"Your Majesty is sentimental," said Meyer.
"It is natural to be so on such a night as this," was the King's reply. "This still, deep cold should freeze the cynicism even out of your nature. If the Princess fights she must be fought, and she must accept the fortune of war. But when this half-tipsy ruffian casts aspersions on her purity——"
"Hear, hear!" broke in the man in the green ulster. "Shoot the Princess if necessary, but spare her good name. I, in my humble way, am a great admirer of the pretty little Gloria. She has an eye that laughs, and as sweet a pair of lips as a poor carpenter like me may dare clap eyes upon. The devil I want to harry is the American Trafford, who mixes up with matters that don't concern him, and brings fire and sword into a poor country that has plenty of troubles already. We've vermin of our own, goodness knows, but this foreign weasel——"
But Karl was in a mood to hear ill of no man. He was convinced,—as he said,—that his fortunes had turned. His natural generosity was in the ascendant, and the magic of the glorious night had won him to a temper of broad benevolence.
"Oh, Trafford," he laughed, "Providence watches over men like that. They take risks and thrive on them. The bullet is not moulded that will pierce his tough American skin; and I rejoice to think it is so, for he is a most fascinating free lance. He saved me from death in the courtyard of the Neptunburg, and I have not forgotten the debt. Given a state of peace, and I would have him as my guest in the Brunvarad to discuss old battles over my best Tokay."
They had reached the place where the bob-sleigh track crossed the highway,—a point of the run much dreaded by the steersmen of racing crews.
"If we follow the path that borders the run," said the bearded man, "we shall save a quarter of a mile at least."
"That's true," said Meyer, "but the ladies must be careful where they plant their feet. If they step off the beaten track they will be up to their waists in soft snow."
"There is a moon," said the man in the ulster curtly, climbing over the snow bank and leading the way along the firm but narrow track. The others followed in single file, and for a time nothing was heard but the crunching of snow beneath their feet. For a space their progress lay among pine-trees, through whose black trunks and freshly-silvered branches the moonlight streamed in rays of elfish light. With its mysterious shadows and sharp silences the wood seemed a vast natural treasure house, wherein the frost jewels gleamed with rich profusion and the strange radiance of an enchanted dreamland. To walk with open eyes in such scenes was to lose touch with reality, to forget the sway and swirl of things material, the harsh absurdities of Grimland's civic strife. No wonder a silence fell on the pacing line.
The awakening was rude. As they emerged from the many pillared sanctuary of the forest there was a loud cry of "Now!" Someone, a man in a woollen helmet, threw a cloak around Karl's head and shoulders; someone, a man with a thick beard, struck Saunders heavily in the face, so that he fell back from the firm path into the yielding depth of the untrodden snow. At the same moment Von Bilderbaum, hastening to the King's rescue, was tripped up by the man in the green ulster, and measured his length violently on the hard path. Meyer, quick as thought, whipped out a revolver and fired point blank between the shoulders of Bilderbaum's assailant. Frau von Bilderbaum screamed, and in her emotion stepped off the firm path and disappeared backwards into a sea of incohesive crystals. Before Meyer had time to fire again a man was at his throat, a man with a beard hanging grotesquely from one ear, a man with mad passion in his eye and a nameless oath on his lips.
"Bernhardt!" gasped Meyer, fighting with the frenzy of a terror-stricken man. His assailant was his superior in weight and vigour, but fortunately for the Commander-in-Chief had but the use of one arm. Nevertheless, the arm that fought him was a limb of steel, the fingers of the sound member as relentless as the tentacles of a devil fish. The Jew sweated and struggled like a man in a nightmare. For a moment, choked and breathless, he was overborne; then relief came. Bilderbaum had regained his feet; the old soldier's sword was drawn from its scabbard, and the ex-priest hissed his last shuddering blasphemy into the night air.
"Robert, Robert, are you hurt?" asked Mrs. Saunders, in dire distress, of her struggling spouse, who was making heroic efforts to wade through the waist-deep snow to theterra firmaof the trodden path.
"Karl—quick!" urged the breathless Englishman, at length making his voice heard now that the struggle was terminated.
They looked where Karl had been—and there was no one. The man in the woollen helmet, too, had disappeared, and the short individual in the private's uniform was likewise nowhere to be seen.
