The Lord of the Sea by M. P. Shiel

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On which a shivering 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_ (washing); and
suddenly, in a near room, arose the clamorous dole of _shivah_ (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
passion: 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 gnashing 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 snatched off the face-cloth, peered upon a noble 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 _shivah_; and
back he ran, seized upon the little old body, not now stiff, _rigor
mortis_ having passed, saw that the sheet was unstained, and
snatched 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 sanctity
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 assassin have result so momentous: for though the
predictions of Estrella had lately spread far among upper-class
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 snatching 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.

Now Temple and Synagogue were crowded: rabbi and pawnbroker and
_maggid,_ clothes-man and _takif,_ were infected; and there spread
the cry (for the most part meaningless): "To Zion!"

It may be that the Jewish electorate were now too agitated with the
near probability of Shiloh to interest themselves in any mundane
question: at all events, it was during that rage that the
Government-whips announced the certainty that the Jewish members
would vote against the Land Bill.

Hogarth first heard it pretty late at night from the Prime Minister;
and "Ha!-the Jews", he went: "so they have dared, these men? I never
thought that they would! May God deliver me from His ill-chosen
people--!"

"And ill-choosing, it seems, my Lord King".

"Quite so! But, Sir Robert Wortley, is it supportable this thing?"--a
brand now on his brow--"an alien race in Britain opposing thus
daringly not _my_ will only, but the plain will of the people? And
have I the air of one who will support it? Rather, I assure you,
would I govern without a Parliament! But stop--perhaps I shall be
found capable of dealing with these mischievous children of Israel.
Give me a night: and to-morrow at noon come, and hear. Of course,
this second-reading business must be postponed ".

And deep and wide, in lonely vigil, wrought the Regent's thought
that night, till morning: of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of
tendencies, histories, soils, ports, railways, possibilities, race-
genius, analogies, destinies; of Rothschild and I Solomon; of Hirsch
and Y'hudah Hanassi; of the Jewish Board of Guardians, Rab Asa, and
the Targum on the Babylonish Talmud; of the Barbary Jews, the
Samaritans, and Y'hudah Halevi; of the Colonial Bank, and the
Karaite Jews....

When at dawn he threw himself dressed into bed, he had resolved upon
a very great thing: their expulsion from England, Pole and
Hungarian, Baron and coster, and the little child at the breast, ten
millions.

His eyes had closed toward sleep when, with a start, he remembered a
prophecy uttered one evening in the _Boodah_ Throne-room, and these
words: "Richard, deal gently with my people...."

Two nights later, with a retinue, he hurriedly left England-for
Constantinople.

XLVI

THE ORDER IN COUNCIL

Three days before that setting-out, O'Hara's appeal for pardon had
come under the Regent's notice: and as he had read, his eyes--once
more--had softened, as he had thought: "It would be a great crime to
forgive him the long list; but never mind--we will see"....

And he had meant to reply, but suddenly the Jews had swept O'Hara
quite out of his mind.

He was away hardly two weeks: and when he returned, Palestine and
western Armenia were his, all his acts of this period bearing
resemblance in largeness and rage to the incredible forced-marches
of Napoleon.

If one spreads apart the first two fingers, he sees exactly the
country ordained by Hogarth for modern Israel: the first finger
Palestine, looking upon the Mediterranean; between the fingers, the
Syrian Desert; the second (longer) finger that Mesopotamia, "the
cradle of our race" between the Euphrates and the Tigris, this
opening upon the Persian Gulf, and the trade of the East.

The then population of this area was only 300,000 (Arabs, Turks,
Jews, Greeks) in the Palestine finger, omitting Russian pilgrims to
Jerusalem; while in the Mesopotamia finger--all that Hinterland of
Palestine called "Turkish Armenia"--not 320,000 Armenians had been
left by Khurdish rapine and Turkish atrocity: we may therefore say
that the whole was an uninhabited land waiting for inhabitants.

