in state, attended by 150 Yeomen, King-at-Arms, six heralds and all
Heralds' College, to be met at Temple Bar by my Lord Mayor, that
day made a baronet, with his Sheriffs and Aldermen on horseback; the
Guildhall in blue velvet, the platform at the east end bearing rows
of squat gold chairs, while a canopy of deep-blue velvet, lined with
light-blue sarcenet, dropped ponderous draperies, tied back with gold
ropes, over the floor; on the canopy-front being Sword and Sceptre, the
Royal Crown of Britain, and the Diadem of the Sea; the canopy table and
the other looking like a short and a long wine-banquet of the Magi in
Ophir: present being members of the British Royal House, Ambassadors
to Britain and the Sea, the two Archbishops, Ministers, the Speaker,
Officers, Fort-Admirals, the Regent's Household, the chief Nobility, the
City personages.
Farthest from the short royal table, near the foot of the long, where
the dishes were _kosher_ for a Jewish colony, sat Frankl, and opposite
him Margaret; and that face of Frankl was pinched and worn.
He prayed continually: “May God be my Rock and my High Tower; may the
Almighty be my Shield this night....” while in two minutes Margaret had
begun to be a wonder to her neighbours--heaved sighs, threw herself,
beat plate with knife, hummed a little, yet conscious of wrong-doing,
her eyes fixed upon Frankl.
“Oh, my!” her sigh heaved mortally, head tumbling dead on shoulder.
“Are you--unwell?” asked a startled neighbour, all shirt-front,
eye-glass and delicacy.
“I see a long table with gold plates”, she whined pitifully, “on every
plate an eyeball dying....”
Frankl controlled her with a glance of anger.
And in the second course after turtle, with a fainting prayer to
Jehovah, the Jew clandestinely held up a forefinger; upon which she,
after some hesitation, remembered the signal, and like a dart shot to
her feet.
Now every eye fastened upon her, from Regent's and Prince's to
the bottom, those near her, who knew her now, feeling a miserable
heart-shrinking of shame.
With sideward head she stood some seconds, smiling; and she sighed: “My
name is Rachel--”
But soon, her mood now rushing into sprightliness, she stamped, and with
an active alacrity of eye, sang:
“Will you come to the wedding?
Will you come?
Bring your own bread-and-butter,
And your own tea-and-sugar,
And we'll all pay a penny for the Rum,
Rum, Rum,
We'll all pay a penny for the Rum”.
The Regent had risen, while Frankl, calm now in reaction, gazed sweetly
upon his face: the vengeance of a Jew--nor was he half done with
vengeance. Certainly, Hogarth was pale: he had sought her long, and
found her _so_. “Why it is my own heart”, he thought, “and they have
made her mad”.
One moment a stab of shame pierced him at the reflection: “_Here!_” but
in the next his heart yearned upon her, and he rose nimbly and naturally
far beyond Lord Mayor and Prince, and the rut of the world. After a
perfectly deliberate bow, he left his place, and walked down the length
of the hall to her, amid the gaping gods, Loveday, too, and three
others, when he was half-way, following.
He had her hand, touched her temple lightly, yet compellingly,
healingly....
“Dear, don't you know me?--Richard?--_Dick?_”
No, but at sight of Loveday some kind of recognition seemed to light,
and die, in her eyes.
“Will you come, dear, and sit up yonder with me?” Hogarth asked, his
face a mask of emotion.
Wearily she shook her head; and “John”, said Hogarth, “take her home”;
whereupon Loveday led her out, the Regent returning to the canopy.
Half an hour later he found it _à propos_ of something to say to the
Prince: “That lady who sang is my sister, Your Royal Highness--seems to
have been subjected to gross cruelties, and has gone crazy”.
The next morning everyone knew that she was the Regent's sister; and a
man said to a man: “There is madness in the family, then....”
