The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter (good romance books to read TXT) 📕

have it in my power to bring a sovereignty to your head, and the fondest of wives to your bosom." As she vehemently spoke, and clung to Wallace, as if she had already a right to seek comfort within his arms, her tears and violent agitations so disconcerted him that for a few moments he could not find a reply. This short endurance of her passion aroused her almost drooping hopes, and intoxicated with so rapturous an illusion, she threw off the little restraint in which the awe of Wallace's coldness had confined her, and flinging herself on his breast, poured forth all her love and fond ambitions for him. In vain he attempted to interrupt her, to raise her with gentleness from her indecorous situation; she had no perception but the idea which had now taken possession of her heart, and whispering to him softly, said: "Be but my husband, Wallace, and all rights shall perish before my love and your aggrandizement. In these arms, you shall bless the day you first saw Joanna of Strathearn!"

The prowess of the Knight of the Green Plume, the respect he owed to the widow of the Earl of Mar, the tenderness he ever felt for all of womankind, were all forgotten in the disgusting blandishments of this disgrace to her sex. She wooed to be his wife, but not with the chaste appeal of the widow of Mahlon. "Let me find favor in thy sight, for thou hast comforted me! Spread thy garment over me, and let me be thy wife!" said the fair Moabitess who in a strange land cast herself at the feet of her deceased husband's friend. She was answered, "I will do all that thou requirest, for thou art a virtuous woman!" But neither the actions nor the words of Lady Mar bore witness that she deserved this appellation. The were the dictates of a passion impure as it was intemperate. Blinded by its fumes, she forgot the nature of the heart she sought to pervert to sympathy with hers. She saw not that every look and movement on her part filled Wallace with aversion, and not until he forcibly broke from her did she doubt the success of her fond caresses.

"Lady mar," said he, "I must repeat that I am not ungrateful for the proofs of regard you have bestowed on me; but such excess of attachment is lavished upon a man that is a bankrupt in love. I am cold as monumental marble to every touch of that passion to which I was once but too entirely devoted. Bereaved of the object, I am punished; thus is my heart doomed to solitude on earth for having made an idol of the angel that was sent to cheer my path to Heaven." Wallace said even more than this. He remonstrated with her on the shipwreck she was making of her own happiness, in adhering thus tenaciously to a man who could only regard her with the general sentiment of esteem. He urged her beauty and yet youthful years, and how many would be eager to win her love, and to marry her with honor. While he continued to speak to her with the tender consideration of a brother, she, who knew no gradations in the affections of the heart, doubted his words, and believed that a latent fire glowed in his breast which her art might yet blow into a flame. She threw herself upon her knees, she wept, she implored his pity, she wound her arms around his, and bathed his hands with her tears, but still he continued to urge her, by every argument of female delicacy, to relinquish her ill-directed love, to return to her domains before her absence could be generally known. She looked up to read his countenance. A friend's anxiety, nay, authority, was there, but no glow of passion; all was calm and determined. Her beauty, then, had been shown to a man without eyes, her tender eloquence poured on an ear that was deaf, her blandishments lavished on a block of marble! In a paroxysm of despair she dashed the hand she held far from her, and standing proudly on her feet—"Hear me, thou man of stone!" cried she, "and answer me on your life and honor, for both depend on your reply; is Joanna of Strathearn to be your wife?"

"Cease to urge me, unhappy lady," returned Wallace; "you already know the decision of this ever-widowed heart."

Lady Mar looked steadfastly at him.

"Then receive my last determination!" and drawing near him with a desperate and portentous countenance, as if she meant to whisper in his ear, she suddenly plucked St. Louis' dagger from his girdle and struck it into his breast. He caught the hand which grasped the hilt. Her eyes glared with the fury of a maniac, and, with a horrid laugh, she exclaimed: "I have slain thee, insolent triumpher in my love and agonies! Thou shalt not now deride me in the arms of thy minion; for, I know that it is not for the dead Marion you have trampled on my heart but for the living Helen!"

As she spoke, he moved her hold from the dagger, and drew the weapon from the wound. A torrent of blood flowed over his vest, and stained the hand that grasped hers. She turned of a deadly paleness, but a demoniac joy still gleamed in her eyes.

"Lady Mar," cried he, while he thrust the thickness of his scarf into the wound, "I pardon this outrage. Go in peace, I shall never breathe to man nor woman the occurrences of this night. Only remember, that with regard to Lady Helen, my wishes are as pure as her own innocence."

"So they may be now, vainly boasting, immaculate Wallace!" answered she, with bitter derision; "men are saints when their passions are satisfied. Think not to impose on her who knows how this vestal Helen followed you in page's attire, and without one stigma being cast upon her maiden delicacy. I am not to learn the days and nights she passed alone with you in the woods of Normandy? Did you not follow her to France? Did you not tear her from the arms of Lord Aymer de Valence? and now, relinquishing her yourself, you leave a dishonored bride to cheat the vows of some honester man! Wallace, I know you, and as I have been fool enough to love you beyond all woman's love, I swear by the powers of heaven and hell to make you feel the weight of woman's hatred!"

