Gloria turned to Trafford.
"Yes, yes," said that gentleman absent-mindedly. "By all means let the expedition start at once. I will accompany it."
The Queen rose from the throne.
"The expedition shall start at once," she said in tones of unutterable bitterness. "I command that it be so. Gentlemen, I leave you, thanking you for your loyal counsel. This is the day of my life, the dreamed-of day on which I call myself, 'Gloria, Queen of Grimland.'"
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE CHAPEL ROYAL
Nervy Trafford left the Council with the dawning consciousness that he was not a very wise man. There are kings and kings, he reflected, kings to serve, honour and obey, and kings to harass, embarrass and decapitate; but it was best on the whole to leave the choice of treatment to the subjects of the particular monarch to be dealt with. He had sided against Karl from an innate love of excitement and a romantic enthusiasm for the rebel Princess. He had saved Karl from premature death, because he was a well-brought-up American with a sneaking respect for the sixth commandment. The result was, that the revolution,—which had been by no means bloodless,—was likely to be followed by an aftermath of civil war infinitely more sanguinary. Had he not interfered, Karl might still have been on the throne. Had he persisted in his revolutionary policy, logically and relentlessly, Grimland might have found peace and tranquillity under the unopposed banner of Gloria. As it was, Karl was evidently in Weissheim, and the good Weissheimers,—according to Herr Gottfried,—were preparing glacis and grapeshot for those who did not see eye to eye with them in things political.
He found his way to the Rubens room, and seated himself, wondering how long it was necessary to wait before demanding access to the private apartments. The short winter day was well-nigh done, and the great, unlit chamber looked vast and ghostly in the failing light. The shadowed corners, the rich stillness, touched and oppressed his imagination. Great men and proud women had passed in sumptuous pageantry through the walls of that noble chamber; and Trafford felt their presence, and strove to exorcise them with the fumes of a cigarette. But the impalpable dust of centuries seemed to impregnate the air, and by-gone monarchs looked askance at him from their dim gold frames, in a scornful wonder at the American interloper who sat so carelessly in the seat of kings. He rose, impatient of their glances, and walked to the window. Snow was falling. The sun that had graced and greeted the new-crowned Queen had sunk beneath the rugged outline of the encircling mountains; the sky, which had been of no uncertain blue, was a nondescript monotone weeping a white haze of crystalline tears. His thoughts harked back to the ashen face and sad eyes of the new-crowned Queen. Why had she not grasped the fact that Karl's immurement in the Eisenmädchen was a humane act of rescue, not a piece of callous cruelty? She herself had experienced the same hiding-place under the same innocuous conditions, and yet it did not seem to have occurred to her that the spikes might still be reposing at the bottom of his overcoat pocket. That the others should have failed to suspect the truth was only natural. That they would be angry on discovering it, was probable—but for that he cared not one jot.
What troubled his awakening conscience was, that good men and true must go down before peace reigned again in the troubled monarchy of Grimland.
After a few more minutes of such meditation, he made his way through the Rubens-saal in the direction of the private apartments. In the corridor leading to the Queen's chamber stood the officer on guard, and talking to him was no less a personage than Von Hügelweiler.