A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

Come Rack! Come Rope! by Robert Hugh Benson

R >> Robert Hugh Benson >> Come Rack! Come Rope!




So then he stood, bent double on two sticks, blinking and peering out at
the faces, wondering whether it was a roar of anger or welcome or
compassion that had broken out at his apparition, and smiling--smiling
piteously, not of deliberation, but because the muscles of his mouth so
moved, and he could not contract them again.

* * * * *

He understood presently that he was to lie down on the hurdle, with his
head to the horses' heels.

This was a great business, to be undertaken with care. He gave his two
sticks to a man, and took his arm. Then he kneeled, clinging to the arm
as a child to a swimmer's in a rough sea, and sank gently down. But he
could not straighten his legs, so they allowed him to lie half
side-ways, and tied him so. It was amazingly uncomfortable, and, before
he was settled, twice the sweat suddenly poured from his face as he
found some new channel of pain in his body....

An order or two was issued in a loud, shouting voice; there was a great
confusion and scuffling, and the crack of a whip. Then, with a jerk that
tore his whole being, he was flicked from his place; the pain swelled
and swelled till there seemed no more room for it in all God's world;
and he closed his eyes so as not to see the house-roofs and the faces
and the sky whirl about in that mad jigging dance....

After that he knew very little of the journey. For the most part his
eyes were tight closed; he sobbed aloud half a dozen times as the hurdle
lifted and dropped over rough places in the road. Two or three times he
opened his eyes to see what the sounds signified, especially a loud,
bellowing voice almost in his ear that cried texts of Scripture at him.

"_We have but one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ
Jesus_...."

"_We then, being justified by faith.... For if by the works of the Law
we are justified_...."

He opened his eyes wide at that, and there was the face of one of the
ministers bobbing against the sky, flushed and breathless, yet
indomitable, bawling aloud as he trotted along to keep pace with the
horse.

Then he closed his eyes again. He knew that he, too, could bandy texts
if that were what was required. Perhaps, if he were a better man and
more mortified, he might be able to do so as the martyrs sometimes had
done. But he could not ... he would have a word to say presently
perhaps, if it were permitted; but not now. His pain occupied him; he
had to deal with that and keep back, if he could, those sobs that were
wrenched from him now and again. He had made but a poor beginning in his
journey, he thought; he must die more decently than that.

* * * * *

The end came unexpectedly. Just when he thought he had gained his
self-control again, so as to make no sound at any rate, the hurdle
stopped. He clenched his teeth to meet the dreadful wrench with which it
would move again; but it did not. Instead there was a man down by him,
untying his bonds. He lay quite still when they were undone; he did not
know which limb to move first, and he dreaded to move any.

"Now then," said the voice, with a touch of compassion, he thought.

He set his teeth, gripped the arm and raised himself--first to his
knees, then to his feet, where he stood swaying. An indescribable roar
ascended steadily on all sides; but he could see little of the crowd as
yet. He was standing in a cleared space, held by guards. A couple of
dozen persons stood here; three or four on horseback; and one of these
he thought to be my lord Shrewsbury, but he was not sure, since his head
was against the glare of the sun. He turned a little, still holding to
the man's arm, and not knowing what to do, and saw a ladder behind him;
he raised his eyes and saw that its head rested against the cross-beam
of a single gallows, that a rope hung from this beam, and that a figure
sitting astride of this cross-beam was busy with this rope. The shock of
the sight cooled and nerved him; rather, it drew his attention all from
himself.... He looked lower again, and behind the gallows was a column
of heavy smoke going up, and in the midst of the smoke a cauldron hung
on a tripod. Beside the cauldron was a great stump of wood, with a
chopper and a knife lying upon it.... He drew one long steady breath,
expelled it again, and turned back to my lord Shrewsbury. As he turned,
he saw him make a sign, and felt himself grasped from behind.


III

He reached at last with his hands the rung of the ladder on which the
executioner's foot rested, hearing, as he went painfully up, the roar of
voices wax to an incredible volume. It was impossible for any to speak
so that he could hear, but he saw the hands above him in eloquent
gesture, and understood that he was to turn round. He did so cautiously,
grasping the man's foot, and so rested, half sitting on a rung, and
holding it as well as he could with his two hands. Then he felt a rope
pass round his wrists, drawing them closer together.... As he turned,
the roar of voices died to a murmur; the murmur died to silence, and he
understood and remembered. It was now the time to speak.... He gathered
for the last time all his forces together. With the sudden silence,
clearness came back to his mind, and he remembered word for word the
little speech he had rehearsed so often during the last week. He had
learned it by heart, fearful lest God should give him no words if he
trusted to the moment, lest God should not see fit to give him even that
interior consolation which was denied to so many of the saints--yet
without which he could not speak from the heart. He had been right, he
knew now: there was no religious consolation; he felt none of that
strange heart-shaking ecstasy that had transfigured other deaths like
his; he had none of the ready wit that Campion had showed. He saw
nothing but the clear October sky above him, cut by the roofs fringed
with heads (a skein of birds passed slowly over it as he raised his
eyes); and, beneath, that irreckonable pavement of heads, motionless now
as a cornfield in a still evening, one glimpse of the river--the river,
he remembered even at this instant, that came down from Hathersage and
Padley and his old home. But there was no open vision, such as he had
half hoped to see, no unimaginable glories looming slowly through the
veils in which God hides Himself on earth, no radiant face smiling into
his own--only this arena of watching human faces turned up to his,
waiting for his last sermon.... He thought he saw faces that he knew,
though he lost them again as his eyes swept on--Mr. Barton, the old
minister of Matstead; Dick; Mr. Bassett.... Their faces looked
terrified.... However, this was not his affair now.

