VI
"PEARSON'S WEEKLY"
"Rose Cottage" was without roses: but had a good-sized "garden" at theback; and here Hogarth soon had a shed nailed together, with bellows,anvil, sledges, rasps, setts, drifts, and so on, making a little smithy.
He engaged a boy; and soon John Loveday would be leaning all a forenoonat the shed door, watching the lithe ply of Hogarth's hips, and thewhite-hot iron gushing flushes; while Margaret, peeping, could seeLoveday's slovenly ease of pose, his numberless cigarettes, and hear therhymes of the sledges chiming.
As to Loveday's L50, she had dared to say nothing to Richard, but keptthem, intending to make up the amount already spent, and give them toFrankl. Loveday, meantime, she avoided with constant care.
So two weeks passed, till, one day, Loveday, leaning at the forge-door,happened to say: "Are you interested in current politics? The EastNorfolk division is being contested, one of the candidates, Sir BennettBeaumont, is a friend of mine, and I was thinking that I might go to themeeting to-night, if you could come--"
"I invite you to supper here instead".
"Not interested?" queried Loveday.
"Not at all. Stop--I'll show you something in which I _am_ interested".
He ran to a corner, picked up a _Pearson's Weekly_, and pointed to aparagraph headed:
"FIVE HUNDRED-POUND NOTES!
"FIFTY TEN-POUND NOTES!!
"ONE HUNDRED FIVE-POUND NOTES!!!" --a prize for "the most intelligent"article, explaining the cause, or causes, of "the present distress andcommercial crisis".
Loveday read it smiling.
"Ah", said he, "but who is to be the judge of 'the most intelligent'article? Pearson must himself be of the highest intelligence to decide".
"True", said Hogarth. "But the man who offered that prize has indicatedto the nation the thing which it should be doing. If I was able to forman Association to enter this competition--and why not? Stop--I will gowith you--"
So that evening they walked to Beccles, and took train for Yarmouth.
The candidate to speak was a Mr. Moses Max, a Liberal Jew; the chair tobe taken by Baruch Frankl; and in the midst of a row, the stately greatmen entered upon the platform and occupied it, hisses like the escapeof steam mixing with "He's a jolly good fellow". Midway down the pit satLoveday, and with him Hogarth, whose large stare ranged solemnly roundand down from galleries to floor.
Frankl sipped water, and rose, amid shouts of: "Circular!""Caps-and-tassels!"
He made a speech of which nothing was known, except the amiable bows,for a continual noising filled the hall; and up rose Mr. Moses Max, astout fair Jew, whose fist struck with a regular, heavy emphasis. Afterten minutes, when he began to be heard, he was saying:
"...Sir Bennett Beaumont! Is _he_ the sort of man you'd send torepresent you? (Cries of: "Yes!") What is he?--ask yourselves thequestion: a fossilized Tory, a man who's about as much idea of progressas a mummy--people actually say he's _got_ a collection of mummies inhis grand fashionable mansion at Aylesham, and it's only what we shouldexpect of him. (Cheers, and cries of: "Oh, oh!") And what has heever done for East Norfolk? Gentlemen, you may say as you like aboutJews--Jews this, and Jews that--and every man has a right to his opinionin this land of glorious Saxon liberty--but no one can deny that it'sJews who know how to make the money. (Cheers and hisses.) They know howto make it for themselves (hisses)--and, yes, they know how to make itfor the nation! (Loud triumph of cheers.) _That's_ the point--_that_touches the spot! (Cries of: "Oh, oh!") Righteousness, it is said,exalteth a nation: well, so do Jews--"
"That is false", said a voice--Hogarth, who had stood up.
The words were the signal for a shower of cheers swept by gusts ofhisses; and immediately one region of the pit was seen to be a scrimmageof fisticuffs, mixed with policemen, sticks, savage faces, and bentbacks; while the two galleries, craning to see, bellowed like Bashan.
Moses Max was leaning wildly, gesticulating, with shouts; while Loveday,who had turned pale on Hogarth's rising, touched Hogarth's coat-tail,whereupon Hogarth, stooping to his ear, shouted: "We will have somefun..."
"The paid agents of Beaumont!" now shouted Moses Max; "sent to disturbour meeting! Englishmen! will you submit to this? The nation shallhear--"
At that point Moses Max, in his gesticulation, happening to touch aswitch in the platform-rail, out glowered into darkness every lightat that end of the hall: at which thing the audience was thrown into astate of boisterous lawlessness, a tumult reigning in the gloom like theconstant voice of Niagara, until suddenly the platform was again lit up,and the uproar lulled.
And now again Moses Max was prone to speak, with lifted fist; but beforeever he could utter one single word, a voice was ringing through theAssembly Rooms:
"_Where_ was Moses when the light went out?"
This again was Hogarth; and it ended Moses Max for that night.
Hogarth had not sat since he had called out "That is false": his tallfigure was recognized; and, with that electric spontaneity of crowds, hewas straightway the leader of the meeting, men darting from their seatswith waving hats, sticks, arms, and vociferous mouth, the chairman halfstanding, with a shivering finger directed upon Hogarth, shrieking tothe police: but too late--Hogarth had brushed past Loveday's knees--wasdashing for the crowded platform-steps--was picking his way, stumbling,darting up them.
Crumpled in his hand was a _Pearson's Weekly_.
Now he is to the front--near Frankl.
