Pandora | Page 8

her neck and having among its
convolutions a hole for her perfectly expressionless face. Her hands
were folded on her stomach, and in her still, swathed figure her little
bead-like eyes, which occasionally changed their direction, alone
represented life. Her husband had a stiff grey beard on his chin and a
bare spacious upper lip, to which constant shaving had imparted a hard
glaze. His eyebrows were thick and his nostrils wide, and when he was
uncovered, in the saloon, it was visible that his grizzled hair was dense
and perpendicular. He might have looked rather grim and truculent
hadn't it been for the mild familiar accommodating gaze with which his
large light-coloured pupils--the leisurely eyes of a silent man--appeared
to consider surrounding objects. He was evidently more friendly than
fierce, but he was more diffident than friendly. He liked to have you in
sight, but wouldn't have pretended to understand you much or to
classify you, and would have been sorry it should put you under an
obligation. He and his wife spoke sometimes, but seldom talked, and
there was something vague and patient in them, as if they had become
victims of a wrought spell. The spell however was of no sinister cast; it
was the fascination of prosperity, the confidence of security, which
sometimes makes people arrogant, but which had had such a different
effect on this simple satisfied pair, in whom further development of
every kind appeared to have been happily arrested.
Mrs. Dangerfield made it known to Count Otto that every morning after
breakfast, the hour at which he wrote his journal in his cabin, the old
couple were guided upstairs and installed in their customary corner by
Pandora. This she had learned to be the name of their elder daughter,
and she was immensely amused by her discovery. "Pandora"--that was
in the highest degree typical; it placed them in the social scale if other
evidence had been wanting; you could tell that a girl was from the
interior, the mysterious interior about which Vogelstein's imagination
was now quite excited, when she had such a name as that. This young
lady managed the whole family, even a little the small beflounced sister,
who, with bold pretty innocent eyes, a torrent of fair silky hair, a
crimson fez, such as is worn by male Turks, very much askew on top of
it, and a way of galloping and straddling about the ship in any company

she could pick up--she had long thin legs, very short skirts and
stockings of every tint-- was going home, in elegant French clothes, to
resume an interrupted education. Pandora overlooked and directed her
relatives; Vogelstein could see this for himself, could see she was very
active and decided, that she had in a high degree the sentiment of
responsibility, settling on the spot most of the questions that could
come up for a family from the interior.
The voyage was remarkably fine, and day after day it was possible to
sit there under the salt sky and feel one's self rounding the great curves
of the globe. The long deck made a white spot in the sharp black circle
of the ocean and in the intense sea-light, while the shadow of the
smoke-streamers trembled on the familiar floor, the shoes of
fellow-passengers, distinctive now, and in some cases irritating, passed
and repassed, accompanied, in the air so tremendously "open," that
rendered all voices weak and most remarks rather flat, by fragments of
opinion on the run of the ship. Vogelstein by this time had finished his
little American story and now definitely judged that Pandora Day was
not at all like the heroine. She was of quite another type; much more
serious and strenuous, and not at all keen, as he had supposed, about
making the acquaintance of gentlemen. Her speaking to him that first
afternoon had been, he was bound to believe, an incident without
importance for herself; in spite of her having followed it up the next
day by the remark, thrown at him as she passed, with a smile that was
almost fraternal: "It's all right, sir! I've found that old chair." After this
she hadn't spoken to him again and had scarcely looked at him. She
read a great deal, and almost always French books, in fresh yellow
paper; not the lighter forms of that literature, but a volume of
Sainte-Beuve, of Renan or at the most, in the way of dissipation, of
Alfred de Musset. She took frequent exercise and almost always
walked alone, apparently not having made many friends on the ship and
being without the resource of her parents, who, as has been related,
never budged out of the cosy corner in which she planted them for the
day.
Her brother was always in the