The Head of the House of Coombe, Frances Hodgson Burnett [adult books to read txt] 📗

Some days before this the Duchess of Darte had driven out in the morning to make some purchases and as she had sat in her large landau she had greatly missed Miss Brent who had always gone with her when she had made necessary visits to the shops. She was not fond of shopping and Miss Brent had privately found pleasure in it which had made her a cheerful companion. To the quiet elderly woman whose life previous to her service with this great lady had been spent in struggles with poverty, the mere incident of entering shops and finding eager salesmen springing forward to meet her with bows and amiable offers of ministration, was to the end of her days an almost thrilling thing. The Duchess bought splendidly though quietly. Knowing always what she wanted, she merely required that it be produced, and after silently examining it gave orders that it should be sent to her. There was a dignity in her decision which was impressive. She never gave trouble or hesitated. The staffs of employees in the large shops knew and reveled in her while they figuratively bent the knee. Miss Brent had been a happy satisfied woman while she had lived. She had died peacefully after a brief and, as it seemed at first, unalarming illness at one of her employer’s country houses to which she had been amiably sent down for a holiday. Every kindness and attention had been bestowed upon her and only a few moments before she fell into her last sleep she had been talking pleasantly of her mistress.

“She is a very great lady, Miss Hallam,” she had said to her nurse. “She’s the last of her kind I often think. Very great ladies seem to have gone out—if you know what I mean. They’ve gone out.”

The Duchess had in fact said of Brent as she stood a few days later beside her coffin and looked down at her contentedly serene face, something not unlike what Brent had said of herself.

“You were a good friend, Brent, my dear,” she murmured. “I shall always miss you. I am afraid there are no more like you left.”

She was thinking of her all the morning as she drove slowly down to Bond Street and Piccadilly. As she got out of her carriage to go into a shop she was attracted by some photographs of beauties in a window and paused to glance at them. Many of them were beauties whom she knew, but among them were some of society’s latest discoveries. The particular photographs which caught her eye were two which had evidently been purposely placed side by side for an interesting reason. The reason was that the two women, while obviously belonging to periods of some twenty years apart as the fashion of their dress proved, were in face and form so singularly alike that they bewilderingly suggested that they were the same person. Both were exquisitely nymphlike, fair and large eyed and both had the fine light hair which is capable of forming itself into a halo. The Duchess stood and looked at them for the moment spellbound. She slightly caught her breath. She was borne back so swiftly and so far. Her errand in the next door shop was forgotten. She went into the one which displayed the photographs.

“I wish to look at the two photographs which are so much alike,” 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 Duchess. “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 Duchess 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 hoarse 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 lust 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 space 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 hoarse 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