He had been in London more than once before, but not to the lodgings in
Philibert Place. When he was brought a second or third time to a town
or city, he always knew that the house he was taken to would be in a
quarter new to him, and he should not see again the people he had seen
before. Such slight links of acquaintance as sometimes formed themselves
between him and other children as shabby and poor as himself were easily
broken. His father, however, had never forbidden him to make chance
acquaintances. He had, in fact, told him that he had reasons for not
wishing him to hold himself aloof from other boys. The only barrier
which must exist between them must be the barrier of silence concerning
his wanderings from country to country. Other boys as poor as he was did
not make constant journeys, therefore they would miss nothing from his
boyish talk when he omitted all mention of his. When he was in Russia,
he must speak only of Russian places and Russian people and customs.
When he was in France, Germany, Austria, or England, he must do the same
thing. When he had learned English, French, German, Italian, and Russian
he did not know. He had seemed to grow up in the midst of changing
tongues which all seemed familiar to him, as languages are familiar to
children who have lived with them until one scarcely seems less familiar
than another. He did remember, however, that his father had always been
unswerving in his attention to his pronunciation and method of speaking
the language of any country they chanced to be living in.
"You must not seem a foreigner in any country," he had said to him. "It
is necessary that you should not. But when you are in England, you must
not know French, or German, or anything but English."
Once, when he was seven or eight years old, a boy had asked him what his
father's work was.
"His own father is a carpenter, and he asked me if my father was one,"
Marco brought the story to Loristan. "I said you were not. Then he asked
if you were a shoemaker, and another one said you might be a bricklayer
or a tailor--and I didn't know what to tell them." He had been out
playing in a London street, and he put a grubby little hand on his
father's arm, and clutched and almost fiercely shook it. "I wanted to
say that you were not like their fathers, not at all. I knew you were
not, though you were quite as poor. You are not a bricklayer or a
shoemaker, but a patriot--you could not be only a bricklayer--you!" He
said it grandly and with a queer indignation, his black head held up and
his eyes angry.
Loristan laid his hand against his mouth.
"Hush! hush!" he said. "Is it an insult to a man to think he may be a
carpenter or make a good suit of clothes? If I could make our clothes,
we should go better dressed. If I were a shoemaker, your toes would not
be making their way into the world as they are now." He was smiling, but
Marco saw his head held itself high, too, and his eyes were glowing as
he touched his shoulder. "I know you did not tell them I was a patriot,"
he ended. "What was it you said to them?"
"I remembered that you were nearly always writing and drawing maps, and
I said you were a writer, but I did not know what you wrote--and that
you said it was a poor trade. I heard you say that once to Lazarus. Was
that a right thing to tell them?"
"Yes. You may always say it if you are asked. There are poor fellows
enough who write a thousand different things which bring them little
money. There is nothing strange in my being a writer."
So Loristan answered him, and from that time if, by any chance, his
father's means of livelihood were inquired into, it was simple enough
and true enough to say that he wrote to earn his bread.
In the first days of strangeness to a new place, Marco often walked a
great deal. He was strong and untiring, and it amused him to wander
through unknown streets, and look at shops, and houses, and people.
He did not confine himself to the great thoroughfares, but liked to
branch off into the side streets and odd, deserted-looking squares, and
even courts and alleyways. He often stopped to watch workmen and talk to
them if they were friendly. In this way he made stray acquaintances in
his strollings, and learned a good many things. He had a fondness for
wandering musicians, and, from an old Italian who had in his youth been
a singer in opera, he had learned to sing a number of songs in his
strong, musical boy-voice. He knew well many of the songs of the people
in several countries.
It was very dull this first morning, and he wished that he had something
to do or some one to speak to. To do nothing whatever is a depressing
thing at all times, but perhaps it is more especially so when one is a
big, healthy boy twelve years old. London as he saw it in the Marylebone
Road seemed to him a hideous place. It was murky and shabby-looking, and
full of dreary-faced people. It was not the first time he had seen the
same things, and they always made him feel that he wished he had
something to do.
Suddenly he turned away from the gate and went into the house to speak
to Lazarus. He found him in his dingy closet of a room on the fourth
floor at the back of the house.
"I am going for a walk," he announced to him. "Please tell my father if
he asks for me. He is busy, and I must not disturb him."
Lazarus was patching an old coat as he often patched things--even shoes
sometimes. When Marco spoke, he stood up at once to answer him. He was
very obstinate and particular about certain forms of manner. Nothing
would have obliged him to remain seated when Loristan or Marco was near
him. Marco thought it was because he had been so strictly trained as a
soldier. He knew that his father had had great trouble to make him lay
aside his habit of saluting when they spoke to him.
"Perhaps," Marco had heard Loristan say to him almost severely,
once when he had forgotten himself and had stood at salute while
his master passed through a broken-down iron gate before an equally
broken-down-looking lodging-house--"perhaps you can force yourself to
remember when I tell you that it is not safe--_it is not safe_! You put
us in danger!"
It was evident that this helped the good fellow to control himself.
Marco remembered that at the time he had actually turned pale, and had
struck his forehead and poured forth a torrent of Samavian dialect in
penitence and terror. But, though he no longer saluted them in public,
he omitted no other form of reverence and ceremony, and the boy had
become accustomed to being treated as if he were anything but the shabby
lad whose very coat was patched by the old soldier who stood "at
attention" before him.
