Chapter XXXI. "The Son of Stefan Loristan"

The Lost Prince

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

When a party composed of two boys attended by a big soldierly
man-servant and accompanied by two distinguished-looking, elderly
men, of a marked foreign type, appeared on the platform of Charing
Cross Station they attracted a good deal of attention. In fact, the
good looks and strong, well-carried body of the handsome lad with the
thick black hair would have caused eyes to turn towards him even if
he had not seemed to be regarded as so special a charge by those who
were with him. But in a country where people are accustomed to
seeing a certain manner and certain forms observed in the case of
persons--however young--who are set apart by the fortune of rank and
distinction, and where the populace also rather enjoys the sight of
such demeanor, it was inevitable that more than one quick-sighted
looker-on should comment on the fact that this was not an ordinary
group of individuals.

"See that fine, big lad over there!" said a workman, whose head,
with a pipe in its mouth, stuck out of a third-class smoking carriage
window. "He's some sort of a young swell, I'll lay a shillin'! Take
a look at him," to his mate inside.

The mate took a look. The pair were of the decent, polytechnic-
educated type, and were shrewd at observation.

"Yes, he's some sort of young swell," he summed him up. "But
he's not English by a long chalk. He must be a young Turk, or
Russian, sent over to be educated. His suite looks like it. All but
the ferret-faced chap on crutches. Wonder what he is!"

A good-natured looking guard was passing, and the first man
hailed him.

"Have we got any swells traveling with us this morning?" he
asked, jerking his head towards the group. "That looks like it. Any
one leaving Windsor or Sandringham to cross from Dover to-day?"

The man looked at the group curiously for a moment and then
shook his head.

"They do look like something or other," he answered, "but no one
knows anything about them. Everybody's safe in Buckingham Palace and
Marlborough House this week. No one either going or coming."

No observer, it is true, could have mistaken Lazarus for an
ordinary attendant escorting an ordinary charge. If silence had not
still been strictly the order, he could not have restrained himself.
As it was, he bore himself like a grenadier, and stood by Marco as if
across his dead body alone could any one approach the lad.

"Until we reach Melzarr," he had said with passion to the two
gentlemen,--"until I can stand before my Master and behold him
embrace his son--behold him--I implore that I may not lose sight of
him night or day. On my knees, I implore that I may travel, armed,
at his side. I am but his servant, and have no right to occupy a
place in the same carriage. But put me anywhere. I will be deaf,
dumb, blind to all but himself. Only permit me to be near enough to
give my life if it is needed. Let me say to my Master, `I never left
him.' "

"We will find a place for you," the elder man said, "and if you
are so anxious, you may sleep across his threshold when we spend the
night at a hotel."

"I will not sleep!" said Lazarus. "I will watch. Suppose there
should be demons of Maranovitch loose and infuriated in Europe? Who
knows!"

"The Maranovitch and Iarovitch who have not already sworn
allegiance to King Ivor are dead on battlefields. The remainder are
now Fedorovitch and praising God for their King," was the answer
Baron Rastka made him.

But Lazarus kept his guard unbroken. When he occupied the next
compartment to the one in which Marco traveled, he stood in the
corridor throughout the journey. When they descended at any point to
change trains, he followed close at the boy's heels, his fierce eyes
on every side at once and his hand on the weapon hidden in his broad
leather belt. When they stopped to rest in some city, he planted
himself in a chair by the bedroom door of his charge, and if he slept
he was not aware that nature had betrayed him into doing so.

If the journey made by the young Bearers of the Sign had been a
strange one, this was strange by its very contrast. Throughout that
pilgrimage, two uncared-for waifs in worn clothes had traveled from
one place to another, sometimes in third- or fourth-class continental
railroad carriages, sometimes in jolting diligences, sometimes in
peasants' carts, sometimes on foot by side roads and mountain paths,
and forest ways. Now, two well-dressed boys in the charge of two men
of the class whose orders are obeyed, journeyed in compartments
reserved for them, their traveling appurtenances supplying every
comfort that luxury could provide.

