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

had ever beheld. They were as still as the night was, and as deep as the shadows covering the world thousands of feet below, and they had a far, far look, and a strange light was in them.”

“What did he say?” asked The Rat hoarsely.

“He only said, `Rise, my son. I awaited thee. Go and eat the food I prepared for thee, and then we will speak together.’ He didn’t move or speak again until my father had eaten the meal. He only sat on the moss and let his eyes rest on the shadows over the abyss. When my father went back, he made a gesture which meant that he should sit near him.

“Then he sat still for several minutes, and let his eyes rest on my father, until he felt as if the light in them were set in the midst of his own body and his soul. Then he said, `I cannot tell thee all thou wouldst know. That I may not do.’ He had a wonderful gentle voice, like a deep soft bell. `But the work will be done. Thy life and thy son’s life will set it on its way.’

“They sat through the whole night together. And the stars hung quite near, as if they listened. And there were sounds in the bushes of stealthy, padding feet which wandered about as if the owners of them listened too. And the wonderful, low, peaceful voice of the holy man went on and on, telling of wonders which seemed like miracles but which were to him only the `working of the Law.’ ”

“What is the Law?” The Rat broke in.

“There were two my father wrote down, and I learned them. The first was the law of The One. I’ll try to say that,” and he covered his eyes and waited through a moment of silence.

It seemed to The Rat as if the room held an extraordinary stillness.

“Listen!” came next. “This is it:

“ `There are a myriad worlds. There is but One Thought out of which they grew. Its Law is Order which cannot swerve. Its creatures are free to choose. Only they can create Disorder, which in itself is Pain and Woe and Hate and Fear. These they alone can bring forth. The Great One is a Golden Light. It is not remote but near. Hold thyself within its glow and thou wilt behold all things clearly. First, with all thy breathing being, know one thing! That thine own thought—when so thou standest—is one with That which thought the Worlds!’ ”

“What?” gasped The Rat. “MY thought—the things I think!”

“Your thoughts—boys’ thoughts—anybody’s thoughts.”

“You’re giving me the jim-jams!”

“He said it,” answered Marco. “And it was then he spoke about the broken Link—and about the greatest books in the world—that in all their different ways, they were only saying over and over again one thing thousands of times. Just this thing—`Hate not, Fear not, Love.’ And he said that was Order. And when it was disturbed, suffering came—poverty and misery and catastrophe and wars.”

“Wars!” The Rat said sharply. “The World couldn’t do without war—and armies and defences! What about Samavia?”

“My father asked him that. And this is what he answered. I learned that too. Let me think again,” and he waited as he had waited before. Then he lifted his head. “Listen! This is it:

“ `Out of the blackness of Disorder and its outpouring of human misery, there will arise the Order which is Peace. When Man learns that he is one with the Thought which itself creates all beauty, all power, all splendor, and all repose, he will not fear that his brother can rob him of his heart’s desire. He will stand in the Light and draw to himself his own.’ ”

“Draw to himself?” The Rat said. “Draw what he wants? I don’t believe it!”

“Nobody does,” said Marco. “We don’t know. He said we stood in the dark of the night—without stars—and did not know that the broken chain swung just above us.”

“I don’t believe it!” said The Rat. “It’s too big!”

Marco did not say whether he believed it or not. He only went on speaking.

“My father listened until he felt as if he had stopped breathing. Just at the stillest of the stillness the Buddhist stopped speaking. And there was a rustling of the undergrowth a few yards away, as if something big was pushing its way through—and there was the soft pad of feet. The Buddhist turned his head and my father heard him say softly: `Come forth, Sister.’

“And a huge leopardess with two cubs walked out on to the ledge and came to him and threw herself down with a heavy lunge near his feet.”

“Your father saw that!” cried out The Rat. “You mean the old fellow knew something that made wild beasts afraid to touch him or any one near him?”

“Not afraid. They knew he was their brother, and that he was one with the Law. He had lived so long with the Great Thought that all darkness and fear had left him forever. He had mended the Chain.”

The Rat had reached deep waters. He leaned forward—his hands burrowing in his hair, his face scowling and twisted, his eyes boring into space. He had climbed to the ledge at the mountain-top; he had seen the luminous immensity of the stars, and he had looked down into the shadows filling the world thousands of feet below. Was there some remote deep in him from whose darkness a slow light was rising? All that Loristan had said he knew must be true. But the rest of it—?

Marco got up and came over to him. He looked like his father again.

“If the descendant of the Lost Prince is brought back to rule Samavia, he will teach his people the Law of the One. It was for that the holy man taught my father until the dawn came.”

