XXIV
``HOW SHALL WE FIND HIM?''
In Vienna they came upon a pageant. In celebration of a
century-past victory the Emperor drove in state and ceremony to
attend at the great cathedral and to do honor to the ancient
banners and laurel-wreathed statue of a long-dead soldier-prince.
The broad pavements of the huge chief thoroughfare were crowded
with a cheering populace watching the martial pomp and splendor
as it passed by with marching feet, prancing horses, and glitter
of scabbard and chain, which all seemed somehow part of music in
triumphant bursts.
The Rat was enormously thrilled by the magnificence of the
imperial place. Its immense spaces, the squares and gardens,
reigned over by statues of emperors, and warriors, and queens
made him feel that all things on earth were possible. The
palaces and stately piles of architecture, whose surmounting
equestrian bronzes ramped high in the air clear cut and beautiful
against the sky, seemed to sweep out of his world all atmosphere
but that of splendid cities down whose broad avenues emperors
rode with waving banners, tramping, jangling soldiery before and
behind, and golden trumpets blaring forth. It seemed as if it
must always be like this--that lances and cavalry and emperors
would never cease to ride by. ``I should like to stay here a
long time,'' he said almost as if he were in a dream. ``I should
like to see it all.''
He leaned on his crutches in the crowd and watched the glitter of
the passing pageant. Now and then he glanced at Marco, who
watched also with a steady eye which, The Rat saw, nothing would
escape: How absorbed he always was in the Game! How impossible
it was for him to forget it or to remember it only as a boy
would! Often it seemed that he was not a boy at all. And the
Game, The Rat knew in these days, was a game no more but a thing
of deep and deadly earnest--a thing which touched kings and
thrones, and concerned the ruling and swaying of great countries.
And they--two lads pushed about by the crowd as they stood and
stared at the soldiers--carried with them that which was even now
lighting the Lamp. The blood in The Rat's veins ran quickly and
made him feel hot as he remembered certain thoughts which had
forced themselves into his mind during the past weeks. As his
brain had the trick of ``working things out,'' it had, during the
last fortnight at least, been following a wonderful even if
rather fantastic and feverish fancy. A mere trifle had set it at
work, but, its labor once begun, things which might have once
seemed to be trifles appeared so no longer. When Marco was
asleep, The Rat lay awake through thrilled and sometimes almost
breathless midnight hours, looking backward and recalling every
detail of their lives since they had known each other. Sometimes
it seemed to him that almost everything he remembered--the Game
from first to last above all--had pointed to but one thing. And
then again he would all at once feel that he was a fool and had
better keep his head steady. Marco, he knew, had no wild
fancies. He had learned too much and his mind was too well
balanced. He did not try to ``work out things.'' He only
thought of what he was under orders to do.
``But,'' said The Rat more than once in these midnight hours,
``if it ever comes to a draw whether he is to be saved or I am,
he is the one that must come to no harm. Killing can't take
long-- and his father sent me with him.''
This thought passed through his mind as the tramping feet went
by. As a sudden splendid burst of approaching music broke upon
his ear, a queer look twisted his face. He realized the contrast
between this day and that first morning behind the churchyard,
when he had sat on his platform among the Squad and looked up and
saw Marco in the arch at the end of the passage. And because he
had been good-looking and had held himself so well, he had thrown
a stone at him. Yes--blind gutter-bred fool that he'd been:--his
first greeting to Marco had been a stone, just because he was
what he was. As they stood here in the crowd in this far-off
foreign city, it did not seem as if it could be true that it was
he who had done it.
He managed to work himself closer to Marco's side. ``Isn't it
splendid?'' he said, ``I wish I was an emperor myself. I'd have
these fellows out like this every day.'' He said it only because
he wanted to say something, to speak, as a reason for getting
closer to him. He wanted to be near enough to touch him and feel
that they were really together and that the whole thing was not a
sort of magnificent dream from which he might awaken to find
himself lying on his heap of rags in his corner of the room in
Bone Court.
The crowd swayed forward in its eagerness to see the principal
feature of the pageant--the Emperor in his carriage. The Rat
swayed forward with the rest to look as it passed.
