The Lost Prince

F >> Francis Hodgson Burnett >> The Lost Prince


"The Lamp is Lighted, brothers!" he cried. "The Lamp is Lighted!"

Then The Rat, who stood apart, watching, thought that the strange world
within the cavern had gone mad! Wild smothered cries broke forth, men
caught each other in passionate embrace, they fell upon their knees,
they clutched one another sobbing, they wrung each other's hands, they
leaped into the air. It was as if they could not bear the joy of hearing
that the end of their waiting had come at last. They rushed upon Marco,
and fell at his feet. The Rat saw big peasants kissing his shoes, his
hands, every scrap of his clothing they could seize. The wild circle
swayed and closed upon him until The Rat was afraid. He did not know
that, overpowered by this frenzy of emotion, his own excitement was
making him shake from head to foot like a leaf, and that tears were
streaming down his cheeks. The swaying crowd hid Marco from him, and he
began to fight his way towards him because his excitement increased with
fear. The ecstasy-frenzied crowd of men seemed for the moment to have
almost ceased to be sane. Marco was only a boy. They did not know how
fiercely they were pressing upon him and keeping away the very air.

"Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" yelled The Rat, struggling forward.
"Stand back, you fools! I'm his aide-de-camp! Let me pass!"

And though no one understood his English, one or two suddenly remembered
they had seen him enter with the priest and so gave way. But just then
the old priest lifted his hand above the crowd, and spoke in a voice of
stern command.

"Stand back, my children!" he cried. "Madness is not the homage you must
bring to the son of Stefan Loristan. Obey! Obey!" His voice had a power
in it that penetrated even the wildest herdsmen. The frenzied mass
swayed back and left space about Marco, whose face The Rat could at last
see. It was very white with emotion, and in his eyes there was a look
which was like awe.

The Rat pushed forward until he stood beside him. He did not know that
he almost sobbed as he spoke.

"I'm your aide-de-camp," he said. "I'm going to stand here! Your father
sent me! I'm under orders! I thought they'd crush you to death."

He glared at the circle about them as if, instead of worshippers
distraught with adoration, they had been enemies. The old priest seeing
him, touched Marco's arm.

"Tell him he need not fear," he said. "It was only for the first few
moments. The passion of their souls drove them wild. They are your
slaves."

"Those at the back might have pushed the front ones on until they
trampled you under foot in spite of themselves!" The Rat persisted.

"No," said Marco. "They would have stopped if I had spoken."

"Why didn't you speak then?" snapped The Rat.

"All they felt was for Samavia, and for my father," Marco said, "and for
the Sign. I felt as they did."

The Rat was somewhat softened. It was true, after all. How could he have
tried to quell the outbursts of their worship of Loristan--of the
country he was saving for them--of the Sign which called them to
freedom? He could not.

Then followed a strange and picturesque ceremonial. The priest went
about among the encircling crowd and spoke to one man after
another--sometimes to a group. A larger circle was formed. As the pale
old man moved about, The Rat felt as if some religious ceremony were
going to be performed. Watching it from first to last, he was thrilled
to the core.

At the end of the cavern a block of stone had been cut out to look like
an altar. It was covered with white, and against the wall above it hung
a large picture veiled by a curtain. From the roof there swung before it
an ancient lamp of metal suspended by chains. In front of the altar was
a sort of stone dais. There the priest asked Marco to stand, with his
aide-de-camp on the lower level in attendance. A knot of the biggest
herdsmen went out and returned. Each carried a huge sword which had
perhaps been of the earliest made in the dark days gone by. The bearers
formed themselves into a line on either side of Marco. They raised their
swords and formed a pointed arch above his head and a passage twelve men
long. When the points first clashed together The Rat struck himself hard
upon his breast. His exultation was too keen to endure. He gazed at
Marco standing still--in that curiously splendid way in which both he
and his father _could_ stand still--and wondered how he could do it. He
looked as if he were prepared for any strange thing which could happen
to him--because he was "under orders." The Rat knew that he was doing
whatsoever he did merely for his father's sake. It was as if he felt
that he was representing his father, though he was a mere boy; and that
because of this, boy as he was, he must bear himself nobly and remain
outwardly undisturbed.

