The Lord of the Sea | Page 3

say out clearly now what it is you mean--"
"Now, you are too hard. You know I am wild in love with you. And so are you with me--"
"_I_?"--with shrinking modesty in her under-looking eyes. "Oh, no-- don't have any delusions like that about me, please! You said that you liked me: and as I am in the habit of speaking the truth myself, I thought that--perhaps--But my meeting you, to be frank with you, was for the sake of my brother".
"Well, you are as candid as they make them," he said, eyeing her with his mild eye. "But what's the matter with your brother? Hard up?"
"He's worried about something". "He must have some harvest-money put away?"
"He has something in Reid's Bank at Yarmouth, I believe".
"Well, shall I tell you what's the matter with him? He's afraid, your brother. He has refused to wear the cap, and he thinks that I shall be down upon him like a thousand of bricks...But suppose I exempt him, and you and I be friends? That's fair".
"What do you mean?"
"Give us one--"
"Believe me, you talk--!"
"Don't let your angry passions rise. I am going to have a kiss off those handsome lips--"
Before she could stir he was in the act of the embrace; but it was never accomplished: for he saw her colour fade, heard crackling twigs, a step! as someone emerged from the wood ten yards away-- Richard.
The thought in Margaret's mind was this: "Father in Heaven, whatever will he think of me here with this Jew?"
Hogarth stopped, staring at this couple; did not understand: Margaret should have been home from "class-meeting"...only, he observed her heaving bosom; then twisted about and went, his walk rapid, in his hand a hunting-crop, by which, with a very sure aim, he batted away pebbles from his path, stooping each time.
III
THE HUNTING-CROP
Along the towing-path to the farmhouse. He did not look behind: was like a man who has received a wound, and wonders whence.
A pallor lay under his brown skin, brown almost as an Oriental's, and he was called "the Black Hogarth"--the Hogarths being Saxon, on the mantel in the dining-room being a very simple coat--a Bull on Gules. But Richard was a startling exception. His hair grew away flat and sparse from his round brow; on his cheeks three moles, jetblack 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.
He glanced up, but said nothing; and Richard said nothing, but walked about, his arms folded, frowning turbulently, while the twilight deepened, and Margaret did not come.
Now he planted a chair near the old man, sat, and shouted: "Listen, sir!"
Up went the old Hogarth's hand to push forward the inquiring ear, while Richard, who, till now, had guarded him from all knowledge of the Circular, snatched it from his breast-pocket, and loudly read.
As the sense entered his head, up the old man shot his palms, shaking from them astonishment and deprecation, with nods; then, with opening arms, and an under-look at Richard: "Well, there is nothing to be said: the land is his...."
Hogarth leapt up and walked out; he muttered: "The land is his, but he is mine...."
The question at the bottom of his mind had been this: "Does Margaret, too, go with the land?" But he did not utter it even to himself: went out, fingering the crop, stalking toward the spot where he had left the man and the woman. But Margaret was then coming through the wood; Frankl had gone up to the Hall; and Hogarth crossed the bridge and went climbing toward the mansion.
It was a Friday evening, and up at the Hall the Sabbath had commenced, two Sabbath-tapers shining now upon the Mezuzzah at the dining-room door, Frankl being of the Cohan?m, the priestly class--a Jew of Jews. As he had passed in, two Moghrab?m Jews had saluted him with: "Shabbath"; and mildly he had replied: "Shabbath".
But swift upon his steps strode Hogarth: Hogarth was at the lodgegates --was on the drive--was in the hall.
But, since Frankl was just preparing to celebrate the kiddush, "He cannot be seen now", said a man in the hall.
"He must", said Hogarth.
As he brushed past, two men raised an outcry: but Hogarth continued his swift way, and had half traversed a salon hung with a chaos of cut-glass when from a side-door appeared the inquiring face of Frankl in pious skull-cap.
"What is it?" he cried--"I cannot be