The only things needed (according to modern notions) to make it
immediately colonizable were roads and railways, and the Regent had
not returned to Dover when both were making in Palestine, the
Sultan, left thunderstruck with a chronic eye of scare by that
visit, "lending his co-operation", consoled meanwhile by a
Conversion Loan of thirteen millions out of Sea-revenue; to which
add a grant-in-aid of fifteen millions to the emigrants, and the
remark of Hogarth's Chancellor about this time becomes intelligible:
"Your Lordship's Majesty's expenditure is exceeding revenue by 50
per cent"; so that Beech's was soon realizing considerably in bonds
over Europe, and Hogarth temporarily poor--had stubbornly refused
any Parliament-grant for the Regent's personal establishment.

And suddenly from the blue fell his bolt: at that same table of the
Regent's oath-of-office assembled eighty-seven Jewish lords and
gentlemen at noon of the 24th March, the first day of the month
Nisan in the Jewish year 5699, ordered, each by himself, to the
Royal presence; and the Regent, with the gravest eyes, both palms
pressed on the table, in an embarrassment of compunction, rose and
spoke with them--Rothschild and merchant-prince, Chief Rabbi,
Manchester Chief Minister, Heads of the Alliance Israelite, Anglo-
Jewish Association, Jewish Board, Jewish philanthropists, writers;
and they could not believe themselves awake.

He began by speaking of himself, the fact of his power, with such
graciousness, that all were affected, not by the power, but by the
gentleness which wielded it: Providence had given him the disposal
of the earth, and it was for him to do his poor best--a lonesome,
sorrowful post; so that talking could never alter in anything the
main point; but it could modify details: and he had called them to
invoke their great administrative gift and expert counsel; he told
of the exodus which he designed, the home which he had prepared
them; recommended a Sanhedrim of Chief Jews to form the Provisional
Government of the new State, with the Chief Rabbi as its head under
the title of Shophet (Judge); would offer a contribution of
L 15,000,000 from his Exchequer toward an emigration and colonizing
fund, and doubtless emigration bureaus would be at once established
at principal centres; he would also hand over a Deed of Gift of this
larger Judaea as between the Sea and the Jewish people to the
Central Authority as soon as established; also, duplicates of the
text of the Treaty as between the Sea and the Ottoman Empire. What
he gave he gave, he assured them, with a free heart, without
condition; except, of course, one: that no inch of the new land
should ever "belong" to any particular Jew: for he gave, as Nature
gave the earth, not to a hundred, but to all, living and to be born,
occupiers to pay rent, not to any adventurer calling himself
landlord, but to the Central Authority, representing all. This done,
he would invoke with confidence upon their able race the blessing of
Almighty God.

In tones so mellow did he utter himself, that for many minutes
stillness reigned, every face pale.

Until a baron stood up with ashen under-lip, to say that such a
scheme, it seemed to him, must remain for ever abortive, unless
enforced by Act of Parliament--

But Hogarth checked him quick.

"No, my lord, not by Act of Parliament: the how your lordship may
leave to me. I dare say you will see it in this evening's papers".

It was by an Order in Council!

* * * * * * *

"DECLARATION of the Court of Great Britain respecting the Order in
Council.

"At the Court at Buckingham Palace, the 24th day of March, his
Lordship's Majesty, the Lord Regent, in Council.

"WHEREAS His Lordship's Majesty was pleased to declare in the name
and on behalf of His Majesty the King on the 23rd day of March: THAT
if at any time, after the expiration of the three months following,
any of the hereinafter mentioned trades, occupations, pursuits, or
acts, shall be carried on or done within the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland by any person being a person coming within the
sense of the term "Jew" as hereinafter defined, THEN and thereafter
such person shall be liable to the pains and penalties hereinafter
specified".