"A bob-sleigh,"—explained Saunders, still short of breath, regaining with assistance the coveted foothold of the path,—"they pushed him on to a bob-sleigh which was anchored to the bough of a fir-tree. The little soldier man took the helm, and the other sat guarding the King with a revolver in one hand and the brake-lever in the other."
"After them!" cried old Bilderbaum excitedly, letting go his wife's hand so that she relapsed again into the treacherous quagmire of mocking powder. "After them!"
"After them!" repeated Meyer scornfully, rubbing his bruised throat. "We might do an heroic eight miles an hour down this slippery path.Theywill be going forty, at least. We might as well chase the moonbeams!"
"What are we to do?" asked Saunders desperately.
"That is a question that fools always ask themselves when their folly finds them out," returned Meyer bitterly. "Unfortunately there is no answer to it."
"Brake!" called a high feminine voice, issuing strangely from the moustached lips of the soldier who steered the abducting bob-sleigh.
The gentleman in the woollen helmet applied the brake, and a sharp turn in the run was negotiated in safety.
"How is Karl?" asked the Princess Gloria, for it was she who was manipulating the wheel at the "bob's" prow.
"Coming to, I think!" Trafford shouted back; "this cold air would restore a corpse."
They were in the straight now, and the pace was terrific. Downward they tore through realms of icy air, while the night wind pushed at their throats, brought floods of moisture to their eyes, and roared a wild melody in their deafened ears. It was an exhilarating experience, and even without the added excitement of their desperate deed would have set the blood racing in their veins. But with the excitement was mingled a very definite sense of shame, in Trafford's case at any rate. Their action had been justified by success, and morally, perhaps, by its absolute necessity in their desperate plight, but it painfully resembled an act of treachery.
"What became of Father Bernhardt and Doctor Matti?" asked Gloria presently.
Trafford leaned forward and answered at the top of his voice:
"They must have been killed! Our weight started the 'bob' before I intended, and we were a hundred yards down the track before I could get my hand to the brake. It was impossible to go back."
"Will they catch us, do you think?"
"Impossible! We are travelling at the rate of an express train. Another twenty minutes of this, and we shall reach the point where Colonel Schale's flying detachment has arranged to wait for us."
For a while they travelled without further speech, save when an imperious "Brake!" from the Princess indicated that the pace must be checked in order for a corner to be rounded without mishap.
Under the stone viaduct of the railway they flew, winding in and out of pine woods, sometimes catching a glimpse of the golden lights of Riefinsdorf, and sometimes of the moonlit ivory of the mighty Klauigberg.
"You are sure that Father Bernhardt and Dr. Matti must have been killed?" asked Gloria at length.
"Without reasonable doubt. They have gone to their long homes, which, according to all theory, should be widely separated. That's as may be. The man I'm sorry for is poor Karl, who was feeling really happy till I clapped the drugged antimacassar over his head."
Trafford waited to hear his sentiments echoed, but Gloria said nothing. Her silence pained him; under the circumstances it seemed ungenerous.
Then occurred something which cannot be verbally described,—so far as the sensations of the three human beings were concerned; for, to be suddenly checked in a lightning descent and hurled incontinently into deep snow, produces a complexity of emotions incapable of being recorded through the medium of ink. What happened to the bob-sleigh is a matter of more precise fact. The front part struck violently against some hard object, the steering runners were wrenched round at right angles to the body of the sleigh, the whole thing skidded viciously on the ice, and finally buried its nose in the flanking wall of snow.
"Are you hurt, Gloria?" called out Trafford from his couch of crystals, as soon as he had sufficient breath to frame the question.
There was no answer. Within a few yards of him Karl was sitting up with an expression of dazed bewilderment that was almost comic to behold. Trafford rose and made his way with infinite difficulty to the run. Discovering his revolver lying by the side of the track, he picked it up and examined it. It was uninjured and the cartridges still undetonated.
"Gloria!" he called.
"Yes—I'm all right," came a voice somewhere from the neighbourhood of Karl. "I'm only a bit shaken. I couldn't answer before. I hadn't—any—breath."
"No bones broken?" he persisted.
"None whatever. What happened?"
Trafford was peering thoughtfully at the track.
