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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.