The Lord of the Sea Part 26

"Well, let me inform you that your life is in danger here; if you are a wise man, you will not fail to leave this neighbourhood this night".

"But no one knows--"

"It is known, Hogarth: your friends are false, and your enemies crafty.

You will have to walk with your eyes open, my friend. What will you do with all the money?"

"I will buy the world, because _you_ are in it".

Now she flashed upon him one glance, in which there was astonishment, and judgment.

"You said that so like my father! Hogarth among the dealers? I thought you would be more squeamish, and arduous, and complex".

"But if a man is famished, he is not complex, he runs to the baker's.

You can have no conception how I peris.h.!.+ And I cannot be contradicted-I claim you-I have the right-I am the lord of this lower world--"

"But you do not see the effect of your words: you disappoint me Richard.

How of what the poet sings:

...this is my favoured lot, My exaltation to afflictions high?

That is more in your line, you know, but you are dazzled, Hogarth-fie.

To _buy me_! And how would you like me afterwards, having renounced my obligations? And how would I like _you_-I whose name is Rebekah, who will mate with none but a wrestler, a fellow of heroic muscle? I feel certain that you are dazzled. It is natural, I suppose--But are all the people in the world so happy, that _you_ too, can find nothing to occupy you but the market-place, with its buying and selling? And to buy _me_?

I am _not_ for sale! How dare you, Hogarth?"

With this she walked off; but, having a creepy instinct in her back that he was on the point to follow, catch, and s.n.a.t.c.h her away, she span round again, crying: "Do not follow me! Mind you! If you like, be at the elm-tree again at half-past ten-and I will communicate with you.

Goodbye--"

Now she did not once look back; and he had not heard that fainting "Good-bye", it had fainted so.

He found himself presently in his room at the paper-shop, and lay biting the bed-clothes, spasm after spasm traversing his body.

Then, turning on his back, he lay with his face now toward the trunk, and a little clock ticked ten more minutes before the fact stole into his consciousness that the bag was not on the trunk.

For some time the disappearance was too stupendous to find room in his brain. He got up and paced, stunned, just conscious of a feeling of unease.

Now he was searching the room mechanically. It was not there....

And again he paced, tapping his top teeth with a finger-nail; and now he called down the stair: "Have you seen, Mrs. Sturgess, the calico bag you gave me to-day?"

"Why, no".

"Has anyone been in my room?"

"Why, _no_, sir! Only myself".

Again he began to pace, and suddenly the grand reality stabbed his brain like a dagger: he was poor....

O'Hara! Where was he....?

His forehead dropped upon the mantel-board, and he leant staring downward there, a miserable man.

But suddenly the man said quietly aloud, raising himself: "All right: better so. O, I have not been myself--virtue has gone out of me--!"

Presently he noticed that it was near the hour of her unexpected _rendezvous_ under the elm....

And nearly all the way he ran--wild to see her again--until he neared the tree, when, descrying a female form, he came stooping with humility, but soon saw that it was a girl, her head in a shawl, whom he did not know.

And she, coming to meet him, said: "What is your name, sir?"

"Why?"

"I am Miss Frankl's messenger".

"My name is Hogarth".

"Will you turn this way that I may see your eyes?...All right: Miss Frankl directs me to give you these".

The girl, who had been weighted down toward the left, handed him an envelope, and a steel box.

Never was he so bewildered! On the way home, he observed that the box had three k.n.o.bs of gold, surrounded by rays, and, inlaid in the top, the letters "R. F."; when he tore open the envelope in his room he found in pencil on one half-sheet:

"Turn the 10 of the right k.n.o.b to the ray 5; the 5 of the middle k.n.o.b to the ray 0; the 15 of the left k.n.o.b to the ray 10: and the box will open".

No more. When he had set wildly to work, and the lid turned back, his eyes beheld the calico bag.

Rebekah had, in fact, before setting out to the _rendezvous_ at nine, seen her father and O'Hara return to the Hall, bearing the bag between them; and, she, crouching at the side door, as before, had heard them talk, arranging details. Her father had then said that before he could write any doc.u.ment, he must either ring or go search for paper: and suddenly she had heard an oath, a thud, a scuffle, had turned the key, softly entered, seen the men struggling against the other door, a revolver, held by the muzzle, in O'Hara's hand; and before she had been sighted by the two desperate men, had had the bag, lying near on an escritoire, and was gone. She had then sent some servants to the scene, and hurried to her chamber.

Later she had heard that O'Hara had escaped through a window, and that her father was raving below in a sort of fit: for Frankl supposed that O'Hara had the jewels, as O'Hara that Frankl had them; and after tending her father, she had dashed out to the _rendezvous_, the jewels then in her room.

As for Hogarth, he did not neglect her warning: and, having left a note for O'Hara, telling him where to find him, at Loveday's, took a late train southwards.

By what marvel Rebekah had become possessed of the jewels he did not even seek to fathom; but one of his uppermost feelings was shame for having suspected O'Hara of stealing them: and for years could never be got to believe in the bad faith of the prelate, his tutor.

Near midnight, on reaching the obscure townlet of Hadston, he there took a bed--not to sleep.

At the tiny inn-window he made periodic arrivals, looked out unseeing at a cart, a wall of flint and Flemish brick, and a moonlit country, then weighed anchor, and swerved away on another voyage; then arrived anew, looked out, saw nothing, and weighed.

He walked now in the dark of the valley of humiliation, with those words written in flame in his brain: "This is my favoured lot--my exaltation to afflictions high": he had allowed a woman to say them to him, and he went "_I!_"

He, the richest of men, was, therefore, that night poorer than any wretch, brought right down, naked, exposed to death, and he filled that chamber with his moans: "G.o.d have mercy upon me! a vulgar rich man...a dreadful contented clown...."

But toward morning he lay calmer, weeping like Peter, and at peace.

Being without money, he sent the next day a small stone to Loveday, asking him to sell it; also to meet old Tom Bates on the night appointed, and keep him till he, Hogarth, came to London.

Four days later he received the money in the name of "Mr. Beech", but the old Bates had not kept the _rendezvous_; and a month later a detective agency discovered that the fisher was dead.

At Hadston Hogarth remained two months, the most occupied man anywhere, yet pa.s.sing for a lounger in the townlet.