“Who will—who will teach the Lost Prince—the new King—when he is found?” The Rat cried. “Who will teach him?”

“The hermit said my father would. He said he would also teach his son—and that son would teach his son—and he would teach his. And through such as they were, the whole world would come to know the Order and the Law.”

Never had The Rat looked so strange and fierce a thing. A whole world at peace! No tactics—no battles—no slaughtered heroes —no clash of arms, and fame! It made him feel sick. And yet— something set his chest heaving.

“And your father would teach him that—when he was found! So that he could teach his sons. Your father BELIEVES in it?”

“Yes,” Marco answered. He said nothing but “Yes.” The Rat threw himself forward on the table, face downward.

“Then,” he said, “he must make me believe it. He must teach me—if he can.”

They heard a clumping step upon the staircase, and, when it reached the landing, it stopped at their door. Then there was a solid knock.

When Marco opened the door, the young soldier who had escorted him from the Hof-Theater was standing outside. He looked as uninterested and stolid as before, as he handed in a small flat package.

“You must have dropped it near your seat at the Opera,” he said. “I was to give it into your own hands. It is your purse.”

After he had clumped down the staircase again, Marco and The Rat drew a quick breath at one and the same time.

“I had no seat and I had no purse,” Marco said. “Let us open it.”

There was a flat limp leather note-holder inside. In it was a paper, at the head of which were photographs of the Lovely Person and her companion. Beneath were a few lines which stated that they were the well known spies, Eugenia Karovna and Paul Varel, and that the bearer must be protected against them. It was signed by the Chief of the Police. On a separate sheet was written the command: “Carry this with you as protection.”

“That is help,” The Rat said. “It would protect us, even in another country. The Chancellor sent it—but you made the strong call —and it’s here!”

There was no street lamp to shine into their windows when they went at last to bed. When the blind was drawn up, they were nearer the sky than they had been in the Marylebone Road. The last thing each of them saw, as he went to sleep, was the stars—and in their dreams, they saw them grow larger and larger, and hang like lamps of radiance against the violet—velvet sky above a ledge of a Himalayan Mountain, where they listened to the sound of a low voice going on and on and on.

XXII A NIGHT VIGIL

On a hill in the midst of a great Austrian plain, around which high Alps wait watching through the ages stands a venerable fortress, almost more beautiful than anything one has ever seen. Perhaps, if it were not for the great plain flowering broadly about it with its wide-spread beauties of meadow-land, and wood, and dim toned buildings gathered about farms, and its dream of a small ancient city at its feet, it might—though it is to be doubted—seem something less a marvel of medieval picturesqueness. But out of the plain rises the low hill, and surrounding it at a stately distance stands guard the giant majesty of Alps, with shoulders in the clouds and god-like heads above them, looking on—always looking on—sometimes themselves ethereal clouds of snow-whiteness, some times monster bare crags which pierce the blue, and whose unchanging silence seems to know the secret of the everlasting. And on the hill which this august circle holds in its embrace, as though it enclosed a treasure, stands the old, old, towered fortress built as a citadel for the Prince Archbishops, who were kings in their domain in the long past centuries when the splendor and power of ecclesiastical princes was among the greatest upon earth.

And as you approach the town—and as you leave it—and as you walk through its streets, the broad calm empty-looking ones, or the narrow thoroughfares whose houses seem so near to each other, whether you climb or descend—or cross bridges, or gaze at churches, or step out on your balcony at night to look at the mountains and the moon—always it seems that from some point you can see it gazing down at you—the citadel of Hohen-Salzburg.

It was to Salzburg they went next, because at Salzburg was to be found the man who looked like a hair-dresser and who worked in a barber’s shop. Strange as it might seem, to him also must be carried the Sign.

“There may be people who come to him to be shaved—soldiers, or men who know things,” The Rat worked it out, “and he can speak to them when he is standing close to them. It will be easy to get near him. You can go and have your hair cut.”

The journey from Munich was not a long one, and during the latter part of it they had the wooden-seated third-class carriage to themselves. Even the drowsy old peasant who nodded and slept in one corner got out with his bundles at last. To Marco the mountains were long-known wonders which could never grow old. They had always and always been so old! Surely they had been the first of the world! Surely they had been standing there waiting when it was said “Let there be Light.” The Light had known it would find them there. They were so silent, and yet it seemed as if they said some amazing thing—something which would take your breath from you if you could hear it. And they never changed. The clouds changed, they wreathed them, and hid them, and trailed