Part 44 (2/2)
It was by an Order in Council!
”DECLARATION of the Court of Great Britain respecting the Order in Council.
”At the Court at Buckingham Palace, the 24th day of March, his Lords.h.i.+p's Majesty, the Lord Regent, in Council.
”WHEREAS His Lords.h.i.+p's Majesty was pleased to declare in the name and on behalf of His Majesty the King on the 23rd day of March: THAT if at any time, after the expiration of the three months following, any of the hereinafter mentioned trades, occupations, pursuits, or acts, shall be carried on or done within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by any person being a person coming within the sense of the term ”Jew” as hereinafter defined, THEN and thereafter such person shall be liable to the pains and penalties hereinafter specified”.
No Jew might own or work land, or teach in any Cheder or school, or be entered at any Public School or University, or sign any stamped doc.u.ment, or carry on certain trades, or vote, or officiate at any public service, and so on: parentage, not religion, const.i.tuting a ”Jew”. Through Britain this piece of Russian despotism sent a wave of quiet gladness, and an epidemic of jest broke out, in club, factory, ”Lane”, and drawing-room: ”You hurry up--to Jericho!” became the workman's answer to a Jew; it was remarked that the chimney of train and steams.h.i.+p would furnish a new pillar of cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night, to go before the modern Exodus; they were little to be pitied, for even Heaven was their mortgagor in land, with promise to pay--the Promised Land; a syndicate would be formed to ”pool” milk and honey, and either Sharon or Salem would become the new Get-O at any price; being a rather Peculiar People, they would call the new Temple ”the 'Ouse” (of Prey-ers), and make contango-day coincide with Pa.s.sover....But let him laugh that is of a merry heart: as for Israel, with weary breast and hunted stare he sandalled his foot for the final Exodus: yet not as them without hope. Already--some days before the Order in Council--the disappearance of Estrella's body, her daring prophecies, had led to the embarkation of 700 Jews for Palestine; and when the Regent's Edict gave startling confirmation of her prediction of ”the Return”, in many a million hearts thrilled the certainty: ”the Day of the Lord is nigh!”
And with that their stoicism and organizing strength, they mutely turned to follow the finger of Destiny: their _takifs_ (rich men), hard upon the unchosen, were, as usual, liberal to their own, the fund swelled, and a Committee left England for the acc.u.mulation of stores and implements; at the same time two Parliament Bills were pa.s.sed in two sittings, empowering the purchase by Government of land ”owned” by Jews on Land Bill terms, and quickening the machinery for the collection of debts due to Jews.
Whereupon, ”You see”, said the Chief Rabbi, ”he drives us out: but he makes us ap.r.o.ns--if only of fig-leaves--to cover us. Let us bow to his rod, and thank him, and go: he is G.o.d's Minister”.
So they went: the world's mercantile marine having been summoned, sea-ports were turned into caravansaries of gabardine and ear-lock: the Exodus began.
In the midst of which it came to the knowledge of the Regent that the house of Frankl was making ready for departure.
And now Hogarth rebelled against Heaven: self-forgetfully he did his best, and it returned and struck him dead: for what good, he thought, would his life do him, she always in Asia, he in Europe?
He wrote to her, a pa.s.sionate hotch-potch of command and grovelling supplication: if she went, he would curse her; would go mad; would blaspheme G.o.d; would throw up everything; would die.
He had promised to go down to Oxford to receive a degree, and as up to the time of his departure she had not replied, he went half-unconscious of himself and those about him.
Now, upon Adair Street the Expulsion had brought despair, the second-reading now a.s.sured, the Jews' vote over, and new writs issued; the second-reading debate was actually in progress at that date of the Oxford visit; and though the four yachts, copies of the _Mahomet II_, were being rapidly put together, the Bill, if at all pressed, must get through before they could be ready; nor could the House of Lords long delay its pa.s.sage.
There remained Harris, so far ineffectual, but not therefore hopeless: so he, spurred, went down to Oxford.
But what Harris could not do was to get near to Hogarth: his task was, as it were, to pluck Venus from the firmament; but he mused, he mused upon her, with musing astrologic eye, with grand patience, fascinated by her very splendours, not without hope. When at 8 P.M. a banquet was served to 250 guests in the Radcliffe Library, the upper gallery being open to a crawling public to see the lions feed, Harris, watching thence the unattainable under the blue of the canopy--blue always in honour of the Sea--thought within himself: ”Ah, Mr. 76, you've got it all, ain't you?--for the time being. But 'ow'd you feel if I had a pistol now?
Gawd! I can just see him nicely curl and kick. Worse luck, I can't shoot a bloomin' 'ouse”.
But the opportunity was so exquisite, that he resolved to try--the exit reached, would run, get a pistol, and return; but at the door itself a hand touched his shoulder, and, with a twist of guilty scare, he saw--O'Hara.
”Good Gawd!” he whispered, ”what you want to startle anybody like that for? Don't you know that the wicked flea pursueth every man, but the righteous shall escape his filthy snare?”
”What are you doing here, boy?” asked O'Hara.
”Thick-head! ain't I down 'ere after this precious Mr. 76?”--for Hogarth, if Monarch of the Sun, would have remained for Harris only a glorified 76, Colmoor being for him the reality of the universe, all else mirage, such stuff as dreams are made of.
”Well”, said O'Hara, ”come with me: want to talk to you”--he just come from the _Mahomet_ through Spain and France, drawn to Hogarth as moths to a candle, his pet.i.tion for pardon not yet answered; and he a.s.sumed that Hogarth's wrath still blazed, though, in fact, answer was only delayed by compet.i.tion of greater interests, Hogarth having forgotten O'Hara; at any rate, O'Hara, with shrinking qualms, had come to Oxford, thinking: ”I will try and get at him for one more talk--I am not afraid of your eyes, my son: tut! I've seen the great brow in a prison-cap. And the haughty beast still loves old Pat at bottom, I do declare. Be bold, be bold, but not _too_ bold....Well, I will! And, if I perish, I perish, and he perishes, too, so help me, G.o.d”....
And to Harris, walking by the towing-path, he said: ”No, boy, don't you.
Not now. Tut!--those lords: they are only making you their tool. Don't you understand? Hogarth is robbing from them the land which they have robbed from the British people, and they naturally wish to murder him: but what have _you_, or I, to do with that? Let the thieves fight it out between them, while we enjoy ourselves, if we can. Weren't we happy in the _Mahomet_, boy--we two? Didn't you roll whole weeks drunk? That was better than Colmoor, eh, Alfie? And didn't I have my incense, my grapes, my little Circa.s.sian, and ten thousand pounds in yellow gold a year? Wasn't that all right? Well, we may have it again!--not in the _Mahomet_, perhaps, but somewhere. Do nothing--not yet: till I give the word. If you _must_ kill, get a dog, or a horse, or an obscure old man, not the Regent of England--”
<script>