"But you think it quite impossible?"
"Which is to say that I dictate to Nature. Well, I don't think I should do that at my time of life."
They all laughed, and went off to the Alcazar, where a Russian woman danced divinely, and was followed by a red-nosed man, who broke plates to the great delight of an immense audience. Faber was not displeased to find himself with these two pretty women in a box, where all the world could see him; and it occurred to him before he had been there very long that the house had recognised him, and that he was being pointed out to other pretty women in the seats below. Certainly, this visit to Berlin was becoming a famous thing in its way. It compelled him to understand the meaning of that fame he had won for himself and the homage paid both to him and to his house. A glamour of life, unknown hitherto, but very dazzling, could influence even so balanced a judgment and so cynical a student of humanity. Hardly one of the women, rustling in silks and velvets, bedizened in jewels—hardly one of them to whom he might not have thrown the handkerchief, if he would. The knowledge flattered his pride, and set him thinking of Gabrielle Silvester. Well dressed and wonderful as these women were, Gabrielle would have held her own among them all. He thought of her as destined to rule amid a glitter of jewels and an incense of roses. There was no house in all Europe she could not grace, he said.
A vain thought. She was engaged to a fool of a boy, who could play cricket; and that very night upon his return to the hotel, he found a letter from her in which she confessed to the folly without excuse. Harry wished for an early day. He had altered his plans, and thought now that he would not go to Australia.
II
Faber read the letter in a deep chair by the fireside—in his private room at the Metropole. Bertie Morris, meanwhile, had the English newspaper and a very large whisky and soda. Both men had caught the Berlin habit, and lived rather by night than by day. The hotel itself was then, at a quarter to one in the morning, beginning to amuse itself seriously.
Gabrielle wrote a pretty hand, round as her own limbs, precise as her own habits, with here and there a fine flourish to denote a certain want of stability. It was to be expected that she would make early mention of her charge; but she dwelt so insistently upon what Maryska de Paleologue had done that she must have presupposed an interest beyond the common. And then there was the postscript—a word of real alarm or of deep design. Faber readily granted the former, and would have nothing to do with the latter. Gabrielle was transparently honest in all that she said and wrote.
"We arrived in London after a bitter journey," the letter ran, "the frost has returned, and the cold is dreadful. I am afraid Maryska feels it very much after Ragusa, and is not grateful to us for bringing her to such an inhospitable country. The streets of London shone like rivers of ice as we drove through, and even my father now admits that there is something in a taxi. What Maryska does not understand is your threatened journey to America, and your unkindness in leaving us all with so brief a farewell. She is very strange here, and she is entirely without friends—though Harry has done his best to cheer her up, and has really developed surprising powers as a private entertainer. Perhaps the cold and the fog have affected her spirits unduly—I would not make too much of it, but she is undoubtedly changed since we left Venice, and the change is not for the better! This much you ought to know.
"Of course, it is much too early yet to speak of the house. We are all at Hampstead in the old home, and it seems difficult to believe that so much has happened in so short a time. I refuse to allow that Christmas Day falls next week, and that in twelve days we shall be ringing the old year out. If anything could convince me it is this bitter cold, this biting cruel weather, which is like nothing England has seen before, and I hope will be like nothing that is to come after. Here at Hampstead, they say the ice is inches thick upon the ponds—I can hear the whir of the skates from my windows, and everyone who passes is dressed like a grizzly bear. Maryska has seen a severe winter in America, and suffered terribly there because of the cold. So you will understand how anxious we are about her, and how very watchful it is necessary to be.
"My father says she is the strangest compound of oddities he has ever encountered. It is a description which does less than justice to an original character. Of religion she has none. Her god is an oath—nothing more: and yet to say that she is without a deep capacity of feeling would be untrue. Some of her ideas are fantastic—I suppose the orthodox would call them barbarous. She has a locket about her throat with a miniature of the Crucifixion after Francesco. I know that she has painted out the face of Christ, and made a crude likeness of her father in its place. Her trunk is full of his drawings—there are hardly any clothes, poor child, and we shall have to fit her out directly she is well enough. By that time we should know where we are to live, if I can persuade my father to see the house agents. He has a morbid idea that he will commit some great mistake, and I should not be surprised if he took a good many houses before the New Year.
"The only other news is that Harry does not now think that he will go to Australia. He appears to be capricious in his new ideas, and is ready to insist upon a crisis in our affairs. This is so wholly unexpected, that I do not know what to say about it. The foundations of the Temple are not laid, and it would be terrible if the building fell. I suppose it is all very serious, and I should consider it in that light, but I remain an enigma to myself, and am content to let the future speak for itself.
"Oh, how cold it is—how cruelly cold! I can write no more, even by a warm fireside. Perhaps Maryska will write herself soon—horrible thought, I have yet to learn if the child can write at all. When she reads, she terrifies me with the possibilities. Her acquaintance with the most dreadful words is a daily fright to me! She speaks Italian and French quite fluently, and another language which my father does not recognise, but thinks may be Roumanian. He brought a professor of Oriental languages from one of the Universities here yesterday, but the poor man was utterly at sea. I am sure he did not understand a single word of what she said—none knew that better than clever Maryska!
"She is asking for you every day, and I must tell her that you are going to America. It is a heavy burden upon my poor shoulders. Yesterday she said, 'Even his friend has gone away.' So, you see, she knows that you were his friend, and I am sure that will not be unwelcome to you.
"Believe me, with all our kindest regards,
"Dear Mr. Faber, yours sincerely,
"Gabrielle Silvester."
"P.S.—The news is not so well to-night. We have had another day of the damp cold, and I am seriously alarmed for her. Have we done right to bring such a hot-house plant to England at all? She is asking for you again even as I write, for she knows that it is written. 'Tell him,' she says, 'that he would have wished it. Then he will come to me.' I am doing my duty even if it be done without hope."
III