A handsome white-haired and mustached personage in splendid
uniform decorated with jeweled orders and with a cascade of
emerald-green plumes nodding in his military hat gravely saluted
the shouting people on either side. By him sat a man uniformed,
decorated, and emerald-plumed also, but many years younger.
Marco's arm touched The Rat's almost at the same moment that his
own touched Marco. Under the nodding plumes each saw the rather
tired and cynical pale face, a sketch of which was hidden in the
slit in Marco's sleeve.
``Is the one who sits with the Emperor an Archduke?'' Marco asked
the man nearest to him in the crowd. The man answered amiably
enough. No, he was not, but he was a certain Prince, a
descendant of the one who was the hero of the day. He was a
great favorite of the Emperor's and was also a great personage,
whose palace contained pictures celebrated throughout Europe.
``He pretends it is only pictures he cares for,'' he went on,
shrugging his shoulders and speaking to his wife, who had begun
to listen, ``but he is a clever one, who amuses himself with
things he professes not to concern himself about--big things.
It's his way to look bored, and interested in nothing, but it's
said he's a wizard for knowing dangerous secrets.''
``Does he live at the Hofburg with the Emperor?'' asked the
woman, craning her neck to look after the imperial carriage.
``No, but he's often there. The Emperor is lonely and bored too,
no doubt, and this one has ways of making him forget his
troubles. It's been told me that now and then the two dress
themselves roughly, like common men, and go out into the city to
see what it's like to rub shoulders with the rest of the world.
I daresay it's true. I should like to try it myself once in a
while, if I had to sit on a throne and wear a crown.''
The two boys followed the celebration to its end. They managed
to get near enough to see the entrance to the church where the
service was held and to get a view of the ceremonies at the
banner-draped and laurel-wreathed statue. They saw the man with
the pale face several times, but he was always so enclosed that
it was not possible to get within yards of him. It happened
once, however, that he looked through a temporary break in the
crowding
people and saw a dark strong-featured and remarkably intent boy's
face, whose vivid scrutiny of him caught his eye. There was
something in the fixedness of its attention which caused him to
look at it curiously for a few seconds, and Marco met his gaze
squarely.
``Look at me! Look at me!'' the boy was saying to him mentally.
``I have a message for you. A message!''
The tired eyes in the pale face rested on him with a certain
growing light of interest and curiosity, but the crowding people
moved and the temporary break closed up, so that the two could
see each other no more. Marco and The Rat were pushed backward
by those taller and stronger than themselves until they were on
the outskirts of the crowd.
``Let us go to the Hofburg,'' said Marco. ``They will come back
there, and we shall see him again even if we can't get near.''
To the Hofburg they made their way through the less crowded
streets, and there they waited as near to the great palace as
they could get. They were there when, the ceremonies at an end,
the imperial carriages returned, but, though they saw their man
again, they were at some distance from him and he did not see
them.
Then followed four singular days. They were singular days
because they were full of tantalizing incidents. Nothing seemed
easier than to hear talk of, and see the Emperor's favorite, but
nothing was more impossible than to get near to him. He seemed
rather a favorite with the populace, and the common people of the
shopkeeping or laboring classes were given to talking freely of
him--of where he was going and what he was doing. To-night he
would be sure to be at this great house or that, at this ball or
that banquet. There was no difficulty in discovering that he
would be sure to go to the opera, or the theatre, or to drive to
Schonbrunn with his imperial master. Marco and The Rat heard
casual speech of him again and again, and from one part of the
city to the other they followed and waited for him. But it was
like chasing a will-o'-the-wisp. He was evidently too brilliant
and important a person to be allowed to move about alone. There
were always people with him who seemed absorbed in his languid
cynical talk. Marco thought that he never seemed to care much
for his companions, though they on their part always seemed
highly entertained by what he was saying. It was noticeable that
they laughed a great deal, though he himself scarcely even
smiled.
``He's one of those chaps with the trick of saying witty things
as if he didn't see the fun in them himself,'' The Rat summed him
up. ``Chaps like that are always cleverer than the other kind.''
``He's too high in favor and too rich not to be followed about,''
they heard a man in a shop say one day, ``but he gets tired of
it. Sometimes, when he's too bored to stand it any longer, he
gives it out that he's gone into the mountains somewhere, and all
the time he's shut up alone with his pictures in his own
palace.''
