Ivanhoe - Walter Scott (e ink ebook reader txt) 📗

said the surprised bride; “or why do you

offer to me a deference so unusual?”

“Because to you, Lady of Ivanhoe,” said Rebecca, rising up and

resuming the usual quiet dignity of her manner, “I may lawfully,

and without rebuke, pay the debt of gratitude which I owe to

Wilfred of Ivanhoe. I am---forgive the boldness which has

offered to you the homage of my country---I am the unhappy

Jewess, for whom your husband hazarded his life against such

fearful odds in the tiltyard of Templestowe.”

“Damsel,” said Rowena, “Wilfred of Ivanhoe on that day rendered

back but in slight measure your unceasing charity towards him in

his wounds and misfortunes. Speak, is there aught remains in

which he or I can serve thee?”

“Nothing,” said Rebecca, calmly, “unless you will transmit to

him my grateful farewell.”

“You leave England then?” said Rowena, scarce recovering the

surprise of this extraordinary visit.

“I leave it, lady, ere this moon again changes. My father had a

brother high in favour with Mohammed Boabdil, King of Grenada

---thither we go, secure of peace and protection, for the payment

of such ransom as the Moslem exact from our people.”

“And are you not then as well protected in England?” said Rowena.

“My husband has favour with the King---the King himself is just

and generous.”

“Lady,” said Rebecca, “I doubt it not---but the people of England

are a fierce race, quarrelling ever with their neighbours or

among themselves, and ready to plunge the sword into the bowels

of each other. Such is no safe abode for the children of my

people. Ephraim is an heartless dove---Issachar an over-laboured

drudge, which stoops between two burdens. Not in a land of war

and blood, surrounded by hostile neighbours, and distracted by

internal factions, can Israel hope to rest during her

wanderings.”

“But you, maiden,” said Rowena---“you surely can have nothing to

fear. She who nursed the sick-bed of Ivanhoe,” she continued,

rising with enthusiasm---“she can have nothing to fear in

England, where Saxon and Norman will contend who shall most do

her honour.”

“Thy speech is fair, lady,” said Rebecca, “and thy purpose

fairer; but it may not be---there is a gulf betwixt us. Our

breeding, our faith, alike forbid either to pass over it.

Farewell---yet, ere I go indulge me one request. The bridal-veil

hangs over thy face; deign to raise it, and let me see the

features of which fame speaks so highly.”

“They are scarce worthy of being looked upon,” said Rowena; “but,

expecting the same from my visitant, I remove the veil.”

She took it off accordingly; and, partly from the consciousness

of beauty, partly from bashfulness, she blushed so intensely,

that cheek, brow, neck, and bosom, were suffused with crimson.

Rebecca blushed also, but it was a momentary feeling; and,

mastered by higher emotions, past slowly from her features like

the crimson cloud, which changes colour when the sun sinks

beneath the horizon.

“Lady,” she said, “the countenance you have deigned to show me

will long dwell in my remembrance. There reigns in it

gentleness and goodness; and if a tinge of the world’s pride or

vanities may mix with an expression so lovely, how should we

chide that which is of earth for bearing some colour of its

original? Long, long will I remember your features, and bless

God that I leave my noble deliverer united with---”

She stopped short---her eyes filled with tears. She hastily

wiped them, and answered to the anxious enquiries of Rowena

---“I am well, lady---well. But my heart swells when I think of

Torquilstone and the lists of Templestowe.---Farewell. One, the

most trifling part of my duty, remains undischarged. Accept this

casket---startle not at its contents.”

Rowena opened the small silver-chased casket, and perceived a

carcanet, or neck lace, with ear-jewels, of diamonds, which were

obviously of immense value.

“It is impossible,” she said, tendering back the casket. “I dare

not accept a gift of such consequence.”

“Yet keep it, lady,” returned Rebecca.---“You have power, rank,

command, influence; we have wealth, the source both of our

strength and weakness; the value of these toys, ten times

multiplied, would not influence half so much as your slightest

wish. To you, therefore, the gift is of little value,---and to

me, what I part with is of much less. Let me not think you deem

so wretchedly ill of my nation as your commons believe. Think ye

that I prize these sparkling fragments of stone above my liberty?

or that my father values them in comparison to the honour of his

only child? Accept them, lady---to me they are valueless. I

will never wear jewels more.”

“You are then unhappy!” said Rowena, struck with the manner in

which Rebecca uttered the last words. “O, remain with us---the

counsel of holy men will wean you from your erring law, and I

will be a sister to you.”

“No, lady,” answered Rebecca, the same calm melancholy reigning

in her soft voice and beautiful features---“that---may not be. I

may not change the faith of my fathers like a garment unsuited to

the climate in which I seek to dwell, and unhappy, lady, I will

not be. He, to whom I dedicate my future life, will be my

comforter, if I do His will.”

“Have you then convents, to one of which you mean to retire?”

asked Rowena.

“No, lady,” said the Jewess; “but among our people, since the

time of Abraham downwards, have been women who have devoted their

thoughts to Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to

men, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving the

distressed. Among these will Rebecca be numbered. Say this to

thy lord, should he chance to enquire after the fate of her whose

life he saved.”

