M. P. Shiel

“ As Frankl stepped down, a name was called at which Hogarth went cold as a ghost: “Rebekah Frankl”.
And in she stepped splendent, to stand like a Nubian woman, with that retreat of the hips, her ears torn with their load of gold, her throat and breast ablaze, she bringing into that English court the gaudy heat of the Orient, Baal and Astarté, orgies of Hindoo women in temples of Parvati, the pallid passion of Bacchantes. ”

“ The Kaiser passengers had now been sent off to New York, the Boodah's halls seemed the home of desolation; and, as the night advanced, Hogarth and Loveday walked on the roof: for they could find no rest, the sky without moon or star, the sea making of three sides of the Boodah a roaring reef, the wind blowing cold, they two wrapped to the nose in oilskins with sou'-westers, lashed by rages of rain and spray. ”

“ And his wife Rebecca, mother of many sons, prying from a window-lattice, writhed odd the eyebrows of the cynic, one beyond the other: for not with foot alone he danced, but his wrung belly laboured in that travail of Orient dancing; and she turned and smiled to Margaret Loveday a turned-down smile, implying shrug, implying girding, her eyelids lowered, yet indulgent of his nature's rage.
And not with foot and abdomen alone he danced, but his two balancing palms danced to the beat of the heat of the music's heart; and with heel and toe he danced. ”

“ It was the habit of Hogarth, when in the Boodah, to rise very early and ascend in flannels to one of the four doors opening upon the ledge—blocks five feet thick, moved by hydraulic motors—and sometimes Loveday would accompany these walks, they always seeing on the plane of the sea some sail, or by a spyglass the fading light-beam of the Goethe north, of the Solon south; or they watched how the Boodah's galaxy, too, waxed faint and garish as some drama of colour evolved in the East ”

“ In an outer room sat O'Hara, writing, reading Theocritus, or a little book on mediaeval embroidery, forefinger on cheek; and anon, absolutely without motive, he would rise, creep, and peep through a keyhole at Hogarth, then on stalking, bowing tiptoe, grinning a rancid grimace of stealth, get back to his seat, and read—the tutor falling over head and ears in love with his pupil: one of those passions that end tragically. ”

“ She did not see Hogarth at all, but stood averted, implacable, unapproachable, looking across the park, while Hogarth occupied a long silence in gazing up to where, like a show, she stood, illumined by the moon.
At last he sent to her the whisper, “Did you call just now? Did you say 'Come'?”
“What is it you want with me, Hogarth? You have 'summoned' me: but be very quick”.
“I told you: I am wealthier than all the princes—”
“Well, let me inform you that your life is in danger here; if you are a wise man, you will not fail to leave this neighbourhood this night”. ”

“ Civilized land, therefore, was bound to pay rent.
So that the shore people could never have the easy superfluity of the fish-rich fisher—because land was bound to pay rent? And the fisher must buy the shore things so dear with his easy-got fish, toiling, he, too, all the week—because land was bound to pay rent?
The wretchedness of Man, then, was a Law?
Hogarth, confronted by a wall, groaned, and while his body was cold, his brow rolled with sweat, he feeling himself on the brink of some truth profound as the roots of the mountains.... ”

“ No son are you of mine, Richard. Your mother, Rachel, who was a Londoner, served me an ill turn while we were sweethearting, hankering after another man—a Jew millionaire he was, she being a governess in his house; but, Richard, I couldn't give her up: I married her three months before you were born; and not a living creature knows, except, perhaps, one—perhaps one: a priest he was, called O'Hara. ”

“ He rose, master of his limbs now, descended, unrobed in an alcove, and in a corridor above the circular stair came upon Quilter-Beckett, who, acting as guide, Rebekah's hand now resting on Hogarth's arm, led them about the Boodah, now walking, now slipping in little trains over eighty-foot rails, rolled in one heat, laid down the vanishing length of dim-lit corridors floored with white tiles, their frieze of majolica, with rows of ceramics; and they saw the armouries, piles of rifles, cutlasses, pistols; ferneries grown by electric light ”

“ Ah, I wish they'd lend them me to send out to those poor Jews, John. But, for myself—I was mad when I gave that order. It won't do! the world is addicted to its orbit, and relapses. I don't say that it will be always so, but it is now. As against the Empire of the Sea arises—Pat O'Hara; as against the brushing aside of these rebels arise—Germany, Russia, the hostile world. Consider the rancour of the nations at Britain's late advantages in sea-rent, try to conceive the scream of jubilation that rings to the sky to-night against her, and against me. ”

“ Do let us be honest with each other!”
“Well, I don't want to be hard”, said Frankl, looking sideward and downward, plotting behind an unwrinkled brow, intending to have every one of the diamonds; so did O'Hara, who already had his plot.
“No, don't be hard”, said O'Hara: “I am not. I give you an incalculable fortune; I take the same. Live and let live! Why should two shrewd old fellows like you and me be like the dog which, wanting two bones, lost the one he had? ”

“ The officers on the Boodah spoke of her in low and stealthy voices; looked at her with queer and stealthy glances.
“'As a bird to the snare...'” muttered one.
“She comes all right, but will never go”, said another.
“She will be always near us”, said a third.
“Life is an earnest thing, after all”, said a fourth: “there are wrongs, it seems, which only blood can wash out: it comes to that at last”.
Now Loveday ran up, looking scared and busy, a quill behind his ear, Hogarth now having the glass at his face, while his eyes struggled with the reek from his cigar-end. ”

