Part 83 (1/2)
”And what for him who loves you dearer than life--for Edwin? He cannot be forgotten!”
Wallace started at this; then she was ignorant of the death of that too-faithful friend! In a hurrying accent he replied, ”Never forgotten! Oh, Helen. I asked for him life; and Heaven gave him long life, even forever and ever!”
Helen's eyes met his, with a look of inquiry:
”That would mean he is gone before you?”
The countenance of Wallace answered her.
”Happy Edwin!” cried she, and the tears rained over her cheeks as she bent her head on her arms. Wallace continued--
”He laid down his life to preserve mine in the hovel of Lumloch. The false Monteith could get no Scot to lay hands on their true defender; and even the foreign ruffians he brought to the task might have spared the n.o.ble boy, but an arrow from the traitor himself pierced his heart.
Contention was then no more, and I resigned myself, to follow him.”
”What a desert does the world become!” exclaimed Helen; then turning on Wallace with a saint-like smile, she added, ”I would hardly now withhold you. You will bear him Helen's love, and tell him how soon I shall be with you. If your Father would not allow my heart to break, in his mercy he may take my soul in the prayers which I shall hourly breathe to him!”
”Thou hast been lent to me as my sweet consolation here, my Helen,”
replied he, ”and the Almighty dispenser of that comfort will not long banish you from the object of your innocent wishes.”
While they thus poured into each other's bosoms the ineffable balm of friends.h.i.+p's purest tenderness, the eyes of Wallace insensibly closed.
”Your gentle influence,” gently murmured he, ”brings that sleep to my eyelids which has not visited them since I first entered these walls.
Like my Marion, Helen, thy presence brings healing on its wings.”
”Sleep, then,” replied she, ”and Marion's angel spirit will keep watch with mine.”
Chapter Lx.x.xIII.
The State Dungeon.
Though all the furies of the elements seemed let loose to rage around the walls of the dungeon, still Wallace slept in the loud uproar. Calm was within, and the warfare of the world could not disturb the balmy rest into which the angel of peace had steeped his senses. From this profound repose he was awakened by the entrance of Gloucester. Helen had just sunk into a slight slumber; but the first words of the earl aroused her, and rising, she followed her beloved Wallace to his side.
Gloucester put a scroll into the hand of Wallace: ”Sign that,” said he, ”and you are free. I know not its contents; but the king commissioned me, as a mark of his grace, to be the messenger of your release.”
Wallace read the conditions, and the color deepened on his cheek as his eye met each article. ”He was to reveal the asylum of Bruce, to forswear Scotland forever, and to take an oath of allegiance to Edward, the seal of which should be the English earldom of Cleveland!” Wallace closed the parchment. ”King Edward knows what will be my reply, I need not speak it.”
”You will accept his terms?” asked the earl.
”Not to insure me a life of ages, with all earthly bliss my portion! I have spoken to these offers before. Read them, my n.o.ble friend, and then give him as mine the answer which would be yours.”
Gloucester obeyed, and while his eyes were bent on the parchment, those of Helen were fixed on her almost wors.h.i.+ped husband, she looked through his beaming countenance into his very soul, and there saw the sublime purpose that consigned his unbending head to the scaffold. When Gloucester had finished, covered with the burning blush of shame, he crushed the disgraceful scroll in his hand, and exclaimed, with honorable vehemence, against the deep duplicity, the deeper cruelty, of his father-in-law, so to mock by base subterfuges the emba.s.sy of France and its n.o.ble object.
”This is the morning in which I was to have met my fate!” replied Wallace. ”Tell this tyrant of the earth that I am even now ready to receive the last stroke of his injustice. In the peaceful grave, my Helen,” added he, turning to her, who sat pale and aghast, ”I shall be beyond his power!”
Gloucester walked the room in great disturbance of mind, while Wallace continued, in a lowered tone, to recall some perception of his own consolations to the abstracted and soul-struck Helen.
The earl stopped suddenly before them: ”That the king did not expect your acquiescence without some hesitation, I cannot doubt, for when I informed him the Lady Helen Mar, now your wife, was the sharer of your prison, he started, and told me that should you still oppose yourself to his conditions, I must bring her to him; who might, perhaps, be the means of persuading you to receive his mercy.”
”Never!” replied Wallace; ”I reject what he calls mercy. He has no rights of judgment over me, and his pretended mercy is an a.s.sumption which, as a true Scot, I despise. He may rifle me of my life, but he shall never beguile me into any acknowledgment of an authority that is false. No wife, nor aught of mine, shall ever stand before him as a suppliant for William Wallace. I will die as I have lived, the equal of Edward in all things but a crown, and his superior in being true to the glory of prince or peasant--unblemished honor!”