II
A YOUNG CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
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.
