glad—in spite of the appeal—to make pretexts for seeing her again. he did so on the morrow; mrs. steuben’s picnic was still three days distant. he called on pandora a second time, also met her each evening in the washington world. it took very little of this to remind him that he was forgetting both mrs. dangerfield’s warnings and the admonitions—long familiar to him—of his own conscience. was he in peril of love? was he to be sacrificed on the altar of the american girl, an altar at which those other poor fellows had poured out some of the bluest blood in germany and he had himself taken oath he would never seriously worship? he decided that he wasn’t in real danger, that he had rather clinched his precautions. it was true that a young person who had succeeded so well for herself might be a great help to her husband; but this diplomatic aspirant preferred on the whole that his success should be his own: it wouldn’t please him to have the air of being pushed by his wife. such a wife as that would wish to push him, and he could hardly admit to himself that this was what fate had in reserve for him—to be propelled in his career by a young lady who would perhaps attempt to talk to the kaiser as he had heard her the other night talk to the president. would she consent to discontinue relations with her family, or would she wish still to borrow plastic relief from that domestic background? that her family was so impossible was to a certain extent an advantage; for if they had been a little better the question of a rupture would be less easy. he turned over these questions in spite of his security, or perhaps indeed because of it. the security made them speculative and disinterested.
they haunted him during the excursion to mount vernon, which took place according to traditions long established. mrs. steuben’s confederates assembled on the steamer and were set afloat on the big brown stream which had already seemed to our special traveller to have too much bosom and too little bank. here and there, however, he became conscious of a shore where there was something to look at, even though conscious at the same time that he had of old lost great opportunities of an idyllic cast in not having managed to be more “thrown with” a certain young lady on the deck of the north german lloyd. the two turned round together to hang over alexandria, which for pandora, as she declared, was a picture of old virginia. she told vogelstein that she was always hearing about it during the civil war, ages before. little girl as she had been at the time she remembered all the names that were on people’s lips during those years of reiteration. this historic spot had a touch of the romance of rich decay, a reference to older things, to a dramatic past. the past of alexandria appeared in the vista of three or four short streets sloping up a hill and lined with poor brick warehouses erected for merchandise that had ceased to come or go. it looked hot and blank and sleepy, down to the shabby waterside where tattered darkies dangled their bare feet from the edge of rotting wharves. pandora was even more interested in mount vernon—when at last its wooded bluff began to command the river—than she had been in the capitol, and after they had disembarked and ascended to the celebrated mansion she insisted on going into every room it contained. she “claimed for it,” as she said—some of her turns were so characteristic both of her nationality and her own style— the finest situation in the world, and was distinct as to the shame of their not giving it to the president for his country-seat. most of her companions had seen the house often, and were now coupling themselves in the grounds according to their sympathies, so that it was easy for vogelstein to offer the benefit of his own experience to the most inquisitive member of the party. they were not to lunch for another hour, and in the interval the young man roamed with his first and fairest acquaintance. the breath of the potomac, on the boat, had been a little harsh, but on the softly-curving lawn, beneath the clustered trees, with the river relegated to a mere shining presence far below and in the distance, the day gave out nothing but its mildness, the whole scene became noble and genial.
count otto could joke a little on great occasions, and the present one was worthy of his humour. he maintained to his companion that the shallow painted mansion resembled a false house, a “wing” or structure of daubed canvas, on the stage; but she answered him so well with certain economical palaces she had seen in germany, where, as she said, there was nothing but china stoves and stuffed birds, that he was obliged to allow the home of washington to be after all really gemuthlich. what he found so in fact was the soft texture of the day, his personal situation, the sweetness of his suspense. for suspense had decidedly become his portion; he was under a charm that made him feel he was watching his own life and that his susceptibilities were beyond his control. it hung over him that things might take a turn, from one hour to the other, which would make them very different from what they had been yet; and his heart certainly beat a little faster as he wondered what that turn might be. why did he come to picnics on fragrant april days with american girls who might lead him too far? wouldn’t such girls be glad to marry a pomeranian count? and would they, after all, talk that way to the kaiser? if he were to marry one of them he should have to give her several thorough lessons.
