The Lord of the Sea Part 52

"Oh, you knew...And have you never seen a bundle of papers under it?"

"Yes--I a.s.sumed them to be old farm-accounts...."

"They are all the proofs you need concerning your birth; it is _my_ trunk by the way--Ah, I must go!"

At the door he fastened upon Hogarth a last reluctant gaze to say good-bye, but Hogarth, staring wildly afar, did not turn his eyes, and O'Hara, with a sigh, was gone.

He drove to Adair Street, and, as he pa.s.sed by a mews, Frankl, waiting there with two detectives, saw him by a street-light, but made no remark.

When O'Hara entered the house, he looked about for Harris, but Harris had gone to the lodging of a woman in James Street near, to arrange a hiding-place for the bag, pa.s.sing out through the Market Street house; and O'Hara, opening the two locked doors, entered the safe-room, where he stood waiting, his forehead low, resting on the steel top; and now a sob throbbed through his frame, and his lips let out "..._so lovely...so great_...."

Count a minute's stillness: and now the man's soul and being foundered in a storm of sorrow, and half-words borne on s.h.i.+vering puffs of breath, and choking groans, broke the stillness: "My Liege! Richard! my King!"

This died to silence; and now he roamed the room with furious steps, and lowering brow, and an out-pushed under-lip, until, deciding, he drew from his pocket a penknife, opened it, leant now one elbow on the safe-top, blade in hand, considered, considered, hesitating, then with lifted chin and the thinnest whimpering like a puppy, pretty pitiful, cut from under his left ear to the chin.

Certainly a hurt so shallow could never have killed, for the hand had been cheris.h.i.+ngly restrained, and the thing was no sooner done than the priest, seeing that he did not die, ran horror-eyed, streaming with blood, shouting a hoa.r.s.e whisper: "Help! help! help!"

But at that cry he sighed, fell back, and effectually died, his heart pierced by the knife of Harris.

And some moments later the face of Frankl, who bore a candle, looked in at the door.

"Is that all right, Alfie?"--in the weakest whisper.

"Come on in, and don't ask any questions", said Harris.

Frankl entered, peered upon the dead visage of the priest; then, the detectives being now behind the parlour-door below, with handcuffs, rose to run to summon them: but, to his horror, Harris was now before the door; he saw in the candlelight those eyes of Alfie fixed upon him: and he knew: before the least threat or movement by Harris, the Jew sent to Heaven a piercing shriek, his hour come....

"...dirty-livered Jew..." striking in the breast, and, as Frankl fell, he gave him one other in the temple, with "Down, down to h.e.l.l, and sye _I_ sent thee thither"; and to dead O'Hara near he gave one in the cheek, with "Go up, thou bald-head, it _is_": all in two seconds' s.p.a.ce; and he was now about to turn anew to hack at Frankl, when his keen ear heard a creak; and he sprang up a spinning motionlessness--the Reality before him.

And instantly on the realization of that fact, he was submissive, reverent, as before the very Helmet of Pallas, G.o.ddess of Blue; and said he with sullen dejection, reverent of the Helmet, but easy with the man: "All right: you've beat me...I suppose it's that Regent-stabbing affair brought you: it was I did it all right".

When they went down, almost from the door a crowd gathered, pressing close, Harris' hands and front all red from O'Hara's throat; and when one policeman, big with the fact, whispered a gentleman: "You may have heard, sir, that the Regent was stabbed to-day--it's been kept precious dark, but the fact's so: this is the beauty as done it", like loosened effluvia that news flew--but distorted, largened--the stains were Regent's blood!--and beyond measure had the crowd spread ere it reached the Edgware Road.

There at the corner, as the officers looked about for a cab, and one blew a whistle, a man reached out and fiercely struck Harris on the face, while another shouted: "Lynch the beggar!"; and now arose a hustling, huddled impulses, and now in full vogue that grave noising of congregations when the voice of G.o.d jogs them; while Harris, excessively pallid, handcuffed, began to whistle; a number of other police now seeking the crowd's centre, but with difficulty; a cab, too, slowly making a way which closed like water round it: and when this had nearly reached him, Harris, in his eagerness to get in, sprang far toward it--and slipped. He never rose again: the crowd rolled over his last howl, and in the midst of a great row as of hounds, trampled him to a paste.

