‘The highest personal courage combined with the loftiest sense of self-sacrifice was hers, the whole illumined in befitting time and place with [411] ]gleams of humour and sportive playfulness, betokening how, under happier circumstances, she could adapt herself to the joyous abandon of the hour. With all a man’s courage and steadfastness in the hour of danger, she exhibited the fascination of her sex undiminished, indeed heightened by the daily dangers amid which she trod so warily and securely. Then she rode so well. I think she is one among the few heroines that Sir Walter exhibits to his readers on horseback. The ill-fated Clara Mowbray, poor girl! rode recklessly; but she was half-crazed through treachery and evil fortune.’
‘How about Rebecca of York?’ said Reggie Banneret. ‘She rode to Ashby-de-la-Zouche with her father, on a memorable occasion, though when carried off and lodged in Front de Bœuf’s castle, together with the wounded Ivanhoe, she seems to have been travelling in a litter.’
‘I always place Rebecca in the front rank of Sir Walter’s heroines,’ said Corisande. ‘Her beauty, her charity, even to the men of the race that ill-used, despised, and plundered her nation, should gain her a prize at any show of fair women in or out of Novel Land. But except when she was carried off, and mounted before one of Brian de Bois-Guilbert’s Eastern mutes, after the siege of Torquilstone Castle, she hadn’t much chance of displaying her accomplishments in that line. She was a dear creature, and any one who can read the ending of the chapter, where she is sentenced to the stake, and Wilfred comes to the rescue, hardly able to sit on his horse, and that [412] ]wicked, fascinating Templar dies of heart failure at the right time, without feeling the tears in their eyes, has no sense, no feeling, no brains, and no heart—that’s my opinion.’
‘What a gallery of beauties Sir Walter’s heroines would furnish!’ said Eric. ‘Indeed, I do remember seeing one in school-boy days, but I am afraid they were guilty of ringlets, and so would be voted unfashionable by the latter-day Johnnies—Edith Bellenden, Flora MacIvor, Rose Bradwardine, Julia Mannering, Amy Robsart, and a host of others—among them one Vanda! but I have less pity for any of their woes and misfortunes than for those of Clara Mowbray in St. Ronan’s Well. Nothing finer in romantic tragedy can be found than her meeting with Francis Tyrrel on the road to Shaw’s Castle.
‘“‘And what good purpose can your remaining here serve?’ [she said]. ‘Surely you need not come either to renew your own unhappiness or to augment mine?’
‘“‘To augment yours—God forbid!’ answered Tyrrel. ‘No; I came hither only because, after so many years of wandering, I longed to revisit the spot where all my hopes lay buried.’
‘“‘Ay, buried is the word,’ she replied—‘crushed down and buried when they budded fairest. I often think of it, Tyrrel; and there are times when, Heaven help me! I can think of little else. Look at me; you remember what I was—see what grief and solitude have made me.’
‘“She flung back the veil which surrounded her [413] ]riding-hat, and which had hitherto hid her face. It was the same countenance which he had formerly known in all the bloom of early beauty; but though the beauty remained, the bloom was fled for ever. Not the agitation of exercise—not that which arose from the pain and confusion of this unexpected interview, had called to poor Clara’s cheek even the semblance of colour. Her complexion was marble-white, like that of the finest piece of statuary.
‘“‘Is it possible?’ said Tyrrel; ‘can grief have made such ravages?’
‘“‘Grief,’ replied Clara, ‘is the sickness of the mind, and its sister is the sickness of the body; they are twin-sisters, Tyrrel, and are seldom long separate. Sometimes the body’s disease comes first, and dims our eyes and palsies our hands before the fire of our mind and of our intellect is quenched. But mark me—soon after comes her cruel sister with her urn, and sprinkles cold dew on our hopes and loves, our memory, our recollections, and our feelings, and shows us that they cannot survive the decay of our bodily powers.’