The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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СКАЧАТЬ knew that the hero of the adventure had been her foster-child who was the baby born a great noble and near the throne. To her, he was the most splendid and adorable of human beings. Almost an emperor, but so warm and tender of heart that he never forgot the long-past days when she had held him on her knee and told him tales of chamois-and bear-hunting, and of the mountain-tops in mid-winter. He was her sun-god.

      “Yes! Yes!” she said. “‘Good Mother,’ he calls me. And I bake him a cake on the hearth, as I did when he was ten years old and my man was teaching him to climb. And when he chooses that a thing shall be done—done it is! He is a great lord.”

      The flames had died down and only the big bed of red coal made the room glow, and they were thinking of going to bed when the old woman started very suddenly, turning her head as if to listen.

      Marco and The Rat heard nothing, but they saw that she did and they sat so still that each held his breath. So there was utter stillness for a few moments. Utter stillness.

      Then they did hear something—a clear silver sound, piercing the pure mountain air.

      The old woman sprang upright with the fire of delight in her eyes.

      “It is his silver horn!” she cried out striking her hands together. “It is his own call to me when he is coming. He has been hunting somewhere and wants to sleep in his good bed here. Help me to put on more faggots,” to The Rat, “so that he will see the flame of them through the open door as he comes.”

      “Shall we be in the way?” said Marco. “We can go at once.”

      She was going towards the door to open it and she stopped a moment and turned.

      “No, no!” she said. “He must see your face. He will want to see it. I want him to see—how young you are.”

      She threw the door wide open and they heard the silver horn send out its gay call again. The brushwood and faggots The Rat had thrown on the coals crackled and sparkled and roared into fine flames, which cast their light into the road and threw out in fine relief the old figure which stood on the threshold and looked so tall.

      And in but a few minutes her great lord came to her. And in his green hunting-suit with its green hat and eagle’s feather he was as splendid as she had said he was. He was big and royal-looking and laughing and he bent and kissed her as if he had been her own son.

      “Yes, good Mother,” they heard him say. “I want my warm bed and one of your good suppers. I sent the others to the Gasthaus.”

      He came into the redly glowing room and his head almost touched the blackened rafters. Then he saw the two boys.

      “Who are these, good Mother?” he asked.

      She lifted his hand and kissed it.

      “They are the Bearers of the Sign,” she said rather softly. “‘The Lamp is lighted.’”

      Then his whole look changed. His laughing face became quite grave and for a moment looked even anxious. Marco knew it was because he was startled to find them only boys. He made a step forward to look at them more closely.

      “The Lamp is lighted! And you two bear the Sign!” he exclaimed. Marco stood out in the fire glow that he might see him well. He saluted with respect.

      “My name is Marco Loristan, Highness,” he said. “And my father sent me.”

      The change which came upon his face then was even greater than at first. For a second, Marco even felt that there was a flash of alarm in it. But almost at once that passed.

      “Loristan is a great man and a great patriot,” he said. “If he sent you, it is because he knows you are the one safe messenger. He has worked too long for Samavia not to know what he does.”

      Marco saluted again. He knew what it was right to say next.

      “If we have your Highness’s permission to retire,” he said, “we will leave you and go to bed. We go down the mountain at sunrise.”

      “Where next?” asked the hunter, looking at him with curious intentness.

      “To Vienna, Highness,” Marco answered.

      His questioner held out his hand, still with the intent interest in his eyes.

      “Good night, fine lad,” he said. “Samavia has need to vaunt itself on its Sign-bearer. God go with you.”

      He stood and watched him as he went toward the room in which he and his aide-de-camp were to sleep. The Rat followed him closely. At the little back door the old, old woman stood, having opened it for them. As Marco passed and bade her good night, he saw that she again made the strange obeisance, bending the knee as he went by.

      XXIV

      “HOW SHALL WE FIND HIM?”

      In Vienna they came upon a pageant. In celebration of a century-past victory the Emperor drove in state and ceremony to attend at the great cathedral and to do honor to the ancient banners and laurel-wreathed statue of a long-dead soldier-prince. The broad pavements of the huge chief thoroughfare were crowded with a cheering populace watching the martial pomp and splendor as it passed by with marching feet, prancing horses, and glitter of scabbard and chain, which all seemed somehow part of music in triumphant bursts.

      The Rat was enormously thrilled by the magnificence of the imperial place. Its immense spaces, the squares and gardens, reigned over by statues of emperors, and warriors, and queens made him feel that all things on earth were possible. The palaces and stately piles of architecture, whose surmounting equestrian bronzes ramped high in the air clear cut and beautiful against the sky, seemed to sweep out of his world all atmosphere but that of splendid cities down whose broad avenues emperors rode with waving banners, tramping, jangling soldiery before and behind, and golden trumpets blaring forth. It seemed as if it must always be like this—that lances and cavalry and emperors would never cease to ride by. “I should like to stay here a long time,” he said almost as if he were in a dream. “I should like to see it all.”

      He leaned on his crutches in the crowd and watched the glitter of the passing pageant. Now and then he glanced at Marco, who watched also with a steady eye which, The Rat saw, nothing would escape: How absorbed he always was in the Game! How impossible it was for him to forget it or to remember it only as a boy would! Often it seemed that he was not a boy at all. And the Game, The Rat knew in these days, was a game no more but a thing of deep and deadly earnest—a thing which touched kings and thrones, and concerned the ruling and swaying of great countries. And they—two lads pushed about by the crowd as they stood and stared at the soldiers—carried with them that which was even now lighting the Lamp. The blood in The Rat’s veins ran quickly and made him feel hot as he remembered certain thoughts which had forced themselves into his mind during the past weeks. As his brain had the trick of “working things out,” it had, during the last fortnight at least, been following a wonderful even if rather fantastic and feverish fancy. A mere trifle had set it at work, but, its labor once begun, things which might have once seemed to be trifles appeared so no longer. When Marco was asleep, The Rat lay awake through thrilled and sometimes almost breathless midnight hours, looking backward and recalling every detail of their lives since they had known each other. Sometimes it seemed to him that almost everything he remembered—the Game from СКАЧАТЬ