"What ho!--who cried for help?"
"I."
"Who art thou, and where?"
"I have fallen into the cess-pool; I pray thee, friend, whoever thou
art, to bring or send me something on which I can rest till sunset, and
then help me forth."
"The saints be blessed! a jolly place to fall into. But why, in the
name of all the Calendar, dost thou want to wait till sunset?"
"Because I am a Jew, and until then is the holy Sabbath."
A peal of laughter answered the explanation.
"Hope thou mayest enjoy it! Well, if ever I heard such nonsense! Is it
worth while pulling a Jew out?--what sayest thou, Anselm?"
"He is a man, poor soul!" returned a second voice. "Nay, let us not
leave him to such a death as that."
"Look here, old Jew! I will go and fetch a ladder and rope. I should
pull my dog out of that hole, and perhaps thou mayest be as good."
"I will not be taken out till sunset," returned Delecresse stubbornly.
"The fellow's a mule! Hie thee, Anselm, and ask counsel of our gracious
Lord what we shall do."
A strange feeling crept over Delecresse when he heard his fate, for life
or death, thus placed in the hands of the man whose life he had wrecked.
Anselm was heard to run off quickly, and in a few minutes he returned.
"Sir Richard the Earl laughed a jolly laugh when I told him," was his
report. "He saith, Let the cur be, if he will not be plucked forth
until Monday morning: for if Saturday be his Sabbath, Sunday is mine,
and what will defile the one will defile the other." [This part of the
story is historical.]
"Monday morning! He will be a dead man, hours before that!"
"So he will. It cannot be helped, except--Jew, wilt thou be pulled out
now, or not? If not now, then not at all."
For one moment, the heart of Delecresse grew sick and faint within him
as he contemplated the awful alternatives presented to his choice.
Then, gathering all his strength, he shouted back his final decision.
"No! I will not break the Sabbath of my God."
The men outside laughed, uttered an expression of contemptuous pity, and
he heard their footsteps grow faint in the distance, and knew that he
was left to die as horrible a death as can befall humanity. Only one
other cry arose, and that was not for the ears of men. It was the
prayer of one in utter error, yet in terrible extremity: and it was
honestly sincere.
"Adonai! I have sinned and done evil, all my life long. Specially I
have sinned against this man, who has left me to die here in this
horrible place. Now therefore, O my God, I beseech Thee, let the
sufferings of Thy servant be accepted before Thee as an atonement for
his sin, and let this one good deed, that I have preferred death rather
than break Thy law, rise before Thee as the incense with the evening
sacrifice!"
Yes, it was utter error. Yet the Christians of his day, one here and
there excepted, could have taught him no better. And what had they
offered him instead? Idol-worship, woman-worship, offerings for the
dead,--every thing which the law of God had forbidden. In the day when
the blood of the martyrs is demanded at the hand of Babylon, will there
be no reckoning for the souls of those thousand sons of Israel, whom she
has persistently thrust away from Christ, by erecting a rood-screen of
idols between Him and them?
When day dawned on the Monday, they pulled out of the cess-pool the body
of a dead man.
One month later, in the chapter-house at Canterbury, King Henry the
Third stood, an humble and helpless suppliant, before his assembled
Barons. There he was forced, utterly against his will and wish, to sign
an additional charter granting liberties to England, and binding his own
hands. It was Simon de Montfort who had brought matters to this pass.
But Simon de Montfort was not the tall, fair, stately man who forced the
pen into the unwilling fingers of the cowering King, and who held out
the Evangelisterium for the swearing of his hated oath. King Henry
looked up into the cold steel-like glitter of those stern blue eyes, and
the firm set expression of the compressed lips, and realised in an
instant that in this man he would find neither misgiving nor mercy. It
was a great perplexity to him that the man on whom he had showered such
favours should thus take part against him. He had forgotten all about
that April morning, twenty-three years before; and had no conception
that between himself and the eyes of Richard de Clare, floated
"A shadow like an angel's, with bright hair,"
nor that when that scene in the chapter-house was over, and Richard
returned his good Damascus blade to its scabbard, he murmured within his
heart to ears that heard not--
"I have avenged thee at last!"
But Richard never knew that his heaviest vengeance had been exacted one
month sooner, when, with that bitter mirth which Anselm had misnamed, he
left an unknown Jew to perish in misery.
The sun was setting that evening over Lincoln. Just on the rise of
Steephill stood a handsome Norman house, with a garden stretching
behind. In the garden, on a stone settle, sat an old priest and a very
handsome middle-aged lady. Two young sisters were wandering about the
garden with their arms round each other's waists; a young man stood at
the ornamental fountain, talking playfully to the hawk upon his wrist;
while on the grass at the lady's feet sat two pretty children, their
laps full of flowers. A conversation which had been running was
evidently coming to a conclusion.
"Then you think, Father, that it is never lawful, under any
circumstances, to do evil that good may come?"
"God can bring good out of evil, my Beatrice. But it is one of His
prerogatives."
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Note 1. _Rot. Exit., Past_., 41 Henry Third.