Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreaders
THE LORD OF THE SEA
By M. P. Shiel
CONTENTS
I. THE EXODUS
II. THE FEZ
III. THE HUNTING-CROP
IV. THE SWOON
V. REID'S
VI. “PEARSON'S WEEKLY”
VII. THE ELM
VIII. THE METEOR
IX. HOGARTH'S GUNS
X. ISAAC
XI. WROXHAM BROAD
XII. THE ROSE
XIII. OUT OF THE WORLD
XIV. THE PRIEST
XV. MONSIGNOR
XVI. THE ROPE
XVII. OLD TOM'S LETTER
XVIII. CHLOROFORM
XIX. THE GREAT BELL
XX. THE INFIRMARY
XXI. IN THE DEEP
XXII. OLD TOM
XXIII. UNDER THE ELM
XXIV. FRANKL SEES THE METEORITE
XXV. CHURCH ARCHITECTURE
XXVI. FRANKL AND O'HARA
XXVII. THE BAG OF LIGHT
XXVIII. THE LETTER
XXIX. PRIORITY OF CLAIM
XXX. MR. BEECH
XXXI. THE HAMMERS
XXXII. WONDER
XXXIII. REEFS OF STEEL
XXXIV. THE “KAISER”
XXXV. THE CUP OF TREMBLING
XXXVI. THE “BOODAH” AND THE BATTLESHIPS
XXXVII. THE STRAITS
XXXVIII. THE MANIFESTO
XXXIX. THE “BOODAH'S” LOCK-UP
XL. THE WEDDING
XLI. THE VISIT
XLII. REBEKAH TELLS
XLIII. THE LAND BILL
XLIV. THE REGENCY
XLV. ESTRELLA, THE PROPHETESS
XLVI. THE ORDER IN COUNCIL
XLVII. THE EMIGRANTS
XLVIII. THE SEA-FORTS
XLIX. THE DÉBACLE
L. THE DECISION
LI. THE MODEL
I
THE EXODUS
In the Calle Las Gabias--one of those by-streets of Lisbon below St.
Catherine--there occurred one New Year a little event in the Synagogue
there worth a mention in this history of Richard, Lord of the Sea.
It was Kol Nidrè, eve of the Day of Atonement, and the little Beth-El,
sweltering in a dingy air, was transacting the long-drawn liturgy, when,
behind the curtain where the women sat, an old dame who had been gazing
upward smote her palms together, and let slip a little scream: “The Day
is coming...!”
She then fainted, and till near ten lay on her bed, lit by the Yom
Kippur candle, with open eyes, but without speech, her sere face
still beautiful, on each temple a little pyramid of plaits, with
gold-and-coral ear-rings: a holy _belle._ About ten P.M. three women
watching heard her murmur: “My child, Rebekah...!”
She was childless, and whom she meant was not known. However, soon
afterwards there was a form at the amulet-guarded door, and Estrella sat
up, saying: “Rebekah, my child...”
A young lady of twenty-two ran in and embraced her, saying: “I have been
to Paris and Madrid with my father--just arrived, so flew to see you. We
leave for London to-night”.
“No: I shall keep you seven days. Tell Frankl _I_ say so. What jewels!
You have grown into a rose of glory, the eyes are profounder and
blacker, and that brow was made for high purpose. Tell me--have you a
lover?”
“No, mamma Estrella”.
“Then, why the blush?”
“It is nothing at all,” Miss Frankl answered: “five years ago when at
school in Bristol I thrice saw through a grating a young man with whom I
was frivolous enough to speak. Happily, I do not know what has become of
him--a wild, divine kind of creature, of whom I am well rid, and never
likely to see again”.
The old lady mused. “What was he?”
“A sailor”.
“Not a common sailor?”
“I fancy so, mamma”.
“What name?”
“Hogarth--Richard”.
“A Jew?”
“An Englishman!”
She laughed, as the old lady's eyes opened in sacred horror, and as she
whispered: “Child!”
Within three months of that night, one midnight the people of Prague
rose and massacred most of the Jewish residents; the next day the flame
broke out in Buda-Pesth; and within a week had become a revolution.
On the twelfth morning one of two men in a City bank said to the other:
“Come, Frankl, you cannot fail a man in this crisis--I only want 80,000
on all Westring--”
“No good to me, my lord,” answered Frankl, who, though a man of only
forty--short, with broad shoulders,--already had his skin divided up
like a dry leaf; in spite of which, he was handsome, with a nose ruled
straight and long, a black beard on his breast.
But the telephone rattled and Frankl heard these words at the receiver:
“Wire to hand from Wertheimer: Austrian Abgeordneten-haus passed a
Resolution at noon virtually expelling Jewish Race....”
When Frankl turned again he had already resolved to possess Westring
Vale, and was saying to himself: “Within six months the value of English
land should be--doubled”.
The bargain was soon made now: and within one week the foresight of
Frankl began to be justified.
Austria, during those days, was a nation of vengeful hearts: for the
Jews had acquired half its land, and had mortgages on the other half:
peasant, therefore, and nobleman flamed alike. And this fury was
contagious: now Germany--now France had it--Anti-Semite laws--like
the old May-Laws--but harsher still; and streaming they came, from
the Leopoldstadt, from Bukowina, from the Sixteen Provinces, from all
Galicia, from the Nicolas Colonies, from Lisbon, with wandering foot and
weary breast--the Heines, Cohens, Oppenheimers--Sephardim, Aschkenasim.
And Dover was the new Elim.
With alarm Britain saw them come! but before she could do anything, the
wave had overflowed it; and by the time it was finished there was no
desire to do anything: for within eight months such a tide of prosperity
was floating England as has hardly been known in a country.
The reason of this was the increased number of hands--each making more
things than its owner could consume himself, and so making every other
richer.
