Part 39 (1/2)

”It only declared surprise, madam,” cried Murray, ”the surprise of a modest and ingenuous mind that did not expect to recognize its mountain friend in the person of the protector of Scotland.”

Lady mar put up her lip, and turning to the still silent Lord Ruthven, again addressed him. ”Stepmothers, my lord,” said she, ”have hard duties to perform; and when we think we fulfill them best, our suspicious husband comes with a magician's wand, and turns all our good to evil.”

”Array your good in a less equivocal garb, my dear Joanna,” answered the Earl of Mar, rather ashamed of the hasty words which indeed the suspicion of a moment had drawn from his lips; ”judge my child by her usual conduct, not by an accidental appearance of inconsistency, and I shall ever be grateful for your solicitude. But in this instance, though she might betray the weakness of an enfeebled const.i.tution, it was certainly not the frailty of a love-sick heart.”

”Judge me by your own rule, dear Donald,” cried his wife, blandishly kissing his forehead, ”and you will not again wither the mother of your boy with such a look as I just now received!”

Glad to see this reconciliation, Lord Ruthven made a sign to Murray, and they withdrew together.

Meanwhile, the honest earl surrendering his whole heart to the wiles of his wife, poured into her not inattentive ear all his wishes for Helen: all the hopes to which her late meeting with Wallace, and their present recognition, had given birth. ”I had rather have that man my son,”

said he, ”than see my beloved daughter placed on an imperial throne.”

”I do not doubt it,” thought Lady Mar; ”for there are many emperors, but only one William Wallace!” However, her sentiments she confined to herself: neither a.s.senting nor dissenting, but answering so as to secure the confidence by which she hoped to traverse his designs.

According to the inconsistency of the wild pa.s.sion that possessed her, one moment she saw nothing but despair before her, and in the next it seemed impossible that Wallace should in heart be proof against her tenderness and charms. She remembered Murray's words: that he was sent to set her free, and that recollection reawakened every hope. Sir William had placed Lord Mar in a post as dangerous as honorable.

Should the Southrons return in any force into Scotland, Stirling must be one of the first places they would attack. The earl was brave, but his wounds had robbed him of much of his martial vigor. Might she not then be indeed set free? And might not Wallace, on such an event, mean to repay her for all those sighs he now sought to repress from ideas of a virtue which she could admire, but had not the courage to imitate?

These wicked meditations pa.s.sed even at the side of her husband, and, with a view to further every wish of her intoxicated imagination, she determined to spare no exertion to secure the support of her own family, which, when agreeing in one point, was the most powerful of any in the kingdom. Her father, the Earl of Strathearn, was now a misanthrope recluse in the Orkneys; she therefore did not calculate on his a.s.sistance, but she resolved on requesting Wallace to put the names of her cousins, Athol and Badenoch, into the exchange of prisoners, for by their means she expected to accomplish all she hoped. On Mar's probable speedy death she so long thought that she regarded it as a certainty, and so pressed forward to the fulfillment of her love and ambition with as much eagerness as if he were already in his grave.

She recollected that Wallace had not this time thrown her from his bosom, when in the transports of her joy she cast herself upon it; he only gently whispered, ”Beware, lady, there are those present who may think my services too richly paid.” With these words he had relinquished her to her husband. But in them she saw nothing inimical to her wishes; it was a caution, not a reproof, and had not his warmer address to Helen conjured up all the fiends of jealousy, she would have been perfectly satisfied with these grounds of hope-slippery though they were, like the sands of the sea.

Eager, therefore, to break away from Lord Mar's projects relating to his daughter, at the first decent opportunity she said: ”We will consider more of this, Donald. I now resign you to the duties of your office, and shall pay mine to her, whose interest is our own.”

Lord Mar pressed her hand to his lips, and they parted.

Prior to Wallace's visit to the citadel, which was to be at an early hour the same morning, a list of the n.o.ble prisoners was put into his hand. Edwin pointed to the name of Lord Montgomery.

”That,” said he, ”is the name of the person you already esteem; but how will you regard him when I tell you who he was?”

Wallace turned on him an inquiring look.

”You have often spoken to me of Sir Gilbert Hambledon-”

”And this be he!” interrupted Wallace.

Edwin recounted the manner of the earl discovering himself, and how he came to bear that t.i.tle. Wallace listened in silence and when his young friend ended, sighed heavily, ”I will thank him,” was all he said; and rising, he proceeded to the chamber of Montgomery. Even at that early hour it was filled with his officers come to inquire after their late commander's health. Wallace advanced to the couch, and the Southrons drew back. The expression of his countenance told the earl that he now knew him.

”n.o.blest of Englishmen!” cried Wallace, in a low voice, ”I come to express a grat.i.tude to you, as lasting as the memory of the action which gave it birth. Your generous conduct to all that was dearest to me on earth was that night in the garden of Ellerslie witnessed by myself. I was in the tree above your head, and nothing but a conviction that I should embarra.s.s the honor of my wife's protector could at that moment have prevented my springing from my covert and declaring my grat.i.tude on the spot.

”Receive my thanks now, inadequate as they are to express what I feel.

But you offered me your heart on the field of Cambus-Kenneth; I will take that as a generous intimation how I may best acknowledge my debt.

Receive then my never-dying friends.h.i.+p, the eternal grat.i.tude of my immortal spirit.”

The answer of Montgomery could not but refer to the same subject, and by presenting the tender form of his wife and her devoted love, almost visibly again before her widowed husband, nearly forced open the fountain of tears which he had buried deep in his heart; and rising suddenly, for fear his emotions might betray themselves, he warmly pressed the hand of his English friend, and left the room.

In the course of the same day the Southron n.o.bles were transported into the citadel, and the family of Mar removed from the fortress, to take up their residence in the palace of Snawdoun.