"Friends! I have ventured to take the place of our friend, Moses,here--no ill-will to him--for with respect to the question before us,whether we elect Beaumont or Max, I care, I confess, little. I'm ratheran Anti-Jew myself (hissing and cheers), but it strikes me that the Jewsare the least of our trouble. To a man who said to me that the cause ofall our evil days is the inability of England to feed these few millionJews I'd answer: "I don't know how you can be so silly!" Why, the wholehuman race, friends, can find room on the Isle of Wight--the earthlaughs at the insignificant drawings upon her made by the small infantrycalled Man. Then, why do we suffer, friends? We _do_ suffer, I suppose?I was once at Paris, and at a place called 'the Morgue' I saw exposedyoung men with wounded temples, and girls with dead mouths twisted, andinnocent old women drowned; and there must be a biggish cry, you know,rising each night from the universal earth, accusing some hoary fault inthe way men live together! What is the fault? If you ask _me_, I answerthat I am only a common smith: _I_ don't know: but I know this about thefault, that it is something simple, commonplace, yet deep-seated, or weshould all see it; but it is hidden from us by its very ordinariness,like the sun which men seldom look at. It _must_ be so. And shall wenever find the time to think of it? Or will never some grand man, mightyas a garrison, owning eyes that know the glances of Truth, arise to seefor us? Friends! but, lacking him, what shall we do to be saved?--fortruly this 'civilization' of ours is a blood-washed civilization,friends, a reddish Juggernaut, you know, whose wheels cease not: so weshould be prying into it, provided we be not now too hide-bound: forthat's the trouble--that our thoughts grow to revolve in stodgy groovesof use-and-wont, and shun to soar beyond. Look at our Parliament--ahurdy-gurdy turning out, age after age, a sing-song of pigmyregulations, accompanied for grum kettledrum by a musketry of suicides,and for pibroch by a European bleating of little children. We are stilla million miles from civilization! For what is a civilized society? Itcan only be one in which the people are proud and happy! The people ofAfrica are happy, not proud; not civilized; the people of England havea certain pride, not a millionth part as superb as it might be, but arefar from happy: far from civilized. The fact is, Man has never begun tolive, but still sleeps a deep sleep. Well! let us do our best, we here!I have here a paper offering a prize to the man of us who will go to theroot of our troubles, and my idea in usurping the place of our friend,Mr. Max, was to ask you to form an association with me to enter thatcompetition. There is no reason why our association should not be largeas the nation, nor why it should not sprea
d to France and Turkey. Forthe thing presses, and to-morrow more of the slaughtered dead will beswarming in the mortuaries of London. Will you, then? The understandingwill be this: that each man who writes his name in a note-book whichwill lie at Rose Cottage, Thring, or who sends his name, will devotesixty minutes each day to the problem. I happen to be in a position touse a chapel at Thring, and there I will hold a meeting--"
At this point Frankl rose: Thring was _his_, his own, own, own; and nowhis eyes had in them that catlike blaze which characterized his rages.
"Here, police! police!" he hissed low, "what's the use of policethat don't act!" And now he raised his voice to a scream: "Jews! Shewyourselves! Don't let this man stay here...!"
About twenty Jews leapt at the challenge; at the same time Hogarth,seeing two policemen running forward from the back, folded his arms, andcried out: "Friends! I have not finished! Don't let me be removed..."
Whereupon practically every man in the pit was in motion, for or againsthim, the galleries two oblongs of battle.
As up the two curving stairs stormed the mob, by a sudden rush like anocean-current he was borne off his feet toward the side, and was aboutto bring down his sharp-pointed little knuckles, when his eye fell uponthe face of a lady who had fainted.
He had had no idea that she was there!--Rebekah Frankl.
She had quietly fainted, not at the rush--but before--during Hogarth'sspeech.
Hogarth managed to fight his way to a door at the platform back withher, entered a room where some chairs were, but, seeing a stair, couldnot let her go from his embrace, but descended, passed along a passageand out into a patch of green.
She, under the dark sky, whispered: "It is you", her forehead on hisshoulder; and added: "My carriage, I think, is yonder".
Hogarth saw the carriage-lights at the field's edge, bore her thither,laid her with care on the cushions, kissed her hand: and this act Franklsaw--with incredulity of his own eyes. As he approached, Hogarth walkedaway.
Frankl mastered his voice to say blandly in Spanish: "Well, how did youget through, sweet child? Who was that man--? But stay: where are thosetwo fools?"
This meant the two familiars--the Arabs, Isaac and Mephibosheth, one ofwhom had come as footman, the other as coachman--and, as he went ragingabout the carriage, with stamps, his boot struck against a body. Therewas enough light to reveal to his peering that it was Mephibosheth, whomIsaac had stabbed, and fled...
Frankl lowered his ear--doubted whether he could detect a breathing; andthough scared, he being a Cohen, and the presence of death defilement,yet he stayed, bending over Mephi several minutes, thinking, not of him,but of Hogarth.
"It is that fool, Isaac, has done it", he thought; "and if the man bedead--" What then? "_If_ he be dead, I've got you, Mr. Hogarth, in thehollow of this hand...."
His fingers passed over the body: there, sticking in the breast, was acangiar which Isaac, in his panic, had left, and Frankl's hand rested onthe handle; if he did not consciously press the knife home, very heavilyhis hand rested on it, eyes blazing, beard shaking....
Then he drew out the knife carefully, to hide it in the carriage,listened again close, felt sure now that death was there, and nowscuttled, as if from plague, guiltily hissing: "Putrid dog...!"
Presently he led his carriage to the station, and made a deposition ofthe murder.
Asked if he had any suspicion as to the culprit, he said: "Not theleast: I left the man alone with the carriage, and who could have hadany motive for killing him beats me."