At the end of the arch of swords, the old priest stood and gave a sign
to one man after another. When the sign was given to a man he walked
under the arch to the dais, and there knelt and, lifting Marco's hand to
his lips, kissed it with passionate fervor. Then he returned to the
place he had left. One after another passed up the aisle of swords, one
after another knelt, one after the other kissed the brown young hand,
rose and went away. Sometimes The Rat heard a few words which sounded
almost like a murmured prayer, sometimes he heard a sob as a shaggy head
bent, again and again he saw eyes wet with tears. Once or twice Marco
spoke a few Samavian words, and the face of the man spoken to flamed
with joy. The Rat had time to see, as Marco had seen, that many of the
faces were not those of peasants. Some of them were clear cut and subtle
and of the type of scholars or nobles. It took a long time for them all
to kneel and kiss the lad's hand, but no man omitted the ceremony; and
when at last it was at an end, a strange silence filled the cavern. They
stood and gazed at each other with burning eyes.

The priest moved to Marco's side, and stood near the altar. He leaned
forward and took in his hand a cord which hung from the veiled
picture--he drew it and the curtain fell apart. There seemed to stand
gazing at them from between its folds a tall kingly youth with deep eyes
in which the stars of God were stilly shining, and with a smile
wonderful to behold. Around the heavy locks of his black hair the long
dead painter of missals had set a faint glow of light like a halo.

"Son of Stefan Loristan," the old priest said, in a shaken voice, "it is
the Lost Prince! It is Ivor!"

Then every man in the room fell on his knees. Even the men who had
upheld the archway of swords dropped their weapons with a crash and
knelt also. He was their saint--this boy! Dead for five hundred years,
he was their saint still.

"Ivor! Ivor!" the voices broke into a heavy murmur. "Ivor! Ivor!" as if
they chanted a litany.

Marco started forward, staring at the picture, his breath caught in his
throat, his lips apart.

"But--but--" he stammered, "but if my father were as young as he is--he
would be _like_ him!"

"When you are as old as he is, _you_ will be like him--_you_!" said the
priest. And he let the curtain fall.

The Rat stood staring with wide eyes from Marco to the picture and from
the picture to Marco. And he breathed faster and faster and gnawed his
finger ends. But he did not utter a word. He could not have done it, if
he tried.

Then Marco stepped down from the dais as if he were in a dream, and the
old man followed him. The men with swords sprang to their feet and made
their archway again with a new clash of steel. The old man and the boy
passed under it together. Now every man's eyes were fixed on Marco. At
the heavy door by which he had entered, he stopped and turned to meet
their glances. He looked very young and thin and pale, but suddenly his
father's smile was lighted in his face. He said a few words in Samavian
clearly and gravely, saluted, and passed out.

"What did you say to them?" gasped The Rat, stumbling after him as the
door closed behind them and shut in the murmur of impassioned sound.

"There was only one thing to say," was the answer. "They are men--I am
only a boy. I thanked them for my father, and told them he would
never--never forget."




XXVIII

"EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!"


It was raining in London--pouring. It had been raining for two weeks,
more or less, generally more. When the train from Dover drew in at
Charing Cross, the weather seemed suddenly to have considered that it
had so far been too lenient and must express itself much more
vigorously. So it had gathered together its resources and poured them
forth in a deluge which surprised even Londoners.

The rain so beat against and streamed down the windows of the
third-class carriage in which Marco and The Rat sat that they could not
see through them.

They had made their homeward journey much more rapidly than they had
made the one on which they had been outward bound. It had of course
taken them some time to tramp back to the frontier, but there had been
no reason for stopping anywhere after they had once reached the
railroads. They had been tired sometimes, but they had slept heavily on
the wooden seats of the railway carriages. Their one desire was to get
home. No. 7 Philibert Place rose before them in its noisy dinginess as
the one desirable spot on earth. To Marco it held his father. And it was
Loristan alone that The Rat saw when he thought of it. Loristan as he
would look when he saw him come into the room with Marco, and stand up
and salute, and say: "I have brought him back, sir. He has carried out
every single order you gave him--every single one. So have I." So he
had. He had been sent as his companion and attendant, and he had been
faithful in every thought. If Marco would have allowed him, he would
have waited upon him like a servant, and have been proud of the service.
But Marco would never let him forget that they were only two boys and
that one was of no more importance than the other. He had secretly even
felt this attitude to be a sort of grievance. It would have been more
like a game if one of them had been the mere servitor of the other, and
if that other had blustered a little, and issued commands, and demanded
sacrifices. If the faithful vassal could have been wounded or cast into
a dungeon for his young commander's sake, the adventure would have been
more complete. But though their journey had been full of wonders and
rich with beauties, though the memory of it hung in The Rat's mind like
a background of tapestry embroidered in all the hues of the earth with
all the splendors of it, there had been no dungeons and no wounds. After
the adventure in Munich their unimportant boyishness had not even been
observed by such perils as might have threatened them. As The Rat had
said, they had "blown like grains of dust" through Europe and had been
as nothing. And this was what Loristan had planned, this was what his
grave thought had wrought out. If they had been men, they would not have
been so safe.

