第102章 XXXI “THE SON OF STEFAN LORISTAN $$$$$$$$$$(4)

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. “Ibelieved 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 Iwaited.''

“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.' ''