About that very time that better man whom he had stabbed, in tying up in bed a bundle of old papers, was saying: "Yes, I will go to my people"....

And by six A.M. he was up, in his study, dressed, looking quite owlish with his excess of eyes, which, however, danced at the first news of the morning--the arrival at Portsmouth of the _Boodah II_., which had raced like a carrier-bird since 8.30 P.M. of the 29th, full of the news of the vanished _Mahomet_: on her being 200 marines.

After that he spoke through the telephone with various Government-offices, early astir that morning, till the Private Secretary looked in with the announcement that his train would be ready in ten minutes.

His last act in the Palace was the sending to the Treasurer at Jerusalem, for Miss Frankl, the telegram:

"Be surprised, but believe: I am a Jew."

"RICHARD".

Of the Household some fifty, catching wind of what was toward, offered, even begged, to go with him; but in general he refused, and set out with a suite of only seven.

They reached Hastings at twenty minutes to ten, where, to the disgust of all, the region of Central Station was found crowded; whereupon Sir Francis Yeames held a consultation with a local rector, and a dash was made to a private hotel near the pier.

There, looking from behind window curtains at eleven, Hogarth saw before a paper-shop:

FLIGHT OF THE REGENT

A minute afterwards he started backward from the splintered window.

Everything was known:

LIFE-HISTORY OF THE CONVICT HOGARTH MARVELLOUS DETAILS

The street, to its two vanis.h.i.+ng-points, was one scene of hats, mixed with upturned faces: and it was an aggressive crowd that gave out a sound.

Not till noon did the _Boodah II._ arrive; and then there was no setting out--all the front windows of the house now broken, and in the town a row like the feeding-time of lions, which uttered "coward", "murderer", "convict", "traitor". Hogarth had been put to bed, the two ladies were in a state of scare, Margaret anon crying on Loveday's shoulder, declaring that "_He_" (meaning Frankl) was in the crowd, and coming, coming, boring his way: she had seen him.

At last, near four P.M., a portion of the yard-wall at the back was broken down by the party, Hogarth was raised and dressed, and through the breach the party pa.s.sed into another back-yard, then made beachward, Hogarth leaning on the arm of Sir Martin Phipps; but they had no sooner come to the Esplanade than they were surrounded, and when, on their attaining the pier, the pier-turnstile was closed against the mob, it was impossible to conceive whence so many missiles came. Once Hogarth stopped, faced round, looked at them, but now a pebble bruised his left temple, and he dropped, fainting.

Caught up by Sir Martin, Loveday, Sir Francis Yeames, and Colonel Lord Hallett of the body-guard, he was hurried, a hanging concave with abandoned head, to the long-waiting boat, and it was in a scurry of escape, out of stroke, that the oarsmen rowed away.

Yonder lay the yacht with her fires banked, and was soon under weigh.

She had started, when a harbour-master's motor-boat was observed giving chase, in her an officer from Scotland Yard who bore a bag, found by means of the key in Frankl's pocket in the Adair Street safe; on its clasp the name "Mahomet", and it contained 850,000: so that the yacht went wealthy on her way.

LI

THE MODEL

The voyage to Palestine was marked by two events: one the stoppage at Tarifa, where the five hundred from the _Mahomet_ were, these, when taken on board the _Boodah II._, making an armed force of 700; and then, toward sunset of the fifth day, a steamer exchanged signals with the _Boodah II._, enquired after the whereabouts of the Lord of the Sea, received the reply "on board", and when she stopped it turned out that she had on board a Jewish Pet.i.tion urging upon Spinoza to come and throw in his lot with them. And here again was that name of Rebekah, spelled now Ribkah.

