“Rose Cottage” was without roses: but had a good-sized “garden” at the
back; and here Hogarth soon had a shed nailed together, with bellows,
anvil, sledges, rasps, setts, drifts, and so on, making a little smithy.
He engaged a boy; and soon John Loveday would be leaning all a forenoon
at the shed door, watching the lithe ply of Hogarth's hips, and the
white-hot iron gushing flushes; while Margaret, peeping, could see
Loveday's slovenly ease of pose, his numberless cigarettes, and hear the
rhymes of the sledges chiming.
As to Loveday's £50, she had dared to say nothing to Richard, but kept
them, intending to make up the amount already spent, and give them to
Frankl. Loveday, meantime, she avoided with constant care.
So two weeks passed, till, one day, Loveday, leaning at the forge-door,
happened to say: “Are you interested in current politics? The East
Norfolk division is being contested, one of the candidates, Sir Bennett
Beaumont, is a friend of mine, and I was thinking that I might go to the
meeting to-night, if you could come--”
“I invite you to supper here instead”.
“Not interested?” queried Loveday.
“Not at all. Stop--I'll show you something in which I _am_ interested”.
He ran to a corner, picked up a _Pearson's Weekly_, and pointed to a
paragraph headed:
“FIVE HUNDRED-POUND NOTES!
“FIFTY TEN-POUND NOTES!!
“ONE HUNDRED FIVE-POUND NOTES!!!” --a prize for “the most intelligent”
article, explaining the cause, or causes, of “the present distress and
commercial crisis”.
Loveday read it smiling.
“Ah”, said he, “but who is to be the judge of 'the most intelligent'
article? Pearson must himself be of the highest intelligence to decide”.
“True”, said Hogarth. “But the man who offered that prize has indicated
to the nation the thing which it should be doing. If I was able to form
an Association to enter this competition--and why not? Stop--I will go
with you--”
So that evening they walked to Beccles, and took train for Yarmouth.
The candidate to speak was a Mr. Moses Max, a Liberal Jew; the chair to
be taken by Baruch Frankl; and in the midst of a row, the stately great
men entered upon the platform and occupied it, hisses like the escape
of steam mixing with “He's a jolly good fellow”. Midway down the pit sat
Loveday, and with him Hogarth, whose large stare ranged solemnly round
and down from galleries to floor.
Frankl sipped water, and rose, amid shouts of: “Circular!”
“Caps-and-tassels!”
He made a speech of which nothing was known, except the amiable bows,
for a continual noising filled the hall; and up rose Mr. Moses Max, a
stout fair Jew, whose fist struck with a regular, heavy emphasis. After
ten minutes, when he began to be heard, he was saying:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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