* * * * * * *

No Jew might own or work land, or teach in any Cheder or school, or
be entered at any Public School or University, or sign any stamped
document, or carry on certain trades, or vote, or officiate at any
public service, and so on: parentage, not religion, constituting a
"Jew". Through Britain this piece of Russian despotism sent a wave
of quiet gladness, and an epidemic of jest broke out, in club,
factory, "Lane", and drawing-room: "You hurry up--to Jericho!"
became the workman's answer to a Jew; it was remarked that the
chimney of train and steamship would furnish a new pillar of cloud
by day, and pillar of fire by night, to go before the modern Exodus;
they were little to be pitied, for even Heaven was their mortgagor
in land, with promise to pay--the Promised Land; a syndicate would
be formed to "pool" milk and honey, and either Sharon or Salem would
become the new Get-O at any price; being a rather Peculiar People,
they would call the new Temple "the 'Ouse" (of Prey-ers), and make
contango-day coincide with Passover....But let him laugh that is of
a merry heart: as for Israel, with weary breast and hunted stare he
sandalled his foot for the final Exodus: yet not as them without
hope. Already--some days before the Order in Council--the
disappearance of Estrella's body, her daring prophecies, had led to
the embarkation of 700 Jews for Palestine; and when the Regent's
Edict gave startling confirmation of her prediction of "the Return",
in many a million hearts thrilled the certainty: "the Day of the
Lord is nigh!"

And with that their stoicism and organizing strength, they mutely
turned to follow the finger of Destiny: their _takifs_ (rich men),
hard upon the unchosen, were, as usual, liberal to their own, the
fund swelled, and a Committee left England for the accumulation of
stores and implements; at the same time two Parliament Bills were
passed in two sittings, empowering the purchase by Government of
land "owned" by Jews on Land Bill terms, and quickening the
machinery for the collection of debts due to Jews.

Whereupon, "You see", said the Chief Rabbi, "he drives us out: but
he makes us aprons--if only of fig-leaves--to cover us. Let us bow
to his rod, and thank him, and go: he is God's Minister".

So they went: the world's mercantile marine having been summoned,
sea-ports were turned into caravansaries of gabardine and ear-lock:
the Exodus began.

In the midst of which it came to the knowledge of the Regent that
the house of Frankl was making ready for departure.

And now Hogarth rebelled against Heaven: self-forgetfully he did his
best, and it returned and struck him dead: for what good, he
thought, would his life do him, she always in Asia, he in Europe?

He wrote to her, a passionate hotch-potch of command and grovelling
supplication: if she went, he would curse her; would go mad; would
blaspheme God; would throw up everything; would die.

He had promised to go down to Oxford to receive a degree, and as up
to the time of his departure she had not replied, he went half-
unconscious of himself and those about him.

Now, upon Adair Street the Expulsion had brought despair, the
second-reading now assured, the Jews' vote over, and new writs
issued; the second-reading debate was actually in progress at that
date of the Oxford visit; and though the four yachts, copies of the
_Mahomet II_, were being rapidly put together, the Bill, if at all
pressed, must get through before they could be ready; nor could the
House of Lords long delay its passage.

There remained Harris, so far ineffectual, but not therefore
hopeless: so he, spurred, went down to Oxford.

But what Harris could not do was to get near to Hogarth: his task
was, as it were, to pluck Venus from the firmament; but he mused, he
mused upon her, with musing astrologic eye, with grand patience,
fascinated by her very splendours, not without hope. When at 8 P.M.
a banquet was served to 250 guests in the Radcliffe Library, the
upper gallery being open to a crawling public to see the lions feed,
Harris, watching thence the unattainable under the blue of the
canopy--blue always in honour of the Sea--thought within himself:
"Ah, Mr. 76, you've got it all, ain't you?--for the time being. But
'ow'd you feel if I had a pistol now? Gawd! I can just see him
nicely curl and kick. Worse luck, I can't shoot a bloomin' 'ouse".

But the opportunity was so exquisite, that he resolved to try--the
exit reached, would run, get a pistol, and return; but at the door
itself a hand touched his shoulder, and, with a twist of guilty
scare, he saw--O'Hara.

