The Scottish Chiefs

by Jane Porter

  Chapter XL.

  The Governor's Apartments.

  The sun rose on Wallace and his brave legions as they traversed theonce romantic glades of Strathmore; but now the scene was changed. Thevillages were abandoned, and the land lay around in uncultivatedwastes. Sheep, without a shepherd, fled wild from the approach of man;and wolves issued, howling, from the cloisters of depopulatedmonasteries. The army approached Dumblane; but it was withoutinhabitant; grass grew in the streets; and the birds which roosted inthe desert dwellings flew scared from the windows as the trumpet ofWallace sounded through the town. Loud echoes repeated the summonsfrom its hollow walls; but no other voice was heard, no human faceappeared; for the ravening hand of Cressingham had been there! Wallacesighed as he looked around him. "Rather smile," cried Graham, "thatHeaven hath given you the power to say to the tyrants who have donethis, 'Here shall your proud waves be stayed!'"

  They proceeded over many a hill and plain, and found that the samewithering touch of desolation had burned up and overwhelmed thecountry. Wallace saw that his troops were faint for want of food;cheering them, he promised that Ormsby should provide them a feast inPerth; and, with reawakened spirits, they took the River Tay at itsfords, and were soon before the walls of that well-armed city. But itwas governed by a coward, and Ormsby fled to Dundee at the first sightof the Scottish army. His flight might have warranted the garrison tosurrender without a blow, but a braver man being his lieutenant, sharpwas the conflict before Wallace could compel that officer to abandonthe ramparts and to sue for the very terms he had at first rejected.

  After the fall of Perth, the young regent made a rapid progress throughthat part of the country; driving the southron garrisons out of Scone,and all the embattled towns; expelling them from the castles ofKincain, Elcho, Kinfauns, and Doune; and then proceeding to the marinefortresses (those avenues by which the ships of England had poured itslegions on the eastern coast), he compelled Dundee, Cupar, Glamis,Montrose, and Aberdeen, all to acknowledge the power of his arms. Heseized most of the English ships in those ports, and manning them withScots, soon cleared the seas of the vessels which had escaped, takingsome, and putting others to flight; and one of the latter was thefugitive Ormsby.

  This enterprise achieved, Wallace, with a host of prisoners, turned hissteps toward the Forth; but ere he left the banks of the Tay and Dee,he detached three thousand men under the command of Lord Ruthven,giving him a commission to range the country from the Carse of Gowrieto remotest Sutherland, and in all that tract reduce every town andcastle which had admitted a Southron garrison. Wallace took leave ofLord Ruthven at Huntingtower, and that worthy nobleman, when heassumed, with the government of Perth, this extensive command, said, ashe grasped the regent's hand, "I say not, bravest of Scots, what is mygratitude for thus making me an arm of my country, but deeds will show!"

  He then bade a father's adieu to his son, counseling him to regardWallace as the light in his path; and, embracing him, they parted.

  A rapid march, round by Fifeshire (through which victory followed theirsteps), brought the conqueror and his troops again within sight of thetowers of Stirling. It was on the eve of the day on which he hadpromised Earl de Warenne should see the English prisoners depart forthe borders. No doubt of his arriving at the appointed time wasentertained by the Scots or by the Southrons in the castle; the oneknew the sacredness of his word, and the other having felt his prowess,would not so far disparage their own as to suppose that any couldwithstand him by whom they were beaten.

  De Warenne, as he stood on the battlements of the keep, beheld fromafar the long line of Scottish soldiers as they descended the OchilHills. When he pointed it out to De Valence, that nobleman (who, inproportion as he wished to check the arms of Wallace, had flatteredhimself that it might happen), against the evidence of his eyesight,contradicted the observation of the veteran earl.

  "Your sight deceives you," said he, "it is only the sunbeams playing onthe cliffs."

  "Then those cliffs are moving ones," cried De Warenne, "which, I fear,have ground our countrymen on the coast to powder! We shall findWallace here by sunset, to show us how he has resented the affront ourill-advised prince cast on his jealous honor."

