The Rabbi spoke with trembling voice: “It is gracious, my Lord King. We are here, however, humbly to present an urgent petition to your Lordship's Majesty. Baruch Frankl, at present a prisoner in the Boodah, a man no longer young, and habituated to comfort—”
“Stay”, interrupted Hogarth: “if you have a petition the day and hour must be arranged by negotiation between yourself and my Chamberlain. But surely, meantime, I may consider you my guest? Miss Frankl and I—have met—in the world. Come, ladies—come, sirs—say yes!”
Rebekah, standing averted, flashed a look at him, reading his heart, and Jews and Jewesses laid heads together, whispering a little, until the Rabbi said, bowing: “We bend to your Lordship's Majesty's most gracious will”.
“Agreed, then, sir. We might now see the Boodah, and if you will luncheon with me—Mr. Chamberlain! direct Admiral Quilter-Beckett to meet me at once in the north corridor”.
He rose, master of his limbs now, descended, unrobed in an alcove, and in a corridor above the circular stair came upon Quilter-Beckett, who, acting as guide, Rebekah's hand now resting on Hogarth's arm, led them about the Boodah, now walking, now slipping in little trains over eighty-foot rails, rolled in one heat, laid down the vanishing length of dim-lit corridors floored with white tiles, their frieze of majolica, with rows of ceramics; and they saw the armouries, piles of rifles, cutlasses, pistols; ferneries grown by electric light; great cold-storage rooms that struck a chill, for preserving meats, butter, fruit; the doctors' environ, the dispensary, and roomy hospital; watched from a railing the working engines that fixed the Boodah's position, Hogarth here saying: “There you have a menagerie of gnome-land: observe those two black beetles, sedately nodding; and there is daddy-longlegs, working his legs gymnastically; and the three pairs of gallant grey stallions, galloping grandly neck to neck; and those two ridiculous beings, rubbing their palms together, round and round: each preoccupied, comically solemn, busied about its own quaint affairs—like a varied gnomeland”.
And Rebekah said in a meek tone, like the hen submitting: “Yes, I see now you say it, my Lord King”.
Up stairs and down, round semicircles, up lifts, through nooks, corridors: saw the guns, and how by hydraulics everything was done—the hoisting of ammunition, loading, training: guns intact, guns wrecked by the Dreadnoughts; and shimmering kitchens, which reeked a smell of heat, and the dairy-maids, and the line of kine, and the row of prison-doors, and the mechanism of ventilation, fans and blowers, the drainage-system, and the dynamos for lighting, for supplying power to motors, for heating, and for shimmering forth rich in the search-lights; and the central ballroom, the clothes store, the original one-ninety-sixth model, the Ambassador-region, the steaming laundry, and the roof, where Rebekah saw her initials on the breeze, and the vertical pop-guns under shields for dealing with aeroplane attack, and the cream theatre, and the paymaster's suite, and the bunkers, the Government-offices, and the tax-receiving rooms, the telephone system, and the lady-telegraphists—till all were tired, though half had not been seen. They luncheoned together; in the early afternoon there was an Investiture, and she was there; for “five-o'clock” there was a Gounod concert in the theatre, and she sat in his box; at night the Bulgarian Ambassador gave a ball, and she danced a gavotte with him.
When they parted a dying wind sighed his name: “Hogarth...”; and when Loveday before sleeping happened to ask: “When do we set out for London, Richard?” Hogarth with a laugh turned upon him, replying: “When do we set out for Arcturus and the Pleiades? Do give one time to look round him!”
The next morning Rebekah, led forward from a semicircle of courtiers by a backing Silver Stick, approached within four feet of the Throne, and after the protracted humiliation of her curtsey, said ruefully: “Our party have failed, my Lord King, to obtain audience for our humble petition till after four days”.
“Is that too long?”