"Good Gawd!" he whispered, "what you want to startle anybody like
that for? Don't you know that the wicked flea pursueth every man,
but the righteous shall escape his filthy snare?"

"What are you doing here, boy?" asked O'Hara.

"Thick-head! ain't I down 'ere after this precious Mr. 76?"--for
Hogarth, if Monarch of the Sun, would have remained for Harris only
a glorified 76, Colmoor being for him the reality of the universe,
all else mirage, such stuff as dreams are made of.

"Well", said O'Hara, "come with me: want to talk to you"--he just
come from the _Mahomet_ through Spain and France, drawn to Hogarth
as moths to a candle, his petition for pardon not yet answered; and
he assumed that Hogarth's wrath still blazed, though, in fact,
answer was only delayed by competition of greater interests, Hogarth
having forgotten O'Hara; at any rate, O'Hara, with shrinking qualms,
had come to Oxford, thinking: "I will try and get at him for one
more talk--I am not afraid of your eyes, my son: tut! I've seen the
great brow in a prison-cap. And the haughty beast still loves old
Pat at bottom, I do declare. Be bold, be bold, but not _too_
bold....Well, I will! And, if I perish, I perish, and he perishes,
too, so help me, God"....

And to Harris, walking by the towing-path, he said: "No, boy, don't
you. Not now. Tut!--those lords: they are only making you their
tool. Don't you understand? Hogarth is robbing from them the land
which they have robbed from the British people, and they naturally
wish to murder him: but what have _you_, or I, to do with that? Let
the thieves fight it out between them, while we enjoy ourselves, if
we can. Weren't we happy in the _Mahomet_, boy--we two? Didn't you
roll whole weeks drunk? That was better than Colmoor, eh, Alfie? And
didn't I have my incense, my grapes, my little Circassian, and ten
thousand pounds in yellow gold a year? Wasn't that all right? Well,
we may have it again!--not in the _Mahomet_, perhaps, but somewhere.
Do nothing--not yet: till I give the word. If you _must_ kill, get a
dog, or a horse, or an obscure old man, not the Regent of England--"

"Dirty old swine!" cried Harris, angry, "'aven't I forbid you again
and again from making game of me? You're doing it now! You just try
that on, and go up thou bald-head, it _is_!"

"But is this understood between us?"

"Old duffer! you are one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow:
there's no knowing how to tyke you. You're such a sinful old
'ypocrite, that you play-act before yourself, I do believe. What is
it you do mean? You myke anyone sick of you; your incense and your
burnt sacrifices are an offence unto me. This Mr. 76 once put a
knife into me, and I mean to put another into him: 'ow's that?"

"Not now!"

"'Ow about your sweet friend, Frankl? I'm under contract with him,
ain't I?"

"Better put the knife into Frankl".

"Into the pair of you, it strikes me!"

"Well, if you make the least attempt upon Hogarth now, you get not
another shilling--".

"Bah! shut that--!"

But the threat won sullen consent; and when after the Banquet the
Oxford guests had driven to see the illuminations, spoiled by
boisterous Spring-winds, and when the Regent returned to his
chambers, he caught sight of O'Hara amid the throng that lined the
stair; upon which, after stepping up past, he stopped, twisted
round, to say: "You, Admiral Donald?"

"If I might speak ten minutes with your Lordship's Majesty--"

"What about?"

Those bold eyes of O'Hara dropped.

"Well", said the Regent, "I will see. Come to-morrow--about five,"
and went on up.

The next morning the Degree was conferred in the theatre, Doctor of
Common Law--"an appropriate one", the Master of Balliol remarked,
"though 'Surgeon' would perhaps be the _mot juste_"; and thus at
last Hogarth donned cap-and-tassel, though not Frankl's--a livery
which drew from Harris the reflection: "Sweet beauty!--in his
mortarboard". The nip upon the brow of the college-cap peak
resembled the nip of the Scotch prison-cap, awaking memories: but
the symbolism was different.

