for O'Hara, telling him where to find him, at Loveday's, took a late
train southwards.
By what marvel Rebekah had become possessed of the jewels he did not
even seek to fathom; but one of his uppermost feelings was shame for
having suspected O'Hara of stealing them: and for years could never be
got to believe in the bad faith of the prelate, his tutor.
Near midnight, on reaching the obscure townlet of Hadston, he there took
a bed--not to sleep.
At the tiny inn-window he made periodic arrivals, looked out unseeing at
a cart, a wall of flint and Flemish brick, and a moonlit country, then
weighed anchor, and swerved away on another voyage; then arrived anew,
looked out, saw nothing, and weighed.
He walked now in the dark of the valley of humiliation, with those words
written in flame in his brain: “This is my favoured lot--my exaltation
to afflictions high”: he had allowed a woman to say them to him, and he
went “_I!_”
He, the richest of men, was, therefore, that night poorer than any
wretch, brought right down, naked, exposed to death, and he filled that
chamber with his moans: “God have mercy upon me! a vulgar rich man...a
dreadful contented clown....”
But toward morning he lay calmer, weeping like Peter, and at peace.
Being without money, he sent the next day a small stone to Loveday,
asking him to sell it; also to meet old Tom Bates on the night
appointed, and keep him till he, Hogarth, came to London.
Four days later he received the money in the name of “Mr. Beech”,
but the old Bates had not kept the _rendezvous_; and a month later a
detective agency discovered that the fisher was dead.
At Hadston Hogarth remained two months, the most occupied man anywhere,
yet passing for a lounger in the townlet.
Here and now he was descended deep into himself, aspiring to greatness,
set on high designs; and, as the days passed, his thoughts more and more
took form, though sometimes, with a sudden heart-pang, he would flinch
and shrink, pierced by a consciousness of the unwieldy thing which he
was at; and he would mutter: “I _must_ be mad”. Anon he would start and
cower at a distinct sound of cannon in his ears.
Usually, during the day, he had with him an atlas, a pair of compasses.
One day he took train, to see the sea.
Another day, happening to look into the goat-hair trunk, he saw that
account-book, containing the addresses of the signatories to his old
“association”, and was overjoyed. “Quite a little army”, he tenderly
said: “I won't forget them”.
After two months he left Hadston for London, having in his head a new
age hatched.
XXVIII
THE LETTER
It was night when Hogarth broke into the presence of Loveday at Cheyne
Gardens with a glad face, crying: “Forgive me, my friend, for being a
boor!”
“You are forgiven”, Loveday answered with his smile, hastening to meet
him: “the broken picture, you see, is in a better frame, and so are we.
What could have made us invent a quarrel about--land, of all things!”
“Come, let us talk”, said Hogarth: “not long--all about land, and sea,
too. I suppose you have nothing to tell about my sister? Never mind--we
shall find her. Come, sit and give me _all_ your intelligence. You
are not interested in land, then? You _will_ be in ten minutes--it is
interesting. Listen: all the land of the earth is _mine_, and all
the sea especially--a good thing, for, for a hundred years Europe,
especially England, has wanted a master: the anarchy of our modern life
is too terrible! it cannot arrange itself; and now the hour has struck,
though none has heard the bell”.
“Hogarth! but you gabble like a mad god”, cried Loveday. “I am all in
the dark--”
“I will tell you”.
And he spoke, first going into his discovery at Colmoor, frowning upon
Loveday, ploughing the truth into his brow; proving how modern misery,
in its complexity, had its cause in one simple old fault, sure as the
fact that smoke ascends, or apples fall. And when he saw conviction beam
in Loveday's face, he next told what had happened at the elm-tree, and
what would happen-soon; whereat Loveday, like a frightened child, clung
to his arm, and once gasped: “Oh no--my God!” and once felt a gory ghost
raise horror in his hairs.
An hour afterwards they were bending over a sheet of paper, Hogarth in
his shirt-sleeves, writing, Loveday overlooking, suggesting, when
two men were announced, and in stepped O'Hara with bows and polished
hesitations, followed by his shadow, Harris; and, “Ah, O'Hara...” cried
Hogarth, still writing, “who is that with you?”
“A friend of mine”, said Loveday, for O'Hara had introduced Harris to
him, and he had adopted Harris as a human study, horrid, but amusing.
The moment O'Hara saw the face of Hogarth, he started, muttering: “He
has the diamonds back! God! is he a magician?”
And Harris drawled nasally: “Of course, you wouldn't know me now, Mr.
76! Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine, it _is_”.
Hogarth was silent--had not yet decided what to do with Harris.
“This is my tenth call here, Hogarth”, said O'Hara, “in the hope of
seeing you, and the streets, you know, are no small risk. You see how
I am muffled up, and this gentleman, too. By the bye, I have selected a
cargo of books for you--”
“No study for a month”, said Hogarth, “but I shall want you all the
same. Just come over here and watch me write this thing. You, Harris,
sit right over there”.
Harris cursed, but obeyed, while O'Hara came and bent under the golden
glow of the silk shade a brow puckered with a care of puzzlement, as he
read.
Then he fell into the work, and was soon the director of it--invaluable!
knew everything! remembered forgotten points; explained technicalities;
the proper person in each little State to whom the document must be
directed, the style of addressing him. Of one sentence he said: “That
will never do--lacks formality”; and of another: “Tut, they will laugh
at that--it is provincial and insolent”, distracted between the work and
his brandy glass. At last, about eleven, the three brains had produced a
letter.
Hogarth laid claim to the sea as his private property, and warned the
nations.
XXIX
PRIORITY OF CLAIM
A gentleman--a Permanent Under-secretary--stood one noon, his back to a
fireplace in a bright-carpeted room at the Foreign Office, letting his
eyes move over some opened letters submitted to him, and presently came
upon the following document, its crest a flag, containing in blue the
letters “R. F.”:
“17 LEADENHALL STR., E.G.
“To the Most Hon.,
“The Marquis of Hallam, K.G.,
“Foreign Office,
“Westminster, S.W.
“MY LORD MARQUIS:
“I have the honour hereby to make formal announcement to Your Lordship
that I am on the point of setting up in the midst of the world a new
Power, whose relations with the King's Government will, I trust, be
relations of friendliness.
“It is my desire that Your Lordship forthwith convey to the King's
Most Excellent Majesty the announcement which is the subject of this
Memorandum.
“My purposes and policy in the establishment of the new Power will
hereafter appear; and my properly accredited Ministers will, in due
course, present themselves at the Chancelleries of the world.
“Hitherto a British subject, it is my will to acquire diplomatic
recognition--as soon as such shall comport with the dignity of the Great
Powers--as an Independent Sovereign, under the title of: 'Lord of the
Sea'. (Address: 'Your Lordship's Majesty', or 'My Lord King'.)
“The domain of my Power will be the sea: and to the sea I hereby set up
claim as far as such points of latitude as have been attained by Man,
and over all degrees of longitude. Provided only: that nothing in this
claim shall be held to infringe upon the prior claim of any nation to
a 'three-mile limit' round its coasts, nor to any national fisheries
whatsoever, nor to any claim of the Kingdom of Denmark with respect to
the Sound.
“The validity of my title to the sea must be considered to rest on the
same basis as the title of any private owner to any area of the earth's
crust: namely, Priority of Claim. If one is valid, so, necessarily,
is the other, this title to land, based on _Priority of Claim_, being
admitted in the Law of all civilized Nations.
“This my claim will come into operation on this day three years hence.
“I have the honour to subscribe myself
“Your Lordship's
“Obdt. Servant,
“RICHARD HOGARTH “.
The Under-secretary, a pale, distinguished man, read this letter with a
little lift of one eyebrow, then let it drop from him into a waste-paper
basket.
At the German, the Turkish, capitals it met much the same reception.
Nowhere did it reach the eye of a Departmental Head. It went to Siam, to
the Prince of Monaco, to Ecuador, and was tossed to cumber a basket, or
moulder on a file.
But Hogarth, who knew that it would be instantly forgotten, had written
it so as to be able to say that he had written it.
At that time he was lodging in a top room in Bloomsbury, and had an
underground den in Leadenhall Street, on its doors the words: “R. Beech
& Co.” Thither in a brougham he drove daily, lying very low, but holding
in that den interviews with all sorts and conditions of men, and feeling
his way toward operations of dimensions so immense, that their mere
project had a modifying influence upon industry.
