Prince Cecil: XIII.

Chapter XIII.

Cecil Meets a Vagrant

The street on which Miss Kaparthy lived ran down for several blocks and ended abruptly in an iron paling with a gate in it. Enclosed within this paling was the park, which was very extensive and took up nearly a hundred acres of the central part of the city. It was the same park that ran between Sir Andrew Fletcher’s house and the consulate building, although that part of it was only a narrow arm.
It was a nice park, as parks go. The river ran through the middle of it and the white paved paths were thickly set with trees and lampposts and park benches. Cecil thought it would save time and withal be safer to go back to the watch shop as much of the way as he could along the park’s quiet winding lanes and anyway, he needed time to think about things.
The lampposts were not lit because nobody was supposed to come there after dark, but there was a three-quarter moon which threw a milky grey light over everything and hundreds of fireflies. The night had ripened so far that the little yellow-green creatures had gone to the very tops of the trees, twinkling like shore lights signaling to a distant vessel. They reminded Cecil of the night he had run away from Mapleton and of the fireflies on the cricket field.
What had he come to Pyromania for, after all? Pyromania was as enslaved as ever and now Cecil had even more troubles than when he had started. Why had he promised Miss Kaparthy that he would save her brother? Reflecting on his decision, he felt that he had promised simply because someone had to do it and he knew nobody else could. But could he do it himself? It was, after all, impossible.
He reached the river and turned down a path that ran along by its bank. The moonlight ran along over the water at his side, keeping pace with his strides. There were no big noises--only the gentle murmuring of the river, the light rustle of trees, and the night wind. The city, the war, and the Javotskis seemed thousands of miles away. Cecil might have been in Regent's Park or Kensington Gardens.
He turned onto another path and passed through a grove of trees. Just beyond in a clear space where the moon shone fully stood a bronze statue on a pedestal. There had once been scores of statues in the park--mostly of kings or national heroes--but they had been torn down by the Javotskis. This one was one of their replacements--a figure of Plato. Cecil approached it and found that whatever had been written on the pedestal initially had been painted over with plaster, but the plastering was old and beginning to crumble away. He bent down and rubbed his knuckles over the rough surface until he was able to make out the following legend:

