20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels

Whether it was that this discipline cleared poor Wamba’s wits or cooled his humor, it is certain that he became the most melancholy fool in England, and if ever he ventured upon a pun to the shuddering poor servitors, who were mumbling their dry crusts below the salt, it was such a faint and stale joke that nobody dared to laugh at the innuendoes of the unfortunate wag, and a sickly smile was the best applause he could minister. Once, indeed, when Guffo, the goose-boy (a half-witted poor wretch), laughed outright at a lamentably stale pun which Wamba palmed upon him at supper-time, (it was dark, and the torches being brought in, Wamba said, ‘Guffo, they can’t see their way in the argument, and are going to throw a little light upon the subject,’) the Lady Rowena, being disturbed in a theological controversy with Father Willibald, (afterwards canonized as St. Willibald, of Bareacres, hermit and confessor,) called out to know what was the cause of the unseemly interruption, and Guffo and Wamba being pointed out as the culprits, ordered them straightway into the court-yard, and three dozen to be administered to each of them.

‘I got you out of Front-de-Boeuf’s castle,’ said poor Wamba, piteously, appealing to Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, ‘and canst thou not save me from the lash?’

‘Yes, from Front-de-Boeuf’s castle, where you were locked up with the Jewess in the tower!’ said Rowena, haughtily replying, to the timid appeal of her husband. ‘Gurth, give him four dozen!’

And this was all poor Wamba got by applying for the mediation of his master.

In fact, Rowena knew her own dignity so well as a princess of the royal blood of England, that Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, her consort, could scarcely call his life his own, and was made, in all things, to feel the inferiority of his station. And which of us is there acquainted with the sex that has not remarked this propensity in lovely woman, and how often the wisest in the council are made to be as fools at her board, and the boldest in the battle-field are craven when facing her distaff?

‘Where you were locked up with the Jewess in the tower,’ was a remark, too, of which Wilfrid keenly felt, and perhaps the reader will understand, the significancy. When the daughter of Isaac of York brought her diamonds and rubies – the poor gentle victim! – and, meekly laying them at the feet of the conquering Rowena, departed into foreign lands to tend the sick of her people, and to brood over the bootless passion which consumed her own pure heart, one would have thought that the heart of the royal lady would have melted before such beauty and humility, and that she would have been generous in the moment of her victory.

But did you ever know a right-minded woman pardon another for being handsome and more love-worthy than herself? The Lady Rowena did certainly say with mighty magnanimity to the Jewish maiden, ‘Come and live with me as a sister, as the former part of this history shows; but Rebecca knew in her heart that her ladyship’s proposition was what is called bosh (in that noble Eastern language with which Wilfrid the Crusader was familiar), or fudge, in plain Saxon; and retired with a broken, gentle spirit, neither able to bear the sight of her rival’s happiness, nor willing to disturb it by the contrast of her own wretchedness. Rowena, like the most high-bred and virtuous of women, never forgave Isaac’s daughter her beauty, nor her flirtation with Wilfrid (as the Saxon lady chose to term it) ; nor, above all, her admirable diamonds and jewels, although Rowena was actually in possession of them.