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Pandora By: Henry James (1843-1916) |
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PANDORA by Henry James
CHAPTER I It has long been the custom of the North German Lloyd steamers,
which convey passengers from Bremen to New York, to anchor for
several hours in the pleasant port of Southampton, where their human
cargo receives many additions. An intelligent young German, Count
Otto Vogelstein, hardly knew a few years ago whether to condemn this
custom or approve it. He leaned over the bulwarks of the Donau as
the American passengers crossed the plank the travellers who embark
at Southampton are mainly of that nationality and curiously,
indifferently, vaguely, through the smoke of his cigar, saw them
absorbed in the huge capacity of the ship, where he had the
agreeable consciousness that his own nest was comfortably made. To
watch from such a point of vantage the struggles of those less
fortunate than ourselves of the uninformed, the unprovided, the
belated, the bewildered is an occupation not devoid of sweetness,
and there was nothing to mitigate the complacency with which our
young friend gave himself up to it; nothing, that is, save a natural
benevolence which had not yet been extinguished by the consciousness
of official greatness. For Count Vogelstein was official, as I
think you would have seen from the straightness of his back, the
lustre of his light elegant spectacles, and something discreet and
diplomatic in the curve of his moustache, which looked as if it
might well contribute to the principal function, as cynics say, of
the lips the active concealment of thought. He had been appointed
to the secretaryship of the German legation at Washington and in
these first days of the autumn was about to take possession of his
post. He was a model character for such a purpose serious civil
ceremonious curious stiff, stuffed with knowledge and convinced
that, as lately rearranged, the German Empire places in the most
striking light the highest of all the possibilities of the greatest
of all the peoples. He was quite aware, however, of the claims to
economic and other consideration of the United States, and that this
quarter of the globe offered a vast field for study. The process of inquiry had already begun for him, in spite of his
having as yet spoken to none of his fellow passengers; the case
being that Vogelstein inquired not only with his tongue, but with
his eyes that is with his spectacles with his ears, with his nose,
with his palate, with all his senses and organs. He was a highly
upright young man, whose only fault was that his sense of comedy, or
of the humour of things, had never been specifically disengaged from
his several other senses. He vaguely felt that something should be
done about this, and in a general manner proposed to do it, for he
was on his way to explore a society abounding in comic aspects.
This consciousness of a missing measure gave him a certain mistrust
of what might be said of him; and if circumspection is the essence
of diplomacy our young aspirant promised well. His mind contained
several millions of facts, packed too closely together for the light
breeze of the imagination to draw through the mass. He was
impatient to report himself to his superior in Washington, and the
loss of time in an English port could only incommode him, inasmuch
as the study of English institutions was no part of his mission. On
the other hand the day was charming; the blue sea, in Southampton
Water, pricked all over with light, had no movement but that of its
infinite shimmer. Moreover he was by no means sure that he should
be happy in the United States, where doubtless he should find
himself soon enough disembarked. He knew that this was not an
important question and that happiness was an unscientific term, such
as a man of his education should be ashamed to use even in the
silence of his thoughts. Lost none the less in the inconsiderate
crowd and feeling himself neither in his own country nor in that to
which he was in a manner accredited, he was reduced to his mere
personality; so that during the hour, to save his importance, he
cultivated such ground as lay in sight for a judgement of this delay
to which the German steamer was subjected in English waters... Continue reading book >>
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Literature |
Romance |
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