Roland III by the grace of God king of Pyromania

He glanced quickly up at the statue again. It was quite obviously Plato. He got down on his hands and knees and began to search about in the grass. The park was regularly tended and no litter or stones were to be found loose on the ground but Cecil found something hard half buried in the earth at the base of the pedestal. It was a stone hand. He brushed the dirt off it and gazed at it silently in the moonlight. Roland the III had been his father.
He left the bit of marble behind in the grass and continued along the path as it pursued a leisurely course across the lawn and under a second grove of trees. A clock somewhere in the city struck eight faintly and far away, but in the moonlit park Cecil felt as if he were in a timeless place, lost in the mists of a thousand years. It seemed a place where nothing was real--the very trees looked as though if you tried to touch them they would disappear. Yet all around him Cecil felt the old grandeur of his ancestors, deposed and trodden underfoot but still with a stern dignity, and he seemed to see the things he had always believed in--honour and chivalry and truth--embodied in the lampposts and the empty pedestals, all whitely surreal and washed in a hopeless moonshine.
He was the last of the Montellescues. He was alone and wandering in the night an empty dream-world that was the old Pyromania. It seemed to be trying to speak to him--like something making one last attempt before it falls silent forever. He thought he knew what it said--that the things that are the most definite are the hardest of all to see; that what is most true is only accepted by faith; and that the highest, brightest ideals only become real when they are lived out in quiet, unseen acts of service and sacrifice.
It hadn’t come to him all at once, but bit by bit and he had only realised it that night in the park because it was the first opportunity he had had to think about it properly. He had come back to his country to be king but now his throne, the war, Karotski and Leiber--even Pyromania--did not seem to matter so much as one lonely, ill prisoner and the promise Cecil had made to Miss Kaparthy.
Still that promise seemed impossible to keep. But as he wandered on through the deserted park Cecil began to feel that somehow he would do it. He didn’t know how—the impossibility of it did not change, but he felt somehow that there was something stronger than impossibility—and that It was on his side.
He threw away the core of the apple and found himself before another wrought-iron gate. This was the one which led out into the lower part of the city—the part where he was going. There were scarcely any people about on the streets—only one or two automobiles with authorised government plates. Cecil trotted down the silent sidewalks past the deserted shops, skirting the circle of light round the base of each lamppost.
Suddenly he stopped and drew back against the window of the shop behind him. A policeman was coming down the street making his nightly rounds. Cecil glanced around but could see nowhere to hide. There was the shop behind him. It was certainly shut up—but then, it was a pub, and Cecil had learned from Karotski and Leiber that some pubs stayed open after the curfew, only they did business in a darkened back room. He tried the door.
It wasn’t locked. He opened it and slipped inside, expecting to find himself in a dark and empty room, but instead found that a dim lamp gleamed above a bar and lighted indifferently a small room populated by three or four people. The heavy wooden shutters in the window kept the uncertain light from escaping into the street and no one spoke or made a noise—a strange state of affairs for a bar room.
‘What do you want?’ asked the man behind the bar, seeing Cecil.
‘There’s a policeman outside,’ explained Cecil.
‘Did he see you?’ asked the man, seeming to understand completely Cecil’s predicament.
‘No. I don’t think so. Do you mind if I stay here for a little while?’
‘Not if you don’t make any noise. Shop’s shut up but I don’t mind a visitor or two.’
Cecil could see that the man did not mind ‘visitors’ as long as they paid for their drinks. Even policemen sometimes came to these surreptitious establishments and did not usually report the owners’, as these were the only places a constable could get a drink after the curfew.
Cecil ordered root beer and sat down to drink it at a table in the furthest corner of the room. The corner, although small and dark, was shared by a man in a threadbare uniform who sat with his chair tipped back and his feet on the table, rocking his chair on two legs in a sort of doze.
He did not speak to Cecil or even seem to notice him, and Cecil decided it was best not to speak to him either. He let his eyes wander around the room, decorated as it was with the usual government posters although here they were defaced by pencil markings made by disgruntled or simply bored citizens.
His eyes gravitated back, almost against his inclination, to the man who shared the table. There was something fascinating in this rough individual, although there was really nothing remarkable about his appearance. He looked to be in his late twenties, and he was the usual sort of person one sees in a pub except that there seemed to be something gentlemanly about him despite his shabbiness. He wore an old army cap pulled down over his eyes, an old army uniform, and old cavalry boots. Cecil, examining him, noticed for the first time a gleam of metal on the man’s boot heels. It was a little silver C, like a sickle moon, and there was one on each boot. Cecil leaned forward closer to look.
‘Eh?’ said the man, noticing him for the first time and seeing his curiosity. ‘What is it?’