XLVIII
THE SEA-FORTS
The second-reading of the Land Bill had passed by a 59 majority: and it
would now have been easy work to hurry through its remaining stages in a
couple of weeks; but the Regent had awaited the nation's verdict in the
return of the 120 to fill the Jewish seats, sure of the result.
So the 23rd was a great night--the third-reading--the majority 115 at 8
P.M.; and the next day, which was marked by a very brilliant levée, the
Bill was before the Lords.
This stage it might easily have reached four weeks before, but had been
shelved for the election of the 120: and in those weeks the four copies
of the _Mahomet II_. had been launched.
And suddenly--bad news from Palestine: news that there, too, after all
the safeguards, the greed of a few was working to plant the old
European wrong: for, the Sanhedrim being short of funds for a railway, a
syndicate of five merchant-princes had offered to buy from it an estate
between Jerusalem and the Jordan, and when the Chief Rabbi had pointed
out that the offer was monstrous, in view of the terms of the Sea's
Deed of Gift, a fierce discussion had ensued, a schism; and although
the syndicate's offer had been rejected by 27, at the next session
the defeated leader, like some warlike Maccabæus, had surged with his
faction and a hundred Arabs into the Mosque of Omar where the Sanhedrim
met, to cast those who did not escape by flight into prison in the
Pasha's Palace. In the hands of his clique the Government remained.
Such was the news....
It was followed in three days by a Representation to the Regent, signed
by 90,000 Jews in Palestine, the fourth name being Rebekah Frankl's,
they imploring him for their sinking ship just launched, calling him
“Father”.
For though the Jews had been content to see that Europe which they
contemned parcelled out among a few, while the mass of men hovered
countryless--from this had arisen their lucre--their mental quality was
too rich in business shrewdness to tolerate in their own case any such
Bedlam: yet they stood helpless before the disaster, and only in the
Regent was hope.
On that night of the arrival of their Petition, the Prime Minister and
the Commander-in-Chief dined in the Palace, placid men at the moment
when soup began, the Regent's sky quite clear, for, though a rumour
whispered that the Lords were designedly lengthening discussion of the
Bill, this gave no one any concern.
During entremêts, however, a scribbled card was passed into the hand of
the Commander-in-Chief, and, as he read, his eyebrows lifted. Craving
permission, he hurried out, had some talk with his Director of Military
Intelligence, and returned pale.
Afterwards, as they three sat on a balcony overlooking the lake, with
cigars, the Regent said: “I have thought, Sir Robert Wortley, of sending
out at once two thousand Tommies under, say, General Sir John Clough, to
the help of those poor Jews....”
Here the Commander-in-Chief cleared his throat, and in a strained voice
interfered: “That is, my Lord King, if we ourselves have not need of
every soldier of the line within the next week”.
The Regent deposited his ash with peering eyes, puzzled.
“What does your Lordship mean?”
“Your Lordship's Majesty, I was summoned from dinner just now to talk
with Major-General Sir Maurice Coppleston, who reports movements of
armed men, just come to his knowledge, and now going forward on a
considerable scale, all northward. He gathers that these can only
consist of Territorials and Yeomanry Cavalry, of whom not less than
twelve battalions of rifles and three batteries of artillery, officers
and men, are now on the way to, or massed upon, York. How widely the
movement may actually extend--God knows”.
Silence now: Sir Robert Wortley suddenly whitening to the lips. Then
Hogarth, in a very low voice, said: “They do not know me”.
“If I may crave leave to retire at once--” from the Commander-in-Chief;
and Hogarth gave consent.
Queer things, omens, doubtings, weird clouds, gathered about Hogarth
that night. When at eleven he gave audience to Admiral Quilter-Beckett,
arrived from the _Boodah_ Quilter-Beckett said: “Strange the fine
weather here: at sea it is quite rough, the _Boodah_ well under foam,
and that old _Campania_ pitches so--”
“You have come, then, in the _Campania_?”--from Hogarth.
