The Lord of the Sea by M. P. Shiel

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His rescuer, a shrimp-fisher, occupied one of three cots perched on
a ravine; and there on the evening of the second day he opened his
eyes on a settee, four children screaming in play around him; he so
far having been seen only by a reporter from Mevagissey, and the
doctor from Gorran, who, on his wide rounds, had been asked into the
cottage.

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-class 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 God 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 shillings 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_ shillings, 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
masses; 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.

There was a long silence.

"Did not O'Hara tell you to make no more efforts for my escape?"
asked Hogarth.

"Who is O'Hara?"

"Why, the priest who escaped, instead of me, through the copse".

"O'Hara was not the name he gave me; and no, he said nothing about
that. I got him off to America, and only saw him twice. I thought
him rather--But why didn't you escape youself?"

"I thought it improper".

"But you did finally?"

"For a reason: you remember the association which I was forming to
answer the question as to the cause of misery? Well, that question I
have answered for myself in prison".

"Really? Tell me!"

Hogarth absently took up a water-colour drawing from the table, and
turned it round and round, leaning forward on a knee, as he told how
the matter was. Meantime, he kept his eyes fixed upward upon
Loveday's face, who stood before him.

In the midst of his talk Loveday scratched the top of his head,
where the hair was rather thin, and said he, twisting round:
"Forgive me-let me ring for some brandy-and-soda--"

Hogarth stood briskly up.

"What I say, I can see, is not new to you?" said he.

"No, not new", Loveday confessed: "I believe that it is quite an
ancient theory; there are even savage tribes whose land-tenure is
not unlike what you advocate--the Basutos, for example".

"And are these Basutos richer, happier, prettier fellows than
average Englishmen?"

"Oh, beyond doubt. Don't suppose that I am gainsaying you: I am only
showing you that the theory is not new--"

"But why do you persist in calling it a _theory?_ Is the fact that
one and one make two a _theory?_"--Hogarth's brow growing every
moment redder.

"What can one call it?"

"Call it what you like! But do you believe it?"

"It is quite possibly true; and now that you say it I believe it;
but I have never seriously considered the matter"

"Why not?"

"Because--I don't know. It is out of my line".

"Your line! Yet you are a human being--"

"Well, partly, yes: say--a novelist".

"Do not jest! It is incredible to me that you have written book
after book, and knew of this divine thing, and did not cram your
books with it!"

Loveday flushed. "You misunderstand my profession; and as to this
theory of land-tenure, let me tell you: it will never be realized--
not in England. Anyway, it would mean civil war...."

Again those words! "Civil war...."

And as, for the second time, he heard them, Hogarth dashed the
picture which he held to the ground, shattering glass and frame:
which meant that, then and there, he washed his hands of the world
and its wagging; meant also his return to Colmoor.

He dashed from the room without a word; down the stairs; out into
the street.

As he ran along the King's Road, he asked a policeman the way to the
nearest police-station, then ran on through a number of smaller
streets, seeking it, till, at a corner, he stopped, once more
uncertain, the night dim and drizzling.

He was about to set off again, when, behind him, he heard: "Excuse
me, mister--could you give a poor man a penny to get a night's
lodging?"

Turning, he saw--old Tom Bates: still in the guernsey; but very
senile and broken now.

The fish-rich fisher...! he had come to this...

Hogarth had twenty-eight shillings about him, and, without
disclosing himself, put hand to pocket to give them all, just as the
old man reached up to his ear to say: "It's the lumbago; I got it
very bad; but it won't be long now. It wur a bad day for me as ever
I come to Lunnon! I'm Norfolk born, I am: and I had eight sons,
which the last was Fred, who, they say, met his death in Colmoor...."

At that word, "Fred", Hogarth started: for under the elm in the
beech-wood between Thring and Priddlestone Fred had concealed a
thing fallen from heaven, which could be sold for--a thousand
pounds.

That would keep the fisher rich during the few days that remained to
him!

But the old man could hardly go himself; if he could, would bungle:
the thing was heavy--on the lord-of-the-manor's land....

Do a kind act, Hogarth. He would see the old place, his father's
grave; and there was a girl who lived in the Hall at Westring whom
it was a thrilling thing to be near, even if one did not see....

"Here are two shillings", said he, in an assumed voice: "and if you
be at this spot, at this hour, on Thursday night coming, you shall
have more. Don't fail".

Again he ran, and took train, two hours later, for Beccles.