The Rat had not known that there were people who traveled in
such a manner; that wants could be so perfectly foreseen; that
railroad officials, porters at stations, the staff of restaurants,
could be by magic transformed into active and eager servants. To
lean against the upholstered back of a railway carriage and in
luxurious ease look through the window at passing beauties, and then
to find books at your elbow and excellent meals appearing at regular
hours, these unknown perfections made it necessary for him at times
to pull himself together and give all his energies to believing that
he was quite awake. Awake he was, and with much on his mind "to work
out,"--so much, indeed, that on the first day of the journey he had
decided to give up the struggle, and wait until fate made clear to
him such things as he was to be allowed to understand of the mystery
of Stefan Loristan.

What he realized most clearly was that the fact that the son of
Stefan Loristan was being escorted in private state to the country
his father had given his life's work to, was never for a moment
forgotten. The Baron Rastka and Count Vorversk were of the dignity
and courteous reserve which marks men of distinction. Marco was not
a mere boy to them, he was the son of Stefan Loristan; and they were
Samavians. They watched over him, not as Lazarus did, but with a
gravity and forethought which somehow seemed to encircle him with a
rampart. Without any air of subservience, they constituted
themselves his attendants. His comfort, his pleasure, even his
entertainment, were their private care. The Rat felt sure they
intended that, if possible, he should enjoy his journey, and that he
should not be fatigued by it. They conversed with him as The Rat had
not known that men ever conversed with boys,--until he had met
Loristan. It was plain that they knew what he would be most
interested in, and that they were aware he was as familiar with the
history of Samavia as they were themselves. When he showed a
disposition to hear of events which had occurred, they were as prompt
to follow his lead as they would have been to follow the lead of a
man. That, The Rat argued with himself, was because Marco had lived
so intimately with his father that his life had been more like a
man's than a boy's and had trained him in mature thinking. He was
very quiet during the journey, and The Rat knew he was thinking all
the time.

The night before they reached Melzarr, they slept at a town some
hours distant from the capital. They arrived at midnight and went
to a quiet hotel.

"To-morrow," said Marco, when The Rat had left him for the
night, "to-morrow, we shall see him! God be thanked!"

"God be thanked!" said The Rat, also. And each saluted the
other before they parted.

In the morning, Lazarus came into the bedroom with an air so
solemn that it seemed as if the garments he carried in his hands were
part of some religious ceremony.

"I am at your command, sir," he said. "And I bring you your
uniform."

He carried, in fact, a richly decorated Samavian uniform, and
the first thing Marco had seen when he entered was that Lazarus
himself was in uniform also. His was the uniform of an officer of
the King's Body Guard.

"The Master," he said, "asks that you wear this on your entrance
to Melzarr. I have a uniform, also, for your aide-de-camp."

When Rastka and Vorversk appeared, they were in uniforms also.
It was a uniform which had a touch of the Orient in its picturesque
splendor. A short fur-bordered mantle hung by a jeweled chain from
the shoulders, and there was much magnificent embroidery of color and
gold.

"Sir, we must drive quickly to the station," Baron Rastka said
to Marco. "These people are excitable and patriotic, and His Majesty
wishes us to remain incognito, and avoid all chance of public
demonstration until we reach the capital." They passed rather
hurriedly through the hotel to the carriage which awaited them. The
Rat saw that something unusual was happening in the place. Servants
were scurrying round corners, and guests were coming out of their
rooms and even hanging over the balustrades.

As Marco got into his carriage, he caught sight of a boy about
his own age who was peeping from behind a bush. Suddenly he darted
away, and they all saw him tearing down the street towards the
station as fast as his legs would carry him.