From the time they had left the old priest on the hillside to begin
their journey back to the frontier, they both had been given to long
silences as they tramped side by side or lay on the moss in the forests.
Now that their work was done, a sort of reaction had set in. There were
no more plans to be made and no more uncertainties to contemplate. They
were on their way back to No. 7 Philibert Place--Marco to his father,
The Rat to the man he worshipped. Each of them was thinking of many
things. Marco was full of longing to see his father's face and hear his
voice again. He wanted to feel the pressure of his hand on his
shoulder--to be sure that he was real and not a dream. This last was
because during this homeward journey everything that had happened often
seemed to be a dream. It had all been so wonderful--the climber standing
looking down at them the morning they awakened on the Gaisburg; the
mountaineer shoemaker measuring his foot in the small shop; the old, old
woman and her noble lord; the Prince with his face turned upward as he
stood on the balcony looking at the moon; the old priest kneeling and
weeping for joy; the great cavern with the yellow light upon the crowd
of passionate faces; the curtain which fell apart and showed the still
eyes and the black hair with the halo about it! Now that they were left
behind, they all seemed like things he had dreamed. But he had not
dreamed them; he was going back to tell his father about them. And how
_good_ it would be to feel his hand on his shoulder!

The Rat gnawed his finger ends a great deal. His thoughts were more wild
and feverish than Marco's. They leaped forward in spite of him. It was
no use to pull himself up and tell himself that he was a fool. Now that
all was over, he had time to be as great a fool as he was inclined to
be. But how he longed to reach London and stand face to face with
Loristan! The sign was given. The Lamp was lighted. What would happen
next? His crutches were under his arms before the train drew up.

"We're there! We're there!" he cried restlessly to Marco. They had no
luggage to delay them. They took their bags and followed the crowd along
the platform. The rain was rattling like bullets against the high
glassed roof. People turned to look at Marco, seeing the glow of
exultant eagerness in his face. They thought he must be some boy coming
home for the holidays and going to make a visit at a place he delighted
in. The rain was dancing on the pavements when they reached the
entrance.

"A cab won't cost much," Marco said, "and it will take us quickly."

They called one and got into it. Each of them had flushed cheeks, and
Marco's eyes looked as if he were gazing at something a long way
off--gazing at it, and wondering.

"We've come back!" said The Rat, in an unsteady voice. "We've been--and
we've come back!" Then suddenly turning to look at Marco, "Does it ever
seem to you as if, perhaps, it--it wasn't true?"

"Yes," Marco answered, "but it was true. And it's done." Then he added
after a second or so of silence, just what The Rat had said to himself,
"What next?" He said it very low.

The way to Philibert Place was not long. When they turned into the
roaring, untidy road, where the busses and drays and carts struggled
past each other with their loads, and the tired-faced people hurried in
crowds along the pavement, they looked at them all feeling that they had
left their dream far behind indeed. But they were at home.

It was a good thing to see Lazarus open the door and stand waiting
before they had time to get out of the cab. Cabs stopped so seldom
before houses in Philibert Place that the inmates were always prompt to
open their doors. When Lazarus had seen this one stop at the broken iron
gate, he had known whom it brought. He had kept an eye on the windows
faithfully for many a day--even when he knew that it was too soon, even
if all was well, for any travelers to return.

He bore himself with an air more than usually military and his salute
when Marco crossed the threshold was formal stateliness itself. But his
greeting burst from his heart.

"God be thanked!" he said in his deep growl of joy. "God be thanked!"

When Marco put forth his hand, he bent his grizzled head and kissed it
devoutly.

"God be thanked!" he said again.

"My father?" Marco began, "my father is out?" If he had been in the
house, he knew he would not have stayed in the back sitting-room.

