Chapter X. The Rat-and Samavia

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

　　What The Rat thought when Loristan began to speak to him, Marcowondered. Suddenly he stood in an unknown world, and it wasLoristan who made it so because its poverty and shabbiness had nopower to touch him. He looked at the boy with calm and cleareyes, he asked him practical questions gently, and it was plainthat he understood many things without asking questions at all.Marco thought that perhaps he had, at some time, seen drunken mendie, in his life in strange places. He seemed to know theterribleness of the night through which The Rat had passed. Hemade him sit down, and he ordered Lazarus to bring him some hotcoffee and simple food."Haven't had a bite since yesterday," The Rat said, stillstaring at him. "How did you know I hadn't?""You have not had time," Loristan answered.Afterward he made him lie down on the sofa."Look at my clothes," said The Rat."Lie down and sleep," Loristan replied, putting his hand on hisshoulder and gently forcing him toward the sofa. "You willsleep a long time. You must tell me how to find the place whereyour father died, and I will see that the proper authorities arenotified.""What are you doing it for?" The Rat asked, and then he added,"sir.""Because I am a man and you are a boy. And this is a terriblething," Loristan answered him.He went away without saying more, and The Rat lay on the sofastaring at the wall and thinking about it until he fell asleep.But, before this happened, Marco had quietly left him alone. So,as Loristan had told him he would, he slept deeply and long; infact, he slept through all the night.When he awakened it was morning, and Lazarus was standing by theside of the sofa looking down at him."You will want to make yourself clean," he said. "It must bedone.""Clean!" said The Rat, with his squeaky laugh. "I couldn'tkeep clean when I had a room to live in, and now where am I towash myself?" He sat up and looked about him."Give me my crutches," he said. "I've got to go. They've letme sleep here all night. They didn't turn me into the street. Idon't know why they didn't. Marco's father--he's the right sort.He looks like a swell.""The Master," said Lazarus, with a rigid manner, "the Masteris a great gentleman. He would turn no tired creature into thestreet. He and his son are poor, but they are of those who give.He desires to see and talk to you again. You are to have breadand coffee with him and the young Master. But it is I who tellyou that you cannot sit at table with them until you are clean.Come with me," and he handed him his crutches. His manner wasauthoritative, but it was the manner of a soldier; his somewhatstiff and erect movements were those of a soldier, also, and TheRat liked them because they made him feel as if he were inbarracks. He did not know what was going to happen, but he gotup and followed him on his crutches.Lazarus took him to a closet under the stairs where a batteredtin bath was already full of hot water, which the old soldierhimself had brought in pails. There were soap and coarse, cleantowels on a wooden chair, and also there was a much worn butcleanly suit of clothes."Put these on when you have bathed," Lazarus ordered, pointingto them. "They belong to the young Master and will be large foryou, but they will be better than your own." And then he wentout of the closet and shut the door.It was a new experience for The Rat. So long as he remembered,he had washed his face and hands--when he had washed them atall--at an iron tap set in the wall of a back street or court insome slum. His father and himself had long ago sunk into theworld where to wash one's self is not a part of every-day life.They had lived amid dirt and foulness, and when his father hadbeen in a maudlin state, he had sometimes cried and talked of thelong-past days when he had shaved every morning and put on aclean shirt.To stand even in the most battered of tin baths full of clean hotwater and to splash and scrub with a big piece of flannel andplenty of soap was a marvelous thing. The Rat's tired bodyresponded to the novelty with a curious feeling of freshness andcomfort."I dare say swells do this every day," he muttered. "I'd doit myself if I was a swell. Soldiers have to keep themselves soclean they shine."When, after making the most of his soap and water, he came out ofthe closet under the stairs, he was as fresh as Marco himself;and, though his clothes had been built for a more stalwart body,his recognition of their cleanliness filled him with pleasure.He wondered if by any effort he could keep himself clean when hewent out into the world again and had to sleep in any hole thepolice did not order him out of.He wanted to see Marco again, but he wanted more to see the tallman with the soft dark eyes and that queer look of being a swellin spite of his shabby clothes and the dingy place he lived in.There was something about him which made you keep on looking athim, and wanting to know what he was thinking of, and why youfelt as if you'd take orders from him as you'd take orders fromyour general, if you were a soldier. He looked, somehow, like asoldier, but as if he were something more--as if people had takenorders from him all his life, and always would take orders fromhim. And yet he had that quiet voice and those fine, easymovements, and he was not a soldier at all, but only a poor manwho wrote things for papers which did not pay him well enough togive him and his son a comfortable living. Through all the timeof his seclusion with the battered bath and the soap and water,The Rat thought of him, and longed to have another look at himand hear him speak again. He did not see any reason why heshould have let him sleep on his sofa or why he should give him abreakfast before he turned him out to face the world. It wasfirst-rate of him to do it. The Rat felt that when he was turnedout, after he had had the coffee, he should want to hang aboutthe neighborhood just on the chance of seeing him pass bysometimes. He did not know what he was going to do. The parishofficials would by this time have taken his dead father, and hewould not see him again. He did not want to see him again. Hehad never seemed like a father. They had never cared anythingfor each other. He had only been a wretched outcast whose besthours had been when he had drunk too much to be violent andbrutal. Perhaps, The Rat thought, he would be driven to goingabout on his platform on the pavements and begging, as his fatherhad tried to force him to do. Could he sell newspapers? Whatcould a crippled lad do unless he begged or sold papers?Lazarus was waiting for him in the passage. The Rat held back alittle."Perhaps they'd rather not eat their breakfast with me," hehesitated. "I'm not--I'm not the kind they are. I couldswallow the coffee out here and carry the bread away with me.And you could thank him for me. I'd want him to know I thankedhim."Lazarus also had a steady eye. The Rat realized that he waslooking him over as if he were