the Republic of Ecuador, thenceforth one of his closest friends, was
with him; whereupon, through newspapers in the pay of Beech's, the
rumour commenced to appear that the Ecuador Government was giving
orders for coast-defence on an unparalleled scale, in view of probable
hostilities with Peru.
In the midst of which activities O'Hara said to him one morning: “You
can now be called a mathematician”.
“I have many admirers, and but one teacher, O'Hara”, Hogarth answered:
“teach me”.
O'Hara cut a secret grimace.
After the failure of the Finchley Road plot he had had another
repentance, and had set himself earnestly to the cultivation of
Hogarth's mind; but the priest's spirit was not “erect”; he had “falls”;
maintained a correspondence with the Jew, whose eye of malice never
slept; and once at Cairo, twice in Paris, Hogarth had to use words
like these: “I must tell you, O'Hara, that I have heard of your recent
behaviour. Naturally, there are those that see for me, and I do not mean
to be compromised by your low revels”.
“Wretch that I am!” broke out O'Hara with smitten brow, and for half
a day was on his knees in an affliction of self-reproach. Yet the same
night he wrote a letter to Frankl containing the words: “You do not
know, _you cannot dream_, the high and slippery road which H. has chosen
for his feet: the future is _big_ with events. Wait: his sublime path is
not without pitfalls....”
Study with O'Hara was in the morning; at night, when possible, that
other study of the working world: and often then Hogarth would withdraw
from opera in the St. Cloud palace, or from some “crush”, to give an
hour to the river of statistics with which he was inundated.
Till these years he had never seen into the sea of things as it is: his
life so isolated--had not even read newspapers.
Now he saw and knew. There below him blazed some masque of beauty and
majesty, moving under a moonlight of blue-darting jets of electric light
all among colossal columns of alabaster robed in vine and rose; or
there below some Melba voice, all trembles and maze of wobbly trebles,
warbling: and the thronged hall sat tranced; but before _him_--figures:
parents killed their children for insurance-money--keeping children
in cellars till their flesh grew green, keeping sore the stumps of
children's legs; with some trades certain comic-sounding names had got
to be associated, “potter's rot”, “phossy jaw”,--enormous horror;
each day in England one million people had to seek pauper-relief, many
perished; of aged persons 40 per cent were permanent paupers; children
were paid 2-1/2d. for making 144 match-boxes; pretty girls (though
pretty girls were detestably rare) were allowed to work, nay _forced_
to--far harder than any ten savages ever dreamt of working; in Glasgow
41 of every 100 families lived in one room: fathers, for weeks, did
not see their children, except asleep; girls took emetics to vomit up
cotton-dust--enormous horror, comic-opera in Hell: and below in the
“crush” the voice of the warbler, cooing, shook.
Sometimes he would mutter: “But that can't be true!” There, though, the
figures lay; and presently he would take heart, and say: “Well, not for
long now, God help me....”
Whether God helped him or not, certainly Man was helping him: ten
thousand and ten thousand hammers--from Spezzia to Belfast--in
model-office and mould-loft and rolling-mill--in foundry and yard and
roaring forge--were ringing upon metal for him, their clamorous industry
clattering over Europe and America carillons of his name.
XXXII
WONDER
Almost suddenly that noise of chiming hammers reached the general ear.
First in the German Admiralty was wonder when a spy, engaged as a
workman at Birkenhead, sent to his Government information that the
British Government was up to something: something of a novelty so
extraordinary, that as yet he could form no conception as to its object.
That it was intended for the sea one must suppose: yet it was
evident that nothing of such odd draughtsmanship--of such mastodon
proportions--had ever yet taken the water.