"Sir," said Lazarus, "will you come with me into his room? You, too,
sir," to The Rat. He had never said "sir" to him before.

He opened the door of the familiar room, and the boys entered. The room
was empty.

Marco did not speak; neither did The Rat. They both stood still in the
middle of the shabby carpet and looked up at the old soldier. Both had
suddenly the same feeling that the earth had dropped from beneath their
feet. Lazarus saw it and spoke fast and with tremor. He was almost as
agitated as they were.

"He left me at your service--at your command"--he began.

"Left you?" said Marco.

"He left us, all three, under orders--to _wait_," said Lazarus. "The
Master has gone."

The Rat felt something hot rush into his eyes. He brushed it away that
he might look at Marco's face. The shock had changed it very much. Its
glowing eager joy had died out, it had turned paler and his brows were
drawn together. For a few seconds he did not speak at all, and, when he
did speak, The Rat knew that his voice was steady only because he willed
that it should be so.

"If he has gone," he said, "it is because he had a strong reason. It was
because he also was under orders."

"He said that you would know that," Lazarus answered. "He was called in
such haste that he had not a moment in which to do more than write a few
words. He left them for you on his desk there."

Marco walked over to the desk and opened the envelope which was lying
there. There were only a few lines on the sheet of paper inside and they
had evidently been written in the greatest haste. They were these:

"The Life of my life--for Samavia."

"He was called--to Samavia," Marco said, and the thought sent his blood
rushing through his veins. "He has gone to Samavia!"

Lazarus drew his hand roughly across his eyes and his voice shook and
sounded hoarse.

"There has been great disaffection in the camps of the Maranovitch," he
said. "The remnant of the army has gone mad. Sir, silence is still the
order, but who knows--who knows? God alone."

He had not finished speaking before he turned his head as if listening
to sounds in the road. They were the kind of sounds which had broken up
The Squad, and sent it rushing down the passage into the street to seize
on a newspaper. There was to be heard a commotion of newsboys shouting
riotously some startling piece of news which had called out an "Extra."

The Rat heard it first and dashed to the front door. As he opened it a
newsboy running by shouted at the topmost power of his lungs the news he
had to sell: "Assassination of King Michael Maranovitch by his own
soldiers! Assassination of the Maranovitch! Extra! Extra! Extra!"

When The Rat returned with a newspaper, Lazarus interposed between him
and Marco with great and respectful ceremony. "Sir," he said to Marco,
"I am at your command, but the Master left me with an order which I was
to repeat to you. He requested you _not_ to read the newspapers until he
himself could see you again."

Both boys fell back.

"Not read the papers!" they exclaimed together.

Lazarus had never before been quite so reverential and ceremonious.

"Your pardon, sir," he said. "I may read them at your orders, and report
such things as it is well that you should know. There have been dark
tales told and there may be darker ones. He asked that you would not
read for yourself. If you meet again--when you meet again"--he corrected
himself hastily--"when you meet again, he says you will understand. I am
your servant. I will read and answer all such questions as I can."

The Rat handed him the paper and they returned to the back room
together.

"You shall tell us what he would wish us to hear," Marco said.

The news was soon told. The story was not a long one as exact details
had not yet reached London. It was briefly that the head of the
Maranovitch party had been put to death by infuriated soldiers of his
own army. It was an army drawn chiefly from a peasantry which did not
love its leaders, or wish to fight, and suffering and brutal treatment
had at last roused it to furious revolt.

"What next?" said Marco.

"If I were a Samavian--" began The Rat and then he stopped.

Lazarus stood biting his lips, but staring stonily at the carpet. Not
The Rat alone but Marco also noted a grim change in him. It was grim
because it suggested that he was holding himself under an iron control.
It was as if while tortured by anxiety he had sworn not to allow himself
to look anxious and the resolve set his jaw hard and carved new lines in
his rugged face. Each boy thought this in secret, but did not wish to
put it into words. If he was anxious, he could only be so for one
reason, and each realized what the reason must be. Loristan had gone to
Samavia--to the torn and bleeding country filled with riot and danger.
If he had gone, it could only have been because its danger called him
and he went to face it at its worst. Lazarus had been left behind to
watch over them. Silence was still the order, and what he knew he could
not tell them, and perhaps he knew little more than that a great life
might be lost.