"Curling-stones," he answered laconically. "When we enfiladed Saunders' trench we sent Major Flannel's stones on a long journey—but not long enough, it appears. There has been a small avalanche of snow across the track, due, I presume, to the vibration of the guns. This held the stones up in the middle of the fair-way. We might have ploughed through the snow, but the granite smashed us."
"What's to be done?" asked the Princess after a pause.
Trafford stepped over the snow-bank and examined the "bob." The runners were twisted and half wrenched from the wooden framework. The steering-wheel was jammed, and refused to respond to the most strenuous efforts; the brake-lever was snapped off short.
"The midnight express doesn't run any further," he said.
"What on earth are we to do?"
He answered her question with another.
"How's Karl?"
The outraged monarch replied in person.
"I am tolerably well, thank you," he said. "I have been conscious for some time, and have listened with some amusement to your commiserations of my lot. The little catastrophe which has just occurred has dispelled the last lingering fumes of the chloroform with which you rendered mehors de combat."
Trafford said nothing, but knitted his brows in perplexed thought.
"We are face to face with a very serious problem," he said after a full minute's meditation. "Gloria, are you sufficiently recovered to join me on the path here, or shall I come and help you out of the soft snow?"
"I will come to you," she answered, suiting the action to the word, and ploughing her deep way to his side. The blonde moustache had parted company with her fair lips, and her fallen shako had released a charming disorder of dark tresses. In her great overcoat, her nether extremities concealed in the snow, she looked once more what she really was,—a young girl of singularly fascinating aspect.
"We can't stay here all night," she said, when she had won her way to the path, "and we cannot well reach the spot where Colonel Schale is awaiting us."
Trafford shook his head.
"Assuming we could walk so far," he said, "and assuming our friend over there would consent to accompany us, we should be overtaken by the pursuit party they are bound to send after us."
"It's all hopeless," she said wearily.
"You have lost confidence in my ability to help you out of difficulties?" he asked.
"You are resourceful—indomitable almost," she conceded, "but you cannot fight Fate."
"I am not trying to."
"But I am. Had it not been for this wretched mishap everything would have been splendid; we should have returned to Weidenbruck with Karl our prisoner. I should have been firmly established on my throne, and you——" she broke off suddenly and added a little sadly: "As it is, we are checkmated within sight of victory."
"You do not blame me for your disappointment? You concede that I did my best?"
His question was dispassionate. She answered it with generous words, but without enthusiasm.
"You did more than any other man could have done. Indeed, I am not complaining of you; I am complaining of Fate."
"Personally, I have a pathetic and unconquerable confidence in Fate," he retorted.
"You—yes. But what is my position? Bernhardt is dead, Matti is dead, Karl is our prisoner only so long as he consents to be. You and I are alone,—alone in the dead of night, in a land of snow and frost. We must find shelter, or perish. We must creep down to Riefinsdorf for a night's lodging, for the road to Wallen is long and will be traversed, for a certainty, by our pursuers. Do you not see now why I complain of Fate? Lying slander has coupled our names none too pleasantly before; what will it say when it has visual facts instead of idle gossip to build upon?"
"Slander will say a good deal," he replied, "but if we wish to give it the lie, the register of the Chapel Royal can always retort with an unanswerable argument."
Gloria said nothing. Moonlight, which is infinitely more beautifying than sunlight, had put a strange fire into her eyes, and turned her flesh to clearest ivory. Trafford, had he been a heathen, would have bowed down and worshipped, so goddess-like was her still pose, so unearthly the cold, soft shadows that gave roundness to her cheeks. As it was, he held his breath and clenched his hands in a spasm of passionate appreciation. Was ever anything so fair under the stars, he asked himself?—did ever such mystic fire burn in human eyes, or frosty breath issue from such perfectly-shaped lips?
In another instant, however, Trafford unclasped his hands, and his fingers trembled, for a great wrath had suddenly mastered him and was shaking his frame as a winter tempest shakes the dead bough of a blasted tree. Gloria,—his Gloria,—who might have loved, who might have fulfilled the mission of her splendid womanhood, had fought down the promptings of her heart and given herself to ambition and the deadening lust of place and power. He felt an almost overpowering desire to seize her roughly in his arms, to break her in his grasp, to crush the supple limbs in an act of ferocious but just retribution. Fortunately his brain steadied itself in time, the mad impulse was checked, and,—as was the way with him,—the paroxysm gave place to a singularly clear and controlled condition of mind.
