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II
THE FEZ

Frankl took up residence at Westring in September, and by November every ale-house, market, and hiring in Westring had become a scene of discussion.

The cause was this: Frankl had sent out to his tenants a Circular containing the words:

"…tenants to use for wear in the Vale a fez with tassel as the Livery of the Manor…the will of the Lord of the Manor…no exception…"

But though intense, the excitement was not loud: for want was in many a home; though after three weeks there were still six farmers who resisted.

And it happened one day that five of these at the Martinmas "Mop," or hiring, were discussing the matter, when they spied the sixth boring his way, and one exclaimed: "Yonder goes Hogarth! Let's hear what he's got to say!" and set to calling.

Hogarth twisted, and came winning his way, taller than the crowd, with "What's up? Hullo, Clinton—not a moment to spare to-day—"

"We were a-talking about that Circular—!" cried one.

At that moment two other men joined the group: one a dark-skinned Jew of the Moghrabîm; the other a young man—an English author—on tour. And these two heard what passed.

Hogarth stood suspended, finding no words, till one cried: "Do you mean to put the cap on?"

He laughed a little now. " I! The whip! The whip!"—he showed his hunting-crop, and was gone.

His manner of speech was rapid, and he had a hoarse sort of voice, almost as of sore-throat.

Of the two not farmers, one—the author—enquired as to his name, and farm; the other man—the Moghrabîm Jew-that evening recounted to Frankl the words which he had heard.

* * * * * * *

One afternoon, two weeks later, Loveday, the author, was leaning upon a stile, talking to Margaret Hogarth; and he said: "I love you! If you could deign —"

"Truth is," she said, "you are in love with my brother, Dick, and you think it is me!"

She was a woman of twenty-five, large and buxom, though neat- waisted, her face beautifully fresh and wholesome, and he of middle- size, with a lazy ease of carriage, small eyes set far apart, a blue-velvet jacket, duck trousers very dirty, held up by a belt, a red shirt, an old cloth hat, a careless carle, greatly famed.

"But it isn't of your brother, but of you , that I am wanting to speak! Tell me—"

"No—I can't. I am a frivolous old woman to be talking to you about such things at all! But, since it is as you say, wait, perhaps I may be able—But I must be going now—"

There was embarrassment in her now: and suddenly she walked away, going to meet—another man.

She passed through stubble-wheat, disappeared in a pine-wood, and came out upon the Waveney towing-path. On the towing-path came Frankl to meet her.

He took her hand, holding his head sideward with a cajoling fondness, wearing the flowing caftan, and a velvet cap which widened out a-top, with puckers.

"Well, sweetheart…" he said.

"But, you know, I begged you not to use such words to me!"—from her.

"What, and I who am such a sweetheart of yours?"—his speech very foreign, yet slangily correct, being, in fact, all slang.

"No," she said, "you spoke different at first, and that is why—But this must be the last, unless you 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. euX8mfaGpnKKmRJZMNsfXzs0CFZGyXWBNJrofx0gG9m4r4KnlSux0apDhuXNrVt+



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, 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.

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 Cohanîm, the priestly class—a Jew of Jews. As he had passed in, two Moghrabîm Jews had saluted him with: "Shabbath"; and mildly he had replied: "Shabbath".

But swift upon his steps strode Hogarth: Hogarth was at the lodge- gates—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 seen—"

He recognized the man of the towing-path, and on his face grew a look of scare, as he backed toward a study: but before he could slam the door, Hogarth, too, was within.

"Who are you? What is it?" whined Frankl, who was both hard master and cringing slave.

Hogarth produced the Circular: but of Margaret not a word.

"Caps-and-tassels, you?"—flicking Frankl on the cheek with a fillip of his middle finger.

"You dare assault me! Why, I swear, I meant no harm—"

Down came the whip upon the Jew's shoulders, Frankl, as the stings penetrated his caftan, giving out one roar, and the next instant, seeing the two Jews at the doorway, groaned the mean whisper: "Oh, don't make a man look small before the servants", crying out immediately: "Help!"