“Yes, my Lord King”.
“And what about the yacht?”
“Oh, the yacht: in her I have sent the two hundred men to the
_Mahomet_”.
“_Which_ two hundred men, Admiral?”
Quilter-Beckett stared.
“Your Lordship's Majesty has forgotten: I had instructions that you
desired some interchanges among the garrisons, and had ordered the
sending of two hundred of my men to the _Mahomet_, I to receive in
return two hundred from her”.
“And you have sent your two hundred?”
“Yes, my Lord King”.
“Have you received the two hundred from the _Mahomet?_”
“They had not arrived when I left the _Boodah_”.
“So that you left only one hundred men in the _Boodah_, with
instructions to receive two hundred others?”
“That is so, my Lord King”.
There was silence.
“But suppose I tell you that I have given no such instructions: will
your heart--_leap?_”
Hogarth clapped a sudden hand of horror upon Quilter-Beckett's shoulder.
“My God--!” Quilter-Beckett started like a gun's recoil.
“Be calm, Admiral: it may be only some mistake....From whence had you
this order?”
“From--from the _Mahomet_, in the usual course--”
“Good night, Admiral; I would be alone”.
At that very hour a world-tragedy was being enacted over the dark and
turbulent ocean, and the immensest of Empires was sinking into the sea.
Darkly, quietly, with no mighty and multitudinous tumult of man.
That midnight the night-glass of many a mystified merchantman searched
the murk for those coruscations with which the crescent of forts had
constellated the Atlantic, the mariner's sea-rent waiting ready, with
his ship's-papers, in his cash box: but no galaxy of lights glanced that
night.
To some, before this, they had appeared, but, as the ship approached,
had vanished, and it was as though the swarm of the Pleiades had
been caught from the skies before their eyes. Long before dawn ships
separated by three thousand miles had gained the assurance that this
or that sea-fort no longer rode the familiar spot-had been rapt to the
stars, had sunk, had somehow passed from being. Before this monstrous
marvel the mariner stood dumb, and it was afterwards said that that wild
night the terminals of heaven and earth were lost, that the storm-winds
were haunted, in all the air lamentation, sobbings as for swallowed
orbs, and the whisper: “It is finished”.
Two days previously a telegram from Admiral O'Hara had gone to all the
forts in European waters, commanding an interchange of 200 of their men
with men of his own fort; and each officer in command, ignorant that the
same instructions had gone to others, had complied: so that by the next
morning, the 29th April, 1600 men from eight forts were converging in
yachts upon the _Mahomet_. As the fort garrisons, originally numbering
500, had recently been reduced to 300, the others having been mostly
drafted into the 2nd Division of the British Royal Marines, compliance
with Admiral O'Hara's order left a garrison of 100 only at each of eight
forts.
Toward five in the afternoon of that day, the 29th, 700 men, to
the bewilderment of her officers, were in the _Mahomet_ two of the
fort-yachts having arrived upon a troubled First Lieutenant who was
in command, all attempts to see the Admiral since the morning having
failed.
But near seven the Admiral summoned the Treasurer to his _bureau_ near
the bottom, he being in dressing-gown and slippers, very slovenly,
seeming either drunk or sick, his mouth gaping to his pantings, and anon
his languishing eye shot dyingly to heaven.
“Well, you see how I am, Mr. Treasurer”, he went, “seedy. Pain in this
temple, trouble with the respiration, and a foul breath. Poor Admiral
Donald, Mr. Treasurer, poor Admiral Donald. The fashion of this world
passeth away, sir, and the Will of God be done! Sometimes, I pledge you
my word, I almost wish that I was dead. There are things, sir, in this
world--Ah, well, God help me; I feel very chippy. I wanted to ask you,
sir, to let me see the books, and hand me over at once all unaudited and
unsettled funds in your counting-house, though I'm not fit for affairs
to-day, sir, God knows--”
“Sir!” cried the Treasurer, a hard-browed, bald-headed man with a
fan-beard, savouring of banks and ledgers.