"Your Majesty," he called out to Karl, who was still maintaining a recumbent position in the snow, "are you sufficiently recovered from your various mishaps to join us here on the path and discuss the situation?"
For answer Karl struggled to his feet and made towards them. He appeared very pale in the moonlight, but there was the same look in his eyes as when he had faced the rebel throng in the courtyard of the Neptunburg.
"You perceive our difficulties, of course," Trafford began. "A week ago we set out from Weidenbruck to accomplish a certain object: that object was, in plain language, to wipe you off the earth, or bring you back bound to the capital. We employed open force, and failed. We employed the gentle arts of abduction, and succeeded—up to a point."
Karl nodded. "I follow you," he said curtly.
"Our motives were frankly selfish," Trafford went on. "The favour of the good Weidenbruckers had to be retained, and it was necessary to do something notable to obtain permanent possession of their good graces." He paused a moment, toyed with his revolver, and looked fixedly at Gloria and then back again at Karl. Then he went on deliberately: "If we return without having killed or captured one, Karl, styling himself King of Grimland, we shall be returning to a nest of hornets. You see my point?"
Karl eyed the revolver thoughtfully.
"Yes, I see your point," he said; "I saw it long before you put it before me. Having failed to abduct me, only one course is open to you. Here I am, unarmed, alone, scarcely recovered from an anæsthetic, shaken by a fall. The moon gives ample light, and your revolver is loaded."
"Precisely," said Trafford. "My course is so obvious! A pressure of the first finger, a puff of smoke, and a brave man groaning in the snow! There are but two objections: firstly, I am not a butcher; secondly, you took it upon you a little while ago to defend the honour of my wife!"
"Your wife?"
"Yes. The lady who is now more or less disguised as a private of the line, did me the honour of bestowing on me her hand in the Chapel Royal of the Neptunburg. When Bernhardt,—playing his part,—hinted at her shame, your kingly spirit refused to hear ill even of your enemy. For that,—if for no other reason,—I am steering clear of regicide."
Karl passed his hand across his brow, as if the news was too much for his dazed senses.
"You and Gloria von Schattenberg are man and wife?" he gasped.
"On paper," Trafford affirmed, "on paper only. In reality we are nothing to each other, and as events are turning out, never will be anything to each other. But I am a proud man, proud of the secret bond between us, though our vows were meaningless and of no value; and because you took it upon you to defend the honour of my 'paper' spouse, I give you your life and wish you God-speed."
Karl's features twitched in the moonlight, and his breath seemed to come with difficulty.
"You are a generous foeman," he said at length.
"Not more so than yourself," Trafford retorted. "When I,—also playing my part,—swore death to 'the cursed American Trafford,' you vowed you would like me for a guest, with whom to fight old battles over old Tokay. I am fond of Tokay," Trafford went on, "and I am fond of reminiscences; also I know a man when I see one. Karl, King of Grimland, will you give me your hand?"
Karl stretched out his hand and gripped the other's. He seemed searching for words, but no words came.
Trafford read many things in the labouring chest and the dimmed eye, and his heart kindled.
"You call me generous," he went on, "but I am generous with another's property. Grimland is yours or Gloria's; mine it never was. Fate has somehow set me as umpire in a great quarrel; and being holder of the scales I must perforce be impartial. Supposing I trample conscience under foot and do a nameless deed under the moon: suppose we return to Weidenbruck triumphant as Queen and consort, what then? Bernhardt, who understood the temper of the Grimlandcanaille, who ruled them as a rough huntsman rules a pack of hounds—Bernhardt the apostate, theabsintheur, the distorted genius whose counsels could alone have kept us in power—is no more. Matti is dead—Matti who, as city prefect, did more with his reforming zeal to make the name of Schattenberg stink in the nostrils of the citizens than any enemy could have done. Weidenbruck is yours for the asking! The nobility were never against you; the people were ours only in their meaner moments. You left the capital as a fugitive; you will return as conquerer, and the people will cry, as I cry now: 'Long live Karl the Twenty-second, of Grimland!'"