He had been clever: had penetrated even the model-office, peered
at detailed draughtsman's-plans, developed from the original
specifications, as well as at orders for Krupp plates, frames, etc.; had
listened in the yard to the talk of four naval men acting as a Board
of Inspection; was able to give details of the machining of enormous
processed plates to sizes determined by templates, the length of
pan-headed rivets, the specific gravity of an average cubic foot, the
scarfing of edges, the accumulation of prepared material. The wooden
half-model, he said, was a one-ninety-sixth, instead of the usual
one-forty-eighth; yet, even so, it was 5 ft. 7-1/2 ins. long, as much
broad, and 1 ft. 3/4 in. high. This meant that the structure would
measure 180 yards square--over one-tenth of a mile--with a depth of 34
yards. Already the far-reaching chaos of scaffolding had run up
eight yards, with stringers and frames to a like level. There were no
keel-blocks, for there was no keel--or rather, the keel was a circular
plate a yard in diameter, resting on a single block, the shape of
the structure to be a perfect square, along the sides of which four
battleships might lie like toy-boats: the bottom, from circular keel
to upward bend, having the same shape as a battleship's seen in midship
section, only with four faces instead of two. From the knee-bend the
sides ran up perpendicular; but at the level evidently intended to be
the water-line they struck inward, so that the flat roof was smaller
than the area below; the position of this water-line giving a definite
clue to the intended displacement; and this again showing that the
whole--roof, sides, bottom, and all--would be one wall of Simmons
armour--steeling and backing--layer on layer--no less than 4ft. 9-1/4
ins. thick.
Yet this stupendous ark, or citadel--so simple was its plan--would be
turned out in less time than a second-class cruiser; and its cost, apart
from yard-modifications and groundways, small in proportion.
This, and much else, the spy reported: but the new fact was obvious as
the sun; the British and French Intelligence Departments, too, were soon
conning it; and a week later it was established that, not one, but at
least eleven, such structures were a-building in the world.
There went the rumour: “It is the Government of Ecuador's order....”
This was at the end of April; Hogarth, obeying some instinct which
continually drew him toward Asia, then loitering alone in Trebizond
tea-gardens and bazaars, buying a braid-bag, mule-trapping, or silver
sword of the Khurdish cavaliers; while Trinity House gave the alarm that
if ever the steel monsters, whatever their object, were launched, “they
would constitute, in the absence of proper precautions, a serious danger
by night to the world's mercantile marine “, and while Lloyd's, the
Maritime Exchanges, the Hydrographic Offices, lived in a species
of amazement, and were already putting the steel islands into the
gazetteers and manuals; the newspapers, too, inundated with the views of
the public, took sides, maintaining, some of them, that it was the part
of Governments to ascertain the objects of the new works, others that
any tampering with their progress at this late stage might even mean
revolution, so profound was their intimacy with industry. Hogarth,
meanwhile, having come to El Khiff, the camp of the Bedouin pilgrims,
there spent some days, and then, passing between Jerusalem and Jericho
in a caravan of Moabite sheiks, went visiting the holy places of Israel,
everywhere examining the country, especially its agriculture, with great
minuteness. It was only on his return to Jerusalem that he heard of the
agitation in Europe: and at once set off Westward from Joppa.
From his arrival at Paris toward the end of May the wildest legends,
originated by him, began to be printed, the most persistent relating
to the diamond and banking House of Beech, which, it was given out, had
discovered diamonds within the crust of a Pacific rock-island: the new
structures, ordered by them, being designed to blast the coast-wall with
dynamite guns. Cavillers pointed out that diamonds never occur in nature
in this fashion, and that, even so, it did not need a fort made of
armour five feet thick to fire off dynamite guns; but so continuously
was the thing repeated, explained, and puffed, that when the London
manager of Beech partially admitted it, the most incredulous acquiesced;
though at the very same period it was proclaimed that the President of
the Ecuador Republic, Hogarth's friend, had admitted to the Great Powers
that the forts were to his order (as, in fact, they nominally were);
and anti-climax was reached when a naval expert, asked to do a hurried
article for the Times, made some error in calculation, and came out with
the statement that the fort-things would sink of their own weight.
This article was headed “Beech's Folly”; and even when the error was
detected, the roar of merriment retained its momentum and rolled: so
that, to the hour of the first launch, the enterprise was commonly
referred to as “Beech's Folly”, and scarf-pins, ink-stands, etc., in the
shape of the forts, were sold with that superscription: “Beech's Folly”.
This, translated into French, became that horrible gallicism: _la bêtise
Biche_.
Gradually, however, the Ecuador-Beech rage died down the hammers, heard
for nine days through the turmoil of the world, were again drowned in
it. The scarf-pins ceased to sell. The 'buses rolled, the Bank cashed
notes, the long street roared--and all was as usual.
Only, in the valley of Westring there was drill and target-practice and
barrack-life routine, the Westring-eccentricity being associated with
the millionaire, Hogarth, the island-eccentricity with the House of
Beech: and in the popular mind Beech and Hogarth were two notions.