But the horses were faster than he was. The party reached the
station, and was escorted quickly to its place in a special saloon-
carriage which awaited it. As the train made its way out of the
station, Marco saw the boy who had run before them rush on to the
platform, waving his arms and shouting something with wild delight.
The people who were standing about turned to look at him, and the
next instant they had all torn off their caps and thrown them up in
the air and were shouting also. But it was not possible to hear what
they said.

"We were only just in time," said Vorversk, and Baron Rastka
nodded.

The train went swiftly, and stopped only once before they
reached Melzarr. This was at a small station, on the platform of
which stood peasants with big baskets of garlanded flowers and
evergreens. They put them on the train, and soon both Marco and The
Rat saw that something unusual was taking place. At one time, a man
standing on the narrow outside platform of the carriage was plainly
seen to be securing garlands and handing up flags to men who worked
on the roof.

"They are doing something with Samavian flags and a lot of
flowers and green things!" cried The Rat, in excitement.

"Sir, they are decorating the outside of the carriage," Vorversk
said. "The villagers on the line obtained permission from His
Majesty. The son of Stefan Loristan could not be allowed to pass
their homes without their doing homage."

"I understand," said Marco, his heart thumping hard against his
uniform. "It is for my father's sake."

At last, embowered, garlanded, and hung with waving banners, the
train drew in at the chief station at Melzarr.

"Sir," said Rastka, as they were entering, "will you stand up
that the people may see you? Those on the outskirts of the crowd
will have the merest glimpse, but they will never forget."

Marco stood up. The others grouped themselves behind him.
There arose a roar of voices, which ended almost in a shriek of joy
which was like the shriek of a tempest. Then there burst forth the
blare of brazen instruments playing the National Hymn of Samavia, and
mad voices joined in it.

If Marco had not been a strong boy, and long trained in self-
control, what he saw and heard might have been almost too much to be
borne. When the train had come to a full stop, and the door was
thrown open, even Rastka's dignified voice was unsteady as he said,
"Sir, lead the way. It is for us to follow."

And Marco, erect in the doorway, stood for a moment, looking out
upon the roaring, acclaiming, weeping, singing and swaying
multitude-- and saluted just as he had saluted The Squad, looking
just as much a boy, just as much a man, just as much a thrilling
young human being.

Then, at the sight of him standing so, it seemed as if the crowd
went mad--as the Forgers of the Sword had seemed to go mad on the
night in the cavern. The tumult rose and rose, the crowd rocked, and
leapt, and, in its frenzy of emotion, threatened to crush itself to
death. But for the lines of soldiers, there would have seemed no
chance for any one to pass through it alive.

"I am the son of Stefan Loristan," Marco said to himself, in
order to hold himself steady. "I am on my way to my father."

Afterward, he was moving through the line of guarding soldiers
to the entrance, where two great state-carriages stood; and there,
outside, waited even a huger and more frenzied crowd than that left
behind. He saluted there again, and again, and again, on all sides.
It was what they had seen the Emperor do in Vienna. He was not an
Emperor, but he was the son of Stefan Loristan who had brought back
the King.

"You must salute, too," he said to The Rat, when they got into
the state carriage. "Perhaps my father has told them. It seems as
if they knew you."

The Rat had been placed beside him on the carriage seat. He was
inwardly shuddering with a rapture of exultation which was almost
anguish. The people were looking at him--shouting at him--surely it
seemed like it when he looked at the faces nearest in the crowd.
Perhaps Loristan--

"Listen!" said Marco suddenly, as the carriage rolled on its
way. "They are shouting to us in Samavian, `The Bearers of the
Sign!'

That is what they are saying now. `The Bearers of the Sign.'
"

They were being taken to the Palace. That Baron Rastka and
Count Vorversk had explained in the train. His Majesty wished to
receive them. Stefan Loristan was there also.

