Part 38 (1/2)
While her thoughts thus followed each other, she unconsciously darted looks on Helen, which, if an evil eye had any bewitching power, would have withered all her beauties. At one of these portentous moments, the glad eyes of Helen met her glance. She started with horror. It made her remember how she had been betrayed, and all that she had suffered from Soulis. But she could not forget that she had also been rescued; and with that blessed recollection, the image of her preserver rose before her. At this gentle idea, her alarmed countenance took a softer expression; and, tenderly sighing, she turned to her father's question of ”How she came to be with Lady Ruthven, when he had been taught by Lord Andrew to believe her safe at St. Fillan's?”
”Yes,” cried Murray, throwing herself on a seat beside her, ”I found in your letter to Sir William Wallace, that you had been betrayed from your asylum by some traitor Scot; and but for the fullness of my joy at our present meeting, I should have inquired the name of the villian!”
Lady Mar felt a deadly sickness at her heart, on hearing that Sir William Wallace was already so far acquainted with her daughter as to have received a letter from her; and in amazed despair, she prepared to listen to what she expected would bring a death-stroke to her hopes.
They had met--but how?--where? They wrote to each other. Then, far indeed had proceeded that communication of hearts, which was now the aim of her life--and she was undone! Helen glanced at the face of Lady mar, and observing its changes, regarded them as corroborations of her having been the betrayer. ”If conscience disturbs you thus,” thought Helen, ”let it rend your heart, and perhaps remorse may follow!”
As the tide of success seemed so full for the patriot Scots, Helen no longer feared that her cousin would rashly seek a precarious vengeance on the traitor Soulis, when he might probably soon have an opportunity of making it certain at the head of an army. She therefore commenced her narrative from the time of Murray's leaving her at the priory, and continued it to the hour in which she had met her father, a prisoner in the streets of Stirling. As she proceeded, the indignation of the earl and of Murray against Soulis became vehement. The nephew was full of immediate personal revenge. But the father, with arguments similar to those which had suggested themselves to his daughter, calmed the lover's rage, for Murray now felt that fire as well as a kinsman's; and reseated himself with repressed, though burning resentment, to listen to the remainder of her relation.
The quaking conscience of Lady mar did indeed vary her cheeks with a thousand dyes, when, as Helen repeated part of her conversation with Macgregor's wife, Murray abruptly said, ”Surely that woman could name the traitor who betrayed us into the hands of our enemies! Did she not hint it?”
Helen cast down her eyes, that even a glance might not overwhelm with insupportable shame the already trembling countess. Lady Mar saw that she was acquainted with her guilt, and expecting no more mercy than she knew she would show to Helen in the like circ.u.mstances, she hastily rose from her chair, internally vowing vengeance against her triumphant daughter and hatred of all mankind. But Helen thought she might have so erred, from a wife's alarm for the safety of the husband she professed to doat on; and this dutiful daughter determined never to accuse her.
While all the furies raged in the breast of the guilty woman, Helen simply answered, ”Lord Soulis would be weak as he is vile, to trust a secret of that kind with a servant;” then hurried on to the relation of subsequent events. The countess breathed again; and almost deceiving herself with the idea that Helen was indeed ignorant of her treachery, listened with emotions of another kind, when she heard of the rescue of her daughter-in-law. She saw Wallace in that brave act! But as Helen, undesignedly to herself, pa.s.sed over the parts in their conversation which had most interested her, and never named the graces of his person, Lady mar thought, that to have viewed Wallace with so little notice would have been impossible; and therefore was glad of such a double conviction, that he and her daughter had never met, which seemed verified when Helen said that the unknown chief had promised to join his arms with those of Wallace.
Murray had observed Helen while she spoke, with an impression at his heart that made it pause. Something in this interview had whispered to him what he had never dreamed before--that she was dearer to him than fifty thousand cousins. And while the blood flushed and retreated in the complexion of Helen, and her downcast eyes refused to show what was pa.s.sing there, while she hastily ran over the circ.u.mstances of her acquaintance with the stranger knight, Murray's own emotions declared the secret of hers; and with a lip as pale as her own, he said, ”But where is this brave man? He cannot have yet joined us, for surely he would have told Wallace or myself that he came from you?”
”I warned him not to do so,” replied she, ”for fear that your indignation against my enemies, my dear cousin, might have precipitated you into dangers to be incurred for our country only.”
”Then, if he had joined us,” replied Murray, rising from his seat, ”you will probably soon known who he is. To-morrow morning Sir William Wallace will enter the citadel, attended by his princ.i.p.al knights; and in that gallant company you must doubtless discover the man who had laid such obligations on us all by your preservation.”
Murray's feelings told him that glad should he be, if the utterance of that obligation would repay it!
