CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"CAPTAIN" TRAFFORD

In his room in the Hôtel Concordia, Nervy Trafford was standing before a long looking-glass, surveying his mirrored image with an ever-recurring smile. Two days had passed since the Strafeburg had fallen, two busy days in the nation's history, and this particular morning found him arrayed in the uniform of a Grimland Staff-Captain.

The dark green tunic with its fur trimming and black braiding suited his face and figure admirably. He twirled his moustaches, and disengaged his sword from between his legs, and his smile broadened to a laugh.

"I only need a false nose," he said to himself, "and I should make a splendid impersonator of Offenbachian opera." And, drawing his sword, he sang with great spirit and much expression, that inimitable air: "Voici le sabre de mon pere--voici le sabre de-e mon pere."

A knock at the door checked his vibrato.

"_Herein!_" he called.

A boy in a tight brown uniform, adorned with the usual unnecessary buttons, entered.

"A note, Excellency."

Trafford took the missive, which bore the royal seal. It read as follows:

"_Neptunburg._

"_My Good Friend,_

"_The procession leaves here at mid-day, when you must be in close attendance on the Royal Person. Lunch at 2 p.m. After lunch, an informal Council in the Throne room. After the Council, make your way to the private apartments. I will give orders for you to be admitted._

_Yours very bewildered,_ _G. v. S., I mean G. R._"

Trafford read, and at the conclusion he whistled. What did it mean, what could it mean but one thing? The situation presented itself as a syllogism of amazing but irrefutable argument. The Princess was going to be crowned. It was undeniable that he had contributed largely to that consummation. The corollary was a ceremony of marriage between himself and the newly-elected sovereign. No wonder the smile gave place to a frown of deep bewilderment. No wonder he passed his fingers repeatedly through his thick and stubborn hair. The compact that was now disturbing his peace of mind had been entered into with the lightest of light hearts. The night he had first met the Princess he had been a soldier of fortune primed with good wine and the spirit of reckless adventure. But since then things had progressed with him, as with the state of Grimland, rapidly.

The condition of spiritual stagnation in which he had visited Grimland was being slowly but surely overcome by fresh interests and rousing incidents. Three days ago it would have seemed a capital jest to go through the ceremony of marriage with an exceptionally beautiful girl with a kingdom for her dowry. Now it seemed like a piece of wanton blasphemy in the worst possible taste.

He put a cigarette between his lips, and took a match from a heavy glass bowl that did duty as matchbox. He struck it on the ribbed side of the bowl, but the match burned his fingers before even it made acquaintance with the tobacco.

Supposing he went through this ceremony, he reasoned, and supposing in this topsy-turvy country the ceremony was approved and ratified by the State--what then? A queer thrill ran through him at the supposition, but he shook his head fiercely. The more he saw of the Princess the more he liked her, and the more he realised the difference between liking and loving. There were strange ideals still lurking in the recesses of his unconventional brain, and to wed a woman for any less reason than a deep spiritual devotion seemed to him a prostitution of God's choicest gifts. And he could not honestly call his regard for the high-couraged little Schattenberg a deep spiritual devotion. It was clean and healthy as the north wind, and every whit as wholesome and refreshing--but was it even approximately like the sentiment he had entertained for the pedestalled Angela Knox?

He made a second attempt to light his cigarette, and this time with success. He blew out a great puff of blue smoke and gazed earnestly into its unravelling depths. And for a prolonged minute of self-hypnotism he was dematerialised out of the picturesque uniform of a Grimland officer, and was standing, smug and frock-coated, in a New York drawing-room. Before him was a very tall woman with a wonderfully correct profile and an abundance of honey-coloured hair. This was the creature to whom he had offered the worship of his life, the woman whose refusal of his suit had thrust him to the very brink of the grim precipice of which no man knoweth the bottom. He gazed and gazed and even admired--but he was unmoved. Slowly the smoke faded, and the dream in the smoke, and he laughed aloud.

Self-analysis is a difficult game for all, and to one of his complex temperament an altogether hopeless proceeding. And so, as if to blow the crowded thoughts from his brain, he stepped to his high window overlooking the city, and flung open the casement. The bells of the cathedral were pealing joyous music into the winter air. The city was _en fête_. The flag of Grimland was flying from all public and semi-public buildings.

Shops, private houses, and hotels were gay with bunting and festoons of artificial flowers. And the sun,--as if to honour the new dynasty with its more than royal majesty,--was gilding men's handiwork till tinsel became silver and gold, and every banner a brave thing of joy and colour and heartfelt holiday.

Within two days of the supposed death of Karl the new dynasty was to be inaugurated with all the pomp that State and Church could lend the occasion.

Things had progressed, not at a run, but at a gallop. And for this Father Bernhardt was responsible. The man was a wonder. He may have been mad, but if so his madness was the distortion of a splendid brain, not the aberration of a weak one. He had gathered the reins of government into his own hands with the skill and confidence of a born ruler. There was no anarchy, no confusion, no hiatus in the city's ordering. Men were conciliated whom it was wise to conciliate. Others were over-awed, a few were suppressed. He seemed to know intuitively everyone's sentiments and every man's abilities. Doctor Matti was made Prefect of Police, Von Hügelweiler became Captain of the Guard. Trafford was given an official position on the staff of the Queen's army. Generally speaking, there was little redistribution of existing authorities. The army welcomed the new _régime_, believing that a change of dynasty might involve a change from the peaceful policy of the twenty-second Karl. Business men and professional men accepted it even when they did not welcome it. There was no alternative. Karl, so they believed, was dead. His son was far away at Weissheim, and was far too young a little person to rule the mad whirlwind of his country's policies. So the _fait accompli_ became the thing accepted, and as the joy bells rang out their message the contagion of their silver tongues turned the hearts, even of the lukewarm, to glad allegiance to the young Queen.