The city had once been noble and majestic. It was somewhat
Oriental, as its uniforms and national costumes were. There were
domed and pillared structures of white stone and marble, there were
great arches, and city gates, and churches. But many of them were
half in ruins through war, and neglect, and decay. They passed the
half-unroofed cathedral, standing in the sunshine in its great
square, still in all its disaster one of the most beautiful
structures in Europe. In the exultant crowd were still to be seen
haggard faces, men with bandaged limbs and heads or hobbling on
sticks and crutches. The richly colored native costumes were most of
them worn to rags. But their wearers had the faces of creatures
plucked from despair to be lifted to heaven.

"Ivor! Ivor!" they cried; "Ivor! Ivor!" and sobbed with
rapture.

The Palace was as wonderful in its way as the white cathedral.
The immensely wide steps of marble were guarded by soldiers. The
huge square in which it stood was filled with people whom the
soldiers held in check.

"I am his son," Marco said to himself, as he descended from the
state carriage and began to walk up the steps which seemed so
enormously wide that they appeared almost like a street. Up he
mounted, step by step, The Rat following him. And as he turned from
side to side, to salute those who made deep obeisance as he passed,
he began to realize that he had seen their faces before.

"These who are guarding the steps," he said, quickly under his
breath to The Rat, "are the Forgers of the Sword!"

There were rich uniforms everywhere when he entered the palace,
and people who bowed almost to the ground as he passed. He was very
young to be confronted with such an adoring adulation and royal
ceremony; but he hoped it would not last too long, and that after he
had knelt to the King and kissed his hand, he would see his father
and hear his voice. Just to hear his voice again, and feel his hand
on his shoulder!

Through the vaulted corridors, to the wide-opened doors of a
magnificent room he was led at last. The end of it seemed a long way
off as he entered. There were many richly dressed people who stood
in line as he passed up toward the canopied dais. He felt that he
had grown pale with the strain of excitement, and he had begun to
feel that he must be walking in a dream, as on each side people bowed
low and curtsied to the ground.

He realized vaguely that the King himself was standing, awaiting
his approach. But as he advanced, each step bearing him nearer to
the throne, the light and color about him, the strangeness and
magnificence, the wildly joyous acclamation of the populace outside
the palace, made him feel rather dazzled, and he did not clearly see
any one single face or thing.

"His Majesty awaits you," said a voice behind him which seemed
to be Baron Rastka's. "Are you faint, sir? You look pale."

He drew himself together, and lifted his eyes. For one full
moment, after he had so lifted them, he stood quite still and
straight, looking into the deep beauty of the royal face. Then he
knelt and kissed the hands held out to him--kissed them both with a
passion of boy love and worship.

The King had the eyes he had longed to see--the King's hands
were those he had longed to feel again upon his shoulder--the King
was his father! the "Stefan Loristan" who had been the last of those
who had waited and labored for Samavia through five hundred years,
and who had lived and died kings, though none of them till now had
worn a crown!

His father was the King!

It was not that night, nor the next, nor for many nights that
the telling of the story was completed. The people knew that their
King and his son were rarely separated from each other; that the
Prince's suite of apartments were connected by a private passage with
his father's. The two were bound together by an affection of
singular strength and meaning, and their love for their people added
to their feeling for each other. In the history of what their past
had been, there was a romance which swelled the emotional Samavian
heart near to bursting. By mountain fires, in huts, under the stars,
in fields and in forests, all that was known of their story was told
and retold a thousand times, with sobs of joy and prayer breaking in
upon the tale.

But none knew it as it was told in a certain quiet but stately
room in the palace, where the man once known only as "Stefan
Loristan," but whom history would call the first King Ivor of
Samavia, told his share of it to the boy whom Samavians had a strange
and superstitious worship for, because he seemed so surely their Lost
Prince restored in body and soul--almost the kingly lad in the
ancient portrait--some of them half believed when he stood in the
sunshine, with the halo about his head.

