The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett (first ebook reader TXT) 📕

to be reached and the words to be said when each individual was encountered.

“This person is to be found at his stall in the market,” was written of the vacant-faced peasant. “You will first attract his attention by asking the price of something. When he is looking at you, touch your left thumb lightly with the forefinger of your right hand. Then utter in a low distinct tone the words `The Lamp is lighted.’ That is all you are to do.”

Sometimes the directions were not quite so simple, but they were all instructions of the same order. The originals of the sketches were to be sought out—always with precaution which should conceal that they were being sought at all, and always in such a manner as would cause an encounter to appear to be mere chance. Then certain words were to be uttered, but always without attracting the attention of any bystander or passer-by.

The boys worked at their task through the entire day. They concentrated all their powers upon it. They wrote and re-wrote —they repeated to each other what they committed to memory as if it were a lesson. Marco worked with the greater ease and more rapidly, because exercise of this order had been his practice and entertainment from his babyhood. The Rat, however, almost kept pace with him, as he had been born with a phenomenal memory and his eagerness and desire were a fury.

But throughout the entire day neither of them once referred to what they were doing as anything but “the game.”

At night, it is true, each found himself lying awake and thinking. It was The Rat who broke the silence from his sofa.

“It is what the messengers of the Secret Party would be ordered to do when they were sent out to give the Sign for the Rising,” he said. “I made that up the first day I invented the party, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” answered Marco.

After a third day’s concentration they knew by heart everything given to them to learn. That night Loristan put them through an examination.

“Can you write these things?” he asked, after each had repeated them and emerged safely from all cross-questioning.

Each boy wrote them correctly from memory.

“Write yours in French—in German—in Russian—in Samavian,” Loristan said to Marco.

“All you have told me to do and to learn is part of myself, Father,” Marco said in the end. “It is part of me, as if it were my hand or my eyes—or my heart.”

“I believe that is true,” answered Loristan.

He was pale that night and there was a shadow on his face. His eyes held a great longing as they rested on Marco. It was a yearning which had a sort of dread in it.

Lazarus also did not seem quite himself. He was red instead of pale, and his movements were uncertain and restless. He cleared his throat nervously at intervals and more than once left his chair as if to look for something.

It was almost midnight when Loristan, standing near Marco, put his arm round his shoulders.

“The Game”—he began, and then was silent a few moments while Marco felt his arm tighten its hold. Both Marco and The Rat felt a hard quick beat in their breasts, and, because of this and because the pause seemed long, Marco spoke.

“The Game—yes, Father?” he said.

“The Game is about to give you work to do—both of you,” Loristan answered.

Lazarus cleared his throat and walked to the easel in the corner of the room. But he only changed the position of a piece of drawing-paper on it and then came back.

“In two days you are to go to Paris—as you,” to The Rat, “planned in the game.”

“As I planned?” The Rat barely breathed the words.

“Yes,” answered Loristan. “The instructions you have learned you will carry out. There is no more to be done than to manage to approach certain persons closely enough to be able to utter certain words to them.”

“Only two young strollers whom no man could suspect,” put in Lazarus in an astonishingly rough and shaky voice. “They could pass near the Emperor himself without danger. The young Master—” his voice became so hoarse that he was obligated to clear it loudly—“the young Master must carry himself less finely. It would be well to shuffle a little and slouch as if he were of the common people.”

“Yes,” said The Rat hastily. “He must do that. I can teach him. He holds his head and his shoulders like a gentleman. He must look like a street lad.”

“I will look like one,” said Marco, with determination.

“I will trust you to remind him,” Loristan said to The Rat, and he said it with gravity. “That will be your charge.”

As he lay upon his pillow that night, it seemed to Marco as if a load had lifted itself from his heart. It was the load of uncertainty and longing. He had so long borne the pain of feeling that he was too young to be allowed to serve in any way. His dreams had never been wild ones—they had in fact always been boyish and modest, howsoever romantic. But now no dream which could have passed through his brain would have seemed so wonderful as this—that the hour had come—the hour had come—and that he, Marco, was to be its messenger. He was to do no dramatic deed and be announced by no flourish of heralds. No one would know what he did. What he achieved could only be attained if he remained obscure and unknown and seemed to every one only a common ordinary boy who knew nothing whatever of important things. But his father had given to him a gift so splendid that he trembled with awe and joy as he thought of it. The Game had become real. He and The Rat were to carry with them The Sign, and it would be like carrying a tiny lamp to set aflame lights which would blaze from one mountain-top to another until half the world seemed on fire.