Islands were building in Italy, France, Germany, Russia; in England,
Scotland, Ireland; at Maine, Baltimore, Newport News: but the
Governments, lacking the machinery, and also the initiative, and judging
to-morrow by yesterday, gave no sign from their Olympus.
In June, John Loveday being then at Westring, one morning O'Hara
arrived, he, too, having left mediæval chasubles to grind at war, and
though he no longer taught Hogarth, a relation persisted between them;
and always not far from O'Hara was to be found Harris, living now on the
pinnacle of dandy bliss, twisting a dandy stick.
It was on the last night of this visit to Westring that O'Hara at a late
hour went with stealth and hesitations along a corridor of the Hall, and
finally tapped at Loveday's door, who, detesting the priest, and reading
in bed, disgustedly dashed off his cigarette ash, as he called: “Come
in”.
And a long time they spoke of things other than the real object of
O'Hara's visit, till O'Hara said: “But--may I ask you something?”
“Do”.
“Well, now, you are a fellow more in the counsels of Hogarth than
another. I want to ask you right out frankly--is it a fact that Hogarth
is choosing Admirals for the islands?”
“I believe it is”, answered Loveday with his long-bow smile of
amusement: “I already know, for example, that Saltoun will admiral
the _Homer_ in the Indian Ocean, Vladimir the _Ruskin_ in the Atlantic
Crescent, and the young Marquis of Erroll the _Justice_ in the Yellow
Sea”.
“Those all?”
“All I know of. I believe, however, that Hogarth is in the throes of
decision as to the rest”.
“I see”.
There was a silence full of Loveday's smile.
“But”, said O'Hara, “what I meant is this: you know what I have been to
Hogarth; without me, what could the poor fellow have done, after all?
I have taught him to think, to dance, and to dine. Now, then, I ask you
right out frankly--am _I_, my son, in the list of Admirals?”
Loveday, flushing, started upright, and sank back. “No, I don't fancy
that your name is among those entertained, O'Hara”.
“We will see about that. Woe to Hogarth, and to his advisers, if he dare
slight O'Hara, my son! What! after preparing myself with toilsome zeal
for this post? and after two promises from Hogarth's own lips--?”
“I deny the promises on Hogarth's behalf”.
“Oh, you! Hogarth looks upon you as a plaything. I do assure you, you
are not taken seriously, Mr. Loveday. How should such as you know what
Hogarth promises or designs? “--his cheeks trembling.
And, Loveday, smiling again, though pale: “Well, if we admit the
promises...but--have you accurately acquainted Hogarth with your past,
sir?”
“Most decidedly, sir!”
“If you have not, I think he should know it”.
“Your threats do not affect me, sir! In three days I shall be in
Petersburg with Hogarth, and shall take a pleasure in writing you the
name of the island to which I am appointed”.
“In three days I also--!” He stopped: but O'Hara understood.
Now the door rushed open, and in looked Harris in under-vest and
drawers, beneath his arm a bundle of walkingsticks, which he had been
caring and telling.
And “'Ere”, he drawled, “when are you coming to 'ave that bit of cold
mutton? It's past twelve o'clock as it is”.
“I am coming, boy”, said O'Hara, rising with brisk obedience.
“Then, come, why don't you! There were shepherds watching their pretty
little flocks by night, but to leave a man watching the cold animal is a
bit out. Come along!”--and O'Hara went.
He reached Petersburg twelve hours before Loveday, his reason for
choosing that time being his knowledge that Frankl was in Petersburg,
and with him Rebekah, Frankl being in a deal with the new-régime
Minister of Finance.
For, as O'Hara had been asking himself the agonized question: “By what
absolute _finesse_ can I, _just now_, win Hogarth?” the mere presence of
Rebekah in the same city with Hogarth drew him thither.
But the next day, when Loveday came, nothing had been done--no chance
of _tête-a-tête_ with Hogarth: and that day was O'Hara an anxious
and tremulous man, living on the tip-toe and _qui vive_ of lynx-eyed
keenness.
The same night at a masque at the Palace of Peterhof Loveday got a
chance of dialogue with Hogarth, they seated amid greenery and coloured
gleams, Hogarth groomed to the glittering glass of his shoes, his legs
stretched, arm akimbo; and presently Loveday led the talk to things
of the sea. “What an extraordinary activity! The British Government
launches the _Peleus_ next Monday at Deptford--the first 28,000-ton
war-boat; and seven cruisers on the slips. Then the French,
Austro-German, Russian--”
“Ha!--I know. They won't build long”.
