Ivanhoe - Walter Scott (bookreader txt) 📗

misfortunes, Rebecca drew backward with a cautious and alarmed, yet not a timorous demeanour, into the farthest corner of the apartment, as if determined to retreat as far as she could, but to stand her ground when retreat became no longer possible. She drew herself into an attitude not of defiance, but of resolution, as one that would avoid provoking assault, yet was resolute to repel it, being offered, to the utmost of her power.

“You have no reason to fear me, Rebecca,” said the Templar; “or if I must so qualify my speech, you have at least now no reason to fear me.”

“I fear you not, Sir Knight,” replied Rebecca, although her short-drawn breath seemed to belie the heroism of her accents; “my trust is strong, and I fear thee not.”

“You have no cause,” answered Bois-Guilbert, gravely; “my former frantic attempts you have not now to dread. Within your call are guards, over whom I have no authority. They are designed to conduct you to death, Rebecca, yet would not suffer you to be insulted by anyone, even by me, were my frenzy⁠—for frenzy it is⁠—to urge me so far.”

“May Heaven be praised!” said the Jewess; “death is the least of my apprehensions in this den of evil.”

“Ay,” replied the Templar, “the idea of death is easily received by the courageous mind, when the road to it is sudden and open. A thrust with a lance, a stroke with a sword, were to me little⁠—To you, a spring from a dizzy battlement, a stroke with a sharp poniard, has no terrors, compared with what either thinks disgrace. Mark me⁠—I say this⁠—perhaps mine own sentiments of honour are not less fantastic, Rebecca, than thine are; but we know alike how to die for them.”

“Unhappy man,” said the Jewess; “and art thou condemned to expose thy life for principles, of which thy sober judgment does not acknowledge the solidity? Surely this is a parting with your treasure for that which is not bread⁠—but deem not so of me. Thy resolution may fluctuate on the wild and changeful billows of human opinion, but mine is anchored on the Rock of Ages.”

“Silence, maiden,” answered the Templar; “such discourse now avails but little. Thou art condemned to die not a sudden and easy death, such as misery chooses, and despair welcomes, but a slow, wretched, protracted course of torture, suited to what the diabolical bigotry of these men calls thy crime.”

“And to whom⁠—if such my fate⁠—to whom do I owe this?” said Rebecca; “surely only to him, who, for a most selfish and brutal cause, dragged me hither, and who now, for some unknown purpose of his own, strives to exaggerate the wretched fate to which he exposed me.”

“Think not,” said the Templar, “that I have so exposed thee; I would have bucklered thee against such danger with my own bosom, as freely as ever I exposed it to the shafts which had otherwise reached thy life.”

“Had thy purpose been the honourable protection of the innocent,” said Rebecca, “I had thanked thee for thy care⁠—as it is, thou hast claimed merit for it so often, that I tell thee life is worth nothing to me, preserved at the price which thou wouldst exact for it.”

“Truce with thine upbraidings, Rebecca,” said the Templar; “I have my own cause of grief, and brook not that thy reproaches should add to it.”

“What is thy purpose, then, Sir Knight?” said the Jewess; “speak it briefly.⁠—If thou hast aught to do, save to witness the misery thou hast caused, let me know it; and then, if so it please you, leave me to myself⁠—the step between time and eternity is short but terrible, and I have few moments to prepare for it.”

“I perceive, Rebecca,” said Bois-Guilbert, “that thou dost continue to burden me with the charge of distresses, which most fain would I have prevented.”

“Sir Knight,” said Rebecca, “I would avoid reproaches⁠—But what is more certain than that I owe my death to thine unbridled passion?”

“You err⁠—you err,”⁠—said the Templar, hastily, “if you impute what I could neither foresee nor prevent to my purpose or agency.⁠—Could I guess the unexpected arrival of yon dotard, whom some flashes of frantic valour, and the praises yielded by fools to the stupid self-torments of an ascetic, have raised for the present above his own merits, above common sense, above me, and above the hundreds of our Order, who think and feel as men free from such silly and fantastic prejudices as are the grounds of his opinions and actions?”

“Yet,” said Rebecca, “you sat a judge upon me, innocent⁠—most innocent⁠—as you knew me to be⁠—you concurred in my condemnation, and, if I aright understood, are yourself to appear in arms to assert my guilt, and assure my punishment.”

“Thy patience, maiden,” replied the Templar. “No race knows so well as thine own tribes how to submit to the time, and so to trim their bark as to make advantage even of an adverse wind.”

“Lamented be the hour,” said Rebecca, “that has taught such art to the House of Israel! but adversity bends the heart as fire bends the stubborn steel, and those who are no longer their own governors, and the denizens of their own free independent state, must crouch before strangers. It is our curse, Sir Knight, deserved, doubtless, by our own misdeeds and those of our fathers; but you⁠—you who boast your freedom as your birthright, how much deeper is your disgrace when you stoop to soothe the prejudices of others, and that against your own conviction?”

“Your words are bitter, Rebecca,” said Bois-Guilbert, pacing the apartment with impatience, “but I came not hither to bandy reproaches with you.⁠—Know that Bois-Guilbert yields not to created man, although circumstances may for a time induce him to alter his plan. His will is the mountain stream, which may indeed be turned for a little space aside by the rock, but fails not to find its course to the ocean. That scroll which warned thee to