King! And his father! Where had his father stood when the King was crowned? Surely, he had stood at the King’s right hand, and the people had adored and acclaimed them equally!
“King Ivor!” he murmured as if he were in a dream. “King Ivor!”
The Rat started up on his elbow.
“You will see him,” he cried out. “He’s not a dream any longer. The Game is not a game now—and it is ended—it is won! It was real—HE was real! Marco, I don’t believe you hear.”
“Yes, I do,” answered Marco, “but it is almost more a dream than when it was one.”
“The greatest patriot in the world is like a king himself!” raved The Rat. “If there is no bigger honor to give him, he will be made a prince—and Commander-in-Chief—and Prime Minister! Can’t you hear those Samavians shouting, and singing, and praying? You’ll see it all! Do you remember the mountain climber who was going to save the shoes he made for the Bearer of the Sign? He said a great day might come when one could show them to the people. It’s come! He’ll show them! I know how they’ll take it!” His voice suddenly dropped—as if it dropped into a pit. “You’ll see it all. But I shall not.”
Then Marco awoke from his dream and lifted his head. “Why not?” he demanded. It sounded like a demand.
“Because I know better than to expect it!” The Rat groaned. “You’ve taken me a long way, but you can’t take me to the palace of a king. I’m not such a fool as to think that, even of your father—”
He broke off because Marco did more than lift his head. He sat upright.
“You bore the Sign as much as I did,” he said. “We bore it together.”
“Who would have listened to ME?” cried The Rat. “YOU were the son of Stefan Loristan.”
“You were the friend of his son,” answered Marco. “You went at the command of Stefan Loristan. You were the ARMY of the son of Stefan Loristan. That I have told you. Where I go, you will go. We will say no more of this—not one word.”
And he lay down again in the silence of a prince of the blood. And The Rat knew that he meant what he said, and that Stefan Loristan also would mean it. And because he was a boy, he began to wonder what Mrs. Beedle would do when she heard what had happened—what had been happening all the time a tall, shabby “foreigner” had lived in her dingy back sitting-room, and been closely watched lest he should go away without paying his rent, as shabby foreigners sometimes did. The Rat saw himself managing to poise himself very erect on his crutches while he told her that the shabby foreigner was—well, was at least the friend of a King, and had given him his crown—and would be made a prince and a Commander-in-Chief—and a Prime Minister—because there was no higher rank or honor to give him. And his son—whom she had insulted—was Samavia’s idol because he had borne the Sign. And also that if she were in Samavia, and Marco chose to do it he could batter her wretched lodging-house to the ground and put her in a prison—“and serve her jolly well right!”
The next day passed, and the next; and then there came a letter. It was from Loristan, and Marco turned pale when Lazarus handed it to him. Lazarus and The Rat went out of the room at once, and left him to read it alone. It was evidently not a long letter, because it was not many minutes before Marco called them again into the room.
“In a few days, messengers—friends of my father’s—will come to take us to Samavia. You and I and Lazarus are to go,” he said to The Rat.
“God be thanked!” said Lazarus. “God be thanked!”
Before the messengers came, it was the end of the week. Lazarus had packed their few belongings, and on Saturday Mrs. Beedle was to be seen hovering at the top of the cellar steps, when Marco and The Rat left the back sitting-room to go out.
“You needn’t glare at me!” she said to Lazarus, who stood glowering at the door which he had opened for them. “Young Master Loristan, I want to know if you’ve heard when your father is coming back?”
“He will not come back,” said Marco.
“He won’t, won’t he? Well, how about next week’s rent?” said Mrs. Beedle. “Your man’s been packing up, I notice. He’s not got much to carry away, but it won’t pass through that front door until I’ve got what’s owing me. People that can pack easy think they can get away easy, and they’ll bear watching. The week’s up to-day.”
Lazarus wheeled and faced her with a furious gesture. “Get back to your cellar, woman,” he commanded. “Get back under ground and stay there. Look at what is stopping before your miserable gate.”
A carriage was stopping—a very perfect carriage of dark brown. The coachman and footman wore dark brown and gold liveries, and the footman had leaped down and opened the door with respectful alacrity. “They are friends of the Master’s come to pay their respects to his son,” said Lazarus. “Are their eyes to be offended by the sight of you?”
“Your money is safe,” said Marco. “You had better leave us.”
Mrs. Beedle gave a sharp glance at the two gentlemen who had entered the broken gate. They were of an order which did not belong to Philibert Place. They looked as if the carriage and the dark brown and gold liveries were everyday affairs to them.
“At all events, they’re two grown men, and not two boys without a penny,” she said. “If they’re your father’s friends, they’ll tell me whether my rent’s safe or not.”
The two visitors were upon the threshold. They were both men of a certain self-contained dignity of type; and when Lazarus opened wide the door, they stepped into the shabby entrance hall as if they did not see it. They looked past its dinginess, and past Lazarus, and The Rat, and Mrs. Beedle—THROUGH them, as it were,—at Marco.
He advanced towards them at once.
“You come from my father!” he said, and gave his hand first to the elder man, then to the younger.
“Yes, we come from your father. I am Baron Rastka—and this is the Count Vorversk,” said the elder man, bowing.
“If they’re barons and counts, and friends of your father’s, they are well-to-do enough to be responsible for you,” said Mrs. Beedle, rather fiercely, because she was somewhat overawed and resented the fact. “It’s a matter of next week’s rent, gentlemen. I want to know where it’s coming from.”
The elder man looked at her with a swift cold glance. He did not speak to her, but to Lazarus. “What is she doing here?” he demanded.
Marco answered him. “She is afraid we cannot pay our rent,” he said. “It is of great importance to her that she should be sure.”
“Take her away,” said the gentleman to Lazarus. He did not even glance at her. He drew something from his coat-pocket and handed it to the old soldier. “Take her away,” he repeated. And because it seemed as if she were not any longer a person at all, Mrs. Beedle actually shuffled down the passage to the cellar-kitchen steps. Lazarus did not leave her until he, too, had descended into the cellar kitchen, where he stood and towered above her like an infuriated giant.
“Tomorrow he will be on his way to Samavia, miserable woman!” he said. “Before he goes, it would be well for you to implore his pardon.”
But Mrs. Beedle’s point of view was not his. She had recovered some of her breath.
“I don’t know where Samavia is,” she raged, as she struggled to set her dusty, black cap straight. “I’ll warrant it’s one of these little foreign countries you can scarcely see on the map—and not a decent English town in it! He can go as soon as he likes, so long as he pays his rent before he does it. Samavia, indeed! You talk as if he was Buckingham Palace!”
XXXI
“THE