“Still the confidence?”
“You can only ask, my dear boy, because you do not yet see what a thing
the battleship really is--much more than half a sham. The march of
invention is from the complex to the simple: for simplicity is strength;
but to the moment when I began to construct, naval construction had not
followed this law: for from the old smooth-bores, aimed with tackle and
quoin, to the present regime of electric wires, you have had a
continual advance in complexity--always within the same little arc of
thought--till now the most complex of things is a battleship; and if
you ask me which is the weaker, a battleship or a watch, I answer a
battleship--_weak_ meaning liability to the injuries which they were
built to resist. In such a case as that of the _Maine_, sunk at Havana,
one might fancy that the task of naval constructors is to turn out
a thing to sink with a minimum of trouble; and you remember the
_Camperdown_ and _Victoria_, how, playing about together, one happened
to touch the other, when down plunged that other. These ships are
a compromise between three _motifs_--speed, resisting attack, and
attacking: and the first is so antagonistic to the second, and also
to the third, that the net result is almost a Nonentity, or No-Thing.
Nothing, in fact, could be more _queer_, unfounded, than these ships;
and the future will look back upon them with pity. Hence the simple
islands, following the law: and don't think t hat their efficacy is a
thing riskier than arithmetic itself.”
“Good”, went Loveday. “But, Richard--captain your islands with decent
men”.
“You have something on your mind: what is it?”
“It is--delicate. Have I your permission to speak?”
“Why, John, yes”.
“Well then--is O'Hara to be an Admiral?”
“Old Pat? Hardly, I think. He may. But no--I don't think. Poor
old talky-talky. He has worked hard for us, John: and his fund of
experience, in one way and another, has been invaluable. Well, I don't
know: I have had the idea, but I don't suppose that, in reality--Still,
I am fond of him, John. Such a tongue, and such a versatile brain, is
he! He was my comfort for many a sombre day in prison--”
Listening near with rancid grin behind some greenery, O'Hara kept
nodding emphatic assents of satisfaction to Hogarth's praise.
“But, stop”, said Loveday: “do you know why he was in prison?”
“He was innocent”.
“Of what?”
“Of stealing some diamonds entrusted him by the Pope”.
“Bah! he lies. His trial was a _cause célèbre_, and hence the false name
he gave me at first: the moment I heard you say 'O'Hara' I knew the man.
He had committed an assault upon a lady in a train--”
“Beast that he is”, went Hogarth, while O'Hara's eyes started from his
head: “and liar, too, it seems. Ha!--he gave me the most circumstantial
story. Why didn't you tell me this before?”
“It was delicate--”
“Beast that he is. Yet how complex is character! the man's tenderness
for his Church is so charming--”
“Fiddlesticks! Look here, Richard, I am come all the way from Westring
to tell you this thing. Don't you give vast powers to that man: it
isn't decent; and I have a feeling that it will be a baleful piece
of weakness. And don't get easy, and tolerant, and fat in the eyes,
Hogarth. That is a very significant Bible-story--the implacable disaster
sent upon old Eli for no greater crime than a _bonhomme_ indolence.
And in order to arouse your wrath against this O'Hara, I am going now,
against my will, to tell you something: the name of that lady in that
train”.
“Someone whom I know?”
“Yes”.
“Who?”
For a moment Loveday's answer hesitated: and in that moment, O'Hara,
with lightning decision, had his mouth at Hogarth's ear: “Come with me
quick--then fall down and worship me for a month! _Someone is in the
Malachite Hall!_”
Like sudden death Hogarth's colour fled his face; in another instant he
was a blind, oblivious wight...had known that she was in Petersburg; but
not that she was at the masque.
In a moment shrubbery, lights, all life, rushed into transformation
for him: and with an excitement of the eyes, the bloodshot left looking
bloodier, he went after O'Hara, tossing back at Loveday that fatal
saying: “_To-morrow_....”
A little previously O'Hara, having got from Frankl details of Rebekah's
dress, had spotted her in primrose silk, black mask and domino, and
soon with Hogarth refound her in the crush: whereas Hogarth went about
prospecting over the crowd, with that excitement of his red-veined
eyeballs, once even entered into talk with a group of four diplomatists,
but all the time with eyeballs absent in hankering tracking, out
prowling after one morbid form, as the stallion's prowls after his
Sally.
