Chapter VII. "The Lamp Is Lighted!"

The Lost Prince

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

On his way home, Marco thought of nothing but the story he must
tell his father, the story the stranger who had been to Samavia had
told The Rat's father. He felt that it must be a true story and not
merely an invention. The Forgers of the Sword must be real men, and
the hidden subterranean caverns stacked through the centuries with
arms must be real, too. And if they were real, surely his father was
one of those who knew the secret. His thoughts ran very fast. The
Rat's boyish invention of the rising was only part of a game, but how
natural it would be that sometime--perhaps before long--there would
be a real rising! Surely there would be one if the Secret Party had
grown so strong, and if many weapons and secret friends in other
countries were ready and waiting. During all these years, hidden
work and preparation would have been going on continually, even
though it was preparation for an unknown day. A party which had
lasted so long--which passed its oath on from generation to
generation--must be of a deadly determination.

What might it not have made ready in its caverns and secret
meeting- places! He longed to reach home and tell his father, at
once, all he had heard. He recalled to mind, word for word, all that
The Rat had been told, and even all he had added in his game,
because-- well, because that seemed so real too, so real that it
actually might be useful.

But when he reached No. 7 Philibert Place, he found Loristan and
Lazarus very much absorbed in work. The door of the back
sitting-room was locked when he first knocked on it, and locked again
as soon as he had entered. There were many papers on the table, and
they were evidently studying them. Several of them were maps. Some
were road maps, some maps of towns and cities, and some of
fortifications; but they were all maps of places in Samavia. They
were usually kept in a strong box, and when they were taken out to be
studied, the door was always kept locked.

Before they had their evening meal, these were all returned to
the strong box, which was pushed into a corner and had newspapers
piled upon it.

"When he arrives," Marco heard Loristan say to Lazarus, "we can
show him clearly what has been planned. He can see for himself."

His father spoke scarcely at all during the meal, and, though it
was not the habit of Lazarus to speak at such times unless spoken to,
this evening it seemed to Marco that he looked more silent than he
had ever seen him look before. They were plainly both thinking
anxiously of deeply serious things. The story of the stranger who
had been to Samavia must not be told yet. But it was one which would
keep.

Loristan did not say anything until Lazarus had removed the
things from the table and made the room as neat as possible. While
that was being done, he sat with his forehead resting on his hand, as
if absorbed in thought. Then he made a gesture to Marco.

"Come here, Comrade," he said.

Marco went to him.

"To-night some one may come to talk with me about grave things,"
he said. "I think he will come, but I cannot be quite sure. It is
important that he should know that, when he comes, he will find me
quite alone. He will come at a late hour, and Lazarus will open the
door quietly that no one may hear. It is important that no one
should see him. Some one must go and walk on the opposite side of
the street until he appears. Then the one who goes to give warning
must cross the pavement before him and say in a low voice, `The Lamp
is lighted!' and at once turn quietly away."

What boy's heart would not have leaped with joy at the mystery
of it! Even a common and dull boy who knew nothing of Samavia would
have felt jerky. Marco's voice almost shook with the thrill of his
feeling.

"How shall I know him?" he said at once. Without asking at all,
he knew he was the "some one" who was to go.

"You have seen him before," Loristan answered. "He is the man
who drove in the carriage with the King."

"I shall know him," said Marco. "When shall I go?"

"Not until it is half-past one o'clock. Go to bed and sleep
until Lazarus calls you." Then he added, "Look well at his face
before you speak. He will probably not be dressed as well as he was
when you saw him first."

Marco went up-stairs to his room and went to bed as he was told,
but it was hard to go to sleep. The rattle and roaring of the road
did not usually keep him awake, because he had lived in the poorer
quarter of too many big capital cities not to be accustomed to noise.
But to-night it seemed to him that, as he lay and looked out at the
lamplight, he heard every bus and cab which went past. He could not
help thinking of the people who were in them, and on top of them, and
of the people who were hurrying along on the pavement outside the
broken iron railings. He was wondering what they would think if they
knew that things connected with the battles they read of in the daily
papers were going on in one of the shabby houses they scarcely gave a
glance to as they went by them. It must be something connected with
the war, if a man who was a great diplomat and the companion of kings
came in secret to talk alone with a patriot who was a Samavian.
Whatever his father was doing was for the good of Samavia, and
perhaps the Secret Party knew he was doing it. His heart almost beat
aloud under his shirt as he lay on the lumpy mattress thinking it
over. He must indeed look well at the stranger before he even moved
toward him. He must be sure he was the right man. The game he had
amused himself with so long--the game of trying to remember pictures
and people and places clearly and in detail--had been a wonderful
training. If he could draw, he knew he could have made a sketch of
the keen-eyed, clever, aquiline face with the well-cut and delicately
close mouth, which looked as if it had been shut upon secrets
always--always. If he could draw, he found himself saying again. He
could draw, though perhaps only roughly. He had often amused himself
by making sketches of things he wanted to ask questions about. He
had even drawn people's faces in his untrained way, and his father
had said that he had a crude gift for catching a likeness. Perhaps
he could make a sketch of this face which would show his father that
he knew and would recognize it.