summing him up."You may not be the kind they are, but you may be of a kind theMaster sees good in. If he did not see something, he would notask you to sit at his table. You are to come with me."The Squad had seen good in The Rat, but no one else had.Policemen had moved him on whenever they set eyes on him, thewretched women of the slums had regarded him as they regarded hisdarting, thieving namesake; loafing or busy men had seen in him ayoung nuisance to be kicked or pushed out of the way. The Squadhad not called "good" what they saw in him. They would haveyelled 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 hefollowed Lazarus into the back sitting-room.It was as dingy and gloomy as it had looked the night before, butby the daylight The Rat saw how rigidly neat it was, how wellswept and free from any speck of dust, how the poor windows hadbeen cleaned and polished, and how everything was set in order.The coarse linen cloth on the table was fresh and spotless, sowas the cheap crockery, the spoons shone with brightness.Loristan was standing on the hearth and Marco was near him. Theywere waiting for their vagabond guest as if he had been agentleman.The Rat hesitated and shuffled at the door for a moment, and thenit suddenly occurred to him to stand as straight as he could andsalute. When he found himself in the presence of Loristan, hefelt as if he ought to do something, but he did not know what.Loristan's recognition of his gesture and his expression as hemoved forward lifted from The Rat's shoulders a load which hehimself had not known lay there. Somehow he felt as if somethingnew had happened to him, as if he were not mere "vermin," afterall, as if he need not be on the defensive--even as if he neednot feel so much in the dark, and like a thing there was no placein the world for. The mere straight and far-seeing look of thisman's eyes seemed to make a place somewhere for what he lookedat. And yet what he said was quite simple."This is well," he said. "You have rested. We will have somefood, and then we will talk together." He made a slight gesturein 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 ofthe 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 towardMarco. "He knows--" he ended, "I've never sat at a table likethis before.""There is not much on it." Loristan made the slight gesturetoward the right-hand seat again and smiled. "Let us sitdown."The Rat obeyed him and the meal began. There were only bread andcoffee and a little butter before them. But Lazarus presentedthe cups and plates on a small japanned tray as if it were agolden salver. When he was not serving, he stood upright behindhis master's chair, as though he wore royal livery of scarlet andgold. To the boy who had gnawed a bone or munched a crustwheresoever he found them, and with no thought but of theappeasing of his own wolfish hunger, to watch the two with whomhe sat eat their simple food was a new thing. He knew nothing ofthe every-day decencies of civilized people. The Rat liked tolook at them, and he found himself trying to hold his cup asLoristan did, and to sit and move as Marco was sitting andmoving--taking his bread or butter, when it was held at his sideby 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 notmake him feel awkward. The Rat knew that his own father had oncelived like this. He himself would have been at ease if chancehad treated him fairly. It made him scowl to think of it. Butin a few minutes Loristan began to talk about the copy of the mapof Samavia. Then The Rat forgot everything else and was ill atease no more. He did not know that Loristan was leading him onto explain his theories about the country and the people and thewar. He found himself telling all that he had read, oroverheard, or thought as he lay awake in his garret. He hadthought 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 ofmilitary schemes which Loristan listened to with curiosity andalso with amazement. He had become extraordinarily clever in onedirection because he had fixed all his mental powers on onething. It seemed scarcely natural that an untaught vagabond ladshould know so much and reason so clearly. It was at leastextraordinarily interesting. There had been no skirmish, noattack, no battle which he had not led and fought in his ownimagination, and he had made scores of rough queer plans of allthat had been or should have been done. Lazarus listened asattentively as his master, and once Marco saw him exchange astartled, rapid glance with Loristan. It was at a moment whenThe Rat was sketching with his finger on the cloth an attackwhich ought to have been made but was not. And Marco knew atonce that the quickly exchanged look meant "He is right! If ithad been done, there would have been victory instead ofdisaster!"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 nightbefore. He had seen the parish authorities and all had been donewhich a city government provides in the case of a pauper's death.His father would be buried in the usual manner. "We will followhim," Loristan said in the end. "You and I and Marco andLazarus."The Rat's mouth fell open."You--and Marco--and Lazarus!" he exclaimed, staring. "Andme! Why should any of us go? I don't want to. He wouldn't havefollowed 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 lonelything," he said at last. "If it has forgotten all respect foritself, pity is all that one has left to give. One would like togive something to anything so lonely." He said the last briefsentence 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 crutchesto a chair, and sat and gazed at the worn carpet as if he werenot looking at it at all, but at something a long way off. Aftera while he looked up at Loristan."Do you know what I thought of, all at once?" he said in ashaky voice. "I thought of that `Lost Prince' one. He onlylived once. Perhaps he didn't live a long time. Nobody knows.But it's five hundred years ago, and, just because he was thekind he was, every one that remembers him thinks of somethingfine. It's queer, but it does you good just to hear his name.And if he has been training kings for Samavia all thesecenturies--they may have been poor and nobody may have knownabout them, but they've been kings. That's what he did--just bybeing alive a few years. When I think of him and then thinkof--the other--there's such an awful difference that --yes--I'msorry. For the first time. I'm his son and I can't care abouthim; but he's too lonely--I want to go."So it was that when the forlorn derelict was carried to thegraveyard where nameless burdens on the city were given to theearth, a curious funeral procession followed him. There were twotall and soldierly looking men and two boys, one of whom walkedon crutches, and behind them were ten other boys who walked twoby two. These ten were a queer, ragged lot; but they hadrespectfully sober faces, held their heads and their shoulderswell, and walked with a remarkably regular marching step.It was the Squad; but they had left their "rifles" at home.