Heroines Of Fiction - William Dean Howells

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poorer for their absence. Rowena, in fact, is a large, blond, calm nonentity, not only passionless, but traitless. Rebecca is conventionally filial, conventionally noble and pathetic; but she is without inconsistency, without variation, which are the soul of feminine identity, and she does not persuade us that she has any real business in the scene. Her moment of greatest vitality is that where she is imprisoned in the tower of Front-de-Boeuf's castle, and reports to her fellow-captive, the wounded Ivanhoe, the events of the assault as they pass under her eye around the beleaguered walls. I do not know whether this is accounted a scene of uncommon power by the critics or not, but it seems to me so.

      "'And I must lie here like a bedridden monk', exclaimed Ivanhoe, 'while the game that gives me freedom or death is played out by others! Look from the window once again, kind maiden, but beware that you are not marked by the archers beneath. . . . What dost thou see, Rebecca?' 'Nothing but the cloud of arrows that fly so thick as to dazzle mine eyes, and to hide the bowmen who shoot them.' 'That cannot endure,' cried Ivanhoe. ' If they press not right on to carry the castle by pure force of arms, the archery may avail but little against stone walls and bulwarks.' . . . She turned her head from the lattice as if unable longer to endure a sight so terrible. 'Look forth again, Rebecca,' said Ivanhoe, mistaking the cause of her retiring. . . . ' There is now less danger.' Rebecca again looked forth and almost immediately exclaimed, ' Holy prophets of the law! Front-de-Boeuf and the Black Knight fight hand to hand in the breach, amid the roar of their followers, who watch the progress of the strife with the cause of the oppressed and of the captive!' She then uttered a loud shriek, and exclaimed, 'He is down!—he is down!' 'Who is down?' cried Ivanhoe. 'For our dear Lady's sake, tell me which has fallen.' 'The Black Knight,' answered Rebecca faintly; then instantly again shouted with joyful eagerness—'But no!—but no!—the name of the Lord of Hosts be blessed! —he is on foot again, and fights as if there were twenty men's strength in his single arm. His sword is broken he snatches an axe from a yeoman—he presses Front- de-Boeuf with blow on blow—the giant stoops and totters like an oak under the steel of the woodsman— he falls, he falls!' 'Front-de-Boeuf?' exclaimed Ivanhoe. 'Front-de-Boeuf!' answered the Jewess. 'The assailants have won the postern gate, have they not?' asked Ivanhoe. 'They have, they have,' exclaimed Rebecca, 'and they press the besieged hard upon the outer wall; some plant ladders, some swarm like bees, and endeavor to ascend upon the shoulders of each other —down go stones, beams, and trunks of trees. As they bear the wounded to the rear, fresh men supply their places in the assault. . . . The Black Knight approaches the postern with his huge axe—the thundering blows which he deals, you may hear them above all the din and shouts of the battle. Stones and beams are hailed down on the bold champion—he regards them no more than if they were thistle-down or feathers! . . . The postern gate shakes, it crashes, it is splintered by his blows—they rush in—the outwork is gone—Oh, Bod!—they hurl the defenders from the battlements— they throw them into the moat—Oh, men, if ye be men indeed, spare them that can resist no longer! . . Our friends strengthen themselves within the outwork which they have mastered; and it affords them so good a shelter from the foeman's shot, that the garrison only bestow a few bolts on it from interval to interval, as if rather to disquiet, than effectually to injure them.' "

      II

      One easily perceives that it is the author, and not a young mediaeval Jewess who is describing the scene in these literary terms; and it is no great wonder that Ivanhoe, finding himself in company with an elderly novelist instead of a beautiful girl, drops off to sleep upon the assurance of victory for his side, after a brief argument upholding the ideal of chivalry against that of humanity, which the supposed Jewess maintains. The passage must often have been praised, and the situation is so well imagined that the unreality of the heroine cannot spoil it quite. It may be said that she is as real as the hero, and she is certainly as well fitted to take the fancy of those boys of all ages to whom the romance of "Ivanhoe" has now almost wholly fallen. Rebecca is not much more probable or palpable in the scenes where she repels the wicked love of the Templar, or meets his accusation before the judges who condemn her to death, or even in that climax where Ivanhoe rises from a sick-bed to do battle for her against her enemy and his. But she is always so much more alive than Rowena, that she exists at least by contrast.