As he had awakened out of his sleep when Lazarus touched him, so he awakened in the middle of the night again. But he was not aroused by a touch. When he opened his eyes he knew it was a look which had penetrated his sleep—a look in the eyes of his father who was standing by his side. In the road outside there was the utter silence he had noticed the night of the Prince’s first visit—the only light was that of the lamp in the street, but he could see Loristan’s face clearly enough to know that the mere intensity of his gaze had awakened him. The Rat was sleeping profoundly. Loristan spoke in Samavian and under his breath.

“Beloved one,” he said. “You are very young. Because I am your father—just at this hour I can feel nothing else. I have trained you for this through all the years of your life. I am proud of your young maturity and strength but—Beloved—you are a child! Can I do this thing!”

For the moment, his face and his voice were scarcely like his own.

He kneeled by the bedside, and, as he did it, Marco half sitting up caught his hand and held it hard against his breast.

“Father, I know!” he cried under his breath also. “It is true. I am a child but am I not a man also? You yourself said it. I always knew that you were teaching me to be one—for some reason. It was my secret that I knew it. I learned well because I never forgot it. And I learned. Did I not?”

He was so eager that he looked more like a boy than ever. But his young strength and courage were splendid to see. Loristan knew him through and through and read every boyish thought of his.

“Yes,” he answered slowly. “You did your part—and now if I —drew back—you would feel that I HAD FAILED YOU-FAILED YOU.”

“You!” Marco breathed it proudly. “You COULD not fail even the weakest thing in the world.”

There was a moment’s silence in which the two pairs of eyes dwelt on each other with the deepest meaning, and then Loristan rose to his feet.

“The end will be all that our hearts most wish,” he said. “To-morrow you may begin the new part of `the Game.’ You may go to Paris.”

 

When the train which was to meet the boat that crossed from Dover to Calais steamed out of the noisy Charing Cross Station, it carried in a third-class carriage two shabby boys. One of them would have been a handsome lad if he had not carried himself slouchingly and walked with a street lad’s careless shuffling gait. The other was a cripple who moved slowly, and apparently with difficulty, on crutches. There was nothing remarkable or picturesque enough about them to attract attention. They sat in the corner of the carriage and neither talked much nor seemed to be particularly interested in the journey or each other. When they went on board the steamer, they were soon lost among the commoner passengers and in fact found for themselves a secluded place which was not advantageous enough to be wanted by any one else.

“What can such a poor-looking pair of lads be going to Paris for?” some one asked his companion.

“Not for pleasure, certainly; perhaps to get work,” was the casual answer.

In the evening they reached Paris, and Marco led the way to a small cafe in a side-street where they got some cheap food. In the same side-street they found a bed they could share for the night in a tiny room over a baker’s shop.

The Rat was too much excited to be ready to go to bed early. He begged Marco to guide him about the brilliant streets. They went slowly along the broad Avenue des Champs Elysees under the lights glittering among the horse-chestnut trees. The Rat’s sharp eyes took it all in—the light of the cafes among the embowering trees, the many carriages rolling by, the people who loitered and laughed or sat at little tables drinking wine and listening to music, the broad stream of life which flowed on to the Arc de Triomphe and back again.

“It’s brighter and clearer than London,” he said to Marco. “The people look as if they were having more fun than they do in England.”

The Place de la Concorde spreading its stately spaces—a world of illumination, movement, and majestic beauty—held him as though by a fascination. He wanted to stand and stare at it, first from one point of view and then from another. It was bigger and more wonderful than he had been able to picture it when Marco had described it to him and told him of the part it had played in the days of the French Revolution when the guillotine had stood in it and the tumbrils had emptied themselves at the foot of its steps.

He stood near the Obelisk a long time without speaking.

“I can see it all happening,” he said at last, and he pulled Marco away.

Before they returned home, they found their way to a large house which stood in a courtyard. In the iron work of the handsome gates which shut it in was wrought a gilded coronet. The gates were closed and the house was not brightly lighted.

They walked past it and round it without speaking, but, when they neared the entrance for the second time, The Rat said in a low tone:

“She is five feet seven, has black hair, a nose with a high bridge, her eyebrows are black and almost meet across it, she has a pale olive skin and holds her head proudly.”

“That is the one,”