Earl Hubert's Daughter Part 47

"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 Sat.u.r.day 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 G.o.d."

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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.s.

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 gra.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances, to do evil that good may come?"

"G.o.d can bring good out of evil, my Beatrice. But it is one of His prerogatives."

Note 1. _Rot. Exit., Past_., 41 Henry Third.

APPENDIX.

Historical Appendix.

FAMILY OF DE BURGH.

Hubert De Burgh, whose ancestry is unknown with certainty (though some genealogists attempt to derive him from Herlouin de Conteville, and his wife Arlette, mother of William the Conqueror), was probably _born_ about 1168-70, and created Justiciary of England, June 15, 1214. He was also Lord Chancellor and Lord Chamberlain, with abundance of smaller offices. He was created Earl of Kent, February 11, 1227. After all the strange vicissitudes through which he had pa.s.sed, it seems almost surprising that he was allowed to die in his bed, at Banstead, May [4?], 1243, aged about 74, and surviving his daughter just two years.

[Character historical.] He married--

A. Margaret, daughter and heir of Robert de Arsic or Arsike: dates unknown. (Hubert had previously been contracted, April 28, 1200, to Joan, daughter of William de Vernon, Earl of Devon; but the marriage did not take place.)

B. Beatrice, daughter and sole heir of William de Warenne of Wirmgay, and widow of Dodo Bardolf: apparently _married_ after 1209, and _died_ in or about 1214.

C. Isabel, youngest daughter and co-heir of William Earl of Gloucester, made Countess of Gloucester by King John, to the prejudice of her two elder sisters: affianced by her father to John, Count of Mortaigne [afterwards King John], at Windsor, September 28, 1176; married to him at Salisbury, August 29, 1189: divorced on her husband's accession, 1200, on pretext of being within the prohibited degrees. She married (2) Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Ess.e.x, to whom she was sold by the husband who had repudiated her, for the sum of twenty thousand marks, in 1213. In the wars of the Barons, she threw all her influence into the scale against the King; but she showed that her enmity was personal, not political, by at once returning to her allegiance on the accession of Henry the Third. She was then given in _marriage_ (3) to Hubert de Burgh, into whose hands the manor of Walden was delivered, as part of her dower, August 13, 1217; the marriage probably took place shortly before that date, and certainly before the 17th of September. Isabel was Hubert's wife for so short a time, that some writers have doubted the fact of the marriage altogether; but it is amply authenticated. She was dead on the 18th of November following, as the Close Rolls bear witness; and the Obituary of Canterbury Cathedral and the Chronicle of Rochester agree in stating that she died October 14, 1217. She was buried in Canterbury Cathedral.

D. Margaret, eldest daughter of William the First, King of Scotland, surnamed The Lion; affianced, 1196, to Otho of Brunswick; commuted to the care of King John of England in 1209; _married_ at York, June 25, 1221; _died_ 1259, leaving no surviving issue. [Character inferentially historical.]

_Issue of Earl Hubert_.

A. _By Margaret Arsic_.

John, knighted Whit Sunday, 1229; _died_ 1274-75, leaving issue.

_Married_:--

Hawise, daughter and heir of Sir William de Lanvalay: _married_ before November 21, 1234; _died_ 1249; _buried_ at Colchester. [Character imaginary.]

2. _Hubert_, living 1281-82; ancestor of the Marquis of Clanricarde.

Whom he married is not known.

D. _By Margaret of Scotland_:--

Margaret, or Margery--she bears both names on the Rolls--_born_ probably 1222; _married_ at Bury Saint Edmund's "when the Earl was at Merton"-- probably January 11-26, 1236,--clandestinely, but with connivance of mother, to Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester; divorced 1237; livery of her estates granted to brother John, May 5, 1241; therefore _died_ shortly before that date. Most writers attribute to Earl Hubert another daughter, whom they call Magotta: but the Rolls show no evidence of any daughter but Margaret. Magotta, or Magot, is manifestly a Latinism of Margot, the French diminutive for Margaret; the Earl's gifts to monasteries for the souls of himself and relatives, include "M. his daughter," but make no mention of two; and the grants made by the King to Earl Hubert and Margaret his wife, and Margaret their daughter, certainly imply that Margaret was the sole heir of her mother.

[Character inferentially historical, except as regards religion, for which no evidence is forthcoming.]

RICHARD DE CLARE.