The Lord of the Sea Part 43

He then subscribed the two oaths, and after him the Privy Councillors, the Lord President first, as witnesses. It was then delivered to the Record Keeper, who deposited it in a box, while Hogarth presented his Lord's-Supper certificate: whereupon the Lord President bent the knee and kissed his hand, then the Royal personages, then the Archbishops, advancing in order on both sides.

It was a week of Hope, the turning over of a new leaf, so the spirit of festival reigned, and was deepened when the evening papers that day announced that a _ukase_ of the Sea had reduced rent on British s.h.i.+ps by 1s. 9d. per ton, and was heightened when during that and the following nights Hogarth dispensed three millions in feting England: his illuminations having no resemblance to those sickly twinklings, tremulous at their own cost, previously deemed good enough for the jubilee-days of an empire; the people were astonished: ample and planetary his mind, his hand right royal, and London, bursting into light, flashed tidings of our earth to Mars. It was incredible then that any had ever wept, or would weep again; the bitterest foes of the Regent caught the contagion of world-gala; Europe flocked to London; theatres were gratis; the illusion of the comet of the final night was complete, her lurid rays sprawling 2000 feet aloft in stiff portentousness, prophesying Change, the parks all transfigured into universes of moons, crescents, stars, jerbs, Roman-candles, _pots de brin_, girandoles of rockets, paG.o.das, marquees, each tree a net of fireflies, while from five hundred and thirty balloons, with silent burst, snowed diverse fires.

The new reign opened with promise.

XLV

ESTRELLA, THE PROPHETESS

For three weeks a Provisional Ministry carried on the Government, confining itself to Supply; till, on the 3rd March, the Lord Regent succeeded in forming a Cabinet; and at 9 on the evening of the 5th for the first time addressed himself to the country in the House of Lords.

That night the world seemed hushed to listen, the peridom of Britain packing the Gallery with rainbow, and the peerdom those benches and cross-benches, red as ma.s.sacre and the Scarlet Woman, where thronged 580, while to Charing Cross spread the crowd without. He, from the Throne, addressed them, and they, startled by the revelation of a caste chaster far than Vere de Vere, and a pride far more serenely throned than Hohenzollern, acknowledged him high-born... "Your lords.h.i.+ps will not fail to perceive my will to invigorate some of our ancient epithets: thus, the First Estate of the Realm shall, during the present Regency, be veritably 'First', and in no case last"; anon he blew his bugle: "Let us play the man!--easy to say, hard to do: yet it was first said by an Englishman when the doing, I think, was hard enough, his martyr's shroud already rapt aloft in flame: _that_ was magnanimous, my lords, I declare! _there_ was the British Lion"....

That same night a new Land Bill was introduced by Sir Robert Wortley, the Prime Minister--a bill drafted, criticized, and re-altered during two years by the legal experts of the Sea, proposing the "purchase" of Great Britain at a price of twice the annual value for inherited land, and seven times for land held by purchase: this to be paid in two and seven years respectively, without interest, lands yielding no revenue to become crown-lands from the date of the Bill, which was called: Land Department (Creation) Bill.

It pa.s.sed first reading; but the question was: would the Jews vote for the second reading? Reluctant enough the Jewish members, but there were rumours that the Jewish electorate were instructing their representatives to repent and vote for.

And now spread far the League of Resistance, so did the Adair Street Society, its secret daughter, of which Admiral Donald (O'Hara) had now been elected Honorary Vice-Master, and whose Roll contained the names of an extraordinary number of Territorial officers.

The Society was busy: had building four yachts, all models of the Admiral's yacht attached to the _Mahomet_, which was called the _Mahomet II_; every dusk companies of 25 to 40 men drilled darkly in the back yard at Adair Street, some of them Territorial officers: in rotation they came, they drilled, over 1000; a top room piled with revolvers, swords, bowie-knives...

For the land-magnates laughed at the notion of submitting to the Bill: rather, said they, "rivers of blood". The mention by Hogarth of Ridley and Latimer they considered irrelevant; their fathers' heroic mood was a detail: not an entail.

In secret they met. Anarchists of the reddest hue.

One night when the Bill was approaching second-reading Frankl introduced Harris as a member; and wide-eyed stood Harris, though still cynical, with elegant walking-stick, hat c.o.c.ked, and "I sye", he whispered, "are all these real, living lords?"

"Large as life", answered Frankl.