As he was about to speak he felt hands about his neck, and then the
touch of a rope passed across his face. For an indescribable instant a
terror seized on him; he closed his eyes and set his teeth. The spasm
passed, and so soon as the hands were withdrawn again, he began:

* * * * *

"Good people"--(at the sound of his voice, high and broken, the silence
became absolute. A thin crowing of a cock from far off in the country
came like a thread and ceased)--"Good people: I die here as a Catholic
man, for my priesthood, which I now confess before all the world." (A
stir of heads and movements below distracted him. But he went on at
once.) "There have been alleged against me crimes in which I had neither
act nor part, against the life of her Grace and the peace of her
dominions."

"Pray for her Grace," rang out a sharp voice below him.

"I will do so presently.... It is for that that I am said to die, in
that I took part in plots of which I knew nothing till all was done. Yet
I was offered my life, if I would but conform and go to church; so you
see very well--"

A storm of confused voices interrupted him. He could distinguish no
sentence, so he waited till they ceased again.

"So you see very well," he cried, "for what it is that I die. It is for
the Catholic faith--"

"Beat the drums! beat the drums!" cried a voice. There began a drumming;
but a howl like a beast's surged up from the whole crowd. When it died
again the drum was silent. He glanced down at my lord Shrewsbury and saw
him whispering with an officer. Then he continued:

"It is for the Catholic faith, then, that I die--that which was once the
faith of all England--and which, I pray, may be one day its faith again.
In that have I lived, and in that will I die. And I pray God, further,
that all who hear me to-day may have grace to take it as I do--as the
true Christian Religion (and none other)--revealed by our Saviour
Christ."

The crowd was wholly quiet again now. My lord had finished his
whispering, and was looking up. But the priest had made his little
sermon, and thought that he had best pray aloud before his strength
failed him. His knees were already shaking violently under him, and the
sweat was pouring again from his face, not so much from the effort of
his speech as from the pain which that effort caused him. It seemed that
there was not one nerve in his body that was not in pain.

"I ask all Catholics, then, that hear me to join with me in prayer....
First, for Christ's Catholic Church throughout the world, for her peace
and furtherance.... Next, for our England, for the conversion of all her
children; and, above all, for her Grace, my Queen and yours, that God
will bless and save her in this world, and her soul eternally in the
next. For these and all other such matters I will beg all Catholics to
join with me and to say the _Our Father_; and when I am in my agony to
say yet another for my soul."

"_Our Father_...."

From the whole packed space the prayer rose up, in great and heavy waves
of sound. There were cries of mockery three or four times, but each was
suddenly cut off.... The waves of sound rolled round and ceased, and the
silence was profound. The priest opened his eyes; closed them again.
Then with a loud voice he began to cry:

"O Christ, as Thine arms were extended--"

* * * * *

He stopped again, shaken even from that intense point of concentration
to which he was forcing himself, by the amazing sound that met his ears.
He had heard, at the close of the _Our Father_, a noise which he could
not interpret: but no more had happened. But now the whole world seemed
screaming and swaying: he heard the trample of horses beneath
him--voices in loud expostulation.

He opened his eyes; the clamour died again at the same instant.... For a
moment his eyes wandered over the heads and up to the sky, to see if
some vision.... Then he looked down....

Against the ladder on which he stood, a man's figure was writhing and
embracing the rungs kneeling on the ground. He was strangely dressed, in
some sort of a loose gown, in a tight silk night-cap, and his feet were
bare. The man's head was dropped, and the priest could not see his face.
He looked beyond for some explanation, and there stood, all alone, a
girl in a hooded cloak, who raised her great eyes to his. As he looked
down again the man's head had fallen back, and the face was staring up
at him, so distorted with speechless entreaty, that even he, at first,
did not recognize it....

Then he saw it to be his father, and understood enough, at least, to act
as a priest for the last time.

He smiled a little, leaned his own head forward as from a cross, and
spoke....

"_Absolvo te a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti_...."


VI

He only awoke once again, after the strangling and the darkness had
passed. He could see nothing, nor hear, except a heavy murmuring noise,
not unpleasant. But there was one last Pain not into which all others
had passed, keen and cold like water, and it was about his heart.

"O Christ--" he whispered, and so died.


THE END

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Various - "Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864"

Marshall Mather - "Lancashire Idylls (1898)"

Maria Thompson Daviess - "Phyllis"

Carl W. Ackerman - "Germany, The Next Republic?"