The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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СКАЧАТЬ He had a son. His name was Ivor. And he was trained as I told you. That part I knew to be true, though I should have believed it was true even if I had not known. There has ALWAYS been a king ready for Samavia—even when he has labored with his hands and served others. Each one took the oath of allegiance.”

      “As I did?” said Marco, breathless with excitement. When one is twelve years old, to be so near a Lost Prince who might end wars is a thrilling thing.

      “The same,” answered Loristan.

      Marco threw up his hand in salute.

      “‘Here grows a man for Samavia! God be thanked!’” he quoted. “And HE is somewhere? And you know?”

      Loristan bent his head in acquiescence.

      “For years much secret work has been done, and the Fedorovitch party has grown until it is much greater and more powerful than the other parties dream. The larger countries are tired of the constant war and disorder in Samavia. Their interests are disturbed by them, and they are deciding that they must have peace and laws which can be counted on. There have been Samavian patriots who have spent their lives in trying to bring this about by making friends in the most powerful capitals, and working secretly for the future good of their own land. Because Samavia is so small and uninfluential, it has taken a long time but when King Maran and his family were assassinated and the war broke out, there were great powers which began to say that if some king of good blood and reliable characteristics were given the crown, he should be upheld.”

      “HIS blood,”—Marco’s intensity made his voice drop almost to a whisper,—“HIS blood has been trained for five hundred years, Father! If it comes true—” though he laughed a little, he was obliged to wink his eyes hard because suddenly he felt tears rush into them, which no boy likes—“the shepherds will have to make a new song—it will have to be a shouting one about a prince going away and a king coming back!”

      “They are a devout people and observe many an ancient rite and ceremony. They will chant prayers and burn altar-fires on their mountain sides,” Loristan said. “But the end is not yet—the end is not yet. Sometimes it seems that perhaps it is near—but God knows!”

      Then there leaped back upon Marco the story he had to tell, but which he had held back for the last—the story of the man who spoke Samavian and drove in the carriage with the King. He knew now that it might mean some important thing which he could not have before suspected.

      “There is something I must tell you,” he said.

      He had learned to relate incidents in few but clear words when he related them to his father. It had been part of his training. Loristan had said that he might sometime have a story to tell when he had but few moments to tell it in—some story which meant life or death to some one. He told this one quickly and well. He made Loristan see the well-dressed man with the deliberate manner and the keen eyes, and he made him hear his voice when he said, “Tell your father that you are a very well-trained lad.”

      “I am glad he said that. He is a man who knows what training is,” said Loristan. “He is a person who knows what all Europe is doing, and almost all that it will do. He is an ambassador from a powerful and great country. If he saw that you are a well-trained and fine lad, it might—it might even be good for Samavia.”

      “Would it matter that I was well-trained? COULD it matter to Samavia?” Marco cried out.

      Loristan paused for a moment—watching him gravely—looking him over—his big, well-built boy’s frame, his shabby clothes, and his eagerly burning eyes.

      He smiled one of his slow wonderful smiles.

      “Yes. It might even matter to Samavia!” he answered.

      VI

THE DRILL AND THE SECRET PARTY

      Loristan did not forbid Marco to pursue his acquaintance with The Rat and his followers.

      “You will find out for yourself whether they are friends for you or not,” he said. “You will know in a few days, and then you can make your own decision. You have known lads in various countries, and you are a good judge of them, I think. You will soon see whether they are going to be MEN or mere rabble. The Rat now—how does he strike you?”

      And the handsome eyes held their keen look of questioning.

      “He’d be a brave soldier if he could stand,” said Marco, thinking him over. “But he might be cruel.”

      “A lad who might make a brave soldier cannot be disdained, but a man who is cruel is a fool. Tell him that from me,” Loristan answered. “He wastes force—his own and the force of the one he treats cruelly. Only a fool wastes force.”

      “May I speak of you sometimes?” asked Marco.

      “Yes. You will know how. You will remember the things about which silence is the order.”

      “I never forget them,” said Marco. “I have been trying not to, for such a long time.”

      “You have succeeded well, Comrade!” returned Loristan, from his writing-table, to which he had gone and where he was turning over papers.

      A strong impulse overpowered the boy. He marched over to the table and stood very straight, making his soldierly young salute, his whole body glowing.

      “Father!” he said, “you don’t know how I love you! I wish you were a general and I might die in battle for you. When I look at you, I long and long to do something for you a boy could not do. I would die of a thousand wounds rather than disobey you—or Samavia!”

      He seized Loristan’s hand, and knelt on one knee and kissed it. An English or American boy could not have done such a thing from unaffected natural impulse. But he was of warm Southern blood.

      “I took my oath of allegiance to you, Father, when I took it to Samavia. It seems as if you were Samavia, too,” he said, and kissed his hand again.

      Loristan had turned toward him with one of the movements which were full of dignity and grace. Marco, looking up at him, felt that there was always a certain remote stateliness in him which made it seem quite natural that any one should bend the knee and kiss his hand.

      A sudden great tenderness glowed in his father’s face as he raised the boy and put his hand on his shoulder.

      “Comrade,” he said, “you don’t know how much I love you—and what reason there is that we should love each other! You don’t know how I have been watching you, and thanking God each year that here grew a man for Samavia. That I know you are—a MAN, though you have lived but twelve years. Twelve years may grow a man—or prove that a man will never grow, though a human thing he may remain for ninety years. This year may be full of strange things for both of us. We cannot know WHAT I may have to ask you to do for me—and for Samavia. Perhaps such a thing as no twelve-year-old boy has ever done before.”

      “Every night and every morning,” said Marco, “I shall pray that I may be called to do it, and that I may do it well.”

      “You will do it well, Comrade, if you are called. That I could make oath,” Loristan answered him.

      The СКАЧАТЬ