Why had Hogarth never had him seized, racked? What restrained the Regent
_now_? That was a question with Frankl. Hogarth might say, even to
himself, that Frankl was vermin too small to be crushed, that he waited
for his sister from God; but lately the real reason had grown upon
Frankl: it was because Hogarth _was afraid_ of him! afraid that Frankl,
if persecuted beyond measure, might blurt out the Regent's convict past,
and raise a sensation of horror through the world not pleasant to face.
Harris, O'Hara, Rebekah and Frankl alone knew that past, and the motives
for silence of the first three were obvious; nor had Frankl whispered
that secret even to his own heart in his bed-chamber, conscious of his
own guilt in the matter of the Arab Jew's death, fearing that, if the
wit and power of Hogarth were given motive to move heaven and earth, the
real facts might not be undiscoverable: then would Frankl be ground
to fine powder by the grinders. But if he was going to Palestine, what
mattered?
Also, there was Margaret: she should go out as a Jewess.
She arrived at “Silverfern” in the charge of a Jewish clerk, and the
Abrahams received her as an afflicted orphan, committed to Frankl by her
father; she, like Rebekah, to go under their care.
Well, the evening before the departure, Mr. and Mrs. Abrahams, their
two sons, Rebekah and Margaret, all go for a stroll--about nine o'clock,
that morning one of the four ravishers having been to the house on some
pretence, seen Margaret with Mrs. Abrahams under the porch, and noted
her well, her grey tailor-gown, her brooch, her singing; and now, as all
walked out under the moon, they were watched, the watchers, surprised
at the presence of _two_ young ladies, concluding that the
smaller--Rebekah--must have arrived later: so upon the large and shapely
form of Margaret their gaze fastened, as the party passed near their
hedge of concealment, Margaret then remarking: “My name is Rachel
Oppenheimer--” and Mrs. Abrahams with gentle chiding answering her: “No,
be good: your name is Ruth Levi”.
For during two years at the Jewish Asylum at Wroxham they had
tilled into her shrieking brain, “Now, be good: your name is
Rachel Oppenheimer”, and one day she had said: “My name _is_ Rachel
Oppenheimer”, and had been saying it ever since.
In fact, there was a real Rachel Oppenheimer, a dependent of Frankl's,
at Yarmouth, who was rather mad, and when it had been necessary
that Margaret should be out of the way in order to secure Hogarth's
conviction, two doctors had examined this Rachel Oppenheimer, and given
the legal certificates by means of which Frankl had put away Margaret;
and she during two years of sanity in an atmosphere of lunacy had
screamed for pity, till one morning she had shewed the stare, the
unworldly rapture, and had started to sing her old songs.
After which, Frankl, hearing of it, and touched by some awe, had got her
out, and kept her in one retreat or another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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