  "His honor," returned De Valence, "is like that of his countrymen's--anenemy alike to his own interest and to that of others. Had it allowedhim to accept the crown of Scotland, and so have fought Edward with theconcentrating arm of a king; or would he even now offer peace to oursovereign, granting his prerogative as liege lord of the country, allmight go well; but as the honor you speak of prevents his using thesemeans of ending the contest, destruction must close his career."

  "And what quarrel," demanded De Warenne, "can you, my Lord de Valence,have against this nice honor of Sir William Wallace, since you allow itsecures the final success of our cause?"

  "His honor and himself are hateful to me!" impatiently answered DeValence; "he crosses me in my wishes, public and private; and for thesake of my king and myself, I might almost be tempted-" He turned paleas he spoke, and met the penetrating glance of De Warenne. He paused.

  "Tempted to what?" asked De Warenne.

  "To a Brutus mode of ridding the state of an enemy."

  "That might be noble in a Roman citizen," returned De Warenne, "whichwould be villainous in an English lord, treated as you have been by agenerous victor, not the usurper of any country's liberties, but rathera Brutus in defense of his own. Which man of us all, from the generalto the meanest follower in our camps, has he injured?"

  Lord Aymer frowned. "Did he not expose me, threaten me with anignominious death, on the walls of Stirling?"

  "But was it before he saw the Earl of Mar, with his hapless family,brought, with halters on their necks, to be suspended from this verytower? Ah! what a tale has the lovely countess told me of that direfulscene! What he then did was to check the sanguinary Cressingham fromimbruiting his hands in the blood of female and infant innocence."

  "I care not," cried De Valence, "what are or are not the offenses ofthis domineering Wallace, but I hate him; and my respect for hisadvocates cannot but correspond with that feeling." As he spoke, thathe might not be further molested by the arguments of De Warenne, heabruptly turned away, and left the battlements.

  Pride would not allow the enraged earl to confess his private reasonsfor this vehement enmity against the Scottish chief. A conferencewhich he had held the preceding evening with Lord Mar, was the cause ofthis augmented hatred; and, from that moment, the haughty Southronvowed the destruction of Wallace, by open attack, or secret treachery.Ambition, and the base counterfeit of love, those two master passionsin untempered minds, were the springs of this antipathy. The instantin which he knew that the young creature whom at a distance hediscerned clinging around the Earl of Mar's neck in the streets ofStirling, was the same Lady Helen on whose account Lord Soulis hadpoured on him such undeserved invectives in Bothwell Castle; curious tohave a nearer view of one whose transcendent beauty he had often heardcelebrated by others, he ordered her to be immediately conveyed to hisapartments in the citadel.

  On their first interview he was more struck by her personal charms thanhe had ever been with any woman's, although few were so noted forgallantry in the English court as himself. He could hardly understandthe nature of his feelings while discoursing with her. To all othersof her sex he had declared his enamored wishes with as much ease asvivacity, but when he looked on Helen the admiration her lovelinessinspired was checked by an indescribable awe. No word of passionescaped his lips; he sought to win her by a deportment consonant withher own dignity of manner, and obeyed all her wishes, excepting whenthey pointed to any communication with her parents. He feared the waryeyes of the Earl of Mar. But nothing of this reverence of Helen wasgrounded on any principle within the heart of De Valence. His idea ofvirtue was so erroneous that he believed, by the short assumption ofits semblance, he might so steal on the confidence of his victim as toinduce her to forget all the world--nay, heaven
itself--in his sophistryand blandishments. To facilitate this end he at first designed toprecipitate the condemnation of the earl, that he might be rid of afather's existence, holding, in dread of his censure, the perhapsotherwise yielding heart of his lovely intended mistress.

  The unprincipled and impure can have no idea what virtue or delicacyare other than vestments of disguise or of ornament, to be thrown offat will; and therefore, to reason with such minds is to talk to thewinds--to tell a man who is born blind to decide between two colors. Inshort, a libertine heart is the same in all ages of the world. DeValence, therefore, seeing the anguish of her fears for her father, andhearing the fervor with which she implored for his life, adopted theplan of granting the earl reprieves from day to day; and in spite ofthe remonstrances of Cressingham, he intended (after having worked uponthe terrors of Helen), to grant to her her father's release, oncondition of her yielding herself to be his. He had even meditatedthat the accomplishment of this device should have taken place the verynight in which Wallace's first appearance before Stirling had calledits garrison to arms.

