The Lost Prince

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

  ‘I am not afraid,’ Marco said aloud. ‘I shall not be afraid. In some way I shall get out.’

  This was the image he wanted most to keep steadily in his mind – that nothing could make him afraid, and that in some way he would get out of the wine cellar.

  He thought of this for some minutes, and said the words over several times. He felt more like himself when he had done it.

  ‘When my eyes are accustomed to the darkness, I shall see if there is any little glimmer of light anywhere,’ he said next.

  He waited with patience, and it seemed for some time that he saw no glimmer at all. He put out his hands on either side of him, and found that, on the side of the wall against which he stood, there seemed to be no shelves. Perhaps the cellar had been used for other purposes than the storing of wine, and, if that was true, there might be somewhere some opening for ventilation. The air was not bad, but then the door had not been shut tightly when the man opened it.

  ‘I am not afraid,’ he repeated. ‘I shall not be afraid. In some way I shall get out.’

  He would not allow himself to stop and think about his father waiting for his return. He knew that would only rouse his emotions and weaken his courage. He began to feel his way carefully along the wall. It reached farther than he had thought it would.

  The cellar was not so very small. He crept round it gradually, and, when he had crept round it, he made his way across it, keeping his hands extended before him and setting down each foot cautiously. Then he sat down on the stone floor and thought again, and what he thought was of the things the old Buddhist had told his father, and that there was a way out of this place for him, and he should somehow find it, and, before too long a time had passed, be walking in the street again.

  It was while he was thinking in this way that he felt a startling thing. It seemed almost as if something touched him. It made him jump, though the touch was so light and soft that it was scarcely a touch at all, in fact he could not be sure that he had not imagined it. He stood up and leaned against the wall again. Perhaps the suddenness of his movement placed him at some angle he had not reached before, or perhaps his eyes had become more completely accustomed to the darkness, for, as he turned his head to listen, he made a discovery: above the door there was a place where the velvet blackness was not so dense. There was something like a slit in the wall, though, as it did not open upon daylight but upon the dark passage, it was not light it admitted so much as a lesser shade of darkness. But even that was better than nothing, and Marco drew another long breath.

  ‘That is only the beginning. I shall find a way out,’ he said. ‘I shall.’

  He remembered reading a story of a man who, being shut by accident in a safety vault, passed through such terrors before his release that he believed he had spent two days and nights in the place when he had been there only a few hours.

  ‘His thoughts did that. I must remember. I will sit down again and begin thinking of all the pictures in the cabinet rooms of the Art History Museum in Vienna. It will take some time, and then there are the others,’ he said.

  It was a good plan. While he could keep his mind upon the game which had helped him to pass so many dull hours, he could think of nothing else, as it required close attention – and perhaps, as the day went on, his captors would begin to feel that it was not safe to run the risk of doing a thing as desperate as this would be. They might think better of it before they left the house at least. In any case, he had learned enough from Loristan to realise that only harm could come from letting one’s mind run wild.

  ‘A mind is either an engine with broken and flying gear, or a giant power under control,’ was the thing they knew.

  He had walked in imagination through three of the cabinet rooms and was turning mentally into a fourth, when he found himself starting again quite violently. This time it was not at a touch but at a sound. Surely it was a sound. And it was in the cellar with him. But it was the tiniest possible noise, a ghost of a squeak and a suggestion of a movement. It came from the opposite side of the cellar, the side where the shelves were. He looked across in the darkness, and in the darkness saw a light which there could be no mistake about. It was a light, two lights indeed, two round phosphorescent greenish balls. They were two eyes staring at him. And then he heard another sound. Not a squeak this time, but something so homely and comfortable that he actually burst out laughing. It was a cat purring, a nice warm cat! And she was curled up on one of the lower shelves purring to some new-born kittens. He knew there were kittens because it was plain now what the tiny squeak had been, and it was made plainer by the fact that he heard another much more distinct one and then another. They had all been asleep when he had come into the cellar. If the mother had been awake, she had probably been very much afraid. Afterward she had perhaps come down from her shelf to investigate, and had passed close to him. The feeling of relief which came upon him at this queer and simple discovery was wonderful. It was so natural and comfortable an everyday thing that it seemed to make spies and criminals unreal, and only natural things possible. With a mother cat purring away among her kittens, even a dark wine cellar was not so black. He got up and kneeled by the shelf. The greenish eyes did not shine in an unfriendly way. He could feel that the owner of them was a nice big cat, and he counted four round little balls of kittens. It was a curious delight to stroke the soft fur and talk to the mother cat. She answered with purring, as if she liked the sense of friendly human nearness. Marco laughed to himself.

  ‘It’s queer what a difference it makes!’ he said. ‘It is almost like finding a window.’

  The mere presence of these harmless living things was companionship. He sat down close to the low shelf and listened to the motherly purring, now and then speaking and putting out his hand to touch the warm fur. The phosphorescent light in the green eyes was a comfort in itself.