Because his master was absent, the old soldier seemed to feel that he
must comfort himself with a greater ceremonial reverance than he had
ever shown before. He held himself within call, and at Marco's orders,
as it had been his custom to hold himself with regard to Loristan. The
ceremonious service even extended itself to The Rat, who appeared to
have taken a new place in his mind. He also seemed now to be a person to
be waited upon and replied to with dignity and formal respect.

When the evening meal was served, Lazarus drew out Loristan's chair at
the head of the table and stood behind it with a majestic air.

"Sir," he said to Marco, "the Master requested that you take his seat at
the table until--while he is not with you."

Marco took the seat in silence.

* * * * *

At two o'clock in the morning, when the roaring road was still, the
light from the street lamp, shining into the small bedroom, fell on two
pale boy faces. The Rat sat up on his sofa bed in the old way with his
hands clasped round his knees. Marco lay flat on his hard pillow.
Neither of them had been to sleep and yet they had not talked a great
deal. Each had secretly guessed a good deal of what the other did not
say.

"There is one thing we must remember," Marco had said, early in the
night. "We must not be afraid."

"No," answered The Rat, almost fiercely, "we must not be afraid."

"We are tired; we came back expecting to be able to tell it all to him.
We have always been looking forward to that. We never thought once that
he might be gone. And he _was_ gone. Did you feel as if--" he turned
towards the sofa, "as if something had struck you on the chest?"

"Yes," The Rat answered heavily. "Yes."

"We weren't ready," said Marco. "He had never gone before; but we ought
to have known he might some day be--called. He went because he was
called. He told us to wait. We don't know what we are waiting for, but
we know that we must not be afraid. To let ourselves be _afraid_ would be
breaking the Law."

"The Law!" groaned The Rat, dropping his head on his hands, "I'd
forgotten about it."

"Let us remember it," said Marco. "This is the time. 'Hate not. _Fear_
not!'" He repeated the last words again and again. "Fear not! Fear
not," he said. "_Nothing_ can harm him."

The Rat lifted his head, and looked at the bed sideways.

"Did you think--" he said slowly--"did you _ever_ think that perhaps _he_
knew where the descendant of the Lost Prince was?"

Marco answered even more slowly.

"If any one knew--surely he might. He has known so much," he said.

"Listen to this!" broke forth The Rat. "I believe he has gone to _tell_
the people. If he does--if he could show them--all the country would run
mad with joy. It wouldn't be only the Secret Party. All Samavia would
rise and follow any flag he chose to raise. They've prayed for the Lost
Prince for five hundred years, and if they believed they'd got him once
more, they'd fight like madmen for him. But there would not be any one
to fight. They'd _all_ want the same thing! If they could see the man with
Ivor's blood in his veins, they'd feel he had come back to them--risen
from the dead. They'd believe it!"

He beat his fists together in his frenzy of excitement. "It's the time!
It's the time!" he cried. "No man could let such a chance go by! He _must_
tell them--he _must_. That _must_ be what he's gone for. He knows--he
knows--he's always known!" And he threw himself back on his sofa and
flung his arms over his face, lying there panting.

"If it is the time," said Marco in a low, strained voice--"if it is, and
he knows--he will tell them." And he threw his arms up over his own face
and lay quite still.

Neither of them said another word, and the street lamp shone in on them
as if it were waiting for something to happen. But nothing happened. In
time they were asleep.




XXIX

'TWIXT NIGHT AND MORNING


After this, they waited. They did not know what they waited for, nor
could they guess even vaguely how the waiting would end. All that
Lazarus could tell them he told. He would have been willing to stand
respectfully for hours relating to Marco the story of how the period of
their absence had passed for his Master and himself. He told how
Loristan had spoken each day of his son, how he had often been pale with
anxiousness, how in the evenings he had walked to and fro in his room,
deep in thought, as he looked down unseeingly at the carpet.

"He permitted me to talk of you, sir," Lazarus said. "I saw that he
wished to hear your name often. I reminded him of the times when you had
been so young that most children of your age would have been in the
hands of nurses, and yet you were strong and silent and sturdy and
traveled with us as if you were not a child at all--never crying when
you were tired and were not properly fed. As if you understood--as if
you understood," he added, proudly. "If, through the power of God a
creature can be a man at six years old, you were that one. Many a dark
day I have looked into your solemn, watching eyes, and have been half
afraid; because that a child should answer one's gaze so gravely seemed
almost an unearthly thing."