CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

DREAMS

The following morning George Trafford awoke from sweet dreams to the pleasant consciousness of hot coffee and crisp rolls. He was still occupying apartments in the Hôtel Concordia, and it was a waiter in that excellent establishment who roused him from the glories of slumberland at the hour of 8.30.

"Good-morning, Rudolf," said Trafford, opening a reluctant eye. "I trust you have not forgotten my honey this morning."

"I have brought the honey, your Excellency; also a letter." Trafford glanced at the handwriting on the envelope.

"Sweeter also than the honey and the honeycomb," he murmured. "A letter from dreamland, Rudolf! Tell me, Rudolf, do waiters dream?"

The man laughed.

"Not often, Excellency. They are too busy by day. Once I dreamed that I was appointed headwaiter at the Concordia."

"Ah! you are ambitious, Rudolf. My dreams are less exalted. I only dreamed that a certain _gnadiges fräulein_ did more than 'almost' love me; that she even cared for me 'more than the others.' It was not a bad dream, Rudolf," he added, casting his eyes over the missive, "and the letter is not a bad awakening."

"You have read it, Excellency?"

"Yes, it is short and sweet. '_Meet me at the confectioner's at the corner of the Königstrasse and the Etizabethstrasse at eleven._' That is all, but the imagination riots at the choice of rendezvous. A sensuous woman would have chosen a restaurant, an extravagant one a milliner's. Only a sweet one could have thought of a pastrycook's."

"I wish your Excellency joy."

"Thank you, Rudolf; my small change is reposing on the edge of the mantelpiece; kindly select a five-krone piece and drink to my good fortune."

At eleven o'clock Trafford was waiting outside a big corner shop, whose ample windows revealed an alluring wealth of edible magnificence. Hardly had the church clock finished striking when a young woman drew near. The combination of blue veil and Russian sables was one Trafford had seen before, and being in uniform he saluted.

"Come inside," said Gloria.

Trafford followed obediently.

"It's so like you to meet me in a place of this kind," he said.

"We must meet somewhere," she returned, and there was a half-mischievous glint in the eyes that looked back into his eyes as she added:--"after what happened yesterday. It's no good meeting at the Neptunburg--a palace has all the luxuries of an ideal home, except privacy. This is one of the places where I was known in my days of exile, and they will serve us chocolate and éclairs in a private room."

"Do you know I dreamed of you last night," began Trafford, as soon as they were alone in a cosy little room at the back.

"Naturally," she laughed.

"And in my dream you were very kind."

"Again, naturally."

"I mean," said Trafford tentatively, "you loved me 'more than the others.'"

"You are most diverting," she said, smiling.

Trafford winced.

"You are not taking me very seriously?" he asked.

"How can I take anything very seriously? If I did, I should go mad. I am a Queen, and Queens must marry. Custom compels. As an exile I had no difficulty in maintaining my spinsterhood. Now, it is different. If I do not marry you--marry you, mind, not merely go through a marriage form with you--I shall be wedded to some young German or Austrian Princeling, whose standard of manhood is measured by the number of beer _seidles_ he can empty in an evening."

"I am flattered. And now for a few practical considerations. Supposing you marry me--and like you, I am using the word in its fullest sense--what will be the result? What will the public say?"

"The public will say little, but it will do a good deal," said Gloria grimly. "It is true we are moving in a time of great changes; it is true that for the moment you are a very popular person. But it is also true that I am a Queen and you a commoner, and Grimlanders like their Royalty undiluted. If we proclaimed ourselves man and wife we should be wise to board the Orient express at Gleis, and steam westward to Ostend or eastward to Constantinople."

"And you would really--really object to that course?" asked Trafford a little sadly. "Yesterday afternoon you said, 'If the Queen of Grimland may not wed an American I will no longer be Queen of Grimland.'"

"Ah, but I spoke in a moment of enthusiasm," declared Gloria unblushingly. "I had been oppressed by the nightmare of Karl's supposed assassination. The fact that he had not really been killed, that it was your ready wit that saved him from a cruel end, warmed my heart wonderfully towards you. But if you had your dream last night, so had I. Mine was less sentimental but equally pleasant. In it I saw myself Queen of Grimland, Queen of a whole country, with no district in revolt against me. Karl had been defeated, captured, and exiled. I was the reigning sovereign of a loyal and loving people."

