The Lord of the Sea Part 20

The same night Hogarth spoke to the fisher: told him that he was not a wrecked sailor, had reasons for avoiding observation, and would pay for shelter and silence: whereat the fisher, who was drinking hot beer, winked, and promised; and the next day took for Hogarth a telegram, signed "Elm Tree", to Mevagissey, asking of Loveday five pounds.

Finally, one midnight, after two weeks of skulking, he reached Whitechapel, where, the fact of his brown skin now giving him the idea of orientalizing himself, at a Jew's, in a little interior behind the counter, he bought sandals, a caftan, a black sudayree, an old Bagdad shawl for girdle, and a greenish-yellow Bedouin head-cloth, or kefie, which banded the forehead, draped the face like a nun's wimple, and fell loose. For these he discarded the shrimp-man's clothes; and now dubbed himself "Peter the Hermit".

For he meant to start-a Crusade.

At a police-station on the third day he saw a description of himself: three moles, bloodshot eye, white teeth, pouting mouth; but over the moles now hung the head-cloth.

For several days he lay low in a garret, considering himself, abandoning himself to sensuality in cocoa, vast buns, tobacco: rioting above all in the thought of the secret truth which lay in his head.

Up to now, not a word to anyone about it; but on the seventh night he spoke.

It was in some "Cocoa Rooms" in a "first-cla.s.s room", strewn with sawdust, where, as he sat alone, another man, bearing his jug, came and sat; and soon he addressed Hogarth.

"Talk English?"

"I am an Englishman", answered Hogarth.

"What, in those togs? What countryman?"

"Norfolk".

"Know Manchester?"

"I was there one day".

"Difference between Manchester and London, isn't there? I am a Manchester man, I am. All the difference in the world. This cold, stiff, selfish city. Londoners, eh? A lot of peripatetic tombstones!"

And so he went on; this being his whole theory of G.o.d and Man: that Londoners are peripatetic tombstones, but Manchester-men just the other way--seemed a mechanic, brisk-eyed, small; a man who had read; but now, evidently, down on his luck.

"Then, why come to London?"--from Hogarth.

"Looking for work",--with a shrug--"looking for a needle in a bundle of hay. What would you have? the whole place overrun with Jews. England no longer belongs to the English, that's the long and short of it".

Hogarth looked him in the face. "Did England belong to the English before the Jews came?"

"How do you mean? Of course it did".

"Which part of it?"

"Why, all of it".

"But fix your mind upon some particular piece of England--some street, or field, that you know--and then tell me: did that belong to the English?"

"Belonged to some Englishman".

"But you don't mean to say that some Englishman is the English?"

"Ah, yes, I know what you are driving at", said the mechanic, with a patronizing nod: "but the point is this: that, apart from vague theorizing, a man did manage to make a good living before these dogs overran the country".

"But--a _good_ living? How much did you make?--forty s.h.i.+llings a week?

toiling in grime six days, sleeping the seventh? I call that a deadly living".

"Well, I _don't_, you see. Besides, I made, not forty, but forty-_five_ s.h.i.+llings, under the sliding-scale".

"Yes, but no brave nation would submit one day to such petty squalors after it was shown the way to escape them".

"There _is_ no way", said the mechanic: "there are the books, and the talkers; but the economic laws that govern the units like you and me are as relentless as gravitation. Don't believe anyone who talks to you about 'ways of escape'".

"But suppose someone has a new thought?"

"There can be no new thoughts about _that_. The question has long since been exhausted".

"Well, come "--with sudden decision--"I will tell you a thought of my own ". And he told.

If the English people paid the rent for England to themselves--to their government--instead of to a few Englishmen, then, by one day's labour in six, Englishmen would be much more rich in all things than a fisherman, by one day's labour in six, was rich in fish.

The expression which he awaited on the face before him was one of illuminated astonishment; but, with a chill in his nerves, he saw the workman's lips curve.

"Bah!" said the Manchester man, "that is an exploded theory!"

_Exploded!!!_

Hogarth was rather pale.

Yet he knew that it was true....Who, then, could have been exploding the Almighty?

"Who has exploded it?"

"Been exploded again and again!" said the Manchester man; "of all the theories of land-tenure, that is about the weakest: _I_ should know, for I've studied them all. The fact is, no change in the system of land-tenure will have the least effect upon the lot of the ma.s.ses; would only make things worse by unsettling the country--if it didn't mean a civil war".

"I begin to see".

Hogarth got up, walked home meditating: and suddenly blushed.

It was known! by mechanics in cocoa-rooms!--that secret thing of his secret cell. And it was not believed!

As for him, what was he now doing outside Colmoor? That question he asked himself, as he sat unsandaling his feet; and he commenced to dress himself again: but paused--would first see Loveday.

Accordingly, the next night, the two friends met at Cheyne Gardens.

And a long time they sat silent, Loveday feeding his eyes upon his friend's face, that hard, rounded brow which seemed harder, and frowned now, that gallant largeness of eye which seemed now wilder, and that manly height, which seemed Mahomet's in the Oriental dress.

"But where have you been for five weeks?" asked Loveday.

"Skulking, and thinking. But about my sister...."

"Do not ask..." said Loveday.