‘My children,’ he said, ‘this is the son of Stefan Loristan, and he comes to bear the Sign. My son,’ to Marco, ‘speak!’
Then Marco understood what he wished, and also what he felt. He felt it himself, that magnificent uplifting gladness, as he spoke, holding his black head high and lifting his right hand.
‘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 fervour. 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 t
he 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.’
chapter twenty-eight
‘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 splendours 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 travellers 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!’