  Impelled by vengeance against the man who had driven him from Dumbartonand from Ayr, and irritated at being delayed in the moment when hispassion was to seize its object, De Valence thought to end all by acoup de main--and rushing out of the gates, was taken prisoner. Suchwas the situation of things, when Wallace first became master of theplace.

  Now when the whole of the English army were in the same captivity withhimself, when he saw the lately proscribed Lord Mar, Governor ofStirling, and that the Scottish cause seemed triumphant on every side,De Valence changed his former illicit views on Helen, and bethought himof making her his wife. Ambition, as well as love, impelled him tothis resolution; and he foresaw that the vast influence which hismarriage with the daughter of Mar must give him in the country, wouldbe a decisive argument with the King of England.

  To this purpose, not doubting the Scottish's earl acceptance of such ason-in-law, on the very day that Wallace marched toward the coast, DeValence sent to request an hour's private audience of Lord Mar. Hecould not then grant it; but at noon, next day, they met in thegovernor's apartments.

  The Southron, without much preface, opened his wishes, and profferedhis hand for the Lady Helen. "I'll make her the proudest lady in GreatBritain," continued he; "for she shall have a court in my Welshprovince, little inferior to that of Edward's queen."

  "Pomp would have no sway with my daughter," replied the earl; "it isthe princely mind she values, not its pagentry. Whomsoever she prefersthe tribute will be paid to the merit of the object, not to his rank;and therefore, earl, should it be you, the greater will be your pledgeof happiness. I shall repeat to her what you have said; and to-morrowdeliver her answer."

  Not deeming it possible that it should be otherwise than favorable, DeValence allowed his imagination to roam over every anticipated delight.He exulted in the pride with which he would show this perfection ofnorthern beauty to the fair of England; how would the simple graces ofher seraphic form, which looked more like a being of air than of earth,put to shame the labored beauties of the court? And then it was notonly the artless charms of a wood-nymph he would present to thewondering throng, but a being whose majesty of soul proclaimed her highdescent and peerless virtues. How did he congratulate himself, incontemplating this unsullied temple of virgin innocence, that he hadnever, by even the vapor of one impassioned sigh, contaminated her pureear, or broken the magic spell, which seemed fated to crown him withhappiness unknown, with honor unexampled! To be so blessed, sodistinguished, so envied, was to him a dream of triumph, that waftedaway all remembrance of his late defeat; and he believed, in takingHelen from Scotland, he should bear away a richer prize than any hecould leave behind.

  Full of these anticipations, he attended the Governor of Stirling thenext day, to hear his daughter's answer. But unwilling to give theearl that advantage over him which a knowledge of his views in thematter might occasion, he affected a composure he did not feel; andwith a lofty air entered the room as if he were come rather to conferthan to beg a favor. This deportment did not lessen the satisfactionwith which the brave Scot opened his mission.

  "My lord, I have just seen my daughter. She duly appreciates the honoryou would confer on her; she is grateful for all your courtesies whilstshe was your prisoner, but beyond that sentiment, her heart, attachedto her native land, cannot sympathize with your wishes."

  De Valence started. He did not expect anything in the shape of adenial; but supposing that perhaps a little of his own art was tried bythe father to enhance the value of his daughter's yielding, he threwhimself into a chair, and affecting chagrin at a disappointment (whichhe did not believe was seriously intended), exclaimed with vehemence,"Surely, Lord Mar, this is not meant as a refusal? I cannot receive itas such, for I know Lady Helen's gentleness, I know the sweettenderness of her nature would plead for me, were she to see me at herfeet, and hear me pour forth the most ardent passion that ever burnedin a human breast. Oh, my gracious lord, if it be her attachment toScotland which alone militates against me, I will promise that her timeshall be passed between the two countries. Her marriage with me mayfacilitate that peace with England which must be the wish of us all;and perhaps the lord wardenship which De Warenne now holds may betransferred to me. I have reasons for expecting that it will be so;and then she, as a queen in Scotland, and you as her father, may claimevery distinction from her fond husband, every indulgence for theScots, which your patriot heart can dictate. This would be a certainbenefit to Scotland; while the ignis fatuus you are now following,however brilliant may be its career during Edward's absence, must onhis return be extinguished in disaster and infamy."