XXX
MR. BEECH
During six weeks Hogarth lived that life of daily passage between Keppel
Street and his office, unknown to the general world, but spreading a
noise of rumour through certain circles of the business world. All day
in the den the gas-jets brawled upon him, he not for minutes casting
a glance, if a clerk brought a caller's name. And here was no novice
modesty in the tackling of affairs; as O'Hara, who would be there, said:
“You must have been _born_ in the City; you have the airs, the very
tricks, of Threadneedle Street, you--Jew”. In a day the prelate counted
seven hundred and thirteen telegrams from the Terni Cannon foundry, many
a diamond dealer, polisher, cutter, the Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin,
the Clydebank, Cramp of Philadelphia, the Russian Finance Minister, San
Francisco, Lloyd's, metal brokers, the Neva, and one night, the eve of
a dash to Amsterdam, he, with O'Hara, Loveday, and five clerks, sat
swotting till morning broke, sustained by gin and soda-water. The priest
lived with wide eyes at the easy fleetness with which Hogarth rolled
off him the greatest affairs: as when on the day after his return from
Holland he stood, his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes, with quite the
right air of serene City-king, his tallness possessing considerable
natural courtliness, and the De Beers' Secretary sat before him, saying,
“Well, Mr. Beech, I have spent the morning with your brokers, and have
felt that I must see you personally before calling a meeting. This
proposition is so tremendous--”
“I only wish I had some time”, said Hogarth, “I would invite you to dine
upon the matter; but it is really so simple--everything at bottom
is merely twice two are four. And you are not obliged to turn over
Kimberley to me: only, in that case, as I have said, I shall be
compelled to flood the market with diamonds as cheap as cat's-eyes--”
When De Beers stared, Hogarth shrugged, saying: “I suppose I must
convince you--” and, unlocking a safe, he took out an _écrin_ which
contained three stones. De Beers appeared to see Titania peering in
their fairy painting.
“Of stones of this water and carating”, said Hogarth, “we have two
hundred and eleven in the Bank of England, two hundred and thirty-eight
in other English and Continental banks, and seventy-five in
safe-deposit. The carating of these three is 111-1/2; and in the
sixties, such as this one”--he took a stone from among coppers in his
pocket--“we have three hundred odd on hand, all flawless, and an equal
number cutting. When I point out, what you know, that our mine is as yet
without the delicate plant of Kimberley, the stones being simply picked
from the blue-earth by three inexpert friends of the firm on the spot,
you will recognize that the wealth of a mine can no further go....”
He was rid of the visitor within six minutes, and within three weeks,
by knack and organization, had gathered into his hands most of the reins
necessary to the control of the world's trade in diamonds.
In an outer room sat O'Hara, writing, reading Theocritus, or a little
book on mediaeval embroidery, forefinger on cheek; and anon, absolutely
without motive, he would rise, creep, and peep through a keyhole at
Hogarth, then on stalking, bowing tiptoe, grinning a rancid grimace of
stealth, get back to his seat, and read--the tutor falling over head and
ears in love with his pupil: one of those passions that end tragically.
One day, as he so sat, the bell _pinged_, the door opened, and O'Hara
jumped to find himself face to face with--Frankl, who had come to see
the new diamond king, in the firm belief that Mr. Beech was none other
than O'Hara; and, “I thought as much!” said he.
“_Sh-h-h_”, went O'Hara bitterly--“for God's sake! he is _in there_--!”
“Who is?”
“_Hogarth!_”
“Well, but--”
“Outside--in the passage--”
They stepped out; and Frankl, his eyelids red, said: “I have only this
day crawled from bed with the blow you struck my temple, or I should
have had you before this--”
“_Sh-h-h_. Your own fault, sir. _You_ played false first--”
“Played false with my own diamonds? You hand me over this day one-half
those stones, or I bring a civil action for the whole, hound you to
beggary, and drag you back to your convict-cell where you come from”.
“Don't lift your voice, I beg of you. Tut, you rave. You can't bring a
civil action against a great millionaire who doesn't care to defend;
and as for me, I do assure you, I haven't fifty pounds to-day. _It is
Hogarth who is Mr. Beech!_”
“_Who?_”--Frankl obtruded a startled ear, frowning his eyes small.
“Hogarth. He has the diamonds back!”
“Which diamonds? How did he get 'em?”
“He is--_in_--_there_: better go and ask him! He got them by black
art--by the aid of the legion of mediaeval witches which wait on
him--_God_ knows how he got them! _You_ gave them to him! _I_ gave them
to him! but he's got them--_in--there_! Better go and ask him--don't be
afraid--just for the roaring fun of it--”
“Hogarth?”
“Yes--Hogarth, Hogarth”.
“Cheated the gallows? And out of prison? And rolling in my wealth, my
riches, my diamonds? Oh, no!--is that fair? A dog? Is that how the world
is run? God of Israel!”