That very night The Rat came in to their attic looking pale and
disappointed. He had been out to buy some food after a long and
arduous day in which they had covered much ground, had seen their
man three times, and each time under circumstances which made him
more inaccessible than ever. They had come back to their poor
quarters both tired and ravenously hungry.
The Rat threw his purchase on to the table and himself into a
chair.
``He's gone to Budapest,'' he said. ``NOW how shall we find
him?''
Marco was rather pale also, and for a moment he looked paler.
The day had been a hard one, and in their haste to reach places
at a long distance from each other they had forgotten their need
of food.
They sat silent for a few moments because there seemed to be
nothing to say. ``We are too tired and hungry to be able to
think well,'' Marco said at last. ``Let us eat our supper and
then go to sleep. Until we've had a rest, we must `let go.' ''
``Yes. There's no good in talking when you're tired,'' The Rat
answered a trifle gloomily. ``You don't reason straight. We
must `let go.' ''
Their meal was simple but they ate well and without words.
Even when they had finished and undressed for the night, they
said very little.
``Where do our thoughts go when we are asleep,'' The Rat inquired
casually after he was stretched out in the darkness. ``They must
go somewhere. Let's send them to find out what to do next.''
``It's not as still as it was on the Gaisberg. You can hear the
city roaring,'' said Marco drowsily from his dark corner. ``We
must make a ledge--for ourselves.''
Sleep made it for them--deep, restful, healthy sleep. If they
had been more resentful of their ill luck and lost labor, it
would have come less easily and have been less natural. In their
talks of strange things they had learned that one great secret of
strength and unflagging courage is to know how to ``let go''--to
cease thinking over an anxiety until the right moment comes. It
was their habit to ``let go'' for hours sometimes, and wander
about looking at places and things--galleries, museums, palaces,
giving themselves up with boyish pleasure and eagerness to all
they saw. Marco was too intimate with the things worth seeing,
and The Rat too curious and feverishly wide-awake to allow of
their missing much.
The Rat's image of the world had grown until it seemed to know no
boundaries which could hold its wealth of wonders. He wanted to
go on and on and see them all.
When Marco opened his eyes in the morning, he found The Rat lying
looking at him. Then they both sat up in bed at the same time.
``I believe we are both thinking the same thing,'' Marco said.
They frequently discovered that they were thinking the same
things.
``So do I,'' answered The Rat. ``It shows how tired we were that
we didn't think of it last night.''
``Yes, we are thinking the same thing,'' said Marco. ``We have
both remembered what we heard about his shutting himself up alone
with his pictures and making people believe he had gone away.''
``He's in his palace now,'' The Rat announced.
``Do you feel sure of that, too?'' asked Marco. ``Did you wake
up and feel sure of it the first thing?''
``Yes,'' answered The Rat. ``As sure as if I'd heard him say it
himself.''
``So did I,'' said Marco.
``That's what our thoughts brought back to us,'' said The Rat,
``when we `let go' and sent them off last night.'' He sat up
hugging his knees and looking straight before him for some time
after this, and Marco did not interrupt his meditations.
The day was a brilliant one, and, though their attic had only one
window, the sun shone in through it as they ate their breakfast.
After it, they leaned on the window's ledge and talked about the
Prince's garden. They talked about it because it was a place
open to the public and they had walked round it more than once.
The palace, which was not a large one, stood in the midst of it.
The Prince was good-natured enough to allow quiet and
well-behaved people to saunter through. It was not a fashionable
promenade but a pleasant retreat for people who sometimes took
their work or books and sat on the seats placed here and there
among the shrubs and flowers.
``When we were there the first time, I noticed two things,''
Marco said. ``There is a stone balcony which juts out from the
side of the palace which looks on the Fountain Garden. That day
there were chairs on it as if the Prince and his visitors
sometimes sat there. Near it, there was a very large evergreen
shrub and I saw that there was a hollow place inside it. If some
one wanted to stay in the gardens all night to watch the windows
when they were lighted and see if any one came out alone upon the
balcony, he could hide himself in the hollow place and stay there
until the morning.''
``Is there room for two inside the shrub?'' The Rat asked.
``No. I must go alone,'' said Marco.
