The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ meal was simple but they ate well and without words.

      Even when they had finished and undressed for the night, they said very little.

      “Where do our thoughts go when we are asleep,” The Rat inquired casually after he was stretched out in the darkness. “They must go somewhere. Let’s send them to find out what to do next.”

      “It’s not as still as it was on the Gaisberg. You can hear the city roaring,” said Marco drowsily from his dark corner. “We must make a ledge—for ourselves.”

      Sleep made it for them—deep, restful, healthy sleep. If they had been more resentful of their ill luck and lost labor, it would have come less easily and have been less natural. In their talks of strange things they had learned that one great secret of strength and unflagging courage is to know how to “let go”—to cease thinking over an anxiety until the right moment comes. It was their habit to “let go” for hours sometimes, and wander about looking at places and things—galleries, museums, palaces, giving themselves up with boyish pleasure and eagerness to all they saw. Marco was too intimate with the things worth seeing, and The Rat too curious and feverishly wide-awake to allow of their missing much.

      The Rat’s image of the world had grown until it seemed to know no boundaries which could hold its wealth of wonders. He wanted to go on and on and see them all.

      When Marco opened his eyes in the morning, he found The Rat lying looking at him. Then they both sat up in bed at the same time.

      “I believe we are both thinking the same thing,” Marco said.

      They frequently discovered that they were thinking the same things.

      “So do I,” answered The Rat. “It shows how tired we were that we didn’t think of it last night.”

      “Yes, we are thinking the same thing,” said Marco. “We have both remembered what we heard about his shutting himself up alone with his pictures and making people believe he had gone away.”

      “He’s in his palace now,” The Rat announced.

      “Do you feel sure of that, too?” asked Marco. “Did you wake up and feel sure of it the first thing?”

      “Yes,” answered The Rat. “As sure as if I’d heard him say it himself.”

      “So did I,” said Marco.

      “That’s what our thoughts brought back to us,” said The Rat, “when we ‘let go’ and sent them off last night.” He sat up hugging his knees and looking straight before him for some time after this, and Marco did not interrupt his meditations.

      The day was a brilliant one, and, though their attic had only one window, the sun shone in through it as they ate their breakfast. After it, they leaned on the window’s ledge and talked about the Prince’s garden. They talked about it because it was a place open to the public and they had walked round it more than once. The palace, which was not a large one, stood in the midst of it. The Prince was goodnatured enough to allow quiet and well-behaved people to saunter through. It was not a fashionable promenade but a pleasant retreat for people who sometimes took their work or books and sat on the seats placed here and there among the shrubs and flowers.

      “When we were there the first time, I noticed two things,” Marco said. “There is a stone balcony which juts out from the side of the palace which looks on the Fountain Garden. That day there were chairs on it as if the Prince and his visitors sometimes sat there. Near it, there was a very large evergreen shrub and I saw that there was a hollow place inside it. If some one wanted to stay in the gardens all night to watch the windows when they were lighted and see if any one came out alone upon the balcony, he could hide himself in the hollow place and stay there until the morning.”

      “Is there room for two inside the shrub?” The Rat asked.

      “No. I must go alone,” said Marco.

      XXV

A VOICE IN THE NIGHT

      Late that afternoon there wandered about the gardens two quiet, inconspicuous, rather poorly dressed boys. They looked at the palace, the shrubs, and the flowerbeds, as strangers usually did, and they sat on the seats and talked as people were accustomed to seeing boys talk together. It was a sunny day and exceptionally warm, and there were more saunterers and sitters than usual, which was perhaps the reason why the portier at the entrance gates gave such slight notice to the pair that he did not observe that, though two boys came in, only one went out. He did not, in fact, remember, when he saw The Rat swing by on his crutches at closing-time, that he had entered in company with a dark-haired lad who walked without any aid. It happened that, when The Rat passed out, the portier at the entrance was much interested in the aspect of the sky, which was curiously threatening. There had been heavy clouds hanging about all day and now and then blotting out the sunshine entirely, but the sun had refused to retire altogether. Just now, however, the clouds had piled themselves in thunderous, purplish mountains, and the sun had been forced to set behind them.

      “It’s been a sort of battle since morning,” the portier said. “There will be some crashes and cataracts tonight.” That was what The Rat had thought when they had sat in the Fountain Garden on a seat which gave them a good view of the balcony and the big evergreen shrub, which they knew had the hollow in the middle, though its circumference was so imposing. “If there should be a big storm, the evergreen will not save you much, though it may keep off the worst,” The Rat said. “I wish there was room for two.”

      He would have wished there was room for two if he had seen Marco marching to the stake. As the gardens emptied, the boys rose and walked round once more, as if on their way out. By the time they had sauntered toward the big evergreen, nobody was in the Fountain Garden, and the last loiterers were moving toward the arched stone entrance to the streets.

      When they drew near one side of the evergreen, the two were together. When The Rat swung out on the other side of it, he was alone! No one noticed that anything had happened; no one looked back. So The Rat swung down the walks and round the flowerbeds and passed into the street. And the portier looked at the sky and made his remark about the “crashes” and “cataracts.”

      As the darkness came on, the hollow in the shrub seemed a very safe place. It was not in the least likely that any one would enter the closed gardens; and if by rare chance some servant passed through, he would not be in search of people who wished to watch all night in the middle of an evergreen instead of going to bed and to sleep. The hollow was well inclosed with greenery, and there was room to sit down when one was tired of standing.

      Marco stood for a long time because, by doing so, he could see plainly the windows opening on the balcony if he gently pushed aside some flexible young boughs. He had managed to discover in his first visit to the gardens that the windows overlooking the Fountain Garden were those which belonged to the Prince’s own suite of rooms. Those which opened on to the balcony lighted his favorite apartment, which contained his best-loved books and pictures and in which he spent most of his secluded leisure hours.

      Marco watched these windows anxiously. If the Prince had not gone to Budapest,—if he were really only in retreat, and hiding from his gay world among his treasures,—he would be living in his favorite rooms and lights would show themselves. And if there were lights, he might pass before a window because, since he was inclosed in his garden, he need not fear being seen. The twilight deepened into darkness and, because of the СКАЧАТЬ