“Just pass them over, sir”.
“Well, this is the most singular order I ever heard of!”
“Obey me promptly, sir, or, by God, I cashier you!” roared O'Hara, his
raised lids laying nude the debauchery of those jaundiced juicy balls.
“Be it so, Admiral Donald”--the Treasurer bowed: “but on the
understanding that I formally protest against the irregularity, and
report it to the High Chancellor”.
He retired, and in half an hour returned with two clerks who bore books,
himself a carpet-bag containing in cash-boxes £850,000, paper and
gold, which he deposited on the Admiral's _bureau_, and, after again
protesting before the clerks, went away.
Not far off by now were some of the other six fort-yachts, converging
with their 200 upon the _Mahomet_, and as the Admiral had no intention
of being put into irons as a lunatic in his own fort, at eight o'clock
he stole from his apartments, dressed now, not in uniform, but in
priest's robes and a voluminous cloak, bearing in one hand the bag, in
the other a key.
Those lower depths of the _Mahomet_ were an utter solitude, lit with
rare rays; yet the Admiral journeyed through and up peering, skulking,
pausing, hurrying, and, if by chance a light caught his face, it showed
a horror of convulsive flesh, his body a mass of trembling, like jelly.
Now, the forts had been built to fight; and (since nothing is
impossible), if they fought, they might fall into an enemy's hand: to
obviate which, there was in a little room on the third floor a handle
which opened by hydraulics a door in the fort's side on the fifth floor
below, the existence of this room being unknown save to each Admiral and
to four of his lieutenants, and its key kept in a spot known to these.
This key O'Hara now had in hand; and as he pushed it into the lock, his
jaw jabbered like a baboon's.
Night was now come; the sea rough; Spain lost to sight; the two emptied
yachts on the way back to their forts; yonder the lights of the _Mahomet
II_. lying-to; two officers in oilskins walking arm in arm, to and fro,
on the roof; and said one: “Look at those waves there all of a sudden:
they rather seem to be breaking on the wrong side of us”.
Then they resumed their talk; and to and fro they walked, arm in arm.
Till now one with sudden hiss: “But-good Christ-just look-why, the
roof's _leaning_--!”
At that moment an outcry and runners from below, shouts, a trumpet-call,
were borne on the winds to them: for the Admiral had rushed up to the
manned parts of the fort, all hell alight in his eyeballs, bawling out,
“The boats! The _Mahomet_ is sinking!”
In spite of which many perished, the survivors afterwards declaring
that the tragedy mesmerized their nerves with a certain awe not to be
compared with the terrors felt on sinking ships, the _Mahomet_ affecting
them like a being of life, like behemoth slowly dying, or some doomed
moon. She gave them, indeed, plenty of time, though when the steel
portals on two of her sides were opened, the sea washed up the steps,
making the launching very delicate feats, and near the last the leaning
was so marked, that there was difficulty in standing; and still in
patient distress she waited while the waves like multitudinous wolves,
trooped to prey upon her.
As the Admiral ran to the outer Collector's Office to embark, he was
faced by the Treasurer, revolver in hand, and “Hand me over that bag,
Admiral”, he said pretty coolly, “or I blow out your brains”.
O'Hara's mouth worked: he could not speak.
“Will you?” said the Treasurer: “no doubt you mean to hand it over to
the proper authorities, but I prefer to do that myself. Be quick, you
old dog!”
Whereat O'Hara, having no weapon, dropped the bag, and trotted wide-eyed
forward to the thronged scene of the launchings.
There were more than enough boats, and though on the lowest side of the
fort nothing could long be done, all had gone off, when the fort, having
settled very low, looking for some time like a brawling cauldron and
area of breaking waves coloured by her hundred lights, went down, and
was not.
