Part 41 (1/2)

she said to the man behind the counter.

He knew her as most people did and brought forth the photographs at once.

”Many people are interested in them, your grace,” he said. ”It was the amazing likeness which made me put them beside each other.”

”Yes,” she answered. ”It is almost incredible.” She looked up from the beautiful young being dressed in the mode of twenty years past.

”This is--WAS--?” she corrected herself and paused. The man replied in a somewhat dropped voice. He evidently had his reasons for feeling it discreet to do so.

”Yes--WAS. She died twenty years ago. The young Princess Alixe of X--” he said. ”There was a sad story, your grace no doubt remembers.

It was a good deal talked about.”

”Yes,” she replied and said no more, but took up the modern picture. It displayed the same almost floating airiness of type, but in this case the original wore diaphanous wisps of spangled tulle threatening to take wings and fly away leaving the girl slimness of arms and shoulders bereft of any covering whatsoever.

”This one is--?” she questioned.

”A Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. A widow with a daughter though she looks in her teens. She's older than the Princess was, but she's kept her beauty as ladies know how to in these days. It's wonderful to see them side by side. But it's only a few that saw her Highness as she was the season she came with the Prince to visit at Windsor in Queen Victoria's day. Did your grace--” he checked himself feeling that he was perhaps somewhat exceeding Bond Street limits.

”Yes. I saw her,” said the d.u.c.h.ess. ”If these are for sale I will take them both.”

”I'm selling a good many of them. People buy them because the likeness makes them a sort of curiosity. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless is a very modern lady and she is quite amused.”

The d.u.c.h.ess took the two photographs home with her and looked at them a great deal afterwards as she sat in her winged chair.

They were on her table when Coombe came to drink tea with her in the afternoon.

When he saw them he stood still and studied the two faces silently for several seconds.

”Did you ever see a likeness so wonderful?” he said at last.

”Never,” she answered. ”Or an unlikeness. That is the most wonderful of all--the unlikeness. It is the same body inhabited by two souls from different spheres.”

His next words were spoken very slowly.

”I should have been sure you would see that,” he commented.

”I lost my breath for a second when I saw them side by side in the shop window--and the next moment I lost it again because I saw--what I speak of--the utter world wide apartness. It is in their eyes.

She--,” she touched the silver frame enclosing the young Princess, ”was a little saint--a little spirit. There never was a young human thing so transparently pure.”

The rigid modeling of his face expressed a thing which, himself recognizing its presence, he chose to turn aside as he moved towards the mantel and leaned on it. The same thing caused his voice to sound hoa.r.s.e and low as he spoke in answer, saying something she had not expected him to say. Its unexpectedness in fact produced in her an effect of shock.

”And she was the possession of a brute incarnate, mad with unbridled l.u.s.t and drink and abnormal furies. She was a child saint, and shook with terror before him. He killed her.”

”I believe he did,” she said unsteadily after a breath s.p.a.ce of pause. ”Many people believed so though great effort was made to silence the stories. But there were too many stories and they were so unspeakable that even those in high places were made furiously indignant. He was not received here at Court afterwards. His own emperor could not condone what he did. Public opinion was too strong.”

”The stories were true,” answered the hoa.r.s.e low voice. ”I myself, by royal command, was a guest at the Schloss in the Bavarian Alps when it was known that he struck her repeatedly with a dog whip.

She was going to have a child. One night I was wandering in the park in misery and I heard shrieks which sent me in mad search.

I do not know what I should have done if I had succeeded, but I tried to force an entrance into the wing from which the shrieks came. I was met and stopped almost by open violence. The sounds ceased. She died a week later. But the most experienced lying could not hide some things. Even royal menials may have human blood in their veins. It was known that there were hideous marks on her little dead body.”

”We heard. We heard,” whispered the d.u.c.h.ess.