The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett (early readers TXT) 📗

dense black eyes and lashes made people glance at him, but he was not the only boy who had been brought to the opera so he felt safe enough to stop at the foot of the stairs and watch those who went up and those who passed by. Such a miscellaneous crowd as it was made up of—good unfashionable music-lovers mixed here and there with grand people of the court and the gay world.

Suddenly he heard a low laugh and a moment later a hand lightly touched him.

“You DID get out, then?” a soft voice said.

When he turned he felt his muscles stiffen. He ceased to slouch and did not smile as he looked at the speaker. What he felt was a wave of fierce and haughty anger. It swept over him before he had time to control it.

A lovely person who seemed swathed in several shades of soft violet drapery was smiling at him with long, lovely eyes.

It was the woman who had trapped him into No. 10 Brandon Terrace.

XXI

“HELP!”

Did it take you so long to find it? asked the Lovely Person with the smile. “Of course I knew you would find it in the end. But we had to give ourselves time. How long did it take?”

Marco removed himself from beneath the touch of her hand. It was quietly done, but there was a disdain in his young face which made her wince though she pretended to shrug her shoulders amusedly.

“You refuse to answer?” she laughed.

“I refuse.”

At that very moment he saw at the curve of the corridor the Chancellor and his daughter approaching slowly. The two young officers were talking gaily to the girl. They were on their way back to their box. Was he going to lose them? Was he?

The delicate hand was laid on his shoulder again, but this time he felt that it grasped him firmly.

“Naughty boy!” the soft voice said. “I am going to take you home with me. If you struggle I shall tell these people that you are my bad boy who is here without permission. What will you answer? My escort is coming down the staircase and will help me. Do you see?” And in fact there appeared in the crowd at the head of the staircase the figure of the man he remembered.

He did see. A dampness broke out on the palms of his hands. If she did this bold thing, what could he say to those she told her lie to? How could he bring proof or explain who he was—and what story dare he tell? His protestations and struggles would merely amuse the lookers-on, who would see in them only the impotent rage of an insubordinate youngster.

There swept over him a wave of remembrance which brought back, as if he were living through it again, the moment when he had stood in the darkness of the wine cellar with his back against the door and heard the man walk away and leave him alone. He felt again as he had done then—but now he was in another land and far away from his father. He could do nothing to help himself unless Something showed him a way.

He made no sound, and the woman who held him saw only a flame leap under his dense black lashes.

But something within him called out. It was as if he heard it. It was that strong self—the self that was Marco, and it called—it called as if it shouted.

“Help!” it called—to that Unknown Stranger Thing which had made worlds and which he and his father so often talked of and in whose power they so believed. “Help!”

The Chancellor was drawing nearer. Perhaps! Should he—?

“You are too proud to kick and shout,” the voice went on. “And people would only laugh. Do you see?”

The stairs were crowded and the man who was at the head of them could only move slowly. But he had seen the boy.

Marco turned so that he could face his captor squarely as if he were going to say something in answer to her. But he was not.

Even as he made the movement of turning, the help he had called for came and he knew what he should do. And he could do two things at once—save himself and give his Sign—because, the Sign once given, the Chancellor would understand.

“He will be here in a moment. He has recognized you,” the woman said.

As he glanced up the stairs, the delicate grip of her hand unconsciously slackened.

Marco whirled away from her. The bell rang which was to warn the audience that they must return to their seats and he saw the Chancellor hasten his pace.

A moment later, the old aristocrat found himself amazedly looking down at the pale face of a breathless lad who spoke to him in German and in such a manner that he could not but pause and listen .

“Sir,” he was saying, “the woman in violet at the foot of the stairs is a spy. She trapped me once and she threatens to do it again. Sir, may I beg you to protect me?”

He said it low and fast. No one else could hear his words.

“What! What!” the Chancellor exclaimed.

And then, drawing a step nearer and quite as low and rapidly but with perfect distinctness, Marco uttered four words:

“The Lamp is lighted.”

The Help cry had been answered instantly. Marco saw it at once in the old man’s eyes, notwithstanding that he turned to look at the woman at the foot of the staircase as if she only concerned him.

“What! What!” he said again, and made a movement toward her, pulling his large moustache with a fierce hand.