XXIII

UNDER THE ELM

His risk of arrest here, round about his old home, was enormous, and
he drew the Bedouin kefie well round his face, skulking from the
station to the "Fen", northward, where he got an urchin to buy him a
paper lantern in a general shop, and now trudged up to Priddlestone,
then down through meadows to the beech-wood, the night rough with
March winds.

It was not the winds, however, which made him draw close his Arab
cloak, but his approach to the elm: there, one night, he had seen a
naked black man! there had fallen the Arab Jew.

He stood twenty yards from the tree, till, with sudden resolution,
he strode, soon had the lantern ruby, and since the grave of "the
affair" had been digged with a piece of wood, for such a piece he
went seeking, having thrown off his caftan.

Instead, he found the rusted half-blade of a spade, and commenced to
dig round the roots, the lantern shine reddening a face strangely
agitated, uncertainty of finding what he sought heightening his
excitement: for the earth showed no disturbance, and since three
years had passed since that night of Bates in the wood, the object
might have been already unearthed. After an hour his back was
aching, his hands dabbled, his brow beaded, while the night-winds
blew, the light now was commoved, and now glowed a steady red; and
still he grovelled.

Presently, as he shovelled in a circle, always two feet deep, moving
the light as he moved, he saw on the top of a shovelful of marl--a
twig: barkless, black, cracked--_scorched!_

To an immoderate degree this thing agitated him--some whisper in the
back of his head--some half-thought: he began now to root furiously,
with a frowning intentness.

But suddenly he shuddered: a finger seemed to touch his shoulder
behind; and he twisted with wild eyes, caught up the light, peered,
saw no black man--nothing: but quite five minutes he stood defiant,
with clenched fists; then resumed the work, though with a constant
feeling now that he was being watched by the unseen seers.

After two new strokes he struck upon something hard, and, digging
eagerly round it, found a quart-can, full of earth. And instantly
all doubt vanished: for this must have been the beer-can carried by
Bates.

Strong curiosity now wrought in Hogarth, a zeal to lay eyes upon
that object which had careered through the heights of space to find
that beech-wood and that elm-tree; and during fifteen minutes his
little implement digged with the quick-plying movement of a distaff-
shuttle, he fighting for breath, anon casting a flying wild glance
behind, but still digging.

Now, frequently, he came upon burned objects, twigs, cinders. Even
the marl had a scorched look; and his agitation grew to ecstasy.

Something very singular had happened to his mind with regard to this
"affair" of Bates: Bates had said that it had fallen on the asteroid
night; and O'Hara had told him--falsely, indeed--that a piece of the
asteroid, fallen upon the French coast, had had diamonds; yet,
somehow, never once had his mind associated the Fred Bates "affair"
with the thought of diamonds, but only with the "thousand pounds"
which Bates had been promised by old Bond. So at the moment when he
had begun to dig, his whole thought was of "a thousand pounds"; but,
somehow, by the time his implement at last grated against something
two feet down, that word "diamonds" had grown up in his brain.

But diamonds! In the midst of his shovelling the thought flashed
through him: "The world is God's! and to whom He wills He gives
it...."

Now at last the thing lay definitely before him: he grated the spade
from end to end, scraping away the marl; and it was very rough....

The size and shape of a man's leg, and red, anyway in the red
lantern-shine--his sight dim--he moved and saw in an improbable
dream; and when he tried to lift the object and failed, for a long
time he sat on the edge of the trench, passing one palm across and
across his forehead, till the lantern-light leapt, and went out.

He sprang upright then--awake, sure: they were diamonds, those bits
of glass, big celestial ones, not of earth, in hundreds; when he
passed his hand along the meteorite he felt it leprous, octahedron,
dodecahedron, large and small: if they were truly diamonds, he
divined that their owner must be as wealthy as some nations.

About three in the morning he managed to raise the meteorite;
refilled the trench; and since it still rained, rolled the meteorite
to the hollow of the elm, put on his caftan, and with his back on
the interior of the tree, his feet on the meteorite, tumbled into a
wonderful slumber.

XXIV

FRANKL SEES THE METEORITE

He was awaked by a footstep, and, starting, saw rocking along the
forest path one Farmer Pollock, wearing now fez and tassel, and he
saw his clothes all clay, and, with a smile of fondness, saw how,
even beneath its grime, the meteor dodged and jeered, with frolic
leers, in the beams of a bright morning that seemed to him the
primal morning, a fresh wedding-morning, swarming with elves and
shell-tinted visions, imps and pixy princes, profligate Golcondas.