Whereupon the yacht, over a hundred yards away, was caught in the
traction of her strong enthralment, and, like a planet, started into
running round a region of sea which wheeled; while seven of the boats,
rowing for life, were grasped, and dragged back, with a hundred and
nine, into the deep.
“Toll for the brave....”
As to the other boats, they arrived at Tarifa the following evening,
with 583; but the Admiral ordered the _Mahomet II_. to Cadiz, where soon
after midnight he landed, and, by negotiation with a “_Jefe_”, in an
hour had a train for Madrid. As he was about to step in, the Treasurer
touched his shoulder.
“What, Admiral, off by land?”
“Yes, sir, as you know”, said O'Hara, “for you have been spying my
movements for the last hour. How childish to imagine that I have
anything to fear, or want to escape! Why, I am bound for England--my
only object in the land journey being quickness. I even invite you to
come with me.”
“All right, Admiral, I will....If you be tempted to murder me _en
route_, remember these”--a pair of pistols; and they set out at about
the hour when the whole crescent of tragedies was over.
At six that evening a yacht, a copy of the _Mahomet II_., had come to
the Cattegat sea-fort to land 200 men who wore the Empire's blue-jacket,
the name “Mahomet” on their caps--nothing to show that they were not
genuine Mahomet men, though some looked rather sea-sick; but in
reality they were young lords, stock-brokers, Territorial Officers,
men-about-town, park-keepers, undergraduates, secretly armed with knife
and revolver, and knowing, too, where the armoury of the sea-fort lay.
Meantime, three other yachts, all named _Mahomet II_., were a-ply in the
Atlantic, two containing 400 men each, one 600, each of the first two
to land 200 at a fort at six, and her remaining 200 at the next fort by
eight-thirty, serving four forts, the last to land 200 at each of
three forts: so that by 10.30 P.M. each of eight forts, including the
Cattegat, contained 200 enemies disguised as fort-men.
And punctually at eleven, in each, began perhaps the darkest massacre of
history--no quarter given--and when the alarm went forth, whichever of
the unarmed fort-men rushed to the dark armoury found the door fastened
against him. Of two men in bed, talking together through an open door,
one arose at the stroke of a clock and killed the other; some perished
in sleep--all very quietly accomplished: a few shots, a few lost echoes
in the vast castles, a few daubs of blood. And in no case did a single
one, either massacred or assassin, escape alive: for, in every
case, some one or other of the fort-officers--Admiral, Lieutenant,
Commander--to prevent capture, opened the inlet to the flood in the very
thick of the doom, went down with his muteness and his bubbling, and the
sea, a secret in its bosom, rolled over the Sea.
XLIX
THE DÉBÂCLE
All the next day, till near 9 P.M., not one syllable was definitely
known of this tremendous fact by anyone in Britain: for though, early
astir, the Regent telegraphed the _Mahomet_, all day he waited without
reply.
At eleven the Prime Minister said to him: “Things, my Lord King, wear
at this moment an aspect so threatening, that I see no escape from civil
war, even if it be brief, except by the immediate forcing through of the
Bill, and I stand ready--now--to propose you as new peers--”
“Wait”, answered the Regent: “pass to-night the Bill should, but I think
I shall effect that by myself going to the Lords, and listening a little
to the talk”.
A dark day, with an under-thought always, whatever the business, of one
thing--the Sea....
About 5.30, as was his custom, he went up a stair to pass along two
corridors to the little cream suite in which lived Margaret, for whom
the doctors now promised sanity, her forehead daily seeming to drink-in
peace from the contact of his palm, after which she would comb his hair,
he lying on a sofa, or taking tea; and, “Well, dear”, he said, this last
day of all, as her ladies retired to an inner salon, “how is the head?”
“I have seen you before”, she replied: “what is your name?”
“Dick Hogarth. Come to me, and let me lay my heavy head on you. The
heart of your friend bodes to-day, bodes, bodes; but is not afraid: a
tough heart, Madge. Do you like me to press my hand upon your head like
that?”