“There is this to be said for him: that he _deserves_ to be rich--”
“Who? So you are taking his part now?”
“Tut--!”
“There is no _tut_ about it! You confess that you are nothing more than
a penniless hanger-on: well, then, I have _you_! back to prison you go
this hour---!”
O'Hara's cheek trembled; but he said: “A sufficiently vain threat, sir:
I am Hogarth's tutor: he won't let me be taken. Don't waste your time,
you impotent Jew--”
“Tutor? That's good! What you teaching him?--murder? _outrage?_ He
_ought_ to have a tutor, he! That's good! Tutor! Well, suppose I drop
a line first post to your nice _pupil_ to let him know that it was his
_tutor_ who stole his diamonds--”
At this threat O'Hara felt himself outflanked; and though his eyes
surveyed the Jew unflinchingly during a silence, inwardly he had
succumbed.
“A man in Hogarth's situation”, he slowly said, “is always liable
to attack. Why should two sharp old fellows like you and me, whose
interests are identical, quarrel?”--and instantly Frankl took note of
that surrender, that weak spot, and knew that the man was his.
“Well”, said he, “so true--two old gaol-birds like you and me, eh? So
true, so true. But what beats me--who runs Beech's? Hogarth is only a
young farmer: he can't operate all the big things I hear about this Mr.
Beech--”
“Tut, you do not conceive the man as he is at all”, said O'Hara:
“perhaps you cannot. High finance, the first day he looked into it,
ceased to mystify him, for he goes always to the ground of things,
touches bottom, where first principles lie, and first principles
are simple as two and two. It was because he had discovered a first
principle that he escaped from Colmoor. And he is as nimble as six
twisting minnows: what you or I learned in a year he learns in an hour,
and if he does not know the usual way, not an instant does he hesitate
to invent a way. You know about Owthwaite's: how the recent shake-out of
the market threatened their collapse, like so many others'. Owthwaite's,
in fact, had already declared, when Hogarth decided to help them over.
And how? Not Bills! He filled up a call-in of two millions and a half
by the India Council, resettled loans and short-discount business,
cheapened money, and in twelve hours his _protégés_ were off the rocks.
And now I hear--”
“But why not buy a chapel, and preach about him? I hate--”
“Stop! O Lord--he is calling--”
“Here's my card; I want to see you to-night at that address at eight”.
And that night at Frankl's town-house in Hanover Square Jew and prelate
conferred, O'Hara for some time resisting, but finally again taking
sides against his saviour. He disclosed that Hogarth, beyond doubt,
kept a few diamonds in a goat-hair trunk in his room--enough to make
two ordinary fortunes, and also carried two or three, with some
hundred-pound notes on his person; and this was made the basis of a
scheme for bringing about the arrest of Hogarth, the first step being
to get from Hogarth the sum he carried about him, leaving him in a
situation where he would find himself powerless to bribe.
This Frankl undertook; and O'Hara promised to lend Harris, and some
friends of Harris.
Now, during these weeks Hogarth was living in some fear, haunted by
insecurity and a vision of Colmoor; and, remembering the theft at
Thring, with a consciousness of Frankl somewhere in him, he went not
only with diamonds on his person, but a revolver as well, and a _puñal_
of Toledo.
But three evenings after the conference in Hanover Square, he received
this letter:
“Dearest Richard:
“It is long since we have met. This is to let you know that I have heard
of your getting out, and your coming into great things, which has made
my heart rejoice. I, alas, am just the other way about. I am staying for
the next two days at Woodfield Cottage, Wylie Street, Finchley Road,
N. I understand that you are lying low, so better not come to see me
perhaps, but send me something.
“Your loving
“Margaret”.
And at sight of these words such a whirlwind transacted itself in the
brain of Hogarth, that he hardly awoke to sense till he found himself in
a railway compartment, going northward. It was only then that, reading
the letter again, he started.
The handwriting was hers! he was sure. But the words...?
“I, alas, am _just the other way about_”--“better not come to me
perhaps, but _send me something_”. There was a tone here not in
character. But her handwriting! This was no forgery. If she had written
_from dictation_ that might explain it.
In this uncertainty he left the train, and took cab, scenting trouble
ahead.
The difficulty was to find Wylie Street, which was a half-built street
of five cottages in a new neighbourhood of brick, and when what was
supposed to be Wylie Street was discovered, the cab had to stop, for
across it lay bricks, hods and barrows in mud. So Hogarth alighted, and,
peering, stumbled forward: no lamp; above, a labouring half-moon riding
a sky of clouds, like a poor ship riding the bleak morning after a
hurricane, her masts all gone by the board: and Hogarth could just
see that three of the five cottages were roofless brick, the fourth
unfinished, so the fifth, alone on the other side, must be--“Woodfield.”