Going first to the spot where he had digged, to give to the surface
a natural look, he trampled the lantern into the mire, threw the tin
can far, then, taking a quantity of marl, plastered the meteorite,
to cover its roughness; then boldly left it, starting out with
consummate audacity for Thring, where everybody, police and all,
knew him well.

A singular light now in his eyes, an evil pride; and he had the step
of a Prince in Prettyland. Corresponding to an inward majesty, of
which, from youth, he had been conscious, he now felt an outward,
and had not been awake eight minutes when his brain was invaded by
plans--plans of debauchery, palaces, orgy, flying beds of ivory
arabesqued in fan-traceries of sapphire, in which Rebekah Frankl
lolled, and smiled; and on toward Thring he stepped, prince new-
crowned, yet by old heredity, high exalted above laws, government,
and the entire little muck of Man.

At one point where the path ran close to Westring-park proper, the
park on higher ground, a grass-bank seven feet high dividing them,
he saw a-top of the bank in caftan, priest-cap, and phylacteries,
taking snuff--Baruch Frankl.

Hogarth skipped up, and stood before the Jew, having drawn his face-
cloth well forward.

"What's the row?" asked Frankl.

"Could you give a poor man a job?"

"You a Jew?"

"Yes", replied Hogarth, not dreaming how truly: "London born".

"A Froom?"

"I keep the fasts".

"What you doing about here?"

"Tramping".

"Fine mess you are in".

"I slept in a hollow tree down yonder--an elm tree".

"Well, there's many a worse shake-down than that. Who are you? Ever
been about here before?"

"I was once".

"You put me in mind of an old chum of mine....Well, here's half-a-
crown for you to go on with".

"Make it a crown", said Hogarth, "and get me to clean up down there;
in a shocking state with mast and leaves".

Frankl considered. "All right, I don't mind".

"I shall want a spade, and--a barrow".

"Go down the path yonder, till you come to the stables, and tell
them".

Frankl resumed his musing stroll, and Hogarth ran for the barrow.

In twenty minutes he was again at the elm tree, and, with a scheme
in him for seeing Rebekah, heaped the barrow with refuse, pushed it
between a beck and the wood, till, wearying of this, he was about to
get the meteorite into the barrow, when he had the mad thought that
Frankl must be made to see and touch it, so set off to seek him: and
a few yards brought him face to face with Frankl.

"Well, how goes it?" asked the Jew.

"There is a weight there which I can't lift", said Hogarth. "Then
you must do the other thing. Don't lift it, and you don't get the
pay. What weight is it?"

"It is here".

Hogarth led him, led him, pointing. Frankl kicked the meteorite.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It can't be a branch", said Hogarth; "too heavy--more like a piece
of old iron".

"Well, slip into it. A strapping fellow like you ought to be able to
do that bit".

"But suppose it's valuable?"

"I make you a present of it, as you are so hard up".

Now Hogarth, by tilting the barrow, with strong effort of four
limbs, got the meteorite lodged, while Frankl, his smile lifting the
wrinkles above his thick moustache, watched the strain: then, with
arms behind, went his contemplative way.

Hogarth rolled the barrow toward Thring.

XXV

CHURCH ARCHITECTURE

It was already eleven o'clock, the sun shining in a bright sky,
under which the country round the Waveney lay broad to the hills of
mist which seemed to encompass the valley; yet, when one came to
them no hills were there, but were still beyond. When Hogarth came
out from the wood upon a footbridge, to his right a hand-sower was
sowing broadcast, with a two-handed rhythm, taking seed, as he
strode, from his scrip; and to the left ran a path between fields to
an eminence with a little church on it; straight northward some
Thring houses visible, and north-east, near the river, Lagden Dip
orchard. Only two stooping women in fields near Thring could Hogarth
see; also, still further, a gig-and-horse whose remote motion was
imperceptible; also the trudging two-handed process of the sower
nourishing the furrows. But for these, England, supposed to be
"overcrowded", seemed a land once inhabited, but abandoned.

To Hogarth the whole, so familiar, looked uplifted now, the sunlight
of a more celestial essence. Westring he would buy--though one
memorable night in Colmoor he had arrived at the knowledge that it
was not just that Westring should be anyone's; but then what one
bought with his own diamonds was surely his own--his name being
Richard.

He had passed the bridge, when, glancing to the left, he saw a fifth
person in the landscape--a man under a sycamore near the church,
gazing up, with hung jaw, at the apse window--dressed in a grey
jacket, but a clerical hat, and he had a note-book, in which he
wrote, or drew. Hogarth, whose mind was in weathercock state, rolled
the barrow to the hill, left it, went stealing fleetly up, and
gripped the man's collar, to whisper: "In the King's name I arrest
you".