Meantime, the Regent's eye wandered, madness and folly in his heart,
and fear, till at four a letter came, he having left Loveday at
Buckingham Palace with instructions to open letters and send the
One.

She had written:

"What you can expect of me I am unable to conceive. Have you not
expelled me? Let us be worthy of our long friendship, and 'play the
man'....'My exaltation to afflictions high'....With prayers for
you, I say good-bye: and will remember.

"REBEKAH FRANKL".

Loveday had added: "She left London at noon for Southampton. Purchas
followed to spy. Machray's other detective waits in Palace for
instructions".

As to the dinner in Christ Church Hall, and the Ball, which were to
end the program of this last day, at four-thirty the news spread
that the Regent had been taken ill.

"Have you not expelled me?"...Was she angry? Did _she_ not know
that he meant well? Hogarth, breaking into a rage, leapt up, with,
"I swear to God that not one step does she move out of this country--!"
and rushed to a bell: a gentleman-usher came.

"What about going?"

"All will be ready in fifteen minutes, my Lord King".

"I feel bad: say ten minutes; tell the Lord Chamberlain".

"Yes. I might mention--did your Lordship's Majesty grant a ten
minutes' audience to Admiral Donald for this hour?"

"_Who_? Yes, I think--Just kick him down the stairs! Or no--say I
may see him some day".

This message, as the usher dashed through, was faithfully dropped at
O'Hara's consciousness; and O'Hara said: "Hoity-toity...!"

Bent-backed he descended to the Quadrangle, with a sense of defeat,
rebuff, contumely, rage, but quite sprightly said to Harris, waiting
beyond the Gateway: "Well, boy, how can we make a night of it? I
feel that way".

"Seen Mr. 76?"

"Tut, no. Sharpen up that knife for his throat, boy!"

And Harris exclaimed: "Another chynge! Strike me silly!--what did I
sye? Give me a new 'eart, O Lawd, it _is_--you grey-haired old
duffer. Chopping and chynging, always the syme--to your old wife
Jyne. I'd be ashamed of myself in your plyce. But sharpen up the
knife, it _is_".

XLVII

THE EMIGRANTS

Late the same night the Regent received at the Palace a telegram
about Rebekah: She had travelled alone to Southampton, where a
landau at the station had awaited her, in which she had driven to a
country-house near the Itchen named "Silverfern", two miles from
Bitterne Manor, in which lived an elderly gentleman, Mr. Abrahams,
ark-opener and scroll-bearer in the Synagogue, with his wife and two
sons. The passage of these, and of Rebekah, was booked by the
_Calabria_, Jewish emigrant-ship, to sail in four days.

Hogarth no sooner heard these tidings than he tumbled into crime:
resolved to kidnap Rebekah; to break his own law for his own behoof:
one of the basest acts of a King.

He had four days: and by the end of the second four men lay in wait
round "Silverfern", one a sea-fort sub-lieutenant, one a detective,
and two others very rough customers: a cottage having been hired by
them for the reception of Rebekah in a dell a mile higher up the
Itchen.

But something infects the world; and gravity badgers the bullet's
trajectory; and a magnetic "H" disturbs the needle; and "impossible"
roots turn up in the equation; and the finger of God is in every
pie.

Hence, though the four ravishers lay in wait, and actually effected
a seizure, the Regent did not get his girl.

None of the four had ever seen her: but as there was no young lady
except her at "Silverfern", that seemed of no importance, so she had
been only described to them as dark and pretty.

But on the night after Rebekah's arrival, there came to "Silverfern"
a new inmate: Margaret Hogarth.

_Her_ passage, too, was booked to Palestine.

For Frankl had said: "In expelling the Jews, he shall expel his own
sister. Oh, that's sweet, after all!"

At this time Frankl's interest in Land Bill and England was dead,
two interests only remaining to him: so to realize his share in the
Western world as to reach Jerusalem loaded with wealth; and also,
not less intense, to hurt Hogarth, to outwit him, to cry quits at
the last.

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