  The silence of the Earl of Mar, who, willing to hear all that was inthe mind of De Valence, had let him proceed uninterrupted, encouragedthe Southron lord to say more than he had at first intended to reveal;but when he made a pause, and seemed to expect an answer, the earlspoke:

  "I am fully sensible of the honor you would bestow upon my daughter andmyself by your alliance; but, as I have said before, her heart is toodevoted to Scotland to marry any man whose birth does not make it hisduty to prefer the liberty of her native land, even before his love forher. That hope to see our country freed from a yoke unjustly laid uponher--that hope which you, not considering our rights, or weighing thepower that lies in a just cause, denominate an ignis fatuus, is theonly passion I believe that lives in the gentle bosom of my Helen; andtherefore, noble earl, not even your offers can equal the measure ofher wishes."

  At this speech De Valence bit his lip with real disappointment; andstarting from his chair now in unaffected disorder, "I am not to bedeceived, Lord Mar," cried he; "I am not to be cajoled by the pretendedpatriotism of your daughter; I know the sex too well to be cheated withthese excuses. The ignis fatuus that leads your daughter from my arms,is not the freedom of Scotland, but the handsome rebel who conquers inits name! He is now fortune's minion, but he will fall, Lord Mar, andthen what will be the fate of his mad adherents?"

  "Earl de Valence," replied the veteran, "sixty winters have checked thetides of passion in my veins; but the indignation of my soul againstany insult offered to my daughter's delicacy, or to the name of thelord regent of Scotland is not less powerful in my breast. You are myprisoner, and I pardon what I could so easily avenge. I will evenanswer you, and say that I do not know of any exclusive affectionsubsisting between my daughter and Sir William Wallace; but this I amassured of, that were it the case, she would be more ennobled in beingthe wife of so true a patriot and so virtuous a man, than were sheadvanced to the bosom of an emperor. And for myself, were he to-morrowhurled by a mysterious Providence from his present nobly-won elevation,I should glory in my son were he such, and would think him as great ona scaffold as on a throne."

  "It is well that is your opinion," replied De Valence, stopping in hiswrathful strides, and turning on Mar with vengeful irony; "cherishthese heroics, for you will assuredly see him s
o exalted. Then wherewill be his triumphs over Edward's arms and Pembroke's heart? Whereyour daughter's patriot husband; you glorious son? Start not, old man,for by all the powers of hell I swear that some eyes which now lookproudly on the Southron host, shall close in blood! I announce a fact!"

  "If you do," replied Mar, shuddering at the demoniac fire thatlightened from the countenance of De Valence, "it must be by the agencyof devils; and their minister, vindictive earl, will meet the vengeanceof the Eternal arm."

  "These dreams," cried De Valence, "cannot terrify me. You are neithera seer, nor I a fool, to be taken by such prophecies. But were youwise enough to embrace the advantage I offer, you might be a prophet ofgood, greater than he of Ercildown, to your nation; for all that youcould promise, I would take care should be fulfilled. But you castfrom you your peace and safety; my vengeance shall therefore take itscourse. I rely not on oracles of heaven or hell; but I have pronouncedthe doom of my enemies; and though you now see me a prisoner, tremble,haughty Scot, at the resentment which lies in this head and heart.This arm perhaps needs not the armies of Edward to pierce you in yourboast!"

  He left the room as he spoke; and Lord Mar, shaking his venerable headas he disappeared, said to himself: "Impotent rage of passion and ofyouth, I pity and forgive you."

  It was not, therefore, so extraordinary that De Valence, when he sawWallace descending the Ochil hills with the flying banners of newvictories, should break into curses of his fortune, and swear inwardlythe most determined revenge.

  Fuel was added to this fire at sunset, when the almost measurelessdefiles of prisoners, marshaled before the ramparts of Stirling, andtaking the usual oath to Wallace, met his view.

  "To-morrow we quit these dishonoring wall," cried he to himself: "butere I leave them, if there be power in gold, or strength in my arm, heshall die!"