The man's hand clapped his heart, as he turned a face of terror.

"There is--some mistake--My God! Are you--?"

"Yes".

"Hogarth?"

"Who else?"

"But you have killed me! My heart--"

"Serves you right. Why didn't you give your right name to Loveday?
And what are you doing here?"

"I was just examining this lovely old church, with its two south
aisles, and one north, like St. John's at Cirencester. When the
church fell in England, architecture was abolished--But as to why I
am in Norfolk at all, I am skulking: and here is as another place.
Your friend packed me off to America; but for some reasons I should
prefer Golmoor--old Colmoor, eh? I fear I am a voluptuary, my son,
fond of comfort, and old things, and pretty things. And all that I
shall have yet! Tut, O'Hara is not done with the world, nor it with
him. As to Norfolk, I once knew--a person--in this neighbourhood--"

The priest paused, regarding Hogarth with a smile, the "person"
meant being Hogarth's mother; and he said: "But you are quite the
Jew in dress: do you know now, then, that you are of the Chosen
Race?"

"Singular notion! This is a mere disguise".

"Ah. But you look quite radiant. You must have come into a fortune.
When I heard of your escape, I said to myself--"

"How did you hear?"

"Why, from Harris".

"Harris is drowned".

"Harris is now under that little roof down there--there"--the
prelate stabbed with his forefinger: "Harris is my shadow; Harris is
my master. He was picked up naked by the ship which ran down your
vessel, recognized me one day in Broadway, and threatened to give me
in charge if I did not adopt him 'as my well-beloved son'. Well,
from him I heard all, how you called fire from Heaven--it was
gallant. But aren't you afraid of capture down here in your own
country?"

"I cannot be captured".

Those stony eyeballs of O'Hara, bulging from out circular trenches
round their sockets, surveyed Hogarth, weighing, divining him, while
his bottom lip, massive as the mouth of Polynesian stone gods,
trembled.

"How do you mean?"

"I can buy King on throne, Judge on bench, Governor and Warder, the
whole machinery. Even O'Hara I could buy".

"I am for sale! Hogarth! I _smelled_ it about you, the myrrh of your
garments! And didn't I prophesy it to you years ago? What a
development! That beast, Harris, will dance for joy! Oh, there is
something very artistic to my fancy, Hogarth, in the metal gold--
brittle, bright, orpimented--"

"And diamonds?"

"Hogarth, have you diamonds?"

"Yes", said Hogarth, smiling at the effect of ecstasy upon O'Hara.

"Prismic diamond!" cried the prelate: "but how--?"

"Do you want to enter my service?"

"Do I _want_?"

"Well, I want a tutor, O'Hara; and you shall be the man. Undertake,
then, to teach me all you know in two years, and I'll give you--how
much?--twenty thousand pounds a year".

"My son", whispered O'Hara, "what a development--!"

"Good-bye. In Thring Street there is a little paper-shop. Come there
to-night at seven".

He ran down the hill: and as he went northward, pushing his barrow,
O'Hara had a lens at his eyes, saw the meteorite, and wondered.

XXVI

FRANKL AND O'HARA

Mrs. Sturgess, of the paper-shop, a clean, washed-out old lady, held
up both averting hands at her back door, as Hogarth threw back his
kefie, finger on lips; but soon, her alarm warming into welcome, she
took him to a room above, to listen to his story of escape.

"And to think", said she, "there is the very box your sister, poor
thing, left with me to keep the day she went away, which never once
have I seen her dear good face from that day to this. Anyway,
_there's_ the box--" pointing to a trunk covered with grey goat's-
hair, the trunk to which the old Hogarth had referred in telling
Richard the secret of his birth, saying to deaf ears that it
contained Richard's "papers"--a box double-bottomed, on its top the
letters "P. O.", with a cross-of-Christ under them.

"But, sir", said Mrs. Sturgess, "you must be in great danger here. I
hope"--with a titter--"I shan't be implicated--"

"Don't be afraid, Mrs. Sturgess, it will be all right, and, for
yourself, don't trouble about the paper-shop any more, but buy a
little villa near Florence, where it is warm for the cough--don't
think me crazy if I tell you that I am a very rich man. Now give me
a steak".

Mrs. Sturgess served him well that day with a pang of expectancy at her
heart! Always, she remembered, Richard Hogarth had been strange--uplifted
and apart--a man incalculable, winged, unknown, though walking the
common ways. He _might_ be a "very rich man"...

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