Part 43 (1/2)
He then subscribed the two oaths, and after him the Privy Councillors, the Lord President first, as witnesses. It was then delivered to the Record Keeper, who deposited it in a box, while Hogarth presented his Lord's-Supper certificate: whereupon the Lord President bent the knee and kissed his hand, then the Royal personages, then the Archbishops, advancing in order on both sides.
It was a week of Hope, the turning over of a new leaf, so the spirit of festival reigned, and was deepened when the evening papers that day announced that a _ukase_ of the Sea had reduced rent on British s.h.i.+ps by 1s. 9d. per ton, and was heightened when during that and the following nights Hogarth dispensed three millions in feting England: his illuminations having no resemblance to those sickly twinklings, tremulous at their own cost, previously deemed good enough for the jubilee-days of an empire; the people were astonished: ample and planetary his mind, his hand right royal, and London, bursting into light, flashed tidings of our earth to Mars. It was incredible then that any had ever wept, or would weep again; the bitterest foes of the Regent caught the contagion of world-gala; Europe flocked to London; theatres were gratis; the illusion of the comet of the final night was complete, her lurid rays sprawling 2000 feet aloft in stiff portentousness, prophesying Change, the parks all transfigured into universes of moons, crescents, stars, jerbs, Roman-candles, _pots de brin_, girandoles of rockets, paG.o.das, marquees, each tree a net of fireflies, while from five hundred and thirty balloons, with silent burst, snowed diverse fires.
The new reign opened with promise.
XLV
ESTRELLA, THE PROPHETESS
For three weeks a Provisional Ministry carried on the Government, confining itself to Supply; till, on the 3rd March, the Lord Regent succeeded in forming a Cabinet; and at 9 on the evening of the 5th for the first time addressed himself to the country in the House of Lords.
That night the world seemed hushed to listen, the peridom of Britain packing the Gallery with rainbow, and the peerdom those benches and cross-benches, red as ma.s.sacre and the Scarlet Woman, where thronged 580, while to Charing Cross spread the crowd without. He, from the Throne, addressed them, and they, startled by the revelation of a caste chaster far than Vere de Vere, and a pride far more serenely throned than Hohenzollern, acknowledged him high-born... ”Your lords.h.i.+ps will not fail to perceive my will to invigorate some of our ancient epithets: thus, the First Estate of the Realm shall, during the present Regency, be veritably 'First', and in no case last”; anon he blew his bugle: ”Let us play the man!--easy to say, hard to do: yet it was first said by an Englishman when the doing, I think, was hard enough, his martyr's shroud already rapt aloft in flame: _that_ was magnanimous, my lords, I declare! _there_ was the British Lion”....
That same night a new Land Bill was introduced by Sir Robert Wortley, the Prime Minister--a bill drafted, criticized, and re-altered during two years by the legal experts of the Sea, proposing the ”purchase” of Great Britain at a price of twice the annual value for inherited land, and seven times for land held by purchase: this to be paid in two and seven years respectively, without interest, lands yielding no revenue to become crown-lands from the date of the Bill, which was called: Land Department (Creation) Bill.
It pa.s.sed first reading; but the question was: would the Jews vote for the second reading? Reluctant enough the Jewish members, but there were rumours that the Jewish electorate were instructing their representatives to repent and vote for.
And now spread far the League of Resistance, so did the Adair Street Society, its secret daughter, of which Admiral Donald (O'Hara) had now been elected Honorary Vice-Master, and whose Roll contained the names of an extraordinary number of Territorial officers.
The Society was busy: had building four yachts, all models of the Admiral's yacht attached to the _Mahomet_, which was called the _Mahomet II_; every dusk companies of 25 to 40 men drilled darkly in the back yard at Adair Street, some of them Territorial officers: in rotation they came, they drilled, over 1000; a top room piled with revolvers, swords, bowie-knives...
For the land-magnates laughed at the notion of submitting to the Bill: rather, said they, ”rivers of blood”. The mention by Hogarth of Ridley and Latimer they considered irrelevant; their fathers' heroic mood was a detail: not an entail.
In secret they met. Anarchists of the reddest hue.
One night when the Bill was approaching second-reading Frankl introduced Harris as a member; and wide-eyed stood Harris, though still cynical, with elegant walking-stick, hat c.o.c.ked, and ”I sye”, he whispered, ”are all these real, living lords?”
”Large as life”, answered Frankl.
”Strike me dotty! The Lord said unto my lord, sit thou at my right hand”...the reason of this introduction of Harris being a relation which had arisen between the Army and the Lord Regent, who had been taking a startling interest in this branch of the services, had visited Aldershot, and held five reviews, flattering the soldier by private notice, s.h.i.+fting officers. By an Order in Council of the 3rd March, a reorganization was effected in the Army Board and Consultative Council, of the new men the Adjutant-General being General Sir Merrick Parr, uncle of Admiral Parr of the sea-fort _Shakespeare_, while the Commander-in-Chief and Inspector-General were the direct creations of the Regent, and the whole Headquarters Staff bound to follow him through thick and thin; and that ”second reading” was near, which, if the Jews would vote against, well and good for Adair Street, but, if not, there remained either (1) the prompt execution of O'Hara's scheme without waiting for the four yachts, copies of the _Mahomet II_, which were slow in building; or (2) the knife of Harris.
But, as to (1), when three delegates from the Society had waited upon O'Hara in the _Mahomet_ to urge immediate action, O'Hara had replied: ”No, my lords, I cannot enter into this undertaking until preparations are complete, since the troops we send would never be allowed to land on the forts, if they arrived in s.h.i.+ps not apparently our own. Your lords.h.i.+ps cannot be more anxious than I to rid the earth of a devouring lion like Richard Hogarth, I do a.s.sure you; but, tut, is there nothing else meanwhile? Just let me introduce to your lords.h.i.+ps a little young man whom I know”--he had summoned Harris.
But when the three delegates had gone, he had struck his brow, exclaiming: ”Wretch that I am!--that great and good fellow, the fairest of the sons of men!...what a black depravity must be in this heart--”
he had underlooked in the mirror, and cut a face; ”but ah, Hogarth! this heart is in your net; and I loved the mother, too”....
He had sought the altar, and that night had written piteously to Hogarth, appealing for fresh friends.h.i.+p and reconsideration of his sentence of dismissal.
So, at any rate, was Harris introduced to Adair Street, became its chief minister, and ten days before the second-reading debate had won, by O'Hara's recommendation, an _entree_ into the Palace as servant to a gentleman-usher-daily-waiter: and now he made bright the knife of the a.s.sa.s.sin, tending its edge as a gardener the tender sprout, the knife being his _metier_ and forte, he despising the noisy, mediate, uncertain pistol, nor could use it, his instincts belonging to the Stone Age. But the days pa.s.sed, and he could by no means get near to Hogarth.
One night he boldly penetrated to the royal antechamber with the knife under his waist-band, having pa.s.sed the stairs-guard by a specious official envelope. As it was late, he thought it must be about the Regent's bedtime, having the vaguest ideas as to royal ways and bedtimes, Hogarth being then in a consultation with three of the Cabinet destined to last till morning. And Harris: ”Can I see the Lord Regent?”
with that lifted brow of perpetual surprise and alertness.
”You? Who are you?” asked a gentleman-in-waiting.
”That's neither 'ere nor there, if it comes to that. I'm Captain Macnaghten's man, then”.