  ‘We shall get out of this – both of us,’ he said. ‘We shall not be here very long, Puss-cat.’

  He was not troubled by the fear of being really hungry for some time. He was so used to eating scantily from necessity, and to passing long hours without food during his journeys, that he had proved to himself that fasting is not, after all, such a desperate ordeal as most people imagine. If you begin by expecting to feel famished and by counting the hours between your meals, you will begin to be ravenous. But he knew better.

  The time passed slowly; but he had known it would pass slowly, and he had made up his mind not to watch it nor ask himself questions about it. He was not a restless boy, but, like his father, could stand or sit or lie still. Now and then he could hear distant rumblings of carts and vans passing in the street. There was a certain degree of companionship in these also. He kept his place near the cat and his hand where he could occasionally touch her. He could lift his eyes now and then to the place where the dim glimmer of something like light showed itself.

  Perhaps the stillness, perhaps the darkness, perhaps the purring of the mother cat, probably all three, caused his thoughts to begin to travel through his mind slowly and more slowly. At last they ceased and he fell asleep. The mother cat purred for some time, and then fell asleep herself.

  chapter fifteen

  a sound in a dream

  Marco slept peacefully for several hours. There was nothing to awaken him during that time. But at the end of it, his sleep was penetrated by a definite sound. He had dreamed of hearing a voice at a distance, and, as he tried in his dream to hear what it said, a brief metallic ringing sound awakened him outright. It was over by the time he was fully conscious, and at once he realised that the voice of his dream had been a real one, and was speaking still. It was the Lovely Person’s voice, and she was speaking rapidly, as if she were in the greatest haste. She was speaking through the door.

  ‘You will have to search for it,’ was all he heard. ‘I have not a moment!’ And, as he listened to her hurriedly departing feet, there came to him with their hastening echoes the words, ‘You are too good for the cellar. I like
you!’

  He sprang to the door and tried it, but it was still locked. The feet ran up the cellar steps and through the upper hall, and the front door closed with a bang. The two people had gone away, as they had threatened. The voice had been excited as well as hurried. Something had happened to frighten them, and they had left the house in great haste.

  Marco turned and stood with his back against the door. The cat had awakened and she was gazing at him with her green eyes. She began to purr encouragingly. She really helped Marco to think. He was thinking with all his might and trying to remember.

  ‘What did she come for? She came for something,’ he said to himself. ‘What did she say? I only heard part of it, because I was asleep. The voice in the dream was part of it. The part I heard was, “You will have to search for it. I have not a moment.” And as she ran down the passage, she called back, “You are too good for the cellar. I like you.”’ He said the words over and over again and tried to recall exactly how they had sounded, and also to recall the voice which had seemed to be part of a dream but had been a real thing. Then he began to try his favourite experiment. As he often tried the experiment of commanding his mind to go to sleep, so he frequently experimented on commanding it to work for him – to help him to remember, to understand, and to argue about things clearly.

  ‘Reason this out for me,’ he said to it now, quite naturally and calmly. ‘Show me what it means.’

  What did she come for? It was certain that she was in too great a hurry to be able, without a reason, to spare the time to come. What was the reason? She had said she liked him. Then she came because she liked him. If she liked him, she came to do something which was not unfriendly. The only good thing she could do for him was something which would help him to get out of the cellar. She had said twice that he was too good for the cellar. If he had been awake, he would have heard all she said and have understood what she wanted him to do or meant to do for him. He must not stop even to think of that. The first words he had heard – what had they been? They had been less clear to him than her last because he had heard them only as he was awakening. But he thought he was sure that they had been, ‘You will have to search for it.’ Search for it. For what? He thought and thought. What must he search for?

  He sat down on the floor of the cellar and held his head in his hands, pressing his eyes so hard that curious lights floated before them.

  ‘Tell me! Tell me!’ he said to that part of his being which the Buddhist anchorite had said held all knowledge and could tell a man everything if he called upon it in the right spirit.

  And in a few minutes, he recalled something which seemed so much a part of his sleep that he had not been sure that he had not dreamed it. The ringing sound! He sprang up on his feet with a little gasping shout. The ringing sound! It had been the ring of metal, striking as it fell. Anything made of metal might have sounded like that. She had thrown something made of metal into the cellar. She had thrown it through the slit in the bricks near the door. She liked him, and said he was too good for his prison. She had thrown to him the only thing which could set him free. She had thrown him the key of the cellar!

  For a few minutes the feelings which surged through him were so full of strong excitement that they set his brain in a whirl. He knew what his father would say – that would not do. If he was to think, he must hold himself still and not let even joy overcome him. The key was in the black little cellar, and he must find it in the dark. Even the woman who liked him enough to give him a chance of freedom knew that she must not open the door and let him out. There must be a delay. He would have to find the key himself, and it would be sure to take time. The chances were that they would be at a safe enough distance before he could get out.

  ‘I will kneel down and crawl on my hands and knees,’ he said.

