Fate is more capricious than the novelist; sometimes you can guess what he intends for an end; what fate has in store, never. Gretchen"s letter did not begin as letters usually do. It began with "I love you"
and ended with the same sentence. "In November my marriage will take place. Do not come abroad. I am growing strong now; if I should see you alas, what would become of that thin ice covering the heart of fire; we have nothing to return, you and I. I long to see you; I dare not tell you how much. Who knows what the world holds hidden? While we live there is always a perhaps. Remember that I love you!"
"Perhaps," I mused absently.
"Perhaps what?" asked Pembroke.
"What?" I had forgotten him. "Oh, it was merely a slip of the tongue." I poked the matting with my cane. "It is high noon; we had best hunt up a lunch. I have an engagement with the American military attache at two, so you will have to take care of yourself till dinner."
Let me tell you what happened in the military club that night. I was waiting for Col. J---- of the Queen"s Light, who was to give me the plan of the fall maneuvers in Africa. Pembroke was in the billiard room showing what he knew about caroms and brandy smashes to a trio of tanned Indian campaigners. I was in the reading room perusing the evening papers. All at once I became aware of a man standing before me. He remained in that position so long that I glanced over the top of my paper.
It was Prince Ernst of Wortumborg. He bowed.
"May I claim your attention for a moment?" he asked.
Had I been in any other place but the club I should have ignored him.
I possessed the liveliest hatred for the man.
"If you will be brief."
"As brief as possible," dropping into the nearest chair. "It has become necessary to ask you a few questions. The matter concerns me."
"Whatever concerns you is nothing to me," I replied coldly.
He smiled. "Are you quite sure?"
I had turned the sword on myself, so it seemed. But I said: "I answered some of your questions once; I believe I was explicit."
"As to that I can say you were; startlingly explicit. It is a delicate matter to profess one"s regard for a woman before total strangers. It is not impossible that she would have done the same thing in your place. Her regard for you--"
I interrupted him with a menacing gesture. "I am extremely irritable,"
I said. "I should regret to lose control of myself in a place like this."
"To be sure!" he said. "This is England, where they knock one another down."
"We do not murder on this side of the channel," I retorted.
"That is unkind. Your friend was a very good shot," with a significant glance at his useless arm. "But for my arm, and his nerves, which were not of the best order, I had not lived to speak to you to-night."
"So much the worse for the world," said I. "Your questions?"
"Ah! Who was that remarkably beautiful woman under your distinguished care Thursday evening?"
"I see that our conversation is to be of the shortest duration. Who she was is none of your business," rudely. I unfolded my paper and began reading.
"Perhaps, after all," not the least perturbed by my insolence, "it were best to state on paper what I have to say. I can readily appreciate that the encounter is disagreeable. To meet one who has made a thing impossible to you sets the nerves on edge." He caught up his opera hat, his cane and gloves. He raised the lapel of his coat and sniffed at the orchid in the b.u.t.tonhole.
Some occult force bade me say, "Why do you wish to know who she was?"
He sat down again. "I shall be pleased to explain. That I mistook her for another who I supposed was on the other side of the channel was a natural mistake, as you will agree. Is it not strange that I should mistake another to be the woman who is so soon to be my wife? Is there not something behind this remarkable, unusual likeness? Since when are two surpa.s.singly beautiful women, born in different lands, of different parents, the exact likeness of each other?"
Now as this was a thing which had occupied my mind more than once, I immediately put aside the personal affair. That could wait. I threw my paper onto the table.
"Do you know, sir," said I, "that thought echoes my own?"
"Let us for the moment put ourselves into the background," said the Prince. "What do you know about her Serene Highness the Princess Hildegarde; her history?"
"Very little; proceed."
"But tell me what you know."
"I know that her father was driven to a gambler"s grave and that her mother died of a broken heart, and that the man who caused all this wishes to break the heart of the daughter, too."
"Scandal, all scandal," said the Prince. "Who ever heard of a broken heart outside of a romantic novel? I see that the innkeeper has been holding your ear. Ah, that innkeeper, that innkeeper! Certainly some day there will come a reckoning."
"Yes, indeed," said I. "Beware of him."
"It was twenty years ago," said the Prince. "It is beyond the recall.
But let me proceed. Not many years ago there was a Prince, a very bad fellow."
"Most of them are."
"He married a woman too good for him," went on the Prince, as though he had not heard.
"And another is about to do likewise."
"There was some scandal. When the Princess was born, her father refused to believe her to be his child. Now, it came to pa.s.s, as they say in the Bible, which I a.s.sure you is a very interesting book, that there were vague rumors immediately after the birth of Princess Hildegarde that another child had been born."
"What!" I was half out of my chair. "Another child?"
"Another child. The fact that the Prince swore that when children came he would make them counterparts of their kind and loving father, lent color to the rumor that the Princess had had one spirited away to escape this threatened contamination. And one of the nurses was missing. Whither had she gone remained a mystery, and is still a mystery, for she never has returned. Did she spirit away the other child, the other girl? I say girl advisedly; if there had been a son, the mother would have retained him. Two years after this interesting episode, the Princess died, and dying, confessed the deception. But the curious thing is, n.o.body believed her. Her mind was not strong, and it was thought to be a hallucination, this second child. Now let me come to the present time. Twins are generally alike; one mirrors the other; when they mature, then comes the deviation, perhaps in the color of the hair and the eyes. Behold! here are two women, but for their hair and eyes were one. Tell me what you know of the other." He bent forward with subdued eagerness.
"Do you think it possible?" I cried excitedly.
"Not only possible, but probable. She is a Princess; at least she should be."
Then I told him what I knew about Phyllis.
"America! Born in America! It cannot be." He was baffled.
"I have known her for eight years," said I. "She was born in America as certainly as I was."
"But this likeness? This rumor of another daughter? Ah, there is something here I do not understand. And this uncle of hers, this Wentworth; who is he?"
"A retired banker, very wealthy, and at present with the American ministry at your own capital."
"To him we must go, then." He rose and walked the length of the room, stopped a moment at the chess table in the corner, then resumed his chair. "You are wondering, no doubt, what it is to me, all this?"
"I confess you have read my mind correctly."