There came, however, a change--almost suddenly--due to the new demand
for land, the “owners” determining to await still further rises, before
letting. This checked industry: for now people, debarred from the land,
had only air.
In Westring Vale, as everywhere, times were hard. It was now the
property of Baruch Frankl: for at the first failure of Lord Westring to
meet terms, Frankl had struck.
Now, one of the yeomen of Westring was a certain Richard Hogarth.
II
THE FEZ
Frankl took up residence at Westring in September, and by November
every ale-house, market, and hiring in Westring had become a scene of
discussion.
The cause was this: Frankl had sent out to his tenants a Circular
containing the words:
“...tenants to use for wear in the Vale a _fez with tassel_ as
the Livery of the Manor...the will of the Lord of the Manor...no
exception...”
But though intense, the excitement was not loud: for want was in many
a home; though after three weeks there were still six farmers who
resisted.
And it happened one day that five of these at the Martinmas “Mop,” or
hiring, were discussing the matter, when they spied the sixth boring his
way, and one exclaimed: “Yonder goes Hogarth! Let's hear what _he's_ got
to say!” and set to calling.
Hogarth twisted, and came winning his way, taller than the crowd, with
“What's up? Hullo, Clinton--not a moment to spare to-day--”
“We were a-talking about that Circular--!” cried one.
At that moment two other men joined the group: one a dark-skinned Jew
of the Moghrabîm; the other a young man--an English author--on tour. And
these two heard what passed.
Hogarth stood suspended, finding no words, till one cried: “Do you mean
to put the cap on?”
He laughed a little now. “_I!_ The whip! The whip!”--he showed his
hunting-crop, and was gone.
His manner of speech was rapid, and he had a hoarse sort of voice,
almost as of sore-throat.
Of the two not farmers, one--the author--enquired as to his name, and
farm; the other man--the Moghrabîm Jew--that evening recounted to Frankl
the words which he had heard.
* * * * * * *
One afternoon, two weeks later, Loveday, the author, was leaning upon
a stile, talking to Margaret Hogarth; and he said: “I love you! If you
could _deign_--”
“Truth is,” she said, “you are in love with my brother, Dick, and you
think it is me!”
She was a woman of twenty-five, large and buxom, though neat-waisted,
her face beautifully fresh and wholesome, and he of middle-size, with a
lazy ease of carriage, small eyes set far apart, a blue-velvet jacket,
duck trousers very dirty, held up by a belt, a red shirt, an old cloth
hat, a careless carle, greatly famed.
“But it isn't of your brother, but of _you_, that I am wanting to speak!
Tell me--”
“No--I can't. I am a frivolous old woman to be talking to you about
such things at all! But, since it is as you say, wait, perhaps I may be
able--But I must be going now--”
There was embarrassment in her now: and suddenly she walked away, going
to meet--another man.
She passed through stubble-wheat, disappeared in a pine-wood, and came
out upon the Waveney towing-path. On the towing-path came Frankl to meet
her.
He took her hand, holding his head sideward with a cajoling fondness,
wearing the flowing caftan, and a velvet cap which widened out a-top,
with puckers.
“Well, sweetheart...” he said.
“But, you know, I begged you not to use such words to me!”--from her.
“What, and I who am such a sweetheart of yours?”--his speech very
foreign, yet slangily correct, being, in fact, _all_ slang.
“No,” she said, “you spoke different at first, and that is why--But this
must be the last, unless you say out clearly now what it is you mean--”
“Now, you are too hard. You know I am wild in love with you. And so are
you with me--”
“_I_?”--with shrinking modesty in her under-looking eyes. “Oh, no--don't
have any delusions like that about me, please! You said that you liked
me: and as I am in the habit of speaking the truth myself, I thought
that--perhaps--But my meeting you, to be frank with you, was for the
sake of my brother”.
“Well, you are as candid as they make them,” he said, eyeing her with
his mild eye. “But what's the matter with your brother? Hard up?”
“He's worried about something”. “He must have some harvest-money put
away?”
“He has something in Reid's Bank at Yarmouth, I believe”.
“Well, shall I tell you what's the matter with him? He's _afraid_, your
brother. He has refused to wear the cap, and he thinks that I shall be
down upon him like a thousand of bricks...But suppose I exempt him, and
you and I be friends? That's fair”.
“What _do_ you mean?”
“Give us _one_--”
“Believe me, you talk--!”
“Don't let your angry passions rise. I am going to have a kiss off those
handsome lips--”
Before she could stir he was in the act of the embrace; but it was never
accomplished: for he saw her colour fade, heard crackling twigs, a step!
as someone emerged from the wood ten yards away--Richard.
The thought in Margaret's mind was this: “Father in Heaven, whatever
will he think of me here with this Jew?”
Hogarth stopped, staring at this couple; did not understand: Margaret
should have been home from “class-meeting”...only, he observed her
heaving bosom; then twisted about and went, his walk rapid, in his hand
a hunting-crop, by which, with a very sure aim, he batted away pebbles
from his path, stooping each time.
III
THE HUNTING-CROP
Along the towing-path to the farmhouse. He did not look behind: was like
a man who has received a wound, and wonders whence.
A pallor lay under his brown skin, brown almost as an Oriental's, and he
was called “the Black Hogarth”--the Hogarths being Saxon, on the mantel
in the dining-room being a very simple coat--a Bull on Gules. But
Richard was a startling exception. His hair grew away flat and sparse
from his round brow; on his cheeks three moles, jet-black in their
centre. Handsome one called his hairless face: the nose delicate,
the lips negroid in their thick pout, the left eye red, streaked with
bloodshot, the eyes' brown brightness very beautiful and strange, with
a sideward stare wild as that sideward stare of the race-horse; and the
lids had a way of lifting largely anon.