  ‘I will crawl back and forth and go over every inch of the floor with my hands until I find it. If I go over every inch, I shall find it.’

  So he kneeled down and began to crawl, and the cat watched him and purred.

  ‘We shall get out, Puss-cat,’ he said to her. ‘I told you we should.’

  He crawled from the door to the wall at the side of the shelves, and then he crawled back again. The key might be quite a small one, and it was necessary that he should pass his hands over every inch, as he had said. The difficulty was to be sure, in the darkness, that he did not miss an inch. Sometimes he was not sure enough, and then he went over the ground again. He crawled backward and forward, and he crawled forward and backward. He crawled crosswise and lengthwise, he crawled diagonally, and he crawled round and round. But he did not find the key. If he had had only a little light, but he had none. He was so absorbed in his search that he did not know he had been engaged in it for several hours, and that it was the middle of the night. But at last he realised that he must stop for a rest, because his knees were beginning to feel bruised, and the skin of his hands was sore as a result of the rubbing on the flags. The cat and her kittens had gone to sleep and awakened again two or three times.

  ‘But it is somewhere!’ he said obstinately. ‘It is inside the cellar. I heard something fall which was made of metal. That was the ringing sound which awakened me.’

  When he stood up, he found his body ached and he was very tired. He stretched himself and exercised his arms and legs.

  ‘I wonder how long I have been crawling about,’ he thought. ‘But the key is in the cellar. It is in the cellar.’

  He sat down near the cat and her family, and, laying his arm on the shelf above her, rested his head on it. He began to think of another experiment.

  ‘I am so tired, I believe I shall go to sleep again. “Thought which Knows All”’ – he was quoting something the hermit had said to Loristan in their midnight talk – ‘Thought which Knows All! Show me this little thing. Lead me to it when I awake.’

  And he did fall asleep, sound and fast.

  He did not know that he slept all the rest of the night. But he did. When he awakened, it was daylight in the streets, and the milk carts were beginning to jingle about, and the early postmen were knocking big double knocks at front doors. The cat may have heard the milk carts, but the actual fact was that she herself was hungry and wanted to go in search of food. Just as Marco lifted his head from his arm and sat up, she jumped down from her shelf and went to the door. She had expected to find it ajar as it had been before. When she found it shut, she scratched at it and was disturbed to find this of no use. Because she knew Marco was in the cellar, she felt she had a friend who would assist her, and she miauled appealingly. This reminded Marco of the key.

  ‘I will when I have found it,’ he said. ‘It is inside the cellar.’

  The cat miauled again, this time very anxiously indeed. The kittens heard her and began to squirm and squeak piteously.

  ‘Lead me to this little thing,’ said Marco, as if speaking to Something in the darkness about him, and he got up.

  He put his hand out toward the kittens, and it touched something lying not far from them. It must have been lying near his elbow all night while he slept.

  It was the key! It had fallen upon the shelf, and not on the floor at all. Marco picked it up and then stood still a moment. He made the sign of the cross.

  Then he found his way to the door and fumbled until he found the keyhole and got the key into it. Then he turned it and pushed the door open – and the cat ran out into the passage before him.

  chapter sixteen

  the rat to the rescue

  Marco walked through the passage and into the kitchen part of the basement. The doors were all locked, and they were solid doors. He ran up the flagged steps and found the door at the top shut and bolted also, and that too was a solid door. His jailers had plainly made sure that it should take time enough for him to make his way into the world, even after he got out of the wine cellar.

  The cat had run away to some part of the place where mice were plentiful. Marco was by this time rather gnawingly hungry himself. If h
e could get into the kitchen, he might find some fragments of food left in a cupboard; but there was no moving the locked door. He tried the outlet into the area, but that was immovable. Then he saw near it a smaller door. It was evidently the entrance to the coal cellar under the pavement. This was proved by the fact that trodden coal-dust marked the flagstones, and near it stood a scuttle with coal in it.

  This coal scuttle was the thing which might help him! Above the area door was a small window which was supposed to light the entry. He could not reach it, and, if he reached it, he could not open it. He could throw pieces of coal at the glass and break it, and then he could shout for help when people passed by. They might not notice or understand where the shouts came from at first, but, if he kept them up, someone’s attention would be attracted in the end.

  He picked a large-sized solid piece of coal out of the heap in the scuttle, and threw it with all his force against the grimy glass. It smashed through and left a big hole. He threw another, and the entire pane was splintered and fell outside into the area. Then he saw it was broad daylight, and guessed that he had been shut up a good many hours. There was plenty of coal in the scuttle, and he had a strong arm and a good aim. He smashed pane after pane, until only the framework remained. When he shouted, there would be nothing between his voice and the street. No one could see him, but if he could do something which would make people slacken their pace to listen, then he could call out that he was in the basement of the house with the broken window.

  ‘Hallo!’ he shouted. ‘Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!’

  But vehicles were passing in the street, and the passers-by were absorbed in their own business. If they heard a sound, they did not stop to enquire into it.