Then, weary of his moaning heart that moaned that day like choruses
of haunted winds through desolate halls, he fell to sleep even as he
mumbled to her, she, seated near his sofa, playing with his hair, his
arm around her, faint zephyrs from the window fanning his head, waving
down the valenciennes.
But now she tossed the comb away, hummed, became restless, disengaged
her shoulders, rose, strayed listlessly, with sighs, and on finding
herself in the ante-chamber, opened the door, went out into a corridor,
leant her back, eyeing the floor; and next with a great sigh set to
gazing upward, droning two notes, one _doh_, one _soh_. All was silent.
But now a sound of voices that drew her, she moving into another longer
corridor, with balusters which overlooked a hall below, and yonder at
the stair-foot were two men in altercation, one a guard, to whom the
other was saying “But I tell you the lydy herself arst me to go to her;
it's an appointment, just like any other appointment. Do let a fellow
pass!” and with mouth at ear he added: “_It's an affair of the 'eart!
'Ere's a sov--_”
“Couldn't, my friend, couldn't”, the guardsman said.
But now Harris: “Why, there she is 'erself, so 'elp-! come out to meet
me, as the Lord liveth!”--ran then toward where she looked over to send
up the hoarse whisper: “I sye--didn't you tell me yourself to come--?”
On which she nodded amiably, smiling, touching a rose in her bosom.
“There you are! What more do you want?” he said to the guard, who now
gave him passage: and like a dart he darted, like a freed lark, or
unleashed hound, fleet on the feet, with lifted brow.
“I sye!” he whispered her, all active, brisk as a cat,
ecstatic--“where's 'e?”
“Who?”--she still at her rose, a memory straying in her that here was a
friend, whom the Terrible One had bid her obey.
“Mr.--the Regent”, he whispered.
“I don't know him. What is your name? _My_ name is--”
“Oh, you muddle-headed cat! Don't you know the dark man with the black
moles--quick!”
“_Sh-h-h_--he is sleeping”.
“Gawd! is he though? Come, show me! I've got a old appointment--”
She led the way: the two corridors--the door--the room, he treading on
air, brow up, eyes on fire, knife bright and ready; and eight feet from
the couch she put out her forefinger, pointing, smiling, Hogarth's face
toward them, his mouth pouting in sleep, bosom breathing, a breeze in
his hair.
From the lips of Harris, in the faintest snake-hiss, proceeded, “Sleep,
my little one-sleep, my pretty one--_sleep_--” and with a wrist as
graceful as the spring of a tigress he had the knife buried in Hogarth's
left breast.
Some instinct must have pierced Hogarth's sleep an instant before the
actual blow, for while the knife was yet in him he had Harris's wrist;
and the assassin fled writhing, so brisk a trick had cracked his elbow.
And blanched and short-breathed sprang Hogarth, but at once tottered,
Margaret, open-mouthed, regarding him, till he suddenly cried out
“Ladies!”, and before they came had hurried out, drawing his coat over
the place of blood.
In the second corridor he had to stop and lean, but then descended,
striking all whom he passed with awe at his face, till he stumbled into
his own drawing-room, and, as he fell, was caught by Sir Francis Yeames,
the Private Secretary.
The wound had passed along the outer front surface of the second rib
toward the scapula, injuring two of the branches of the axillary artery:
so whispered the Resident Medical Attendant, while the council of
doctors pronounced the condition “very grave”, but not “dangerous”--a
case for “judicious pressure”; and after a long swoon he opened his
eyes; in the deeply-recessed series of windows, narrow and round-topped,
now dying the twilight; the insignificant bed lost in a chamber of
frescoes and vast darksome oils of battles and loves. And, suddenly
starting, he asked: “What's the time?”
“Seven-thirty, my Lord King”, answered Sir Martin Phipps.
“Ah, I remember: I was stabbed. Who did it?”