Still Karl maintained his frozen silence; not a muscle of his face moved. Only, there was a gleam in his eyes that seemed to look beyond the stark pine trunks and the barren fields of snow; that seemed to project his vision over forty leagues of hill and plain to the turbulent city on the Niederkessel, where a shouting throng acclaimed him as their King. For a moment his whole face lit up with a wonderful glow, and then his emotion seemed to master him. He was a strong man, but he had been through much, physically and mentally, and the last sudden vicissitude of his fortunes won a sharp reaction. His heart beat in great thuds, and the stiff vertical trunks of the forest pines bent and swayed before his eyes. He leaned against a big tree and covered his face with his hands.
Trafford turned and faced Gloria. He expected reproaches, anger, tears of despair. He had given away her kingdom to her enemy. The strong plant of her ambition he had cut at the very tap-root. He who, by hardening his heart, might have made her a queen, had preferred by an act of mercy to make her a fugitive! He steeled himself against the expected hurricane of bitterness. He looked, and as he looked he rubbed his eyes in amazement. The face of Gloria von Schattenberg was the face he had seen in delirium at the old house at Wallen,—the face of a woman with a loving heart and a soul of flame. The eyes that met his were bright with a splendid joy, overflowing with a great tenderness.
"Gloria!"
She advanced towards him with outstretched arms, a smile on her lips.
He seized her and drew her to him.
"Have I done right?" he whispered.
"Beloved, a thousand times, yes!" she replied. "To-night I see things truly, and I shall never see them otherwise. You have conquered me, hypnotised me, as you nearly did at Wallen; and now there is no Bernhardt to wake me from my sweet dream. The glory of a man is his strength and his courage, but the heart of a man is his tenderness and his mercy, and it is these that have prevailed with me."
"Herr Trafford!" came a voice from the big pine-tree.
"Your Majesty."
"I am going to make my way back to Weissheim. May I ask what you propose doing?"
Trafford hesitated.
"About that I must consult the Princess," he said at length.
"I am going where my husband goes," said Gloria, "and I am doing what my husband decides to do."
"Then we will make for Riefinsdorf," said Trafford. "To-morrow, early, we will get a smith to mend our shattered 'bob,' and before the sun has climbed above the shoulder of the Klauigberg we will be scudding down the King's highway, 'Youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm.'"
"Towards Wallen?" asked Karl.
"Towards Austria," corrected Trafford. "The road forks at Winterthurm, and we take the southern branch. The Rylvio Pass is steep, and six hours' coasting should bring us to the frontier."
"Needless to say, you need fear no pursuit," said Karl, "but when will you return? You have to be my guest at the Brunvarad and drink my wine. That is part of the bargain."
Trafford smiled.
"It may come to that, some day," he said. "Things move quickly in Grimland. But the time is not yet." He paused, and then went on: "Your Majesty has had an eventful winter. You have lost a throne and regained it, I believe, more firmly than before. That is, in allegory, the case with me"—he took the Princess's hand in his—"and I am well content."
Karl gazed at the happy pair. Slowly a wonderful smile spread itself over his face, and his eyes shone through a veil of moisture. He seized Trafford's hand and gripped it almost violently.
"Good-bye, brave and generous enemy!" he said; "Good-bye, friend that is to be, that must be, that shall be!" He turned to the Princess, took her in his big arms, and kissed her on both cheeks. "Good-bye, little cousin!" he said. "You are wise and happy in your choice. You have abjured a troubled throne for a kingdom of peace and heart's ease. You are my kinswoman in more than blood,—for you have given yourself to the man whom I am proud to call friend."
He turned and walked up the path as one in a dream. For a moment he staggered in his gait; but he stooped down and rubbed some snow on his forehead, and went on steadily up the hill towards Weissheim.
Gloria and Trafford stood watching him till he disappeared from view.
A little sob broke from the Princess. Then she put her hand in Trafford's, and together they set out towards Riefinsdorf.
In the small hours of the morning, a party of half a dozen men on skis issued from the courtyard of the Brunvarad. They were weary-looking folk, dull-eyed and taciturn, and without a word they set themselves in motion along the road to Riefinsdorf. The remains of a huge bonfire glowed dully by the roadside, and a pillar of black smoke streamed straight up into the windless air. Where the snow had thawed in a circle round the once festive blaze it had frozen again into lumps of discoloured ice. Dark, recumbent forms showed here and there in the snow, heavy breathing wretches who had gone to sleep, warmed with abundant wine and the glowing flames, but who would wake in the morn to the misery of frost-bite and its attendant horrors. But the little group of ski-ers had no thought for such as these, and they passed them by with scarce a glance. Onward they went without a word, till Meyer tripped up over a sleeping form in the roadway, and broke the silence with a bitter curse, as he dragged himself to his feet.