in their little tour of the house our young friend and his companion had had a great many fellow visitors, who had also arrived by the steamer and who had hitherto not left them an ideal privacy. but the others gradually dispersed; they circled about a kind of showman who was the authorised guide, a big slow genial vulgar heavily-bearded man, with a whimsical edifying patronising tone, a tone that had immense success when he stopped here and there to make his points—to pass his eyes over his listening flock, then fix them quite above it with a meditative look and bring out some ancient pleasantry as if it were a sudden inspiration. he made a cheerful thing, an echo of the platform before the booth of a country fair, even of a visit to the tomb of the pater patriae. it is enshrined in a kind of grotto in the grounds, and vogelstein remarked to pandora that he was a good man for the place, but was too familiar. “oh he’d have been familiar with washington,” said the girl with the bright dryness with which she often uttered amusing things. vogelstein looked at her a moment, and it came over him, as he smiled, that she herself probably wouldn’t have been abashed even by the hero with whom history has taken fewest liberties. “you look as if you could hardly believe that,” pandora went on. “you germans are always in such awe of great people.” and it occurred to her critic that perhaps after all washington would have liked her manner, which was wonderfully fresh and natural. the man with the beard was an ideal minister to american shrines; he played on the curiosity of his little band with the touch of a master, drawing them at the right moment away to see the classic ice-house where the old lady had been found weeping in the belief it was washington’s grave. while this monument was under inspection our interesting couple had the house to themselves, and they spent some time on a pretty terrace where certain windows of the second floor opened—a little rootless verandah which overhung, in a manner, obliquely, all the magnificence of the view; the immense sweep of the river, the artistic plantations, the last-century garden with its big box hedges and remains of old espaliers. they lingered here for nearly half an hour, and it was in this retirement that vogelstein enjoyed the only approach to intimate conversation appointed for him, as was to appear, with a young woman in whom he had been unable to persuade himself that he was not absorbed. it’s not necessary, and it’s not possible, that i should reproduce this colloquy; but i may mention that it began—as they leaned against the parapet of the terrace and heard the cheerful voice of the showman wafted up to them from a distance—with his saying to her rather abruptly that he couldn’t make out why they hadn’t had more talk together when they crossed the atlantic.
“well, i can if you can’t,” said pandora. “i’d have talked quick enough if you had spoken to me. i spoke to you first.”
“yes, i remember that”—and it affected him awkwardly.
“you listened too much to mrs. dangerfield.”
he feigned a vagueness. “to mrs. dangerfield?”
“that woman you were always sitting with; she told you not to speak to me. i’ve seen her in new york; she speaks to me now herself. she recommended you to have nothing to do with me.”
“oh how can you say such dreadful things?” count otto cried with a very becoming blush.
“you know you can’t deny it. you weren’t attracted by my family. they’re charming people when you know them. i don’t have a better time anywhere than i have at home,” the girl went on loyally. “but what does it matter? my family are very happy. they’re getting quite used to new york. mrs. dangerfield’s a vulgar wretch—next winter she’ll call on me.”
“you are unlike any madchen i’ve ever seen—i don’t understand you,” said poor vogelstein with the colour still in his face.
“well, you never will understand me—probably; but what difference does it make?”
he attempted to tell her what difference, but i’ve no space to follow him here. it’s known that when the german mind attempts to explain things it doesn’t always reduce them to simplicity, and pandora was first mystified, then amused, by some of the count’s revelations. at last i think she was a little frightened, for she remarked irrelevantly, with some decision, that luncheon would be ready and that they ought to join mrs. steuben. her companion walked slowly, on purpose, as they left the house together, for he knew the pang of a vague sense that he was losing her.
“and shall you be in washington many days yet?” he appealed as they went.
“it will all depend. i’m expecting important news. what i shall do will be influenced by that.”
the way she talked about expecting news—and important!—made him feel somehow that she had a career, that she was active and independent, so that he could scarcely hope to stop her as she passed. it was certainly true that he had never seen any girl like her. it would have occurred to him that the news she was expecting might have reference to the favour she had begged of the president, if he hadn’t already made up his mind—in the calm of meditation after that talk with the bonnycastles—that this favour must be a pleasantry. what she had said to him had a discouraging, a somewhat chilling effect; nevertheless it was not without a certain ardour that he inquired of her whether, so long as she stayed in washington, he mightn’t pay her certain respectful attentions.
