There was one member who did not make his appearance on these evenings, although he was still in the city and apparently in just the mood for such festivities--namely, Angelos Stephanopulos. This or that one had encountered him, on foot or in a carriage, acting as knight to his lady, the Russian countess, who had been away for a few months, but had now returned to that same private hotel where--though at some distance from the nocturnal musical orgies--Irene and her uncle were awaiting reassuring reports from Italy. Irene had satisfied the demands of etiquette by making a formal call upon her fellow-lodger, but had avoided any more intimate intercourse.
Upon this point her uncle had submitted all the more readily to his young governess because, at bottom, he felt more aversion than liking for all but martial or dancing music. But another promise which his strict little niece exacted from him, that he would never say a word to any one about her former relations to Felix, appeared to him so useless that he did not think it a matter of conscience to keep it any longer than while they were all such near neighbors in the country.
At his first meeting with Schnetz he informed his friend and brother-in-arms of the whole story.
He earnestly besought him to exert all his influence to rouse Felix from his dogged silence. Only a single visit from him--now, in the interesting paleness of convalescence--just to thank them for their sympathy during his illness; and the world must have turned topsy-turvy since he was young, if these two estranged lovers did not make up again.
Schnetz listened to these propositions with his usual morose calmness, abused his imperial terribly, and then remarked--that this commission was not to his taste. He had too great a regard for Felix to help him to a bride who could not love him just as he was, with all his faults and weaknesses. He doubted himself whether he should be doing the young man a favor if he did so. He was keeping house very comfortably out there in the solitary villa, going into the woods every day with Homo and a good double-barreled gun; and even though he did not shoot much, he unquestionably killed time after a much more manly fashion than if he were here striving to regain the favor and forgiveness of a spoiled princess. Besides, he was intending to put his affairs in order soon after Christmas, and then to set sail in the early spring; for he had taken it into his head that the air in America would agree with him better than that of his native land.
This announcement threw the uncle into the liveliest state of alarm. He depicted to his friend in such dark colors the future that threatened him, if Felix should carry out this resolution, the prospect of the life-long guardianship of a Fräulein who would soon be getting passée, who would grow more whimsical and unmanageable from year to year, and who would make him suffer for the wrong which she herself had done to her own happiness by her proud obstinacy; he besought him in such moving terms not to leave him in the lurch, now of all times, that finally Schnetz took pity upon him and promised to at least seize the first opportunity to question Felix concerning the real state of his feelings.
For a moment he felt tempted, now that they were on the subject of confessions, to give this lively bachelor, who only wanted to get rid of his ward in order that he might once more enjoy "life" perfectly unrestrainedly, a hint in respect to certain natural duties toward another orphaned child. But a dark presentiment, that possibly a more suitable hour might come for such a disclosure, restrained him. And, moreover, as Red Zenz appeared to have vanished from the face of the earth, there would be no use, for the present, in awakening paternal feelings of which the visible object was perhaps lost for ever.
CHAPTER VIII.
Thus the year drew toward its end, and Christmas stood before the door.
In former years they had always had a Christmas-tree at the Paradise Club. But this time the friends felt disposed to celebrate a more domestic festival, in a narrower circle. In the course of this year they had been drawn closer to one another, and had withdrawn more and more from the other members of "Paradise." Nor was Angelica any longer the only representative of her sex among them, and the only one thus excluded from the men's festivals. And so it was determined that Christmas Eve should be celebrated in the studio-building; that the tree should be set up in Rosenbusch's room, and the table laid in Angelica's--a plan which the two neighbors laid before the others as a joint idea of their own. Each deposited his contribution toward the preparations, in a money-box of which Angelica was the custodian.