He passed through Lagden Dip orchard into the old homestead, into the
dining-room, where cowered the old Hogarth, smoking, his hair a mist of
wool-white.
He glanced up, but said nothing; and Richard said nothing, but walked
about, his arms folded, frowning turbulently, while the twilight
deepened, and Margaret did not come.
Now he planted a chair near the old man, sat, and shouted: “Listen,
sir!”
Up went the old Hogarth's hand to push forward the inquiring ear,
while Richard, who, till now, had guarded him from all knowledge of the
Circular, snatched it from his breast-pocket, and loudly read.
As the sense entered his head, up the old man shot his palms, shaking
from them astonishment and deprecation, with nods; then, with opening
arms, and an under-look at Richard: “Well, there is nothing to be said:
the land is his....”
Hogarth leapt up and walked out; he muttered: “The land is his, but he
is mine....”
The question at the bottom of his mind had been this: “Does _Margaret_,
too, go with the land?” But he did not utter it even to himself: went
out, fingering the crop, stalking toward the spot where he had left the
man and the woman. But Margaret was then coming through the wood;
Frankl had gone up to the Hall; and Hogarth crossed the bridge and went
climbing toward the mansion.
It was a Friday evening, and up at the Hall the Sabbath had commenced,
two Sabbath-tapers shining now upon the Mezuzzah at the dining-room
door, Frankl being of the Cohanîm, the priestly class--a Jew of Jews. As
he had passed in, two Moghrabîm Jews had saluted him with: “Shabbath”;
and mildly he had replied: “Shabbath”.
But swift upon his steps strode Hogarth: Hogarth was at the
lodge-gates--was on the drive--was in the hall.
But, since Frankl was just preparing to celebrate the _kiddush_, “He
cannot be seen now”, said a man in the hall.
“He must”, said Hogarth.
As he brushed past, two men raised an outcry: but Hogarth continued
his swift way, and had half traversed a _salon_ hung with a chaos of
cut-glass when from a side-door appeared the inquiring face of Frankl in
pious skull-cap.
“What is it?” he cried--“I cannot be seen--”
He recognized the man of the towing-path, and on his face grew a look of
scare, as he backed toward a study: but before he could slam the door,
Hogarth, too, was within.
“Who are you? What is it?” whined Frankl, who was both hard master and
cringing slave.
Hogarth produced the Circular: but of Margaret not a word.
“Caps-and-tassels, you?”--flicking Frankl on the cheek with a fillip of
his middle finger.
“You dare assault me! Why, I swear, I meant no harm--”
Down came the whip upon the Jew's shoulders, Frankl, as the stings
penetrated his caftan, giving out one roar, and the next instant, seeing
the two Jews at the doorway, groaned the mean whisper: “Oh, don't make a
man look small before the servants”, crying out immediately: “Help!”
Soon five or six servants were at the door, and, of these, two Arab Jews
rushed forward, one a tall fellow, the other an obese bulk with bright
black eyes, the former holding a slender blade--the knife with which
“shechita”, or slaughtering, was done: and while the corpulent Jew threw
himself upon Hogarth, the other drew this knife through the flesh of
Hogarth's shoulder, at the same time happening to cut the heavy Arab
across the wrist.
Now, there was some quarrel between the two Arabs, and the injured Arab,
forgetting Hogarth, turned fiercely upon his fellow.
Hogarth, meanwhile, had not let go Frankl, nor delivered the intended
number of cuts: so he was again standing with uplifted whip, when his
eye happened to fall upon the doorway.
He saw there a sight which struck his arm paralysed: Rebekah Frankl.
Two months had she been here at Westring--and he had not known it!
There she stood peering, of a divine beauty in his eyes, like
half-mythical queens of Egypt and Babylon, blinking in a rather
barbarous superfluity of jewels: and, blinded and headlong, he was in
flight.
As for Frankl, he locked that door upon himself, and remained there,
forgetting the sanctification of the Sabbath.
The Hebrew's eyes blazed like a wild beast's. The words: “As the Lord
liveth...” hissed in whispers from his lips.
He took up a pinch of old ashes, and cast it into the air.
As Shimei, the son of Gera, cursed David, so he cursed Richard Hogarth
that night--again and again--with grave rites, with cancerous rancour.
“I will blight him, as the Lord liveth; as the Lord liveth, I will
blight him...” he said repeatedly, his draperied arms spread in pompous
imprecation.
As a beginning, he sat and wrote to Reid's Bank, requesting the payment
in gold of £14,000--to produce a stoppage of payment at the little Bank
in which were Richard's savings.
Afterwards, with mild eyes he repaired to the dining-hall, and
sanctified the Sabbath, blessing a cup of wine, dividing up two napkined
loaves, and giving to Rebekah his benediction.
IV
THE SWOON
Hogarth went moodily down the hillside to the Waveney, across the
bridge, and home, his sleeve stained with blood.
In the dining-room, he threw himself into an easy-chair in a gloom lit
only by the fireglow, in the room above mourning a little harmonium
which Margaret was playing, mixed with the sound of Loveday's voice.
The old man said: “Richard, my boy...”
Hogarth did not answer.
“Richard, I have somewhat to say to you--are ye hearkening?”
Richard, losing blood, moaned a drowsy “Yes”.
And the old Hogarth, all deaf and bedimmed, said: “I had to say it to
you, and this night let it be: Richard, you are no son of mine”.
At this point Hogarth's head dropped forward: but many a time, during
long years, he remembered a dream in which he had heard those words:
“Richard, you are no son of mine...”
