The Lord of the Sea E-Book

M. P. Shiel

• Herausgeber: Blackmore Dennett
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

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...!"

Leseprobe

THE LORD OF THE SEA

by M.P. Shiel

Published 2018 by Blackmore Dennett

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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TABLE OF 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 DÉBÂCLE

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.