Part 31 (1/2)

”Yes”.

”Who?”

For a moment Loveday's answer hesitated: and in that moment, O'Hara, with lightning decision, had his mouth at Hogarth's ear: ”Come with me quick--then fall down and wors.h.i.+p me for a month! _Someone is in the Malachite Hall!_”

Like sudden death Hogarth's colour fled his face; in another instant he was a blind, oblivious wight...had known that she was in Petersburg; but not that she was at the masque.

In a moment shrubbery, lights, all life, rushed into transformation for him: and with an excitement of the eyes, the bloodshot left looking bloodier, he went after O'Hara, tossing back at Loveday that fatal saying: ”_To-morrow_....”

A little previously O'Hara, having got from Frankl details of Rebekah's dress, had spotted her in primrose silk, black mask and domino, and soon with Hogarth refound her in the crush: whereas Hogarth went about prospecting over the crowd, with that excitement of his red-veined eyeb.a.l.l.s, once even entered into talk with a group of four diplomatists, but all the time with eyeb.a.l.l.s absent in hankering tracking, out prowling after one morbid form, as the stallion's prowls after his Sally.

After an hour she said in French over her shoulder: ”Why follow me?”

And as he bowed compliance, she added: ”Are you well?”

He said: ”Yes”, and bowed, and she nodded twice, smiling a little, as they parted.

He, on the wings of exaltation, made haste to salute the Throne and leave the palace, rus.h.i.+ng toward solitude to brood upon that smile, those familiar nods, and the gentle ”Are you well?”--in his landau with him O'Hara, who persecuted him even to his bedroom; and when, after an hour, the priest at last reappeared in a corridor, the night-lights there shone upon an exultant visage, like a climber's who, after long clamberings, at last stamps on the Matterhorn, and looks abroad.

When he entered his own room, he stood with a hung head, till, sharply looking up, he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with amazed, realization and opening arms: ”Well, it's done!--I've got it!” Now he put forefinger to nose, and cut a beastly face at himself in the mirror-wall.

The next day Hogarth rather guiltily said to Loveday: ”Well, I have promised old O'Hara the _Mahomet_ for the Straits. Don't frown--I owe him something, and the clever beast got over me in crazy moment”.

”Quite so”, Loveday coldly said: and thenceforth, the thing being done, was mum as to the name of the lady connected with O'Hara's crime.

He returned immediately to England, having there many occupations, which multiplied as the islands everywhere neared completion, the first of the launches taking place at Spezzia on the 7th of February.

A fortnight before this event the Beech-fever had revived, the coming launch being no secret, and the doubt whether ”Beech's Folly” might be no folly, and the question what, on the whole, Beech's Folly might really bode, filled once more the consciousness of the Western world. By the 1st of February a drop was recorded in many general securities, in ”governments”, rentes, and consols; in Berlin the bank-rate rose one per cent.; it was stated that specie was acc.u.mulating in European vaults; while up leapt futures-cotton in the Liverpool market. At last the First Lord of the Treasury, in a speech at Manchester, gave sign of the Government's consciousness of the new fact, saying that he could only repeat the answer given by the First Lord of the Admiralty to the recent Deputations of the Chamber of s.h.i.+pping and of Merchant s.h.i.+ppers, that Britain and the other maritime nations would know how to protect the seas from any nuisance. He antic.i.p.ated no nuisance. The structures popularly known as ”Beech's Folly” (prolonged laughter) would be provided with lighthouses: and until they proved a nuisance on the ocean's fairways, the Governments must permit to private enterprise that free hand which was the characteristic of our age; moreover, a recognized Government had avowed its a.s.sociation with these structures.

Nevertheless, the fever heightened. The light-system of the _Boodah_, now included in the usual alphabetical lists of derelicts, was conned by thousands of mariners, while in the crowded captains', underwriters', and committee rooms at Lloyd's discussion buzzed and speechified in every tone of gravity. Suddenly in the F. G. and S. clause marine insurance underwent a profound modification; and it was then that the millionaire, Schroeder, at that time a German clerk in the City, managed to borrow five thousand pounds, and quickly cleared his pile by underwriting on larger F. C. and S. terms. And again raged the sale of the islands as penny salt-cellars, finger-basins, etc.; in broker's and sub-editor's office the tape-machine clicked the hourly progress of preparations at Spezzia; while every by-street was dreadful with that music-hall chorus:

”To Spezzia runs the Pullman train; The Follies soon their sense will teach; We've Beech, O dear, upon the brain, He brains upon the beach”.

Meantime, the question of the drawing-room was ”Are you going to Spezzia?” and by the 7th so great a pilgrimage of tourists--experts, idlers, cinematographers, special correspondents, ministers of state, Yankees, officers, social stars--had flocked to the scene, that accommodation failed in the town and surrounding hill-country, from Le Grazie on the west, to Lerici on the east of the Gulf.

The morning dawned bright--Italian sky, tranquil Italian sea--and by nine the harbour was alive with small-craft and Portovenere steamboats, all gala with flags; on the land side, too, over the hills, up the old road called Giro della Foce, and before the villages commanding the town, spread a cloud of witnesses; while the mult.i.tude in possession of _permessos_ for the dock-region stretched across a hundred and sixty acres, perched on every coign, and murmuring like the sea.

And all in the air a fluttered consciousness of the to-come, the present nothing, an hour hence everything--like the suspense of nature before gales, and that greatness and novelty of marriage-mornings: for such a bride that day would rush to the brine as it had never embraced.

There lay the hulk, all nuptial in colours, her roof looking like a _plaza_ of Lima or La Paz at Carnival, flags in mountain-ridges round her edges, flags in festoons, in slanting clothes-lines, in trophy-groups, on bandroled poles, bedecking her; some scaffolding still round her; and three running derricks, capable of wielding guns and boilers of 140 tons, craned their shears about her. A temporary stair under flags ran right up to a ledge above the waterline: from which ledge little steel steps led here and there to the roof; round the edge of roof and ledge running two bal.u.s.trades, surrounding the hulk; and over that upper portion, four times repeated in white letters ten feet high, the name _BOODAH_ boomed itself.

By eleven some seven hundred people stood and sat on the roof--the _elite_ of Europe, invited to the luncheon after the launch, seeming to the tract of on-lookers quite dainty and visionary there, like objects mirrored in an eye. And they formed groups, of which some chatted, and were elegant, and some spoke the gravest words uttered for centuries.

”What, really, is the _Boodah_?” asked a Servian Minister of a French: ”is she a whim, a threat, or a tool?”

”She is too heavy for a whim”, answered the French, ”too dear for a threat, and too fantastic for a tool. Time will show”.

But this was no answer at all: something more to the point came from a mult.i.tudinous tumult of sledges below--the workmen ”wedging-up”.