XLIX

THE DeBaCLE

All the next day, till near 9 P.M., not one syllable was definitely known of this tremendous fact by anyone in Britain: for though, early astir, the Regent telegraphed the _Mahomet_, all day he waited without reply.

At eleven the Prime Minister said to him: "Things, my Lord King, wear at this moment an aspect so threatening, that I see no escape from civil war, even if it be brief, except by the immediate forcing through of the Bill, and I stand ready--now--to propose you as new peers--"

"Wait", answered the Regent: "pa.s.s to-night the Bill should, but I think I shall effect that by myself going to the Lords, and listening a little to the talk".

A dark day, with an under-thought always, whatever the business, of one thing--the Sea....

About 5.30, as was his custom, he went up a stair to pa.s.s along two corridors to the little cream suite in which lived Margaret, for whom the doctors now promised sanity, her forehead daily seeming to drink-in peace from the contact of his palm, after which she would comb his hair, he lying on a sofa, or taking tea; and, "Well, dear", he said, this last day of all, as her ladies retired to an inner salon, "how is the head?"

"I have seen you before", she replied: "what is your name?"

"d.i.c.k Hogarth. Come to me, and let me lay my heavy head on you. The heart of your friend bodes to-day, bodes, bodes; but is not afraid: a tough heart, Madge. Do you like me to press my hand upon your head like that?"

Then, weary of his moaning heart that moaned that day like choruses of haunted winds through desolate halls, he fell to sleep even as he mumbled to her, she, seated near his sofa, playing with his hair, his arm around her, faint zephyrs from the window fanning his head, waving down the valenciennes.

But now she tossed the comb away, hummed, became restless, disengaged her shoulders, rose, strayed listlessly, with sighs, and on finding herself in the ante-chamber, opened the door, went out into a corridor, leant her back, eyeing the floor; and next with a great sigh set to gazing upward, droning two notes, one _doh_, one _soh_. All was silent.

But now a sound of voices that drew her, she moving into another longer corridor, with bal.u.s.ters which overlooked a hall below, and yonder at the stair-foot were two men in altercation, one a guard, to whom the other was saying "But I tell you the lydy herself arst me to go to her; it's an appointment, just like any other appointment. Do let a fellow pa.s.s!" and with mouth at ear he added: "_It's an affair of the 'eart!

'Ere's a sov--_"

"Couldn't, my friend, couldn't", the guardsman said.

But now Harris: "Why, there she is 'erself, so 'elp-! come out to meet me, as the Lord liveth!"--ran then toward where she looked over to send up the hoa.r.s.e whisper: "I sye--didn't you tell me yourself to come--?"

On which she nodded amiably, smiling, touching a rose in her bosom.

"There you are! What more do you want?" he said to the guard, who now gave him pa.s.sage: and like a dart he darted, like a freed lark, or unleashed hound, fleet on the feet, with lifted brow.

"I sye!" he whispered her, all active, brisk as a cat, ecstatic--"where's 'e?"

"Who?"--she still at her rose, a memory straying in her that here was a friend, whom the Terrible One had bid her obey.

"Mr.--the Regent", he whispered.

"I don't know him. What is your name? _My_ name is--"

"Oh, you muddle-headed cat! Don't you know the dark man with the black moles--quick!"

"_Sh-h-h_--he is sleeping".

"Gawd! is he though? Come, show me! I've got a old appointment--"

She led the way: the two corridors--the door--the room, he treading on air, brow up, eyes on fire, knife bright and ready; and eight feet from the couch she put out her forefinger, pointing, smiling, Hogarth's face toward them, his mouth pouting in sleep, bosom breathing, a breeze in his hair.

From the lips of Harris, in the faintest snake-hiss, proceeded, "Sleep, my little one-sleep, my pretty one--_sleep_--" and with a wrist as graceful as the spring of a tigress he had the knife buried in Hogarth's left breast.

Some instinct must have pierced Hogarth's sleep an instant before the actual blow, for while the knife was yet in him he had Harris's wrist; and the a.s.sa.s.sin fled writhing, so brisk a trick had cracked his elbow.

And blanched and short-breathed sprang Hogarth, but at once tottered, Margaret, open-mouthed, regarding him, till he suddenly cried out "Ladies!", and before they came had hurried out, drawing his coat over the place of blood.

In the second corridor he had to stop and lean, but then descended, striking all whom he pa.s.sed with awe at his face, till he stumbled into his own drawing-room, and, as he fell, was caught by Sir Francis Yeames, the Private Secretary.

The wound had pa.s.sed along the outer front surface of the second rib toward the scapula, injuring two of the branches of the axillary artery: so whispered the Resident Medical Attendant, while the council of doctors p.r.o.nounced the condition "very grave", but not "dangerous"--a case for "judicious pressure"; and after a long swoon he opened his eyes; in the deeply-recessed series of windows, narrow and round-topped, now dying the twilight; the insignificant bed lost in a chamber of frescoes and vast darksome oils of battles and loves. And, suddenly starting, he asked: "What's the time?"

"Seven-thirty, my Lord King", answered Sir Martin Phipps.

"Ah, I remember: I was stabbed. Who did it?"

"It can only be a.s.sumed from the evidence of a guardsman that it was a servant in the Palace, called Harris".

"Aye, I think I saw his face. Does anyone know of the matter?"

"Very few persons so far....The police are after Harris".

Now the Regent started, understanding that the condemnation of Harris would mean a revelation of the Colmoor-horror secret; and he said after a minute, "John, is that you? Will you go and have the whole thing quashed?....And now, doctor, the wound."

"The wound is not what we call 'dangerous', my Lord King: ah, but believe me, it was a narrow shave".

"I dare say, Sir Martin: the outcomes of this particular world do arrive by narrow shaves; but they arrive, and life is an escape. At any rate, doctor, I shall be able to go, as arranged, to the Lords--"

The doctor smiled. "No, never that".

"I shall go".

And at once he leapt from bed, staggering headlong in the effort, to strike his head against a window corner, while all ran, crying out, to catch him, the doctor thinking: "Those whom the G.o.ds destroy they first drive mad".

So far not a whisper of the stab had reached even the Prime Minister or the Prince; but since the news of moving troops, and the reluctance of the Lords to pa.s.s the Bill, agitated all, London came out to watch his descent upon the Lords.

He went in precisely the spirit of a professor who steps to the chair, smiles, and takes the cla.s.s; but as he drove down Whitehall, this thought pierced him with a keener point than the steel of Harris: "_The Sea...!_"

He did not know that at last a thousand transmitters, from Tarifa, from Frederikshavn, from many a ship, were thrilling the ether with messages as to the Sea.

Nor did he know that that day Frankl had whispered to some dozen people, with proofs and old newspapers, that convict past of the Regent.

And from his very first entering, when the Lord Chancellor rose, and the Regent made the bow, he was shocked by the scene of open insolence spread before him.

Everywhere the boldest eyes regarded him; he saw smiles of scorn, snarling visages, as, with reclining head and lowered lids, his eyes rested on the House: a hard gaze. Unfortunately, his pallor was perfectly obvious, and its significance, the stab being unknown, was misunderstood.

And up rose a young lord, who stammered unprofundities just below the region of lawn-sleeves to the right; and another with slow step, as if to music, came up the gangway, and spoke at the table; and another after him: and it needed sustained effort to understand what they said; the brain, as it were, would not close upon statement after statement so insignificant. But Hogarth would have endured till midnight, or longer, but for a growing doubt within him: "Am I bleeding? Shall I not certainly faint?"

And there was this other question: "To what greater daring of insolence will these impossible speeches rise?"