"Strike me dotty! The Lord said unto my lord, sit thou at my right hand"...the reason of this introduction of Harris being a relation which had arisen between the Army and the Lord Regent, who had been taking a startling interest in this branch of the services, had visited Aldershot, and held five reviews, flattering the soldier by private notice, s.h.i.+fting officers. By an Order in Council of the 3rd March, a reorganization was effected in the Army Board and Consultative Council, of the new men the Adjutant-General being General Sir Merrick Parr, uncle of Admiral Parr of the sea-fort _Shakespeare_, while the Commander-in-Chief and Inspector-General were the direct creations of the Regent, and the whole Headquarters Staff bound to follow him through thick and thin; and that "second reading" was near, which, if the Jews would vote against, well and good for Adair Street, but, if not, there remained either (1) the prompt execution of O'Hara's scheme without waiting for the four yachts, copies of the _Mahomet II_, which were slow in building; or (2) the knife of Harris.

But, as to (1), when three delegates from the Society had waited upon O'Hara in the _Mahomet_ to urge immediate action, O'Hara had replied: "No, my lords, I cannot enter into this undertaking until preparations are complete, since the troops we send would never be allowed to land on the forts, if they arrived in s.h.i.+ps not apparently our own. Your lords.h.i.+ps cannot be more anxious than I to rid the earth of a devouring lion like Richard Hogarth, I do a.s.sure you; but, tut, is there nothing else meanwhile? Just let me introduce to your lords.h.i.+ps a little young man whom I know"--he had summoned Harris.

But when the three delegates had gone, he had struck his brow, exclaiming: "Wretch that I am!--that great and good fellow, the fairest of the sons of men!...what a black depravity must be in this heart--"

he had underlooked in the mirror, and cut a face; "but ah, Hogarth! this heart is in your net; and I loved the mother, too"....

He had sought the altar, and that night had written piteously to Hogarth, appealing for fresh friends.h.i.+p and reconsideration of his sentence of dismissal.

So, at any rate, was Harris introduced to Adair Street, became its chief minister, and ten days before the second-reading debate had won, by O'Hara's recommendation, an _entree_ into the Palace as servant to a gentleman-usher-daily-waiter: and now he made bright the knife of the a.s.sa.s.sin, tending its edge as a gardener the tender sprout, the knife being his _metier_ and forte, he despising the noisy, mediate, uncertain pistol, nor could use it, his instincts belonging to the Stone Age. But the days pa.s.sed, and he could by no means get near to Hogarth.

One night he boldly penetrated to the royal antechamber with the knife under his waist-band, having pa.s.sed the stairs-guard by a specious official envelope. As it was late, he thought it must be about the Regent's bedtime, having the vaguest ideas as to royal ways and bedtimes, Hogarth being then in a consultation with three of the Cabinet destined to last till morning. And Harris: "Can I see the Lord Regent?"

with that lifted brow of perpetual surprise and alertness.

"You? Who are you?" asked a gentleman-in-waiting.

"That's neither 'ere nor there, if it comes to that. I'm Captain Macnaghten's man, then".

"But what is it you want?"

"He told me to give the Regent this 'ere"--showing the envelope.

"Weally! then, give it to me".

"He said I was to give it to the Regent's self".

"Then, go to blazes quickly, will you? and let Captain Macnaghten know fwom me that he has been dwinking".

Harris could not penetrate the ten-fold barrier; but he lay in wait; watched from some coign every Royal exit and entrance, careful that Hogarth never saw his face; and he cherished the knife-edge.

One night, four days before the debate, he stood by the Green Park railings, listless, smoking, when--he started: saw a hurried figure come out--face m.u.f.fled--Hogarth!--alone.

Hogarth walked a little, entered a cab; Harris, in another, shadowed him.

Down Piccadilly, the Hammersmith Road, into the Addison: Hogarth alighted; Harris followed.

Now, at this time Hogarth had a spy, who presented him reports of the doings of Rebekah Frankl--a species of literature which the Regent found agreeable; and, as for two days Rebekah had, for some reason, been at a villa of Addison Road, this escapade of the Lord Regent was motived by his hope of catching there some glimpse of her, the house being small, he having seized his first chance of secret escape from state-affairs near midnight: and behind him, like the shadow of death, stole the a.s.sa.s.sin.

