PAGE 13
Pandora
by
“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.