For the news of his fall--the fact that he was a Jew--had created a mighty stirring in Israel, of wonder, of the pride of race.

By the seventh day the yacht was off the Palestine coast, and Joppa, seated on her cliffs, appeared over a foaming roadstead. But when a landing was effected, they were to hear that there had been a collision on the Jerusalem-Joppa railway, the line blocked, travel suspended; so, as the filthy town was congested, the Royal party took refuge in a great restaurant-tent, set up by a Polish Jew in gaberdine and fur cap, who vociferated invitation at the door. All was mud, beggary, narrowness, chaos, picturesque woe. Yet work had commenced: between the upper and the nether millstone a woman ground corn at a doorway; the camel pa.s.sed loaded; the dragoman went with quicker step. In the afternoon Spinoza, wandering beyond the outskirts of the town, saw in an orange-grove, sitting before a roofless hut, six diligent two-handed Jews exhaustively drawing the cord of the cobbler; further still, and saw what could only have been a Petticoat-Lane Jew ploughing with a little cow and a camel: and he smiled, thanking G.o.d, and taking courage--had always loved this land.

The next morning he procured a number of clumsy waggons, with horses, a.s.ses, camels, and provisions; and his caravan set out, to travel all day over a plain, a "goodly land," the almond-tree in blossom, orange and olive, everywhere lilies, the scarlet anemone, he considering himself so familiar with the way, that he was their only guide, though the morning was misty; and through the plain of Sharon they wended over the worst roads in existence, until, pa.s.sing into a country of rocks, they made out afar the mountains of Judaea, whose patches of white stone look like snow in suns.h.i.+ne, on the roads streams of wayfarers, tending all eastward to Jerusalem, lines of camels and waggons, pedestrians with wine-skins, mother and sucking child on the solitary a.s.s, and the Bedouin troop; but Spinoza was all solitary among fastnesses on the third forenoon when he muttered nervously: "I must certainly have lost the way".

Thereupon he called halt, and the caravan turned back to re-find the road, Spinoza prying on camel-back foremost, clad now in the caftan and white robes of the Orient.

But all day the caravan wandered out of the track in a white sea of mist: no farmstead, nor cot, but the wild vine, and the wild fig, and twice a telegraph-tree, still with its bark on, and the abandoned hold of a bandit-sheik. Finally, near six P.M., Spinoza, finding himself in a valley-bottom, sent out the order to pitch camp: upon which the tents were fixed near a brook, waggons grouped around, and animals picketed to gra.s.s. Spinoza, the two ladies, and Loveday, then ate together at the door of one tent; after which he rose and strolled away, thinking how best to handle this crab of Israel.

He noticed that the mist was lifting a little; and suddenly, as he strolled, he stood still, listening: for remote tones of singing or mourning seemed to meet his ear--from the west: and in some moments more he saw the Mount of Olives--to the west, not, as he believed that it must be, to the east, he having, in fact, in losing his way from the coast, pa.s.sed by Jerusalem to the north; and on the other side of the Mount of Olives, from its foot to the Brook Kedron, spread at that moment over the Valley of Jehosophat an innumerable mult.i.tude, covered in praying-shawls, many prostrate, many with the keen and stressful face of supplication lifted in appeal to G.o.d, that He would visit His people, and turn again in this latter day to His lost and helpless flock. Every child of Israel who could contrive it, at whatever cost, was there, since it was the prophesied day of--"the Coming".

But a bold woman, summoning her fainting strength, bracing her trembling knee, stepped a little up the hillside to fling high her hand as a sign--Rebecca Frankl, celebrated now through Israel as the elect of the sibyl Estrella; and at that signal the congregation, gazing keenly into heaven, lifted up their voice in meek song, singing the sibyl's "Hymn to the Messiah":

"The oceans trudge and tire their soul, desiring Thee; and night-winds homeless roam with dole, reproaching Thee; the clouds aspire, and find no goal, and gush for Thee, reproaching Thee."