Trafford nodded gravely.

"That is the dream of a Schattenberg," he said. "It is much the same dream that your father dreamed before he fell into the great sleep where there are no dreams. But it is not the dream of the woman I kissed yesterday afternoon in the Chapel Royal of the Neptunburg."

Gloria's eyes fell before his steadfast gaze. Her face softened; it saddened under a wave of emotion--an emotion, the instant expression of which, though easily attributable to her actress-temperament, was nevertheless based on something far deeper.

"I wonder if I am a hard woman," she began, still looking down. "Years of exile, of earning one's living on the variety stage, striving--surely these are not softening influences." She paused for him to add some sympathetic word. Whether he intended to do so or not, he forgot it on meeting the eyes that now were looking him through and through, as she continued: "But I do not unsay what I said yesterday! I really like you, immensely--and perhaps I almost love you."

Trafford took her hand and kissed it rapturously; she almost snatched it away, and there was a ring of steel in the tones that now declared:

"But I have tasted power, and now that the horror of Karl's death is no longer on my conscience, I wish to be the unopposed ruler of my country."

"Even though the process of establishing your rule costs the lives of brave men?"

Again she dropped her eyes--was silenced. She sipped her chocolate. When she spoke, it was quietly and with absolute conviction.

"If I had known what Father Bernhardt told us, that Karl was really a humane man and was absolutely innocent of the Archbishop's death, I don't believe I should have headed a rebellion against him. But--rightly or wrongly--the rebellion has succeeded and the seat of government is mine. To falter now would be to cause more misery and bloodshed than to go on. The people have declared against Karl, and Karl they will not have at any price. If I were to abdicate, some other adventurer would take my place. To withdraw myself from Grimland now would be to leave my friends to the certain reprisals of their enemies."

"Your argument is flawless," acknowledged Trafford. "I am _de trop_. Ambition, to say nothing of humanity, leaves you but one course. Neither do I complain--though I shall return a disappointed man. You are not heartless, far from it, for yesterday in a moment of golden light I caught a glimpse of a great splendour, the gorgeous harmonies of a woman's heart. The vision has faded, and again I say I do not complain. On the contrary, I thank Providence for the vision of what might have been."

A more prolonged silence followed these words. Trafford busied himself with his éclair, while his companion continued to stir her chocolate, till a veritable whirlpool formed in its opaque depths. At last she looked up.

"Of course, I'm not heartless," she said,--and she smiled as a coquette might smile on being told that her flirtations were dangerous,--"and of course, I like you very much, only you miss the whole gist of my argument. If we announce our marriage now we shall be drummed out of the country. That might suit you, but it doesn't harmonise with the ideals that have been instilled into me from my earliest years. If you accompany me in this projected expedition to Weissheim,--not as my husband, but as my officer,--if you exert your skill and valour on my behalf and help to capture Karl and win me back my old home--the Marienkastel--there is no knowing what the enthusiasm of the Grimlander would not do for you. If we return as conquerers, what more fitting crown to our pageant than the union of the vindicated Queen and her triumphant General?"

Trafford gazed at the mantled cheek and the light of expectancy that shone in her eyes now. Certain words of Saunders' came back, ringing in his ears: "When you really fall in love you will refuse to take 'No' for an answer. In the words of the pre-historic doggerel, you will 'try, try again.'"

"I see," he said, "I have done something, but I have not done enough. I will accompany you to Weissheim--a unit of your force--and I will do my best to serve your cause. What has passed between us is nothing, must make no difference in our relations, is merely the burlesque conclusion of a burlesque compact. I thought I saw the working of Fate in the incensed gloom of the Chapel Royal. The next few weeks will prove me an idle visionary or a true seer." He paused. "Which do you wish me to prove?"

She rose to her feet, opened her sable cloak, and disengaged a pearl brooch from her neck. Bending over him so that her breath swept his cheek, she fastened the trinket to the lapel of his green tunic, and finished his subjugation with a long look into his eyes.

"A true seer," she answered.