‘I was looking at your boots,’ Cecil explained.
‘Well, what’s the matter with ‘em?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then mind your own business.’
The man pulled his cap lower over his eyes and folded his arms.
‘You must have been in the 7th Guards cavalry once,’ Cecil went on, undaunted.
‘Why?’
‘Because your boots have silver heels.’
The man let his chair down on all four of its legs and looked Cecil straight on.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘I was just wondering if you got them second-hand,’ said Cecil carelessly.
The man who had seemed to be half asleep a moment before became in two seconds so undeniably awake that he jumped to his feet and knocked Cecil down —chair and all—with a blow from his fist.
For a moment Cecil lay on the floor trying to get his wits back, for the man had hit him very hard. If he had had time for it he might have felt like crying because his chin hurt very much. I don’t say that he would have cried, but only felt like it; but in any case he didn’t have a chance to do anything of the sort because the proprietor of the pub came up just then with an angry air.
‘Enough of this!’ he said. ‘I run an exemplary bar and I don’t permit fighting. If you two hotheads want to fight you can do it out on the street and be arrested there!’
And with that he caught either of them by the collar and thrust them out so forcefully (being a well-built man) that Cecil fell down again and the other man staggered a good bit, though this may have been due in part to the empty glass he had left on the table. The door was shut on them and it happened to be a very good thing that the policeman had passed on.
Cecil picked himself up and looked at the man, wondering how to apologise. It did not look as if it would be easy. The man had recovered his balace with the aid of a lamppost and now stood with his hands in his pockets and an air of dejection, shaking his head now and then as if he were still dizzy. Cecil was rather lightheaded himself from the blow he had gotten, but the night air was clearing that up quickly and he had only had root beer.
‘Look here,’ he addressed the man, extending his hand; ‘I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to get you thrown out.’
‘What of it?’ said the man, with his back to Cecil and his shoulders hunched up. ‘I deserved it. Hitting a kid…’
‘I thought you would,’ said Cecil. ‘That’s why I deliberately insulted you.’
‘Deliberately, eh?’ asked the man, turning to look at him curiously.
‘Yes,’ said Cecil. ‘I knew you would get angry if you were really a Silver Heel.’
‘Well, I hope you are convinced,’ said the man. ‘I am a Silver Heel. What of it?’
‘In that case,’ said Cecil; ‘you once belonged to one of the most elite corps in the Pyromanian army.’
‘Yes, once,’ said the man with a snort like that a very sophisticated person would give who has just sniffed an unpleasant odour. ‘But that’s long past. Who cares about the Silver Heels anymore? Just a lot of mendicants and ne'er-do-wells—nobody wants them; nobody needs them; the police say, “Get along, you blighter!” whenever they see one. Look at me! I’m a disgrace. What does it matter and what do I care?’
‘I don’t know what you care,’ said Cecil; ‘but I’m glad I found you because this is terribly important. Look here.’
He took from his pocket a small silver pin. It was made up of two crossed spears with a crown superimposed on them and beneath it the words, Pro Regis.
The soldier started as if he recognised it.
‘Where did you get that?’ he asked.
‘The Pyromanian royal princes are always enrolled in the Guards’ list honourarily,’ said Cecil.
‘The royal princes? Then you’re a—’
‘Yes,’ said Cecil. ‘I’m a prince—the prince, actually—the only one.’
The man did not seem to be able to speak. He stared at Cecil dumbfounded.
‘You’ve got a pin like this too, haven’t you?’ Cecil asked.
‘Yes,’ stammered the man; ‘—on my collar.’
‘I didn’t see it. Well, would you like to do service for your king again?’
The man jerked his head back like a Prussian salute and looked Cecil squarely in the eye.
‘Do you dare to ask me that?’ he said with a fierce excitement; then added as a sort of afterthought, ‘—Your Highness?’
He turned away and put his hands in his pockets, tipping his face upwards and contemplating the stars. Then, as if his feelings would not be satisfied by this weak demonstration, he took his hands from his pockets, snatched off his battered army cap, and ran his fingers through his hair.
‘Ha!’ he said.
He turned suddenly back to Cecil, fell on one knee and kissed the prince’s hand, jumped up again, tossed his cap up in the air, caught it, and flung it onto the pavement, shouting, ‘Bravo!’
Cecil had grown to expect people to be delightedly surprised when they found out who he was, but in spite of this he was taken aback by this man’s unusual expression of feeling.
‘Hush! Not so loud,’ he enjoined. ‘You’ll have a policeman on us if you don’t look sharp.’
‘No,’ said the man. ‘Can’t talk here, can we? Come along with me—come along to my flat…we can talk comfortably there.’
And without another word of explanation he turned and went off up the street, leaving Cecil staring after him in amazement. Cecil stood where he was a moment only. Then with a quick resolve he set off after the soldier. He did not know but that he might be led into a trap—he did not know that the soldier was loyal, after all. He had taken chances before, but he could hardly expect his luck to hold out forever. Still, he followed in the wake of the hurrying figure in front of him, feeling intuitively that he was not being led into a trap—that he was, on the contrary, about to make a revolutionary discovery.