Burlesques Part 42

This is the epitaph she caused to be written by Father Drono (who piqued himself upon his Latinity) on the stone commemorating the death of her late lord:--

Hic est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus: c.u.m gladio et lancea, Normania et quoque Francia Verbera dura dabat: per Turcos multum equitabat: Guilbertum occidit: atque Hierosolyma vidit.

Heu! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa, Uxor Athelstani est conjux castissima Thani.

And this is the translation which the doggerel knave Wamba made of the Latin lines:

"REQUIESCAT.

"Under the stone you behold, Buried, and coffined, and cold, Lieth Sir Wilfrid the Bold.

"Always he marched in advance, Warring in Flanders and France, Doughty with sword and with lance.

"Famous in Saracen fight, Rode in his youth the good knight, Scattering Paynims in flight.

"Brian the Templar untrue, Fairly in tourney he slew, Saw Hierusalem too.

"Now he is buried and gone, Lying beneath the gray stone: Where shall you find such a one?

"Long time his widow deplored, Weeping the fate of her lord, Sadly cut off by the sword.

"When she was eased of her pain, Came the good Lord Athelstane, When her ladyship married again."

Athelstane burst into a loud laugh, when he heard it, at the last line, but Rowena would have had the fool whipped, had not the Thane interceded; and to him, she said, she could refuse nothing.

CHAPTER IV.

IVANHOE REDIVIVUS.

I trust n.o.body will suppose, from the events described in the last chapter, that our friend Ivanhoe is really dead. Because we have given him an epitaph or two and a monument, are these any reasons that he should be really gone out of the world? No: as in the pantomime, when we see Clown and Pantaloon lay out Harlequin and cry over him, we are always sure that Master Harlequin will be up at the next minute alert and shining in his glistening coat; and, after giving a box on the ears to the pair of them, will be taking a dance with Columbine, or leaping gayly through the clock-face, or into the three-pair-of-stairs'

window:--so Sir Wilfrid, the Harlequin of our Christmas piece, may be run through a little, or may make believe to be dead, but will a.s.suredly rise up again when he is wanted, and show himself at the right moment.

The suspicious-looking characters from whom Wamba ran away were no cut-throats and plunderers, as the poor knave imagined, but no other than Ivanhoe's friend, the hermit, and a reverend brother of his, who visited the scene of the late battle in order to see if any Christians still survived there, whom they might shrive and get ready for heaven, or to whom they might possibly offer the benefit of their skill as leeches. Both were prodigiously learned in the healing art; and had about them those precious elixirs which so often occur in romances, and with which patients are so miraculously restored. Abruptly dropping his master's head from his lap as he fled, poor Wamba caused the knight's pate to fall with rather a heavy thump to the ground, and if the knave had but stayed a minute longer, he would have heard Sir Wilfrid utter a deep groan. But though the fool heard him not, the holy hermits did; and to recognize the gallant Wilfrid, to withdraw the enormous dagger still sticking out of his back, to wash the wound with a portion of the precious elixir, and to pour a little of it down his throat, was with the excellent hermits the work of an instant: which remedies being applied, one of the good men took the knight by the heels and the other by the head, and bore him daintily from the castle to their hermitage in a neighboring rock. As for the Count of Chalus, and the remainder of the slain, the hermits were too much occupied with Ivanhoe's case to mind them, and did not, it appears, give them any elixir: so that, if they are really dead, they must stay on the rampart stark and cold; or if otherwise, when the scene closes upon them as it does now, they may get up, shake themselves, go to the slips and drink a pot of porter, or change their stage-clothes and go home to supper. My dear readers, you may settle the matter among yourselves as you like. If you wish to kill the characters really off, let them be dead, and have done with them: but, entre nous, I don't believe they are any more dead than you or I are, and sometimes doubt whether there is a single syllable of truth in this whole story.

Well, Ivanhoe was taken to the hermits' cell, and there doctored by the holy fathers for his hurts; which were of such a severe and dangerous order, that he was under medical treatment for a very considerable time.

When he woke up from his delirium, and asked how long he had been ill, fancy his astonishment when he heard that he had been in the fever for six years! He thought the reverend fathers were joking at first, but their profession forbade them from that sort of levity; and besides, he could not possibly have got well any sooner, because the story would have been sadly put out had he appeared earlier. And it proves how good the fathers were to him, and how very nearly that scoundrel of a Roger de Backbite's dagger had finished him, that he did not get well under this great length of time; during the whole of which the fathers tended him without ever thinking of a fee. I know of a kind physician in this town who does as much sometimes; but I won't do him the ill service of mentioning his name here.