The old Hogarth continued to ears that did not hear:
“I have kept it from you--for I'm under a bargain with a firm of
solicitors in London; but, Dick, it doesn't strike me as I am long for
this world: a queer feeling I've had in this left side the last hour or
two; and there's that Circular--I never heard of such a thing in all my
born days. But what can we do? You'll have to wear the cap--or be turned
out. Always I've said to myself, from a young man: 'Get hold of a bit of
land someways as your own God's own': but I never did; the days went by
and by, and it all seems no longer than an after-dinner nap in a barn on
a hot harvest-day. But a bit of land--the man who has that can make all
the rest work to keep him. And if they turn me out, I couldn't live,
lad: the old house has got into my bones, somehow. Anyhow, I think the
time is come to tell you in my own way how the thing was. No son are you
of mine, Richard. Your mother, Rachel, who was a Londoner, served me an
ill turn while we were sweethearting, hankering after another man--a Jew
millionaire he was, she being a governess in his house; but, Richard, I
couldn't give her up: I married her three months before you were born;
and not a living creature knows, except, perhaps, one--perhaps one: a
priest he was, called O'Hara. But that's how it was. Your father was
a Jew, and your mother was a Jew, and you are a Jew, and in the
under-bottom of the old grey trunk you will find a roll of papers. Are
you hearkening? And don't you be ashamed of being a Jew, boy--_they_ are
the people who've got the money; and money buys land, Richard. Nor your
father did not do so badly by you, either: his name was Spinoza--Sir
Solomon Spinoza--”
At that point Margaret, bearing a lamp, entered, followed by Loveday,
and at the sight of Richard uttered a cry.
V
REID'S
By noon Hogarth knew the news: his hundred and fifty at Reid's were
gone; and he owed for the Michaelmas quarter--twenty-one pounds five,
his only chattels of value being the thresher, not yet paid for, half a
rick, seed, manure, and “the furniture”. If he could realize enough for
rent, he would lack capital for wages and cultivation, for Reid's had
been his credit-bank.
After dinner he stood long at a window, then twisted away, and walked
to Thring, where he captained in a football match, Loveday watching his
rage, his twisting waist, and then accompanying him home: but in the
dining-room they found the lord-of-the-manor's bailiff; and Loveday,
divining something embarrassing, took himself away.
The same evening there were two appraisers in the house, and the
bailiff, on their judgment, took possession of the chattels on the
holding except some furniture, and some agricultural “fixtures”. The
sale was arranged for the sixth day.
From the old Hogarth the truth could no longer be hidden...
Two days he continued quiet in the old nook by the hearth, apparently in
a kind of dotage doze; but on the third, he began to poke about, hobbled
into the dairy, peered into the churn, touched the skimmer.
“You'll have to wear the cap”, Margaret heard him mutter--“or be turned
out”.
As if taking farewell, he would get up, as at a sudden thought, to go to
visit something. He kept murmuring: “I always said, Get a bit of land as
your own, but I never did; the days went by and by....”
Margaret, meantime, was busy, binding beds with sheets, making bundles,
preparing for the flitting, with a heaving breast; till, on the fifth
day, a van stood loaded with their things at the hall-door, and she,
with untidy hair, was helping heave the last trunk upon the backboard,
when the carman said: “Mrs. Mackenzie says, mum, the things mustn't be
took to the cottage, except you pay in advance”.
Now Margaret stood at a loss; but in a minute went bustling, deciding
to go to Loveday, not without twinges of reluctance: for Loveday, with
instinctive delicacy, had lately kept from the farm; and to Margaret,
whose point of view was different, the words “false friends” had
occurred.
Passing through an alley of the forest, she was met by a man--a
park-keeper of Frankl's--a German Jew, who had once handed her a note
from Frankl. And he, on seeing her, said: “Here have I a letter for your
brother”.
“Who from?” she asked.
“That may I not say”.
When he handed her an envelope rather stuffed with papers, she went
on her flurried way; and soon Loveday was bowing before her in his
sitting-room at Priddlestone.
“You will be surprised to see me, Mr. Loveday,” said she, panting.
“A little surprised, but most awfully glad, too. Is all well?”
“Oh, far from that, I'm afraid. But I haven't got any time--and, oh my,
I don't know how to say it,--but to be frank with you--could you lend
Richard two pounds--?”
Loveday coloured to the roots of his hair.
He could not tell her: “Open that envelope in your hand”, for that would
have meant that it was he who had sent the £50 it contained; and he had
now only one sixpence in Priddlestone.
“That is”, she said--“if it is not an inconvenience to you--”
He could find no words. Some fifteen minutes before, having enclosed
the notes, he had descended to the bar to get mine host to find him a
messenger, and direct the envelope--for Hogarth knew his handwriting.
Mine host was not there--his wife could not write: but she had pointed
out the Jewish park-keeper sipping beer; so Loveday had had the man
upstairs, had made him write the address, and had bribed him to deliver
the envelope with a mum tongue.
“I'm afraid I've taken a great liberty--” she said, shrinking at his
silence.
Then he spoke: “Oh, liberty!--but--really--I'm quite broke myself--!”
“Then, good-afternoon to you”, said she: “I am very sorry--but you will
excuse the liberty, won't you--?”
In the forest she began to cry, covering her eyes, moaning: “Why, how
could he be so _mean_? And I who loved that young man with all my heart,
God knows--!”
Her eyes searched the ground for two sovereigns. Then she happened to
look at the envelope: and instantly was interested. “Why, it is the
Jew's hand!” she thought, for the letters were angular in the German
manner, making a general similarity with Frankl's writing.
Curiosity overcame her: she opened, and saw...
“Oh, well, this is _generous_ though, after all!” she exclaimed.
And now she ran, coming out from mossy path upon wide forest-road: and
there, taking promenade, was Frankl, quite near, with phylacteried left
arm.
“Why, sweetheart...” said he.
She stopped before him. “Well, you can call me what you like for the
time being”, said she, laughing rather hysterically; “for I am most
grateful to you for your generous present to my brother, Mr. Frankl!”