Her denunciation had no effect on Wallace; but her slander against her unoffending daughter-in-law agitated him with an indignation that almost dispossessed him of himself. In hurried and vehement words, he denied all that she had alleged against Helen, and appealed to the whole court of France to witness her spotless innocence. Lady Mar exulted in this emotion, though every sentence, by the interest it displayed in its object, seemed to establish the truth of a suspicion which she at first only uttered from the vague workings of her revenge. Triumphing in the belief that he had found another as frail as herself, and yet maddened that another should have been preferred before her, her jealous pride blazed into redoubled flame.

"Swear," cried she, "till I see the blood of that false heart forced to my feet, and still I shall believe the base daughter of Mar a wanton. I go, not to proclaim her dishonor to the world, but to deprive her of her lover; to yield the rebel Wallace into the hands of justice! When on the scaffold, proud exulter in those by me now detested beauties, remember that it was Joanna Strathearn who laid thy matchless head upon the block; who consigned those limbs, of Heaven's own statuary, to decorate the spires of Scotland! Remember that my curse pursues you, here and hereafter!"

A livid fire seemed to dart from her scornful eyes, her countenance was torn as by some internal fiend, and, with the last malediction thundering from her tongue, she darted from his sight.

Chapter LXXI.

The Camp.

Next morning Wallace was recalled from the confusion into which his nocturnal visitor had thrown his mind by the entrance of Ker, who came, as usual, with the reports of the night. In the course of the communication he mentioned, that about three hours before sunrise, the Knight of the Green Plume had left the camp with his dispatches for Sterling. Wallace was scarcely surprised at this ready falsehood of Lady Mar's, and, not intending to betray her, he merely said, "Long ere be appears again I hope we shall have good tidings from our friend in the north."

But day succeeded day, and notwithstanding Bothweil's embassy, no accounts arrived. The countess had left an emissary in the Scottish camp, who did as she had done before—intercepted all messengers from Perthshire.

Indeed, from the first of her flight to Wallace to the hour of her qoitting him, she had never halted in her purpose from any regard to honor. Previous to her stealing from Huntingtower, she had bribed the senesehal to say that on the morning of her disappearance, he had met a knight, near Saint Concal's Well, coming to the castle; who told him that the Countess of Mar was gone on a secret mission to Norway, and she therefore had commanded him, by that knight, to enjoin her sister-in-law, for the sake of the cause most dear to them all, not to acquaint Lord Ruthven, or any of their friends, with her departure, till she should return with happy news for Scotland. The man added, that after declaring this, the knight rode hastily away. But this precaution, which did indeed impose on the innocent credulty of her husband's sister and his daughter, failed to satisfy the countess herself.

Fearful that Helen might communicate her flight to Wallace, and so excite his suspicion of her not being far from him, from the moment of her joining him at Linlithgow she intercepted every letter from Huntingtower: and when Bruce went to that castle, she continued the practice with double vigilance, being jealous of what might be said of Helen by this Sir Thomas de Longueville, in whom the master of her fate seemed so unreservedly to confide. To this end, even after she left the camp, all packets from Perthshire were conveyed to her by the spy she had stationed near Wallace; while all which were sent from him to Huntingtower were stopped by the treacherous seneschal, and thrown into the flames. No letters, however, ever came from Helen; a few bore Lord Ruthven's superscription, and all the rest were addressed by Sir Thomas de Longueville to Wallace. She broke the seals of this correspondence, but she looked in vain on their contents. Bruce and his friend, as well as Ruthven, wrote in a cipher, and only one passage, which the former had by chance written in the common character, could she ever make out. It ran thus:

"I have just returned to Huntingtower, after the capture of Kinfouns. Lady Helen sits by me on one side, Isabella on the other. Isabella smiles on me, like the spirit of happiness. Helen's look is not less gracious, for I tell her I am writing to Sir William Wallace. She smiles, hut it is with such a smile as that with which a saint would relinquish to Heaven the dearest object of its love. 'Helen,' said I, 'what shall I say from you to our friend?' 'That I pray for him.' 'That you think of him?' 'That I pray for him,' repeated she, more emphatically; 'that is the way I always think of my preserver.' Her manner checked me, my dear Wallace, but I would give worlds that you could bring your heart to make this sweet vestal smile as I do her sister!"

Lady Mar crushed the registered wish in her hand; and though she was never able to decipher a word or more of Bruce's numerous letters (many of which, could she have read them, contained complaints of that silence she had so cruelly occasioned), she took and destroyed them all.

She had ever shunned the penetrating eyes of young Lord Bothwell, and to have him on the spot when she should discover herself to Wallace, she thought would only invite discomfiture. Affecting to share the general anxiety respecting the failure of communications from the north, she it was