“as many as you like—and as respectful ones; but you won’t keep them up for ever!”
“you try to torment me,” said count otto.
she waited to explain. “i mean that i may have some of my family.”
“i shall be delighted to see them again.”
again she just hung fire. “there are some you’ve never seen.”
in the afternoon, returning to washington on the steamer, vogelstein received a warning. it came from mrs. bonnycastle and constituted, oddly enough, the second juncture at which an officious female friend had, while sociably afloat with him, advised him on the subject of pandora day.
“there’s one thing we forgot to tell you the other night about the self-made girl,” said the lady of infinite mirth. “it’s never safe to fix your affections on her, because she has almost always an impediment somewhere in the background.”
he looked at her askance, but smiled and said: “i should understand your information—for which i’m so much obliged—a little better if i knew what you mean by an impediment.”
“oh i mean she’s always engaged to some young man who belongs to her earlier phase.”
“her earlier phase?”
“the time before she had made herself—when she lived unconscious of her powers. a young man from utica, say. they usually have to wait; he’s probably in a store. it’s a long engagement.”
count otto somehow preferred to understand as little as possible. “do you mean a betrothal—to take effect?”
“i don’t mean anything german and moonstruck. i mean that piece of peculiarly american enterprise a premature engagement—to take effect, but too complacently, at the end of time.”
vogelstein very properly reflected that it was no use his having entered the diplomatic career if he weren’t able to bear himself as if this interesting generalisation had no particular message for him. he did mrs. bonnycastle moreover the justice to believe that she wouldn’t have approached the question with such levity if she had supposed she should make him wince. the whole thing was, like everything else, but for her to laugh at, and the betrayal moreover of a good intention. “i see, i see—the self-made girl has of course always had a past. yes, and the young man in the store—from utica—is part of her past.”
“you express it perfectly,” said mrs. bonnycastle. “i couldn’t say it better myself.”
“but with her present, with her future, when they change like this young lady’s, i suppose everything else changes. how do you say it in america? she lets him slide.”
“we don’t say it at all!” mrs. bonnycastle cried. “she does nothing of the sort; for what do you take her? she sticks to him; that at least is what we expect her to do,” she added with less assurance. “as i tell you, the type’s new and the case under consideration. we haven’t yet had time for complete study.”
“oh of course i hope she sticks to him,” vogelstein declared simply and with his german accent more audible, as it always was when he was slightly agitated.
for the rest of the trip he was rather restless. he wandered about the boat, talking little with the returning picnickers. toward the last, as they drew near washington and the white dome of the capitol hung aloft before them, looking as simple as a suspended snowball, he found himself, on the deck, in proximity to mrs. steuben. he reproached himself with having rather neglected her during an entertainment for which he was indebted to her bounty, and he sought to repair his omission by a proper deference. but the only act of homage that occurred to him was to ask her as by chance whether miss day were, to her knowledge, engaged.
mrs. steuben turned her southern eyes upon him with a look of almost romantic compassion. “to my knowledge? why of course i’d know! i should think you’d know too. didn’t you know she was engaged? why she has been engaged since she was sixteen.”
count otto gazed at the dome of the capitol. “to a gentleman from utica?
“yes, a native of her place. she’s expecting him soon.”
“i’m so very glad to hear it,” said vogelstein, who decidedly, for his career, had promise. “and is she going to marry him?”
“why what do people fall in love with each other for? i presume they’ll marry when she gets round to it. ah if she had only been from the sooth—!”
at this he broke quickly in: “but why have they never brought it off, as you say, in so many years?”
“well, at first she was too young, and then she thought her family ought to see europe—of course they could see it better with her— and they spent some time there. and then mr. bellamy had some business difficulties that made him feel as if he didn’t want to marry just then. but he has given up business and i presume feels more free. of course it’s rather long, but all the while they’ve been engaged. it’s a true, true love,” said mrs. steuben, whose sound of the adjective was that of a feeble flute.
“is his name mr. bellamy?” the count asked with his haunting reminiscence. “d. f. bellamy, so? and has he been in a store?”