He jumped out of bed and went to a table near the window. There
was paper and a pencil lying on it. A street lamp exactly opposite
threw into the room quite light enough for him to see by. He half
knelt by the table and began to draw. He worked for about twenty
minutes steadily, and he tore up two or three unsatisfactory
sketches. The poor drawing would not matter if he could catch that
subtle look which was not slyness but something more dignified and
important. It was not difficult to get the marked, aristocratic
outline of the features. A common-looking man with less pronounced
profile would have been less easy to draw in one sense. He gave his
mind wholly to the recalling of every detail which had photographed
itself on his memory through its trained habit. Gradually he saw
that the likeness was becoming clearer. It was not long before it
was clear enough to be a striking one. Any one who knew the man
would recognize it. He got up, drawing a long and joyful breath.

He did not put on his shoes, but crossed his room as noiselessly
as possible, and as noiselessly opened the door. He made no ghost of
a sound when he went down the stairs. The woman who kept the
lodging-house had gone to bed, and so had the other lodgers and the
maid of all work. All the lights were out except the one he saw a
glimmer of under the door of his father's room. When he had been a
mere baby, he had been taught to make a special sign on the door when
he wished to speak to Loristan. He stood still outside the back
sitting-room and made it now. It was a low scratching sound--two
scratches and a soft tap. Lazarus opened the door and looked
troubled.

"It is not yet time, sir," he said very low.

"I know," Marco answered. "But I must show something to my
father." Lazarus let him in, and Loristan turned round from his
writing-table questioningly.

Marco went forward and laid the sketch down before him.

"Look at it," he said. "I remember him well enough to draw
that. I thought of it all at once--that I could make a sort of
picture. Do you think it is like him?" Loristan examined it
closely.

"It is very like him," he answered. "You have made me feel
entirely safe. Thanks, Comrade. It was a good idea."

There was relief in the grip he gave the boy's hand, and Marco
turned away with an exultant feeling. Just as he reached the door,
Loristan said to him:

"Make the most of this gift. It is a gift. And it is true your
mind has had good training. The more you draw, the better. Draw
everything you can."

Neither the street lamps, nor the noises, nor his thoughts kept
Marco awake when he went back to bed. But before he settled himself
upon his pillow he gave himself certain orders. He had both read,
and heard Loristan say, that the mind can control the body when
people once find out that it can do so. He had tried experiments
himself, and had found out some curious things. One was that if he
told himself to remember a certain thing at a certain time, he
usually found that he did remember it. Something in his brain seemed
to remind him. He had often tried the experiment of telling himself
to awaken at a particular hour, and had awakened almost exactly at
the moment by the clock.

"I will sleep until one o'clock," he said as he shut his eyes.
"Then I will awaken and feel quite fresh. I shall not be sleepy at
all."

He slept as soundly as a boy can sleep. And at one o'clock
exactly he awakened, and found the street lamp still throwing its
light through the window. He knew it was one o'clock, because there
was a cheap little round clock on the table, and he could see the
time. He was quite fresh and not at all sleepy. His experiment had
succeeded again.

He got up and dressed. Then he went down-stairs as noiselessly
as before. He carried his shoes in his hands, as he meant to put
them on only when he reached the street. He made his sign at his
father's door, and it was Loristan who opened it.

"Shall I go now?" Marco asked.

"Yes. Walk slowly to the other side of the street. Look in
every direction. We do not know where he will come from. After you
have given him the sign, then come in and go to bed again."

Marco saluted as a soldier would have done on receiving an
order.

Then, without a second's delay, he passed noiselessly out of the
house.

Loristan turned back into the room and stood silently in the
center of it. The long lines of his handsome body looked
particularly erect and stately, and his eyes were glowing as if
something deeply moved him.

"There grows a man for Samavia," he said to Lazarus, who watched
him. "God be thanked!"

Lazarus's voice was low and hoarse, and he saluted quite
reverently.

"Your--sir!" he said. "God save the Prince!"