Soon five or six servants were at the door, and, of these, two Arab Jews rushed forward, one a tall fellow, the other an obese bulk with bright black eyes, the former holding a slender blade—the knife with which "shechita", or slaughtering, was done: and while the corpulent Jew threw himself upon Hogarth, the other drew this knife through the flesh of Hogarth's shoulder, at the same time happening to cut the heavy Arab across the wrist.

Now, there was some quarrel between the two Arabs, and the injured
Arab, forgetting Hogarth, turned fiercely upon his fellow.

Hogarth, meanwhile, had not let go Frankl, nor delivered the intended number of cuts: so he was again standing with uplifted whip, when his eye happened to fall upon the doorway.

He saw there a sight which struck his arm paralysed: Rebekah Frankl.

Two months had she been here at Westring—and he had not known it!

There she stood peering, of a divine beauty in his eyes, like half- mythical queens of Egypt and Babylon, blinking in a rather barbarous superfluity of jewels: and, blinded and headlong, he was in flight.

As for Frankl, he locked that door upon himself, and remained there, forgetting the sanctification of the Sabbath.

The Hebrew's eyes blazed like a wild beast's. The words: "As the
Lord liveth…" hissed in whispers from his lips.

He took up a pinch of old ashes, and cast it into the air.

As Shimei, the son of Gera, cursed David, so he cursed Richard Hogarth that night—again and again—with grave rites, with cancerous rancour.

"I will blight him, as the Lord liveth; as the Lord liveth, I will blight him…" he said repeatedly, his draperied arms spread in pompous imprecation.

As a beginning, he sat and wrote to Reid's Bank, requesting the payment in gold of £14,000—to produce a stoppage of payment at the little Bank in which were Richard's savings.

Afterwards, with mild eyes he repaired to the dining-hall, and sanctified the Sabbath, blessing a cup of wine, dividing up two napkined loaves, and giving to Rebekah his benediction. 7oJZ5U7HFC7XmCrIsnrb+3lU4OUu6guieE+rdhdTSDa2JO+WprMqJpOA3ruVmgfz



IV
THE SWOON

Hogarth went moodily down the hillside to the Waveney, across the bridge, and home, his sleeve stained with blood.

In the dining-room, he threw himself into an easy-chair in a gloom lit only by the fireglow, in the room above mourning a little harmonium which Margaret was playing, mixed with the sound of Loveday's voice.

The old man said: "Richard, my boy…"

Hogarth did not answer.

"Richard, I have somewhat to say to you—are ye hearkening?"

Richard, losing blood, moaned a drowsy "Yes".

And the old Hogarth, all deaf and bedimmed, said: "I had to say it to you, and this night let it be: Richard, you are no son of mine".

At this point Hogarth's head dropped forward: but many a time, during long years, he remembered a dream in which he had heard those words: "Richard, you are no son of mine…"

The old Hogarth continued to ears that did not hear:

"I have kept it from you—for I'm under a bargain with a firm of solicitors in London; but, Dick, it doesn't strike me as I am long for this world: a queer feeling I've had in this left side the last hour or two; and there's that Circular—I never heard of such a thing in all my born days. But what can we do? You'll have to wear the cap—or be turned out. Always I've said to myself, from a young man: 'Get hold of a bit of land someways as your own God's own': but I never did; the days went by and by, and it all seems no longer than an after-dinner nap in a barn on a hot harvest-day. But a bit of land—the man who has that can make all the rest work to keep him. And if they turn me out, I couldn't live, lad: the old house has got into my bones, somehow. Anyhow, I think the time is come to tell you in my own way how the thing was. 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. But that's how it was. Your father was a Jew, and your mother was a Jew, and you are a Jew, and in the under-bottom of the old grey trunk you will find a roll of papers. Are you hearkening? And don't you be ashamed of being a Jew, boy— they are the people who've got the money; and money buys land, Richard. Nor your father did not do so badly by you, either: his name was Spinoza—Sir Solomon Spinoza—"

At that point Margaret, bearing a lamp, entered, followed by
Loveday, and at the sight of Richard uttered a cry.
7oJZ5U7HFC7XmCrIsnrb+3lU4OUu6guieE+rdhdTSDa2JO+WprMqJpOA3ruVmgfz

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