She had still no suspicion of Richard's visit of chastisement to the
Hall!
“Now, what do you mean?” said Frankl.
“Why, you might guess that I know your handwriting by this time!” she
said coquettishly, and held out the notes and the envelope.
His eyes twinkled; he meditated; he had, more than ever, need of her;
and he said: “Well, you are as 'cute as they make them!”
“But instead of sending us this, which I am not at all sure that Richard
will touch, why couldn't you pay it to yourself, and not turn us out--”
“I let business take its course: and afterwards I do my charity. But it
wasn't for your brother, you know, that I sent it--but for _you_”.
“I must be running--”
When she reached the farm, she gave the carman a secret glimpse of the
notes, while Hogarth, who was now there, went to seek the old Hogarth,
for whom a nest had been made among the furniture in the cart.
He was found above-stairs in an empty room, searching the floor for
something.
“Come, sir”, said Hogarth, and led him step by step.
But as the old man passed the threshold, he fell flat on the slabs of
the porch, striking his forehead, printing a stain there.
And the next day, the day of the sale, he still lay in the old chamber,
on the ancient bed, dead.
VI
“PEARSON'S WEEKLY”
“Rose Cottage” was without roses: but had a good-sized “garden” at the
back; and here Hogarth soon had a shed nailed together, with bellows,
anvil, sledges, rasps, setts, drifts, and so on, making a little smithy.
He engaged a boy; and soon John Loveday would be leaning all a forenoon
at the shed door, watching the lithe ply of Hogarth's hips, and the
white-hot iron gushing flushes; while Margaret, peeping, could see
Loveday's slovenly ease of pose, his numberless cigarettes, and hear the
rhymes of the sledges chiming.
As to Loveday's £50, she had dared to say nothing to Richard, but kept
them, intending to make up the amount already spent, and give them to
Frankl. Loveday, meantime, she avoided with constant care.
So two weeks passed, till, one day, Loveday, leaning at the forge-door,
happened to say: “Are you interested in current politics? The East
Norfolk division is being contested, one of the candidates, Sir Bennett
Beaumont, is a friend of mine, and I was thinking that I might go to the
meeting to-night, if you could come--”
“I invite you to supper here instead”.
“Not interested?” queried Loveday.
“Not at all. Stop--I'll show you something in which I _am_ interested”.
He ran to a corner, picked up a _Pearson's Weekly_, and pointed to a
paragraph headed:
“FIVE HUNDRED-POUND NOTES!
“FIFTY TEN-POUND NOTES!!
“ONE HUNDRED FIVE-POUND NOTES!!!” --a prize for “the most intelligent”
article, explaining the cause, or causes, of “the present distress and
commercial crisis”.
Loveday read it smiling.
“Ah”, said he, “but who is to be the judge of 'the most intelligent'
article? Pearson must himself be of the highest intelligence to decide”.
“True”, said Hogarth. “But the man who offered that prize has indicated
to the nation the thing which it should be doing. If I was able to form
an Association to enter this competition--and why not? Stop--I will go
with you--”
So that evening they walked to Beccles, and took train for Yarmouth.
The candidate to speak was a Mr. Moses Max, a Liberal Jew; the chair to
be taken by Baruch Frankl; and in the midst of a row, the stately great
men entered upon the platform and occupied it, hisses like the escape
of steam mixing with “He's a jolly good fellow”. Midway down the pit sat
Loveday, and with him Hogarth, whose large stare ranged solemnly round
and down from galleries to floor.
Frankl sipped water, and rose, amid shouts of: “Circular!”
“Caps-and-tassels!”
He made a speech of which nothing was known, except the amiable bows,
for a continual noising filled the hall; and up rose Mr. Moses Max, a
stout fair Jew, whose fist struck with a regular, heavy emphasis. After
ten minutes, when he began to be heard, he was saying:
“...Sir Bennett Beaumont! Is _he_ the sort of man you'd send to
represent you? (Cries of: “Yes!”) What is he?--ask yourselves the
question: a fossilized Tory, a man who's about as much idea of progress
as a mummy--people actually say he's _got_ a collection of mummies in
his grand fashionable mansion at Aylesham, and it's only what we should
expect of him. (Cheers, and cries of: “Oh, oh!”) And what has he
ever done for East Norfolk? Gentlemen, you may say as you like about
Jews--Jews this, and Jews that--and every man has a right to his opinion
in this land of glorious Saxon liberty--but no one can deny that it's
Jews who know how to make the money. (Cheers and hisses.) They know how
to make it for themselves (hisses)--and, yes, they know how to make it
for the nation! (Loud triumph of cheers.) _That's_ the point--_that_
touches the spot! (Cries of: “Oh, oh!”) Righteousness, it is said,
exalteth a nation: well, so do Jews--”
“That is false”, said a voice--Hogarth, who had stood up.
The words were the signal for a shower of cheers swept by gusts of
hisses; and immediately one region of the pit was seen to be a scrimmage
of fisticuffs, mixed with policemen, sticks, savage faces, and bent
backs; while the two galleries, craning to see, bellowed like Bashan.
Moses Max was leaning wildly, gesticulating, with shouts; while Loveday,
who had turned pale on Hogarth's rising, touched Hogarth's coat-tail,
whereupon Hogarth, stooping to his ear, shouted: “We will have some
fun...”
“The paid agents of Beaumont!” now shouted Moses Max; “sent to disturb
our meeting! Englishmen! will you submit to this? The nation shall
hear--”
At that point Moses Max, in his gesticulation, happening to touch a
switch in the platform-rail, out glowered into darkness every light
at that end of the hall: at which thing the audience was thrown into a
state of boisterous lawlessness, a tumult reigning in the gloom like the
constant voice of Niagara, until suddenly the platform was again lit up,
and the uproar lulled.
