Part 45 (2/2)

”Yes. I might mention--did your Lords.h.i.+p's Majesty grant a ten minutes'

audience to Admiral Donald for this hour?”

”_Who_? Yes, I think--Just kick him down the stairs! Or no--say I may see him some day”.

This message, as the usher dashed through, was faithfully dropped at O'Hara's consciousness; and O'Hara said: ”Hoity-toity...!”

Bent-backed he descended to the Quadrangle, with a sense of defeat, rebuff, contumely, rage, but quite sprightly said to Harris, waiting beyond the Gateway: ”Well, boy, how can we make a night of it? I feel that way”.

”Seen Mr. 76?”

”Tut, no. Sharpen up that knife for his throat, boy!”

And Harris exclaimed: ”Another chynge! Strike me silly!--what did I sye? Give me a new 'eart, O Lawd, it _is_--you grey-haired old duffer.

Chopping and chynging, always the syme--to your old wife Jyne. I'd be ashamed of myself in your plyce. But sharpen up the knife, it _is_”.

XLVII

THE EMIGRANTS

Late the same night the Regent received at the Palace a telegram about Rebekah: She had travelled alone to Southampton, where a landau at the station had awaited her, in which she had driven to a country-house near the Itchen named ”Silverfern”, two miles from Bitterne Manor, in which lived an elderly gentleman, Mr. Abrahams, ark-opener and scroll-bearer in the Synagogue, with his wife and two sons. The pa.s.sage of these, and of Rebekah, was booked by the _Calabria_, Jewish emigrant-s.h.i.+p, to sail in four days.

Hogarth no sooner heard these tidings than he tumbled into crime: resolved to kidnap Rebekah; to break his own law for his own behoof: one of the basest acts of a King.

He had four days: and by the end of the second four men lay in wait round ”Silverfern”, one a sea-fort sub-lieutenant, one a detective, and two others very rough customers: a cottage having been hired by them for the reception of Rebekah in a dell a mile higher up the Itchen.

But something infects the world; and gravity badgers the bullet's trajectory; and a magnetic ”H” disturbs the needle; and ”impossible”

roots turn up in the equation; and the finger of G.o.d is in every pie.

Hence, though the four ravishers lay in wait, and actually effected a seizure, the Regent did not get his girl.

None of the four had ever seen her: but as there was no young lady except her at ”Silverfern”, that seemed of no importance, so she had been only described to them as dark and pretty.

But on the night after Rebekah's arrival, there came to ”Silverfern” a new inmate: Margaret Hogarth.

_Her_ pa.s.sage, too, was booked to Palestine.

For Frankl had said: ”In expelling the Jews, he shall expel his own sister. Oh, that's sweet, after all!”

At this time Frankl's interest in Land Bill and England was dead, two interests only remaining to him: so to realize his share in the Western world as to reach Jerusalem loaded with wealth; and also, not less intense, to hurt Hogarth, to outwit him, to cry quits at the last.

It was hard--Hogarth being set so high; but he invoked the help of the Holy One (blessed be He): and was not without resource.

Why had Hogarth never had him seized, racked? What restrained the Regent _now_? That was a question with Frankl. Hogarth might say, even to himself, that Frankl was vermin too small to be crushed, that he waited for his sister from G.o.d; but lately the real reason had grown upon Frankl: it was because Hogarth _was afraid_ of him! afraid that Frankl, if persecuted beyond measure, might blurt out the Regent's convict past, and raise a sensation of horror through the world not pleasant to face.

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