The Lord of the Sea | Page 9

forehead on his
shoulder; and added: "My carriage, I think, is yonder".
Hogarth saw the carriage-lights at the field's edge, bore her thither, laid
her with care on the cushions, kissed her hand: and this act Frankl
saw--with incredulity of his own eyes. As he approached, Hogarth
walked away.
Frankl mastered his voice to say blandly in Spanish: "Well, how did
you get through, sweet child? Who was that man--? But stay: where are
those two fools?"
This meant the two familiars--the Arabs, Isaac and Mephibosheth, one
of whom had come as footman, the other as coachman--and, as he went
raging about the carriage, with stamps, his boot struck against a body.
There was enough light to reveal to his peering that it was
Mephibosheth, whom Isaac had stabbed, and fled...

Frankl lowered his ear--doubted whether he could detect a breathing;
and though scared, he being a Cohen, and the presence of death
defilement, yet he stayed, bending over Mephi several minutes,
thinking, not of him, but of Hogarth.
"It is that fool, Isaac, has done it", he thought; "and if the man be
dead--" What then? "If he be dead, I've got you, Mr. Hogarth, in the
hollow of this hand...."
His fingers passed over the body: there, sticking in the breast, was a
cangiar which Isaac, in his panic, had left, and Frankl's hand rested on
the handle; if he did not consciously press the knife home, very heavily
his hand rested on it, eyes blazing, beard shaking....
Then he drew out the knife carefully, to hide it in the carriage, listened
again close, felt sure now that death was there, and now scuttled, as if
from plague, guiltily hissing: "Putrid dog...!"
Presently he led his carriage to the station, and made a deposition of the
murder.
Asked if he had any suspicion as to the culprit, he said: "Not the least: I
left the man alone with the carriage, and who could have had any
motive for killing him beats me."
VII
THE ELM
Hogarth, meantime, had made his way to the front of the room, then
vomiting its throng, discovered Loveday, and, deciding to walk home,
they were soon on the cliffs.
And suddenly Loveday: "To-morrow will conclude my fifth week in
Westring. What, do you suppose, has made me stay?"
"I have wondered".
"I work better here...Hogarth, you inspirit me".

"Is that so?"
"It is, yes. Merely your presence is for me a freshness and an
enthusiasm: I catch in the turn of your body hints of adventurous
Columbuses, Drakes, nimble Achilles; and sibylline meanings in some
glance of yours infect my fancy with images of Moses, blind old
Homers--prophet, lawgiver, poet--"
They were passing along a stretch of sand, with some lights of
Lowestoft in sight, arm in arm; and Hogarth said: "Well, you speak
some big words. But my life, you understand, has been as simple and
small as possible. I will tell you: my father sent me to an extraordinary
school--where he got the coin I could never find out-- Lancing College
at Shoreham. There I did very well--only that I was continually getting
it! What was the matter with me when a boy I can't understand: I was
the devil. One summer vacation (I was fourteen) I stole three pounds
from the old man, and ran away one Sunday night. Passed through
London and soon was apprentice in a blacksmith's shop in a Kent
village called Bigham. But in six months I had the forge at my fingers'
ends, and was off: nothing could hold me long. One day I turned up
before the Recruiting Office of Marines in Bristol--just of the right age
for what they call 'second-class boys'--and decided upon the sea--that
sea there--which, from the moment I saw it at the age of four, caused
me a swelling of the breast with which, to this day, it afflicts me. Well,
I got the birth-certificate of another boy, scraped through, was entered
into a District Ship, and finally sailed in the St. Vincent to the Pacific
Station.
"However, my trial of His Majesty's ships was not a success: twice I
was in irons, once leapt into mid-ocean; nor could the battleship hold
me when she had nothing to teach me; so I did to the King what I had
done to the old man--cut and ran.
"It was at Valparaiso, and I made my way across the continent to
Buenos Ayres.
"I forget now what took me to Bristol: but there I was one day when I
happened to see--what do you think?--a girl--sixteen--I a stripling of

nineteen, or so--but she most precocious, spoke like a woman--a
grating in a wall between us. Ah, well, God is good, and His Mercy
endureth for ever. But she said it could never be--she a