And now again Moses Max was prone to speak, with lifted fist; but before
ever he could utter one single word, a voice was ringing through the
Assembly Rooms:
“_Where_ was Moses when the light went out?”
This again was Hogarth; and it ended Moses Max for that night.
Hogarth had not sat since he had called out “That is false”: his tall
figure was recognized; and, with that electric spontaneity of crowds, he
was straightway the leader of the meeting, men darting from their seats
with waving hats, sticks, arms, and vociferous mouth, the chairman half
standing, with a shivering finger directed upon Hogarth, shrieking to
the police: but too late--Hogarth had brushed past Loveday's knees--was
dashing for the crowded platform-steps--was picking his way, stumbling,
darting up them.
Crumpled in his hand was a _Pearson's Weekly_.
Now he is to the front--near Frankl.
“Friends! I have ventured to take the place of our friend, Moses,
here--no ill-will to him--for with respect to the question before us,
whether we elect Beaumont or Max, I care, I confess, little. I'm rather
an Anti-Jew myself (hissing and cheers), but it strikes me that the Jews
are the least of our trouble. To a man who said to me that the cause of
all our evil days is the inability of England to feed these few million
Jews I'd answer: “I don't know how you can be so silly!” Why, the whole
human race, friends, can find room on the Isle of Wight--the earth
laughs at the insignificant drawings upon her made by the small infantry
called Man. Then, why do we suffer, friends? We _do_ suffer, I suppose?
I was once at Paris, and at a place called 'the Morgue' I saw exposed
young men with wounded temples, and girls with dead mouths twisted, and
innocent old women drowned; and there must be a biggish cry, you know,
rising each night from the universal earth, accusing some hoary fault in
the way men live together! What is the fault? If you ask _me_, I answer
that I am only a common smith: _I_ don't know: but I know this about the
fault, that it is something simple, commonplace, yet deep-seated, or we
should all see it; but it is hidden from us by its very ordinariness,
like the sun which men seldom look at. It _must_ be so. And shall we
never find the time to think of it? Or will never some grand man, mighty
as a garrison, owning eyes that know the glances of Truth, arise to see
for us? Friends! but, lacking him, what shall we do to be saved?--for
truly this 'civilization' of ours is a blood-washed civilization,
friends, a reddish Juggernaut, you know, whose wheels cease not: so we
should be prying into it, provided we be not now too hide-bound: for
that's the trouble--that our thoughts grow to revolve in stodgy grooves
of use-and-wont, and shun to soar beyond. Look at our Parliament--a
hurdy-gurdy turning out, age after age, a sing-song of pigmy
regulations, accompanied for grum kettledrum by a musketry of suicides,
and for pibroch by a European bleating of little children. We are still
a million miles from civilization! For what is a civilized society? It
can only be one in which the people are proud and happy! The people of
Africa are happy, not proud; not civilized; the people of England have
a certain pride, not a millionth part as superb as it might be, but are
far from happy: far from civilized. The fact is, Man has never begun to
live, but still sleeps a deep sleep. Well! let us do our best, we here!
I have here a paper offering a prize to the man of us who will go to the
root of our troubles, and my idea in usurping the place of our friend,
Mr. Max, was to ask you to form an association with me to enter that
competition. There is no reason why our association should not be large
as the nation, nor why it should not spread to France and Turkey. For
the thing presses, and to-morrow more of the slaughtered dead will be
swarming in the mortuaries of London. Will you, then? The understanding
will be this: that each man who writes his name in a note-book which
will lie at Rose Cottage, Thring, or who sends his name, will devote
sixty minutes each day to the problem. I happen to be in a position to
use a chapel at Thring, and there I will hold a meeting--”
At this point Frankl rose: Thring was _his_, his own, own, own; and now
his eyes had in them that catlike blaze which characterized his rages.
“Here, police! police!” he hissed low, “what's the use of police
that don't act!” And now he raised his voice to a scream: “Jews! Shew
yourselves! Don't let this man stay here...!”
About twenty Jews leapt at the challenge; at the same time Hogarth,
seeing two policemen running forward from the back, folded his arms, and
cried out: “Friends! I have not finished! Don't let me be removed...”
Whereupon practically every man in the pit was in motion, for or against
him, the galleries two oblongs of battle.
As up the two curving stairs stormed the mob, by a sudden rush like an
ocean-current he was borne off his feet toward the side, and was about
to bring down his sharp-pointed little knuckles, when his eye fell upon
the face of a lady who had fainted.
He had had no idea that she was there!--Rebekah Frankl.
She had quietly fainted, not at the rush--but before--during Hogarth's
speech.
Hogarth managed to fight his way to a door at the platform back with
her, entered a room where some chairs were, but, seeing a stair, could
not let her go from his embrace, but descended, passed along a passage
and out into a patch of green.
She, under the dark sky, whispered: “It is you”, her forehead on his
shoulder; and added: “My carriage, I think, is yonder”.
Hogarth saw the carriage-lights at the field's edge, bore her thither,
laid her with care on the cushions, kissed her hand: and this act Frankl
saw--with incredulity of his own eyes. As he approached, Hogarth walked
away.
Frankl mastered his voice to say blandly in Spanish: “Well, how did you
get through, sweet child? Who was that man--? But stay: where are those
two fools?”
This meant the two familiars--the Arabs, Isaac and Mephibosheth, one of
whom had come as footman, the other as coachman--and, as he went raging
about the carriage, with stamps, his boot struck against a body. There
was enough light to reveal to his peering that it was Mephibosheth, whom
Isaac had stabbed, and fled...
Frankl lowered his ear--doubted whether he could detect a breathing; and
though scared, he being a Cohen, and the presence of death defilement,
yet he stayed, bending over Mephi several minutes, thinking, not of him,
but of Hogarth.