"Why don't you go home, Meyer?" suggested Saunders, "you are fagged out, and we may have to sprint later on."
"If Bilderbaum can go on, I can go on," said the Commander-in-Chief irritably. "He is ten years older than I am."
"Five," corrected the General snappishly.
"The pursuit is farcical," said Meyer. "It would have been useless if we had undertaken it at once. At this hour it is a piece of ludicrous folly."
"You need not come," snapped Saunders, who, like the others, seemed to be in the worst of humours.
"Thanks," retorted Meyer. "We must play the game to its weary end. We have shown ourselves fools, and the least part of our penalty is a sleepless night after a restless day."
"We may overtake them yet," said Captain Lexa, who, with two of his riflemen, made up the little party.
"Impossibilities seem possibilities only to geniuses and fools," said Meyer rudely. "It is hardly necessary to state to which category we belong."
"While there is life there is hope," maintained Lexa stubbornly.
Meyer made an exclamation of contempt.
"Supposing the miracle is realised," he said, "and the slower catches the swifter, even then they will certainly outwit us again. In the proverb the tortoise caught the hare—but then the tortoise had brains."
Meyer's sarcasm had anything but a cheering effect on the dismal spirits of the company.
"To think of our never recognising them!" said Saunders bitterly. "To think of Trafford fooling us——"
"Oh, Trafford has imagination and initiative, in strong contradistinction to ourselves!" interrupted Meyer. "He has fooled us before and he would fool us again twenty times if twenty opportunities were offered him. We are not very clever people, my dear Saunders."
"If we are ever to catch them," said Lexa, "it must be by taking every short cut that offers itself. The road to Wallen winds round in and out of the mountains, and our only chance of overtaking the fugitives is to go straight up hill and down dale, no matter how steep and difficult the track."
Meyer groaned. His legs were aching intolerably, and the thought of breasting a steep ascent on skis almost overwhelmed his flagging spirit. No one, however, answered his groan with another suggestion that he should go back. The Jew had expressed his determination to go on to the bitter end, and nothing but complete physical collapse would stop him. They glissaded swiftly and almost recklessly down the hillside, and the rush of keen air somewhat quickened their flagging energies.
"Bend to the left!" called out Saunders, himself executing a fine "Christiania swing," and thereby just saving himself from charging the snow-wall that banked the bob-sleigh run. The others swung round at his call, and for a time proceeded parallel to the track at a reduced speed.
"Man ahead!" called out Saunders presently; and true enough a dark object was advancing slowly towards them up the path bordering the run. The two soldiers cuddled their rifles suggestively, and the others proceeded at an even pace towards the strange walker of the night.
"A wounded soldier finding his way back," suggested Lexa.
"He may be able to give us information," said Von Bilderbaum.
"Or he may be going to shoot us," said Meyer, prepared as usual for the worst. "Hands up, man," he called nervously, "or we fire!"
The man slowly raised his hands above his head, and continued to plod wearily up the path towards them. In the vague moonlight the newcomer seemed of gigantic stature, and his soundless footsteps suggested a being from another world. On he came with upraised arms and bent head, and then suddenly he lifted his face so that the rays of the sinking moon fell full upon it.
Lexa uttered a cry, but the others stood still in frozen silence, believing they dreamed. Then old Bilderbaum called out hoarsely to the soldiers, "Present arms!" and himself stood stiffly at the salute.
"Must I continue to hold my hands in the air?" asked Karl. "I am very tired."
"Your Majesty!" gasped Saunders.
"Good-evening, gentlemen," said the King, at length lowering his arms. "This is an unexpected pleasure. You are indefatigable."
"Pardon me," said Meyer yawning; "we are exceedingly tired. But as I have been constantly reminding my comrades,—almost to the point of boredom,—we are a pack of fools and must pay for our folly by the inconvenience of a night in the snow."