"Yes, sir," Lazarus answered. "Where was it your wish to go?"
Marco knitted his black brows a little in trying to recall distinct
memories of the last time he had been in London.
"I have been to so many places, and have seen so many things since I was
here before, that I must begin to learn again about the streets and
buildings I do not quite remember."
"Yes, sir," said Lazarus. "There _have_ been so many. I also forget. You
were but eight years old when you were last here."
"I think I will go and find the royal palace, and then I will walk about
and learn the names of the streets," Marco said.
"Yes, sir," answered Lazarus, and this time he made his military salute.
Marco lifted his right hand in recognition, as if he had been a young
officer. Most boys might have looked awkward or theatrical in making
the gesture, but he made it with naturalness and ease, because he had
been familiar with the form since his babyhood. He had seen officers
returning the salutes of their men when they encountered each other by
chance in the streets, he had seen princes passing sentries on their
way to their carriages, more august personages raising the quiet,
recognizing hand to their helmets as they rode through applauding
crowds. He had seen many royal persons and many royal pageants, but
always only as an ill-clad boy standing on the edge of the crowd of
common people. An energetic lad, however poor, cannot spend his days in
going from one country to another without, by mere every-day chance,
becoming familiar with the outer life of royalties and courts. Marco had
stood in continental thoroughfares when visiting emperors rode by with
glittering soldiery before and behind them, and a populace shouting
courteous welcomes. He knew where in various great capitals the sentries
stood before kingly or princely palaces. He had seen certain royal faces
often enough to know them well, and to be ready to make his salute when
particular quiet and unattended carriages passed him by.
"It is well to know them. It is well to observe everything and to train
one's self to remember faces and circumstances," his father had said.
"If you were a young prince or a young man training for a diplomatic
career, you would be taught to notice and remember people and things
as you would be taught to speak your own language with elegance. Such
observation would be your most practical accomplishment and greatest
power. It is as practical for one man as another--for a poor lad in a
patched coat as for one whose place is to be in courts. As you cannot be
educated in the ordinary way, you must learn from travel and the world.
You must lose nothing--forget nothing."
It was his father who had taught him everything, and he had learned a
great deal. Loristan had the power of making all things interesting to
fascination. To Marco it seemed that he knew everything in the world.
They were not rich enough to buy many books, but Loristan knew the
treasures of all great cities, the resources of the smallest towns.
Together he and his boy walked through the endless galleries filled with
the wonders of the world, the pictures before which through centuries an
unbroken procession of almost worshiping eyes had passed uplifted.
Because his father made the pictures seem the glowing, burning work of
still-living men whom the centuries could not turn to dust, because he
could tell the stories of their living and laboring to triumph, stories
of what they felt and suffered and were, the boy became as familiar with
the old masters--Italian, German, French, Dutch, English, Spanish--as he
was with most of the countries they had lived in. They were not merely
old masters to him, but men who were great, men who seemed to him to
have wielded beautiful swords and held high, splendid lights. His father
could not go often with him, but he always took him for the first time
to the galleries, museums, libraries, and historical places which were
richest in treasures of art, beauty, or story. Then, having seen them
once through his eyes, Marco went again and again alone, and so grew
intimate with the wonders of the world. He knew that he was gratifying
a wish of his father's when he tried to train himself to observe
all things and forget nothing. These palaces of marvels were his
school-rooms, and his strange but rich education was the most
interesting part of his life. In time, he knew exactly the places where
the great Rembrandts, Vandykes, Rubens, Raphaels, Tintorettos, or Frans
Hals hung; he knew whether this masterpiece or that was in Vienna, in
Paris, in Venice, or Munich, or Rome. He knew stories of splendid crown
jewels, of old armor, of ancient crafts, and of Roman relics dug up from
beneath the foundations of old German cities. Any boy wandering to amuse
himself through museums and palaces on "free days" could see what he
saw, but boys living fuller and less lonely lives would have been less
likely to concentrate their entire minds on what they looked at, and
also less likely to store away facts with the determination to be able
to recall at any moment the mental shelf on which they were laid. Having
no playmates and nothing to play with, he began when he was a very
little fellow to make a sort of game out of his rambles through
picture-galleries, and the places which, whether they called themselves
museums or not, were storehouses or relics of antiquity. There were
always the blessed "free days," when he could climb any marble steps,
and enter any great portal without paying an entrance fee. Once inside,
there were plenty of plainly and poorly dressed people to be seen, but
there were not often boys as young as himself who were not attended by
older companions. Quiet and orderly as he was, he often found himself
stared at. The game he had created for himself was as simple as it was
absorbing. It was to try how much he could remember and clearly describe
to his father when they sat together at night and talked of what he had
seen. These night talks filled his happiest hours. He never felt lonely
then, and when his father sat and watched him with a certain curious
and deep attention in his dark, reflective eyes, the boy was utterly
comforted and content. Sometimes he brought back rough and crude
sketches of objects he wished to ask questions about, and Loristan could
always relate to him the full, rich story of the thing he wanted to
know. They were stories made so splendid and full of color in the
telling that Marco could not forget them.