“It is that fool, Isaac, has done it”, he thought; “and if the man be
dead--” What then? “_If_ he be dead, I've got you, Mr. Hogarth, in the
hollow of this hand....”
His fingers passed over the body: there, sticking in the breast, was a
cangiar which Isaac, in his panic, had left, and Frankl's hand rested on
the handle; if he did not consciously press the knife home, very heavily
his hand rested on it, eyes blazing, beard shaking....
Then he drew out the knife carefully, to hide it in the carriage,
listened again close, felt sure now that death was there, and now
scuttled, as if from plague, guiltily hissing: “Putrid dog...!”
Presently he led his carriage to the station, and made a deposition of
the murder.
Asked if he had any suspicion as to the culprit, he said: “Not the
least: I left the man alone with the carriage, and who could have had
any motive for killing him beats me.”
VII
THE ELM
Hogarth, meantime, had made his way to the front of the room, then
vomiting its throng, discovered Loveday, and, deciding to walk home,
they were soon on the cliffs.
And suddenly Loveday: “To-morrow will conclude my fifth week in
Westring. What, do you suppose, has made me stay?”
“I have wondered”.
“I work better here...Hogarth, you inspirit me”.
“Is that so?”
“It is, yes. Merely your presence is for me a freshness and an
enthusiasm: I catch in the turn of your body hints of adventurous
Columbuses, Drakes, nimble Achilles; and sibylline meanings in some
glance of yours infect my fancy with images of Moses, blind old
Homers--prophet, lawgiver, poet--”
They were passing along a stretch of sand, with some lights of Lowestoft
in sight, arm in arm; and Hogarth said: “Well, you speak some big words.
But my life, you understand, has been as simple and small as possible.
I will tell you: my father sent me to an extraordinary school--where he
got the coin I could never find out--Lancing College at Shoreham. There
I did very well--only that I was continually _getting_ it! What was
the matter with me when a boy I can't understand: I was the devil. One
summer vacation (I was fourteen) I stole three pounds from the old
man, and ran away one Sunday night. Passed through London and soon was
apprentice in a blacksmith's shop in a Kent village called Bigham. But
in six months I had the forge at my fingers' ends, and was off: nothing
could hold me long. One day I turned up before the Recruiting Office
of Marines in Bristol--just of the right age for what they call
'second-class boys'--and decided upon the sea--that sea there--which,
from the moment I saw it at the age of four, caused me a swelling of
the breast with which, to this day, it afflicts me. Well, I got the
birth-certificate of another boy, scraped through, was entered into a
District Ship, and finally sailed in the _St. Vincent_ to the Pacific
Station.
“However, my trial of His Majesty's ships was not a success: twice I was
in irons, once leapt into mid-ocean; nor could the battleship hold me
when she had nothing to teach me; so I did to the King what I had done
to the old man--cut and ran.
“It was at Valparaiso, and I made my way across the continent to Buenos
Ayres.
“I forget now what took me to Bristol: but there I was one day when I
happened to see--what do you think?--a girl--sixteen--I a stripling of
nineteen, or so--but she most precocious, spoke like a woman--a grating
in a wall between us. Ah, well, God is good, and His Mercy endureth for
ever. But she said it could never be--she a Jewess: though that, by the
way, is nonsense, for she is a Jewess, and a Parisienne, and a Hindoo,
and a Negress, and a Japanese, and the man who marries her will have a
harem. My friend, I have seen her this very night!”
He was silent. Suddenly he broke out: “I came home raving! The old man
was scared out of his wits by my frenzy--I drank like ten men--in a
month was the terror of Westring. One midnight, going home through the
beech-wood--I don't know if you have noticed a hollow elm-tree which
stands to the right of the path?”
“I think I have”, said Loveday.
“We shall pass near it presently; and at the moment when we approach it,
I shall feel a little thrill in my back: always it is so with me. But I
was saying: that midnight, as I passed the tree, drunk as I was, I saw
a naked black man with a long beard run out; I took to my heels; he was
after me; till I reached the bridge, when I stopped, faced him, fired a
blow into his eyes, and he vanished.
“During the week I continued to see apparitions. My groans were heard in
the farm-yard: Lord have mercy upon me! Christ have mercy upon me! I was
visited by the Methodist preacher at Thring; and finally I found solace:
I became a class-member, a leader, a local preacher.
“For some time I have been conscious of dissatisfaction among the people
with my preaching, who say that my God 'is not a personal God', and that
my Christianity is 'rum stuff': I am therefore meaning to give it up.
But I still preach every second Thursday night.
“It was about that time that, by accident, I found out the power of my
hand to cure headache, and things like that, and the sensation among
these villagers was enormous, I can tell you, six years ago; now they
come to be touched without the slighest sense of the unusual. But what I
have done well in was--the farming. I knew little of agriculture--”
At this point they turned into the lane to Westring: and Loveday went
with him a little beyond Priddlestone to see the fatal elm.
VIII
THE METEOR
The next morning, after breakfast, Hogarth went down old Thring Street,
and spent a penny for a note-book to contain the signatures of his
association.
But this was no day for interest in that scheme: for under the
projecting first-floor of the paper-shop were newspaper placards bearing
such words as:
THE EARTH IN DANGER
SHALL WE PERISH TO-NIGHT?
and Hogarth was soon bending in the street over a paragraph, short--but
in _pica_.
M. Tissot, the astronomer, had, at half-past ten the previous night,
observed through the 40-inch telescope of the Nice observatory a body
which seemed a tiny planet or aerolite of abnormal size. It was sighted
at a point two degrees W. of _a_ Librae at an angle of 43 1/2° with
the horizon, and had been photographed, its elements calculated, its
spectrum taken. The ascertained diameter was 3° 17”, or about 73 miles,
and its substance seemed to consist of ironstone mixed with diamond.
