Ivanhoe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (78 page)

She entered—a noble and commanding figure, the long white veil; in which she was shrouded, overshadowing rather than concealing the elegance and majesty of her shape. Her demeanour was that of respect, unmingled by the least shade either of fear or of a wish to propitiate favour. Rowena was ever ready to acknowledge the claims, and attend to the feelings, of others. She arose, and would have conducted her lovely visitor to a seat; but the stranger looked at Elgitha, and again intimated a wish to discourse with the Lady Rowena alone. Elgitha had no sooner retired with unwilling steps than, to the surprise of the Lady of Ivanhoe, her fair visitant kneeled on one knee, pressed her hands to her forehead, and bending her head to the ground, in spite of Rowena’s resistance, kissed the embroidered hem of her tunic.

“What means this, lady?” 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 hath 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 overlaboured 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 inquiries 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 necklace, 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 inquire 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 wafts 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 inquiring 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 Cœur-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—

1
(p. 3)
Parnell’s
Tale: The poetry that follows is from Thomas Parnell’s “A Fairy Tale, in the Ancient English Style” (1729; lines 97-99), slightly altered.

2
(p. 4) Men bless their stars and call it luxury: The line, slightly altered, is from Thomas Addison’s
Cato
(1713; 1.4.70).

3
(p. 5)
“wonder that they please no more”:
From Samuel Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes” (1749; line 263).

4
(p. 5)
Logan’s tragedy of
Runnamede: John Logan (1748-1788) was forced to give up his ministry in the Church of Scotland because of his success as a playwright.
Runnamede,
which concerns the events surrounding the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, was first staged in 1783.

5
(p. 6)
trick upon trick:
Scott misquotes from Maria Edgeworth’s
Tales of Fashionable Life
(1802; 3.95).

6
(p. 7)
Il Bondocani:
Stories of II Bondocani, a robber chief featured in
The Arabian Nights,
were known in Europe in various forms beginning in the late Middle Ages.

7
(p. 11) Tring, Wing, and Ivanhoe ... And glad he could escape so: The historical circumstance of the rhyme is disputed, as these villages (with their manors) never belonged to the Hampden family. What is certain is that they are located in Buckinghamshire, far away from the action of the novel.

8
(p. 12)
the freedom of the rules:
Scott’s first profession was the law, and this refers to the right Scottish lawyers enjoyed to appear in English courts.

1
(p. 13)
Rev. Dr. Dryasdust, F.A.S.:
A fictitious character of Scott’s invention who first appears in his 1816 novel
The Antiquary,
Dryasdust is also the addressee for the “Introductory Epistle” to
The Fortunes of Nigel
(1822) and is the “author” of frame matter in two other Scott novels. His name has become proverbial, signifying the pedantic, fact-laden practice of history.

2
(p. 14)
a second M’Pherson:
James Macpherson (1736-1796) was responsible for the greatest literary hoax of the eighteenth century. His translations (1760-1763) of “Ossian,” an ancient Scottish bard who was greeted as the Celtic Homer, were fakes, written by himself.

3
(p. 14)
Mohawks and Iroquois:
The Iroquois, of which the Mohawks are one tribe, fought with the English against the French in the seventeenth century, and against the Americans in the War of Independence. In Scott’s time, an analogy between Native American tribes and the Highland clans of Scotland was commonly drawn.

4
(p. 15)
the Bruces and Wallaces of Caledonia:
Robert (the) Bruce (1274-1329) was crowned king of Scotland in 1306; he defeated the English in a famous battle at Bannockburn in 1314. Sir William Wallace (1270-1305) was another storied champion of Scottish independence, captured and executed by the English in 1305.

5
(p. 15)
Erictho ...
in corpore quærit: Erictho, the witch consulted by Roman general Pompey in Lucan’s
Pharsalia
(first century A.D.), resurrects a corpse from the battlefield: “Prying into the inmost parts cold in death, till she finds the substance of the stiffened lungs unwounded and still firm, and seeking the power of utterance in a corpse” (6.629-231), translated by J. D. Duff (London, 1928), p. 351. The “Scottish magician” to whom Erictho is likened is Scott himself.

6
(p. 16)
valley ofJehoshaphat:
Scott seems here to confuse two biblical references: the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37, and the valley of Jehoshaphat, referred to in Joel 3:12.

7
(p. 17)
Dr. Henry ... Mr. Strutt... Mr. Sharon Turner:
Robert Henry, Joseph Strutt, and Sharon Turner were late-eighteenth-century historians whose work was vital to Scott’s reconstruction of the Middle Ages in
Ivanhoe.

8
(p. 17)
goblin tale:
Walpole’s
The Castle of Otranto
(1765) is considered the first modern Gothic novel in English, inaugurating a genre whose popular appeal is undiminished today.

9
(p. 19)
“well of English undefiled”:
The quoted phrase is from Edmund Spenser’s
The Faerie Queene
(1596; 4.2.32). Spencer is referring to Chaucer’s English, not his own.

10
(p. 19)
the unfortunate Chatterton:
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was the so-called “marvelous boy” whose forgeries of fifteenth-century poems were uncovered by Horace Walpole—which prompted his early suicide. Chatterton afterward became an icon of the Romantic movement.

11
(p. 19)
“eyes, hands, organs, dimensions ... same winter and summer”
: These passages are near-quotations from Shakespeare’s
The Merchant of Venice
(act 3, scene 1).