"If you are fools," said Karl, "I am the king of fools. But at least there is something noble in your folly, if it leads you from warmth and shelter to a hopeless search over a snow-bound countryside."
"But you have escaped, sire?" said Bilderbaum.
"Yes and no," replied Karl. "When the grand coup occurred on the bob-sleigh run I was partially stupefied by the fumes of chloroform. I quickly recovered, however, from its effects, and was even beginning to appreciate the fascinations of a moonlight abduction when an accident occurred to the sleigh."
"You were hurt?" inquired Saunders anxiously.
"No; I fell on my head—which is vastly harder than the snow."
"What happened, sire?" asked Lexa.
And then the King went on to tell that when Trafford enfiladed Saunders' trench with curling-stones he had won the first trick in the game and unwittingly lost the last. That the stones went gaily down the bob-sleigh run en route for Riefinsdorf, and might have gone Heaven knows where had not a subsidence of snow, caused doubtless by the reverberation of the guns, blocked the track. "The snow held the stones up," he concluded, "and the Providence, which manages the unstable affairs of kings and tobogganers, arranged that our runners should strike a large pink stone with a blue ribbon on it."
"Splendid!" cried Bilderbaum enthusiastically. "The 'bob' was wrecked, and the Princess and Trafford being stunned or disabled, you escaped from their clutches."
"Your imagination does you infinite credit, General," said Karl dryly, "but it outruns fact. No one was stunned or disabled; of the three, I was distinctly the most shaken."
"But how——"
"The situation was simple," said Karl. "The 'bob,' as you surmise, was wrecked. My abduction, therefore, was rendered abortive. There were only two courses open to my enemies—to kill me and make their way on foot to Wallen, where their friends were awaiting them, or to set me free and themselves fly the country. Those of you who know Trafford and his charming wife——"
"Wife!" interrupted Saunders.
"Yes," affirmed Karl; "the Princess Gloria was secretly married some days ago to your friend Trafford in the Chapel Royal of the Neptunburg. They are a healthy-minded couple, and they refused to entertain seriously the idea of murder."
"They set you free!" ejaculated Saunders. "Well done, Nervy Trafford! I am not so ashamed of my friend after all."
"He is a splendid fellow," said Karl, "and incidentally, my cousin by marriage. I assure you I for my part am not ashamed of the relationship."
"But where are they now?" asked Meyer.
"They are—where they are. They are free to leave the country without let or hindrance. When things are quieted down and I am firmly in the saddle again, they can come back in their true capacity—as my friends."
"We shall not have to wait long, sire," said Meyer with an unwonted note of jubilation in his voice. "Even before yesterday's battle the tide was running strongly for you at the capital. Henceforth Weidenbruck and the whole country will be loyal. Long live Karl the Twenty-second of Grimland!"
"Long live Karl!" echoed Saunders, Von Bilderbaum, and Lexa. "Long live Karl!" reiterated the riflemen, raising their shakos aloft on their musket barrels.
Karl stood still, with eyes that swam. He began to speak, but ended with a shake of his head, as if something had choked him.
"To-morrow, dear friends," he muttered very low. "To-morrow. To-night I am tired, very tired and very happy. Long live George Trafford and his beautiful bride!" he said in stronger tones. "God bless them! God bless our poor country! God help me to rule"—but his voice had sunk again to a whisper and as he spoke he reeled against Saunders.
The latter held the massive but limp frame from falling, while someone produced brandy from a flask and poured a generous measure down the King's throat. Then the soldiers made a seat of their crossed weapons, and shoulder-high and supported by willing arms, Karl of Grimland was borne, half-fainting with exposure and fatigue, but serene of mind, to the winter palace of his beloved Weissheim.
Down the great, white highway of the Rylvio Pass a bob-sleigh was speeding in the early hours of a perfect morning. The incense of dawn was in the air, and the magic of stupendous scenery uplifted the souls of the two travellers. Fantastic peaks of incomparable beauty rose up in majesty to meet the amazing turquoise of the heavens. Sparkling cascades of dazzling whiteness hung in streams of frozen foam from dun cliffs and larch-crowned boulders. The roadway down which the sleigh was coursing with unchecked speed wound like a silver ribbon at the edge of precipices, sometimes tunnelling through an arch of brown rock, only to give again, after a moment's gloom, a fresh expanse of argent domes and shimmering declivities. Perched high on perilous crags were ancient castles of grim battlements and enduring masonry, stubborn homes of a stubborn nobility that had levied toll in olden times on all such as passed their inhospitable walls. Below, in the still shadowed valley, were villages of tiny houses, the toy campanili of Lilliputian churches, and a grey-green river rushing over a stony bed to merge itself in the ampler flood of the Danube.