By noon a fresh light was thrown upon the little world, the Yerkes
observatory and Greenwich both uttering their voice, the Astronomer
Royal announcing that the so-called planet was merely a meteor--not more
than 400 yards in diameter, with a low velocity of two miles a second;
and its distance was less than a tenth of that estimated by Tissot. The
Yerkes observatory fixed the diameter at 230 yards. All, however, agreed
in the opinion that it must strike the earth between ten and twelve that
night.
These later announcements so much allayed the panic, that by one o'clock
Hogarth, on peeping into the note-book on the box before the smithy, saw
six signatures; and a young man who came about six P.M. to sign, cried
out: “Hullo! the book is filled up!” on which Hogarth ran out, saying:
“Don't run away on that account, I'll run and get--” darting into the
house to ask Margaret where a certain account-book was.
“Didn't I throw it into the box of rubbish in the cellar at Lagden, when
we were leaving?” she asked; on which he threw off his apron, and was
off toward Lagden Dip to get it.
He had almost cleared the village when he was blocked by a crowd before
a cottage, from out of which were coming screams--a woman's; and he ran
in, found a man named Fred Bates beating his wife, planted a blow on his
chest.
The next morning the wife of Bates was found dead, greatly disfigured
about the face, whereupon Bates was arrested, and Hogarth, as we shall
see, was subpoenaed to give evidence of the beating.
In ten minutes he was at the old farm-house of the Hogarths.
The new tenant was a Mr. Bond, a bankrupt metal-broker, who had
two hobbies--farming and astronomy; and, as Hogarth approached the
yard-gate, he saw Mr. Bond, his two daughters, his servants, grouped
round an optic tube mounted on a tripod. He asked permission to get the
account-book, got it, in a few minutes was again passing through, and,
as he went by, bowing his thanks, Mr. Bond said: “But--have you seen the
asteroid?”
“No--whereabouts?”
“Not quite visible to the naked eye yet: but come--you shall see”.
He himself looked through, fixing the sight, turning the adjuster; then
with fussy suddenness: “Now, sir--”
Hogarth put an eager eye to the glass.
“You see her?” said Mr. Bond, rubbing his soft old palms; “straight for
us she comes--in a considerable hurry by this time, I can tell you! and
if she happens to break up in the air, then, pray, sir, that a splinter
of her may fall into your back yard--not too big a one! but a nice
little comfortable _piece_”--he rubbed his palms--“for you know, no
doubt, of what her substance is composed? Diamond, sir, in extraordinary
evidence! in conjunction with specular iron ore, commonly called the red
haematite, and the ferrous carbonate, or spathic iron. You see her, sir?
you see her?”
Hogarth whispered: “Yes”.
There, fairest among ten thousand, sailing the high seas she came; and
longer than was modest he stopped there, gazing, then ran, wondering at
her daisy loveliness, not dreaming that between himself and her was--a
relation.
She broke up with a European display soon after eleven that night over
the North Sea.
IX
HOGARTH'S GUNS
At the moment when Hogarth was peering through the telescope, a man was
loitering before his cottage--one of the Hall's park-keepers; and
when Margaret put out her head to look for Richard's coming, the man
whistled.
In a moment a note was in her hand.
“DEAR MISS HOGARTH,
“This is to ask you to be certain sure to meet me this evening at 9 P.M.
on the towpath. It isn't to-day that you are well aware of the state of
my feelings toward you: but it is not to talk sweethearting that I
wish to see you now, but about your brother, and the matter is about
as important as can be. If I were in your place, I should destroy this
letter.
“Yours, with my respects,
“BARUCH FRANKL”.
Margaret tore it up, and “My goodness!” she thought, “what is anyone to
do? If I only had the money to make up those fifty pounds! May the Holy
Spirit guide me now...!”
Later in the evening she stole out, and met Frankl.
He assumed a very respectful tone.
“Miss Hogarth”, said he at once, “have you heard?”
“No, sir”.
“You have not been told that your brother has been to the Hall?”
“What in patience for?”
“He came--you couldn't believe--to beat me!”
“Richard! I don't understand. When?”
“Yesterday”. (In reality it was four weeks before.)
“But what about?”
“Revenge! Blind, murderous revenge for turning him neck and crop out of
Lagden!”
“You _are_ in a temper! But I can't understand a word of it!”
“Well, that is what I had to tell you. He came to my house--And how good
have I been to this man! Didn't I send him the fifty pounds--?”
“Well, that _was_ kind. But I must tell you, Mr. Frankl, that Richard
knows nothing of the fifty pounds--”
“Well, then it is _your_ fault! Oh, he did not know of the fifty
pounds? Then it is your fault entirely, this rage of his against me--He
threatened to shoot me dead--thrice he threatened--soon, he said--”
“Not Richard?”
“Yes, Richard!--your nice Richard! But what did I want you for to-night?
It was to let you see that I have it in my power to let your brother in
for three months hard--not less. But you know, my dear, don't you, that
I wouldn't do anything to give you pain? That is why, so far, I've
taken no steps. But your brother must be unarmed. I can't have my life
exposed, after his threats, and all”.
“Unarmed....”
“Yes. I have it on good authority that your brother has guns. I must
have those guns put into my own hands by you...”
“But I couldn't! He would find out...”
“Then I must act, that's all. Or no--I give you another chance--tell him
of the fifty pounds I sent--that may disarm him in another way--”
He was sure that this she would not now do, yet felt relieved when she
cried out: “I couldn't! Not now! Can't you see?”
“Well, there is nothing to be done, then. I must act, that's all”.
“But don't be _hard_! What can I do? Sooner or later he'd be sure to
miss them!”