After an hour she said in French over her shoulder: “Why follow me?”
And as he bowed compliance, she added: “Are you well?”
He said: “Yes”, and bowed, and she nodded twice, smiling a little, as
they parted.
He, on the wings of exaltation, made haste to salute the Throne and
leave the palace, rushing toward solitude to brood upon that smile,
those familiar nods, and the gentle “Are you well?”--in his landau with
him O'Hara, who persecuted him even to his bedroom; and when, after
an hour, the priest at last reappeared in a corridor, the night-lights
there shone upon an exultant visage, like a climber's who, after long
clamberings, at last stamps on the Matterhorn, and looks abroad.
When he entered his own room, he stood with a hung head, till, sharply
looking up, he ejaculated with amazed, realization and opening arms:
“Well, it's done!--I've got it!” Now he put forefinger to nose, and cut
a beastly face at himself in the mirror-wall.
The next day Hogarth rather guiltily said to Loveday: “Well, I have
promised old O'Hara the _Mahomet_ for the Straits. Don't frown--I owe
him something, and the clever beast got over me in crazy moment”.
“Quite so”, Loveday coldly said: and thenceforth, the thing being done,
was mum as to the name of the lady connected with O'Hara's crime.
He returned immediately to England, having there many occupations, which
multiplied as the islands everywhere neared completion, the first of the
launches taking place at Spezzia on the 7th of February.
A fortnight before this event the Beech-fever had revived, the coming
launch being no secret, and the doubt whether “Beech's Folly” might
be no folly, and the question what, on the whole, Beech's Folly might
really bode, filled once more the consciousness of the Western world. By
the 1st of February a drop was recorded in many general securities, in
“governments”, rentes, and consols; in Berlin the bank-rate rose one per
cent.; it was stated that specie was accumulating in European vaults;
while up leapt futures-cotton in the Liverpool market. At last the
First Lord of the Treasury, in a speech at Manchester, gave sign of the
Government's consciousness of the new fact, saying that he could only
repeat the answer given by the First Lord of the Admiralty to the recent
Deputations of the Chamber of Shipping and of Merchant Shippers, that
Britain and the other maritime nations would know how to protect the
seas from any nuisance. He anticipated no nuisance. The structures
popularly known as “Beech's Folly” (prolonged laughter) would be
provided with lighthouses: and until they proved a nuisance on the
ocean's fairways, the Governments must permit to private enterprise
that free hand which was the characteristic of our age; moreover, a
recognized Government had avowed its association with these structures.
Nevertheless, the fever heightened. The light-system of the _Boodah_,
now included in the usual alphabetical lists of derelicts, was conned
by thousands of mariners, while in the crowded captains', underwriters',
and committee rooms at Lloyd's discussion buzzed and speechified in
every tone of gravity. Suddenly in the F. G. and S. clause marine
insurance underwent a profound modification; and it was then that the
millionaire, Schroeder, at that time a German clerk in the City,
managed to borrow five thousand pounds, and quickly cleared his pile by
underwriting on larger F. C. and S. terms. And again raged the sale of
the islands as penny salt-cellars, finger-basins, etc.; in broker's
and sub-editor's office the tape-machine clicked the hourly progress of
preparations at Spezzia; while every by-street was dreadful with that
music-hall chorus:
“To Spezzia runs the Pullman train;
The Follies soon their sense will teach;
We've Beech, O dear, upon the brain,
He brains upon the beach”.
Meantime, the question of the drawing-room was “Are you going to
Spezzia?” and by the 7th so great a pilgrimage of tourists--experts,
idlers, cinematographers, special correspondents, ministers of state,
Yankees, officers, social stars--had flocked to the scene, that
accommodation failed in the town and surrounding hill-country, from Le
Grazie on the west, to Lerici on the east of the Gulf.
The morning dawned bright--Italian sky, tranquil Italian sea--and by
nine the harbour was alive with small-craft and Portovenere steamboats,
all gala with flags; on the land side, too, over the hills, up the old
road called Giro della Foce, and before the villages commanding the
town, spread a cloud of witnesses; while the multitude in possession
of _permessos_ for the dock-region stretched across a hundred and sixty
acres, perched on every coign, and murmuring like the sea.