Ivanhoe, being now quickly p.r.o.nounced well, trimmed his beard, which by this time hung down considerably below his knees, and calling for his suit of chain-armor, which before had fitted his elegant person as tight as wax, now put it on, and it bagged and hung so loosely about him, that even the good friars laughed at his absurd appearance. It was impossible that he should go about the country in such a garb as that: the very boys would laugh at him: so the friars gave him one of their old gowns, in which he disguised himself, and after taking an affectionate farewell of his friends, set forth on his return to his native country. As he went along, he learned that Richard was dead, that John reigned, that Prince Arthur had been poisoned, and was of course made acquainted with various other facts of public importance recorded in Pinnock's Catechism and the Historic Page.

But these subjects did not interest him near so much as his own private affairs; and I can fancy that his legs trembled under him, and his pilgrim's staff shook with emotion, as at length, after many perils, he came in sight of his paternal mansion of Rotherwood, and saw once more the chimneys smoking, the shadows of the oaks over the gra.s.s in the sunset, and the rooks winging over the trees. He heard the supper gong sounding: he knew his way to the door well enough; he entered the familiar hall with a benedicite, and without any more words took his place.

You might have thought for a moment that the gray friar trembled and his shrunken cheek looked deadly pale; but he recovered himself presently: nor could you see his pallor for the cowl which covered his face.

A little boy was playing on Athelstane's knee; Rowena smiling and patting the Saxon Thane fondly on his broad bullhead, filled him a huge cup of spiced wine from a golden jug. He drained a quart of the liquor, and, turning round, addressed the friar:--

"And so, gray frere, thou sawest good King Richard fall at Chalus by the bolt of that felon bowman?"

"We did, an it please you. The brothers of our house attended the good King in his last moments: in truth, he made a Christian ending!"

"And didst thou see the archer flayed alive? It must have been rare sport," roared Athelstane, laughing hugely at the joke. "How the fellow must have howled!"

"My love!" said Rowena, interposing tenderly, and putting a pretty white finger on his lip.

"I would have liked to see it too," cried the boy.

"That's my own little Cedric, and so thou shalt. And, friar, didst see my poor kinsman Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe? They say he fought well at Chalus!"

"My sweet lord," again interposed Rowena, "mention him not."

"Why? Because thou and he were so tender in days of yore--when you could not bear my plain face, being all in love with his pale one?"

"Those times are past now, dear Athelstane," said his affectionate wife, looking up to the ceiling.

"Marry, thou never couldst forgive him the Jewess, Rowena."

"The odious hussy! don't mention the name of the unbelieving creature,"

exclaimed the lady.

"Well, well, poor Wil was a good lad--a thought melancholy and milksop though. Why, a pint of sack fuddled his poor brains."

"Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe was a good lance," said the friar. "I have heard there was none better in Christendom. He lay in our convent after his wounds, and it was there we tended him till he died. He was buried in our north cloister."

"And there's an end of him," said Athelstane. "But come, this is dismal talk. Where's Wamba the Jester? Let us have a song. Stir up, Wamba, and don't lie like a dog in the fire! Sing us a song, thou crack-brained jester, and leave off whimpering for bygones. Tush, man! There be many good fellows left in this world."

"There be buzzards in eagles' nests," Wamba said, who was lying stretched before the fire, sharing the hearth with the Thane's dogs.

"There be dead men alive, and live men dead. There be merry songs and dismal songs. Marry, and the merriest are the saddest sometimes. I will leave off motley and wear black, gossip Athelstane. I will turn howler at funerals, and then, perhaps, I shall be merry. Motley is fit for mutes, and black for fools. Give me some drink, gossip, for my voice is as cracked as my brain."

"Drink and sing, thou beast, and cease prating," the Thane said.

And Wamba, touching his rebeck wildly, sat up in the chimney-side and curled his lean shanks together and began:--

"LOVE AT TWO SCORE.

"Ho! pretty page, with dimpled chin, That never has known the barber's shear, All your aim is woman to win-- This is the way that boys begin-- Wait till you've come to forty year!

"Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, Billing and cooing is all your cheer, Sighing and singing of midnight strains Under Bonnybells' window-panes.

Wait till you've come to forty year!

"Forty times over let Michaelmas pa.s.s, Grizzling hair the brain doth clear; Then you know a boy is an a.s.s, Then you know the worth of a la.s.s, Once you have come to forty year.

"Pledge me round, I bid ye declare, All good fellows whose beards are gray: Did not the fairest of the fair Common grow, and wearisome, ere Ever a month was pa.s.sed away?

"The reddest lips that ever have kissed, The brightest eyes that ever have shone, May pray and whisper and we not list, Or look away and never be missed, Ere yet ever a month was gone.

"Gillian's dead, Heaven rest her bier, How I loved her twenty years syne!