      The story in which she has her being seems to have been the first which Scott wrote when he began to be afraid his Scotch stories were wearying his public. The romance which immediately preceded " Ivanhoe was "The Bride of Lammermoor," not perhaps the best of the Scotch stories, but a tale which has most deeply appealed to the hearts of gentle readers. Of all Scott s heroines Lucy Ashton is, after Jeanie Deans, perhaps the most persuasive of her reality. She is almost purely tragical. From the very beginning you can see her dark fate following the yielding and tender creature on ''that way madness lies," and it avails little that the Master of Ravenswood saves her from a mad bull in the opening chapters, or that they plight their troth and have their brief hour of happiness in the shadow of her doom. When you see her at last, gibbering and gloating over the bleeding body of the husband whom she had stabbed on her wedding-night, it is as if you had foreseen it all from the first. She has fewer words in her tragedy than even Ophelia in hers; but she remains in the memory with the like clinging hold upon the pity of the witness. The book is much better in construction than most of Scott's novels; it has far more form than he commonly knew how to give them, and, basing itself so largely as it does upon facts known to him, it has a truth that the others seldom had. This truth, strangely enough, is concentrated in the passive girl who scarcely speaks; who is blown about like a lily in the stormy events and the violent passions that surge around her, and suffers everything, but does nothing. She hardly utters a word in that last scene between Ravenswood and herself, when he returns to the house from which he has been driven with atrocious insult by her mother, to question the hapless creature of her own part in her betrothal to Bucklaw; yet she is the very soul of the tremendous incident.

      " He planted himself full in the middle of the apartment, opposite to the table at which Lucy was seated, on whom, as if she had been alone in the chamber, he bent his eyes with a mingled expression of deep grief and deliberate indignation. His dark-colored riding cloak, displaced from one shoulder, hung around one side of his person in the ample folds of the Spanish mantle. His slouched hat, which he had not removed at entrance, gave an additional gloom to his dark features, which, wasted by sorrow and marked by the ghastly look communicated by long illness, added to a countenance naturally somewhat stern and wild, a fierce and even savage expression. . . . He said not a single word, and there was a deep silence in the company for more than two minutes. It was broken by Lady Ashton, who in that space partly recovered her natural audacity. She demanded to know the cause of this unauthorized intrusion. 'That is a question, madam,' said her son, 'which I have the best right to ask.' . . . Bucklaw interposed, saying, ' No man on earth should usurp his previous right in demanding an explanation from the Master.' . . . The passions of the two young men thus counteracting each other, gave Ravenswood leisure to exclaim, in a stern and steady voice, ' Silence!—let him who really seeks danger, take the fitting time when it may be found; my mission here will shortly be accomplished. Is that your handwriting, madam?' he added, in a softer tone, extending towards Miss Ashton her last letter. A faltering 'Yes,' seemed rather to escape from her lips than to be uttered as a voluntary answer. ' And is this your handwriting?' extending towards her their mutual engagement. Lucy remained silent. Terror and a yet stronger and more confused feeling so utterly disturbed her understanding that she probably scarcely comprehended the question that was put to her. . . . 'Sir William Ashton,' said Ravenswood . . . ' if this young lady of her own free will desires the restoration of this contract, as her letter would seem to imply, there is not a withered leaf which this autumn wind strews on the heath, that is more valueless in my eyes. But I must and will hear the truth from her own mouth . . . alone, and without witnesses. Lady Ashton is welcome to remain, but let all others depart.' Ravenswood, when the men had left the room, bolted the door, and returned, raised his hat from his forehead, and gazing upon Lucy with eyes in which an expression of sorrow overcame their late fierceness . . . said,' Do you know me. Miss Ashton? I am still Edgar Ravenswood.' She was silent, and he went on with increasing vehemence, ' I am still that Edgar Ravenswood, who . . . for your sake forgave, nay clasped hands with the oppressor and pillager of his house—the traducer and murderer of his father.' ' My daughter,' answered Lady Ashton, ' has no occasion to dispute the identity of your person; the

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