Helen herself knew not how to account for the agitation which shook her whenever she adverted to her unknown preserver. At the time of the hermit's friend (the good lay brother), having brought her to Alloa, when she explained to Lady Ruthven the cause of her strange arrival, she had then told her story with composure, till she mentioned her deliverer; but in that moment, for the first time she felt a confusion which disordered the animation with which she described his patriotism and his bravery. But it was natural, she thought, that grat.i.tude for a recent benefit should make her heart beat high. It was something like the enthusiasm she had felt for Wallace on the rescue of her father, and she was satisfied. But a few days of quiet at Alloa had recovered her health from the shock it had received in the recent scenes, and she proposed to her aunt to send some trusty messenger to inform the imprisoned earl at Dumbarton of her happy refuge; and Lady Ruthven in return had urged the probability that the messenger would be intercepted, and so her asylum be discovered, saying, ”Let it alone, till this knight of yours, by performing his word, calls you to declare his honorable deeds. Till then, Lord Mar, ignorant of your danger, needs no a.s.surance of your safety.”
This casual reference to the knight had then made the tranquilized heart of Helen renew its throbbings, and turning from her aunt with an acquiescing reply, she retired to her own apartment to quell the unusual and painful blushes she felt burning on her cheeks. Why she should feel thus she could not account, ”unless,” said she to herself, ”I fear that my suspicion may be guessed at; and should my words or looks betray the royal Bruce to any harm, that moment of undesigned ingrat.i.tude would be the last of my life.”
This explanation seemed ample to herself. And henceforth avoiding all mention of her preserver in her conversations with Lady Ruthven, she had confined the subject to her own breast; and thinking that she thought of him more by her intention to speak of him less, she wondered not that whenever she was alone his image immediately rose in her mind, his voice seemed to sound in her ears, and even as the summer air wafted its soft fragrance over her cheek, she would turn as if she felt that breath which had so gently brushed her to repose. She would then start and sigh, and repeat his words to herself, but all was serene in her bosom. For it seemed as if the contemplation of so much loveliness of soul in so n.o.ble a form, soothed instead of agitated her heart.
”What a king will he be?” thought she; ”with what transport would the virtuous Wallace set the Scottish crown on so n.o.ble a brow.”
Such were her meditations and feelings, when she was brought a prisoner to Stirling. And when she heard of the victories of Wallace, she could not but think that the brave arm of her knight was there, and that he, with the renowned champion of Scotland, would fly, on the receipt of her letter, to Stirling, there to repeat the valiant deeds of Dumbarton. The first blast of the Scottish trumpet under the walls found her, as she had said, upon her knees, and kept her there, for hardly with any intermission, with fast and prayer did she kneel before the altar of Heaven--till the voice of Andrew Murray at midnight called her to freedom and to happiness.
Wallace, and perhaps her nameless hero with him, had again conquered!
His idea dwelt in her heart and faltered on her tongue; and yet, in reciting the narrative of her late sufferings to her father, when she came to the mentioning of the stranger's conduct to her--with an apprehensive embarra.s.sment she felt her growing emotions as she drew near the subject; and, hurrying over the event, she could only excuse herself for such new perturbations by supposing that the former treason of Lady Mar now excited her alarm, with fear she should fix it on a new object. Turning cold at an idea so pregnant with horror, she hastily pa.s.sed from the agitating theme to speak of De Valence and the respect with which he had treated her during her imprisonment. His courtesy had professed to deny nothing to her wishes except her personal liberty and any conference with her parents or aunt. Her father's life, he declared it was altogether out of his power to grant. He might suspend the sentence, but he could not abrogate it.
”Yes,” cried the earl, ”though false and inflexible, I must not accuse him of having been so barbarous in his tyranny as Cressingham. For it was not until De Valence was taken prisoner that Joanna and I were divided. Till then we were lodged in decent apartments, but on that event Cressingham tore us from each other, and threw us into different dungeons. My sister Janet I never saw since the hour we were separated in the street of Stirling until the awful moment in which we met on the roof of this castle--the moment when I expected to behold her and my wife die before my eyes!”
Helen now learned, for the first time, the base cruelties which had been exercised on her father and his family since the capture of De Valence. She had been exempted from sharing them by the fears of Cressingham, who, knowing that the English earl had particular views with regard to her, durst not risk offending him by outraging one whom he had declared himself determined to protect.
During part of this conversation, Murray withdrew to bring Lady Ruthven and her son to share the general joy of full domestic reunion. The happy Edwin and his mother having embraced these dear relatives with yet more tender affections yearning in their bosoms, accompanied Murray to the door of the barbican, which contained Lord Ruthven. They entered on the wings of conjugal and filial love; but the for once pensive Lord Andrew, with a slow and musing step, returned into the castle to see that all was safely disposed for the remainder of the night.
Chapter x.x.xV.
Stirling Citadel.
At noon next day Murray received a message from Wallace, desiring him to acquaint the Earl of Mar that he was coming to the citadel to offer the palace of Snawdoun to the ladies of Mar, and to request the earl to take charge of the ill.u.s.trous prisoners he was bringing to the castle.
Each member of the family hastened to prepare for an interview which excited different expectations in each different breast. Lady Mar, well satisfied that Helen and Wallace had never met, and clinging to the vague words of Murray, that he had sent to give her liberty, called forth every art of the tiringroom to embellish her still fine person.