"Haven't had a bite since yesterday," The Rat said, still staring at him. "How did you know I hadn't?"
"You have not had time," Loristan answered.
"Look at my clothes," said The Rat.
"Lie down and sleep," Loristan replied, putting his hand on his shoulder and gently forcing him toward the sofa. "You will sleep a long time. You must tell me how to find the place where your father died, and I will see that the proper authorities are notified."
"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 terrible thing," Loristan answered him.
He went away without saying more, and The Rat lay on the sofa staring 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; in fact, he slept through all the night.
When he awakened2 it was morning, and Lazarus was standing3 by the side of the sofa looking down at him.
"You will want to make yourself clean," he said. "It must be done."
"Clean!" said The Rat, with his squeaky laugh. "I couldn't keep clean when I had a room to live in, and now where am I to wash myself?" He sat up and looked about him.
"Give me my crutches4," he said. "I've got to go. They've let me sleep here all night. They didn't turn me into the street. I don't know why they didn't. Marco's father—he's the right sort. He looks like a swell5."
"The Master," said Lazarus, with a rigid6 manner, "the Master is a great gentleman. He would turn no tired creature into the street. 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 bread and coffee with him and the young Master. But it is I who tell you that you cannot sit at table with them until you are clean. Come with me," and he handed him his crutches. His manner was authoritative7, but it was the manner of a soldier; his somewhat stiff and erect8 movements were those of a soldier, also, and The Rat liked them because they made him feel as if he were in barracks. He did not know what was going to happen, but he got up and followed him on his crutches.
Lazarus took him to a closet under the stairs where a battered9 tin bath was already full of hot water, which the old soldier himself had brought in pails. There were soap and coarse, clean towels on a wooden chair, and also there was a much worn but clean suit of clothes.
"Put these on when you have bathed," Lazarus ordered, pointing to them. "They belong to the young Master and will be large for you, but they will be better than your own." And then he went out 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 at all—at an iron tap set in the wall of a back street or court in some slum. His father and himself had long ago sunk into the world where to wash one's self is not a part of every-day life. They had lived amid dirt and foulness10, and when his father had been in a maudlin11 state, he had sometimes cried and talked of the long-past days when he had shaved every morning and put on a clean shirt.
To stand even in the most battered of tin baths full of clean hot water and to splash and scrub with a big piece of flannel12 and plenty of soap was a marvelous thing. The Rat's tired body responded to the novelty with a curious feeling of freshness and comfort.
"I dare say swells13 do this every day," he muttered. "I'd do it myself if I was a swell. Soldiers have to keep themselves so clean they shine."
When, after making the most of his soap and water, he came out of the 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 he went out into the world again and had to sleep in any hole the police did not order him out of.
He wanted to see Marco again, but he wanted more to see the tall man with the soft dark eyes and that queer look of being a swell in spite of his shabby clothes and the dingy14 place he lived in. There was something about him which made you keep on looking at him, and wanting to know what he was thinking of, and why you felt as if you'd take orders from him as you'd take orders from your general, if you were a soldier. He looked, somehow, like a soldier, but as if he were something more—as if people had taken orders from him all his life, and always would take orders from him. And yet he had that quiet voice and those fine, easy movements, and he was not a soldier at all, but only a poor man who wrote things for papers which did not pay him well enough to give him and his son a comfortable living. Through all the time of his seclusion15 with the battered bath and the soap and water, The Rat thought of him, and longed to have another look at him and hear him speak again. He did not see any reason why he should have let him sleep on his sofa or why he should give him a breakfast before he turned him out to face the world. It was first-rate of him to do it. The Rat felt that when he was turned out, after he had had the coffee, he should want to hang about the neighborhood just on the chance of seeing him pass by sometimes. He did not know what he was going to do. The parish officials would by this time have taken his dead father, and he would not see him again. He did not want to see him again. He had never seemed like a father. They had never cared anything for each other. He had only been a wretched outcast whose best hours had been when he had drunk too much to be violent and brutal16. Perhaps, The Rat thought, he would be driven to going about on his platform on the pavements and begging, as his father had tried to force him to do. Could he sell newspapers? What could a crippled lad do unless he begged or sold papers?
Lazarus was waiting for him in the passage. The Rat held back a little.
"Perhaps they'd rather not eat their breakfast with me," he hesitated. "I'm not—I'm not the kind they are. I could swallow 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 thanked him."
Lazarus also had a steady eye. The Rat realized that he was looking him over as if he were summing him up.
"You may not be the kind they are, but you may be of a kind the Master sees good in. If he did not see something, he would not ask you to sit at his table. You are to come with me."
The Squad17 had seen good in The Rat, but no one else had. Policemen had moved him on whenever they set eyes on him, the wretched women of the slums had regarded him as they regarded his darting18, 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-room19.
It was as dingy and gloomy as it had looked the night before, but by the daylight The Rat saw how rigidly20 neat it was, how well swept and free from any speck21 of dust, how the poor windows had been cleaned and polished, and how everything was set in order. The coarse linen22 cloth on the table was fresh and spotless, so was the cheap crockery, the spoons shone with brightness.
Loristan was standing on the hearth23 and Marco was near him. They were waiting for their vagabond guest as if he had been a gentleman.
The Rat hesitated and shuffled24 at the door for a moment, and then it suddenly occurred to him to stand as straight as he could and salute25. 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 mere26 "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 far-seeing 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 scarlet27 and gold. To the boy who had gnawed28 a bone or munched29 a crust wheresoever he found them, and with no thought but of the appeasing30 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 every-day decencies of civilized31 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 scowl32 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 amazement33. He had become extraordinarily34 clever in one direction because he had fixed35 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 attentively36 as his master, and once Marco saw him exchange a startled, rapid glance with Loristan. It was at a moment when The Rat was sketching37 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 graveyard38 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, ragged39 lot; but they had respectfully sober faces, held their heads and their shoulders well, and walked with a remarkably40 regular marching step.
It was the Squad; but they had left their "rifles" at home.
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1
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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crutches
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| n.拐杖, 支柱 v.支撑 | |
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5
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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6
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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8
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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10
foulness
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| n. 纠缠, 卑鄙 | |
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maudlin
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| adj.感情脆弱的，爱哭的 | |
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12
flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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13
swells
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| 增强( swell的第三人称单数 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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14
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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15
seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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18
darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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19
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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22
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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23
hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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24
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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25
salute
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| vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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28
gnawed
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| 咬( gnaw的过去式和过去分词 )； （长时间） 折磨某人； （使）苦恼； （长时间）危害某事物 | |
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29
munched
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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30
appeasing
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| 安抚，抚慰( appease的现在分词 )； 绥靖（满足另一国的要求以避免战争） | |
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31
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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32
scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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33
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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37
sketching
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| n.草图 | |
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38
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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39
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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