“Woodfield” was unlighted: and the moment he ascertained this, he felt
himself the victim of a plot; but not all the whispers of prudence could
hold him now from seeing the adventure through. Loudly he flung back
the little gate, with rash precipitancy entered: and as he sprang up the
three steps to ring, he was seized.
They were five, three being big fellows, two masked.
His main sensation was gladness that none, apparently, was a policeman;
and he set hilariously to work with his knuckles. This, however, could
not save, soon he was on his back, striking his head; but when he saw
that the object was to rifle his pockets, letting be, he managed to
steal out the _puñal_ from his breast, and presently with a sudden
upheaving and scattering rage, was staggering to his legs. Before he
could be stopped, he was making for the gate, but close upon him ran one
of the five--a slim man, masked--who fired Hogarth's own pistol at his
legs, but missed: whereupon, Hogarth, with a backward twist, struck at
random with the dagger, which entered the man's breast. But at the same
time a whistle shrilled, and from an opposite cottage rushed out at last
what he dreaded--three policemen.
These had been placed there on the understanding that it was thither
that Hogarth would go, the object of the plot being to rifle his pockets
before he was officially taken; and it succeeded to the extent that his
pockets _were_ rifled: but he knocked down one officer, and dodged the
other two, reaching his taxi; and, having previously arranged with the
cabman, got off racing.
But the masked man whom he had struck down was Harris, who for weeks lay
raving in fever--an ill-fated stroke, for Harris had a memory.
As for Hogarth, he rushed home to Keppel Street, hurried down the trunk,
and was off to Cheyne Gardens.
“Well”, he cried, breaking in upon Loveday, “this phase of our life is
up! Look at my clothes: I have had a fight--Frankl, I suppose. I wanted
to live a simple life for two years: but they won't let me, you see.
Ha!--then the other thing. From this night we bury our identity under
mountains of splendour. It is disgusting to me, this life, skulking,
thinking to bribe honest men. Meantime, you must find me some room to
hide in with the trunk--mustn't stay here to-night. And to-morrow you
buy me a boat to take us off from some point of the coast--Come--”
XXXI
THE HAMMERS
Within six months Hogarth, as distinct from “Beech”, had risen upon
the consciousness of Europe, say like the morning sun: and the wearied
worker, borne at evening through crowded undergrounds, might read his
name with a listless incomprehension.
He impressed the popular fancy, especially in Paris, where he was
best known, as erratic: as once when, by a stroke of financial
sleight-of-hand, he got the young Government of Russia into a tight
place, then refused them a loan, except on condition of the lease to
him of the Kremlin: and for three months squalid old Moscow was the most
cometary Court anywhere--acts savouring of a meteorite waywardness which
impressed him, more than anything, upon the everyday world; and he won a
tolerant wonder.
However, an outcry, led by the _Intransigeant_, denounced his
acquisition of the site of royal St. Cloud for his Paris residence on
the ground that he was a Jew, betrayed by his face--an accusation which
caused the buying up of hundreds of thousands of his photographs--and on
the ground that his design was to familiarize the people with the idea
of his sovereignty, and by a _coup_ to seize the Government; at which
Paris was in a ferment, and a midnight mob traversed the _Bois_ and
demolished some of his mason-work. The next day, however, the Minister
of the Interior announced from the Tribune that Hogarth was no Jew, but
an Englishman _pur sang_; and, on the whole, Hogarth had his way: the
noise died down; and where parterres and avenues had stood on the old
palace site, there arose one of those enchanting fabrics, which, from
the Bosphorus to London, bore the name of “The Beeches”.
At this time he had dependent upon him a retinue, serving him in
multifarious ways from electrical adviser to spy, and from chancellor
to recruiter, numbering many hundreds. He knew five thousand faces by
sight; in England had two armies--a small one collecting data as to
acreages, tenures, trades, scales, wages, prices, crimes, mines, and a
large one, numbering five thousand, doing gun-practice in Westring Vale:
for, England being for sale, he had bought at thrice its market value
that part of it called Westring; and on the sea also he kept a little
army of a thousand, borne in old cruiser-hulks bought from the English
Admiralty, hulks whose crews, in rotation, changed places with drafts
from the Westring barracks.