The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett
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of the slums had regarded him as they regarded his darting, thieving namesake; loafing or busy men had seen in him a young nuisance to be kicked or pushed out of the way. The Squad had not called “good” what they saw in him. They would have yelled with laughter if they had heard any one else call it so. “Goodness” was not considered an attraction in their world.
The Rat grinned a little and wondered what was meant, as he followed Lazarus into the back sitting-room.
It was as dingy and gloomy as it had looked the night before, but by the daylight The Rat saw how rigidly neat it was, how well swept and free from any speck of dust, how the poor windows had been cleaned and polished, and how everything was set in order. The coarse linen cloth on the table was fresh and spotless, so was the cheap crockery, the spoons shone with brightness.
Loristan was standing on the hearth and Marco was near him. They were waiting for their vagabond guest as if he had been a gentleman.
The Rat hesitated and shuffled at the door for a moment, and then it suddenly occurred to him to stand as straight as he could and salute. When he found himself in the presence of Loristan, he felt as if he ought to do something, but he did not know what.
Loristan’s recognition of his gesture and his expression as he moved forward lifted from The Rat’s shoulders a load which he himself had not known lay there. Somehow he felt as if something new had happened to him, as if he were not mere “vermin,” after all, as if he need not be on the defensive—even as if he need not feel so much in the dark, and like a thing there was no place in the world for. The mere straight and farseeing look of this man’s eyes seemed to make a place somewhere for what he looked at. And yet what he said was quite simple.
“This is well,” he said. “You have rested. We will have some food, and then we will talk together.” He made a slight gesture in the direction of the chair at the right hand of his own place.
The Rat hesitated again. What a swell he was! With that wave of the hand he made you feel as if you were a fellow like himself, and he was doing you some honor.
“I’m not—” The Rat broke off and jerked his head toward Marco. “He knows—” he ended, “I’ve never sat at a table like this before.”
“There is not much on it.” Loristan made the slight gesture toward the right-hand seat again and smiled. “Let us sit down.”
The Rat obeyed him and the meal began. There were only bread and coffee and a little butter before them. But Lazarus presented the cups and plates on a small japanned tray as if it were a golden salver. When he was not serving, he stood upright behind his master’s chair, as though he wore royal livery of scarlet and gold. To the boy who had gnawed a bone or munched a crust wheresoever he found them, and with no thought but of the appeasing of his own wolfish hunger, to watch the two with whom he sat eat their simple food was a new thing. He knew nothing of the everyday decencies of civilized people. The Rat liked to look at them, and he found himself trying to hold his cup as Loristan did, and to sit and move as Marco was sitting and moving—taking his bread or butter, when it was held at his side by Lazarus, as if it were a simple thing to be waited upon. Marco had had things handed to him all his life, and it did not make him feel awkward. The Rat knew that his own father had once lived like this. He himself would have been at ease if chance had treated him fairly. It made him scowl to think of it. But in a few minutes Loristan began to talk about the copy of the map of Samavia. Then The Rat forgot everything else and was ill at ease no more. He did not know that Loristan was leading him on to explain his theories about the country and the people and the war. He found himself telling all that he had read, or overheard, or THOUGHT as he lay awake in his garret. He had thought out a great many things in a way not at all like a boy’s. His strangely concentrated and over-mature mind had been full of military schemes which Loristan listened to with curiosity and also with amazement. He had become extraordinarily clever in one direction because he had fixed all his mental powers on one thing. It seemed scarcely natural that an untaught vagabond lad should know so much and reason so clearly. It was at least extraordinarily interesting. There had been no skirmish, no attack, no battle which he had not led and fought in his own imagination, and he had made scores of rough queer plans of all that had been or should have been done. Lazarus listened as attentively as his master, and once Marco saw him exchange a startled, rapid glance with Loristan. It was at a moment when The Rat was sketching with his finger on the cloth an attack which OUGHT to have been made but was not. And Marco knew at once that the quickly exchanged look meant “He is right! If it had been done, there would have been victory instead of disaster!”
It was a wonderful meal, though it was only of bread and coffee. The Rat knew he should never be able to forget it.
Afterward, Loristan told him of what he had done the night before. He had seen the parish authorities and all had been done which a city government provides in the case of a pauper’s death.
His father would be buried in the usual manner. “We will follow him,” Loristan said in the end. “You and I and Marco and Lazarus.”
The Rat’s mouth fell open.
“You—and Marco—and Lazarus!” he exclaimed, staring. “And me! Why should any of us go? I don’t want to. He wouldn’t have followed me if I’d been the one.”
Loristan remained silent for a few moments.
“When a life has counted for nothing, the end of it is a lonely thing,” he said at last. “If it has forgotten all respect for itself, pity is all that one has left to give. One would like to give SOMETHING to anything so lonely.” He said the last brief sentence after a pause.
“Let us go,” Marco said suddenly; and he caught The Rat’s hand.
The Rat’s own movement was sudden. He slipped from his crutches to a chair, and sat and gazed at the worn carpet as if he were not looking at it at all, but at something a long way off. After a while he looked up at Loristan.
“Do you know what I thought of, all at once?” he said in a shaky voice. “I thought of that ‘Lost Prince’ one. He only lived once. Perhaps he didn’t live a long time. Nobody knows. But it’s five hundred years ago, and, just because he was the kind he was, every one that remembers him thinks of something fine. It’s queer, but it does you good just to hear his name. And if he has been training kings for Samavia all these centuries—they may have been poor and nobody may have known about them, but they’ve been KINGS. That’s what HE did—just by being alive a few years. When I think of him and then think of—the other—there’s such an awful difference that—yes—I’m sorry. For the first time. I’m his son and I can’t care about him; but he’s too lonely—I want to go.”
So it was that when the forlorn derelict was carried to the graveyard where nameless burdens on the city were given to the earth, a curious funeral procession followed him. There were two tall and soldierly looking men and two boys, one of whom walked on crutches, and behind them were ten other boys who walked two by two. These ten were a queer, ragged lot; but they had respectfully sober faces, held their heads and their shoulders well, and walked with a remarkably regular marching step.
It was the Squad; but they had left their “rifles” at home.
XI
“COME WITH ME”
When they came back from the graveyard, The Rat was silent all the way. He was thinking of what had happened and of what lay before him. He was, in fact, thinking chiefly that nothing lay before him—nothing. The certainty of that gave his sharp, lined face new lines and sharpness which made it look pinched and hard.
He had nothing before but a corner in a bare garret in which he could find little more than a leaking roof over his head—when he was not turned out into the street. But, if policemen asked him where he lived, he could say he lived in Bone Court with his father. Now he couldn’t say it.
He got along very well on his crutches, but he was rather tired when they reached the turn in the street which led in the direction of