Ivanhoe, Walter Scott [the lemonade war series txt] 📗
- Author: Walter Scott
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But, present still, though now unseen;
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of THEE a cloudy screen
To temper the deceitful ray.
And oh, when stoops on Judah’s path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be THOU, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning, and a shining light!
Our harps we left by Babel’s streams,
The tyrant’s jest, the Gentile’s scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,
And mute our timbrel, trump, and horn.
But THOU hast said, the blood of goat,
The flesh of rams, I will not prize;
A contrite heart, and humble thought,
Are mine accepted sacrifice.
When the sounds of Rebecca’s devotional hymn had died away in
silence, the low knock at the door was again renewed. “Enter,”
she said, “if thou art a friend; and if a foe, I have not the
means of refusing thy entrance.”
“I am,” said Brian de Bois-Guilbert, entering the apartment,
“friend or foe, Rebecca, as the event of this interview shall
make me.”
Alarmed at the sight of this man, whose licentious passion she
considered as the root of her 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 any one, 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 sate 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 demand a champion, from whom couldst thou think it came,
if not from Bois-Guilbert? In whom else couldst thou have excited
such interest?”
“A brief respite from instant death,” said Rebecca, “which will
little avail me---was this all thou couldst do for one, on whose
head thou hast heaped sorrow, and whom thou hast brought near
even to the verge of the tomb?”
“No maiden,” said Bois-Guilbert, “this was NOT all that I
purposed. Had it not been for the accursed interference of yon
fanatical dotard, and the fool of Goodalricke, who, being a
Templar, affects to think and judge according to the ordinary
rules of humanity, the office of the Champion Defender had
devolved, not on a Preceptor, but on a Companion of the Order.
Then I myself---such was my purpose---had, on the sounding of the
trumpet, appeared in the lists as thy champion, disguised indeed
in the fashion of a roving knight, who seeks adventures to prove
his shield and spear; and then, let Beaumanoir have chosen not
one, but two or three of the brethren here assembled, I had not
doubted to cast them out of the saddle with my single lance.
Thus, Rebecca, should thine innocence have been avouched, and to
thine own gratitude would I have trusted for the reward of my
victory.”
“This, Sir Knight,” said Rebecca, “is but idle boasting---a brag
of what you would have done had you not found it convenient to do
otherwise. You received my glove, and my champion, if a creature
so desolate can find one, must encounter your lance in the lists
---yet you would assume the air of my friend and protector!”
“Thy friend and protector,” said the Templar, gravely, “I will
yet be---but mark at what risk, or rather at what certainty, of
dishonour; and then blame me not if I make my stipulations,
before I offer up all that I have hitherto held dear, to save the
life of a Jewish maiden.”
“Speak,” said Rebecca; “I understand thee not.”
“Well, then,” said Bois-Guilbert, “I will speak as freely as ever
did doting penitent to his ghostly father, when placed in the
tricky confessional.---Rebecca, if I appear not in these lists I
lose fame and rank---lose that which is the breath of my
nostrils, the esteem, I mean, in which I am held by my brethren,
and the hopes I have of succeeding to that mighty authority,
which is now wielded by the bigoted dotard Lucas de Beaumanoir,
but of which I should make a different use. Such is my certain
doom, except I appear in arms against thy cause. Accursed be he
of Goodalricke, who baited this trap for me! and doubly accursed
Albert de Malvoisin, who withheld me from the resolution I had
formed, of hurling back the glove at the face of the
superstitious and superannuated fool, who listened to a charge so
absurd, and against a creature so high in mind, and so lovely in
form as thou art!”
“And what now avails rant or flattery?” answered Rebecca. “Thou
hast made thy choice between causing to be shed the blood of an
innocent woman, or of endangering thine own earthly state and
earthly hopes---What avails it to reckon together?---thy choice
is made.”
“No, Rebecca,” said the knight, in a softer tone, and drawing
nearer towards her; “my choice is NOT made---nay, mark, it is
thine to make the election. If I appear in the lists, I must
maintain my name in arms; and if I do so, championed or
unchampioned, thou diest by the stake and faggot, for there lives
not the knight who hath coped with me in arms on equal issue, or
on terms of vantage, save Richard Coeur-de-Lion, and his minion
of Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe, as thou well knowest, is unable to bear his
corslet, and Richard is in a foreign prison. If I appear, then
thou diest, even although thy charms should instigate some
hot-headed youth to enter the lists in thy defence.”
“And what avails repeating this so often?” said Rebecca.
“Much,” replied the Templar; “for thou must learn to look at thy
fate on every side.”
“Well, then, turn the tapestry,” said the Jewess, “and let me see
the other side.”
“If I appear,” said Bois-Guilbert, “in the fatal lists, thou
diest by a slow and cruel death, in pain such as they say is
destined to the guilty hereafter. But if I appear not, then am I
a degraded and dishonoured knight, accused of witchcraft and of
communion with infidels---the illustrious
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