Fathers and sons -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction; Princes -- Fiction; Refugees -- Fiction
It was deep to blackness in the hollow of the evergreen. Marco stood in
it, streaming with rain, but feeling nothing because he was full of
thought. He pushed aside his greenery and kept his eyes on the place in
the blackness where the windows must be, though he could not see them.
It seemed that he waited a long time, but he knew it only seemed so
really. He began to breathe quickly because he was waiting for
something.
Suddenly he saw exactly where the windows were--because they were all
lighted!
His feeling of relief was great, but it did not last very long. It was
true that something had been gained in the certainty that his man had
not left Vienna. But what next? It would not be so easy to follow him if
he chose only to go out secretly at night. What next? To spend the rest
of the night watching a lighted window was not enough. To-morrow night
it might not be lighted. But he kept his gaze fixed upon it. He tried to
fix all his will and thought-power on the person inside the room.
Perhaps he could reach him and make him listen, even though he would not
know that any one was speaking to him. He knew that thoughts were strong
things. If angry thoughts in one man's mind will create anger in the
mind of another, why should not sane messages cross the line?
"I must speak to you. I must speak to you!" he found himself saying in a
low intense voice. "I am outside here waiting. Listen! I must speak to
you!"
He said it many times and kept his eyes fixed upon the window which
opened on to the balcony. Once he saw a man's figure cross the room, but
he could not be sure who it was. The last distant rumblings of thunder
had died away and the clouds were breaking. It was not long before the
dark mountainous billows broke apart, and a brilliant full moon showed
herself sailing in the rift, suddenly flooding everything with light.
Parts of the garden were silver white, and the tree shadows were like
black velvet. A silvery lance pierced even into the hollow of Marco's
evergreen and struck across his face.
Perhaps it was this sudden change which attracted the attention of those
inside the balconied room. A man's figure appeared at the long windows.
Marco saw now that it was the Prince. He opened the windows and stepped
out on to the balcony.
"It is all over," he said quietly. And he stood with his face lifted,
looking at the great white sailing moon.
He stood very still and seemed for the moment to forget the world and
himself. It was a wonderful, triumphant queen of a moon. But something
brought him back to earth. A low, but strong and clear, boy-voice came
up to him from the garden path below.
"The Lamp is lighted. The Lamp is lighted," it said, and the words
sounded almost as if some one were uttering a prayer. They seemed to
call to him, to arrest him, to draw him.
He stood still a few seconds in dead silence. Then he bent over the
balustrade. The moonlight had not broken the darkness below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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