“i don’t know what kind of business it was: it was some kind of business in utica. i think he had a branch in new york. he’s one of the leading gentlemen of utica and very highly educated. he’s a good deal older than miss day. he’s a very fine man—i presume a college man. he stands very high in utica. i don’t know why you look as if you doubted it.”
vogelstein assured mrs. steuben that he doubted nothing, and indeed what she told him was probably the more credible for seeming to him eminently strange. bellamy had been the name of the gentleman who, a year and a half before, was to have met pandora on the arrival of the german steamer; it was in bellamy’s name that she had addressed herself with such effusion to bellamy’s friend, the man in the straw hat who was about to fumble in her mother’s old clothes. this was a fact that seemed to count otto to finish the picture of her contradictions; it wanted at present no touch to be complete. yet even as it hung there before him it continued to fascinate him, and he stared at it, detached from surrounding things and feeling a little as if he had been pitched out of an overturned vehicle, till the boat bumped against one of the outstanding piles of the wharf at which mrs. steuben’s party was to disembark. there was some delay in getting the steamer adjusted to the dock, during which the passengers watched the process over its side and extracted what entertainment they might from the appearance of the various persons collected to receive it. there were darkies and loafers and hackmen, and also vague individuals, the loosest and blankest he had ever seen anywhere, with tufts on their chins, toothpicks in their mouths, hands in their pockets, rumination in their jaws and diamond pins in their shirt-fronts, who looked as if they had sauntered over from pennsylvania avenue to while away half an hour, forsaking for that interval their various slanting postures in the porticoes of the hotels and the doorways of the saloons.
“oh i’m so glad! how sweet of you to come down!” it was a voice close to count otto’s shoulder that spoke these words, and he had no need to turn to see from whom it proceeded. it had been in his ears the greater part of the day, though, as he now perceived, without the fullest richness of expression of which it was capable. still less was he obliged to turn to discover to whom it was addressed, for the few simple words i have quoted had been flung across the narrowing interval of water, and a gentleman who had stepped to the edge of the dock without our young man’s observing him tossed back an immediate reply.
“i got here by the three o’clock train. they told me in k street where you were, and i thought i’d come down and meet you.”
“charming attention!” said pandora day with the laugh that seemed always to invite the whole of any company to partake in it; though for some moments after this she and her interlocutor appeared to continue the conversation only with their eyes. meanwhile vogelstein’s also were not idle. he looked at her visitor from head to foot, and he was aware that she was quite unconscious of his own proximity. the gentleman before him was tall, good-looking, well-dressed; evidently he would stand well not only at utica, but, judging from the way he had planted himself on the dock, in any position that circumstances might compel him to take up. he was about forty years old; he had a black moustache and he seemed to look at the world over some counter-like expanse on which he invited it all warily and pleasantly to put down first its idea of the terms of a transaction. he waved a gloved hand at pandora as if, when she exclaimed “gracious, ain’t they long!” to urge her to be patient. she was patient several seconds and then asked him if he had any news. he looked at her briefly, in silence, smiling, after which he drew from his pocket a large letter with an official-looking seal and shook it jocosely above his head. this was discreetly, covertly done. no one but our young man appeared aware of how much was taking place—and poor count otto mainly felt it in the air. the boat was touching the wharf and the space between the pair inconsiderable.
“department of state?” pandora very prettily and soundlessly mouthed across at him.
“that’s what they call it.”
“well, what country?”
“what’s your opinion of the dutch?” the gentleman asked for answer.
“oh gracious!” cried pandora.
“well, are you going to wait for the return trip?” said the gentleman.
our silent sufferer turned away, and presently mrs. steuben and her companion disembarked together. when this lady entered a carriage with miss day the gentleman who had spoken to the girl followed them; the others scattered, and vogelstein, declining with thanks a “lift” from mrs. bonnycastle, walked home alone and in some intensity of meditation. two days later he saw in a newspaper an announcement that the president had offered the post of minister to holland to mr. d. f. bellamy of utica; and in the course of a month he heard from mrs. steuben that pandora, a thousand other duties performed, had finally “got round” to the altar of her own nuptials. he communicated this news to mrs. bonnycastle, who had not heard it but who, shrieking at the queer face he showed her, met it with the remark that there was now ground for a new induction as to the self-made girl.
