Part 3 (2/2)
He was found above-stairs in an empty room, searching the floor for something.
”Come, sir”, said Hogarth, and led him step by step.
But as the old man pa.s.sed the threshold, he fell flat on the slabs of the porch, striking his forehead, printing a stain there.
And the next day, the day of the sale, he still lay in the old chamber, on the ancient bed, dead.
VI
”PEARSON'S WEEKLY”
”Rose Cottage” was without roses: but had a good-sized ”garden” at the back; 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 forenoon at the shed door, watching the lithe ply of Hogarth's hips, and the white-hot iron gus.h.i.+ng flushes; while Margaret, peeping, could see Loveday's slovenly ease of pose, his numberless cigarettes, and hear the rhymes of the sledges chiming.
As to Loveday's 50, she had dared to say nothing to Richard, but kept them, intending to make up the amount already spent, and give them to Frankl. Loveday, meantime, she avoided with constant care.
So two weeks pa.s.sed, till, one day, Loveday, leaning at the forge-door, happened to say: ”Are you interested in current politics? The East Norfolk division is being contested, one of the candidates, Sir Bennett Beaumont, is a friend of mine, and I was thinking that I might go to the meeting 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 a paragraph 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 and commercial 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 indicated to the nation the thing which it should be doing. If I was able to form an a.s.sociation to enter this compet.i.tion--and why not? Stop--I will go with 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 to be taken by Baruch Frankl; and in the midst of a row, the stately great men entered upon the platform and occupied it, hisses like the escape of steam mixing with ”He's a jolly good fellow”. Midway down the pit sat Loveday, and with him Hogarth, whose large stare ranged solemnly round and down from galleries to floor.
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