Hogarth, going soft up to the house, leaned aside from the frontage steps to peer; but Venetian blinds barred him from the least sight of the interior, though he could hear sounds, strange sounds, as of wailing; and, as the villa was in the midst of quite a s.p.a.cious ground, well grown with trees and shrubberies, he stole round to the back, peered into an open door level with the garden, and within saw a doorway of twilight in the midst of darkness; had hoped to see a servant, who might talk gossip, or even contrive him sight of the Sacred Body; had ready bribe in hand: but n.o.body there. So, after some hesitation, he entered; and Harris, just then come to the house-corner on tiptoe, discerned him go in, ran on hot bricks to the door, and now distinctly saw Hogarth, who had pa.s.sed through a kitchen, standing on three wooden steps before a doorway which framed a faint light in the room beyond.

On which a s.h.i.+vering of eagerness, quick as winking sheet-lightning, shook Harris' right knee.

Hogarth, meantime, having seen the chamber before him empty, in his headlong way had entered, and the guess now in Harris' mind was this: "It's a girl: a night out"....

He hesitated, Hogarth being once within the house and lost to him, but after some minutes dared to follow.

Hogarth, meantime, had seen that the light came from a death-taper, with which was a vessel of water for ceremonial purification, and a napkin, here being all the preparations for _tahara_ (was.h.i.+ng); and suddenly, in a near room, arose the clamorous dole of _s.h.i.+vah_ (the seven mourning-days), Rachel weeping for her children, because they are not: a Jew was dead: "shema, Yisrael...": and this explained Rebekah's stay there, for the bereaved may not leave the house. A peer at the bed--a covered face--pierced him with a compunction like shame: here was _kodesh_, and he a desecrator with his earthy pa.s.sion: so he turned to beat a retreat by the way he had come--when a faint sound that way, made by Harris; and, instead, he leapt lightly through a window five feet above the garden.

Some moments later Harris, entering on prowling all-fours, and seeing the bed-clothes hang immediately near, stole under; waited: no sound save the singsong lament; and "O Gawd", thought he, cynic even in his palest agitation, "there shall be weeping and wailing and gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth"....But that Hogarth had not come to wail and gnash he felt convinced: if he heard no sound above him, that might be because of the sounds around; so he crawled barely out, and, kneeling, put up a most cautious groping hand, the bed being in the darkest part of the room; someone there: and swiftly as a dolphin twists to dart and snap, his knife was in a breast and instantly ready to strike its expected bedfellow.

But the breast was alone, the breast of Estrella, the Prophetess, four days dead.

Harris s.n.a.t.c.hed off the face-cloth, peered upon a n.o.ble old visage, fixed now in trance, and said: "Well, I'm--"

Now he ran, but in the kitchen stopped wild-eyed. It I might be murder-he was not certain; at least it was out-rage, and he might be traced: there was the cabman who had brought him--his absence from the Palace---"Bah! it can't be proved...." But still, if he were even arrested, and Hogarth got to hear of his presence about the Court--that would spoil all. He listened: all that part of the house a settled solitude, the servants themselves sitting _s.h.i.+vah_; and back he ran, seized upon the little old body, not now stiff, _rigor mortis_ having pa.s.sed, saw that the sheet was unstained, and s.n.a.t.c.hed her away out to the bottom of the garden where shrubbery and holly-hedge formed a jungle.

Now he set to dig with hissing haste; and, even as he hissed and digged, he talked without pause, envenomed, heaping her sanct.i.ty with insult: "Old cat you...dust to dust and ashes to ashes, it is....What you want to do that for? under you go in the cold, cold sod....Who arst you to put your little finger in the pie? There's another one for you, fair in the gullet! Now take her up tenderly, lift her with care-and down she goes"....

Such were Estrella's _kaddish_ and "House of Life"....As he had only the knife, and the work was slow, and in the midst of it an outcry from the house, the body missed, he stopped, listening, but without acute fear, knowing it improbable that they could dream of seeking in the grounds, and as a matter of fact their minds were a mere paralysis of holy wonder; so presently he had the little body in a two-foot grave, arranged surface and dead leaves to naturalness, leapt a wall, and got away.

Never did act of a.s.sa.s.sin have result so momentous: for though the predictions of Estrella had lately spread far among upper-cla.s.s Jews, it was only on the day after her burial by Harris that her fame reached to each Jew under the sun.

It was given out that divine confirmation had been vouchsafed to her prophecies by the s.n.a.t.c.hing of her body, like Enoch's, into Heaven, or by its burial, like Moses', by Jahvah: for when no explanation but one is extant, the brain fastens upon that, and embraces it.

And as Estrella, who, in life, had guarded her hard sayings for the few, had left papers revealing for her whole race what she had dreamed, like wildfire now ran her message among the Chosen.