There was an involuntary tremour on Rebecca’s voice, and a

tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would

willingly have expressed. She hastened to bid Rowena adieu.

“Farewell,” she said. “May He, who made both Jew and Christian,

shower down on you his choicest blessings! The bark that waits

us hence will be under weigh ere we can reach the port.”

She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena surprised as if a

vision had passed before her. The fair Saxon related the

singular conference to her husband, on whose mind it made a deep

impression. He lived long and happily with Rowena, for they were

attached to each other by the bonds of early affection, and they

loved each other the more, from the recollection of the obstacles

which had impeded their union. Yet it would be enquiring too

curiously to ask, whether the recollection of Rebecca’s beauty

and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more frequently than

the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved.

Ivanhoe distinguished himself in the service of Richard, and was

graced with farther marks of the royal favour. He might have

risen still higher, but for the premature death of the heroic

Coeur-de-Lion, before the Castle of Chaluz, near Limoges. With

the life of a generous, but rash and romantic monarch, perished

all the projects which his ambition and his generosity had

formed; to whom may be applied, with a slight alteration, the

lines composed by Johnson for Charles of Sweden---

His fate was destined to a foreign strand,

A petty fortress and an “humble” hand;

He left the name at which the world grew pale,

To point a moral, or adorn a TALE.

NOTE TO CHAPTER I.

Note A.---The Ranger or the Forest, that cuts the foreclaws off

our dogs.

A most sensible grievance of those aggrieved times were the

Forest Laws. These oppressive enactments were the produce of the

Norman Conquest, for the Saxon laws of the chase were mild and

humane; while those of William, enthusiastically attached to the

exercise and its rights, were to the last degree tyrannical. The

formation of the New Forest, bears evidence to his passion for

hunting, where he reduced many a happy village to the condition

of that one commemorated by my friend, Mr William Stewart Rose:

“Amongst the ruins of the church

The midnight raven found a perch,

A melancholy place;

The ruthless Conqueror cast down,

Woe worth the deed, that little town,

To lengthen out his chase.”

The disabling dogs, which might be necessary for keeping flocks

and herds, from running at the deer, was called “lawing”, and was

in general use. The Charter of the Forest designed to lessen

those evils, declares that inquisition, or view, for lawing dogs,

shall be made every third year, and shall be then done by the

view and testimony of lawful men, not otherwise; and they whose

dogs shall be then found unlawed, shall give three shillings for

mercy, and for the future no man’s ox shall be taken for lawing.

Such lawing also shall be done by the assize commonly used, and

which is, that three claws shall be cut off without the ball of

the right foot. See on this subject the Historical Essay on the

Magna Charta of King John, (a most beautiful volume), by Richard

Thomson.

NOTE TO CHAPTER II.

Note B.---Negro Slaves.

The severe accuracy of some critics has objected to the

complexion of the slaves of Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as being

totally out of costume and propriety. I remember the same

objection being made to a set of sable functionaries, whom my

friend, Mat Lewis, introduced as the guards and mischief-doing

satellites of the wicked Baron, in his Castle Spectre. Mat

treated the objection with great contempt, and averred in reply,

that he made the slaves black in order to obtain a striking

effect of contrast, and that, could he have derived a similar

advantage from making his heroine blue, blue she should have

been.

I do not pretend to plead the immunities of my order so highly

as this; but neither will I allow that the author of a modern

antique romance is obliged to confine himself to the introduction

of those manners only which can be proved to have absolutely

existed in the times he is depicting, so that he restrain himself

to such as are plausible and natural, and contain no obvious

anachronism. In this point of view, what can be more natural,

than that the Templars, who, we know, copied closely the luxuries

of the Asiatic warriors with whom they fought, should use the

service of the enslaved Africans, whom the fate of war

transferred to new masters? I am sure, if there are no precise

proofs of their having done so, there is nothing, on the other

hand, that can entitle us positively to conclude that they never

did. Besides, there is an instance in romance.

John of Rampayne, an excellent juggler and minstrel, undertook

to effect the escape of one Audulf de Bracy, by presenting

himself in disguise at the court of the king, where he was

confined. For this purpose, “he stained his hair and his whole

body entirely as black as jet, so that nothing was white but his

teeth,” and succeeded in imposing himself on the king, as an

Ethiopian minstrel. He effected, by stratagem, the escape of the

prisoner. Negroes, therefore, must have been known in England in

the dark ages.*

Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy, prefixed to Ritson’s Ancient Metrical Romances, p. clxxxvii.

NOTE TO CHAPTER XVII.

Note C.---Minstrelsy.

The realm of France, it is well known, was divided betwixt the

Norman and Teutonic race, who spoke the language in which the

word Yes is pronounced as “oui”, and the inhabitants of the

southern regions, whose speech bearing some affinity to the

Italian, pronounced the same word “oc”. The poets of the former

race were called “Minstrels”, and their poems “Lays”: those of

the latter were termed “Troubadours”, and their compositions

called “sirventes”, and other names. Richard, a professed