"Poor little Princess," mused Trafford, as he gazed out at the sparkling panorama of white roofs and snow-crested battlements, "what an ordeal lies before you, to-day and to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow! It is the day after to-morrow one fears in Grimland. The sun does not always shine at Weidenbruck, and the cathedral bells are not always instruments of joy."

Another knock at the door interrupted his reverie. This time it was Von Hügelweiler who responded to his "_herein_."

"Good-morning," said Trafford genially, extending a hand in greeting.

But no answering smile showed on the Captain's stern and gloomy countenance, and instead of grasping Trafford's hand, his own went up in a stiff salute.

Von Hügelweiler was suffering from Trafford on the brain. His natural dislike for the American, born of the latter's triumph on the Rundsee, had been extraordinarily deepened by the events of the past few days. It was Trafford to whom all glory for the capture of the Strafeburg redounded; Trafford who had set the "Rothlied" going, suborned the soldiers, "bossed" everything and everybody as if he were a true born patriot instead of a foreign adventurer with the devil's own luck. Why, next to Father Bernhardt this pig of an American was the most popular man in Weidenbruck! All this, in itself, was a source of considerable annoyance to the sensitive Captain of the Guides; but what touched him on the raw, was the footing on which Trafford seemed to stand with the Princess Gloria. He knew nothing of the true state of their relations, but he perceived at once an ease and understanding between them, which embittered his spirit and spoilt his whole pleasure in life. He, Von Hügelweiler, had forfeited his self-respect, risked all his prospects, his soldier's honour, for the sake of a half-formulated pledge, for the vague shadow of a promise of things unutterably sweet. Were it to be that this sacrifice had been made in vain, that this hated American was the one who had come between him and the heaven of his desire, there would be a heavy price to be paid, a full price, a reckoning in something more precious than gold and silver. And so he had come to Trafford's rooms, not with any definite idea either of eliciting information or forcing a quarrel, but because,--as has been said,--he had Trafford on the brain, and he felt it necessary to keep in touch with him.

"To what do I owe the honour of this visit?" the American went on, getting no response to his greeting.

"I come with commands," said the Captain brusquely. He was mindful of the _de haut en bas_ manner which Trafford had employed towards him that night before the Strafeburg, and he wished to reverse their respective positions once for all. "You have been appointed to the Staff, and I am your superior officer."

"Salaam! Sahib," said Trafford with a facetious bow.

Hügelweiler flushed, and went on in angry tones.

"My orders are that you start with the royal procession from the Neptunburg at mid-day. I, as Captain of the Guard, shall be in close attendance on the Queen. You will bring up the rear with a company of the Kurdeburg Volunteers."

Von Hügelweiler's tone was designedly over-bearing, but Trafford kept his temper marvellously well, as he sometimes could, when occasion demanded.

"Are those your commands or the Queen's?" he asked, tossing the glass matchbox a little way into the air and catching it again. His behaviour irritated Von Hügelweiler inexpressibly.

"They are commands--that is enough for you," he retorted crudely.

"Not nearly enough, I assure you," responded Trafford, with exaggerated blandness. "I have her Majesty's orders to be in close attendance on her royal person. Until I get counter-orders from an equally high source I shall perform the pleasant and honourable duty of being in the closest possible proximity to our dear Sovereign."

Hügelweiler's face became livid with rage.

"Show me your orders!" he demanded harshly.

"They were conveyed in a private note, otherwise I should have much pleasure, my superior officer."

"I command you to show them to me!" cried the Captain, losing all patience; "and for heaven's sake cease tossing that infernal matchbox!"

This was altogether too much for Trafford's sorely-tried self-control. He had held himself in with incalculable patience up to now, but he felt that the moment had arrived for letting himself go--thoroughly.

[Illustration: "If I see so much as an inch of blade this little hand-grenade of mine will play havoc with your handsome features"]

"Von Hügelweiler," he said in peculiarly distinct tones, "we live in stirring times. A King has just lost his throne, a number of high functionaries have been laid low, a mass of--shall I say, scum--has come to the surface. No, Captain, don't draw your sword," he said sternly, as the Captain flushed crimson and made a threatening movement with his sword-arm. "I am not an unarmed man, my brave officer"--poising the substantial matchbox in his right hand, in the manner of an athlete about to put the weight--"and if I see so much as an inch of blade this little hand-grenade of mine will play havoc with your handsome features. That's better," he went on, as the other shrank back furious but cowed before the strange missile which threatened his physical attractions, "that's much better, _mon brav_. Curse and swear and vow vengeance, but don't play any monkey tricks, or the Guards will want a smarter captain to lead them in the procession to-day. And one more word before you withdraw the sunshine of your presence from the room," he continued, as the other made a movement towards the door with mingled fury and disgust on his countenance. "I have taken a hand in the game which is being played in Grimland. I have thrown in my lot with Gloria von Schattenberg, and as her officer I am prepared to obey as well as command--in reason. But I won't be bullied, Herr Captain. I'm not built that way."

"You shall answer for your insolence!'" came viciously through Von Hügelweiler's white teeth.

"Maybe, but if you can get the Queen to sanction my arrest you're a cleverer man than you look, Von Hügelweiler."

A curse hissed from the Captain's lips, and he half raised his clenched fist in a gesture of intolerable passion. Then his arm dropped limp to his side and a look of suffering came into his eyes, and when he spoke, it was hoarsely and with a break in his voice.

"What is Gloria von Schattenberg to you?" he asked.

"That is the precise question I was asking myself when you came in," was the response. "To answer it I need solitude, and solitude, Captain,--as I need not point out,--is incompatible with your presence here. Captain von Hügelweiler, I have the honour of wishing you good-morning."