So long as the history of Europe is written and read, the unparalleled
story of the Rising of the Secret Party in Samavia will stand out as one
of its most startling and romantic records. Every detail connected with
the astonishing episode, from beginning to end, was romantic even when
it was most productive of realistic results. When it is related, it
always begins with the story of the tall and kingly Samavian youth who
walked out of the palace in the early morning sunshine singing the
herdsmen's song of beauty of old days. Then comes the outbreak of the
ruined and revolting populace; then the legend of the morning on the
mountain side, and the old shepherd coming out of his cave and finding
the apparently dead body of the beautiful young hunter. Then the secret
nursing in the cavern; then the jolting cart piled with sheepskins
crossing the frontier, and ending its journey at the barred entrance of
the monastery and leaving its mysterious burden behind. And then the
bitter hate and struggle of dynasties, and the handful of shepherds and
herdsmen meeting in their cavern and binding themselves and their unborn
sons and sons' sons by an oath never to be broken. Then the passing of
generations and the slaughter of peoples and the changing of kings,--and
always that oath remembered, and the Forgers of the Sword, at their
secret work, hidden in forests and caves. Then the strange story of the
uncrowned kings who, wandering in other lands, lived and died in silence
and seclusion, often laboring with their hands for their daily bread,
but never forgetting that they must be kings, and ready,--even though
Samavia never called. Perhaps the whole story would fill too many
volumes to admit of it ever being told fully.
But history makes the growing of the Secret Party clear,--though it
seems almost to cease to be history, in spite of its efforts to be brief
and speak only of dull facts, when it is forced to deal with the Bearing
of the Sign by two mere boys, who, being blown as unremarked as any two
grains of dust across Europe, lit the Lamp whose flame so flared up to
the high heavens that as if from the earth itself there sprang forth
Samavians by the thousands ready to feed it--Iarovitch and Maranovitch
swept aside forever and only Samavians remaining to cry aloud in ardent
praise and worship of the God who had brought back to them their Lost
Prince. The battle-cry of his name had ended every battle. Swords fell
from hands because swords were not needed. The Iarovitch fled in terror
and dismay; the Maranovitch were nowhere to be found. Between night and
morning, as the newsboy had said, the standard of Ivor was raised and
waved from palace and citadel alike. From mountain, forest and plain,
from city, village and town, its followers flocked to swear allegiance;
broken and wounded legions staggered along the roads to join and kneel
to it; women and children followed, weeping with joy and chanting songs
of praise. The Powers held out their scepters to the lately prostrate
and ignored country. Train-loads of food and supplies of all things
needed began to cross the frontier; the aid of nations was bestowed.
Samavia, at peace to till its land, to raise its flocks, to mine its
ores, would be able to pay all back. Samavia in past centuries had been
rich enough to make great loans, and had stored such harvests as warring
countries had been glad to call upon. The story of the crowning of the
King had been the wildest of all--the multitude of ecstatic people,
famished, in rags, and many of them weak with wounds, kneeling at his
feet, praying, as their one salvation and security, that he would go
attended by them to their bombarded and broken cathedral, and at its
high altar let the crown be placed upon his head, so that even those who
perhaps must die of their past sufferings would at least have paid their
poor homage to the King Ivor who would rule their children and bring
back to Samavia her honor and her peace.
"Ivor! Ivor!" they chanted like a prayer,--"Ivor! Ivor!" in their
houses, by the roadside, in the streets.
"The story of the Coronation in the shattered Cathedral, whose roof had
been torn to fragments by bombs," said an important London paper, "reads
like a legend of the Middle Ages. But, upon the whole, there is in
Samavia's national character, something of the mediaeval, still."
* * * * *
Lazarus, having bought and read in his top floor room every newspaper
recording the details which had reached London, returned to report
almost verbatim, standing erect before Marco, the eyes under his shaggy
brows sometimes flaming with exultation, sometimes filled with a rush of
tears. He could not be made to sit down. His whole big body seemed to
have become rigid with magnificence. Meeting Mrs. Beedle in the passage,
he strode by her with an air so thunderous that she turned and scuttled
back to her cellar kitchen, almost falling down the stone steps in her
nervous terror. In such a mood, he was not a person to face without
something like awe.
In the middle of the night, The Rat suddenly spoke to Marco as if he
knew that he was awake and would hear him.
"He has given all his life to Samavia!" he said. "When you traveled from
country to country, and lived in holes and corners, it was because by
doing it he could escape spies, and see the people who must be made to
understand. No one else could have made them listen. An emperor would
have begun to listen when he had seen his face and heard his voice. And
he could be silent, and wait for the right time to speak. He could keep
still when other men could not. He could keep his face still--and his
hands--and his eyes. Now all Samavia knows what he has done, and that he
has been the greatest patriot in the world. We both saw what Samavians
were like that night in the cavern. They will go mad with joy when they
see his face!"
"They have seen it now," said Marco, in a low voice from his bed.
Then there was a long silence, though it was not quite silence because
The Rat's breathing was so quick and hard.
"He--must have been at that coronation!" he said at last. "The
King--what will the King do to--repay him?"
Marco did not answer. His breathing could be heard also. His mind was
picturing that same coronation--the shattered, roofless cathedral, the
ruins of the ancient and magnificent high altar, the multitude of
kneeling, famine-scourged people, the battle-worn, wounded and bandaged
soldiery! And the 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 if 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 every-day 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 over-awed 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.
"To-morrow 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!"