20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels

‘Well, well,’ said Isaac, in rather an appeased tone, ‘let us hear what the poor girl has got to say. Do you want to marry his royal highness, Rebecca? Say the word, yes or no.’

Another groan burst from the rabbis–they cried, shrieked, chattered, gesticulated, furious to lose such a prize; as were the women, that she should reign over them a second Esther[806].

‘Silence,’ cried out Isaac, ‘let the girl speak. Speak boldly, Rebecca dear, there’s a good girl.’

Rebecca was as pale as a stone. She folded her arms on her breast, and felt the ring there. She looked round all the assembly, and then at Isaac. ‘Father,’ she said, in a thrilling low steady voice, ‘I am not of your religion – I am not of the Prince Boabdil’s religion – I – I am of his religion.’

‘His! whose, in the name of Moses, girl?’ cried Isaac.

Rebecca clasped her hands on her beating chest and looked round with dauntless eyes. ‘Of his,’ she said, ‘who saved my life and your honor: of my dear, dear champion’s. I never can be his, but I will be no other’s. Give my money to my kinsmen; it is that they long for. Take the dross, Simeon and Solomon, Jonah and Jochanan, and divide it among you, and leave me. I will never be yours, I tell you, never. Do you think, after knowing him and hearing him speak, – after watching him wounded on his pillow, and glorious in battle (her eyes melted and kindled again as she spoke these words), I can mate with such as you? Go. Leave me to myself. I am none of yours. I love him – I love him. Fate divides us long, long miles separate us; and I know we may never meet again. But I love and bless him always. Yes, always. My prayers are his; my faith is his. Yes, my faith is your faith, Wilfred–Wilfred! I have no kindred more, – I am a Christian!’

At this last word there was such a row in the assembly, as my feeble pen would in vain endeavor to depict. Old Isaac staggered back in a fit, and nobody took the least notice of him. Groans, curses, yells of men, shrieks of women, filled room with such a furious jabbering, as might have appalled the any heart less stout than Rebecca’s; but that brave woman was prepared for all; expecting, and perhaps hoping, that death would be her instant lot. There was but one creature who pitied her, and that was her cousin and father’s clerk, little Ben Davids, who was but thirteen, and had only just begun to carry a bag, and whose crying and boohooing, as she finished speaking, was drowned in the screams and maledictions of the elder Israelites. Ben Davids was madly in love with his cousin (as boys often are with ladies of twice their age), and he had presence of mind suddenly to knock over the large brazen lamp on the table, which illuminated the angry conclave; then, whispering to Rebecca to go up to her own room and lock herself in, or they would kill her else, he took her hand and led her out.

From that day she disappeared from among her people. The poor and the wretched missed her, and asked for her in vain. Had any violence been done to her, the poorer Jews would have risen and put all Isaac’s family to death; and besides, her old flame, Prince Boabdil, would have also been exceedingly wrathful. She was not killed then, but, so to speak, buried alive, and locked up in Isaac’s back-kitchen: an apartment into which scarcely any light, entered, and where she was fed upon scanty portions of the most mouldy bread and water. Little Ben Davids was the only person who visited her, and her sole consolation was to talk to him about Ivanhoe, and how good and how gentle he was; how brave and how true; and how he slew the tremendous knight of the Templars, and how he married a lady whom Rebecca scarcely thought worthy of him, but with whom she prayed he might be happy ; and of what color his eyes were, and what were the arms on his shield – viz. a tree with the word ‘Desdichado’ written underneath, &c. &c. &c.: all which talk would not have interested little Davids, had it come from anybody else’s mouth, but to which he never tired of listening as it fell from her sweet lips.

So, in fact, when old Isaac of York came to negotiate with Don Beltran de Cuchilla for the ransom of the Alfaqui’s daughter of Xixona, our dearest Rebecca was no more dead than you and I; and it was in his rage and fury against Ivanhoe that Isaac told that cavalier the falsehood which caused the knight so much pain and such a prodigious deal of bloodshed to the Moors: and who knows, trivial as it may seem, whether it was not that very circumstance which caused the destruction in Spain of the Moorish power?