“ At that word, “Fred”, Hogarth started: for under the elm in the beech-wood between Thring and Priddlestone Fred had concealed a thing fallen from heaven, which could be sold for—a thousand pounds.
That would keep the fisher rich during the few days that remained to him!
But the old man could hardly go himself; if he could, would bungle: the thing was heavy—on the lord-of-the-manor's land....
Do a kind act, Hogarth. He would see the old place, his father's grave; and there was a girl who lived in the Hall at Westring whom it was a thrilling thing to be near, even if one did not see.... ”

“ Hogarth's first thought, as getting-up bell clattered réveille through the gallery, was of Loveday's cypher, and by the time the warder came to ask if he would see governor or doctor, a thought of Monsignor O'Hara had somehow mixed itself with the thought of the cypher; when an orderly handed in the day's brown loaf, he was thinking, “Strange that he never told me what he has done”; eating his pint of gruel, he thought: “If I will not escape myself, I might perhaps let another.” ”

“ Beech had bought up, easily ousting the Rothschilds from their old financial kingship: by tens of millions the process had gone on; and still it continued increasingly, for the wealth of Hogarth now, as compared with that of other rich men, was like a ship to a skiff. If he threw upon the market, the bankruptcy of several nations might follow: it was doubtful if the United States could survive; certainly, Austria, Russia, South America must go under.
Nor was the East less his slave: Japan a mercantile nation, China and Turkey in his fiscal net. ”

“ Why not go to your own people?”
“Which people?”
“The Jews”.
“Don't talk that same madness”.
“My time with you is short, Raphael Spinoza”—O'Hara glanced at his watch—“in five minutes we part, never, I do assure you, to meet again. Listen, then, to me: you are a Jew. I knew your mother—the most intellectual woman, I suppose, who ever drew breath, the only one whom I have loved; and I should have known you merely from your resemblance to her at my first glance at you in Colmoor, though I had more precise data: the three moles, the bloodshot eye, for didn't I baptize you? ”

“ Another descent and Hogarth reached a region of laugh and harping: whereupon, dismissing his guide, he tracked the music into a nook so rare, that he stood amazed—a Court of Love, or Mahommedan Heaven, or grot of Omar—anything old, lovely, and devil-sacred—the air chokingly odorous, near a fountain some brazen demon—Moloch or Baal—buried in roses, over everything roses, bounty of flowers, a very harvest-home of Chloris, Flora in revel; and smooth youths bearing cups for some twenty others, all garlanded, besides those on the marble stage ”

“ Ninety-nine per cent of what I say is a lie; even when it is the truth, it is a lie just the same. But at this particular moment I am talking the God's truth: I want you! You shall be my little girl! Chuck Richard!—chuck the swine's-flesh!—I'll take you right away—to Paris—this very night—”
She had arisen, alarmed by his hissed fury. “But, you are stark, staring, raving mad”, she said proudly, “that is what you are”.
Frankl struck the side of the brougham, it flew, and Margaret tottered backward with an exclamation. ”

“ This key O'Hara now had in hand; and as he pushed it into the lock, his jaw jabbered like a baboon's.
Night was now come; the sea rough; Spain lost to sight; the two emptied yachts on the way back to their forts; yonder the lights of the Mahomet II. lying-to; two officers in oilskins walking arm in arm, to and fro, on the roof; and said one: “Look at those waves there all of a sudden: they rather seem to be breaking on the wrong side of us”. ”

“ Nothing could be more exquisite than the contrast between his air of force, authority and importance, and the knickerbockers, the coarse cap, the canvas slop-jacket, which he wore.
Outwardly calm, he was yet very excited by that “I had a motive”; he said to himself: “Suppose this man has some plan! He could invent ten, if he only knew it. And suppose he would tell me it, if I make him believe me innocent! It would be like him!”
When the eleven o'clock dinner-bell rang, and they two were again together, O'Hara said: “Hogarth, I have for some time been intending to give you my story. ”

“ As he stooped to the water, his huge stare ranged the moor, took in the truth of it, and, after waiting ten, fifteen seconds, he upset the can. As two officers, at the outcry, ran toward the spot, Hogarth, his eyes fixed upon them, waited—and all at once, with a flourish, drew his handkerchief.
O'Hara, with a heavy but impassioned run, was away...
He had not run five yards when a chorus of whistles was shrilling.
And quick, that monotony reels into a very frenzy of sensation: it is no more the same world, the same men. Lo, in the Palace of Continuity is an Event. ”

“ Is the fact that one and one make two a theory?”—Hogarth's brow growing every moment redder.
“What can one call it?”
“Call it what you like! But do you believe it?”
“It is quite possibly true; and now that you say it I believe it; but I have never seriously considered the matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because—I don't know. It is out of my line”.
“Your line! Yet you are a human being—”
“Well, partly, yes: say—a novelist”.
“Do not jest! It is incredible to me that you have written book after book, and knew of this divine thing, and did not cram your books with it!”
Loveday flushed. ”

“ His hair grew away flat and sparse from his round brow; on his cheeks three moles, jet-black in their centre. Handsome one called his hairless face: the nose delicate, the lips negroid in their thick pout, the left eye red, streaked with bloodshot, the eyes' brown brightness very beautiful and strange, with a sideward stare wild as that sideward stare of the race-horse; and the lids had a way of lifting largely anon.
He passed through Lagden Dip orchard into the old homestead, into the dining-room, where cowered the old Hogarth, smoking, his hair a mist of wool-white. ”

“ At last those words: and he gave out a shout which begat mouths of echo through the galleries of Colmoor.
“If the workers on shore paid rent among one another”—then they would—on the whole—be in the very position of the fish-rich workers on sea, who paid no rent at all, the nation—as a whole—living on its country rent-free: England English, America American, as the sea human: and our race might then begin to think, to live! ”