It was a wonderful and intense story, that of the long
wanderings and the close hiding of the dangerous secret. Among all
those who had known that a man who was an impassioned patriot was
laboring for Samavia, and using all the power of a great mind and the
delicate ingenuity of a great genius to gain friends and favor for
his unhappy country, there had been but one who had known that Stefan
Loristan had a claim to the Samavian throne. He had made no claim,
he had sought--not a crown--but the final freedom of the nation for
which his love had been a religion.

"Not the crown!" he said to the two young Bearers of the Sign as
they sat at his feet like schoolboys--"not a throne. `The Life of my
life--for Samavia.' That was what I worked for--what we have all
worked for. If there had risen a wiser man in Samavia's time of
need, it would not have been for me to remind them of their Lost
Prince. I could have stood aside. But no man arose. The crucial
moment came--and the one man who knew the secret, revealed it.
Then--Samavia called, and I answered."

He put his hand on the thick, black hair of his boy's head.

"There was a thing we never spoke of together," he said. "I
believed always that your mother died of her bitter fears for me and
the unending strain of them. She was very young and loving, and knew
that there was no day when we parted that we were sure of seeing each
other alive again. When she died, she begged me to promise that your
boyhood and youth should not be burdened by the knowledge she had
found it so terrible to bear. I should have kept the secret from
you, even if she had not so implored me. I had never meant that you
should know the truth until you were a man. If I had died, a certain
document would have been sent to you which would have left my task in
your hands and made my plans clear. You would have known then that
you also were a Prince Ivor, who must take up his country's burden
and be ready when Samavia called. I tried to help you to train
yourself for any task. You never failed me."

"Your Majesty," said The Rat, "I began to work it out, and think
it must be true that night when we were with the old woman on the top
of the mountain. It was the way she looked at--at His Highness."

"Say `Marco,' " threw in Prince Ivor. "It's easier. He was my
army, Father."

Stefan Loristan's grave eyes melted.

"Say `Marco,' " he said. "You were his army--and more--when we
both needed one. It was you who invented the Game!"

"Thanks, Your Majesty," said The Rat, reddening scarlet. "You
do me great honor! But he would never let me wait on him when we
were traveling. He said we were nothing but two boys. I suppose
that's why it's hard to remember, at first. But my mind went on
working until sometimes I was afraid I might let something out at the
wrong time. When we went down into the cavern, and I saw the Forgers
of the Sword go mad over him--I knew it must be true. But I didn't
dare to speak. I knew you meant us to wait; so I waited."

"You are a faithful friend," said the King, "and you have always
obeyed orders!"

A great moon was sailing in the sky that night--just such a
moon as had sailed among the torn rifts of storm clouds when the
Prince at Vienna had come out upon the balcony and the boyish voice
had startled him from the darkness of the garden below. The clearer
light of this night's splendor drew them out on a balcony also--a
broad balcony of white marble which looked like snow. The pure
radiance fell upon all they saw spread before them--the lovely but
half-ruined city, the great palace square with its broken statues and
arches, the splendid ghost of the unroofed cathedral whose High Altar
was bare to the sky.

They stood and looked at it. There was a stillness in which all
the world might have ceased breathing.

"What next?" said Prince Ivor, at last speaking quietly and low.
"What next, Father?"

"Great things which will come, one by one," said the King, "if
we hold ourselves ready."

Prince Ivor turned his face from the lovely, white, broken city,
and put his brown hand on his father's arm.

"Upon the ledge that night--" he said, "Father, you remember
--?" The King was looking far away, but he bent his head:

"Yes. That will come, too," he said. "Can you repeat it?"

"Yes," said Ivor, "and so can the aide-de-camp. We've said it a
hundred times. We believe it's true. `If the descendant of the Lost
Prince is brought back to rule in Samavia, he will teach his people
the Law of the One, from his throne. He will teach his son, and that
son will teach his son, and he will teach his. And through such as
these, the whole world will learn the Order and the Law.' "