Then Marco recognized that a curious thing happened. The Lovely Person saw the movement and the gray moustache, and that instant her smile died away and she turned quite white—so white, that under the brilliant electric light she was almost green and scarcely looked lovely at all. She made a sign to the man on the staircase and slipped through the crowd like an eel. She was a slim flexible creature and never was a disappearance more wonderful in its rapidity. Between stout matrons and their thin or stout escorts and families she made her way and lost herself—but always making toward the exit. In two minutes there was no sight of her violet draperies to be seen. She was gone and so, evidently, was her male companion.

It was plain to Marco that to follow the profession of a spy was not by any means a safe thing. The Chancellor had recognized her— she had recognized the Chancellor who turned looking ferociously angry and spoke to one of the young officers.

“She and the man with her are two of the most dangerous spies in Europe, She is a Rumanian and he is a Russian. What they wanted of this innocent lad I don’t pretend to know. What did she threaten?” to Marco.

Marco was feeling rather cold and sick and had lost his healthy color for the moment.

“She said she meant to take me home with her and would pretend I was her son who had come here without permission,” he answered. “She believes I know something I do not.” He made a hesitating but grateful bow. “The third act, sir—I must not keep you. Thank you! Thank you!”

The Chancellor moved toward the entrance door of the balcony seats, but he did it with his hand on Marco’s shoulder.

“See that he gets home safely,” he said to the younger of the two officers. “Send a messenger with him. He’s young to be attacked by creatures of that kind.”

Polite young officers naturally obey the commands of Chancellors and such dignitaries. This one found without trouble a young private who marched with Marco through the deserted streets to his lodgings. He was a stolid young Bavarian peasant and seemed to have no curiosity or even any interest in the reason for the command given him. He was in fact thinking of his sweetheart who lived near Konigsee and who had skated with him on the frozen lake last winter. He scarcely gave a glance to the schoolboy he was to escort, he neither knew nor wondered why.

The Rat had fallen asleep over his papers and lay with his head on his folded arms on the table. But he was awakened by Marco’s coming into the room and sat up blinking his eyes in the effort to get them open.

“Did you see him? Did you get near enough?” he drowsed.

“Yes,” Marco answered. “I got near enough.’

The Rat sat upright suddenly.

“It’s not been easy,” he exclaimed. “I’m sure something happened —something went wrong.”

“Something nearly went wrong—VERY nearly,” answered Marco. But as he spoke he took the sketch of the Chancellor out of the slit in his sleeve and tore it and burned it with a match. “But I did get near enough. And that’s TWO.”

They talked long, before they went to sleep that night. The Rat grew pale as he listened to the story of the woman in violet.

“I ought to have gone with you!” he said. “I see now. An aide-de-camp must always be in attendance. It would have been harder for her to manage two than one. I must always be near to watch, even if I am not close by you. If you had not come back—if you had not come back!” He struck his clenched hands together fiercely. “What should I have done!”

When Marco turned toward him from the table near which he was standing, he looked like his father.

“You would have gone on with the Game just as far as you could,” he said. “You could not leave it. You remember the places, and the faces, and the Sign. There is some money; and when it was all gone, you could have begged, as we used to pretend we should.

We have not had to do it yet; and it was best to save it for country places and villages. But you could have done it if you were obliged to. The Game would have to go on.”

The Rat caught at his thin chest as if he had been struck breathless.

“Without you?” he gasped. “Without you?”

“Yes,” said Marco. “And we must think of it, and plan in case anything like that should happen.”

He stopped himself quite suddenly, and sat down, looking straight before him, as if at some far away thing he saw.

“Nothing will happen,” he said. “Nothing can.”

“What are you thinking of?” The Rat gulped, because his breath had not quite come back. “Why will nothing happen?”

“Because—” the boy spoke in an almost matter-of-fact tone—in quite an unexalted tone at all events, “you see I can always make a strong call, as I did tonight.”

“Did you shout?” The Rat asked. “I didn’t know you shouted.”

“I didn’t. I said nothing aloud. But I—the myself that is in me,” Marco touched himself on the breast, “called out, `Help! Help!’ with all its strength. And help came.”

The Rat regarded him dubiously.

“What did it call to?” he asked.

“To the Power—to the Strength-place—to the Thought that does things. The Buddhist hermit, who told my father about it, called it `The Thought that thought the World.’ ”

A reluctant suspicion betrayed itself in The Rat’s eyes.

“Do you mean you prayed?” he inquired, with a slight touch of disfavor.

Marco’s eyes remained fixed upon him in vague thoughtfulness for a moment or so of pause.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “Perhaps it’s the same thing— when you need something so much that you cry out loud for it. But it’s not words, it’s a strong thing