"Oh, could anything be more perfect?" asked Gloria, who, as on the previous night, was doing duty at the wheel. There was a flush on her cheeks that was a tribute to the keen mountain air, and a sparkle in her dark eyes that told of welling happiness and a splendid conscious joy. Radiant as the morn, fragrant as the pine-laden air, she seemed the embodiment of a hundred vitalities crowded into one blithe being.
"We are on our honeymoon," returned Trafford, "and it would be a cold, dank day that could depress my soaring spirits. As it is, the impossible beauty of our surroundings is so intoxicating my bewildered brain that I am neglecting my duties as brakesman in a most alarming manner. We shall be over a precipice in a minute, if I don't master my exaltation of spirits."
"Perfect love casteth out fear," laughed Gloria.
"Is it perfect?" he asked.
"Absolutely—now, dear," she replied. "From the first you captured my fancy; that was why I did not lie to you in Herr Krantz's wine-shop. Then, when I thought you had killed Karl in the Iron Maiden, my heart grew sick and cold, for I believed you were, as the others, without ruth or mercy. The news that you had saved his life while pretending to take it, put new fire into my soul; but there was ever a war in my breast between true tenderness and the lust of power. I had inherited ambition from a long line of callous ancestors; my whole life had been a tale of scheming, deadening opportunism. And Bernhardt, as we know, with his great domineering personality, was as death to sentiment. And then, last night, well, you took the bit between your teeth and let yourself go. You over-rode my will, you set at nought my interests: you were master, and I handmaid, and my whole soul went out to you in admiration of your strength, and love of the way you used it."
Trafford drank in the words as he drank in the clear, sweet air of the mountain-side, and happiness—the heroic happiness that befel poets and warriors in the days of the world's youth, when men were demi-gods and gods were demi-mortals—took him with golden wings and exalted him, so that the soaring mountain and the wheeling bird and the forest and the crag and the river were as his brothers and sisters, fellow members of the worshipful company of rejoicing creation.
Onward and downward they flew, while the beams of the rising sun climbed down the valley walls, ledge by ledge and rock by rock, turning brown cliffs to gold, and snowy slopes to diamond and silver. Already they were far below the supreme height of the Weissheim plateau, and the air, dry though it was in reality, seemed almost damp in comparison after the moistureless atmosphere of the lofty tableland they had quitted. The snow held everywhere, but it was the thin covering of an English hill-side in January, not the sumptuous and universal mantle of frost-bound Weissheim. The larch and fir of the uplands were giving gradual place to the stunted oak and the starved chestnut. A thin hedge maintained a scrubby, struggling line at the edge of the roadside, and on the southern slopes the fields were furrowed in endless terraces for the vine.
"We shall reach the frontier in an hour," said Trafford.
"And then?"
"Then we must quit our faithful 'bob.' The road ceases to run downhill at Morgenthal, and a bob-sleigh will not defy the laws of gravity even for the happiest couple in Christendom."
"Then what are our plans?" asked Gloria.
"Plans!" he echoed; "we have no plans. The poor, the unhappy, and the hungry have plans, for they must scheme to improve their condition. But you and I are rich in every gift, and life will be one delicious and unending bob-sleigh ride through gorgeous scenery and vitalising air."
The Princes sighed luxuriously. Then, after a pause—
"We must reach the valley some day," she said.
"Some day, yes," he acquiesced. "Some day the ride will be done, and the road end in the great shadows which no human eye can pierce. But that day will find us hand in hand, with no fear in our hearts, and ready for a longer, stranger, and even more beautiful journey."
As he spoke the valley widened out, and the hills on either side receded at a broad angle. The roofs of Morgenthal were plain to their gaze, and the tinkling of goats' bells broke the silence.
"Austria!" cried Gloria.
"Austria, Vienna, Paris, London," he said, "Southampton, and then the very first boat bound for little old New York. But in our hearts Grimland—always Grimland."