"Yes," Loristan answered, after a moment's hesitation,--"when he
is found." And he went back to his table smiling his beautiful
smile.

The wonder of silence in the deserted streets of a great city,
after midnight has hushed all the roar and tumult to rest, is an
almost unbelievable thing. The stillness in the depths of a forest
or on a mountain top is not so strange. A few hours ago, the tumult
was rushing past; in a few hours more, it will be rushing past
again.

But now the street is a naked thing; a distant policeman's tramp
on the bare pavement has a hollow and almost fearsome sound. It
seemed especially so to Marco as he crossed the road. Had it ever
been so empty and deadly silent before? Was it so every night?
Perhaps it was, when he was fast asleep on his lumpy mattress with
the light from a street lamp streaming into the room. He listened
for the step of the policeman on night-watch, because he did not wish
to be seen. There was a jutting wall where he could stand in the
shadow while the man passed. A policeman would stop to look
questioningly at a boy who walked up and down the pavement at
half-past one in the morning. Marco could wait until he had gone by,
and then come out into the light and look up and down the road and
the cross streets.

He heard his approaching footsteps in a few minutes, and was
safely in the shadows before he could be seen. When the policeman
passed, he came out and walked slowly down the road, looking on each
side, and now and then looking back. At first no one was in sight.
Then a late hansom-cab came tinkling along. But the people in it
were returning from some festivity, and were laughing and talking,
and noticed nothing but their own joking. Then there was silence
again, and for a long time, as it seemed to Marco, no one was to be
seen. It was not really so long as it appeared, because he was
anxious. Then a very early vegetable-wagon on the way from the
country to Covent Garden Market came slowly lumbering by with its
driver almost asleep on his piles of potatoes and cabbages. After it
had passed, there was stillness and emptiness once more, until the
policeman showed himself again on his beat, and Marco slipped into
the shadow of the wall as he had done before.

When he came out into the light, he had begun to hope that the
time would not seem long to his father. It had not really been long,
he told himself, it had only seemed so. But his father's anxiousness
would be greater than his own could be. Loristan knew all that
depended on the coming of this great man who sat side by side with a
king in his carriage and talked to him as if he knew him well.

"It might be something which all Samavia is waiting to know-- at
least all the Secret Party," Marco thought. "The Secret Party is
Samavia,"--he started at the sound of footsteps. "Some one is
coming!" he said. "It is a man."

It was a man who was walking up the road on the same side of the
pavement as his own. Marco began to walk toward him quietly but
rather rapidly. He thought it might be best to appear as if he were
some boy sent on a midnight errand--perhaps to call a doctor. Then,
if it was a stranger he passed, no suspicion would be aroused. Was
this man as tall as the one who had driven with the King? Yes, he
was about the same height, but he was too far away to be recognizable
otherwise. He drew nearer, and Marco noticed that he also seemed
slightly to hasten his footsteps. Marco went on. A little nearer,
and he would be able to make sure. Yes, now he was near enough.
Yes, this man was the same height and not unlike in figure, but he
was much younger. He was not the one who had been in the carriage
with His Majesty. He was not more than thirty years old. He began
swinging his cane and whistling a music-hall song softly as Marco
passed him without changing his pace.

It was after the policeman had walked round his beat and
disappeared for the third time, that Marco heard footsteps echoing at
some distance down a cross street. After listening to make sure that
they were approaching instead of receding in another direction, he
placed himself at a point where he could watch the length of the
thoroughfare. Yes, some one was coming. It was a man's figure
again. He was able to place himself rather in the shadow so that the
person approaching would not see that he was being watched. The
solitary walker reached a recognizable distance in about two minutes'
time. He was dressed in an ordinary shop-made suit of clothes which
was rather shabby and quite unnoticeable in its appearance. His
common hat was worn so that it rather shaded his face. But even
before he had crossed to Marco's side of the road, the boy had
clearly recognized him. It was the man who had driven with the
King!

Chance was with Marco. The man crossed at exactly the place
which made it easy for the boy to step lightly from behind him, walk
a few paces by his side, and then pass directly before him across the
pavement, glancing quietly up into his face as he said in a low voice
but distinctly, the words "The Lamp is lighted," and without pausing
a second walk on his way down the road. He did not slacken his pace
or look back until he was some distance away. Then he glanced over
his shoulder, and saw that the figure had crossed the street and was
inside the railings. It was all right. His father would not be
disappointed. The great man had come.

He walked for about ten minutes, and then went home and to bed.
But he was obliged to tell himself to go to sleep several times
before his eyes closed for the rest of the night.